Catholic Beliefs and Practices: Don't Believe Everything You Read

I sometimes get the impression that many people learned most of what they believe about Catholics and Catholicism from periodicals purchased at grocery checkouts.

For example, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta isn't a seer: despite what you may have read in the papers. I realize that tabloids need to have attention-getting headlines, like "Abraham Lincoln Was A Woman!" - but the cover in that photo made me a little nostalgic for the days when space alien abductions and Elvis sightings were more common subjects for the imaginative end of the press pool.

Back to Mother Teresa: There's a pretty good write-up about her on EWTN ("Mother Teresa of Calcutta: Peacemaker, Pioneer, Legend," including a biography and several quotes).

The point of this post is that not everyone who writes about Catholic beliefs and practices knows a great deal about them.

And, sadly, the same is true for people who are in positions of authority. More about that at another time.

Here are two online resources that are a bit better informed about Catholicism than that tabloid:

• "Catechism of the Catholic Church"
  United States Council of Catholic Bishops
  A detailed, if somewhat dry, discussion of Catholic beliefs
• "Frequently Requested Catholic Church Statistics."
  Georgetown University's collection of statistics relating to Catholics in America, and around the world

A word about the Catechism: The one I link to is the official English translation of the Latin document. It's quite useful for people who read English, but it's not an "American" document. The Catechism is written for the Catholic Church, and so does not go into details of life and faith that are specific to one culture or another. The USCCB provides an "Informative Dossier" that describes what the Catechism is, how it was made, what it does, and what it doesn't do.