Glad You Asked

The apostle Paul was a busy man. As well as traveling, preaching, arguing, getting imprisoned, and surviving shipwreck, he also wrote a lot of letters. Over half the books in the Christian scriptures are commonly attributed to him, and anyone involved in an argument over matters of Catholic teaching is likely, at some point, to quote Paul.  This can make things complicated, since some statements a...

A thousand or so years ago, there lived an Irish archbishop named Malachy. And this archbishop supposedly had a series of visions about popes—past, present and future. According to the revelations in these visions, recorded in a document that was supposedly discovered around 1590, there would be only 112 popes between Malachy's time and the day of the final judgment. Today, some people think that...

The rosary is probably the most well-known of all Catholic prayer practices. Many Catholics grew up praying it as part of their family or community devotions. And the physical rosary itself, a string of beads or knots with a crucifix attached and sometimes a medal, is immediately recognizable as a Catholic object. Catholics might carry rosaries, wear them, drape them over statues, or dangle them o...

There are certain core beliefs that every Christian denomination shares: the Trinity. The divinity of Jesus. Jesus' death and resurrection. Some Protestants have little in common with Catholics beyond these and a few other core beliefs, but other denominations seem closely related to Catholicism. The Episcopal Church, for instance, has a lot in common with the Catholic Church, in terms of belief a...

Some of the most popular and well-known Catholic pilgrimage sites are places where Mary the Mother of Jesus is believed to have appeared to people. Every year, millions travel to Fatima in Portugal and Lourdes in France. The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe near Mexico City sees around 20 million pilgrims a year. And the site of the claimed apparitions at Medjugorje, though controversial, still a...

Most people who are even a little familiar with church history will recognize the image of Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to a church door in Wittenberg. While there's no conclusive evidence that he actually did this, we do know that the Augustinian friar succeeded in kicking off the Protestant Reformation by promulgating his then-controversial treatise and that his primary objection was to t...

What do we know about the life of the early Christians in the first few generations after the death of Jesus? While there's a lot of debate about such topics as leadership roles and gender equality, Acts is pretty explicit about a few details: The very first Christians held all things in common. When people joined the community of believers, they would sell their possessions and distribute the pro...

From Hebrew scriptures to contemporary television, from Medieval manuscripts to Victorian greeting cards, angels loom large in the collective imagination of Western culture, and not only for Christians. But the word angel seems to cover a multitude of possible beings. To judge from their many and varied representations, a vision of an angel might involve a giant three-headed winged monster, a chub...

Mary Magdalene is probably one of the most recognized saints in the Catholic Church. She's also one of those saints whose true history is obscured behind various stories and legends, from the early church to the modern era. Who was Mary Magdalene? Was she the woman who washed Jesus' feet? Was she the same person as Mary of Bethany?  According to multiple popular accounts, Mary Magdalene was a sex...

Some Catholic apologists talk about the church as though it were a kind of data repository, filled with answers to any possible question a person might have. But in reality, Catholic thought is filled with gray areas and open-ended questions. Even when it comes to questions pertaining to faith and morals, the jury—or the magisterium—is still out, on many of them.  So what does it mean to understan...

When Mary gave birth to Jesus, what was it like? Did she experience the same anxiety, fear, mess, and pain that any woman can expect when preparing for childbirth? Many people might find this question strange. Of course Mary, being fully human, and not God, would share in all the usual feelings and emotions—both pleasant and unpleasant—associated with bringing a baby into the world. Wouldn't she?...

Different Christian denominations hold varying views on multiple topics. Over the past two thousand years, these doctrinal differences have often generated conflict, even to the point of religious wars. Despite huge variations in belief on some topics, however, one thing all Christian denominations agree on is that Jesus is the Son of God and the third person of the Trinity. They also believe that...

