[World, August 27, 1994] 1969—Gary Mathewes arrives at the Wood-stock festival with his streetwise, drug-dealing Greenwich Village girlfriend. “I don't remember buying a ticket, or anyone asking for a ticket,” he says. “I don't remember much, except spending a lot of time lying on the ground.”
1994—Father Gregory Mathewes-Green stands at an altar covered with gold brocade. “Holy things are for the holy,” he intones. “One is holy,” the people sing back, “One is Lord, Jesus Christ.”
Twenty-five years after Woodstock, twenty years after he insisted on a vegetarian spread at his wedding reception,
[World, April 23, 1994]
The American Association of University Women, which last year issued a report equating boy-girl schoolyard teasing with sexual harassment, is now concerned about how schools damage little girls' fragile self-esteem. The problem is that they don't have enough role models.
Wait a minute, you say. The last time you visited a school, at least half the teachers looked to be female.
[The Christian Century, April 13, 1994]
When my friend Marvin came for a visit, I presumed he'd join us for vespers, out of curiosity or simple politeness. To my surprise he was deeply reluctant. Marvin is a dedicated convert to a conservative branch of the Presbyterian church, and it began to dawn on me that he might actively object to Orthodoxy.
I recalled the evangelical Protestant anxiety about highly liturgical churches:
[Christianity Today, April 24, 1994]
In a year which has seen many discouragements for the pro‑life movement, March 10 marks a particularly low point; it is the anniversary of the killing of abortionist David Gunn in Pensacola, Florida. When the pro‑choice movement tragically gained a martyr, they gained another boost in the fashionability of their cause. And those of us who oppose both abortion and murder must wonder once again why God allows these setbacks to occur.
[The NOEL News, Spring 1991]
Did you ever study for the wrong exam? There you were with freshly sharpened pencils and a head full of trigonometry--and you were handed a blue book and a list of essay questions about the Spanish-American War. Oh no!
There are times that I wonder whether the pro-life movement is confused about which test we're taking.
[World, March 12, 1994]
It was ”almost providential."
This is a cautious man speaking. Governor Bob Casey is not given to effusive pronouncements. His lengthy form is folded behind the ornate desk, but his long arms sometimes escape to chop the air in emphasis. White hair and black eyebrows lend him an intense appearance, but his manner is plain-spoken and unaffected, and always marked by caution.
[World, February 26, 1994]
Good news on the pro-life front recently: both Pennsylvania and North Dakota have overcome judicial hurdles to putting abortion laws into effect. Pro-life victories are rare enough that activists are celebrating.
The Pennsylvania laws were enacted in 1990, but abortion advocates brought repeated challenges that carried them all the way to the Supreme Court.
[World, January 29, 1994]
The book's title was The Power of Their Glory; its subhead described Episcopalians as “America's Ruling Class.” The Episcopal church was just one of several mainline denominations that rocketed in membership, prominence, and influence in the years after World War II. The horrors of war had been such a foretaste of hell
[World, February 5, 1994]
During my college years I lived on ”Olympia Hill," a site less heavenly than its name suggests. Our southern city had once been host to a booming textile industry, and a hundred years ago a ramshackle collection of unheated wooden houses for employees had been thrown together beyond the railroad tracks. By the time I arrived, Olympia Hill had developed a mixed population:
[Religion News Service, November 28, 1995]
Is everybody happy? I'm not sure. On the Saturday before Thanksgiving, Christiana Mall in Christiana, Delaware was crowded and bristling with festive decor, but the people waiting around the base of the fountain looked dazed and glum. The fountain was dry, so its circular field of brownish rocks sat idle,
