People just don't realize how much peer pressure, the desire for peer acclamation, influences them.

The devil's main purpose is not to scare us, in a horror-movie way; when we're scared of him, we're alert to him, and that might undermine his plans. Instead, he wants to quietly, subtly lure us into stepping away from God.

As a teenager and a student, I totally cast away the Christian faith. I just believed it was stupid, and only stupid people could believe it. I actually became an anti-Christian, and very antagonistic.

My mother was an unbeliever - and still is. My father was a nominal Catholic. We would go in to church at the last minute before the gospel reading, take Communion, and walk right out again.

I was raised in a nominal Roman Catholic home, but without any really strong faith there.

After I graduated from college, while traveling around Europe, hitchhiking, doing the tourist thing, I went into a church in Dublin.