The idea of right and wrong, being righteous, acknowledging when you make a mistake, repentance - all these important things I got from my Catholic background.
There's Catholic guilt about things, then there's the guilt of being the youngest of 10, so when nice things happen to you, you're not really allowed to enjoy them.
I've always been really artistic. I went to an all-girls' private Catholic school, and one of their biggest things was musical theater. I became obsessed with that.
I had been involved in the March on Washington in 1963. I was with friends carrying a sign, 'Protestants, Jews and Catholics for Civil Rights.'
When I went to high school, an all-boys' school, a Catholic school, I tried out for football, and I didn't make it. It was the first time, athletically, that I was knocked down.
In my midteens I went through a brief stage of religious fanaticism, but it was very much about just saying prayers and stuff like that, reciting rosaries and spending a lot of time on that kind of Catholic ritual.
David Grant: Well, why did you have kids, then? Woody Grant: I like to screw, and your mother's a Catholic, so you figure it out.
Philomena: And after I had the sex, I thought anything that feels so lovely must be wrong. Martin Sixsmith: Fucking Catholics.
Rosemary Woodhouse: Isn't Hutch coming with us? Skipper: Catholics only, Miss. I'm afraid that we're bound by these prejudices. Rosemary Woodhouse: I understand.
My first memories of religion were being taken to Episcopal church. My father was Catholic, but my mother, I believe, was Episcopal. So I sort of veered off into the watered-down version of Catholicism.
I know of no wars started by anyone to impose lack of religion on someone else. We have lethal Sunni v Shia, Catholic against Protestant, but no agnostic suicide bombers attack crowded atheist pubs.
So nonetheless given the importance that was placed on sport in Australia, I wanted to be part of that scene, particularly since I had felt very strongly in my early schooling being marginalised even in the Catholic school.
I had grown up in a privileged, upper-caste Hindu community; and because my father worked for a Catholic hospital, we lived in a prosperous Christian neighborhood.
Two studies from the year 2000, however, indicate that Catholics give lower ratings to their clergy's ministerial activities across the board than do Protestants.
As a former Catholic, and as someone who even today is not opposed to being called a Christian, I felt I had every right to use the symbols of the Church and resented being told not to.
Atheists/agnostics scored an average of 6.7 out of 12 on questions specifically regarding the Bible and Christianity. This is a higher score than (Protestant) Christians (6.2) and Catholics (5.4).
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.
If you think about it, if you've ever been to a Catholic service, it's practically a laser light show. It's very dramatic, very theatrical. The outfits they wear, it's all designed to be impressive.
You know how the church has been hit so hard by the sexual misconduct by clergy, and what's that's done to Catholics, especially here in Boston but elsewhere as well.
I enjoy being Jewish, but I'm an atheist... I hate fundamentalism in all its forms. Jews, Catholics, Baptists, I think they are all potty and capable of destroying the world.
It was an inflexible maxim of Roman discipline that good soldier should dread his own officers far more than the enemy
