The World's Toughest Catholic Quiz

The Q Continuum alerts us to an article in USA Today that says that Americans like God, they just don't know anything about Him.

In fact, they are pretty ignorant when it comes to doctrine. Let's face it, Catholics have more doctrine per square inch than most religions. (Hey, when it's True, there's a lot to say about it.) To prove them wrong, Q links to the World’s Toughest Catholic Quiz first posted by This Rock author Karl Keating.

I took it and -- without cheating -- I got 16 out of 20 correct. It would have been 17, but I didn't select what I knew was the right answer on one or two of 'em (too much second guessing). Guess I'll have to study a little harder before taking over adult education at the parish!

Now you try!

Don't fret if your percentage is lower than you expected it to be.

As you see, the Catholic faith is a very exact thing. Yes, you can be saved even if you know it imperfectly, but your value as an apologist will increase as you learn how much you still have to learn.

Here are the official rankings:

Fewer than four answers correct: Downright embarrassing. Even random guessing should have gotten you a score of four out of twenty. Crumple up your answer sheet and make a novena.

Four to seven answers correct: Frankly, pretty poor. You have a long way to go before you're prepared to explain your faith in public.

Eight to ten answers correct: On the low side, but you will be spared public penance.

Eleven to thirteen answers correct: About average or a little better--nothing to be ashamed about, but nothing to write home about either.

Fourteen to sixteen answers correct: You're nearly ready to take over the adult education classes in your parish--you need to do just a little more homework.

Seventeen to nineteen answers correct: Wonderful! You have every reason to be satisfied with yourself.

Twenty correct: Zounds! Contact me about a job as an apologist.

A Dogma By Any Other Name

Reports abound of Fr. Roy Bourgeois' impending excommunication for participating in the "ordination" of women priests.

This is all very sad, and Fr. Bourgeois is in need of our prayers for true repentance and adherence to the clear teachings of the Catholic Church. In his public dissent, Bourgeois claims:

The current Catholic Church doctrine on the ordination of women implies our loving and all-powerful God, Creator of heaven and earth, somehow cannot empower a woman to be a priest.

It is appropriate to point out firstly that a dogma is a revealed and/or defined truth, not a discipline or custom subject to change,

[A] dogma is now understood to be a truth appertaining to faith or morals, revealed by God, transmitted from the Apostles in the Scriptures or by tradition, and proposed by the Church for the acceptance of the faithful. ... A dogma therefore implies a twofold relation: to Divine revelation and to the authoritative teaching of the Church.
-- Catholic Encylopedia: New Advent

and secondly, Pope John Paul II's Apostolic Letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, definitively addresses the subject.

Pope John Paul II says in this letter that, in granting admission to the ministerial priesthood, the church has always acknowledged as a perennial norm her Lord’s way of acting in choosing the 12 men whom he made the foundation of his church.

Because “in some places” women’s ordination is thought to be still open to debate or that the “Church’s judgment” on the matter has merely a “disciplinary force,” Pope John Paul declares “that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”

Pope John Paul says that “the fact the Blessed Virgin Mary... received neither the mission proper to the apostles nor the ministerial priesthood clearly shows that the nonadmission of women to priestly ordination cannot mean that women are of lesser dignity, nor can it be construed as discrimination against them.”