From CBS4 Denver: Good Samaritan Comes To The Rescue After Church Vandalism
(CBS4) – A Good Samaritan has come to the rescue for a Catholic church in the Denver area.
In July someone stole the 5 foot statue outside the Saint Francis Assisi Parish. The church bought a $1,500 replacement but then that statue was vandalized.
An Adams County woman saw the story in the paper and decided to help. She just goes by Angie and has experience working with fiberglass. In her free time she has been piecing together the statue.
“Here was this horribly damaged statue, and I felt bad. So I thought ‘Well, I can do that,’” she said.
Angie said there’s a message she’d like to share in relation to her efforts.
“If you can help out, volunteer and help out. It’s not harming anyone to help,” she said…
God bless you and thank you Angie.
The Polish Community Center invites all to its Traditional Polish Wigilia – Vigil Supper and “Tribute to Volunteers” honoring those who have given of their time and talents on Saturday, January 15th starting at 6pm.
The eveing will include a sharing of “Opłatek” (Oblation Wafer), the customs and traditions of Christmas, singing of Kolędy And Carols, and familiar Polish Cuisine.
Member, guests, and friends are welcome. Reservations are recommended. Tickets are $12, Volunteers are free. Please call 518-456-3995 to make reservations.
The PCC is located at 225 Washington Ave Ext, Albany NY 12205.
From Christian Newswire: Top Eight Things Your Church Can Do to Increase Membership in 2011
Most churches in the United States are facing declining membership, but the message is still as relevant as in the past. So what’s changed? The message is getting lost in all the clutter.
Here are my top 8 tips for increasing your church membership in 2011:
- List your church on Google Places. Last month 17 million people googled “church, find a church, church home, Methodist Church, Baptist church, etc.”
- Make up or buy some cards that invite people to your church and hand them out to every member. Ask them to go out and perform random acts of kindness and give out the cards. Memory Cross has developed some very unique ones or you can create your own. If each of your members can touch three people a year, think what an impact that would make to your community and your church.
- Get a list of people in the neighborhoods around your church and reach out to them at least 3-4 times a year. Postcards are a great tool because they are inexpensive and people have to see them, at least for a second.
- Create door hangers or flyers and give them to members to hand out in their neighborhood.
- Hold a free community event. It can be anything from a car wash to a concert to handing out bottles of water on a hot summer day. Do not accept any donations. Instead hand out a card with your church information on it.
- Start using email marketing and ask for the names and email address of all visitors. This will provide you a second way to connect with them.
- Set up a system where you connect visitors with someone in your church as soon as possible. Too many people come one time; and if they don’t feel connected to the church, they may not return. Even a phone call to thank them for visiting is a great way to open up conversation.
- Form a group that is committed to praying for people in your community. Meet on a regular basis and encourage them to write down any outreach ideas they come up with.
If you take action on these eight steps, you will find new visitors coming to your church and people’s lives being changed.
Break out the noise makers and strike up the band. Let’s ring in the New Year the best way we can!
Join the Polish Community Center, 225 Washington Ave Ext, Albany NY, for a New Year’s Eve Party on Friday, December 31 starting at 7pm. Advance tickets are $85 per person if paid by 12/26, $100 per person at the door. Your admission includes appetizers, buffet dinner, Viennese dessert table, coffee, tea, house open bar, champagne toast at midnight, dancing, party favors, midnight snack. Live entertainment with DJ Paradise (contemporary music).
For reservation please call the Polish Community Center at 518-456-3995 or Marian Wiercioch at 518-235-5549.
Przywitaj Nowy Rok 2011 po Polsku!
Bal Sylwestrowy organizowany przez Polski Klub w Albany NY (225 Washington Ave Ext, Albany NY 12205)
Piątek 31 Grudnia, 2010 rozpoczęcie balu o godz. 7 wieczorem do tańca gra DJ Paradise.
$85 od osoby za bilety przedpłacone do 26 grudnia, $100 od osoby za bilety przy wejściu.
W cenie wliczone zimne przekąski, kolacja, posiłek po północy, alkohol, ciasto, kawa, herbata, szampański toast o północy, kapelusze, trąbki
Wszystkich serdecznie zapraszamy na szampańska zabawę!
Po bilety i rezerwacje prosimy dzwonić do Klubu PCC: 518-456-3995 albo Marian Wiercioch 518-235-5549
From Gazeta Wyborcza: A Dominican’s dramatic letter: The Sins of My Church (Dramatyczny list dominikanina: Winy mojego Kościoła)
“All is not well with the Polish Church. It is large, colorful, impressive – but really is artificially inflated like a balloon. I’m afraid we do not appreciate the risks.”
