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.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Is groundwork done for Islam's aggression?
Published in Cumbelrand Times-News Wednesday, October 13, 2010.
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?
In our current smoke-and-mirrors political and social environments, where hypocrisy steamrolls sense, astute educators very rightlyThe 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.
may wonder, “How better might Islam transform America than to confuse the views of America’s youths?”
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?
Monday, August 30, 2010
Would this mosque be America's undoing?
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.”
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Liberation theology politicizes Christianity
Published in Cumberland Times-News Tuesday, July 27, 2010.
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.
"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.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
U.S. Immigration Overhaul Overdue
Published in Cumberland Times-News Tuesday, June 22, 2010.
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
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
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