Dear Friends,
As with most anniversaries and milestones, it’s hard to believe it was 15 years ago, this past Sunday, that I knelt on the floor of the Cathedral of St. Helena, with the Gospel book opened over my head, being commissioned and ordained a bishop.
In some ways, that morning in Helena, Mont., seems like an eternity ago, and in other ways, it seems like just yesterday.
In 2003, the Diocese of Madison had only six seminarians studying to be priests. With the number of ordinations decreasing and retirements of many active priests looming, the future didn’t look very promising.
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| 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 pray that you’ve all had a restful summer . . . as it seems, sadly, that we’re coming very quickly upon its last days! For myself, I’m maintaining hope that the winter is mild. I know that such a hope might be foolish — but I’m a man of hope, nonetheless!
In considering the readings of this past Sunday, I think it’s very important that we reflect together, once again, on the theme of fraternal correction — which is what the first (Ez 33:7-9) and the third (Mt 18:15-20) readings were about.
Fraternal correction is the way we correct one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. We do so not in arrogance, nor in contempt, but with love. Fraternal correction in the Church is a service of love.
In our day and age, nobody wants to correct anybody (unless perhaps it’s anonymously, of someone we don’t know, and in an online forum — which is certainly not charitable correction). To correct someone directly, someone whom we actually know, requires us to make claims about right and wrong, and about what is good and evil. Nobody wants to do that because, “you have your own truth and I have my own truth and we just peacefully coexist and it’s all just wonderful!” . . . except that it’s not. It’s a confused world.
In this confused world, it’s politically incorrect to correct anyone for anything! For instance, you even have to be careful, lest you say that ISIS is a group of extremist Islamic terrorists, who are absolutely wrong. Now, that’s obviously true, but some can’t say that. Because, after all, “we simply don’t see the world as ISIS does. They have their own truth, so we have to be polite when we deal with them.” . . . Just as I’m sure they are polite when they are beheading people.
BARABOO — St. Clare of Assisi, the patron saint after whom St. Clare Hospital in Baraboo was named, has been described in history as “full of light” or “radiant.”
Her guiding light continues to be a beacon that illuminates the exceptional health care ministry practiced throughout the community as part of the SSM Health Care mission at the St. Clare Hospital campus in Baraboo and its clinic facilities in the Wisconsin Dells/Lake Delton area.
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| 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.”
“With the Lord . . .” What does it mean to be with the Lord?
“Whoa!”
That was the simple word of exclamation uttered by a young girl as she entered St. Mary Church in Fennimore on a recent Sunday morning.
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| 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 at the meeting of the Bishops’ Conference in Baltimore, our Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who serves as the personal representative of Pope Francis in the United States, addressed us bishops on behalf of Pope Francis.
In the first place, I thought it was interesting that a great deal of his address to us was focused on quotations from Pope Paul VI and Blessed John Paul the Great.
This is a sure sign that Pope Francis wishes to be seen in continuity with his venerable predecessors, a fact which he made clear recently as he affirmed Archbishop Agostino Marchetto’s account of the hermeneutic of continuity as a proper interpretive key for the Second Vatican Council.
But, I want to focus on one particular thought that Archbishop Viganò raised.
MADISON — On Saturday, Dec. 7, St. Ambrose Academy in Madison will host its annual Benefit Dinner, gathering people from around the Diocese of Madison to celebrate Catholic education on the feast day of its patron, St. Ambrose.
The sounds of trumpets, timpani, and harp and the smell of incense enhanced the prayers of the faithful of the Diocese of Madison as they united with their bishop and priests at the Chrism Mass celebrated on Tuesday of Holy Week, March 26, at St. Maria Goretti Church.
BELOIT — Bishop Robert C. Morlino traveled to Beloit on Saturday, Aug. 25, to confer a blessing on the Stateline Pregnancy Clinic (SPC), its staff and volunteers, in special recognition of their recent acquisition of an important piece of new equipment used in their work.
