Pope Francis is sending a representative to Syria and Turkey in the wake of that disastrous earthquake.
Two congressmen from New York are calling on Mayor Eric Adams to release early documents related to 9/11.
St Pius Church in Jamaica, Queens was the scene of a massive baby shower.
By Paula Katinas and Jessica Easthope
PARK SLOPE — Aradhana Agarwala has quite an impressive resume as a musician. She plays the piano as well as the clarinet and has composed at least 40 pieces of music. Even more impressive: She’s just 11 years old.
Despite her youth, composing music is nothing new for Aradhana, a sixth grader at St. Saviour Catholic Academy in Park Slope. In fourth grade, she took part in an ambitious project — creating a musical based on the life of Harriet Tubman.
Aradhana puts a lot of thought into her compositions. “I like to think of the setting when I’m writing music. If it’s taking place in a mystical forest, I’ll do something with the flute and string instruments. It gives me an empowering feeling,” she explained.
What’s unusual about all of this is that it’s not unusual at St. Saviour Catholic Academy. The school takes music instruction seriously, so seriously, in fact, that it requires students to compose music.
Starting in the fifth grade, all students at the K-to-8 school take part in the Young Composer Initiative, a program developed by music teacher Ted Stafford to unlock children’s creativity, promote a positive work ethic and instill in them a sense of teamwork.
Some students learn to play musical instruments while others learn to sing, but all get the chance to write music. At the end of the school term, their musical compositions are performed by professional musicians in concert at St. Saviour Church — a big thrill for the junior Bachs and Beethovens.
“It’s great because when you see it written down and then have it being played, it’s very different. You get to see what you’ve done and see it all come together,” said seventh grader Jocelyn Rossillo, a flute player.
Music teacher Ted Stafford said, “To hear your own piece played in the church by a bunch of pros? It’s pretty amazing for these kids.”
The program is an important part of life at St. Saviour, said Principal Susan Walsh, who immediately gave Stafford the green light as soon as he proposed it nine years ago.
“The Young Composer Initiative is important to us as a school because we try to balance the arts and the academics. We want to send well-rounded children out into the world,” she said. “They’re also learning how to read music, write music, and then they hear their songs recorded.”
Aradhana, who is adept at both the piano and the clarinet, loves taking part in the Young Composer Initiative.
“I really like expressing myself through music,” she explained. “I know a lot of kids think that composing is only for people who are older and that you have to know all about music before you start. But I think that music is the universal language and it’s for everyone. People my age can do it. You can learn as you do it.”
That’s music to Stafford’s ears because it fits in perfectly with his philosophy. Part of his goal in creating the program was to demystify music education.
“It’s not rocket science. It’s not magic,” Stafford said. “It’s a learnable skill that anyone can do, and it really comes down to being a right.
Everybody should know how to compose a reasonable melody, just like learning to write an essay or being able to solve a math problem. It’s among the skills that everyone should have as part of their right to education.”
Stafford estimated that in the nine years since the inception of the Young Composers Initiative, more than 300 students have come through the program.
The students work on their compositions during twice-a-week sessions in the school’s music room. But the youngsters often find ideas coming to them in their lives outside of school.
“I was sitting down at my desk trying to do my homework and I got an idea,” said Ella Lee. “And then suddenly I said, ‘Wait, this could be a good sound. This could be a good tune if I add more instruments to it.’ And that was actually one of my inspirations for the first piece I composed.”
Ella called her piece “Dance of the Tides,” a name inspired by the fact that on paper, the melody looked like waves.
The young composers are influenced by a variety of musical genres — classical, jazz, hip-hop and rap.
Alessio Cavaleri, a seventh grader who plays the saxophone and the drums, listens a lot to the rapper Eminem. “Listening to him gives me ideas,” he said.
Ella loves Beethoven. “I see his pieces as really intense and they have nice mood changes. But I don’t look up to him as a piano player. For that, I look up to people like Mendelssohn and Rachmaninoff,” she explained.
Alessio enjoys the freedom of expression that comes with composing. “You have a lot more options when you’re creating music. You can do so many different things because you’re not locked in and you’re not being super delicate. You can just go crazy on it and it will just sound good anyway,” he said.
