Pat McCloskey, OFM

How can I help the Dreamers and my fellow brothers and sisters wanting to come to the United States?
Pray for Dreamers, support local efforts on their behalf, and make your views known to those who represent you in Congress. Every country, including the United States, has a right to control its borders. All three branches of government work together to do that. By the way, our country has had a tradition of family reunification long before the term chain migration became a negative expression.

What is the Catholic Church’s position on entering prayer? Is it New Age? Is it allowed for Catholics? Why or why not?

It is allowed, despite what some self-appointed guardians of Catholic orthodoxy are claiming on the Internet.

In a 2014 article in America (December 3), Sidney Callahan wrote: “The simple steps of the method are to choose a sacred word as a symbol of your intention to consent to God’s presence and action within. Then, settling comfortably, you introduce the sacred word and remain quietly attentive within God’s presence.

How does the Book of Revelation speak to 2018 Catholics? Should all its visions, images, warnings, cautions, advice, and guidance be applied to their spiritual and temporal lives?

The Book of Revelation, sometimes called the Apocalypse (from the Greek verb “to reveal “), was intended as a book of consolation for Christians who were suffering violent persecutions from pagan rulers in the last decade of the first century AD. Its affirmation that God’s power and justice will ultimately prevail continues to console Christians.

One of my high school students asked if someone with a prosthetic hand could be ordained. If so, would that hand be anointed? What if a man was born without arms?

I think that all the things you mentioned are possible. The Catholic Church has established various impediments to ordination, but it can also dispense from many of them.

At one time, a man blind in his left eye could not be ordained because that was his “canonical eye. ” The missal rested on a stand to the priest’s left at the altar.

During Pope Francis’ visit to Chile and Peru last January, he married a couple during one of the flights. Does Church law permit that?

Carlos Ciuffardi Elorriage, 41, and Paula Podest Reuiz, 39, had been civilly married for several years but not in the Catholic Church. They approached the pope about their situation, and after an extended conversation he offered to witness the wedding on the next flight during his pastoral visit.