How Catholic are you? The five questions you must answer to qualify

phinsman: You only have a Bachelors. Would a Catholic with a Ph.D trump you?

Brendan, I totally agree with you. I grew up in a Catholic family, but my logic oriented brain has made me totally non-religious and a non-believer. I have an Engineering degree and also taught High School Physics, Chemistry and Principals of Mechanics and now work in Networking Services for our local school district in Eugene, Oregon. I was amazed to learn this in 7th grade in Catholic School... our religion teacher taught us that when you believe in something, it's based on faith and there is no proof. That's when I started to be a non-believer.

I opt for Science over Religion. After all, isn't it better to figure out how things work, rather than just make stuff up?

There are so many priests, preachers, and shamans who have the gall, the sheer arrogance, of claiming to speak for God. A direct pipeline to the Almighty! God did this, God told me. God loves that, God wants this. Hey, like .... ENOUGH already! I know that there are many many good people who call themselves Catholic, many good people out there out there searching for answers, searching for community, and searching for a way . ...in this all-too-harsh world. There's only one thing I can say to you: think for yourself,be yourself, trust yourself. Don't just accept something because it comes from a religious "voice of authority". For ultimately YOU are responsible for your life, and how you try to live it. That’s why you have freedom of choice and a conscience: to choose, NOT just to follow..... Personally I like the prayer of St. Francis myself, in summing up what's most important in this all-too-short life: Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love. For it is in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life. Amen.

As I've said earlier, I am no longer a practicing Catholic - or Christian - but that is not to say that I don't believe in an existance beyond human death - I do. But it has nothing to do with Heaven and Hell, Purgatory and Limbo - the four options for a Catholic. It has everything to do with science, especially quantum physics. In quantum physics - or quantum mechanics - we begin to deal with the monomental questions of our very nature and existence, and herein lies our ultimate path to understanding where we transition to following our mortal death. The great conundrum confronting Quantum Physics is the indeterminable behavior of sub-atomic particles such as the electron. Yet it is our understanding of its unpredictable behavior - and accommodating this behavior - that has led us to develop the most mind-bogling technological devices like the Iphone and Ipad and a 1,000 other devices - even if we still don't quite understand why the electron instantly changes its behavior the instant we observe it. Herin lies our answers to the afterlife, real but through science, not religion. This, obviously, is an incomplete answer to an alternate explanation as to why there is a beyond beyond the end but I or perhaps someone else will pick up this line of thought.

My answer to the above questions would probably get me a failing grade as a Catholic. But I'll always support the R.C.'s opposition to killing the unborn and same-sex marriages.

I am very impressed at the high intelligence of Young Pike at the age of eight !He seems to have slipped up a bit in the interim as I dont notice him listed in the Fortune 500 ! JackFnTwix knows nothing about history or Germany of the late 1930s ,otherwise he wouldnt make such ignorant or bigoted comments about the Pope !

Malarkey ! The Canon is only One Part of the Mass ! Taking it out of Context, is pure Lutheranism !

Cyn@ the story says that six blind men were asked to determine what an elephant looked like by feeling different parts of the elephant's body. The blind man who feels a leg says the elephant is like a pillar; the one who feels the tail says the elephant is like a rope; the one who feels the trunk says the elephant is like a tree branch; the one who feels the ear says the elephant is like a hand fan; the one who feels the belly says the elephant is like a wall; and the one who feels the tusk says the elephant is like a solid pipe.

No, no, no, no, and no. Really since the 4th grade when I learned enough about science and mythology to understand the difference. In a catholic school, mind you. Then I went on to read history other than the bible, take comparative religion classes in high school and college and realized a goodly portion of catholic doctrine is basically stolen from earlier religions they wiped out via the Romans. That and I think that women need to be recognized as viable human beings capable of planning their own families, that priests should be of both sexes and allowed to marry. My uncle Fr Nils Francis Thompson despairs for my soul.

Answer: Not Catholic at all. Yes, shock horror, you don't need to be Catholic to be Irish and over 15% of people in Ireland are Protestant!

The Almighty Creator GOD has no mother. Blessed Mary was the mother of Jesus the Son of God not God the Father. Jesus actual blood and body cant be present in the Eucharist. Jesus was using bread and wine to teach spiritual truths. The reason the Roman Catholic Church massacred people wanting to read the Bible. Is because it exposes them as a false church trading off on traditions.

We got a wonderful thanksgiving gift from two grand aunts - they renouced the church of a pope who both hid the endless molestation of children and in 2009 showed what is nothing but hatred for Jews,by UNexcommunicating a Holocaust denier, Bishop Williamson.

Mr O' Shea there are Irish people who are not Roman Catholic. Is this site suggesting that to be Irish you must be catholic? Yet 95% of Irish Culture & Life non-catholic Irish people have been & are the most successful in all realms.

yes , the closing f the westrn mind to ratioal thought and the rise of the Crusades, the Templars, t inquisition ...and then you appoint an ex Hitler youth pope. Well well, how gauche.