Stafford said one of the best things about the program is that it often frees the students from the fear of failure and opens them up to try new things.
“They know it doesn’t have to be perfect. But it has to be written,” he added.
Monsignor John Vesey, Parochial Vicar for Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Diocese of Brooklyn, joins Currents News to discuss the sainthood cause of Blessed Father Stanley Rother. Father Rother was killed by a political group in Guatemala for trying to protect his parishioners.
Pope Francis sends a message of hope to Turkey.
New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan speaks out after the Archdiocese announces the closing of 12 Catholic schools and the merging of four others.
St. Saviour Catholic Academy in Park Slope has a program called the “Young Composers Initiative.”
Most Reverend Bishop Robert J. Brennan’s Homily from Mass on 2/14/23
Editor Emeritus of The Tablet, Ed Wilkinson, joins Currents News to discuss his new book “Chasing Church News” and The Tablet’s new membership program that supports Catholic journalism in Brooklyn and beyond.
To become a member visit: https://thetablet.org/become-a-member/
By Jessica Easthope
Since the 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked Turkey and Syria in the early morning hours of February 6, the Turkish Cultural Center has been collecting.
Thousands of items from diapers and baby food to blankets and clothes, a full flight’s worth of cargo airlifting the supplies from Newark International Airport to Turkey every day through the Embrace Relief Campaign, now they’re sending a ninth and final shipment.
“Those are our people, those are our friends and family members, when we started to see the pictures and videos from the drones we realized maybe this was the largest one,” said Jackson Guven, the coordinator of the Brooklyn Turkish community’s donation and fundraising efforts.
They asked people to bring supplies to the Brooklyn Amity School in Sheepshead Bay until Turkey said they had enough. Jackson said people of all ethnicities and faiths have supported their mission.
“It gives me hope that being united is the strongest thing in our community, we’ve tried to build bridges between communities and I saw a lot during this disaster that they opened their hearts I believe,” he said.
The lobby of the school has been a central location but principal, Adam Olimi says money and supplies have come from all over thanks to the power of social media.
“There are a lot of people on social media today and I think it’s one of the greatest things we can do, it’s fast, easy access, less resources used and of course that was the first thing we’ve done was share the link on our social media account,” he said.
Now Jackson says the Turkish community is looking toward achieving a long-term goal; getting the country’s authorities to ensure the surviving buildings and new construction can withstand another quake.
“We are looking to the future now and we are trying to encourage our people in Turkey and the authorities to bring that proof and agreements to the buildings for the people’s safety,” he said. “I hope the authorities learned a lesson from this disaster.”
By Kate Scanlon
WASHINGTON (OSV News) — The FBI is facing scrutiny after a leaked memo suggested some “radical traditionalist” Catholics pose threats of racial or ethnically motivated violence. The memo has since been retracted by the bureau, a spokesperson told OSV News.
In a leaked memo dated Jan. 23, an analyst at the FBI’s Richmond Division said “Radical Traditionalist Catholics” are “typically characterized by the rejection of the Second Vatican Council.” The memo said the ideology can amount to an “adherence to anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ and white supremacist ideology.” The memo also names far-right personality Nick Fuentes, who publicly self-identifies as Catholic and whom the memo says has ties to “white Christian nationalism.”
However, the memo distinguishes “radical traditionalist” Catholics as “separate and distinct” from “traditionalist Catholics,” Catholics who “simply prefer the Traditional Latin Mass and pre-Vatican II teachings.”
Nevertheless, the leaked FBI memo generated everything from unease over its contents to outrage from some quarters alleging the FBI was labeling all Catholics a threat.
Rick Garnett, a professor of law at the University of Notre Dame, told OSV News that although the FBI retracted the memo, “that it was ever composed is troubling.”
“While it probably does not violate America’s religious freedom laws for a law enforcement agency to discuss threats in particular communities, the memo echoes an ugly, and long-standing, tendency in the United States of seeing Catholics as somehow disloyal or particularly problematic,” Garnett said.
Robert A. Destro, a professor of law at The Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law in Washington, told OSV News the FBI’s memo overstepped the agency’s realm of authority.
