"The Bible is God's
Chart for you..."

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Note: Many of the answers and responses to the following  questions came from well known authors, theologians and writers. My main sources include: Catholic Replies by James J. Drummey, Handbook of Christian Apologetics by Peter Kreeft & Ronald K. Tacelli, Catholic Q & A by John J. Dietzen, The Catholic Answer Book by Peter M.J. Stavinskas, Some Theological Journals and Magazines, among others.

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1. Were Adam and Eve real? This goes down to the fundamentals of our faith, isn't it? If there were two people who started the human race, how do we explain the different races?

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Answer: We don't know whether or not there were two original human beings from which all the rest of us descended. And if there were, we surely do not know their names. One thing is certain: We will never find out from the Bible. Holy Scripture simply was not written to pass on to us such details of anthropology as this. Whether there are two "first parents" or 200, or exactly where they came from, has little to do with the spiritual and theological intent of the biblical story of Adam and Eve - which was put together in the form we have it only a few hundred years before Christ. That story, which we find in the first chapters of Genesis, is meant to convey to us some of the most important truths of our faith - that the world, including the human family, owes its existence to the one true God; that this world as it came from God was good and was meant for human happiness; that whatever misfortunes there are on earth come from people's stubbornness and sinfulness; that even in the beginning God had a plan to eventually save us from that sinfulness. I don't know why this should be so "fundamental" for our faith. The great facts about God and our relation with him are the real message of holy scripture. As for the rest, scientists generally agree that any certainty about such things that happened way back in the dawn of history, tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago, is well nigh impossible. The position of the Church on this subject was made clear in the encyclical "Humani Generis" of Pope Pius XII (1950). In it the Holy Father insisted that the theory that there were more than two "first parents" of the human race should not be taught as an established fact. And that's where the matter stands. Concerning the origin of the races, neither the Bible nor Christian revelation gives us much to go on. Some of the  more fundamentalist Christians profess to see hints in the Scripture about how the races started. But the church's position, once again, is that this type of question must be answered by the sciences of anthropology and palentology, not by theologians or scripture scholars.

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2. According to Stephen Hawking's "A Brief Hisotry of Time," the Catholic church has declared that its teaching does not conflict with the 'Big Bang Theory' of creation. Can you clear up this confusion on the church's position?

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Answer: None of the teachings of the Catholic Church conflict with the so called 'Big Bang Theory' of the origin of the physical universe. We believe that this material cosmos - all the galaxies and universes, the existence of which are revealed by the personally willed action of an uncreated Creator we call God.According to the Big Bang Theory, all material creation began with an infinitesimal particle of matter and energy, with a density we might call nearly infinite. The intensity of energy within this particle caused it to explode and expand into the material cosmos which now exists. Evidence for the universe having its origin something along these lines is enormous, though it can never be absolutely conclusive. As said, nothing in our faith prevents our believing that God could very well have created the universe in this manner. In fact, certain aspects of this theory seem to point to the existence of a creator more clearly than some scientists are comfortable with. Certainly, the existence of this creation, with all its mind-blowing combinations or of order and randomness; of plan and arrangement, from the smallest particle to the farthest space, alongside an almost fluky indeterminateness that makes the unexpected happen all the time - that all this might have begun with one tiny, dense particle can point us perhaps more than anything else to the incomprehensible "size" and beauty of the God we believe in. Of course, if one is a Bible fundamentalist believing that everything in the Scriptures, beginning with the Genesis story of creation, is literal historical fact, all the above would be rejected out of hand. But such theories have no basis in, and certainly are not required by, Catholic dogma or teaching.

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3. Somebody told me that the story of the great flood and Noah was only a myth. What is the truth?

