Ask a Franciscan

As a child, I was taught to pray: “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” If this ...

My daughter-in-law’s brother is in a committed gay relationship and is going to be the father of a child carried by a woman who will allow the two men to adopt the baby.

Hospitals today really encourage people to have living wills. Is it permissible for patients to choose to have water and food withheld in case of very severe illness? I think this is suicide.

Do you think that saints can help us out? Can you be sure that they are there and that sometimes they talk to you?

A non-Catholic friend asked me how the Scriptures at Mass are selected. Who started this and when was the present system adopted? Vatican II’s 1963 “Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy” called for a wider selection of biblical texts to be ...

How could God take my precious son at age 43 and yet allow rotten people who have stopped believing in God to keep on living? My son was a great Catholic and spent eight years in Catholic schools.