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May 18th, 2008
Thanks for your question to Busted Halo. Whether you sinned or not depends on whether you intended to do evil or turn away from God by visiting a psychic. You don't indicate that this was ...
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May 18th, 2008
The term used for lay ministers of the eucharist is not "exceptional" but "extraordinary." "Ordinary" is the Church's term for someone who is ordained. For example, a bishop is often called an "ordinary" because he ...
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May 18th, 2008
Transubstantiation is a teaching of the Church that developed from the 10th the 13th century as a way of explaining how the bread and wine that we receive at Mass are no longer bread and ...
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May 18th, 2008
All things being equal, the Church would prefer that Catholics marry Catholics. Shared religious beliefs and practices are important factors in establishing a closer union with another person. Catholics also see marriage between Catholics as ...
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May 18th, 2008
How strictly must we obey laws that don't seem to make sense and impede the way we want to live our lives? Does a Christian need to follow the law literally, as an expression of God's will over temporal matters through human legislators?
Jesus and Paul provide some example here. Both seem to have been "law-abiding citizens" in most respects. Jesus made exceptions which involved common sense (the disciples picking and eating grain because they were hungry on ...
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May 18th, 2008
As many Catholics do, I have some serious disagreements with the Catholic church's teachings. I joke that "I'm a bad Catholic but obviously still identify as a Catholic. How can I reconcile issues over things like abortion, acceptance of other religions, gays/females as priests.
The first big conflict in the Church was over whether to admit Gentiles to baptism, without binding them to practice all the laws of Moses, and whether Jewish Christians could then associate with them as ...
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May 18th, 2008
Your question comes at a time when many people are asking about the appropriateness of tatoos. Parents, especially, are facing the increasing number of adolescents who want to have this form of "body art" ...
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May 18th, 2008
The first thing to note is that the Bible isn't a source of science or history as we know it, but of religious truth. As John Paul II once observed, "the Bible does not show ...
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May 18th, 2008
I mean, we follow Jesus, but he didn't even write it; his friends did. If it was written so many years after his death by failing memories, why do we live by it? (What about the missing years?) Why do we base our beliefs on a man who 1) is like the rest of us and just wants peace, 2) was written about by other people who only told their version of the story, 3) wasn't important enough to be followed during the missing years?
These are great questions and I hope I can do them justice. The four gospels are important to us because they provide us with the first testimonies of faith. They share the story of Jesus ...
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May 18th, 2008
Thank you for your question. You ask: "What was the nature of Adam and Eve's perfection? And is this the perfection we are trying to journey towards?"
The book of Genesis relates that "God created ...
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May 18th, 2008
John's gospel is different in many respects from Matthew, Mark and Luke, which are called "synoptic gospels" because they share so much in common. John's gospel was probably written at a later date than the ...
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May 18th, 2008
I don't know where to start. Should I start from Genesis and work my way through? I've read the majority of the new Testament and I've re-read some books. I know that when you read the Bible it's definitely not a one time read, I would like to find a way of reading it daily but I'm not sure how to go about it.
We have a great guide to reading the bible called Bible Boot Camp. You can find it by selecting Googling God in our top navigation, then clicking the Bible Boot Camp button.
I also think a ...
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May 18th, 2008
I have learned that all catholics must believe as an article of faith that all human beings have descended from two real human beings, Adam and Eve, who had no antecedents. Science has traced human lineage back several million years. We have, in our DNA, strong evidence of our development over very long time spans. My question is, if science proves beyond a doubt, by DNA or other evidence, that we have no linkage to those two distince parents Adam and Eve, how might the church respond to this, since it is in obvious contradiction to church teaching?
Contemporary Catholic biblical scholars tell us that the stories found in the book of Genesis are not meant to be a source of historical or scientific fact as we understand those terms today. Rather, they ...
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May 18th, 2008
I'm not quite sure what you're asking here but here's my best shot--tell me if this makes sense.
God can be "summed up" (as best we can) in three ways, I think:
1. God is beyond "us." ...
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May 18th, 2008
This is a question that many Catholics are asking after hearing the recent statement of Bishop Sheridan of Colorado Springs that he would refuse to give commununion to a political candidate whose views are not ...
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