Tag: bishop

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Bishop Robert Barron

René Girard, Church Father

René Girard, one of the most influential Catholic philosophers in the world, died recently at the age of 91.

Born in Avignon and a member of the illustrious Academie Francaise, Girard nevertheless made his academic reputation in the United States as a professor at Indiana University, Johns Hopkins University, and Stanford University.

New social theory

There are some thinkers that offer intriguing ideas and proposals, and there is a tiny handful of thinkers that manage to shake your world. Girard was in this second camp. In a series of books and articles, written across several decades, he proposed a social theory of extraordinary explanatory power.

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Kevin Wondrash

St. Thérèse Lecture on November 20

MADISON — The fall presentation in the St. Thérèse Lecture Series presented by the Diocese of Madison will be Friday, Nov. 20, at 7:30 p.m. in the chapel of the Bishop O’Connor Center in Madison.

It will be entitled “A Treasure of Inestimable Value: The Beauty of Liturgy,” and will be given by Abbot Marcel Rooney, OSB.

Abbot Rooney is president of the Orate Institute of Sacred Liturgy, Music, and Art. The institute is dedicated to the renewal of the sacred liturgy in our churches and other Catholic institutions.

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Bishop Robert Barron

Daniel and the great unveiling

Toward the end of the liturgical year, we Catholics hear at Mass from the mysterious, often confounding, and utterly fascinating Book of Daniel.

Recent scholarship has demonstrated that the Book of Daniel had an extraordinarily powerful influence on the first Christians, providing them a most important template for understanding the significance of Jesus.

Daniel is, of course, an example of apocalyptic literature, which in the common understanding means that it has to do with the end of the world.

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Bishop Robert Barron

Preaching the strange word

About 15 years ago, I prepared an elective class at Mundelein Seminary which I entitled “The Christology of the Poets and Preachers.” In this course, I endeavored to explore the Catholic tradition’s non-technical, more lyrical manner of presenting the significance of Jesus.

I studied the literary works of Dante, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and G.K. Chesterton, and I also investigated in detail the sermons of many of the greatest masters: Origen, Augustine, Chrysostom, Bernard, Aquinas, Newman, and Knox, among others.

What struck me with particular power, and caused me, I confess, to re-think things rather thoroughly was this: none of these figures — from the late second century to the 20th century — whose sermons we specially revere and hold up for imitation, preached the way I was taught to preach.

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Kevin Wondrash

Mass for deceased bishops and priests of Diocese of Madison

MADISON — Bishop Robert C. Morlino will celebrate a special Requiem Mass for deceased priests and bishops of the Diocese of Madison. November is a month when Catholics pray in a special way for the repose of the dead and, by God’s will, for the rapid entrance into heaven of the poor souls.

On Monday, Nov. 2, at 7 p.m. at the Bishop O’Connor Center, Bishop Morlino, with clerical and lay ministers, will celebrate a Pontifical Requiem Mass “at the Throne” in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.

 

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Bishop Robert Barron

Letting the fly out of the fly bottle

During the pope’s visit to America, I had the privilege of commenting for NBC News and for MSNBC.

Twice I was on for extended periods with Brian Williams, the former anchor for NBC Nightly News, and twice with Chris Matthews, the host of Hardball. I must say that both men are very good at what they do, namely, keeping a conversation going among several different people with varying points of view and assuring that things stay sufficiently lively and interesting.

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Bishop Robert Barron

The pope, the Congress, and a Trappist monk

I had the extraordinary privilege of following the pope’s pilgrimage at very close quarters. I had this access both as a bishop and as a commentator for NBC News.

It was thrilling indeed to witness just how rapturously the American people received the pope and how affected the Holy Father was by this reception. Many images stay vividly in my mind: the pope kissing the forehead of the 10-year-old boy with cerebral palsy, the rabbi and imam praying together at the September 11th memorial, a little boy from a New York Catholic school showing the pope how to maneuver his way around a Smart Board.

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Ronald Faust

Wisconsin KC’s support bishops in taking action against sale, use of fetal body parts

Ronald Faust

In support of the bishops of Wisconsin: As Knights of Columbus we cannot be part of what Pope Francis has called the “complicit silence” of many who hear of atrocities and do nothing. We must act.

I invite you to consider that those same words apply completely and directly to the brutalization of women and children by Planned Parenthood. The intentional, vicious murder of innocents in the womb is an atrocity. That it is followed by the callous selling of their body parts should shock our culture into action.

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