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The apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13:11, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”Well, when I was a child, I thought you got to heaven by just being a nice person. My parents never took me to church, and the closest “Sunday school education” I received was from old Bible cartoons produced by the same animation company that made The Flintstones. I thought they …

When it comes to the practice of baptism, questions arise as to who can receive it. At first glance, such questions might seem a bit pedantic, something only for theological nerds. But as we’ll see, these questions are at the heart of many of the conversations that we Catholics have about baptism, whether we’re talking to Catholics or Protestants. So let’s take a look at a few special cases that come up more frequently than others. Can We Baptize Infants in the Womb? What abou …

The Catholic Church teaches what we must believe in order to be saved.After college, I traveled the country with a pro-life organization whose staff were evenly divided between Catholics and Protestants. This made for interesting conversations around the trays of lasagna we ate in the evenings. (If you’ve ever had to feed thirty missionaries, you understand the utility of lasagna.)One night, we were having a slightly technical discussion about specific topics related to salvation—li …

“Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life.” This is how St. Basil, quoted in the Catechism (336), described the role of the guardian angels. Obviously, God does not need the assistance of the angels; he is capable of taking care of people without them. But in his wisdom God has seen fit to assign angels to watch over human beings. Perhaps because Lucifer, the leader of the fallen angels, led human beings to their downfall, it is appropriate …

God creates, we believe, ex caritate—out of love. If we recall our image of Christianity as a reflection of the human heart, we can ask: what is the first thing love longs to do? What is the first impulse of a lover toward his or her beloved? Is it not the bestowal of gifts? We long to be good to those we love; we look for ways to provide for them, and traditionally such benevolence is the first characteristic of charity. This is how to understand God’s original act outsid …