Barely going on four hours of sleep today, so I'm taking a brief respite from work to wrap up some writing. I thought it'd be fun to address a few "what do Catholics believe"-style questions which I've heard recently.

Disclaimer: I'm a lay person who has only been returned to the Church for a few years! Please do validate whatever I say with a priest, the Catholic Catechism, etc. before you take them as any kind of truth! The below is just my understanding at this point in my own learning journey.


Do Catholics Read the Bible?

Yes, they do! Every Catholic church I've ever encountered has one-- sometimes several-- Bible reading groups. Every devout Catholic I've ever met has several Bibles in their house. I've been Lectoring for a couple of years now, and I've read significant swathes of the Bible to the congregation over that time, just during the course of the Catholic Mass!

But there is also some truth to the stereotype. Being 2000 years old, the Catholic Church has had a gazillion ecumenical councils, where over the literally millennia it has distilled the Bible and other sacred sources into a living document called "The Catechism", which you can read online here. As well, all of the Church's Traditions are based on sacred scripture-- for instance, you can read about the Catholic Mass here; most things in the Mass, down to many little details, have some kind of rooted explanation behind them, if you drill down deep enough.

So Catholics in general aren't as good typically at quoting scripture off the top of their heads like our Protestant brothers and sisters are-- I think this is something Catholics can do better. But on the flip-side, devout Catholics are phenomenal at following both the Catholic Church's "big T" and "little t" traditions, which are the "playbooks" and models for how to live-- so they wind up living the scripture in their moment-to-moment existences, even if they haven't necessarily memorized which verse of John something was originally from.

Personally, I find the Catholic churches with their beautiful stained glass windows, their cruets and their monstrances, lavabo pitchers and purificators, sanctuaries and altars with glowing red sanctuary lamps; the priests with their chasubules and amices; the thurifers leaving behind a smoky trail of burning incense; the organ, piano, and sometimes even blaring trumpet music; all it really brings the sacramental life to reality, and speaks directly to me of the glory of God.

None of those things are necessary by the way! Wherever followers gather, there is the Church. But they are nice add-ons, to help us more fully devote ourselves in prayer and worship to and of the Lord.

My wife is the Bible study kind of person. Whereas for me, I've found myself extremely drawn to the liturgical aspects of the Faith, and that's why I've become so involved in that respect-- I sort of absorb pieces of The Word indirectly via other means. I'm not saying this is good or preferable-- I'm just offering an explanation for the stereotype, for which I'm partly to blame I suppose! I should do a lot more direct Bible reading than I do.

The Catholic Church also has an almost unfathomable history of upper-case Saints, many of whom participated directly in miracles from the Lord Himself, and many of whom communed directly with God on a more attuned level than most of us, to the point of having direct visions of and overt, actual conversations with Jesus, Mary, angels, and other figures. I've only just started to delve into what can be gleaned from the various things God has directly communicated via these Saints.


Do Catholics Hate Gay People?

No! In fact, there are tons of queer, practicing Catholics. I recently read that twenty five percent of religious LGBTQ people are Catholic.

The Church teaches that the model for sexual relations is: a man and a woman, married-- not in the civil sense, but before God (it's a pity and source of confusion that the two concepts share the same word of "marriage" in English, because they are two, discrete concepts)-- with children, and having sex for pro-creative purposes. Anything outside of that model is considered outside of God's plan for us, where sexual matters are concerned.

It is not sinful to have sexual thoughts outside of this. What is sinful is indulging in them. It's like Mel Gibson once said: "I can't control my first thought, but I can control my second thought." The sin comes in when you give in to the temptation, either by rolling around in fantasies, or through overt sexual acts. Here is the "Confiteor" prayer, which is said at most Masses, bold emphasis is mine. It's a beautiful prayer!



There are a couple of things to note in the bolded section. First, the emphasis on not just deeds but thoughts as well! Second, it's not just what you do, but what you fail to do. More on that latter point in a second.

LGBTQ people are not in any way, shape, or form being "singled out" or excluded in even a remote way from being Catholic, or being part of the church! I happen to be straight, and in full disclosure I struggle with sexual sin as much as anyone. I can't even count the number of times I've looked at a beautiful woman walking past, and indulged in sinful thinking. This is something-- again, as a straight person-- I am constantly bringing to Confession.

