The Catholic customs of praying for the souls of the dead, praying to the saints who have gone before us in earthly life, and of venerating relics are based primarily in the church’s long-standing tradition and theology rather than explicit scriptural “prooftexts.” However, the Bible does indeed allude to these practices.

Indulgences are deeply rooted in several key Catholic theological concepts, such as the nature of purgatory, the church’s authority, the spiritual power of prayer and sacrifice and the communion of saints.

Jesus was trying to explain the goal and some possible pitfalls to avoid. He never suggests that he was giving us a breakdown of who attains salvation in terms of percentages.

The church is against any “gender ideology” that would separate the concept of psychological gender from biological sex; or which would propose that one’s sex could be changed through medical or surgical means; or which would hold that one’s bodily sex could be somehow wrong or mistaken in light of one’s self-perception of one’s gender.

Although purgatory is not exactly a “punishment” in the way we would tend to use the term today, traditionally purgatory has been understood to involve a degree of suffering.

A valid marriage is essentially a marriage where the wedding “worked,” and produced a true bond. In contrast, an attempted marriage where one of these necessary elements was absent would be considered an “invalid” or “null” marriage.

While the devil was cast out of God’s direct presence in heaven, this did not happen because God actively wanted Satan to have sway over his creatures.

It is the consistent traditional practice in Eastern Catholic churches to administer Communion under both kinds as a matter of course.

The church does not have any current official teaching on fairies or leprechauns. However, in traditional folklore, fairies and leprechauns were not the sweet and playful creatures that they tend to be in our modern depictions, and they have an association with pre-Christian European paganism.

In order to ensure that declarations of nullity are not simply “rubber stamped” or “cop outs,” the church has a specific process, carried out through the ministry of diocesan marriage tribunals, for investigating whether or not a marriage was invalid.