If the FBI had evidence of criminal conduct from a member of one of the groups, Destro said, “then it seems to me they should do exactly what they would do in a criminal case, which is they would get a warrant to wiretap them, maybe search their house.”
Bishop Barry C. Knestout of Richmond, Virginia, expressed alarm at the memo’s contents.
“People of all faith groups have long found refuge in the constitutional protections of our great nation,” Bishop Knestout said in a statement. “We all seek to share in God’s gift of life, enjoy the fruits of liberty that our nation offers and assist one another in ensuring the common good.”
Bishop Knestout noted in his statement that some of the groups named in the memo are not in full communion with the church, adding, “If evidence of extremism exists, it should be rooted out, but not at the expense of religious freedom.”
“A preference for traditional forms of worship and holding closely to the Church’s teachings on marriage, family, human sexuality, and the dignity of the human person does not equate with extremism,” he said.
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, alongside attorneys general from 19 other states, sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland condemning the memo as “anti-Catholic.”
Miyares said in a statement that “Virginia is the birthplace of religious freedom and has a long history of protecting the inalienable right to live your faith free from government interference or intimidation.”
“The leaked memo from our state capital’s FBI office is unacceptable, unconstitutional, and un-American. Frankly, it’s what I would expect from Communist Cuba,” Miyares said. “As attorney general, I’m responsible for defending Virginians’ rights, and religious freedom is the bedrock of the constitutions of the United States and of Virginia. Virginians should not and will not be labeled ‘violent extremists’ by their government because of how they worship, or because of their beliefs.”
The same FBI memo noted that “conversely, deep-seated anti-Catholicism remains a characteristic of many far-right white nationalists.”
A cited source in the FBI memo is the the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an organization that monitors “hate groups” but has faced criticism from some who say the group too widely applies that label.
Cassie Miller, senior research analyst with center’s Intelligence Project, told OSV News in an email, “There is a stark difference between traditionalist Catholics — who celebrate the Latin Mass and rebuff many of the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council — and the radical traditionalist Catholics tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center.”
“The latter group is made up of a handful of organizations that not only reject many of the modern Catholic Church’s teachings and practices, but openly embrace antisemitism,” Miller said. “The radical traditionalist Catholics groups we identify as hate groups promote Holocaust denial and argue that the reforms of Vatican II were part of a sinister Jewish plot, in addition to other racist, bigoted, and conspiratorial beliefs. These are groups that teach hatred of people based on their religious beliefs, and for that reason we consider them hate groups.”
SPLC in 2021 identified nine organizations as “radical traditional Catholicism hate groups,” including the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary located in Richmond, New Hampshire, which is not canonically recognized by the Catholic Church.
On its website, SPLC says “(r)adical traditionalist” Catholics “subscribe to an ideology that is rejected by the Vatican and some 70 million mainstream American Catholics” and “may make up the largest single group of serious antisemites in America.”
A spokesperson for the FBI said in a statement provided to OSV News, “While our standard practice is to not comment on specific intelligence products, this particular field office product — disseminated only within the FBI — regarding racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism does not meet the exacting standards of the FBI.”
“Upon learning of the document, FBI Headquarters quickly began taking action to remove the document from FBI systems and conduct a review of the basis for the document,” the statement said. “The FBI is committed to sound analytic tradecraft and to investigating and preventing acts of violence and other crimes while upholding the constitutional rights of all Americans and will never conduct investigative activities or open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity.”
Several organizations in Brooklyn are collecting money, baby formula, diapers, and other necessities for earthquake victims.
The man who went on a deadly driving rampage through Brooklyn in a U-Haul truck will make his first court appearance today.
A vigil was held last night for one of the victims in the mass shooting at Michigan State University.
Bishop Robert Brennan, along with several others attended a dinner celebrating 123 years of the Cathedral Club.
It’s one of the most prestigious groups in the Diocese of Brooklyn. The dinner helps raise money in support of Catholic education. The lay organization has promoted the Catholic faith and provided students with scholarships for over a century.
Despite all the great work the group has already done, Bishop Brennan believes there’s a lot more potential.