Certainly God knows when we are sorry for our sins. And since God’s only relationship with us is one of unconditional love, whenever we turn to God with a sincere sorrow for sin and a desire to make a new beginning, God is there to meet us with forgiveness.
As human beings, however, we may need a more concrete way of experiencing God’s love for us. A person who loves us might show his or her love by making time for us, writing us a note, treating us to a special meal, or buying us a gift. We may already know that our friend cares for us, but the concrete attention is a confirmation and reassurance that human love requires. We Catholics believe that God has given us the sacraments as a way of showing that we are receiving…

I’m sure that God forgave you when you celebrated the Sacrament of Reconciliation many years ago. However, the fact that the act of taking money from another still bothers you after all these years indicates that there’s an additional step that you need to take before you can feel completely at peace. When we harm someone it’s important to make restitution, that is, to repair as much as possible the injury we did to the other person.
The first step is to make an attempt to pay back the person or institution from whom you took the money. This doesn’t have to be done openly, but can be in the form of an anonymous donation or secret gift.
Of course, after so many years the person from whom the money…

Yes, the saints are human just like ourselves. They are in no way gods or super-humans. In the early church, the word “saint” was used to describe anyone who was a member of the community that expressed faith in Christ. Christians believed that death did not end one’s membership in the family of faith. The bonds of faith and love continued between the living and the dead. So when someone who had lived a good life died, they were presumed to be still members in good standing of the “communion of saints.”
After a while, Christians who had lived lives of remarkable holiness, or who had accepted death by martyrdom rather than deny their faith in Christ, were honored by their contemporaries…

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 in line with church teaching against abortion. Archbishop Burke of St. Louis has established a similiar policy, as have two bishops in New Jersey, but these seem to be a minority among the American bishops.
Archbishop Sean O’Malley of Boston said last summer that Catholic politicians who support legal abortion should stop receiving communion by their own choice. But Archbishop O’Malley added that the church does not deny communion to people who come to receive it, presuming that they do so…

The short answer to your question is: you are taking the medication prescribed by your doctor in order to regulate your menstrual cycle and ease your discomfort. The medication is achieving this effect. Neither you or your doctor intends that this medication be used for the purpose of birth control. In your case the situation is made even clearer by the fact that you are not sexually active and do not intend to be so. So your assumption that there is no sin involved in your taking the contraceptive in these circumstances is correct.
Now some background. The Church has a traditional guideline for determining the morality of such an action. It is called “the principle of double effect.” This applies to…

Catholic teaching holds that abortion is always immoral. This is a strongly held position and dates back to the earliest days of the Church. For example, the Didache, the earliest known book of basic instructions for Christians, contains a prohibition against abortion. One of the distinctive features of the earliest Christian community was its strong stance against abortion and infanticide as practiced within the Roman empire.
The Catholic position on abortion is based on the following principles:
1. The life of an embryo is consistent with the life of a fetus which is consistent with the life of a newborn baby. No change in being ever takes place. Life is therefore “human” from the moment of conception…

You are correct in sensing that there is more unity than difference in the way Catholics and Lutherans understand and celebrate communion. In fact, since the second Vatican Council there has been a “coming together” of these different Christian Churches with respect to communion. The Catholic Eucharist (Mass) is now celebrated in the language of the local community rather than in Latin. The communal celebration of the Mass is much preferred to the private celebration by a priest that was common before Vatican II. And Catholics have restored the ancient practice of communion under the forms of both bread and wine.
In dialogues between Lutheran and Catholic theologians in 1968, Lutherans agreed…

I’ve found nothing in the Code of Canon Law of the Catholic Church indicating that Protestant spouses cannot be buried with their Catholic spouse in a Catholic cemetery. The only hitch would be if burial in a Catholic cemetery would have been contrary to the wishes of the spouse who has died. A Catholic priest or cemetery would want to respect his or her wishes regarding their own funeral and burial.…

The Catholic Church recognizes the validity of other Christian baptisms if they involve water by immersion, pouring or sprinkling, and if they are done “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” If a Christian whose Baptism fulfilled these conditions seeks to become a Catholic, he or she does not need to be rebaptized, but must make a formal “profession of faith,” reciting the Nicene Creed (which is usually recited during a Catholic Mass, and expresses the fundamental beliefs of Catholics). This is done at a special ceremony called “the reception of baptized Christians into the full communion of the Catholic Church.” Normally the new Catholic receives…

The matter of women deacons is in a different state in the Catholic Church from that of women priests. Pope John Paul II stated that it was not possible for women to be ordained as priests. His argument was that Jesus had chosen only men for the 12 apostles, and that the apostles did the same when they chose who would succeed them in ministry. He also made use of the “in persona Christi” image which you cite in your question. John Paul II went so far as to indicate that Catholics should not even discuss the ordination of women to the priesthood as a possibility.
Women as deacons is another matter. It is still open to study and discussion. There is some evidence that women served as deacons in the early Church. For…

