Curran Center Talk: “Disability, Vocation, and Catholicism”

From the first epidemic in New York City in 1916, polio struck communities across the United States nearly every summer until the approval of a vaccine in 1955. Many survivors wrote memoirs, records of their suffering and their vision for life as newly-disabled people in the wake of the illness. American Catholic women who survived polio often viewed their suffering as part of a divine calling. They frequently saw a rationale for their religious vocation in their disability. Catholic culture encouraged this interpretation, especially for women; Catholic women who survived polio entered helping professions at higher rates than men and non-Catholics. Brittany Acors, winner of the 2025 New Scholar Essay Prize for Catholic Studies in the Americas, will explore how American Catholic polio survivors interacted with their culture to cultivate new understandings and craft narratives of suffering, disability, and service.