More Grace and Gratitude

Past Catholic Christmases make rich memories

2011-12-24T23:46:00.001-05:00

Published in Cumbelrand Times-News Sunday, December 25, 2011

"The decorations, the music, the crèche, the shoulder-to-shoulder, better-get-there-early, standing-room-only crowd, the unparalleled beauty of Christ’s arrival and His sacrifice – along with anticipating what came after – made this night magical, indeed."

Being part of my mom’s large Catholic family, and spending my first seven grades in Catholic school, I recall vibrantly holy and wholesome past Christmases.

Before Christmas Mass became a children’s Mass (reminiscent of a school pageant), it was reverent, beautiful, solemn, yet celebratory -- the essence, in my memory, of the Catholic celebration of Christ’s birth and ultimate sacrifice.

For the month prior, we prepared in school for the miraculous coming of our infant savior. Besides studying Bible stories and the Baltimore Catechism, and unfolding our Advent calendars, we incorporated the mystery and wonder of Christ’s coming into literary and art projects and mini-dramas.

As Christmas day approached, we spent more time in church for choir practice. Sister Charlotte, the organist, arranged prayers to fit Christmas hymns, which we students carefully and joyfully then sang from our pews in the choir loft at midnight Mass.

Preparations at home began weeks in advance, too. Mom usually made me a new dress; perhaps I’d get a new coat. We’d bake sand tarts and pineapple filled cookies, Santa-shaped sugar-type, and Mom’s caramel-topped applesauce cakes – gifts for the teachers!

My siblings and I looked forward to finding a few surprises the next morning, as we decorated the tree on Christmas Eve and placed the crèche beneath it. Situating the tree in front of the double windows required rearranging living room furniture, adding to the sense of accommodating the Christ child in our home.

Midnight Mass, though, brought the denouement. The decorations, the music, the crèche, the shoulder-to-shoulder, better-get-there-early, standing-room-only crowd, the unparalleled beauty of Christ’s arrival and His sacrifice – along with anticipating what came after – made this night magical, indeed.

The longer-than-usual service ended after 1 a.m. Then everyone in my mother’s family – who traveled from various states, and filled a significant portion of the church pews – gathered once again at her parents’ home for breakfast.

We scrambled dozens of eggs and fried pounds of puddin’ to feed upwards of probably 60, some years. We know the tradition started as early as 1963, because we have group photos that show my right arm in a cast: I broke it on the playground in second grade.

After breakfast, around 4 a.m., we all gathered in my grandparents’ spacious living room. We cousins gave each other our jingle gifts and distributed those from the pile under the tree. Everyone got something from Grandma and Grandpap, and their seven daughters exchanged gifts. The revelry continued until sunup.

Returning home on Christmas day, we opened the gifts under our own tree: Usually a book (most memorably, The Yearling), a board game (Scrabble), clothes (a nightgown and underwear), perhaps a doll (Shirley Temple), or candy (Life Savers book). Then we’d read, play, or sleep.

Twenty-five years or so have passed since our last Christmas gathering at Grandma’s house, but Mom’s sister Frances keeps a holiday tradition going. This year, we'll gather after the New Year at her farmhouse in Salisbury, Pa.

Sadly, most in the younger generations don’t practice the faith, and those who do might need to travel a distance to experience a traditional, beautiful and reverent Catholic Christmas Mass. Staged to accommodate children -- or to appeal to the child within – most Christmas Masses today emote and entertain, rather than inspire and elevate.

At this time of year, I am grateful to my parents (my father converted from the Episcopal Church), Mom’s parents and their parents, and the priests and nuns of my youth, for making my Catholic upbringing real, and my Christmas memories rich.

Will U.S. refine Chinese cure for blindness?

2011-11-23T10:19:00.002-05:00

Published in Cumberland Times-News Wednesday, November 23, 2011.

"In this new biomedical race for breakthrough cures, I hope researchers in our country...will follow Hu’s lead to utilize cord blood or adult stem cells, rather than those from embryos. True hope, for any stem cell cure, lies in ethical harvesting."

An ophthalmologist told me recently that scientific advancements might repair damaged optic nerves. “Hopefully,” he said, “you and I will live to see the day.”

That was the first time, since my vision loss April 17, 2006, I had heard of such possibilities. Optic nerve damage is irreversible, I’d been told.

Mine is a complication of heart surgery -- my second to correct birth defects, and their effects. My surgeon blames the 10 minutes, in a 10-hour operation, he needed to repair my aortic aneurism.

Vision experts say even momentary loss of blood flow to optic nerves results in blindness. Perhaps miraculously, I have a bit of residual vision in my left eye, enough to permit me to read, with magnification, and to help me figure out my surroundings.

Since seventh grade, I’ve been nearsighted; and for several decades, I’d been legally blind, though prescription glasses corrected by astigmatism to 20/20.

Perhaps being blind, without my glasses, all those years helped me to accept the permanent state; or perhaps it was because the blindness seemed minor, compared to other difficulties my recovery presented; or perhaps it was my abiding faith in God’s will. Regardless, gratefully, I embraced the challenge with remarkable grace.

Now I read online in the 2011 “Research Story” of Dr. Dong Feng Chen of the Schepens Eye Research Institute, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School: “we hope that functional restoration of sight after optic nerve injury may become possible in the near future, first in mice and then in people.”

That is exciting news, but the U.S. has some catching up to do with China. In the eastern city of Hangzhou, as reported March 18, 2008 by National Public Radio, 600 foreigners and 2,300 Chinese already had received cord blood stem cell therapy at Beike Biotechnology, run by 40-something Dr. Sean Hu. Seventy percent, Hu claims, improved.

A researcher in Los Angeles calls Hu’s therapies “extreme nonsense,” NPR reports, but a doctor at University of Florida “concluded that (Hu’s) stem-cell therapy was the only clinical explanation for (his six-year-old patient’s) improvement.” The girl went from no light perception to recognizing large letters.

According to the current National Institutes of Health Plan for Eye and Vision Research section on Low Vision and Blindness Rehabilitation, “Visual impairment is included among the 10 most prevalent causes of disability in the United States.”

Besides optic neuropathies, other causes for low vision and blindness considered in the NIH report are retinal, corneal and lens diseases, cataracts, glaucoma, strabismis, amblyoopia, myopia, and other disorders of the ocular muscles.

Dr. Hu’s therapies cost hopeful patients tens of thousands of dollars, and seem to apply to infants and children. Experts do not understand how his therapy works, and they have no knowledge of long-term effects or risks.

In this new biomedical race for breakthrough cures, I hope researchers in our country will refine Hu’s technique, to understand the full treatment dynamic, and that they will follow Hu’s lead to utilize cord blood or adult stem cells, rather than those from embryos. True hope, for any stem cell cure, lies in ethical harvesting.

Vision loss changes life, but life is about change. I am thankful that I traveled and participated fully in community when I could, and enjoyed beauty when I saw it clearly. I have all those experiences to draw upon.

Now, in a narrow, grey-veiled, hazy montage, where people and obstacles materialize suddenly, like specters -- fuzzy-figured and featureless -- I ambulate in the dim glow of a nightlight. But I still love life, and I don’t fear death: Great gifts from God.

Compassion is genuine activism for the poor

2011-10-19T23:04:00.002-04:00

Published in Cumberland Times-News Wednesday, October 19, 2011.

"Christ tells of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37), who showers mercy on one victimized by thievery and lawlessness. The Samaritan shares his wealth to help, directly where the need is. This genuine activism springs from heartfelt concern and charity."

My Sept. 29 letter (‘Hey, lady! Can you spare me a penny?’) suggests, tongue-in-cheek, that Bill O’Reilly and the president should try panhandling, to test reasonableness of a one percent national sales tax. In response, Adam Robinette (“Just what is an ‘eccentricity,’ anyway?” Oct. 6) defends lifestyles of the homeless and insists that we all should freely hand our cash over to beggars to spend as they wish.

I relate examples of two real panhandlers to illustrate that we should be wary of folks who appeal to our sympathies with intent to part us from our hard-earned cash, and then spend it in questionable ways.

Mr. Robinette points out that beggars threaten us less than armed robbers do. I believe, in the cases of O’Reilly’s suggested tax and the president’s socialistic jobs bill, any initiative to persuade hard-working Americans to forfeit more cash to fund expansive government spending is tantamount to robbery.

Mr. Robinette says Christians should not judge – particularly when giving to beggars for needs unknown.

Jesus does tell us, “Judge not” (Matthew 7:1), in the context that we should not condemn others (as Mr. Robinette does Christians), because we always have work to do on our own souls.

Jesus also advises us to be “wise as serpents” (Matthew 10:16) and discern foes who would deceive and entangle us in ungodliness (Matthew 10:17).

Christians should give alms, discretely and heroically, as the poor widow does (Mark 12:41-44); but as Mr. Robinette admits, money in their hands does not empower beggars to improve their lot. In fact, I believe it can promote disordered lifestyles and, therefore, is not a kindhearted gift.

Similarly, socialism – blatant in the president’s proposal to tax the rich to aid the poor -- is not Christ-like.

Christ brings us God’s help, particularly in hardship (Romans 5:1-11). God’s heavenly aid comforts, guides and provides for us, according to our needs (Matthew 6:25-34); of course, we must do our part to help ourselves.

Socialism presumes we are helpless, and hopeless. It forcibly takes from one and hands to others. It is thievery and lawlessness.

Compassion, on the other hand, in its urge to redeem, exemplifies true love. Christ tells of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37), who showers mercy on one victimized by thievery and lawlessness. The Samaritan shares his wealth to help, directly where the need is. This genuine activism springs from heartfelt concern and charity.

Moreover, through Christ’s apostle Paul, we see that community flourishes when we contribute our God given skills for the common good (1 Corinthians 12:3-14, 20, 27) and when we lovingly share resources -- wisely, as needed, and all for the glory of God (Acts 4:32-37). This is no testament to socialism (or communism), but an example of a generous, faith-filled community.

Jesus required his followers to sell their possessions and give to the poor (Matthew 19:21), not as a command to sustain the poor, but to teach his disciples to shed attachments that would detract from their devotion to his ministry: Exhorting sinners to repent, reform and return to God.

Many religious communities today rely on contributions from benefactors, and require members to embrace poverty. Worldly orthodox Christians, though, as opposed to Christian (or atheist) socialists, believe we each own our earnings, the fruits of our labors, and -- other than taxes levied to build a stable, secure and prosperous nation -- we hold the right to determine how to save, spend or share our resources.

Neither Mr. Robinette, nor the president, has authority to tell us how to help the poor, who will always be with us (Mark 14:7).

About John Mattingly of Mount Savage, Maryland

2011-10-02T15:48:00.005-04:00

This information clarifies the identify of John Mattingly of Mount Savage, Maryland as he is referenced in History of St. Patrick Catholic Church in Mount Savage, Maryland, compiled by Nancy E. Thoerig and published by the church in 2004.

Lannie Dietle and Michael McKenzie report in their book In Search of the Turkey Foot Road, edited by Nancy E. Thoerig and a 2011 publication of the Mount Savage Historical Society, "Although we are not students of Mattingly genealogy, it seems likely that the John Mattingly who is cited on page 48 of the 1909 "The Catholic red book of Western Maryland" as being the first Catholic settler in the area at the time of the French and Indian War may not be the same John Mattingly who married Onea Arnold in 1797, and may not be the same John Mattingly who patented lots 3373 and 3374 (the present-day Amanda Paul farm) in 1819."

Dietle and McKenzie expound, "Although Mattingly genealogy is peripheral to this study, we note that Thomas A. Stobie of Overland Park Kansas has written on his genealogy website that John Mattingly, born
1773, was the husband of Onea Honor (Arnold) Mattingly who died in 1823, and was the son of Henry Mattingly, born 1751. According to the 1787 Deakins‘ list, a Henry Mattingly owned lots 3366 and 3367, which were along the present-day Bald Knob Road.

"Barry Thoerig reports that a William R. Mattingly had at one time posted information on the RootsWeb website that indicated that John Mattingly was born June 1, 1773 in Allegany County Maryland, and was married to Onea Honor Arnold who was born March 3, 1776 in the same county. William R. Mattingly also reported that John and Onea had a son Sylvester born on December 17, 1817. (The Maryland Historical Trust Inventory of Historic Properties) indicates that Francis and Sylvester Mattingly inherited the present-day Amanda Paul farm from John Mattingly in 1845, and then Sylvester bought out Francis on September 26, 1846. This information on Sylvester Mattingly indicates that William R. Mattingly was researching the same John Mattingly who once owned the present-day Amanda Paul farm. Sylvester and his wife Ellen are buried in the Saint Patrick‘s Catholic Church Cemetery."

The Turkey Foot Road followed, generally, present-day Maryland State Route 36 from the Narrows in Cumberland to Barrelville, and then through Arnold's Settlement (early Mount Savage), on its way from Fort Cumberland to present-day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvannia, and on to Pickawillany (present-day Piqua, Ohio).

'Hey, lady! Can you spare me a penny?'

2011-09-29T22:48:00.003-04:00

Published in Cumberland Times-News Thursday, September 29, 2011.

"If Bill O’Reilly’s idea of a one percent federal retail tax should materialize, then I would see my investments working for the government and not for me."

In the past couple weeks, after finishing our grocery shopping, my brother, sister-in-law and I – exiting the plaza -- have observed a panhandler with a sign that reads “Jobless. Broke. Hungry.”

I always feel compassion, and a sense of “but for the grace of God, there go I,” along with a smattering of skepticism, when I see someone homeless.

My sister-in-law suggested we give the fellow a granola bar she handily retrieved from the car console, “since he says he’s hungry.” My brother reckoned, though, the beggar would prefer cash.

We ultimately decided against any gift. After all, I said, there are places where he could receive food; and we agreed that likely, judging from his plentiful tattoos, he would squander cash.

I recalled the time I encountered a vagrant outside McDonald’s in Sharpsburg. “Lady, can you spare me some change?” he asked. “No,” I replied, “but come inside, and I’ll buy your breakfast.” “Oh, no,” he said. “I don’t eat here.” (Doubtful, then, I thought, he’d buy food with cash.) “Sorry. I can’t help you,” I told him.

My brother, sister-in-law and I postulated that if this beggar had saved the money he spent on eccentricities, he might have that cash, with interest now, for necessities. Of course, it is possible he changed his ways some time ago and simply has hit hard times. Without family or assistance, many more likely would be on the streets today.

Times are exceedingly tough. We all feel the crunch of stagnant or shrinking incomes, escalating expenses, diminishing returns on investments, and frozen or dwindling savings. We all have to make less do more; austerity is the new norm.

“Suze Orman says,” I quoted to my brother and sister-in-law, “saving has to be more fun than spending.” For me, it is. I buy items on sale and use coupons. If it’s not a deal, then there is no deal.

I did make a few bad spending decisions, one wrong investment turn in my younger days, but I don’t expect any more of those.

I never could afford eccentricities; I always had a hefty monthly health insurance bill that still keeps me strapped. But praise God I’ve had health insurance all these years; without it, I’d be poor, possibly homeless.

Suze says health insurance is a must, to build security, along with investing in stocks. Now, that’s where I get nervous. Investing in a mutual fund, with a financial adviser, is what I consider my past wrong turn. I lost too much. Now my certificates of deposit earn a paltry penny (and less) on the dollar.

If Bill O’Reilly’s idea of a one percent federal retail tax should materialize, then I would see my investments working for the government and not for me.

Suze says if we choose solid stocks that pay dividends, then we can earn up to five percent and keep ahead of inflation – if we invest half our holdings for at least a decade, that is!

I’ve done some courageous things, mostly because I’ve had to; but I could never be that brave.

I might continue to consider, and then re-consider, putting a thousand dollars into a dividend fund, but I won’t make any hasty moves. One percent assured in the bank helps to pay my health insurance.

Perhaps Bill O’Reilly, and the president, would do well to panhandle for pennies and see how many they could collect. My guess is even a one percent tax would be too much for most.

My best life lesson I learned in the garden

2011-09-03T11:58:00.001-04:00

Published in Cumberland Times-News Wednesday, August 31, 2011.

"The image of that scene remains in my mind’s eye; and even now, I feel the shift in my thinking that took place at that moment: The overwhelmed child grew a step toward becoming the industrious adult."

In my youth, my parents planted a bountiful vegetable garden. It stretched the 120-foot width of our lower lot, and about a third of the depth. A narrow path on either side bordered our neighbors’ yards and gardens, and across the bottom were woods.

Otherwise in that lot, across the road from our front porch, were a red raspberry patch, two Concord grape arbors, a half-dozen sour cherry trees, three German Prune plum trees, a red currant bush, a Yellow Transparent apple tree, a Winter Banana apple tree, a McIntosh graft on an otherwise generic apple tree, another sprawling apple tree that served best to support my suspended wooden swing, two Chinese chestnut trees, and a black walnut tree. The blossoms in spring were spectacular.

Later, my parents planted two Bartlett pear trees. The pears are delicious. The cherry trees broke to smithereens in an ice storm many winters back. The grape arbors, too, came down decades ago. The chestnuts are beautiful trees, though the fruits are wormy. The McIntosh graft is dead. The swing and its tree are long gone. The banana apple provides good shade now for the nearest neighbor, and fodder for the deer.

As my older siblings moved out, and we no longer needed it, my father seeded the garden in clover -- beloved by groundhogs (who always were troublesome in the garden). The lot serves now as a front yard for my 91-year-old mother and me.

In my younger days, we kept busy spring, summer and fall -- planting, weeding, picking, cleaning, seeding, canning and freezing. We had two sets of shelves in the basement, each four feet wide and six feet tall, spaced to fit quart jars. By summer’s end, we filled them with colorful gems of cherry, raspberry and currant preserves, grape juice and jelly, pitted plums and cherries, tomatoes, green beans, beets, pickles and relish, apple butter and applesauce, and peaches we bought by the bushel from a storehouse in Pinto, Maryland.

In addition to beef bought from my mother’s parents, who raised Black Angus and Charolais, our double chest freezer filled with bags of corn, peas and walnuts. The cabbage, potatoes, lettuce, green peppers, peanuts, onions and yellow squash we used during the season.

I learned my best life lesson from Mom in our garden.

The rows seemed to me, as a youngster, to stretch to infinity; and eyeing the length of the garden from my crouched position weeding, I lamented the magnitude of the job.

“Don’t look at what you’ve got yet to do,” my mother said. “Look at what you’ve gotten done. And keep weeding!”

The image of that scene remains in my mind’s eye; and even now, I feel the shift in my thinking that took place at that moment: The overwhelmed child grew a step toward becoming the industrious adult.

Still, when jobs are big, I draw on Mom’s wisdom at that moment in the garden. Big jobs require time and persistence. The long view comes into focus with completion of each task along the way. Looking back regularly, to appreciate accomplishments, provides motivation and direction. Then, when the job is complete, the satisfaction that comes with hard work and beautiful results makes the investment and diligence worthwhile.

And, in the end, life is like that.

What I learned in the garden that day is, rather than grumble when faced with a big job, or a small task – or life’s challenges -- I praise God for the place, the time, and the ability to do it. And I thank Him for the garden, the lesson, and Mom.

Catholic lifestyle is countercultural today

2011-07-12T13:37:00.004-04:00

Published in Cumberland Times-News Tuesday, July 12, 2011.

"Faith, after all, is a way of life. Church is our springboard into the mystery of God, where we strive to live by His commands and prepare to return to Him in eternity."

Today’s American lifestyle differs drastically from what it was decades ago.

For example, in contrast to the current focus on self-fulfillment and pursuit of all things pleasurable, my parents grew up on hard work, frugality and faith, and so did I.

In my youth, school was my job; I followed the rules and did my best. Weekdays had no room for diversions, and the Saturday (and summer day) rule was no television or playmates before noon.

Work around the house or in the yard and garden took precedence over entertainments, and expenditures on extravagances or pipe dreams were out of the question. Cooking, sewing, piano practice, and reading were encouraged. (My dad and brother did the manly tasks.)

Saturday evenings brought a good scrubbing, and then Mom cleaned and filed my fingernails and gave them a coat of clear polish. Next morning, we dressed in our finest, with hat and white gloves: Sunday was church day.

As I matured and internalized my parents’ training, the habit I valued most was Mass on Sundays and holy days. I never missed, even during times when I strayed in other ways. I credit that faith training with grounding my decisions and helping me discern best paths in my life’s directions – and empowering me to embrace my greatest trials fearlessly.

Faith, after all, is a way of life. Church is our springboard into the mystery of God, where we strive to live by His commands and prepare to return to Him in eternity.

For Christians, adhering to God means embracing Christ’s cross and hoping to share in His resurrection. Jesus says (Mt. 11:28-30): “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.... For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

“How can life’s burden be easy?” I asked my 91-year-old mother recently, as we read that verse in our evening prayers. Mom answered, “When you do the right thing, it is easy.”

What I learned, growing up Catholic, to be the right thing is countercultural today. Society has turned upside-down.

About seven years ago, confounded by chaos at work, and distressed with intrusions on my peace, I set out to re-connect with the basic tenets of my faith and to expand my understanding, to find other serious Catholics, and to gain a mature contemporary perspective on this beautiful, ancient and complex faith tradition.

While visiting the Grotto of Lourdes in Emmitsburg one day in June 2004, I found a flyer at the back of the glass chapel announcing a weekend retreat at Mount St. Mary’s seminary hosted by (then grotto chaplain) Father Jack Lombardi. The topic was virtues and disciplined desires.

I signed up, and since have been among the hundred or so who regularly attend Father Jack’s weekend retreats. To me, he is a prophet, straightforwardly proclaiming the truths and beauty of the Catholic faith and lifestyle. (Father Jack served at St. Patrick in Cumberland in the early 1990s. He presently is administrator at St. Peter Catholic Church in Hancock and St. Patrick mission in Little Orleans.)

Now, in his first book, “Finding Life’s Balance,” Father Jack (ordained 1988, Archdiocese of Baltimore) shares his own experiences, in the context of Scripture and Catholic orthodoxy, to journey with readers to discover the harmony that an authentic Catholic lifestyle provides in a topsy-turvy world. He calls that place “the ‘radical middle’ between extremes.”

I edited his book, available on CD. For more information, write me at P.O. Box 541, Mount Savage, MD 21545.

Priest shortage solution: Fill seminaries

2011-05-31T15:32:00.002-04:00

Published in Cumberland Times-News Thursday, May 26, 2011.

The Catholic Church’s diminishing presence in our area, attributed to a shortage of priests (and religious) and manifested in recent closure of St. Patrick in Mount Savage (and relocation of Christian Brothers from Cumberland), is troubling. The solution, seemingly impossible in today’s secular world, is to attract more seminarians.

Even conservative Catholics suggest priests marry, or more married men be ordained. They ask: How can priests live fulfilled, as celibates? How can unmarried, celibate men counsel on marriage and sex?

As a contented single woman, I respectfully challenge beliefs that sex is integral to happiness, or marriage is essential to maturity. For celibates, many aspects of life offer greater allure and growth -- like simplicity, service, solitude, or seeking God’s will.

One does not need sex to know lust is our strongest passion. Overcoming the basic urge for physical union, especially with someone we love, can seem impossible. Once conquered, though, relationships are pure; we interact with dignity, without innuendo, motive or guile.

Well embraced, celibacy detaches desires from the chaotic sexual, secular scene and frees thoughts and energies for the pursuit of holiness, the core of authentic happiness. Celibacy is a meaningful, healthy, joyful lifestyle that rings with clarity and purpose; work, play and relationships serve others and glorify God.

With special exception, particularly for Episcopalian ministers, married men are ordained Roman Catholic priests; if they become widowers, then they must be celibate.

In a Sept. 1, 1994 Arlington (Va.) Catholic Herald, Fr. William P. Saunders summarizes Pope Paul VI’s encyclical "Sacerdotalis Caelibatus" (1967) to say celibacy identifies with Christ, a celibate. It is sacrificial love, “whereby a priest gives of himself totally to the service of God and His Church.” And it is a sign of the coming Kingdom of God, when, Jesus says (Mt 22:30), “In the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage.

In an undated article, “Celibacy in the Priesthood,” Fr. Saunders points out St. Paul was unmarried (1 Cor 7:8); and as early as the year 215, Clement of Alexandria referred to priests being “saved in the begetting of children.”

The local Spanish Council of Elvira in 306, Saunders quotes, imposed celibacy: “all…engaged in the ministry are forbidden entirely to live with their wives and to beget children.”

However, at conclusion of the Council of Nicea in 325, Saunders notes, “no church-wide requirement for priests to be celibate was mandated.” At this time, though, he writes, “the new spiritual fervor of ‘white martyrdom’ arose.”

Their faith legalized by Constantine in 313, fewer Christians shed blood in public arenas. “With white martyrdom,” writes Saunders, “men and women chose to renounce the things of this world and to die to their old selves” and dedicate their lives to Christ – “the thrust behind monasticism and the vows of poverty, chastity (including celibacy), and obedience.”

While rules of celibacy differed between Western mad Eastern traditions, Saunders writes, Damasus I decreed it in 384. Following confusion and abuses in the Middle Ages, the Second Lateran Council in 1139 firmly “decreed Holy Orders as an impediment to marriage.”

The Council of Trent (1563) asserts celibacy is possible, writes Saunders, but recognizes celibates need the grace of God to remain faithful.

Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg has near-record enrollment this year, as do others. Former rector Archbishop Harry Flynn, in a spring newsletter interview, attributes the numbers to balanced formation, prayer and community.

Today’s seminaries are forming priests better than they have in more than half a century. Rather than bemoan or demean celibacy, let’s appreciate Catholic orthodoxy and pray for priests’ fidelity.

Founders deemed God's laws supreme

2011-04-13T23:49:00.006-04:00

Submitted to Cumbelrand Times-News Wednesday, April 6, 2011; published April 18.

“By invoking the ‘Laws of Nature and of Nature's God,’ the 56 signers of the Declaration incorporated a legal standard of freedom into the forms of government that would follow…that God's law was supreme.”

-- Kerry Lee Morgan, ,LONANG.org

Windy Cutler (April 4, “Constitution protects rights”), Maryland lawmakers and citizens who support gay marriage ignore the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence.

It cites “the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God” as the forces that create freedom and entitle citizens to certain inalienable rights -- but in the context of eternity, not simply the here-and-now.

Kerry Lee Morgan explains at LONANG.org, “By invoking the ‘Laws of Nature and of Nature's God,’ the 56 signers of the Declaration incorporated a legal standard of freedom into the forms of government that would follow…that God's law was supreme.”

The founders knew, as authentic believers do, true life, liberty and happiness (earthly and eternal) flow in following the laws of nature and of God, not in opposing them -- which results in spiritual death, enslavement to passions, and entanglement in disorder.

Thomas Aquinas, whose writings the founders likely studied, explains in his Summa Theologica, Question 94 that natural law drives man to survive and reproduce, to educate offspring, to know the truth about God, to live harmoniously in society, and to act according to reason.

Faithful Catholics are not the only ones who defeated gay marriage in Maryland. Black delegates from Prince George’s and Baltimore who “refused to vote against their ‘base’” (black faithful) get the most credit in a March 12 Capital News Service article.

More than a dozen black ministers and bands of their faithful lobbied to defeat the bill, “which they say violates God’s law,” reports the March 8 Washington Post. Rev. Joel Peebles, pastor of 19,000-member Jericho City of Praise in Landover says, "We didn't come tonight against anybody. We came for the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman."

The article quotes Rev. Nathaniel Thomas of Forestville New Redeemer Baptist Church: "What we are focused on is the word 'marriage,' We're not talking about anyone not having rights. But when you use the word 'marriage,' that goes directly to what the church believes is a relationship between a male and a female."

Greg Quinlan, an “ex-gay” and president of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, testified in a House hearing, quoted in the Feb. 25 Washington Post, “I urge you to stop."

The National Organization for Marriage pledged to spend big money to support Democrats in Maryland who voted against the bill, and to oppose the sole Republican who voted for it (Sen. Allan Kittleman, Howard), the March 11 New York Times reports.

If the bill should pass in the future, enough public outcries probably would bring it to referendum. Its chances for acceptance in Maryland, though, may increase.

A national Pew Research Center survey (March 3) reveals “a continuing rise in support for same-sex marriage since 2009.” Currently, 45 percent favor, 46 percent oppose gay marriage, Pew reports, compared to 37 and 54 percent, respectively, two years ago.

Furthermore, “all the growth in Maryland is coming from groups that consistently vote Democratic – African-Americans, Asians and Hispanics,” Gazette.net reports Feb. 25.

While blacks oppose gay marriage on moral grounds, a 2010 Univision and Associated Press poll indicates Asians and Hispanics may waffle, depending on their level of American enculturation; but “Protestants were much more strongly against homosexual ‘marriage’ than Catholics.”

“The Senate vote was definitely a wake-up call,” the March 11 Washington Post quotes Minority Leader Nancy Jacobs (R-Harford). “I thought it was going to fly through the House. But once delegates started hearing from their constituents, they started thinking twice.”

Marylanders who revere God need to educate themselves about their faith and the freedoms God’s laws ensure, and engage to protect them.

Authentic Catholics do not support gay marriaige

2011-04-02T23:28:00.007-04:00

Published in Cumberland Times-News Wednesday, March 30, 2011. (Blogger persists to ignore paragraphs in this posting.)
"...faithful Catholics sent 10,000 emails and thousands of phone calls to legislators to voice their objections to the bill."
Gov. Martin O’Malley, House Speaker Michael Busch and Del. Heather Mizeur, along with other liberal Catholics, are momentously misguided: Authentic Catholics do not support gay marriage. In the Feb. 24 Washington Post, O’Malley contrasts his “vocation” with Catholic bishops, saying his calling “requires…service to others in an arena of compromise.” O’Malley said he would sign the same-sex marriage bill if it made its way to his desk, and Busch (D-Anne Arundel) said he would vote for it. Catholic lawmakers who compromise church teachings, with intent to upend natural law, or who commiserate to establish state authority to stipulate church matters regarding marriage do not serve others: They mislead, and they transgress. In a Feb. 28 interview with MarylandReporter.com, Mizeur (D-Montgomery), one of eight openly gay members in the Assembly -- seven in the House, one in the Senate -- says “the church are the people in the pews.” She dismisses the Maryland Catholic Conference as representing the bishops, and says the Catholic “social justice tradition,” and private convictions of “conscience” lead reasonable Catholics to support gay marriage rights. In a March 4 email, the MCC notes that faithful Catholics sent 10,000 emails and thousands of phone calls to legislators to voice their objections to the bill. The MCC called for 10,000 more emails and thousands more phone calls in the week leading up to the failed vote. The three bishops of Washington, D.C. Maryland and Wilmington, Del. issued a joint call Feb. 28 to Maryland’s 1.2 million Catholics for “continued and urgent action” to defeat the bill; they note that 500 Catholics visited legislators during MCC lobby night Feb. 21. “The word marriage,” the bishops write, “describes the commitment of a man and a woman to come together for life with the possibility of generating and educating children. This is not to say that some people over the ages have not come together in a variety of ways, physical, financial and social. But these various unions have always had other names because they are not marriage.” Proponents worked furiously, too, to pass the bill. Mizeur conducted a door-to-door campaign. Even Katie O’Malley, though, could not effectively twist the last arm. Mrs. O’Malley, a Baltimore District Court judge, lobbied hard in the final hours, the Post reports March 10, to persuade Del. John Olszewski (D-Baltimore County) to vote for the bill. Rather, Olszewski (a Methodist) undertook a last minute amendment maneuver -- rejected by the House, the Post reports March 11 -- “to broaden the (bill’s) religious exceptions.” Olszewski’s pivotal vote apparently depended on deleting restrictive language. He preferred leaving the choice regarding “activities related to ‘the promotion of marriage’” to religious organizations. Catholic adoption agencies do not serve gay couples; and on March 10, the Washington Times reports, Sacred Heart of Jesus in Boulder, Colo., became the latest Catholic school to forgo enrollment for children of a lesbian couple. House leaders withdrew the bill March 11. If it had passed, taxpayers would have paid millions for a referendum. In the Senate, Jamie Raskin (D-Montgomery), a proclaimed atheist (and lead sponsor of bills to legalize medical marijuana in Maryland), led floor debate on same-sex marriage. President Mike Miller (a Catholic) voted against it, but warded off a filibuster, to enable the bill to advance to the House. Last year, gay marriage was a non-starter. This year, the bill sailed through the Senate and advanced dangerously close to passage in the House. Busch says in the March 11 New York Times, “This is a distance run, not a sprint. We’ll come back next year and take a strong look at it.”

You can't be Chritian and still support secularism

2011-02-13T06:55:00.003-05:00

Published in Cumberland Times-News Sunday, February 6, 2011.

“Man has determined for himself that he, alone, is the ultimate authority. … Secularism is anti-Christian." -- Rocky Nester

To the Editor:

In response to "Secularism doesn't mean non- or anti-Christian" (Feb. 2 Times-News): Secularism is apart from religion. Religion is a set of beliefs and everyone lives a set of beliefs. Therefore, everyone has a religion.

Even if you are an atheist, you are religious. You believe there is no god. You believe in no hell or heaven. You believe morality is either what you say it is or what the state says it is (Secular Humanism, etc.)

To say you are a Christian and you support secularism is a contradiction. You are saying you are apart from religion and you have a religion. You can’t have it both ways. Jesus said in Mat. 12:30, “He that is not with me is against me…”. Also in Mat. 6:24: “No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate one, and love the other; or he will hold to one, and despise the other.”

As a Christian, you cannot have it both ways. But as a secularist you may think you can have it both ways.

Sadly, many are in the world of unreality. Our “secular” education system believes it is teaching people apart from region. They think they are being neutral and objective. Yet the truth is they are indoctrinated into secular humanism and they are indoctrinating others into this religion. It has its own genesis in their dogmatic insistence in the theory of evolution (creationism is not allowed).

They have their own bibles; Humanist Mainifesto (1933), Humanist Manifesto II (1972) and Humanist Manifesto 2000. John Dewey described Humanism as our “common Faith”. Julian Huxley called it “religion without revelation.” And, to make it official, the U.S. Supreme Court in Torcaso v. Watkins (1961) declared that Secular Humanism is a religion.

Man has determined for himself that he, alone, is the ultimate authority. He can have it both ways. He can have both a religion and not a religion. The S.H. (Secular Humanist) believes in both situational ethics and moral relativism. The S.H. can determine the meaning of words apart from their original meaning – he is a nihilist. Life has no meaning apart from the state.

At the same time, he is both a statist and not a statist. S.H. is an oxymoron, but to the S.H. it is acceptable. But then, after all, when you are a god, you make the rules. As a Christian, there is only one way and Jesus made it clear in John 14:6: “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”

Secularism is anti-Christian.

I am a biblical worldview trainer. Call me (301-722-2203) for more information.

Rocky Nester
Cumberland

Is this charter school a secular ruse?

2011-01-29T13:44:00.005-05:00

Published in Cumberland Times-News Tuesday, January 25, 2011.
(Beginning mid-October 2010, the Times-News limited Letters access to online subscribers.)

"A few local progressive thinkers did endorse the idea, but
authentic broad-based support in Allegany County remains non-existent. In fact, the idea appears to many in the county to be a ruse by MMPCS founders to impose their personal agenda."

Sister Phyllis McNally presents a valid point in her Jan. 9 letter, “Bishop Walsh makes education option available for students": Private schools pose viable alternatives for students whose parents otherwise might support a charter school -- an idea that fell flat last month in Allegany County.

Since 1966, four years prior to Bishop James Edward Walsh’s release from prison in Communist China, the Catholic school has educated students “of all faiths and beliefs,” the president writes, and offers “the very same qualities parents continue to want …smaller class sizes, excellent academics, values-centered curriculum and individualized learning experiences.”

Calvary Christian Academy, a ministry of Calvary Baptist Church in Cresaptown since 1973, has similar offerings.

Most people of faith who could afford tuition and manage transportation would gratefully send their children to one of these quality schools.

Christian values, though, probably are far from the Mountain Maryland Public Charter School founders’ desires for their children. MMPCS President Veronica Mingolelli is an outspoken member of Citizens for a Secular Government, a local non- to anti-religion organization headed by atheist activist Jeffrey Davis.

Davis fought to erect a monument to secularism, promoted as a tribute to the U.S. Constitution, on the courthouse lawn in a show of opposition to Judeo-Christian principles displayed there in the Ten Commandments, which Davis tried to have removed.

As early as November 2007, Mingolelli pushed Davis’ monument agenda, and she was his spokesperson on a 2009 county task force. A January 2010 decision by the Maryland Historical Trust, however, thwarted their efforts.

Now Mingolelli, an occupational therapist in the county schools who apparently hails from Massachusetts, seeks the trust and influence of our community leaders to help her and her friends establish a taxpayer funded charter school in Cumberland.

A few local progressive thinkers did endorse the idea, but authentic broad-based support in Allegany County remains non-existent. In fact, the idea appears to many in the county to be a ruse by MMPCS founders to impose their personal agenda.

Contributors in a Cumberland Chat chain, for example, from Sept. 26-29, 2010 speculate that MMPCS promoters are “an elitist bunch (who want) a publicly funded ‘private’ school,” perhaps a Montessori type; and they note that studies show charter schools perform no better than other public schools.

In reality, a June 2010 U.S. Department of Education publication, “The Evaluation of Charter School Impacts: Final Report” (prepared by the Institute of Education Services), concludes that while “charter schools serving more low income or low achieving students had statistically significant positive effects on math test scores…charter schools serving more advantaged students -- those with higher income and prior achievement -- had significant negative effects.”

Why would Mingolelli and her associates – medical, law and education professionals – want their children, who probably achieve above average, in a public charter school? More understandable -- unless they object to Christian values, or unless they aim to create their own non- or anti-religion environment -- would be a desire to place their children in a private school.

Bishop Walsh and Calvary Christian have records of high standards and student accomplishments, and they always are in need of well-heeled parents and patrons to support their fundraising and endowment programs.

Much wiser community investments of time, treasure and energy -- spent misguidedly on the idea of a questionable charter school -- would be to help our private schools expand their finances, increase their enrollments, and enhance their academic programs.

Eighth Commandment: Palestine shall not steal

2010-12-19T07:54:00.003-05:00

Submitted to the Cumberland Times-News December 13, 2010; published December 20.

...there are many places where Palestinians could establish a homeland "that would be consistent with their roots. But there is only one place on earth where the Jewish people could have a homeland that is consistent with their roots." -- former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee

As we watched Alan Dershowitz attack Mike Huckabee in a taped three-year-old argument on Huckabee’s FOX program Dec. 4, the governor, in real time, most likely rehearsed his remarks for his role the next evening as keynote speaker at the 28th annual dinner of the American Friends of the Beit El Yeshiva Center in Manhattan.

With 1,400 to attend, this dinner “is one of the largest and most prestigious functions of any Jewish organization,” according to Eugen Gluck, board chair, as reported by Arutz Sheva, the Israeli media network based in the West Bank that hosts the event.

The dinner honors 5,500 or so residents of Beit El (Bethel), first settled in 1977, who forego the cushy life to stay put in the conflict and clamor for the rights of Israel.

Bethel is the Biblical site where Jacob slept and dreamt of angels descending and ascending a ladder (Genesis 28:10-19); and God spoke to him. Therefore, Jacob called this place “the gate of heaven.” This is where Jacob delivered the blessing of his father Isaac into Israel, and it is where he would manifest God’s promise to make of his grandfather Abraham a nation.

Huckabee is “outspoken,” reports Arutz Sheva, “in his support for Israel's rights to sovereignty over the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria, where Beit El is located.”

A visitor to Israel 12 times, Arutz Sheva reports, Huckabee said last year there are many places where Palestinians could establish a homeland “that would be consistent with their roots. But there is only one place on earth where the Jewish people could have a homeland that is consistent with their roots."

As a Christian, Huckabee understands his shared inheritance in God’s promise for salvation, first granted to our spiritual elders, the Jews. We believe that Jesus, a descendant of Abraham (Mt. 1:1-17), is the manifestation of that promise.

During Advent, we wait, with Jesus’ mother Mary, and prepare for the Messiah’s birth. We look inward, and we reach out to others in charity, as we aim to re-order our lives, and to open our hearts to God’s redemption. During this holy time, Christians also anticipate Christ’s second coming.

Sadly, the secular crush to buy expensive gifts defines Christmas, and charity, for many today. Surely, for children, visits from St. Nicholas, and fulfillments of hearts’ desires for material expressions of affection are important, to build treasured memories.

As St. Paul writes, though, a time arrives when adults give up childish attachments to things, memories and desires (1 Cor. 13:11). Advent is the time to mature, through personal discipline, to acquire the ability to cast off inordinate lifestyles, and to explore our spiritual destiny, instead -- and to advance on the path of St. Paul toward self-sufficiency (Phil 4:11b-13). One day, with Paul, we may say, “In him who is the source of my strength, I have strength for everything.”

In their disagreement, Dershowitz lambastes Huckabee for saying the Ten Commandments are unalterable; and he claims that Jesus rewrote them to shift the Sabbath and to redefine adultery.

As a Jew, and reportedly a supporter of Israel, perhaps Dershowitz might agree, finally, with Huckabee and others who believe that the eighth commandment stands unchanged: Palestine shall not steal land from Israel bequeathed by God to the Jews.

Furthermore, in the course of three years, since he apparently first tore into Huckabee, Dershowitz could choose to re-order his view, and let go of inordinate tendencies to confound the foundational tenets shared by the Jewish and Christian faiths, and seek authentic peace by making peace with God.

Share the story of the legendary Turkey Foot Road

2010-12-11T12:41:00.007-05:00

"Chances are, when you read the book, you will discover new
facts about your ancestors; and you might uncover connections with other folks you know, or will come to know, that you otherwise never would expect."

In its heyday, the Turkey Foot Road was a primary route west into the frontier, which at that time in our region was anywhere west of the Conococheague. In the mid-1700s, the Wills Creek region included the entire Wills Creek drainage area -- seemingly undefined by boundaries and governed collaboratively by the colonies of Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. It was, as "In Search of the Turkey Foot Road" co-author Lannie Dietle once described it to me, "a howling wilderness."

This is where our ancestors, migrating from Europe to seek religious freedom and economic opportunity in unexplored territory, braved the elements and encountered the Indians to claim land, build homes, settle communities, and leave legacies that today are our roots and our hometowns.

Share the story of the legendary Turkey Foot Road, almost lost in time, but captured by co-authors Lannie Dietle and Michael McKenzie from the memories of Salisbury, Pa., Mayor Harry Ringler, Sr., and the research of Mount Savage amateur historian and archaeologist Francis Bridges, and others.

Chances are, when you read the book, you will discover new facts about your ancestors; and you might uncover connections with other folks you know, or will come to know, that you otherwise never would expect. While serving as editor for the project, I grew to know my ancestry better; and I found that I share genetic connections with both Dietle and McKenzie.

So join the fun, and share the story. You will find new friends, and perhaps a relative or two.

Feel free to print our promotional flyer and post it in your school, library, post office, etc., or include it, or an item about the book, in your historical or genealogical society or family newsletter. All proceeds from sales benefit the Mount Savage Historical Society.

Turkey Foot Road 1906 view

2010-11-28T15:07:00.010-05:00

Mount Savage Historical Society
P.O. Box 401
Mount Savage, Maryland 21545
-----------------------------------------------------------

FIGURE 102 CUTLINES -- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 29, 2010 -- Contact: NancyE.Thoerig@verizon.net

MUCH IMPROVED – In 1904, four Allegany County road directors and Engineer George G. Townsend designed a plan to improve the hillside route along Jennings Run, which primarily entailed protecting the roadway from flood damage when the run “got up,” an ofttimes occurrence. Townsend writes in a 1906 “Good Roads Magazine” article (Appendix 19 in Dietle and McKenzie’s “In Search of the Turkey Foot Road” book): “This wall is 231 ft. long, of good sandstone, laid in first-class Portland cement mortar. Another shorter, but higher wall, similarly constructed, protects an exposed point farther up the stream.” Realignment of both the road and the run was necessary in 1957, to construct the current Maryland State Route 36 corridor. Parts of this wall remain visible, and segments of the old road remain in use today.

Turkey Foot Road 1897 view

2010-11-28T14:59:00.009-05:00

Mount Savage Historical Society
P.O. Box 401
Mount Savage, Maryland 21545
-----------------------------------------------------------

FIGURE 169 CUTLINES -- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 29, 2010 -- Contact: NancyE.Thoerig@verizon.net

WAGONS HO! -- From the bottom left corner, wagon wheel tracks lead into a curving dirt road that hugs a craggy cliffside, along a portion of the historic Turkey Foot Road between Corriganville and Barrelville, Md. The authors of “In Search of the Turkey Foot Road” consider how road builders might have cut primitive routes through rock and tackled other difficult obstacles to forge and improve westward routes through the Wills Creek Narrows in Cumberland and the Jennings Run gap in Corriganville. The authors selected this view from the 1897 book “Artwork of Allegany County Maryland” to be the cover for their book, published by the Mount Savage Historical Society.

New book retraces historic Turkey Foot Road

2010-11-28T14:16:00.017-05:00

Mount Savage Historical Society
P.O. Box 401
Mount Savage, Maryland 21545
-----------------------------------------------------------

NEWS RELEASE -- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 29, 2010 -- Contact: NancyE.Thoerig@verizon.net

MOUNT SAVAGE, Md. – Along the northwestern Maryland and southwestern Pennsylvania border, an Indian trail led traders, drovers, travelers and settlers into the American frontier. The primitive road that evolved from this ancient route spawned scattered settlements that today are our hometowns.

“In Search of the Turkey Foot Road: From Fort Cumberland to the North Fork of the Youghiogheny,” by Lannie Dietle and Michael McKenzie, retraces this historic and nearly forgotten route, highlighting the part between Cumberland and Confluence, Pa.

The Mount Savage Historical Society is publishing the work , as announced by President Dennis Lashley. Visit http://www.mtsavage.info/ to see sample pages.

The serious reader soon finds that this 342-page book is more than a story about a road. The Turkey Foot Road, disguised by different names, still takes us where we need to go; and this historic transportation corridor continues to define us today as descendants of those who braved the elements and events of the early American wilderness to make homes, and leave legacies, in a boundless new land of opportunity.

Co-authors Dietle and McKenzie, and Editor Nancy E. Thoerig, found that they share ancestors who traveled this road and settled along it. They suspect that many thousands of Americans similarly can trace their lineage to settlers along the Turkey Foot Road.

Relying on maps, property surveys, aerial photographs, crop marks, landscape scars, oral traditions and local guides (namely Salisbury, Pa. Mayor Harry Ringler, Sr. and Mount Savage amateur historian and archaeologist Francis Bridges), Dietle and McKenzie delineate the route in detail. Assisted with their GPS coordinates, a dedicated hiker might set out to walk the 18th century route from Cumberland to Harnedsville, Pa. The authors also identify key points between Harnedsville and Pittsburgh.

“In its heyday,” Dietle summarizes in the final chapter, “the Turkey Foot Road was an early route west. It helped to settle the towns and environs that interest us most: Barrelville and Mount Savage in Maryland; Wellersburg, Pocahontas, and Salisbury in Pennsylvania.”

Dietle continues, “The road also serviced points farther west, such as Springs, Savage, Confluence, Harnedsville, and so forth, all the way to Pittsburgh. By 1820, the United States population had grown to 9.6 million, and about half of it had moved west of Cumberland. As this tremendous migration and population growth occurred, some of the people along the Turkey Foot Road moved on, helping to settle and populate the great American west.”

The antecedent to the Turkey Foot Road, traditionally called the Turkey Foot Trail, was an Indian trading path. In 1749, the colonies of Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland, at the request of the Miami Indians, improved this route to facilitate easier trade between Pickawillany (Piqua), Ohio and Wills Creek (Cumberland), Md.

English trade flourished along this primary corridor into the contested Ohio territory, and tensions with the French mounted. Thus, the early Turkey Foot Road, the authors contend, provoked the first large scale attack of the French and Indian War, at Pickawillany in 1752.

George Washington made the earliest mention of Turkey Foot the authors found, in reference to the confluence of the Casselman River and Laurel Hill Creek with the Youghiogheny River, at present-day Confluence, Pa. Most likely, the authors believe, the road takes its name from this destination.

“In Search of the Turkey Foot Road” is a fascinating read through history in our own backyards. Meticulously researched and abundantly documented, with almost 80 appendices and 460 maps, figures and photos, the book is sure to tickle any reader’s curiosity about the people, places and events that transpire along the Turkey Foot Road.

Drawing upon his ancestral connections and childhood memories in Somerset County, Pa., Dietle writes from his home in Houston, Texas, where he works as principal designer for an engineering firm that makes seals for oilfield equipment.

Descended from one of the first settlers in Mount Savage, McKenzie led the project’s local research endeavors. He lives in Barrelville and works as a diesel locomotive mechanic at the CSX shop in Cumberland.

Proceeds benefit the Mount Savage Historical Society. Visit http://www.mtsavage.info/ to see sample pages, a general overview and chapter summaries, biographies for the co-authors, editor and contributors, and to contact Becky Korns, MSHS secretary, to order.

*****
NEWS STAFF: For more information on the Turkey Foot Road project, or to arrange an author’s interview, write NancyE.Thoerig@verizon.net.

Turkey Foot Road history becomes personal

2010-11-17T07:16:00.004-05:00

Published in Cumberland Times-News Sunday, November 14, 2010.
(Beginning mid-October 2010, the Times-News limited Letters access to online subscribers.)

Historic roads take us where we want to go, and they transport us to where we come from.

Our fortune to live in such a notably historic place in America gives us an advantage, if we explore it, to understand how the past shapes our present. That dynamic becomes personal when “In Search of the Turkey Foot Road: From Fort Cumberland to the North Fork of the Youghiogheny,” by Lannie Dietle and Michael McKenzie, retraces this mostly forgotten early route that breached the barrier of the Allegheny Mountains and opened travel westward for settlers from Wills Creek.

Dietle and McKenzie are collaborators on items and articles of historical interest in nearby southwestern Pennsylvania and northwestern Maryland, posted at Dietle’s family genealogy web site Korns.org. This is their first book. It is a volunteer project to benefit the Mount Savage Historical Society, which plans to publish a CD with a print companion.

