The last time our friend Christopher J. Doucot spoke at an Episcopal church was in 2004. He had just returned from Iraq, and gave what he describes as a “somewhat forceful sermon” critical of the U.S.-led invasion there.

A graduate of Yale Divinity School, a founding member of the Hartford Catholic Worker, and an instructor in sociology at Central Connecticut State University, Chris was told to keep it upbeat on Sunday -- All Saints' Day -- when he is scheduled to speak at St. James Episcopal Church in West Hartford, Conn.

When I was a kid, my understanding of the saints was that they were something like the cartoon superheroes I watched on Saturday mornings. They could fly, endure great suffering, go years without eating and heal people by praying over them. They were not real people.

As I got older, I began to see various athletes from Boston's professional sports teams as saintly – if not saints in the making. Carl Yaztremski of the Red Sox was the patron of the lost cause who never gave up. Terry O'Reilly of the Boston Bruins was the defender of the meek. He spent hours in the penalty box for busting the noses of any player from the opposing team who got in Wayne Cashman's way. Unfortunately, O'Reilly didn't confine his bellicosity to the ice. Once, in 1979, he climbed into the stands of Madison Square Garden to beat a New York Ragners fan with his own shoe.

Continue reading "Guest post: The vision of the saints" »

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When I was living in London 20 years ago, I was touched one Halloween when a British friend surprised me with a card to mark the holiday.

It was the first and only Halloween card I've ever received. Obviously, I didn't tell her that. She thought she was helping me to feel at home in her country by remembering a tradition from mine; why tell her that it isn't really a holiday for exchanging cards?

Since then, however, Europeans have become more familiar with Halloween. Which is why the Vatican has grown more vocal in its condemnation of the annual observance.

In an article in L'Osservatore Romano, the Holy See says Halloween is a pagan celebration of "terror, fear and death." The official Vatican paper warns parents against allowing children to dress up as ghosts and ghouls.

(We're getting this from British newspapers, because we haven't been able to find the original story at the L'Osservatore Romano Web site.)

The article, headlined “The Dangerous Messages of Halloween,” quotes liturgical expert Joan Maria Canals as saying 'Halloween has an undercurrent of occultism and is absolutely anti-Christian” and urging parents “'to be aware of this and try to direct the meaning of the feast towards wholesomeness and beauty rather than terror, fear and death.'

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Categories: Catholicism, Culture, Holidays, International, Wicca
        

The current issue of the Baltimore Jewish Times has a nicely observed cover story about the murky future facing the Congregation of Israel, a small shul in the Eastern Shore hamlet of Pocomoke City that decided not to hold High Holiday services this year for the first time in its 130-year history. Managing editor Alan H. Feiler writes:

This evening, as the first faint traces of darkness fall on Pocomoke City — a picturesque but economically depressed town about 40 minutes southeast of Salisbury — Congregation of Israel’s humble, 60-year-old building will remain silent, solemn and empty at the start of Rosh Hashanah. Once a community of 20 to 25 Jewish families and considered the epicenter of Eastern Shore Jewry, Pocomoke City today has, at best, only an estimated handful of Jews.

“It’s really sad,” said Pocomoke City Mayor Michael A. McDermott. “A lot of the families had stores here and in other communities around here, and they organized this synagogue. But a lot of the families relocated or their children moved on, so it dried up. Having the synagogue in the city, even if it was lightly used, was unique. It was slowly ebbing away, but there’s a real sense of loss. We’ve lost a part of our heritage.”

Tammy Green and her family first stumbled upon Congregation of Israel while vacationing in Delaware during the High Holidays in 1972, Feiler reports. They have been back every year since.

“We wanted something intimate and different than our synagogue in Bethesda, and it’s become an important part of our lives,” she says. “Back then, there were three families to make sure that everyone had a home to go to for dinner, like an extended family. But the people started to die off. I don’t know what we’ll do this year for the holidays. [Congregation of Israel] is very close to my heart.”

