Category: Bishop

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Bishop Robert C. Morlino, Bishop of Madison

Bishop Morlino calls canonizations a ‘special gift from God’

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,

Last week I was blessed to take part in the wonderful Canonization ceremony and Mass of Thanksgiving for St. John Paul II and St. John XXIII. The experience certainly was one of the most precious of my entire life.

I was blessed to visit Rome for the first time in the mid-’70s and God’s providence has enabled me to return a good number of times. Yet, never once have I seen Rome so crowded as it was during those days leading up to the Canonizations. More so than the crowds that might gather at a secular event such as a World’s Fair, I was reminded of the crowds that fill the streets at World Youth Days.

‘Reverential joy’ in the air

There was not only a wonderful spirit of devotion, but also a tremendous number of energetic young people who moved around the city, even through the night, attending the numerous programs and opportunities for prayer in the various churches around Rome.

 

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Bishop Robert C. Morlino, Bishop of Madison

All time belongs to Him

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,

It is always strange to prepare a column for this issue of the Catholic Herald.

As I write, it is Monday and we’ve just entered into Holy Week. When this issue arrives at your homes, it will most likely be Holy Thursday, and yet this will also serve as the “Easter issue.”

We’ve just experienced Palm Sunday, when we rejoiced and sang “Hosanna!” as Jesus rode triumphantly into Jerusalem.

So should I reflect upon those moments of worldly glory? Should I rejoice with all the gusto of Easter, knowing that you may read this in the glow of those days? Or, should I consider the darkness of Christ’s passion and death, bearing in mind that you may read this column on Holy Thursday or Good Friday?

Of course it wouldn’t be the end of the world to do any of this, and the point is not really the tension of writing this column.

We live in a world of tension

I reflect upon it though, because it’s actually the tension in which we live day-in and day-out.

For us, Christ’s life, His passion, His death, and His raising to new life all are present at once.

 

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Bishop Robert C. Morlino, Bishop of Madison

Being ‘with the Lord’

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,

“With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption (Ps 130:7).” We were reminded in the Responsorial Psalm of this past Sunday. And these are precisely the thoughts to which we should turn our minds and hearts as we come upon Holy Week, Easter, and the celebration of His Divine Mercy.

I would like to take a look briefly at the three major ideas in the above verse, “With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.”

What does it mean to be ‘with the Lord’?

“With the Lord . . .” What does it mean to be with the Lord?

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Bishop Robert C. Morlino, Bishop of Madison

Finding hope and light in the darkness

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,

“Night is coming, when no one can work,” we heard in the Gospel reading of this past Sunday (Jn 9:4).

Jesus told his disciples: do the works of God while it is still day, “night is coming when no one can work.”

No one can work and, I might add, no-thing can work. And I would suggest that night has come.

Even as we’ve just marked the Sunday that we call “Rejoice Sunday,” we acknowledge that we have to rejoice in the truth. God gives us the grace to rejoice in the truth. And the truth is that the night has come and so no one and nothing can work — but the splendid Light of the Resurrection will make that night as bright as day!

The story of the man born blind, which we encountered in the Gospel reading, is in many ways an allegory for our very own culture and our very own society. It is a culture and a society of death. A culture upon which night has descended, so nothing works.

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Bishop Robert C. Morlino, Bishop of Madison

Annual Catholic Appeal

Dear Friends in Christ,

What better place to look for the theme of this year’s diocesan appeal than to the witness of our new Holy Father, Pope Francis? His powerful example of charity will be our focus as we approach our 2014 Annual Catholic Appeal and its theme: “Beacon of Faith; Fire of Charity.”

Brothers and sisters, we are each chosen to be a Beacon of Faith to our friends, family, co-workers — a beacon radiating the light of Christ to all with whom we come into contact. Pope Francis has made clear that as the world grows darker, we must continue to strengthen our own faith; allow ourselves to be evangelized anew; to become part of the New Evangelization; and work together as one with the mission of Christ and His Church.

