Message Forum

Welcome to the Watterson High School Message Forum.

The message forum is an ongoing dialogue between classmates. There are no items, topics, subtopics, etc.

Forums work when people participate - so don't be bashful! Click the "Post Message" button to add your entry to the forum.


 
go to bottom 
  Post Message
  
    Prior Page
 Page  
Next Page      

03/10/19 01:49 PM #4972    

 

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

Although no one asked me, I will nevertheless, chime insmiley 

Because the subject matter of evolution, and particularly the existence of good and evil, are topics which have been widely and endlessly researched and discussed by many wise and good persons, I will simply refer to one of the sources which informs my personal beliefs on the subject of evil.  http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s2c1p4.htm

As regards to evolution, it may interest some to know that the Catholic Church professes no intrinsic conflict between Christianity and the theory of evolution provided that Christians believe that God created all things and that the individual soul is a direct creation of God and not the product of purely material forces. 

Providence and the scandal of evil.

309 If God the Father almighty, the Creator of the ordered and good world, cares for all his creatures, why does evil exist? To this question, as pressing as it is unavoidable and as painful as it is mysterious, no quick answer will suffice. Only Christian faith as a whole constitutes the answer to this question: the goodness of creation, the drama of sin and the patient love of God who comes to meet man by his covenants, the redemptive Incarnation of his Son, his gift of the Spirit, his gathering of the Church, the power of the sacraments and his call to a blessed life to which free creatures are invited to consent in advance, but from which, by a terrible mystery, they can also turn away in advance. There is not a single aspect of the Christian message that is not in part an answer to the question of evil.

310 But why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it? With infinite power God could always create something better.174 But with infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world "in a state of journeying" towards its ultimate perfection. In God's plan this process of becoming involves the appearance of certain beings and the disappearance of others, the existence of the more perfect alongside the less perfect, both constructive and destructive forces of nature. With physical good there exists also physical evil as long as creation has not reached perfection.175

311 Angels and men, as intelligent and free creatures, have to journey toward their ultimate destinies by their free choice and preferential love. They can therefore go astray. Indeed, they have sinned. Thus has moral evil, incommensurably more harmful than physical evil, entered the world. God is in no way, directly or indirectly, the cause of moral evil.176 He permits it, however, because he respects the freedom of his creatures and, mysteriously, knows how to derive good from it:

For almighty God. . ., because he is supremely good, would never allow any evil whatsoever to exist in his works if he were not so all-powerful and good as to cause good to emerge from evil itself.177

312 In time we can discover that God in his almighty providence can bring a good from the consequences of an evil, even a moral evil, caused by his creatures: "It was not you", said Joseph to his brothers, "who sent me here, but God. . . You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive."178 From the greatest moral evil ever committed - the rejection and murder of God's only Son, caused by the sins of all men - God, by his grace that "abounded all the more",179 brought the greatest of goods: the glorification of Christ and our redemption. But for all that, evil never becomes a good.

 


03/10/19 03:20 PM #4973    

Joseph Gentilini

Very interesting thoujghts from all of you.  I do not know about good and evil, but I do know my own failings, missing the mark, etc. My gut tells me, however, that there is evil that exists. When I think of Hitler, for example, I see evil.  I have read a good bit about Hitler and the Nazi machine.  Because of my training and education, I clould say that he was mentally ill, but this does not mean that he had no choices to make. He hated the Jews, even thought he had some Jewish blood.  He profected what he could not accept in himself.  The men in the SS were actually trained to torture the Jews so that they would become hard and not care about what they did to the Jews.  A person could be mentally ill, but this does not excuse them.  

Concerning evolution.  I believe this is true.  How it occurs, etc., I don't knowl  It makes more sense to me than some of the religious fundamentalist who refuse to believe it.  Many think that God created human beings separetely - as a special species.  To me, thinking that we came about from certain annimals, etc., does not threaten my faith in God and his creations at all.  The story of Adam and Eve is not to be taken literally; it is a story written and spoken by man to tell a story of God and his creations and love for humanity.  A person can be a Christian and still believe we evolved.

I have not entered into all the comments people have made, but I read them all.  I finally decided to join in a bit.

