Chicago, Ill., Jun 27, 2018 / 03:16 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The social advocate and Chicago priest Father Michael Pfleger has invited anti-violence activists to protest gun violence by closing a portion of the Dan Ryan Expressway, where it is part of I-94.
As many as 1,000 people could join Father Pfleger July 7. Beginning at the entrance ramp on 79th Street, the protestors will march about mile and a half until the exit ramp off 67th Street, shutting down the highway’s northbound lanes.
Father Pfleger is the pastor of St Sabina Catholic Church, a parish which has hosted similar protests in the past. On Monday, he posted on Twitter and Facebook encouraging people to participate in the rally. The march will follow a few days after U.S. Independence Day, which sees annual spike in shootings in Chicago.
“As we celebrate Independence weekend, there’s not a sense of freedom in many of our communities and for many of our young people,” Father Pfleger told the Chicago Tribune. “Instead, there’s a sense of fear.”
According to the Chicago Tribune, Illinois State Police have declined to comment on the protest, but are aware of its presence. Father Pfleger announced the plans to notify commuters in advance, but he does not plan to receive permission from authorities.
In an opinion piece at the Chicago Sun Times, Mary Mitchell said Fr. Pfleger had compared this rally to acts of civil disobedience that were part of the civil rights movement. He said city officials have not done enough to address gun violence, especially that taking place on Chicago’s South and West Sides.
“I’m taking a page out of the 101 Book of the Civil Rights Movement. We are sick of this violence – the violence by police, the violence of black on black crime, violence across the board,” he said
“But also the violence of bad schools, violence of poverty, violence of no businesses, violence of those coming back from incarceration with bus fare and no opportunities, and the lack of common-sense gun legislation in our state.”
The Chicago Tribune wrote that the city has seen over 1,300 people killed by gun violence this year alone. The weekend of June 15 was reportedly one of the most violent weekends in 2018, including nine deaths and 47 wounded. On the last Fourth of July, 15 people were shot and killed and 87 others were injured.
St Sabina parish also led anti-gun demonstrations on June 4 at Chicago’s Civic center downtown and on June 15 in Auburn Gresham neighborhood.
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Standing 100 feet tall, the Christmas Star overlooks the little town of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (aka “Christmas City, USA”). / Credit: A. Strakey/Flickr
CNA Staff, Dec 25, 2023 / 07:00 am (CNA).
There are at least 18 cities and towns in the United States named Bethlehem, but one of the first and perhaps the most famous is Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a town of 75,000 in the eastern state’s Lehigh Valley, a short drive from Allentown.
Bethlehem was founded in 1741 — prior to the establishment of the United States itself — when Protestant Christians, members of the Moravian Church, purchased land along the confluence of Monocacy Creek and the Lehigh River and cleared it of trees to begin building hewn-log structures.
According to the city’s official website, the town of Bethlehem was christened on Christmas Eve of that year. It’s not the only town in the area to be named after a biblical location — the valley also is home to towns named Egypt, Emmaus, and Nazareth.
In the intervening years since its founding, the town has sought to lean into its name by branding itself “Christmas City USA.” The town even claims to have put up the first documented Christmas tree in the (future) United States, in 1747.
The town has seen a lot throughout its lengthy history, including the deaths of about 500 of its soldiers in the Revolutionary War. One of the original buildings in the town is thought to be the largest 18th-century log structure in continuous use in the United States, the town’s website says.
The town’s status as a nexus of industry is long as well. Just six years after its founding, the town website says, some 35 crafts, trades, and industries had been established, including a butchery, clockmakers, and numerous mills of different kinds. Bethlehem’s Colonial Industrial Quarter had, the town says, the largest concentration of pre-Industrial Revolution crafts, trades, and industries in America and “can be considered America’s earliest industrial park.”
A steel plant in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Credit: Peter Miller/Flickr
Bethlehem Steel was once one of the most important manufacturers in the entire country, as it provided the steel for such iconic structures as the Golden Gate Bridge, the Empire State Building, and the Hoover Dam.
And according to at least one historian, the United States may not have succeeded in the two World Wars if Bethlehem Steel, with its wartime peak of some 300,000 workers, had not been able to turn out the necessary materials for the country’s military. Bethlehem Steel alone produced 1,127 ships during World War II.
The massive plant in the corporation’s hometown finally closed down for good in 2003 after the company declared bankruptcy two years earlier. Still a prominent landmark on the city’s riverfront, the rusted, dystopian steel mill towers have been preserved and incorporated into a trendy new public park and music venue.
