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Article: The long goodbyes: leaving New Orleans and the Catholic church.(NEW ORLEANS)(Cover story)
- Article from:
- National Catholic Reporter
- Article date:
- September 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 National Catholic Reporter. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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This has been a Catholic city longer than America has been a constitutional democracy. The still-fading echoes of Latin plainchant haunt the French Quarter more subtly but more powerfully than the retailed incantations of Marie Laveau's voodoo or the perennially popular jazz of Satchmo's horn. Tourist traps in the Quarter sell surreal images of popular saints, and drivers of horse-drawn carriages on cobblestone streets point out St. Louis Cathedral, the oldest in North America, to wide-eyed young lovers honeymooning in the City That Care Forgot.
Living in New Orleans for nearly a decade, I too had a love affair--with the city itself. I felt drunk with it, ...