OSV Newsweekly

Every week, OSV Newsweekly helps you look at the news and issues of today though the eyes of Faith. Lively, thoughtful, spiritual, OSV Newsweekly brings you Catholic clarity on today's news.

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Student loan debt dampens discerners' calls to religious life →

By Maryann Gogniat Eidemiller - OSV Newsweekly, 4/22/2012

Roberta Reifsnyder wanted to go to college to become a nurse, then get married and have eight children. Plans changed when her faith was challenged by students who didn’t share her Catholic beliefs, and she started to realize that “something was missing.”

Halfway through Cedar Crest College in Allentown, Pa., she felt a call to vocation, but knew that she couldn’t enter a community with student loans hanging over her head.

“I wondered what I could do, how I could finish college and not have any debt,” she said. “My concern was in losing the vocation.”

Reifsnyder, 23, is a second-year postulant with the Sisters of Christian Charity in Mendham, N.J. She also is a school nurse, a job that she needs to help her pay off nearly $80,000 in student loans. Read more

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