As I opened the doors of Corpus Christi Catholic Church in Bolton Hill last Sunday, I thought about eternal life.

Not an eternal life of the soul, but the ways in which our words and actions echo long after our deaths.

We tell the stories of the departed and pass along their wisdom. We move through buildings they constructed. We climb stairs their feet rubbed smooth.

There are places that become a part of us, and places where a part of us of will always remain.

Corpus Christi, one of dozens of Baltimore-area Catholic parishes set to close at the end of the month, is that kind of place for my family. My paternal grandfather and most of his eight siblings attended the school associated with the church from first through eighth grade, making the 15-minute trek from their Mount Vernon rowhouse in all sorts of weather.

One hundred years ago, my grandfather would have been streaming into these pews with his fifth-grade class. While most of the outside world would be unrecognizable to them now, the inside of the church building has changed little over the past century.

My grandfather and his siblings must have brushed against the same marble walls. They knelt at the same statues. They gazed up in awe at the same vaulted ceiling and stained glass windows.

Across the Baltimore area, people are grieving beloved parishes, even people who harbor mixed feelings toward Catholicism. A church is a place where we celebrate life’s seasons: baptism, first communion, confirmation, marriage. As Ralph Moore, one of the city’s most prominent lay Catholics and a parishioner of the soon-to-close St. Ann’s, told me recently, many people have marked all of their life’s milestones in their home parish and planned to have their funerals there as well.

As parishes close their doors, they shut a portal to the past. Many of us will no longer be able to worship in the places where our ancestors and loved ones worshipped. We are losing access to places where memories are kept.

My dear friend Rick Gioioso’s mother was a devoted parishioner at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart in Mount Washington, which is also slated for closure. As JoAnne Gioioso raised her five children, she tended to the church, polishing the pews, arranging the flowers on the altar and serving as a Eucharistic minister, stopping only when her final illness left her wheelchair-bound. My friend, although he lives in Philadelphia, donates to the church in memory of his parents, and attends Mass there when in town to feel close to them.

Whenever I am in a Catholic church, I think of stories like this. I think of people I love.

I remember my maternal grandmother playfully whacking my knee during a boring sermon. I think of my mother belting out the words to “Be Not Afraid,” despite being a bit tone-deaf. I think of my father’s quiet faith. I think of the life-changing teachers at Notre Dame Preparatory School who encouraged me to read my reflections at school liturgies — the beginning of my life as a writer.

But when I am in a Catholic church, I also think of pain.

I think of the more than 600 people who told investigators with the Maryland Office of the Attorney General that they had been sexually abused as children by a Catholic clergy member. I think of the survivors of abuse who shared their stories with me. I will never forget the horrors they endured and the immense strength with which they fought for justice.

I am keenly aware that many see the Catholic Church, and the hierarchy that covered for abusers, as irredeemable.

For many of us who grew up Catholic, the allegations of clergy sexual abuse hit close to home. One of the priests included in the attorney general’s report was a friend of my parents who visited my childhood home several times. Another priest in the report reportedly groomed and kissed on the lips a teenage relative, who fortunately told his parents before things further escalated.

The good parts of Catholicism are woven into my family. My grandfather’s siblings, the same crew who traipsed across the railroad tracks to Corpus Christi, grew up to do a lot of good in the world. (The school closed in 1971 and the building now houses Midtown Academy.)

The eldest daughter became a nun, taking the name Sister Dolores Scharper. She was a Daughter of Charity, and served as principal of several Catholic schools, including the old Seton High on Charles Street. The youngest daughter, who took the name Sister Annina Scharper, also became a Daughter of Charity, and worked as a nurse in hospitals across the country and in Taiwan. She died in the spring, just a few days before she would have turned 100, a joyous, giving and gracious person until the end.

One of my grandfather’s brothers, Philip Scharper, studied to become a priest, but left before he was ordained. He married, had six children and cofounded a liberal Catholic publishing house that published seminal works on the leftist doctrine of liberation theology. He wrote many books, including “Meet the American Catholic” and “The Radical Bible.”

