At online Catholic forum, no question is too bizarre

(UNDATED) When you give your group a name like Catholic Answers, you’re bound to draw some puzzling questions. Such as: “Is my son going to hell for spitting out the Eucharist?” “How do you sooth an angry Episcopalian?” “If we start a Catholic colony on another planet, should we bring bishops?” And yet, the team […]

(RNS2-MAY11) “Will my son go to hell for spitting out the Eucharist?” is just one of the questions submitted to Catholic Answers, an online forum devoted to answering Catholics’ questions about church life, from the mundane to the bizarre. (RNS file photo of second-grader Anthony Bass, 7, of Mentor, Ohio, receiving his First Communion from the Rev. Robert Kline at St. John Vianney Catholic Church) By Thomas Ondrey/The Plain Dealer of Cleveland.

(UNDATED) When you give your group a name like Catholic Answers, you’re bound to draw some puzzling questions. Such as:

“Is my son going to hell for spitting out the Eucharist?”


“How do you sooth an angry Episcopalian?”

“If we start a Catholic colony on another planet, should we bring bishops?”

And yet, the team of apologists at Catholic Answers endeavors to reply to almost every query — no matter how outlandish. (Briefly: If unintentional, the boy committed a terrible mistake, but not a sin; Agree to disagree with the Episcopalian; Yes, but they needn’t be in the first spaceship.)

Catholic Answers, which began with one man, Karl Keating, posting flyers on cars in church parking lots, has become one of the largest lay-run groups dedicated to Catholic apologetics and evangelism in the U.S. Based in San Diego, the organization publishes books, theological tracts, and a magazine; leads more than 200 seminars, conferences and retreats each year; broadcasts a two-hour long radio show daily; and maintains a Web site trafficked by millions each month.

Among those endeavors, few are as popular as the online feature, “Ask an Apologist,” said Jimmy Akin, the organization’s director of apologetics and evangelization. Since 2004, a team of four apologists has answered thousands of questions — ranging from the intensely personal (“Is being raped a sin?” Answer: No) to the borderline bizarre (“May I drink holy water?” Answer: Yes).

The Ask an Apologist forum is one of a growing number of religious Web sites providing answers to religion and moral questions, said Heidi Campbell, an assistant professor at Texas A&M University who has written a book about online religious communities. For example, a team of rabbis answers questions about Judaism at AskMoses.com, and Mufti Ebrahim Desai of South Africa does the same for Islam at AskImam.com.

These sites provide more than authoritative advice, Campbell and other experts say; they also offer an anonymity that allows questioners to unveil deep and sometimes intensely personal secrets. A psychological survey found that anonymity was the most oft-cited reason people preferred online counseling over face-to-face sessions, said Dr. Kimberly Young, a psychologist and expert on online behavior.

If things get too personal, the apologists at Catholic Answers will reply to seekers privately by e-mail, said the Rev. Vincent Serpa, 71, a Dominican priest who has worked with the organization for nearly a decade.

“I have had some of the most intimate conversations I’ve ever had in my life,” through the online forum, he said, “and yet I wouldn’t know them if they passed me on the street.”


Akin said he’s found that even off-the-wall questions can unearth foundational principles once you dig deep enough. Take, for instance, the query about bishops on another planet. As the colony gets started, just having a priest to celebrate the sacraments will suffice, as it did when clergy accompanied explorers to foreign lands, Akin said. But as the colony grows, it will need more priests, and only a bishop can ordain another man to the priesthood, he said.

Catholic Answers trains its apologists in-house. “There are no places people can go to get a degree in the kinds of questions people are asking here,” Akin said. They rely on the Catholic Catechism, canon law and liturgical regulations, but also consult with outside moral theologians, psychologists and other experts, said Serpa.

The employees at Catholic Answers make no bones about their conservatism. “They wouldn’t be working here if the weren’t loyal to the magisterium,” said Akin. “We don’t just take someone off the street and put them in front of a computer.”

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Dan Morris-Young, a columnist with Catholic News Service and a veteran of diocesan newspapers, called the apologists at Catholic Answers “traditionalists in the strict sense of the word.”

The answers they provide “tend to be doctrinally sound, but with very little wiggle room for informed conscience,” he said. “They’re not wacky. They’re just very, very, very conservative,” Morris-Young said.

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At one time, Catholic Answers’ conservatism blended with a political mission. Before the 2004 presidential election, the group produced a “Voter’s Guide for Serious Catholics” that promoted five “non-negotiable” issues: abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, same-sex marriage and human cloning. A rival group filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service, accusing Catholic Answers, a tax-exempt non-profit, of illegal partisan politicking. The IRS took no action, but Catholic Answers later spun off its political action group anyway.


Serpa said the people who turn to him at Catholic Answers trust him because he’s orthodox — and has a sense of humor.

“The order I belong to was founded by St. Dominic, a preacher,” Serpa said. “And I’m sure that if Dominic were here today, he’d be doing what I’m doing.”

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