Pat McCloskey, OFM

I was taught that prior to Christ’s dying and rising, people (in the Old Testament) could not enter heaven and see God. What about Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and the many holy women in the Old Testament?

You have identified a theological dilemma: how to speak about people who lived before Jesus as being saved without slighting the unique role of his passion, death, and resurrection. The concept of limbo was developed to cover this group of people, plus babies who die before Baptism and ultimately good adults who were never baptized.

A number of my Protestant friends who have studied Greek use grape juice at their communion service. Why does the Catholic Church use wine?

The Catholic and Orthodox Churches use wine because the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke indicate that Jesus used “the fruit of the vine ” at the Last Supper. That probably meant wine at least, that is how these Churches understood those texts for almost 1,500 years before the religious ancestors of your friends started to use grape juice.

I am gay. What can I do to stay in God’s grace and live a full, happy life as a gay man?

There is only one type of salvation: generously cooperating according to the circumstances of a person’s life with God’s unique gift of salvation through Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection.

Although I know the Catholic Church approves of cremation, I can’t find in the Catechism of the Catholic Church what the Church requires that Catholics do with the ashes (cremains). Do they have to be buried as in a traditional burial?

According to the second section of article 2301, “The Church permits cremation, provided that it does not demonstrate a denial of faith in the resurrection of the body. “

What is meant by the expression “the valley of the shadow of death “? I am a lifelong Catholic nearing the end of life. So much has changed over the years that I don’t understand what the Church teaches now about the passage from this life to the next. Do we still believe it is a fearsome struggle to avoid the clutches of the evil one? How can I find peace about this?

Are there any readings, books, or websites to explain to my 79-year-old sister that the archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary, telling her that she was favored by God to give birth to God’s Son?My sister believes something evil happened to Mary. When I told her she was wrong, she replied, “But it was on the Internet! “