SINSINAWA — Sr. […]
Author: Chris Lee
Blessed Sacrament students raise money ‘marching’ for hunger
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| Blessed Sacrament School in Madison second grader Jayden Wijeyakulasuriya leaps joyfully past the church during the school’s recent Hunger March. (Catholic Herald photo/Kevin Wondrash) |
MADISON — “Show an Attitude of Gratitude.”
That is the theme this school year at Blessed Sacrament School in Madison.
That is the reason more than 60 first, second, and third graders laced up their running shoes and ran or walked around the school block as many times as they could.
The occasion was the annual Hunger March held recently.
Helping at home and around the world
For almost 40 years, the march has been an opportunity for students to make the Catholic values they learn part of their everyday lives.
In recent years, the Hunger March has helped many people both locally and globally.
Proceeds from the march have gone to building a well in Africa, helping a family secure the first month’s rent of an apartment, helping Our Lady of Hope Clinic in Madison — a non-profit medical group that provides primary care services to the uninsured, as well as donating to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.
Prior to the march, the students asked parents, family members, friends, and neighbors to pledge money per lap they completed.
The march begins
As the 9 a.m. start time rolled around and the inspirational music played, the students finished their stretches and warm-ups and got ready for lap number one.
The students walked as a group for the first lap.
As they completed that lap, the students busted through a Hunger March banner and then some took off running as if they’d been waiting all day to do so.
World Meeting of Families brings together over 17,000 people
Editor’s note: Cathy Lins and Marie Lins from the Diocese of Madison attended events surrounding the recent visit of Pope Francis to the United States. Marie Lins attended the entire World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia.
The World Meeting of Families (WMOF), held from September 22 to 25 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in downtown Philadelphia, was the largest in history with over 17,000 participants and over 100 countries represented.
Catholic Charities Sunday
Dear Friends in […]
Issues beneath issues at synod 2015
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Editor’s note: George Weigel is in Rome reporting on the General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the Family.
Since Pope Francis announced that two synods would examine the contemporary crisis of marriage and the family and work to devise more evangelically dynamic responses to that crisis, a lot of attention has focused on issues of Catholic discipline.
How does the Church determine that a marriage never existed and thus grant a decree of nullity? What is to be done about the sacramental situation of divorced and civilly remarried Catholics? How does the Church best prepare its sons and daughters for marriage?
Let’s renew our commitment to defend all human life
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Pablo Casals, the great cellist and conductor, gazed at a baby and exclaimed, “You are unique. In the millions of years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. And look at your body; what a wonder it is! Your exquisite legs, your arms, your cunning little fingers. You may become another Shakespeare, Michelangelo, or Beethoven.”
St. Theresa of the Child Jesus, whose feast we celebrated on October 1, believed that people of her time feared God too much. She couldn’t understand how anyone could fear God, who came to us as a tiny helpless baby.
And yet, today there seem to be some who fear babies more than God.
The pope, the Congress, and a Trappist monk
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I had the extraordinary privilege of following the pope’s pilgrimage at very close quarters. I had this access both as a bishop and as a commentator for NBC News.
It was thrilling indeed to witness just how rapturously the American people received the pope and how affected the Holy Father was by this reception. Many images stay vividly in my mind: the pope kissing the forehead of the 10-year-old boy with cerebral palsy, the rabbi and imam praying together at the September 11th memorial, a little boy from a New York Catholic school showing the pope how to maneuver his way around a Smart Board.
Joseph Baker to be ordained in Rome
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| Joseph Baker |
Joseph Baker, a seminarian for the Diocese of Madison, will be ordained as a transitional deacon on Thursday, Oct. 1, at 9:30 a.m. at the Altar of the Chair at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York will be ordaining Baker and 39 other men from around the United States. A transitional deacon has completed his third year of theology studies and intends to be ordained as a priest.
Baker will participate as a deacon in a Mass of Thanksgiving celebrated by Bishop Robert C. Morlino of Madison on Friday, Oct. 2, at 8 a.m. in the Chapel of the Presentation at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
Baker is the son of Kay and Mark Baker, members of St. Charles Borromeo Parish in Chippewa Falls. His “home parish” is St. Paul’s University Catholic Center at the University of Wisconsin (UW)-Madison.
A graduate of Catholic schools in Chippewa Falls, Baker attended UW-Madison from the fall of 2006 to the fall of 2007. He then enrolled at St. Mary’s University of Minnesota/Immaculate Heart of Mary Seminary in Winona from the spring of 2008 to the spring of 2009.
He was selected as a Basselin Scholar at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., which he attended from the fall of 2009 to the spring of 2012. He has attended the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome from the fall of 2012 to the spring of 2015.
Parishioners from the Diocese of Madison travel to see Pope Francis
Cathy Lins, and her sister Marie, got names of families from the Diocese of Madison who were going to see Pope Francis during his visit to the United States. What follows are comments from the families and pictures they shared.
Kevin Blau family
Kevin Blau and his family, members of Divine Mercy Parish in Merimac and Sauk City, travelled to Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia for Pope Francis’ visit to the U.S.
‘Mad Men’ and the depression of Don Draper
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About four years ago, I had to take the long flight to New Zealand to give a retreat to the priests of the Diocese of Christchurch.
In order to pass the time, I brought along an iPad with the entire first season of Mad Men on it. So in one very intense period, I got immersed in the world of Don Draper, a world that I vaguely remember from my own childhood — not the booze and the affairs, of course, but the look, the feel, the colors, the way people moved and talked.