Oh, I get it. He's a Catholic convert.

"If Vulcans had a church, they'd be Catholics."

It makes sense, too. Massive unhealthy repression of perfectly natural and informative emotions and the ability to ignore suffering in favor of an impersonal logic that inevitably needs to be overturned by the human captain's more emotional response to an issue in order to bring about the true best result.

Sums up my sense of things as a recovering Catholic myself.