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WITHOUT WAITING for more developments, we can safely assert that the Second Vatican Council will mark a historic turning point in the apostolic life of the Church. The relatively untapped energies of the lay Catholic will be channeled at last into the main stream of the Church's apostolate. Pope John XXIII indicated as much when receiving the Permanent Committee of the International Congresses for the Lay Apostolate on February 8. He said that this question would be "an object of vital concern and special study." Later, in the annual official publication, Activities of the Holy See in 1960, the Central Preparatory Commission stated categorically that the nature, prerogatives and limitations of the lay apostolate would be studied in detail at the council, on the level of both theory and practice, with special reference to its relations with the hierarchy.
Such authoritative forecasts reflect the virtually unanimous wishes of the bishops of the whole world. The age of the lay apostolate is arriving. To speak more accurately, that day has already arrived. It remains only for the Fathers of the council to give it formal recognition.
The council's concern with the apostolic possibilities of the layman is a simple response to the sensus fidelium, the ground swell that has been sweeping the Church for many years. One would have to go back to the 13th century and the popular revival aroused by St. Francis of Assisi to find a comparable grass-roots upsurge of lay religious zeal. It seems as though the more society becomes secularized, the more pronounced becomes the spiritual outlook of individual Christians in the face of their environment. The evolving world circumstances also suggest that Providence itself is kindling this fire to coincide with the advent of a revolutionary era.
In the newly developing countries, where Christianity's roots are still tender, unprecedented opportunities are opening at the very moment when, as in Africa and Asia, political independence has tolled the bell for the 19th-century missionary methods which depended so largely upon the prestige of the colonizing power. As if these political and social changes were not enough, rapid technological advances put a premium on specialists trained as no priest or religious worker can be trained. Even if the shortage of priests is not felt in the former mission-sending countries, laymen can perform much of the work now indicated in the apostolate better, if not exclusively.
The needs and the opportunities are evident. Why must we wait for an ecumenical council in order to get the lay apostolate moving? How is it that the recent decades have witnessed so much backing and filling, such unmistakable experimentation and, most of all, such prolonged and indecisive theoretical discussions?
The nub of the difficulty lies precisely in the apostolic nature of this lay action. The layman is doing the work of the Church. Yet, by the will of Christ and the constitution of the Church, the preaching of the gospel and the sanctification of souls are entrusted directly to an order of priesthood, with the bishops at the head. Without abolishing the distinction between clergy and laity, it seems difficult, if not impossible, to conceive of a lay apostolate in the strict sense.
If "apostolate" were understood only in a generic or metaphoric sense, there would be no perplexity. Every Christian, by the fact of his baptism and confirmation, is called to some expressions of apostolic zeal, through prayer, good example and the conscientious fulfillment of the duties of his state in life. A faithful Catholic working in an office, a factory or the Peace Corps, with the right motivation, can find ways of bearing witness to the faith that is in him. But this work is his own personal testimony and not part of the apostolate of the Church.
A wider radius of action, however, is envisaged in the lay apostolate. To use the words of Pius XII when he spoke to the Congress of the Lay Apostolate on October 5, 1957, this apostolate is "the assuming by laymen of tasks deriving from the mission which Christ confided to his Church." Those called to this role are expected, not to supplement the work of the bishops, priests and religious in a marginal way, but to work alongside of these and even to supplant them in certain areas. Whence arise the still unanswered problems of organization, canon law, theology and spirituality which the council must now confront.
A résumé of the stages through which what we now call the lay apostolate has passed will help put today's issues in perspective. The problem is relatively new, at least in its contemporary expression. The Church has known an apostolic laity as far back as Joseph of Arimathea and the Women of Jerusalem; but a lay apostolate is something else again. As a body, the laity has not been invited to participate in the Church's sacerdotal mission in the ministry of the word.
At the high-water mark of Catholic Europe, the "laity" was the civil power itself, as personified in the Emperor or prince. With the French Revolution and its aftermath, when the Catholic princes lost their crowns, or at least their real power, if not their faith, the "laity" signified more and more the individual Catholic in relation to his Church. By reason of personal rather than hereditary status, some Catholics became conspicuous as loyal defenders of the Church's interests and ideals. Hence there arose, in the early decades of the 19th century, what is known, for want of a better word, as the Catholic Movement. The first half of the past century is remarkable for the names of such able and devoted Catholic laymen as de Bonald and de Maistre in France, von Stolberg and Goerres in Germany, Donoso Cortés in Spain, Daniel O'Connell in Ireland and others. By their energies and talents they supplied as best they could for the moral and political decline of the traditional Catholic ruler.
