It’s less complicated than one might think, actually. The Papal Nuncio (the Pope’s representative in a country) solicits names that members of the Bishop’s conference in the area put forward and then selects three of those names to be forwarded to the Pope (the Holy See). The Pope then meets with the Nuncio most often and asks some questions and they decide what person might be best for the position. The bishop functions in a diocese (a local geographic area) as a CEO would in a corporation. They are in charge of the local governance of the diocese. Therefore, the local area does have some influence over who gets to be bishop of the diocese, however, the Pope is free to choose none of the candidates…

Our Lady of Mount Carmel is the title for Mary as the patroness of the Carmelite order. Mount Carmel is located about twenty miles from Nazareth. For many years, the mountain attracted religious hermits, and around the thirteenth century they became formalized into the Carmelite order. The monks built a church there honoring Mary, and their spirituality as an order is based on regarding her as a model of contemplation and closeness to Christ.
Our Lady of Mount Carmel is sometimes referred to as Our Lady of the Brown Scapular. A scapular is the sleeveless outer garment that a monk would wear over his shoulders. Over the centuries a smaller version of the scapular (often two small square of cloth connected with string)…

Although John is a very common name, there’s nothing “common” about the John we encounter in the Book of Revelation and elsewhere in the New Testament. If, in fact, the Gospel of John, the 3 Letters of John, and the Book of Revelation can all be attributed to the same author – the Apostle John – than we are in fact dealing with a very extraordinary author.
The introduction to the Book of Revelation in the New American Bible tells us that, although the author identifies himself as John, he never claims to be John the Apostle. Even so, he was identified as such by a number of Church Fathers while an equal number of Church Fathers denied this identity. The bottom line is that we really don’t know who this “John”…

Our word “mission” comes from the Latin word “missio,” which means “sending.” After the resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples and sent them out to the world to proclaim the good news. As they preached his message, they sent others, who sent others, and so on, always in Jesus’ name. Thus, from the earliest days of the Church, to be a Christian was to be a missionary, someone sent by Jesus with the message of salvation. Wherever people hunger for that message, we need missionaries. While we often associate “mission” with foreign lands and distant peoples, and find the word’s exotic connotations attractive, long-distance travel is not required. The message of Jesus is not only for peoples…

While marrying outside the Church precludes one from receiving the sacraments, it is helpful for parents to keep the following in mind.
1. The end of the story is not yet written. The Holy Spirit continues to be active in the lives of your children. You’d be amazed how things can change as the years go by, especially when they start to have children.
2. Maintain contact and communication. You do not need to condone the act, but neither should you disown them because of it. A good rule of thumb: If your child seeks to return to the sacraments, will they be comfortable asking you for advice on how to do so?
3. In matters of faith, be inviting, not condemning. Remember, “The truth without compassion is the hammer that destroys.”…

That priests are somehow “different.” I’ve often been told, “I can’t believe you’re a priest.” I don’t know if that says something about me, or the priests they have met. One of the nicest compliments I ever received was when I was told, “You’re cool. You’re not what I expected a priest to be like. You don’t walk around like you have a stick up your behnd.”
In my experience, so many people really don’t know priests. Especially young people, college age, don’t know any priests under seventy years of age, so when they meet someone like me who is a fanatical fisherman, a faithful Phillies fan, plays the guitar, knows the movies they’ve seen, and can just hang out with them, they are surprised.…

I’m a catechist and volunteer at my parish, and I was asked to participate in something called a “mystagogy session.”  What is mystagogy?
The fourth stage of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults is called “mystagogy,” from the Greek words meaning “to lead through the mysteries.” Traditionally mystagogy extends throughout the Easter season, until the feast of Pentecost. This is a period of accompaniment for new Catholics as they discover what it means to fully participate in the sacramental mysteries of the Church. The newly baptized are called “neophytes,” from the Greek words meaning “new plant,” because the faith has been newly planted in them. Even though their catechetical…

First, let me make an important clarification: Catholics are not required to involve Mary in their prayer lives. Doing so is totally voluntary. Many people pray to her and ask for her intercession; others never do. It’s a matter of choice.
That, of course, begs another question: why do many Catholics make her a part of their prayers? Ultimately, it comes down to our beliefs about Mary. Catholics have traditionally regarded her as a powerful intercessor (you can see a biblical example of this in the story of the Wedding at Cana), and as a woman who can draw us closer to her son. For centuries, Catholics have also honored her as a powerful example of living a God -centered life. In the apostolic exhortation Marialis…

Some parts of the Bible are easier to read than others. Likewise, some parts are more inviting to read than others. Many people find books such as Leviticus and Numbers to be rather daunting and tedious to read. On the other hand, many books in the Wisdom section of the bible are among the most popular. The Book of Proverbs is one such book. Reading it can be likened to opening up a few thousand fortune cookies! And who doesn’t like fortune cookies?
By the same token, reading a thousand or so short, pithy wise sayings might loom as an overwhelming task for anyone. This gives us a clue as to how the Book of Proverbs should be read and understood. It is not something that is intended to be read as we would a novel. In fact, the introduction…

Mortal sin is deadly sin, those freely chosen acts and dispositions that make the reality of God’s grace (i.e., his love and power) dry up in us. God can no longer relate to us because our sins have pushed God out of our lives. Pride, Lust, Anger, Gluttony, Greed, Envy, Sloth, freely chosen and acted on, can ruin our lives. Take gluttony. A 1200 lb. person is not able to live happily, the way God desires us to live. Or the destruction and greed that Bernie Madoff caused. Social sin, like war or corporate malfeasance, can also be mortal, i.e., deadly.
Mortal sin is not easy to commit. The sinner must know and realize the act is grave matter, have full knowledge he or she is committing such sin, and give full consent of the will…