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Answer: We cannot read stories of the Bible, especially those which go back tens or hundreds of thousands of years into prehistory, as if they were written by modern scientists or historians. Just as Jesus used parables(which are fictions to convey a truth he wanted to teach), other parts of the Bible can do the same. Except for those Christian groups who are biblical literalists (meaning that they accept every part of the Bible as literally true, as if they were scientific and historical documents in our modern sense of the word) almost no one today would, for example, view the story of Noah and the Ark as literally and historically accurate. This by no means says that the story is not true. The truth of the story is not in whether or not the details are accurate, but rather in the knowledge it reveals to us of God's power, man's capacity for both good and evil, God's desire to forgive and save us, and so on. Sometimes, in fact, when we concentrate too much on the technical details of stories like Noah, we tend to miss the real message which God is telling us if we listen in the right way.

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4. Can a Catholic believe in evolution?

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Answer: Evolution is not a doctrine, hence one does not "believe in" it. Evolution is a scientific theory which has significant support in the scientific community but has never been proven. That having been said, Catholic theology provides believers with a way to safeguard the biblical doctrine of creation and to accept the theory of evolution at the same time. The first two chapters of Genesis offer two stories of creation, which are considerably different at the literal level, the most obvious difference being that Genesis 1 presents man created last while Genesis 2 shows man created first. However, we are here dealing with Hebrew poetry, which is not intended to be taken literally. At the level of meaining, Genesis 1 and 2 are not mutually exclusive but complementary. The theological point in both stories is that man is the crown of creation. Two principal doctrines taught in Genesis are the following: God is the source of the entire created order: God "breathed into" man His own divine life. Now, a Catholic can accept the theory of evolution if also willing to admit that God began the evolutionary process and then personally intervened when a creature had reached that perfection which was fit to receive an immortal soul. This approach takes seriously the biblical data(using Scripture as its sacred authors intended it to be understood) while simultaneously maintaining an openness to scientific inquiry. Of course, faith and science can never contradict each other becasue, when engaged in properly, both seek to lead people to truth and, ultimately, the Truth who reveals Himself in the Scriptures and in the world of nature.

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5. When will the world end? Does the Church teach anything about it?

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Answer: The thousands of false predictions which have excited the world at one time or another ought to convince us, even if nothing else does, that God hasn't let us in on his plans for the date of the end of the world. Whether it is 100 or 100,000 years away, we don;t know. The Bible, at best, only speaks of situations which will be present before the end of the world. Even then, it is usually hard to discover what teh Scripture writers really mean. However, those who parade around with signs declaring "The end is near" do have a point. Neither Scripture nor the Church is concerned with satisfying our idle curiosity, but rather with reminding us that the day we leave this earth, not the day it burns up, is the end of the world for you and me.

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6. If God knows everything, then He knows who will go to Heaven and to Hell. So it really doesn't matter what a person does if that person is predestined for Hell, right?

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Answer: Wrong. You are confusing predestination with God's foreknowledge. Yes, God knows who will be saved and who will be lost, but He does not cause or predestine anyone to go to Hell. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says: "...one must will fully turn away from God (the definition of Mortal sin) and persist in mortal sin until the end in order to deserve punishment in Hell." That is why the Church implores the mercy of God, who "wants none to perish but all to come to repentance" (2 Pt 3:9). God did not want us to be puppets, so He gave each of us a free will. He wants us to choose Him freely. He gives us all the grace we need to be saved. He shows love and concern for us even when we turn away from Him. He says to the sinner, "Come now, let us set things right...Though your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow" (Is. 1:18). God "wants all men to be saved and come to know the truth," said St. Paul (1 Tim 2:4). He said that God has "predestined us through Christ Jesus to be his adopted sons" (Eph 1:5). If we leave ourselves open to His grace and love, receive His sacraments frequently, and follow the teachings of His Church, then Heaven will be our final destination.

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7. If God is a good and loving God, why does He permit evil and suffering in the world?

