Tag: Catholics

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Brent King, For the Catholic Herald

Jubilee Year of Mercy approaches its end

holy door
A Holy Door is located at St. Patrick Church, 404 E. Main St., Madison. Another Holy Door is located at Holy Redeemer Church, 120 W. Johnson St., Madison. Both churches are part of the Cathedral Parish. For more information on Mass and Confession schedule, go to www.isthmuscatholic.org A Holy Door is also found at the Schoenstatt Founder Shrine, 5901 Cottage Grove Rd. in Madison, which is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.  (Catholic Herald photo/Kevin Wondrash)

MADISON — Led by our Holy Father, Pope Francis, Catholics around the world have had a great opportunity to make contemplating and celebrating the Mercy of God a daily part of our lives through our observance of the Jubilee Year of Mercy.

Here in the Diocese of Madison, we adopted the theme, “Contemplating the Face of God’s Mercy.”

Many of us may read this and wonder, “What does this mean for me and what does this mean for my church/our diocese?”

These are good questions to be asking, especially as we consider how to continue to respond to God’s mercy once the Jubilee Year concludes on November 20.

We should keep asking ourselves those questions, and now is the perfect time to reflect on our own, as well as our collective, participation in this Jubilee Year.

Where we’ve been

Whether alone, with our families, or with the larger community, we always start every faithful effort with sincere prayer — through study, meditation, and more formal worship — especially in placing ourselves in our Lord’s very presence at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and in Eucharistic Adoration.

Sincere and humble contemplation upon the face of God’s mercy will always lead us to the continual conversion we each need, and this conversion leads us to seek God’s mercy eagerly through the Sacrament of Penance and through living out the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy more frequently and more perfectly.

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Bishop Robert C. Morlino, Bishop of Madison

Let’s promote eschatological awareness

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,

The word “eschatology” points to the last things — death, judgment, heaven, and hell. In a certain sense, it’s the most important part of our faith.

Why did God make us? God made us to know, love, and serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next! And of course, what is seen in this world passes away, but what is unseen in the next world is eternal. And what is eternal obviously takes priority over what is temporal, what is time-bound.

Most important part of our faith

So the eschatological dimension of our faith is most important, and yet most Catholics don’t consider it very often. Recent surveys reveal that most Catholics are unsure as to whether there is life after death. Many Catholics think that it’s all over with our bodily death here.

That’s terribly sad, and troubling, and it’s partly why I’ve been focusing on eschatology of late. Lacking a proper understanding of eschatology skews our entire perspective on life and reality.

One tendency for those who lack a proper perspective vis-à-vis eschatology is to be completely wrapped up in improving things in this world, without reference to the things of eternity. Of course we want to improve things in this world and, in fact, we need to work hard to improve them — that’s part and parcel of knowing, loving, and serving God in this world.

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Mary C. Uhler, Catholic Herald Staff

Voters urged not to sit on sidelines

faithful citizenship

MADISON — This election year, Catholics may find it difficult to choose candidates and be tempted not to vote.

However, failure to vote would not be in keeping with Catholic teaching, which emphasizes that faithful citizens should be involved in the political process.

That’s what Barbara Sella told those gathered recently at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Madison for her presentation, “Be Catholic First: Tools for Discerning as We Approach Election 2016.”

Sella is associate director for respect life and social concerns for the Wisconsin Catholic Conference (WCC), the public policy arm of the state’s Catholic bishops.

Role to play

Faithful citizens “cannot and must not remain on the sidelines,” she said in quoting Pope Francis. “We have an actual role to play in the politics of our nation.”

Sella said, “The Church emphasizes that our choices have to be grounded in moral principles, and we have to use our prudential judgment based on the values of our faith.

“Forming our conscience is the first step. But we have to form it in line with the teachings of the Church.”

The role of the Church itself is as a “teaching institution.” The bishops and priests teach the laity. “We are the doers,” Sella emphasized.

“The bishops and priests rely on the expertise of lay people.”

Key principles

This year, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is emphasizing four key principles in its materials on Faithful Citizenship (see www.faithfulcitizenship.org):

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Bishop Robert Barron

Pope Francis and the evangelicals, part two

Part two of a two-part series.

In his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), displaying his penchant for finding the memorable image, Pope Francis excoriates Christians who have turned “into querulous and disillusioned pessimists, ‘sourpusses,'” and whose lives “seem like Lent without Easter.”

Such people might be smart and they might even be morally upright, but they will never be successful evangelists.

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Bishop Robert Barron

Pope Francis and the evangelicals, part one

Part one of a two-part series.

The whole Christian world has watched with fascination as Pope Francis, over the past several months, has reached out to evangelicals.

Who can forget the mesmerizing iPhone video, filmed by the pope’s (late) friend Bishop Tony Palmer, in which the Bishop of Rome communicated, with father-like compassion, to a national gathering of American evangelical leaders?

His smile, his tone of voice, and the simple, direct words that he chose constituted a bridge between Catholics and evangelicals. What I found particularly moving was the remarkable reaction of the evangelical audience after they had taken in the video: a real prayer in the Spirit.

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Mary C. Uhler, Catholic Herald Staff

Dynamic Catholics can change the world

Ever since the early days of our country, Catholics have been making a tremendous impact on our society.

We do so much in our communities: feeding the hungry, giving clothing to those in need, educating children and adults, caring for the sick in hospitals and care facilities, and visiting people in prison. The list is endless.

But did you know that most of these things are being done by only about seven percent of Catholics in our country? That’s what Matthew Kelly asserts in his book, The Four Signs of a Dynamic Catholic.

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John Huebscher

Pew survey looks at religion and politics

Eye on the Capitol by John Huebscher

Polls and surveys are not infallible. Nor do they define what is true. But they do have their uses.

If they are conducted carefully and without bias, they can offer insights regarding public opinion or perceptions at a given moment in time. Among other things, polls can help us understand the mood of the moment and confirm or question trends of changing opinion.

Among the more respected polling organizations is the Pew Research Center. The center has a particular interest in measuring the role of religion in public life and how those who identify as adherents of a particular religion feel about issues and events.

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John Huebscher

Polarization: Can Catholics narrow the divide?

Eye on the Capitol by John Huebscher

One doesn’t have to try very hard these days to read or hear media accounts of how polarized our politics have become. The topic has been studied and commented upon at length in recent months.

Some of this commentary notes that Wisconsin is among the most polarized places in the country, where the chasm between liberals and conservatives and Democrats and Republicans is especially wide.

Why is our politics so divisive?

For one thing, as was noted recently in a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel story on the topic, voters are more ideological. That is, they rarely blend conservative and liberal positions. Instead, they are more likely to embrace either a liberal or a conservative view across the board.

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