Masterson recently completed her doctoral degree in performance at
the University of Connecticut where she studied with Dr. Neal
Larrabee. At UConn she performed as part of the UConn Wind Ensemble
and the UConn Chamber Music Festival.She was the winner of the
graduate division in UConn’s 2009 concerto competition and in 2010,
her piano trio performed as part of the prestigious Jorgensen Center
for the Perform Arts Classics Series.

She received a bachelor’s degree in physics and a performer’s
certificate from DePauw University. As the winner of the 2001 Young
Artist competition, she performed with the Evansville Philharmonic
Orchester. At DePauw, she performed as soloist with the DePauw Symphony
Orchestera and accompanied a variety of recitals and musical theater
productions.

Currently she teaches individuals lessons, group piano and music
theory at the Community School of the Arts and is an adjunct faculty
member at Eastern Connecticut State University. Dr Masterson also
serves as the organist and choir director at the First United
Methodist Church of Mansfield.

The Rev. Ann Ritonia from Church of the Good Shepherd participates in Ashes to Go/Contributed

The Rev. Ann Ritonia from Church of the Good Shepherd (680 Racebrook
Road in Orange) stands along the Post Road in Orange on Ash Wednesday,
offering ashes to anyone as a part of the national “Ashes to Go”
(www.ashestogo.org) movement. Ash Wednesday services will be held at
the church at 12:30p.m. and 7 p.m. today. In addition, Rev. Ritonia will be
offering Ashes to Go until noon, and again from  4 p.m to 6 p.m at the CT Post
Mall Food Court.

Nicholas Kristof, a Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist, will deliver the lecture, “A Call to Action: Encouraging Young People to Join the ‘World’s Fight’ & Take on a Cause Larger than Themselves,” at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, March 1, on Burt Kahn Court on the Mount Carmel Campus of Quinnipiac University. He wrote  Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, as a means of raising our awareness of issues facing women globally. After the lecture, Kristof will sign copies of his book. This event is free and open to the public. For more information, call 203-582-8652. Link here to more on Half the Sky.

The deeper the roots of a tree, the taller and broader it’s canopy.  With President George Washington, we can see the deep anchor of his faith and continual gratitude for divine Providence led to a legacy that included a broad array of issues with unique, thoughtful resolutions.

Wikimedia Commons Photo

In fact volumes continue to be written not only about Washington’s impact on the founding of our democracy, but also about his contemporaries who assisted the growth of our fledgling country. With the celebration of Washington’s birthday amid the flurry of debate over health care reform, I’ve selected one such individual to share with you today.

Dr. Benjamin Rush was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. His appointments as a Surgeon General to the Continental Army in 1777 as well as a Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania gave him the opportunity to contribute to the beginning dialogue of health care in America.  He wrote:

“Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship to restrict the art of healing to one class of Men and deny equal privileges to others; the Constitution of the Republic should make a Special privilege for medical freedoms as well as religious freedom.”

Interesting, isn’t it, that the umbrella of our Founding Father’s legacy included a counsel not to restrict the art of healing.  A previous post here, The Soul of Medicine: spiritual perspectives and clinical medicine addressed too this basic reality of spiritual care by our populace: “Americans spend about $1.5 billion annually on books on spirituality and religion, and about 40 percent have sought out complementary and alternative therapies.”

Mark Silk

As noted in this space, some Catholic thinkers have been favoring us with some serious theologizing as they make their respective cases for how to respond to the Obama Administration’s contraception coverage mandate. And then there’s the Most Rev. William E. Lori, Bishop of Bridgeport, CT. Yesterday, His Excellency showed up at Rep. Darrell Issa’s religious-opponents-only hearing on the mandate to deliver himself of the Parable of the Kosher Deli, an exercise of the analogical imaginationfit to make David Tracy wish he was a Protestant.

The parable imagines a new government order requiring kosher delicatessens to sell pork. The Orthodox Jews are up in arms, and the thing limps along in rough parallel to the current tale of the mandate. Yes, the government adjusts the policy a bit, but this now affects the kosher meat suppliers, and they’re not happy. You get the idea. What’s interesting about Lori’s little jeu d’esprit is not how inept the analogy is, however, but how a proper Parable of the Kosher Deli would prove the opposite of what he’s seeking to demonstrate.

In fact, the rules of kashrut forbid Jews from eating pork, not selling it or otherwise being involved in its provision. No doubt, a mandate to sell pork would be resisted by the deli owners, but the point here–and it’s not a trivial one–is that Orthodox Jews have no objection to non-Jews eating pork, or to doing anything to help them to do so.

I can’t help but wonder: Are some pro-life advocates hermetically sealed in a ghettoized world of circular logic? They must be. It’s the only explanation. No one else would spoon-feed the opposition with ready-made quotes for their publicity brochures. Sweet-smiling pro-choice convention receptionists can now hand out pamphlets featuring pictures of frowning, stereotypical finger-waggers. Captions blare: “We’ve always said they don’t care about babies once they’re born. Now we know they’re not exactly charitable about fetuses.”