Mount Savage was a destination for settlers and travelers along the Turkey Foot Road, an upgrade of ancient Indian trails. At the town’s northern border with Pennsylvania, Arnold’s Settlement sprang up where Archibald Arnold (proprietor of Arnold’s hotel), and Logsdon, Durbin, Mattingly and McKenzie families (and relatives) stopped on their way west from Westminster in Carroll County, Maryland around 1770.

The Turkey Foot Road follows Wills Creek northwest out of Cumberland, and then Jennings Run west to Barrelville, where it tacks up the hillside to join Mile Lane in northeast Mount Savage. Then it scales Bald Knob Road, and at the top of the hill goes northwest to Pocahontas, Pa., then to Salisbury, Confluence, and the Forks of the Ohio at Pittsburgh.

As an early traders trail, the route forged on to Pickawillany, Ohio (present-day Piqua), where the French and their Indian allies waged a battle on the English in 1752. In this sense, Dietle and McKenzie suggest, trading activities along the Turkey Foot trail in the contested Ohio territory helped incite the French and Indian War.

George Washington made the earliest mention of Turkey Foot the authors found, in reference to the confluence of the Casselman River and Laurel Hill Creek with the Youghiogheny (at present-day Confluence, Pa.). Most likely, the road takes its name from this destination.

Drawing upon his ancestral connections and childhood memories in Somerset County, Pa., Lannie Dietle writes from his home in Houston, where he works as principal designer for an engineering firm that makes seals for oilfield equipment.

Descended from Gabriel McKenzie, one of the early settlers who accompanied Archibald Arnold, Michael McKenzie led the project’s local research endeavors. He works as a diesel engine mechanic at the CSX Cumberland shop.

It was my pleasure to sign on as editor. The book is a fascinating read, meticulously researched and abundantly documented and illustrated with appendices, maps, figures and photos. It is sure to tickle any reader’s curiosity about the people, places and events that transpire along the Turkey Foot Road.

Dietle, McKenzie and I found that we have ancestors in common. Drucilla Ann McKenzie, a descendant of Gabriel, is my mother’s father’s grandmother. Drusianna’s son Ozias Weimer, my mother’s grandfather, was Johannes Weimer’s great-great-grandson. Ozias married Elizabeth Rose Breig, Martin Weimer’s great-great-granddaughter.

Martin and Johannes Weimer were brothers who emigrated from Langensoultzbach, France (in Alsace, on the border with Germany). Martin Weimer, also Dietle’s ancestor, built the first house in Salisbury, Pa., Dietle documents, and owned property along the Turkey Foot Road.

Visit http://korns.org/Turkey-Foot-Road-Book.pdf to see sample pages from the book; among them are the Table of Contents, and first and last chapters. Watch for announcements about availability; or enquire at MountSavageHistoricalSociety.org.

Is groundwork done for Islam's aggression?

2010-10-14T15:07:00.004-04:00

Published in Cumbelrand Times-News Wednesday, October 13, 2010.

In our current smoke-and-mirrors political and social environments, where hypocrisy steamrolls sense, astute educators very rightly
may wonder, “How better might Islam transform America than to confuse the views of America’s youths?”

The Texas State Board of Education’s adoption Sept. 24 of a resolution to reject future textbooks that unfairly represent Islam and Christianity is proactive, given current radical Muslim aggression in America.

Proposed in July by Randy Rives, a school board member in Odessa, Texas, the resolution cites abundant instances in high school history textbooks that the TSBOE agrees document a “pro-Islamic anti-Christian bias.”

The board’s action sends a message to publishers: If it’s biased, we won’t buy it. With about 4.7 million students in K-12 public schools, and contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, Texas wields mighty sway in the textbook publishing industry.

In our current smoke-and-mirrors political and social environments, where hypocrisy steamrolls sense, astute educators very rightly may wonder, “How better might Islam transform America than to confuse the views of America’s youths?”

Most Americans recall the horrific 9/11 attack, and object to the Ground Zero mosque. We believe Sharia law is incompatible with American justice, and puzzle over President Obama’s advancement of Islam in America.

We find the President’s radical upbringing undeniable and his liberation theology undesirable; and we hear that radical Muslims intend to influence American foreign policy and redefine America’s Judeo-Christian tradition.

Then a year ago, the Dubai royal family, headed by a sheikh who is “young, ambitious and quite entrepreneurial,” as described on a “history and lineage” website, was “poised to become a major shareholder,” as reported in the July 28, 2009 Independent.ie, in Education Media & Publishing Group.

EMPG owns Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Harcourt Education. The royals “lost (their) stake,” as reported Sept. 23 by MSNBC, when EMPG restructured its debt earlier this year.

Realistic fears of radical Islam’s influence and infiltration hearken back to Communist penetration that took hold in our government and religious institutions from the 1930s into present times. Just three months ago, the FBI arrested and deported 10 Russian spies.

The American Communist Party, founded in 1919, was purported by liberals to be harmless. However, in 1995, the Commission on Government Secrecy published the Venona papers – 2,900 documents of radio messages from top KGB agents in Washington and New York to their superiors in Moscow (1943 to 1948) – that confirmed the American Communist Party did influence American policy, and commit espionage.

Claremont Institute reports: “It is now plain that by 1945 every important branch of the American government…was infested with Communists busily doing the work of the Soviet Union.”

At the same time, Communists infiltrated the Catholic Church. In 1952, Bishop Fulton Sheen converted Bella Dodd, who revealed that as a Communist agent, she recruited young radicals to enter Catholic seminaries.

According to a June 21, 2009 Detroit Examiner article, Dodd confessed: “In the 1930s, we put 1,100 men into the priesthood in order to destroy the Church from within. The idea was for these men to be ordained, and then climb the ladder of influence and authority…. Right now they are in the highest places in the Church.”

The idea of Communist infiltration, writes Clare Kolewski, was to destroy the faith of the people “through the promotion of a pseudo-religion — something that resembled Catholicism but was not the real thing.”

Kolewski goes on: “This would be necessary to shame Church leaders into ‘openness to the world’ and to a more flexible attitude toward all religions and philosophies. The Communists would then exploit this openness in order to undermine the Church.”

Might we wonder if Communist infiltration into our government and values systems, begun as much as 80 years ago, has done groundwork for Islam to “shame” us today, into “opening” our culture to their radical philosophies?

Would this mosque be America's undoing?

2010-08-30T13:55:00.002-04:00

Published in Cumberland Times-News Sunday, August 29, 2010.

"So how can a radical Muslim who pledges fidelity to the Koran and (spiritual, if not physical) death to Christians and Jews lay such an impassioned claim to the U.S. Constitution?"
Many believe the Ground Zero mosque symbolizes militant Islam and threatens to undo America’s Judeo-Christian tradition.

On Oct. 22, 2001, six weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Associated Press religion writer Rachel Zoll reported that Muslim organizations aim to redefine America’s heritage.

Zoll writes that a post-9/11 study commissioned by the American Jewish Committee shows Muslim organizations in America inflate their numbers, by more than double, to exceed six million.

Six million Jews live here, and by claiming more, Muslims “would buttress calls for a redefinition of America's heritage as 'Judeo-Christian-Muslim,'” ACJ Director David Harris tells Zoll, “a stated goal of some Muslim leaders.”

President Obama’s Aug. 13 mosque endorsement barely got air until Nihad Awad, director of the Washington lobby, Council on American-Islamic Relations (criminally implicated for Hamas support), called other national leaders “to speak out in defense of the freedom of religion…enshrined in our Constitution” (USAToday, Aug. 14).

Our unique Judeo-Christian Constitution establishes America as the world’s grand experiment in religious freedom. Muslim countries do not embrace this concept. So how can a radical Muslim who pledges fidelity to the Koran and (spiritual, if not physical) death to Christians and Jews lay such an impassioned claim to the U.S. Constitution?

Hypocrisy? Mockery? Deception? Would a scoundrel like Awad set out to transform America, in a covert 21st century Conquest? (Google “taqiyya.”)

If not, then he might consider a well-reasoned, common sense precedent in this matter.

In 1984, Carmelite nuns set up a convent in a former administration building at Auschwitz. In 1993, they moved, because Jewish sensibilities -- nearly half a century after the holocaust -- were offended.

The sisters had a legal right to stay, and they had a rightful mission: Praying for the souls who died there, among whom were Polish Franciscan priest St. Maximilian Kolbe (starved Aug. 14, 1941) and Polish Jewish convert and Carmelite nun St. Edith Stein (gassed Aug. 9, 1942).

One of the controversial Carmelites was an Auschwitz survivor. Among more than a million who perished at Auschwitz, 149 were Catholic religious (Auschwitz.org, May 24, 2004) and 600 were Catholic Jews (TheTablet.co.uk, Feb. 13, 1999).

Dr. Ady Steg, a French Jewish leader at the time, blasted Catholic officials: "[T]he Carmelites come to Auschwitz to exalt the triumph of the Church” (Los Angeles Times, June 22, 1987).

Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, the son of Polish Jewish immigrants to France, whose mother died at Auschwitz, and Polish Pope John Paul II, who narrowly escaped Nazi capture, empathized.

The nuns relocated to a convent built for them across the street. It houses an information center about the Jewish holocaust.

The nuns, though, did not set out to destroy the country from within. The Muslim Brotherhood, with whom Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf allegedly has ties, does.

In his Sept. 9, 2007 Dallas Morning News commentary, Rod Dreher quotes from an 18-page Muslim Brotherhood document, seized by the FBI:

“The process of settlement [of Islam in the United States] is…eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ their miserable house…so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all religions.”

Earlier credit goes to San Ramon Valley (Calif.) Herald reporter Lisa Gardiner for quoting CAIR founder Omar Ahmad on July 4, 1998: “The Koran…should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.”

If Cordoba House is legitimate, then true moderate Muslims might say, “Move it.” But if those involved, like Awad and Abdul Rauf, intend this mosque to be the axis for America’s undoing, and for world domination by Islam, then we all should say, “No way.”

Liberation theology politicizes Christianity

2010-08-01T16:49:00.007-04:00

Published in Cumberland Times-News Tuesday, July 27, 2010.

"Jesus says our Father sent him to stir up the social order, to raise up
the poor and scatter the proud. But Jesus’ radical idea of revolution is a
spiritual wave of individual conversions. The savior’s poverty, and power, is a humble spirit."

Jesus teaches us that our personal relationship with him is the heart of our service to others (Lk. 10:38-42).

Today in America, perhaps emboldened by a President who champions their beliefs, liberation theologians -- and not just black adherents -- are ramping up efforts to remake Christianity into a politicized Christology.

Considering the movement’s genesis, it is unsurprising that President Obama has found friends at University of Notre Dame, where liberation theology founder Gustavo Gutierrez holds a prestigious professorship in the Kellogg Institute for International Studies.

Rev. Gutierrez’ bio at the Institute web site lists Latin America as his focus and “[t]he historical background and continuing theological relevance of the preferential option for the poor” as his current research topic. Gutierrez, a Peru native, is a Dominican priest.

Most associated with the Jesuits and 1960s insurgency in El Salvador, liberation theology hit a high pitch with assassination of San Salvador Archbishop Oscar Romero, killed March 24, 1980 because he publicly called Christian Salvadoran soldiers to obey God’s order and honor human dignity, and not follow government orders to oppress, abuse and kill countrymen.

A 12-year civil war ensued. Among 75,000 killed were six Jesuit priests, murdered in their home Nov. 16, 1989.

Fr. Jon Sobrino was not in the rectory that day. He continues to work and teach in El Salvador.

Two of Sobrino’s books published in 1999 are the subject of a Vatican notification to the faithful of March 14, 2007. Fr. Sobrino’s work with the poor is “admirable,” the Vatican writes, but he strays from church doctrine in his theological “presuppositions” that humanize Jesus Christ and neglect his divinity and “the salvific value of his Death.”

Fr. Sobrino’s material, rather than spiritual, view of Jesus and his teachings constructs the premise of liberation theology: That Jesus manifests social liberation from economic and political injustices imposed on the downtrodden by their oppressors -- not personal redemption from sins of immorality.

Along with Gutierrez and Leonardo Boff of Brazil (a former Franciscan priest twice admonished by Rome), and Juan Luis Segundo of Uruguay (a Jesuit priest, deceased in 1996), Sobrino was instrumental in formulating this humanistic view of social justice into a modern liturgy.

These liberation theology creators supposedly gained inspiration from the Vatican II document, Lumen Gentium: “the Church encompasses with love all who are afflicted with human suffering and in the poor…sees the image of (Jesus). It does all it can to relieve their need and in them it strives to serve Christ” (Chapter 1, paragraph 8).

Consider Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Like Fr. Gutierrez and the others, she lived among the world’s poorest outcasts and devoted her life to improving their condition. Unlike the priests, however, she embraced Jesus’ spiritual poverty, his acceptance of suffering and surrender to God’s will, and his divine power to show us the way to heaven.

Jesus says our Father sent him to stir up the social order, to raise up the poor and scatter the proud. But Jesus’ radical idea of revolution is a spiritual wave of individual conversions. The savior’s poverty, and power, is a humble spirit.

Salvation history, Jesus teaches, is God’s domain, not man’s. Our monumental spiritual task in our puny human existence is to transcend injustices with charity and forgiveness.

Largely diminished in Latin America after Rome’s 1984 rebuke of Marxist (and underlying atheist) concepts, liberation theology remains a current among liberal Catholics and a prominent force in American black churches.

Among notable U.S. liberation theologians is Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose 1990 sermon “The Audacity to Hope” inspired the beliefs of longtime Trinity United Church of Christ member Barack Obama.

U.S. Immigration Overhaul Overdue

2010-06-29T23:53:00.003-04:00

Published in Cumberland Times-News Tuesday, June 22, 2010.

Can the Speaker, and the President, not hear the masses’ outcry for
immigration reform? Do they not see that Americans do want reasonable treatment for illegals – but most assuredly, protection for Americans?

Rather than follow through on a promise to send National Guard troops to Arizona’s border, President Obama appallingly slapped the governor last week with a frivolous lawsuit over the constitutionality of her state’s immigration law(s).

Equally reprehensibly, Obama’s third-in-command, Nancy Pelosi, preached amnesty as immigration reform last month to Catholics at what appears to be a contrived “first-of-its kind” forum in Washington, D.C.

Besides stretching the limits of the First Amendment, Pelosi played Pope to 1) cite a Catholic view of Scripture that inspires her viewpoint, 2) tell Catholic bishops to teach her view to the faithful, and 3) call all Catholics in the pews to endorse her progressive policies.

Pelosi told conferees in a May “briefing” at Trinity University, “the Church is going to have to play a very major role (in how illegals) are treated. … I want you to speak about (reform) from the pulpit…to instruct your (people who) oppose immigration reform…and you have to tell them that this is a manifestation of our living the gospels.”

Can the Speaker, and the President, not hear the masses’ outcry for immigration reform? Do they not see that Americans do want reasonable treatment for illegals – but most assuredly, protection for Americans?

The President illogically pressures the governor not to defend Arizonans; and Pelosi crazily pressures Catholics to defend all illegals: “As a practical matter, we can’t say to (12 million people), go back to wherever you came from, or go to jail.”

Surely, as immigration reform unfolds, illegals who seek better lives here, and contribute, should earn assistance. However, rather than hogtie the states, federal officials should coordinate with them (and home countries) to arrest, incarcerate and prosecute illegals who commit heinous crimes in America.

His lawsuit typifies Obama’s inability to respond effectively to a plight like Arizona’s. And in delusional style, Pelosi blithely turns her gaze from Arizona’s border, where citizens daily battle transgressions like trafficking, rape and murder, to call fellow Catholics to manifest her utopia by advocating that compassion trumps law!

Sensible Christians know that compassion succeeds when transgressors amend their lives. Unrepentant, unreformable, criminal illegals who repeatedly break America’s laws and harm her people are due justice (Mt. 18:23-35).

Now, how could Pelosi’s intimate sharing of motives and agendas from state to church transpire?

Pelosi is a 1962 graduate of Trinity, which co-sponsored the Catholic forum, with National Catholic Reporter.

Founded in 1897 as a Catholic women’s college, Trinity today is iuber-liberal. Its president, Patricia McGuire, labels pro-life Catholics “uber-guardians of a belief system we can hardly recognize” (Catholic News Agency, May 18, 2009).

Founded in 1964 by laity and clergy, NCR is independent and often dissents from Catholic teaching.

Another speaker at Pelosi’s forum was Sister Simone Campbell, director of Network social justice lobby, who organized women religious to sign a letter, against bishops’ teaching, that influenced fence-sitters to vote to pass the abortion-friendly health care reform bill.

Prominent among panelists was Sister Carol Keehan, CEO of Catholic Health Association, touted by NCR as “the organization that played a pivotal role in the health care reform debate.” Sister Keehan and CHA also disregarded bishops’ teaching to endorse the flawed bill.

A panelists list includes Baltimore Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien, though his office confirms, “He did not attend.”

On the back burner since 9/11, immigration overhaul is overdue. The U.S. Bishops advocate well-reasoned reform “that keeps immigrant families together, adopts smart and humane enforcement policies, and provides undocumented immigrants with a set of rules by which they can earn legal status and begin a path toward citizenship” (Archbishop O’Brien, May 6 Catholic Review).

Nancy E. Thoerig
Mount Savage

Judeo-Christian primciples make U.S. exceptional

2010-05-17T17:10:00.003-04:00

Published Monday, May 17, 2010 in Cumberland Times-News.

Now, if America’s history students could explore motivational
religious themes like Moses’ leadership and the Exodus, they might discover more personally the situational gravity, and vision, of William Bradford, George Washington, Harriett Tubman, Abraham Lincoln, Cecil B. DeMille, Martin Luther King Jr., Ronald Reagan, and so many more.

Christian conservatives can find a recapitulation of beliefs in Jewish author Bruce Feiler’s 2009 book, “America’s Prophet: Moses and the American Story.”

Feiler visits popular museums and interviews prominent historians. He probes obscure corners and inspects hoarded troves of historic objects. He analyzes common threads and concludes that Judeo-Christian principles are the bedrock of American society.

Recognizing the Bible’s influence -- from the Pilgrims’ crash-landing on Clark’s Island in 1620, to the clashes in our homes and communities today -- is essential, Feiler establishes, to understanding American history and preserving the American dream.

“Discovering how much the biblical narrative of the Israelites colored the vision and informed the values of twenty generations of Americans and their leaders,” Feiler writes, “was like discovering a new front door to a house I’d lived in all my life.

“You can’t understand American history…without understanding Moses. He is a looking glass into our (collective American) soul.”

Now, if America’s history students could explore motivational religious themes like Moses’ leadership and the Exodus, they might discover more personally the situational gravity, and vision, of William Bradford, George Washington, Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln, Cecil B. DeMille, Martin Luther King Jr., Ronald Reagan, and so many more.

The Founding Fathers (and our most revered leaders) were Christians (or God-fearers) who knew their Hebrew Bible (Genesis through Deuteronomy); and Moses, the reluctant-yet-headstrong redeemer in Exodus, motivated them to rise up and defeat the world’s (and society’s) most daunting or oppressive powers.

Throughout the American timeline, Feiler illustrates, the Exodus storyline repeats: 1) Righteous rebellion, 2) hard-won liberty, 3) just law, grounded in Hebraic principles – and all along the way, supplication and gratefulness to God for his intervention and generosity.

While Jesus is a personal savior to Christians, Feiler acknowledges, Moses is America’s prime founding father. Moses is the one to whom those we call founders turned, for inspiration and leadership -- from renouncing allegiance to the king, to establishing three chambers of government; from declaring the rights to choose life and liberty and to pursue happiness, to ensuring that those rights be protected by law.

Having signed the Mayflower Compact Nov. 11, but still seeking a suitable harbor, the Pilgrims organized an exploration party of 17 who set out Monday, Dec. 6 to explore Cape Cod Bay. As night fell on Friday, in a blustery storm, the pilot guided their battered shallop to rest on a tiny island inside Plymouth Harbor.

The next day, Saturday, the men needed to rest and repair their boat; and as William Bradford writes in his journal, “this being the last day of the week, they prepared there to keep the Sabbath.”
Their fellow Pilgrims -- on the ship, anchored 20 miles away -- likely knew not if they survived. Yet these devout Christians, finally finding suitable shelter after three months at sea, primarily honored God, praised him for his providence, thanked him for his “manifold deliverances,” and sought his blessings upon their pursuits in this New Promised Land.

From their humble act sprang Thanksgiving, what Feiler calls, “the symbol of American blessing, the one holiday that (marks) the union of God, the people, and the land.” He relates it to Passover, the Jews’ seminal commemoration of deliverance.

“I hadn’t known that Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams proposed Moses for America’s seal,” Feiler ponders at the conclusion of his history-detective tome. “The United States at its founding was essentially one hundred percent Christian.”

Well, Christians share the faith of Abraham and his descendants; and the Judeo-Christian tradition is the sublime combination of liberty and law that makes America exceptional.

Texas Gives the Boot to Liberal Social Studies Bias

2010-04-26T07:02:00.004-04:00

From Education Reporter April 2010

"An education without some understanding of the profound role of
religion in our nation's history and its contributions to our nation's success is an incomplete education, and our courts have often said as much." -- Derek Davis, dean of the College of Humanities at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor

After three days of contentious meetings, Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) members gave preliminary approval to revised social studies standards they say are intended to rein in the liberal bias of teachers and academics. "We are adding balance," said Dr. Don McLeroy, leader of the conservative bloc of the board. "History has been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left."

The new standards will be written next year and remain in effect for ten years. They will determine what the state's 4.8 million K-12 students are taught in government, world history, U.S. history, and economics classes from kindergarten through high school. They will also be used to develop state tests and write textbooks.

Significant media attention has been devoted to the state's debate over social studies guidelines because decisions made there have national impact. Since Texas is the largest single purchaser of textbooks, publishers tailor them to its guidelines. Typically more than 90% of America's textbooks are based on Lone Star state curriculum, as it is too costly to produce multiple versions.

The lengthy process of determining curriculum guidelines began with teams of teachers writing a first draft, which was then reviewed by six experts appointed by the SBOE. The expert panel then reported their findings and recommendations to the 15 board members. The board also received at least 14,000 emails and considered 17 hours of public testimony prior to the three-day meeting. Parents, teachers, civil rights groups, historians and state legislators were among those who attended the proceedings, and many testified before the board.

The heated discussions there served as a public forum for quieter ideological skirmishes happening throughout the country. The battle line runs between defenders of traditional values, who oppose what they see as politically correct historical revision, and progressives, who prefer secularism and emphasize prominent inclusion of minority figures. McLeroy acknowledged the conflict, saying, "Our country is divided on how we see things, and [it comes] into sharp focus, especially with history and how you present it to your children." (Austin-American Statesman, 3-11-09) Proponents of both sides were visible and vocal during the deliberations.

The conservative caucus of the Texas legislature submitted written testimony and sent representative Ken Paxton to read it at the proceedings. The letter called on the board to resist pressure to wash the standards "clean of any references to Judeo-Christian faiths while promoting references to other religions." The letter cited a prior attempt to remove Christmas and Rosh Hashanah from guidelines and replace them with the five-day Hindu festival Diwali, a measure that was overturned by the board.

The board also rejected the adoption of the secularist-preferred B.C.E. and C.E. (Before the Common Era and Common Era) instead of B.C. and A.D. to specify time periods before and after the birth of Christ. Board member Mavis Knight (D-Dallas) objected on the ground that the "social studies community uses B.C.E. and C.E."

Hostilities escalated over presenting the religious beliefs of the Founding Fathers, and particularly on how the First Amendment should be taught. Knight proposed an amendment to teach students that "the Founding Fathers supported a strong wall of separation between church and state."

Republican member Ken Mercer countered that the Founders "did not want a separation from religion, they just wanted to avoid having a national denomination . . . one religion everyone would have to follow. I think they had a different understanding of religious freedom." Other Republican board members agreed that the First Amendment was written to protect rather than prohibit the practice of religion, and Knight's motion failed. (wnd.com, 3-15-10)

"Some board members and the non-expert ideologues they appointed to a review panel have made it clear that they want students to learn that the Founding Fathers intended America to be an explicitly Christian nation with laws based on their own narrow interpretations of the Bible," said Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, an organization whose mission is to "counter the religious right."

Former board chairman McLeroy said the efforts of conservatives were misconstrued and mischaracterized. "I don't see anyone wanting to say this is a Christian nation or anything like that," he said. "The argument is that the principles on which (the nation) has been founded are biblically based."

McLeroy found support for his position in the dean of the College of Humanities at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, Derek Davis. "An education without some understanding of the profound role of religion in our nation's history and its contributions to our nation's success is an incomplete education, and our courts have often said as much," said Davis. (Education Week, 1-13-10)

The subject of minority inclusion and prominence in the guidelines was another ongoing area of controversy. Texas state legislator Eddie Rodriguez (D-Austin), representing the Mexican-American caucus, came before the board to voice concerns about the absence of important Hispanic figures and groups in the history standards. Rodriguez asked the board to include Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America and member of the Democratic Socialists of America in the guidelines; member Pat Hardy (R- Fort Worth) informed him Huerta was already in the standards.

