Hi Mrs. XXXXX,
If you mean that you do not believe you can discuss the Bible and its teachings with me, then I would have to humbly conclude that you are wrong. 
Certainly you know some of its main points, as I see evidenced below (e.g., “God is love,” “Jesus is God,” etc.). But even if you do not know certain parts, then it’s just a matter of picking up a Bible, and reading the part or parts you don’t know, and trying to see if you can figure it out. And if you can’t, then we can try and see why. At the very least, we can try and help one another learn. And by the way, I am certainly not as familiar with the Bible as you may think I am, and as many others are — perhaps I’m “no match” for your priest, Father XXXXX, or certain other knowledgeable members of your church! But we can all learn at least something from one another.
But anyway, my aim is not to talk about deep, philosophical things that are beyond the reach of most people (heck, then they would certainly be beyond my reach, too!). Rather I want to talk about simple, everyday things. Practical things. Things that everyone can talk about and understand. Things you don’t need any fancy degrees or titles to understand. Things that a little child can understand. For God throws wide hope His arms when we come to Him as a little child.
And in fact, if we don’t approach Him as a little child, humble and dependent, then we cannot come to Him. Jesus Himself said, in Mark 10:15, “Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” I believe Jesus meant that unless we humble ourselves, and are as dependent upon God as a little child is dependent upon its parents, we shall never enter into the kingdom of God. In other words, we need to trust Jesus as a child humbly trusts its parents. What could be more simple?
Likewise, a great theologian was once asked the question, “What is the most important thing you have ever learned in all your years of study?” He replied, humbly, and like a little child, “Jesus loves me this I know, for my Bible tells me so.” Again, what could be more simple?
That said, the oversimplification of truth is no virtue. To paint over important, biblical doctrines, to misrepresent the very Word of God, is in fact nothing short of evil. Thus, without the context, we might properly ask the theologian, whom does Jesus love? Surely He does not love everyone! At least not with the same kind of love that He has for those who are true Christians, for there are many who end up in hell. The gospel, then, is simple; but it is not simplistic.
Rather, what I am trying to foster, if God should so grant it to you (and still to me) by His Holy Spirit, is a sense of child-like humility and dependence upon the Bible, the Word of God, for the truth. In short, I hope you might cry out with the Philippian jailer, “[W]hat must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30).
> I only know what I believe. Most importantly, that God is
> love, that Jesus is God, that I want to follow his
> commandments.
I think it is good that you believe these biblical truths and desire to follow Jesus’ commandments. After all, that is what Solomon, the wisest of all men, concluded, too, at the end of his book, Ecclesiastes: “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil” (Ecc. 12:13-14). Solomon thus concluded that the “whole duty of man” was simply to “fear God and keep his commandments.”
In fact, if we could sum up the entire Bible, we could do no better than to humbly agree with what Jesus Himself taught in the following story: “But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?’ And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets’” (Matt. 22:34-40). Thus, Jesus concluded that the entire Bible, “all the Law and the Prophets,” depend upon loving God and loving one’s neighbor.
From these two paragraphs, we can state that the purpose of life is to fear God and keep His commandments by loving Him and loving our neighbor. Living life couldn’t be simpler.
Or could it?
Because even though we know what to do, the question is, do we do it? Do we obey? We may know in our minds that we are to do these things, but every day we see in our own lives that, in fact, we do not love God nor love our neighbor.
For example, when we cheat or steal from our neighbor, we are not loving him as we love ourselves; after all, we would not want another person to cheat or steal from us. When we lie to, or gossip about, our neighbor, we are not loving our neighbor as we love ourselves; after all, we would not want another person to lie to us or to gossip about us. When we dishonor our parents, we are not loving them as we love ourselves; after all, we would not want our parents to dishonor us, and to disrespect us, and to treat us poorly. When we covet our neighbor’s belongings, when we want the home he has, or the car he has, or the career he has, or whatever else he has, or when we are envious that he has certain things that we do not have, that we feel in a sense “entitled” to have over him (”because I’m better than he is!” or whatever), we are not loving our neighbor. When we take the name of the Lord our God in vain, we are not loving God; after all, we would not want God to take our name in vain, that is, we would not want God to esteem us lightly, and to not think about us at all except as a curse. When we regard other things such as our careers, or even our very own families, as more important than God, as worth spending more time with, as worth putting more of our energy into, than the time and energy we spend with and expend for God, then we are not loving God; after all, Jesus said, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matt. 10:37).
