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 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.
If Catholics and Jews can today come together regularly for talks after so many tears and so much blood have been shed, than Jews and Arabs must be able to do the same.
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.
Mum was a tremendous Anglo-Catholic. Very impressive, actually. She made me go to church for years - I still don't want to because of that.
I grew up in the East End of London, the youngest of three boys in a Catholic household. Both my parents were market traders and worked seven days a week.
Martin Sixsmith: [frustrated] I asked a question. Sister Claire: You're a journalist. Martin Sixsmith: Yes. Well, I used to be. Philomena: He's a Roman Catholic. Martin Sixsmith: Yes. Well, I used to be.
Our religion is itself profoundly sad - a religion of universal anguish, and one which, because of its very catholicity, grants full liberty to the individual and asks no better than to be celebrated in each man's own language - so long as he knows a...
But I remember the moment when my father died. I wasn't a very committed Catholic beforehand, but when that happened it suddenly all felt so obvious: I now believe religion is our attempt to find an explanation, for us to feel more protected.
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'm theologically in line with the Roman Catholic Church. I believe in the authority of the church, but I also have tremendous respect for my brothers and sisters in other Christian faiths.
We grew up devout Catholics, so my trips to San Juan always include going to the churches that we used to go to and lighting candles and everything. Everything I do in San Juan is what I used to do with my mom, kind of as a tribute to her.
I remember one time when all the nuns in my Catholic grade school got around in a semicircle, me and Mom in the middle, and they said, 'Mrs. Farley, the children at school are laughing at Christopher, not with him.' I thought, 'Who cares? As long as ...
We're seeing a much larger ministry here for the general community. Not just Catholics, but others are calling us too. They're not looking for lawyers or suing their grandfathers, but counseling and healing.
I found out that many of our Catholics simply don't know what the church teaches, and why, on a lot of issues, and therefore are saying things that they think are okay. They simply don't know.
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.
By no means do I anticipate screening those who come on to campus... And I have no difficulty if a bishop across the country or some local pastor may say that's not Catholic teaching - that's fine.
To me there's nothing different in principle with a Catholic adoption agency, or indeed Methodist adoption agency, saying the rules in our community are different and therefore the law shouldn't apply to us. Why not then say sharia can be applied to ...
I'd much rather be eating a bar of chocolate or even something healthy like a lettuce leaf alone at my desk than sitting through this silent, painful meal.
Malone had been raised by a lady both Irish and Catholic, in a good bourgeois home in which careless table manners were a sin, much less this storm in his heart.
To a born-again atheist like myself, it is clear that each of us has multiple selves, talents, perceptions. But to the Roman Catholic, unity is all.
