Q

Does the Bible include everything is I need to Know. ?

A

No! As to show this we can see in the bible that there are some Books that are not found their, such as Paul's Letter to the Corinthians as Mentioned in Corinthians 5 " When I wrote in my letter to you." The apostle John Clearly states in his letter as He writes ( Jn 20:30) "Christ said and done Many other things that are not written as there would not be enough Books in the world to contain them". Christ himself did not while upon the earth reveal everything to his Apostles but explained to them that they would be lead to understand many things with the Help of the Holy Spirit (Jn 16:12).

Q

Is everyone born With Original Sin?

A

Yes. All are born with original sin, which simply means who ever is born shall one day die. This is because the first parents (Adam & Eve) had sinned and so the reward of sin is death. This teaching of original sin is shown in the Old Testament in words of the Prophet Job (Job 14:4) " Can a man be found who is clean of defilement? There is none!" This is made clear to us in the New Testament as we read in Romans 5:12 "Sin entered the world through one man (Adam) and through sin death. And thus, death has spread through the whole human race because everyone has sinned. Sin existed in the world long before law was given. "

Q

Do I need to accept the traditions of the church to be in union with the fullness of the truth?

A

By maintain the traditions of the church we adhere to the gospel it self, as we read in 2Thess 2:14-15 " Stand firm, brothers, and keep the traditions that we taught you. Whether by word of mouth or by letter." In fact the same apostle (Saint Paul) even goes on to commend those who stood firm in the teaching and traditions as he delivered to them ( 1 Corith 11:2).

Q

Is keeping statues or pictures idolatry?

No! For the simply reason that the church does not worship statues as they are not Gods or idols. These statues or icons are only symbols recalling Christ, the Virgin Mary, saints etc. It can be also said that they are channels of Gods Grace as Just like a Offensive image when taken in and thought about can lead to sin so to it can be said that when one takes in the beauty of these images it is for them a benefit for their soul to try and comprehend the Greatness of Gods Beauty (through simple Human Understanding.) God himself commanded that images and statues be carved and painted but not as gods or idols but rather to put the faithful in an atmosphere of devotion as we read in exodus 25: 10- 20 God says to Moses " Make two Cherubim (angles) out of hammered gold ".

Further when people had to look to the bronze serpent to be healed, they were not worshipping it, as shown by the fact that, years later when they did worship it, and even gave it a name ("Nehushtan") as a snake-god, the righteous king Hezekiah had it destroyed (2 Kgs. 18:4).

Q

Do Catholics pray to saints?

A

We pray with saints, not to them. The intercession of the prayers to the saints is powerful because of their lives and so many are spared, healed and aided for their sake. Many accounts of this are given in scripture. We read in Exodus 32:11 Moses Pleaded with YAHWEH saying " Do not bring this disaster on your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, your servants to whom by own self, you swore and made this promise." I will make your offspring as many as the stars of Heaven ". So YAHWEH relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened. . I will make your offspring as many as the stars of Heaven ". So YAHWEH relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened. Their many examples of this found in the New Testament. In The book of mathew22: 32 we read that Christ regards the dead saints Living as He is God of the living and not the dead, thus if the saints are living in the presence of god truly can they not intercede for us. If often we might ask a friend to pray for us they how much more can the saints aid us by their prayer and intercession.

Q

Is the Eucharist the real body of Christ or Only a Symbol?

A

The Eucharist is by no means a symbol but truly the presence of Christ under the appearance of bread and wine. This we can come to understand by the words of Christ as contained in the Gospel, for example we read in John 6:53 " I tell you most solemnly, If you do not eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you. Any one who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him. As I who am sent by the living Father, Myself draw life from the father, so whoever eats me will draw life from me. This the bread come down from heaven ; not like the bread your ancestors ate. They are dead, but anyone who eats this bread will live forever."

Q

Did Jesus have brothers ?

