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Many non-Catholics struggle with the concept of praying to saints because they think prayer and worship are the same thing. Since the Bible says we should only worship God, then shouldn’t we only pray to God? But the word “worship” refers to giving someone “worth-ship,” or the honor that person is due. We call judges “your honor,” for example, as a way of paying them respect, but we don’t treat them like gods. “Prayer” comes from the Latin word precarius and refers to making a request for someth …

I was sitting in a booth at a restaurant in San Diego waiting for the religious equivalent of a “blind date” to begin. A few weeks earlier, some Catholic friends of mine asked me to meet with their son while he was home from college. They wanted me to speak to him because he told his parents he wasn’t going to church with them anymore because he was now an atheist. They asked me, “Can you help him see he needs to start going back to church? Can you help him get over all this atheist stuff?” Then …

The Bible says that if Jesus did not rise from the dead then the Christian faith is worthless (1 Cor. 15:17). However, if Jesus did rise from the dead then we know Jesus can keep his promise to give everyone who follows him eternal life (1 John 2:25). But how can we know that Jesus really rose from the dead and that the Bible’s description of this miracle wasn’t just a story someone made up? One way is by showing that the Resurrection is the only explanation for the events surrounding Jesus’ dea …

St. Peter urges us to be ready to give reasons for our faith (1 Pet. 3:15), and helping Catholics explain their belief in Church teachings has always been at the core of our mission. But even Catholics who are trained in apologetics can sometimes stumble when confronted with the question, "Why are you Catholic?"It’s a simple question but not an easy one to answer quickly. It requires an approach that goes beyond arguments from Scripture or history about this or that Catholic teaching. Yet, since …