Organizationally, this action of individuals soon gave way to national unions or congresses for the defense of the Church. A notable initiative of this kind was the Katliotikentag, an annual event in Germany, the first of which was held in 1848. In Belgium, the Assemblée générale des catholiques first met in Malines with a similar purpose in 1863. In Italy, the Opera dei congressi e dei comitati cattolici was founded in 1874. As the industrial revolution progressed, bringing with it the problem of socialism, Catholic laymen found an additional outlet for their zeal. The predominantly lay group who created the Union of Fribourg (1884) laid the groundwork for Rerum Novarum. In connection with this social action the names of Toniolo in Italy and Harmel in France, of course, deserve special mention.
During the critical years of the 19th century the Church had reason to be consoled in her sons and daughters. In the parliamentary eloquence of a Montalembert, the charity of an Ozanam, the alms collecting of a Pauline Jaricot, the polemics of a Veuillot, the swords of the Zouaves who came from all over the world to fight for the Pope, the attachment and generosity of the faithful were impressively evident.
But this zeal, once on the march, was not destined to stop at that point. A more intimate participation of the laity in the apostolate of the Church was bound to grow from these beginnings. The Church began to call for lay action on an ever broader front. One of the earliest invitations was that of Leo XIII, who in his encyclical Sapientiae Christianae of January 10, 1890, said: "No one...must entertain the notion that private individuals are prevented from taking some active part in this duty of teaching, especially those on whom God has bestowed gifts of mind with the strong wish of rendering themselves useful."
But the same Pope soon learned that Catholic organizations could provide anxiety as well as comfort and strength. By the turn of the century he was having difficulties because of the political orientation of some movements which wished to serve the Church in their way, without reference to the wishes of the bishops.
Freewheeling by overzealous organizations continued, nonetheless. In 1904, Pope St. Pius X suppressed the Opera dei congressi after it had repeatedly acted in opposition to the Pontiff's known wishes. (As it so happened, the chief troublemaker was not a layman, but a priest, Don Romolo Murri. a Modernist who later left the Church). In a letter of June 11, 1905, Il fermo proposito, the Pope created a new lay organization, the Unione populare, which would avoid the pitfalls of the past. Those works "known by the name of Catholic Action," said the Holy Father, "cannot be conceived as existing in independence of the counsel and sovereign direction of the ecclesiastical authority, especially insofar as they must all be governed by the principles of Christian teaching and morality; still less possible is it to conceive them as existing in opposition, more or less open, to the ecclesiastical authority." Movements which carry the Catholic banner, observed the Pope, should act in a Catholic manner.
The use of the phrase "Catholic Action" by Pope St. Pius X was an abrupt change in terminology. Contemporary observers noted that, as though on purpose, the Pontiff had used this term wherever his predecessor would have spoken of "Christian Democracy." The older term, they commented, had become too ambiguous to be useful. It had taken on both a political and a social (as well as religious) meaning. And so it came about that from this time on, Catholic Action, though not used for the first time in 1905, entered into the language of the Church to designate lay action which is nonpolitical, apostolic and completely subordinated to the hierarchy.
When Pius XI began his pontificate in 1922, he thus found himself in possession of an idea and a name. He proceeded to give concrete organizational form to Catholic Action. Under his impulsion, lay activities of all sorts sprang up. Of these, the model form of Catholic Action was the Young Christian Workers (Jocistes), founded by the famous Canon Cardijn. It would be difficult to overestimate the profound influence of this form of "specialized Catholic Action," which had so many imitators.
To this Pontiff is due the definition of CA as "the participation of the laity in the apostolic mission of the hierarchy." A key device, called the "mandate," was developed in order to assure full episcopal control at all times. Only those movements could be regarded as forming Catholic Action which had received a formal commission from each bishop. This mandate or license could be given or withdrawn at discretion.
The formula of Pius XI, theoretically sound, proved impractical. Subsequent reversals of official policy imply this clearly enough. The remedies for old ills generated new maladies. For instance, the preoccupation with absolute subordination to the bishop only succeeded in chilling lay initiative. The bishops inevitably dealt with the laity as they did with their own priests and religious, in disregard of the whole idea of the lay apostolate and its responsibilities. The method of the mandate also induced confusion and a spirit of rivalry through lack of uniform application from one diocese to another. Furthermore, a sort of superapostolate was created, since Catholic Action appeared to be above older works which, though approved by the Popes and the bishops, did not possess the treasured mandate.
