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"Although the world of today has a very vivid awareness of its unity and of how one man depends on another in needful solidarity, it is most grievously torn into opposing camps by conflicting forces. Influenced by such a variety of complexities, many of our contemporaries are kept from accurately identifying permanent values and adjusting them properly to fresh discoveries. As a result, buffeted between hope and anxiety and pressing one another with questions about the present course of events, …

The answer depends on precisely what is meant by saint. If saint is taken to refer to simply being united to Christ (and thus a Christian), then the answer is baptism. St. Paul teaches, “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:13, emphasis added). The one body Paul writes of here refers to the body of Christ (v. 27). Moreover, in Romans 6:3-5, he writes: Do you not know that all of us who have been …

When I was in the seminary at the Pontifical North American College in Rome, one of my apostolates was to give English-speaking tours of St. Peter’s Basilica. In such a role, I encountered people of every sort and kind. Every week, parts of the world passed through my tour of the basilica.In my tour, since we were on “home turf,” I attempted to give a full summary of the Christian faith through the architecture, art, monuments, and history of this universally esteemed and recognized house of wor …

The 1983 Code of Canon Law (CIC) defines sacramentals as “sacred signs by which effects, especially spiritual effects, are signified in some imitation of the sacraments and are obtained through the intercession of the Church” (1166). The Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC), further describes sacramentals by their ability to “signify effects, particularly of a spiritual nature, which are obtained through the intercession of the Church. By them …

The first encounter between Jesus and Peter is presented to us in two different ways. Mark, Matthew, and Luke present Peter working as a fisherman in Galilee when Jesus calls him to become one of his followers. John, on the other hand, tells us that Jesus had gone out, like many people, to see John the Baptist in Judea, and that same time a group of men from Bethsaida, among Peter and his brother Andrew, also went to see John the Baptist. In this account, the Baptist testifies that Jesus is the …