Catholic Church
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8correct to beat the crowd
This Catholic trivia quiz has 147 free questions with answers and starts easy enough for children preparing for First Communion or a religious-education class and works its way up to questions that will stretch lifelong parishioners. The kid-friendly end covers the Advent wreath, where the ashes for Ash Wednesday come from, the Stations of the Cross, the Swiss Guard's uniform, holy water at the church door and the rosary. The harder end takes in the sacraments, the Council of Trent, the Second Vatican Council, the Immaculate Conception and papal history. It works as a classroom warm-up, a youth-group game or a family quiz on a Sunday afternoon. Every answer has been checked against the relevant Wikipedia article or an official Church source, so it is safe to use for teaching.
30 of 147 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which colour are the robes and hats worn by Catholic cardinals?
Red
Red, strictly scarlet, is said to show a cardinal's readiness to shed his blood for the faith; the pope still places a scarlet biretta on each new cardinal's head.
Q 02How many sacraments are recognized in the Catholic Church?
Seven
Seven: the list was fixed in the 12th century by the theologian Peter Lombard, whose textbook, the Sentences, became the standard, and Church councils later confirmed it.
Q 03Catholics count Peter as the first pope because Jesus promised to build his church on what?
This rock
This rock is a pun: Jesus renamed the fisherman Simon 'Peter', from the Greek for rock, and promised him the keys of the kingdom, which is why crossed keys are his emblem.
Q 04Which council, meeting on and off from 1545 to 1563, shaped the Catholic answer to the Protestant Reformation?
Council of Trent
The Council of Trent took 18 years to finish its work; among its most lasting reforms, it ordered seminaries to be set up so that future priests would be properly trained.
Q 05Whom did Pope John Paul II formally declare the patron of ecology in 1979?
Francis of Assisi
Francis of Assisi, said to have preached to the birds, wrote the 'Canticle of the Creatures', whose refrain 'Laudato si'' gave the 2015 environmental encyclical its title.
Q 06A bishop leads which unit of the Catholic Church, made up of many parishes?
A diocese
A diocese takes its name from the Roman Empire, where the word meant a block of provinces under an imperial governor; the Church borrowed it for a bishop's territory.
Q 07The term 'Eucharist' comes from a Greek word meaning what?
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving: the Greek eucharistia echoes the Last Supper accounts, in which Jesus 'gave thanks' before breaking the bread.
Q 08Which liturgical season of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving lasts 40 days in preparation for Easter?
Lent
Lent's 40 days of fasting echo Jesus's 40 days in the desert and the fasts of Moses and Elijah; in the Roman Rite it begins 46 days before Easter and ends as the Paschal Triduum opens.
Q 09Often confused with the virgin birth, the Immaculate Conception concerns whose conception, free of original sin?
Mary, the mother of Jesus
Mary, the mother of Jesus, is its subject; Franciscans championed the idea and Dominicans resisted it for centuries before the question was settled in 1854, when it was defined as dogma.
Q 10Who, with six companions, founded the Society of Jesus, also known as the Jesuits?
Ignatius of Loyola
Ignatius of Loyola was a Basque soldier until a cannonball broke his leg at Pamplona in 1521; reading saints' lives while he recovered turned him to religion, and he gathered the first Jesuits in Paris.
Q 11What is a Church tribunal's declaration that a marriage was never validly contracted called?
Annulment
An annulment declares that a valid marriage never came about, where a divorce ends one; despite a common fear, children of an annulled marriage are still counted legitimate.
Q 12In what decade did the Second Vatican Council conclude?
1960s
The Second Vatican Council, commonly known as Vatican II, met from 1962 to 1965.
Q 13The Hanukkah story comes from which books, kept in Catholic Bibles but left out of most Protestant ones?
Maccabees
Maccabees tells of the revolt behind Hanukkah; its two books are among seven that Jewish and Protestant canons leave out, which is why Catholic Old Testaments have 46 books to Protestants' 39.
Q 21The ashes used on Ash Wednesday are made by burning what?
Palm branches from last Palm Sunday
Palm branches from last Palm Sunday are burned for the ashes, so the greenery that hailed Jesus as king returns as a sign of mortality: 'Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.'