Rev. Wiśniewski is a famous university chaplain who, in Communist times, signed the first declaration of the Civil Rights movement in Poland. The East German secret police, Stasi, considered him one of the sixty most dangerous persons in the Polish opposition.
The eight page letter presents an unusually severe diagnosis of the Polish Church’s problems. Among the problems he notes:
- Scandalous division within the Polish episcopate: Bishops work against each other by using the facade of Catholic faith to divide society and the Church into rival political camps and causes. These efforts are in effect “pagan as they inflame and divide society and the Church itself.” He noted the recent example of some Bishops writing to major newspapers in support of the “Defenders of the Cross” protests in front of Poland’s Presidential Palace.
- Politics over the Gospel: Half of the priests are “infected with xenophobia, nationalism and shamefully hidden anti-Semitism.” He notes that these priests have lost sight of the boundaries between the gospel and politics. They use vulgarities in the pulpit to condemn or support specific political parties and politicians.
- A lack of discipline: By example he notes the unresolved issue of Radio Maryja, where in addition to prayer, people “learn fanaticism, resentment and even hatred for those who think differently” from a member of the clergy.
- An inability to communicate: The hierarchy is unable to communicate with changing world. Their communications are meant to convey pronounced conviction, zeal, zest, and great confidence, but in the opinion of professionals, they come across as incompetent.
Rev. Wiśniewski proposes a “great debate” that will “restore the true” face “of the church.” This debate should be given to the care of special teams under the auspices of one of the major bishops. This should include a team “to address the issue of education and religious education of children and young people” as well as an assessment of the activity of clergy in the media, particularly that of Rev. Tadeusz Rydzyk, director of Radio Maryja.
Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek called the letter a moving call to repair the church.
2010 marked the Year of Frederick Chopin. The year 2010 was the 200th anniversary of the birth of this eminent figure. There were great celebrations and concerts as well as piano competitions throughout the world and in particular in Poland in his honor.
We also celebrated another important figure in the history of arts, literature, and particularly poetry in Poland, Maria Konopnicka. 2010 marked the 100th anniversary of her passing. Maria Konopnicka is beloved of the Polish National Catholic Church in particular. Bishop Hodur established societies in her honor, as well in honor of Juliusz Słowacki, so as to promote literature and arts among Polish immigrants to the United States.
The following article appeared in the September 21, 2010 edition of God’s Field, written by the Very Rev. Frederyk Banas: Maria Konopnicka, May 23, 1842 – October 8, 1910, Poland’s Great Poetess
October 8, 2010 marks the 100th anniversary of the death of Poland’s great poetess, Maria Konopnicka. It was at the time of her death in 1910 that our beloved Organizer, the late Prime Bishop Franciszek Hodur was in Poland and learned of the death of this great woman after whom he had already organized societies in his church in the United States. The Roman Church refused her burial considering her an enemy and heretic because she had the courage to speak and write of the evils in the Church of Rome and its exploitation of the poor.
The family of the late poetess learned of the presence of Prime Bishop Hodur in Poland and requested that he conduct the funeral service. However, after hearing of this, the Roman hierarchy had changed its mind and decided to conduct the funeral service for her. Bishop Hodur presented his message and placed a large wreath with the inscription: “To Poland’s Great Poetess from the Polish National Catholic Church in the United States.”
The late Prime Bishop Francis Hodur in his introductory comments to the first volume of poetry published by the United Ladies’ Maria Konopnicka Societies in Scranton, PA, in 1946 said:
“Maria Konopnicka is not only the greatest poetess of the Polish people, but we can say without exaggeration, that she is the greatest poet of the human race. Before her, three women have gained fame as poets, namely: Deborah, living in the 11th century before Christ, living in that era which was known as the period of Judges; Sapphonia, living near the end of the 7th century on the island of Lesbos in Greece, and Ada Negri, living at the end of the 19th century in Italy and a contemporary of Maria Konopnicka.
History tells us that Deborah was a prophetess a judge and a poet. She wrote patriotic songs calling the Jewish people to fight for their freedom and liberty; these songs were sung either by her when she led the soldiers into battle, or by others designated by her.
