The Virgin Queen Mother of Heaven and Earth

I think if I was inclined to become 'Christian at all, I might find it worthwhile to move to France, where I might worship in a Notre Dame cathedral, where as Henry Adams points out Mary is the reigning power in the statuary of many of these places, and is prayed to and revered as a motherly deity might be.

Really, it seems that Catholicism would be easy enough to swallow if religion were mandatory, especially as compared to Adventism, Mormonism or Judaism, to name just the few religions I have paid some attention to in the past. All of these three are rather demanding, requiring hours of study and devotional practice besides the mandatory attendance that marks membership in these groups. I have met many Catholics from many different congregations, all of whom seemed to confirm the generalization that Catholicism does not expect people to read the Bible and to seek the help of the Holy Spirit to understand the verses for oneself. In the past it was in fact assumed that most Catholics did not read the whole Bible and that the priests and the Pope handed down the word of God to the masses in terms that would make better sense to laymen. Granted, most Mormons have not actually read and studied the Bible and Book of Mormon verse by verse, and likewise there are lazy Adventists and Jews, but the average Adventist is expected to be reading the whole Bible, and there is a printed schedule in the back of their Bibles that many follow to read it every year completely. Church consists of a class of an hour or two every Saturday morning before the actual service, in which the congregation divides into small groups and each discusses a particular topic or book of the Bible, in a format I have otherwise only encountered in upper-division or graduate college courses. Many of the members of a congregation are called upon to lead these groups, and most prepare ahead of time every week, with a discipline that has been honed since early childhood. Compared to this Catholicism sounds fairly easy, and while orthodox Catholic views are demeaning to women at least in the old French traditions there are options for avoiding such unpleasantness. No, I am not converting from my atheist stance. But if I did, Catholicism has a much better chance of winning me now that I am aware of the Notre Dame cathedrals and their offerings.