Technically, I am a cradle Catholic. My family is a mix of Irish- and Italian-American. My parents had me baptized as a baby. I attended religious education classes every year as a child and received all the sacraments at the usual age. My mother gave me a children's Bible for Christmas one year, and we read from it every night for a while, getting all the way to the Acts of the Apostles before my siblings and I lost interest because Jesus was gone at that point, so who cared what Peter and Paul were doing?
Actually, that's very characteristic of my religious beliefs as a child. I liked Jesus. I liked the Bible. I don't think there wa