The ex-catholic brother and I were talking last Sunday about being catholic. I told him that the priests serving at my childhood church were from the Marist order. He said "that explains everything".

I asked him what he meant, and he said that the Marists were originally from the Benedictine order, or something like that, and that the Marists were the liberal catholics.

He told me that most of the catholics churches in San Francisco were conservative, which he said was so strange since San Francisco has the reputation for being a liberal city.

I've been researching the Marists, the Benedictine order, and the history of catholicism in France. The Marists priesthood was born in the aftermath of the French Revolution.

There was an article on the Net about liberal catholicism coming out of France, after the French revolution. There's just too much to take in and to synthesize for me to make sense of it tonight. But I kind of the gist of what he's saying.

The ex-catholic brother also said that he thought the presbyterian church was a strain from the Benedicitine order. I have no idea what he meant when he said this, but I'm dying to find out.