- Feb 5, 2002
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COMMENTARY: The fallen-away Catholic entertainer’s issue, one might conclude, was not a quarrel with the Church’s view on thinking, but a personal crisis of faith.
Stephen Valentine Patrick William Allen (better known, simply, as Steve Allen) was born in New York City the day after Christmas in 1921. His father died when he was an infant, which led to his being raised by his mother’s Irish Catholic family on the south side of Chicago.
When he was 16, he ran away from home, later noting how easy it was to descend into begging. He landed his first radio job in Phoenix after spending four months at Arizona State Teachers’ College. In 1943 he married Dorothy Goodman. Their marriage bore three children and lasted until 1952 when, consequent to Allen’s affair with another woman, it ended in divorce.
His failed Catholic marriage was personally devastating.
“The idea that it could happen to me knocked me for a loop,” he said, “so I tried to read my way out of it and make sense out of life.”
Continued below.
Stephen Valentine Patrick William Allen (better known, simply, as Steve Allen) was born in New York City the day after Christmas in 1921. His father died when he was an infant, which led to his being raised by his mother’s Irish Catholic family on the south side of Chicago.
When he was 16, he ran away from home, later noting how easy it was to descend into begging. He landed his first radio job in Phoenix after spending four months at Arizona State Teachers’ College. In 1943 he married Dorothy Goodman. Their marriage bore three children and lasted until 1952 when, consequent to Allen’s affair with another woman, it ended in divorce.
His failed Catholic marriage was personally devastating.
“The idea that it could happen to me knocked me for a loop,” he said, “so I tried to read my way out of it and make sense out of life.”
Continued below.
A Sympathetic Retrospective on Catholic Intellectual Steve Allen
COMMENTARY: The fallen-away Catholic entertainer’s issue, one might conclude, was not a quarrel with the Church’s view on thinking, but a personal crisis of faith.