Pope John Paul II not only was a powerful spiritual leader for Catholics but also a world leader of extraordinary consequence during the last quarter-century.
For faithful Catholics, communion is not just a nice ritual: It is the body and blood of Jesus Christ, and the ultimate sign of our willingness to be incorporated into the church.
The right-to-life movement and the Roman Catholic Church are saying that it is better to destroy these embryos, or preferably have them adopted - which is not going to happen - than to use them for research.
I became a minister of the Eucharist when I was 17. My parents aren't very strict Catholics, but for some reason I decided this is what I want to do, and I have kept it up.
I'd love to go and visit the Mosque in Mecca again, just for the sheer beauty of it, not for God - much the way a non-Catholic might go to Vatican City because of the beauty of the buildings and the artifacts.
It doesn't really matter how much of the rules or the dogma we accepted and lived by if we're not really living by the fundamental creed of the Catholic Church, which is service to others and finding God in ourselves and then seeing God in everyone -...
The inviolability of the seal of confession is so fundamental to the very nature of the sacrament that any proposal which undermines that inviolability is a challenge to the rights of every Catholic to freedom of religion and conscience.
I don't believe in organized religion - I dealt with them hand in hand, and a whole bunch of Catholic priests tried to molest me. Telling me I was gay and I should go home with them and stuff.
I sincerely hope I can contribute to the progress there has been in relations between Jews and Catholics since the Second Vatican Council in a spirit of renewed collaboration.
Every year, like a good Catholic, I wait for Christmas. Putting up the lights, decorating the tree, making sweets and then unwrapping gifts on Christmas morning... it's a tradition my family has followed since I was very little.
I have an enormous family because I'm from Montreal and my family's Catholic, so my dad has eight siblings and they all have kids and we all grew up in the same property on weekends and summers.
The death of Pope John Paul II led many of different faiths and of no faith to acknowledge their debt to the Roman Catholic Church for holding on to absolutes that the rest of us can measure ourselves against.
Shame is something you'll find a lot of - particularly Catholic - girls feel about their bodies, about their sexuality, about their diet, about anything you like. Shame is the way you keep them down. That's the way to crush a girl.
What has always puzzled me is the flexibility of God's word. For instance, Catholics can now eat meat on Fridays. And limbo has been abolished. How does this work? Who tells them?
I was married awfully young and I felt trapped. My wife had been divorced and all the time we were married we were out of the Church. It wasn't until we were divorced that we became good Catholics again.
I know that many writers have had to write under censorship and yet produced good novels; for instance, Cervantes wrote Don Quixote under Catholic censorship.
I was raised Catholic, but then I discovered Buddhism, and I used to have a boyfriend who was a Scientologist, and they are all good religions that help people. As far as I'm concerned, you can have all three religions at once and it's okay!
Martyrs - those killed because of their Catholic faith - can be beatified even if they don't perform a miracle. However, all beatified individuals must stage a certifiable miracle before being made a saint.
There is a very well-defined procedure that allows the Vatican to raise issues with a particular theologian about something that does not appear in conformity with the Catholic faith. It is not always easy to make this determination.
Great dislike to the Bible was shown by those who conversed with me about it, and several have remarked to me, at different times, that if it were not for that book, Catholics would never be led to renounce their own faith.
I try to understand faith and religion. I was raised by wonderful Catholic parents who were deeply faithful and taught us that God is a God of love.
