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In Rememberance

Memorial Day

The photo is from a photo essay by Danel J. Wood.

Heavenly Father, Whose care and guidance brought our forefathers to this great land, and led them through faith, courage and self-sacrifice to build the foundations of a great democratic nation, dedicated to Thy service and the rights of man, lead us, O God, in our day, as Thou didst lead our forefathers, and help us to be faithful stewards of the heritage which Thou hast entrusted to us.

Reverently, on this Memorial Day, in Thy holy presence, we pay our tribute of respect to the memory of those who gave their lives in the service of our country. We pray, that the souls of these, our heroic dead may have found perfect rest in Thee, and received the crown of an unfading life. O Thou, Eternal Lover of souls, cherish and bless them, we entreat Thee, and give unto us, the living, peace and hope as we think of them in this solemn hour.

Before Thee, O Lord God, we humbly acknowledge our debt to them, and beseech Thee to give us the strength, to go on towards the ideals for which they fought and died. Take, O Lord, the veil from their hearts, and join us in one communion with all Thy saints on earth, and in the life beyond.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. — From Memorial Day Prayers according to the Ritual of the Polish National Catholic Church

Christian Witness, PNCC, , ,

Actions Speak Louder Than Words! 

From the Rt. Rev. Thaddeus Peplowski from the May – June – July 2009 Issue of ACTS, a publication of the Buffalo-Pittsburgh Diocese of the Polish National Catholic Church:

We are all familiar with the saying: “Actions speak louder than words!” It reminds us that when positive things are being done, then the words that introduced the actions need not be repeated, since they are being manifested.

When Jesus spoke of His death and resurrection, they were mere words to the Apostles who did not even want to hear them; but when Christ died on the cross, that action stung the hearts of these men, who seemed to be completely lost in their sorrow. The resurrection from the dead of our Savior and His multiple appearances to His disciples, made them reassess everything that Jesus said during His three-year ministry in a new light of faith and truth. Before the resurrection, they were just ordinary men with ordinary fears, but after He rose from the dead and breathed upon them the gift of the Holy Spirit, they were transformed into superheroes, men who feared nothing, even death itself. The kind of faith that they professed as missionaries caused the fledging Church to grow by leaps and bounds – nothing could restrain the power of the Word that caused the spontaneous growth of the Church.

That is the kind of faith and spirit that needs to be revived in the Church today. The Holy Spirit is guiding us to a variety of groups of people, not only here in our country, but even in far-off Italy, who are seeking to create parishes modeled after the example of the Polish National Catholic Church. The so-called “hidden treasure” of our ecclesial structure is being sought after as the ideal form of establishing National Catholic Parishes that resemble early Christian communities. Yes, just speaking about our faith is not enough, we need to share it in outward form of helping others to establish congregations regardless of their ethnic, national or racial background, so that our words may produce actions.

Recently, we have been responding to the pleading of Catholic people who are desperately seeking to establish parishes within the PNCC. We are accepting their challenge and going forth to help them. Just like St. Paul accepted the call of the Macedonians, so we too must reach out and assist those who are seeking to become one with us in faith and service. If we fail to answer their call, we are also failing our Lord Jesus Christ who in the Great Commission delegated His Apostles to “Go, therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19-20)

We too, like the Apostles, are commissioned to continue the same missionary call of bringing those who are abandoned and lost back into the fold of the Church. It is wrong to proselytize members of other churches, but it is good to respond to the call of people who are seeking to become members of our Church, and come to us on their own. On Pentecost, when Peter converted over 3,000 Jewish men, he did so because they came to him, seeking the Word of Life and seeking conversion and baptism on their own. We need to do more than speak about the blessings that God has bestowed upon the National Catholic Movement; we need to open our hearts and minds to welcoming into our fold those who wish to be brothers and sisters with us in the One, Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church that the Polish National Catholic Church professes to be in doctrine and practice.

…Opportunities are always being presented to us, all we need to do is respond to the plea of people who are seeking to become National Catholics. We need to embrace them with the same welcoming love that each one of our parishes received when they were accepted into the Polish National Catholic Church.

Pray for the continued success of our Mission and Evangelism Program … that it may bring new members to our existing parishes, as well as inspiring groups of believers who are seeking to establish new PNCC congregations. It is only through the Words of encouragement that our Prayers and Words of faith precipitate the Actions of organizing new Parishes, proving that Actions do speak louder than Words.

