My theory is that everyone has a religion — or perhaps better said “a source of our values.”

One reason I left the church was because I was changing my religion from Catholicism to alcohol and parties. I didn’t see the two as compatible, so one had to go. I did buy into the beer commercial lifestyle as much as an evangelical Christian buys into being saved by Jesus (whatever that means). My youthful life centered around alcohol!

When I was about 23, I came to the realization that this was stupid. I cut my alcohol consumption by about 75%. My values were based on being an oilfield worker: long hours, bad weather, big money. That was who Dave Volek was!

Then my religion changed to a combination of business and politics. Spare time and energy went into politics — and I think my business suffered a little. It did eventually shut down, but that was more to do with the cyclical nature of the petroleum industry. But I got the experience to develop a new system of democracy and write a book about it.

I know quite a few Catholics. I would say that they are fairly diverse in their theological interpretations of Catholicism. There is the official belief, of course. But many Catholics don’t buy into much of it. For example, many Catholics believe priests should be allowed to marry and have families. These believers tend to rationalize their cognitive dissonance in various ways. But that’s their problem, not mine. As long as they are reasonably good people, I’m not going to denigrate their religious choices.

You might be interested in this article I put on Medium.