Published in Cumberlnad Times-News on August 20, 2008.
To the Editor:
Winner of the 1976 classic BMW, raffled to purchase an ambulance for St. Elizabeth Hospital in Arusha, Tanzania, is Jack Gallagher of Great Falls, Va., as announced by Pamela Protani, ambulance fund representative. "I spoke with Mr. Gallagher earlier today and he and his wife are terribly excited," notes Ms. Protani in an email Aug. 16.
The drawing followed 7 p.m. Mass Aug. 15, at the National Shrine Grotto of Lourdes in Emmitsburg. "Stay tuned," adds Ms. Protani, "as we should be purchasing the ambulance either this week or next; and that's terribly exciting for us, as well!" An announcement and additional information will be posted on the St. Elizabeth Hospital Ambulance Fund Web site at http://www.sehafund.org/.
Need for the ambulance was mentioned by St. Elizabeth Hospital Medical Director Dr. Kway to a group of visiting missionaries, under leadership of Grotto of Lourdes Chaplain Father Jack Lombardi, during their pilgrimage to Arusha in August 2007. The BMW raffle was the capstone in their year-long fundraising efforts. The car was donated by locksmith Carroll Kohler of Randallstown, who restored it over a period of four years.
Father Jack notes, "Please know that 100 percent of donations collected will go toward the purchase of the ambulance, an ambulance that will serve the sick, the needy and the poorest of the poor in Arusha, Tanzania. Asante Sana! (Swahili for thank you!)"
Nancy E. Thoerig
Mount Savage
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Proceeds to help purchase ambulance
Published in Cumberland Times-News Letters on July 26, 2008.
To the Editor:
Thank you for publishing my letter and many thanks to everyone who has responded with interest in purchasing tickets for a chance to win the 1976 classic BMW Model 2002 car being raffled to benefit St. Elizabeth Hospital in Arusha, Tanzania.
Tickets may be purchased online or by mail. To purchase online, go to the ambulance fund Web site at http://www.sehafund.org/ and choose the Purchase a Raffle Ticket page. Follow instructions for installing cookies, if needed.
Any questions regarding making an online purchase may be directed to Pamela Protani at information@sehafund.org. To purchase by mail, send a check or money order, along with number of tickets requested, to St. Elizabeth Hospital Ambulance Fund, 937 Oldham Street, Baltimore, MD 21224. Make checks payable to St. Elizabeth Hospital Ambulance Fund. Tickets are $30 each. Deadline to purchase tickets is August 12. The drawing is set August 15.
Proceeds from the 2,002 tickets being sold will help purchase an ambulance for the hospital for transporting critically ill patients to the next facility 60 miles away. The fundraiser is a fruit of a mission trip taken last summer by a group of volunteers from Maryland under leadership of Father Jack Lombardi, chaplain at the Grotto of Lourdes in Emmitsburg. The car was donated by Carroll Kohler of Randallstown.
“We are grateful for your support and donations," says Pamela Protani, fund representative. "Your kindness will be long remembered by those whom the ambulance will serve at St. Elizabeth Hospital and the community of Arusha Tanzania.”
Again, many thanks. And good luck!
Nancy E. Thoerig
Mount Savage
To the Editor:
Thank you for publishing my letter and many thanks to everyone who has responded with interest in purchasing tickets for a chance to win the 1976 classic BMW Model 2002 car being raffled to benefit St. Elizabeth Hospital in Arusha, Tanzania.
Tickets may be purchased online or by mail. To purchase online, go to the ambulance fund Web site at http://www.sehafund.org/ and choose the Purchase a Raffle Ticket page. Follow instructions for installing cookies, if needed.
Any questions regarding making an online purchase may be directed to Pamela Protani at information@sehafund.org. To purchase by mail, send a check or money order, along with number of tickets requested, to St. Elizabeth Hospital Ambulance Fund, 937 Oldham Street, Baltimore, MD 21224. Make checks payable to St. Elizabeth Hospital Ambulance Fund. Tickets are $30 each. Deadline to purchase tickets is August 12. The drawing is set August 15.
Proceeds from the 2,002 tickets being sold will help purchase an ambulance for the hospital for transporting critically ill patients to the next facility 60 miles away. The fundraiser is a fruit of a mission trip taken last summer by a group of volunteers from Maryland under leadership of Father Jack Lombardi, chaplain at the Grotto of Lourdes in Emmitsburg. The car was donated by Carroll Kohler of Randallstown.
“We are grateful for your support and donations," says Pamela Protani, fund representative. "Your kindness will be long remembered by those whom the ambulance will serve at St. Elizabeth Hospital and the community of Arusha Tanzania.”
