MADISON — Bishop Robert C. Morlino will celebrate a Solemn Pontifical Mass on Friday, July 1, Feast of the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord, at 7 p.m., in the chapel of Holy Name Heights located in the Bishop O’Connor Center, 702 S. High Point Rd.
This Mass will be offered for the intention of suffering and persecuted Christians around the globe.
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| Deacon Joseph Baker |
MADISON — Deacon Joseph Baker will be ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Robert C. Morlino of Madison on Friday, June 24, at 7:30 p.m. at St. Maria Goretti Church in Madison.
Everyone is invited to attend.
St. Maria Goretti is wheelchair accessible. There will be assistive-listening devices for the hard-of-hearing and a sign language interpreter for the deaf. Large-print leaflets will be available.
Parents: Kay and Mark Baker, Chippewa Falls, Wis.
Home parish: St. Paul University Catholic Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Grade school: McDonell Area Catholic Schools, Chippewa Falls, Wis.
High school: McDonell Central Catholic High School, Chippewa Falls, Wis.
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With his latest film, Last Days in the Desert, Rodrigo Garcia has accomplished something truly remarkable.
He has taken a portion of the life of the single most compelling person who has ever lived and turned it into a colossally boring movie.
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A recent issue of Time Magazine features a fascinating and deeply troubling article on the prevalence of pornography in our culture.
The focus of the piece is on the generation of young men now coming of age, the first generation who grew up with unlimited access to hardcore pornography on the Internet. The statistics on this score are absolutely startling.
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Reliable sources have informed me that for the millennial generation, Bill Nye is a figure of great importance, due to his widely-watched program from the 1990s called Bill Nye the Science Guy.
Evidently, he taught a large swath of American youth the fundamentals of experimental science and became for them a sort of paragon of reason. Well, I’ll take their word for it.
But judging from a recent video in which Bill Nye discussed the relation between science and philosophy, I can only tell you that he sure is not the “philosophy guy.”
MADISON — The Diocese of Madison Office of Worship announces various workshops to be held this summer.
Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion:
• Wednesday, June 15 — Bishop O’Connor Catholic Center, 702 S. High Point Rd., Madison, 7 to 8:30 p.m.
• Wednesday, Aug. 31 –Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary Church, 221 Columbus St., Sun Prairie, 7 to 8:30 p.m.
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Fr. Daniel Berrigan, SJ, passed away April 30 at the age of 94. Though many younger Catholics might not remember him, Father Berrigan was one of the most provocative and controversial religious figures of his time.
Standing in the tradition of principled non-violence proposed by Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, and others, Berrigan led the charge against America’s involvement in the Vietnam conflict and its on-going participation in the Cold War and the nuclear arms race.
He was most famous, of course, for his leadership of the “Catonsville Nine,” a group of protestors who, in the spring of 1968, broke into a building and burned draft records with homemade napalm. To say that he was, during that tumultuous time in American history, a polarizing figure would be an understatement.
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Last week the world marked the 400th anniversary of the death of the greatest writer in the English language and one of the three or four most significant artists the human race has produced. William Shakespeare simply contains so much.
In the manner of Dante, Homer, Michelangelo, James Joyce, and Aquinas, he seems to encompass the whole: every texture of feeling, every nuance of thought, the tragedy of sin, the most exquisite longings of the soul, the most confounding confusions, heaven, hell, and everything in between.
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For the first 300 years of Christianity, followers of the nonviolent Jesus — imitating his example — practiced total nonviolence.
But after Christianity was legalized and later made the official religion of the Roman Empire, Christians began fighting for the empire. And sadly, Christians have been fighting for empires ever since.
The “just war” theory was developed to offer criteria — like protecting civilians from attack — that had to be met before war could be theoretically morally justified and continued. Most unfortunately, this led to the Catholic Church’s abandonment of total Christ-like nonviolence.
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In my capacity as regional bishop of the Santa Barbara pastoral region, which covers two entire counties north of Los Angeles, I am obliged to spend a good deal of time in the car.
To make the long trips a bit easier, I have gotten back into the habit of listening to audio books. Just recently, I followed, with rapt attention, a book that I had read many years ago but which I had, I confess, largely forgotten: C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce.
The inspiration for this theological fantasy is the medieval idea of the refrigerium, the refreshment or vacation from Hell granted to some of the souls abiding there.
