Today, October 2, 2011, St. Anthony’s Shrine and Missionary Center conducted an open air service in their block of Arch Street in Downtown Crossing, Boston, MA.
They conducted the Franciscan Blessing of the Animals in celebration of the Feast of St. Francis of Assissi.
Included in their blessing were the Animals of the Charles and Alewife.
The service was well attended, overwhelmingly by dogs with their masters. I did see one cat. I carried with me as a stand in for the Animals of the Charles and Alewife a lovely plush racoon loaned to me by my sister Jeanne.
At the service, I was pleased to say hello to Maynard S. Clark who persuaded me to participate and, more importantly, Rev. Jim McIntosh, with whom Maynard put me in contact to clear our participation.
The service was quite lovely. The dogs were uniformly well behaved. There was a significant amount of barking, but it was happy barking of dogs saying hello to their canine friends.
The Franciscans were kind enough to give me a certificate signed by Father Jim Kelly, Guardian and Executive Director of St. Anthony’s Shrine and Ministry Center indicating that “Animals of the Charles and Alewife received a special blessing for the Feast of St. Francis of Assissi” on Sunday, October 2, 2011.
When you get away from the pols who dominate politics in Cambridge and their friends in the state bureaucracy, the Department of Conservation and Recreation, people are very uniformly decent and commendable. The good reception by the Franciscans was quite lovely and a very pleasant breath of fresh air away from what is the political world in Cambridge, MA, USA.
The animals of the Charles River Basis are subject to ongoing heartless abuse by Cambridge and its friends. The animals of Alewife are about to be subjected to killing on mass.
Whatever excuse the destroyers can get away with they use. The excuses are commonly decidedly bizarre.
At Alewife, which they will destroy within days, they even admit they cannot achieve their stated goals. They do not admit they can achieve their stated goals, meaningful flood protection, by taking the massive parking lot directly across Cambridge Park Drive and using that for flood protection. Why not?
Why have they killed off or driven away pretty much all of the animals on the Charles River Basin? Why are they starving and abusing the most visible remaining residents, the Charles River White Geese?
The destoyers have publicly stated that, on the Charles River Basin, they have contempt for animals. At Alewife, they have not done the really horrible thing yet. Now they are lying that they are decent human beings. Once they do the killing, as they “clarified” their position on the Charles, after the mass killing, Cambridge and the DCR will brag of their heartlessness as they brag of their heartlessness on the Charles.
Once it is too late.
Reality is the ruling of the superior court judge and jury and the appeals court in Monteiro where Cambridge was found guilty of destroying a woman’s life because she filed a civil rights complaint: “Reprehensible”, $3.5 million penal damages, “ample evidence [of] outrageous actions.” They have paid $8.3 million so far.
Monteiro is not isolated. Monteiro is just one decision obtained because the representative of the victim were willing and able to spend millions of dollars standing up to these people. The Monteiro case was kept away from their fake protective groups.
As I said, it is always a pleasure to get away from the “reprehensible” situation in Cambridge. The Franciscans are commendable. The Franciscans fit in with a very decent world, outside the City of Cambridge, MA, USA.
