Michael Moore Almost Became a Catholic Priest

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

Left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore, popping up everywhere to promote his new documentary Capitalism: A Love Story, left high school to study for the priesthood. Seriously.

Moore is taking flack on some conservative blogs for saying that Jesus would condemn hedge funds, but it turns out he has a serious Roman Catholic side. Check out this clip from an ABC News interview from a couple of years back in which anchor Terry Moran expresses shock at Moore's seminary stint: 

A recent New York Times profile of Moore has more on Moore's faithy side (courtesy of GetReligion):

As much as Mr. Moore sometimes plays a comic-book version of class warrior—Left-Thing vs. the Republic of Fear!—his politics are not grounded in class as much as in Roman Catholicism. Growing up in Michigan, he attended parochial school and intended to go into the seminary, inspired by the priests and nuns who, at least until Pope John Paul II, inherited a long tradition of social justice and activism in the American church.

"The nuns always made a point to take us to the Jewish temple for Passover seders," he said. "They wanted to make it clear that the Jews had nothing to do with putting Jesus up on the cross."

Along with a moral imperative, Catholicism also gave a method. Mr. Moore idolized the Berrigan brothers, the radical priests who introduced street theater into their activism, for example, mixing their own napalm to burn government draft records. Their actions were a form of political spectacle that, conceptually, is Marxist—workers seizing means of production and all that—and it influenced some of Mr. Moore's best-remembered stunts. 

I'm submitting my interview request now . . .

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