Every original article remains available. Choose a question and take your time.
If the Pope were to ask me to adore him, I would tell him to go to confession and ask forgiveness of so great a sin before attempting to celebrate Mass. For he would commit mortal sin did he accept adoration even as it would be mortal sin to offer it to him.
The Old Catholics are really new Protestants dating from 1870. Even though their Orders be correct, they lost Apostoiic jurisdiction by leaving the Catholic Church.
Since there is no proportion between the visible action and the giving of interior grace of a supernatural character, it is evident that God alone could institute a Sacrament. It calls for His infinite power. Jesus Christ, therefore, at once God and man, instituted the Sacraments.
There certainly could be. And St. John, XIX., 25, writes that there stood by the cross of Jesus “His mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary of Cleophas.” But even here, Mary of Cleophas need not have been a sister in the first degree of blood relationship, but rather of the same lineage in more remote degrees of either consanguin…
It is not the function of Catholic priests. Some so-called priests of humanly manufactured religions have been professional dealers in the occult. The Catholic priest is a very different being. He does not pretend to fully comprehend mysteries himself. He rather explains that there are mysteries in God, and in God’s work.
In order that complete man, body and soul, may attain an eternal destiny, and that the body which good people have mortified for the love of God, and which evil people have wickedly indulged for the love of self, may share the fate of the soul. Human beings in their complete nature will thus glorify God’s mercy and justice.
Is it fair to ask the Church to admit to her Sacraments those of any religion or of no religion? People who are complete strangers to her cannot expect her to make as much of them as of those who are her own children. The parties do not resent their exclusion from the Altar nearly so much as the Church resents mixed marriages.
His distribution of the bread has no reference to the matter under discussion. Firstly, it cost Him no effort so to multiply bread miraculously. If men could produce things miraculously, they would not mind giving them away. But ordinary human production costs the producer the employment of his own means of support, and he has a…
The Church does exist to save souls, even as Christ died for that purpose. But she does not lack interest in the social well-being of mankind. Moral law rules even man’s social conduct, and since moral injustice can and does occur in the behavior of men towards each other in their social relations, it is the duty of the Church t…
Playing tennis is not sinful. It is neither holy nor wicked of itself. It is mental and bodily refreshment of one’s forces. But how far will you go? If I may not play tennis, may I exercise my limbs by walking? If I may not use my legs, may I use my eyes in reading? If not that, may I use my lungs by breathing? Where are you goi…
God would not have inspired the Jews to pray for the departed if such prayers were of no avail. Christians have always prayed for the dead, a practice fully warranted by the doctrine of the Communion of Saints. And if we can pray for our dear ones who are in trouble in this life, our prayers can certainly follow them in their fu…
.It is not an insult to Protestants that a Catholic cannot attend a Protestant service. Every man must be guided by his own conscience. How far would one have to give up having any convictions at all, lest he insult those with whom he has to disagree? Nor do I compare Protestantism with paganism. I compared the unlawfulness of a…
Upon what do you base that outrageous assertion?
That does not suggest that a Bishop must be married, but belongs to the same context as that which you have just quoted. If a man who has been married, but not to more than one wife, be chosen, he must be one who has been faithful and who has ruled well his own house. That discipline was most wise at a time when such a man could…
The Independent Order of Odd Fellows, established in 18th-century England, emerged as a fraternal society focused on mutual aid, charity, and personal development. Its origins are traced to working-class communities seeking to provide financial and social support for members. By the 19th century, the organization had spread to t…
It was a pagan practice which Christians avoided from the very beginning. In the third century we find Christian writers, such as Minucius Felix, warning Christians against imitating the practice, and bidding them retain the custom of earth burial. In comparatively recent times Atheists and irreligious materialists have reintrod…
Christ said, “If a man will not hear the Church, let him be as the heathen.” Matt. XVIII, 17. He referred, of course, to a deliberate and willful refusal of a known obligation. If a man knows that the Catholic Church is the true Church, yet refuses to obey it, he will certainly be as the heathen before God. But Protestants who a…
That you were highly amused at a Requiem Mass which you did not understand only proves that you are devoid of the power to sympathize with what is sacred to other people. Had you understood it, and then been amused, there might have been some excuse. You say that the whole ceremony was a gabble and a mumble to you. Were you to a…
Miracles were necessary during the preparatory stages of religion, and, above all, during the earliest years of Christianity that the final perfection of that religion might be rapidly and firmly established. Once that true religion was solidly established under the form of the Catholic Church, there was no longer the same need.…
How do you know? Catholics know that God commanded Confession as a means oi recovering His friendship and that for this the price is negligible. They know that shame did not keep them from committing the sin as it should have done, and they will not let false shame keep them from confessing it. They know that they fully deserve …
The practice is not anti-Christian. Reception under one kind only is quite sufficient for Holy Communion. Our Lord said simply, “If any man eat of this bread he shall live forever, for the bread that I will give is My flesh for the life of the world.” Jn. VI., 52. In the early Church Communion was at times given to little childr…
No. Those words have no reference to any particular civil or economic structure of society.
Nowhere did Christ ever commission women to teach in His name and with His authority. St. Paul explicity forbids women to attempt to exercise such functions. I. Tim. II., 11-12; I. Cor. XIV., 34. People who would ordain women in the Church seem to believe that they know more about Christianity than St Paul.
No. Christ was God, and in the Old Testament God dictated a ceremonial every bit as lavish as Catholic ceremonial. So that it cannot be against His principles. And Christ never condemned ceremonial. He instituted the ceremonial of Baptism with water. With ceremony He breathed upon the Apostles when giving them th<$ power to forg…
Your optional contribution helps keep these resources free to read.
