God, Religion & Spirituality - February 1, 2023

God, Religion & Spirituality

My great grandparents, who built the farmhouse in Ohio that I have now restored, were staunch Roman Catholics. They raised their five children as Catholics and the entire family attended Sunday mass at the Immaculate Conception Church in Port Clinton, Ohio.

My dear mother insisted that my sister and I be raised Catholic. My father was Presbyterian and didn’t object. I was baptized in Darmstadt, West Germany three weeks after I was born.

After they divorced she raised the two of us as a single mother. We saw JFK at the Carmel Mission before he became President. We both attended the Carmel Mission parochial school and I even went to the seminary in Fresno to study for the priesthood.

Our beloved United States of America was founded on the principle of religious freedom. Our wise founders knew that the love of God and neighbor is the basic tenet of all religions. Still, they insisted that no religion should ever be established as “the religion” of the country.

The Supreme Court made a colossal mistake when it “established the religion of ‘no religion.’“ The flawed reasoning that bowed to the minority interests who fought school prayer hurt the vast majority of Americans who choose to practice their religion. If a child doesn’t want to join in group prayer in school, simply bow your head in silence, or please go to another school.

Deep down inside every man, woman and child is the basic idea of God. It is not children who object to prayer, religion, and spirituality – it is their godless parents.

I have observed that people who believe in God and practice some form of religion or spirituality are much happier than those who do not. And those who deny the existence of God are intellectually arrogant. Religion, family and, school are our primary sources of moral growth.

Let’s allow God back into America.