goodness – Madison Catholic Herald Archive (2001-2025)

A beautiful, basic tenet of our faith, articulated in the creation account of Genesis, is that every human being is created in the image and likeness of God, the imago Dei.

The Scriptures narrate the words of God Himself: Let us make man in our image and likeness.

This conviction is the bedrock of the Church’s defense of human dignity, proclamation of inherent rights, and responsibilities of each person and a motivation for all of our concern for the poor, the young, the elderly, and the suffering.

Editorial

On May 17, 2018February 15, 2022

Mary C. Uhler, Catholic Herald Staff

Catholic schools do a great job!

It’s that time of year when we celebrate graduations in schools around the country. This week’s Catholic Herald includes our annual Catholic school graduation section. We invite Catholic schools in the Diocese of Madison to send information about their graduation ceremonies.

Around the Diocese

On April 10, 2014

Cathy Lins, For the Catholic Herald

Forgiveness can change our lives, says expert

MONONA — “It’s basically goodness starting within myself and flowing out to others,” Dr. Robert D. Enright said as he explained forgiveness.

“When we have been treated unfairly by others and choose to forgive, we do two things: we get rid of something negative and then we try to offer the one who hurt us some kind of moral goodness, whether it’s respect, generosity, kindness, or even some kind of moral love.”

Word on Fire

On March 20, 2014

Fr. Robert Barron

Why goodness depends on God

One of the most common observations made by opponents of religion is that we don’t need God in order to have a coherent and integral morality.

Atheists and agnostics are extremely sensitive to the charge that the rejection of God will conduce automatically to moral chaos. Consequently, they argue that a robust sense of ethics can be grounded in the consensus of the human community over time or in the intuitions and sensibilities of decent people, etc.

What I would like to do is lay out, in very brief compass, the Catholic understanding of the relationship between morality and the existence of God and to show, thereby, why it is indispensably important for a society that wishes to maintain its moral integrity to maintain, at the same time, a vibrant belief in God.