Q My wife and I have been married 66 years. She is Catholic, I am not, but I want to join the church if that’s possible. We have gone to Mass together through all those years, except when I stayed home with our young children so she could go.

She now has Alzheimer’s disease, but I still take her every Sunday. She doesn’t want to walk up to Communion anymore. I offered to go up with her, but she says no. She’s never alone.

Can you help me? What do I need to do to become Catholic? (Virginia)

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The Swiss Guards have the colorful uniforms and the heroic legends, but the Vatican police and firefighters have the ancient church.

Actually, the Church of San Pellegrino inside the Vatican once belonged to the Swiss Guards and still is decorated with the coat of arms of each commander of the corps from 1517 to 1982.

Q A few weeks ago, near our daughter’s home, we attended a church with a Communion rail, the first one I’ve seen in many years. With people receiving Communion almost all the time standing, the rails are obviously no longer necessary. But we wondered, when did the rule that Catholic churches need a Communion rail cease? Why would this church have one? (Florida)

Writing copy for commercials at a local television station was my first job out of college.

I wrote promos for upcoming TV programs and public service announcements for such organizations as the Red Cross and the public library. I once prepared ad copy for a furniture store that sold its sofas, chairs and beds dirt cheap. The familiar jingle that opened each commercial from time immemorial was, “If you want to pay more, shop at any other store.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — In late July, a young woman was removing books from shelves in the Vatican Library and vacuuming the dust off of them, one by one.

Scholars have not had access to the library’s 1.6 million books, hundreds of thousands of manuscripts, or its coin and medal collections since 2007, when the absolute-silence rule in the library’s reading rooms was replaced with the ruckus of jackhammers, drills and cement mixers.

When you reach 75 years old, you need only two words in your vocabulary: “Thank you!” Gratitude is the real mark of genuine maturity, of spiritual health. This wisdom comes from Morris West, author of A View from the Ridge: The Testimony of a Twentieth-Century Christian. West is quick to concede that life is filled with hurts and disappointments, making gratitude very difficult to achieve.

Q Our daughter tells us a priest advised her that it is all right to receive Communion in a church of another denomination; also that she does not need to go to Mass if she attends services in another non-Catholic church. My wife and I question this. Is she correct? (Michigan)

Some parishes, although rural and small, are alive and vibrant with parish activity that goes far beyond the Sunday weekend Mass schedule. Usually these parishes share their pastor with one or more other parishes. The parishioners have come to understand how important it is to assist the pastor with parish responsibilities and have come forward to volunteer in areas such as, sacramental preparation, visiting the sick and homebound, training liturgical ministers, music ministry for liturgies, social justice issues, business administration, financial issues and many more areas of parish life.

Marlene Mulford, chancellor and director of pastoral planning, answers some frequently asked questions about the 2010 Parish Pastoral Plan.

I remember how the midday sky would turn ominously black and a sultry stillness would pervade the charged air.

I was just a kid growing up on a Midwestern farm, but even children knew how tornado weather felt. I still get that tightening in my stomach as I remember Dad surveying the flat Nebraska landscape for funnel clouds. You looked at the bottom of the black cloud, where a border showed evidence of daylight beneath, and if a funnel formed, it would drop malevolently down through the blackness and be silhouetted against the lighter sky below.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Commissioning another statue for Vatican City might sound like overkill in a place where thousands of sculpted figures crowd the landscape.

Q I am Catholic and my wife is not. For several personal reasons, we were married outside the church. We’ve discussed convalidation of our marriage, and my wife has expressed interest in the Catholic faith, which has led us to discuss the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults with our parish director of religious education.

We’re told that before she can be baptized and received into the church, we must validate our marriage. This makes me ask: What happens when a married couple, neither of whom is Catholic, go through the RCIA? Is their marriage validated by the RCIA process? Or, what happens when only one spouse goes through the RCIA if neither is Catholic? Is there a similar validation issue? (Indiana)

Physical well-being is both a medical and a spiritual concern.

It’s amazing how the mind can affect bodily health. Those who allow themselves to wallow in fear and self-pity will always feel emotionally drained. This leads to imaginary ailments and a state of joylessness.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — When the inside history of U.S.-Vatican relations is finally written, one of the more surprising chapters might be the role played by the Knights of Columbus.

