wfn.org | [ENS] Cathedral's Dean Kowalski calls Cindy Sheehan a "prophet"

["Matthew Davies" <mdavies@episcopalchurch.org>]

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Cathedral's Dean Kowalski calls Cindy Sheehan a "prophet"

by Daphne Mack

ENS 092105-1

[ENS] More than 1,000 people filled the Cathedral Church of St. John  
the Divine in New York City on September 19, 2005, to hear anti-war  
activist Cindy Sheehan and supporters on the "Bring Them Home Now  
Tour" rally support for a three-day march and anti-war protest in  
Washington, DC, September 24-26.

"We need to show Congress that we mean business when we say we want  
our troops [to come] home," Sheehan said.

Sheehan came to national attention this summer when she camped out  
near President George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, demanding  
that the vacationing president explain to her in person why her 24- 
year-old son Casey, an Army specialist assigned to 1st Battalion,  
82nd Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, died in Iraq.  
The effort became known as Camp Casey.

In his welcoming address, the Very Rev. Dr. James A. Kowalski, dean  
of the cathedral, received applause when he likened Sheehan to a  
"prophet."

"In the Bible there are stories about seemingly unimportant,  
insignificant, seemingly powerless people who out of nowhere landed  
in the kingdom where the king was out of control and emerged as a  
prophet and said to the king you have lied to your people and led  
them astray and Cindy Sheehan is one of those prophets," he said.

"It's an honor to have you here," Kowalski told the crowd. "A lot of  
people told us not to do this, not as a church especially" which  
didn't "make any sense to us, especially this cathedral." However, he  
added, "a lot of things haven't been making any sense to us."

"We asked a lot of tough questions before we went to war, and I know  
a lot of people disagreed, but the truth is we weren't told the  
truth," Kowalski said.

He urged those present to not "let people ever persuade you that just  
because people disagree, that they are not patriots or [that] we're  
not patriots." He said the "name calling and the mean spirited	
deception going on in the name of government and in the name of  
patriotism has got to stop."

Kowalski asked "what greater conversation could there be than about  
stopping war, and returning to peace?"

Elliot Adams, of Veterans for Peace, spoke poignantly of "the pain"  
he kept "inside with alcohol" for 30 years over his part in the  
Vietnam War. He compared a soldier to a "crystal glass, and if you  
break it, you can't fix it."

Asking the audience to repeat after him, Adams stated the three point  
message of Camp Casey that will be taken to Washington: first, "bring  
them home now"; second, "take care of them when they get here"; and  
third, "never send our love ones to war again on a lie."

The Rev. Osagyefu Uhuru Sekou, of Clergy and Laity Concerned about  
Iraq, said it was very appropriate to be assembled in this "sacred  
place because there is no more sacred work than the work of peace and  
justice."

Sheehan told the crowd "we will not accept you not being in  
Washington, DC next weekend."

"We have to make the world safer and the only way we are going to do  
that is to get George Bush out of office," she said.

--Daphne Mack is staff writer for Episcopal News Service.

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