It is now for the Catholic Church to bend herself to her work with calmness and generosity. It is for you to observe her with renewed and friendly attention.
Every day Catholics prove that you can be a good Catholic and a good Democrat and have a different position from the Church on abortion.
I just disagree so much with the way the Catholic Church says things like, ‘If you’re not a good person, you’ll die and go to Hell; there’s a purgatory there…’ If I was talking with a Holy Ghost, it would scare the living Hell out of me.
If you are an Arabic-speaking, Greek-Orthodox going to a French school it makes you deeply sceptical if you have to listen to three different accounts of the Crusades – one from the Muslim side, one from the Greek side and one from the Catholic side.
Though I was born a Muslim, my father’s job as a medical officer meant that we travelled a great deal and I went to Hindi schools, Muslim schools, public schools, C of E and Catholic schools.
My Catholic faith is the foundation of my worldview, and my judicial duty is governed, from beginning to end, by the law.
I would not have stayed at a university if it told me upfront that a condition for me getting tenure. my views have to be filtered through Catholic values. I would consider it a betrayal of my parents’ legacy.
I’m a black Catholic raised in Decatur, Georgia, which was very gang-infested. Then, I went to an all-white private high school and excelled in sports and wrote poetry, then played football at the University of Georgia, minoring in drama.
For black Catholics, the papal visit is a time of anticipation but also a time of reflection on their difficult – but important – place within the Catholic Church in America.
I grew up in Stillwater, Minnesota in a proud Catholic family.
My mother was Catholic, my father not. I went to Catholic high school. Every form of education failed me. I was trouble.
I went to Catholic school and they basically just said don’t have sex, but would never explain anything.
It’s troubling for me as a Catholic to be at odds with the church.
You know, my children go to a local, local catholic school just down the road.
My mother was Catholic, my father was Protestant. There was always a debate going on at home – I think in those days we called them arguments – about who was right and who was wrong.
I have four children which is not bad considering I’m not a Catholic.
One night, I just woke up and I went, ‘Killing Jesus.’ And I believe, because I’m a Catholic, that comes from the Holy Spirit. My inspiration comes from that. And so I wrote ‘Killing Jesus’ because I think I was directed to write that.
I went to Catholic school in and out. I’m what you call a recovering Catholic. I have many major issues with the church.
Interesting enough, we had a reunion of the 12 of us who graduated, right? The only one who wasn’t there was the guy who became a priest, and he was literally in prison in Libya, for being a Catholic priest. Isn’t that interesting? Everybody else made the reunion but that guy.
I loved every second of Catholic church. I loved the sickly sweet rotting-pomegranate smells of the incense. I loved the overwrought altar, the birdbath of holy water, the votive candles; I loved that there was a poor box, the stations of the cross rendered in stained glass on the windows.
I would describe myself as a practising Catholic. This is only my opinion; others may disagree.
I’m a pro-life Roman Catholic conservative, always have been.
In bringing the subject of religious oppression to a wider audience, I didn’t just want to kick the Catholic Church but to poke a finger in the throat of theocracy and to let it be known that people shouldn’t tolerate this anymore.
People always think I’m Jewish. Actually, I’m a lapsed Catholic.
I was a Catholic youth minister for eight years… I’m not Catholic anymore. The church is too misogynistic.
When you are raised Catholic, there is one thing that you are confronted with at a young age, and that’s death. You’re confronted with all the big issues – and that sparks deep questions, like what the hell are we doing here, anyway?
I’m an Irish Catholic and I have a long iceberg of guilt.
I’m a good Catholic boy.
I grew up as a Catholic, and there was so much that was beautiful there, and also so much that was troubling. The whole patriarchal thing, the whole male-dominated approach, really bothered me.
We live across the street from our Roman Catholic parish, 39 steps away from the holy water, so close that the church bells mark every moment of our day. We wake up to the pealing, we pause several times a day to hear the beautiful songs ring out.
Having grown up Catholic, my prayers were scripted – memorized and deployed in church and before bed. As a young adult, I veered off script and talked to God more plainly. And by ‘talked to,’ I mean that I basically asked for things to turn out the way I wanted them to.
I was honestly a Catholic.
The Catholic Church has never really come to terms with women. What I object to is being treated either as Madonnas or Mary Magdalenes.
I was baptised a Catholic and, although I’m not a churchgoer now, I do have a strong sense of the integrity of doing what you believe to be true.
I went to a Catholic high school and it seemed like every time I drew something for a class project, it either got thrown away by the teacher or something.
In my 20s, as I began to travel in Europe, I found comfort in religious paintings. Even though my own belief in Catholic dogma had been shaken and weakened, I found that the beauty and the richness of the art still held me.
I grew up in the north of Chile, and this is why there are a lot of religious symbols in my pictures: because the Catholic Church in Latin America is very strong.
I am a Congregationalist with Catholic sensibilities. Which probably explains how I ended up in a Episcopal church.
Once a Catholic always a Catholic.
The Catholic Church is an innately conservative rock – they call themselves the ‘rock of Peter’ – and its resistance to change is, ironically, what has kept it constant throughout the ages.
I attended private Catholic schools in Paris and Los Angeles through high school.
My company is called East-West Theatre precisely because Sarajevo is this city on the border between East and West, the place where the Great Mosque and the Catholic Cathedral and the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral stand almost within touching distance of each other.
I’m not Catholic. I don’t believe in God. But at the same time, I’m obsessed by the sacred, by spirituality. The question of redemption has been present well before Christianity, but as French people are a bit stupid, they see all that in religious terms.
Even Catholic parishes today are not wanting for talent. But no serious singer or organist will get anywhere near the typical music program, at least if he wants to retain his self-respect.
I was brought up as a Catholic, and I’m no longer a Catholic. I don’t talk about my beliefs too much in public probably because I feel very strongly that it’s something personal – more than personal, it’s private.
The Palestine I know is a place where Christians and Muslims are equal. My mother, a Muslim village girl, attended a Catholic girls’ school in Ramallah, and my refugee husband spent the Second Intifada side by side with his Christian brothers from Bethlehem.
I was raised Catholic and I went to church until I was 16. I went through a phase when I was 15 of being quite fanatically Catholic. I was going to church a lot, receiving communion, saying the Rosary, praying, all that stuff. But when I started scrutinizing it, it just fell apart so quickly.
The Catholic Church is wealthier than Coca-Cola, but takes from some of the poorest people in the world.
I went to Catholic school for the cheapest private education.
I grew up in a very Catholic household. We were pretty conservative.
A person like me who has grown up in a mixed culture ought to be spiritual. My mother is a Catholic, my father is a Muslim, and my wife is a Hindu. Personally, I feel spirituality is about being clear-hearted. It involves a sense of connection with the divine.
I can’t speak to the differences within the Catholic Church.
The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false.
I was brought up a Catholic and was an altar boy.
Certainly in Catholic countries, the peasantry have always found ways to integrate pagan things in a way that makes it a little bit easier just to be a human being.
It’s such a relief to see Catholic and Protestant ministers getting on – that’s so rare. And in ‘I’d Do Anything,’ I’ve had so much support from folks back home, no matter what side they’re on.
Two of my aunts are Catholic sisters.
I’m a Catholic by background. I was raised in Goa, a part of India that was visited by Portuguese missionaries a few hundred years ago, which explains my last name.
The mystery of being human and, certainly, of being a Catholic lies in our embracing together the imperfect state known as the human condition. First and foremost, if we could ever be perfect or do things perfectly, we would eliminate mystery, an essential ingredient in the good life and the spiritual life.
