“Windows To Spirituality”
Catholic Church And Homosexuality This article covers the relationship between Catholic Church and homosexuality in detail. The “Catechism of the Catholic Church“ promulgated by Pope John Paul II considers sexual activity between members of the same sex to be a mortal sin against chastity. This teaching has developed through a number of ecumenical councils and the influence of theologians, including...
Catholic Church Sexual Abuse Cases This article covers Catholic Church sexual abuse cases in detail. There have been many cases of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, nuns, Popes, and other members of religious life. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the cases have involved many allegations, investigations, trials, convictions, acknowledgement and apologies by Church authorities,...
Catholic Church And Abortion This article covers the relationship between Catholic Church and abortion. The official teachings of the Catechism of the Catholic Church promulgated by Pope John Paul II oppose all forms of abortion procedures whose direct purpose is to destroy a zygote, blastocyst, embryo or fetus, since it holds...
Women In The Catholic Church This article covers the role of women in the Catholic Church. Women play significant roles in the life of the Catholic Church, although excluded from the Catholic hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons. In the history of the Catholic Church, the church often influenced social attitudes toward women. Influential...
Canon Law Of The Catholic Church The canon law of the Catholic Church (“canon law” comes from Latin ius canonicum) is “how the Church organizes and governs herself”. It is the system of laws and ecclesiastical legal principles made and enforced by the hierarchical authorities of the Catholic Church to regulate its external organization and government and to order and direct the activities of...
Anti-Catholicism Anti-Catholicism is hostility towards Catholics or opposition to the Catholic Church, its clergy, and/or its adherents. At various points after the Reformation, some majority Protestant states, including England, Prussia, Scotland, and the United States, turned anti-Catholicism, opposition to the Pope (anti-Papalism), mockery of Catholic rituals, and opposition to Catholic adherents into major political themes. The anti-Catholic sentiment which resulted from this trend...
Catholic Art Catholic art is art produced by or for members of the Catholic Church. This includes visual art (iconography), sculpture, decorative arts, applied arts, and architecture. In a broader sense, Catholic music and other art may be included as well. Expressions of art may or may not attempt to illustrate, supplement and portray in tangible form Catholic teaching....
Science And The Church This article covers the relationship between science and The Church. The words “science“ and “Church“ are here understood in the following sense: Science is not taken in the restricted meaning of natural sciences, but in the general one given to the word by Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. Aristotle defines...
Catholic The word Catholic (katholikos from katholou — throughout the whole, i.e., universal) occurs in the Greek classics, e.g., in Aristotle and Polybius, and was freely used by the earlier Christian writers in what we may call its primitive and non-ecclesiastical sense. Thus we meet such phrases as the “the catholic resurrection” (Justin Martyr), “the catholic goodness of God” (Tertullian),...
Catholic Epistles The catholic epistles (general epistles) are seven epistles of the New Testament. Listed in order of their appearance in the New Testament. Catholic Epistle, the name given to the Epistle of St. James, to that of St. Jude, to two Epistles of St. Peter and the first three of St. John,...
Nuns Origin and history The institution of nuns and sisters, who devote themselves in various religious orders to the practice of a life of perfection, dates from the first ages of the Church, and women may claim with a certain pride that they were the first to embrace the religious state for its...
Teresa Of Ávila Teresa of Ávila (born Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada; 28 March 1515 – 4 or 15 October 1582), also called Saint Teresa of Jesus, was a Spanish noblewoman who was called to convent life in the Catholic Church. A Carmelite nun, prominent Spanish mystic, religious reformer, author, theologian of the contemplative life and of mental prayer, she earned...
Society Of Jesus The Society of Jesus (Societas Iesu; abbreviated SJ), also known as the Jesuits (Iesuitæ), is a religious order of the Catholic Church headquartered in Rome. It was founded by Ignatius of Loyola and six companions with the approval of Pope Paul III in 1540. The society is engaged in evangelization and apostolic ministry in 112 nations. Jesuits work in education, research, and...
Mental Prayer Mental prayer is a form of prayer recommended in the Catholic Church whereby one loves God through dialogue, meditating on God’s words, and contemplation of Christ’s face. It is distinguished from vocal prayers which use set prayers, although mental prayer can proceed by using vocal prayers in order to improve dialogue with God....
Prayer In The Catholic Church Prayer in the Catholic Church is “the raising of one’s mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God.” It is an act of the moral virtue of religion, which Catholic theologians identify as a part of the cardinal virtue of justice....
Outline Of Catholicism The following outline of Catholicism is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Catholicism: Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies, and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a...
Independent Catholicism Independent Catholicism is a denominational movement of clergy and laity who self-identify as Catholic (most often as Old Catholic and/or as Independent Catholic) and form “micro-churches claiming apostolic succession and valid sacraments”, in spite of not being affiliated to the historic Catholic churches such as the Roman Catholic...
Old Catholic Church The term Old Catholic Church was used from the 1850s by groups which had separated from the Roman Catholic Church over certain doctrines, primarily concerned with papal authority; some of these groups, especially in the Netherlands, had already existed long before the term. These churches are not in full communion with the Holy See. Member...
Papal Primacy Papal primacy, also known as the primacy of the bishop of Rome, is a Christian ecclesiological doctrine concerning the respect and authority that is due to the pope from other bishops and their episcopal sees. English academic and Catholic priest Aidan Nichols wrote that “at root, only one issue of substance divides the Eastern Orthodox...
Friends of God The Friends of God (German: Gottesfreunde; or gotesvriunde) was a medieval mystical group of both ecclesiastical and lay persons within the Catholic Church (though it nearly became a separate sect) and a center of German mysticism. It was founded between 1339 and 1343 during the Avignon Papacy of the Western Schism, a time of great turmoil for the Catholic...
