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…

To answer your question I have to provide a little history.
Up until 1965, Mass was celebrated everywhere in the Catholic church in Latin according to the “rite” (order or ritual or worship) determined at the Council of Trent and issued by Pope Pius V in 1568.
The Second Vatican Council wrote a “Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy” (1963) which advocated that Mass be celebrated in the native language (“vernacular”) of a particular region or country. This was so that “the Christian people, so far as possible, should be able to understand (the texts and rites) with ease and take part in them fully, actively, as befits a community.”
This document also asked for…

Devotion to Mary goes back a long way in the Catholic church. But Catholics do not believe that Mary is divine and we don’t pray to Mary. God, made flesh in Jesus and present in the Holy Spirit, is the only One to whom we pray.
We do believe that Mary holds a special place among the saints of the church, and that the saints are part of a community of faith and love that doesn’t end with death. This “communion of saints” includes both the living and dead. We don’t “pray to” the saints either, but we believe that we can ask those who now live with God to pray for us, just as we pray for persons who have died.
Catholics don’t worship Mary; rather, we honor her. We honor Mary as the…

The Immaculate Conception is a teaching of the church that Mary, the Mother of Jesus, was preserved from original sin from the moment of her conception. This is not a teaching found in the New Testament, which contains no stories about the conception, birth or childhood of Mary. It developed in the Middle Ages, as a way of better understanding Mary’s special role as the Mother of God. It was finally declared to be a dogma of the Catholic Church by Pope Pius IX in 1854.
The feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary is celebrated on December 8 and is one of the special holy days of the Church calendar. In the early 19th century the bishops of the United States declared Mary to be our patron under the title of the Immaculate…

Thank you for sending your question to “Ask Fr. Joe.”
First of all, let me say that there will be no problem with your getting your married “validated” in the Catholic Church. I’m assuming that neither of you has been married before in a valid Catholic marriage so no annulment would be necessary.
Catholics who marry in a civil ceremony need only to get their marriage con-valided, that is, to exchange your vows in the presence of a priest or deacon. You are already married civilly so you can only get one marriage license. It will be necessary for you to produce a certificate of your marriage in order to get married in the Church so there is no way you can keep this secret from the officiating…

I’m assuming from your note that you were divorced and have remarried without receiving an annulment of your first marriage from the Church court. If so, your priest is following the practice of the Church of reserving communion for those who are “in communion” with Church teaching and practice. Church teaching holds that marriage is a permanent, lifelong commitment grounded in Jesus’ teaching “let no one separate what God has joined” (Mark 10:6-9). The Church does not believe that a civil divorce enables a Catholic to remarry.
You might want to make an appointment with your parish priest to talk over your circumstances with him. It may be possible to obtain an annulment…

This is a hard question to answer, and I appreciate the anquish with which you must ask it.
If you were married in a Catholic ceremony, you would promise to do all within your power to have your children baptized and raised as Catholics. Your non-Catholic husband would not be required to make any promise, but would need to be informed that you had made such a promise. So the primary responsibility for raising your childen as Catholics would rest with you.
In your present situation, I would encourage your desire to have any children of your marriage baptized and raised as Catholics, but you will have to be prepared to do it on your own. You mention that your husband has stated that he does not want take part in the childen’s…

Yes, it’s true that Jesus’ own prayer was directed toward God as Father. The prayer which Jesus teaches his disciples in ths gospels of Matthew and Luke is addressed to “our Father” and does not mention Jesus at all! We still pray this as “The Lord’s Prayer” and regard it as a central Christian prayer.
Apart from the Lord’s Prayer, most prayer in Catholic worship is addressed “TO the Father, THROUGH the Son, IN unity with the Holy Spirit.” This formula expresses two basic beliefs of Catholics: the Trinity and the Incarnation.
The Apostle’s Creed, one of the earliest Christian professions of faith, states: “I believe in God the Father…

As Americans we have mixed emotions regarding the word king. The American Revolution was fought to free Americans from the tyranny of a kingly rule. Since then we’ve had little enthusiasm for hereditary, life-long reigns. Our political traditions mostly involve elected officials who serve a set term of office and then retire to private life. The U.S. Constitution maintains a “balance of powers” among the different branches of government to prevent any one branch from usurping a royal authority.
Even in the world at large, hereditary monarchies are fading away. Those which remain, as in Great Britain, have come to assume largely a ceremonial function as heads of state, with little genuine…

As Christians, this may be the most important question we can ask. Certainly St. Paul thought so. He once declared that if Christ did not rise from the dead, then our faith is in vain.
Yet the gospels give surprisingly few facts about such an significant and in fact essential event. There are no details about how God raised up Jesus. There were apparently no witnesses to the resurrection itself, no one to describe what had occurred or when. All four gospels tell us that on Sunday morning, three days after Jesus had died, some of his disciples found that the tomb in which his body had been placed was empty.
This fact alone did not bring faith to the disciples. The absence of Jesus’ body caused some bewilderment or led…

