A Catholic Education

Dear Editor: I would like to take this opportunity to tell you of the terrific response we have been receiving over the last few months as a result of the wonderful Tablet coverage of our book, “Beneath the Blue and Gold, The Story of The Mary Louis Academy.” Both your comments in The Tablet and the interview we shared on Tablet Week in Review resulted not only in hundreds of orders for the book, but also in something of far greater significance for many who are a part of the history of a Catholic school in our diocese.

Since your April coverage of the book, I have received many e-mails, notes and phone calls from Tablet subscribers, their friends and family members, both locally and from across the country, who are graduates of a Catholic school in the Diocese of Brooklyn. Each has offered fond memories of and great respect for Catholic education. Many shared experiences were noted: sodalities and CYO field days, Mission Sunday and Lenten retreats, Latin classes and glee clubs, mite boxes and spring bazaars, uniforms and detentions.

While each person who contacted me may have attended a different Catholic school in Brooklyn or Queens, they were all of the same opinion that it was the Sisters, Brothers and lay teachers who had the strongest and most positive influences after parents on who they ultimately became as grown men and women.

Over and over, these alumni of our diocesan schools recounted stories of their elementary and secondary Catholic school life that warmed the heart, uplifted the soul and brought a smile to the face. What was missing was any mention of the shallow, Catholic school stereotypes of nasty nuns and bullying brothers that are so casually depicted and readily accepted by our society today. So great has been the response to our book that I have set up a similar project, complete with information on local and national resources.

While it may be true that a fine education has always been available in the New York City public schools, there is simply no other school system that has provided such high quality academic instruction along with a superior foundation for moral, ethical and personal growth than the Catholic schools in America, and in particular, those of the Diocese of Brooklyn. I need only point to the millions of men and women who are products of our Catholic schools who have gone on to make a difference in our world, from captains of industry, to elected officials, to consecrated religious, to community servants, and to everyday mothers and fathers.

Since 1936, we at The Mary Louis Academy have proudly declared, “Fidem Servari – I have kept the faith” as we continue to educate young women in the Josephite tradition of all-inclusive love, unity and reconciliation. So, too, has every Catholic school in our diocese “kept the faith,” working tirelessly to overcome those challenges, both financial and societal, that seek to impede our mission to teach as Jesus did.

My deepest gratitude to you and your staff for presenting “Beneath the Blue and Gold: The Story of The Mary Louis Academy” as an example of the greatness that is and was Catholic education. I hope that our book has many counterparts from among our schools.

Rita E. Piro
Hollis Hills

A Great Teacher and Friend

Dear Editor: I note with sadness the death of Msgr. George Fogarty in late September. He was a great teacher and friend to many of us at Cathedral College, Brooklyn.

I know of no one who wanted to know and love the Lord and His Church more, and who pursued that goal with more discipline and faithfulness. As a teacher, he demanded his students master a science, but also encouraged us to cultivate the art of self-expression. As a friend, he would join your cause if he thought you were on to something, helping you to formulate and plan at a deeper level.

We will miss him, but take some comfort in what would be his insistence that now he has been freed to be with us more than ever.

Daniel Molloy
Bay Ridge

Rosary Rally for America

Dear Editor: This letter is an appeal to all who believe that through prayer we can restore order in our own lives and in the world.

Saturday, Oct. 13, is the 90th anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, Portugal, in 1917, which climaxed the apparitions of the Mother of God to three shepherd children. She performed a miracle in the heavens witnessed by more than 70,000 people.

In six apparitions, Our Lady of Fatima urgently requested prayer and penance to avoid chastisement. This request is still valid today, even more so. Wars, the spread of communism and the breakdown of the family have occurred as she predicted. Are we on the verge of ever greater disaster?

America Needs Fatima is promoting 2,000 public Rosary rallies across the country on Saturday, October 13, 2007. Many cities are participating. All are welcome and encouraged to join. As Catholics, we need to make a public witness to our faith without shame. We need to proclaim the Truth from the rooftops. The Blessed Mother gave us the remedy for all society’s ills and that is through the Holy Rosary. Through the Rosary, we can change the world.

In Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, one of the designated places of assembly is McKinley Park at 74th St. and Ft. Hamilton Pkwy. from 1:30 a.m. - 2 p.m.

Contact America Needs Fatima at 1-866-584-6012, visit  www.TFP.org or call the rally captain at 718-266-0024 for more information. Please join us for a public Rosary rally and bring a friend! See you there.

Deborah Nuzzo
Brooklyn

Dear Editor: Oct. 13 will be the 90th anniversary of the

miracle at Fatima. All across the country, public square Rosary Rallies will be held, almost 2,000. Of the Rosary, St. Louis de Montfort said, “Never will anyone who says his Rosary every day be led astray. This is a statement that I would gladly sign with my blood.”

On Saturday, Oct. 13, at noon, a rally will be held at 86th St. and Fifth Ave, in Bay Ridge. Come and join us. For other locations, see www.TFP.org.

Rose Scirghi
Brooklyn

Editor’s Note: A similar Rosary Rally will be held at Juniper Valley Park in Queens at noon on Saturday, Oct. 13.

The Holy Land Is Safe to Visit

Dear Editor: My parish had a fair of religious items from Jerusalem to help support the Christians living in that region, who look after the places where Jesus walked, died and rose from the dead.

Previous years there were 80-to-100 buses with tourists visiting the sites. Now there are only one or two buses. The area is safe. One Catholic group from upstate and another from Long Island take the tourists on two or three tours per year. Its brochure points out that it is safe with nothing to worry about. What these people need is a well-orchestrated public relations campaign to make people aware of its safety and spirituality. If all these people leave, who will be left to oversee these one-of-a-kind religious and historical treasures?

John McHugh
Fresh Meadows

Reality of Non-Christian Europe

Dear Editor: I am sure that many are grateful to David Powell (Up Front and Personal, Oct. 6) for sharing the memories of his time at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.  It was also good of him to remind us of the flaws of secular humanist cultural ethos in the European Union (this may not have been his intention).

While it is important not to condemn it is more important to face the reality of dangerous ideas. 

A provident God has given us Benedict XVI, who is not only able to recognize such dangers but is also able to give us a hopeful vision as he pursues a “reform of the reform” and implements the unfinished work of Vatican II in the Church in an orthodox manner. 

When Leo XIII was elected in 1878 at the age of 68 years old, he was thought to be an interim pope because of his age. However, he died when he was 93 and was still writing encyclicals in his 92nd year. May God grant Benedict XVI at least another 20 years of life for the good of the Church.

When the allegedly Christian nations of Europe began to distance themselves from Christian values, they did find themselves at war with each other, without any boundaries. This increasingly secular stance prepared the foundation for the slaughter of millions by atheistic socialism; National Socialism in Germany; and Communist Socialism in Russia. The nations of the European Union have repudiated its Christian past. The Union is now the political expression of a dying culture with rapidly declining population trying to foster leftist causes such as same-sex marriages (fine examples of fruitless unions). With dangerously low population rates and Moslem families increasing in numbers, the nations of Europe may become Eurarabia with sharia law.  

While universal health coverage can be beneficial in ordinary health care issues, it does not work very well for life-threatening health issues. Thousands of Europeans come to the United States for better health care and better surgery rather than endanger their lives in the European system. The extremely high unemployment rate of a socialistic economy, the diminishing population of young and middle-age citizens and large numbers of senior citizens will fracture the socialist tax base. At that point, if it has not already begun, decisions will have to be made concerning who will get care first. Senior citizens will be a burden on the system and nations of the European Union will have to extend the parameters of its culture of death to include them.

This is a horrible future for Europe, but Catholics are called to be people of hope. The mystery of the presence of Jesus Christ in the Catholic Church, which He established, is a mystery of grace and inspiration. It may or may not include Europe, but maybe somewhere there is another modern Duke William of Aquitaine who is establishing another present-day Abbey of Cluny (910 AD), free of civil authority, subject only to the Bishop of Rome and a source of reform of the Church. 

Deacon John P. Coffey
Lindisfarne Village
Brooklyn