Is Marco Rubio Still Catholic?

Damian Thompson is reporting that Senator-Elect Marco Rubio attends an evangelical protestant church:

I assumed until this morning that Marco Rubio, the pro-life new senator-elect from Florida, was a Catholic. That’s because I kept reading in articles that he was “a conservative Roman Catholic”. Then I came across this curious article from Politics Daily which (without apparently realising that it is doing so) reveals that he has abandoned the faith of his Cuban parents ...

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All very confusing: the author of the piece seems to think that attending Christ Fellowship Church is compatible with Catholicism. It is not...

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According to the St Petersburg Times, Rubio not only attends this evangelical church but gives generously to it...

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Conservative Catholics, in contrast – and they are a growing community, especially in Middle America, admire Rubio not only for his stance on life issues but also because they mistakenly assume that he shares their faith. I’m sorry to have to disillusion them. And I wonder why Rubio has not said, very clearly, that he is an evangelical, not a Catholic.

[Read the whole thing]

My Comments:
An interesting revelation, and one that I assume will be fleshed out in additional detail on the Catholic blogs in the days and weeks to come.

Is it relevant? I suppose it might matter to faithful Catholics to some extent. But I must say that one of the funnier comments I've read in response to Thompson's story is along the lines of "Get back to me when he claims to be a Christian but is actually a Muslim."

Now that right there is funny, I don't care who you are. *


* NB: For the record, I do not believe that any prominent U.S. politician claiming to be a Christian is actually a Muslim in disguise. But the meme is out there, and that's what makes this comment funny.