Thursday, March 7, 2013

all Nassau OTB bettors and employees are not

heterosexual and Catholic. Nassau OTB can't close based upon religious preference.
See eg NY Const. Art. 1, Sec. 3

Discrimination the “Very Purpose” of DOMA, Lambda Legal and GLAD Argue in Supreme Court Brief

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Lambda Legal and LA Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce Mixer

03/07/2013 - 18:30

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03/13/2013 - 17:30

New York, New York

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03/24/2013 - 17:00

Fort Lauderdale, Florida

"DOMA is a recipe for a violation of equal protection guaranteed by the U. S. Constitution"

Date:

03/01/2013

Susan Sommer

"DOMA is a perfect storm with multiple elements all of which call for careful judicial review. Its passage was accompanied by unambiguous and overt statements of moral disapproval of gay people, indicating its very purpose was discriminatory. It is precisely the sort of statute that should fail rational basis scrutiny. Indeed, it’s harder to imagine a clearer example."

(Washington, DC, March 1, 2013) -- Lambda Legal and Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) today submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in U.S. v. Windsor urging the U.S. Supreme Court to affirm the decision by the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals declaring Section 3 of the federal so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional.
"DOMA is a recipe for a violation of equal protection guaranteed by the U. S. Constitution: It targets a particularly disliked group, impacts important personal interests, and represents a one-time departure from the usual process of allocating federal rights and benefits," said Susan Sommer, Lambda Legal Senior Counsel and Director of Constitutional Litigation. "DOMA is a perfect storm with multiple elements all of which call for careful judicial review. Its passage was accompanied by unambiguous and overt statements of moral disapproval of gay people, indicating its very purpose was discriminatory. It is precisely the sort of statute that should fail rational basis scrutiny. Indeed, it’s harder to imagine a clearer example."

The brief argues that, although laws such as DOMA that discriminate based on sexual orientation should be subjected to heightened scrutiny - a more rigorous standard of constitutional review - DOMA does not even pass the less strict, rational basis standard. Drawing on the Supreme Court's ruling in Romer v. Evans, Lambda Legal's historic 1996 case, the brief argues that DOMA fails this less strict standard because it heaps upon married same-sex couples disadvantages that defy credible connection to any legitimate purpose. DOMA amended more than 1,000 federal laws and regulations ranging from tax policy, federal employee benefits, rights under private pension plans and conflict-of-interest rules.
Mary L. Bonauto, GLAD Civil Rights Project Director, commented, "DOMA is akin to so many of the anti-gay laws still plaguing gay people in many States. In addition to showing why DOMA fails, the point of this brief is to demonstrate that under the most basic equal protection framework, anti-gay laws are indefensible."
Windsor is one of multiple recent cases where federal courts have found Section 3 of DOMA unconstitutional. Those cases include Lambda Legal's Golinski v. U.S. Office of Personnel Management in the Ninth Circuit and GLAD's Gill et. al. v. Office of Personnel Management in the First Circuit and Pedersen v. Office of Personnel Management in the Second Circuit. U.S. v. Windsor is also out of the Second Circuit and was brought by the ACLU and the law firm of Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison LLP.
In addition to the Lambda Legal/GLAD brief, over forty other friend-of-the-court briefs are being filed urging the Supreme Court to affirm the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Windsor, including one joined by 278 businesses and municipalities.
In addition to Sommer and Bonauto, other lawyers on the brief include: Paul M. Smith, Luke C. Platzer and Melissa A. Cox of Jenner & Block LLP who teamed up with GLAD on its DOMA litigation; Jon W. Davidson, Tara L. Borelli, and Shelbi D. Day, of Lambda Legal; and Gary Buseck, Vickie L. Henry, and Janson Wu of GLAD.
To read the brief filed today click here.
Information about Golinski v. OPM, Lambda Legal’s DOMA challenge, is available here.
Information about Gill v. OPM and Pedersen v. OPM is available here.

###

Contact Info

Lambda Legal: Tom Warnke, Cell: 213-841-4503: Email: twarnke@lambdalegal.org
GLAD: Carisa Cunningham, Cell: 617-447-6500: Email: ccunningham@glad.org

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Home > LI Confidential > Stop scratching on holidays

Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012

Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.

Nassau OTB Catholics see a day off based upon

based upon religious

preference

See also NY Const. Art. 1, Sec. 3. Andrew Cuomo is not the Church?

