Volume > Issue > Catholic Chic

Catholic Chic

GUEST COLUMN

By Richard Crepeau | April 2002
Richard Crepeau is Professor of History at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. This column previously appeared on PopPolitics.com.

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.

Enjoyed reading this?

READ MORE! REGISTER TODAY

SUBSCRIBE

You May Also Enjoy

Who Really Killed Goliath?

What if I told you there is a competing tradition in the Old Testament about an individual with a much lower profile who slayed Goliath?

The Cult of Diversity at Providence College

A Catholic college, employing the vague and undefined empty vessel of "diversity," is willingly suppressing its own Catholic culture in favor of an infection with Western sexual obsessions.

Struggling With Today’s Evils

Elderly folks I once knew were proud of their indifference to the urban American world and its culture, its values and habits, of which they occasionally heard from their children.