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Bishop Robert C. Morlino, Bishop of Madison

Pray, examine conscience, guide others

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,

This week we’ll have come upon Lent and in that regard I’d like to ask a few things:

1) Let’s keep one another in prayer. Please know that you can count on my prayers, just as I renew them for every person in the diocese, every blessed day, and I’d ask that you try to remember me as well.

2) If you would, please go back and read my columns from the past two weeks — on conscience and fraternal correction (they’re available at the Madison Catholic Herald website — www.madisoncatholicherald.org — if you’ve already discarded your previous issues).

Take some time to reflect upon them, to examine your own conscience. Spend some real time doing so this Lent, and think about what changes you can make in your own life — in accord with a conscience well-formed by the Church and oriented toward Truth.

3) Think of two people with whom you might engage personally and directly in the ways I mention in that second column. Really try to purify your intentions as you consider approaching them (do not fall into sin in carrying out this exercise!) and do so in love and with joy.

Our Holy Father, in his message for Lent, speaks of the types of poverty affecting our world. He speaks, of course, of material destitution, and he challenges us to help our brothers and sisters in that regard — and so we must!

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Bishop Robert C. Morlino, Bishop of Madison

Church needs ‘dynamic’ fraternal correction

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,

Last week in my column I talked a lot about conscience, and I’d like to pick the theme back up, as our Gospel from this past Sunday touches on that very same message.

Conscience should always drive us toward perfection. “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect (Mt 5:48),” is the parting exhortation from our Lord in this past Sunday’s Gospel. A correctly formed conscience never says to you, “How little can I do and still call myself a Catholic?”

Conscience doesn’t make us minimalistic

Conscience does not open the door to be a minimalist. It is not a tool for our saying, “How can I give myself permission to do the minimum?”

Conscience opens the door to perfection, to the heroic, to the maximum, because the well-formed conscience serves as that truth-seeking radar, by which we choose to follow the law of the Lord.

As I said, we very much need to spread the word about conscience, and the readings of this past Sunday really help us with one detail of how to do that.

If we’re going to spread the good word about conscience, that means we’re going to have to correct others, especially our brothers and sisters who are Catholic. We know that this is not easy.

What is easy, when we seek to inform the consciences of others, is to seem as if we are judging the person themselves. We have to avoid that judgment of the individual, but we must not hesitate to help them, by offering the truth about their actions.

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Bishop Robert C. Morlino, Bishop of Madison

Conscience must be a ‘Truth-seeking radar’

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,

There is a great service to humanity that is being lost. It is being lost in society and it is being treated with kid gloves even in the Church. This service is to help another person form and follow their conscience.

So lost is this service that it is very quickly becoming illegal. I wish I were speaking in exaggerated hyperbole here, but sadly I am not. To help others form their conscience means to say that this or that is wrong. And to say certain things are wrong has become very dangerous and indeed — close to illegal in our country, and already illegal in Canada.

However, it is, always and everywhere, the right and responsibility of the Church, and of parents, and of good neighbors, to witness to the law of the Lord, to speak the Truth as it is written on our hearts, and to help others to form their conscience.

In fact there is little that is more important because, as we’ll see, it is the path by which we must follow to seek and to attain the blessedness in this life and in the life to come.

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Bishop Robert C. Morlino, Bishop of Madison

Christ calls laity to be ‘salt and light’

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,

Last week I happened to be in Jackson, Mississippi (for about 36 hours). Now, why would I go there? Was it because I had never been to Mississippi, and I had never tried their particular brand of Southern cooking?

Well . . . I’ll admit that was at the back of my mind . . . but I would never had made a special trip just for that reason. I went to Jackson for the ordination of their new bishop, Bishop Joseph Kopacz.

Bishop from same home parish

Bishop Kopacz is a great priest, about four years younger than I, who grew up with me in the same home parish near Scranton, Pennsylvania — St. Anthony’s in Dunmore.

Just imagine — two bishops from the same generation from the same home parish. If you would, I’d ask your prayers for him as he begins his new ministry in Jackson.

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