My Crush on Catholicism from Jewcy.com

Aaron Hamburger has a nice piece on something that I have noticed in my three-score-and-five years wandering the planet. Jews and Catholics tend to hit it off better [at least in the USA] than they do with other perhaps more closely related faiths. My daughter went to a Christian prep school, but almost all her friends turned out to be Jewish! And she from Joan of Arc grade school!

I think it all goes back stateside to the phenomenon that the longest-running Broadway play, Abie's Irish Rose, pointed out. Rather than marry a drunken Irish hubby or an Italian or Pole, a nice Irish girl would marry a hard-working ambitious young Jewish male, at least in NYC, and have nice smart good-looking kids. Debra Messing looks like she might have sprung from this phenomenon, and James Caan, though there are a lot of different genes in the NYC pool. When I was living off-and-on in NYC, nice red-headed Jewish girls would come onto me, with my Irish traits, so it works both ways gender-wise.

Finally, I can remember listening more than once to the life-confessions of young Jewish males when an RA at Michigan, or a foreign-policy type in DC. Confession is good for the soul, and the spirituality of Catholicism---Joseph Campbell is a good example---attracts a lot of people bored with empty ritual or soulless materialism.

But then there's the numerous midges in the ointment---meat on Fridays and Latin Mass, then no longer necessary. And that eternal damnation versus reincarnation.

I, for one, want a second chance.