Author: Chris Lee

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Chris Lee

Cathedral Parish plans pilgrimage

MADISON — Join the Cathedral Parish for a pilgrimage on Saturday, Nov. 8. Pilgrims will spend the day in spiritual preparation for receiving the Eucharist.

Sr. Patricia Vinje will share her reflections on prayer and guide the pilgrims through many devotions of the day. Msgr. Kevin Holmes will share his insights into the Eucharist as well as celebrate the 5 p.m. Mass when participants return to Madison.

Pilgrims will travel by motor coach to the Sauk City area and visit Valley of Our Lady Cistercian Monastery and Wollersheim Winery to learn about bread and wine production. During the visit, pilgrims will also collect both species of the Eucharist to be utilized at the Masses for that weekend. The schedule is:

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Chris Lee

St. Paul University Catholic Center kicks off new academic year

Students from St. Paul University Catholic Center in the Library Mall construction zone welcome students with free root beer floats. (Contributed photo)

MADISON — St. Paul University Catholic Center welcomed University of Wisconsin (UW) students back to school with a week of free root beer floats, followed by pizza parties, dances, and spaghetti dinners.

In a warm spirit of friendship, St. Paul’s students spread themselves across campus to draw others into a discovery of the joy of the Gospel.

Twenty-two-year old Irina Olson, who is serving this year as an intern at St. Paul’s, has a special love for Welcome Week. “No matter how many root beer floats you have, Welcome Week never gets old,” she said.

“In every scoop of ice cream is an opportunity to build a friendship that could teach someone about the love of the Lord. That makes this the most exciting of all places to be at the University of Wisconsin.”

Leaders for Christ

The St. Paul’s team focuses on the life-giving mission of bringing Christ to the heart of one of the most influential university campuses in the world.

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Chris Lee

The sciences and God

Given the ruminations of Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett, one might have thought that the absolute limit of scientistic arrogance had been reached. But think again.

Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology, has asserted that “science” is on the verge of providing a complete understanding of the universe — an explication that precludes the antiquated notion of God altogether.

Limitations of the sciences

Before addressing the God issue, let me make a simple observation. Though the sciences might be able to explain the chemical make-up of pages and ink, they will never be able to reveal the meaning of a book; and though they might make sense of the biology of the human body, they will never tell us why a human act is moral or immoral; and though they might disclose the cellular structure of oil and canvas, they will never determine why a painting is beautiful.

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Chris Lee

We the people DO have a voice in protecting all life

To the editor:

I participated in the People’s Climate March in New York City on September 21 and was grateful to return to Madison to see the Voices page in the September 25th issue of the Catholic Herald.

Tony Magliano’s piece “The truth about climate change” cites Pope Benedict’s powerful and urgent statements re: the Church’s teaching on climate change.

Stephen Kent’s article “Why not us?” urges every Christian to be a light to the world despite the failures of our government and the UN to act on global issues.

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Chris Lee

St. Thérèse Lecture answers, ‘Who is Pope Francis?’

Alejandro Bermúdez, the speaker at this fall’s St. Thérèse of Lisieux Lecture at the Bishop O’Connor Center in Madison, speaks on “Who is Pope Francis? What is his mind?” on September 19. Bermúdez is the director of ACI-Prensa, the world’s largest Catholic news agency in Spanish, as well as the executive director of Catholic News Agency. (Catholic Herald photos/Kevin Wondrash)

MADISON — On a near-autumn Friday evening in Madison, hundreds of people arrived at the Bishop O’Connor Center’s auditorium to learn more about current successor to St. Peter — Pope Francis.

It was the second of 2014’s St. Thérèse Lectures presented by the Office of Evangelization and Catechesis of the Diocese of Madison.

The topic on September 19 was “Who is Pope Francis? What is his mind?” The speaker was Alejandro Bermúdez, director of ACI-Prensa, the world’s largest Catholic news agency in Spanish, as well as the executive director of Catholic News Agency and the Portuguese agency ACI digital.

Bermúdez, who spent part of his life in Argentina, met and interviewed Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio (now Pope Francis) on several occasions. Bermúdez recently compiled a book of interviews regarding Pope Francis shortly after his election titled Pope Francis: Our Brother, Our Friend: Personal Recollections about the Man Who Became Pope, which has since been adapted into a show on EWTN.

As Bermúdez began his talk, he said Pope Francis is the next pope in a streak of “incredibly virtuous human beings at the head of the Catholic Church.”

Bermúdez outlined what he called “three crucial factors” to understanding Pope Francis: his background as an Argentinian, his background as a Jesuit, and understanding his intellectual mentors.

Pope Francis as an Argentinian

Bermúdez said Argentina has a major Catholic culture with a great number of Catholic theologians and writers. He said this creates of culture of “very lively debates” among Catholics.

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Chris Lee

La Crosse couple presenters at synod

MENOMONIE — Alice and Jeff Heinzen will not only be serving as auditors for the upcoming Extraordinary Synod on the Family that Pope Francis has called for October 5 to 19 at the Vatican but also they will make a presentation before the general assembly at the historic event.

In their main role as one of 14 married couples from around the world selected to serve as auditors for the synod, the Heinzens will observe all of the general assembly sessions and participate in group discussions with the English-speaking delegates.

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