A

No. He had "adelphoi" or "brethren" 'ADELPHOI.' the Greek word for brother (adelphos; plural: adelphoi) means sibling ( or cousin, nephew, and other close relations). In Matthew 13:55-56 four men are named as brothers (adelphoi) of the Lord: James, Joseph, Simon, and Jude. Further in John 19:25 we read, "Standing by the foot of the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary of Magdala." Cross reference this with Matthew 27:56: "Among them [at the cross] were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee." We see that at least two of the men mentioned in Matthew 13 were definitely not siblings of Jesus (although they're called adelphoi); they were Jesus' cousins -- sons of their mother's sister. Mary had no other Children other than Jesus .

Q

I have read a few books that seem to hint at or out right say that the Church has many links to the Pagan faiths.

A

Certainly the early Christians borrowed some rituals from the pagans, and made them Catholic-- but there are most certainly no links to pagan doctrines and those of the Catholic Church.

The persecution of the early Christians caused them to at times celebrate feasts on the same days as the pagan holidays so as not to attract attention.

Christian ritual developed when, in the third century, the Church left the Catacombs. Many forms of self-expression must be identical, in varying times, places, cults, as long as human nature is the same. Water, oil, light, incense, singing, procession, prostration... are things common to religion.

Little enough, however, was directly borrowed by the Church -- nothing, without being "baptised". In all these things, the spirit is the essential:

The Church assimilates to herself what she takes, or, if she cannot adapt, she rejects it. Even pagan feasts may be "baptised" The philosophies of Plato and Aristotle gave the Church a basis for the solid scholastic theology of St. Thomas. The Church has always borrowed what she thought could be put to good use and made it Catholic. If it cannot be put to good use, then she rejects it.

Pope St. Gregory wrote to St. Augustine "The temples of the idols in that nation ought not to be destroyed but let the idols that are in them be cast down; let water be blessed and sprinkled in the said temples and let altars be built and relics placed therein. For if those temples be well built it is meet that they be converted from the worship of devils to the service of the true God."

The Roman Empire was once pagan, but the Church made her Catholic and she borrowed from the Romans many customs which we practice to this day. It is something to be proud of.

Q

The Catholic Church teaches that Mary was without sin, yet do not the scriptures say that all have sinned (Romans 3:23)?

A

We must first understand that the word "all" (pas in Greek) can indeed have different meanings (as it does in English) . Their are many examples in the scriptures were we can indeed see this, as in the writings of St. Paul, as he writes that "all Israel will be saved," (Romans 11:26), but we know that many will not be saved. And in 15:14, Paul describes members of the Roman church as ".... filled with all knowledge...." (cf. 1 Cor 1:5 in KJV), which clearly cannot be taken literally. Further to add to this that we read that "As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive" 1 Cor 15:22. As far as physical death is concerned (the context of 1 Cor 15), not "all" people have died (e.g., Enoch: Gen 5:24; cf. Heb 11:5, Elijah: 2 Kings 2:11). Likewise, "all" will not be made spiritually alive by Christ, as some will choose to suffer eternal spiritual death in hell.

Q

Don't Catholic add to the bible by including The Apocryphal books ?

No, as a matter of fact, the Jews made no distinction between the deutero-canonical books and the others, prior to the fall of Jerusalem in the year 70 AD. The Christians had a vague idea of the list of inspired books coming from the Old testament. In fact the oldest scrolls that we have in our possession and which give a complete list of the Old testament books date back to the 4th Century. It is evident that the early Christians did not receive the list of Holy books from the Jews according to the decision taken in the Jamnia Jewish council (west of Jerusalem) in the year 90 AD. One of the major reason that the Jewish council reject the Deotero-canonical books is that they had to be written in Hebrew or Aramaic "the holy tongue" as so they later rejected the Deutero-canonical books most of which were available in the Greek, at that time. Later, in the 19th Century, a good part of the original Hebrew text of Ecclesiasticus was discovered in Cairo. A Hebrew text of some parts of Tobit is also available.

Further in the New testament, we find many references to the Deutero-canonical Books: Mt 6:14 = Ecclesiastisus 28:2, Mt 27:39 = Wisdom 2:12, Romans 1:20 = Wisdom 13:14, Hebrews 11:35 = 2 Mach 6:18, James 1:19 = Ecclesiastics 5:11, 1Peter 1:6 = Wisdom 3:3.