LIBERTY: Rights & Tolerance | August 2003

[Around 1946]...about ten years before I was born...someone (allegedly a KKK affiliated group) fire-bombed our new Catholic church, the Temple City parish of St. Luke.

In the two years or so it took to re-construct the building, the congregation met in the hastily re-modeled chicken coop of a local parishioner.

In 1996, as we celebrated the 50 year anniversary of our parish, the procession was led by "The Chicken Coopers", the surviving members of the original congregation -- the little kids asked them why they wore those cute little cut-out paper chicks on their coats or dresses.  Hearing the answer, the children grew up much that day.

Although you can tell by some of my other essays that I don't always agree with the official positions of the church, and I regret those times when it has not lived up to its lofty ideals, I love the Catholic Church and what it stands for at its very best -- no organization in history has fed more of the hungry, clothed more of the naked, or healed more of the sick around the world than the Roman Catholic Church (and as a true believer, I also am proud of the work they have done in spreading the "good news" of the Gospels).  I'm glad that our country has more religious tolerance now than during some periods when it has not lived up to its lofty ideals.

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