Wisconsin State Journal Reports on Bishop Morlino’s Ten Year Anniversary in Madison
The Wisconsin State Journal (WSJ) will be running an article on Bishop Robert C. Morlino on Sunday, July 28th, marking our Bishop’s ten year anniversary in the Diocese of Madison. The article was written by Doug Erickson, a WSJ reporter who specializes in exploring matters of faith, values and ethics in Wisconsin.
The article will include an invitation to a live chat on this subject at Madison.com, at noon on Monday, July 29th. During the live chat, reporter Doug Erickson will take questions about “Catholic Bishop Robert Morlino’s tenure and the State Journal’s religion coverage.” All are invited by WSJ to participate in the online chat.
The WSJ and Doug Erickson have been accused of negative and imbalanced coverage of the Catholic Church in Madison frequently in the past. They seem to favor coverage of dissident Catholics, and of radical splinter groups, which they portray very favorably.
It will be interesting to see whether Doug Erickson’s recent interactions with the Diocese and with local Catholic bloggers have given him a more positive perspective on the Catholic Church.
We remain hopeful.
No doubt many of the usual WSJ forum Catholic-bashers will come out for the live chat on Monday, unless anonymity is not welcomed.
Some will, no doubt, take the opportunity to be nasty.
But faithful Catholics should also make an effort to be part of this conversation. It offers faithful Catholics the opportunity to show how we are different.
Previous WSJ slanted reporting on Catholics in Madison is described in some of my previous blog articles, for example:
Progressives in the United States have been suffering some defeats in recent weeks, as authors of the progressive agenda have started falling into their own traps and tangling in their own snares.
Coincidence?
Or answer to national and global prayer?
Join Those Catholics
Catholics have the national and global infrastructure needed to launch national and global prayer efforts.
Pope Benedict just led Global Adoration 2 weeks ago.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has called for a SECOND Fortnight for Freedom, starting Thursday evening, June 20th.
In Madison, Wisconsin
In Madison, the Fortnight for Freedom will begin with a Vigil for Freedom in downtown Madison, at 7 PM on Thursday, June 24th.
Location: State Street steps of the Wisconsin State Capitol building on Capitol Square, in Madison.
Bishop Robert C. Morlino will lead Madison in prayer.
The vigil will continue through July 4th, 2013. Schedule of events found at Fortnight of Freedom.
All are welcome, it’s not just for Catholics. We need everybody’s prayers!
Lord, you blessed your land; you forgave the guilt of your people.
O Lord, you once favoured your land and revived the fortunes of Jacob,
you forgave the guilt of your people
and covered all their sins.
You averted all your rage,
you calmed the heat of your anger.
Revive us now, God, our helper!
Put an end to your grievance against us.
Will you be angry with us for ever,
will your anger never cease?
Will you not restore again our life
that your people may rejoice in you?
Let us see, O Lord, your mercy
and give us your saving help.
I will hear what the Lord God has to say,
a voice that speaks of peace,
peace for his people and his friends
and those who turn to him in their hearts.
His help is near for those who fear him
and his glory will dwell in our land.
Mercy and faithfulness have met;
justice and peace have embraced.
Faithfulness shall spring from the earth
and justice look down from heaven.
The Lord will make us prosper
and our earth shall yield its fruit.
Justice shall march before him
and peace shall follow his steps.
Despite the fact that Catholicism is the largest religion in Madison, in Wisconsin and in the United States, Madison’s Wisconsin Sate Journal (WSJ) did not report on the historical global holy hour. Clearly hostile to Catholicism, WSJ prefers to report on Catholic dissidents, often on as few as two of them, rather than to report on thousands of Madisonians participating in a historical global prayer effort.
Historic Event of Biblical Proportions
The image of the entire world kneeling in adoration of Our Lord, led by the Pope, imploring God’s assistance, presents a picture of historical and Biblical significance. It calls to mind events such as God’s call of Nineveh to repentance, or the miraculous Christian victory at the Battle of Lepanto, attributed to God’s intervention after massive prayer of the Rosary.
