By 6 a.m., he's eating breakfast, then he and Durham get their four kids, ages 3 to 10, dressed, fed and off to school. After that, Wahlberg heads to church. He prays almost every day, still loyal to the Roman Catholicism he grew up with, which became more and more important to him in his late 20s and 30s. “I don't go to Mass every day,” he says. “But I like to start my day by going to get my 15 to 20 minutes of prayer, getting focused and giving thanks.”
He is nonjudgmental about others who don't share his beliefs, but still prays that they might find God, as he has. He says he's impressed with Pope Francis (“He's pretty awesome”) but rejects the church's stance on gay marriage, which he supports “absolutely.”
*Author’s note: I think Wahlberg’s disconnect between his Faith, and the full acceptance of what the Church teaches is symptomatic of many contemporary Catholics. From what he says, he is undeniably a prayerful man yet he cannot reconcile that prayerfulness with Catholic moral principles. As someone from his generation, he is two years older than me, I think this is a case, not of stubborn heard-headedness, but of a lack in catechesis during childhood. As a kid, I vividly remember a well-intentioned, but misguided, young priest telling a class full of schoolchildren that the best Catholics are those “that question everything.” I bought into that; and questioned. But, with no one around to answer those nagging uncertainties, I left them unresolved, doubted, and then disregarded my immature and fragile Faith all together.