To discern whether or not somebody was Catholic in 1897, you wanted to ask solely two questions. What didn’t he eat on Friday night, and the place did he go on Sunday morning? The near-universal solutions: meat and Mass. To finish the weekend rota, you may ask what he did on Saturday afternoon. That, too, would have been a protected wager: He’d make one other journey to church to share his sins with a priest—receiving penance, absolution, and God’s forgiveness.
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