Posted on 09/01/2004 5:37:10 PM PDT by Land of the Irish
Jesuit Fr. Edward Coughlin blessed a crowd of worshippers attending Mass at St. Francis Xavier Church on Aug. 29, praying for their peace, safety and welfare and giving thanks to God for their "generosity of heart." The crowd, which included more than half of the early Mass attendees, dispersed not into a war zone, but into one of this city's largest anti-war marches.
Xavier's associate pastor, Jesuit Matt Roche, said he was not surprised that almost two-thirds of the congregation left Mass to participate in the demonstration. "This is an unusually aware parish. It's a very political community and a politically aware parish with many interested in politics and committed to actions for peace and justice.
More than 700 persons come to the parish soup kitchen, which is held once a week.
Many of the parishioners include religious sisters who work or reside in the area.
The parishioners joined a throng of activists estimated at between 150,000 and 400,000, comprising some 800 groups affiliated with United for Peace and Justice - organizer of the demonstration. They moved from Washington Square and the streets of Chelsea up Seventh Avenue to Madison Square Garden, where this week the Republican National Convention will nominate George Bush to serve a second term as president.
If these demonstrators had anything to say about it, the script would be different. Their protest was not a rally for "Kerry for President" so much as a giant public critique of the Bush administration's policies on war, the economy, healthcare, social security, nuclear weapons, trade policy, education, the environment, immigration, labor and human rights.
Protestors sang, chanted, drummed, shouted and waved banners, placards and puppets to demonstrate their anger at the current state of the union. They used pathos and humor for emphasis. Several carried flag-draped coffins representing the nearly 1,000 men and women killed in the Iraq war.
A group of "Billionaires for Bush" donned tuxedos, evening gowns and cocktail glasses all the while ordering "more tax cuts" as their beverage of choice.
"I was simply blown away by how many different people and how many different messages were here," said Freda Berrigan, who was in the lead off section of the march, representing the national committee of the War Resisters League. The League, which prides itself as the oldest continuous protest group in America, drew many Catholic activists, including Jesuit Fr. Simon Harak, who has served as the anti-military coordinator of the group for a year.
Marching alongside the League were members of the Catholic Worker, of the Kairos Community-Plowshares New York and of the Atlantic Life Community, a network of resistance communities stretching up and down the East Coast. Besides New York and New Jersey protestors, others arrived from Boston, Baltimore, Hartford, Philadelphia, Chicago and more than 1,000 from the San Francisco Bay area.
Kairos member and veteran Plowshare activist Elmer Maas told NCR he was not just marching against the "pre-emptive" war in Iraq, but also against the array of weapons being planned and manufactured by the military to "ensure our global, our almost cosmic dominance of air and space."
Members of the Kairos and Plowshare contingent remembered in "our hearts, our minds and our statements" Oblate Fr. Karl Cabot, and the three Dominican nuns -- Carol Gilbert, Ardeth Platte and Jackie Hudson -- who are all serving time in Colorado prisons. The sisters hammered on missiles and spilled their blood in late 2002 "to bring to consciousness and to life the fact that the U.S. has more than 10,000 nuclear weapons while it was preparing to go to war against Saddam Hussein who had none," Maas said. "The sisters exposed the lies behind Bush's war even before it started," he said.
Other sisters at the march pointed to the absence of the Catholic hierarchy in the fight to prevent both the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. "The bishops have not called the faith community to ponder the injustice of these kinds of war," said Dominican Sr. Arlene Flaherty, director of the 30-year-old Intercommunity Center for Justice and Peace here.
Flaherty noted that Cardinal Edward Egan would give the invocation at the Convention. While that may go with being the leading prelate in the host city, "unfortunately, this will be the sound bite Catholics hear all across the nation."
The nun visited her "Dominican family" in Iraq in 2000 and took their cause to the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva. She also demonstrated on behalf of Iraqi citizens -- along with some 100 other New York-area religious leaders -- outside the United States Mission to the United Nations.
Flaherty believes the "incredible increase in poverty and its effects on our children" is directly related to the escalating costs of militarism and the Bush administration's low regard for the welfare of the poor and of families. It's "crucial," that the bishops "who talk about the renewal of communities" start to "connect the dots" between the wages of war and the poverty and lack of healthcare of millions of Americans, she said.
For Dominican Sr. Kathleen Phelan, who serves on the elected leadership of her congregation's Eastern Province, the march was another opportunity to exercise her First Amendment rights. Phelan, who proudly displayed her "I have family in Iraq," button said she was amazed to see so many armed soldiers in the train stations and on the sidewalks of New York since the Republicans came to town.
Several Catholic marchers took issue with the Republicans' choice of a city that had been so devastated on 9/11. "It is a crass exploitation of the recent trauma to come here now," said Mary Ragan, a director at the Psychotherapy and Spirituality Institute, in Lower Manhattan, near Ground Zero. "Any use of footage of 9/11 further exploits the grief of families whose grief needs to be held in private."
Ragan pointed to the horrific physical and psyche blow hurled at the city three years ago, but also to the outpouring of kindness that followed the evil -- from New Yorkers and from people around the world. She compared Sunday's march to one of the many rituals that followed 9/11 in the city. "A march like this can be used for healing."
