perspective – Madison Catholic Herald Archive (2001-2025)

Beginning this month, a new series of articles will appear in our newspaper to offer catechesis and formation concerning end of life decisions, dying, death, funerals, and burial of the dead from our Catholic perspective.

No one easily faces these issues because they remind us of our mortality and fragility, but our faith in Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, helps us understand how our own death, ending an earthly existence lived out in faith, hope, and charity, becomes the sacred passage to eternal joy in the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Church encourages us to prepare for death, most importantly on the spiritual plane of being ready to meet the Lord with our interior house in order, but also on the practical level of health decisions, an updated will, funeral and burial plans, and the dispersal of possessions.

‘Vision’ becomes better with age

One of the benefits of aging is that our vision improves so much.

What? You say you have more trouble reading the fine print on prescription bottles? And you need stronger light bulbs and magnifying glasses?

Oh, sure, but that’s not the kind of vision I’m thinking about. I’m thinking of hindsight. You know, they always say that hindsight is 20-20.

So here’s what’s so great about it. We have perspective now. We can look back at the things that drove us crazy with worry, like a messy house when guests arrived. But now we know that it was never the picture-perfect house that mattered, but the warmth of our hospitality.

A Christmas gift: civility in public discourse

Anyone familiar with the recent election campaign or with the “reader comments” that accompany editorials and news articles knows that civility is often the first casualty in debates today.

Nearly anyone who makes a public argument finds his intelligence questioned, his motives impugned, or his basic decency assaulted. Some critics will even doubt the patriotism or Americanism of their opponents. Others call their opponents bigots or racists.