Karen Hall points to a quiz that appeared in the 1993 issue of This Rock Magazine which bills itself as the "World’s Toughest Catholic Quiz."
I got 17 out of 20 and one of them I really should have got correct if I would have thought about it more. The other two though were helpful in learning a more exact definition of what the questions covered.
I wouldn’t call it the toughest Catholic quiz though. Envoy Magazine use to run a regular feature called inQUIZition that I think were generally much tougher. For example this one where I got only 12 of 20 right.
So what do you score?
29 comments
I got 17 out of 20 as well. Although I answered the contraception question correctly (b) “never permitted”, I thought in the case of rape and as long as it was established conception had not already taken place, that methods could be used to prevent conception. Am I wrong?
Any way to let them know that this phrase contains a mild? oath.
“Twenty correct: Zounds! Contact me about a job as an apologist.”
Zounds is short for God’s Wounds. Therefore when one uses it they are profaning the wounds of Christ. An Apologetics magazine editor should not be profaning the Lord’s wounds, though I doubt he knew.
Scott, no you are right. The quiz is not recent and that teaching is new.
Also I got is wrong because the Church does allow natural family planning.
like the Ovulation method and Rhythm Method
I got 17 out of 20; not bad for a bloody (semi-)Protestant!
Two of the ones I missed, however, make me a serious heretic – consubstantiation in #1, and whatever Christological heresy I fell for in number #15b. Ouch. Mea maxima culpa; I recant.
Puff – incorrect. NFP (or whatever you want to call it) is immoral if the intent is to avoid conception for anything other than “grave reasons”.
There is no such thing as “Catholic birth control”.
On the rape issue, though, I think you and Scott are correct. An example would be coitus interruptus: perfectly legit for someone being raped, but not for anyone else.
I’ve seen that first one before, so I didn’t take it again. I believe my score at the time was 16 or 17, but I’ve learned a few things since 🙂
Funny how none of you posted scores to the second quiz…which was very hard…I only got 7 right.
I scored “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” but I am a religious studies student doing a specialization in Roman Catholic thought. I also think there is an error in their questions about deacons, because there are 2 types, and if you know maried deacons the answer is different then they give.
19. However, if you missed many do not feel bad. According to a fellow parishioner who was upset by the Catholic Answers Voters Guide a couple of years ago, she did some research on CA and found out that they “are not in line with Church teachings and dissent from the Pope”. Seriously. I wonder if her research was something on Commonwhine or if it is because the do not follow the “spirit of Vatican II”.
I got one wrong for the first quiz — the archbishop question.
16 right.
Got the sister, archbishop, God died on the Cross and #1 wrong. I got too technical on that one. They excluded soul and divinity, so I assumed from their warning that it was incomplete.
Oops, meant #2 not #1
Rape is in fact an exception to the contraception rule, as long as there is no chance for abortion. See paragraph 36 here: http://www.nccbuscc.org/bishops/directives.shtml#partfour
which states in part:
A female who has been raped should be able to defend herself against a potential conception from the sexual assault. If, after appropriate testing, there is no evidence that conception has occurred already, she may be treated with medications that would prevent ovulation, sperm capacitation, or fertilization. It is not permissible, however, to initiate or to recommend treatments that have as their purpose or direct effect the removal, destruction, or interference with the implantation of a fertilized ovum.
If the Ovulation method or the Rythm Method are not approved, why pray tell was it taught to us by the church before we got married. We were told the church recognises the responsibility of married couples to plan their children. As long as the pill, the condom or anything else artificial isn’t used and the sperm isn’t “wasted” or thrown away, then it is acceptable.
Either you don’t understand the concept of either pratice, which basically states that when a woman is fertile she and her husband refrains from sex completely and only engage in intercourse when she can no longer conceive that month, or you are stating your own opinion and not the church’s stand.
As for coitus interruptus. I believe the bible itself relates a story of a man withdrawing from his wife and spilling his seed on the ground, God struck him dead. The church has the same opinion.
Also, you give way to much consideration to a rapist if you think that in the middle of brutalising a woman he is going to to pull out(pardon my bluntness) at the precise moment to protect his victim from conception.
I doubt you have ever been sexually vicitimised if you actually think that.
I have trouble with the first question–Christ is physically present in the consecrated species. I’m not sure what “physical” means here. Aquinas deals with this directly in the Tertia Pars of the Summa. Pope Paul VI also uses the phrase “physically present,” but then adds “but not as if in a place” to modify what he means. So, if “physical” here means “put the host under a microscope and we see hair, skin cells, and blood vessels,” then I do not accept “physically present” as orthodox. Though I’m not sure what else we would mean by “physically present.” The CCC says nothing about a physical presence, only a sacramental presence. I wonder if “physical presence” is an overstatement of what we mean by Real Presence…IOW, an overstatement meant to counter Prot notions of symbolic presence.
