As the fall season rolls in and many students are headed back to school, the seminarians for the diocese are all heading back to school to continue with their seminary formation after a much deserved summer break.
Starting this fall, we will have seminarians in seminaries in Detroit, Mich.; Denver, Colo.; Washington, D.C.; Winona and St. Paul, Minn.; Seward,
Neb.; South Orange, N.J.; and Rome, Italy. Their years of seminary formation range from freshmen in college to the final year of theology.
Is pregnancy a disease? Should Catholics, purchasing insurance for themselves or their employees be forced against their consciences to subsidize its prevention?
These questions lie at the heart of new regulations just issued by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which will administer President Barack Obama’s new health care law.
The regulations include a list of “preventive services” that all group health plans must provide without any co-pay. The list includes female surgical sterilization, plus all FDA-approved contraceptives, including some (like the prescription drug ella) that can act as abortifacients.
This year Labor Day falls on September 5, shortly before the 10th anniversary of 9-11. Most who died in these terrorist attacks were working when they died. On Labor Day, we can honor their memory by prayerful reflection on the value of work and workers.
Labor Day is a national holiday during which we honor the dignity of workers and the quality of their work. According to Hilda Solis, secretary of labor, the first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on September 5, 1882, to honor the social and economic achievements of American workers.
The Catholic Church has long acknowledged the role of the medical professional in declaring death. It is the proper competency of medicine, not theology, to identify reliable signs that death has occurred.
The hardening of the body known as rigor mortis, for example, is a reliable medical indicator that death has occurred. When the heart permanently stops beating and the lungs permanently stop functioning (cessation of cardio-pulmonary function), medical professionals recognize these signs as another reliable way to assess that death has occurred.
To the editor: […]
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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. |
Editor’s note: The following is a transcription of Bishop Robert C. Morlino’s homily for Priestly Ordinations on Friday, May 6, at St. Maria Goretti Church in Madison.
Tim, Jorge — “my sons,” I get to call you tonight. At the moment I call you my sons, I want to thank both of your dear parents, your grandparents, and your family for showing you what it means to be a good father — long before I came on the scene. And I want to thank them for showing you what it is to be a faithful son.
All of that will come into play in the days, the months, and the years ahead. I’m almost as proud of you tonight as your dear parents are — not quite as proud (I don’t think I could manage that) but I know how proud they are and I, certainly, am proud. I’m so grateful to your dear parents and your family, for their generosity in giving the Church such a wonderful, unselfish gift.
Mother’s Day offers us opportunities to show that we are as proud of our mother as she is of us.
Anna Jarvis, (1864-1948) was so proud of her mother that she worked to establish a day on which she and others could honor their mother and all mothers. She is known as the mother of Mother’s Day.
As soon as I heard my wife burst out the bathroom door that sunny spring day, I knew she was pregnant. I hadn’t yet opened my eyes but I didn’t need to. Her footsteps told me everything.
My wife didn’t have any particular reason to believe she was pregnant. But after a couple years of praying for a second child, I’d grown accustomed to Laura taking random pregnancy tests — hoping against hope that somehow that second pink line would appear. This time it did.
The days ahead were as joyful as any we’d experienced in our life together. We beamed when friends who knew of our struggle with secondary infertility congratulated us and we devoured all the fetal development materials we could find, eager to mark every last milestone in our baby’s nascent life.
A widow told her son she sometimes wished that when she died, she could be buried with a fork in her hand. When he asked her “why,” she explained that at a banquet, the head waitress often requests that we keep our fork because the best is yet to come.
She told her son because of our faith in the resurrection, and God’s mercy, that after death the very best is yet to come — the priceless gift of eternal life. Christ’s resurrection gives us hope of enjoying eternal happiness in heaven.
Must we live through a lot of history before we love history? Must we be an antique before we appreciate antiques?
My fascination with ancestors just took off this year when Janine, my daughter-in-law, discovered a Luxembourg Museum in her Wisconsin territory. For Christmas she and my son John bought me a year’s membership and took me for a visit soon after. What an exciting adventure!