Again, many thanks. And good luck!
Nancy E. Thoerig
Mount Savage
Friday, July 18, 2008
Win a Beamer, help save a life
Published in Cumberland Times-News Letters on July 18, 2008.
To the Editor:
A chance to win a BMW is a chance to change the world – well, a small part of it -- in, perhaps, a most significant way.
In August 2007, a group of 16 adults and youths, under the leadership of the Rev. Jack Lombardi, chaplain at the Grotto of Lourdes in Emmitsburg, traveled from Maryland to Tanzania, Africa, to volunteer with various organizations, orphanages, schools and hospitals. For 17 days, they lived in Arusha, Tanzania, home of St. Elizabeth Hospital.
The “state-of-the-art” 33-year-old hospital provides top-of-the-line services for 350,000; however, it lacks what we would consider to be basic medical equipment -- and they have never owned an ambulance. When asked by Father Jack and his group, while touring St. Elizabeth, how they might help him, Medical Director Dr. Kway responded, “We need an ambulance” for transporting seriously ill patients, many with AIDS, to a second hospital about 60 miles away. An ambulance -- $65,000: A tall order that has received inspiring response.
Carroll Kohler, an acquaintance of Father Jack’s from his days as pastor at Holy Family Catholic Church in Randallstown (Father Jack served at St. Patrick in Cumberland in the ‘90s; he recently celebrated his 20th anniversary), is a locksmith by trade and car restorer by passion. Kohler spent more than four years restoring a black 1976 BMW, Model 2002, to perfection, with all the bling. He intended to sell it. He changed his mind.
Kohler gave the BMW to Father Jack to raffle to benefit St. Elizabeth Hospital. 2,002 tickets will be sold at $30 each. The drawing is slated August 15. More info can be found at http://www.sehafund.org/.
The odds are pretty good at winning the Beamer – and at saving a life in Arusha.
Nancy E. Thoerig
Mount Savage
To the Editor:
A chance to win a BMW is a chance to change the world – well, a small part of it -- in, perhaps, a most significant way.
In August 2007, a group of 16 adults and youths, under the leadership of the Rev. Jack Lombardi, chaplain at the Grotto of Lourdes in Emmitsburg, traveled from Maryland to Tanzania, Africa, to volunteer with various organizations, orphanages, schools and hospitals. For 17 days, they lived in Arusha, Tanzania, home of St. Elizabeth Hospital.
The “state-of-the-art” 33-year-old hospital provides top-of-the-line services for 350,000; however, it lacks what we would consider to be basic medical equipment -- and they have never owned an ambulance. When asked by Father Jack and his group, while touring St. Elizabeth, how they might help him, Medical Director Dr. Kway responded, “We need an ambulance” for transporting seriously ill patients, many with AIDS, to a second hospital about 60 miles away. An ambulance -- $65,000: A tall order that has received inspiring response.
Carroll Kohler, an acquaintance of Father Jack’s from his days as pastor at Holy Family Catholic Church in Randallstown (Father Jack served at St. Patrick in Cumberland in the ‘90s; he recently celebrated his 20th anniversary), is a locksmith by trade and car restorer by passion. Kohler spent more than four years restoring a black 1976 BMW, Model 2002, to perfection, with all the bling. He intended to sell it. He changed his mind.
Kohler gave the BMW to Father Jack to raffle to benefit St. Elizabeth Hospital. 2,002 tickets will be sold at $30 each. The drawing is slated August 15. More info can be found at http://www.sehafund.org/.
The odds are pretty good at winning the Beamer – and at saving a life in Arusha.
Nancy E. Thoerig
Mount Savage
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Time to renew conscience within media, home
Published in Cumberland Times-News Letters on June 8, 2008.
"Child sexual abuse in all its varied forms and arenas is a warp in American society."
To the Editor:
Francis DeBernardo, whom Jeffrey Davis quotes ("It is enough to make your stomach churn," June 2), is executive director of New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based organization of gay Catholics that rebels against Pope Benedict XVI, because he disciplined its founders and denounces its legitimacy implicitly, for members’ non-adherence to teachings on natural law, through his continued firm stance (promulgated during tenure in his former position as enforcer for the faith) on reasons why homosexuals cannot be priests. (Source: Wikipedia.org). Note: Members of other homosexual organizations, like Exodus International, choose to live in accord with church teachings and in communion with the universal congregation.
In the document addressing “Discernment of Vocations with Regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies” (accessible at Vatican.va) approved by Pope Benedict on August 31, 2005, the church sets forth “norms concerning a specific question, made more urgent by the current situation” and states clearly: “[T]he Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ‘gay culture.’"
