Holy day of obligation: Given the amount of stuff that accumulates on my desk, National Clean Off Your Desk Day should have its own season.
For the record: Home teams playing at the Bradley Center when Archbishop Jerome E. Listecki is present have each won. The Marquette men’s basketball team won on Wednesday and the Milwaukee Admirals won on Saturday. Not sure if it was the archbishop or the Elvis impersonator, but Saturday night’s 12,000-plus crowd was the Admirals’ biggest of the season. If his presence does, in fact, help the home teams, the Brewers, Bucks and Wave might want to offer him a season ticket.
Space case: Speaking of facilities that hold a lot of people, one wonders if major archdiocesan events, e.g., the installation of an archbishop, might not be more community-friendly events if they were held in places like the Milwaukee Theatre or the U.S. Cellular Arena. The cost and potential liturgical obstacles would be offset by the fact that the former holds 4,100 people while the latter holds more than 10,000. When Archbishop Listecki was installed Jan. 4 at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, 1,000 people attended, including approximately 240 of whom watched the telecast in the atrium. When Bishop Paul Sirba was ordained and installed for the Diocese of Duluth, Minn., on Dec. 14, the event was carried on TV and attendees still filled all 2,300 seats in the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center.
Sports as religion: This has nothing to do with the outcome of Sunday’s Packers-Cardinals game, but in reading the book “First Things First,” by Kurt and Brenda Warner, one learns that she wasn’t going to marry him because he — a Catholic who graduated from a Catholic high school — wasn’t a “Christian.” And he concurs! Uh, Kurt, check out the Scripture-based Catholic “playbook” we call the Catechism of the Catholic Church if you have any doubts about Catholics being Christian. Share it with your wife, too, because I’m not sure if Brenda’s spiritual diet of fundamentalism fiber is laced with anti-Catholicism, but her claim that you weren’t Christian is as faulty as yesterday’s Packer defense.