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Home > LI Confidential > Stop scratching on holidays

Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012

March 5, 2013

U.S. Catholics in Poll See a Church Out of Touch

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and MEGAN THEE-BRENAN

Roman Catholics in the United States say that their church and bishops are out of touch, and that the next pope should lead the church in a more modern direction on issues like birth control and ordaining women and married men as priests, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

Seven out of 10 say Pope Benedict XVI and the Vatican have done a poor job of handling sexual abuse, a significant rise from three years ago. A majority said that the issue had led them to question the Vatican’s authority. The sexual abuse of children by priests is the largest problem facing the church, Catholics in the poll said.

Three-fourths of those polled said they thought it was a good idea for Benedict to resign. Most wanted the next pope to be “someone younger, with new ideas.” A majority said they wanted the next pope to make the church’s teachings more liberal.

With cardinals now in Rome preparing to elect Benedict’s successor, the poll indicated that the church’s hierarchy had lost the confidence and allegiance of many American Catholics, an intensification of a long-term trend. They like their priests and nuns, but many feel that the bishops and cardinals do not understand their lives.

“I don’t think they are in the trenches with people,” said Therese Spender, 51, a homemaker in Fort Wayne, Ind., who said she attended Mass once a week and agreed to answer further questions after the poll. “They go to a lot of meetings, but they are not out in the street.”

Even Catholics who frequently attend Mass said they were not following the bishops’ lead on issues that the church had recently invested much energy, money and credibility in fighting — artificial birth control and same-sex marriage.

Eric O’Leary, 38, a funeral director in Des Moines who attends Mass weekly, said: “I would like them not to be so quick to condemn people because of their sexual preference or because of abortion, or to refuse priests the right to get married or women to be priests. I don’t think the church should get involved in whether or not people use birth control.”

The nationwide telephone poll was conducted on landlines and cellphones from Feb. 23 to 27, when many Catholics were still absorbing news of the first resignation of a pope in 600 years. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus four percentage points for the 580 Catholics, who were oversampled for purposes of analysis in the survey of 1,585 adults.

Benedict, a soft-spoken scholar and a church traditionalist, had apparently made little impression on American Catholics in his eight years as pope. Half of those in the poll said they either had no opinion of him or had not heard enough about him. Nevertheless, 4 in 10 had a favorable opinion, and only one in 10 unfavorable.

“He’s written three or four books, and his writings are incredible,” said Leonard Lefebvre, 70, a retired economist in Tequesta, Fla. “He’s continued on course, and he’s held the religion to where it’s supposed to be at.”

The poll suggested that the papacy no longer occupies the exalted position it once did. Asked whether the pope is infallible when he teaches on matters of morality and faith, 40 percent said yes, 46 percent said no, and 14 percent said they did not know. Nearly 8 in 10 Catholics polled said they would be more likely to follow their conscience on “difficult moral questions” than to follow the pope’s teachings.

When asked which “one thing” they would “most like to see the next pope accomplish,” the most common responses that respondents volunteered were, in order: bring people back to church, modernize the church, unify the church, and do something about sexual abuse.

A spate of new information about prelates hiding the misdeeds of pedophile priests appeared to have taken a toll. A higher percentage of Catholics said the pope and the Vatican had done a poor job of handling reports of past sexual abuse recently (69 percent) compared with 2010 (55 percent), when the abuse scandal flared in many European countries. This is despite the church’s many reforms in the last 10 years and reports of abuse by priests in the United States declining drastically.

Majorities said they wanted to see the next pope maintain the church’s opposition to abortion and the death penalty, even though they themselves were not opposed to them. Three-quarters of Catholics supported abortion under at least some circumstances, and three-fifths favored the death penalty.

“I can understand how the Catholic Church stands against it,” said Geri Toni, 57, of abortion. “We are not supposed to kill. That is one of our Ten Commandments.”

“But as a woman,” said Ms. Toni, who lives in Fort Myers, Fla., and attends Mass weekly, “I have to make sense of it, and I believe choice comes down to the individual.”

On every other hotly debated issue, Catholics wanted the next pope to lead the church in an about-face. Seven of 10 Catholics polled said the next pope should let priests marry, let women become priests and allow the use of artificial methods of birth control. Nine of 10 said they wanted the next pope to allow the use of condoms to prevent the spread of H.I.V. and other diseases.

