MADISON — “Wow! What a 23 hours with the relic of St. Maria Goretti’s body in our parish and our church,” wrote Msgr. Michael Burke, pastor at St. Maria Goretti Parish in Madison, in his parish bulletin.
Relics of the parish’s patroness were at the parish from the morning of October 16 to the morning of October 17. More than 13,000 people from 11 states were estimated to have venerated the relics. According to the parish, there were two medically confirmed healings.
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| 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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Every third summer, the Catholic lectionary provides a series of readings for Sunday Mass from the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John. This is the magnificently crafted chapter in which the evangelist’s Eucharistic theology is most fully presented.
It is a curiosity of John’s Gospel that the Last Supper scene includes no “institution narrative,” which is to say, the account of what Jesus did with the bread and cup the night before he died.
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Fr. Bart Timmerman, pastor of St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Madison, leads more than 200 people in praying the Rosary outside the Planned Parenthood clinic on Madison’s east side as they protested the selling of baby body parts from abortions. (Catholic Herald photo/Kevin Wondrash) |
MADISON — Prayer.
That’s what it will take to end abortion.
That’s what rush hour commuters saw as more than 200 people prayed on the sidewalks near the Planned Parenthood clinic on Madison’s east side to do their part to see that facility close and protect the lives of the unborn.
The protest on Monday, Aug. 24, was held in unity with nationwide protests following reports of Planned Parenthood harvesting and selling the organs and tissue of aborted babies.
As people’s workdays ended, they arrived at the Orin Rd. site for the 5 p.m. protest, despite the unseasonably cold and gloomy late August weather.
Fr. Rick Heilman, pastor of St. Mary Parish in Pine Bluff and St. Michael the Archangel Parish in Mount Horeb and Perry, welcomed everyone who came out.
“With man it’s impossible, but with God all things are possible,” he said. Encouraging everyone to pray and be in a state of grace, he added, “We need to lean on God and his grace . . . lean on Our Lady as much as you can. She is the one who steps on that satanic head.”
MADISON — On Monday, Aug. 24, pro-lifers will join the nationwide efforts to protest Planned Parenthood’s barbaric practice of aborting babies and selling their body parts.
“In the wake of the horrific videos exposing this practice, now is the time for people of faith to stand up and demand an end to the nation’s largest abortion provider,” said Laura Karlen of Madison‘s Vigil for Life.
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When one considers the many ways countless human beings are treated like cheap disposable products — from children exploited by pornographers, to young sweatshop workers exploited by wealthy corporations — it’s hard to imagine how much worse it can get for the poor and vulnerable.
But dismembering and vacuuming babies out of their mother’s wombs, and then selling their body parts, is as low as it gets.
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On August 15, we celebrate Mary’s Assumption into heaven.
In no. 966 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church it says, “The Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death.”
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| Veronica Arntz |
St. John Paul II — the beloved pope and now saint — contributed a vast amount of knowledge and wisdom to the Church’s teachings on marriage and family.
Born on May 18, 1920, and ordained a priest in 1946, Karol Wojtyla’s adolescent years were marked by the reign and violence of the Third Reich.
Due largely to his devout Catholic parents, Wojtyla, rather than turning to violence himself, cultivated his mind through poetry and plays, eventually turning to philosophical inquiries, particularly in personalism.
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The famous Olympian Bruce Jenner made headlines recently when he told ABC News, “For all intents and purposes, I’m a woman . . . That female side is part of me. That’s who I am.”
He has been receiving hormonal treatments to acquire feminine traits and is not yet sure whether he will undergo surgery to “complete” the process.
His dramatic case raises important ethical and medical concerns about properly understanding our identity and respecting the given order of our bodies.
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Two news items from last week put me in mind of St. Irenaeus and the battle he waged, 19 centuries ago, against the Gnostic heresy.
The first was the emergence of Bruce Jenner as a “woman” named Caitlyn, and the second was a “shadow council” that took place in Rome and apparently called for the victory of a theology of love over John Paul II’s theology of the body.
