Marriage Quote by Olympia Dukakis

She packs a whole domestic sociology seminar into two breezy sentences, and the charm is that it lands like a dinner-party aside rather than a manifesto. Calling her husband a "fall-away Catholic, but with a vengeance" turns religious lapse into something active, even militant. Lots of people drift from faith; "with a vengeance" implies an ex-believer who didn t just leave the Church but left with receipts. The phrase hints at Catholicism as an institution tied to authority, guilt, and gender hierarchy and at the emotional heat that can come from rejecting it. It s not faith she s mocking so much as the cultural machinery around it.

Then she pivots: "He s actually more of a feminist than I am". The comedy is self-directed. Dukakis, publicly associated with strong women on screen, undercuts the expected script by admitting her husband may outpace her politically. That reversal does two things at once: it normalizes men as sincere feminists (not just allies performing enlightened masculinity) and it complicates the idea that feminist identity is automatic for women. There s a sly acknowledgement that everyone has blind spots, including the people you assume are already "there."

Context matters: Dukakis came of age in mid-century America, where Catholic identity was both socially cohesive and culturally conservative, and where feminism arrived in waves that divided households as often as they united them. The line suggests a marriage built on argument, evolution, and mutual surprise and it makes that evolution sound not like self-help, but like lived experience.