On a sunny Thursday morning in late June, dozens of teens made their way downstairs to the parish hall at St. Bernard Parish in Middleton. They just spent the fourth of five nights sleeping on the floor of a classroom. While it doesn’t sound like a fun way to spend part of their summer vacation, they love it.
Tag: youth
At Camp Gray, ‘awesome’ is normal
By Thursday afternoon, things were in full swing at Camp Gray. Campers, ranging in age from second-graders to young adults who just finished high school, spent the last few days growing closer to God together and having fun together.
World Youth Day in Rio de Janiero
MADISON — The […]
Lebanese youth await participation in Vatican’s Way of the Cross
BEIRUT (CNS) — When a committee of Catholic youth in Lebanon set out to compose the meditations for the Way of the Cross, they had no idea that a new pope would preside over the Good Friday service at Rome’s Colosseum.
By custom, the pope invites a cardinal or an ecclesial community to prepare the meditations. This year is the first that young people of a particular country were asked to participate. Pope Benedict XVI invited the youth of Lebanon to participate through Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rai, who was named a cardinal in November.
Matthew 25 and Madison Square
MADISON — So. It’s Autumn. How did you live your faith this summer? Mass? Good. Eucharistic Adoration? Going on retreat? Personal prayer time? Terrific. Love Begins Here and other Mission Trip experiences? Great.
Farmers Market? Fabulous.
Wait. Farmer’s Market?
Yes. Farmer’s Market.
Exercising isn’t just for the ‘young’ anymore
“If I knew then what I know now” is a common opener for us senior citizens.
It is especially appropriate for things involving health care . . . the benefits of regular exercise, for example.
Granted, our Mamas got lots of exercise hanging out laundry, the Papas didn’t have power lawn mowers, and the kids didn’t get rides to school. Everybody walked everywhere.
Playtex or Jack LaLanne?
I just wish I had heard about exercise during my childbearing years in the late 40s and early 50s.
I expected to get back into shape by pulling on a Playtex rubber girdle. (Oh, the memory of sweating through that one!)
Catholic schools: Faith, academics, service
“Why do we have Catholic schools?” I mean really, why do we have Catholic schools? It’s a question I hear much too often.
Yet it is a question that I am passionate about answering, not just because I’m the superintendent, but because I’ve experienced Catholic schools as a student, a parent, a teacher, and an administrator, and I am completely, totally, and unequivocally convinced that Catholic schools are awesome!
Catholic school students encouraged to respect everyone
Catholic Schools Week begins on Sunday, Jan. 29, and ends on Sunday, Feb. 5. Catholic schools typically celebrate Catholic Schools Week with Masses, open houses, and activities for students, families, parishioners, and the wider community.
The Catholic school builds upon the relationship with God, knowledge, values, and community that the student experiences at home. In no. 2204 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it says, “the Christian family constitutes a specific revelation and realization of ecclesial communion and for this reason it can and should be called a domestic Church.” Good families teach us to respect God and each other.
The cardinal Down Under
In the Baltimore of the 1960s, my canny pastor devised a neat scheme for getting “Father Visitor” (as the confessional doors read) to fill in during the summer for his vacationing curates: bring over newly-ordained Australians from their studies in Rome.
There were no language issues (save for those of, er, accent); by the standards of student priests fresh from the Urban College of Propaganda Fidei, the young Aussies were recompensed handsomely and got to see something of the United States; it was win-win, all around.
Thus in the summer of 1967 I met Fr. George Pell of Ballarat, who, with the oils of ordination still wet on his forehead, spent several months at my parish before embarking on doctoral studies at Oxford.
Young adults excited about faith
For many years, the Catholic Church on campus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has drawn a very large crowd of young adults for a night of catechesis, prayer, and community on Thursday nights.