The lyin', the switch, and the wardrobe

Elizabeth Scalia defends the practice of vowed religious men and women wearing distinctive habits. Were it more widespread, the Pew research finding now making waves might have turned out differently.

Apart from what it implies about the poor or spread-too-thin quality of Catholic catechesis, I'm sanguine about findings that many people are ignorant of their own faith, because I think Brian Saint-Paul is right:

Expect to see plenty of "Atheists Know More About Religion Than Christians" -style headlines, and while that may irk, it is in one sense true. In a country as heavily religious as the United States, the atheist must make a conscious choice to go a different route, and that requires some knowledge of what he's rejecting. That's not the case for the mainline Christian who finds his nominal and ill-informed faith fits easily with the nominal and ill-informed Christianity of American culture.