All of us who watch a loved one struggle with mental illness are confronted with the brutal suffering it creates, and your question brings to light one of its peculiar cruelties: the disease itself can make the sufferer push treatment out of reach. How should loved ones react? Can you force your brother to take his medication?
The reality is, you can’t. That’s the challenging side of human freedom. Your brother enjoys the same freedom that you do, even though his ability to use it wisely may be constrained by his illness. If he is over age 18, unless he poses a danger to himself or others, he can choose not to take his medication. You could be tempted to react in one of two extreme ways. One extreme might be dedicating…

Question:  I am a firm believer in the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution which is the right to keep and bear arms.  I currently carry a small revolver almost everywhere i go.  I pray to God everyday that I never have to use it.  I am also very seriously discerning a call to the priesthood.  My question is are there any rules about priests being armed is it allowed at all?  if it is allowed must it be concealed?  etc.  Thank You very much and I hope you can clarify this for me. I have also read many scripture verses that would seem to support the idea of good upstanding Christians being armed for the safety of themselves and others.  If I am misinterpreting these passages I defer to Holy Mother Church.  In Christ,…

We live in incredibly complex times.  So often the corporations that provide us with products and services are so large and so interconnected, we can hardly extract ourselves from connections to them.  Years ago, I was in a Jesuit community that decided to boycott Nestle because of that corporation’s practices in marketing infant formula in the third world.  I was amazed when I saw the two page list of food and other companies from which we could not buy products in order to boycott Nestle.

If you can find a health care plan that in no way, shape or form has anything to do with abortion or hospital services that provide abortions, or doctors who graduated from medical schools that taught how to perform abortions,…

If you’re looking for a general overview, I recommend The Catholic Companion to Mary, by Mary Kathleen Glavich.  This highly readable book covers key events of Mary’s life and explains Catholic teachings/beliefs about Mary.  It also has all kinds of Marian trivia (everything from her influence on female names to the definition of a “Hail Mary” pass in football).
 
It’s out of print, but the book  Mary in the Church: A Selection of Teaching Documents can be purchased used on Amazon.  It contains four recent Church documents on Mary, including the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ 1973 letter Behold Your Mother: Woman of Faith, which is one of my all-time favorite resources about…

The Stations of the Cross (sometimes also called the “Way of the Cross” or Via Crucis, in Latin) are a traditional devotion tracing the events on the way to Christ’s crucifixion. The devotion has its roots in the practice of pilgrimage to Jerusalem, especially to sites along the way to the cross. In the fifteenth century, as it became difficult for Christians to visit Jerusalem, the Franciscans began to erect outdoor shrines in Europe to recall these holy places, and in later centuries the devotion took root throughout the entire Church.
Traditionally, there are fourteen stations:
Jesus is condemned to death
Jesus takes up his cross
Jesus falls the first time
Jesus meets his mother
Simon of Cyrene helps…

In Jewish and Christian tradition, the number 40 has symbolic meaning. A period of 40 days or years, more than being a literal measurement, represents a long time and a period of preparation or testing. When 40 days or 40 years have passed, the appropriate period or the “right amount of time” has been completed in preparation for the working of God’s grace. Recall the 40 days and 40 nights of rain during the flood in Genesis 7, the 40 years that the Israelites wandered in the desert after the Exodus, and the 40 days that Jesus spent in the desert before beginning his public ministry in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. Lent lasts 40 days so that we will spend the “right amount of time” in this period of penance…

First of all, I hope you are feeling a bit better after an obvious experience of suffering in which you may still be feeling sad.
We often want a savior who removes suffering from our experience but what ends up happening is that we find that savior hanging from the cross!
It’s disappointing to many that God often doesn’t save us from experiences of suffering. Instead God values human freedom above controlling and micromanaging our lives.
Scripture tells us that suffering is the result of human choice and an imperfect world. With human freedom and our imperfect selves comes the risk of making a choice that hurts ourselves or others and other people’s choices having an effect on us or other innocent…

If I have a gay brother am I bound to not attend his “commitment” ceremony if I am Catholic?

You are bound to do what is loving and just.  You are required to follow your rightly formed conscience.  Most importantly, “Ama Deus et fac quod vis” (Love God and do what you will).  St. Augustine, Bernard Lonergan and Matthew Fox all say that.  If you’ve got those three on the same side, it must be Catholic!

It was only in 1972 that the American Psychological Association decided that homosexual persons were no longer to be considered mentally ill.  Society has changed a great deal in understanding of and attitudes toward homosexual persons in recent decades.  The church teaches that homosexuals…

When Jesus was on the cross, he entrusted the care of his mother to the beloved apostle (commonly believed to be John). “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.” (John 19:26-27) It’s probably a safe assumption that John followed Jesus’ directions and looked after Mary with reverence and filial love. We also know that Mary was present at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles (this is Mary’s last appearance in the Bible).
How involved was Mary in the ministry of the early Church? It’s hard to say…

The liturgical celebrations of the Catholic Church – mass, morning and evening prayer, and other celebrations such as baptisms and weddings – are by definition communal celebrations. Thus they are always open to the community. Anyone who wishes may join us in prayer, whether or not he or she is Catholic or Christian.
As a newcomer, you are welcome to join your voice to ours in prayer and to respond out loud during the mass if you are inspired to do so and believe in the words that you say. If you decide that you wish to become Catholic, immediately before you celebrate the sacraments of initiation (baptism, confirmation and Eucharist) you will have a chance to make a public, official profession of Catholic Christian…

Marriages must be open to pro-creation and to unity in the Catholic Church. So since women can’t bear children past a certain age most people assume that this kind of marriage would not qualify as a Catholic one.
However, that is not the case. The word “open” is the key word in that sentence. Couples of any age that are unable to bear children are not trying to prevent pregnancy but rather they are simply unable to bear children for whatever reason (menopause or infertility). Their openness to the possibility of children however is still present in the sexual giving of the one to the other. Now that won’t produce a child as wishing can’t really change science, but there could be a miracle!…

We’re “against” it (LOL).  Seriously, we are called to be stewards of creation.  The church, like all sane and sensible institutions, knows the shift in global weather patterns are deeply dangerous and threaten humanity.

