Now that fifteen years have passed since I began writing the Question Time column for The Catholic Weekly and this fifth volume of questions and answers sees the light of day, it is time to write a new Introduction.

How did this whole project begin? It started in 2004 when I was Director of the Catholic Adult Education Centre of the Archdiocese of Sydney and was receiving occasional questions about the Catholic faith. I duly answered them and filed the answers in a folder on my office computer. In December of that year I was sitting with the editor of The Catholic Weekly at a lunch and offered to use this material to write a question-and-answer column for the paper. His eyes lit up because the Archbishop had asked him to find someone to write such a column and now here was someone offering to do so.

I began writing the column in January 2005 and have done so every week since then. Soon I was receiving reports of people who were cutting out the columns and pasting them on paper for future reference, or photocopying them for others. Over those first years numerous people asked if there was any plan to publish the columns as a book.

As regards the structure of the book, it seemed appropriate to arrange the questions and answers systematically by topic, following the general structure of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Thus, in all the volumes Chapter 1 deals with matters of Catholic doctrine, Chapter 2 with questions relating to the sacraments and the liturgy in general, Chapter 3 with matters of morals and Chapter 4 with questions relating to prayer and Christian devotions.

People sometimes ask if I am running out of questions. The answer is an emphatic no. I receive an envelope from The Catholic Weekly from time to time containing questions sent in by readers and from that source alone I have more questions than I can answer. But questions also come directly by email from around the country, and even from abroad, and many others come from personal conversations and from classes I give. So there is no shortage of questions.

How long can I keep this up? God only knows. I continue to write the column and all the new ones go into a folder on my computer titled Question Time 6. So my intention at present is to write long enough at least to bring that book to light. After that, we shall see.