Sixty-two percent of Catholics said they were in favor of legalizing marriage for same-sex couples. Catholics approved of same-sex marriage at a higher rate than Americans as a whole, among whom 53 percent approved.

John Sadel, 28, a supervisor in a plastics production facility in Bethlehem, Pa., said, “I’m not saying change everything the church stands for, but you need to evolve with the times if you want to remain a viable religion.”

The American bishops also appear to have lost ground among their own flock in their campaign to fight the White House rule that requires employers to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives — a campaign the bishops say is about religious freedom.

One year ago, two-thirds of Catholics polled said that religiously affiliated employers, like hospitals or universities, should be allowed to opt out of covering birth control for their female employees because of religious or moral objections. In the most recent poll, only about half of Catholics said they agreed.

The issue has become a political litmus test, with Catholic bishops and religious conservatives saying that their religious freedom is being threatened by President Obama’s policies. But when asked what the debate is about, only 40 percent of Catholics polled said “religious freedom,” while 50 percent said “women’s health and their rights” — an indication that Mr. Obama’s framing of the issue is holding sway even among many Catholics.

Catholics seemed to feel far more warmly toward their local priests than those in the hierarchy. Seven in 10 Catholics in the poll said they felt that their parish priests were “in touch with the needs of Catholics today.” Eighty-five percent of those who attend Mass said the sermons were excellent or good.

Nearly two-thirds of Catholics polled said they had not changed the amount of money they contributed to the church in the last few years; 16 percent said they gave more; 17 percent said less. Of those giving less, half said it was because of financial circumstances, and one-quarter cited unhappiness with the church.

Nationwide, bishops are closing parish churches and schools to save money and to respond to changing demographics. The reorganization is so sweeping that the poll found that 11 percent of Catholics who attend Mass said their parish church had closed or merged in the last few years.

Allison Kopicki, Dalia Sussman and Marina Stefan contributed reporting.

Bearing Arms: Charity Takes Gun Lobby Closer to Its Quarry

Cardinal Keith O'Brien & Lech Walesa proudly

commend Andrew Cuomo and Teamsters Local 707 President Kevin McCaffrey for denying homosexual Greek Bettors their rights secured by NY Const. Art, 1, Sec. 3. New York State may marry homosexuals but it will be ....damned if it is going to let them bet at Nassau OTB while Andrew Cuomo may chose to be in church. Someday he thinks he will be king of the United States.

Following Resignation, Top British Cardinal Acknowledges Sexual Misconduct

By JOHN F. BURNS

Published: March 3, 2013

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LONDON — Britain’s most senior Roman Catholic cleric, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, acknowledged Sunday that he had been guilty of sexual misconduct, a week after he announced his resignation and said he would not attend the conclave to choose the next pope. The moves followed revelations that three current and one former priest had accused him of inappropriate sexual contact dating back decades.

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Former Cardinal Keith O’Brien on Wednesday. He stepped down last week after charges of inappropriate conduct by four men.

Top British Cardinal Resigns, a Day After Charges of ‘Inappropriate Acts’ (February 26, 2013)

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Cardinal O’Brien, the head of the church in Scotland, is the highest-ranking figure in the church’s recent history to make such an admission.

“I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal,” Cardinal O’Brien, 74, said in a statement.

The statement stunned many in the Scottish church and beyond. Some said the cardinal’s statement appeared to raise the possibility that the undefined sexual activities he acknowledged may not be restricted to the known allegations, the earliest of which relates to 1980. Ordained in 1965, he became an archbishop in 1985, but was not named cardinal until 2003.

Last weekend, The Observer newspaper reported the accusations of impropriety with accounts from the four men. The first was a seminarian when Cardinal O’Brien, then a priest, served as a powerful supervisory figure in two Scottish seminaries. The others were young priests; it is not clear exactly when in the 1980s they say they were subject to his unwanted advances.

Initially, Cardinal O’Brien contested the allegations and said he was seeking legal advice. But on Sunday, he offered a sweeping apology that was, however, bereft of detail. “To those I have offended, I apologize and ask forgiveness,” he said. “To the Catholic Church and the people of Scotland, I also apologize. I will now spend the rest of my life in retirement. I will play no further part in the public life of the Catholic Church in Scotland.”