Q 22In which devotion do worshippers walk between fourteen scenes of Jesus's final journey to Calvary?
Stations of the Cross
Stations of the Cross grew up as a pilgrimage in miniature: Franciscans spread the practice so that people who could never travel to the Holy Land could follow the route in their own church.
Q 23Palm Sunday remembers Jesus riding into which city?
Q 14Catholics give dulia to the saints and latria to God alone; what does latria mean?
Adoration
Adoration: the word idolatry joins the Greek for 'image' to latreia, 'worship'; the Second Council of Nicaea drew the line in 787 when it restored icons, saying images may be venerated but adoration belongs to God alone.
Q 15Which country was the birthplace of Pope John Paul II?
Poland
Poland: born Karol Wojtyła in Wadowice, he worked in a quarry and a chemical plant under Nazi occupation while training in secret for the priesthood, and in 1978 became the first non-Italian pope in 455 years.
Q 16Excluding Saint Peter, who had the longest verifiable reign as head of the Catholic Church?
Pius IX
Pius IX reigned for more than 31 years, from 1846 to 1878; hailed at first as a liberal who freed political prisoners, he ended as the self-styled 'prisoner in the Vatican' after Italy took Rome.
Q 17Which three rites are grouped together as the Catholic Church's sacraments of initiation?
Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist
Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist: Eastern Catholic churches give all three to infants in a single ceremony, while the Western Church usually spreads them across childhood.
Q 18What does the Church call the final purification of souls who die in God's grace?
Purgatory
Purgatory was pictured by Dante as a mountain of seven terraces; the sale of indulgences that promised to shorten souls' time there helped to spark the Protestant Reformation.
Q 19The Sacrament of Confirmation is said to perfect the grace received in which other sacrament?
Baptism
Baptism and Confirmation began as a single ceremony; they drifted apart in the West because Confirmation was reserved to the bishop, who could not be present at every infant's christening.
Q 20Three of an Advent wreath's four candles are violet; what colour is the fourth, lit on the third Sunday?
Rose
Rose marks Gaudete Sunday, named for its opening word, 'Rejoice': the lighter candle signals a pause for joy in the middle of Advent's penitential violet.
Jerusalem
Jerusalem: the Gospels have Jesus ride in on a donkey while crowds spread their cloaks on the road, an arrival Matthew presents as fulfilling Zechariah's prophecy of a humble king.
Q 24Which astronomer did the Roman Inquisition sentence in 1633 for defending heliocentrism?
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei was tried by the Roman Inquisition in 1633 for defending Copernican heliocentrism in his Dialogue; he was made to abjure and spent his remaining years under house arrest at Arcetri near Florence.
Q 25Where is the holy water font usually found in a Catholic church?
At the entrance
Holy water fonts, or stoups, stand at the entrance of a church so people can dip their fingers and make the sign of the cross as they walk in, recalling their baptism.
Q 26Catholics traditionally pray to which saint for help in finding lost things?
Anthony of Padua
Anthony of Padua is said to have prayed for the return of a treasured book of psalms that had been carried off, and got it back; Jude is the patron of lost causes, Christopher of travellers.
Q 27What is Vatican City famous for being, among all the countries in the world?
The smallest
The smallest country in the world, Vatican City lies wholly inside Rome; it was created only in 1929, when a treaty with Italy ended a 59-year dispute over the popes' lost territory.
Q 28Which artist painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, where new popes are chosen?
Michelangelo
Michelangelo, who saw himself as a sculptor rather than a painter, took the job reluctantly and spent four years, from 1508 to 1512, covering the ceiling.
Q 29The Catholic feast of the Archangels on 29 September honours Michael, Gabriel and which third archangel?
Raphael
Raphael, who guides young Tobias in the Book of Tobit, joined the feast only in 1969; before that the day belonged to Michael, which is why it is still called Michaelmas.
Q 30Pope Francis, elected in 2013, was the first pope from which part of the world?
South America
South America: born Jorge Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, Francis joked on the night of his election that the cardinals had gone to the ends of the earth to find Rome a bishop.