It is totally intuitive that the pope should restate forcefully – in establishing his leadership in the midst of the current crisis that implicates priests’ relationships with boys -- a position that prohibits ordination of males who are sexually attracted to other males. No connection is made between homosexuality and pedophilia; however, the pope’s action is a common sense approach to manage the risk of further implication.
Mr. Davis judges that “absolutely only one response was appropriate from the very beginning;” however, it is believed by some, Wikipedia notes, that bishops were “acting on the best medical advice then available” when re-assigning priests after treatment. The online encyclopedia also notes, in considering the daycare center dilemma of the 1980s and 1990s – years leading up to uncovering the clergy abuse -- that this was a time of “rising police interest, investigation and prosecution of such crimes. As such it is not certain that a sudden ‘crisis of abuse’ ever existed; instead the dramatic increase in reported abuse cases may simply have heralded the end of a long-term endemic problem found throughout a number of institutions, both secular and religious.”
Recall the Boy Scouts of America scandal of the 1980s. “Among the first national youth organizations to address the issue of sexual abuse of its members,” Wikipedia notes, the BSA responded “to introduce barriers to pedophiles.” While a few cases still occur (Wikipedia cites documents from August 2007 showing that “since the BSA's Youth Protection Program was introduced, the organization has removed about 180 of its 70,000 leaders each year”), sexual abuse among its four million members “is now extremely rare.” Clearly, internal review and self-reporting in accordance with statutes of existing law – a system that Mr. Davis decries as an “insult” and “effrontery” – works.
Consider just a few more facts. The pedophile ring in Texas has complicated the lives of more than 400 children and overloaded and baffled social and justice workers. In schools, Wikipedia cites the US Department of Education, "nearly 9.6 percent of students are targets of educator sexual misconduct.” US Child Protective Services data show, according to Wikipedia, that “83,600 children were determined to have been sexually abused” in 2005, a figure that represents 9.3 percent of all substantiated cases that year. (The numbers cited by Mr. Davis are small in comparison.) Child sexual abuse in all its varied forms and arenas is a warp in American society. And it is a worldwide problem, as illustrated recently by the UN peacekeepers scandal.
The pope does not link pornography and violence in society with the development of pedophiles, as Mr. Davis implies. The salient point of the pope’s message, contained in his address to US bishops (accessible at Zenit.org), is that people produce pornography, film, literature, commercialism that exploit children and perpetuate child sexual abuse; and people make violence easily accessible for viewing by children in their homes, presenting a distorted view of society that demoralizes and confuses children. The pope calls urgently for a renewal of conscience in people within the media and inside our homes; and he states in context: “Children deserve to grow up with a healthy understanding of sexuality and its proper place in human relationships. They should be spared the degrading manifestations and the crude manipulation of sexuality so prevalent today.” People are called to work in unity toward a day when prevalent child sexual abuse is a closed chapter in American history.
Nancy E. Thoerig, Mount Savage
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Cleanup must go past church
Published in Cumberland Times-News Letters on May 22, 2008
Remarks made by Jeffrey Davis (“What the church of Rome needs is a good cleansing,” May 8) precisely illustrate Bill O’Reilly’s concern about insatiable secularism put forth in his April 22 column. Unarguably, errors were made. Unquestionably, better judgments might have been seen. Inexcusably, perpetrators were shielded. Presently, though, offenders are being purged; and a secure (we hope failsafe) system of checks and balances is in place to identify pedophiles and block them from admission to seminaries and from holding staff or volunteer positions throughout the Catholic Church. If Mr. Davis were seeking solutions, rather than platitudes, then he could be satisfied.
Reality check: Pedophilia is an ancient and modern-day scourge. The medical term was coined in 1886 by Viennese psychiatrist Richard von Kraft-Ebing from a word used by Greek poets to mean “child-friendship,” according to Wikipedia.com. The practice, as noted in Wikipedia, was “relatively common and accepted in many places, including the United States and England, where the legal age of consent typically ranged from seven to 12 years until the end of the 19th century.” Counterintuitive, wouldn’t you say?
Wikipedia notes that causes are not well understood; and the extent of occurrence is not well known; and while there are behavior therapies, there are no cures. Studies done as recently as 2007 look at brain structure and activity for clues; but earlier studies (1970s) noted in Wikipedia “concluded that at least a quarter of all adult men may have some feelings of sexual arousal in connection with pre-pubescent youths.” Furthermore, psychologist Fred S. Berlin asserts that “attraction to pre-pubescent youths (is) a sexual orientation in itself.” And now hear this: “Some pro-pedophile activists aim to change legal, medical and social views of pedophilia,” Wikipedia notes.