Many analysts saw the cardinal’s resignation and absence from the conclave as a result of papal pressure, and British newspapers have cited unidentified Vatican officials as saying Pope Benedict — who stunned the world with his own announcement on Feb. 11 that he would step down — had ordered the cardinal to remove himself.

Benedict’s resignation, which he attributed to ill health and exhaustion, took effect on Thursday, bringing an end to an eight-year papacy overshadowed by scandals involving cover-ups of pedophilia and other forms of sexual abuse by Catholic clerics.

The Vatican and more than a billion Catholics worldwide now await the papal conclave this month, in which 115 cardinals will choose one among their number as Benedict’s successor. He will inherit a crisis over church governance that Vatican experts have described as one of the legacies of the 85-year-old Benedict, a widely respected theologian whose critics faulted him with failing to deal conclusively with the sexual abuse scandals.

Analysts said that Cardinal O’Brien’s apology was bound to place a shadow over the process. Even before his announcement on Sunday, it was already seen as highly unusual that Cardinal O’Brien would not attend the conclave, and several other cardinals accused of protecting abusive priests have fought off pressure not to participate from advocates for abuse victims.

The differing approaches across the Catholic world to handling the sex abuse crisis are expected to be evident at the conclave. Bishops’ conferences in English-speaking countries have tended to adopt a more aggressive, zero-tolerance policy in recent years, while more traditionalist cardinals inside the Vatican and elsewhere in the Catholic world have often closed ranks to defend fellow prelates.

Cardinal O’Brien was a powerful voice of the conservative orthodoxy on homosexuality that characterized the papacies of John Paul II, who elevated him, and Benedict. Abandoning the relatively tolerant approach to the issue he had adopted in the years before he donned a cardinal’s red hat, he condemned homosexuality as immoral, and as a “grotesque subversion.”

His sudden downfall is a major crisis for the church in Scotland, where most of the country’s 750,000 Catholics are of Irish ancestry and live in the central belt between Glasgow and Edinburgh. As migrants or their descendants, they suffered decades of discrimination.

“It’s possibly, in terms of the internal history of the Church, the biggest crisis in the history of Scottish Catholicism since the Reformation,” said Tom Devine, a prominent historian.

The four men who accused Cardinal O’Brien have not been identified publicly, but the Observer reporter who broke the story, Catherine Deveney, wrote Saturday that they had all identified themselves in the complaints forwarded to the papal nuncio.

She also addressed the mystery of why the accusations are only now surfacing: until now, the men did not know of one another’s stories.

She said the former seminarian, whose story she had known “for years,” had called her last month, and related that he had just had a conversation with a priest who had divulged that the cardinal had instigated an “inappropriate relationship.” Ms. Deveney said that two other priests who said they had been approached by the cardinal were “drawn in,” without saying how.

“I’d never wanted to ‘out’ Keith just for being gay,” said the former seminarian, Ms. Deveney wrote. “But this was confirming that his behavior toward me was part of his modus operandi. He has hurt others, probably worse, than he affected me. And that only became clear a few weeks ago.”

She laid out this timeline: The four made statements to the nuncio, Archbishop Antonio Mennini, a few days before Benedict announced that he was stepping down. The four men were told that Cardinal O’Brien would still go to Rome.

Then, on Feb. 22, the cardinal made headlines by saying that the church rules on celibacy should be reviewed. Ms. Deveney said the men learned informally that the church objected to the comments, and that “the cardinal would not go to Rome.”

“So did the church act because it was shocked by the claims against the cardinal, or were they angry he had broken ranks on celibacy?” she asked, noting that her article breaking the news — for which she had the men’s statements in hand — came two days later.

The former seminarian, now married with children, said he had acted because he was “disappointed” by what he described as a “lack of integrity” by the church in reacting to the men’s original complaint to the Vatican, Ms. Deveney wrote. He said the only response he had received from church authorities had been in the form of a “cursory e-mail” giving the numbers of counselors he could talk to who were based “hundreds of miles” from where he lived.

Since the allegations became public, he said, the indifference of the church had not changed. “There have been two sensations for me this week,” he said. “One is feeling the hot breath of the media on the back of my neck, and the other is sensing the cold disapproval of the church hierarchy for daring to break ranks. I feel like if they could crush me, they would.”

Rachel Donadio contributed reporting from Rome and Douglas Dalby from Edinburgh, Scotland.

