Philip F. Lawler Quotes & Sayings

But why would Catholics defend an anti-Catholic tradition? In part because they had ceased to identify with their faith; by the 1980s, to identify oneself as Catholic in Boston was to give an ethnic rather than a religious description. The voters who identified themselves as Catholics were telling pollsters something about their backgrounds but not necessarily their beliefs. The fashionable trend, for well over a generation, had been for Catholics to leave their religious backgrounds behind. By 1986 a majority had done so. — Philip F. Lawler