Even the most inattentive visitor to my parents’ house couldn’t make it through the living room and into the kitchen without realizing we’re very, very Catholic. If the sheer number of children (six) or their school uniforms didn’t tip him off, the religious art, quotes, jewelry and ubiquitous crucifixes would surely do the trick.

Just north of the lightswitch coming into the house is a heavy bronze crucifix. It’s serious — if it fell off the wall and onto your foot, you’d probably break a toe or two. Three steps in and you can see the print of a painting of a man creating a Blessed Virgin wood sculpture. It’s art within art — very clever. There’s the Asian print of the Madonna and Christ child, screened on a piece of delicate cloth, no less charming for a few rips. Mama and baby look at the dining room, blessing casseroles and birthday cakes. We’ve got a Last Supper fired on an enamel plate whose edges are rippled and gold, the subtle embellishments that are characteristic of the collector’s plate medium. In the kitchen, the Catholic paraphernalia ranges from the kitschy — a vintage, handsome Jesus-fish bottle opener — to the creepy — a calligraphy sign that reads, “Christ is the Head of this house, the Unseen Guest at every meal, the Silent Listener to every conversation.”

My brothers’ rooms are simple, and mostly decorated with sports posters. But each of them has at least one saint statue and a few saint-medal necklaces. My sisters’ room (they share) is very cool, arty, with lots of bright colors and there’s a very ’80s-looking wood-and-metal cross right smack dab above the door. (That one could crack your skull if it fell.)

And the books — my God, the books. Bibles. Missals. Hymnals. Books about meditating, praying and serving the poor; biographies of saints; and one huge tome called POEM OF THE MAN-GOD based on the visions of an Italian mystic. Catholic books are on bookshelves, coffee tables, underneath the newspaper, beside beds and couches and — seriously — the stack of reading materials in the bathroom includes Mother Teresa: In Her Own Words. But the finest piece of Catholic paraphernalia is a candleholder-cum-rosary holder next to a fat armchair just off the kitchen.

The ornate, heavy, black candle holder is about 18 inches tall. And my mother has rigged it so that dangling from the candleholder, in all their bright, plastic-beaded glory, are about a dozen rosaries. What’s striking — besides that a bunch of rosaries are hanging from a cast-iron candleholder — is that they’re set up so conveniently, like keys hung from hooks by the front door. Right there, so it’s easy to just grab ‘em on your way to the laundry room. What’s also striking is that somehow this — and the rest of the Virgins and Christ-childs and Biblical phrases in the house — isn’t smothering or uncomfortable or, worst of all, ghetto. It’s all really very lovely.

You can tell a lot about a person by how he decorates his space. Think of the beer signs that college guys plaster in their living rooms, the empty bottles they line up in their kitchens. When I was an awkward and ugly middle-schooler, I covered my ceiling with clipped magazine photos of movie stars at glamorous premieres. Thing is, college guys are fantasizing their own coolness, and I was fantasizing my own glamor. But at my house, it’s not an act — the trappings of the Church are part of who we are. They’re backed up by the joyful, pious lives of my parents, and complemented by their fine aesthetic taste and a bunch of secular art.

Though I can’t help but think there’s some craftiness to it, on my parents’ part. You try sneaking out when the occupant of a giant heavy bronze crucifix stares you down from beside the door.

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