Catholic schools in Indonesia routinely accept non-Catholic students, but exempt them from studying religion. Obama's school documents, though, wrongly list him as being Indonesian.
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.
If I were going to convert to any religion I would probably choose Catholicism because it at least has female saints and the Virgin Mary.
Catholicism is not a soothing religion. It's a painful religion. We're all gluttons for punishment.
If you grow up in a very strong religion like Catholicism you certainly cultivate in yourself a certain taste for the intensity of ideas.
What makes a comedian has nothing to do with religion. Think of Red Skelton, Jimmy Durante, Jackie Gleason, who were all Catholics.
We Protestants automatically assume that the Pharisees are the Catholics. They are the self-righteous people who have made Christianity a form of legalistic religion, thereby destroying the free grace of the Gospel. We Protestants are the tax collectors, knowing that we are sinners and that our lives depend upon God's free grace.
I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
Religious wars are not caused by the fact that there is more than one religion, but by the spirit of intolerance... the spread of which can only be regarded as the total eclipse of human reason.
Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
Ethical religion can be real only to those who are engaged in ceaseless efforts at moral improvement. By moving upward we acquire faith in an upward movement, without limit.
The God who existed before any religion counts on you to make the oneness of the human family known and celebrated.
Scientific prayer makes God a celestial lab rat, leading to bad science and worse religion.
Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor - over each other.
All nations struggle in the aftermath of civil war. More than 100 years after the English Civil War, for instance, any prelate who was 'enthusiastic' about religion attracted censure and suspicion.
Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.
Like religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It's too controversial.
I select a very small number of things to be sceptical about, such as markets, and on these I am hypersceptic. But I want to be fooled by randomness in art. I want the ceremonial of religion; we are made for it.
The quarrels and divisions about religion were evils unknown to the heathen. The reason was because the religion of the heathen consisted rather in rites and ceremonies than in any constant belief.
While my mother lived, I always felt to a certain degree as if I had somebody who was my superior and who exercised a mysterious protection over me. I belonged to something - I hung to something - there is nothing that has so much reverence and religion in it as affection to parents.