Read the rest of the story at jewishtimes.com.

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On the eve or Rosh Hashanah, Jewish leaders in the United States are asking rabbis to emphasize the faith's ethical requirements in their sermons in response to recent financial scandals involving its members, the Associated Press is reporting.

Jews have been embarrassed the past year by the arrest of former Wall Street tycoon [Bernie] Madoff, who is serving a 150-year prison sentence for defrauding investors out of billions of dollars, and several rabbis who were arrested in July on money laundering charges, said Richard Joel, president of Yeshiva University in New York.

Widely distributed images showed them being led into the FBI building in Newark in rabbinical garb and handcuffs didn't help.

Locally, Rabbi Jay Kenneth Wagner, the assistant principal at Yeshivat Rambam Maimonides Academy of Baltimore, was indicted this week on charges of stealing more than $13,000 in school checks that he deposited into his own bank account,

"It's troubling," Rabbi Moshe Kletenik, president of the Rabbinical Council of America, which comprises about 1,000 rabbis in the U.S., Canada and Israel, tells AP reporter Victor Epstein. "Ethical living is as significant a part of leading a religious life as ritual law."

Read the rest of the Associated Press story here.

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Local Muslims are planning to fulfill their Ramadan obligation to help the needy on Saturday by giving a hot meal, clothing, health screening, contacts for job training and other assistance to more than 1,000 homeless people in Baltimore.

Organized in 19 cities nationwide by Islamic Relief, the annual Day of Dignity will be hosted locally by Masjid Ul Haqq at 514 Islamic Way. Since coming to Baltimore in 2005, organizers say, the effort has served nearly 3,500 people.

Initiated in Los Angeles, the event is now held annually in New York, Washington, Philadelphia,Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, Detroit and other cities.

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President Barack Obama is taking advantage of the start of Ramadan on Saturday to make another overture to the Muslim world. In a holiday message now on the White House Web site, he wishes Muslims Ramadan Kareem, and then details U.S. efforts to engage Muslims in much the same language that he used during his address in Cairo in June.

“Beyond America’s borders, we are … committed to keeping our responsibility to build a world that is more peaceful and secure,” Obama says in the new message. “That is why we are responsibly ending the war in Iraq. That is why we are isolating violent extremists while empowering the people in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. That is why we are unyielding in our support for a two-state solution that recognizes the rights of Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace and security. ...

“All of these efforts are a part of America’s commitment to engage Muslims and Muslim-majority nations on the basis of mutual interest and mutual respect. And at this time of renewal, I want to reiterate my commitment to a new beginning between America and Muslims around the world.”

The complete transcript follows, after the jump.

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The Rev. Jason Poling is pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

As I prepare to celebrate my eighth Father’s Day (as an honoree) I join so many of my colleagues in realizing that I am turning into my father.

It’s the little things: eating food past the sell-by date, cutting dead limbs off of trees, hitting rest stops at the last possible moment. And energy conservation.

Fathers, I think, must have been the first conservationists. No doubt it was somebody’s dad who wondered aloud, and repeatedly, whether the cave needed the fire to be so hot.

And so I tromp about the house turning off lights and yelling at my kids about leaving doors open (Are you trying to air-condition the back yard?) and closing blinds on the east side of the house in the morning and on the west in the afternoon. I admonish my wife to load the dishwasher without rinsing the dishes first so we don’t strain the well. And let’s not get into septic system management.

Growing up I remember looking forward to my grandparents’ visits because the house would be heated above freezing and the fridge would be stocked with real milk instead of the powdered skim stuff my dad mixed up every few days in a harvest gold Tupperware pitcher. Until my dad installed an attic fan that sounded like a jet engine taking off and slammed every open door in the house we sweated the sheets every summer; the window fan in my room was supposedly set on low for respiratory health but I knew it was about the electric bill.

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