Whether you are new or returning to the Church, please know you are welcome here, and we hope and pray that you will find a spiritual home here at St. Aidan's. In an attempt to answer some common questions about the Catholic faith, we have provided some brief answers for you explore.
This program of the Catholic Church, is oriented towards those who are searching and inquiring about the Catholic way of life. While this program is oriented for adults, it accepts teenagers who are mature enough to participate in the OCIA.
For information, please contact Administrator Deacon Mr. Jerry Magaldi at (516) 746-6585 x101
The Catholic Church traces its roots to Jesus Christ and the Apostles. It is centered on faith in Christ, Holy Scripture, the teachings of the Church, along with the Seven Sacraments. Ultimately, however, Catholicism is an encounter with a person—Jesus Christ.
From the very beginning, Christ gave Peter a unique role among the Apostles: “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church” (Mt 16:18). The pope is not merely the bishop of Rome, but the successor of Peter, the rock on whom Christ built his Church, and thus the visible sign of the Church’s unity across time and space.
Catholics do not pray to Mary and the saints as if they were divine, but rather ask them to intercede, much as one might ask a trusted friend to pray on one’s behalf. This practice, far from detracting from Christ, magnifies His saving work, for it is only by his grace that Mary and the saints can intercede at all, and it reminds the faithful that the Church is not bound by death but is a communion of pilgrims and saints joined together in the worship of the living God.
The seven sacraments are the divinely instituted means by which Christ communicates his life to the Church—Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Confession (Penance), Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders, and Matrimony—each a concrete encounter with the saving power of the Lord, shaping believers into his likeness and binding them into the communion of his Body.
The Eucharist is the sacrament in which Christ himself becomes truly present—body, blood, soul, and divinity—under the appearances of bread and wine, offered in the Church’s great act of thanksgiving and worship; it is both the memorial of the Lord’s sacrifice on Calvary and the foretaste of the heavenly banquet, the source and summit of the Church’s life in which believers are united most intimately to Christ and to one another.
Catholics confess their sins to a priest because Christ entrusted the apostles and their successors with the authority to forgive sins in his name, making the sacrament of Penance not a mere human exchange but a personal encounter with the mercy of the risen Lord, who heals, restores, and reconciles the sinner to both God and the Church.