This article is excerpted from a blog post on the Camp Gray Web site. For the entire post, click here.
BARABOO — As I sit at my desk in the new Camp Gray office, surrounded by the amenities of a modern office, I am abundantly humbled. This isn’t a post about me, however. This is a post about new and old. It’s about “the Joe,” a tiny old office, and now a great retreat space and spiffy new office.
In his speech delivered at the closing of the Second Vatican Council on December 8, 1965, Pope Paul VI said, “It is beauty, like truth, which brings joy to the heart of man and is that precious fruit which resists the wear and tear of time, which unites generations and makes them share things in admiration.”
In his calling for our current Year of Faith, Pope Benedict XVI proclaimed, “Today too, there is a need for stronger ecclesial commitment to new evangelization in order to rediscover the joy of believing and the enthusiasm for communicating the faith.”
St. Mary’s Hospital recently celebrated “100 years of Care…and counting.” Through a partnership with the hospital that spans some 20 years, the Catholic Multicultural Center (CMC) has seen what a big difference a little caring can make.
It may have taken about 59 years before the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. was a reality, but it took only the past three years for almost 500 World War II (WWII) and Korean War Era veterans and “Rosie the Riveters” in the southern Wisconsin area to seize the opportunity to experience it and other national memorials, thanks to VetsRoll.
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PINE BLUFF — “As Christians we must love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us,” Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria, Ill., boldly stated, “but as Christians we must also stand up for what we believe and always be ready to fight for the Faith. The days in which we live now require heroic Catholicism, not casual Catholicism. We can no longer be Catholics by accident, but instead be Catholics by conviction.”
The Church Militant Field Manual was written to help all of us in the trenches of the Church Militant to understand, train for, and respond to this call for heroic faith in these critical times. Pope Benedict XVI stated that, “Members of the Church on earth are aptly described as ‘Ecclesia Militans’, the Church Militant, since it is necessary to enter into battle with evil.”
As Jesus ascended to his Father in heaven, he assured his disciples, “You will receive POWER when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8). God wants us — the Ecclesia Militans — engaged in this mission, but He wants us strong in His supernatural power.
What is this power? That is precisely what we explore in the Church Militant Field Manual. St. Paul wrote: “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph 6:10-12).
A rally was held at the steps of the Capitol on October 20 to protest the intrusion of the federal government into religious freedom through a recent mandate by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
MADISON — On a recent visit to the Catholic Charities Adults Day Center in Madison, I noticed that plenty of windows let in lots of light. People were busy doing art projects, working at the computer, talking together, or listening to a speaker.
The Adult Day Center, located at 2917 International Lane near the Dane County Airport in Madison, offers purpose and meaning to the many lives it touches, observed Cricket Hesselberg, the center’s program director. She has worked there for 14 years.
MADISON — “It was a defining moment of my life. God was leading me to care of the dying,” said Tom Moreland, founder and CEO of Saint Jude Hospice, in a recent interview.
Moreland was talking about his work with the Missionaries of Charity at an AIDS Hospice in San Francisco, Calif. He served there for two summers while he was an undergraduate student at the University of Kansas.
The Catholic apostolate, Pro Labore Dei (for the Labor of God), has been feeding the homeless in downtown Madison since September of 2003.
