Bible-Belt Catholics
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1025176,00.html
With spirited preaching and conservative teaching, the South is giving
the faith a new flavor
By TIM PADGETT/CHARLOTTE
Eight years ago, a handful of Roman Catholic families in Huntersville,
a suburb of Charlotte, N.C., started a new parish. The home of their
church, St. Mark, was a bowling alley. Our Lady of the Lanes, as they
jokingly called it, was an apt symbol of the scarcity--and supple
ingenuity--of Catholics in a region known as the buckle of the
Protestant Bible Belt. Soon St. Mark was gaining a family a day. Now
its almost 2,800 families hear Mass in a cavernous gymnasium as they
await completion of a new church. Among the newcomers is Ben Liuzzo,
54, a financial-services manager who a few years ago moved his family
from New York to North Carolina. He had thought Catholics in the area
might be as outnumbered as Jews or Muslims--and that the meager church
life that did exist wouldn't engage his 14-year-old son. Instead, the
Liuzzos are attending standing-room-only services like St. Mark's teen
Mass, complete with a pop-music ensemble that could be mistaken for one
of the area's rollicking Christian rock bands. "This I was not prepared
for," says Liuzzo, who flashes a smile at a recent service as an altar
girl marches a crucifix past 1,000 parishioners.
Bible belt
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/b45ea4acfab644f1
Catholicism
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/97a95b560bb92eb6
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