Other Hispanics such as Jose Antonia Navarro were added in response to the push for greater inclusion, but tensions rose when not every request was adopted. Mary Helen Berlanga, Democrat board member, stormed out of the room when members did not add the names of two Hispanic and one black Medal of Honor recipients to a history lesson. Berlanga was also upset that the board deleted a requirement that sociology students "explain how institutional racism is evident in American society." She accused her colleagues of "whitewashing" the curriculum standards, saying, "We can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don't exist."
Republican members argued that listing three Medal of Honor winners out of the thousands of those honored "diminishes the accomplishment of other recipients." Terri Leo (R-Spring) said, "I would rather give teachers the academic freedom to possibly pull a winner from that school, that those children can relate to and emulate."

Further examples of the changes the SBOE ultimately approved include restoring references to Independence Day, Thomas Edison, Christopher Columbus, Mother Teresa, Albert Einstein, Neil Armstrong and Daniel Boone that had been deleted. The board added the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms to a lesson on the Bill of Rights, an element conspicuously absent from some curricula.

Teachers and textbooks will be required to accurately describe the U.S. form of government as a constitutional republic rather than as a democracy. Depictions of Joseph McCarthy must include an explanation of "how the later release of the Venona papers confirmed suspicions of Communist infiltration in the U.S. government." The Venona papers are verified transcripts of communications between the Soviet Union and its agents in the U.S.

A section in the U.S. government standards will cover the concept of American exceptionalism and detail how the nation's values are unique from other nations. Alexis de Tocqueville's five values critical to America's success as a republic will also be delineated. In economics, the board added free-market economists Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek to the usual list of John Maynard Keynes, Adam Smith and Karl Marx.

The board, whose members are elected, voted ten to five along party lines to approve the revised standards, with the Republicans prevailing over the Democrats. Conservatives held only one seat 15 years ago, but have built up to seven of the ten GOP seats on the 15-member board now. A final vote on the Texas standards is expected in May, after another public comment period. (Education Week, 3-1-10; New York Times, 3-13-10)

U.S. History textbook battle bigger than Texas

2010-04-13T16:39:00.003-04:00

Published Tuesday, April 13, in Cumberland Times-News.

I agree with Cynthia Dunbar on this: America’s classrooms are no place to preach religion, but students should learn its importance in our nation’s founding and foundation.

Ms. Dunbar seemed to be one stirring national interest in the Texas State Board of Education textbook revision controversy (and the board had invited phone calls and emails from interested citizens), so I called her to learn her views.

She told me that school textbooks today redact references to God from Declaration of Independence or U.S. Constitution excerpts. Students should learn accurate history, we agreed, the truth about our founders’ inspirations and the ideals they impart to us.

After three days of contentious debate on 300 amendments, the board voted 10-5 on March 12 to pass a set of curriculum standards for grades K-12 that preserve a patriotic (rather than revisionist) approach to American history.

American Center for Law and Justice attorney Jay Sekulow speaks of revisionists: “Our Founders acknowledged their reliance upon Divine Providence, that we are endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights; and this idea that now you remove that, it as if it is does not exist…. It really goes to the depths of what these groups are trying to get at, and that is to expunge any reference to America's religious heritage" (FOX News, March 8).

The TSBOE vote followed the party line, so Democrats (three Hispanics, two blacks) are shouting “racism” and accusing Republicans of imposing religious and conservative views. The Mexican American Legislative Caucus, composed of 44 Texas House members, has scheduled an April 28 hearing on the TSBOE’s process; and Democratic state Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa says he will work to abolish the board when the legislature convenes next January.

Gov. Rick Perry tells the Associated Press (March 26 Austin Star-Telegram) the process works. Perry declined federal funding earlier this year and rejected a national curriculum developed by governors and education leaders in preference for the elected board's updates.

The board must review public comment now, and then take a final vote in May. If it passes, the new curriculum starts in the 2011-12 school year and stays in place for a decade. Because Texas is a major textbook purchaser, these changes set standards to be included in textbooks marketed nationwide.

Gilbert T. Sewall, American Textbook Council director, tells FOX, no doubt, “identity politics have contributed to the decline of textbook quality over the last 20 years."

Sewall says groups from nutritionists to gender activists have demanded their way into textbooks. He says Christians comprise the most visible groups who want to “use American history textbooks (positively) to recapture the soul of the nation."

A national Rasmussen survey (March 9) concludes 55 percent of Americans believe school textbooks present information in a politically correct manner, rather than accurately (18 percent are undecided). Forty-three percent say U.S. history textbooks are not accurate (26 percent are undecided). Dissatisfaction is higher among parents of schoolchildren.

Chair Gail Lowe tells KUT News Austin the TSBOE has spent more than a year discussing and developing the social studies curriculum review standards: “We have sought input from teachers, parents, professors, history experts, business and industry leaders,” and more recently, all interested Americans.

Board member Terri Leo calls the standards a "world-class document."

ABC News reports (March 10): “State governors and education officials proposed new national standards for K-12 education today, a step President Obama believes is key to improving the quality of the nation's schools.”

Jay Sekulow says, “Well, if you grab the minds of the young people, you grab the minds of the next generation."

Write sboeteks@tea.state.tx.us, or call (512)463-9734.

Nancy E. Thoerig
Mount Savage

TSBOE clarifies Thomas Jefferson legacy in curriculum

2010-03-26T15:25:00.010-04:00

“Jefferson was not himself an Enlightenment philosopher, although he was heavily influenced by the writings of these individuals. But to say the (Texas) State Board of Education has removed him from the TEKS is inaccurate and irresponsible,” said (Gail) Lowe (board chairman).
NOTE (updated March 26): On Wednesday, March 24, I received an email from Texas State Board of Education member Terri Leo. The content was a release on TSBOE letterhead dated March 19 that corrects erroneous reportage and clarifies a March 12 board decision regarding Thomas Jefferson's role as a founding father and statesman. The original on letterhead may be viewed at the Fort Worth Star Telegram archives. Ms. Leo may be reached at TerriSLeo@aol.com. Here, then, is our email exchange, including the TSBOE release:

From: Terri S, Leo
To: Nancy E. Thoerig
Sent: Friday, March 26, 2010 9:15 PM
Subject: Re: Thomas Jefferson remains in social studies curriculum (17)
Thank you, we covet your prayers!

**********
From: Nancy E. Thoerig
To: Terri S. Leo
Sent: Friday, March 26, 2010 6:15:21 A.M. Central Daylight Time
Thank you, Ms. Leo, for includimg me in your update.
I appreciate receiving this letter and applaud the good work you and your colleagues are able to achieve, in the face of opposition, to strengthen the American history curriculum for students everywhere.
Keep plugging...and praying.
Best wishes for a blessed Easter for you and yours,
Nancy E. Thoerig
**********
From: Terri S. Leo
Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2010 8:51 PMMarch 19, 2010

Thomas Jefferson remains in social studies curriculum

After hours of public testimony and more than 100 amendments offered to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for social studies, the State Board of Education last week gave preliminary approval to the curriculum standards that will be used in Texas public schools.

One amendment in particular has garnered a lot of attention, after some media outlets erroneously reported the State Board of Education was dropping Thomas Jefferson from the curriculum framework.

“The only individual mentioned more times in the curriculum standards than Thomas Jefferson is George Washington,” said Gail Lowe, chairwoman of the 15-member board. “We expect students at the elementary level, in middle school and in high school to study the Founding Fathers and to be well versed in their contributions to our country. That includes Thomas Jefferson and his legacy,” she said.

In fifth grade, designed as an introductory survey course of the United States from 1565 to the present, students are expected to “identify the Founding Fathers and Patriot heroes, including John Adams, Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Nathan Hale, Thomas Jefferson, the Sons of Liberty, and George Washington, and their motivations and contributions during the revolutionary period.”

In the eighth grade, in which the history of the United States from the early colonial period through Reconstruction is presented, the TEKS framework requires students to “explain the roles played by significant individuals during the American Revolution, including Abigail Adams, John Adams, Wentworth Cheswell, Samuel Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, James Armistead, Benjamin Franklin, Bernardo de Galvez, Crispus Attucks, King George III, Haym Salomon, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette, Thomas Paine and George Washington.”

The U.S. Government course required for high school graduation states that students will “identify the contributions of the political philosophies of the Founding Fathers, including John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, James Madison, George Mason, Roger Sherman and James Wilson on the development of the U.S. government.”

In addition, students must “identify significant individuals in the field of government and politics, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan.”

Although Jefferson had been listed in a World History standard, the board removed his name from a list of European Enlightenment philosophers that included John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu and Jean Jacques Rousseau.

“This was inappropriate placement of Jefferson’s name,” said Lowe of the World History proposal. “Jefferson was not himself an Enlightenment philosopher, although he was heavily influenced by the writings of these individuals. But to say the State Board of Education has removed him from the TEKS is inaccurate and irresponsible,” said Lowe.

Lowe continued, “Jefferson not only penned the words of the Declaration of Independence, served as the third president of the United States and was father of the University of Virginia, but his promotion of the ideals of a limited federal government and states’ rights also permeated our nation for generations. No study of American history would be complete without his inclusion,” she said.

The social studies Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills will be finalized in May when the board holds its last public hearing and final adoption of the standards.

Christians, atheists square off in battle over God in public

2010-03-12T11:51:00.004-05:00

Published Friday, March 12, 2010, in Cumberland Times-News.

"Ironically, a conservative atheist would endorse the Catholic, Anglican, Evangelical and Orthodox Christian principles of the Manhattan Declaration, regarding exercise of conscience in political matters of compromise, more readily than could a liberal Christian."

Christians won in the courtroom in recent weeks, while atheists advanced to ground zero, in the battle over God in the public square.

Late Feb. 26, Christians cheered as Westview (Calif.) High School math teacher Bradley Johnson, a 30-year employee, won his three-year battle for the right to re-post classroom banners that display historical and religious American heritage themes.

That morning, atheists gloated over a first-ever secular lobby meeting at the White House (two hours with five Obama staffers) to discuss religious policy matters.

In San Diego, the school district violated Johnson’s constitutional rights, ruled Federal District Court Judge Roger Benitez, when the principal ordered him to remove the banners – because they “overemphasized” God, or might offend a hypothetical Muslim student.

For 25 years, Johnson displayed a banner that features traditional patriotic phrases – “In God We Trust,” “One Nation under God,” “God Bless America,” and “God Shed His Grace on Thee.” For 17 years, he displayed another that quotes from the Declaration of Independence: “All Men Are Created Equal, They Are Endowed by Their Creator.”

Johnson removed his patriotic displays, but other teachers’ personal banners that promoted political positions or non-Christian religions stayed put, a fact that weighed heavily for Judge Benitez:

“Fostering diversity…does not mean bleaching out historical religious expression or mainstream morality. By squelching only Johnson’s patriotic and religious classroom banners, while permitting other diverse religious and anti-religious classroom displays, the school district does a disservice to the students…and the federal and state constitutions do not permit this one-sided censorship.”

In his 32-page opinion, Judge Benitez strongly states, “That God places prominently in our Nation’s history does not create an Establishment Clause violation requiring (scrubbing of) Johnson’s public high school classroom walls. It is a matter of historical fact that our institutions and government (give) place to a supreme God.”

Meanwhile, 60 representatives of the Secular Coalition for America, which unites 10 member organizations -- and boasts 25 endorsing groups -- of atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers, skeptics, brights, ignostics, materialists and naturalists, met with Obama staffers from Public Engagement; Intergovernmental Affairs; Children, Youth and Families; Department of Justice; and Military Personnel.

SCA founder (2002) and president Herb Silverman reports (Washington Post, Feb. 28) the secularists’ three-prong agenda: “to close legal loopholes for the religiously based medical neglect of children;” protect military personnel from “(coercion) into religious participation,” proselytizing, or discrimination; and to establish that religious organizations who receive federal funds “cannot discriminate in hiring,” or proselytize, “and that secular options are made equally available.”

Margaret Talev writes in her Feb. 25 McClatchy Newspapers article that the White House “downplayed the meeting,” while SCA members believe they have a “kindred spirit” in President Obama --- since his mother was agnostic, and he is the first U.S. President to recognize “nonbelievers,” alongside religious groups, in his inaugural address.

Coincidentally, on Feb. 24, the Pontifical Council for Culture announced it would create a foundation to answer Pope Benedict’s call to "renew dialogue with men and women who don't believe but want to move towards God."

Sounds counter-intuitive; but Catholic News Agency reports the council’s aim is “to create a network of agnostic or atheistic people who accept dialogue” to develop “themes of rapport (among) religion, society, peace and nature.” The first conference could take place later this year.

Ironically, a conservative atheist would endorse the Catholic, Anglican, Evangelical and Orthodox Christian principles of the Manhattan Declaration, regarding exercise of conscience in political matters of compromise, more readily than could a liberal Christian. In fact, the document signatories commend pro-life atheists for their support.

Could convictions of heart transcend this battleground?

Thank you to TSBOE members who vote to preserve American history

2010-03-02T16:10:00.009-05:00

NOTE: In the morning of Eeb. 25, 2010, I called TSBOE member Cynthia Dunbar to discuss the textbook controversy and the role of the board in revisionist history. Ms. Dunbar told me that she is one of seven conservatives on the 15-member board. Their continual challenge, she said, is to garner the support of the eighth board member to comprise a majority to be able to vote down revisionist proposals that come from liberal committees. Ironically, she noted, 10 members of the board are Republicans; but most often, one of the moderate Democrats is the eighth vote. They have had significant successes, she noted, in keeping traditional history in place. They got Christmas back into the textbooks, for example, she said, though the board did compromise to put in Dewali. The next vote will take place in March, with adoption to be made in May. In either of those votes, she said, revisions could come forward again; so it is important for her and the conservatives to remain vigilant (and in the majority). Ms. Dunbar appreciates our support; and she encouraged me to email again to the SBOE support address, though we confirmed in our phone conversation that she had not received a copy of the letter I sent Feb. 18 to Dr. Morrow.

Here, then, is a letter emailed Feb. 26, 2010 to all members of Texas State Board of Education, thanking those who vote to preserve traditional, patriotic American history in school textbooks.

Dear Ms. (Cynthia) Dunbar and members of the Texas State Board of Education, in particular,
Ken Mercer, Terri Leo, David Bradley, Barbara Cargill, Don McLeroy, Gail Lowe and Geraldine Miller:

Thank you for all you accomplish to preserve a traditional, patriotic presentation of American history, especially in the face of revisionist pressures. I applaud your ongoing efforts to maintain for students what former President Ronald Reagan calls "an informed patriotism ...an unambivalent appreciation of America."

Well educated in the public schools and state university systems, I come from a family of educators. I believe that American history grounds us in our homes, our communities, our nation and the world; and it is vital that students from kindergarten through graduation learn key age-appropriate and expanding American history concepts in order to develop a mature understanding of our unique experience and place among the nations of the world.

We Americans share an exceptional heritage that began with a quest for personal freedom and traces now from our families to nearly every other country – an experience of trial, courage, commitment and achievement in which all of our students have the right and privilege to participate.

Students should have the opportunity to gain a full understanding of their troubled but beautiful American identity. They need to know that people like them have acted with values of justice rooted in a tradition of faith and clear thinking, and based in a strong Constitution, to right our country's greatest wrongs and take her repeatedly from crises to new heights of greatness. At the beginning, our country's leaders grounded the Constitution, and acknowledged the source of their greatness, in gratitude to God for His many blessings and good guidance. As our U.S. Senate Chaplain Barry C. Black's web site affirms today, our First Amendment separates church and state, but not God and state.

These are concepts our students need to learn (and we need to uphold) in order to esteem their own families and communities, their nation and themselves. One cannot love what one does not know. Hire teachers who know and love American history. Give them sound textbooks. Teach our students traditional, patriotic American history. Give them the chance to know and love their country.

Thank you for your consideration.

I pray for your guidance.

Sincerely,

Nancy E. Thoerig
Mount Savage, MD

Preserve traditional, patriotic American history in our schools

2010-03-02T15:15:00.009-05:00

Letter emailed Feb. 18, 2010 to Dr. Rosemary Morrow, director of Social Studies, Division of Curriculum, Texas Education Agency, Austin, Texas, in response to her email to Ron Maiers regarding his concerns expressed in a telephone conversation about proposed revisionis to American history textbooks. (Dr. Morrow's email to Mr. Maiers and his email response follow, along with an original email sent Feb. 16, 2010 to the full membership of the Texas State Board of Education.)

Dear Dr. Morrow:

I appreciate your Feb. 16 response to Ron Maiers; but concerns remain.

On Mike Huckabee’s Feb. 6 program, Mathew Staver of Liberty Counsel and Liberty University School of Law said the TSBOE would consider proposed revisions to U.S. history textbooks in March; and he urged Americans to contact board members to voice concerns. Accordingly, I wish to say: I believe that revisionist history destroys the American identity, robs our students of a sure sense of their American citizenry, and ill prepares students to be American citizens in the global society.

A Liberty Counsel press release reports further that the proposed social studies guidelines will have final reading and adoption in May.

Dean Staver summed up, essentially, regarding Texas' purchasing power as it influences availability of textbooks for other states to purchase: As goes Texas, so goes the nation. Dean Staver noted that board member Cynthia Dunbar of Liberty University School of Law stands opposed to suggested revisions -- sweeping and trivializing changes that apparently could stay in place for a decade, if approved for the next school year. It seems Ms. Dunbar leads an effort to convince a majority of the 15-member board to vote to preserve a traditional, patriotic presentation of American history in school textbooks, rather than take a revisionist approach to diminish our unique and exceptional American story in deference to a global view.

In reviewing the 148-page "Instructional Materials Current Adoption Bulletin" for the year 2009-2010, I see strong instructional support for music, languages, and the arts, health and technical education, and career preparedness; but only four U.S. History textbook titles appear (page 105), and they are advanced placement. Otherwise, five AP World History titles show, with seven for AP European History (page 106). The four U.S. Government and three AP U.S. Government and Politics textbooks likely are narrow in scope and would not instruct in American history, per se. Moreover, the one title (page 107) for AP Comparative Government and Politics and four titles for Economics with Emphasis on the Free Enterprise System likely do not give students a view of the unique American experiment and experience in these arenas.

I am no expert, but I am well educated in the public schools and state university systems; and I come from a family of educators. I believe that American history grounds us in our homes, our communities, our nation and the world; and it is vital that students from kindergarten through graduation learn key age-appropriate and expanding American history concepts in order to develop a mature understanding of our unique experience among the nations of the world.

We Americans share an exceptional heritage that traces from our families to nearly every country in the world – an experience of trial, courage and achievement in which all of our students have the right and privilege to participate. Students should have the opportunity to gain a full understanding of their troubled but beautiful American identity. They need to know that people like them have acted with values rooted in a tradition of faith and clear thinking and based in a strong Constitution to right our country's greatest wrongs and take her repeatedly from crises to new heights of greatness.

These are concepts our students need to learn in order to esteem their own families and communities, their nation and themselves. One cannot love what one does not know. Hire teachers who know and love American history. Give them sound textbooks. Teach our students traditional, patriotic American history. Give them the chance to love their country.

Thank you for your consideration.

I pray for your guidance.

Sincerely,

Nancy E. Thoerig
Mount Savage, MD

*****

Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 3:49 PM
Subject: Re: Texas Social Studies Standards

"IN GOD WE TRUST"
Mrs Morrow,
Just Wanted to tell you thanks for forwarding this information to me. I feel that every citizen MUST stand for the freedoms which all out generations before us fought for and we also must continue the fight so that our generation and the ones after us can live in a free Nation
We must never give up the title of "AMERICANS" and we must pass this idenity on for generations to come.

God Bless
Ron

*****
Sent: Tue, February 16, 2010 3:20:36 PM

Subject: Texas Social Studies Standards

Dear Ron Maiers:

The State Board of Education (SBOE) in Texas is currently reviewing the social studies standards, the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). It is from these standards that a proclamation will be issued in a year or so for instructional materials that include textbooks for Texas public schools. The SBOE makes decision for Texas public schools and does not decide standards or instructional materials for private schools or homeschoolers within the state and does not make decisions for other states.

Drafts of the revised standards from social studies Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) review committees can be found at http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index2.aspx?id=364. The State Board of Education (SBOE) met in January and made amendments to Kindergarten through Grade 8 and high school U.S. history. These amended documents will be posted on the same link in early March.

By examining the standards drafts, you will find that there is a history, citizenship, and government strand at every grade level. U.S history is taught at Grades 5 and 8 and high school. U.S. government is required for high school graduation. There are no plans to remove the courses nor radically change the content of the courses. Standards are generally intended to be broad concepts, not specifics of names, places, etc. These specifics are generally included at the level below the standards, curriculum writing, which is left to local school districts in Texas.

If you have any further questions regarding social studies standards, please contact me at (512) 463-9581 or by e-mail at rosemary.morrow@tea.state.tx.us.

Sincerely,

Rosemary Morrow

Rosemary Morrow, PhD, Director of Social Studies
Division of Curriculum

Texas Education Agency
1701 North Congress Avenue, Austin, Texas 78701
512.463.9581
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/

*****
Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 5:19 PM
Subject: textbook revisions

Dear Texas State Board of Education members,

Texas' purchasing power determines textbooks that other state boards of education order for their students. Therefore, your decisions regarding textbook revisions affect all students across the country.

When you consider revisions, please -- along with portrayals of important historic scandals and mistakes -- respectfully present the fullness and beauty of the American experience, the courage and commitment of our founders and our prominent historical heroes, so that our students may understand the sacrifice and witness of our predecessors.

Only with an understanding of the past -- our countrymen's struggles that are grounded in exceptional primciples and common sense, the experience known as the American experiment -- can our students embrace and cherish their unique heritage in the world. Only with love for this country, nurtured through knowledge of its people and accomplishments, can the well-informed American citizen develop a realistic view of his or her place in the world.

Ours is a legacy that deserves reverence and pride. America is the envy of the world, a light of truth and justice, the desire of the oppressed and the destination of generations of immigrants. From its troubled beginings, this country and its people have been blessed and guided by divine providence to realize uncommon greatness.

I pray that wisdom will guide you.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Nancy E. Thoerig
Mount Savage, Maryland

Power without God deludes, tyrannizes, destroys

2010-02-14T16:42:00.004-05:00

Published Wednesday, February 10, 2010 in Cumberland Times-News.

“Throughout the years, the United States Senate has honored the historic separation of Church and State, but not the separation of God and State”: From the web site of Barry C. Black, U.S. Senate Chaplain.

“The first Senate, meeting in New York City on April 25, 1789, elected the Right Reverend Samuel Provost, the Episcopal Bishop of New York, as its first Chaplain.” Since then, “all sessions of the Senate have been opened with prayer, strongly affirming the Senate's faith in God as Sovereign Lord of our Nation.”

Intending to undo our country’s unbroken grounding in God, 255 atheists, humanists, secularists, skeptics and freethinkers, along with thousands from 19 national and local organizations, represented by Michael Newdow, renewed their fight on Dec. 15, 2009 to remove prayer from public life.

In at least nine suits filed since 2002, Newdow leads the charge to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance; strike “in God we trust” from American currency and as the national motto; stop invocations at Presidential inaugurations; eliminate “so help me God” from the Presidential swearing-in; and wipe “God save the United States and this honorable court” from court session openings.

In its amicus brief filed in Newdow’s appeal (the D.C. Circuit dismissed the case), American Center for Law and Justice attorney James M. Henderson writes that Newdow’s “targeting of religious expression at Presidential inaugurations is particularly meritless given the controlling decision” in Marsh v. Chambers (July 5, 1983).

Nebraska state senator Ernie Chambers sued to prove that prayer offered by a state-supported chaplain at the legislature’s opening violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. The Supreme Court held that prayer in the legislature, and state-hired chaplains, are constitutional, given the “unique history” of the United States.

“The practice of opening sessions of Congress with prayer has continued without interruption…since the First Congress drafted the First Amendment, and a similar practice has been followed…in Nebraska and many other states,” writes then-Chief Justice Warren Burger in the court opinion.

“To invoke divine guidance on a public body entrusted with making the laws is not…a violation of the Establishment Clause; it is simply a tolerable acknowledgment of beliefs widely held among the people of this country.”

As Justice Burger cites, “the Continental Congress, beginning in 1774, adopted the traditional procedure of opening its sessions with a prayer.” Burger quotes from a document of the first Senate session to recount that one of our founders’ early items of business was “to take under consideration the manner of electing Chaplains.”

Burger notes the House followed the Senate by six days to elect its first chaplain May 1, 1789. “A statute providing for the payment of these chaplains was enacted into law on September 22, 1789,” Burger writes, adding that three days later, “final agreement was reached on the language of the Bill of Rights.

“Clearly the men who wrote the First Amendment Religion Clauses did not view (paid chaplains) and opening prayers as a violation of that Amendment.”

The Rev. Daniel P. Coughlin, a Catholic priest, is U.S. House of Representatives Chaplain. In Maryland’s General Assembly, House sessions open with the Pledge of Allegiance; then a different delegate each day offers a prayer. In the Senate, either an invited religious leader or one of the senators leads daily prayer.

Our founders, imperfect but striving, knew that political pursuits without God’s blessing were untrustworthy. History demonstrated for them -- as it does for us -- that power without God deludes, tyrannizes and destroys. Let us pray that our leaders hold fast to exceptional American principles and common sense, and never lose sight of God.

Monument to constitution should honor document

2010-01-10T14:53:00.006-05:00

Letter written January 4, 2010 to Allegany County Commissioners. Published January 10 in Cumberland Times-News.

