• The Catholic Church is deeply biblical. Jesus's followers gathered the sacred writings and established the fundamental books of the Bible in the first centuries of the Church.
• Teachers and preachers commented on the Bible and wrote brilliant treatises on it -- people like St. Augustine and St. Jerome.
• Catholic monks preserved the Bible through the "dark ages" by copying it by hand. They also preserved knowledge of ancient languages to help interpret the Bible.
• Catholics were leaders in the early Biblical revival (people like Erasmus) and are leading Bible scholars today.
• All Catholic worship is based on a careful reading and presentation of the Bible.
• The Catholic Church has a structure but it is not authoritarian in the way most people take that word.
• Catholic leaders basically serve believers by preaching, by prayer, and by leadership.
• Catholic life is not run by the Pope. Rather, Catholic life unfolds in local parish congregations.
• The Pope and bishops give guidance on certain fundamental issues of faith and good living...but all pastors do that.
• The Catholic Church believes fundamentally in the freedom of the human conscience.
• Some individual Catholics may be superstitious, but the Church does not foster superstition or silly religious fantasies.
• The Church believes that God gave us human reason to use in understanding our faith.
• Catholics worship only God. We pray to saints as our older brothers and sisters in faith, who are united with us in Christ through the Communion of Saints. Sacred images inspire us and help focus our thoughts and prayer.
• Catholics have a lot of societies, but hardly any of them are secret. Rather, these societies have well-known traditions to help their members become holy and live faithfully.
• Many of these societies are called "religious orders"--groups of men and women who live together to accomplish a particular good.
• Catholics keep secrets when it will help people--as when they confess their sin or come for counseling, in the same way we keep secrets about our friends when they confide in us.
• All Catholic societies need the approval of church leadership to insure that their purposes are sound.
• Catholics do take sex very seriously because they see it as a beautiful and important gift from God.
• Catholics do not think that sex should be recreational or irresponsible because God uses sexual activity to bring new people into the world.
• Catholics believe that sexual activity belongs inside of marriage, in a committed and mature relationship.
• Catholics encourage personal discipline in the exercise of sexual activity. Catholics accept the use of family planning which cooperates with the woman's natural periods of infertility and does not rely on mechanical, chemical or other artificial forms of contraception.
• Catholics think the modern world is hung up on sex, given the way society treats sex as a sensational, exploitative thing, and given the way people use and abuse each other under the guise of false love.
Material on this page was adapted from information provided by Paulist Evangelization Ministries
and is available in pamphlet form here.