So I am a Catholic for many reasons. Sometimes think I might also be a Buddhist, because that faith is calm and wide, and sometimes I think perhaps I am also a pantheist, because I smell divinity in music, herons, drunkards, flowers. But Catholic is my language, Catholic is the coat I wear, Catholic is the house in which I live.
It is a house that needs cleaning, a house in which savagery and cowardice have thrived, where evil has a room with a view, where foolishness and greed have prominent places at the table. But it is also a house where hope lives, and hope is the greatest of mercies, the most enduring of gifts, the most nutritious of foods.
— Brian Doyle, Leaping: Revelations and Epiphanies