ANOTHER COMPLICATION arose from the growth of Catholic Action in the interwar period. The lay apostle, normally, is married; the couple would probably be engaged in Catholic Action together. Spiritual writers, accordingly, set about to develop a lay spirituality for married apostolic couples. Their efforts were not always satisfactory, inasmuch as the impression was created, contrary to the long-standing ascetical teaching of the Church, that marriage and virginity are states equally favorable for the attainment of sanctity. No doubt many vocations were decided on this basis. It seems probable that the drop in priestly and religious vocations in Europe is traceable to the high praise of sanctity in the married state current in the 1930's. In his encyclical Sacra Virginitas of March 25, 1954, Pope Pius XII corrected the errors and exaggerations that arose in this connection. This is not a serious problem, but its existence illustrates some of the unsuspected doctrinal and pastoral implications in the field of the lay apostolate.
After World War II a new period of development set in. The two world congresses of the lay apostolate summoned by Pius XII in 1951 and 1957 aided in crystallizing further the data of experience. The most striking sign of a change of approach occurred when Pius XII finally resolved the perennial and often sterile dispute over the definition of Catholic Action by the simple process of extending it to embrace every approved Catholic lay activity of an apostolic nature. The term "lay apostolate" is now current; it is the term most likely to get the sanction of official use in the decrees of the general council.
The transitions in vocabulary (Catholic Movement, Christian Democracy, Catholic Action, Lay Apostolate) mark the four phases in the apostolic evolution about to culminate at the council. The pattern of issues to be met is now clear. The bishops want the laity to join with them in the work of the Church. They are careful at the same time to safeguard the God-given constitution of the Church, according to which the power of teaching and governing resides in the bishops alone. But this vigilance has led the clergy to control the lay apostolate from the outside almost at every turn and, too often, even to do with their own hands what the laity should do. Whence the witty and far from inaccurate description of Catholic Action as "the organized interference of the clergy in the apostolic mission of the laity." The delicate balance between lay responsibility and episcopal control is yet to be created.
There seem to be reasonable grounds for hoping that the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council will be able to settle what several Popes have vainly striven to resolve. By their unique prestige, the bishops at the council can at least widen the range of possible solutions in a number of areas. Pastorally, the council can make its own the earlier calls of modern Popes inviting generous lay men and women to a more direct participation in the work of Christ. (It can set the example itself by finding some form of lay consultation at the council.) Canonically, the Vatican synod can give the laity some formal status in ecclesiastical legislation. Such recognition is presently lacking. According to one standard canon law textbook, the laity are simply "those who do not have the power either of order or of jurisdiction."
Theologically, the council can render a more profound service. Lack of adequate theological perspective is part of the reason for the past setbacks of the lay apostolate. At bottom, what is needed is a recasting of the terms in which the Church is presented. Ecclesiology, as many writers point out, has been up to now primarily a hierarchiology. The main stress has been on the teaching and governing role of the episcopacy. Familiar to every layman is the distinction, so often insisted upon in sermons, between the Church Teaching and the Church Taught. At times, the very word "Church" is used as synonymous with "Church Teaching," as though the hierarchy is the Church. What is true of the magisterium is also true of the ruling power as embodied in the symbol of the shepherd. Pope St. Pius X expressed a characteristic churchman's attitude when on February 11, 1906, he declared to the French Catholics: "The one duty of the multitudes is to allow themselves to be led and, like a docile flock, to follow the shepherd." Such exhortations to passivity are hardly a favorable starting point for great lay endeavors in the Lord's vineyard.
The modern awareness of the Mystical Body has done much to center differently the axis of our thinking. We are here reminded that the head, important as it is, is not the body; that the body has other members whose functions are different and whose work cannot be done by the head; and that all members, the greater and the lesser, must contribute their separate part "to the building up of the Body of Christ."
Pius XII indicated the mind of the Church in seeking to redress the balance when he told the 1957 lay congress: "It would be a misunderstanding of the real nature of the Church and her social character to distinguish in her an active element, the ecclesiastical authorities, and a purely passive element, the laity." These are surprising words, in view of earlier statements not only by Pope St. Pius X but also by Pius XII himself. That the Holy Father felt able to make such an utterance without fear of being misunderstood is perhaps possible only because of our newly awakened consciousness of the Mystical Body.
Another doctrinal contribution of the council could be a clarification of the idea of the Royal Priesthood of the laity. Today, in contrast to former times, the Church willingly associates the faithful with the divine liturgy and freely speaks of the priesthood of the laity— again without fear of being misunderstood. This mutual partnership of both sides of the altar rail in the public liturgical prayers is bound to have its natural correlative in the field of action. At the same time, the liturgical life may help provide the basis of the lay spirituality, which is as yet in its primitive form.