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The assembly of all Catholics in simultaneous global prayer represents no small effort. There are about 1.2 billion Catholics in the world, and about 2,800 Catholic dioceses, so the number of people participating in this global holy hour was likely in the millions. Pope Francis requested feedback on participation, so details on participation may soon be available.
Rome Reports:
Putting Religion into Context in 2013
The secular (non-religious) “progressive” world, i.e. Madison’s Wisconsin State Journal’s (WSJ) world, despite their minority status in the United States, views religion as archaic and primitive. Their “enlightened” modernists ridicule religious beliefs and rituals, and try to reinterpret traditional belief in the light of new and modern philosophies. WSJ articles either ignore the existence of religion altogether, or attempt to spin (not very subtly) their reports to discredit proven and established religion.
A short visit to the WSJ discussion forums demonstrates the lack of tolerance and the air of conceit exhibited by many Madison progressives who use the forums for anonymous hate-mongering, particularly hate-mongering directed at the Catholic Church. A little participation in those forums (plus a bit of detective work) often reveals some major participants of those forums to be members, or even staff of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF). To read those WSJ forums, one would think religion to be an embarrassing and primitive Medieval error, which has now been corrected by enlightened modernists, who are themselves the infallible source of all wisdom and knowledge.
Secular (Non-Religious) Culture: the Rule or the Exception?
999 out of 1,000 atheists are tolerant, nice atheists, many of whom, according to Pope Francis, are candidates for salvation. Too bad the squeaky wheel, FFRF, often gives them all a bad name.
What Americans Actually Believe
In the United States, the most educated and technologically advanced nation in the world, 90% of Americans believe in God, 82% of Americans pray regularly, and 47% pray daily.
Why would they do that?
Because it works.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, the symbolic seat of American Catholicism, where Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass, and where Cardinal Dolan, the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops now serves. Catholicism is the largest religion in the United States; 25% of Americans are Catholic.
The “enlightened” modernists would claim, of course, that the 82% of Americans who believe in God and who pray must be the primitive uneducated fools of America, while the 18% who do not believe in God and do not pray are the intelligent educated Americans.
But no.
There is no correlation between belief/unbelief in God and smarts or education.
Gallup polls tell us that 71% of Americans with postgraduate education believe that God is responsible for creating human beings (Gallup, 2010).
78% of all Americans (of any educational level) believe the same thing.
Only 16% of Americans believe in evolution without any involvement of God.
Proverbs 2:5-8
The knowledge of God comes from observation, experience, and common sense, and is available to the simplest of us. That knowledge is not lost by those who are get some formal education. We can all see that the sky is blue, whether we get graduate degrees or not. The brainwashing that often does occur on modern US campuses and is carried out by progressive minorities, evaportes quickly as soon as college kids leave the campus environment and start experiencing real life.
You couldn’t get numbers like 82% and 78% if the progressive brainwashing in college lasted.
What Do Believers Do When the Going Gets Rough, and Does it Work?
So, despite what mass media tells us, despite what Hollywood and television shows us, despite what agenda progressive governments try to push in our schools and in our legislation, Americans continue to believe in God and to pray.
When faced with powerful opposing forces, the now Progressive (previously Democrat) party, which tried to eliminate mention of God from their platform in the last election, desperately reaches for underhanded and unethical methods to win, believing that the ends justify the means. But those who believe in God and know that God’s power dwarfs our own, double down and pray. Pray hard, and wait.
A concerted global prayer effort in these difficult times is an even better idea than individual prayer. The Catholic Church is one of the most populous and organized groups capable of of arranging concerted global prayer, and that is what our very wise Pope Francis has just arranged.
If you think that the prayer and peaceful activism of the last few years are bearing fruit in unexpected ways today, with new Obama administration scandals surfacing almost daily and shocking even the mainstream (liberal) media, just wait until the fruits of this week’s Global Adoration begin to arrive. The radicals who have tried to strong-arm America into expansion of national and global federally-funded abortion, redefinition of marriage, and violation of religious freedom, will stand no chance against a praying American electorate.