About queer relationships being blessed within the Catholic church-- once again, LGBTQ people are not being "singled out", as if every kind of heteronormative relationship can be blessed, whereas other relationships can't. This is not true! My wife and I are one woman and one man, and we were "married" in the civil sense-- but even we couldn't get our marriage blessed within the Catholic Church! We had to make some changes to bring the relationship within God's parameters. It was only once we'd completed those steps, that we were able to get our marriage blessed.

So to reiterate, it's not that the Catholic Church is "anti-gay"-- it just puts forth a specific model for what constitutes proper sexual behavior, whether the relationship in question is straight, gay, lesbian, queer, or whatever it may be. The alternative for sexual relations outside of God's parameters is chastity: many holy orders, such as priests and sisters, take life-long vows of chastity. And even straight, married people are often chaste if there is some aspect of the sexual relations which is not pro-creative, or which is closed to the pro-creative aspects of the act.

My personal view is that way too much emphasis in our society is placed on sex. Out of all of the people I most dearly love, there is zero sexual element involved in any of the relationships other than the one with my wife-- and even then, the sexual portion is a tiny part of what makes our relationship meaningful. The Catholic Church wants us to have intimately close relationships with one another-- that's a good thing! But just without the sexual aspect in most cases-- that's all which is being asked.

So what about that second part of the bolded statement-- that it's not just what we do, but what we fail to do? God loves us all perfectly and completely. The Catholic Church also teaches that we are to strive to love one another as God loves us. Jesus also said that the first person to throw the stone should be the one who has never sinned.

Being sinners-- sexual or otherwise-- does not exclude us from being part of the Catholic Church. Otherwise there'd be no one in the Church!

However, Jesus also told the woman, "Go, and sin no more." What God does ask of us is that we repent: we should approach God through a spirit of humility, authentic contrition, and obedience through the Sacrament of Confession, to do penance and thus repair the rift we've created between ourselves and God, and ourselves and the community (no sin is committed in isolation-- it harms others as well!).

Failing to love others-- something we may fail to do-- is also a sin! So if we find ourselves condemning others due to their sexual activities or for any other reason-- focusing too much on the splinter in someone else's eye while ignoring the plank in our own eye-- we need to also take that to Confession, and repent of it. Everyone is on some kind of journey with the Lord.

I think I'll end this section with a story I read recently. At a particular Catholic church, there was a transgender individual who would come before every single Mass and light all of the candles. We all have "our things", and this was "her thing"-- lighting the candles. Interestingly, she dressed very flamboyantly, with bright colored hair and clothes-- so she became a real fixture in that church, happily lighting all of the candles all the time in a very visible way.

One day, she didn't show up. There were murmurs: "Where the heck is she? Is she ok?" After Mass, some members of the congregation did some digging and found out: she'd had a stroke, and was dying in the hospital. Everyone in the congregation chipped in, and filled that whole hospital room not just with themselves in this individual's final moments, but with so many flowers they couldn't even all fit in the room.

The people in the congregation undoubtedly recognized that some of this individual's proclivities were sinful, just as the same thing could be said of many of their own proclivities. Some people suffer from sexual temptation; others to rob banks; others to slander; or any other number of things. Everyone has a cross to bear. But we should still choose to love and pray for one another!


Do Catholics Believe People Who Don't Believe in God Go To Hell?

My daughter asked me this one recently! "Let's say there is this super good person, but who doesn't believe in God-- you're telling me they go to Hell??"

To answer this question we need to ask: what is Hell? And to answer that, we need to ask, what is Heaven?

Heaven is eternal communion with God. God exists outside of time and space. He lives in an "eternal moment". If we choose to be humble, authentically contrite of heart, and we ask for God's infinite Mercy-- if we choose God, to have a relationship with Him, to fully unite our hearts with Him-- then that is what we will receive! When we die, we will be one with God in the eternal moment.

But what if we actively reject the relationship with God? Well, then we won't have the relationship with him in eternity! The lack of a relationship with God in eternity is called "Hell". It's sort of like if you say, "do you want to be my friend?", and I say "no". That means we aren't friends! To be friends, we both need to say "yes"! The whole concept just doesn't make any sense if one of us declines.