The Second Vatican Council, by throwing light on these and other as yet obscure doctrinal comers, by setting in a new framework the apostolic outlook of the Church, by codifying the lessons of the past 150 years of trial and error and by giving timely impetus to worthy tendencies, can earn for itself the title of "Council of the Lay Apostolate." To the timorous (clergy or lay), some aspects of this change may appear revolutionary and dangerous to the essential clergy-lay distinction. But the lay apostolate exists only to energize the strength of the Mystical Body, not to reorganize the constitution of the Church. Those who enter upon this new-style vocation will need more, not less, love and knowledge of the Church; they will need more, not less, loyalty and devotion to the Holy Father and their bishops. The clergy, for their part, will learn how to exercise better their unique and irreplaceable prerogatives of preaching and sanctification. The end-product will be a mighty union of hearts in the Christian community. The zeal of the first Christians brought Christ's gospel only to the limits of the Roman Empire. It may be this age's privilege to extend that Kingdom, in a great leap forward, to the ends of the earth.
Glad to see America Magazine is still leading us forward.


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GaryT needed a new logo design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 263 designs submitted by 89 freelance designers.
We are a group of Austrian and Swiss IT experts, software developer and marketeers, starting their own business after several years of experience in the industry. It will start as a small company but (hopefully) grow fast. We think that the market is in need of a company that offers smart software solutions, running on a stable IT structure of extremely high availability and security. So we will focus on IT.
We aim to be a high-end solution and knowledge provider and therefore want to have broad appeal to large and mid sized companies with high security and availability needs. We have to be a company that customers can trust blindly.
We are looking for a logo representing our technology company FOKUS IT.
As we are no designers we don't know if there should be a separate symbol within the logo or if the name itself should be the logo. So feel free to decide.
Colors: We like (not too bright) green and gray in all varieties but learned from the already submitted designs that it might also be fine to add other colors.
Font: We want to establish a perfect corporate design step by step, so we will need a font that is available in different styles like bold, light, ...
As we are familiar with the Web and want to offer mainly web based applications we - unsurprisingly - like these types of logos:
The files we will require are:
Print file format - .ai (CMYK)
Web file format - .jpg and layered .psd (RGB)
The logo should also work in gray scale and we need a tiny pixel version too.
Find out how a design contest works or learn more about our logo design services.

subset: commoncrawl


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Black Sabbath Unleash 'End of the Beginning' Video as '13' Heads Toward No. 1 Debut
Coinciding with the release of '13' this week (June 11), Black Sabbath are offering up a ton of extras for fans who patiently waited the 35 years it took original members Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler to release a new full-length album. In addition to the one-of-a-kind Town Hall they hosted in New York City on release day, they also just revealed the full music video companion to their appearance on the season finale of the TV show 'CSI.'
Back in May, Sabbath premiered their new track 'End of the Beginning' on the CBS show, performing the song in front of a small crowd as part of a scene for the episode. With only a portion of the performance shown on 'CSI,' the band has just unleashed the full performance as the video for 'End of the Beginning' (watch above).
Meanwhile, according to Billboard, industry insiders are already forecasting that first week sales for Sabbath's '13' will land the disc at No. 1 on the next Billboard 200 chart with a projected 120,000 units sold in its first week out. The actual chart won't be finalized until June 19 but it appears as though the return of Black Sabbath is a huge success.


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Somewhat similar in nature to Mozilla's Firebug product, Opera Dragonfly supports all the newest web technologies, including SVG and HTML5 APIs such as web storage. The toolkit is also said to incorporate a network inspector to give developers the power to examine which resources an application loads -- and in what order.
The first open source product out of the design labs for the Oslo-headquartered browser developer, the new toolkit also comes with a storage inspector for developers to update and test cookies, as well as the HTML5 web storage API.
"People ask why we chose 'Opera Dragonfly' as the name of our developer tools," said David Storey, Chief web opener, Opera Software. "Dragonflies eat bugs, and that is exactly what we want it to do for developers around the world. You spend your time making the web better for everyone. The least we can do is make life easier for you."
Developers can start Opera Dragonfly beta as follows:
- Enter opera:config#DeveloperTools|DeveloperToolsURL into your address bar.
- Change "DeveloperToolsURL" to https://dragonfly.opera.com/app/cutting-edge/.
- Click "Save".
Use the shortcut to open Opera Dragonfly: Ctrl+Shift+I (Windows and Linux) or ⌘+Shift+I (Mac).


