On the lighter side for a change:
Who would any of you regard as an “honorary Catholic” — that is to say, not formally a member of the Catholic Church, yet having some kind of quality, a degree of orthodoxy, manifest charity, admirable life, what have you, that you would regard as the mark of an exemplary Catholic?
To get things started:
Any others?
Don’t take this discussion any more seriously than it’s intended. This is not a question of who saved their soul and who didn’t. It is more in the nature of “who really should have been a Catholic?”.
Who would any of you regard as an “honorary Catholic” — that is to say, not formally a member of the Catholic Church, yet having some kind of quality, a degree of orthodoxy, manifest charity, admirable life, what have you, that you would regard as the mark of an exemplary Catholic?
To get things started:
- C.S. Lewis comes immediately to mind, and let me deal with this up-front, I realize he was an Anglican, and Anglicans regard themselves as Catholics. All well and good. You can think of this as the question of being an honorary Roman Catholic.
- Audrey Hepburn, “just because”, and because I like her. An absolute mensch in the humanitarian world. Class and femininity personified.
- Ronald Reagan, anyone? The tragic thing is that he would have actually been a Catholic, had his father not acquiesced to his mother raising him as a Protestant. (I believe the Church actually gave permission for this, foreseeing that his mother would be better able to give him a Christian upbringing.)
- George Washington — he was very fond of Catholic moral and ethical teaching, and even attended Mass from time to time. Some suggest that he died a Catholic. Let’s hope so.
- Jefferson Davis — he actually asked to become a Catholic as a schoolboy, and his Dominican teachers turned him down. Pity. He even wore the Brown Scapular and was given a requiem funeral Mass. Pius IX befriended him during and after the WBTS.
Any others?
Don’t take this discussion any more seriously than it’s intended. This is not a question of who saved their soul and who didn’t. It is more in the nature of “who really should have been a Catholic?”.
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