Sapphonia was a poet of nature. She wrote beautiful poems about the mountains, the forests, the valleys and about all of those beautiful things which spoke to the human heart and soul and which were found on the island of Lesbos. She was persecuted to such an extent that she had to leave and return to southern Italy in order to save her life. After a few years, guided by the love of her home country, she returned to Lesbos and lived out her remaining years.
Ada Negri is truly the daughter of the Italian people. She was born into the family of a poor Italian workman. In spite of extraordinary material difficulties, she secured an adequate education and became a school teacher. She began to write and speak of the poverty of the Italian people. She spoke of the wrongs suffered by the Italian peasant and workman, and as a result of this, she lost her job as a school teacher and was persecuted. After the peasants and workmen received some recognition in the nation, she became very popular and was respected and even practically glorified by her people.
Maria Konopnicka united in her person the talents of the three mentioned immortal names. She was the poetess of her people. She did not lead her people into battle in the common meaning of the term as did Deborah, but she carried on the spiritual battle, calling for more education, equality of all people who constitute the nation, and prophesied victory for the Polish people when justice among them would be satisfied. She loved the natural beauty of the Polish landscape, the glorious majesty of the Tatra Mountains, the fields, streams, the gardens and the villages and all of those things which would foster love for the Fatherland.
She was disillusioned and disgusted with a visit to the Church of St. Joachim in Rome in which were placed all the national standards of all nations of the world, but among which the standard of Poland was not evident. She wrote of this bitterly saying, “Upon these marble walls where even the schismatic Lutheran has his place, this holy martyr for the Christian cause, this sacred Poland has been erased from among the nations of the earth as though anathemized.
From “Do braci zmartwychwstańców.” ” In a poem concerning the Church of Rome she speaks thusly:O Rome! . . . How you have disappointed
me, Rome!
You have not spread your wings over
the brood as the hen does
When in Jerusalem the hawks hovered
over the chicks,
No, you have hid in the smoke of your
thuribles,
And with the hawks you have made
alliance.
In the brightness of the feathers of
peacocks you
Permit yourself to be carried, basking in
the glory
Which you have torn out of the garment
of Christ!Maria Konopnicka struggled for social justice; she was the mediatrix of her people. She wrote of the oppressed, of the disinherited, the orphan and the poverty of her fellowman. The words which she uttered in receiving the gift of a home and a little parcel of land in Zamowiec, a gift of the Polish people in appreciation for her labor, sufferings and work on their behalf, could be interpreted as her will and testament: “On this occasion,” she said, “what do we need? … Love for the earth. Confessors for an ideal, education for the people, respect for work, soldiers for an idea, triumph for truth, unity and equality for all!”
Her principles and ideals were so closely related to those of our beloved Organizer, the late Prime Bishop Francis Hodur. Both lived and struggled for freedom, truth, equality, justice, education, brotherhood and enlightenment; Both were warriors for great causes and issues! People of this caliber are not born daily but are providential! Let us cherish their work and continue on the mission they have begun for causes so noble and holy which will make our Country and our Church great, free, and unique!
From WGRZ-TV in Buffalo and friend Andy Golebiowski: Main Ingredient in Good Sauerkraut: Love
DELAVAN, N.Y. – Every year Steve and Diane Woloszyn invite friends and neighbors over to their house to make sauerkraut for the winter. Their homestead on Weaver Rd. serves as a gathering place for friends from Grand Island to Springville, as well as neighbors from down the road, who bring their crocks to be filled with shredded cabbage. When asked what goes into making the sauerkraut, Steve answers, “A lotta love !”
Along with love, he adds caraway seeds and carrots, according to his taste, and salt to help the cabbage ferment. The caraway seeds his father taught him to add. Adding carrots was something his friend Tony Zawadzki shared with him.
For some who come together, the making of sauerkraut is a continuation of what they learned as children from their grandparents. Tony, who lives in Cheektowaga, makes the 45 minute trek every year to lend the expertise he learned as a boy in Poland. Tony says that he alway looks for easier ways to do things. Some years he used to cut through 50 heads of cabbage for the family in one sitting with a knife. This year he came up with an idea to use a bow saw instead.
“I kiss the saw for making it easy”, jokes Tony, to which 10 year-old Eric Ward responds in all seriousness “My dad actually says ‘Don’t take the easy way out.'”
Eric was joined by his brother younger brother Ryan and little Colton. Colton digs through the huge box full of cabbage looking for leaves that he offers to those working at a long table. There Eric and Ryan’s mom Kerry and Tony Zawadzki’s wife Lottie do the cutting by hand. Kerry says she never liked sauerkraut until she tried the homemade she learned to make from Diane and Steve. Asked what she likes in her sauerkraut, she points to Diane and says “Whatever she makes.”
