Catholic Church

The Catholic Church in the novel is experienced through a convent school, its sisters and bishop, and the rituals and rules that organize life in Santa Fe. It offers Lizzy Enders a disciplined religious world after bereavement and abandonment, but her Methodist identity keeps its teachings open to question. The Church’s authority is consequential, yet the novel locates faith not only in doctrine but also in prayer, practical care, and competing interpretations of the miraculous.

Institutional Setting

The story’s Catholic setting is the school and convent attached to a chapel in Santa Fe. The author’s note connects this fictional world to the history of the Academy of Our Lady of Light: the Sisters of Loretto were brought to Santa Fe from Kentucky in 1852 by Bishop Jean Baptiste Lamy to run the school attached to the chapel. The novel uses that history and the local staircase legend as a springboard for its fictional story.

For Lizzy, the school’s religious life is at first part of the disorientation of being the only Methodist among Catholics. Its practices nonetheless become familiar. During evening prayer, after the day students have left, the incense, Latin, and sung responses give her a rare interval of peace in which she can sort through her thoughts. It is also the time she allows herself to think directly about her mother, whose absence otherwise returns to her during ordinary moments of the day.

Ritual, Authority, and Care

The sisters’ religious practice is woven into both formal ritual and ordinary responsibilities. A week-long novena to Saint Joseph accompanies their concern over the missing staircase for the chapel. The Bishop shares their prayer but acknowledges that people expect miracles of him which he cannot perform; instead, he gives a hungry carpenter work to examine the problem. The episode places religious expectation beside practical action rather than presenting prayer as a substitute for it.

Sister Roberta makes that practical ethic especially visible. She secretly provides Violate Lacey with medicine and sweet coffee with milk and nutmeg, explaining that God forgives disobedience when it helps someone in need. Her example makes care a lived religious judgment: obedience to rules is not treated as the only measure of moral conduct.

The Church’s presence also intersects with civil regulation. Sister Roberta tells Lizzy that Santa Fe requires midwives to hold a municipal judge’s license and a parish priest’s certificate confirming their knowledge of baptism. When Violate Lacey dies, the convent follows the town’s requirement that bodies be buried within twenty-four hours; because the next day is Sunday, her funeral is held that evening. The Bishop also wishes the convent to keep her baby, Elena, as the child has no known relative other than a drunken, violent father. These moments show religious authority working alongside municipal rules and responding to immediate vulnerability.

Sacraments and Conscience

The conflict over Violate Lacey’s baptism exposes the distance between institutional assurance and personal consent. While Violate Lacey is in a coma, Bishop Lamy tells Lizzy that he baptized her into the Catholic faith. He justifies the act by saying that the sisters did not know whether she had previously been baptized and wanted to make sure she would go to heaven. Lizzy objects that Violate Lacey was Methodist and did not want a Catholic baptism; the Bishop’s explanation does not resolve the disagreement for her.

Lizzy later asks José whether a bag of asafoetida, which Violate Lacey had asked her to place around her neck, could void the baptism. José has no precedent for that remedy. He answers instead with a different understanding of divine judgment: God is loving rather than punitive, and loves people regardless of their religious standing. His response does not settle the institutional question, but it offers Lizzy a way to consider faith through mercy rather than fear.

The Staircase and Competing Beliefs

When the carpenter’s staircase is found complete, the sisters gather in the church to see it. Its polished circular ascent has thirty-three carefully finished steps and no banister. Sister Roberta interprets the missing handrail through faith, then descends on her hands and knees before proposing that the girls practice coming down gracefully. Her response turns belief into a bodily act, even as the staircase’s unsupported structure makes faith seem physically precarious.

Mother Magdalena declares that the carpenter was Saint Joseph, and the sisters kneel in prayer. Lizzy rejects their conclusion: she remembers the man as someone who spoke with her, comforted her about her father, held her kitten, and felt hurt when the girls rejected him. The author’s note preserves this uncertainty, saying that the actual staircase’s builder was likewise identified in legend as Saint Joseph while leaving the question of belief to the reader. The Catholic Church’s role in the novel is therefore neither simply to certify a miracle nor to extinguish doubt. Its members give the event a sacred interpretation, while Lizzy remains unconvinced and leaves a small possibility of belief open.