EUROPE NEWS
Updated March 3, 2013, 5:44 p.m. ET

Walesa Draws Fire for Comments About Gay Rights

By MARCIN SOBCZYK

WARSAW—Lech Walesa, Poland's communist-era democracy campaigner, caused an uproar here by saying homosexuals shouldn't demand more rights and gay legislators should sit "behind a wall" in Parliament, words critics said put into question his legacy as a freedom fighter.
"They need to know they are a minority and adjust to smaller things instead of rising to the greatest heights, taking peak time, organizing the biggest provocations designed to spoil others or pick out people from the majority," he said of gay people in a television interview Friday night, adding that he refuses to accept public gay-rights marches that "coax my children and grandchildren."
Most of the Polish society opposes granting the increasingly vocal homosexual minority some of the rights married couples enjoy. According to opinion polls, most Poles oppose allowing same-sex couples to register their partnerships. Bans of gay-rights parades by then-Warsaw mayor Lech Kaczynski, which courts subsequently struck down, featured prominently in Mr. Kaczynski's successful presidential campaign in 2005.
A shipyard electrician, Mr. Walesa led Poland's trade unions that challenged the communist system in the 1970s and 1980s. For that, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983. After communism fell in the former Soviet bloc in 1989, Mr. Walesa served as the country's president.
Mr. Walesa retired from active politics after he was voted out of office in 1995, but remains a resonant voice in the national debate. In recent years, he has supported Poland's ruling Civic Platform, whose leader, Prime Minister Donald Tusk, has this year urged the party's reluctant conservative lawmakers to support same-sex civil union legislation.
The growing visibility of gay people in Polish society, which has accompanied its democratic transition, led to the election of its first openly homosexual legislator in 2011. Robert Biedron, a gay-rights campaigner, won his seat with the support of nearly 17,000 people. He sits in the third row out of the 11 in the Sejm, lower house of parliament, right next to Anna Grodzka, Poland's first transsexual lawmaker. Both are members of the anticlerical Palikot Movement, an opposition party.
Mr. Biedron called the former president's remarks inappropriate.
"It's completely irresponsible for a public figure to use the kind of hate speech that some, perhaps most in the society are using," he said. "By using it, Lech Walesa, the symbol of freedom, shows a lack of respect for the Nobel Peace Prize."
He added Mr. Walesa's call to relegate him behind the parliament's wall ring of the practice of "a bench ghetto," segregation of Jewish students in classrooms of Poland's universities in the 1930s.
Mr. Walesa's son, Jaroslaw, a member of the European Parliament, joined critics, saying the 70-year-old former president acted on a reflex built into the people that grew up separated from the West with the Iron Curtain.
"What my father said is fundamentally wrong and damaging," he said in remarks posted online. "He is part of the older generation and, unfortunately, he presented an opinion characteristic of his generation."
Recent votes in Poland's Parliament have shown it has a firm conservative majority across party lines. In January, it rejected three bills seeking to allow same-sex couples to register their partnerships. In February, it ducked a vote that would have installed Ms. Grodzka, who was born a man, as a deputy speaker of Parliament.
Write to Marcin Sobczyk at marcin.sobczyk@dowjones.com

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Home > LI Confidential > Stop scratching on holidays

Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Cardinal Dolan does not tolerate freedom of

religion in NY and requires that Andrew Cuomo close Nassau OTB ON ROMAN CATHOLIC PALM SUNAY IN PREFERENCE TO GREEK ORTHODOX PALM SUNDAY AND ROMAN CATHOLIC EASTER SUNDAY IN PREFERENCE TO GREEK ORTHODOX EASTER SUNDAY.

FREEDOM OF RELIGION IN NY IS NOT FOR ALL.

Saying Mass at Vatican, Dolan Urges Catholics to Look Beyond the Papal Conclave

By MICHAEL PAULSON

Published: March 3, 2013

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VATICAN CITY — The cavernous nave of St. Peter’s Basilica was nearly empty when Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan arrived Sunday morning, shortly after dawn, a fading moon still hanging in the sky, and red streaks of sunlight illuminating the facade.

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Cardinal Dolan, the archbishop of New York, is a morning person — most days, he likes to get up at 5 and walk or exercise before his morning prayers — and on this last quiet day before the process of selecting a new pope begins Monday, he was raring to go — to celebrate a Mass, to start the day, to begin the conclave.