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Answer: The presence of evil and suffering in the world is a mystery that we will not fully understand until the final judgment, but Holy Scripture and the teaching of the Church can shed some light on it. Consider the following points: (1) God created the first humans in a state of holiness, but Adam and Eve, at the urgin of Satan, set themselves against God and brought evil into the world. As a result of their sin, said the Second Vatican Council, "men have frequently fallen into multiple errors...The result has been the corruption of morals and human institutions and not rarely contempt for the human person himself." Thus, the evils of the world are traceable not to God but to original sin and the personal sins we commit. (2) While God is not the cause of evil and suffering, He permits these afflictions in order to draw some good out of them. For instance, out of the suffering and death of Jesus came eternal salvation. If Jesus did not die on the cross, we could not get to Heaven.(3) If we join our sufferings with those of Christ, they will bring us closer to Him. Who knows more about homelessness and buried in a stranger's grave? Who knows more about loneliness than our Lord, who was abandoned by all His friends? Who knows more about injustice than our Lord, who was falsely accused and wrongly convicted of criminal activity? Who knows more about physical pain than our Lord, who underwent excruciating torture and death? "come to me, all you who are weary and find life burdensome," Jesus says to us, "and I will refresh you" (Mt 11:28). (4) In his Apostolic Letter "On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering," Pope John Paul II said that "suffering is present in the world in order to release love, in order to give birth to works of love toward neighbor, in order to transform the whole human civilization into a "civilization of love" (n.30). Thus, suffering can be beneficial if it stirs in us a spirit of compassion, love, and sacrifice toward others. (5) Patient suffering can prepare us for the life to come. If we suffer with Christ, says St. Paul, we will be "glorified with him. I consider the sufferings of the present to be as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed in us" (Rom 8:17-18).

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8. In the gospel of St. Matthew (12:31), Jesus speaks of a sin "against the Holy Spirit" which will never be forgiven in this world or in the next. What is this unforgivable sins?

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Answer: St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and many others believed that by the "sin against the Holy Spirit" Jesus meant the sin of final unrepentance, which is the refusal to repent of one's rejection of God through a serious sin, even at the moment of death. This probably is the most common view since it is a total, final rejection of all the helps the Holy Spirit offers us to turn away from evil and toward God. Perhaps another way of saying the same thing is that anyone who deliberately and maliciously refuses the helps which the Holy Spirit gives to keep us from sin in the first place, sins against the Holy Spirit. As St. Thomas says, many gifts of the Spirit are meant to help us avoid sin inour lives. The gift of hope keeps us from despair. The gift of fear of the Lord keeps us from presuming in the wrong way on God's mercy and love, and so on. All these gifts, he tells us, are effects of the Holy Spirit within us. When we refuse to hope, when we refuse to acknowledge the majesty and power of God in our lives, we in effect say we do not need the Holy Spirit, which puts us in deep spiritual trouble. Repentance is impossible because when we're in that frame of mind there cannot be even enough humility for us to admit that we have sinned and need repentance at all.

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9. Can a priest marry?

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Answer:  Many Catholics still do not realize that it is possible for a priest to be released from his promise not to marry. Unlike marriage, whose nature and permanence are established by God himself, the celibacy of the priesthood is something the church could change and has changed in various ways through the centuries. Yes, Jesus established the priesthood to serve his people in various ways, but he never made it his absolute rule that priests could not be married. In fact, married priests have been common in some part of the world since the beginning of Christianity. If a priest however simply ignores the solemn promise he has made to remain unmarried, it would be wrong. It is possible for him, however, to petition the pope to release him from that promise; in that case, he could marry and remain in good standing in the Church as a layman.

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10. The creation hymn of Genesis where God creates the world inform us that God surveyed the cosmos and saw "it was very good" (Gn 1:31). How is it that all creation proceeded from the Creator, and yet is evaluated as both good and evil? It seems that everything that comes from God should be good. Wouldn't all created things be basically good? Where does evil come from?

