Posted on 08/31/2005 7:01:55 AM PDT by pabianice
ANNAPOLIS, MD -- The Naval Academy has no plans to drop the regular saying of grace before its midshipmen's lunch, despite a policy issued this week by the Air Force to discourage most public prayer, a spokesman said.
The Naval Academy is the only U.S. military institution that holds formal prayer at lunch, a ritual that might date to its founding in 1845. Its chaplains say grace at the mandatory lunch for its more than 4,100 midshipmen.
Academy spokesman Cmdr. Rod Gibbons said there are no plans to change the tradition of what he has called "devotional thoughts." Prayers are nondenominational and are led by Roman Catholic, Jewish or Protestant chaplains.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2003 that mealtime prayers at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Va., violated the First Amendment.
The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Maryland and the Anti-Defamation League have asked the Navy to stop the lunchtime prayer based on that ruling, but academy leaders have declined.
David Rocah, a lawyer for the Maryland ACLU, said the organization has not been able to bring a suit because midshipmen are reluctant to "begin their career by suing the Navy."
The Air Force Academy, in Colorado Springs, Colo., holds 20 seconds of silence before lunch, and no prayer precedes the noon meal at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.
The new Air Force regulations came after several internal and external reviews that questioned evangelical proselytizing by faculty, staff and cadets at the Air Force Academy.
The Air Force's new policy says prayer "should not usually be included in official settings such as staff meetings, office meetings, classes or officially sanctioned activities."
We need a www.jewishvetsagainsttheaclu.com
Go Navy! I love that my son is there.
Good for the US Navy!
Clint Jr loves that place...wants to go there. He goes there every year for wrestling camp and this year he went to the SEAL camp. GO NAVY! God Bless your son.
Sometimes they were prefunctory ("Great God, good food, let's eat") and no one liked the ones where someone droned on for a minute or more, but it overall it was a nice tradition.
The ACLU is a communist organization dedicated to silencing God and destroying America.
Go Navy Beat Air Force
What's wrong with prayer? Aren't they supposed to prepare these young people for combat?
Went thru Parris Island in the 1960's. There was a plastic grace card in a holder on each table with a couple of brief prayers on it. Someone picked it up said grace and the next command was sit. Every butt had better hit the bench seat in unison or we got to do it over ... sometimes several times.
This is a matter of free exercise, not establishment. As with the words "under God" for the pledge, atheists and agnostics can simply remain silent. They are not hurt by the words of others.
This is a matter of free exercise, not establishment. As with the words "under God" for the pledge, atheists and agnostics can simply remain silent. They are not hurt by the words of others.
Amen and Amen.
This is good. We do not need to have looters who disrespect higher authority in our armed forces
Good!
That's because the US Naval Academy is for men, while Zoomie School is for sissies!!!!
Best four years I ever hated in my life.
Really? That's scary. In Clint Jr's scout troop the scoutmaster and ast. scoutmaster were both Navy pilots and the charter rep was a WW2 sub driver...they've been lobbing him hard to go, is that a mistake?
Ping!
Your position is far too lucid to ever be adopted by our courts.
Any 'wich grads out there....?
"God bless this food to our use and us to his service. Amen. Take seats."
No variation. No deviation. 3 times a day. Seven days a week. 9 months a year.
Very inspirational.
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