It can't go in quite the same category, because with wives and kids there's the element of "they're not public figures, and we really know almost nothing about them." (I vary in how much I use them. In this story I've referred to them, but never by name.) Not so with religion; Catholicism is not a person but a public institution, and we know it very well.

I know what you mean about how people should have a handle on it before writing it. This fandom skews towards secular liberalism with a heavy bias against crazy fundamentalists; we don't hear a lot about sane people of faith, and a lot of us probably don't understand them very well.

There's some technical knowledge involved too. For example, there was that recent story in which Stephen pointed out a Bible verse to his boyfriend and explained how he interpreted it to not be a condemnation of all homosexuality. Which is all well and good, except that Stephen has never believed that every word of the Bible is true, so he wouldn't feel the need to interpret those verses in a favorable light in the first place. The idea of the literal truth of the Bible is not a Catholic belief. It's unique to evangelical Protestantism, and even mainline Protestants rely on the Bible itself much more than Catholics do.

...I'm not religious, but I'm a bit of a geek for the subject. Can you tell? ^_~