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Last time, I wrote a piece on Bruce Jenner’s transformation into Caitlyn Jenner. I argued that the manner in which Jenner spoke of his transition reflected a Gnostic anthropology, which is repugnant to a biblical view of the human being.
I didn’t say a word about Jenner personally; I urged no violence against him/her; I didn’t question his/her motives. I simply made an observation that the moral and spiritual context for transgenderism is, from a classically Christian standpoint, problematic.
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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.
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Recently, I spent six days at a place only about a 10-minute drive from my home, but I had entered a country as “foreign'”to my experience as Botswana or Katmandu.
I had taken up residence in Hospitalland. I was brought in for an emergency appendectomy and had to undergo a second surgery, due to complications.
JANESVILLE — Fr. Stephen Umhoefer will be retiring effective July 11 as pastor of Nativity of Mary Parish in Janesville.
A retirement Mass will take place on Sunday, May 31, at 2 p.m. at Nativity of Mary Church, 313 E. Wall St.
Several priests will be concelebrating with him. The Diocesan Choir will also be on hand, along with the parish’s Sanctuary and Loft Choirs, to sing for the Mass.
BARABOO — The 102nd annual Corpus Christi Mass and procession at Durward’s Glen will take place on Sunday, June 7, at 11 a.m.
The Mass will be celebrated at the outdoor Holy Family altar by Fr. Pedro Escribano.
The Knights of Columbus will serve a picnic-style meal after the Mass and procession.
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C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and their colleagues in the Inklings wanted to write fiction that would effectively “evangelize the imagination,” accustoming the minds, especially of young people, to the hearing of the Christian Gospel.
Accordingly, Tolkien’s Gandalf is a figure of Jesus the prophet and Lewis’ Aslan is a representation of Christ as both sacrificial victim and victorious king. Happily, the film versions of both The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia have proven to be wildly popular all over the world.
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More than 20 years ago, Dr. David Eddy, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, described how his mother, though not suffering from a terminal illness, chose to end her life through VSED (voluntarily stopping eating and drinking).
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Fourth and last in a series of reflections by Fr. Robert Barron on the life of Cardinal Francis George.
The other principal sign of the exhaustion of the liberal project is its hyper-stress on freedom as self-assertion and self-definition.
In Cardinal Francis George’s words, “The cultural fault line lies in a willingness to sacrifice even the Gospel truth in order to safeguard personal freedom construed as choice.”
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Memorial Day is a federal holiday observed on the last Monday of May.
On Memorial Day we honor military personnel who died while serving our country, particularly those who died in battle or from wounds sustained in battle.
On Veterans Day, we honor those who served honorably in military service during wartime or peacetime.
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Anna Jarvis (1864-1948) is recognized as the “mother of Mother’s Day.” She never married or had children, but as a child she heard her mother wish that there was a day to honor all mothers, living and dead.
She started the custom of wearing carnations on Mother’s Day. White carnations were her mother’s favorite flower because they symbolized a mother’s pure love. Today, red and pink carnations are given to honor a living mother and white carnations to honor a deceased mother.
In 1870, Julia Ward Howe, shocked by the Civil War’s bloodshed, organized a mother’s day for peace. This prepared the way for today’s Mother’s Day.