Hence it may be one thing to know that we are to do these things, and quite another to actually do them, to live them out in our day-to-day lives.
But you might think, well, no one is perfect! No one can do these things, all the time!
It may be true that no one can perfectly love God and love his neighbor 24/7, 365 days per year, for his entire life. But that is besides the point. The point is that the Bible itself calls us to perfection; Jesus Himself, God incarnate, calls us to perfection. “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48), our Lord says. And, in Matt. 5:17-20: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. . . . For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus says that He did not come to do away with the Law or the Prophets, and that not the tiniest dot from the Law will pass away until all is accomplished. The standard is not less but more; not lowered but raised; not relaxed but tightened. Jesus continues by saying that we are to be absolutely perfect, and that unless our righteousness exceeds the scribes and Pharisees — who were already known as meticulous, stringent observers of every single detail of the Law — that we will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Again, that is the standard. If we do not meet it, then we will never enter into heaven.
And although you rightly emphasize that God is loving and merciful, if you are to be fair, you must also emphasize that God is righteous and just. It is only fair that He punish sin. Otherwise, evildoers will get away with committing evil. Murders will get away with murder. Thieves will get away with stealing. Adulterers, child molesters, and the like will get away with adultery and child molestation. Imagine living in a world like that! We could not. Our very hearts cannot but cry out against a comparatively harmless wrong, such as when someone cuts us off on the road, or we are yelled at for no apparent reason. We cry out for justice in an unjust world. But although life is unfair, thankfully, God is not. Would we want it any other way?
Going back to Solomon, if you remember, that is what he was getting at as well. Let me quote Ecc. 12:13-14 once more: “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.” At this point, I want to emphasize the latter half of the sentence, “For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.” God is all-seeing, and all-knowing, and God will bring every deed we do or do not do into judgment. And the connotation is that we must so live our lives, so fear or reverence God and keep His commandments, as to be ready and prepared for the coming judgment. And if we do not meet His standard of perfection, if we fail in one little point of obedience to Him, then we will be deemed imperfect. James testifies to the same truth, “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it” (James 2:10). Worse, if we have sinned, then it is only fair that God punish us.
> I have to be very careful choseing my words when I
> talk/write to you.
Please, just be yourself, and I’ll be myself. Of course, in general, it’s good to be as precise as possible and to choose our words carefully when we speak. But at the same time, I hope preciseness of words, etc., doesn’t come at the cost of simply being yourself and saying what is on your mind. I mean, I’m not a “word” police officer that’s out to throw people who forget to cross their t’s and dot their i’s into “precision prison” or something! And certainly I myself am exceedingly inadequate when speaking; I tend to mutter a lot and go off on tangents and that sort of thing. So please don’t feel intimidated by me — I’m honestly super duper unimpressive, most especially when I try to use words!
> I know it can be shown to you (in the bible) why we believe
> that Mary had no other children. Example, the brothers of
> Jesus that are spoken of could have been sons of Joseph.
Do you mean that they could have been sons of Joseph by a different woman, i.e., wife, than Mary? There’s no mention Joseph fathered children by another woman in the Bible. In fact, Joseph, Jesus’ earthly father, entirely disappears in the Gospel accounts after Jesus matures into adulthood (as far as I remember, we hear no more of Joseph after the opening chapters) while Mary, Jesus’ mother, is seen to follow Jesus throughout His ministry. So it’d make more sense to say that they could have been sons of Mary by a different man. But then that would still mean Mary was no longer a virgin.
Also, it’s interesting to me that John 2:12 states, after Jesus performed the miracle of transforming the water into wine at a wedding feast in Cana, “After this he [Jesus] went down to Capernaum, with his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there for a few days.” This is interesting to me because it is a verse which distinguishes between Jesus’ brothers and Jesus’ disciples. My question would be, why the distinction, if, for example, brothers and disciples are two different terms for the same thing, as some have argued? And, as far as I understand, the phrase is not suggesting “Jesus’ brothers, that is, His disciples.” No, it seems very clear that the “and” separates and distinguishes between Jesus’ mother, Jesus brothers, and Jesus’ disciples.
