MC News

As long as there are tests, the saying goes, there will be prayer in public schools. And even though a handful of school administrators still have a heavy-handed approach towards faith in public schools, a large majority of public schools across the country handle faith issues with no problem. That’s the view of First Amendment expert Charles Haynes,

For months, Janesville Congressman and now Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan has spoken passionately about how Catholic social teaching helped shape his budget priorities. And for months, leaders within his own denomination have ripped him. A committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops blasted his federal budget approach for “unjustified and wrong” cuts to the poor. A busload of nuns motored through nine states, including Wisconsin, contending his fiscal priorities are “immoral” and would “devastate the soul of our nation.” But in Ryan’s own Catholic diocese, the reception has been much more nuanced, even flattering at times. Read…

(Madison, WI) – The search for God and spiritual significance is alive and well on U.S. college and university campuses. Madison-based InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA anticipates a record year of campus ministry in the 2012-2013 school year that is now getting underway. During the 2011-2012 school year just past, InterVarsity saw 3,354 new believers come to faith in Jesus Christ. That’s an increase of more than 700 over the previous year, and more than double the same figure from seven years ago. Read more of this news release.

JERUSALEM, Israel — It didn’t draw Super Bowl attention but Israel’s first-ever international tackle football game made history. It was American football, Israeli style, complete with the blowing of the shofar (ram’s horn). Played on a Baptist baseball field, Israel’s national team took on a foreign opponent for the first time ever — the Crusaders from Wisconsin’s Maranatha Baptist Bible College.

Theresa Wilks became known in college for always wearing basketball shoes, excelling at sports and never doing anything contrary to her Catholic faith. Classmates took to calling her “Mother Teresa.” It was a jokey nickname at first, but it made her wonder, “Is this a sign from God, all these comments people are making?” Now 27, Wilks, who lives and works at Camp Gray, a year-round Catholic camp near Baraboo, will leave in two weeks to enter a convent near St. Louis.

The volunteers of Habitat for Humanity of Dane County are currently building Habitat’s 200th home for a local family. Construction began in the spring and Habitat’s Summer 2012 newsletter reports that completion is expected in 2013.Habitat volunteers from local faith communities, and others, have been building homes for over a quarter of a century. When the home is ready for occupation there’s always a house blessing ceremony and the new home owners are given a Bible.

“You’re kidding, right?” That’s the reaction David Liners often gets from people when they hear about the 11×15 campaign. It’s a short name for an ambitious effort launched in February by a cross section of the state’s faith leaders. The goal is to reduce Wisconsin’s prison population from its current size of about 22,000 inmates to 11,000 by the end of 2015. In other words, whack it in half in four calendar years.

Masterworks from the world’s oldest museum art gallery are coming to one of Madison’s newest. Forty-five artworks traveling from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy, will be featured in “Offering of the Angels: Painting and Tapestries from the Uffizi Gallery,” a historically important exhibition that opens Friday Aug. 24 at the Chazen Museum of Art, 750 University Ave. “Offering of the Angels” is organized around the Christian theme of the Eucharist, with depiction of important imagery from the Old and New Testaments including original sin and the fall, the Virgin Mary, the Last Supper, the passion, the cross and the…

MADISON — In May 2012, the St. Paul University Catholic Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison was granted approval by the City of Madison to build a new chapel and student center at 723 State St. “After four years of conversations with the City of Madison, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, our neighbors, and many key benefactors and supporters of St. Paul’s, we are very happy to have a building design that we know both meets city approval and most of our needs,” said Fr. Eric Nielsen, director of the center.

The American people are not happy, with the country stuck in a recession and led by self-serving politicians. But in their American optimism they believe that better days are ahead. What if they’re wrong? Several leading Christian intellectuals who have come to the U.S. from abroad are not as optimistic. The English social critic Os Guinness has a new book out, A Free People’s Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future (InterVarsity Press). Vishal Mangalwadi, from India, delivered a lecture series at the University of Minnesota, Must the Sun Set on the West (now available through his website, www.revelationmovement.com). Mangalwadi…