Papua New Guinea's speaker destroys 'pagan' carvings.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I would be outraged too -even if you aren't a pagan, these are still part of your cultural heritage. 

Then I approve of this action strongly.

(Hyperbole. Actually no. But seriously, "cultural heritage" is turning into something I'm growing disgusted by.)

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Once again I was being hyperbolic and don't approve of this. I judt disapprove of the wording that something should be respected BECAUSE of "cultural heritage" rather than simply being historical items. Especially if the person in question no longer has anything to do with that and has rejected it. Though this guy is going further and is being a dick.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

To put things into perspective, my grandmother seemed to have an air of disapproval when I said one of my pastors is a Vietnamese immigrant and Buddhist convert, obviously she's not a Buddhist but her attitude seemed to be that Buddhism is what her culture is and what her family is and she should stay with that because your family and culture doesn't change and abandoning that is just wrong. Of course she wouldn't like any white converts to Buddhism either. It's a view I imagine most people of our generation would find strange, but I bet Snowstalker and a good chunk of people in Ireland would agree to some level. That's what I think of when I hear about "cultural heritage".

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

As Nathan implies I've spoken a lot on this. Short answer is that's not very common here.

However you must consider there aren't many Italians here at all (as in the example.) Most Upper Midwesterners are some combination of Scandinavian + German + maybe some other things (if you're NOT ethnically mixed then you're either not from here originally or not white), and everyone is quite assimilated so in general the ethnic identity here rarely becomes more detailed than "White Midwestern", and it's also pretty rare you'll find someone with an all Catholic family stretching back generations for the same reason above, so much mixing and intermarriages. Some branch of your family is most likely not going to be Catholic (or Protestant...or your type of Protestant). Just in mine alone going back just two generations I have Lutheran, Catholic and Baptist and that's not even taking into account some of the conversions on both sides...

So basically conversion and even just reidentification (so many mixed marriages here means it's not uncommon for someone raised in one parent's church to end up more liberal/conservative than it and if the other one's is more liberal/conservative they often just end up identifying and claiming it even if they don't formally convert) is pretty common and no one sees whatever church one's raised in as some sort of immutable identification factor.