Dear Sirs:

Thank you for (assistant county attorney) Barry Lavine’s prompt response to my December 21 letter to you. I appreciate the chance to see the proposed Constitution monument inscription in full, and to read Mr. Lavine’s rationale for its acceptance.

Sadly, Mr. Lavine overlooks the obvious: “The meaning conveyed by a monument is generally not a simple one like ‘Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner,’” writes Justice Samuel Alito in the unanimous Supreme Court decision in Pleasant Grove City, Utah v. Summum (February 25, 2009).

The proposed inscription, innocuous as it may seem to Mr. Lavine (and it contains two typos in the Preamble), is a commentary, a viewpoint, an interpretation by one group that has a right, under the Constitution, to take a slant on that document. However, as ruled by the Supreme Court, one group does not have the right to present their slant, as a foregone conclusion for everyone, on a public monument.

Our society’s Judeo-Christian grounding is the philosophical “backbone of our country.” God endows the rights and dignities ensured by the Constitution. The Constitution generated from our forefathers’ gratitude for God’s graces, to establish a framework to order our society toward a balance that keeps the people free from tyranny.

A monument is a sort of fine art object, intended to inspire us and bring us to pause and reflect, in a personal or communal way, on matters of individual or social significance. A monument to the Constitution, then, should lift viewers’ minds and hearts to ponder the document’s significance, not draw us into one viewpoint.

Therefore, I urge you to reconsider the inscription for a monument to the Constitution. I ask you to choose one that presents facts about the document’s genesis, rather than a viewpoint, along with the Preamble:

The United States Constitution

“We the People of the United States,
in Order to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility,
provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare,
and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,
do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Drafted by Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, the United States Constitution joined thirteen states under one government and established a framework for the nation’s growth and stability.

At Independence Hall in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787, after a summer of study and debate in a convention presided by General George Washington, and eleven years after the Revolution won under General Washington’s leadership, fifty-five delegates signed the United States Constitution.

“Having conducted these states to independence and peace,
he now appears to assist in framing a Government to make the People happy.”
-- William Pierce of Georgia, about General George Washington,
from Character Sketches of Delegates to the Federal Convention

A committee is in place to review proposals. The board of commissioners has final say on how such a project should take form. Please consider my proposal.

I hope this note finds you well and in agreement, that such an important project as a monument to the Constitution on the courthouse lawn deserves great deliberation.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Nancy E. Thoerig

Manhattan Decllaration: Call to Saintliness

2009-12-07T11:37:00.000-05:00

Published in Cumberland Times-News Monday, Dec. 7, 2009.

"All pledge their commitments, and urge us to pledge ours, to stand up, or sit down, and refuse to comply with laws that kill the vulnerable, defile the natural union, or silence conscientious objectors."

Saintliness is difficult, but simple: Do what is right in the eyes of the eternal God, not what is popular in the current culture. We all are sinners, but each can be a saint.

This Advent, let’s pray for strengthened conviction, for ourselves and for others, so that the visionaries of the Manhattan Declaration will accomplish their goals: To invigorate America’s Christians to do heroic acts of civil disobedience; and to inspire others of faith (or no faith at all) to adhere to biblical and natural truths that preserve life, define marriage, and exercise conscience.

One hundred sixty-eight American Christian clergy and leaders signed the Manhattan Declaration, presented to the public Nov. 20 in Washington, D.C. Thirty-one represent Catholic communities – bishops from Washington, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New York City, Brooklyn, Newark, Kansas City (Kan.), Birmingham, Denver, Oakland (Calif.), Louisville, Detroit, Portland, Madison, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Fargo, Phoenix and Colorado Springs, along with Catholic editors, activists, educators, writers and scholars. Others represent the Orthodox, Evangelical and Anglican faithful.

All pledge their commitments, and urge us to pledge ours, to stand up, or sit down, and refuse to comply with laws that kill the vulnerable, defile the natural union, or silence conscientious objectors.

Nearly 300,000 Americans have signed onto the document, so far, to support renewal of Christians’ “2,000-year tradition of proclaiming God’s word, seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering.”

Most poignantly, during this holy season, as we reflect on our own shortcomings and imperfections, and in this troubled time for our institutions, our religious leaders call us to take courage and do what is right, not comply with what is popular.

This is a protest against compromise and complicity with the inherent evils of abortion and euthanasia, unnatural unions, and coercive repression of religion. The declaration reminds us of those “who died bravely in the coliseums rather than deny their Lord.”

We would hope that no modern-day saint in America would face death for civil disobedience; but these times are unsettled: A revolution brews.

The Taxed Enough Already Tea Party crowds protest corruption, redistribution and over-spending by big government. Black conservatives protest socialist and communist ideas (termed “plantation politics”) that undermine the American identity, perpetuate oppression, and resurrect racism (“Time to Be Heard: Black Conservatives in America” transcript, Nov. 16, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,575301,00.html).

Now comes the Manhattan Declaration: Drafted by Dr. Robert George, law professor at Princeton University; Dr. Timothy George, founding dean of Beeson Divinity School at Stanford University; and Chuck Colson, founder of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview, the effort unites the thoughts, voices and actions of America’s Christians on matters of justice, human rights and the common good.

The Manhattan Declaration web site defines conscience as “the faculty of judging, informed by faith and reason, what one is bound by a law higher than oneself to do or not do, even if one would prefer…to do otherwise.”

Those who wish to preserve truth and freedom in America, and to live by “principles of right reason and natural law,” as Cardinal Justin Rigali summarized at the press conference, are logging on and signing up: http://manhattandeclaration.org.

'Time to Be Heard': Black Conservatism in America

2009-11-21T12:04:00.006-05:00

Here is complete video from Glenn Beck's poignant program Nov. 13 on FOX Network, in three parts (full transcript):

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

'Fall on Your Knees'

2009-11-19T10:15:00.002-05:00

Here are exquisite renditions of "Mary, Did You Know?" and "O, Holy Night" from Hayley Westrena:

Catholics to Congress: 'Remove abortion funding. Include conscience rights.'

2009-11-05T15:45:00.004-05:00

Published in Cumberland Times-News Thursday, November 5.

“None of the bills retains longstanding current policies against abortion funding or abortion coverage mandates (the Hyde Amendment of 1976), and none fully protects conscience rights in health care.” – U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Oct. 29, 2009

As Congress prepares to debate health reform legislation, Catholics across the country call and email their representatives with the message, “Remove abortion funding and mandates from needed health care reform.”

They urge House members to “support the Stupak Amendment that addresses essential pro-life concerns on abortion funding and conscience rights” and to “ensure that the Rule for the bill allows a vote on this amendment.”

They urge Senators to “support an amendment to incorporate longstanding policies against abortion funding and in favor of conscience rights.”

SS. Peter and Paul, St. Ambrose and St. Mary’s in Cumberland distributed bulletin inserts in Masses on Nov. 1, to get the word out about the bishops’ position “against expansion of abortion through health care reform” and to put the call to action into motion.

Nearly 19,000 parishes nationwide received the inserts, distributed by the USCCB to dioceses on Oct. 29, the day Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) unveiled the House bill.

“Genuine health care reform should protect the life and dignity of all people from the moment of conception to natural death,” the bishops write, adding that the USCCB concludes “all committee-approved bills are seriously deficient on the issues of abortion and conscience.”

The full insert (and a press release) are available at www.usccb.org/healthcare.

The bishops urge readers to call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 or email senators and representatives. A pre-written, instant email to Congress is available at www.usccb.org/action.

According to an Oct. 29 article by Tony Romm in the congressional news publication The Hill, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) continues to pressure his party's leadership to permit a vote on an amendment that would prevent the funding of abortions with taxpayer dollars. The provision reportedly still was missing from the Democrats’ bill on Oct. 29.

Romm quotes Stupak, “I am disappointed the Capps Amendment has remained intact in H.R. 3962, mandating abortion services for the first time in our nation’s history.”

In an opinion piece in The Hill on Oct. 29, Stupak writes, “My amendment to include Hyde language in H.R. 3200, America’s Affordable Health Choices Act, is not new or out of line with the current policies regarding federal funding for abortions.”

Romm notes, “It is still unclear whether a vote on Stupak's amendment will even take place.”

Another objection to the public option stems from Catholic teachings on principles of subsidiarity -- that people in a free and healthy society resolve local needs at local levels, and solidarity – that people in a free and healthy society develop and share talents in the marketplace and the community, to create the best possible conditions for all.

In an Aug. 22 statement published in The Catholic Key, Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann (Kansas City, Kansas) and Bishop Robert W. Finn (Kansas City-St. Joseph) write: "[W]e cannot be passive concerning health care policy in our country. ... [C]hange which expands the reach of government beyond its competence would do more harm than good.”

Naumann and Finn continue: “We call upon our Catholic faithful, and all people of good will, to hold our elected officials accountable in these important deliberations and let them know clearly our support for those who, with prudence and wisdom, will protect the right to life, maintain freedom of conscience, and nurture the sense of solidarity that drives us to work hard, to pray, and to act charitably for the good of all."

Nancy E. Thoerig
Mount Savage

All Souls and All Saints: Why?

2009-11-04T10:18:00.002-05:00

In this Buested Halo clip, Father James Martin, SJ, author of My Life with the Saints (published by Loyola Press), talks about the connection between All Hallows Eve (October 31) and All Saints Day (November 1).

Public monument no place for opinion

2009-10-01T09:21:00.003-04:00

Published in Cumberland Times-News Thursday, October 1, 2009.

"Our local leaders will do best to reject any inscription, other
than a quote from the Constitution. Our Founding Fathers’ legacy -- not Jeffrey Davis’ wish -- echoes through the ages."

To the Editor:

The county commissioners and their monument committee do well to reject Jeffrey Davis’ (and his Citizens for a Secular Government’s) viewpoint, as an inscription for a courthouse lawn tribute to the U.S. Constitution. As Justice Samuel Alito summarizes (Pleasant Grove City, Utah vs. Summum), a public monument is no place to post a personal opinion.

Our local leaders will do best to reject any inscription, other than a quote from the Constitution. Our Founding Fathers’ legacy -- not Jeffrey Davis’ wish -- echoes through the ages.

Signed Sept. 17, 1788, the U.S. Constitution united 13 states into one nation and established a framework for growth and stability. Over the summer months, at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, 55 educated and distinguished patriots, men of influence and integrity, esteemed lawyers, judges, governors, theologians, military officers, merchants from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, deliberated and debated and negotiated.

General George Washington chaired the convention. Gouverneur Morris penned the document. Benjamin Franklin, 82, was the eldest delegate; Jonathan Dayton, 26, the youngest.

William Pierce, delegate from Georgia, says of General Washington, in his Character Sketches of Delegates to the Federal Convention (Library of Congress): “Having conducted these states to independence and peace, he now appears to assist in framing a Government to make the People happy.”

In their Soldier-Statesmen of the Constitution (U.S. Army Center for Military History), Robert Wright and Morris MacGregory say that, as a soldier and member of the Continental Congress, Gouverneur Morris was “convinced” that “a strong central government was needed” to preserve liberties and expand opportunities won in the Revolution: “In an age when most (early Americans) still thought of themselves as citizens of their sovereign and separate states, Morris was able to articulate a clear vision of a new and powerful union.”

Facing opposition that seemed likely at times to extinguish the assembly’s efforts, Washington placed his trust in God. In an Aug. 31, 1788 letter to Annis Boudinot Stockton (University of Virginia) -- a Revolutionary War patriot in her own right and widow of Richard Stockton, Declaration of Independence signer and Continental Congress delegate -- Washington expresses his awe and gratitude for the graces and great gift bestowed upon our nation by the benevolent Being: “I can never trace the (interconnection) of causes, which led to these events, without acknowledging the mystery and admiring the goodness of Providence. To that superintending Power alone is our retraction from the brink of ruin to be attributed. A spirit of accommodation was happily infused into the leading characters of the Continent…for the reception of a good government.”

Of Gouverneur Morris -- graduated from King’s College (named Columbia University in 1784) and buried at St. Anne’s Episcopal Churchyard in the Bronx -- Wright and MacGregory say: “During the Convention debates, he defended ideas that had been associated with him ever since he had helped write the New York constitution in 1776: religious liberty, opposition to slavery, the right of property as the foundation of society, the rule of law, and the consent of the governed as the basis of government. His aims were ambitious and reflected his vision of a government that would serve as an example to the rest of the world.”

Especially now, as efforts seem under way to circumvent the framework of our Constitution and to deny its source and sense, if a monument is to be erected in its honor, then we must urge our commissioners to accept only a quote from the Constitution, to enshrine the inspired vision of our faithful forefathers -- not the skewed view of Jeffrey Davis.

Nancy E. Thoerig
Mount Savage

copyright Sept. 25, 2009, Nancy E. Thoerig

Bishop D'Arcy speaks on Notre Dame controversy

2009-09-01T12:38:00.002-04:00

"It was only right that the bishop be with (the students), for
they were on the side of truth, and their demonstration was disciplined, rooted in prayer and substantive. ...[T]hey chose to give public witness to the Catholic faith contrary to the example of a powerful, international university, against which they were respectfully but firmly in disagreement."

Bishop John M. D'Arcy (Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana) clarifies, in an Augusut 31 reflelction in America Magazine, his decision to support the students at Notre Dame. And he calls all Catholic universities to consider anew their relationship with their students and pastoral leaders and with the church in toto.

Cumberland's Confederate history sure to fascinate

2009-08-03T16:40:00.002-04:00

Published in Cumberland Times-News Monday, July 27, 2009.

Opposition to education about the Confederate flag is misguided. Knowledge about our Confederate heritage is important, in classrooms and the community.

The Confederate flag flew over Cumberland only once, when Union occupiers briefly retreated, but Southern sympathies ran deep.

Slavery was the states’ rights issue that led to the Civil War. A turning point was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. It permitted the South to expand slavery into new territories. The Republican Party formed in opposition and soon was the voice and force of the North.

Abraham Lincoln enunciated the North’s position on “slavery agitation” in his 1858 debates with Stephen Douglas. Then between Lincoln’s November 1860 election and his March 1861 inauguration as president, seven states seceded. (Maryland planned to join them.) The following year, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

Confederate activities in Cumberland and Maryland and oppression under Union occupation come home in The McKaig Journal.

Public interest surrounded the 1984 publication of this Civil War-era diary. Now just one generation past, the Journal is forgotten, and our Civil War heritage is maligned. Perhaps The McKaig Journal should be required reading in Allegany County schools.

Cumberland’s place in the Civil War is certain to fascinate any history teacher. Students might engage in thoughtful discussion about ancestors who could have been among the 800-or-so slaves in Allegany County, or who might have fought either with the North or South in the Battle between the States.

Published by the Allegany County Historical Society, with a grant from the 350th Maryland Birthday Committee, The McKaig Journal was penned between 1851 and 1866 by Priscilla Beall McKaig and her husband, Cumberland businessman William Wallace McKaig.

In the introduction, Michael Mudge recounts events that escalated, after the April 12, 1861 battle at Fort Sumter, to poise Maryland to secede in September. Leading the delegation in that direction (until his arrest by Union troops in Cumberland on August 26) was Mrs. McKaig’s brother-in-law, State Senator Thomas Jefferson McKaig.

President Lincoln squelched Maryland’s secession, because it endangered the federal capital. On September 11, he ordered all the legislators’ arrests.

Mudge elucidates President Lincoln’s decision to station up to 8,000 federal troops at Campobello (the site of Allegany High School) on June 8, 1861, and to put the entire state under martial law.

Mrs. McKaig, who had two sons Confederate officers and another a prisoner of war, was banished from town for three months. The “underground railroad” that passed through our countryside went above board, as slave catchers in Cumberland lost their jobs, and Negro house servants and farm workers fled freely to Pennsylvania.

Communications went underground, as “ladies whose hearts were with the South” operated a secret Confederate post office in the rear of a store on Baltimore Street. They also donated money and provisions to Confederate soldiers who were on their way to prison in Ohio.

Mudge mentions Constance Cary, who left Cumberland prior to the occupation to go to the estate of her grandmother, Lady Fairfax, in Alexandria. Her two cousins, who faced arrest in Baltimore, joined her there. The trio was popular in Richmond for singing “My Maryland,” which memorializes the first Confederate blood shed in the streets of Baltimore on April 19, 1861.

Mudge writes of the Cary cousins: “upon the (Confederate) War Department’s approval of the design by General Pierre G. T. Beauregard, these three Maryland belles completed the first three Confederate battle flags.” Beauregard was one of three Confederate generals to receive them.

While Allegany County filled Union ranks, as well, Mudge notes, its sympathies were Confederate. Let’s know and honor our heritage.

Faith transcends violence

2009-06-14T12:06:00.002-04:00

Published in Cumberland Sunday Times, June 14, 2009.
"...peoples’ evil acts do not warrant condemnation of religion, nor
skepticism toward humankind."

An atheist views violence in the name of God as reason to reject faith (“There’s no compassion or pity in them,” May 6). A believer views all violence as godless.

Evil reigns in peoples’ minds and hearts when they commit heinous acts against innocents. But peoples’ evil acts do not warrant condemnation of religion, nor skepticism toward humankind.

Believers plumb the depths of their relationship with God to find the transcendent in the midst of godlessness. God’s love protects souls, and it changes minds and hearts to overcome evil. Our hope in God and in the goodness of humankind overcomes despair, and it moves mountains (Mt. 17:20).

Anne Frank was 15 when she died of typhus in a concentration camp, seven months after her arrest in 1944. She and her Jewish family, hunted by Nazi soldiers, hid for almost three years in her father’s office building in Amsterdam. An accidental noise in their upper chamber revealed their whereabouts to an incidental burglar and betrayer below.

Otto Frank survived (Nazis killed 6 million Jews and 8 million more civilians in three years). He returned to his family’s hideout and found his daughter’s diary. Published in English in 1952, Anne’s poignant words tell of her love for God and her unfailing faith in people.

Immaculee Ilibagiza was 22, a Catholic Tutsi college student, when the Hutu government set out to exterminate her tribe in a power grab in Rwanda in 1994. A family friend, a Hutu Christian pastor, risked his own life to hide her and seven other Tutsi women in a tiny concealed bathroom in his home.

For the duration of the holocaust, hunted by Hutu killers, Immaculee shared meager table scraps, prayed her rosary, read her Bible, kept a holy silence, and fortified her spirit. She and her sister prisoners were about to be betrayed by a houseboy when the pastor, who also survives (Hutus killed 1 million Tutsis, and moderate Hutus, in three months), made a bold move to transfer his captives to their French liberators.

Published in 2006, Immaculee’s story is vivid testimony to the power of faith. Her words to the man who killed her family, but couldn’t extinguish her God or her dreams, were, “I forgive you.”

Violence is man’s injustice against man. Genocide is mass-hysteria violence. The cure for violence is a change of mind and heart. It is found in God’s love for all human life and in our forgiveness and joy in living.

Modern-day holocausts rage in systematized abortion and embryonic stem cell research. Justified in the name of compassion, abortion conveniently kills a targeted segment of our population. Promoted in the name of humanitarianism, embryonic stem cell research creates and enslaves nascent life with the sole intent to experiment with it and casually destroy it. Children these days are holocaust survivors.

Who tells the story of God’s mercy for good people gone mad in today’s holocaust? Norma McCorvey speaks in two books about the industry that appalls her and her own conversion rooted in God’s love. Locked for 20 years in her identity as Jane Roe, McCorvey now runs her own pro-life ministry.

Her 1973 Supreme Court case legalized abortion in all 50 states. Ironically, Jane Roe never had an abortion. She gave birth to the child in question and to two more. In 1995, McCorvey became a pro-life Christian. In 1998, she became Catholic.

Fifty-one percent of Americans now are pro-life. Let’s keep faith in God’s mercy, and hope that His love will reform minds and hearts and move them to bring the genocide of innocents to a peaceful end.

Christian thinking fundamental to forming Constitution

2009-05-13T14:20:00.000-04:00

"Davis proposes a monument to secularism, in opposition to the
Judeo-Christian principles that are displayed on the Ten Commandments monument -- which he has said publicly he would prefer to see removed from the courthouse lawn."

Glenn Riffey (“Constitution a product of Christian influence,” April 14) presents an informed argument for honoring Christian influence in the construction of the U.S. Constitution, in response to Jeffrey Davis (“Why shouldn’t we honor the Constitution,” April 8).

Surely, your savvy readers appreciate historical facts; and they desire to understand the reality of Christianity’s essence and the impact of the Judeo-Christian experience in our forebears’ formation of the Constitution; and they believe in the Constitution’s purpose to protect and guide a civil society.

We may add to Mr. Riffey’s list of founding fathers John Witherspoon, the only active clergyman and college president (College of New Jersey, now Princeton University) to help form the Declaration of Independence and to sign it.

A native of Scotland and a minister of the national Presbyterian Church, Witherspoon, like others involved in forming our nation, was wary of the power of the British crown.

In 1774, Witherspoon joined the American Revolution as a member of the Committee of Correspondence, which interpreted British actions among the colonies and disseminated information. This committee brought the colonies into political union, and many of its members were daring Sons of Liberty.

In June 1776, Witherspoon was elected to the Continental Congress as a member of the New Jersey delegation. He became one of the Congress’s most influential members, serving on more than 100 committees, among them the board of war and the committee on secret correspondence.

Witherspoon helped draft the Articles of Confederation, and he argued to adopt the Constitution during the New Jersey ratification debates. (Source: Wikipedia.)

Presbyterian pastor and evangelical Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer writes in his 1981 book, A Christian Manifesto, that the “linkage of (Witherspoon’s) Christian thinking and the concepts of government were not incidental but fundamental” to form and establish the American civil society.

Now, what is disconcerting about Jeffrey Davis’ indignation in pressuring the county to put up a monument to the Constitution is that what he really wants is not a monument to the Constitution at all.

Davis proposes a monument to secularism, in opposition to the Judeo-Christian principles that are displayed on the Ten Commandments monument -- which he has said publicly he would prefer to see removed from the courthouse lawn. In fact, Davis has had limited success in attempts to do just that.

Davis wants a monument to his viewpoint, which he believes is the only one possible. This attitude misses the mark.

“The meaning conveyed by a monument is generally not a simple one like ‘Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner,’” writes Justice Samuel Alito in the unanimous Supreme Court opinion in Pleasant Grove City, Utah v. Summum.

“Even when a monument features the written word,” writes Justice Alito, “the monument…may in fact be interpreted by different observers, in a variety of ways.”

A monument is a sort of fine art object. It inspires us and brings us to pause and reflect, in a personal and communal way, on matters that have individual and social significance.

A monument to the Constitution, especially if it includes words, should represent the Constitution, not Jeffrey Davis.

We should see, on a monument to the Constitution, the Preamble, which sums up the Constitution’s reason for being. Then let us pray that the document, so carefully crafted by our courageous and faithful forefathers, remains up to the task to “secure the Blessings of Liberty” for all.

by Nancy E. Thoerig 05.13.09

Notre Dame scandal: Obama not role model for Catholics

2009-04-16T15:34:00.007-04:00

Emailed April 6 to Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., president at University of Notre Dame. (Confirmation reply received April 16.) To date, 24 bishops have voiced opposition.

"Rather than honor this president and condone his life-denigrating
policies, we Catholics should stand firmly in opposition and call him to task on his ethical transgressions."

Dear Father Jenkins,

Please rescind the invitation that has been accepted by President Obama to speak at commencement on May 17, and reverse the university's intent to confer on him the honorary doctor of laws degree.

Called the "abortion president" by pro-life activists, Mr. Obama’s appearance at the university would contradict the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ policy against honoring pro-abortion politicians. In 2004, the USCCB approved a policy statement regarding "Catholics in Political Life," which states, with reference to pro-abortion politicians, "They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions."

It is an insult to all Catholics; and it would be a lasting disgrace for Notre Dame, as one of our country's leading Catholic universities, and an unwanted complicity for Catholics of conscience everywhere, to have a legacy of hosting and commiserating with this president, who in the first months of his term has done unprecedented moral damage to implicate all taxpayers in funding abortions at home and abroad.

Additionally, this president has supported abortionists’ leaving viable babies – survivors of botched abortion procedures -- to die, thereby compromising the life-protecting and preserving oaths of health care workers in our nation’s hospitals.

Now the Obama administration intends to rescind health service regulations that would result in health care workers being forced to provide such services as abortions in violation of their beliefs and consciences. USCCB President Cardinal Francis George states: "No government should come between an individual person and God—that’s what America is supposed to be about.” Indeed, Mr. Obama’s proposed rescission of these protective regulations amounts to government oppression and threatens the inalienable rights to freedom of religion and conscience and speech that are protected under the First Amendment.

Furthermore, Mr. Obama has promised to sign into law the Freedom of Choice Act, which further would violate and suppress constitutional rights to exercise freedoms of religion, conscience, and speech, and would enforce the taxpayer-funded genocide of unborn infants in America. As a result, Catholic practitioners of conscience could lose their livelihoods, and Catholic health facilities would close. The light of our society’s strongest bastion of reason – the Catholic Church -- would be extinguished, and its voice would be strangulated, in a legalized culture of death in America.

Mr. Obama’s embryonic stem cell research policies, as well -- unnecessary in the light of advances made in adult stem cell research -- are contrary to a respect for the dignity of created life, and they fly in the face of every conscionable Catholic.

