Priest shortage solution: Fill seminaries

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

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

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 Christian and still support secularism

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?

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.