Author: Gordon Govier

MONONA — A stop at the St. Stephen’s Food Pantry is designed to resemble a trip to the grocery store. There are shopping carts, shelves of baked goods, bags of dried pasta and cans of mandarin oranges (one of the pantry’s most popular items). There are steaks, whole chickens, and soon, catfish fillets. Two adjoining tables offer pastries from Piggly Wiggly or the nearby Copps. St. Stephen’s, located in St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church in Monona, is one of the larger of the county’s 45 food pantries. Read more of this story.

A pair of development proposals can move forward despite attempts from neighbors to sway the Madison City Council’s opinion. Council members on Tuesday denied 16-1 an appeal from neighbors to rescind a conditional use permit granted to Care Net Pregnancy Center of Dane County, which wants to build a $6.4 million, 36-unit, mixed-income housing project at 1360 MacArthur Road. Read more of this story.

FEW LIBERAL DEMOCRATS of President Obama’s first term possessed as much power and political savvy as former congressman David Obey. In the secular political world, he was the principal architect of the federal stimulus package, and he chaired the session of Congress that voted to enact the controversial health-care plan known as “Obamacare.” Perhaps less well known in that secular political world is that Obey believed his actions were rooted not in secular political philosophy but in the religious traditions of his native Wisconsin. He encountered this tradition growing up in a Roman Catholic parish in Wausau and reaffirmed it…

Faith Community Bible Church’s building at the corner of Park & Regent is now available for prayer/worship 24 hours/day, 7 days/week, continuing 40 days in observance of the Lenten season leading up to Easter.

Al Ripp, lifelong Middleton resident, will join Middleton Outreach Ministry as Executive Director, coming to MOM with nearly 20 years of leading corporate initiatives.

Several Madison-area pastors will hit some of the city’s busiest streets and intersections today to offer drive-thru ashes for the start of Lent.

Madison Catholic Bishop Robert Morlino remembers Pope Benedict XVI once telling a group of priests they must have the courage and humility to rest when they are tired — to take days off when needed. “I think he’s displaying the courage and humility he told priests to have,” Morlino said in an interview Monday, the day Benedict announced his surprise resignation.

Milwaukee-area churches are using Valentine’s Day to engage the faithful in some unabashed discussions about sex, love and romance. “These are real issues that affect people’s everyday lives,” said the Rev. Danny Parmelee of Epikos Church, which will explore a host of topics – including sex as part of God’s design, homosexuality and pornography – in a four-part series that launched Sunday.

It’s a tradition many people know as Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, a last blast of decadent foods before the start of 40 days of Lenten penance on Ash Wednesday. But in England, Ferris knew it as Shrove Tuesday. The term comes from the verb “shrive,” which means to obtain absolution for one’s sins by way of confession.

Milwaukee Working is a fledgling faith-based nonprofit aimed at creating jobs in the heart of one of the most impoverished cities in America. Housed in a former ice-cream factory near W. North Ave. and N. 30th St., its four start-up ventures employ about 15 workers, most of whom have spent time in prison or on the streets and had never held full-time jobs before. “This is a resurrection story – not just of a building, but of people’s lives,” said the Rev. Mike Murphy, an associate pastor at Elmbrook Church in Brookfield and one of Milwaukee Working’s founders.