The Diocese of Madison issued the following statement on October 4:
Earlier today, Circuit Court Judge Rhonda Lanford released her decision that the St. Raphael Cathedral site does not meet religious exemption qualifications — ruling in favor of the City of Madison and leaving the Cathedral Parish having paid nearly $100,000 per year in taxes since 2012.
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Fleming Rutledge’s The Crucifixion is one of the most stimulating and thought-provoking books of theology that I have read in the past 10 years.
Both an academic and a well-regarded preacher in the Episcopal tradition, Rutledge has an extraordinary knack of cutting to the heart of the matter. Her book on the central reality of the Christian faith is supremely illuminating, a delight for the inquiring mind — and man, will it ever preach.
GREEN LAKE — The Wisconsin Catholic Charismatic Renewal (CCR) will host a family conference, “WIsconsin on FIre,” at the Green Lake Conference Center in Green Lake August 12 to 14.
This year’s conference will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the CCR and will feature speaker David Mangan, who was present at the Duquesne Weekend in 1967, the event often spoken of as the beginning of the CCR in the U.S.
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There is, in many quarters, increasing concern about the hyper-charged political correctness that has gripped our campuses and other forums of public conversation.
Even great works of literature and philosophy — from Huckleberry Finn and Heart of Darkness to, believe it or not, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason — are now regularly accompanied by “trigger warnings” that alert prospective readers to the racism, sexism, homophobia, or classism contained therein.
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There is, in many quarters, increasing concern about the hyper-charged political correctness that has gripped our campuses and other forums of public conversation.
Even great works of literature and philosophy — from Huckleberry Finn and Heart of Darkness to, believe it or not, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason — are now regularly accompanied by “trigger warnings” that alert prospective readers to the racism, sexism, homophobia, or classism contained therein.
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The Resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the be-all and the end-all of the Christian faith. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, all bishops, priests, and Christian ministers should go home and get honest jobs, and all the Christian faithful should leave their churches immediately.
As Paul himself put it: “If Jesus is not raised from the dead, our preaching is in vain and we are the most pitiable of men.” It’s no good, of course, trying to explain the Resurrection away or rationalize it as a myth, a symbol, or an inner subjective experience. None of that does justice to the novelty and sheer strangeness of the Biblical message.
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Last week, during the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress, I had the enormous privilege of sharing a breakfast with Fr. Robert Spitzer, the inter-galactically smart Jesuit, who once served as president of Gonzaga University and who now directs the Magis Center on matters of faith, reason, and science.
I had just finished Spitzer’s latest book entitled The Soul’s Upward Yearning and delighted in discussing it in some detail with him.
This text is, in my judgment, the best challenge to what the philosopher Charles Taylor calls the “buffered self,” that is to say, a self isolated from any sense of the transcendent.
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I’m sure by now you’ve heard about the absurd reaction of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) to the lighthearted Super Bowl commercial produced to advertise Doritos.
In the 30-second clip, a pregnant mother, undergoing an ultra-sound, is annoyed by her husband who is absent-mindedly munching Doritos while their baby’s image is displayed on the screen.
But as the father moves the corn chip, the baby in the womb moves with it; and when the mother throws the bag across the room, the child reacts so keenly and purposively that he decides this is the moment to be born.
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Recently, I had the privilege of spending four hours in the Sistine Chapel with my Word on Fire team. Toward the end of our filming, the director of the Vatican Museums, who had accompanied us throughout the process, asked whether I wanted to see the “room of tears.”
This is the little antechamber, just off of the Sistine Chapel, where the newly-elected pope changes into his white cassock. Understandably, tears flow in that room, once the poor man realizes the weight of his office.
Inside, there were documents and other memorabilia, but what got my attention was a row of albs, chasubles, and copes worn by various popes.
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Over the years, there have been numerous films that feature the character of the “monster-mentor,” by which I mean an elder who forms a young apprentice through the toughest kind of tough love.
Think of Lou Gossett, Jr.’s character in An Officer and a Gentleman who puts Richard Gere’s young Navy recruit brutally through his paces; or of the awful drill instructor in Full Metal Jacket who ruthlessly prepares one young man to be a soldier, even as he leads another to commit suicide; or of Pai-Mei in Kill Bill, Vol. 2, the Kung-Fu master who brow-beats one recruit until she is able to put her fist through a four-inch thick piece of wood.
