I've been the beneficiary of a peculiar kind of Catholic education. I'm not a Catholic, so I didn't attend Catechism classes. I didn't study at a Catholic school or university.
Instead, I married a man, our editor John Allen, who knew a lot about the Church when I first met him, and then I moved with him to Rome where he expanded his knowledge about the ins and outs of the Vatican by covering it for the National Catholic Reporter, The Boston Globe and now Crux.
I'm Jewish, but John likes to joke that I know more about the Catholic Church than most Catholics. It's probably true, but not because I made a rigorous course of study. It's just hard not to when you live in Rome, and can't swing a baseball bat without hitting a priest, or a nun, or a bishop, or even a cardinal!
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