Deirdre O'Kane Quotes

Every Irish person of my generation and earlier, we were raised Catholic and we'd have to learn it in school, we'd to learn the catechism by rote.

I was raised Irish Catholic and went to Holy Names Academy, an all-girl's private Catholic school. I loved the nuns there and I love them to this day.

It's a funny thing about being raised Catholic and then going to Catholic schools with nuns - the cliche about the mean nun was not what I had at all. They were very, very smart, devoted individuals.

Like the graduates of some notorious boot camp, my brothers and sisters and I look back with a sort of perverse glee at the rigors of our Catholicism. My oldest sister, Mary, was so convinced of the church's omnipotence that when she walked into a Protestant church with some high-school friends, she was sure its walls would crash down on her head.

I was in high school - and I went to an all-boys Catholic high school, a Jesuit high school, where I was focused on academics and athletics, going to church every Sunday at Little Flower, working on my service projects, and friendship, friendship with my fellow classmates and friendship with girls from the local all-girls Catholic schools.

Those Catholics, they really nab you when you're young.

I would not call myself Catholic anymore, but I went to 16 years of Catholic school: grade school, high school and college.

Older boys were allowed to beat younger ones at my 15th-century English boarding school, and every boy had to run a five-mile annual steeplechase through the sludge and rain of an October day, as horses do. We wrote poems in dead languages and recited the Lord's Prayer in Latin every Sunday night.

Every kid that goes to Catholic school believes he's going to be a priest one day.

I was brought up Catholic and know the stench of the Catholic Church. I moved away from religion early, but the impression remains.

We were a religious, practicing, Catholic family - Mass together on Sunday, Catholic schools, and parents who practiced everything they preached. A great gift was their total absence of any derogatory talk about people of any race or culture and we were on a street of many faiths, though no other races at that early time.

I had an Irish Catholic education. Horrible nuns, vindictive and cruel.

When I was a kid, I attended a small Catholic school in a south suburb of Chicago.

Worse than the ordinary, miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.

I go to mass every Sunday, which is a shock to everybody.

I was brought up a Catholic and was an altar boy.

I didn't grow up in the Catholic church, but I went to a Catholic high school and a Catholic college, and the Jesuit priests are not saints floating around campus.

I grew up Catholic, so I feel guilty about everything.

Every school that I have ever attended, except for kindergarten, I went to a Catholic institution.

It's such a shame, really, because we were known for our country of saints and scholars, and we grew up with such a great tradition with St. Patrick, and he is the one who brought Christianity to Ireland, and we celebrate St. Patrick's day every single year, but there's very few practising Catholics or practising Christians.

My father converted from being Southern Baptist when I was very young. He was determined that we get to Mass every Sunday, which served as the foundation for everything else. You simply do not miss Mass. Period. When the father of the family says we go, then we go.

I think Catholicism took root very quickly in Ireland because it's a very superstitious religion, the holy ghost, the holy spirit, it has a goddess, very visual, the music.

In big houses in which things are done properly, there is always the religious element. The diurnal cycle is observed with more feeling when there are servants to do the work.

I was educated by the nuns. Guilt and discipline — combine those and you'll be pretty productive.

If you're brought up Catholic, you're convinced of magic at a very early age. You're convinced the world isn't entirely real, which is a kind of conviction that never leaves you, for some strange reason.