Today, we have Democrats, Republicans, Tea Baggers, Libertarians, Evangelicals, and any number of other political, religious, or special interest groups that account for the diverse and often volatile discourse we regularly encounter. In Jesus’ time, things were no less volatile. Various religious and political groups flourished in Judaism, resulting in a discourse that was often heated and, at times, outright hostile.
In his book, Jesus: A Gospel Portrait, Fr. Donald Senior, C.P., does a wonderful job of identifying the various groups that made up the “world of Jesus,” including the Essenes, the Zealots, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Scribes, just to name a few.
In the Gospels, the scribes…

The word God speaks to us is our life. Sit quietly and ask yourself the following question:
What really fills me with joy and passion?
God is speaking there. We can think about this in a number of ways. Who do you really love and who loves you? God is in those relationships, communicating who and what you and the persons with whom you are in relation are becoming for all eternity. What injustice or evil makes your blood boil and calls for your action(s) to set things right? God is very likely in that experience. How do you prepare for Mass? Too often we walk into the work of the liturgy with less preparation than we make for seeing a Friday night movie. Read the readings all week before Sunday Mass and see how God’s communication…

The infancy narratives (the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke) definitely comprise the bulk of Scriptural references to Mary. She is, of course, also present on Calvary when Christ died (John 19:25-27).
Beyond those stories, Mary does turn up in a few other places, all relating to Christ’s ministry. She is present at the Wedding Feast at Cana, when she encourages Jesus to perform his first public miracle (John 2: 1-12). Later, she is mentioned as having followed Jesus as he traveled and preached (see Matthew 12:46-50, Mark 3:31-35, and Luke 8:19-21 for three slightly different accounts of the same event).
The final mention of Mary comes in Acts 1:14, following Christ’s resurrection, when she is with…

Remember learning about different kinds of literary devices in English class? Well, one of these devices is known as personification, which is when an abstract concept is represented as a person or given human qualities. For example, we may talk about opportunity knocking or time standing still.
In Scripture, the virtue of wisdom is personified as a woman and is referred to in the feminine (chakmah in Hebrew, sophia in Greek, and sapientia in Latin). Personification is used to make a concept less abstract and more personal and thus, more attainable.
No doubt, depicting wisdom as a woman is intended to make the virtue of wisdom alluring and inviting to men, for whom much of Scripture was originally intended. The…

The quick answer is that bread and wine during the Eucharist are not transformed into the flesh and blood of Jesus of Nazareth, but the glorified reality of the risen Christ. The sacramental signs of bread and wine are substantially (trans-substantiation), by the mysterious power of the Holy Spirit, become Christ present to us and in us. As Catholics, we receive the Eucharist (we don’t “take” the Eucharist). The sacrament achieves by signifying. A too literal reading of the words means one misses the deeper realities communicated by metaphor and meaning.
The deeper answer needs more awareness of what a sacrament is and how a sacrament achieves the mediation of God’s grace. The question presupposes…

Almost never. It is very rare that the death penalty is ever permissible in Catholic teaching. Only when grave danger is imminent and a society is unable to protect itself from a perpetrator can the use of the death penalty be applied as a moral justification.
What does this mean? It means that all other means of keeping a prisoner at bay have been exhausted or are unable to be made available. As an example, prisons are readily available and criminals are easily detained in them. As a result the death penalty in the United States and other places that have the ability to construct a criminal justice system to maintain law and order and detain and incarcerate criminals would not be allowed to employ the death penalty as…

Ghosts are figments of novelists’ and Hollywood movie makers’ imaginations. Ghosts are the souls or spirits of the dead that somehow manifest themselves to the living. Despite popular stories (Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, etc.), no one has ever proven the existence of Ghosts. For decades, James Randi has offered a prize of $1,000,000 dollars to anyone who can prove the paranormal. He hasn’t had to pay anyone yet.
As those who follow Jesus “We believe… in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.” The transformation in Christ that begins at baptism reaches culmination when we die. Death is when our souls separate from our mortal bodies and our mortal bodies decay. We hope and trust our souls…

Imagine that dear friends of yours were getting married, and the beverages ran out shortly after the reception began. It wouldn’t ruin their marriage, certainly, but it would put a damper on the celebration. As a close friend, you’d probably offer to go to the store or do whatever you could to help. Even if a disappointing reception is not exactly a problem of global proportions, you’d surely recognize that you were present at a specific moment of human need, and that helping out would be the right thing to do.
By bringing the lack of wine to Jesus’ attention, Mary was not solving a global problem, that’s true. She was, however, noticing and responding to an immediate human need, offering the help that she…

Since Dan Brown published The Da Vinci Code, there has been a lot of attention focused on the apocryphal gospels – texts written around the same time as the 4 canonical Gospels that have not been included in the Bible. While Dan Brown created an entertainment phenomenon that has him laughing all the way to the bank, his facts are not straight. Unfortunately, because many people believe everything they see in a movie, a number of folks have concluded that the Church has been suppressing the apocryphal gospels for centuries, trying to keep them out of the hands of the faithful in order to hide some earth-shattering secret. The truth is, people like you and me “decided” that these accounts were not…

The Ascension refers to the day celebrated 40 days after Easter when Catholics celebrate the fact that Jesus returns to God after being with his disciples after the resurrection. It is a central element of our tradition and is included in the creed recited at mass each Sunday. It is also a Holy Day of Obligation and Catholics are required to go to mass on that day.
The scriptural basis for this comes from Acts 1: 9-11.
And after He had said these things, He was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.
And as they were gazing intently into the sky while He was going, behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them.
They also said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into…