“I’m eager to get started,” he said. “Let’s go. Let’s go, let’s get home.”

Cardinal Dolan is one of 115 cardinal-electors expected Monday morning at the Vatican’s New Synod Hall, along with dozens of retired cardinals who are invited to participate in the conversations but who cannot vote in the ensuing conclave because they are over the age of 80. The cardinals plan to meet for several days in what they call “general congregation” to get to know one another and to discuss issues facing the church globally; during their meetings, they will also pick a start date for the conclave.

Cardinal Dolan has spent the last several days meeting with other church officials, doing interviews with reporters, and taking care of more ordinary tasks — on Saturday visiting a friend in the hospital and on Sunday taking New York’s seminarians and priests in Rome to lunch. Cardinal Dolan has said, “I never like to come to Rome without saying Mass at St. Peter’s sometime during my stay,” so on Sunday that is what he did. He employed a small chapel in the basilica’s grottoes, and invited about 20 people, including the author George Weigel and members of the New York news media, to take part. Anne Thompson, an NBC News correspondent, was a reader during the liturgy.

“We’re all here to follow the extraordinary events with the departure of Benedict XVI, the election of a new successor of St. Peter,” Cardinal Dolan said. However, he said, the celebration of Mass is more significant.

“We’ve got to keep in mind — you know what, even more important than the pope is what we’re doing right now,” he said. “The life of the church goes on, and the life of the church centers around what we’re doing right now.”

He celebrated the Mass in the Chapel of Our Lady Queen of the Hungarians, a contemporary worship space that honors the experience of Hungarian Catholics. Cardinal Dolan, a fan of sports metaphors, noted that the chapel was “just a 9-iron shot from the tomb of St. Peter.”

In his brief homily, the cardinal made a passing reference to the mass shooting at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Conn., saying that in biblical times individuals tried to discern what God was doing, just as people today look at the massacre and “try to figure out what happened,” or try to understand God’s role in “tragedy and sickness and suffering in our own life.” Those are understandable questions, the cardinal suggested, but, he said, “Don’t try to be figuring out God’s will out there all the time — try to figure out what God is asking you to do inside.”

The cardinal said the task of the next pope was not to make change in the church but to preserve the church’s traditions.

“That’s the very nature of the papacy, is to hand on faithfully what God told us of Jesus, what Jesus told his apostles, and what his apostles hand on to us — tradition, with a capital T,” he said.

“Many of you professional, excellent journalists ask, very often, ‘Do you think the new pope will make changes in the church?’ ” he added. “The church is in the business of change, big time: change of human heart. Jesus through his church calls us first and foremost not to change structures, not to change all this stuff out there — we’ll get to that, if first of all we let God change us inside.”

A version of this article appeared in print on March 4, 2013, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Saying Mass at Vatican, Dolan Urges Catholics to Look Beyond the Papal Conclave.

Saying Mass at Vatican, Dolan Urges Catholics to Look Beyond the Papal Conclave

By MICHAEL PAULSON

Published: March 3, 2013

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“I’m eager to get started,” he said. “Let’s go. Let’s go, let’s get home.”

The cardinal said the task of the next pope was not to make change in the church but to preserve the church’s traditions.

A version of this article appeared in print on March 4, 2013, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Saying Mass at Vatican, Dolan Urges Catholics to Look Beyond the Papal Conclave.

Cardinal Dolan supports freedom of religion in NY

ONLY FOR CATHOLICS

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Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012

NY Cardinal Dolan a 'happy warrior' for church

Originally published: March 3, 2013 4:36 AM
Updated: March 3, 2013 5:46 AM
By The Associated Press RACHEL ZOLL (AP Religion Writer)

Photo credit: AP | Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, talks during an interview with the Associated Press at the Pontifical North American College, in Rome, Thursday, Feb. 28, 2013. Dolan spoke shortly before he watched Pope Benedict XVI leave the Vatican in a helicopter taking the Pope to Castel Gandolfo. Benedict XVI greeted the faithful for the last time as pope on Thursday, telling tearful well-wishers that he is beginning the final stage of his life as "simply a pilgrim," hours before he becomes the first pontiff in 600 years to resign. (AP Photo/Angelo Carconi)