I’m happy to assure you that the Catholic Church has never taught that unbaptized babies go to hell. In fact, such a belief was explicitly rejected by Pope Pius VI in 1794, in response to the severe teachings of an group in Italy called the Jansenists.
The fate of unbaptized babies after death has been, however, a topic of discussion in the Church since at least the 4th century. The discussion centered around how to interpret Jesus’ words in the gospel of John (3:5) “no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit.”
Whether these words of Jesus applied to babies was apparently not a concern for the earliest Christians, since they baptized only adults. The practice…

Thanks for your question.
First and foremost, the question of what happens to us after death leads us into a place of mystery. We don’t have a photograph or a road map. The most basic decision that Christians make in the face of death is to trust in the reality of a God who wills eternal life, not death for us. The first letter of Paul to Timothy speaks of “God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (I Tim. 2:3-4). As Catholics, we believe that God’s will for salvation for all is conditioned by our human freedom to say “yes” or “no.” God does not force Divine life and love upon us. God’s gift of salvation is given to anyone…

The earliest Scriptural reference to prayers for the dead comes in the second book of Maccabees. The books of Maccabees were among the latest written books found in the Old Testament. They recount the struggle of the Jewish people for freedom against the Seleucid Empire, around 100-200 years before the birth of Christ. They are written from an Orthodox Jewish point of view. The second book of Maccabees tells how Judas Maccabee, the Jewish leader, led his troops into battle in 163 B.C. When the battle ended he directed that the bodies of those Jews who had died be buried. As soldiers prepared their slain comrades for burial, they discovered that each was wearing an amulet taken as booty from a pagan Temple. This violated…

It’s no surprise that you find you can’t get a straight answer from anyone on this question, because everything about life after death is basically a mystery. We don’t have a blueprint, a map or a photograph of heaven. Life with God is beyond our human imagination’s ability to conceive. Our imagination is rooted in our earthly experience of time and space and life with God is without time and is not limited by space–which is what we mean by the word “eternal.”
However, our imagination can give us hints or clues, based on our experience in this life. My favorite definition of hell is that of the Russian novelist Dostoevksii that “hell is the suffering of being unable…

From the quality and concern of your question, I would judge that you are a conscientious and compassionate person of faith.I wish that there were an easy and equally straightforward way to answer your question, but there isn’t.We have to consider many factors that don’t bump up easily against each other.
The Catholic church (in its official teaching) has a problem with same-sex marriage for at least two reasons. First, the church has maintained an opposition to sexual relationships between people of the same sex dating back to the prohibitions found in some of the letters of St. Paul. Since marriage of its nature involves a sexual relationship, two persons of the same sex cannot enter into it. A longterm…

To answer your question I have to provide a little history.
Up until 1965, Mass was celebrated everywhere in the Catholic church in Latin according to the “rite” (order or ritual or worship) determined at the Council of Trent and issued by Pope Pius V in 1568.
The Second Vatican Council wrote a “Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy” (1963) which advocated that Mass be celebrated in the native language (“vernacular”) of a particular region or country. This was so that “the Christian people, so far as possible, should be able to understand (the texts and rites) with ease and take part in them fully, actively, as befits a community.”
This document also asked for…

“Lectio” is the Latin word for reading. In Catholic language a lector is a reader and a lectionary is the book of scripture readings. So the Latin “Lectio Divina” translates into English as “Divine”, “holy” or “prayerful” reading.
To understand how this practice developed in the Church, it’s important to understand that the skill of reading is a relatively modern phenomenon. Books did not become easily available to people until the invention of the printing press in the 16th century. Until then, Bibles and other books of prayer were copied by hand. This became one of the tasks of a monastery, or community of monks. Monks learned the skills…

A good place to begin is with your own diocesan newspaper. Most dioceses publish a weekly or monthly newspaper and these often contain excellent movie reviews or an evaluation of current films with respect to their suitability for family viewing. A few years ago Paulist Productions developed an annual “Humanitas Prize” to acknowledge television programs which promote human and Christian values and articulate a positive moral code. The Humanitas prize continues in existence and has been a force for influencing tv programming in a positive way.
Another response is to set a good example in your own use of the media. Your own good example will have the strongest effect of all in influencing your family’s…

Opus Dei is what is known as a “personal prelature” of the Pope. This means that unlike a diocese or a parish, Opus Dei has their own Bishops and priests that aren’t connected with a geographical diocese.
At the basic level, Opus Dei is a Lay run organization of people committed to living a spiritual life in the everyday.
John Allen has the best book on Opus Dei and I’d recommend it for further study.…

Attempts to contact or communicate with the spirits of the dead are warned against both in Scripture (Deuteronomy 18:10-12, Leviticus 19:31, I Samuel 28:8) and in the teaching of the Catholic Church (Acta Apostolicae Sedis 9-269). Some of the reasons given for this are: (a) a context of superstitious beliefs and practices, (b) the frequency of fraud and deception in the methods of mediums and channelers, (c) the possible influence of the demonic. The New Catholic Encyclopedia article on “Spiritism” notes: “it is understood, however, that what is condemned is superstitious abuse and that there was no intention to preclude legitimate scientific study, provided there is no recourse to…