Letter Response
Dear Editor: In a Tuesday, Nov. 14, letter to the editor, a writer asks for $5,000 for the refurbishment of St. Gregory’s Catholic church. This is obviously in response to St. Michael’s Cathedral in downtown Sitka receiving funds from the Sitka Assembly for their much-needed painting project.
As Fr. Andy Sensenig, pastor of St. Gregory’s, points out: ‘‘St. Michael’s is a very historic building in the heart of downtown Sitka that is a trademark of our community. As an example, take a look at the literature from the Sitka Summer Music Festival and you will see the familiar onion dome and Russian Orthodox cross.’’ The letter Mr. Roddy wrote does not represent St. Gregory’s Parish.
It was very appropriate for the Assembly to put $5,000 toward this much-needed project for our community. The building is not original as most people know, but as stated above, it is a major Sitka landmark.
The National Park Service invested millions of dollars refurbishing the Russian Bishop’s House. It is part of Sitka’s historic past and is one of only four remaining buildings in the United States from the Russian colonization.
St. Gregory’s has no desire for equal funding.
Michael Trainor, Sitka
Religious Liberty
Dear Editor: Thank you for printing Dr. Ronald E. Dick’s Nov. 9 letter unwrapping some of our First Amendment rights. My letter is not directed toward Dr. Dick’s letter or the appropriateness of the Sitka Assembly’s donation to St. Michael’s Cathedral’s renovation, but rather to “…transmit (some of) our heritage of …religious liberty.”
The Preamble to the State of Alaska’s Constitution reads: We the people of Alaska, grateful to God and to those who founded our nation and pioneered this great land, in order to secure and transmit to succeeding generations our heritage of political, civil, and religious liberty within the Union of States, do ordain and establish this constitution for the State of Alaska.
“Grateful to God”—I’ll call that “every day a Thanksgiving day!”
The Oct. 3, 1863, Proclamation of Thanksgiving, written by William H. Seward and signed by President Abraham Lincoln, states in part, “…No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.”
This proclamation was issued exactly 74 years after President George Washington also proclaimed a national day of Thanksgiving.
With enthusiasm,
(origin means inspired or possessed by god),
Dug Jensen, Sitka