 


03/10/19 07:16 PM #4974    

 

David Mitchell

Mary Margaret and Joe

I love that you both joined in. And nobody had to ask you Mary Margaret.

 

And Jack, I'm afraid you have it all wrong my friend. Didn't you know that aliens only visit our planet on Thursdays to pick up their dry cleaning before the weekend? Shame on you. I thought any silly fool would know that!

 

Star date 3140

Kirk, out.


03/10/19 08:41 PM #4975    

 

James Hamilton, M. D.

Folks,

I'm sure many of you upon reading my post #4978 realized that 2 to the 71st power is actually in the sextillions and not merely in the quintillions. MY BAD! The actual number is 2,361,183,241,434,822,606,848. Don't forget to add one more for the total number of bacteria. 😁

And, Jack, why do all those sci-fi shows assume life on all those other planets is far superior to us earthlings? Are we the rubes of the universe? 🤔

Jim

03/10/19 08:44 PM #4976    

 

David Mitchell

I think I tried this idea before, but it re-enters my train of thought at this point. 

That nagging question of "free will". I do beleive that the Creator made us with this crazy thing, and we are then "free" to use it as a gift, or let it become a curse. 

Why not create us all perfect, so that we could never choose evil, harm, or maliciousnes of any kind?  But if we were without choice, what would be the point of of caring, loving, or giving from the heart? What value would moral character be? If there were no evil, what then would good be?

Would there be any worth to having us all marching in lock step as robots, un-feeling, un-thinking, un-caring?  Obedient - sure!  Forced obedience that is.

It is said God has a human nature. Think about this - He takes an enormous risk in letting us wander off the leash. The risk either that we might fall, or that we might choose to follow his plea - to love. 

I'm going to lay my money of the "risk" of choosing Love - (His Grace).

And I'm betting on a huge payoff !

 


03/10/19 08:51 PM #4977    

 

David Mitchell

Jim,

Can you cut me a litle slack? That's twice this week you've made my eyes glaze over.

 

And don't blame me for all this stuff. It was all Mike's fault. He tossed out the first pitch on #4948


03/11/19 01:23 PM #4978    

 

David Barbour

We love ya Dave, keep it up!

Dave


03/11/19 02:00 PM #4979    

 

David Mitchell

Shhhh,  Quiet man, don't encourage the guy!

 


03/11/19 11:22 PM #4980    

 

Timothy Lavelle

ACE Hardware has "flashdarks" on sale this week. They advertise that the Whitehouse has ordered three cases of them. 

I am pretty sure that we all agreed that without mankind, evil does not exist. Or was it that evil is the absence of good?

But, for sure, "flashdarks" are the next big thing.  

 


03/12/19 12:15 AM #4981    

 

David Mitchell

Dude, I'm ordering two !

One to use in broad daylight, and one for when I get to travel through some "white holes" in space.  


03/12/19 03:27 AM #4982    

 

David Barbour


03/12/19 03:28 AM #4983    

 

David Barbour

Any memories?


03/12/19 11:18 AM #4984    

 

Michael McLeod

We were supposed to sell those things, right? All I remember is eating them.

A viewing recommendation: One Strange Rock. I've been bingeing on it on Netflix. A brilliant investigation into the natural world and the cosmos. Beautifully photographed and scientifically sound; just a wonderful job at explaining core concepts with an appreciation for their mysteries. Einstein has a wonderful quote I can't remember word for word but it is essentially about mystery - that when we are overtaken by awe and wonderment, we're in the right place - that's what it's all about. Not understanding. Not explaining it. Just having that feeling you get in your chest, not your brain. That's how you know you are in touch with what it is, whatever it is.


03/12/19 06:51 PM #4985    

 

David Mitchell

Golly Mike!  I'm all "science and religioned" out about now. Should we try history for $200?

(I've  got some more OLP parish history for a bit later.)

 

Tim, I think I've got it now - Evil must be when I am all out of things to say.               Care to shed a little darkness on the subjet?


03/12/19 07:05 PM #4986    

 

Michael McLeod

No Dave. Drop everything. I am afraid we have yet another pressing issue to address. NOTA BENE EVERYONE: I am posting this story from today's New York Times here so that Doctor Hamilton, Doctor Mitchell and I can confer about its implications.

I should also say that if I remember correctly, many of you were ahead of your time when it comes to this issue. 