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June 9, 2013
Don Glut's Frankenstein Reboots
In the late Sixties, writer Don Glut undertook his pulp-style New Adventures of Frankenstein series that quickly grew into ten novels and a short story anthology. Published erratically through the years, the books still need to be compiled into a comprehensive and accessible collection. After testing the e-book market in 2011 with a new edition of the first book, Frankenstein Lives Again, publisher Bill Cunningham of Pulp 2.0 Press has come up with a bold new format that collects the whole set — and loads of extras — in two large books that are sure to dazzle Glut fans and Frankenstein fanatics.
Volume One collects the first six Frankenstein novels and Volume Two completes the set with the remaining four novels, the short story collection, plus a new, never-before-published title — Frankenstein: The Final Horror! — that brings the whole saga to its logical end. Bonus features will be spread across the two hefty, 800-page volumes. Covers are by Rondo-Award winning artist Mark Maddox.
Publisher Cunningham also plans to issue the novels as individual e-books with new covers by Jim Craig.
Pulp 2.0 Press is now taking pre-orders (USA only) for The New Adventures of Frankenstein Collection: Volume One. The book ships mid-July.
Pulp 2.0 Press website and Facebook page
Don Glut's website
4 comments:
- Singlem said...
When are these books out in paperback format? And where can I get them? I loved this Frankenstein series when I bought the original paperbacks back in the 70s.
- July 9, 2013 at 4:46 PM
- Pierre Fournier said...
Best contact the publisher. Links provided in the post above.
- July 9, 2013 at 5:32 PM
- Singlem said...
Still no sign of either of these books yet in paperback.
- September 17, 2013 at 10:15 PM
- Singlem said...
Have given up all hope of EVER seeing these books in paperback print.
- January 18, 2015 at 11:20 AM
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Harborside Marina is a full service marina located 60 miles Southwest of Chicago on the Illinois River. They offer a full service department and complete sales department. Transients up to 110' are welcome year round. Another great feature about Harborside Marina is that they offer free WiFi, 89 octane Valvetech gas, diesel, ice, vending machines, pump outs, water, electric, dumpsters, cable TV and clean showers. If you are in the market for a new boat, the marina is a certified dealer for Premier Pontoons, Yacht Club trailers, Evinrude outboards and Harbor Craft Coastal Crusiers. They also have a large variety of used boats and yachts for sale.
You can visit http://www.harborsidemarina.com/ to book your stay today.
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Since our relationship with Yardbarker has started I have been reading plenty of athlete blogs that I never knew existed. One of those has been tight end Vernon Davis's which three days ago he wrote this
Coach Singletary brings a lot of energy. His speeches, they really seem to touch the team. If you look at some of the guys faces they really are tuned in to what he's saying. They might be like a couple of feet away from him but it seems like he's right up in their face by the looks of their expressions that you see on their faces.Davis was tuned in today when big Mike told him "he'd do a better job for us right now taking a shower and coming back and watching the game than going out on the field, simple as that," and then after the game when Vernon tried to approach his new coach, Singletary came at him with "You don't want to talk to me right now." And then to the media with this.
Interesting. I wonder what Davis will write about this week?
Now this wasn't about cars, Eastern Motors, or the Redskins. But I feel like this blog needs something...more than I have been writing about.


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Fisikelli walks on his land with a slight tilt of the head and a slow, respectful gait.
"Watch that," he cautions, pointing to a thin electrical wire running along the white PVC fence surrounding his cow pasture. "It's hot."
Fisikelli, who goes by Freddy, is a 74-year-old son of Italian immigrants, but you'd swear there were at least three generations of Florida rancher in him. He speaks with a Southern twang, loves nothing more in the world than to hunt, and he's so thin that the blue Rustler jeans he wears drape around his legs. The work he's done is imprinted on his worn, leathery hands, which seem more a part of his farm than of him, battered by decades of subtropical sun and dirt to a mottled, river-rock reddish brown.
The pasture is empty but for one black, big-horned cow. Fisikelli, who wears a hearing aid in each ear, suddenly breaks into a loud, high-pitched call: "Come out, come out, come out, come out -- hey!"
Beyond a nearby fence, they call back with big, guttural "meeeaaaaaaggh"s. Then a small herd of brown and black cows comes running through a tree-lined opening in two near-perfect lines. They surround Fisikelli, who is closer to his cattle than most ranchers. He has names for all 19 of them. Blondie, a big brown one, walks right up to Fisikelli, and he gives her a good pat. "The brown cows you can touch," he explains of his stock. "The black cows you can't. They're a different breed."
Fisikelli has been farming this land in southwest Broward County since 1965, when he and a couple of friends from Southern Bell, where he worked his day job, cashed out their stock plans and bought 40 acres at $775 each for a total of $31,000.
