On Monday night as promised I attended Bishop Matthew Clark’s Prayer service for President Elect Obama. I completely agree with the concept of praying for a President and all our leaders. We should pray that they respect life and keep us safe.
I was deeply disappointed in the event. It was held at Sacred Heart Cathedral, a Catholic Church and the home of Bishop Clark. It was called an ecumenical interfaith service. There was no professing of the Christian faith at all. During the event there was absolutely no reading of New Testament Scriptures by the Bishop. The name of Jesus Christ was not mentioned once. The blessing phrase “May Christ be with you” was changed to “May truth and beauty be with you”. There was a program for the event, it had Barack Obama’s picture on it and again never mentions Christ in it. This was taken off of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester’s website:
Mission
The department of Evangelization and Catechesis is dedicated to the Church’s effort to make disciples and to help people believe that Jesus is the Son of God, so that believing, they might have life in his name, thus building up the body of Christ. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #4).
As billed it was an interfaith service. Other religious leaders were comfortable reading from holy books. An old Testament Bible reading from Deuteronomy was read by Rabbi Laurence A Kotok of Temple B’rith Kodesh, We thank him for that. Iman Muhammad Shafig of the Islamic Center of Rochester read from the Qur’an. There was even a Sanskrit chant. However Bishop Clark in his own church chose not to read from the Testament of Jesus Christ! There was never a mention of the sanctity of life, opposition to abortion, death penalty or war. We might as well have been at a Democratic caucus meeting in the War Memorial. Most disappointing was no mention of Thursdays pro life march in Washington D.C. where 100’s of clergies, including the Bishops from the Syracuse and Buffalo diocese will attend. There is an estimated crowd of 200,000 people. Bishop Clark will not attend, he has never attended in 20 years.
On Wednesday I will leave to go to Washington. I will come back with a report that includes pictures of the masses of people. Last year we easily had 200,000 people, the media barely covered it.