“Whoa!”
That was the simple word of exclamation uttered by a young girl as she entered St. Mary Church in Fennimore on a recent Sunday morning.
Author: Kevin Wondrash
Rite of Election and Call to Continuing Conversion
WAUNAKEE — The Rite of Election of Catechumens and Call to Continuing Conversion for Candidates for Full Communion in the Catholic Church will be celebrated by the parishes of the Diocese of Madison on Sunday, March 9, at 3 p.m. at St. John the Baptist Church in Waunakee.
Parishes come together to celebrate the life of Venerable Father Mazzuchelli
The priesthood of Venerable Fr. Samuel Mazzuchelli lasted just more than 30 years, from his ordination in 1830 until his death on February 23, 1864.
Pray, examine conscience, guide others
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| This column is the bishop’s communication with the faithful of the Diocese of Madison. Any wider circulation reaches beyond the intention of the bishop. |
Dear Friends,
This week we’ll have come upon Lent and in that regard I’d like to ask a few things:
1) Let’s keep one another in prayer. Please know that you can count on my prayers, just as I renew them for every person in the diocese, every blessed day, and I’d ask that you try to remember me as well.
2) If you would, please go back and read my columns from the past two weeks — on conscience and fraternal correction (they’re available at the Madison Catholic Herald website — www.madisoncatholicherald.org — if you’ve already discarded your previous issues).
Take some time to reflect upon them, to examine your own conscience. Spend some real time doing so this Lent, and think about what changes you can make in your own life — in accord with a conscience well-formed by the Church and oriented toward Truth.
3) Think of two people with whom you might engage personally and directly in the ways I mention in that second column. Really try to purify your intentions as you consider approaching them (do not fall into sin in carrying out this exercise!) and do so in love and with joy.
Our Holy Father, in his message for Lent, speaks of the types of poverty affecting our world. He speaks, of course, of material destitution, and he challenges us to help our brothers and sisters in that regard — and so we must!
Lenten evening of reflection for women
MADISON — Join […]
Food fair and farmer’s market in Reedsburg
REEDSBURG — To support local growers and to educate the public about sustainably-grown and locally produced foods, the Justice and Peace Commission of Diocesan Cluster 350 is holding its fourth annual “Food Fair and Farmers’ Market” on Saturday, March 8, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Sacred Heart School Gym, corner of 6th and Willow Sts.
Faith is alive during Lent on UW-Madison campus
MADISON — College students are known for “pulling an all-nighter” to stay up through the night writing a paper or studying for an exam.
For Audrey Hilts, a sophomore at UW-Madison and student leader at St. Paul Catholic Center, her first all-nighter last year was a little different.
“The night before Ash Wednesday, St. Paul’s offered all-night perpetual Eucharistic Adoration — praying with the Blessed Sacrament in the middle of the night was such a powerful way to begin Lent!”
Facing difficult moral decisions
CNN recently profiled the case of a woman named Marlise Munoz, who was both pregnant and brain dead.
Its report noted that Mrs. Munoz was “33 years old and 14 weeks pregnant with the couple’s second child when her husband found her unconscious on their kitchen floor November 26. Though doctors had pronounced her brain dead and her family had said she did not want to have machines keep her body alive, officials at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, argued state law required them to maintain life-sustaining treatment for a pregnant patient.”
Church needs ‘dynamic’ fraternal correction
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| This column is the bishop’s communication with the faithful of the Diocese of Madison. Any wider circulation reaches beyond the intention of the bishop. |
Dear Friends,
Last week in my column I talked a lot about conscience, and I’d like to pick the theme back up, as our Gospel from this past Sunday touches on that very same message.
Conscience should always drive us toward perfection. “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect (Mt 5:48),” is the parting exhortation from our Lord in this past Sunday’s Gospel. A correctly formed conscience never says to you, “How little can I do and still call myself a Catholic?”
Conscience doesn’t make us minimalistic
Conscience does not open the door to be a minimalist. It is not a tool for our saying, “How can I give myself permission to do the minimum?”
Conscience opens the door to perfection, to the heroic, to the maximum, because the well-formed conscience serves as that truth-seeking radar, by which we choose to follow the law of the Lord.
As I said, we very much need to spread the word about conscience, and the readings of this past Sunday really help us with one detail of how to do that.
If we’re going to spread the good word about conscience, that means we’re going to have to correct others, especially our brothers and sisters who are Catholic. We know that this is not easy.
What is easy, when we seek to inform the consciences of others, is to seem as if we are judging the person themselves. We have to avoid that judgment of the individual, but we must not hesitate to help them, by offering the truth about their actions.
Open houses scheduled at Lumen House
MADISON — There will be open houses and tours the next two Thursdays, Feb. 27 and March 6, from 4 to 5 p.m. at the site of Lumen House at 142 W. Johnson St.
Lumen House is a student housing project of Cathedral Parish in Madison. Residents will experience high quality apartment living within a small, supportive community.