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Once a Catholic: Prominent Catholics and Ex-Catholics Discuss the Influence of the Church on Their Lives and Work
Drawn from in-depth interviews with 26 prominent practicing and "fallen" Catholics, this is a serious yet entertaining look at how the Roman Catholic experience shaped these people's careers, relationships, and feelings about themselves and the world.
- GenresChristianity
371 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1987
23 people want to read
About the author
Peter Occhiogrosso
29 books3 followersPeter Occhiogrosso is the author or coauthor of more than 20 nonfiction books, as well as a journalist who began his writing career in the 1970s as a music reviewer and interviewer. Since 1987 many of his books have focused on spirituality and world religion, although he has also coauthored books by public figures as disparate as talk-show host Larry King, cabaret singer Michael Feinstein, and rock icon Frank Zappa.
As his interests expanded from the world of music to encompass spiritual life and practices, Peter wrote a series of books about spiritual experience, including "Once A Catholic" (Houghton-Mifflin); "Through the Labyrinth" (Penguin); and a popular guide to the world's religions entitled "The Joy of Sects" (Doubleday). At the same time, he maintained a parallel career as a coauthor and collaborator, adding to his books with King and Zappa by helping to write Caroline Myss's "Why People Don't Heal" and "Sacred Contracts," both of which were New York Times Best Sellers.
He also coauthored five books on prayer and healing with Ron Roth, PhD. In 2012 he worked with yoga master Mark Whitwell to create "The Promise of Love, Sex, and Intimacy" (Atria). Following a lifelong interest in nutrition and health, Peter has also collaborated with Vijay Vad, MD, of the Hospital for Special Surgery, on a leading book about arthritis treatment, "Arthritis Rx" (Gotham), as well as Dr. Vad's latest book, "Stop Pain" (Hay House). Three of the books Peter coauthored became New York Times Best Sellers.
As his interests expanded from the world of music to encompass spiritual life and practices, Peter wrote a series of books about spiritual experience, including "Once A Catholic" (Houghton-Mifflin); "Through the Labyrinth" (Penguin); and a popular guide to the world's religions entitled "The Joy of Sects" (Doubleday). At the same time, he maintained a parallel career as a coauthor and collaborator, adding to his books with King and Zappa by helping to write Caroline Myss's "Why People Don't Heal" and "Sacred Contracts," both of which were New York Times Best Sellers.
He also coauthored five books on prayer and healing with Ron Roth, PhD. In 2012 he worked with yoga master Mark Whitwell to create "The Promise of Love, Sex, and Intimacy" (Atria). Following a lifelong interest in nutrition and health, Peter has also collaborated with Vijay Vad, MD, of the Hospital for Special Surgery, on a leading book about arthritis treatment, "Arthritis Rx" (Gotham), as well as Dr. Vad's latest book, "Stop Pain" (Hay House). Three of the books Peter coauthored became New York Times Best Sellers.