Catholic teachings state that “the measure of every institution is whether it threatens or enhances the life and dignity of the human person” (USCCB “Themes of Catholic Social Teaching,” 2005). Mr. Obama’s policies regarding abortion, conscientious objection, and stem cell research threaten the life and dignity of the human person. Rather than honor this president and condone his life-denigrating policies, we Catholics should stand firmly in opposition and call him to task on his ethical transgressions.

Please don't support or honor this president and his problematic policies. He is not a model to raise up before your students, or before Catholics anywhere, to admire or to emulate. Only further harm to our nation’s damaged moral fabric, and to our historic Catholic values, ideals, and identity would come of it.

Please rescind the invitation. Please reverse the decision.

Many prayers for you, your students, and for our country,

Nancy E. Thoerig and Mary W. Thoerig
Mount Savage, MD 21545

cc: Patrick McCartan (fellow and board chairman emeritas), Cardinal Francis George (USCCB president), Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien (Baltimore)
mailed copies to: Bishop John M. D'Arcy (Fort Wayne-South Bend), Richard C. Notebaert (board chairman)

Constitution a product of Christian influence

2009-04-16T11:34:00.003-04:00

Written by Glenn C. Riffey, Cumbelrand, Maryland, and published in Cumberland Times-News Letters April 14, 2009.

To the Editor:

In his letter of “Why shouldn’t we honor the Constitution?” (April 8 Times-News) Mr. Jeffrey Davis makes the comment that the Constitution is truly a secular document.

If he means that it was written without any Christian influence, I totally disagree. Here is why.

During the Constitutional Convention, when things were becoming quite tense, Benjamin Franklin not only called for prayer but stated that “he could hardly conceive a transaction of such momentous importance — referring to the Constitution — to pass without being in some degree influenced, guided and governed by that omnipotent, omnipresent and beneficent Ruler, in whom all inferior spirits live and move and have their being.”

Now, Dr. Franklin was no Christian but he was highly influenced by the British evangelist, George Whitefield, and was a close friend of his.

In addition, convention President George Washington stated, “This event is in the hands of God.” He went on to say, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

James Madison, the chief architect of the Constitution and fourth president of the United States stated in the Federalist Papers no. 43 that the authority for ratification of the Constitution by nine states under Article VII of the document was the same “laws of Nature and Nature’s God” to which Thomas Jefferson, our third president, had appealed for our right to exist as a nation in the Declaration of Independence.

In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote that liberty was a gift of God and an “unalienable right” to be secured by government. In the Constitution the preamble states that one of the purposes of the government is to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Prosperity [sic]" (should be "posterity").

According to Washington, one of those liberties was the right to worship God.

Last, but not least, John Adams, our second president succeeding Washington said this, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” In other words, Adams knew that unless we kept moral and religious principles that the Constitution would not work.

During these times Christianity was a daily living way of life, and even non-Christians were greatly influenced by Christian principles. Without the guidance of God and Christian influence in the midst of this convention the Constitution would not be the document that it is.

he Constitution of the United States may not be a Christian church document, but it was by Christian reason and influence that gave way for the liberties that it gives, even to the point of one wanting to deny any Christian influence upon the document at all.

This same Christian influence is what gives Mr. Davis the right to say that it is only a secular document and for that he should give thanks to God for the ability to do so.

Glenn C. Riffey
Cumberland

President intends to remove 'conscientious objection' clause

2009-04-09T07:20:00.005-04:00

Submitted to Cumbelrand Times-News Monday, April 6, 2009.

"Everyone who believes in conscientious objection should write
to the Department of Health and Human Services and to President Obama to let them know your objections...."

To the Editor:

The Obama administration intends to rescind health service regulations that would result in health care workers being forced to provide such services as abortions in violation of their beliefs and consciences.

Everyone who believes in conscientious objection should write to the Department of Health and Human Services and to President Obama to let them know your objections to this proposed rescission of regulations that currently protect that right.

The deadline to log comments is April 9.

DHHS can be emailed through the Maryland Catholic Conference web site at mdcathcon.org. Click on “Protect Medical Conscience Rights.” The President can be emailed at whitehouse.gov. At the far right bottom of the home page, click “Contact.”

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops President Cardinal Francis George states: "No government should come between an individual person and God—that’s what America is supposed to be about.” Indeed, Mr. Obama’s proposed rescission of these protective regulations amounts to government oppression and threatens the inalienable rights to freedom of religion, conscience and speech that are protected under the First Amendment.

Nancy E. Thoerig
Mount Savage

View Cardinal George's message:

Christian humanism made of gratitude

2009-03-23T16:25:00.005-04:00

Submitted to Cumberland Times-News March 23, 2009.
Update: Published in Times-News Letters on April 13.
"Gratitude nourishes in us humility to endure lean and low points in life, and grace to embrace abundance and joy. We strive to arrive, as St. Paul did, at a stage of self-sufficiency – spiritually, that is."

“Without gratitude,” writes Theodore Dalrymple in his 2008 book The Politics and Culture of Decline, “it is hard to appreciate, or be satisfied with, what you have; and life (becomes) an existential shopping spree that no product satisfies.”

The difference between Christian Humanism (a culture of life) and Secular Humanism (the culture of death) seems to be the difference between gratitude and emptiness.

“Secular ideologies have lost much of their appeal and once again people are hungering for the unifying vision of the religious imagination.” So says the Center for Religious Humanism (based in Seattle, Wash.), which aims to cultivate respect for truth by celebrating creation and nurturing the soul through art that expresses faith.

The Christian life is filled with gratitude: God gifted us Christ, who died to redeem us. St. Paul says in Philippians 4:13: “In him who is the source of my strength, I have strength for everything.”

Gratitude nourishes in us humility to endure lean and low points in life, and grace to embrace abundance and joy. We strive to arrive, as St. Paul did, at a stage of self-sufficiency – spiritually, that is.

We live in community; and community creates culture. Culture is rooted in religion. Religion sustains and tempers us: It inspires us to hope and instructs us to love. Christians hope for eternal union with God; and we aim to help others attain the same.

Mysterious and difficult, these tenets take a lifetime to unfold and to realize in concrete ways. Sadly, what is difficult to understand or do, or takes time, often is dismissed. At the end, though, our relationship with God is a personal one; and it is our most important relationship.

Elwell’s Evangelical Dictionary cites St. Justin Martyr (born in the year 100) as the first Christian Humanist -- the first to enunciate that truths of faith are more important than human culture.

In his Dialogue with Trypho, Justin recounts his quest, around age 30, to acquaint himself with God. His teachers, though, either don’t know God, or they believe He is irrelevant to other matters of learning.

Finally, Justin finds a Platonist: “And the perception of immaterial things…and the contemplation of ideas furnished my mind with wings, so that in a little while I supposed that I had become wise; and such was my stupidity,” for Justin had learned only “to look upon God.”

Then one day he converses with an old man about God and life and teachers; and the old man says to Justin: “There existed, long before this time, certain men…who spoke by the Divine Spirit, and foretold events which would take place, and which are now taking place. They are called prophets…and he who has read them is very much helped in his knowledge of the beginning and end of things...since they both glorified the Creator…and proclaimed His Son, the Christ….”

Justin reads the prophets’ writings and discovers contentment in their “words filled with the Spirit of God, and big with power, and flourishing with grace;” and he yearns to share it. (St. Justin taught and defended the Christian faith in Asia Minor and Rome, until his beheading in 165.)

A culture without God lacks gratitude and contentment; and the lights of truth and beauty and imagination go dark. Anyone who wants to create a culture of life can set out today, as St. Justin did, to know God and his intent for us – to be fully human in a relationship with His son – and to be fully alive, even (and especially) in a secular culture of death.

Thou shalt not kill, in word or deed

2009-03-18T15:43:00.002-04:00

Though he said he failed to see the connection betwee the fifth and eighth commandments ("Thou shalt not kill" and "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor"), Father Paul Byrnes led our "Why Catholic" group on March 12 to pray for mercy for all the times that we destroyed relationships or reputations.

I believe those commandments, and the reqeust for mercy, also would apply to the times we confuse or corrupt others' thoughts or perspectives by our own dissidence or rebellion against authority, simply because we feel that we are entitled (or beholden to an opposite point-of-view or opposing group of characters) to stir up bad feelings among our audience.

Father Paul did it again: He contradicted more than clarified. He confused more than amused. He left me, anyway, feeling uneasy about him when the session was over. He leaves an impression that he is very uncertain, even uneducated, about his topic -- the Catholic faith -- and his pastoral responsibilities.

In response to one participant's question, "When will we hear priests speak out from the pulpit against abortion?" he replied: "Oh, I wouldn't! You're presuming that I would!"

Well, yes. You are a Catholic priest. We just might expect you to feel comfortable addressing the issue from the pulpit -- not politically, of course, but pastorally.

Catholics today yearn for pastoral direction. It would be lovely if more of our priests would speak clearly, comfortably and concisely on the issue of abortion -- and on other matters of moralitty. (Fortunately, I know at least two priests who do.)

I didn't find anything worth notating in Father Byrnes' session. He showed clips from the movies Friendly Persuasion (having to do with matters of conscience related to the commandment "Thou shalt not kill") and Dead Man Walking (related to the morality of capital punishment.

Father Bynes did enunciate his personal position that the church's teaching on life should include all aspects of it, from womb to tomb; and he handed out two articles, Abortion Absolutists and Finding Renewal. Both appear in America, the National Catholic Weekly, published by the Jesuits, a very liberal order.

Secular monument not needed

2009-03-10T11:14:00.004-04:00

Published in Cumberland Times-News Letters Tuesday, March 10, 2009.

“[A]lthough a park is a traditional public forum for speeches and
(events)…the placement of a permanent monument…is best viewed as a form of government speech and is therefore not subject to scrutiny under the Free Speech Clause.” -- Supreme Court decision, February 25, 2009, Pleasant Grove City, Urah v. Summum

Just because Allegany County commissioners approve display of the Ten Commandments monument (donated by the local Fraternal Order of Eagles in the 1950s) on the courthouse lawn, they are not obliged (under pressure from Jeffrey Davis, founder of the local Citizens for a Secular Government) to put up a companion monument to secularism.

A unanimous Supreme Court decision on February 25, 2009, ruled so in the case of Pleasant Grove City, Utah v. Summum.

Summum sued when Pleasant Grove City officials determined that the group’s proposal for a monument to its Seven Aphorisms didn’t fit the city’s guidelines for displaying monuments on public land, though a Ten Commandments monument (donated by the local Fraternal Order of Eagles in 1971) stood.

Justice Samuel Alito writes in the court opinion that the city “explained that it limited Park monuments to those either directly related to the City’s history or donated by groups with longstanding community ties.”

Alito summarizes: “This case presents the question whether the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment entitles a private group to insist that a municipality permit it to place a permanent monument in a city park....”

The opinion concludes that “although a park is a traditional public forum for speeches and (events)…the placement of a permanent monument…is best viewed as a form of government speech and is therefore not subject to scrutiny under the Free Speech Clause.”

The court considers that since public monuments “commonly play an important role in defining the identity that a city projects to its own residents and to the outside world, entities rightly exercise discretion when accepting donated monuments to be placed on public property….”

Alito reflects on Summum’s notion of entitlement: “[W]hen France presented the Statue of Liberty to the United States in 1884, this country (would have) had the option of either (a) declining France’s offer or (b) accepting the gift, but providing a comparable location in the harbor of New York for other statues of a similar size and nature (e.g., a Statue of Autocracy, if one had been offered by, say, the German Empire or Imperial Russia).”

He continues, in the same vein: “Every jurisdiction that has accepted a donated war memorial (could) be asked to provide equal treatment for a donated monument questioning the cause for which the veterans fought.”

Our county commissioners consented recently to consider guidelines for constructing a monument, to stand on the courthouse lawn, ostensibly to honor the U.S. Constitution, at the insistence of Davis and his irreligious group.

Davis threatened the county commissioners with a law suit in 2004 that resulted in the commissioners removing the Ten Commandments monument. In response to public outcry, they moved it back.

According to a Times-News article of Jan. 27, 2009 (“County OKs study into U.S. Constitution monument idea”), Davis has advocated for the secular monument since November 2007. He apparently threatened to sue the commissioners if they wouldn’t give him a go-ahead.

It seems, as reported in the Times-News article, that Davis proposes a 138-word inscription to include his own viewpoint that the U.S. Constitution is “a secular document that was intended to form a more perfect union and to protect the liberties of all its people.”

“Legally, he’s got the right to do it,” Commissioner Jim Stakem says in the Times-News article. Davis also is quoted in that article: “My preference…is, (that) they would not keep the Ten Commandments on the courthouse lawn. I don’t think...it belongs there.”

The Supreme Court disagrees.

Nancy E. Thoerig
Mount Savage

Family, 'Domestic Church,' seat of personal formation

2009-03-07T12:00:00.002-05:00

"The family is creation's natural unit for producing and protecting its members and for developing commuity and society."

We Christians/Catholics learn the societal aspects of compassion, service and respect in our family settings, hopefully. If we don't learn these values and behaviors in our family relationships, we may possibly learn them in other settings and circumstances; but it is difficult.

In our "Why Catholic" session this week, facilitated by Margie Meyers, we discussed the fourth commandment (honor father and mother) and the family unit as the "domestic Church" -- that is, the Church in miniature, the Holy Family replicated -- where parents and children learn and practice reciprocal expressions of love, caring and nurturing. The family is creation's natural unit for producing and protecting its members and for developing commuity and society.

We Catholics/Christians must foster family values and advocate for their protection. We should keep ourselves informed of threats to the institution of marriage and family and call community to uphold the family standards that keep community and society safe, healthy and productive.

Love God, honor His name, keep holy His day

2009-03-03T11:23:00.005-05:00

"The law of the Sabbath day is in the life of the spirit what the law of gravitation is in nature." -- Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath -- Its Meaning for Modern Man

The sixth semester morning meetings of the four-year Why Catholic program (that meets twice a year) began February 26. Father Ty Hullinger taught on the Ten Commandments overall and particularly the first three -- all having to do with our love for God: Serve no other God; keep His name holy; keep His Sabbath holy.

Father Ty presented a wealth of information -- in a hurry and a flurry -- that boiled down to 1) be aware of material possessions or social priorities that may (and must not) take precedence in our lives over our love, attention and obedience to God; 2) cherish His name and honor it in thought and speech; 3) avoid secular pursuits and prefer to desire a deepening understanding of faith and service to others on Sunday.

Father Ty sent us home with a couple of handouts, one containting excerpts from Abrahan Joshua Heschel's The Sabbath -- Its Meaning for Modern Man, in which Heschel states: "What we are depends on what the Sabbath is to us. The law of the Sabbath day is in the life of the spirit what the law of gravitation is in nature."

Courage to proclaim religious heritage America's most pressing issue

2009-03-02T13:50:00.006-05:00

"Unless we define who we are and have the courage to proclaim it, we will lack the wherewithal to face future exigencies." -- Louise Friend of Friendsville, Maryland

Published in Cumberland Times-News Letters March 2, 2009. (Written by Louise Friend of Friendsville, Maryland.)

To the Editor:

When Geert Wilders, the Dutch parliamentarian, arrived at Heathrow Airport to present to the British Parliament a screening of his film, Fitna, the frightened Home Secretary ordered him deported.

Lord Ahmed, a Muslim member of the House of Lords, had threatened descent of 10,000 Muslims on Britain’s Parliament if Wilders were admitted. Wilders’ short film is a compilation of video footage from various recent Muslim terrorist atrocities and its documentation has earned him death threats as well as the Home Secretary’s unwelcome.

Wilders appeared on Fox News’s The O’Reilly Factor recently, and during the interview he made a simple but profound statement. “I think we should embrace our identity and be proud of our Judeo-Christian heritage,” Wilders said. He is correct.

Unless we do embrace our identity and take pride in our Judeo-Christian heritage, then America, like Britain, will cower in the face of evil tyranny. This, I think, is the most pressing issue facing America today — even more than the economy, important though the economy may be. Unless we define who we are and have the courage to proclaim it, we will lack the wherewithal to face future exigencies.

America’s richness derives in part from its multicultured and multi-faith composition. But despite our varied backgrounds and faiths, most of us share an overriding belief that by some power greater than ourselves, we have been granted certain inalienable rights.

While the multiculturalist, perhaps in an attempt to be “fair,” would deny distinction between good and evil, virtue and vice, nobility and baseness, most Americans would not ascribe moral equivalency between life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, say, and death, bondage and despair.

And one need not be a Jew nor a Christian to believe such. So where did we Americans get such a notion?

We often describe America’s Founders as being men of the Enlightenment, and so they were, but by and large, most were also men of the Bible. They displayed an interesting array of theologies, and a few merely articulated a vague and shadowy sense of a Divine Providence.

But whence the Enlightenment? I am convinced that the European Enlightenment with its argument for individual significance and consequent freedoms could not have arisen from any philosophical seedbed other than that provided by a Judeo-Christian foundation.

So while each American, in his or her right to conscience, may adhere to any faith or lack thereof, each of us may also imbibe, enjoy and treasure the fruit emanating from a Judeo-Christian rootstock. And this we should celebrate.

Geert Wilders offers a courageous voice in a politically correct West run amok. We do not need to “reboot” America’s image to ingratiate ourselves with those who hold a world view altogether contrary to our own.

We need to reinforce our image and identity by proclaiming boldly our heritage and world view, and we need to do it with pride and without apology.

Louise Friend
Friendsville

Theories of limbo, evolution clarified

2009-02-19T14:38:00.003-05:00

Submitted to the Cumberland Times-News Thursday, February 19, 2009.
(Update: Published in Times-News Letters Wednesday, February 25, 2009.)
Limbo “has no clear foundation in revelation” and “never entered into the (magisterium's) dogmatic definitions.” -- from a Jan. 19, 2007 document of the International Theological Commission
Pope Benedict XVI recalls the view of his predecessors, Pius XII and John Paul II -- "that there is no opposition between faith's understanding of creation and the evidence of the empirical sciences." -- from Oct. 31, 2008 address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences
Bradley Wood (“Evolution, Christianity cannot be compatible,” Feb. 18) misrepresents Catholic teaching on concepts of limbo and evolution.

Though part of Catholic tradition since the Middle Ages, the theory of limbo (as stated in a Jan. 19, 2007 document of the International Theological Commission) “has no clear foundation in revelation” and “never entered into the (magisterium’s) dogmatic definitions.”

In fact, the ITC document notes, liturgy includes a feast day for the Holy Innocents (instituted sometime before the year 485) and a funeral Mass for unbaptized infants (instituted in 1970). Both recognize the sacredness of the souls of unbaptized infants.

Clarification of limbo has been sought since the first Vatican Council (1868). In recent years, the ITC notes, it has become urgent, because “the number of infants who die unbaptized is growing greatly” -- due in part to parents’ lack of practice, as well as to in vitro fertilization and abortion.

Baptism in the Holy Spirit is the sacrament left to us by Jesus Christ to draw us into God’s plan of salvation; and Catholics are obliged to have their children baptized. In any case, though, it is understood that God’s mercy pours out to each of us; therefore, “[t]he Church entrusts to God’s mercy those infants who die unbaptized.”

Regarding evolution, in his Oct. 31, 2008 address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences as they began an assembly on "Scientific Insight Into the Evolution of the Universe and of Life," Pope Benedict XVI recalls the view of his predecessors, Pius XII and John Paul II -- "that there is no opposition between faith's understanding of creation and the evidence of the empirical sciences."

Pope Benedict explains that God’s design for “foundation of the cosmos and its developments” does not stop “with the beginning of the history of the world and of life.” Rather, “the Creator founds these developments and supports them, underpins them and sustains them continuously.”

Pope Benedict illustrates: “To ‘evolve’ literally means ‘to unroll a scroll,’ that is, to read a book. (Nature) is a book whose history, whose evolution, whose ‘writing’ and meaning, we ‘read’ according to the different approaches of the sciences, while all the time presupposing the foundational presence of the author who has wished to reveal himself therein.”

The pope summarizes: “Experimental and philosophical inquiry gradually discovers these (organic, animal and spiritual) orders; it perceives them working to maintain themselves in being, defending themselves against imbalances, and overcoming obstacles. And thanks to the natural sciences we have greatly increased our understanding of the uniqueness of humanity’s place in the cosmos.”

To further explore the complementarity of faith and science, a March 3-7, 2009 international conference in Rome on "Biological Evolution, Facts and Theories” will be hosted by academics from South Bend’s Notre Dame University, Rome's Gregorian University and the Pontifical Council for Culture. The event marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his "Origin of the Species."

The conference web site states that “this issue of biological evolution deserves a careful and serious reconsideration from a scientific point of view as well as in a philosophical and theological perspective.... [W]ithin the complex and multifaceted issue of the Science-Faith relationship, this event focuses on the possibility to reconcile in the same philosophical position the ‘Creation’ thinking and the ‘Evolution’ thinking, without the first pretending to be a scientific theory nor the second being reduced to a dogma.”

by Nancy E. Thoerig 02.19.09

Irreligious secularism not American way

2009-02-07T15:02:00.008-05:00

Submitted to the Cumberland Times-News on Friday, February 6, 2009.
(Update: Published in Cumberland Times-News Letters on Tuesday, February 10, 2009.)

"Religion gives us that arc – the continuum of a personal and
national past, present and future. The majority of Americans hope and trust in a providential God – however we define or name Him."

As county leaders consider a monument to the U.S. Constitution, proposed by local citizens who advocate secular government, let’s hope they remember that laicité is not the American way. Hopefully, the monument truly will honor the Constitution, and not deliver a statement that decries religion.

The governor of Washington State found herself in a quandary at Christmastime when she permitted atheists to post a viewpoint, rather than set up a holiday display, in the Capitol building. The brouhaha that ensued made a mockery of First Amendment rights. Our commissioners would do well to avoid a similar free-for-all on the courthouse lawn.

The type of secularism that irreligious groups promote (laicité) suppresses citizens’ freedom to express their faith in public; and it oppresses those who do. It requires political leaders to disregard their consciences when making decisions for the citizenry; and it shuns those who don’t.

Our Constitution’s First Amendment serves exceedingly well to keep church and state separate, to the extent that neither shall rule the other; and it engenders a rich synergy among political and spiritual elements in our society that is unique among the nations of the world.

It is fitting that early in his first day in office, the President of the United States prays. At the National Cathedral web site is the full video of the Inaugural Prayer Service held Jan. 21. We see President Barack Obama, along with Vice-President Joe Biden and other officials, join a full array of American religious leaders to commend our nation to God and to implore His benevolence. Parts of the prayers are borrowed from the Inaugural services of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

According to historian Peter Henriques, in his 2006 book, Realistic Visionary, Washington (baptized Anglican) was an orthodox believer who attended services regularly, though he kept a public silence about details of his beliefs. The first President’s Inaugural Address is replete with supplications to the “Almighty Being who rules over the Universe” on whose “divine blessing…the success of this government must depend.”

Lincoln often attended the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church while living at the White House. In 1846, when he ran for Congress, Lincoln published on a handbill: “That I am not a member of any Christian church is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures….” In an 1873 Scribners Monthly, after Lee’s victory at the Second Battle of Bull Run, he says: “I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go” (Source: Wikipedia).

Entering the nave at the National Cathedral, President Obama and his entourage walked past Herbert Houck’s statue of Abraham Lincoln kneeling in prayer.

In his 2006 Call to Renewal keynote address on religion and politics, Barack Obama states that “Americans are a religious people;” and he cites these figures: “90 percent of us believe in God, 70 percent affiliate themselves with an organized religion.” He goes on to say that our “religious tendency…speaks to a hunger…that goes beyond any particular issue or cause. (Americans’) work, their possessions, their diversions, their sheer busyness, is not enough. They want a sense of purpose, a narrative arc to their lives.”

Religion gives us that arc – the continuum of a personal and national past, present and future. The majority of Americans hope and trust in a providential God – however we define or name Him.

Our political leaders must uphold the First Amendment. They would do well, also, to preserve and be guided by our nation’s religious heritage.

by Nancy E. Thoerig 02-06-09

President's first duty: Pary at National Cathedral

2009-01-16T11:57:00.005-05:00

Submitted to Cumberland Times-News January 16, 2009; not published.

"...the religious impulse runs deep and wide in us as a people. ... Coming together...at the beginning of a new president’s term
and in the nation’s church, seems important and right.” -- Samuel T. Lloyd III, dean, Washington National Cathedral

So where does the new President of the United States go after his inauguration? To the Washington National Cathedral – for the Inaugural Prayer Service.

On Wednesday, Jan. 21, the National Cathedral (also known as the nation’s church and serving as the Episcopal Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul) at Wisconsin Avenue in Washington, D.C., hosts the every-four-years event that was renewed by FDR in 1933, when, as Cathedral Dean Samuel T. Lloyd III notes in the January 2009 newsletter, “the world was in the depths of an even deeper economic crisis” than now faces Barack Obama.

On the first full day of his presidency, Mr. Obama and members of his Cabinet, Congress, the Supreme Court and more – who represent all of us -- gather in the nave and join in an ecumenical and interfaith service intended to bolster them “as they steer us through some of the most turbulent waters in decades,” writes Dean Lloyd.

“In some ways it may seem odd,” Dean Lloyd adds, “for a nation so committed to the separation of church and state to have an inaugural service. But the religious impulse runs deep and wide in us as a people. We pray to a God who is known by many names and is worshipped in many ways. Coming together in this way, at the beginning of a new president’s term and in the nation’s church, seems important and right.”