 

Excerpted from “An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System,” published on Tuesday by William Morrow.

 

Should you pick your nose?

Don’t laugh. Scientifically, it’s an interesting question.

Should your children pick their noses? Should your children eat dirt? Maybe: Your body needs to know what immune challenges lurk in the immediate environment.

Should you use antibacterial soap or hand sanitizers? No. Are we taking too many antibiotics? Yes.

“I tell people, when they drop food on the floor, please pick it up and eat it,” said Dr. Meg Lemon, a dermatologist in Denver who treats people with allergies and autoimmune disorders.

 

“Get rid of the antibacterial soap. Immunize! If a new vaccine comes out, run and get it. I immunized the living hell out of my children. And it’s O.K. if they eat dirt.”

Dr. Lemon’s prescription for a better immune system doesn’t end there. “You should not only pick your nose, you should eat it,” she said.

She’s referring, with a facetious touch, to the fact our immune system can become disrupted if it doesn’t have regular interactions with the natural world.

“Our immune system needs a job,” Dr. Lemon said. “We evolved over millions of years to have our immune systems under constant assault. Now they don’t have anything to do.”

She isn’t alone. Leading physicians and immunologists are reconsidering the antiseptic, at times hysterical, ways in which we interact with our environment.

Why? Let us turn to 19th-century London.

The British Journal of Homeopathyvolume 29, published in 1872, included a startlingly prescient observation: “Hay fever is said to be an aristocratic disease, and there can be no doubt that, if it is not almost wholly confined to the upper classes of society, it is rarely, if ever, met with but among the educated.”

Hay fever is a catchall term for seasonal allergies to pollen and other airborne irritants. With this idea that hay fever was an aristocratic disease, British scientists were on to something.

More than a century later, in November 1989, another highly influential paper was published on the subject of hay fever. The paper was short, less than two pages, in BMJ, titled “Hay Fever, Hygiene, and Household Size.”

The author looked at the prevalence of hay fever among 17,414 children born in March 1958. Of 16 variables the scientist explored, he described as “most striking” an association between the likelihood that a child would get hay fever allergy and the number of his or her siblings.

It was an inverse relationship, meaning the more siblings the child had, the less likely it was that he or she would get the allergy. Not just that, but the children least likely to get allergies were ones who had older siblings.

The paper hypothesized that “allergic diseases were prevented by infection in early childhood, transmitted by unhygienic contact with older siblings, or acquired prenatally from a mother infected by contact with her older children.

“Over the past century declining family size, improvements in household amenities, and higher standards of personal cleanliness have reduced the opportunity for cross infection in young families,” the paper continued. “This may have resulted in more widespread clinical expression of atopic disease, emerging in wealthier people, as seems to have occurred for hay fever.”

This is the birth of the hygiene hypothesis. The ideas behind it have since evolved and expanded, but it provides profound insight into a challenge that human beings face in our relationship with the modern world.

Our ancestors evolved over millions of years to survive in their environments. For most of human existence, that environment was characterized by extreme challenges, like scarcity of food, or food that could carry disease, as well as unsanitary conditions and unclean water, withering weather, and so on. It was a dangerous environment, a heck of a thing to survive.

At the center of our defenses was our immune system, our most elegant defense. The system is the product of centuries of evolution, as a river stone is shaped by water rushing over it and the tumbles it experiences on its journey downstream.

Late in the process, humans learned to take steps to bolster our defenses, developing all manner of customs and habits to support our survival. In this way, think of the brain — the organ that helps us develop habits and customs — as another facet of the immune system.

We used our collective brains to figure out effective behaviors. We started washing our hands and took care to avoid certain foods that experience showed could be dangerous or deadly. In some cultures, people came to avoid pork, which we now know is highly susceptible to trichinosis; in others, people banned meats, which we later learned may carry toxic loads of E. coli and other bacteria.

Ritual washing is mentioned in Exodus, one of the earliest books in the Bible: “So they shall wash their hands and their feet, that they die not.”

Our ideas evolved, but for the most part, the immune system did not. This is not to say that it didn’t change. The immune system responds to our environment. When we encounter various threats, our defenses learn and then are much more able to deal with that threat in the future. In that way, we adapt to our environment.

