You have 3 blocks to choose from...

main_multi_content - embed any kind of content, with full category, select, and filter support
main_cc_embed - actually this is what the catalogues use in v10 (it's embedded in category screens)
main_include_module - include any screen as a block

Actually to elaborate, I have a list of abilities which some of the entries in the main catalogue share, so was trying to think of a way to do this. I decided creating a catalogue for the abilities made sense, but as I stated above the most I can do is provide a link to those abilities. Given they are single sentences, I was hoping there would be way to output the sentences directly in the view.

I think you're saying you want catalogue reference fields to embed the foreign entry they are referencing rather than just linking to it.

I'll add a new issue for that.

Yep, thanks for explaining what I couldn't :)