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March 4, 2023
A DIVERSE SERIES OF INTERVIEWS
Author Peter Occhogrosso wrote in the introductory chapter of this 1987 book, “By assembling the interviews in this book I hoped to recall for my subjects and my readers, as well as for myself, the provenance and effects of that imprint… Yet few of these people were as predictable or monomaniacal as I might have preferred… other motifs drifted into our conversations as the project went along… Considering that nearly half the people with whom I spoke are lapsed Catholics---or, as we sometimes like to call ourselves, ‘cultural Catholics’---and that a number of the rest are outspoken critics of the Vatican, I was rather surprised that the overall tone of the interviews was so optimistic. The men and women who have remained in the Church either embrace it wholeheartedly or are working to reshape its commitment to social justice… a few profess no fondness for the Church at all. Yet in their harshest outcries one can sometimes sense an undercurrent of disappointment … Catholics who were willing to discuss their experience generally had more good than bad to say about it.” (Pg. xiii-xv)
Joan Chittister observes, “I don’t think religious life is dead. On the contrary, I think religious life is in a state of rebirth. But what was a significant reason to give your life one hundred years ago is no longer a significant reason. One hundred years ago… What nuns were doing … was making it possible for immigrant Catholics to preserve their faith and be inserted into a Protestant culture… Now, since Vatican II, nuns have realized that the radical ministry of that century is over; Catholics ARE the establishment. They’re the middle class; they’re even the wealthy; they’re certainly the educated. The whole question now is Who are the new poor? Who needs us now?” (Pg. 13)
Occhiogrosso said of Martin Scorsese, “Why does it seem as if the lapsed Catholic artists are the ones who can’t keep the religion out of their work? I don’t know another major American filmmaker whose movies are more thoroughly steeped in the ethos and essence of Catholicism than Martin Scorsese Although Scorsese probably hasn’t made a film so overtly obsessed with sin, penance, and redemption and so loaded with Catholic images since his 19783 ‘Mean Streets’… he still keeps his hand in. In his most recent work, ‘The Color of Money’ … features its own versions of the fall and resurrection…” (Pg. 89)
Michael Novak states, “Really, to read the letters columns in the ‘National Catholic Reporter,’ the flagship of progressive bourgeois Christianity, is to overhear spoiled children. No, the Church means participating in God’s life, no matter what, believing in GOD, and not in nonsense… The priest is not just a social worker, teacher, nurse, counselor, minister. The priest is Christ, in a special way… We have now seen the priesthood demythologized. So what is it now, a club of political activists? No, the priest is [‘set aside,’ Celibacy is a sign of this being ‘set apart.’” (Pg. 133)
He says of Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, “It’s a matter of record that Guccione once began study to become a Roman Catholic priest and that he is a painter manqué Those influences show their hand in a curious asceticism and a kind of priestly demeanor and in a lavish art collection. But is it too much to ask the reader to see in Guccione’s elaborate yet meticulous grooming… the picture of a Man Whom Would Be a Renaissance Prince?” (Pg. 137)
Jimmy Breslin asserts, “The Church’s position on birth control has to be insane. I’ve got a little headache with abortion myself---I don’t like that… I’m going to be very consistent on the question of the state tinkering with life. I’m going to be against war. I’m going to be against capital punishment, against euthanasia, and against abortion. But how can they be against birth control when they have to be for it in China, in India?... Do they want people to be born just so they can starve in Somalia and have twenty-nine grandmothers in Brooklyn? They spend too much time preaching about sex. How are you going to go to hell over love? But you’re gonna go to hell over hate.” (Pg. 181)
George Carlin recounts, “Psychologically. I wasn’t a Catholic much after eighth grade… I had given it up internally a few years before that. It never took with me. There seemed to be a hypocrisy, an inconsistency, a stressing of penance and punishment and pain, and not a celebration of life. It seemed very antihuman… there was a feeling that they weren’t really sure of themselves. They would change a rule, for instance, that you couldn’t eat meat on Friday… now there are people in hell for eternity for eating a piece of bologna, and it’s no longer a sin. I just sensed that they weren’t really serious. I believed in a God, and I had a strong spiritual development. But the religious, external stuff didn’t take very well.” (Pg. 224)
Elizabeth McAlister states, “Ultimately, when you talk about the issues within the Church that need to be addressed, you’re talking about the emphasis on narrow moral issue and the abandonment of the wider issues of justice. When you read that prophets, when you read the gospels, where they focused on issues of justice, it becomes really astonishing to consider how we were taught. Earing meat on Friday was much more important than feeding the hungry---one was a sin, and the other was just a nice thing to do.” (Pg. 261)
Eugene McCarthy suggests, “I don’t think that this new wave of repression coming out of Rome will create a schism in the American Church. I think people will just leave---they’ll drift off and come back and drift off again. We all know people who would’ve been excommunicated years ago yet who continued to go communion and receive the sacraments. I presume that the parish priests knew what was happening but didn’t do anything about it. There seem to be two Churches now, operating out of the same building, as it were, under the same hierarchy. In earlier times, they would have had a showdown, I suppose---nail some theses to the door---but they don’t do that anymore. The nun who recently made a public show against the Pope wouldn’t been burned at the stake four hundred years ago.” (Pg. 283)
Frank Zappa recalls, “I’m certainly not a devouter, but I did used to be. I was pretty devout until the time I was eighteen… But if wasn’t really connected with the rigamarole of the Church. If I’d been raised in any other kind of religion, I think I would’ve been just as devout because it felt correct at that time in my life to be devout. But the more you get into the rigamarole and look at what the dogma is and see how the machinery of the Church shuts people’s minds off, and the more you learn about the business end of the Church and the history of the Church, from an objective point of view, then the more chance there is that you will decide that it is possible for a human being still to be quite fond of Jesus and wind up hating ANY church. That’s a theoretical possibility.” (Pg. 334)
This book will interest those seeking a variety of viewpoints on the Catholic church.