For Skeptics
A reminder for skeptics of the mysterious mechanisms behind global change–
The demise of Communism and the end of the Cold War were not the result of politics, plans, troop movements, or elections. The Soviet Union was brought to it’s knees in 1991 without bloodshed because it fell into it’s own traps, while two courageous religious men, Pope John Paul the Great and “born-again Christian” President Ronald Reagan, stood up for what was right, while Catholic Poland resisted peacefully, and while the world prayed. See The Holy Alliance.
Concerted prayer efforts work just as well in the 20th and 21st centuries as they did in Biblical and Medieval times; God is outside of time. Those who don’t know history do not know this.
Why Some Don’t Believe
We don’t want to dismiss those good people who lack faith, or the reasons for their lack of faith. Those reasons can include a failure to understand why God does not always answer our prayers exactly the way we wanted Him to, and a failure to understand why God would permit evil to exist in the world. These are important questions addressed elsewhere, but can be summarized by making an analogy between God and a good parent.
The fact that God has not always given you what you want does not mean that He is not there, or that you cannot tap into His power if you approach Him the right way. Presumably your parents did not always give you what you wanted, particularly if you did not approach them in the right way, and you have not concluded that your parents do not exist.
God might also, like a good parent, allow you to experience a limited brush with evil, if that inspires you to make a course correction which will transform the rest of your life.
One more factor contributing to lack of faith in the world can be “religious” people who fail to live up to their professed beliefs. Religious people do make mistakes, much as math professors and doctors can make mistakes. Their mistakes (sins) do not invalidate the truth and beauty of Christ’s message or of His Church, but they do give non-believers a bad image of that message.
The intentions for which the Pope requested this global prayer were:
For the obedience of the Church so that she appear before the world as “beautiful,without spot or wrinkle,holy and without blemish.”
For victims of violence, drugs, human trafficking, economic insecurity and social marginalization.
Paraphrased, first for the holiness of the Church, so that the beauty of her message might be more apparent to the world, and also for the masses of humanity who are suffering from the sins of the world.
Violence, drugs, human trafficking, economic insecurity and social marginalization are all products of humanity’s violation of the Ten Commandments and of Christian morality. They are products of sin. If humanity did a better job of recognizing and following the wisdom and beauty of Judeo-Christian morality, human suffering would be reduced drastically.
No whale needed for Pope Francis. Unlike Jonah, he offers no resistance and does his job.
The misery and immorality of the present world resembles that of Nineveh in the Bible. The solution is a return to God’s law. Pope Francis is a modern Jonah, calling us to get down on our knees and to make the necessary corrections.
What is this Seemingly Archaic Rite of “Adoration?”
The word archaic , often used by progressives to describe the Catholic Church, her teachings and her ceremonies, can be interpreted in a negative or positive way, depending on one’s reference point. A narcissistic modern attitude might define archaic as old, out of date, or irrelevant. But a more broadminded modern approach would suggest that something that has survived 2,000 years successfully must be pretty advantageous and pretty awesome. Evolutionism is, after all, a popular modern mechanism for appraisal of ideas.
If the Church has persisted for two thousand years, and 1.2 billion people subscribe to it today, this Church would only be archaic in the very positive sense of being ancient, being respected, and being awesome. And despite what the media would like to tell you, the Catholic Church is treated with great reverence and respect worldwide. Why else would the funeral of Pope John Paul the Great draw over four million mourners, many of them not Catholic, and draw the world’s largest gathering of statesmen from over 200 countries to Rome?
What about this archaic word “adoration?”
Perpetual Adoration Chapel in Madison, WI
Adore:
–to regard with utmost esteem, love and respect; honor.
-to pay divine honor to; worship;
-to adore God.
-to like or admire very much: I simply adore the way your hair is done!
-to worship Origin: Latin ad + orare to speak; to speak to
So to adore God is to esteem, love and respect God.
