Q.What’s an anti-pope? A. An antipope is someone who makes a false claim to be the pope, based on a process of election, installment or even self-appointment that is contrary to the Church’s laws. Historians typically recognize as antipopes only those false claimants with a significant following, such as large numbers of the faithful, powerful political backing, or some portion of the college of cardinals. Lists of antipopes compiled by scholars vary because questions have ar

Q. Is prayer more effective if it is limited in scope? A. I think the first thing we must note is that prayer is a mystery with regard to the ways it actually works. That is, the intricate, complex, often hidden ways in which God responds to a prayer, and the subtle ways in which it affects the one praying as well as the one being prayed for, are beyond our full knowing or understanding. We can’t think of prayer so much in mechanical terms. It’s not as if we can apply this mu