The most recent wave of circuitous reasoning came in reaction to the sound arguments of Mitch Hescox, President and CEO of the Evangelical Environmental Network, who testified before the House Energy and Power Subcommittee on the merits of Environmental Protection Agency regulations aimed at reducing mercury pollution from coal-fired plants (research indicates that one in six children are born with threatening mercury levels). Essentially, Hescox stood on a solid “Consistent Life” foundation, which places the protection of the unborn within a broader pro-life context: All human life is sacred, from conception to the grave which means curbing mercury levels is a pro-life issue: “Let’s not endanger our children with a substance we can control,” said Hescox. “We must protect the weakest in our society, the unborn, from mercury poisoning.”

The spigot of ghettoized logic broke and the rush flowed. Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL), who has previously speculated that we live on a planet starved of carbon dioxide, quoted from a statement on the Cornwall Alliance website: “The life in pro-life denotes not quality of life but life itself” and only refers to “opposition to a procedure that intentionally results in dead babies.” Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) scoured for straw men: “I find it extremely ironic that Rev. Michell Hescox and the Evangelical Environmental Network think that the pro-life agenda is best aligned with a movement that believes there are too many people in the world, actively promotes population control, and sees humans principally as polluters.”

Read the attachments to Hescox’s testimony, Senator. See the announcement from the US Conference on Catholic Bishops, which quotes Bishop Stephen Blaire. He and his colleagues “welcome” the new EPA standards: “In the end it just makes good sense to want to have clean air for our children and families to breathe and for future generations.”

Last I checked, the good bishops still frowned on population control.

Read full post here.

In order to remove the flour, sweets and fat from the cupboard by Ash Wednesday, it has become a custom to have pancakes and some sort of meat for supper.  St. Peter’s-Trinity Church will continue this custom with a “Hash and Pancake Supper” Feb. 21 from 5:00-6:30 p,m. in the Great Hall at 160 Main St. in Thomaston.  The cost is $8 per adult and $4 for children 12 years old and under.  Take out is available.  You can either call the church office and order ahead of time or if you just want to come down during the dinner and pick up your dinner(s) to go.

For more information call the church office at 860 283-5472.

Ash Wednesday services will be held on Feb. 22 at 9:30 a.m and 7:30 p.m.

The symposium will bring together people of diverse faith backgrounds to explore the challenges faith communities face while seeking to minister in the midst of violent and traumatic situations. Clifford Beers is partnering with faith communities in the development of a resource network that will better serve the needs of those affected by such traumas as child abuse, domestic violence, clergy sexual misconduct, community violence, racial violence, and bullying.

The Rev. Dr. Marie Fortune, founder and senior analyst of the Faith Trust Institute in Seattle, will lead a multi-faith workshop which will explore sacred stories, and teachings which have shaped people of faith’s understanding of traumatic experiences.  The workshop will review sacred writings which have been used to justify trauma inflicted on others as well as teachings which have acted as a lifeline to victims of trauma and have helped make meaning of these experiences.  Barbara Tinney, executive director of the New Haven Family Alliance;  Elena Giacci, domestic violence specialist and Native American spiritual healer; and Rabbi Mark Dratch, founder and director of JSafe: The Jewish Institute Supporting an Abuse Free Environment round out the morning plenary.

Afternoon workshops will offer an opportunity to learn and discuss practical hands-on solutions and tools from a faith perspective. Among the featured workshops is “Conversations With My Molester — Conversations With the Church,” a dramatic presentation and conversation about healing the trauma of clergy sexual abuse. Other featured workshops include “Healing Rituals in Individual and Community Trauma,”  “Healing the Trauma of Religion Based Homophobia,” and “Vicarious Trauma and How to Take Care of Yourself from a Faith Perspective.”

This is a pre-conference event to the Healing the Generations Trauma Conference that will be held at Foxwoods Resort Casino March 1-2. Registration for the Pre-Conference Multi-Faith Leap of Faith event on February 29 is $75 and includes the morning plenary, 2 afternoon workshops, continental breakfast, and Kosher lunch.  For more information, or to register, contact Nicole Glorioso at (203) 772-1270 x 226 or www.cliffordbeers.org

“This development runs clearly in the face of the Bill of Rights, providing in its First Amendment freedom of religion. Never before in the history of the United States has the federal government forced citizens to pay for health insurance that violates their religious principles,” said Mansell.

The archbishop made his feelings known during a two-hour broadcast moderated by the Rev. John Gatzak, general manager of WJMJ, on Wednesday evening.  He said that Catholic relief services, colleges, universities, schools and hospitals would be impacted. He noted that 16 percent of the nation’s hospitals are run under the auspices of Catholicism.

“If this goes through, we would have no Catholic hospitals or Catholic charities, said Mansell.

The archbishop was joined by Michael Culhane of the Connecticut Catholic Public Affairs Conference, the public policy and advocacy office of the Catholic Bishops in Connecticut.

“This is an affront to our religious liberties,” said Culhane.

Listeners flooded the broadcast with phone calls voicing their comments and questions. An 82-year-old woman called to say that she was appalled by what was happening. In her lifetime, she couldn’t remember the government being so intrusive. A caller from Meriden said that all religions have to band together, because there is “strength in numbers,” while an atheist commented that although he didn’t practice a religion, he certainly believed in the Constitution of the United States. And, while some are viewing this as a controversy over contraception, Vincent McCarthy, a constitutional lawyer, called in to say that the mandate was clearly unconstitutional, because “It is forcing the Catholic Church to pay for policies that they believe are wrong.” “I see this going all the way to the Supreme Court,” he said.

Mansell and bishops across the nation are urging people to call their local legislators in opposition of the mandate. “Votes make the difference,” he said.