Rather than rail against the Catholic Church, which is doing a model job cleaning its own house, Mr. Davis and others might look at the broader environment and consider how knowledgeable we truly aren’t about pedophilia and how tolerant we don’t want to be of this ill and prepare now to combat the ignominy where it could perpetuate: In flawed human nature (that needs moral discipline) and in the fabric of society (that needs moral law).
In a press conference aboard Shepherd One, upon arriving in the United States, Pope Benedict XVI was asked by reporter John Allen: “The American people are awaiting a word from you…about this crisis. What will be your message for this suffering Church?” Pope Benedict replied: “I am ashamed and we will do everything possible to ensure that this does not happen in (the) future. … [P]edophiles cannot be priests and (we will) help in any possible way the victims (who) will need healing and help and assistance and reconciliation…and we will do all that is possible in the education of seminarians for a deep spiritual, human and intellectual formation…. [I]t is more important to have good priests than to have many priests. … [W]e hope that we can do and we have done and we will do in the future all that is possible to heal these wounds.” (Full transcript may be read at Zenit.org.)
The Pope acknowledges, though, that a clean-up effort needs to extend far beyond the Catholic Church. What will you do in your home or community or church to protect the dignity of children and yourself from the perpetration of pedophilia – and other social ills and values crises?
Nancy E. Thoerig
Mount Savage
To the Editor:"Unarguably, errors were made. Unquestionably, better judgments
might have been seen. Inexcusably, perpetrators were shielded."
Remarks made by Jeffrey Davis (“What the church of Rome needs is a good cleansing,” May 8) precisely illustrate Bill O’Reilly’s concern about insatiable secularism put forth in his April 22 column. Unarguably, errors were made. Unquestionably, better judgments might have been seen. Inexcusably, perpetrators were shielded. Presently, though, offenders are being purged; and a secure (we hope failsafe) system of checks and balances is in place to identify pedophiles and block them from admission to seminaries and from holding staff or volunteer positions throughout the Catholic Church. If Mr. Davis were seeking solutions, rather than platitudes, then he could be satisfied.
Reality check: Pedophilia is an ancient and modern-day scourge. The medical term was coined in 1886 by Viennese psychiatrist Richard von Kraft-Ebing from a word used by Greek poets to mean “child-friendship,” according to Wikipedia.com. The practice, as noted in Wikipedia, was “relatively common and accepted in many places, including the United States and England, where the legal age of consent typically ranged from seven to 12 years until the end of the 19th century.” Counterintuitive, wouldn’t you say?
Wikipedia notes that causes are not well understood; and the extent of occurrence is not well known; and while there are behavior therapies, there are no cures. Studies done as recently as 2007 look at brain structure and activity for clues; but earlier studies (1970s) noted in Wikipedia “concluded that at least a quarter of all adult men may have some feelings of sexual arousal in connection with pre-pubescent youths.” Furthermore, psychologist Fred S. Berlin asserts that “attraction to pre-pubescent youths (is) a sexual orientation in itself.” And now hear this: “Some pro-pedophile activists aim to change legal, medical and social views of pedophilia,” Wikipedia notes.
Rather than rail against the Catholic Church, which is doing a model job cleaning its own house, Mr. Davis and others might look at the broader environment and consider how knowledgeable we truly aren’t about pedophilia and how tolerant we don’t want to be of this ill and prepare now to combat the ignominy where it could perpetuate: In flawed human nature (that needs moral discipline) and in the fabric of society (that needs moral law).
In a press conference aboard Shepherd One, upon arriving in the United States, Pope Benedict XVI was asked by reporter John Allen: “The American people are awaiting a word from you…about this crisis. What will be your message for this suffering Church?” Pope Benedict replied: “I am ashamed and we will do everything possible to ensure that this does not happen in (the) future. … [P]edophiles cannot be priests and (we will) help in any possible way the victims (who) will need healing and help and assistance and reconciliation…and we will do all that is possible in the education of seminarians for a deep spiritual, human and intellectual formation…. [I]t is more important to have good priests than to have many priests. … [W]e hope that we can do and we have done and we will do in the future all that is possible to heal these wounds.” (Full transcript may be read at Zenit.org.)
The Pope acknowledges, though, that a clean-up effort needs to extend far beyond the Catholic Church. What will you do in your home or community or church to protect the dignity of children and yourself from the perpetration of pedophilia – and other social ills and values crises?
Nancy E. Thoerig
Mount Savage
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