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Second in a series of reflections by Fr. Robert Barron on the life of Cardinal Francis George.
The one who would proclaim the Gospel in the contemporary American setting must appreciate that the American culture is sown liberally with semina verbi (seeds of the Word).
The first of these, in Cardinal Francis George’s judgment, is the modern sense of freedom and its accompanying rights.
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First in a series of reflections by Fr. Robert Barron on the life of Cardinal Francis George.
Cardinal Francis George, who died April 17 at the age of 78, was obviously a man of enormous accomplishment and influence.
He was a cardinal of the Roman Church, a past president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the archbishop of one of the largest and most complicated archdioceses in the world, and the intellectual leader of the American Church.
A number of American bishops have told me that when Cardinal George spoke at the bishops’ meetings, the entire room would fall silent and everyone would listen.
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A survey by William J. Byron and Charles Zech appeared in America magazine. It was conducted at the request of David O’Connell, the bishop of Trenton, and its focus was very simple: it endeavored to discover why Catholics have left the Church.
No one denies that a rather substantive number of Catholics have taken their leave during the past 20 years, and Byron and Zech wanted to find out why. They did so in the most direct way possible: they asked those who had quit.
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Just a few weeks before the most significant Christian holy day of the year, British Prime Minister David Cameron, speaking on an evangelical radio program, articulated what, for him, is the meaning of Easter.
He explained that the central message of Easter is “kindness, compassion, hard work, and responsibility.” I’m for all of those virtues, but so, I would venture to guess, is any decent person from any background, religious or non-religious. Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, fair-minded agnostics, and atheists would all subscribe to that rather abstract and harmless description of the significance of Easter.
In a sense, we shouldn’t blame the prime minister for his characterization, for the Christian Churches in general, but especially the Anglican Church, have not distinguished themselves for the crispness of their doctrinal formulations.
But if that’s all Easter is about, not to put too fine a point on it, the jig is up.
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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.
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Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella is the most surprising Hollywood movie of the year so far.
The director manages to tells the familiar fairy tale without irony, hyper-feminist sub-plots, Marxist insinuations, deconstructionist cynicism, or arch condescension. In so doing, he actually allows the spiritual, indeed specifically Christian, character of the tale to emerge.
It probably strikes a contemporary audience as odd that Cinderella might be a Christian allegory, but keep in mind that most of the fairy stories and children’s tales compiled by the Brothers Grimm and later adapted by Walt Disney found their roots in the Christian culture of late medieval and early modern Europe.
MADISON — In the Diocese of Madison, the Chrism Mass will be celebrated on Holy Tuesday, March 31, at 7:30 p.m. at St. Maria Goretti Church, 5313 Flad Ave.
Bishop Robert C. Morlino will be the principal celebrant with priests of the diocese concelebrating.
At the Mass, oils to be used during the coming year are blessed, including the Oils of the Sick, of Catechumens, and of Chrism. Chrism is a mixture of oil of olives and balsam specially blessed by the bishop, to be used in sacraments and the consecration of churches and particular items and vessels.
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I once gave a sermon in which I mentioned Keith Richards, the lead guitarist for the Rolling Stones.
I recounted how struck I was by a passage from Richards’ autobiography in which the guitarist described the almost maniacal dedication with which he and his bandmates set out to learn Chicago blues.
“Benedictines,” he said, “had nothing on us.” I urged my listeners to approach their spiritual lives with the same “Benedictine” focus and fervor that the young Rolling Stones had in regard to the blues.
MADISON — On March 3, Bishop Robert C. Morlino issued a Decree Conferring Private Juridic Personality upon Dead Theologians Society. This decree, in fact, now allows the Dead Theologians Society (DTS) to function as a Private Diocesan Lay Association of the Faithful.
What started in 1997 as an idea with a group of teens in Florida who were part of a parish youth group, led by Eddie Cotter, Jr., has since grown to become an international apostolate.
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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.
