What is the miraculous medal?

You may have seen Catholics wearing a small silver medal depicting Mary.  She stands on a globe, with a serpent (Satan) under her feet.  Around her is the prayer, “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.”

In 1830, Mary appeared to Catherine Labouré, a young French nun.  On her second visit, Mary asked Catherine to have a medal made in her likeness.  She told Catherine that those who wore the blessed medal and who confidently said the prayer on it would receive special grace and protection.  Many who wear it have reported what they call miraculous happenings (hence the name “Miraculous Medal”).

Though blessed objects like medals (called “sacramentals”)…

Here are several ways in which the two religions differ:

Incarnation: The big difference is what Christian theology calls “the Incarnation”, or the “enfleshment” of God as one of us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
Trinity: Closely related to this is the revelation of God as a community of relations—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If one looks at Jewish mysticism the idea of God being internally dialogical is not so strange.  Jewish mystical tradition hold a vision of God as ten-fold, the sephirot emanating from the eternal One, the wholly other.  By the last of the emanations, God is approachable by humanity.
Scripture: We share the bulk of Sacred Scripture, but not the New Testament which Jews…

While your self-sufficiency and resourcefulness are admirable, starting your own porn site is problematic, even with limits.  Before your body was yours, it was God’s creation.
Putting yourself out there in sexually suggestive ways compromises your inherent human dignity and dishonors the good intent behind sex.  Moreover, you pose a temptation to others—a “near occasion of sin,” as the Catechism says—to engage sex in unhealthy, undignified, ultimately unloving ways.  Sounds like mutual objectification: you want their money, they want arousal, all without commitment.  Porn may be easy and lucrative, but you’d be better off seeking other ways of earning money that won’t…

Is foreplay against Catholic teaching?  Can I touch my girlfriend since her orgasm is not tied to fertility?
Catholic teaching is set within a larger context, i.e., the invitation to form ourselves as the loving and generous persons God, and we, deeply desire ourselves to be.  These “is it against the church?” questions always make me want to challenge the minimalist assumptions behind the question.  Such questions are analogous to the ubiquitous classroom query, “Will this be on the test?”

God doesn’t ask us to do the minimum.  God asks us to do the more.  We are to be more loving, more generous, more self sacrificing, more habitually virtuous as a result of our relationship with Christ.  Reaching…

Question: How did the Rosary become associated with Mary?

Since the early days of the Church, Christians have used knotted cords or prayer beads to help keep track of their prayers.  The rosary as we know it today evolved in the Middle Ages, when the “Hail Mary” prayer became widely known.  The term “rosary” comes from “rosarium,” or a bouquet of roses; the prayers of the rosary were seen as a spiritual bouquet offered to Mary.  In fact, there’s an old tradition that Mary herself appeared to St. Dominic (1170-1221) and gave him the rosary as an aid in his preaching against the Albigensian heresy, which denied the Incarnation of Christ.

While praying each decade, Catholics meditate on key moments…

I think I can explain what was happening here.
In Catholic belief and practice, baptism is a ‘once for all time’ sacrament. You only get it once and it is effective forever. No one can ever change that you are a Christian and a member of the Body of Christ once it is done. That’s why we don’t rebaptize people from other Christian denominations as, for example, the Baptists do.
Generally what happens when a child receives emergency baptism in a hospital, is that s/he receives the additional rites of the ceremony in a parish celebration later on–prayers, reading, participation of godparents, anointing with holy chrism, receiving of the baptismal candle, etc. But generally the actual…

Question:  Who is the disciple that Jesus loved?  A nun told me that it was John but then a scripture professor told me something else about it being all of us.

If I could provide the definitive answer about the identity of the “beloved disciple” and publish it in a book, I could probably retire tomorrow on the royalties. Unfortunately, we don’t really know for sure who the beloved disciple is. The phrase appears in the Gospel of John five times. Since this phrase appears only in John’s Gospel and does not appear in the other Gospels, it was traditionally assumed that it referred to John the Apostle and evangelist. Some scholars believe that this was an autobiographical device employed by John to refer to…

This is weird but is Satanism or devil worship a religion?  Or is it just some kind of weird cult?
“Satanism” is a term that refers to a number of related beliefs and social phenomena. Their commonality is that they all feature the veneration or admiration of  Satan or similar figures.
The notion of Satan arose in Jewish scripture. For example, in the Book of Job, the angel of the Lord called ‘the Satan’ (suh-tahn) was the one who challenged the followers of Yahweh. In the gospels, a character named “Satan” was described as the cosmic enemy of God and  temptor of Jesus. Religions inspired by these texts (Jews, Christians and Muslims) typically regarded Satan as an adversary or…

Question: Can you tell me a bit about “Santa Ria”?  What are its origins and does it have anything to do with the Catholic church?

Santería, also known as Lukumi, is an Afro-Caribbean syncretic religion, meaning that it combines multiple different forms of belief or practice. “Santería” itself means “way of the saints,” and it mingles Yoruba traditions of West African slaves from Nigeria and Benin with the Catholicism of the Spanish plantation owners who colonized the Americas.