We’re slugging through the snowiest winter in Philadelphia history (I’m writing this on yet a fourth school snow day in 2010.  In almost 20 years of college teaching I’ve only had five snow days, but four of them have been in the past month!).  The wild swings in Philly winters show me that “global weirding” is happening.

The increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is measurable.  There were 260 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere before the industrial revolution. …

In the Bible, Mary speaks on four separate occasions. During the Annunciation, she asks the angel how she, a virgin, could be the mother of God (Luke 1:34); later, she responds, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” (Luke 1:38)
Directly after the Annunciation, Mary travels to visit her pregnant cousin Elizabeth, and sings the beautiful psalm of praise called the Magnificat. (Luke 1:46-55)
When Jesus is lost in the Temple, Mary admonishes him, saying, “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.” (Luke 2:48)
Finally, at the Wedding at Cana, Mary points out the lack of wine to Jesus. (John 2:3) She later instructs…

We don’t know.
Easiest question ever!
Scripture has provided us with very little evidence of St. Joseph’s life much less his death. He has no spoken words in the Bible and God only speaks to him in dreams. We assume that Joseph is dead because we don’t see him at the foot of the cross with Mary at Jesus’ crucifixion.
It was also assumed that Joseph was much older than Mary and so in an age where people didn’t live that long Joseph would have died long before Mary. Life expectancy was about 40 years old at the time and so if Jesus was 33 when he died then Mary was well into her 40s, a very old woman for her time! Joseph would have to have been in his 50s and it is unlikely that he would have lived that…

Just by asking the question – and by caring about how your community prays – you are already on the right track. But the way you asked the question points to how you can begin to answer it for yourself. Do you want to know what “we” should do to help “them”? Or do you all want to know what you can do to help each other? Your parish leaders, especially those making decisions about prayer and liturgy, must include immigrant parishioners, so that your community can worship in a way that faithfully reflects the experience of all its members.
The specific strategies that work for you will depend on the nature of your community. Do your parishioners come from many different places, or is the immigrant population…

Question:  What’s the Catholic teaching on plastic surgery?  If I want to get a tummy tuck or a breast enhancement am I committing a sin?

Sin is the rejection of God who is love.  God gives you, well, your, body and soul!  Do you accept yourself as you are?  Is getting this or that plastic surgery rejecting God’s gift of your body, or does the surgery serve and achieve a truly therapeutic function?  There is a major difference between having breast reconstruction surgery after a radical mastectomy and getting a “nose job” as a high school graduation present so that you look “cuter.”  The real horror that plastic surgery has done to Burt Reynolds, Joan Rivers, and Kenny Rogers (and did to…

The Bible Code is both a book and a phenomenon which claims that one can find hidden (encrypted) messages in code in the first five books of the Bible in the original Hebrew text. These hidden messages are purported to predict events that occurred thousands of years later, such as the Holocaust and the assassination of JFK. Basically, the Bible code claims that the hidden messages can be discovered by analyzing “equidistant letter sequences” (ELS).

Those who believe in the Bible code claim that these messages are the “fingerprint of God” imbedded in the biblical texts. Skeptics point out that the ELS method can be used to reveal similar messages in a phone book or in War and Peace, pointing out that such combinations…

My first thought is that if you feel the need to respond to anything you don’t like you should have enough restraint to not fire off something impulsively over email or approach the priest immediately after mass and give him a piece of your mind.
However, I do think that preachers need to know when they aren’t reaching people in their community. So perhaps the right approach is to ask to make an appointment and to explain your point of view at that time and to listen to his side of the story as well.
Lastly, you use the word “like.” It’s important to note that mass does not exist for you to “like.” Mass exists for GOD to like. We come to praise God and hope that our actions move God…

You’re out with your friends on a Friday night and suddenly you notice that one of them has switched from his favorite microbrew to… lemonade? Is it time for Lent already? Giving up something for Lent sometimes evokes head-scratching in non-Catholics, but what might seem like just another Catholic eccentricity can actually be a practice with deep spiritual significance.
Lent, the period of 40 days that precedes the celebration of Easter, has its origin in the early days of the Church. Converts seeking to become Christian, who at that time were mostly adults, spent several years in study and preparation. Under the threat of Roman persecution, becoming a Christian was serious business, so their process of…

Question: At work, I lie often. As long as I am taking care of my family and community, does God really care?
As Dumbledore told Harry Potter, “It is our choices that show what we truly
are, much more than our talents and abilities” (Rowling, Chamber of
Secrets, p. 333).
To strive to tell the truth means one cannot be bought.  Choosing to
lie, consistently and often, makes us untruthful, unreliable,
untrustworthy persons.  Maybe we’re not as bad as Bernie Madoff, but
somewhere along the line he started shading the truth and eventually
thousands lost millions.  Lying gets easier and easier to justify.
Soon, we no longer know what we’ve said, or who we are.  We lose
ourselves in…