Author: Chris Lee

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Chris Lee

Name chosen for homeless day resource center

the beacon
Partners in the homeless day resource center project gather to announce its name as “The Beacon” during a press conference on May 2 in Madison. Pictured from left are: Dane County Executive Joe Parisi, Catholic Charities of Madison President and CEO Jackson Fonder, President and CEO of United Way of Dane County Renee Moe, president of J.H. Findorff & Son Inc. Dave Beck-Engel, and Madison Deputy Mayor Katie Crawley. (Catholic Herald photo/Kevin Wondrash)

MADISON — “The homeless day resource center will be known as . . . The Beacon.”

The words of Catholic Charities of Madison President and CEO Jackson Fonder marked the next step in the project to open said resource center near downtown Madison.

The name was announced at a May 2 press conference at the United Way of Dane County in Madison.

The announcement came after more than 400 people submitted naming ideas online and more than 400 people voted on the name finalists, which were: The Beacon, The Net, The Opportunity Place, and The Turning Point Center.

At the press conference, Fonder said “The Beacon” was submitted first by former Catholic Charities board member Diane Ballweg. Other people also submitted the name as an idea later in the process.

Working together

Joining Fonder at the press conference was Renee Moe, CEO of United Way of Madison.

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Chris Lee

Pride, humility, and social media

On a recent trip to Sacramento, from my home base in the LA area, I flew Southwest Airlines. In an idle moment, I reached for the magazine in the seatback pocket and commenced to leaf through it.

I came across an article by a woman named Sarah Menkedick entitled “Unfiltered: How Motherhood Interrupted My Relationship with Social Media.” The piece was not only wittily and engagingly written; it also spoke to some pretty profound truths about our cultural situation today and the generation that has come of age under the influence of the Internet.

She argues that to have swum in the sea of Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and YouTube from the time that one was a child was to live one’s life perpetually in front of an audience. Most millenials never simply had experiences; they were conditioned to record, preserve, and present those experiences to a following who were invited to like what they saw, to comment on it, to respond to it.

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Chris Lee

Thanks for support of fish fries, especially Good Friday dinner

To the editor:

On behalf of Our Lady of the Assumption (OLA) Parish, I would like to thank everyone who supported our fish fries this past season.

In particular, we would like to thank those who attended and supported the Good Friday fish dinner.  That night we served over 325 individuals and families, some of whom may not have had a good meal that day without your donations.

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Chris Lee

Fatima at 100: Story of apparitions continues to attract attention

fatima stamp
This postcard, set for release by the Vatican May 4, marks the 100th anniversary of the apparitions of Mary to the three shepherd children in Fatima May 13, 1917. (CNS photo/courtesy of Vatican Philatelic and Numismatic Office)

While conversion and prayer are at the heart of Mary’s messages at Fatima, Portugal, the miracles and unexplained phenomenon that accompanied the events 100 years ago continue to intrigue believers and nonbelievers alike.

The apparitions of Mary at Fatima in 1917 were not the first supernatural events reported there.

Two years before Mary appeared to the three shepherd children — Lucia dos Santos and her cousins, Jacinta and Francisco Marto — they saw a strange sight while praying the Rosary in the field, according to the memoirs of Sister Lucia, who had become a Carmelite nun.

“We had hardly begun when, there before our eyes, we saw a figure poised in the air above the trees; it looked like a statue made of snow, rendered almost transparent by the rays of the sun,” she wrote, describing what they saw in 1915.

The next year, Francisco and Jacinta received permission to tend their family’s flocks and Lucia decided to join her cousins in a field owned by their families.

It was 1916 when the mysterious figure appeared again, this time approaching close enough “to distinguish its features.”

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Chris Lee

Religious Life reveals real possibilities for all lives

Word on Fire
Fr. Steve Grunow

Thomas Hobbes considered human civilization as an endless war of all against all with the only viable solution being the power of the state to regulate, order, and control.

Georg Frederich Hegel postulated that existence was an experience of inescapeable dialectics, a violent collision of opposites and it was only in this state of affairs that new growth and development was possible.

Friedrich Nietzsche insisted that all is “will to power” and that it is the master of power alone that escapes the heavy hand of fate.

These ideas have all had great weight. Whether we know about them or recognize their validity or not, these ideas have shaped, formed, and defined our culture.

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Chris Lee

Diocesan women invited to attend annual MDCCW convention

FORT ATKINSON — Women of the diocese are invited to attend the 63rd annual convention of the Madison Diocesan Council of Catholic Women (MDCCW) to be held Wednesday, June 14, at St. Joseph Parish Hall and Church, 1660 Endl Blvd., here.

The Jefferson and Rock-Green Vicariates are hosting the one-day gathering, which begins with registration and continental breakfast at 8 a.m. and concludes at 3:30 p.m. The day includes a keynote speaker, Mass, catered lunch, “shareshop,” patriotic Rosary, and silent auction.

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