Author: Kevin Wondrash

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Kevin Wondrash

The blessings of God throughout our lives

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,

I hope that this summer has been as blessed for each of you as it has for me. As if it couldn’t get any better as we enter this week, I am preparing to spend time with our outstanding seminarians. Hopefully many of you have had a chance to meet some of the great men studying to give their lives in service to you, through Christ and His Church. Please keep them in your prayers, along with several new young women from our diocese who are entering into religious life this year.

In terms of our seminarians, I’d ask that you also give special consideration to offering what financial support you can to our St. Joseph’s Fund for seminarian education. When all is said and done, we may have 32 men studying for the Diocese of Madison. With the blessing of these outstanding men comes the responsibility of paying for their formation and education.

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Kevin Wondrash

Ethical Use of Ventilators

Making Sense out of Bioethics column by Fr. Tad Pacholczyk

The use of ventilators can pose particularly challenging problems during end of life situations for families.

When should we place a loved one on a ventilator? If somebody is on a ventilator, can we ever “pull the plug?”

Understanding our moral duty depends upon whether the use of a ventilator in a particular case can be considered “ordinary” or “extraordinary.”

Ordinary treatment

Ordinary interventions can be understood as those medicines, operations, and treatments that offer a reasonable hope of benefit for the patient and that can be obtained and used without excessive pain, expense, or other significant burden. Use of a ventilator will sometimes satisfy these criteria, and other times it will not, depending on the specifics of the patient’s situation.

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Kevin Wondrash

‘Vision’ becomes better with age

Grand Mom column by Audrey Mettel Fixmer

One of the benefits of aging is that our vision improves so much.

What? You say you have more trouble reading the fine print on prescription bottles? And you need stronger light bulbs and magnifying glasses?

Oh, sure, but that’s not the kind of vision I’m thinking about. I’m thinking of hindsight. You know, they always say that hindsight is 20-20.

So here’s what’s so great about it. We have perspective now. We can look back at the things that drove us crazy with worry, like a messy house when guests arrived. But now we know that it was never the picture-perfect house that mattered, but the warmth of our hospitality.

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Kevin Wondrash

Freedom to give ourselves to God

Dear Friends,

This past week, on Friday, we had a very well attended liturgy and I’d like to recall the three areas we covered, for each of them is tied together and each of them is worthy of your attention.

First of all, we celebrated the great Feast of SS. Peter and Paul, a major feast of the Church, and then we had the festive ordination of two great young men, a moment of tremendous joy for our diocese, and lastly, we marked the major liturgical celebration of our “Fortnight for Freedom,” as we prayed for the preservation of religious liberty and freedom, with God’s help.

First, I spoke of the Feast of SS. Peter and Paul. Pope Benedict XVI remarked, in his homily for this feast, that the fraternity of Peter and Paul was really something remarkable. It was interesting to see how well our readings for the Feast of Peter and Paul worked, and as we celebrated the Fortnight for Freedom — for both of the first two readings had statements about the freedom of those two great apostles. The First Reading (Acts 12:1-11) spoke of how Peter was freed for his apostolic ministry by the direct intervention of the Lord’s angel, and in the Second Reading (2 Tim. 4:6-8, 17-18) Paul thanks God because he has been given the freedom to “fight the good fight,” and that “the Lord rescued him from the lion’s mouth.”

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Kevin Wondrash

The priest: in persona Christi

Real Life Cathoic by Christopher Stefanick

I met a young priest in Fairfax, Va., last week. Of course “young” is a relative term. Everyone around me gets younger with each passing year.

Father Jaffe had been at the parish for less than a week and was the priest on call for the local hospital. It was 2 a.m. when his pager went off. A couple had lost their eight-year-old son hours before and the mother wouldn’t let go of his body.

All attempts of the staff and hospital chaplain to get her to release her son had failed. She sat rocking him, unresponsive to anyone. The woman wasn’t Catholic, but the staff knew from experience that it was time to call in a priest.

When the newly ordained 26-year-old arrived, he did the only thing that came to mind. He sat with the parents in silence for a moment and said, “It looks like you need some prayer.” He opened his rite book, The Pastoral Care of the Sick to the section with the prayers for the deceased and he began to pray aloud.

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Kevin Wondrash

Funerals: Not a time for remorse but celebration

Grand Mom column by Audrey Mettel Fixmer

When I was a kid back in the 30s and 40s, Grandma often came for a visit, always dressed in black, and usually it was a funeral that brought her to town.

I thought that was so weird. Did she enjoy funerals? Was that the only thing on her social calendar?

Well, guess what? I’ve arrived at that age when I open the paper first to the obituary page. First I check out to see if there’s someone I know. Then, I average the ages to see how I’m doing.

On a good day I’m younger than any of them. On a bad day I’m older. Too often, it seems, I find a friend has passed and I feel a stab of pain for the spouse and I want to express my sympathy and attend the funeral.

Final salvation at last

When I recently attended the funeral of my dear friend Betty, it occurred to me that funerals are really good for us seniors. They remind us of our own mortality, of course.

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Kevin Wondrash

Serving the Truth to the world

Editor’s Note: The following is a copy of Bishop Morlino’s Homily for the celebration of the Ordination to the Diaconate of Rev. Mr. Vincent Brewer and Rev. Mr. Garrett Kau, for the Diocese of Madison.

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.

We know that the Holy Spirit hovers over this celebration tonight and that in just a few moments, the Holy Spirit is going to rush onto your souls and He’s going to change you, Vince and Garrett, into the person of Jesus Christ, the servant. This will be a lifelong change at the deepest level of your soul and you will be very different when you go to sleep tonight, than you were when you woke up this morning. And if you had moments of nervousness about this today, they will disappear, as the Holy Spirit will take up residence at the deepest level of your soul, in a whole new way — and it really is a big deal!

In the Second Reading, from the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 8:26-40), we heard the Ethiopian eunuch reading from the Prophet Isaiah, and talking about Jesus, the suffering servant. Of course, the identity of the diaconate is all about being servant — servant of the Word, and servant of charity. It’s a very interesting description that we have of the servanthood of Jesus, this description of the suffering servant.

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Kevin Wondrash

The hidden power in our suffering

Making Sense out of Bioethics column by Fr. Tad Pacholczyk

In a 1999 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, patients with serious illness were asked to identify what was most important to them during the dying process.

Many indicated they wanted to achieve a “sense of control.” This is understandable. Most of us fear our powerlessness in the face of illness and death.

We would like to retain an element of control, even though we realize that dying often involves the very opposite: a total loss of control, over our muscles, our emotions, our minds, our bowels, and our very lives, as our human framework succumbs to powerful disintegrative forces.

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Kevin Wondrash

Fatherhood and the sacredness of life

The upcoming celebration of Father’s Day on Sunday, June 17, is a fitting time to examine the irony that in our current culture, fatherhood is rarely mentioned.

When mentioned at all, fathers are mocked or portrayed negatively. Some movies and stories downplay the role of the father in a child’s life, yet simultaneously portray the child as suffering from the father’s inability to live up to that role.

Protect both mother and child

In reality, the nobility and significance of fatherhood remain a powerful witness in the lives of those who have had the opportunity to grow up with a present and caring father. And there are, of course, profound stories and testimonies to counter the culture’s defeatist attitude towards fatherhood.

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