help with the tough questions

While of course our wounded egos are saying, “why would anyone want to go to another website, have they taken in all the pearls of wisdom on this site?!”, we want to help you with your search. Here’s a choice of some of the great sites that give wonderful access to further learning about Christianity. Not for scholars. For regular adults.

• February 2023: The Writings of Saint Francis
• February 2023: First Holy Communion resources: Web resources for those making their first holy communion, including a links page that seems interesting — if not fascinating in parts — perhaps for all of us!
• October 2015: Resources to help us to “make a good confession” (from Boston)
• January 2015: just found out that a free copy of the plain-English, short catechism “I Believe–A Little Catholic Catechism” is available online.  Wow!
• In late 2014 for the first time the 2009 “United States Catholic Catechism for Catholics” was published in an easy to navigate online version. It seems to ‘translate’ well some of the Catechism into more ‘plain English’.
  You can read about it here, or read it itself here.
  You can get straight to what you want using its search engine or its index (tip: if you do use the index and note that a certain topic is on say, page 100, you’ll need to add 27 to that page number in the page search box in the top left corner; 127 in this example). But the best way, we recommend, is simply the Contents page, which they’ve happily made clickable.
• A massive and terrific Links Page from  Tommy Lane’s personal website, where the links are sorted usefully, for example
  • A great simplified way of praying the Rosary, aimed at children but surely also good for us adults. See, for example, the extra sentences added in between each Hail Mary for the first Joyful Mystery to help focus our minds on the mystery instead of ourselves.
  • In fact, that site covers lots of topics that help children to pray better by understanding their prayers better.
• A well-written page teaching us about the (Anglican) Church of Ireland, specifically what is the difference in belief between it and the Roman Catholic church, and how it differs from other Protestant churches.
• A full list of videos of talks given at the International Eucharist Congress in Dublin in 2012
• Videos and audio of ‘Faith Matters’ 2012 talks in London dealing, like this site, with a large variety of questions. If you look on the left hand side of the page, you’ll see there’s LOTS of similar video and audio from different years available.
• The English-language version of the Vatican website, where you can explore lots, of course including a section on Pope Francis, but also such as a list of Vatican-related websites, such as the Vatican-related newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, which has many sections including a Religion section and a good Search Engine.
• If you’d like to listen to your choice of half-hour radio programs, here’s the program archive page of Franciscan Media.
• If you’d like to listen to 90-second homilies based on the Sunday readings and gospel, then here’s just that from Franciscan priest Greg Friedman.
• The idea of there being a worldwide, natural ‘stages of faith‘ in each of us. Originally proposed in 1981 by James Fowler, building on the work of the brilliant psychologists Erikson and Piaget, and now widely used in education and adult faith formation.
  It’s liberating to realise that deep doubt and deep questioning of your faith is a step forwards.  Wouldn’t it be great if all adults knew this. Wouldn’t it be great if we all kept moving forwards without getting stuck at one stage. To get a deeper understanding also search other sites, such as this UUA one.