God always says "yes". He loves us so much, that we quite literally can't even process how much. He desperately wants us to love Him! He wants all of us to live in the "eternal moment" with Him! You want proof as to how much He loves us? He loves us so much, that he gave us free will. He could have made us dumb automaton robots-- but He didn't! Because it's not love when it's merely pre-programmed.

But as a result of His great gift of free will, we need to choose to also have the relationship with Him, from our side of the picture. This relationship is "Heaven".

The Catholic Church also teaches that we'll be judged contextually. Let's say you are like the character in "The Horde", raised exclusively by a pack of wild cows, and were never taught about God-- then you die. You are not going to be excluded from communion with the Lord simply due to a lack of knowledge. Similarly, let's say you were only ever told lies about God, and rejected Him solely on the basis of those lies-- you will be judged with that context in mind as well.


Do Catholics Really Believe Three People Can Be One Person?

This is more of a general Christian theology one and not Catholic-specific, but it's a great question!

Catholics believe that God is three persons in one nature. Your nature is like a well: when you take a thought or an action, you draw from the well of your nature. If you are kind-hearted and gentle, you'll draw that bucket up and take a gentle action; if you're violent and evil, you'll draw the bucket up and probably perform some kind of violent or evil act.

Human natures can change by the way! The process of a changing nature, from evil towards good, is called conversion.

In the universe which God has created, there is a 1-to-1 relationship between "person" and "nature"-- each person has his or her own nature. Even in the case of identical twins, they have their own separate natures, which differ in probably a million different ways! They may even be similar, but they are two distinct wells, to stick with my metaphor.

In the case of the three God persons-- the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit-- they are all drawing from the same well: the same nature. It's not something we can wrap our human brains around, but that's what it is.

While we're on the subject, what if you could-- within your very mind-- encapsulate someone else, totally, down to every single molecule, every single atom, every single thought, word, action, down to their very nature, completely and 100% totally? Then, what if you could blink that encapsulation into reality? What if you could even do this with yourself?

That's who the Son is. The Father made a 100% perfect "copy" of Himself, so-to-speak, then created the Son. Of course, the word "then" isn't correct, because it implies time-- like, there was a time when it was just the Father, and the Son hadn't been "created" yet. Again, this is something we can't understand with our human brains.

Time is the measure of change. God is unchanging, and exists outside of time and space. He lives in an "eternal moment", and even the word "moment" there isn't ideal. "Time" doesn't make any sense when talking about God. But because human language is limited to human concepts, we just have to do the best we can.

So who is the Holy Spirit then? The Father and the Son together spirate-- or breath-- the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is just as completely God as are the Father and Son, sharing the same nature, and not missing anything or being incomplete in any way.

When Moses asked God for His name, God replied: "yhwh", the letters being Yod, Heh, Waw, Heh. Adding in some vowels, "yahweh". Some have commented that this is the sound of breathing; perhaps we are ourselves spirating God's name when we simply breath? "Yah", inhale, "weh" exhale. And perhaps death is when we can no longer breathe, and thus can no longer say God's name?

Food for thought.

Oh, and on the subject of the Trinity, it's what's called by the Catholic Church "a mystery". The Church doesn't view mysteries as something we can understand-- rather, they are like a fountain, or a waterfall: you can keep returning to it for a drink, and every time you take a drink from it, you understand the mystery and God just that little bit better.


Do Catholics Worship Mary and Statues?

This is an easy one: no!

Mary is the virgin mother of God. She conceived of Jesus divinely. As the immaculate mother of God, Catholics view her as a most holy of figure, for sure! But she is not God-- Catholics only worship the Lord! Mary-- and the Saints for that matter-- are what Catholics call intercessors. It's like if you have a super devout neighbor, and you ask them to pray for you for an upcoming cancer treatment or something. We too can ask Mary to pray for us!

As for statues, that's just plain silly, yet I do hear it from time-to-time. Statues and their like are called devotional materials. For example, I have a small copy of the Divine Mercy painting on my wall: I don't worship the painting! "Oh most holy metal picture frame, most holy piece of paper with inkjet printer blots on it, I worship you!"

Rather, the picture is just something I use to help me pray: it reminds me of the Lord's endless Mercy! It helps me devote myself more fully to God in prayer-- that's all.