When the sauerkraut is done, Diane will bake it together with meats and spices to make a stew called “bigos”…
A real tribute to lived tradition and family. Great job Andy!
St. Barbara Day (Barbórka)
Miners dress in special uniforms during Barbórka. The uniform consists of black suit and hat with a feather. The color of the feather (white, red or black) depends on the rank of the miner. Miners wear their decorative uniforms not only during Barborka but also for weddings, funerals and other important political or social ceremonies.
Barbórka is celebrated with Miners’ Balls. Miners from coal-mines of Silesia and Zaglebie do not work underground during this day but participate in festivities. A big Ball takes place each year in Kraków’s University of Mining and Metallurgy (AGH).
Barbórka is celebrated not only in Poland but also in other countries of the region with strong mining tradition like in Germany and in Czech Republic. In Germany the celebration is called “Barbarafeier”.
St. Barbara is not only a patron of coal-miners but also a patron of geologists, mathematicians and many others professions. Her patronage is linked with the fact that according to the legend she was imprisoned in a tall tower. Her imprisonment led to association with variety of construction professions. Her festivities take place in geological institutes and universities of Germany and Austria. St. Barbara is also connected strongly with the Orthodox Church’s tradition.
To prevent accidents miners used to build chapels devoted to their patron, St. Barbara. St. Barbara is also a very celebrated nameday in Poland because Barbara is a popular feminine name.
We had in Poland over hundred mines! Besides black and brown coal also copper and silver are excavated and also salt. But salt miners have their own patron, St. Kinga. St. Kinga’s feast is on July 24th.
We give Thee our most humble and hearty thanks, O God, for blessings without number which we have received from Thee, for all Thy goodness and loving kindness, for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life. And, we beseech Thee, give us that due sense of all Thy mercies, that our hearts may be truly thankful for all things, and that we show forth Thy praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up ourselves to Thy service and by walking before Thee in holiness and righteousness all our days. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. — A General Thanksgiving – from A Book of Devotions and Prayers According to the Use of the Polish National Catholic Church, Published by the Mission Fund of the PNCC, 7th edition, May 1, 1984.
John Guzlowski posted a poem for Thanksgiving at Lightning and Ashes. It begins:
My people were all poor people,
the ones who survived to look
in my eyes and touch my fingers
and those who didn’t, dying insteadof fever or hunger or a bullet
in the face, dying maybe thinking
of how their deaths were balanced
by my birth or one of the otherstories the poor tell themselves
to give themselves the strength
to crawl out of their own graves.…
It is stark, and fitted to our times.
From CNN: More Americans filing for unemployment
The number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits rose by 2,000 in the latest week, pointing to continued weakness in the job market, the government reported Thursday.
The number of initial filings rose to 439,000 in the week ended Nov. 13, the Labor Department said. The number was slightly better than the 442,000 economists surveyed by Briefing.com had expected, but higher than the revised 437,000 initial claims filed the week before.
Overall, the weekly number has been treading water since last November, hovering in the mid to upper 400,000s and even ticking slightly above 500,000 in mid-August.
Economists often say the number needs to fall below 400,000, before the stubbornly high unemployment rate can start dropping significantly…
While Congress (various sources): Fails To Extend UI Benefits – Program Faces Lapse By November 30
On November 18th, the House of Representative failed to pass a three month extension of emergency unemployment benefits (EUC08) setting up the possibility the program will lapse once again on November 30.
Plunging over 2 million people into hopeless economic uncertainty. No lifeline, no paycheck, no jobs — nothing by which they might feed their families, pay for housing, or sustain themselves till the one job for every five people becomes theirs.
The hope for that happening is slim, at least for 6 years at the best estimate. From Money Morning via NuWire: Pre-Recession Unemployment Rates Won’t Be Seen Until At Least 2016
Stocks are up nearly 70% from their bear market lows. Corporate profits are rising. And the economy is expanding. Yet the unemployment rate continues to hover around 10%.
Neither President Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus program, nor the U.S. Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing has generated enough good news to convince companies to hire meaningful numbers of new workers.
Of the 8.7 million people who lost their jobs during the recession, more than 7.3 million are still without work. There are still nearly five job seekers for every job opening. In fact, adding in workers who are working part time but looking for full-time work and those who have given up looking all together brings the “real” unemployment rate to a staggering 17% compared to 16.5% last year, the latest government report shows.
