ROFL. That's exactly what Rachel said. Despite the apparent obviousness of the question, it turned out I could find many reasons to argue about it :)
However, I don't know to think through the grammar, but I wouldn't have said that the present tense was wrong. After all, she IS dead, so apparently SOME properties continue to apply to her. There might well be a good reason it doesn't, but I don't see why Catholicism doesn't apply? :)
Well, surely because Catholicism is a statement about what somebody believes, and they don't believe anything when they no longer have a functioning brain to believe it with!
(Unless, I suppose, you mean "is Catholic" not in the sense of describing their current beliefs but in the sense of their official status in the eyes of the Catholic church? And I suppose that another Catholic might argue that a Catholic who died and went to heaven would still believe all the same things, just there rather than here, and hence could still be Catholic in the present tense.)
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Date: 2010-10-05 10:54 am (UTC)However, I don't know to think through the grammar, but I wouldn't have said that the present tense was wrong. After all, she IS dead, so apparently SOME properties continue to apply to her. There might well be a good reason it doesn't, but I don't see why Catholicism doesn't apply? :)
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Date: 2010-10-05 11:26 am (UTC)(Unless, I suppose, you mean "is Catholic" not in the sense of describing their current beliefs but in the sense of their official status in the eyes of the Catholic church? And I suppose that another Catholic might argue that a Catholic who died and went to heaven would still believe all the same things, just there rather than here, and hence could still be Catholic in the present tense.)