Anne Rice quits being Catholic

I've just learned about Anne Rice’s dramatic quit from Catholicism in Guardian’s G2 today. There is an interview with Emma Brockes about her new novel, Of Love and Evil, and a picture of Anne sitting in the grounds of her balmy estate in Palm Springs.

The statement she posted on Facebook (reprinted in today’s G2) only really says that she has left the Catholic Church; not necessarily her faith:

"I quit," she wrote. "In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen."

The question Emma asks is: what took her so long? Well, there are Catholics who don’t follow the dogma and who are able to live with the contradiction. I guess Anne felt she couldn’t.

When I was doing some research in Berlin a couple of months ago, the curator assisting me told me that the daughter of one of the subjects I was studying lives in Palm Springs. I asked what she had said about the place. The curator said she had been told that it was a great place to live because nothing ever happens there.