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Answer: Your question takes us to the heart of one of the foundational theological statements in this creation story. These Genesis stories were formed within a strongly monotheistic Hebrew people, who lived among cultures with vastly different beliefs and theologies. One of these differences centered on the problem of evil.. Every people in history who wrestled at all with spiritual concerns has asked the question: How do we explain the presence of evil, hurt, alienation in the world? Every sane human being claims to want only peace, harmony, love, and goodness. Yet, put two of us in the same room for long, or two nations on the same earth, and you soon have misunderstanding, viciousness, hatred and killing. How does one explain that? The most common explanation, outside of "one God" religions like Christianity, Judaism and Islam, has been some form of dualism. There are out there somewhere, so this belief gos, two powers or gods, one good and one bad, (sometimes several of each) always struggling with each other for dominance or control. The good god is the source of happy situations, so we placate him, pray to him and sacrifice to him. The bad god causes all evil, so we placate him too, in order to minimize his bad intentions toward us. All this may sound bizarre, but it's true, and in  fact is still present in our world. Many of our own responses to God as Christians carry echoes of this kind of thinking about God our Father, precisely one of the attitudes toward God which Jesus came to correct with his "good news." From our knowledge of contemporary religious outlooks at the time the book of Genesis was formed, we know that one great purpose of these stories was to place Hebrew belief in one God over against the beliefs of their neighbors. When God created the world, he didn't fight or hassle with any other god as the pagans believed. He simply said: "Let it be," and it was. Furthermore, when this world came from his creative will it was "good" to its core, all good, and finally as you say, "very good." Then where, according to this Hebrew story, did moral evil, human evil, come from? It came not from God, but from us! The one God loved us enough to want us able to respond to that love, and so gave us a free will. We are able to say yes to God, or no. And all our hurt, all moral evil, comes from the fact  that we, all of us, out of selfishness and pride deep within, occasionally and to some degree, do say no in our hearts and with our lives. This is the Genesis lesson about good and evil. The world, the cosmos and every corner of it, comes from the hand of a God who can make nothing bad. In other words, we cannot look outside for someone to blame for our troubles, although we persist in doing that.

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11. Some friends and I were discussing what happens to your soul when you die. I thought the soul goes immediately to heaven. Another thought one's soul remains sleeping until Jesus comes again, then we go to heaven, but it will feel like you have been asleep for only a second. Who is right?

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Answer: Most of what you ask cannot be answered with anything more than speculation. A few considerations, however, might throw some light on your discussion. Both our spiritual and material parts, traditionally referred to as body and soul, are essential for our human nature, whether here or in the next life. In other words, it seems there can be no such thing as a human soul floating around without a body. If a soul does not have some relation to a body, it is not a human soul. Whatever it is, if such a separate existence were even possible, it would not be a human being. Without getting too philosophically technical, all this follows from the church's traditional explanation of our human nature in terms of the Greek metaphysics passed down to us by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, in which elements called matter (body) and from (soul) are inseparable, interwoven counterparts of all material beings.This all fits and presupposes what we profess in the Apostles' Creed: I believe in the resurrection of the body. Your friend's comment about being "asleep for only a second" is interesting. Putting all the above together, many suggested that when we die, our next conscious moment will be the resurrection, our rising to the new life that Paul attempts to describe in the second letter to the Corinthians (chapter 15). It seems to make sense, insofar as any explanation we might make of the next life can make sense, given our limited experience in this one.

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12. Could you please explain what will happen to us at the time of the particular and general judgments?

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Answer: It is the teaching of the Church that every person will face two judgments following death. Immediately after we die comes the particular judgment, when Christ will judge each one of u son how well we loved and served God and neighbor while on earth. "It is appointed that men die once, and after death be judged," said St. Paul (Hebrews 9:27), which rules out the possibility of reincarnation. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (n. 1022), each one of us will receive eternal retribution at the moment of our death, in  a particular judgment before Christ Himself. Then will come either entrance into Heaven - immediately or after purification in Purgatory - or immediate and everlasting damnation in Hell. At the end of the world comes the general judgment, when all members of the human race will be judged on the basis of how they responded to those in need - the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, the imprisoned. This social judgment will not change the verdict rendered at the particular judgment, but it will reveal to the whole world God's mercy toward those who are saved and His justice toward those who are condemned. In the presence of Christ, who is Truth itself, says the Catechism, the truth of each person's relationship with God will be laid bare. The Last Judgment will reveal once and for all the good that each person did or failed to do during his life on earth. When Christ returns in glory at the Last Judgment, the Catechism continues, God the Father, through Jesus Christ, will pronounce the final word on all history. Then we shall know the ultimate meaning of the whole work of creation and of the entire economy of salvation and understand the marvelous ways by which the Providence of God led everything toward its final end. The Last Judgment will reveal that God's justice triumphs over all the injustices committed by His creatures and that God's love is stronger than death. Following that judgment, our Lord will say to the just, "Come. You have my Father's blessing! Inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world" (Matthew 25:34). To the wicked Jesus will say, "Out of my sight, you condemned, into that everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matthew 25:41).

