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Two news items from last week put me in mind of St. Irenaeus and the battle he waged, 19 centuries ago, against the Gnostic heresy.
The first was the emergence of Bruce Jenner as a “woman” named Caitlyn, and the second was a “shadow council” that took place in Rome and apparently called for the victory of a theology of love over John Paul II’s theology of the body.
About five years ago, I left a wonderful job in corporate America to join the nonprofit sector and have not looked back.
I can’t tell you exactly what it was that compelled me to make such a drastic move. Over the years I had worked with many nonprofits, mostly as a volunteer, and loved the work and people involved. It just felt like it was the right thing to do. Almost like it was a calling.
Q I am writing because I don’t know what to do about my brother.
He is in his 50s and lives with our mom who is well into her 70s. He is completely dependent on her for financial help.”Doug” has never been able to hold a job longer than a few months. He drinks heavily so I am not surprised that he can’t keep a job.
My mom feels sorry for him and states that he was never the same after he returned from military duty.
The issue is that if, or when, something happens to mom and she can no longer support him, I am not willing to pick up where she left off. I believe he is more capable than she thinks and I don’t want to become the next enabler.
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| Veronica Arntz |
To prepare for the upcoming World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia this September, the Office of Evangelization and Catechesis of the Diocese of Madison is providing a monthly series on a particular theme on marriage and family. Each theme is a chapter in the preparatory catechesis developed for the event entitled Love Is Our Mission: The Family Fully Alive, available in paperback from www.osvparish.com or for free online at www.worldmeeting2015.org
The story between God and His creation is a story of love. Being perfect in Himself, He had no need to create the universe, the animals, or even man himself.
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Recently, I spent six days at a place only about a 10-minute drive from my home, but I had entered a country as “foreign'”to my experience as Botswana or Katmandu.
I had taken up residence in Hospitalland. I was brought in for an emergency appendectomy and had to undergo a second surgery, due to complications.
Editor’s note: During this Year of Consecrated Life, this is the fifth in a series based on the Second Vatican Council’s document, Perfectae Caritatis (Decree on the Adaptation and Renewal of Religious Life) written by Abbot Marcel Rooney, OSB, former abbot primate of the Benedictine order who now resides in Madison.
This commentary on the Second Vatican Council’s Decree On the Adaptation and Renewal of Religious Life has already examined the council’s basic understanding of the role of Religious Life in the Church.
If this special vocation within the Church is to be renewed, just how would one go about that?
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Who would have predicted it? Who would have imagined on February 23, 1977, the day of his appointment as Archbishop of San Salvador, that the highly conservative Oscar Romero — who was suspicious of the Catholic Church’s involvement in political activism — would die a martyr’s death.
And that he would die for courageously defending his people against the murderous assaults of the Salvadoran government, military, and right-wing death squads.
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| Cathy Lins |
Along the mental health continuum are three major mental health states in which individuals can be located at various times in their lives.
At the “healthy” end of the continuum are individuals experiencing well-being, a state of good mental and emotional health. These individuals may experience stress and discomfort resulting from occasional problems of everyday life, but they experience no impairment to daily functioning.
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| Andy Galvin |
First in a series of articles on the World Meeting of Families to be held in Philadelphia in September.
The World Meeting of Families (WMOF) is a week-long international event of prayer, catechesis, and celebration that seeks to strengthen the bonds between families and to witness to the crucial importance of marriage and the family to all of society.
There are three parts to the WMOF: a Theological Adult Congress and a concurrent Youth Congress, the Festival of Families, and a Papal Mass.
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C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and their colleagues in the Inklings wanted to write fiction that would effectively “evangelize the imagination,” accustoming the minds, especially of young people, to the hearing of the Christian Gospel.
Accordingly, Tolkien’s Gandalf is a figure of Jesus the prophet and Lewis’ Aslan is a representation of Christ as both sacrificial victim and victorious king. Happily, the film versions of both The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia have proven to be wildly popular all over the world.
