By David G Bonagura, Jr.

When I was 24, I was asked at the last minute to substitute teach a religious education class at another parish. I was not given a topic or syllabus, so I racked my brain for something compelling for this sixth-grade class. Then, eureka: I taught about Hell.

The students seemed like the typical religious education crowd: unchurched and uninterested. Yet as soon as I mentioned Hell, ears and hands shot up. They had heard about Hell and knew it as a place of punishment - but nothing more. This little bit was enough to entice them. Who, after all, isn't intrigued by thoughts of eternal punishment, everlasting fire, and evil? There's a reason Dante's Inferno is more popular than his Purgatorio and Paradiso. The stuff of Hell strikes at the gut and inflames the imagination.

In our short time together, the students asked dozens of questions, which opened doors to other topics: God and His plan of salvation, Heaven, the Ten Commandments, sin, Jesus, the Mass

The give and take between them and me made the class far more engaging than the typical method of religious ed classes: e.g., read the textbook aloud, then color something.

These students were not unique: over the years I have been peppered with questions about all things Catholic from people of all ages. And they are right to ask: the Catholic faith plums the deepest mysteries of God, of eternity, of human existence. To seek God requires asking questions. Every answer leads to another question, and every answer, no matter how brilliant, is, to paraphrase St. Thomas Aquinas, only straw compared to the infinite reality that our finite words cannot capture.

Today, with multitudes of Catholics uncatechized, unchurched, and inundated by anti-religious messaging, questions about the faith have a certain cast. First, they often begin, "How do we know that. . .?" The formulation suggests not disbelief or hostility, but puzzlement - and fear. It's as if they want to believe yet, like Thomas on Easter Sunday, they want an empirical guarantee. This refusal to trust - whether God or others - is the pox of Modernity that has destroyed faith in God and faith in reason. Modernity promised individual freedom; it instead brought paralysis and depression.

Second, many questions are shaped by a secular worldview that is hostile to Christianity. In most cases, Catholics do not realize this, but the world has a far stronger influence than the Church on how most of us perceive the faith. Compare: "Why does the Church oppose gay marriage?" versus "What is the Church's teachings on marriage?" The former implies the Church is the nasty oppressor and that gay marriage is a good thing - implications that would not arise from a Catholic worldview. We could multiple examples, especially on moral teachings: "Why does the Church oppose abortion? Artificial contraception? IVF? Human cloning? Embryonic stem cell research?"

There are other types of questions that show the secular world putting the Church on trial: "Why do Catholics think their religion is better than others?" "Why does God allow innocent people to suffer?" "Why can't women be priests?" It's no wonder that Catholics cite not believing the Church's teachings as the top reason for leaving. With the secular world driving the narrative, the deck is stacked against the Church, which cannot easily respond to these deeply embedded assumptions.

Answering these questions, then, requires more than a verbal answer. It requires providing a context, so the answers make sense. The Church's teachings on sexuality, to name one prominent example, only can be understood in light of God's plan for Creation: human beings participate in God's love through marital love, which is stamped into the physical nature of men and women. Without this context, Church teachings can seem like abstract rules instead of emanations of divine revelation.

Providing context also generates opportunity: questioners can be raised up, out of the secular murk th...