My son Joshua recently celebrated his first Penance in anticipation of his first Holy Communion. He is the first of our five children to do so. Needless to say, it was a very special day for him and our family. As I mentioned in my last blog post, over the last few years he has expressed a true desire to partake of these sacraments. My wife and I have done our best to help him and his sibling to understand the beauty, meaning, and power of the sacraments, and whenever possible have used...
Do you know just how hard it is to go to Mass once a week and on a handful more days each year? Judging by the questions the apologists at Catholic Answers receive on the subject, you would think that trying to find a Catholic church at which a Catholic can attend Mass is as difficult a venture as manned space flight to Mars.
When I first started answering this question, I assured each questioner that if it is truly impossible to get to a church for Mass on a Sunday or holy day of...
A textbook used for confirmation preparation in a parish in California teaches students that the sacrament of confirmation “only came into existence in the third century” and that “there was no sacrament of penance in the early church”. I suppose such sacramental ignorance is not surprising given that a deacon who instructs catechists in the same diocese teaches that at one time there were only two sacraments and, at another time, twenty two.
The Church teaches very clearly that the...
In my first blog post for the Catholic Answers Blog, I discussed some of the horror stories I'd been told over the years of abuses of the Eucharist, the precious body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Some of the stories of what people have done to the Eucharist, usually because of innocent ignorance, are truly mind-boggling.
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I recently got a call at Catholic Answers from a woman who had fallen away from the Church many years ago but had come back home after watching EWTN and listening to Catholic Answers Live. Sadly, though, she had been told by a deacon at her parish that she could not receive the Eucharist or even go to confession because she had gotten remarried outside the Church after her first marriage ended in divorce. Before she could be fully reconciled with God and the Church...
"The work of priestly formation these days must involve a strong catechetical component since so many of our people have been deficiently formed. The resources you provide are allowing the Church to do a better job in preparing Catholics to know and defend their faith more effectively."
"Frequent Confession, frequent Communion, daily Mass: these are the pillars which should sustain the whole edifice of education."