 

We survived over tens of thousands of years. Eventually, we washed our hands, swept our floors, cooked our food, avoided certain foods altogether. We improved the hygiene of the animals we raised and slaughtered for food.

Particularly in the wealthier areas of the world, we purified our water, and developed plumbing and waste treatment plants; we isolated and killed bacteria and other germs.

The immune system’s enemies list was attenuated, largely for the good. Now, though, our bodies are proving that they cannot keep up with this change. We have created a mismatch between the immune system — one of the longest surviving and most refined balancing acts in the world — and our environment.

Thanks to all the powerful learning we’ve done as a species, we have minimized the regular interaction not just with parasites but even with friendly bacteria and parasites that helped to teach and hone the immune system — that “trained” it. It doesn’t encounter as many bugs when we are babies. This is not just because our homes are cleaner, but also because our families are smaller (fewer older children are bringing home the germs), our foods and water cleaner, our milk sterilized. Some refer to the lack of interaction with all kinds of microbes we used to meet in nature as the “old friends mechanism.”

What does the immune system do when it’s not properly trained?

It can overreact. It becomes aggrieved by things like dust mites or pollen. It develops what we called allergies, chronic immune system attacks — inflammation — in a way that is counterproductive, irritating, even dangerous.

The percentage of children in the United States with a food allergy rose 50 percent between 1997–1999 and 2009–2011, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The jump in skin allergies was 69 percent during that period, leaving 12.5 percent of American children with eczema and other irritations.

Food and respiratory allergies rose in tandem with income level. More money, which typically correlates with higher education, has meant more risk of allergy. This may reflect differences in who reports such allergies, but it also springs from differences in environment.

 

These trends are seen internationally, too. Skin allergies “doubled or tripled in industrialized countries during the past three decades, affecting 15–30 percent of children and 2–10 percent of adults,” according to a paper citing research from the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

By 2011, one in four children in Europe had an allergy, and the figure was on the rise, according to a report by the World Allergy Organization. Reinforcing the hygiene hypothesis, the paper noted that migration studies have shown that children born overseas have lower levels of some types of both allergy and autoimmunity than migrants whose children are born in the United States.

There are related trends in inflammatory bowel disease, lupus, rheumatic conditions and, in particular, celiac disease. The last results from the immune’s system overreacting to gluten, a protein in wheat, rye and barley. This attack, in turn, damages the walls of the small intestine.

This might sound like a food allergy, but it is different in part because of the symptoms. In the case of an autoimmune disorder like this one, the immune system attacks the protein and associated regions.

CreditMike McQuade

 

Allergies can generate a more generalized response. A peanut allergy, for instance, can lead to inflammation in the windpipe, known as anaphylaxis, which can cause strangulation.

In the case of both allergy and autoimmune disorders, though, the immune system reacts more strongly than it otherwise might, or than is healthy for the host (yeah, I’m talking about you).

This is not to say that all of these increases are due to better hygiene, a drop in childhood infection, and its association with wealth and education. There have been many changes to our environment, including new pollutants. There are absolutely genetic factors as well.

But the hygiene hypothesis — and when it comes to allergy, the inverse relationship between industrialized processes and health — has held up remarkably well.

As our bodies strive for balance, Madison Avenue has made a full-court press for greater hygiene, sometimes to our detriment.

We’re fed a steady diet of a hygiene-related marketing that began in the late 1800s, according to a novel study published in 2001 by the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology. Scientists at Columbia University who did the research were trying to understand how we became so enamored of soap products.

Some highlights:

  • The Sears catalog in the early 1900s heavily advertised “ammonia, Borax, and laundry and toilet soap.”
  • “During the early to mid-1900s, soap manufacturing in the United States increased by 44 percent,” coinciding with “major improvements in water supply, refuse disposal and sewage systems.”
  • The marketing trailed off in the 1960s and 1970s as antibiotics and vaccines were understood to be the answer to infectious agents, with less emphasis on “personal responsibility.”
  • But then, starting in the late 1980s, the market for such hygiene products — home and personal — surged 81 percent. The authors cite a “return of public concern for protection against infectious disease,” and it’s hard not to think of AIDS as part of that attention. If you’re in marketing, never waste a crisis, and the messages had an impact.
  • The study cites a Gallup poll from 1998 that found that 66 percent of adults worried about virus and bacteria, and 40 percent “believed these microorganisms were becoming more widespread.” Gallup also reported that 33 percent of adults “expressed the need for antibacterial cleansers to protect the home environment,” and 26 percent believed they were needed to protect the body and skin.

