A recent study done by Ohio State University found that Catholic men are the most likely to bet on sports. I derived a strange sense of pride in that finding. Weird, but true.
I graduated from St. John’s Academy in Plattsburgh, N.Y., and our senior class had 38 students. That didn’t stop us from winning the school’s first state hockey championship. It was a “Hoosiers” story except on ice.
It was at the school’s gym where we’d congregate to help set up tables for bingo each week. Perhaps that helped plant the gambling seed during my formative years.
“If we think about Catholic teachings and what’s gone on in parishes, gambling has been seen as more morally permissible, within limits,” study co-author Laura Upenieks said. “And we see that carrying over into sports betting here.”
From personal experience, I can attest that most Catholic boys like to drink and gamble. At least, that was the case for my crew of six young friends, who remain tight to this day. We typically start every day by “gambling” on Wordle via text messages, with the winner earning a mythical $5.
It was during my senior year that I visited Notre Dame and stood in awe of “Touchdown Jesus” before slapping the “Play Like a Champion Today” sign heading into the locker room. There was no way the Fighting Irish could lose that day. Final score: Penn State 24, Notre Dame 19.
I’ve bet on sports for more than four decades now, and it’s no less enjoyable in my 50s. My mantra is, “Keep it small, keep it fun.” I’ve never been a +EV bettor, and never will. You have to know your limitations.
When North Carolina legalized sports betting in March 2024, I kept a detailed ledger of all bets from that first year and reached a high of $1,400 in winnings. Of course, I lost all of that back the following year, but the original $500 bankroll is still in play.
“The average person is not gambling thousands of dollars. The average hardcore gambler very well may be, but the average U.S. adult is not,” co-author of the study and professor of sociology Chris Knoester said.
Knoester and Upenieks expected to find a negative correlation between frequent religious service attendance and sports gambling. They did not, and noted that regular attendance can serve as both a “protective factor and a lubricant” for sports betting.
The latter evidently applies to this weekly Mass attendee and Eucharistic Minister. There was also a 45% probability that Catholic men polled in the study had placed a bet in the past year.
And while Protestants were predicted to be the least likely to gamble on sports, the analysis specifically singled out Catholics as more likely to bet on sports than people who identified as atheist, agnostic, or with no religious affiliation.
There’s a Patron Saint for Gamblers?
If you’re familiar with Catholicism, we take our saints seriously. Growing in faith over the last two decades, I believe in their ability to intercede in our lives. I often invoke the powers of St. Michael, St. Christopher, and Saint Francis.
Yet, I’d never heard of Saint Cajetan until I Googled “Is there a patron saint for gamblers?” He was born in October 1480 in Vicenza, Italy, to a noble family.
Saint Cajetan became a lawyer, diplomat, and ultimately a priest. As the story goes, he provided loans to poor folks to alleviate gambling debts and was a helper to those in need of good fortune.
My prayer to Saint Cajetan is to help young people today growing up in our normalized gambling society, with prediction markets allowing users 18+ to bet on basically anything. If your goal is to financialize everything in this world, as Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour has said, you’re not playing the long game.
We’re here for a blip of time, and there are much better things ahead eternally. My money’s on that.
Amen.
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A recent study done by Ohio State University found that Catholic men are the most likely to bet on sports. I derived a strange sense of pride in that finding. Weird, but true. I graduated from St. John’s Academy in Plattsburgh, N.Y., and our senior class had 38 students. That didn’t stop us from winning
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