News

This week, Nashotah House will install a new dean and president, the Right Rev. Edward Salmon. A retired South Carolina bishop, Salmon will have to balance the school’s traditional mission against shifting economic and technological forces, and lead it at a time of great division within the Anglican Communion. “Our vision is to continue to do, impressively and strongly, what we’ve done for 170 years,” said Salmon, a longtime Nashotah House trustee, who will be installed during a convocation Friday – where former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey is scheduled to speak.

Read More

MADISON — After decades in which “women’s ordination” was openly discussed, Pope John Paul II declared, in the encyclical Ordinatio Sacerdotalis in 1994, that priestly ordination is reserved to men and the Church has no authority to change this. To this day, however, many Catholics remain puzzled as to how or even whether the question has been fully resolved. If anything, public dissent is growing stronger with high-profile cases of priests and others declaring opposition to the teaching. The Diocese of Madison invites all to attend a St. Thérèse of Lisieux Lecture on Tuesday, Nov. 8, in which Sr. Sara…

Read More

I’ve been asking myself that question a lot recently. I’m a junior living in the dorms. That doesn’t make sense. At least that’s what people tell me. At the University of Wisconsin – Madison, it’s widely understood that once you finish your freshman year in the dorms, you’re out of there. In fact, freshmen start signing leases for apartments within a month or two of arriving on campus. Dorms are a rite of passage for freshmen, but generally students don’t choose to live in them for a second, and certainly not a third, year. So why am I living in the…

Read More

Clara Franklin had no idea she was about to cause such a ruckus when she took the stage May 1 at Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Madison. The historically black congregation was celebrating its 100th anniversary with a special service, and Franklin, 86, the church’s first female deacon, was asked to give a few reflections. She was just a couple of minutes into her remarks when she faltered, then crumpled.

Read More

CHAMPION, Wis. – Philip and Barbara Hesselbein came to the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help to pray for a grandson who has an inoperable brain tumor. Darlene Searcy prayed for her family and for herself; she has cancer. Mary Spakowicz, who also has cancer, came “because God will hear me here.” The afflicted and the faithful have long made pilgrimages to the quiet country site east of Green Bay where Belgian immigrant Adele Brise said in 1859 that she saw the Virgin Mary three times. For the past few years, maybe 30 or 50 people had trickled in…

Read More

Fifty years ago, Marlys Mittelstadt, of Monona, put off starting her new job as the organist and choir director at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Madison because she was having a baby. She officially started serving the congregation when her youngest child was six weeks old. “It was 50 years (of performing) on Sept. 15,” she said. On Sunday, she played at her last service and while she plans on performing recitals in the future, she said she will miss Sundays.

Read More