Nancy E. Thoerig
Mount Savage

Note: The Inaugural Prayer Service can be viewed from the National Cathedral web site. It's fantastic! Having sat in the choir at numerous Evensong services and felt the choir voices and organ pipes surge in my blood and bones, I can say, when viewing the inaugural service, I felt almost as if I were there. In front of the computer is the best seat in the house. The service lasts just a little more than 1 hour, 20 minutes. The full event program also may be viewed from the web site. A good companion to the video, it lists names and affiliations of participants.

by Nancy E. Thoerig 02.04.09

Secularism not legislated way in our land

2009-01-16T11:27:00.003-05:00

Submitted to Cumberland Times-News Januar;y 16, 2009; not published.

"...the Supreme Court decision...does not make any board declaration
about governmental neutrality toward religion in general (and vice versa), which is the basis for a secular society...."

Brad Taylor (“Heed what JFK said about church and state,” Jan. 9) misconstrues the intent of Epperson v. Arkansas and may mislead the reader to believe that secularism is the legislated way in our land.

The quote he uses, when read in the full context of the Supreme Court decision (accessible at FindLaw.com), does not make any board declaration about governmental neutrality toward religion in general (and vice versa), which is the basis for a secular society – and for Mr. Taylor’s argument. The ruling in this case applies narrowly to First Amendment rights and Fourteenth Amendment protections as they apply to teaching the theory of evolution in public schools.

The 1968 case considered a complaint brought by Susan Epperson, a 10th grade biology teacher in Little Rock, Arkansas, who supposed that she might lose her job if she taught evolution in her classroom. A law that had been passed in Arkansas by voter referendum in 1928 (following the Scopes “monkey trial” in Tennessee) prohibited any public school in the state from teaching evolution. (The law hadn’t been enforced in the 40 years it existed.)

The Supreme Court opinion on the situation concludes: “The law's effort was confined to an attempt to blot out a particular theory because of its supposed conflict with the Biblical account, literally read. Plainly, the law is contrary to the mandate of the First, and in violation of the Fourteenth, Amendment to the Constitution.”

The last sentence of the quote cited from the context of the opinion by Mr. Taylor reads: “The First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion.” The opinion expounds on this thought to explain that the state of Arkansas was found to be in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because it favored the fundamentalist religious view of creationism over any other religious view of the origin of man; and, secondly, that the state law violated the Fourteenth Amendment because it interfered with the teacher’s right to teach, and the students’ right to learn, the nonreligions theory of evolution.

Nancy E. Thoerig
Mount Savage

Seeking divine guidance not imposition of religion

2009-01-14T09:18:00.005-05:00

"Why do we continue to deny the reality of our history? Many of
our leaders seek divine guidance in their decision making. That is not the same as an organized religion imposing her will on the government." -- Dr. Tom Gulbronson

Published in Cumberland Times-News Letters January 14, 2009. (Written by Dr. Tom Gulbronson, current senior pastor at Springfield, West Virginia, Assembly of God Church and distinguished national leader.)

To the Editor:

In a recent article published by the Cumberland Times-News, mention was made of President Kennedy’s speech to the Houston Ministerial Association in 1960 (”Heed what JFK said about church and state,” Jan. 9 Times-News).

We must understand the context of the times in order to properly interpret the speech.

At this time there was a lot of anti-Catholic sentiment in America. There was fear that if Kennedy were elected President, the Pope would impose the will of the church on the government. Mr. Kennedy was assuring mostly Protestant clergy that the church would not impose her will upon the government.

This was not an indictment against politicians who were people of faith that shared Judeo-Christian Values.

Our history is replete with men and women of faith who voiced their values in political speeches and policies. That is entirely different from the church imposing her will on the government. George Washington declared “You cannot rightly govern the world without God and the Bible”.

All politicians bring their background into office. Whether atheist, Jewish, Christian or whatever, their value system influences their policies and voting.

The first Continental Congress opened with prayer. Every session of Congress since then has begun with prayer. In March 1998, I opened a session of Congress with prayer. It is in the congressional record (pages H917 and H 918).

Why do we continue to deny the reality of our history? Many of our leaders seek divine guidance in their decision making. That is not the same as an organized religion imposing her will on the government.

The first amendment was also written to keep the government from imposing her will on the church. It has served as a protection for the church and the government.

Dr. Tom Gulbronson
Fort Ashby, W.Va.

---------------------
Here is Dr. Gulbronson's prayer that opened Congress on March 10, 1998:

Our gracious Heavenly Father, the
one who gives grace to all people, we
exalt Your name and implore Your
righteousness. Thank You for this day
and this particular time in history.
You have blessed this Nation and we
trust that You will continue to do so.
May You draw together this great
country of many cultures under the
banner of love.

We thank You for these lawmakers
that have dedicated their lives to the
service of this great Nation. May You
continue to give each one of us
strength and the fortitude to make
choices according to Your divine will.
May we walk in love, humility,
gentleness, patience and peace, which
are the attributes that the Apostle
Paul described as worthy of our vocation
or calling. By faith, we receive
these blessings and glorify You.

In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

--------------------------------------
This TRIBUTE TO REVEREND THOMAS F. GULBRONSON was presented before Congress that day, following Dr. Gulbronson's prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance, by Congressman Jim Moran of Virginia, former mayor of Alexandria:
Mr. Speaker,
I do not know when it was that Pastor
Tom Gulbronson realized what a
gift from God and a calling for God
that he had. It may have been when he
was serving in the United States Air
Force. I do know that since serving his
country in the Air Force, Pastor Tom
has been a pastor for 40 years. In fact,
20 of those years he has been Pastor at
the First Assembly of God Church in
Alexandria, Virginia.
Now, during that period of time he
has gotten all kinds of awards, and I
could list all of them, and he has spoken
on the 700 Club and he has become
nationally known, both for his sermons
and his books and his leadership. But
we know him because he is a dynamic
figure in our community. People gather
together under his leadership and
are inspired by his commitment to God
and to the principles that he has dedicated
his life to.
So it is a particular pleasure to have
him address this body this day. I thank
the majority leader for arranging it. I
thank Pastor Tom for all of the many,
many years that he has served our
community and our country. Thank
you, Tom.

Father Neuhaus, leading intellectual and writer, dead at 72

2009-01-10T12:14:00.005-05:00

"Any religious believer who raises his or her voice in the public square today owes a debt of gratitude to the indomitable, irreplaceable
Richard John Neuhaus." -- from "Richard John Neuhaus, public intellectual," editorial in the Friday, January 9, 2009 Dallas News

Father Richard John Neuhaus, a Lutheran pastor turned Catholic priest and leading intellectual and writer on orthodoxy (founder of First Things: A Journal of Religion, Culture and Public Life and author of The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America and more than 20 other books and regular commentator on EWTN's World Over Live and named four years ago by Time Magazine one of "The 25 Most Influential Evangelicas in the America") died of cancer in mid-morning Thursday, January 8, 2009. He was 72.

U.S. separation of church, state best model

2009-01-06T10:27:00.003-05:00

Published in Cumberland Times-News Letters January 6, 2008.

"As France strives to progress beyond its stymieing century-old
secular politics, the United States would be unwise to regress to embrace them."
Brad Taylor (“Civility best preserved when government minds its own secular business," Dec. 26) presents two fallacies:

1. That government’s “task” is to provide that “individual believers holding diverse convictions may challenge one another without…interference”: Untrue. The First Amendment provides that government will not prefer one religion over another; and it forbids one’s harassment of another.

English Puritan theologian Roger Williams fled injustices of religious intolerance in 1630 to seek freedom of expression, without intimidation or coercion, in America. Williams’ utopia was ratified in 1663 by royal charter to establish the colony of Rhode Island “with full religious liberty” where no one shall “be in any wise molested or called in question for any difference in matters of religion.” (Source: “The metaphor of the wall of separation: Baptists and the First Amendment” by Mercer University President William D. Underwood, Baptist History and Heritage, Sumner-Fall 2008.)

More than 320 years later, the United States Supreme Court reiterated (Lynch v. Donnelly, 1984) hat the Constitution “affirmatively mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance of all religions, and forbids hostility toward any.” (Source: Wikipedia.)

2. That “[t]he greater the distance between church and state…, the greater our religious liberty”: False. Complete neutrality, or absence of religious involvement in government affairs and vice versa, is termed “laicite.” It is the political system of secularism, which suppresses expression of religious belief in public and oppresses those who do it. By definition, religious freedom is “the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance” (source: Wikipedia).

A leading secular state is France, where in 2004, religious symbols were banned in public schools. President Nicolas Sarkozy criticizes this type of “negative laicite;” and he intends to develop a “positive laicite,” which, as noted at Wikipedia, “recognizes the contribution of faith to French culture, history and society, allows for faith in the public discourse and for government subsidies for faith-based groups.”

As France strives to progress beyond its stymieing century-old secular politics, the United States would be unwise to regress to embrace them.

French historian Alexis de Tocqueville, in his 1835 work Democracy in America, finds the synergy of faith and politics that he experiences here remarkable; and he concludes that religion in society is necessary to temper government’s propensities to seize authority (or to impose priority) over peoples’ expression of their convictions, and to inhibit peoples’ tendencies to surrender it.

American sociologist Robert N. Bellah studied President Kennedy’s use of the name “God” in his 1961 inaugural address, and JFK’s statement that “separation of church and state has not denied the political realm a religious dimension,” to conclude that “American civil religion” is “the subordination of the nation to ethical principles that transcend it.” (Source: “Civil Religion in America,” 991 reprint; University of California, Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditionalist World.)

Bellah and Tocqueville agree that it is integral in our democracy that people be free always to worship their God rather than be forced to relinquish their convictions in the public square.

French philosopher Jacques Maritain, a drafter of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is quoted at Wikipedia praising the U.S. model of religious freedom in the mid-20th century as superior because it had both “sharp distinction and actual cooperation” between church and state. He called it “an historical treasure.” He begged: “Please to God that you keep it carefully, and do not let your concept of separation veer round to the European one."
by Nancy E. Thoerig 01.06.09
Listen to President Kennedy's inaugural speech:

Underhill's 'Mysticism' great reference

2008-12-26T12:01:00.003-05:00

Eveylyn Underhill (1875-1941) was an English Anglo-Catholic writer, one of the most widely read in her time, on topics of religion and spiritual practice, particularly Christian mysticism. Her best-known book, Mysticism, is one of my favorite reads. I discovered it in 2001 on the Internet and devoured it. It answered many questions for me at that time that had lingered in my psyche for a decade or more. It clarified for me many nagging thoughts that otherwise, I believe, would have remained unanswered. This book of Ms. Underhill's is a worthwhile read and a great reference book on its topic. I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I do.

by Nancy E. Thoerig 12-26-08

Here is Emmanuel

2008-12-25T14:49:00.008-05:00

A great echo
sends a vibrant pulse
through time
begun with a Word voiced:
Emmanuel.

A breath expressed,
the world reverberates;
ideas crash,
with gravity impelled:
Here is Emmanuel.

Unstoppable justice,
unfathomable light;
a reforming ignites
an upsurge in grace:
The afterglow of Emmanuel.

Through swells of time,
the echo resounds;
leaning in,
I absorb the tone:
A penetrating Promise, Emmanuel.

copyrighted by Nancy E. Thoerig
December 31, 2004

-----------------------------------
From Pope Benedict XVI's noontime Urbi et Orbi Christmas 2008 Message:

"Brothers and sisters, all you who are listening to my words: this proclamation of hope – the heart of the Christmas message – is meant for all men and women. Jesus was born for everyone, and just as Mary, in Bethlehem, offered him to the shepherds, so on this day the Church presents him to all humanity, so that each person and every human situation may come to know the power of God’s saving grace, which alone can transform evil into good, which alone can change human hearts, making them oases of peace."

-------------------------------------
A beautiful rendition of "O Holy Night" with Celine Dion:

Merry, holy, healthy, happy, blessed, lovely Christmas

O'Reilly addressed public square 'free-for-all'

2008-12-24T11:40:00.004-05:00

Published in Cumberland Times-News Letters December 24, 2008

J. M. Cutler (“O’Reilly wants to tell us how to mark the season,” Dec. 18 Times-News) misinterprets Bill O’Reilly’s message regarding First Amendment rights as they played out in the Washington state capital recently; and he misrepresents “separation of church and state.”

Mr. O’Reilly cites the situation that Washington state Sen. Pam Roach calls “a circus”(in a Dec. 6 Seattle Times article) as the pinnacle of “far-left zealots…running wild” in what Mr. O’Reilly informs us is an ultra-liberal city in a state that otherwise “is fairly conservative.” He gives examples of over-the-top behaviors, actions and lifestyles in Seattle and its environs; and he makes the point that the governor, in her manner of accommodating the atheists in the capitol building in Olympia, “overstepped” bounds of common consideration in her application of the First Amendment.

Sen. Roach, as the Seattle Times article notes, “wants the atheists’ sign moved further from the Nativity scene and the governor to establish firmer guidelines on displays.” The article states that on Dec. 1, “the Nativity scene and atheist sign were installed alongside each other.” A photograph that accompanies a Dec. 3 Associated Press article shows that they abut.

The AP article recounts that a holiday tree (part of a charity drive for needy families) has been displayed in the capitol for nearly 20 years; a menorah has been sponsored by a Jewish group since 2006; the Nativity scene was installed in 2007; this year, the atheist sign went up with the Nativity. A fray then ensued, as depicted in the Times article, with numerous other groups clamoring to make their religious viewpoints known.

In a 1984 case (Lynch v. Donnelly), the Supreme Court ruled that a crèche display (which had been in place since 1943) in the Pawtucket, Rhode Island, shopping district did not violate the First Amendment Establishment Clause, citing “insufficient evidence to establish that the inclusion of the crèche is a purposeful or surreptitious effort to express some kind of subtle governmental advocacy of a particular religious” view (Source: Wikipedia).

The judges ruled that the crèche, within the larger display, had “legitimate secular purposes” in marking a federal holiday “with religious significance” that long has been a part of Western culture; and they wrote that the Constitution “affirmatively mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance of all religions, and forbids hostility toward any.”

The verbiage in the atheists’ sign seems hostile. The placement seems transgressive. The brouhaha seems to be the result of neglect in Gov. Christine Gregoire's action. That’s Mr. O’Reilly’s point.

The governor allowed viewpoints. Then after about 30 viewpoints had been posted, and her office had been overwhelmed with as many as 9,000 dissenting telephone calls in one day (according to the Seattle Times), the governor said that no more entries would be accepted. She could have allowed “religious holiday displays” with “certain guidelines…that wouldn’t be viewpoints,” says Fox News’ Megan Kelly (in a Dec. 15 debate with Mr. O’Reilly) and avoided the fiasco and still properly upheld First Amendment rights.

Contrary to what Mr. Cutler implies, “separation of church and state” does not mean that one should exclude the other. It means that the state shall not intimidate or dominate any religion, but civilly accommodate all religions. The founding fathers drew upon their ancestors’ experiences (particularly the English Civil War of the 1640s that ended the Church of England’s monopoly on Christian worship there) to determine that in a democracy, the state must not monopolize or persecute any religion.

As explained at Wikipedia, Thomas Jefferson (quoted in his biography on the White House web site as having “sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man”) coined the phrase in an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists, a religious minority who feared the majority position of the Congregationalist Church in Connecticut. The colonists, having largely come to America to find refuge from religious persecution, rightly feared government preference for one religion over another.

President Jefferson replied to a letter from the Danbury Baptists to assure them, as summarized by Wikipedia, “that their rights as a religious minority would be protected from federal interference.” That premise underpins “freedom of religion” within the Bill of Rights First Amendment.

The laws and values of the United States are rooted in a political and philosophical tradition of liberty and equality: That’s democracy. Laws and values interconnect and build on history to form guidelines for conduct in modern society: That’s civility. Without regard for order, establishment and each other, the public square is a free-for-all: That’s the state of affairs that Bill O’Reilly calls our attention to in Washington State today.

Nancy E. Thoerig
Mount Savage

Site offers marriaige help

2008-12-15T16:13:00.002-05:00

For Your Marriage, an initiative of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, offers a wealth of resources to help couples prepare and care for their Catholic marriages and work at keeping them viable through the years.

Rejoice! The Lord is near

2008-12-14T13:33:00.001-05:00

Today is Gaudate Sunday. Here's a beautiful sermon on the topic.

Three Priests

2008-12-14T13:32:00.004-05:00

I've just learned of the Three Priests, a new singing sensation. Take a listen:

And visit their web site.

by Nancy E. Thoerig 12-14-08

Natural approach works best

2008-12-13T10:25:00.002-05:00

Published in Cumberland Times-News Letters December 12, 2008.

"We humans are more than a basal libido, though we rarely get that message in the secular mainstream today."

Craig Etchison’s letter of December 2 (“We need this to save the planet”) presents information about global overpopulation that he uses to counter faith training about birth control and to build an argument in favor of funding worldwide education about contraception. Additionally, Mr. Etchison claims: “If women around the world had access to family planning, millions of abortions and deaths would be eliminated.”

While feminists might disagree that controlling population is a compelling reason to promote contraception, Mr. Etchison’s point about preventing abortions seems to have mainstream secular support. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, states in an article about Family Planning that, in the United States, Title X -- serving young individuals and low-income families -- “has allowed millions of American women to receive necessary reproductive healthcare, plan their pregnancies and prevent abortions.” Mr. Etchison and others might be interested to know, as well, that “[o]ver the last decade, abstinence-only sex education became more common in the U.S., largely as a result of federal government funding initiatives,” as reported by Wikipedia.

Another Wikipedia article about Natural Family Planning notes that natural means for preventing pregnancy, including the Fertility Awareness Method, comprise the number one family planning approach utilized in India today and the third most popular used in Brazil. A related Wikipedia article about Fertility Awareness states: “From 1930 to 1980, all research and promotion of fertility awareness was done by those associated with the Roman Catholic Church. Fertility awareness organizations continue to be predominately Catholic, but some secular organizations now exist.”

Regardless, though, of government, faith-based or secular support for abstinence training, Mr. Etchison thinks the world population needs to choose contraception; and he decries America for not contributing as much as $235 million to a United Nations fund that would educate poor populations around the globe about it.

The world view purported by Mr. Etchison is fatalistic. He implies that Catholic Church teaching about Natural Family Planning is remote and outdated; and he says it “condemns women and children to death.” He poses questions that would draw the reader into his line of thinking: That practicing faithful abstinence on a global scale would be tantamount to self-destruction “because we (couldn’t) control our population.”

Seems he means to say, “Because we couldn’t control our sex drives.” With all due respect to Mr. Etchison and the dear reader, we humans are more than a basal libido, though we rarely get that message in the secular mainstream today. We have intelligence and the ability to reason; we have innate dignity; and in America, we have an abundance of opportunities to teach and learn about our sexuality and to seek personal support in choosing better health for ourselves, as well as restraint and civility toward our partner.

Even the Feminist Women’s Health Center, founded in 1971 on the premise that women should be empowered to choose abortion, claims today that the Fertility Awareness Method is “effective if used correctly and consistently.”

Other advantages of the natural approach cited by FWHC are: No health risks; can help promote pregnancy, as well as prevent it; “acceptable for couples with religious concerns about contraception;” increases a woman's understanding of her body; “couples may develop greater communication, cooperation and responsibility.” Disadvantages listed are: “Learning to use the method takes time and effort;” and “[r]equires considerable commitment, calculation and self-control, both by the woman and her partner.”

An article about Natural Family Planning at the Archdiocese of Baltimore web site lists one more disadvantage: “The lack of medical professionals instructed in this method.” FWHC notes, as well: “It is helpful to learn these techniques directly from a qualified instructor if you can find one.” They advise: “Books and websites also have good information.”

Feminists, most secularists and the Catholic Church likely would disagree on most everything. But it seems that common ground can be found on the topic of a natural approach to preventing pregnancy – which, all would agree, empowers women to know themselves and urges men to respect their partner and her fertility cycle.

by Nancy E. Thoerig 12-09-08

Contraception is not natural

2008-12-10T15:12:00.006-05:00

"Fertility is a natural condition. Contraception is unhealthy."

Janet E. Smith, professor of moral theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, in her talk titled "Contraception: Why Not?," expounds on the deadly effects in our society brought about by a contraception mentality.

She traces the history of thought from 1930, when the Anglican church broke form ecumenical solidarity that banned contraception in marriage. By 1960, the pill was available, and the Catholic Church was being pressured to change its teaching. Pope Paul VI's "Humanae Vitae" encyclical, published in 1968, dashed those hopes, and rebellion raged from within.

Soom Pope Paul's predicitons came true. Respect for women and life plummeted. Out-of-wedlock pregnancy and divorce rates skyrocketed. Poverty levels for single women with children rose. Cohabitation replaced marriage as the social norm. Sexually transmitted diseases gained prevalence.

Disorder reigned.

Prof. Smith considers reasons not to contracept, both from moral and practial points of view:

Contraception denies God's creative power and diminishes the gift of fertility.

Fertility is a natural condition. Contraception is unhealthy.

Contraception demeans women. They become objects of gratification, rather than of love.

Contraception defeats bonding. Bodies become machines, rather than comforters.

Contraception negates marriage. It becomes an institution, rather than a sacrament.

Contraception leads to abortion. They are the same decision -- against life.

Natural Family Planning is healthy and effective.

Natural Family Planning builds fulfilling, solid, lasting marital relationships.

On the 30th anniversary of issuance of the ill-received encyclical, Pope John Pual II called, in a letter to bishops, for a renewed sense of wonder at the beauty of the unitive bond between husband and wife. On the 40th anniversary, Pope Benedict XVI, in a letter to the president of the John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, calls for awareness of "authentic conjugal charity."

For more on Prof. Smith's talk, acquire the CD free from One More Soul.

by Nancy E. Thoerig 12-12-08

Artificial contraception corrupts intent of love

2008-11-27T10:49:00.004-05:00

Published in Cumberland Times-News letters Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 2008.

"[A]rtificial contraception contradicts natural law: Most methods are unhealthy; and all corrupt the intent of love and unity – reverence
for, and openness to, the totality of the other."

Regarding Jeffrey Davis’ concerns (“This message was not one of compassion,” Nov. 19 Times-News), first, I wish to offer that “[t]he current medical consensus is that spermicidal and ovicidal mechanisms are the only way in which IUDs work,” as stated in Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.

Apparently, the intrauterine device -- “the world's most widely used method of reversible birth control,” according to Wikipedia – causes inflammation, which produces an environment in which sperm and egg (99 percent of the time) will not thrive.

The IUD first was marketed in Germany in 1929, then improved by an American doctor in 1968. After years of trial and error (and some deaths), the FDA approved the ParaGard T 380A in 1984. It became available for use in 1988 and still is the only copper IUD approved in the United States. Wikipedia reports that a 2002 CDC survey found the IUD was used by 1.3 percent of American women of reproductive age. Wikipedia notes that insertion is painful; and the IUD can cause pain, increased menstrual discomfort, infection, ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage or premature delivery.

Second, I wish to offer for Mr. Davis that “[w]hoever really loves his partner (in marriage) loves not only for what he receives, but loves that partner for (her) own sake, content to be able to enrich the other with the gift of himself”: Pope Paul VI, in his ill-received encyclical, “Humanae Vitae,” considers “the reverence due,” each partner for the wholeness of the other.

While in 1930, the Anglican church broke from (and other Christian denominations followed) “what was once a solid ecumenical consensus” in “condemning artificial contraception as contrary to the plan of God for marriage,” as written by Baltimore Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien in a Sept. 4 column about this year’s 40th anniversary of “Humanae Vitae;” and even though, as the bishop notes, more than 90 percent of Catholics disagree with it, Catholic teaching about natural family planning still applies to married couples. Unmarried folks still are expected to be celibate. Neither teaching is easy to follow: An admirable minority succeeds.

But simply because we (Catholic or otherwise, married or single) struggle to keep the unitive urge wholesome is no reason to expect the Church to change her teachings, or to condemn her or her ministers for upholding the truth or for exhorting us to comply honorably with the laws of God written into our hearts (the yearning to love) and the laws of nature written into our urges (the yearning to unite). No, we should continue struggling to be wholesome.

Pope Paul calls us to employ intelligence to consider our responsibilities and to manage our urges. We all know that artificial contraception contradicts natural law: Most methods are unhealthy; and all corrupt the intent of love and unity – reverence for, and openness to, the totality of the other. We all know that without respect for fidelity and procreation, the unitive act (the most profound expression of the love between a man and a woman) can become a disordered battleground for self-gratification, each manipulating or demeaning the other and degrading the relationship.

This age of man differs little from any other in its rebellion against God and its desire to control nature. Into the midst of one of human history’s darkest epochs came a man who walked the truth and left a legacy that became the Catholic church. Hopefully, the successors to Christ’s apostle Peter will stay true to the teacher, whose compassion for us, in our wholeness, points out our shortcomings and urges us to mold our minds, hearts and actions in respectful reverence for each other and for our God.

by Nancy E. Thoerig (written Nov. 20, 2008)

Real division is between liberals, conservatives

2008-11-16T15:25:00.002-05:00

Published in Cumbelrand Times-News letters Sunday, November 16, 2008.