To adore God is also to speak to God, i.e. pray.
Those who believe in God, in the Creator of the Universe and source of all that is good, adore God and pray to God.
That would be 90% of Americans (who believe) and 82% of Americans (who pray).
Catholics have a special opportunity to adore/pray to God in person, or face-to-face, since they have the Real Presence of God available to them in the Eucharist, or in Holy Communion. They have access to God personally and physically just as much as the apostles did 2,000 years ago. They have the Mass, they have Holy Communion, and they have Adoration, sometimes called Exposition, of the Blessed Sacrament. Why settle for virtual conversation with God (without the physical Presence), when you can have a face-to-face conversation?
Finally, regarding the pomp and ceremony with which Catholics treat the Blessed Sacrament-
If you were to meet face-to-face with God (not the Queen, not the President, not your future spouse at the wedding altar, but GOD), how much dressing up, bowing, kneeling, and reverence do you think would be warranted?
So How Did This Call to Global Adoration Look in Madison?
Bishop Morlino leads Adoration at Madison’s Cathedral Parish
In Madison, Bishop Robert Morlino responded to Pope Francis’ call for global Adoration by leading his Sunday congregation in Adoration for one hour before Sunday Mass, before the exposed Blessed Sacrament in a monstrance (the big gold thing holding the small white Communion host). The hour included scripture readings, a homily, and silent prayer. The Bishop’s (June 2) remarks will soon be available at Madison’s Cathedral Parish’s media archive.
Following the Holy Hour of Adoration, Mass was celebrated, and then the Blessed Sacrament was carried in procession through the streets of Madison, to the Capitol Building, where Catholics have been gathering to pray frequently throughout the last year (Last Year’s Corpus Christi Sunday procession, Freedom of Religion Rallies, Rosary at the Capitol). Benediction (a blessing with the Holy Host in the monstrance) at the State Street steps of the Wisconsin State Capitol in downtown Madison concluded the ceremonies.
Of course, skeptics will correctly point out that cause and effect are hard to prove when it comes to prayer, but in one humble Catholic’s opinion, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet, when it comes to the fruits of Global Adoration.
What worked for Reagan and for Pope John Paul II in 1991 (turning to God) will work for Pope Francis in 2013.
I’m bracing for the ride.
It should be a good one!
Every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved. It may be supposed that such persons would have desired Baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity.
Pope Benedict quoted St. Augustine, saying that those who, prompted by love, strive for peace are predestined by God to be citizens of Jerusalem (to be saved).
Normally, “it will be in the sincere practice of what is good in their own religious traditions and by following the dictates of their own consciences that the members of other religions respond positively to God’s invitation and receive salvation in Jesus Christ, even while they do not recognize of acknowledge him at their Saviour.
If there is salvation outside the Catholic Church, and the Catholic Church has so many “difficult” rules some people don’t want to follow, what’s the point of becoming Catholic? After all, you can do whatever you want, and still be saved!
No, not really. You have to do good to be saved, and to find peace. And defining and doing good on your own is like reinventing the wheel. Possible, but not easy.
Despite the possibility of salvation outside the Catholic Church, salvation inside the Catholic Church is much easier. That was Christ’s point in coming to live among us, to teach us the ground rules and to leave us some help.
.When faced with a difficult and monumental task like getting through life, you can “wing it,” or you can check the instruction manual.
Your choice.
The Catholic Church is the repository of grace and wisdom left to us by Jesus Christ.
The Catholic Church makes our job of attaining salvation (and of experiencing peace in this life) a LOT easier.
A billion people today have this figured out; Catholics.
They want to share the Good News: the New Evangelization
Good Reminder
This is a good reminder of the fact that all groups of people include good people.
And that Christian-hating atheists, like the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), are a minority, who represent only 0.1 %, or only 1 out of 1,000 atheists.
The vast majority of atheists are nice people who not only tolerate us Christians, but who even appreciate the more secular elements of our holidays, like Easter and Christmas.