Christian Witness, PNCC,

Year of the Laid-Off Workers Support Group

From the Toledo Blade: Optimist works to nix negativity

The first week, Chris Cremean sat all by himself. The second week, two people showed up and yesterday – week three – both returned.

With the local jobless rate hitting 12.6 percent in March, Mr. Cremean is pretty confident his new support group for the unemployed will expand soon enough.

Yesterday morning, at Resurrection Polish National Catholic Church in Temperance, he was joined by the same two middle-aged women from last week’s session.

“First they came and said, ‘Do you have answers?’ Of course, everybody’s looking for answers. And I said, ‘No, we’re going to talk about your questions.’ Sometimes, that’s all you need, to talk it out.”

Should we just go ahead now and designate 2009 as the Year of the Laid-Off Workers Support Group?

Or does that sound too negative?

Mr. Cremean may be a college-educated, 57-year-old man enduring the second layoff of his lifetime, but one thing this Toledo man is not is negative.

“What I find exciting is that old saying about how when one door closes, another one opens. But if you don’t take the lessons you learned, you’re gonna get depressed. You’re gonna withdraw, you’re gonna retire.”

Mr. Cremean dislikes the word.

“It should be [struck] from the language,” he insisted.

If he’s learned anything from his 34-year career working with older people – as a social worker, and a long-term and home-care administrator – it’s how to age successfully.

“I’ve watched how people get to be 100, and they were involved and active their whole life.

“They may have had a job for 20 or 30 years, but they were always involved and engaged in something else. ‘Retire,’ the word itself, means to detach, to give up. It’s all negative.”

Like many unemployed folks, Mr. Cremean (jobless since October) feels he has nothing to lose by launching his own business.

The company’s name – Caregiver Resources Group – is self-explanatory.

“I always read there’s a need for support of the caregivers, so … I’m going to go out on my own, take the bull by the horns and see if I can make this work.”

See? Nothing negative about him. If anything, he’s a man for our times.

Losing a job these days is “so widespread there’s less of the stigma. It’s almost like, ‘Oh, I lost mine, too! Join the club!'”

Sure, he said, there are already some support groups around Toledo for the newly jobless.

“But I’d encourage every church or organization to think about [starting one] – the more the merrier!”

Well, maybe not merrier.

Christian Witness, PNCC,

The Hispanic market and the Church

Friend, Dr. Felipe Korzenny, Director of the Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication at Florida State University, and Senior Strategy Consultant for the Captura Group, and Lee Vann, Founder and CEO of the Captura Group have several new articles out examining different ethnic/cultural groups in the United States and their use of social media.

In The Multicultural World of Social Media Marketing social media usage patterns are explored. The study notes:

We aggregated information to find out what ethnic/cultural groups are more likely to visit social networking sites. We found broad diversity in social media behaviors among different ethnic/cultural groups and that emerging minorities visit social networking sites more frequently than non-Hispanic whites.

We then broke out the data for leading social networks, MySpace and Facebook, to see if there are any groups leading usage of the most popular social networking sites—”again, minorities lead the way, with English Preferring Hispanics being twice as likely to visit MySpace regularly than Non-Hispanic Whites. The relative importance of emerging minorities as compared with the traditional majority points to a major shift in social influence…

The study goes on to state:

Culturally, ethnic minorities tend to be drawn to collectivistic values and often look to one another to help guide decisions and opinions. In addition, ethnic minorities are more likely to leverage social networks to communicate with groups of family and friends who are geographically dispersed. Social media facilitates such collective sharing of information and communication.

We can take this information and juxtapose it to the role of the faith as a key expression of these “collectivistic values” and as a centering point for leveraging social networks essential to communication and collaboration in the Hispanic community.

In Reaching Spanish Preferring Hispanics on Facebook the authors reiterate the cultural ethic — ethnic minorities tend to be more collectivistic and go on to note that there is a dearth of culturally relevant content online.. While a certain type of relevancy — that which is considered current and trendy — is not important in the faith context, the other type of relevancy — that which begins with understanding, and speaks the language of the heart — is important.

Bishop Hodur’s National model continues to be an effective means of communicating with those in need of God’s power and healing. God is best communicated, is most clearly understood, in a cultural, national, and linguistic context that relates.

PNCC,

Welcoming St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish, Lucca, Italy

Welcome to the PNCC. I wish you every blessing in your mission, ministry, and witness.

sc0071b4dfThe parish was formed by former members of the Convocation of American Churches in Europe (TEC) who had worshiped at St. James Parish in Florence and who subsequently left TEC to become members of the Episcopal Orthodox Mission in Italy under the Diocese of Ruvuma, Anglican Church of Tanzania.