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NEW YORK - (AP) -- Challenging a White House mandate for birth control coverage in health insurance, New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan sounded like a general rallying the troops.
"The only thing we're certainly not prepared to do is give in," Dolan said at a national bishops' meeting last November. "We're not violating our consciences."
Weeks earlier, he had appeared in a far less formal setting, at New York's Fordham University with comedian Stephen Colbert. From the 3,000 cheering audience members, one student considering the priesthood asked whether he should date. Dolan said it could help decide the right path, then quipped, "By the way, let me give you the phone numbers of my nieces."
___
EDITOR'S NOTE: As the Roman Catholic Church prepares to elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI, The Associated Press is profiling key cardinals seen as "papabili" -- contenders to the throne. In the secretive world of the Vatican, there is no way to know who is in the running, and history has yielded plenty of surprises. But these are the names that have come up time and again in speculation. Today: Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
___
Catholic News Service calls him a happy warrior for evangelization. Kean University historian Christopher Bellitto calls him the bear-hug bishop. Dolan, 63, is an upbeat, affable defender of Catholic orthodoxy, and a well-known religious figure in the United States.
He holds a job Pope John Paul II once called "archbishop of the capital of the world." His colleagues broke with protocol in 2010 and made him president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, instead of elevating the sitting vice president as expected. And during the 2012 presidential election, Republicans and Democrats competed over which national political convention the cardinal would bless. He did both.
But scholars question whether his charisma and experience are enough for a real shot at succeeding Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. The thinking ahead of the conclave is Dolan's chances are slim.
"It's not a personal attack on his qualities as a cardinal or individual," said Monsignor Michael Fahey, a scholar at Fairfield University in Conn. "Cardinal Dolan has a knack for getting people to feel relaxed and to laugh and to expect the unexpected, but that is not what the church needs right now."
Dolan spent seven years in Rome as rector of the North American College, considered the West Point for U.S. priests, where he had studied for his own ordination years earlier. However, he never worked in a Vatican office or congregation -- experience that would have helped him develop ties with cardinals from other countries and raise his profile in a conclave.
Benedict made Dolan a cardinal just a year ago. Still, the former pope chose the New York archbishop for the honor of delivering a speech to other church leaders in Rome. His address on spreading the faith was highly praised, and he emerged as something of a star of the event, gaining mention in some Italian media as potentially "papabile," or having the qualities of a future pope.
No American has ever served as pontiff. Some cardinals express concerns a superpower pope and the potential for his actions to be viewed as serving the U.S. instead of the church.
Ahead of this conclave, church-watchers seem split over whether that old assumption still applies. Dolan's credentials as upholder of the faith have been especially burnished by the bishops' ongoing conflicts with President Barack Obama. Obama endorses same-sex marriage, supports abortion rights and included the birth control coverage rule in his health care overhaul.
However, Dolan speaks only halting Italian and a little Spanish, and no French or Latin, a huge drawback for a potential leader of a 1.2 billion-member global church. (By contrast, Benedict speaks eight or so languages.) The cardinal's informality and folksy vocabulary, which help make him so approachable in the United States, could actually undermine his chances in Rome. In recent comments about other challenges the church has survived, Dolan noted that some former popes have been "lemons." When taking the stage to greet Colbert, before about 3,000 cheering students, Dolan jokingly kissed Colbert's ring instead of shaking the comedian's hand.
Along with his humor, Dolan can artfully convey church teaching. He earned a doctorate in church history from The Catholic University of America and sprinkles his speeches with details of the early struggles Catholic immigrants trying to carve a place for themselves in Protestant America. Noting that secularism is growing in the U.S, he argues that broader society is in a "drive to neuter religion" and "push religion back into the sacristy." On his blog, "The Gospel in the Digital Age," Dolan writes on a wide range of issues, from gun control to abortion to the future of Catholic schools.
A St. Louis native of Irish ancestry and the oldest of five children, Dolan began his path to the priesthood as a boy. He said he would set up cardboard boxes with sheets to make a play altar in the basement. He attended a seminary prep school in Missouri and by 1985 earned his doctorate. After working as a parish priest, professor and seminary leader, he served briefly as an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of St. Louis before John Paul appointed him in 2002 as archbishop of Milwaukee, which serves about 675,000 parishioners. In 2009, Benedict appointed Dolan archbishop of New York, the nation's second-largest archdiocese after Los Angeles, serving about 2.5 million Catholics.
Like every U.S. bishop in recent years, Dolan has had to grapple with fallout from the clergy sex abuse scandal.
Dolan's predecessor in Milwaukee, Archbishop Rembert Weakland, who had been planning to retire, left abruptly after news broke that the archdiocese had paid a $450,000 settlement to a man claiming Weakland tried to sexually assault him. Weakland admitted an "inappropriate relationship" but denied abuse.
In 2004, Dolan publicly released the names of Milwaukee diocesan priests who had been accused of molesting children. However, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests said he said he didn't work closely enough with civil authorities to also identify accused clergy from religious orders.
Days before Dolan left for the conclave, he sat for a deposition with attorneys for people who said they had been abused as children by clergy working in the Milwaukee archdiocese. Dolan's successor in Milwaukee sought bankruptcy protection for the archdiocese from 570 abuse claims. Advocates for victims have accused Dolan of having tried to shield the Milwaukee archdiocese assets, in part by transferring millions of dollars several years ago into a cemetery trust fund and a parish fund. Dolan denies the accusation.
On the final day of Benedict's pontificate, Dolan stood with seminarians on the roof of the North American College and waved as a helicopter flew overhead, carrying the departing pope to what will be his temporary retirement home, the papal retreat in Castel Gandolfo. In his trademark way, he put any talk of his elevation aside, by recalling a conversation with his mother.
She told him, "You better be back in time for St. Patrick's Day because I want to walk down Fifth Avenue with you in the parade."
___
AP reporter Trisha Thomas contributed from Rome.