That modest purchase has made Fisikelli a millionaire. Those 40 acres would now go for $275,000 each, or a total of about $11 million, which amounts to 355 times what he and his partners paid for them. After an ill-timed selloff and a gift of an acre and a half to his son, Fisikelli still holds 8.5 acres, or about $2.4 million worth of land.
""They tell me I should sell, but why? This is my home," says Fisikelli, the town's conscience. "People say, 'You could do anything you want. Why don't you go on cruises?' Well, if you can't fish off the boat, I don't want to be on it."
And Southwest Ranches -- a rural haven made up mostly of two- to three-acre home sites -- is his town. He helped found the edge-of-the-Everglades municipality five years ago to save it from being consumed by the soul-sucking sprawl of neighboring suburbs like Pembroke Pines and Weston. When its 13 square miles and 7,000 residents were incorporated in 2000, Fisikelli ran for council and not only won a seat but garnered the most votes of any candidate in the five races. Appointed vice mayor, he was determined to create a simple town that focused on much-needed road improvements and repair of serious drainage problems.
But the parasites and profiteers got in the way of that practical notion, and the place was taken over by a political machine. The Ranches seems to have gone a bit too far with the Old West tradition it celebrates (the town hall comes complete with a hitching post). It has become, literally, an outlaw town, blatantly violating Florida's Code of Ethics and public disclosure laws. Under the guise of saving money and avoiding unions, Southwest Ranches contracts all its services to private companies. While privatization has long been controversial, the town has taken the concept to the extreme, using it as an excuse to subvert the staples of decent government.
The Ranches' boss is Town Administrator John Canada, a former Broward County budget director who runs the place like a family business. He's bolstered by Town Attorney Gary Poliakoff, who is managing partner of the powerhouse legal and lobbying firm Becker & Poliakoff. Owner of a 6,500-square-foot Southwest Ranches mansion, Poliakoff "volunteered" to help form the municipality before he and his son Keith became two of its well-compensated officials. The public face of the machine is Mayor Mecca Fink, a town booster who religiously supports Canada and Poliakoff. And then there is Richard Rubin, the town's extravagantly paid grant writer, who happens to be the husband of one of Poliakoff's top political allies, Broward County Commissioner Diana Wasserman-Rubin.
The machine, hard-wired into the Broward political power grid, has rustled up contracts to cash in mightily on the taxpayers of Southwest Ranches and Broward County. And, like some kind of civic viral infection, it's replicating. Canada, Poliakoff, Fink, and Rubin are poaching into West Park, Broward's newest city. They plan to take over that town, which just elected its first commission March 8, even as they retain control of Southwest Ranches.
If successful, the machine's profits would be staggering. But hey, everybody's getting rich in the Ranches. With land prices skyrocketing across South Florida, it's boom time in the boonies. The rich and famous -- from corporate bigs to professional jocks like Miami Dolphins star Jason Taylor and former Marlins pitcher Alex Fernandez -- are flocking to the Ranches and covering the open space with gargantuan homes. Most Ranchers are content to go along for the ride, happy to be land-wealthy and hoping for more.
Fisikelli, who knows the town and its government as well as anyone, doesn't like the mansions or the political machine. He's leading a group of vigilant villagers in a bid to take the town back. They say the town government has become little more than a shell game. And they want to bring something to their little western outpost that has been missing for way too long: a little law and order.
Fisikelli and his comrades in arms have a grave mission, but that doesn't mean they lack a sense of humor. It's evident in the name they've given themselves: "Ranchers for Better Government... and World Peace." In addition to the former vice mayor, there are about a dozen other hard-core reformers, most notably Holly Hugdahl, a freelance government consultant who serves as the group's financial expert. There's also organizer Fred Cox, a former Federal Reserve Bank employee and avid equestrian who recently hurt his back when he was thrown from a horse. Serving as the group's unofficial historian is Marcia Larkin, who was an enthusiastic town booster before realizing the experiment was going terribly awry.
In trademark tongue-in-cheek fashion, Cox states one of the group's basic gripes: "The Canadians have taken over the town."
He's not talking about invaders from the north. To understand what he means, you need only peruse a list of town employees. At the top is John Canada, the administrator. The clerk is one Shari Canada. And a Pat Canada serves as finance director.
Shari is Canada's daughter, and Pat is his wife. It's called nepotism, and it's against the law. Florida forbids public officials from employing a relative in "a position in the agency in which the official is serving or over which the official exercises jurisdiction or control."
John Canada, however, considers himself a private official, since the town contracts not with him but with the company he formed to run Southwest Ranches, John Canada & Associates. In effect, Canada's argument is that a private contractor hired to act in place of a governmental body is immune from the state's ethics laws.