In addition, the fact that Jesus’ mother and Jesus’ brothers are mentioned alongside one another here seems possibly to indicate that they were Jesus’ brothers by Jesus’ mother, Mary. It would at least be a valid interpretation, I think.
The only obscure point that I notice in the verse is that the term “brothers” might in fact be a generic term for “brothers and sisters.” It’s like in the French language: if there is a mixed company or group of males and females, so long as there is a single male in the group, then the group is described in the masculine. For example, in a group of 10 people, let us suppose there are nine women and one man. If you were to talk about the group in the third person plural, that is, “They are cool,” then you would say, “Ils sont cool.” In French, there are two words for “they”: ils and elles. Ils is masculine and elles is feminine, just like Elle Magazine. But if there are nine women and one man, the French would not use elles, even though the women outnumber the men, but rather they would use ils, simply because when there is one man in the group, then the group is described in the masculine. From what I understand, New Testament Greek is similar in this regard.
> I have never heard that we belive that you must be members of
> the Catholic Church to go to heaven!! I have heard just the
> opposite and from a Priest.
Well, I do apologize for the mistake; please let me see if I can’t better rephrase what I want to say. Before 1962, when the Second Vatican Council, or Vatican II, began their first session, the Catholic Church did not believe Protestants or those of other religions could, generally speaking, be saved (there were possible exceptions, but in general this was the case). In fact, Protestants were considered heretics and schismatics, and thus condemnation was more the order of the day than not.
However, after Vatican II, and perhaps influenced overmuch by some measure of guilt for the Holocaust and the increasingly politically and socially liberal atmosphere of the 1960s, the Catholic Church did an about face (or more charitably, allowed the “exceptions” I mentioned in the previous paragraph equal footing with the view that one needed to be part of the Catholic Church to be saved): Protestants and those of other religions were “accepted.”
Nevertheless, Protestants seem to be considered “children” churches to the Catholic Church’s Mother Church, as Lumen Gentium (15) explains: “In all of Christ’s disciples the Spirit arouses the desire to be peacefully united, in the manner determined by Christ, as one flock under one shepherd, and He prompts them to pursue this end. Mother Church never ceases to pray, hope and work that this may come about. She exhorts her children to purification and renewal so that the sign of Christ may shine more brightly over the face of the earth.” Apparently, Mother Church wants to swallow up “her children” into herself like Cronos swallowing his own.
And nevermind that the Bible calls the Church the Bride of Christ, and nowhere mentions the Church as a mother figure.
At any rate, it was only within the last 50 years, give or take, that the Catholic Church more seriously considered outsiders on par with its own members in terms of salvation. Perhaps in another 50 years, or 500 years, or who knows how long, one need no longer believe in God to be saved, since there is a current strain in Catholicism which allows for those who sincerely seek God by seeking to live a good life entrance into heaven. I know several atheists who are fairly “good,” whatever that means.
Honestly, though, it’s a slippery slope. Perhaps it would’ve been better to have stuck with semper eadem.
> I do not know anything about St. Peter’s marriage status.
Fortunately, the Apostle Paul does!
Let me quote 1 Corinthians 9:1-7. But to set the context, let me describe what’s happening here. Paul is addressing the Corinthian Christians and defending himself against accusations that he is not a “real” apostle. This is what he says: “Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are not you my workmanship in the Lord? If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. This is my defense to those who would examine me. Do we not have the right to eat and drink? Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living? Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard without eating any of its fruit? Or who tends a flock without getting some of the milk?”
Embedded in Paul’s defense of himself as a true apostle of Jesus Christ, we find the quote, “Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?” We see here that “the brothers of the Lord,” “other apostles,” and finally “Cephas” apparently have wives. Now the question is, who is Cephas? John 1:42 gives us the answer, “Jesus looked at him and said, ‘So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas’ (which means Peter).”
Cephas therefore is Peter. And yes, Paul is stating that Peter had a wife.
By the way, notice also the phrase “the brothers of the Lord.” Either it is referring to Christian brothers in a general sense, or it is referring to the Lord’s actual, physical brothers. I just wanted to point this out in reference to your previous statement about Mary’s virginity.
> I love my faith and enjoy the traditions of the Church.
Well, this may come as a surpise, but I find enjoyment in the traditions of the Catholic Church, too. From the kneeling at the pews, and other motions through the liturgy, to the point the priest asks the laity to receive the holy communion, well, that’s quite enjoyable. And the music! It can be quite good at times. Moreover, I would probably thoroughly enjoy living the life of a priest (okay, maybe not the celibacy bit). A life of studying the Scriptures, counseling others, and “feeding the flock,” yes, these, I think, I could enjoy.