And even though private sector payrolls increased by 151,000 in October – bringing the number of jobs created since the economy bottomed in December 2009 to 1.1 million -the share of the population working or looking for work declined to 64.5%, its lowest level since 1984.
…
The Great Recession has spawned some truly unique – and ugly – economic offspring. But one trend has emerged that sets it apart from most economic downturns: the swelling ranks of the long-term unemployed.
The number of people who’ve been collecting unemployment benefits for at least six months increased by more than 100% in 40 states over the last two years, according to an analysis of unemployment insurance data compiled by National Employment Law Project (NELP).
The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) stood at 6.2 million in October. Those folks now account for 41.8% of the 14.8 million unemployed workers in the country.
“Long term unemployment is more than ever the norm of a layoff , and it’s across the country and across the economy that this is happening,” Andrew Stettner of NELP told the Huffington Post.
The reality of long-term unemployment is even worse than the numbers suggest.
“This is certainly a crisis of huge proportion and it is reflected in an extraordinary number of people unemployed for a very long time,” wrote Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, in an email to the HuffPost. “It’s even worse than that because we’re seeing a large withdrawal from the job market and one can assume that this is among those who have been unemployed a long time — giving up.”
This trend is important because long-term unemployment feeds on itself.
There are a series of consequences that follow long-term unemployed workers far into the future. Job skills deteriorate, job networks disappear, and workers lose hope. The longer a worker is unemployed the less likely he or she is to find a new job and the more likely it is they will find only a lower-paying job.
“People lose job skills, they become unemployable,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “It becomes a real long-term problem. People in their late 40s and 50s who end up out of work for long periods of time may drop out of the work force and never get another regular job.”
There are also other – less obvious – consequences of long-term unemployment. According to recent research, job displacement can lead to significant reductions in life expectancy . Other research shows that the children of these workers earn less when they become adults and enter the labor force.
…
The specter of long-term unemployment will sustain the unemployment rate as the skills of idled workers deteriorate and segments of the labor force are compelled to retrain or move out of the areas of the country that were propped up by the housing bubble. The likely result is that the unemployment rate will fall at only a gradual pace.
…
To determine how long the recovery will take this time, the Brookings Institution recently examined the “job gap,” or the number of months it would take to get back to pre-recession employment levels while absorbing the 125,000 people who enter the labor force each month.
The results show that even under the most optimistic scenarios, it will take years to eliminate the job gap.
If the economy adds about 208,000 jobs per month, the average monthly rate for the best year of job creation in the 2000s, it will take 142 months, or about 12 years to close the job gap.
At a more optimistic rate of 321,000 jobs per month, the average monthly rate for the best year of the 1990s, the economy will reach pre-recession employment levels in 60 months, or about 5 years.
Here’s the takeaway: Based on the history, pre-recession unemployment rates won’t be seen again until at least 2016, and in all probability much later, as idled workers find it harder and harder to land jobs.
Also, if you are unemployed, certain elitist, undereducated, and reactionary segments of society cast the blame squarely on your shoulders. They think you’re banking the money for a lavish vacation and a grope from your local TSA agent. Of course reality is different, one job for every five workers, and that UI benefit money gets spent on the basic needs of life, preventing a horrific dip into poverty. Per the Congressional Budget Office in Unemployment Insurance Benefits and Family Income of the Unemployed [PDF]
- Almost half of families in which at least one person was unemployed received income from UI in 2009. In 2009, the median contribution of UI benefits to the income of families that received those benefits was $6,000, accounting for 11 percent of their family income that year.
- Without the financial support provided to families by UI benefits and under an assumption of no change in employment or other sources of income associated with the absence of that support, the poverty rate and related indicators of financial hardship would have been higher in 2009 than they actually were. For instance, in 2009 the poverty rate was 14.3 percent, whereas without UI benefits and with no behavioral responses taken into account, it would have been 15.4 percent.
But who cares about studies and research when we are simply angered because our neighbor is in need. Not too long ago we would have invited that family in. We would have fed and clothed them (Matthew 25:40). Now, who cares! Not businesses like Giant Food, the Thanksgiving Grinch, because someone may be slowed on the way to the cash register.
For many of us, it’s a Thanksgiving tradition to drop a few coins in the Salvation Army’s red kettle outside our local grocery.
It’s quick, easy, and has real impact – last year, more than $139 million was raised by red kettles to provide services ranging from hot meals to warm beds for homeless and impoverished Americans.