Author Peter Occhogrosso wrote in the introductory chapter of this 1987 book, “By assembling the interviews in this book I hoped to recall for my subjects and my readers, as well as for myself, the provenance and effects of that imprint… Yet few of these people were as predictable or monomaniacal as I might have preferred… other motifs drifted into our conversations as the project went along… Considering that nearly half the people with whom I spoke are lapsed Catholics---or, as we sometimes like to call ourselves, ‘cultural Catholics’---and that a number of the rest are outspoken critics of the Vatican, I was rather surprised that the overall tone of the interviews was so optimistic. The men and women who have remained in the Church either embrace it wholeheartedly or are working to reshape its commitment to social justice… a few profess no fondness for the Church at all. Yet in their harshest outcries one can sometimes sense an undercurrent of disappointment … Catholics who were willing to discuss their experience generally had more good than bad to say about it.” (Pg. xiii-xv)
Joan Chittister observes, “I don’t think religious life is dead. On the contrary, I think religious life is in a state of rebirth. But what was a significant reason to give your life one hundred years ago is no longer a significant reason. One hundred years ago… What nuns were doing … was making it possible for immigrant Catholics to preserve their faith and be inserted into a Protestant culture… Now, since Vatican II, nuns have realized that the radical ministry of that century is over; Catholics ARE the establishment. They’re the middle class; they’re even the wealthy; they’re certainly the educated. The whole question now is Who are the new poor? Who needs us now?” (Pg. 13)
Occhiogrosso said of Martin Scorsese, “Why does it seem as if the lapsed Catholic artists are the ones who can’t keep the religion out of their work? I don’t know another major American filmmaker whose movies are more thoroughly steeped in the ethos and essence of Catholicism than Martin Scorsese Although Scorsese probably hasn’t made a film so overtly obsessed with sin, penance, and redemption and so loaded with Catholic images since his 19783 ‘Mean Streets’… he still keeps his hand in. In his most recent work, ‘The Color of Money’ … features its own versions of the fall and resurrection…” (Pg. 89)
Michael Novak states, “Really, to read the letters columns in the ‘National Catholic Reporter,’ the flagship of progressive bourgeois Christianity, is to overhear spoiled children. No, the Church means participating in God’s life, no matter what, believing in GOD, and not in nonsense… The priest is not just a social worker, teacher, nurse, counselor, minister. The priest is Christ, in a special way… We have now seen the priesthood demythologized. So what is it now, a club of political activists? No, the priest is [‘set aside,’ Celibacy is a sign of this being ‘set apart.’” (Pg. 133)
He says of Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, “It’s a matter of record that Guccione once began study to become a Roman Catholic priest and that he is a painter manqué Those influences show their hand in a curious asceticism and a kind of priestly demeanor and in a lavish art collection. But is it too much to ask the reader to see in Guccione’s elaborate yet meticulous grooming… the picture of a Man Whom Would Be a Renaissance Prince?” (Pg. 137)
Jimmy Breslin asserts, “The Church’s position on birth control has to be insane. I’ve got a little headache with abortion myself---I don’t like that… I’m going to be very consistent on the question of the state tinkering with life. I’m going to be against war. I’m going to be against capital punishment, against euthanasia, and against abortion. But how can they be against birth control when they have to be for it in China, in India?... Do they want people to be born just so they can starve in Somalia and have twenty-nine grandmothers in Brooklyn? They spend too much time preaching about sex. How are you going to go to hell over love? But you’re gonna go to hell over hate.” (Pg. 181)