It is a dangerous and apparently unprecedented notion. Bonnie Williams, long-time executive director of the Florida Commission on Ethics, says she's never heard another municipality make a similar case. "Nothing is ever cut and dried, but it's reasonable that the town should abide by the conflict-of-interest laws and that the arguments the town may have against it are spurious," the ever-circumspect Williams said. "If someone filed a complaint in this case, it could be decided once and for all."
But Canada doesn't stop there. The Florida Constitution forbids anyone from holding two distinct offices within any municipality. Yet John Canada & Associates, a single entity, is serving as both town manager and town clerk, two distinct offices. In other words, Canada checks and balances Canada.
This apparent law-breaking, however, may seem like only a minor transgression compared to Canada's colossal compensation. When he retired as the $125,000 budget director of Broward County to become the town's first administrator in 2000, his inaugural contract paid about $350,000 a year. Canada was doing quite well considering the small size of the town and the fact that, other than a single clerk, he was the company's only employee. (He hired his wife and daughter and a few additional employees, sans benefits, in 2002). By contrast, the average town administrator in the United States makes about $92,000, according to the International City/County Management Association (ICMA). For a small town like Southwest Ranches, ICMA reports that the average pay is in the $60,000 range. Canada's windfall seems even more inflated when you consider that he was almost certainly making more than his former boss, Broward County Administrator Roger Desjarlais, who oversees a $2.5 billion budget and nearly 2 million residents. Desjarlais earns about $200,000 annually.
This year, the Southwest Ranches administrator's already rich plum got even sweeter. The council canceled the final year of his contract, which was supposed to pay $378,000, and replaced it with a four-year deal. In 2005, he'll receive $655,000, with healthy raises scheduled through 2008, when he's slated to bring in a whopping $759,000. For that giant pay increase, he agreed to hire a new assistant town administrator and two more employees. In other words, he has received nearly $280,000 in extra pay to hire three people (again without providing pension or benefits).
So how much is Canada really making? Well, he won't say -- and his secrecy is another clear violation of the laws of Florida, specifically the "Government-in-the-Sunshine" statutes. He won't even provide the information to the council. Last year, Town Councilman Don Maines, a guarded critic of the administration, asked the administrator to reveal his employees' salaries. "I said we should have the right to what he is paying out," Maines explains. "It would help to know what it really costs to run the town. But he basically told us that it's none of our business."
Canada, who has been publicly criticized in the past for failing to return phone calls, didn't respond to requests from New Times for interviews. But when questioned at a recent town hall meeting about his refusal to turn over the information on his employees, he said simply: "It's not public information because we're not a public corporation."
The Florida Supreme Court, however, has ruled otherwise. In an unrelated case, the court determined that any private company that "performs the public function in place of the public body" falls under the Sunshine statutes.
Pat Gleason, general counsel for the Florida attorney general, says it's clear that Canada is violating the law. "It's all public record," Gleason says. "If a private corporation is standing in the shoes of the government, then they must adhere to public records. It's unusual for that kind of situation to occur. Most of the time, the private entities are aware of their responsibilities under the law."
Canada also defended his nepotistic practices. "In traditional government, you can't [hire relatives]," he acknowledged. "But these are not traditional employees. We run our business just like any other business."
That, however, wasn't the original plan for Southwest Ranches. The town charter, which effectively stands as the supreme law for the town, has nothing in it about a company running the place. Rather, it states that an administrator should be hired not on a contractual basis but for an "indefinite" amount of time. In other words, Canada's own contract, which covers a specified number of years, violates town law.
Charged with making sure the town follows the law is Gary Poliakoff, who is known not quite affectionately as "Big P" by the Ranchers for Better Government. "Little P" would be his son, Keith. Neither father nor son, however, works for the town. Their 120-member legal and lobbying firm, Becker & Poliakoff, actually holds the contract.
Gary Poliakoff, who made his fortune representing neighborhood and condo associations, has been deeply involved in the town since well before its inception. As a leader of one of the most influential law firms in Florida, he was one of the few people in the Ranches who had any idea how to assemble a municipality. He wrote the charter, and his firm contributed to several council campaigns, most notably those of Fink, the town's first mayor, and Johnny Dollar, the first vice mayor, who died suddenly from a heart attack in 2002. Fisikelli, the maverick ex-councilman, didn't receive any funds from Becker & Poliakoff and says he didn't want them.
"The town became a clique, and I was invited to join the clique," the former vice mayor says. "But I told them I wouldn't join. The whole scheme was based on the fact that there was a lot of money to be made on the town. Money changes people. It makes people lie, and I can't get behind that."