For years, I identified as Catholic, even though I disagreed with much of Catholic dogma. I don’t believe premarital sex is wrong. I think birth control is great. I do not believe life begins at conception. As a bisexual person, I believe that all loving relationships between consenting adults are equally sacred. I believe all of us are created in God’s image, and that trans and nonbinary people are just as divine as everyone else — if not more so.

When my husband and I got married, we asked Father Richard Lawrence at St. Vincent de Paul to perform the ceremony. I was familiar with Father Lawrence, not only because he had gone to elementary school with my mom and high school with my dad (Smalltimore!), but because as a City Hall reporter I had seen him passionately fight for the rights of unhoused people. I also knew that he and his parish were staunch supporters of LGBTQIA+ people.

Just a few weeks after our wedding, Father Lawrence gave an eloquent homily in defense of same-sex marriage — flagrantly violating the archdiocese’s orders on the subject. Church doctrine has changed dramatically over the years, Father Lawrence pointed out, and the teachings on this topic will likely evolve as well.

Members of the clergy like Father Lawrence made me feel like I had a home in the Catholic Church. But that generation of liberal Catholic leaders is dying off, and hundreds of thousands of laypeople, like me, no longer feel comfortable calling ourselves Catholic. In the middle of the last century, more than 250,000 Catholics worshipped in the city, yet just 5,000 to 8,000 attend Mass at city churches today.

For the past six years, I’ve been on a quest to find a new church. My husband and I have brought our three children to progressive Presbyterian, Episcopal and Lutheran churches. I like their doctrines. I appreciate their rainbow flags and their commitment to social justice. We’ve met wonderful ministers and congregants at these churches.

And yet none of these churches quite feels like home. I find myself longing for the Catholic Church, and for the connection I feel to my family and to my past when I sing the familiar hymns. Last weekend, as my sister and I joined the congregation of Corpus Christi for their second-to-last Sunday morning Mass, I burst into tears as we sang, “Be Not Afraid.”

It was a day for tears in the church. Father Martin Demek’s voice cracked as he spoke of his love for his congregation at Corpus Christi, which is being folded into a new parish seated at The Basilica of The Assumption. Young people dabbed their eyes as they read tributes to the women who had led faith formation classes.

Corpus Christi will still be open for weddings, campus ministries for nearby universities and, beginning in January, a Sunday evening Mass. But it will no longer be the standalone parish my grandfather and his siblings knew.

As we prepared to leave Corpus Christi on Sunday, I inhaled the familiar scent of just-extinguished altar candles. I thought about all the Scharpers who had walked across the church’s mosaic-tiled floors.

I thought about the many Catholics and former Catholics who feel alienated, betrayed or abandoned by the church. The many parishes preparing to celebrate their final Masses. The priests and parishioners bracing for change.

In this season of darkness, as we prepare for Advent, it’s a time to reflect, and hope, that the church will bring forth a brighter future.

Readers’ church memories

Do you have a connection to a Catholic church that’s closing? Share your memories using the form below.

St. Anthony of Padua (closing)

“I have the fondest memories of St. Anthony’s bingo as a child — the smell of the bingo hall, my grandfather selling cards, learning to play with my mother. Even after my family drifted away from “the church” per se, we still remained connected to the community, and I admire the way St. Anthony’s has always committed itself to social justice.”

— Marie S.

St. Dominic Parish (closing)

“I was a member of the St. Dominic Parish. I remember going to mass on Sundays as well as attending school there. It was a great parish and school that was a vibrant part of the community.

When I became an altar boy, I believed it was a faithful way to be a small part of what the church had to offer all the families. It was a way to feel what the families felt through grieving at funerals, joy at weddings and countless baptisms and communions.

I will remember those times as feeling very close to God and believing deeply in the Catholic faith.”

— Ray W.

Our Lady of Pompeii Parish (closing)