Samhain shona duit! I hope that you all have a wonderful holiday no matter what path of faith the you are on.
I am very excited about this years celebration and oddly enough preparded this year to deal with all that must be done. I am hopeful, happy and ready to set those extra plates at the table for my ancestors.
In light of the holiday, I will be off line until after the sunrise of November 3rd. That includes this blog here, e-mails and the other sites that I write for.
From the weekly National Catholic Register comes an article from Father Dwight Longnecker entitled Are Witches Real? The good father enlightens us by writing that witches are indeed real and that commercialism of witches is only used to make people think that they are not real.
Personal religion matters to the people who believe in their faiths. While some faiths may allow for a level of tolerance and acceptance towards individuals or group beliefs in a variety of faiths, there are others who hold within a cornerstone of their faith that their own religious path is the only way.
The human condition is rife with religious discord and unfortunately it is those who have the tolerant faiths who sometimes find themselves fighting for their right to believe in what they do.
Does it matter on a personal level if your neighbor is of a different faith? Does it matter that a politician or other public servant has a faith that is not like your own? It shouldn’t matter at all.
The Freedom from Religion Foundation filed a claim last week to sue President Bush and The National Day of Prayer Task Force ran by Focus on the Family. The issue is over the First Amendment and the Federal Government.
The Foundation charges that the government “aligns and partners” with the NDP Task Force as the official organizer of the National Day of Prayer. The NDP Task Force identifies itself online as “The National Day of Prayer ‘Official Website.’ ” The task force has close ties to Focus on the Family. Its chair person, Shirley Dobson, is married to Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, and the task force is located in the Focus on the Family headquarters. Read full release on their site here and you can read the actual legal claim here in pdf.
Back at the end of April and beginning of May I wrote about this same subject here and even a letter to my local paper(which can be read here). The Nevada Appeal had reprinted the National Day of Prayer Task Force false information and though they were aware of the issue, they never printed a correction. I had even pointed out that the declaration as created by the task force had been signed by Governor Gibbons months before President Bush even signed his declaration. My efforts to educate with the correct information were both attacked in some instances or ignored all together but at least I tried.