But the fact that I enjoy something does not mean that God is pleased that I practice them. Not that my enjoyment means nothing, but if my enjoyment is displeasing, or worse, despicable, to God, then what does my enjoyment mean?
> Jesus was a Jew and practiced traditions. Goodness,
> traditions are what makes us unite in culture, family as
> well as in faith.
Yes, and there is nothing wrong with traditions, per se. The question we must ask of all traditions, however, is, do they have any basis for practice in the Bible? If so, then well and good. But if not, then we need to reconsider their value and worth. In all ways, we must evaluate traditions in light of the Holy Scriptures.
> I still wish you would speak to a Priest.
I’d like to, if I have the opportunity. But please know I have spoken to many priests in the past.
Also, I’m sorry if my words, especially towards the end, were a little too much in jest. It was getting to be longer than I expected, and, well, you know me! I can’t stand not having a little bit of fun here and there. 
So please, I do beg your forgiveness if I’ve offended you anywhere. What we’re talking about is entirely serious and I do want to be serious.
Thus I do want to softly press upon you the importance of what I’ve said. Again, perhaps what I’ve said has come across to you the wrong way, or offended you, or worse. I want to reiterate my sincerest apologies. But if God would be pleased for you to overlook my faults, and my errors, either in facts and/or in language, and you could see pass my deficiencies, and look at my main message, I would be grateful.
It is: Ask yourself, that is, really ask yourself, in all seriousness, “What must I do to be saved?” And ask God, “Can someone as sinful as I am even be saved?”
And now, please allow me to close by saying this: it greatly matters what we believe, not only because what we believe effects how we live, but also because what we believe effects how we die.
For me, the true faith must also be a practical faith. After all, what will you say when you are on your deathbed? When the prospect of heaven and hell are open before you?
Will you say, “I believe I will go to heaven because my good works outweigh my bad works”? But how do know whether you have done more good than bad in life? I don’t know about you, but I hardly even remember half the things I did a week ago let alone all the things I’ve done in my life!
Or will you say, “I believe I will go to heaven because I am ‘basically’ a good person”? But how do you know that you are good? Have you ever lied? Then what does that make you? Have you ever spoken malicious words of gossip? Then what does that make you? Have you ever stolen anything? Then what does that make you? And on and on we go.
Or again, will you say, “I believe I will go to heaven because God is loving and will save me in spite of myself”? But do you not also know that God is just and fair, and must, if He is to be just and fair, condemn that which is wrong?
Or, “I believe I will neither go to heaven nor hell, because I am not perfect, but neither am I entirely imperfect; therefore, I believe I will go to purgatory until such a time as I am cleansed of my imperfections; only then will I be ushered into heaven”? How do you know that such the state known as purgatory truly exists? Can you count on it? Will you debate theological points when you are about to die?
Or still yet, “I believe in the Catholic Church! That is, I believe that what the Catholic Church does in administering the sacraments to me, from baptism to last rites (anointing the sick), from my cradle to my grave, is sufficient for me to enter into heaven”? Where then is your faith? Is it not in the Catholic Church? And who does the Catholic Church consist of? Priests, laity, and the like. So then your faith is in people, i.e., in the collective group of people known as the Catholic Church? I have no problem trusting people with a great many things, most especially if they are my close friends. To trust my friends in even the most important matters such as with my home or my money or babysitting my children is one thing, but to trust my friends in matters such as only God can judge, to trust them with my eternal destiny, with the salvation of my very soul, to trust them to be able to carry me to heaven on a pallet made by human hands, is an entirely different matter — for they too are but fallible human beings who have never looked upon God’s face. I would rather place my whole trust upon the One Who has both seen God and come to save men in the form of a Man.
I hate to sound morbid. But these are weighty matters. I cannot think of anything more serious and more weighty to a person than the prospect of death — which, last I checked, occurs to 1 out of every 1 person. But ultimately, the question you need to answer for yourself is, what reason or ground of hope do you have to enter into heaven when you have passed from this life into the next? Without a sufficient basis for such a hope, the answer you will receive from the Judge once you stand before God will be far more morbid than anything I can now utter.
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