Santería rituals often involve elements that use or closely resemble Catholic ones, such as prayers, or images of the saints, known as orishas. Scholarly consensus says that Spanish efforts to missionize…

What is the deal with the Vatican now saying that there is no Limbo? Isn’t this a change in doctrine?
The issue is more about the relationship of baptism and salvation, than it is about limbo.  The teaching on limbo didn’t change so much as the teaching on salvation without baptism changed.  At Vatican II the church shifted gears and taught: “Those also can attain to everlasting salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the gospel of Christ or his church, yet sincerely seek God, and moved by grace, strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience” (Lumen Gentium #16.  trans. Abbot).  The catechism realizes that “God has bound salvation to the…

Over the last several years, many Catholics worldwide have signed petitions urging the Pope to make a dogmatic declaration that Mary is the “co-redemptrix.”
What exactly does this mean?  Supporters of the title say that “co-redemptrix” signifies the unique and irreplaceable role that Mary played in the salvation of the world: namely, she conceived, gave birth to, and supported Christ in his saving mission.  In doing so, she was intimately involved in redeeming the world from sin.  These supporters do clarify (correctly) that she is subordinate to her Son, and that Jesus himself is the true and only Redeemer.
What they say about Mary has, in fact, been taught by the Church for centuries.  …

This is another of those examples that shows us that the evangelists – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – were not as concerned with reporting the details of an incident as they were with expressing the meaning of the experience. It’s similar to the question of “when did Jesus rise from the dead?” Was it “when the sun had risen” (Mark’s Gospel) or “while it was still dark” (John’s Gospel)?

It’s good to pay attention to such discrepancies because they often alert us to a point that the evangelist is making.  In both cases (the Crucifixion and Resurrection), it would seem that John’s Gospel manipulates chronology to make a significant theological point. In the case of the Resurrection, John…

As the joke goes: Very carefully.
According to the norms established in 1978 by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the local bishop must investigate the alleged apparition to determine that:

There is a great likelihood that something miraculous did occur (that the vision isn’t a trick or an effect of the weather, say).
The alleged visionary is mentally sound, honest and moral, respectful of the Church, and not out for profit.
Any messages from the apparition are theologically sound and free of error.
Healthy, enduring spiritual effects (prayer, conversion, etc.) result from the apparition.

If the bishop judges the apparition to be worthy of belief, then Catholics are free to honor Mary…

The church doesn’t have any strong feelings on body piercing. The Catechism warns against mutilations (e.g. cutting one’s arm or leg off) but nothing else is found. A recent article in U.S. Catholic Magazine showed a picture of someone receiving communion on their tongue and it was pierced!
However, the church would expect you to be respectful of your own body and not to do anything that would be viewed as unhealthy (e.g. using dirty needles for piercing and risking serious infections!) or dangerous. Piercing and tattoos could put you at risk for HIV as well–so be very careful and only go to reputable places to get these things done.
Some other thoughts regarding modesty and intention:
I would…

This is a little bit like asking, “Why are there different look-out points for the Grand Canyon?” The Grand Canyon is simply too large, complex, and majestic to be taken in from one and only one perspective. In the same way, the experience of Jesus is too grand to be limited to one perspective. For this reason, we are blessed to have four Gospels – 4 different perspectives of the experience we call Jesus. Each evangelist tends to focus on a different aspect of the story. Interestingly enough, the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes (aka, The Feeding of the 5000) is the only miracle, other than the Resurrection, to appear in all four Gospels. This is an indication to us of the significance of this story which teaches…

Question:  I went to a “high Anglican” service and was told that they believe the same thing about the Eucharist as we do.  Is it OK therefore for me to receive communion here as a Catholic and if not, why does the church say that I shouldn’t receive here?

The Anglican and Catholic International Dialogue Commission, in a 1981 document entitled The Final Report, claimed in the sections relating to the Eucharist “to have attained a substantial agreement on eucharistic faith.” This, however, does not resolve the question of intercommunion. The reason is that, while both churches may have a common understanding of what is happening at the Eucharist, the significance they attribute to…

Question:  I am a young man who recently came back to the Catholic church and I am happy to have found God back into my life.  The problem is that i am in a serious relationship for 7 years now, are we are getting married in 2010 and are having sex regularly.  Technically I’m in a state of mortal sin since I use condoms and I have sex before getting married. I do confess this in the sacrament of reconciliation but sometimes it don’t feel like I truly repent.  In some ways I don’t … I enjoy sex and its hard to say no to my girlfriend.   How can I continue to be faithful to god and his commandments while still be tempted by sexual activity?

The way of fidelity is to resist temptations.  Married people…

From Scripture, we know that Mary was cared for by the apostle John after Christ’s death (John 19:26-27).  Mary was also present at Pentecost, when Jesus sent the Holy Spirit upon the Church (Acts 1-2).

In addition to Scripture, Catholics look to sacred Tradition, the faith handed down from the apostles and expressed in the lived worship of the Church.   As the Second Vatican Council document Dei Verbum explains, “…it is not from Sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed. Therefore both sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture are to be accepted and venerated with the same sense of loyalty and reverence.”(DV 9)

It’s through sacred Tradition…

There are a few. BustedHalo.com is a sub-division of a larger ministry outreach called Paulist Young Adult Ministries, a national ministry for young adults. If you check out our Church Search and Events sections (under faith guides) you should find some good places to go.
Secondly, NCYAMA is the National Catholic Young Adult Ministry Association and we work very closely with them. In fact, I’m the President of the board of directors. Check them out at www.ncyama.org or by calling 1-888-ncyama1.
Mike Hayes is the Senior Editor for Googling God…

The story of Jonah is one of those Scripture passages that we as Catholics would say is a TRUE story, but not necessarily FACT. Catholics believe that everything in the Bible is TRUE in a religious sense. However, when it comes to scientific and historical truth (facts), there are times that the Bible is not totally accurate.
Why? Simply because the Bible comes to us from a time when most people were not literate and certainly not as literal as we are today. They did not have science and history as we understand those fields today. So, although there is a great deal of historicity in the Bible (proven by archeological study), we also find that there are places where figurative language was used. Figurative language (for…