Marcher Vince Comiskey, who brought his 76-year-old "not very good knees" to the march, noted that a Republican counter-demonstrator at Madison Square Garden held out a sign reading: "I am pro-life." Comiskey wanted to tell her that he too is pro-life, but "I am not pro-war, or pro-death penalty," said the veteran campaigner who, along with his wife, Joan, represented Pax Christi International at the United Nations for many years. He regretted that the size of the rally made dialogue with Republican onlookers difficult.
[Patricia Lefevere, a frequent contributor to NCR, lives in New Jersey.]
But your enemy is pro-war, Mr. Comiskey and your enemy wants to kill all your children and grandchildren.
The question not who likes war, no one likes war. The question is, do the innocent deserve to be defended from the aggressor?
I know what the Church teaches and it is not the pacifism of a pampered middle class.
that's because so-called pro-life groups can give two s**t's about war or the death-penalty. It's their own brand of "cafeteria catholicsim" to overlook that the Pope has condemned this war.
I'm sorry you are very, very wrong. There is such a thing as a just war. There are times where the death penalty has been called for. The pope's teachings on war and the death penalty are not unchanging Catholic Truths. They are the pope's OPINIONS. There is a very big difference.
Please read your Catechism.
By the way, how many have been killed by the war in Iraq this past year? How many have been killed by the death penalty in the US this year? How many have been slaughtered by abortion in the US this year?
Don't listen to her. If she's read the Catechism, she's dissenting from it.
and again. Read post #22.
Benediction Arlene, not invocation. I see the ignorant nun slept through more than just theology class.
Thursday, September 2, 2004
"A Safer World, A More Hopeful America"
7:45 p.m. to 11:15 p.m. EDT
Convention Call to Order
Representative Henry Bonilla (TX)
Deputy Permanent Co-Chair
Presentation of Colors
New York Port Authority
Pledge of Allegiance
Mary Lou Retton and Kerri Strug
Olympic Gold Medalists
National Anthem
Nicole C. Mullen, Nashville, TN
Invocation
Bishop Keith Butler, Southfield, MI
Lynn Swann
NFL Hall of Famer
Dorothy Hamill
Olympic Gold Medalist
The Honorable Michael Williams (TX)
Music
Donnie McClurkin
Music
Michael W. Smith
Governor George Pataki (NY)
President George W. Bush
Benediction
Cardinal Egan
Uh-oh, remember the "theologically conservative but politically liberal" type I talked about many months ago?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1171080/posts?page=6#6
Here seems to be a classic example at post#22 (by "dissident daughter"), and she is supposedly Catholic.
I don't see any theological conservatism in post 22.
The theologically conservative position is that it is all right to kill in war and to carry out the death penalty, but murder to kill the preborn.
She's socially *and* theologically liberal, as far as I can see.
I don't see any theological conservatism in post 22.
The theologically conservative position is that it is all right to kill in war and to carry out the death penalty, but murder to kill the preborn.
She's socially *and* theologically liberal, as far as I can see.
Thanks, that makes everything much clearer now.
I'm not "supposedly" Catholic -- I'm Catholic!
For someone who is pro-life --- that means ALL life, to be asaulted by neo-con catholics, shows that you are more motivated by politics than theology.
Your arguments against abortion lack credibility when you fail to defend all life.
Jesus was killed by the death penalty, by the way.
When I lived in New York several years ago, I went to mass once at this beautiful old and enormous Jesuit church.
So have I. It is Irish architect Patrick C. Keely's masterpiece, built in 1882, modeled on the floor plan of the Cathedral of Pisa, and resembling the church of the Gesu in Rome. Frescoed by Williwm Lamprecht, and containing a Priviledged altar, it is a true gem.
Once known for having some of the finest sacred music in the city, and even the nation (Pietro Yon, Gaston Dethier, Bruno Oscar Klein were among its famous organists). Fr. John Young, Choirmaster for many years, was repsonsible for bringing the carol "Silent Night" to the US.
It was famous for its brilliant preaching, and many devotions. Its former lower church (now the soup kitchen!) is where Thomas Merton was converted.
Sadly, it ceased being Catholic some 35 years ago. This is where DIGNITY was born - and flourished for over 20 years. It is the first church where "Gay masses" were held. And still are.
FYI - the Jesuits are raising funds to completely wreckovate and destroy the beautiful interior - as they have done with other of their churches across the country.
Nothing you could tell me about that parish - or the Jesuits - is a surprise any more.
"Jesus was killed by the death penalty, by the way."
No, Jesus willingly laid down his life. Had the law of the era been properly applied, he would not have been crucified.
"I'm not "supposedly" Catholic -- I'm Catholic!"
Bill Buckley says that when somebody asks him if he's a *good* Catholic he answers, "No, but I'd like to be."
Liberalism and Catholicsm are incompatible. Catholicism is of and from God. Liberalism is of and from Satan. Practically any belief a Catholic has that the Hildebeeste would endorse is in conflict with Catholicism.
That specifically includes the liberal position on war (otherwise known as "kicking Evil's @ss") and the death penalty.
So says John Kerry (unless he's courting the Jewish vote).
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