Plenty of people are raised Catholic and then aren't Catholic anymore, like any religion.

Religion did not exist for the saving of souls but for the preservation and welfare of society, and in all that was necessary to this end every man had to take his part, or break with the domestic and political community to which he belonged.

The dissolution of the nation destroys the national religion, and dethrones the national deity.

I don't think you need religion.

Thus a man was born into a fixed relation to certain gods as surely as he was born into a relation to his fellow-men and his religion... was simply one side of the general scheme of conduct prescribed for him by his position as a member of society.

We are so accustomed to think of religion as a thing between individual men and God that we can hardly enter into the idea of a religion in which a whole nation in its national organisation appears as the religious unit.

The stability and peace which seemed to be so firmly established by the brilliant monarchy of Francis I vanished with the terrible outbreak of the Wars of Religion.

The question of religion was a matter for each individual's conscience, and in a great many cases was the outcome of birth or residence in a certain geographical area.

The Constitution provides for freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.

It's also reflective of a young person's religion or faith in that it's highly charged with sacramental imagery and with country imagery, because I was in the seminary for so many years in the country.