Glad You Asked

Whenever Christians discuss questions about human sexuality and sexual orientation, it is only a matter of time before someone references the Bible to defend an anti-LGBTQ ideology. Whole faith communities may even be divided over the question of whether the Bible contains prescriptions against LGBTQ people. For many Catholics and Christians of other denominations, this question is not merely theo...

Radical equality, regardless of gender, ethnicity, or social class, was at the heart of the faith and practice of the early church. And throughout history the institutional church, as well as individual Catholics, sometimes defended and advanced women's rights. However, from the very beginning, the church has also been dominated by male voices. And institutional Catholicism has a rigidly patriarch...

Human beings have grappled with the question of why God allows suffering since before the origins of Christianity. It is a perennial conundrum for anyone who believes in a deity or deities. In many ancient cultures, including those of the Greeks and the Egyptians, belief in a multitude of gods may have made it a little easier for humans to find an answer to this question. But passages from these c...

Many Catholics, as well as Christians from other denominations, have a habit of talking about God as though God were masculine or even male. Some Catholics will even affirm that they believe God is masculine, and that referring to God as anything other than masculine is theologically questionable or even sinful. After all, two of the three divine persons of the Trinity are specifically designated...

While the phrase "biblical morality" is popular among many Christians, it is not especially meaningful, since Jesus is ambiguous on a lot of topics, in his teachings, and other topics he doesn't address at all. But there's one theme on which the teachings in the gospels, as well as the rest of the Christian and Hebrew scriptures, are straightforward: Those who have wealth are obliged to help the p...

Today, many Catholics as well as Christians of other denominations admire and enjoy Jewish traditions and rituals. But it hasn't always been that way. For centuries, Christians in different times, places, and cultures persecuted Jewish people, even to the point of forbidding the practice of Judaism.  In the Middle Ages, hateful rhetoric about Jewish people and the Jewish faith sometimes prompted p...

In the early days of the church, death by crucifixion was still seen as something scandalous and shameful. It is generally believed that the cross was not widely used as an image of the Christian faith until the fourth century. Today, however, we have grown quite comfortable with using different representations of this torture device as a sign of our religious identity. We have grown comfortable,...

What is the point of Lenten fasting for Catholics? The practice has come to be so intertwined with wellness culture that if you do an internet search for "fasting," you're likely to get a lot of advice associated with dieting and weight loss. While there are legitimate fasting practices that can help people become more physically healthy, much of the discourse around wellness and weight is potenti...

The Catholic Church has a vast panoply of canonized saints, some obscure, others well-known, others so popular they have claimed a space in non-Catholic or secular traditions as well. Perhaps the most familiar of these in the United States, is St. Patrick, the primary patron saint of Ireland. Celebrations associated with St. Patrick's feast day, in this country, include parades, wearing green, eat...

Eating fish on Fridays, especially during Lent, is a well-known Catholic tradition that has been practiced for centuries. The custom takes different forms from one culture to the next and has generated fascinating conversations about what counts as fish and whether religiously oriented eating customs need to take into account such issues as food accessibility and geographic or economic privilege....

The idea of life–especially intelligent life–on other planets has long captured the contemporary imagination. Despite the fact that there is no solid scientific evidence suggesting the existence of alien life forms, speculation about extraterrestrial activity inspires movies, television, novels, and popular music. But is there a particular Catholic view on aliens? Does the church have an official...

A common misunderstanding about Catholicism is that the church has preset answers to every possible moral or theological question, and that discussion about the church's teachings or traditions is limited to apologetics. In reality, the Catholic Church does not have a ready answer to every question, and many of its magisterial teachings have evolved and changed over time. So while memorizing defin...

Catholics often have to explain to their Protestant friends that no, we don't worship Mary. We do venerate her, though, because she freely chose to say "yes" when God asked her to bring Jesus into the world. And we ask her to intercede for us because of her closeness to Jesus.  Catholics have a set of doctrines about Mary, and a whole branch of theology called Mariology. This doesn't mean every qu...

Most people in the United States probably remember learning the story of the first Thanksgiving back in elementary school. The pilgrims, as the story goes, made the arduous journey to the Americas on a quest for religious liberty. There they encountered Indigenous people who kindly helped them settle in and get through the first harsh winter. The next year, following a successful first harvest, th...

For the first few centuries of the church, Christians were pacifists. Jesus' teachings about turning the other cheek, forgiving your enemies, and being peacemakers were taken seriously and literally. But over time, as Christianity became the official religion of the empire rather than a marginal and persecuted sect, the church began to edge out of pacifism and into what is today called "just war t...

When we talk about the global history of Catholicism, we may be tempted to portray the church as the unequivocal moral hero in every story. But our factual history is far more complicated than hagiographies and triumphalist narratives would have us believe. Different people at different times have experienced the impact of the church on their culture and personal lives in diverse ways, not always...

Some Catholic saints, like Mary Magdalene or Francis of Assisi, are widely known even in secular culture. Other saints, like Anthony of Padua or Thérèse of Lisieux, may not be as familiar to non-Catholics but have devoted followers within the church and are associated with particular prayers or devotions. Then there are many more saints who most people, even practicing Catholics, have probably nev...

The mandate to welcome the stranger predates Christianity and has been both a moral obligation and a sacred trust in many cultures in the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and beyond. Hebrew scripture depicts righteous men such as Abraham welcoming and caring for strangers from afar. It also tells how God punishes those in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah who seek to do violence to guests and strang...

The question of whether a priest should ever withhold communion from a Catholic has become the subject of heated debate in recent years. Some believe that priests should deny communion to prominent politicians due to their stance on certain issues, especially the legality of abortion. Others argue that no one who is baptized into the faith should ever be denied communion, since the sacraments shou...

Many similarities and common threads can be found between Christian and Muslim faith traditions. Both Christianity and Islam are monotheistic. Both believe in an afterlife. And while Christianity and Islam have different sacred texts, the Bible and the Quran, some central figures—including Abraham, Moses, Mary, and Jesus—appear in both. The Quran depicts Jesus as a teacher, healer, and even a mira...

One of the best-known of Jesus' parables is the story commonly referred to as the "Parable of the Good Samaritan." The story is intended to teach the disciples what loving your neighbor really means, but we can't fully appreciate the moral without recognizing that Jesus' audience would not have expected the Samaritan to be the moral hero. Contemporary audiences might not know exactly who or what a...

Different Christian denominations have different ways of interpreting and honoring Jesus' actions and words at the Last Supper. The Last Supper itself, according to the synoptic gospels, was a Passover meal and would have been celebrated according to specific rubrics within the Jewish tradition. Today, denominational groups have developed their own rubrics, some more specific than others. Some chu...

 "As in all the churches of the saints, women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says." Probably every Christian woman is familiar with this verse from 1 Corinthians. Or perhaps with a similar verse from 1 Timothy, which states that no woman can teach or have authority over men but must instead keep silent.  These and o...

In 2016, NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick ignited controversy when he knelt during the National Anthem to protest police brutality and racism. In 2015, Joseph Kennedy, an assistant football coach in Washington, was fired for kneeling after games in prayer (and encouraging others to join him). In both cases, kneeling is a way of demonstrating these men's heartfelt beliefs and of literally embodying...

Unions were once an essential component of the U.S. economy. For generations, unions safeguarded the rights of workers and ensured a better way of life for working-class families. Although not everyone regarded unions with uncritical approval, many families were proud of their union affiliation. But in recent decades, things have changed. Unions have less influence than they once did, fewer worker...