According to a study published in the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, atheists show scientifically measurable responses indicating probable belief in God.
When Finnish investigators measured emotional response with skin conductance measurements, atheists showed the same conflicted response as religious people did, when asked to dare God to do terrible things.
Despite atheists’ verbal claims that they did not find God statements such as “I dare God to make my parents drown” unpleasant, measurement of their emotional arousal while making those statements were identical to those of religious people, who verbally acknowledged such statements to be highly disturbing.
Previously, it was reported that Richard Dawkins, a globally prominent atheist leader, acknowledges his own uncertainty on the existence of God; Dawkins assigns a probability of 15% to the existence of God. See World’s Most Famous Atheist Not Sure Whether God Exists.
The US Catholic Bishops have made a unanimous declaration that the Obama administration is violating the civil rights of American Catholics, by forcing them to act against their faith in a matter involving the life and death of innocent human beings in the HHS Mandate.
Obama’s position on gay marriage, should it prevail, would also criminalize the refusal of a Catholic parish to hire a “married” homosexual to teach in its elementary school.
Pope Francis wrote that the movement for same-sex marriage was Satanic. (The implications of same-sex marriage are not obvious on the surface, but are explored at Gay Marriage and Homosexuality)
Questions and points:
Why did the Archbishop of Boston and chairman of the bishops’ pro-life committee, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, welcome Obama to speak at his Cathedral, literally giving Obama a pulpit?
Let us hope and pray that the good Cardinal plans to confront Obama on the Cardinal’s turf.
Time will tell where this remarkable event will lead.
One of the most highly trafficked older articles on this blog, still visited by thousands of people, is an article written in April of 2010, entitled If You’re Looking for Child Abuse, the Catholic Church is the Last Place to Look. I must admit some surprise, seeing so much traffic going to an article that is three years old.
So I re-read the article, to do a bit of updating. As a courtesy to those who read it, it should be current.
Not much updating was needed, since the main points of the article remain as true today as they were in 2010:
Catholic priests are the least offenders of all groups in society.
Children are more safe with Catholic priests than they are in public schools and in their own homes.
The media seems to report selectively on Catholic priests, misleading people into thinking that Catholic priests are prone to child abuse, when this is simply untrue.
The few articles which exonerate the Catholic Church are often removed from the web, as in the case of the NewsMax article I originally quoted in 2010. Whether threats of litigation similar to those used by the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) are responsible for removal of these articles is not clear.
The fact remains that children are actually in more danger of abuse in their own homes than they are with a Catholic priest. Live-in boyfriends of divorced mothers are the highest offending group of child abusers in our society. Teachers, doctors and farmers are also high up on the list.
Media sensationalizes the the fact that dozens of priest offenders are “loose” in the United States, when it fails to acknowledge that every town in America has hundreds of “loose” sex offenders, and that there are close to a million registered sex offenders in the United States.
Media fails to acknowledge that sex offenders cannot be vaporized magically, either by the government or by the Church, and they do exist and live among us after their sentences have been completed.
Media exercizes a terrible double standard, reporting primarily on Catholic priests who have abused children, and failing to report on the other groups. They also assume guilt, failing to acknowledge that any organization believed to have deep pockets will be subject to numerous false accusations.
Dave has been interviewed on National Public Radio (NPR) as well as by other radio outlets and newspapers for his work. He has also contributed to print publications.
Dave is a graduate of Boston College and lives with his wife and family in Massachusetts.
At our house, Easter egg making continues through the Easter season, as we resurrect our rusty old skills and the eggs we make start looking better and better.
Then, we save the best eggs, dry them out, and display them as Easter decorations in subsequent years.
See Easter Monday, 2012.
This year, my son Tom created an unbelievably beautiful egg, rich with Easter symbolism and with traditional Lithuanian artistry .
Here is his post from facebook:
Carved Easter Egg
This year, my mom Syte and I revived a hobby from years past: making Lithuanian Easter eggs! There are several methods and many traditional designs.
