Signs You May Be Catholic

You may be Catholic if ...

- you are not offended by references to bodily functions, but by disrespectful references to the Trinity or elements of the Mass.
- your friends all call you Frank, and your middle name begins with an X.
- you know the difference between a deuterocanonical and an apocryphal book.
- you suspect Dan Brown is borderline mentally retarded.
- you always found the words to the pop song “Spirit in the Sky” (“Never been a sinner/I never sinned”) shocking and blasphemous.
- you worry more about Purgatory than Hell
- you study the philosophers AuGUStine and St. Thomas More, instead of the philosophers AUgustine and Sir Thomas More.
- you are never certain you are saved, or that anyone else is damned.
- you don't see anything sinister about being Spanish.
- you take original sin personally.
- you do not think of Limbo as a dance.
- you're not sure what a “Roman” Catholic is.
- you know that Felicity and Perpetua are saints.
- you know that “Immaculate Conception” means conceived without sin, not without sex
- ...and you know it was Mary, not Jesus.
- you think of the British monarchy as chintzy and nouveau riche.
- you recognize the acronyms OLPH, JMJ, and AMDG
- you see nothing immoral in gambling, smoking, or drinking, but think of eating fish as virtuous.
- you know Jesus fell three times while carrying the cross.
- you can immediately tell whether a statue is of Mary, or of St. Theresa of Lisieux
- you don't think of saints, let alone priests and pastors, as sinless.
- you know the difference between mortal and venial.
- if you won the lottery, the first thing you'd do is have more children.
- you would never admit it, but in your own mind you tend to conflate Martin Luther and Lex Luthor.
- you are vicariously embarassed by the “white hats/black hats” moral view of most Hollywood movies.
- your friends call you Ben, but your name isn't Benjamin.
- you know the names of the three kings.
- you think of Anne, Elizabeth, and Mary as New Testament saints, not English Tudor Queens.
- you think of the Middle Ages as kind of a good idea.
- you are Irish or Scottish, and your name isn't William.
- you don't believe Santa Claus is a fairy tale, or a lie you tell your children; he's a saint in heaven.
- you don't see anything unhealthy about feeling guilty.
- your friends call you Al, but your name isn't Allan or Albert.
- you have invisible friends that you talk to regularly.
- you see art as a part of religion, not something opposed to it.
- you think “mixed marriage” means marrying a non-Catholic.
- you know the difference between a substance and an accident.
- you do not believe it is possible to be “too good”--but you can be too rich or too thin.
- you imagine the architecture in heaven as being Gothic.
- you think of Mardi Gras and Carnival as religious celebrations.
- when someone calls out the number of the next hymn in church, you sometimes feel the urge to shout out “Bingo!”
- you believe in the healing power of saying you're sorry.
- you can't remember the sermon.
- you used to get your leisure reading suggestions not from Oprah, but from something called “The Index.”
- for you, Mary is queen of more than just the Scots.

The above is all copyright by me, Stephen K. Roney; but free to use for non-commercial purposes with clear acknowledgement of the course.