Mario Cuomo
A great moment on Bill Maher's show last weekend, in an interview with Mario Cuomo. Bill was noting Cuomo's religious convictions as a Catholic, despite his not agreeing with many of the pronouncements of the church. He seemed to think that "picking and choosing" the things you want to believe from a religion was somewhat missing the point. I'm paraphrasing, but the exchange went something like this:

Maher: Why would you buy the raisin bread if you're just going to pick out all the raisins?
Cuomo (after an appropriate dramatic pause): you do it for the bread, Bill.

Maybe you had to be there, but it was the perfect response, and in one phrase summed up the barriers that separate the decidedly non-religious, the radically fundamental religious, and the religious/spiritual like Cuomo who recognize a difference between the calling of faith and the rules of a religion. I'm not sure that anyone in any one of those three categories truly understands the thought process of those in one of the other two.

If you miss Cuomo like I do, and want to relive the glory days, here is the text to his famous Convention speech from 1984.