Inside Holy Infancy Catholic Church in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which is located on Bethlehem’s south side and founded in 1861, attracting Catholic immigrants from all over the world who came to work in the steel industry. Credit: Courtesy of Holy Infancy Catholic Church
Catholics in Bethlehem
Father Andrew Gehringer, pastor of Holy Infancy Catholic Church, told CNA that his parish, which is located on Bethlehem’s south side, was founded back in 1861 and attracted Catholic immigrants from all over the world who moved to Bethlehem to work in the steel industry. In the town’s heyday, there were six Catholic churches within 10 blocks, he said, with Holy Infancy being the first. Germans, Irish, Hungarians, Polish, Portuguese, and Brazilian people have all made Bethlehem home over the years.
Today, Mass is offered at Holy Infant in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Gehringer said the multicultural nature of his parish lends itself to numerous fascinating Christmas traditions. For example, Portuguese-speaking parishioners participate in the “Novena de Natal” (Christmas novena), a nine-day prayerful meditation on the birth of Christ.
Spanish-speaking Catholics celebrate “Las Posadas” at Holy Infancy Catholic Church in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which is located on Bethlehem’s south side and founded in 1861. Credit: Courtesy of Holy Infancy Catholic Church
A similar devotion, “Las Posadas,” is practiced by the parish’s Spanish-speaking Catholics. The Spanish word “posada” means “inn,” and this devotion commemorates Mary and Joseph’s journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, where they sought shelter for the birth of Jesus. Like the Portuguese Christmas novena, Las Posadas begins on Dec. 16 and involves the recitation of the rosary followed by a procession, Mass, and a celebration with a piñata on the nights leading up to Christmas.
“We really do push the multicultural flair of our parish. So we have multicultural dinners, and we have a multicultural summer festival,” Gehringer continued.
The priest said the town, as you can imagine, goes all out decorating for Christmas. Many of the decorations are religious, such as a Nativity scene in the center of the city, as well as innumerable Christmas trees. Gehringer said some of the parish’s Spanish-speakers have been asked in years past to decorate Christmas trees for the city in the manner of their culture.
The town has had a massive Christmas star set up on a nearby mountain since the late 1930s, a five-pointed star with eight rays. The structure is located at Bethlehem’s highest point — 890 feet above sea level — and the star’s LED lighting array, installed in 2010, can be seen 20 miles away. The star has become a symbol of the city, with signs throughout Bethlehem bearing an image of the star and proclaiming “Follow the Star to Bethlehem Attractions.”
Gehringer said it is special to live in a city where the religious aspects of Christmas are so widely celebrated with symbols — which, of course, include the name of the town itself.
“There’s some very Christian symbolism that’s very prominent in our city, that our city puts up,” Gehringer said. “In some towns, they don’t even allow the Nativity set.”
Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2020. He was the head coach of Auburn University’s football team from 1999 to 2008. / Sen. Tommy Tuberville Facebook page.
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 1, 2023 / 14:00 pm (CNA).
President Joe Biden this week canceled the planned move of U.S. Space Command headquarters to Alabama, a move that Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville described as “blatant patronage politics” that comes after Tuberville’s monthslong blockade of military promotions over federal abortion policy.
Tuberville has been blocking military promotions in the Senate since March of this year over the Pentagon’s decision to fund travel expenses for abortion after the Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade last year.
The Trump administration announced in its final days that Space Command would be moving to Huntsville, Alabama, due to its “large, qualified workforce, quality schools, superior infrastructure capacity, and low initial and recurring costs.”
On Monday, the Pentagon said in an announcement that Biden had “selected Colorado Springs as the permanent location of the U.S. Space Command Headquarters,” scuttling SPACECOM’s planned move to Huntsville.
In its statement on Monday, the Pentagon said Biden had decided to put the headquarters of the agency in Colorado Springs because it “ensures peak readiness in the space domain for our nation during a critical period.”
“It will also enable the command to most effectively plan, execute, and integrate military space power into multi-domain global operations in order to deter aggression and defend national interests,” the Pentagon continued.
Tuberville’s office provided CNA with a statement in which the senator accused the Biden administration of “politiciz[ing]” the military and “putting Space Command headquarters in a location that didn’t even make the top three [candidate cities].”
“The top three choices for Space Command headquarters were all in red states — Alabama, Nebraska, and Texas,” Tuberville said. “Colorado didn’t even come close.”
The senator deemed it “shameful that the administration waited until Congress had gone into recess and already passed next year’s defense budget before announcing this decision.”
Calling the decision a “disastrous mistake,” Tuberville vowed: “This is absolutely not over.”
The Pentagon’s decision also drew a rebuke from Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, who said in a statement that the White House’s choice “is very simply the wrong decision for national security.”
And Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle said in a statement that the White House had reversed the “meticulous decision-making process” that led to Huntsville’s selection.
“To have that process invalidated and to have our selection taken away is demoralizing,” he said.
Carl Anderson, former Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome, March 17, 2022. / Daniel Ibáñez/CNA.
Los Angeles, Calif., May 16, 2022 / 13:25 pm (CNA).
In his address to the gradua… […]
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