Questions for Catholics

Hello, my dear friends. I’m speaking, of course, to our Catholic friends, and I mean friends. I have many Catholic friends and, on my mother’s side of the family, Catholic relatives, including my mother. My mother is of Irish-Catholic background. In her family there are members of the Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland and in America and in Canada. I've always had a love of the Catholic people, and I spent 11 years of my youth in Catholic schools through my mother's insistence. But like many other young people at that time I began to question the established religious values of the time and began to do my own seeking and my own searching.

Let us begin, please, with my first question. In the first epistle of St. John 1 :7 we read that the blood of Christ cleanses from all sin. The blood of Christ “cleanses” – Greek “katharizo” – takes away all our sins. All sin. We are told in the New Testament we are saved by grace through faith. (Rom. 5:2; Eph. 2:8)

The third question I would like to ask is this one: I was always told in Catholic schools and by my mother that Peter was “the rock”. “Upon this rock I will build my church” from Matthew 16. (Mt. 16:18)

But I have yet another question.

In the Gospel of St. John 6 I've heard it quoted, quoted, quoted, and re-quoted as applying to the Eucharist. We read the following, I’m beginning in verse 47…

But I’d like to ask you yet another question. All over the world we are seeing scandals: Australia, New Zealand. Latin America. the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Europe. One month ago the largest Roman Catholic seminary in Austria, a Catholic country, was closed down.

But I would like to ask a third question of my Catholic friends.

Without doubt Mary – her real name was “Miryam” – Mary the mother of Jesus was the greatest woman who ever lived.

But I have one final question for my Roman Catholic friends. And I assure you I have many friends, I am not speaking antagonistically or with hostility to any Catholic people. I'm only asking you these questions which I’d like you to answer, I invite you to answer. Engage with me, there’s one more I’d like to ask you.

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Hello, my dear friends. I’m speaking, of course, to our Catholic friends, and I mean friends. I have many Catholic friends and, on my mother’s side of the family, Catholic relatives, including my mother. My mother is of Irish-Catholic background. In her family there are members of the Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland and in America and in Canada. I've always had a love of the Catholic people, and I spent 11 years of my youth in Catholic schools through my mother's insistence. But like many other young people at that time I began to question the established religious values of the time and began to do my own seeking and my own searching.