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13. Is there really Purgatory?

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Answer: If there is no Purgatory, then anniversary Masses for the dead are a waste of time, we can abolish All Souls Day, and we can reduce the Communion of Saints to the Church Triumphant in Heaven and the Church Militant on earth. The existence of Purgtory is a defeined dogma of the Catholic Faith. The basis for this belief can be traced to Second Maccabees 12:46 which says, "It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins," and it has been affirmed by the Second Council of Lyons (1274), the Council of Florence (1439), the Council of Trent (1545), Vatican Council II (1964), and the Catechism of the Catholi Church (1994). According to the Catechism (n. 1031), the Church gives the name Purgatory to the final purification of the elect, which is entirely different form the punishment of the damned. The Church formulated her doctrine on Purgatory especially at the Councils of Florence and Trent, the Catechism says, and relies on certain Scriptural texts (cf. Corinthians 3:15 and 1 Peter 1:7) in speaking of a cleansing fire. The Catechism says (n. 1032) that this teaching is also based on the practice o fprayer for the dead described in Second Maccabees 12:46, and emphasizes that from the beginning the Church has honored the memeory of the dead and offered prayers in suffrage for them, especially at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, so that, once purified, they may see God. The church also recommends that almsgiving, indulgences, and works of penance  be undertaken on behalf of the dead.

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14. Is it superstitious or old-fashioned to believe in the devil?

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Answer: The pseudo-sophisticates of the day would have you think so, even as there is an increase in satanic activity all around them. But the constant teaching of the Catholic Church is that Satan really exists and has greatly influenced the course of human history. "A monumental struggle against the powers of darkness pervades the whole history of man," said Vatican II's Constitution of the Church in the Modern World. "The battle was joined from the very origins of the world and will continue until the last day, as the Lord has attested" (n. 37). The Church teaches that Satan and the other demons were first good angels, being created naturally good by God, who became evil by their own doing, says the Catechism of the Catholic Church (n. 391). It says that there is abundant evidence in Scripture of the disastrous influence of the one whom Jesus said "brought death to man from the beginning" (jn 8:44) and who even tried to divert Jesus from the mission received from His Father (cf. Mt 4:1-11). "It was to destroy the devil's works," the evangelist tells us, "that the Son of God revealed himself" (1 Jn 3:8). At a general audience on November 15, 1972, Pope Paul VI described the devil as "a living, spiritual being, perverted and perverting. A terrible reality. Mysterious and frightening...He is the enemy number one, a tempter par excellence. So we know that this dark and disturbing spirit really exists, and that he still acts with treacherous cunning; he is the secret enemy that sows errors and misfortunes in human history." Paul VI was echoed on August 13, 1986 by Pope John Paul II, who said that "the action of Satan consists primarily in tempting men to evil, by influencing their imaginations and higher faculties to turn them away from the law of God." It needs to be stressed, however, that the power of Satan is not infinite, the Catechism says, noting that he is only a creature, powerful from the facat that he is pure spirit, but still a creature, incapable of preventing the building up of God's reign. While Satan may act in the world out of hatred for God and HIs KIngdom, and although his actions may cause grave injuries of a spiritual nature and, indirectly, sometimes even of a physical nature to persons and to society, the Catechism says, these actions are permitted by the same Divine Providence which guides human and cosmic history with strength and gentleness. We don't know why God permits diabolical activity, but we believe that in everything God works for good with those who love him.