NY Cardinal Dolan a 'happy warrior' for church

Originally published: March 3, 2013 4:36 AM
Updated: March 3, 2013 5:46 AM
By The Associated Press RACHEL ZOLL (AP Religion Writer)

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Friday, March 1, 2013

once a Nassau OTB Branch with many stories

then a Fast Track and then......
At least they did not do themselves in.

Potter's Pub in East Meadow to close Saturday

Wednesday February 27, 2013 12:28 PM By Joan Reminick

Photo credit: Timothy Fadek | Potter's Pub closes Saturday, March 2, 2013.

If you have fond memories of hoisting a Guinness, downing a burger and betting on the races at Potter’s Pub in East Meadow, you have only a short window of time to get there before the place closes for good this Saturday night.
Mike Amitrano, who has owned the pub for 23 of its 41 years, said that the damage caused by superstorm Sandy proved financially crippling. “I laid out so much money to reopen,” Amitrano said, “and then my insurance claim was denied.”
Amitrano said his Dublin-born wife Joyce, the restaurant’s chef, is known for her corned beef and cabbage and shepherd’s pie as well as a steak tidbit sandwich.
Potter’s Pub is at 2045 Hempstead Tpke., East Meadow, 516-794-6698.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

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Stop scratching on holidays Published: June 1, 2012

Stop scratching on holidays Published: June 1, 2012

U.S. Catholics in Poll See a Church Out of Touch

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and MEGAN THEE-BRENAN

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Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Following Resignation, Top British Cardinal Acknowledges Sexual Misconduct

By JOHN F. BURNS

Published: March 3, 2013

Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images

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Top British Cardinal Resigns, a Day After Charges of ‘Inappropriate Acts’ (February 26, 2013)

Walesa Draws Fire for Comments About Gay Rights

By MARCIN SOBCZYK

Stop scratching on holidays Published: June 1, 2012

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Saying Mass at Vatican, Dolan Urges Catholics to Look Beyond the Papal Conclave

By MICHAEL PAULSON

Published: March 3, 2013

A version of this article appeared in print on March 4, 2013, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Saying Mass at Vatican, Dolan Urges Catholics to Look Beyond the Papal Conclave.

Saying Mass at Vatican, Dolan Urges Catholics to Look Beyond the Papal Conclave

By MICHAEL PAULSON

Published: March 3, 2013

A version of this article appeared in print on March 4, 2013, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Saying Mass at Vatican, Dolan Urges Catholics to Look Beyond the Papal Conclave.

Stop scratching on holidays Published: June 1, 2012

NY Cardinal Dolan a 'happy warrior' for church

Photos

NY Cardinal Dolan a 'happy warrior' for church

Photos

Friday, March 1, 2013

Potter's Pub in East Meadow to close Saturday

Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012

Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012

Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012

Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012