Quote

I wasn't raised Catholic; I just really like the image of a neutral and benign Mary floating around somewhere, being nice to people.

Mary's life was a perfect imitation of Jesus. She was humble, hidden, sorrowful and afflicted, but she also knew joys that never entered the heart of man. She is all things to all men that she might understand their failings, though she failed not.

I think the beauty of Catholicism is its consistency through both successes and difficulties. I've counted on my faith to give me strength through both training and competition - but also in school, with my family and everyday life.

Whether one is Marian or Charismatic or both, or prays in one or more of the many other ways open to us, it is all a flow of love, if the heart is truly speaking to and listening to the Holy Trinity. Personally, I pray the Divine Mercy chaplet every day. We pray the Rosary every day in our family.

I, personally, do not consider myself to be some kind of Holy Mary of feminism.

Mary and Jesus had this extraordinary relationship between them. What a teacher Mary is, really. It is the ultimate trusting; that she had to trust God, that she was so privileged to be the mother of the Savior, that she had to stand there as a mother and watch her son being murdered and trust that that is what he came to do.

My mum Mary was always a bright, confident and fiercely independent lady.

Religion is among the most beautiful and most natural of all things - that religion which 'sees God in clouds and hears Him in the wind,' which endows every object of sense with a living soul, which finds in the system of nature whatever is holy, mysterious and venerable, and inspires the bosom with sentiments of awe and veneration.

I'm a good Catholic girl in the way that Madonna is. In the sense that I'm not that good at all.