This year the need is greater than ever, with more than 44 million Americans on food stamps. But because of the objection of a large grocery store chain, the residents of poverty-stricken Washington, D.C. are at risk of going without essential holiday services.
Giant Food, a major supermarket chain in Washington D.C. and several surrounding states, just issued new regulations severely limiting red kettle fundraisers. Why? “In order to best serve our customers, and not hinder their shopping experience,” a Giant Food representative said in a statement.
Donating to the needy might not be at the top of everyone’s shopping list, but that’s why physical reminders of the importance of giving are needed. Caught up in the commotion of our own lives, we can all use help overcoming the distractions and indifference that prevents us from helping to alleviate suffering in our communities.
Tell Giant to offer more than a bargain, but hope as well. Tell Congress to actually do something for the long term unemployed, that is, other than posturing.
Oh, and if you are working; watch over your shoulder because employers are stealing their worker wages at an alarming rate. From the Albany Times Union: Wages belong to the workers
In New York City alone, a study by the National Employment Law Project earlier this year found that 21 percent of low-wage workers are paid less than the minimum wage, 77 percent weren’t paid time-and-a-half when they worked overtime, and 69 percent didn’t receive any pay at all when they came in early or stayed late after their shift.
We’re talking about the jobs that literally make our economy run — home care and child care workers, dishwashers, food prep workers, construction workers, cashiers, laundry workers, garment workers, security guards and janitors. Hundreds of thousands of them aren’t getting even the most basic protections that the rest of us take for granted.
And make no mistake, the problem isn’t going away: These types of jobs account for eight out of the top 10 occupations projected to grow the most by 2018.
Wage theft in New York is not incidental, aberrant or rare, committed by a few rogue employers. Over the last two years, the state Department of Labor has brought cases against restaurants in Ithaca, a printer in Albany, horse trainers at the Saratoga Race Course, hotels in Lake George and car washes across the state. Altogether, the agency recovered $28.8 million in stolen wages for nearly 18,000 New Yorkers in 2009 — the largest amount ever. That’s a valiant effort to be sure, but still not nearly enough to match the scale of the problem…when workers made a complaint to their employer or government agency, 42 percent experienced illegal retaliation — such as being fired or having their wages or hours cut. That is enough to discourage even the most committed worker from filing a wage theft claim.
[And r]ight now, it’s all too common that a worker successfully brings a wage theft claim, only to see the employer declare bankruptcy, leave town, close shop or otherwise evade paying up… In New York City alone, more than 300,000 workers are robbed of $18.4 million every week, totaling close to $1 billion a year. Extrapolate that to the state level, and you get a staggering amount of potential stimulus that’s being taken out of the pockets of working families and local businesses, and state coffers.
Even in good times, fighting wage theft is smart policy. In a recession, it’s such a no-brainer…
Our call as people of faith is to bring hope, to give hope, to recall in the minds of our brothers and sisters that all we have, even our poverty, is from the Lord, and to take action. We must remind all that God is about freedom and justice, not subservience and pain, and show our solidarity with those thrust into poverty, hopelessness, joblessness, or who have their daily bread stolen out of their hands.
Today, the struggles are growing closer to those of 125 years ago. Our people no longer look to bright hope in tomorrow, but the hunger pains to come tomorrow. They are falling into a grave out of which they might not crawl.
As opposed to purveyors of the success gospel, or the gospel of monarchies of every type, we are aware our hard scrabble, blue collar background. Our Holy Church, the PNCC, gave hope to working men and women when all that was offered them were days of back breaking labor for little in wages and the company store. When their Churches were joined at the hip with the ruling classes and the government bureaucracy, we stood by their side on the picket line. What we offered then was education, literature, a better future, lived ideals based on God’s closeness to man, an expression of the freedom these men and women had as Americans. We showed them that they could join together in Unions, that they could worship God in truth and freedom. We taught them about our God who desires deeply to be joined to men and women in their lives, who communes with them in their work and struggle. Our God wants more than a fractional share of our pennies for others to administer, but true thanks from a free people joined to Him.
The hope of Jesus Christ, His peace, His presence, His justice, His tomorrow are more necessary than ever. Let us as a Church stand up and show the hope that is more than social services, more than mere charity and political posturing; the Church that is the hope of eternity, the hope of freedom and justice for a free people joined to Jesus Christ our brother. God stands with us. Let us give Him thanks and more — our action.