They were wrong. And even doctors have been wrong.

They have vastly overprescribed antibiotics. These may be a huge boon to an immune system faced with an otherwise deadly infection. But when used without good reason, the drugs can wipe out healthy microbes in our gut and cause bacteria to develop defenses that make them even more lethal.

A scientist who led efforts at the World Health Organization to develop global policy to limit use of antibiotics told me that, philosophically, this is a lesson that runs counter to a century of marketing: We’re not safer when we try to eliminate every risk from our environment.

“We have to get away from the idea of annihilating these things in our local environment. It just plays upon a certain fear,” said the scientist, Dr. Keiji Fukuda.

Has much of our hygiene been practical, valuable, life-preserving? Yes.

Have we overcorrected? At times. Should you pick your nose? Or put another way: Might that urge to pick be part of a primitive strategy to inform your immune system about the range of microbes in your environment, give this vigilant force activity, and train your most elegant defense?

Yes. Perhaps.

In short, from a cultural standpoint, you still probably shouldn’t pick — not in public. But it is a surprisingly fair scientific question.

Excerpted from “An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System,” published on Tuesday by William Morrow.

Matt Richtel is a best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter based in San Francisco. He joined The Times staff in 2000, and his work has focused on science, technology, business and narrative-driven storytelling around these issues.

  @mrichtel


03/12/19 10:11 PM #4987    

 

James Hamilton, M. D.

Mike,

There is a lot of truth in what you wrote but there are some other considerations also.

It has long been known that some societies in the world (some isolated Pacific Islanders for instance) who have not been exposed to antibiotics and vaccines have a very low incidence of allergic diseases. There are fewer studies of which I am aware regarding their death rate from infectious diseases. I suspect things like tetanus and diphtheria, death from which are caused by the toxins produced by the bacteria, are significant.

In regards to HIV, that is a virus that jumped from the green monkey to man (ebola has a similar history) and was transported around the globe, something to which isolated populations would not have been exposed, and are not related to antibiotics. Easy international travel plays a major role in the spread of infectious diseases.

In some African populations, sickle cell trait, not SC anemia itself, is thought to be protective against malaria, an adaptive mechanism. Most of us without significant African heritage are unprotected and need malaria prophylaxis when visiting certain parts of the world. Which is worse: an atopic runny nose or dermatitis or death from malaria?

Gluten disease -Celiac Disease - is actually quite rare and requires antibody and/or biopsy to make a true diagnosis. Currently there are way too many individuals (lots of millennials) who think they are gluten intolerant and thus the grocery aisles are packed with gluten free food. IMHO most of it is overpriced, overhyped and tastes terrible. I also feel that modern farming techniques, which produces a lot of gluten, have fed a lot of the world and saved many people from starvation. Some of those who claim gluten "sensitivity" just got a little flatulent from something they consumed.

Are antibiotics overprescribed? Definitely! As a medical profession we have been too willing to write a prescription quickly rather than to discuss with the patient that a simple viral infection needs not be treated with antibiotics and the harm that can do to both the individual and the community. As I discussed in Post #4978 bacteria rapidly can develop (evolve) resistance to antibiotics and we sometimes end up "chasing our tails" in treating them.

I see some hope in the future in that as genomics and pharmacogenomics progresses science may find unique ways to revive our prehistoric immune system to attack pathogens without antibiotics and pevent it from attacking our own tissues.

Remember, this is that brave new world!

Jim

 


03/12/19 10:37 PM #4988    

 

David Mitchell

Mike,

These are almost the very same words my Dad (43+ years head of the Allergy Dept. at OSU Med School, and 54+ years in private Allergy practice) used to harp on - over, and over, and over. He used to use the phrase "good clean bacteria" - which he claimed our bodies needed.

Also the mention of over-prescription of antibiotics (for every little thing !). People would come in all the time telling him they "needed a shot" to fix their common cold. He would tell them they needed to get some bed rest and take aspirin, and eat chicken noodle soup. They would get upset and complain about his lack of professionalism. 

