“Catholics for Charity in Truth” whose members are parishoners of St. Henry’s Catholic Church located within walking distance of the Gordon Jewish Community Center, is asking the Center’s board to cancel the May 23rd event featuring Joseph Levin, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Levin’s talk is titled, Then and Now: Hate in the Mainstream.
A letter signed by members of “Catholics for Charity in Truth” lays out in detail many of the biased attacks leveled at pro-family Christian groups and asked that “[r]espectfully, in consonance with basic civility, please cancel the speaking engagement of Southern Poverty Law Center co-founder Joseph J. Levin, Jr.”
May 10, 2018
Board of Directors
Gordon Jewish Community Center
801 Percy Warner Boulevard
Nashville, TN 37205Dear Board of Directors:
Re: Southern Poverty Law Center
As Catholics, in unison with many voices, we respectfully request that you cancel the speaking engagement of Southern Poverty Law Center co-founder, Joseph J. Levin Jr., at the Gordon Jewish Community Center of May 23, 2018.
The Southern Poverty Law Center silences Christian voices in the public square through reprehensibly vilifying pro-family Christian groups as akin to the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis. The Southern Poverty Law Center smears with demonic lies groups that affirm Judeo-Christian and reasonable teachings on sex, marriage, and family. The Southern Poverty Law Center propagandizes public school children through pushing so-called ‘tolerance education’ which radically promotes pro-homosexual, anti-family, ideology. The Southern Poverty Law Center usurps the rights and duties of parents to educate their children’s consciences and all under the guise of equality and inclusiveness. The Southern Poverty Law Center has no legitimate role in the coercion of children’s consciences in contradiction to parents’ Judeo-Christian and reasonable convictions. The Southern Poverty Law Center advances the moral-constraint-free sexual revolution which has been manifestly, objectively, catastrophic to children and to society. The Southern Poverty Law Center annihilates the very distinction between good and evil.
We trust that hate does not represent Jewish values.
We further invite you to open dialogue, rational argument, with us, for the sake of truth. We invite you to establish a line of communication.
There are purposes to reality and these purposes are to be discovered and not invented. Man cannot create reality. Man’s own mind is not the ultimate, certain standard of reality.
Everything is not empirical. The Enlightenment rejection of metaphysics for only things observable, quantifiable, and mechanistic has irrationally biased the modern mind. Reason means more than modern empirical sciences, and true reason is able to reach the reality of things.
Everything is not subjective. The postmodern rejection of the classical understanding of truth as conformity of the mind to external reality has resulted in a thoroughgoing relativism and jettisoning of moral truth. The postmodern radical dualistic distinction between mind and body has reduced the body to the status of an instrument, a slave, which one may freely mutilate. The truth of human nature is not a social construction.
Respectfully, in consonance with basic civility, please cancel the speaking engagement of Southern Poverty Law Center co-founder, Joseph J. Levin Jr.
Sincerely,
John P. Conricode
B.D. Pastoral Ministry, Sacred Heart Major Seminary
Chair, Catholics for Charity in Truth
Parishioner, Saint Henry Catholic Church, Bellevue
The SPLC has fundraised off attacking the religious underpinnings of Christian conservative organizations including Focus on the Family, The Alliance Defending Freedom, and The Family Research Council, which was labeled a “hate group” for its positions on homosexuality.
Using an overt double-standard the SPLC ignores others like Islamist Memphis Imam Yasir Qadhi who says “we believe homosexuality is a sin” on his Youtube video.
Several days after John Conricode, the chair of “Catholics for Charity in Truth” sent the letter inviting the Jewish Center’s Board members to “establish a line of communication” with his group, he contacted Deborah Oleshansky, Director of the Jewish Community Relations Committee that is hosting the SPLC speaker and Jewish Federation Director Mark Freedman requesting a meeting.
Neither Oleshansky nor Freedman would agree to meet with Conricode or his group until after the SPLC event. They did however, offer to allow Conricode’s group to submit questions that might be addressed by SPLC’s Levin.
Insisting that audience members submit questions in writing either before or during an event has become a popular method of controlling what can be discussed, as opposed to an open forum allowing questions from the floor.
Conricode and his group object to the Jewish Community Center “hosting a speaker from a group overtly hostile to Judeo-Christian voices and values in the public square and rejecting dialogue regarding the matter.”
“Catholics for Charity in Truth” will be holding an ecumenical prayer service, including the Rosary, outside the Gordon Jewish Community Center gate, on Percy Warner Blvd. from 6:00 – 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, May 23rd.
The SPLC hate-fest is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. on May 23rd.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is neither poor or concerned with the law, particularly the U.S. Constitution and our freedom of speech and expression, particularly those expressing Judeo-Christian values.
The SPLC labeling of individuals and groups as “haters” is a communist/socialist tactic that uses smears and name-calling to attack anyone who opposes their point of view, their ideology, and their values (or lack their of).
The Jewish Community Relations Committee, by their hosting the SPLC and by their response to Mr. Conricode’s letter, seems to be more concerned with leftist politics than Jewish spiritual values. And more concerned with leftist political alliances than relations with the Christian community in Nashville. They could have at least met with the Catholic group and been more diplomatic in their response.
But the CRC has taken a divisive stand and its not a stand based on a firm foundation. The Christians and Jews in Nashville have lived and worked together in harmony for 150 years. This is sad news for the city.