The controversial president of The Catholic League shows how the Church may be the best guide for achieving long-term health and happiness. Religious Americans are by far the healthiest and happiest of any segment of the population—this is true across religions according to recent Gallup polls. Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League, goes a step further to show that Catholicism will not only make you healthy and happy, but it will ultimately lead you to heaven too.     In his latest book, The Catholic Advantage , Donohue turns his attention to the ways Catholicism is experienced by believers. He explores a simplified and practical way of looking at the faith, demonstrating how Catholic living enhances our well-being. With exciting new research and time-honored wisdom, Donohue shows how the application of beliefs, bonds and boundaries lead to a bountiful life, while the atheism, narcissism, and hedonism of secular intellectuals and celebrity culture paves the path to misery.     Donohue writes, “Catholics who have faithfully followed the precepts of their religion, and have lived a life of good health and happiness, are nicely positioned to experience even greater happiness in heaven. Anyone who bats three for three, especially given these stakes, must be doing something right.” DR. WILLIAM A. DONOHUE is the president and CEO of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organization. The publisher of the Catholic League journal, Catalyst, Donohue is also a former Bradley Resident Scholar at The Heritage Foundation and served for two decades on the board of directors of the National Association of Scholars. A formidable TV presence, Donohue has authored several books on civil liberties, social issues, and Catholicism. Chapter 1 Beliefs Perks of Prayer and Parish Those of us who are drawn to prayer have personal reasons for doing so, and while we often pray for a certain outcome, we typically don’t seek to reward ourselves with a host of residual benefits. But there are perquisites attendant to prayer; psychological and physical bonuses await the faithful. Doctors, however, are split on this issue. Indeed, many of them are conflicted about the power of religion to affect well-being. Doctors are trained, quite properly, to concentrate on matters that are empirically verifiable, thus making religious claims hard to assess. Their practice, however, allows them the opportunity to encounter situations where the power of religion cannot be discounted. For example, a study of 1,134 physicians found that 72 percent believe that miracles existed in the past, and 70 percent believe they can occur today. About the same number, 69 percent, believe religion is a reliable and necessary guide to life.1 Paul N. Duckro and Philip R. Magaletta of Saint Louis University, who have done pioneering work on the subject of religion and its healing effects, nicely capture what is happening: “Demonstrating positive outcomes of prayer is not equivalent to unmasking the mechanism by which the effects of prayer are accomplished. Studies hoping to do so necessarily enter much trickier waters.” Dr. Jeff Levin, an epidemiologist and former medical school professor, comments on their astute observation, saying, “[t]he resistance and hostility that some scientists and physicians show to this topic stem, I believe, from an unwillingness to consider explanations that undermine a strictly materialistic worldview.”2 Ironically, many of these same doctors no doubt consider themselves to be open-minded, yet they evince a bias that undercuts their presumed objectivity. Dr. Aaron Kheriaty is a Catholic psychiatrist and director of Residency Training and Medical Education in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, Irvine. He traces much of the antireligious bias in the health profession to Freud. Kheriaty maintains that the overwhelming evidence on the subject of religion and its positive impact on people’s lives demonstrates just how wrong Freud was in branding religious beliefs intrinsically neurotic. “On the contrary,” he writes, “if there is any effect on mental health, the evidence suggests that it is generally a beneficial one.”3 Therefore, to dismiss religion as inherently irrational, and void of redeeming qualities, is not supported by the data. Things are changing: more of those in the health field are open to the role religion can play in fostering desirable outcomes. For example, the number of medical schools that have courses on religion and health is considerable. One leading researcher, Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School, holds that prayer and general stress management can reduce doctor visits by up to 50 percent.4 Most patients would agree. In a national survey, it was revealed that 35 percent of respondents used prayer for health concerns; 75 percent of these prayed for wellness, and 22 percent prayed for specific medical conditions