605 articles from the existing collection.
If no law spiritual governs marriage, why did Christ say, “But I say unto you that whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another committeth adultery”? Christ was not the civil ruler, and He had said explicitly, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” If marriage belongs solely to civil authority, Christ woul< have…
The Catholic Church is not a kingdom of this world. It is the Kingdom of Christ in this world. And the Pope as Pope is not monarch of the Church in any national sense. No national considerations sway his rule over the millions of Catholics of every race and clime. He has temporal authority to-day in Vatican City, but that is mer…
Why is the Catholic Church opposed to birth control? Where in the Bible is birth control condemned as being contrary to the Will of God?
It is far from strange. Australia was colonized chiefly by Protestants. And because 75 per cent, of the population happens to be derived from Protestant forbears you prove, not that the Catholic Church is wrong, but only that the majority in this country happens to be Protestant. Again, this Protestant majority has not become Ca…
Yes. When the Pharisees complained to Christ that His disciples did not fast, He replied that they did not whilst He was with them, but that they would when He had gone from them. Mk. II., 18. Now the Catholic Church, ordered by Christ to teach all nations whatsoever Christ had said to her, tells us that at certain times we must…
In Matt. V., 26, Christ, in condemning sin, speaks of liberation only after expiation. “Thou shalt not go out from thence till thou repay the last farthing.” In Matt. XII., 32, He speaks of sin which “shall not be forgiven either in this world or in the world to come.” Any remission of the effects of sin in the next world can re…
You are asking an impossible question. You might as well ask me, “Why has Australia declared war on Afghanistan?” No man could answer that question, because there is no answer to it. He could only reply, “Tell me first, are you under the impression that Australia has declared war on Afghanistan?” And if you replied in the affirm…
Catholics are human beings with souls devoted to the service of God according to their Catholic Faith, yet with bodies which link them with this world, and render them subject to social relations and duties. These duties are regulated to a great extent by civil law, and Catholics do their share as citizens in the making of those…
No one. The Catholic Church says that it is a mortal sin for a Catholic to eat meat on Friday knowingly and wilfully, without a sufficiently grave and excusing reason. Then that Church says that if a man dies in unrepented mortal sin, he will go to hell.
It would not. The only fear of a novice when she enters is that she will be found unsuitable and not be accepted. Open the doors, and the Nuns will close them again, as they did in the first place, imploring the Church to let them do so with her blessing. They are happy in their self-chosen state. If you threw open the doors of …
Any baptized child could receive Holy Communion with profit. The early Christians frequently gave Communion even to infants. However, the Church for wise reasons requires in her present discipline that children should have attained sufficient reason to be able, after due instruction, to know that the Blessed Sacrament differs fr…
That would indeed be a wonderful way. It is surprising that the big business people have not thought of it. They have but to insert an advertisement in die newspapers, “It is sinful not to purchase at our establishment,” and the first firm that does so will have all rival firms closed in no time. It is a wonder that the modern w…
Because if God ever had a beginning, then before He began there was nothing. Now nothing, with nothing to work upon, and no faculties with which to work, could never turn its non-existent self into something. But there is obviously something, and there can never have been a time when there was nothing. God at least must always h…
No sophistry is likely to deceive all the people all the time. But Catholic Priests do not rely upon sophistry, and your supposition that they are opponents of true science is absurd in view of the fact that they have done as much, if not more than any other body of men in the world to spread science and genuine education. If th…
If they were not, that would not justify birth-control. The end does not justify the means. However I do not deny that individual cases of extreme poverty occur where there happens to be large families. But they occur also where there are not large families. I deny however that parents cannot normally support the children which …
One has to exist before one can be consulted, and then it is rather late to consult us concerning that which has already occurred. We therefore had no choice in this particular matter. Nor could we reasonably wish to have a choice. If a thing will necessarily be to my harm, I would reasonably wish to have an opportunity of decli…
Priests also dress with simplicity. They are not always in vestments. As for Christ, he too went to the Temple, and took part in its worship, never condemning its ritual. With the establishment of His own Church in fulfillment of the Old Law, He ordained His own Priests after the Order of Melchisedech in place of the Levitical P…
No. If the individual conscience is to be the guide, there will be as many religions as consciences. There are right consciences and wrong consciences. Conscience is right if it squares with the laws of God. It is warped if it be at variance with the will of God. However, if conscience alone matters, why did not Christ leave us …
The natural law of morality does not forbid it, nor has God directly given a positive law in the matter. It is a disciplinary law of the Catholic Church, and a very grave one. The Church could suspend the law, and permit Cremation in certain circumstances, as in the case of an epidemic or in war time. But normally she insists up…
According to the findings of your simple readers there must be hundreds of conflicting plans of salvation, all revealed by the one Christ! As for the capacity of your children, you might as well give them the article in the Encyclopaedia Brittanica on Spectroscopic Analysis as the subject matter of their studies. But the Bible i…
Yes. In Gen. III., 15, God said to Satan, “I will put enmities between thee and the woman … thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.” The radical enmity between Satan and that second Eve, the Mother of Christ, forbids her having been under the dominion of Satan, as she would have been had she ever contracted original sin in actual f…
If people do not know the dogmas of the Church to be true, it is not because of any fault in the dogmas, but because of a fault in themselves. They are either inadequately informed, or wrongly informed. Certainly they would never know the dogmas of the Church to be true if she did alter them. Any alteration of them would be at t…
Even the Protestant Bible does not give the second commandment as referring to images, though Protestants are usually taught that those words in the first commandment which refer to images constitute a second commandment.
That is not evidence. Only on a man’s own admission could we know that he is not limiting his children by practicing continence, he and his wife agreeing to abstain from marriage rights by mutual consent. But even if it be true that many Catholics sin in this manner, the fact that they sin could not justify the same sin in other…
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