On January 25, 2009 the Rt. Rev. Thaddeus Peplowski of the Buffalo-Pittsburgh Diocese of the PNCC, who has oversight of the churches in Europe, conditionally ordained Fr. Claudio BoccaFr. Bocca was the first native Italian to be ordained in TEC. When he joined the Tanzanian Church he was inhibited (July 19, 2004), and was later deposed by the Rt. Rev. Pierre W. Whalon, Bishop in Charge, Convocation of American Churches in Europe. and Deacons Gastone Bernacchi, and Paolo Leone. Fr. Bocca was appointed pastor of St. Stainislaus Kostka and Deacons Bernacchi and Leone were assigned to the parish.

The parish serves Americans, Poles, and Italians amongst the beauty of Tuscany. Fr. Bocca’s wife Alicia is originally from Poland.

Christian Witness, Perspective, PNCC, , , ,

Keeping the slaves

From TPM: What Part of Illegal Don’t Conservatives Understand — or Why do They Ignore Wage Theft

Wage theft is illegal. Yet rightwing politicians largely dismiss the problem and most systematically oppose laws to increase enforcement of wage laws. Yet at the same time in recent years, those conservative politicians have been attacking undocumented immigrants as undermining wage standards for native workers. The hypocrisy is palpable, but here’s a lesson: state legislators standing up against wage theft have been able to expose that hypocrisy.

At Progressive States Network, we’ve worked with community groups, advocates and legislators to promote wage enforcement directly as a counterpoint to anti-immigrant rhetoric and promote a policy agenda that builds support for all workers, native and immigrant alike. In states like Kansas, Iowa, and Connecticut, anti-immigrant legislation has been derailed once the issue of the failure to enforce broader wage laws entered the discussion. For example:

In Connecticut in 2007, a bill was introduced that would have made it a criminal offense to hire undocumented workers, but instead it was modified into a state law that goes after all employers who commit workers’ compensation premium fraud in order to cheat workers out of benefits.

When the Iowa Senate in 2008 approved SF 2416, a bill to toughen enforcement against employers who violate Iowa wage laws, it stalled movement in that chamber of an anti-immigrant bill approved in that state’s House and halted anti-immigrant legislation for 2008.

When the Kansas House in 2008 voted to gut an anti-immigrant bill by adding provisions to severely punish employers violating wage laws and exploiting undocumented immigrants, it led to deadlock on a purely anti-immigrant bill in the state Senate that lacked those wage enforcement provisions. Anti-immigrant politicians walked away from their own bill rather than support wage law enforcement amendments.

If anti-immigrant politicians resist such wage enforcement proposals, it just emphasizes that their supposed concern for wage losses by low-income workers is an empty smokescreen for hatred and nativism.

…

The point is that anti-immigrant resentment smolders across the country, partly because of racism and cultural xenophobia, but also with a greater number of people who recognize the unacceptability of illegal sweatshops, but wrongly have been told to scapegoat immigrants and the immigration system. When progressives stand up and attack wage theft directly and demand real enforcement of wage and hour laws, the elimination of illegal sweatshops will help blunt the effectiveness of much of the overall anti-immigrant political attack.

What most don’t seem to ‘get’ is that wage theft and other abuses heaped on workers — and most especially on undocumented workers — amounts to a new system of slavery. Call it indentured servitude or slavery, the effect is the same. State and Federal laws were enacted to protect all workers without concern over their status because to do otherwise would amount to complicity with corrupt employers. Employers who fail to abide by those laws, simply because the worker doesn’t speak English, or is undocumented, or is in some other way powerless, are no more than slave-holders.

People won’t buy goods from China because of its treatment of Tibet, but they feel perfectly content shaving a few nickels off their restaurant bill — those nickels being the unpaid wages owed to a new class of slaves.

These ‘new slaves’ are us. They are our grandparents and great-grandparents, the people Bishop Hodur stood with when they were abused by the coal bosses of Pennsylvania. That is our legacy. I stand with workers, to protect their God given humanity and dignity. As a Church we must stand with workers so that the words of a deceased coal miner won’t have to be recorded again (from King coal: a piece of eastern Pennsylvania history by Jill M. Beccaris and Christine Woyshner in Social Education, January 1, 2007).

Forty years I worked with a pick and drill,
Down in the mines against my will,
The Coal King’s slave, but now it’s passed
Thanks be to God I am free at last. –Tombstone of an anthracite miner in Hazleton, Pennsylvania.

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