In the movie Contact, the main character, Ellie, recalls a memory of her father where she asks him whether or not he thinks there is life on other worlds. “I don’t know,” he replies. “But I guess I’d say if it is just us … seems like an awful waste of space.”

Sometimes when I think of the angels it makes me a bit fearful—mostly because so many of them are in hell. Angels are, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, spiritual beings of intellect and will, created before the world as “personal and immortal creatures, surpassing in perfection all visible creatures” (#330).

Have you ever prayed for the salvation of Judas? It’s kind of a bizarre—even borderline sacrilegious—question, for no less than two reasons.