Columns – Page 91 – Madison Catholic Herald Archive (2001-2025)

I was pleased that the United States Supreme Court dismissed a suit brought by Michael Newdow, a Sacramento man who wanted to remove the phrase “In God We Trust” from the nation’s coins and paper currency, as well as from the fronts of our public buildings.

The argument that the gentleman brought forward was that this custom somehow violates the First Amendment guarantee that the government shall make no law either establishing an official religion or prohibiting the free exercise of religion in the United States.

The Catholic Difference

On April 9, 2015

George Weigel

Easter and evangelism: learning from St. Paul

Galatians 1:15-18 is not your basic witness-to-the-Resurrection text.

Yet St. Paul’s mini-spiritual autobiography helps us understand just how radically the experience of the Risen Lord changed the first disciples’ religious worldview, and why an evangelical imperative was built into that experience.

St. Paul’s story

Here’s the Pauline text:

Word on Fire

On April 2, 2015

Fr. Robert Barron

What ‘Whiplash’ can teach us

Over the years, there have been numerous films that feature the character of the “monster-mentor,” by which I mean an elder who forms a young apprentice through the toughest kind of tough love.

Think of Lou Gossett, Jr.’s character in An Officer and a Gentleman who puts Richard Gere’s young Navy recruit brutally through his paces; or of the awful drill instructor in Full Metal Jacket who ruthlessly prepares one young man to be a soldier, even as he leads another to commit suicide; or of Pai-Mei in Kill Bill, Vol. 2, the Kung-Fu master who brow-beats one recruit until she is able to put her fist through a four-inch thick piece of wood.

St. John Paul II and the ‘tyranny of the possible’

The reputations of the great often diminish over time. Ten years after his holy death on April 2, 2005, Karol Wojtyla, St. John Paul II, looms even larger than he did when the world figuratively gathered at his bedside a decade ago.

Tens of millions of men and women around the world felt impelled, and privileged, to pray with him through what he called his “Passover” — his liberation through death into a new life of freedom in the blazing glory of the Thrice-Holy God.

On this anniversary, as at his canonization last year, what seems most memorable about the man, at least at this historical moment, was that he refused to accommodate to the “tyranny of the possible:” the idea that some things just can’t be put right; that we’re stuck with the way things are, however much we may dislike them.

Easter’s eternal surprise

In February 1991, during Operation Desert Storm, Ruth Dillow received the sad news from the Pentagon that her son Clayton had stepped on a mine in Kuwait and was killed.

Ruth said that the grief and shock she felt was almost unbearable. For three days she wept constantly. For three days family and friends tried to comfort her, but they could not. Her grief was too great! She felt some of the grief that Mary surely experienced when her son, Jesus, was crucified.

Surprising news

After the third day, the telephone rang. “It’s just another stranger trying to comfort me,” she thought. Reluctantly, she picked up the phone. The voice on the phone shouted joyfully, “Mom, it’s me. I’m still alive! It’s me!”

Guest column

On March 26, 2015

Patrick Gorman

Baptism: Reforms of the Second Vatican Council

Patrick Gorman

Lent is a season of preparation and recollection of our Baptism. This is the seventh and final article in a series of articles reflecting upon the Sacrament of Baptism.

Our Lord’s parting words to his disciples were, “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age” (Mt. 28:19-20).

Ever since that day, that is what the Church has done.

Parental responsibilities of an only child

Q I am an only child with parents who are nearing their mid 70s.

My mother recently pointed out that some of their friends are speaking to their children about power of attorney for health and financial matters in the event of an illness or loss of capacity.

Is it automatic that I, again as an only child, should be responsible for everything? Is that wise? I am not even sure what all of that responsibility would entail.

(From a daughter in Portage).

Word on Fire

On March 26, 2015

Fr. Robert Barron

A very Christian ‘Cinderella’

Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella is the most surprising Hollywood movie of the year so far.

The director manages to tells the familiar fairy tale without irony, hyper-feminist sub-plots, Marxist insinuations, deconstructionist cynicism, or arch condescension. In so doing, he actually allows the spiritual, indeed specifically Christian, character of the tale to emerge.

It probably strikes a contemporary audience as odd that Cinderella might be a Christian allegory, but keep in mind that most of the fairy stories and children’s tales compiled by the Brothers Grimm and later adapted by Walt Disney found their roots in the Christian culture of late medieval and early modern Europe.

Making the way of the cross with Jesus

Writing a column on social justice and peace offers me plenty of timely issues to choose from. And I always truly sense from God the exact issue he desires that I write on.

I’m not claiming here any special revelation. God’s active, guiding presence is available to everyone. All we need to do is deeply trust, quietly listen, and patiently wait.

Now in my case, God knows I’m on a deadline. And almost always his Spirit graciously gives me plenty of lead time. But regarding this particular column, the Spirit seemed to be silent, that is, until I visited a parishioner at the Little Sisters of the Poor’s home for the elderly in Baltimore.

Guest column

On March 19, 2015

Chris Lee

Baptism: Immerse yourself in mystery

Patrick Gorman

Lent is a season of preparation and recollection of our Baptism. This is the sixth in a series of several articles reflecting upon the Sacrament of Baptism.

When I was studying liturgy, there was a running joke with both teachers and students — “If you don’t know the answer to a question, write down that it is a mystery” (because so much of our faith is a mystery — something which we will never understand completely in this life).

The mysteries of our faith are not like the mysteries we read. They are not a puzzle to be figured out if offered enough clues but rather realities that need to be lived and that each of us reflect upon.