"[T]he real division among voters overall is between liberals and
conservatives and rests squarely in the moral issue of abortion
rights."

A short Associated Press article on page 2A in the November 7 Cumberland Times-News titled “Election shows deep racial divide in churches” troubled me. The viewpoint seemed to be slanted to conclude that white Christians were motivated by race preference to vote against the black candidate and that the situation was causing tumult among black Christians and their clergy.

The first sentence reads: “The barrier-crossing election of Barack Obama did little to bridge the deep racial divide in American churches.” The writer’s second paragraph states: “While nonwhite Christians voted overwhelmingly for Obama, most white Christians backed John McCain, according to exit polls. Several black clergy said that criticism of Obama by some white Christians over his religious beliefs and support for abortion rights crossed the line, hurting longtime efforts to reconcile their communities.”

The Times-News 4-paragraph version of the AP story had two more paragraphs, one that presented exit poll numbers breaking out the white Christian vote and another that concluded: “The pattern is not new and fits the larger trend of white voters overall, the majority of whom voted for McCain.” (The full AP national exit poll summary can be viewed at http://election.cbsnews.com.)

But Obama won. So clearly there was a great amount of support for him among whites, Christian or otherwise. What’s the full story? I wondered who the cited black clergy were and what line they felt was crossed by legitimate concerns about Obama’s religious beliefs and support for abortion rights.

I found that the article was written by AP religion reporter Rachel Zoll and is 18 paragraphs in its entirety, published November 6 at web sites for both the Sentinel and Enterprise in Fitchburg, Mass. and the San Francisco Examiner.

Ms. Zoll presents a balance of quotes in her article, though not a balance of data. It seems important to note that, among white religious affiliations, Obama was supported overwhelmingly by the Jewish vote, 83 percent; “something else,” 67 percent; “none,” 71 percent; and “non-white,” 79 percent. And of the white vote overall, Obama received nearly half, 43 percent. Percentages of other races voting for Obama were 95 percent black, 67 percent Latino, 62 percent Asian, 66 percent other.

Based on information presented in (and left out of) her own article, Ms. Zoll’s conclusions about strained Christian race relations continue to confound me. The quotes actually show that Ms. Zoll’s so-called “racial divide” describes contention within black churches, while racial accord prevails among conservative blacks and whites surrounding questions about Obama’s moral formation and in opposition to his position on abortion rights.

Ms. Zoll establishes in her article that most (55 percent) white Christians voted for McCain. She highlights the fact that 74 percent of the evangelical vote went to him. She cites Rev. Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, as saying that white evangelicals were motivated by opposition to abortion rights, not by race preference, to vote for McCain. She also writes that “white and black Christian conservatives generally share an opposition to abortion rights.”

Ms. Zoll unerringly gets to the heart of her “racial divide” matter when she writes that Derrick W. Hutchins, a leader in one of the country’s largest predominantly African-American Pentecostal denominations, “was angered by repeated accusations that he and other black theological conservatives had abandoned their religious beliefs simply to vote for an African-American. The claims came not only from white Christians,” writes Ms. Zoll, “but also from some blacks who backed McCain.”

So Ms. Zoll’s “racial divide” manifests within black churches. Even though nearly 100 percent of blacks overall voted for Obama, tension arises now over church members’ commitment, or lack of it, to the abortion issue.

Also apparently of lingering tension in black churches, according to Ms. Zoll’s article, is Obama’s Christian formation under the leadership of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. She cites African-American Bishop Harry Jackson, pastor of Hope Christian Church in Washington, D.C.: "Many, many people question whether Barack Obama had been under a legitimate Christian leadership figure.” And of “criticism” over Obama’s religious beliefs that “crossed the line,” Jackson calls it “fair game” and says, “I personally never ascribed any vitriolic character assassination to it."

So it seems that the real division among voters overall is between liberals and conservatives and rests squarely in the moral issue of abortion rights. Obama has said, according to a Wikipedia article about the bill, that he will pass the Freedom of Choice Act, which, Wikipedia notes, “would abolish all restrictions and limitations on the right of women in the United States to have an abortion, whether at the state or federal level.”

In Ms. Zoll’s article, African-American conservative Dallas megachurch Bishop T.D. Jakes says: "I would love to see black and white Christians find common ground, and a deeper understanding of each other's needs." I wonder if Bishop Jakes would agree that black Christians need to re-unite to advocate “right to life” and join white Christians to take a strong stand against “freedom of choice.”

by Nancy E. Thoerig (written 11-11-08)

Defining and defending 'marriage'

2008-11-16T09:49:00.003-05:00

The populist vote overturned the right in California for gays to "marry," spurring a wave of protests across the nation by gays "to urge supporters not to quit the fight for the right to wed," as reported in an Associated Press article published today in the Cumberland Times-News.

Gay union contradicts natural law. It is disordered. And legitimizing it would lead to a disordered union.

The USCCB sums up the dire consequences that gay marriage legislation would loose in society:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh_81zsW6U8

by Nancy E. Thoerig 11-16-08

'Humanae Vitae' not fodder for interpretation

2008-11-15T10:55:00.004-05:00

"This is the constant teaching of Tradition and of the Church's Magisterium which cannot be called into question by the Catholic theologian." -- Pope John Paul II on Humanae Vitae
Most searches lead us home.

At the web site for SS. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Cumberland is a category titled "Right to Life," which takes the visitor to an article about Humanae Vitae written by Father Paul A. Duffner in which he expounds on the idea of "cafeteria" Catholic thinking, especially related to rejection of the church's teaching on contraception:

"[O]ur conscience, which is simply a practical judgment of the intellect, is not always a reliable guide. ... 'I am following my conscience,' they say.... What they are saying amounts to this: 'My conscience allows me to reject what the Spirit of Christ dictates, and follow what the spirit of the world suggests.'"

He quotes Pope John Paul II: "It is not sufficient to say to man: 'always follow your conscience.' It is necessary to add immediately and always: 'Ask yourself if your conscience is telling you the truth or something false, and seek untiringly to know the truth."

Quite strongly, Father Duffner says, "Once one is no longer guided by the light of divine faith, the spirit of the world takes over. "

by Nancy E. Thoerig 11-15-08

Catholic voters rallying behind 'foundational' issues

2008-11-15T09:07:00.002-05:00

"[I]f we neglect or ignore the pillars of life, faith and family,
our nation will surely falter." -- CatholicVote.com

Though CatolicVote.com may not have succeeded in convincing the majority of Catholic voters in the recent presidential election to stick with the social issues that matter -- life, family, faith -- in the face of a drastic worldwide economic downturn that continues to threaten those basic issues, the grassroots organization pledges to stand strong in defending them.

CatholicVote.com is a project of the Fidelis Center for Law and Policy.

Here's the awesome, breathtaking, thought provoking video, one more time:

by Nancy E. Thoerig 11-15-08

Moral law, grace urge us to act

2008-11-14T11:20:00.006-05:00

"Adhering to the precepts disposes us to receive God's grace and to be able to humble ourselves in love and service before God so that we will be able, humbly, to love and serve others."
(Photo from Clay Pots.)
"Moral Law, Grace and the Church" was the topic of yesterday's Why Catholic session. Father Ty Hullinger introduced concepts of moral (natural) law as being imprinted by God on our consciences, giving us an innate sense of right and wrong, good and evil, and grace as being infused continually, our reception, though, being subject to our awareness and acceptance.

Relying heavily on the Compendium as his source, Father Ty spoke then of the five precepts of the magisterium that are established as the "indispensible minimum" for us to aspire to do in order to cooperate to dispose ourselves to be open to the reception of God's grace: Attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation; receive the sacrament of reconcilation at least once a year; receive the sacrament of the Eucharist at least once in the year, during the Easter season; fast and abstain according to church guidelines; keep holy the holy days of oblication.

The two most liberal Catholics in the group -- St. Patrick (Cumberland) Deacon Loren Mooney and Antoinette Wiseman -- challenged the magisterium's "indispensible minimum" idea and raised the fact that the guidelines say nothing about loving each other. Father Ty agreed with me when I contended that these precepts are the magisterium's instructions for us to follow in order to dispose ourselves to be aware of and accept God's grace; the idea of loving each other is "covered" in the Ten Commandments and the Beautitudes. Loren and Toni both asked Father Ty, then, for reassurance that there is a law above these precepts of the magisterium. Of course, Father Ty said there is.

Loren propsoed, then, that Vatican I followers most likely would be very comfortable adhering to these precepts, which have nothing to do with love. If it would not have belabored the point, would have clarified that these precepts are about us, individually, developmentally, spiritually, not about our direct relationships with others. Adhering to the precepts disposes us to receive God's grace and to be able to humble ourselves in love and service before God so that we will be able, humbly, to love and serve others. I like both Loren and Toni, but here is another example of how unaccepting of church teaching and single-minded about "love" (which they seem to equate to leniencey) above obedience and openness to the fullness of God's love that a Vatican II-trained thinker can be....

Father Ty very effectively wove his points about moral law and grace into the story line of the movie Amazing Grace, which presents the relationship between John Newton, Anglican clergyman, former slave ship captain and auther of the famous hymn by the same name, and
William Wilbefforce, a Member of Parliament who spent 20 years, at the encouragement of Newton, fighting to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire.

The ignominy of slavery is the ignominy of present-day abortion, oppression of immigrants, human trafficking (all modern forms of enslavement); and we are called by social responsiblity, moral law and God's grace to take an active role to fight for justice.

Last week's session was led by Toni Wiseman and considered topics of "Sin, Mercy and Moral Solidarity." Toni discussed our relationship with God as one similar to a friendship that can be damaged and broken, in need of attention or often requiring repair.

We discussed God's eternal and infinte mercy that should not be taken for granted, but cherished and nourished, and His call for us to receive and develop the mercy He gives to us into our mercy given for others. As members of one church, we are called to take a unified position to address social injustices.

Our Why Catholic sessions are adjourned now until the Lenten season.

by Nancy E. Thoerig 11-14-08

Bishops take stand on FOCA

2008-11-13T14:19:00.004-05:00

"It is critically important that we voice our early and grave concerns to our elected officials regarding this uncompromising legislation...." -- Bishosp Edwin F. O'Brien, Maryland, host for USCCB winter conference

As reported at Whispers in the Loggia, where the full text may be viewed, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, president, and the body of bishops, at their winter conference in Baltimore, organized their thoughts into a statement issued Wednesday afternoon to address the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) and guide their path in countering the legislation during the upcoming administration:

"The fundamental good is life itself, a gift from God and our parents. A good state protects the lives of all. Legal protection for those members of the human family waiting to be born in this country was removed when the Supreme Court decided Roe vs. Wade in 1973. This was bad law. The danger the Bishops see at this moment is that a bad court decision will be enshrined in bad legislation that is more radical than the 1973 Supreme Court decision itself.

"In the last Congress, a Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) was introduced that would, if brought forward in the same form today, outlaw any 'interference' in providing abortion at will. It would deprive the American people in all fifty states of the freedom they now have to enact modest restraints and regulations on the abortion industry. FOCA would coerce all Americans into subsidizing and promoting abortion with their tax dollars. It would counteract any and all sincere efforts by government and others of good will to reduce the number of abortions in our country.

"... Aggressively pro-abortion policies, legislation and executive orders will permanently alienate tens of millions of Americans, and would be seen by many as an attack on the free exercise of their religion.:

Whispers' Rocco Palmo quotes Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Chicago: "[FOCA] could mean discontinuing obstetrics in our hospitals, and we may need to consider taking the drastic step of closing our catholic hospitals entirely. It would not be sufficient to withdraw our sponsorship or to sell them to someone who would perform abortions. That would be a morally unacceptable cooperation in evil."

According to Whispers, first steps have been taken to arrange an official meeting between Cardinal George and President-elect Obama.

In his weekly column that appears in the November 13 Catholic Review, Baltimore Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien, host for this year's USCCB winter conference, writes (as scooped at Wispers): "While early exit polling indicated that the economy was the paramount concern of six out of every 10 Americans, we must not lose sight of the ongoing struggle our country faces in achieving genuine respect for the freedom and dignity of every human life."

Bishop O'Brien exhorts his faithful: "As faithful citizens, our duty ... [is] to claim our legitimate role in the public square by urging those whom we have elected as our leaders to uphold values we believe are fundamental to the common good."

The bishop continues: "Of particular concern to Catholics and others seeking to promote a culture of life, is Senator Obama’s public commitment to passing the Freedom of Choice Act. It is critically important that we voice our early and grave concerns to our elected officials regarding this uncompromising legislation, which is currently pending before Congress. To do so, and to learn more information, I encourage you to visit the online Legislative Action Center of our Maryland Catholic Conference....

"FOCA, co-sponsored by Maryland Senators Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin and Representatives Dutch Ruppersberger and Chris Van Hollen…

"Removes the choice of medical providers to refuse in good conscience to provide morally offensive services.

"Removes the choice of taxpayers to decline to have their money pay for morally abhorrent procedures.

"Removes the choice of state legislatures to undertake reasonable and widely accepted regulations of abortions, including those that increase education and family involvement while reducing the number of abortions. ...

"I pledge that we will join with other all law-abiding religious and public interest groups in taking every action necessary to resist this blatant attempt to stifle the consciences of those who continue to hold innocent human life sacred."

Photo from Archdiocese of San Francisco, Office of Public Policy and Social Concerns

by Nancy E. Thoerig 11-13-08

Catholics vote economy over social concerns

2008-11-08T17:14:00.006-05:00

Just found an undated item about an Associated Press interview with Papal spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi regarding the recent election of Senator Barak Obama president of the United States that notes that despite the fact that McCain was the pro-life candidate, Catholic voters "overwhelmingly prioritize economic over social concerns" (based on a November 5 AP exit poll). The article says the pope will make a statement.

Zenit posts a November 5 release regarding a telegram sent by Pope Benedict XVI to President-elect Obama promising him his prayers and encouraging Obama to "build a world of peace, solidarity and justice."

A November 5 Zenit news release quotes Cardinal Francis George in a congratulatory statement to Obama: ""We stand ready to work with you in defense and support of the life and dignity of every human person."

Zenit also has posted a release November 7 about a Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person scientist's conclusions about the beginning of life, in which she says: "As I note in the paper, resolving when human life begins has important implications for a number of controversial political topics, including abortion and human embryonic stem cell research. "

by Nancy E. Thoerig 11-08-08

Ancient chant new again

2008-11-08T10:50:00.009-05:00

"...the music of chant conveyed religious precepts to largely illiterate
societies." -- Carlos Alcala, Sacramento Bee

In a blog posting today, Fr. John Zuhlsdorf (called a "liturgy expert" by Zenit) at "What Does the Prayer Really Say?" takes a look at a November 7 Sacramento Bee article written by Carlos Alcala and titled "Chants of a Lifetime: An age-old form of vocal worship enhances the liturgy at St. Stephen’s Catholic Church." At the end of Father Z's commentary, inserted into the text of the article, is a video that features Gregorian chant in the tradition of the art that existed for hundreds of years prior to the papcy of St. Gregory and passed down over the ages in a vocal tradition. The first "recordings" were made in the 800s, notes Mr. Alcala, when monks created the method of indicating notes on a staff still used today.

Another exceptional example of chant and a glimpse at its role in daily religious life is presented as one aspect in an exploration of the lifestyle of Carthusian monks in the film titled "Into Great Silence." German filmmaker Philip Groening had asked the abbott permission to make a documentary film from inside the Grande Chartreuse monastery isolated in the French Alps. Sixteen years later, he got the go-ahead. Mr. Groening was so impressed with the sounds of silence (and occasional scheduled conversation) that he made the film an uncommon three-hour meditation. Moviegoers reportedly stood in long lines in France to view it. (I borrowed the DVD from the local public library system. The sights and sounds are awesome.)

An assortment of CDs sof chant are available for purchase or borrowing. One I own is titled "Immortal Gregorian Chant, Part One." Its seasonal selecxtions are intoned by French monks. Anotherof mine is titled "Chant from the Hermitage," on which John Michael Talbot and the monks of Little Portion Hermitage give chant a slightly new slant. Talbot still writes and tours. My CD of a "Mass in honor of the Immaculate Conception," sung by the choir of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception is performed mostly chant style. The Allegany County Public Library system has available for lending two chant CDs that I've borrowed, one titled "Feather on the Breath of God," a selection of chants composed by St. Hildegard von Bingen, and another sung by monks.

Seek out chant and give it a listen. It may revive your soul.

Here's a beautiful presentaiton of Hildegard von Bingen's "Spiritus Sanctus":

by Nancy E. Thoerig 11-08-08

Liberals vs. conservatives: 'Anger' not a virtue?

2008-11-04T15:02:00.018-05:00

"[C]harity demands beneficence and fraternal correction; it is benevolence; it fosters reciprocity and remains disinterested and generous; it is friendship and communication..." -- Catechism of the Catholic Church #1829

It seems that Father Paul Byrnes and I have reached an understanding, a holy "friendship" rooted in charity -- the type of charity that germinates and grows in forthright communcation. And we've agreed to pray for each other. ...

I sent Father Byrnes an email last week expressing my disagreements and concerns with his teaching on "conscience." He emailed me back with some probing (perhaps defensive, aggressive) questions. We exchanged a few more "notes," finally coming, it seems, to a point where we discover that we share a good deal of agreement; otherwise, we consent to disagree.

I've concluded that Father Byrnes and I both love our Catholic faith, though we stand at opposite ends of the spectrum in approaching its beliefs. He is liberal. I am conservative. He reads Commonweal, a non-profit journal of lay Catholic opinion on a variety of religious, cultural and political issues, dubbed "decidedly liberal" by Wikipedia. I watch the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN),a non-profit broadcasting system that airs only Catholic programming, dubbed "conservative" by Wikipedia.

Liberal Catholics tend to believe that the Vatican should be run more as a democracy, open to change in order to better reflect trends in society; they like to challenge doctrines and push limits of obedience to them. Conservative Catholics tend to believe that the magisterium should reflect the Vatican authoritatively in our communities and exhort the faithful to adhere strictly to church teachings, in order to effect changes in society; they aim for literal interpretations of doctrines and honorable obedience to them. Liberals think conservatives are judgmental and unweilding. Conservatives think liberals are shortsighted and unthinking.

Liberal Catholics think the church will become a monolilth if it does not adapt within the secular society. Conservative Catholics think Catholicism (its ethics and lifestyle) will disappear if it accommodates the secular society. Liberals think the church should bend to serve its members. Conservatives believe we members should straighten up and serve our church.

Liberal Catholics cling to the memory of Pope John XXIII (1958-63) and keep alive what we conservatives consider to be the "radical" spirit of change brought about by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). Conservative Catholics are grateful to Pope Paul VI (1963-78) for the saving wisdom and inspired truth in his "Humanae Vitae"(1968) encyclical (which still elicits contempt from liberals), and they cling to the orthodoxy renewed by John Paul II (1978-2005) and the tradition and reason engendered by Benedict XVI. Liberals hold (conservatives would say "rebelliously") to the "interpretive" teachings and "loose" liturgies of the tumultuous 1960s and '70s. Conservatives strive (liberals might say "naively") to re-learn "authentic" teachings and revive liturgical orthodoxy.

Liberal Catholics tend to like noisy "friendliness" in church and easy or lax behaviors in the presence of a familiar and personable God. Conservative Catholics tend to prefer a silent sense of awe in church, and respect and reverence in the presence of God, who, though accessible to us all, is worthy of honor and fear for His great power and grand mystery.

Liberal Catholics might consider conservatives to be pious "papists." Conservative Catholics might consider liberals to be phony "protestants." Liberals think that teachings of Vatican II produced independent-thinking, more "mature," responsible adults. Conservatives think that many of the Vatican II teachings produced ill-informed, sadly misguided, disillusioned fall-aways.

Chances are, even though Father Paul and I have found points of agreement, we never will see eye-to-eye on our points of contention. Hopefully, we will respect and appreciate each other...and keep trying to understand the meanings and minglings of our divergent journeys in our beloved faith.

I believe we both were a bit angry -- with each other. Anger is considered to be a vice; and when it is hurtful, no doubt it is. Like love, though, anger (sparing and careful) can be benevolent -- when it is rooted in right intentions (to give or gain knowledge, understanding, counsel) -- though inflamed by passions, and employed to express and elicit deeply held thoughts and beliefs. Anger, then, like detached and generous love, once having achieved reciprocity, harmony or equanimity, should flee, forgetting offenses and forgiving transgressions (but remembering important aspects learned about the other).

Last week's Why Catholic session focused on virtues -- holy habits that dispose us toward doing good, living an ordered life, drawing nearer to God and neighbor.

Faith, hope and charity are theological virtues -- infused by God at baptism -- to "dispose Christians to live in a relationship with the Holy Trinity. They have God for their origin, their motive, and their object -- God known by faith, God hoped in and loved for His own sake" (CCC #1840). These three graces from God flow upon us continually like a waterfall. We simply need to receive them. They balance and compensate, so that in times when we may lack one, we may draw on the other for strength or understanding and perseverance.

Of the three theological virtues, charity -- the love of Christ for us and the love He asks us to give to others -- is greatest, because it "upholds and purifies our human ability to love, and raises it to the supernatural perfection of divine love" (CCC #1827). When a Christian's life is motivated by love for God and others, then he stands before God no longer "in servile fear, or as a mercenary looking for wages, but as a son responding to the love of him 'who first loved us'" (CCC #1828). The fruits of charity are joy, peace and mercy. Think (and act) on that....

Perpahs the most beautiful and complete description of love is this: "[C]harity demands beneficence and fraternal correction; it is benevolence; it fosters reciprocity and remains disinterested and generous; it is friendship and communication..." (CCC #1829). Wow. Yes.

From the theological virtues flow the cardinal, or moral, virtues: Prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice. "The moral virtues grow through education, deliberate acts and perseverance in struggle. Divine grace elevates and purifies them" (CCC #1839). We are tried in our lives by fire. These virtues, properly employed, make the fire our friend, smelting us into fortified steel, all for the glory of God, rather than melting us into a limp, gooey (stuck on ourselves) lump.

The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, which dispose us toward opening our minds and wills to discern and act upon His promptings in our hearts, are wisdom, understanding, counsel, courage, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord (CCC #1831).

I had a dream many years ago; and God said to me: "In fear of the Lord, all things will be revealed." I hope for wisdom...and trust it will come...and try to love...and I pray now more than I used to.

by Nancy E. Thoerig (Article was expanded and revised significantly in parts through 11-08-08.)

Washington National Cathedral 'live' tour

2008-11-03T11:10:00.005-05:00

The Washington National Cathedral and grounds are hallowed places that draw my heart near and fill my senses with their beauty and intimacy. The cathedral spire stood as a steady reminder to me, as I recovered from my first heart surgery in 1972 at Georgetown University Hospital, that life was more than the here and now. The spire beckoned me and inspired me to get well and get out of the hospital -- and get to that place.

My sister and brother-in-law helped fulfill my wish at that time to go where the spire called me. Having grown up and gotten busy, time went by; and I forgot about the cathedral -- 'til I drove past one day in late 1997. I was amazed at my oversight and neglect and missed oppotrunities to enjoy it.

In the years that followed, 'til I lost my eyesight in 2006, I visited countless times to enjoy hearing the carillon or seeing turning of the seasons -- early multitudinous tulips, mid-summer aromatic lavendar, towering red, pink and yellow October roses -- in the Bishop's Garden; to hear the crystallilne voices of the boy's choir and the thunderous-to-delicate organ recital pipings at Sunday Evensong; to pray in Resurrection Chaptel; to particpate in special programs, like a spring flower sale or a summer workshop; or just to take respite in this uncommonly tranquil spot in the heart of the city.

Hardly a visit to Washington went by, from the time of my rediscovery on, when I didn't stop at the cathedral -- if for no other reason than to pay my respects.

I love this place. I miss it. I wish to share it with you. I hope you'll enjoy this video from WETA: http://www.weta.org/tv/local/wetaallaccess/nationalcathedral. (Click the little icon to the right of the time indicator to enjoy a full-screen version.)

'Human Vitae' sign of troubled times

2008-10-29T11:25:00.009-04:00

"Thomas Stransky, an official of Rome's Secretariat for Christian Unity, suggests that the church is suffering from a "silent schism" of rebels who are remaining Catholic in name but are "hanging loose" from the institutional church." -- Time Cover Story, "Catholic Freedom v. Authority," November 22, 1968

Wow. Amazing.

To get more color and gain greater understanding of the torrential times surrounding issuance of "Humanae Vitae," take a read through the Time cover story from November 22, 1968.

And here are words from the culprit who started it all -- Charles E. Curran in his book Loual Dissent, published 2006. (No wonder Catholic University had such a notorious reputation. Thankfully, today, CUA is a papal flagship in America.) Looks as if then-Rev. Curran was an adviser at Vatican II and let his pride override the purpose of his service to our Church. Curran was "let go" from CUA in 1986. Since some time after that, he has taught at Southern Methodist University.

While Curran makes himself out to be brave and righteous in his (misguided) dissent, there is no denying that the true conscienable objector and hero in this saga is now-Cardinal Stafford, who held to the truth through the firestorm of hatred, distortion, manipulation and coersion.

Let's offer a prayer of thanks in this moment for the courage of Pope Paul VI and for all those of his time and ours whose values and virtues lead them to discern, accept and act in God's truth.