Q Some time ago, you claimed in your column that the apostles did not write the Apostles’ Creed. A recent article disagreed. Each part of the creed, it said, was written by one of the apostles before they separated to go their separate ways as missionaries. Who is right? (New York)

This year’s annual Memorial Day Concert in Washington was far different than the first one I attended in the1980s! Then, we would picnic on the Capitol lawn in a free and easy atmosphere. Now, people pass through dozens of metal detectors to access the lawn.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Throughout his five-year pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI has made some of his most interesting comments off the cuff, often during question-and-answer sessions with priests.

Q  During this past Easter season, the pastor of our parish talked about Mary Magdalen, how she was close to our Lord, and that she is often called a reformed prostitute, which he said is not true. That’s news to me. I seem to recall the Gospel calls her a repentant sinner who loved Jesus because he forgave her. In fact, I’m sure I’ve heard her referred to as the sinful woman in the Bible. (Louisiana)

Q Our 26-year-old daughter died a year ago after a 15-month bout with oral cancer. I really believed in the power of prayer. My confessor urged me to pray to Padre Pio without ceasing, which I did, along with prayers to numerous other saints. She was also included in lots of prayer chains and Masses. But she never had any good news. When it became evident she would die, I stopped praying.

Since then I can’t pray for anything because I don’t think it will do any good. Whatever will happen is God’s will. I’ve always urged others to pray, but I can’t anymore.

Can you please tell me why I should pray, like to a saint, if they can’t intervene? It’s just what God wants. (Ohio)

Inspiring and admirable best describe the exhibit Women and Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington. A more awesome collage of the work, devotion and enormous impact women religious have on church and nation cannot be found!

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The Roman Inquisition and the Index of Forbidden Books obviously do not represent the brightest chapters in Catholic history, but newly published documents from Vatican archives should help scholars distinguish between the truth and the dark legends.

Q I am a former Protestant, now Catholic for 10 years. I’ve come to realize there are fundamentalists and zealots in every denomination.

Recently, in the Easter season, I saw a film and was honestly mortified. It described the graces one receives on Mercy Sunday (Sunday after Easter) as essentially an eighth sacrament, how people must say certain prayers exactly in a specific format to receive the graces of God’s mercy.

When do promoters of these “devotions” go too far and become just another extreme group? (New York)

It was my turn to serve as leader during morning office at our Mother of Good Counsel Home convent community. At the end of a chanted psalm, I stood to read the prayer.  

On May 9, our nation celebrated Mother’s Day. It’s highly fitting that we stop, at least one day a year, to express our gratitude to and for our mothers, because so often so many children can take their mothers for granted the rest of the year. It’s also a day to contemplate the inestimable good of motherhood, which is always less appreciated than individual mothers. 

“Remember, man, that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.”

As I celebrate the Easter Season and reflect on this past Lenten season, these words have a special meaning for me. In Genesis, Scripture tells how God created the earth, and springing forth from the earth, every kind of grass and seed bearing plant and fruit. From the earth God created all the animals, fish and birds of the sky. God also created from the earth man and woman and gave them dominion over all things of the earth.

Q At our parish Why Catholic? meeting, we discussed your recent column on guardian angels. Everyone disagreed with your statement that while the doctrine of personal guardian angels is a “rich and joyful treasure of our Catholic heritage, it is not an ‘article of faith,’” and acceptance of that belief is not an essential of Catholic life.

Scripture (Psalm 91 and Hebrews 1:14, for example) and the liturgy (feast of the Guardian Angels, Oct. 2) both proclaim the existence of guardian angels, as does the Catechism of the Catholic Church (No. 336). You should correct your statement that this dogma is not an article of faith. (New Jersey)

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — With workshops such as “Benedict XVI, sexual abuse and The New York Times” on the program, it wasn’t surprising that a conference of Catholic communicators in Rome provoked more interest than usual this year.

But those expecting a round of media-bashing were disappointed. Most of the April 26-28 discussion focused on how the church itself should be more transparent, more proactive in communicating and more journalist-friendly if it wants to get its message out on clerical sex abuse.

As two students of St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa., reported their experience of working with the “dump people” in Guatemala, the idea “ruined for life” coursed through my mind.

Dump people reside in garbage dump areas where they live on what they can find there.

Q I sometimes send the family of a deceased friend a card promising a Mass intention. Someone died recently who was not Catholic, but a good Christian and friend. Is it all right to send a Mass card for him, or would it offend the family or be in poor taste? (Louisiana)