Growing up, I was your classic Catholic Irish kid. I went to mass every Sunday. Then in secondary school I went to boarding school, and there was mass seven days a week before breakfast – it may have put me off!
I have an enormous family because I’m from Montreal and my family’s Catholic, so my dad has eight siblings and they all have kids and we all grew up in the same property on weekends and summers.
I worked as a prosecutor watching Catholic priests charged with sex abuse and saw firsthand how the ‘circle the wagons’ mentality revictimized the innocent, coddled the guilty, and made matters worse for everyone.
I do disapprove very strongly of labelling children, especially young children, as something like ‘Catholic children’ or ‘Protestant children’ or ‘Islamic children.’
The artistic taste of the Catholic priests is appalling and I am most anxious to have a Catholic church in which everything is genuine and good, and not tawdry and ostentatious.
A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a system of metaphysics. Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its beautiful morality.
I would not call myself Catholic anymore, but I went to 16 years of Catholic school: grade school, high school and college.
I was raised Catholic, and I have an aversion to anyone who takes religion to the extreme.
I was brought up a Catholic, so I suppose I have to believe in the goodness of human beings. I think we’re not so bad after all.
I was raised Catholic, and I can get incredibly guilty about mistakes.
In the Catholic schools, they spend much less money than the public schools, and they get amazing results. Private schools spend much more money than the public schools, and they get remarkable results.
I was always religious. I was baptized as a Catholic. I got my daughter baptized as a Catholic.
How does a nice Catholic girl end up going to prison for a year? It’s crazy. I’ve made mistakes. I have to pay for those mistakes.
I won the parental lottery. Most of the kids I grew up with either came from really fractured homes, or really violent ones. I went home to a very traditional, good Irish Catholic family.
The Catholic Church is a weird church. Much mysticism is sown broadspread from its ritual mysteries till it extends into the very lives of its constituents and parishoners.
There was plenty of dysfunction in my family and I went to Catholic School with these psychotic nuns. I would always try to be funny to lighten the mood.
Every kid that goes to Catholic school believes he’s going to be a priest one day.
Before playing football, I didn’t fit in anywhere. My parents didn’t have a lot of money, which they spent on our education to send us to Catholic private school in Oakland, mostly black. The other kids had more money than I did. I started school early; I was young. So I’d come back to my hood and read.
I’m a Roman Catholic. Or was. I was brought up that way and used to say my prayers every night, but I don’t pray to God any more. I might use the usual phrases I picked up from my parents, ‘Oh, if God spares me next year…’ or ‘Please God…’ but they’re only phrases.
I’m so happy I married a fellow Catholic because I think that marriage is tough enough – that’s one area that’s just not something we argue about. There’s no contention about it because we’re both on the same page.
Being raised by a Catholic father, a Protestant mother, and marrying the Muslim father of my three children, I encourage people to respect and at least try to understand different religions.
In Pope Francis’s ‘Amoris Laetitia’ (The Joy of Love), an apostolic exhortation on Catholic family life, he does not make earth-shattering doctrinal changes with regards to divorced Catholics, same-sex married Catholics, or the church’s stance on homosexuality.
My interest in art must have started with my Catholic upbringing. Art was everywhere: churches with its paintings, sculptures, stained glass, textiles, and fine metalwork.
I got in trouble in Catholic school for rolling the waist of my skirt down.
I went to a Catholic girls’ school before we moved to Florida when I was 15.
When Juan Antonio Samaranch said the Olympics are more important than the Catholic Church, I just couldn’t believe it. I said to myself, ‘Don’t let your expression show that he has just made a total ass of himself. Be cool, and just keep right on talking.’
I have very good relations with Pope Francis. I read constantly what he says and follow his speeches. Pope Francis has come to renew the Catholic Church, and he has new air to renew the spiritual world. Now, Venezuela does not need mediation.
As a practicing Catholic all my life, my faith and the church are never far from my mind. The lessons I learned in the church have structured the way I’ve approached my life and my career. They were lessons of grace, kindness, forgiveness, and compassion.
I spent my entire Irish Catholic youth in a constant state of guilt over imaginary sins. I learned that nothing is a sin as long as you don’t take pleasure from it.
I know Marco Rubio very well. He’s a friend of mine. He’s a man of deep faith. He is a man who follows Catholic dogma and – you know, for whom religion is very important.
A Buddhist or a good atheist is as acceptable to God as a good Catholic.
Though I am a Catholic, a professing one, I have serious doubts about the survival of the human personality after death.
The things of Catholic life are never boring because we have such a rich tradition and so many stories to tell.
Both my parents are Catholic and staunch believers. I’m not a Catholic now, but I still carry part of it with me.
People are like, ‘Oh, they must be Catholic’ or ‘Oh, she must just want all of his money.’ I’m like, ‘If I wanted all of his money, why am I having so many children? Children are expensive!’
I’m a closet Catholic. I love the iconography of the saints. There was a point in my life when I was going to convert to Catholicism, but I didn’t want my grandmother spinning around in her grave like a rotisserie chicken.
I have always thought of myself as a Czechoslovak Catholic.
My parents were extremely liberal. They didn’t believe in being Catholic or Protestant, and that was a big deal at the time.
While I was in college becoming a good Catholic I was also becoming a writer – one haunted by Catholicism.
I grew up Catholic. We went to confession on Saturday, stood in the shortest line, since it led to the priest who gave the easiest penance – usually a few Our Fathers and Hail Marys. We confessed in private, prayed our penance and our souls were clean.
I’m Irish. That means I’m Catholic. But, truth is, now I’m a retired Christian.
I identify, I guess, as a conservative Catholic.
At age 11, I went to a Jewish school. I speak Yiddish. I’m Church of England Protestant. My father was Catholic, and my mother was Protestant. My wife is a Muslim.
I was raised a Catholic, so I can even feel a little, you know, embarrassed or guilty if I’m really offending people’s sensibilities. To a degree.
What does it mean to be Catholic and not a Catholic? I feel adrift, homeless. My Catholic imagination allows me to see the soul as a lit breath, seeking the divine. It persists.
In the Catholic tradition, the idea of giving something up on a Friday – the act of self denial – has always been tied with being generous to those in need.
My mother was an unbeliever – and still is. My father was a nominal Catholic. We would go in to church at the last minute before the gospel reading, take Communion, and walk right out again.
I was a strong supporter of Montessori when my kids were very little. I homeschooled for a year, and then we did public school all the way through for the kids. I went to Catholic and public school depending on where I lived.
I was brought up Roman Catholic. I’m not even baptized.
I’m Catholic now, I’m Christian, watch out for them Devils.
I was nerdy girl who went to Catholic school and wanted to be an engineer. I was all set to attend the Illinois Institute of Technology. And then I took a hard left turn and studied Liberal Arts at Northern Illinois University, majored in Communications. Then worked in radio as a disk jockey and as the weather girl.
I was always in new schools and had British parents, which was not the norm, and I think there was also… I’m not particularly religious, but I was born Jewish, and I always felt like the outsider because I wasn’t Christian or Catholic.
I was brought up Catholic and know the stench of the Catholic Church. I moved away from religion early, but the impression remains.
With a Catholic mother and a Muslim father, I’ve always had a great interest in religion, but I’ve never practiced one myself. After I received a diagnosis of an aggressive form of leukemia at the age of 22, I put my faith in medicine.
One nice thing about growing up Catholic is it makes you open-minded about other people’s religions, since ours is nuttier than yours.
I am a Catholic.
Thankfully, I was able to go to Marquette University and get my education, a Catholic education, so I could please my family, because I think they wanted me to be a priest.
