Hi, Robyn.

I, too, grew up in the Bible Belt, from age 9 to 15, and we were the only Catholics in the county we lived in. My best friend honestly thought priests had hooves under their cassocks! Bob Jones University students would accost us Catholic school students (there was a Catholic school in the next county!), so we learned early how to defend our faith. Catechism class was rarely seen as irrelevant! Fortunately, we had a very good Catholic education, which later generations have not received, unfortunately. Your questions come mostly from the secular milieu; however, not from Protestantism. I will take the easier ones first.

You said:

1. How is the Church dealing with the discoveries of the books from Judas, Mary Magdalene, and the lost books of the Bible?
   
   I understand the buzz around it was from the Da Vinci Code and whatnot.
   
   What does the Church have to say about it?
   
   In reference to the lost books of the Bible: there are none. The People of God have always known their own books and rejected those that were not Hers. There are writings that arose out of early heresies, and were attributed, as was the practice, to various Bible figures, but they were known about even during New Testament times, and were never accepted. We forget that everything new is old: All the heresies we have now existed in the first few centuries, and some of the worse were rampant in New Testament times.
   The historicity of all of these books is easily disproved, as is their authorship. The
   so-called Gospel of Judas was always known about, and was written about, but it is
   only now that we have found a part of it in manuscript form, hence the renewed interest.
   

You said:

2. How literal is the Bible taken these days?
   
   I mean, in some of the verses, it says that women should stay silent and respect men, and that they should not to uncover their heads nor have any markings on the skin. (referring to tattoos, I assume) Obviously, some things should be taken literally, referring to the commandments and common sense things, but I have two tattoos; I hardly think that they are sinful.
   
   In reference to the Bible: The Church teaches that the literal truth of the Bible is the truth according to the literary form used by the human author. There are other senses of Scripture also, but the literal sense must be interpreted according to the author's intention, not according to the literal sense of the words. For instance, if I say, I am so hungry I could eat a horse!, that is not literally true according to the meaning of the words, but it is literally true according to the meaning of the words as I and the society I live in use them: Eat a horse is a figure of speech, and it has a meaning. Take both of the Creation stories. They convey what the author wanted to convey:
   
   
   • that creation is an act of God, not a result of a battle of gods;
   • that creation is good; that creation is orderly and hierarchical and beloved;
   • that man, male and female, are made in God's image;
   • that God's plan was perfectly good, and was then disturbed by sin.

   This is a lot. There is meaning in the sequence but it is absurd to say that there were 7 calendar days. No one in Judaism or in early Christianity believed that there were 7
   (24 hour periods) of creation. That's not what day means for the Scriptural author.
   The human authors of Scripture used words sometimes historically, sometimes symbolically (some numbers, for instance), and sometimes poetically, metaphorically. There is much to Scriptural interpretation. Look up the document, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, or look in the Catechism. It is obvious that a literal interpretation depends on an interpreter! Fundamentalist literal interpretation has yielded tens of thousands of denominations and sects, each one with its own literal interpretation.

You said:

3. What does the Church say about ghosts?
   
   Someone recently pitched the idea to me that maybe being a ghost is Hell, because you are eternally separated from God. I know it really isn't Hell, but is it wrong to entertain ideas like that?
   
   In reference to the Ghosts: Literally speaking, a ghost is a spirit. It is usually taken to mean not a pure spirit, like an angel (good or bad), but the spirit of a human, the soul separated from the body by death. What people call ghost may be something else: they may be referring to manifestations of many sorts which indicate a personal presence, anything from a soul to an alien or to an evil spirit.
   
   We will speak first of the human soul idea. The Church teaches that the soul is separated from the body at death, and undergoes an immediate judgment. The good go to God, the evil away from God but going to God can be immediate or a process, depending on the charity of a person. The process of being ushered into Paradise is a purification called Purgatory, which is a state of being purified, of course, and whose location, if any, is unknown, but which in essence is an anteroom to Heaven.
   
   Many saints and mystics have said that some souls work out their purification on earth, and this is not contrary to Catholic doctrine. Occasionally, they are permitted, for our sakes and theirs, to manifest themselves. In this case, they serve as a lesson on immortality, and as a reminder to pray for the departed. Many such manifestations are eliminated by sincere prayer, especially at Mass, for the repose of the soul of the departed person. We should give them that charity. Secondly, sometimes, a preternatural event may be caused by an evil spirit. In those cases, one should pray in the name of the Lord, Jesus, and use holy water and other sacramentals. If necessary, have the place blessed by a priest, or have a Mass said there, or have the place exorcised.

You said:

4. Someone said to me long ago that even thinking about a sin, is sinning. To me, that seems almost impossible not to do; I mean if I tell you not to think of a red balloon what's the first thing you think of?
   
   I went to a small-town high school where all the students (with the exception of 15 of us) were Southern Baptists or Protestants and it was one of them who told me this. I didn't know if it was a difference in religious beliefs or whether it was true at all.
   
   Thinking about sin is not sinning. Otherwise moral theologians, who spend their time meditating on good and evil acts, would be sinning all the time! One can sin in one's thoughts, with the mind and the heart. Jesus said that anger and lust were sins, not just the murder and adultery they lead to but, for the sin of thought or heart to be a sin, it must include an act of the will, a consent to the evil, conceived or imagined. Imagination itself is not sinful ever. The devil can put things in our imagination and so can our own memories and desires but, imagining committing a sin with someone, plus consenting to it, desiring it, is sinful. This sin could be a sin of envy, of anger, of lust or, of pride.
   
   Sin is in the will so willing the sin is sinning, even if you don't carry it out. The person who consents to the evil done by another or to another is also guilty, as, for instance, in abortion or in support of abortion, even if one would never do it oneself. We have to fight temptations from within, from our fallen nature which desires lower goods for itself more than the Good, and this struggle, sometimes easy, sometimes hard, is constant and builds us in virtue and in trust in God. The sign of a virtue is that it gets easier and easier to do the right thing.

You said:

5. Finally, I recently found out that you cannot receive Communion if you have sinned seriously.
   
   
   • Is it still really bad, even though I didn't know about it?
     
   • Is this still the rule?
     
   • What's the severity of the sin, if you don't receive Communion?
   
   In reference to Holy Communion: No, one should not receive Holy Communion if one is in the state of grave sin, or mortal sin, as we say. To be in a state of serious sin, the sin must:
   • first of all be a grave matter, or be believed to be one
   • we must have done it freely, with full consent of the will
     (not from serious fear or pressure), and
   • have done it with sufficient reflection or awareness of what we are doing.

   Now, St. Paul says we should not eat and drink the Body and Blood of the Lord unworthily. (1 Corinthians 11:27) Otherwise, we commit the sin of sacrilege, if we receive knowing we are in a state of serious sin so, if one is in a state of serious sin, one should go to Confession before Communion.
   

Hope this helps,

Mary Ann
Bible Belt reference:
BibleBeltCatholics.com