Kailey Barthel (Submitted photo courtesy of Barthel family) Last fall, my husband Mark and I drove our daughter Kailey to [...]

MENOMONEE FALLS — Students at St. Anthony Parish School have discovered a newfound love of learning, thanks to donors’ funds.

St. Anthony, a school for students in 4-year-old kindergarten to eighth grade, entered a new era of technology more than a year ago when a SMART Board was installed. Created by Canadian company SMART Technologies, SMART Boards are a modern version of the chalkboard. The devices give students an opportunity to learn and demonstrate knowledge interactively.

Rarely is a Catholic school without financial concerns. In good economic times and bad, the need to provide more financial assistance, cut spending, minimize increases, and maintain and increase enrollment – enrollment in archdiocesan schools dropped this school year by 2.3 percent or a loss of 298 students from the previous year – is ever present. Nowhere is this need more evident than in Catholic schools serving rural communities. 

Q: My 10-year-old son said to me, “Didn’t we already have Advent last year? Why are we doing it again?” Can you help me answer his question?

Your son asked a very good question! If the baby Jesus was already born, lived his life, died and rose, why are we preparing for his coming all over again? The liturgical year of the church is often depicted as a circle and we refer to it as a cycle in that it comes around again and again every year.

As we celebrate this cycle through our liturgy, we remember the events of the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The liturgical year is divided into two main seasons of preparation and celebration: Advent leads us to Christmas, and Lent leads us to Easter and Pentecost. Periods of Ordinary Time come between these major seasons.

During a visit last month to Aquinas Academy in Menomonee Falls, Fr. Francis “Rocky” Hoffman shared his vision for having Christ-centered homes.

During his talk, “Family: The Antidote to a Toxic Culture,” Fr. Hoffman, senior director of mission, programming and development at Relevant Radio, and a frequently heard on-air talent, spent little time discussing the ills of society, opting to focus on what could be done to curtail those ills. About 100 people attended the talk.

According to Fr. Hoffman, toxins within families can be attributed to a number of factors, including addictive behavior, working unreasonably long hours and coveting money and material possessions. He said those toxins have been eroding the family structure over time, and that Catholics are not exempt from them.

Fr. Francis “Rocky” Hoffman can be heard on Relevant Radio, 100.1 FM on Morning Air, during the 7 a.m. hour and is a guest on “Go Ask Your Father,” Tuesdays and Thursdays at noon.

You are an Altairian.

That’s because you live on the planet Altair-2. You’re attending high school there, and have just been given a tough homework assignment. Your teacher requires a research paper on the odd inhabitants of Earth, a plant located in the galaxy just to the left.

You ask, “What makes them so special?”

Your teacher answers, “Earthlings seem to be evenly divided about whether it is better to love one another or hate one another. The assignment is for you to find out which impulse is more powerful.”

Keeping Christ in Christmas doesn’t need to be one more “to-do” on your already packed December calendar. Jesus was born [...]

The message she preached to 20 million viewers during her nine years as head writer and executive producer of  “Touched By An Angel,” Martha Williamson now preaches to just two  – her daughters.

Of the things she and her husband, Jon Andersen, hope to teach the 9- and 7-year olds they adopted from China, the most important is “that in any circumstance, in any situation, seeking first the kingdom of God,” Williamson said in a phone interview with your Catholic Herald.

It’s the same message that “Touched By An Angel” exuded in each of its 212 hour-long episodes that ran on CBS from 1994 to 2003.

“We were taking a very Biblical point of view, and it was going to be a big leap,” explained Williamson, also president of Moon Water Productions. “There had certainly been shows about angels and supernatural people before on television but … our intention was to make God the star of the show. You never saw God on the show, but the message of God and his message that he exists and he loves you and he wants to be part of your life was going to be a recurring theme every week.”

Williamson said the responsibility that came with “Touched By An Angel” was great at a time when faith and spiritual matters “were assiduously avoided on television.”

“When you’re talking about people’s faith, you have tremendous responsibility and this was a television show that we knew was going to be groundbreaking because it was going to be unequivocally about God,” she explained of the show’s Judeo-Christian stance. “… (We) used words straight out of the Bible and put them in the mouths of the angels.”

This is Wisconsin in the middle of football season so I hope you’ll indulge me a Packer analogy.Catholics in southeastern [...]

Q. Every day I hear of tragedies all over the world and even in my own city. As a Christian I feel called to respond to the needs of the poor and suffering and yet a day caring for my husband and my three small children exhausts me. I feel helpless. What does God really want from me?

The world is full of pain and suffering. Our media keeps us in touch with these tragedies. Jesus teaches us to have a compassionate heart and so you are rightly moved by all you see around you, and your heart leaps, aches and breaks in response to so much human suffering.

God has blessed you with a husband, three growing children, and all the demands of nurturing life in an active and very busy world. How are you to respond on a daily basis to the reality of our human condition both near and far? What exactly is your divine assignment?