To discern whether someone was Catholic in 1897, you needed to ask only two questions. What didn’t he eat on Friday evening, and where did he go on Sunday morning? The near-universal answers: meat and Mass. To complete the weekend rota, you might ask what he did on Saturday afternoon. That, too, would have been a safe bet: He’d make another trip to church to share his sins with a priest—receiving penance, absolution, and God’s forgiveness.

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