Catholic Chic
GUEST COLUMN
Is it some sort of new chic?
Am I somehow suddenly “in”?
For some reason over the past several months there seems to have been a rash of people popping up “everywhere” who claim, and I emphasize “claim,” to have been “raised Catholic.” The most recent is the guy who played “Puddy” on Seinfeld, who made his confession to Terry Gross on Fresh Air.
Reading the newspaper, I discover politicians who were “raised Catholic.” Celebrities of all sorts from television, movies, or some esoteric branch of show business or the arts tell the world with a wink and a nod that they were “raised Catholic.” It seems to resonate with everyone. There seems to be an unspoken understanding of the precise meaning of this biographical fact.
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It took a few years, but the Vatican has ruled that the former vocations director for the American College of Louvain is a homosexual child abuser.
Moscow reminded me this time of New York in the middle of winter. Not the…