The answer is: much later than we might think!
The early church seems to have avoided any titles for Christians, except for the egalitarian “brother” and “sister.” Matthew’s gospel, which is very concerned about the rules of conduct within a Christian community, records this teaching of Jesus: “Call no one on earth your father, you have but one Father in heaven” (Matthew 23:9). Jesus seems to be suggesting that titles are a way of claiming rank over and above others and therefore were not proper for a disciple who sought to be a servant to all.
With the passage of time, however, the title “Father” crept into Christian etiquette as a way of describing the…

I’m not sure I completely understand your question, but I can certainly understand the sadness and frustration in your experience of wanting to minister the Sacraments and not having your desire supported by the Church. it seems from what you’ve said that you’re not assuming a public role as a concelebrant but rather sitting with the congregation at Mass and privately reciting the words of consecration along with the presider. The fact that the Church allows the use of missalettes which contain the words of the eucharistic prayers along with the readings from Scripture indicates that the Church at least permits if not encourages the practice of reading and “praying along”…

When I was growing up, my mother didn’t belong to any church. When I was in high school, after a long period of seeking and questioning, she decided to become a Catholic. Her older sister, my favorite Aunt, had taken instructions and been baptized a Catholic some years before. So two adults in my immediate family had found meaning and joy through becoming members of the Catholic church.
While I was attending Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, California a Paulist priest, Fr. Elwood (Bud) Keiser, led a retreat day at the school. He spoke of the Paulist mission to share the gospel and the Catholic faith beyond the church doors. The Paulists tried to live out this mission in parishes, in adult education centers…

The practice of cardinals electing a new pope has its origins in the tradition of the early church for a local church to elect its own bishop. St. Ambrose, for example, was chosen as bishop of Milan by the Catholics of that area, even though he was still a catechumen. He had to be baptized before he could be ordained as bishop!
Gradually the right to elect a new bishop was restricted to the priests and deacons of an area. In Rome the priests, deacons and bishops of diocese in the neighborhood of Rome were called cardinals, from the Latin word “cardo” (hinge). There still exists the distinction of cardinal bishops (of the seven dioceses surrounding Rome), cardinal priests (of the churches within Rome) and…

The idea of the infallibility of the pope was defined at the first Vatican Council in 1869. The Council was trying to describe the teaching authority of the pope at a time when the pope’s temporal power over the papal states gave way to Italy’s desire for unification. Rome was the last preserve of the pope’s temporal power and this city fell into the hands of the Italian army even as the Vatican Council met.
For many years thereafter the pope was considered a “prisoner of the Vatican,” refusing to set foot in any other part of Italy in protest of the occupation of Rome. Yet during these same years the pope’s spiritual and moral authority grew. The definition of papal infallibility…

The word pope is an English adaptation of the Latin word “papa” (a child’s affectionate word for father). From the third to the fifth centuries words like papa or abba were used of bishops to describe their role as a spiritual father. By the third century the term “pope” began to be used as a title solely for the bishops of Rome.
The oldest title and role that a pope retains is that of bishop of Rome. The church also regards the pope as the successor of Peter, the chief of the apostles. As such he exercises a primacy over the entire Church, as defined by the First Vatican Council (1869). The role of the pope as spiritual leader of the whole church has come more and more to define what a pope “does.”…

Thank you for your question about the Creed.
Basically the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed came into being around the same time though the earliest forms of the Apostles Creed are in evidence around the year 100 with the final version that we now have being dated in the year 700. The difference is that the Nicene Creed was written in response to various heresies about the nature of Jesus Christ that were debated at the Church Council of Nicea in the year 325. The creed was principally written in opposition to the heretic, Arius, who taught that Jesus was a creature made by God not wholly equal to the Father. Such that the lines saying, “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten…

One of the ten commandments is “remember to keep holy the sabbath day. Six days you may labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord, your God. No work may be done then…in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the Lord has blessed the sabbath day and made it holy” (Exodus 20:8-10).
The commandment doesn’t say anything about going to church; it simply sets aside one day of the week as a day of rest, when no work was to be done. It became customary among the Jewish people, however, to see the sabbath as a day to be “with” God in a special way. Much of their prayer centered in the home, but they also developed…

Actually, a complete celebration of the Mass should engage the whole person–including the mind, the emotions, and the body. Even the simplest Masses, for example, involve a procession to and from the communion station, and a switch in posture from standing to sitting to kneeling. These gestures indicate that we participate not only with our minds but with our complete self.
Popular devotions often express the emotions of Catholics and may even intensify them. When I visited churches in Mexico I observed persons processing on their knees to the tabernacle or statue of the Blessed Mother. The reverence these pilgrims felt was expressed with deep emotion.
Possibly the most powerful conveyer of emotion…

It’s true that the Mass is a remembering of the death and resurrection of Christ. But it’s a particular kind of remembering that involves an encounter with past, present and future. In the acclamation of faith during Mass we proclaim that “Christ HAS died, Christ IS risen, Christ WILL come again.” The Greek word for this kind of remembering is “anamnesis.” It means not only a memorial, but a re-presentation. In other words, in the rite of the Mass Christ becomes “present” once again, in the here and now. In doing the actions of blessing, breaking/pouring, and sharing the bread and wine we experience once again the reality of Jesus himself. Not only did Christ…