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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,
It is wonderful to be back in Wisconsin, though I am very grateful to have had a bit of time for vacation — where the weather was a bit different from our weather here and now. Nevertheless, it is good to be home!
I’d like to bring up here a very interesting phrase that has come to the fore in recent weeks in our national life.
I once asked a young physician whether he had received any training in medical ethics during medical school. I wondered whether he had been taught how to handle some of the complex moral questions that can arise when practicing medicine.
It turned out that he had taken only one ethics class during his four years of medical school, and it was a rather loose-knit affair. For the first part of each class, he told me, students were presented with medical cases that raised ethical questions.
Back in the “old days” when I was a student at Madonna High school (early 40s) we were taught by an order of Francisan Sisters who were on their toes when it came to keeping up with the latest Church trends.
The liturgical movement had just emerged and the good Sisters endowed us with the latest in liturgical art and the best of Catholic literature.
The following are […]
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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,
As you read this letter, Christmas will be upon us and the Year of the Lord 2010 will have almost expired. As we look around the whole world, we see the violence of war and terrorism raging, we see hunger thriving in so many places as well as extreme poverty, we see senior citizens being actually or virtually euthanized and we see the slaughter of the unborn, we see God’s gift of human sexuality, naturally oriented toward unselfish love, cheapened and continually used for every kind of self-centered entertainment. It’s not a “pretty picture,” but it is a picture of this world that, we claim, belongs to God this Christmas.
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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 in Christ,
It has been a while since I’ve been able to write down here my thoughts for you in the form of a column. Know that you’ve been very much in my thoughts and prayers, especially as we come upon Christmas.
This week I’d like to share with you my homily from the wonderful Priestly Ordination we were fortunate to celebrate this past week. At this ordination the Lord blessed us with two great young men as priests and blessed me in a special way with two new sons.
I address my homily to Fr. John Putzer and Fr. Chad Droessler, but I think the words are a good reflection for all of us on the priesthood and on the great Grace with which the Lord blesses all of us:
A key argument in the embryonic stem cell debate — widely invoked by scientists, patient advocacy groups, and politicians — involves the fate of frozen embryos.
Barack Obama put it this way in 2008: “If we are going to discard those embryos, and we know there is potential research that could lead to curing debilitating diseases — Alzheimer’s, Lou Gehrig’s disease — if that possibility presents itself, then I think that we should, in a careful way, go ahead and pursue that research.”
The head of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins, embraced this same line of reasoning by
When I look at the pictures taken last year on Christmas Eve, they bring tears to my eyes and a smile on my lips.
Our family gathered as usual: eight of the 10 children and 12 grandchildren and great-grands who live in the area, not in Grandma’s house or Aunt Krissy’s, but at Countryside Nursing Home in Jefferson. Since Grandpa couldn’t join us, we joined him in the beautiful parlor with its huge fireplace and Christmas tree.
Sometimes I ask […]
MONROE — Msgr. Thomas F. Campion, 79, director of the Madison Diocese Apostolate to the Handicapped, died Friday, Nov. 12, 2010, at his home.