Christian history is full of stories about relics, from the quest of the holy grail to tales about unscrupulous medieval merchants hawking fake relics. Today, the practice of collecting and venerating relics of dead saints or artifacts from the life of Jesus might seem backwards and superstitious to some, disturbing or macabre to others. But the tradition of venerating relics is not simply an oddi...

Do Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus on December 25 because that was the day when the Romans celebrated the feast of Sol Invictus, the "unconquered sun," as the winter days began to get longer again? Or perhaps because that date aligns with the festival of Yule in Scandinavian cultures? Are Christmas trees a part of seasonal festivities because some pre-Christian cultures worshiped trees as...

Catholics have a veritable treasury of beliefs and traditions about Jesus' family life, but some of these are only tenuously connected with the information we have from the Bible. While the gospels are full of stories about Jesus' ministry, death, and resurrection, we are left to piece together details about his early life and his familial connections on the basis of a few tantalizing passages. On...

Any Christian who has ever loved a family pet or worked closely with animals has probably, at some point, asked whether non-human animals go to heaven. For parents of small children who have lost an animal friend to age, accident, or illness, this question becomes especially fraught with worries about how to help a child through their grieving processes without inculcating inaccurate beliefs about...

Suppose a person were able to time-travel back 800 years and visit Catholic Europe. Despite the common notion that Catholicism remained fixed and unchanging prior to the Second Vatican Council, a theoretical time traveler would find many Catholic beliefs and practices that would seem strange. Some traditions Catholics imagine were deeply rooted in history are relatively recent and weren't around d...

Over the two thousand years of its existence, the Catholic Church has developed complicated and elaborate leadership structures, with strict rules about who can take which roles and why. These structures can be confusing even for cradle Catholics, who may not be sure about the exact differences between a bishop and an archbishop, or what the different colored robes for different ranks in the churc...

Belief in the spirit world is central to the Christian faith, but Catholicism takes communion with supernatural realities to a whole new level. Catholics pray not only to God but also to Mary and the saints. Catholics even talk to their dead, say prayers for them, and ask them, in turn, for intercession. The lives of the saints are filled with stories about miraculous healings, levitation, bilocat...

Because the Bible is a conglomeration of diverse texts written in varied historical contexts to meet the needs of diverse audiences, its symbols and motifs might seem strange to contemporary readers. Often, readers may be tempted to impose their own interpretations on some of the more arcane details from Hebrew or Christian scripture.  One such esoteric biblical motif is the number 666. While the...

Thanks to horror movies, many people are aware that the Catholic church has rituals, called exorcisms, which are practiced by Catholic priests. In the horror genre, exorcisms are intended to cast evil spirits out of possessed people. They are dramatic events, potentially traumatizing to witness, often attended by screaming, violence, bodily contortions, and supernatural occurrences. But are these...

Anyone who has been following Catholic news within the U.S. or globally has probably gotten used to hearing updates about synods. Thanks to the leadership of Pope Francis, terms like "synod" and "synodality" have entered the ordinary vernacular of Catholics. At the time of this recording, the three-year-long Synod on Synodality, running from 2021 to 2024, is still ongoing, but many Catholics may s...

People who are curious about basic Catholic teachings and traditions have a wealth of resources to turn to, from the Catechism of the Catholic Church to various official documents, going back centuries. But when it comes to some questions about morality or belief, the church does not have an official position.  Understanding some topics from a Catholic perspective sometimes means getting familiar...

Most Christians are aware of the basic theology about the first two persons of the Trinity: the Father and the Son. Both the Father and the Son are widely represented in scripture and alluded to in tradition and liturgy. Although we know, according to strict theology, that the Father is not an embodied person, let alone an enfleshed male, we have grown comfortable with thinking of the first person...

Can women preach in churches? People may answer this question in different ways, depending on their denomination or faith tradition. Some Christian churches allow for women to be ordained. In others, women are barred from any kind of teaching or leadership position at all. Many women working in faith-based ministries have likely heard such statements as "it's unBiblical for women to preach," "wome...