Thursday, August 25, 2011

Outrage As Bloomberg Bans Clergy From 9/11 Ceremony 
 
Religious leaders are calling on Mayor Michael Bloomberg to reverse course and offer clergy a role in the ceremony commemorating the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.Rudy Washington, a deputy mayor in former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s administration, said he’s outraged. Mr. Washington organized an interfaith ceremony at Yankee Stadium shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
 
This is America, and to have a memorial service where there’s no prayer, this appears to be insanity to me,” said Mr. Washington, who has suffered severe medical problems connected to the time he spent at Ground Zero. ..
Did Bloomberg forget this?
Mychal F. Judge, OFM (born Robert Emmet Judge on May 11, 1933; died September 11, 2001) was a Roman Catholic priest of the Franciscan Order of Friars Minor, Chaplain of the Fire Department of New York, and the first recorded victim of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
And this?
Upon hearing the news that the World Trade Center had been hit, Father Judge rushed to the site. He was met by the Mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, who asked him to pray for the city and its victims. Judge administered the Last Rites to some lying on the streets, then entered the lobby of the World Trade Center North Tower, where an emergency command post was organized. There he continued offering aid and prayers for the rescuers, the injured and dead. 
When the South Tower collapsed at 9:59 AM, debris went flying through the North Tower lobby, killing many inside, including Judge. At the moment he was struck in the head and killed, Judge was repeatedly praying aloud, “Jesus, please end this right now! God, please end this!”, according to Judge’s biographer and New York Daily News columnist Michael Daly.
Shortly after his death, an NYPD lieutenant, who had also been buried in the collapse, found Judge’s body and assisted by two firemen and two civilian bystanders carried it out of the North Tower lobby to nearby St Peter’s Church. 
This event was captured in the documentary film 9/11, shot by Jules and Gedeon Naudet. Shannon Stapleton, photographer from Reuters, photographed Judge’s body being carried out of the rubble by five men. It became one of the most famous images related to 9/11. The Philadelphia Weekly reports the photograph is considered an American Pietà. 
Judge’s body was formally identified by NYPDDetectiveSteven McDonald, a long-time friend of the priest. The coroner found that Judge died of “blunt force trauma to the head.” 
Mychal Judge’s body bag was labeled “Victim 0001,” recognized as the first official victim of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Former President Bill Clinton was among the 3,000 people who attended his funeral, held on September 15 at St Francis of Assisi Church in Manhattan. It was presided over by Cardinal Edward Egan. President Clinton said that Judge’s death was “a special loss. We should live his life as an example of what has to prevail.” 
And has Bloomberg forgotten all the other clergy that ministered to the dying and the survivors?
Read the full story here.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

How long do we have to put up with these people? That is people like Bloomberg and Obama. How long do we have to put up with "leaders" who are constantly poking us in the eye and standing for everything that is contrary to what used to be right about our country?

First, we change ourselves. We decide to return our nation's founding principles. We decide to return our nation's God: the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who the Founders referred to as Nature's God.

Second, we change our leadership. Get them out. Every last one who does not believe in the greatness of our country, its founding, and its God should be voted out of office. If a person does not act like he believes with every fiber of his being that the God of the Bible is superior to and different from Allah or if a person acts like America is just another country among many and not the greatest nation the world has ever seen, then that person is not fit for and office in this country.

Always On Watch said...

No clergy? Including imams?

SamenoKami said...

Don't pray. Don't piss and moan about the hurricane headed your way either.
(I'm gonna get in trouble for that comment.)

Paddy D said...

Religious Leaders in NYC should hold their own interfaith Memorial Service in a House of Worship close to the 9/11 site and invite the First Responders and others who were outraged by the Mayors decision to attend a Memorial Service free of Mayor Bloomberg.