This is one of a long stream of articles I have read over the last 20 years about Asthma - claiming we are living in far too clean of atmospheres for our immune systems to avoid it.

Oh, and don't get me started on the negative efects of No. 1 (I meant to say - Red) food  dye -wow!  (and #2 Red and #1 Orange). Dad clainmed it to be the scourge of the human race!

Curious to hear what Dr. Jim will say?

 

P.s. Triclosan - the main ingrediaent in many antibacterial soaps (but coming off the market in some countires in recent years) is a dangerous pesticide! If you see it on your bathroom shelf, throw it out.


03/13/19 01:32 AM #4989    

 

David Mitchell

Rethinking my post #4997

Tim

Maybe I meant, Evil is when I still have something left to say - Good is when I run out of words.

Oh well, whatever?


03/13/19 10:54 AM #4990    

 

Frank Ganley

I am in almost total agreement with that news post about over use of sanitizers, lotions and potion that we use unendingly. In my life I have been exposed to the sun since birth. I grew up in phila and on decoration day( now memorial day) as a family we moved to Ocean  City nj. We returned on the saturday before labor day. I was lathered in oil, not sunscreen and still use it today. Younger brothers and sister used 30,50 spf since it inception. Those that have used it have a close and personal relationship with their dermatologist. One sister had her face removed so they could get at and get out the cancer. A brother has had so much skin burned off or removed he lost weight from the operations. I have never used it even though through out my life and being a golf pro i have always had a great tan. Today nothing like lying on a raft in my pool and oiling up for that rich bronze color. The USA  uses 80% of spf products in the world, we also suffer from 80% of skin cancer in the world. My grand daughter uses hand sanitizers all the time at school due to government oversight in what we have to do. Nothing against doctors but as The eminent Dr HAMILTON ALLUDED TO IS THE OVERUSE OF ALL THESE PRODUCTS SUCH products that it interferes with our immune system. If you need it use it but a simple cold or runny nose, drink plenty of liquids and rest. We must find a cure from cancer but when we do find a cure what will be the next thing that kills us.


03/13/19 10:57 AM #4991    

 

Michael McLeod

Thanks Jim.

Is it logical to assume that the adaptation that protected against malaria made that population succeptible to anemia?

 

Also, interestingly enough -- I hope I have this right -- I believe I read somewhere that a genetic mutation in human beings made it possible for us to digest glutens - something that is not possible for other primates. 

 


03/13/19 12:21 PM #4992    

 

David Mitchell

Like my dad used to tell people he met at parites, "you gotta watch out for these doctors, they can kill ya."

 

And I grew up in a house where it was a cold day in hell when we took medication. I used to hear the old line about "the cobblers children are the last to be shoed".


03/13/19 01:05 PM #4993    

 

John Maxwell

Mike,
I learned that in Vietnam when I drank the water in the river, I acquired aomebic disintary. I learned that the land speed record could be set in trips to the latrine. It only happened once. After that one incident, I could have drunk an entire river and not succomb to the condition that ripped my gut to shreads. Later in life I remember hearing a Johnny Knoxville interview describing the exact same condition I suffered from, that he experience in Egypt. He ended his interview with, "that was when I learned my body can take on a lot of germs and desease once they are properly introduced to the human immune system." People should not be affraid to go outside and play in the mud. It only makes you stronger.

03/13/19 01:16 PM #4994    

 

David Mitchell

OLP History

I wanted to add a final story about Father Foley (and his reign of terror).

From our earlier stories (mine and John Jackson's - and you could hear the same for Nina, Mary Ann, Keith - anyone) you have heard about what the next pastor referred to as "the Bingo Capital of the World". Father Foley was obsessed with raising money. He loved the process of raising money and he loved those who gave a lot. I just remember that Dad and Doctor Donley were the two largest contributors in the parrish  - and used their influence on him when they felt the need. I mentioned earlier about how they paid him a visit and (as Mom later claimed) "ripped him up one side and down the other" over his publishing the annual contributions from the entire parrish - in the order of contribution from highest to lowest. 