Here are a few photos of an egg I made. The egg was dyed brown by boiling it with onion skins. Carving the surface with a blade exposes the white shell, which is how I made this two-colored egg.
If you’re wondering how it stands on its own, this particular egg was dyed several years ago, and the inside has dried into a small hard ball. With a bit of effort, you can settle the ball at the bottom of the egg so it balances upright.
Christ is risen, indeed He is risen. Alleluia and Happy Easter!
Non-commercial use is welcomed with attribution (please leave the “tomreitz.com” credit intact).
BTW, Tom’s talents as a Web Developer are at least equal to his talents in Lithuanian Easter Egg making. Anybody who needs a customized website should look him up at his company, ReitzInternet.com.
Tom’s Egg, Easter 2013:
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One face of the egg depicts Christ, the Lamb who was slain, but has been raised. Alleluia!
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.The other face features a blooming Easter lily.
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Top view of the egg, which resembles a host in a monstrance.
Today’s Catholic Nuns: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
No Big Surprise
It’s not a big surprise to see that the liberal media prioritizes liberal dissident Catholics over faithful Catholics when they cover Catholics at all, and prioritizes liberal dissident Catholic nuns over faithful Catholic nuns when they cover Catholic nuns at all.
Catholic teaching frowns on much of the modern liberal agenda as immoral, so it would be self-defeating for liberals to cover Catholic beliefs in an accurate or persuasive way.
Media prefers to highlight dissident Catholics like Biden and Pelosi, implying that these renegades are representative of real Catholics. In this way, the media seeks to legitimize the radical progressive agenda.
There is no question that Catholic dissidents do exist, and that dissident Catholic nuns do exist.
But the exact number of dissidents, and the degree to which the media misrepresent Catholics in their attempts to justify the liberal agenda, are important subjects to address.
One of the Most Active Hate Groups in This Country…
Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF)
MICHAELANGELO CENSORED;
REMOVING GOD THE FATHER FROM
PUBLIC ART DISPLAY
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The Freedom From Religion Foundation(FFRF) is one of the most active hate groups in the country.
They are supported by the media, which ironically favors Democrats, the founders of the KKK. . .
FFRF misrepersents the separation of Church and State, a concept not found in the Constitution, but from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson, in which his concern is for protecting religious groups from the state, not the reverse.
The Left loves to issue reports about how conservative groups are actually hate groups and potential terrorists, often comparing them — without any intent of irony — to the KKK, that icon of hate founded by Democrats.
Meanwhile, one of the most active hate groups in this country, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, not only is allowed to continue its anti-Christian activity, it is encouraged and supported by the media and politicians…
The FFRF has harassed and intimidated Christian groups around the country and actively intimidates local governments into banning any non-atheist religious displays or activities on public lands.
It gets away with all this bullying because the FFRF has, on many court benches, duplicitous left-wing comrades who have twisted the concept of church-state separation into a weapon of church suppression by the state.
That infamous “wall of separation” is not a phrase found in the Constitution. It originates from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to a minister who was concerned about the government interfering with religious activity. Jefferson explained that this “wall” was meant to protect religious groups from the state…
Syte Reitz grew up in Queens, New York, in a family of Lithuanian immigrants who fled Nazi and Soviet domination during World War II. Her education includes a Ph.D. in Biochemistry, and post-doctoral work at Princeton University. Syte left her job as an Assistant Professor at Oakland University, Michigan, to devote herself to raising her children, and ultimately homeschooled them through the end of high school. She is a member of Madison's Cathedral Parish.
violation of religious freedom
Syte Reitz grew up in Queens, New York, in a family of Lithuanian immigrants who fled Nazi and Soviet domination during World War II. Her education includes a Ph.D. in Biochemistry, and post-doctoral work at Princeton University. Syte left her job as an Assistant Professor at Oakland University, Michigan, to devote herself to raising her children, and ultimately homeschooled them through the end of high school. She is a member of Madison's Cathedral Parish.
