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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Texts have a “signature,” or a kind of DNA, that allows us to determine whether a book was written by one or several authors. The Qur’an has traces of at least thirty.
Kneeling had always meant self-abnegation. To kneel in church was to blend in utterly, to be one more duck in a pond of ducks. Now I felt as if I were showing off.
GKC won not only a popular following but also the respect and admiration — if not always the agreement — of serious intellectual and literary figures of his time.