Fr. Philip, OP
Fr. Philip,what’s your take, then, on the Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano which occured bac in the 8th century?
Puff,
I think the objection Fr. Philip has is that the church does not use the language of physical with regards to the Eucharist. For example the Council of Trent it its decreed uses substance. The term sacramentally present is what is used mostly now.
Not to brag but – 20 out of 20. Many years ago as a new returnee to the Church, I was blessed to take the first course of Father John Hardin’s Marian Cathechist series.
NFP is not contraception. It is being aware of the natural signs of fertility which God placed in women as He created them. It’s purpose is not to prevent conception while still performing the marital act but rather to allow husband and wife to consciously participate in the act of co-creation.
I found the question concerning mortal and serious sin to be confusing. My understanding that a condition for mortal sin is that the act is a serious sin (grave matter) done in full knowledge of its gravity and with full consent of the will. That to me suggests that the definitions cannot be the same, although an act would be both a serious sin and a mortal sin, the latter being a subset of the former.
Your second Inquizition quiz is truly from one of the lowest rings described by Dante. I shouldn’t have tried this one, but I got overconfident from the first. I did get 6 of the 20 right, but half of those were guesses. How did you ever get 12 right?
Puff,
I may have been unclear re: coitus interruptus – I meant that no one would fault a woman for defending herself against a rapist and ending the assault after penetration, but before ejaculation (as opposed to a husband and wife, who could not morally do the same, i.e., C.I.). It was meant as an illustration of a permissible example of contraception, without the confusions of testing for conception and whether one is sure or not that no conception had taken place. So I believe that you and I agree on this point.
As for NFP, I understand what it is. If a husband and wife decided that they only wanted two (or one, or no) children, and used their knowledge of the wife’s ovulation cycle to accomplish this end, they would commit mortal sin. Only grave reasons permit using NFP to avoid pregnancy. The fact that you may have been taught something different is not suprising, but it does not make it right.
Come to think of it, I’m not sure about their wording of question 2 about the Real Presence (the bread is both the body and blood and the wine is both body and blood). If so, the whole distinction between substance and accident is moot. In addition, their rendering creates ambiguity while Christ’s words at the Last Supper were not ambiguous in the least. This is my Body. This is my Blood.
There’s a difference between saying that the Real Presence is wholly present in both species and that both species are identical essentially and existentially.
Is it just me?
Despite some misleading translations, Humanae Vitae does NOT say you need “grave” reasons to avoid pregnancy using NFP. It says you need “serious” reasons.
Kevin and Puff,
From para 10 of HV:
“In relation to physical, economic, psychological and social conditions, responsible parenthood is exercised, either by the deliberate and generous decision to raise a numerous family, or by the decision, made for grave motives and with due respect for the moral law, to avoid for the time being, or even for an indeterminate period, a new birth.”
Given that “grave” is apparently a “misleading” translation, I still don’t see what the subsitute “serious” provides. The rule is to raise a numerous family. The exception is not. Under what nonmedical circumstances does the exception apply? At the very least “because I don’t want a large a family” should not satisfy the condition.
My understanding above was that someone told Puff that the avoidance of conception, witout regard to reasons (grave, serious or otherwise) was permissible as long as NFP was used.
I think to claim that Real Presence means physical presence is a concession to modernist scientific notions of reality. Think about it: the term “real” in our history has meant “formal” more often than it has meant “material.” The word “substance” means “what a thing is most fundamentally.” Not “stuff.” The claim that RP means PP assumes that that which is most real is the material and not the formal. This is why the CCC makes it clear that Christ’s body, blood, divinity, etc. are present sacramentally (not physically) in the Eucharistic species. For us, to be sacramentally present is more real than to be physically present. The physical presence claim has to buy too much of the modernist project for my comfort.
Fr. Philip
I forgot…
RE: Eucharistic miracles. W ecan hold that God can on occasion miraclously transform the consecrated species into physical flesh and blood for some divine purpose. We can hold this w/o holding that anytime bread and wine are consecrated they become physical flesh and blood.
For me, these miracles are pointless. I believe in transubstantion and the Real Presence in the absence of any such miracle. What does Jesus say about those who clamor for signs…(ahem)…?
Fr. Philip, OP
Woo hoo! 16 (17…the contraception one I got right) and 11 (I blew the Kateri one…and I know NOTHING about ‘oneness Pentacostalism’…but that was nasty hard!
I got 17/20. w00t!
I have a question about the Precepts of the Church question, though: what does it mean to confess your sins once a year if you are only required to go after committing grave sin?
I missed 15 because I assume that (c) would be met with cries of “Patripassianism!” — something I have been accused of too often.
I just got 12 of 20 on the InQUIZition. But come on, why in particular should Catholics need to be able to answer questions on Calvin and Charles Williams?
Comments are closed.