The goal of all this fund raising was to build the permanent church. I do beleive the parrish was carved out of the two big existing parrishes, St. Mike's and Immacualte Conception in the late 40's or early 50's and began with a quansett hut (which was before me). It then moved into a tiny frame building down near the northwest corner of the property just behind a poultry shop, owned If I recall correctly, by Mr. Deritas (spelling) father of several kids ahead and behind us at Watterson (Norma the oldest and quite a beautiful girl - about Watterson Class of '63). this is the church where I was allowed to crawl under the pews and pop my head up three pews away, while my (extremely tolerant) parents looked on. It was such a small congregation, I think they trusted me to "visit" other parrishioners that knew me well - including a smiling, freckled face boy about my age named Tommy (Litzinger) - our earliest meeting - about 3 or 4. 

But when the school was built, it had an addition on the back (north) side that was big square shape intended to become the eventual gymnasium - someday. That boring, tasteless, cubical became the church for most of my life in Columbus. That was where we listened to Father Foley's raving sermans and was the resting place for those rooftop loudspeakers I mentioned earlier.

The money streamed in from collections and Bingo, and at one point, I seem to recall (details vague here - John??) Father Foley getting pressured by Bishop Ready to close or cut back on the Bingo. Father Foley's response was to "stage" a raid by the Sheriff's department (he was a buddy of the Sheriff), to force it to go to court and prove the Bishop had no grounds to close it. (Charlie Kaps could shed some light (or "darkness") here if he is lurking.)

But it all came to a halt one day when Father Foley died. And were the parrishioners in for a shock!

Father not only relished the process of raising money, but he also loved investing it - in his own choice of accounts. (still can't imagine they had that autonomous authority back then). He had a brother who was a stock broker in Boston and Father had put all of the parrish funds into his brother's hands to invest. Right after Father's death, it was discovered that the Boston account was cleaned out, and that his brother had moved to the Bahamas. I seem to recall hearing the figure "half a million dollars" (20 odd years of collections) was gone.

Not too many years later the new church was built - how so quickly I do not know. But the lawyer for Father Foley (or for the Parish itself) was Charlie Kaps' dad. And I remember standing outside Sunday Mass one day, ovehearing my dad chatting with Mr. Kaps, and they were both in agreement, suspecting that Father Foley had found out about his brother, and that brought on the heart attack that killed him. 

Epilogue to follow shortly.


03/13/19 01:23 PM #4995    

 

David Mitchell

Jack,

How nice to know we share a sort of "brotherhood". Only mine was "shigella dysentery", came from our Squadron Mess Hall dish water. (or so my dad concluded).

It hit me first and ripped through the entire squadron - nasty stuff! Got Medivac-ed out to "Binh Thuy Feild EVAC Hospital" in Can Tho and spent three days being fed through a needle in my arm. 

You and I may also hold the weight loss title for the class. I think you once claimed 130 lbs. I only got down to 132.


03/13/19 01:43 PM #4996    

 

David Mitchell

OLP History - epilogue

Years later when the new church was finally being built, I remember hearing Dad's comments from a planning meeting where the parishioners were reveiwing the architectural drawinsg for the new church. Dad was laughing to Mom about a comment Charlie Kaps' dad had made at the meeting. Dad said that Mr Kaps didn't like the modern look of it at all (nor did Dad and Mom), and called it a "Circus Tent". That name stuck with a numbr of older parishioners who were luke-warm to the modern look.

When the new church was finally built, Mom and Dad decided to buy the new bells for the triangular, steel-framed "steeple". I think the three bells were forged in Belgium and I suspect cost a pretty penny. Dad and Mom never told me how much. Those of you not familiar, They are three different sized bells, hanging one above the other - smaller at the top - largest at the bottom. (about 12 inch diamter to about 24 inch)

And here is the funny part. The sound they give off is an unpleasant, almost discordant chime that Mom and Dad were completely emabarrased about. And what's even funnier, they are named after (dedicated to) my mother's mother (my Grandma Bessie), a Methodist woman (born in Hew Hampshire or Vermont) who used to love to come to Mass with us because she loved to hear Father Foley's "New England" accent. Some years back, I was told there are still a few old parishioners who refer to them as "Bessie's Bells". 

(I can spell when I want to)

 


go to top 
  Post Message
  
    Prior Page
 Page  
Next Page