The Squires of […]
Tag: God
Mother Nature is one unreliable lady
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Conservation International has sponsored a series of videos that have become YouTube sensations, garnering millions of views.
They feature famous actors — Harrison Ford, Kevin Spacey, Robert Redford, and others — voicing different aspects of the natural world, from the ocean, to the rain forest, to redwood trees. The most striking is the one that presents Mother Nature herself, given voice by Julia Roberts.
Nature’s indifference
They all have more or less the same message, namely, that nature finally doesn’t give a fig for human beings, that it is far greater than we, and will outlast us. Here are some highlights from the Mother’s speech:
Why our democracy trusts in God
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I was pleased that the United States Supreme Court dismissed a suit brought by Michael Newdow, a Sacramento man who wanted to remove the phrase “In God We Trust” from the nation’s coins and paper currency, as well as from the fronts of our public buildings.
The argument that the gentleman brought forward was that this custom somehow violates the First Amendment guarantee that the government shall make no law either establishing an official religion or prohibiting the free exercise of religion in the United States.
Putting God first in our lives
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Artistic representations of the Ten Commandments often depict two stone tablets on which there are two tables of inscriptions.
This portrayal follows from a classical division of the commandments in which there are two specific categories: those that order humanity’s relationship with God and those that order human relationships with one another.
If we consider the Bible as a totality, it becomes apparent that the Scriptures give priority to the first table, those commands dealing with God.
Missionary to speak at UW on Ukraine riots
MADISON — Valentyna Pavsyukova, founder of the nonprofit organization Chalice of Mercy, will speak at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Thursday, Feb. 5, at 7 p.m. in the Gordon Dining and Event Center. Badger Catholic invites all students and their friends to join the organization’s General Speaker Event, “Ukraine: The City Without God.”
Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration begins January 1 in Sauk City
SAUK CITY — “Spending time before the Blessed Sacrament is the gift we can give to God this Christmas,” according to Fr. John Blewett, pastor of Divine Mercy Parish in Sauk City.
The parish has been working since May to expand its current, two-day a week Eucharistic Adoration Program held at St. Aloysius Church to a Perpetual Adoration program slated to begin January 1.
Bishop Robert C. Morlino is scheduled to dedicate the new chapel, called the “Mary, Mother of God Chapel,” fittingly on the feast of the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, January 1.
A God-haunted film
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The great British physicist Stephen Hawking has emerged in recent years as a poster boy for atheism, and his heroic struggles against the ravages of Lou Gehrig’s disease have made him something of a secular saint.
The new bio-pic A Theory of Everything does indeed engage in a fair amount of Hawking-hagiography, but it is also, curiously, a God-haunted movie.
Religion for atheists
In an opening scene, the young Hawking meets Jane, his future wife, in a bar and tells her that he is a cosmologist. “What’s cosmology?” she asks, and he responds, “Religion for intelligent atheists.”
Believing and trusting in God’s plan for us
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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. |
Dear Friends,
The timing of this column falls into one of those awkward periods that comes with the schedule of our weekly publication.
As I write, we are still at the height of preparation for Christmas, yet this will likely be the edition of the Catholic Herald that is in your homes on Christmas Day. As such, I’m going to look forward joyfully and reflect upon the goodness that is “already, but not yet.”
I suppose it’s appropriate to be stuck in this place of anticipation, as it does speak to our lives each and every day, and it’s made especially clear at Christmas.
Rejoice at Jesus’ coming
At Christmas we celebrate and rejoice in the reality of eternal life made possible for us by God’s coming into the world.
We celebrate that everything is now changed for humanity. We celebrate God with us, a light in the darkness, the Word made flesh, God’s Kingdom at hand.
And yet, we remain in a period of waiting and of laboring. The world is not right. We may be redeemed, with hope for forgiveness, but we still fail, and falter, and sin.
When Jesus came into the world, it meant redemption from sin and the hope of an eternity of joy, but it did not mean mankind would be unable to choose otherwise, it did not mean everything would be peachy for us at all times.
Revisiting the argument from desire
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One of the classical demonstrations of God’s existence is the so-called argument from desire.
It can be stated in a very succinct manner as follows. Every innate or natural desire corresponds to some objective state of affairs that fulfills it.
We all have an innate or natural desire for ultimate fulfillment, ultimate joy, which nothing in this world can possibly satisfy. Therefore there must exist objectively a supernatural condition that grounds perfect fulfillment and happiness, which people generally refer to as “God.”
God is a family of three eternal persons in Trinity
To the editor:
In his article in the October 16 issue, Father Barron writes that unbelieving scientists don’t seem to know what we mean by “God.” He states that a universe of contingent entities requires a non-contingent source.
Some unbelievers assert that our universe and others derived from space time fluctuations that always existed. This debate, which has been raging for several years, is partly our fault because we leave the impression that God is a solitary individual who arbitrarily created the universe from nothing.