George Carlin recounts, “Psychologically. I wasn’t a Catholic much after eighth grade… I had given it up internally a few years before that. It never took with me. There seemed to be a hypocrisy, an inconsistency, a stressing of penance and punishment and pain, and not a celebration of life. It seemed very antihuman… there was a feeling that they weren’t really sure of themselves. They would change a rule, for instance, that you couldn’t eat meat on Friday… now there are people in hell for eternity for eating a piece of bologna, and it’s no longer a sin. I just sensed that they weren’t really serious. I believed in a God, and I had a strong spiritual development. But the religious, external stuff didn’t take very well.” (Pg. 224)
Elizabeth McAlister states, “Ultimately, when you talk about the issues within the Church that need to be addressed, you’re talking about the emphasis on narrow moral issue and the abandonment of the wider issues of justice. When you read that prophets, when you read the gospels, where they focused on issues of justice, it becomes really astonishing to consider how we were taught. Earing meat on Friday was much more important than feeding the hungry---one was a sin, and the other was just a nice thing to do.” (Pg. 261)
Eugene McCarthy suggests, “I don’t think that this new wave of repression coming out of Rome will create a schism in the American Church. I think people will just leave---they’ll drift off and come back and drift off again. We all know people who would’ve been excommunicated years ago yet who continued to go communion and receive the sacraments. I presume that the parish priests knew what was happening but didn’t do anything about it. There seem to be two Churches now, operating out of the same building, as it were, under the same hierarchy. In earlier times, they would have had a showdown, I suppose---nail some theses to the door---but they don’t do that anymore. The nun who recently made a public show against the Pope wouldn’t been burned at the stake four hundred years ago.” (Pg. 283)
Frank Zappa recalls, “I’m certainly not a devouter, but I did used to be. I was pretty devout until the time I was eighteen… But if wasn’t really connected with the rigamarole of the Church. If I’d been raised in any other kind of religion, I think I would’ve been just as devout because it felt correct at that time in my life to be devout. But the more you get into the rigamarole and look at what the dogma is and see how the machinery of the Church shuts people’s minds off, and the more you learn about the business end of the Church and the history of the Church, from an objective point of view, then the more chance there is that you will decide that it is possible for a human being still to be quite fond of Jesus and wind up hating ANY church. That’s a theoretical possibility.” (Pg. 334)
This book will interest those seeking a variety of viewpoints on the Catholic church.
May 18, 2017
This is a good book if you want to know the impact of Catholicism on a person's life, and in particular on various priests and nuns who have either given up the faith or converted to it. A priest admitted he confessed his sexual activity with teenage boys to his confessor on numerous occasions. Asked if that was the way he reconciled his actions with God, he said, 'Yes I think it does.'
I read this book for research and found it extremely helpful, but I'm not sure how thrilling a read it would be as a general non-fiction book although it does cover interviews with a wide range of people sufficient for everyone to find something of interest.
Freak Out!: My Life With Frank Zappa
I read this book for research and found it extremely helpful, but I'm not sure how thrilling a read it would be as a general non-fiction book although it does cover interviews with a wide range of people sufficient for everyone to find something of interest.
Freak Out!: My Life With Frank Zappa
May 29, 2018
Revealing interviews of current (or ex-) Catholic men and women from many fields in the public eye—writer, comedian, film director, religious life, politician, musician, and how they were influenced by parochial schools and the Church. Positive and negative spins., effects of Vatican II. Sr. Joan Chittister, Mary Gordon, Frank Zappa, Sen. Eugene McCarthy, George Carlin, Christopher Buckley. Liked the differing viewpoints.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews