Anna Quindlen:
· “I don’t do Catholic guilt. I don’t feel guilty about being at odds with the Church over the things I’m at odds with them over.”
· “If I were pope for a year, I’d be the second woman pope. The first thing I would do is ordain women because that would lift the Church.”
Cokie Roberts:
· “My husband, Steve, whom I met in college, is Jewish…We raised our kids as both. How was the Church going to respond to it? How could it say no? There’s no intersection. It’s ridiculous that the Church would deny a Jewish godparent. The truth of it is, any one of us can baptize a child. It’s just some priest deciding to pull some power game.”
Bill Maher:
· “I’ve heard the Catholic League’s not a big fan of mine. I won their award for being most critical of Catholics? No one insulted Catholics more than me and no one f***** more kids than the Catholic priests. I’ll take insulting Catholics and they can have f****** kids. How about that?”
Sister Joan Chittister, O.S.B.:
· “Should you wear the habit? What’s the habit about? And it was a big thing for me, because I loved the tradition and I loved the order and I certainly didn’t want to lose it. I can honestly remember the day I said to myself, ‘Joan, it comes down to this. Are you or are you not a Benedictine in the bathtub?’”
James Carroll:
· “I worship in the Catholic tradition and honor the Catholic institution, even while much of what I believe would disqualify me from a more rigid notion of what it is to be a Catholic. I don’t believe in the infallibity of the pope, for example.”
· “My beloved Roman Catholic tradition is full of things I reject.”
Nancy Pelosi:
· “When my mom asked if I wanted to be a nun, I said I’d rather be a priest.”
· “My mother thought the most wonderful way to profess your faith if you were a girl was to be a nun. The nuns were always wonderful, but the power was with the priest. I always thought that the nuns should be able to be priests.”
Frank McCourt:
· “Every priest must have been trained in suffering and horror.”
· “Now I believe that when you die there’s nothing—oblivion and memories.”
Susan Sarandon:
· “I don’t know that there’s a heaven. And there certainly isn’t a hell. God is much bigger than that. I don’t think God is really insulted if you take her name in vain.”
Sister Laurie Brink, O.P.:
· “Because I teach at the Catholic seminary, I am bound to not advocate women’s ordination and not even talk about it. We are not allowed to talk about some things. This one is a formal no-no. But I trust the spirit to open the hearts and mind of the hierarchy. She can be very persuasive.”
Dan Aykroyd:
· “Catholicism is no longer necessary for me to lead my life and lead it in a moral and ethical way. I am extremely ethical, and I am a moral person, but I don’t need Catholicism in my life today.”
· “I’d embrace gay and lesbian priests, because I don’t believe homosexuality is immoral. I draw the line at bestiality because it’s unfair to the dog or the cat. If the dog or the cat had consciousness, then that’d be OK with me. Sexuality has nothing to do with morality.”