The townsfolk tried to bone up on the rules of government, but Poliakoff, even though he didn't practice municipal law, played the role of wizard. Any doubt that the lawyer was the man behind the curtain was extinguished at the first town hall meeting, which was held in the quaint setting of a school auditorium on August 8, 2000. The initial order of business was to name Poliakoff as interim town attorney. Mayor Fink, according to the Sun-Sentinel, then cried out hurriedly from the makeshift dais, "Gary, please come up here and help us!"
Poliakoff's law firm was then contracted by the town for up to $200,000 a year at a rate of $175 an hour. On top of that, the firm has received hundreds of thousands of dollars more in other fees, including from the proceeds of land deals it closes for the town.
Oh, and there have been many land deals.
Since incorporation, Southwest Ranches has purchased more than 200 acres of open land, ostensibly for public parks. Though its budget hovers at a minuscule $6 million annually, the town has borrowed roughly $5 million and obtained some $25 million in grants. The majority of the latter, about $18 million, came from Broward County's $400 million Safe Parks and Land Preservation Bond. The way all that county money was procured reveals the labyrinthine and incestuous nature of politics not only in Southwest Ranches but also in Broward County.
From the town's early days, the man behind the grants has been Poliakoff chum Richard Rubin, whom the Ranches hired to secure government money for its land-buying bonanza. Rubin had a bit of an advantage, since he's married to Diana Wasserman-Rubin, who won a seat on the Broward Commission shortly before her husband took the job.
A month after the town was incorporated, the Rubins bought a $305,000 home in Southwest Ranches (at the right time -- their house is likely worth $700,000 or more today). Wasserman-Rubin was then the clear front-runner for the commission seat. Managing her campaign was none other than Bernie Friedman, an influential lobbyist who works for the Poliakoffs' law firm.
The Ranches has not only provided Richard Rubin a free office in which to conduct his business but has paid him as much as $1 million for writing grants. If that sounds like an obscene amount of money for a part-time government gig, that's because it is. Most grant writers, even those working full-time for a big city, would consider themselves lucky to earn $75,000 annually.
From the start, Rubin pulled phenomenal coin from Southwest Ranches, in the ballpark of $200,000 a year, give or take 10 or 20 grand. He clearly had nothing to complain about, but things would get much better. And his fortuitous rise in compensation would occur simultaneously with his wife's political rise. In November 2002, Wasserman-Rubin was appointed for a yearlong term as Broward's first mayor. Just four months later, Southwest Ranches basically began to print money for the man, town records indicate. And it was done with a confusing string of contracts that the Ranchers for a Better Government say effectively hid the payout from the public's view.
First, on February 10, 2003, the council approved a yearlong contract with Rubin for $78,000. A month later, it spiced up the deal by approving an additional $175,000 for Rubin. Three months after that, the council gave Rubin a $15,000 performance bonus. Then, in November 2003, Rubin was awarded another $155,000 contract.
Then, during a town meeting on April 8, 2004, Canada asked the board to approve an emergency outlay of $29,999 to Rubin for a month's worth of work, saying his contracts had all been paid. The council approved the money, with Maines casting the only nay vote.
That adds up to some ludicrous lucre -- $452,999 in a maze of contracts during a 14-month period. "Does it look unethical, and does it look bad the way Canada goes about things?" Maines asks. "Yes, but the town has benefited."
The councilman says that Rubin's puffed-up pay is earned not so much for filling out applications as for using his county links -- a.k.a. his wife -- to bring the money to the Ranches. "His value comes from his connections," Maines opines. "He uses his influence. He does whatever lobbying needs to be done to benefit the town."
When reached on the telephone at home and asked about his pay, Rubin was unrepentant. He said he deserved even more money. "I've brought $25 million to the town, and what I've been paid is less than what any professional consultant would be paid," he said. "The only reason I'm doing it for less is that I'm a resident of the town, and the town means a lot to my family and to me."
As he began to elaborate, his wife suddenly got on the phone and explained that Rubin couldn't speak because he'd been having health problems, had just come from the hospital, and was still under anesthesia. Wasserman-Rubin, apparently, is accustomed to taking care of her husband in more ways than one; she's also served as an enthusiastic supporter on the County Commission for her husband's grant requests.
She has not only voted for each one of the town grants authored by Rubin but has added successful motions to the commission agenda directing county staff to help the town acquire property and shift funds to Southwest Ranches coffers. Wasserman-Rubin even gave the town $482,500 of the $1 million allotted from the county parks bond to her office for discretionary spending.
Rubin takes credit for that money in his $25 million boast -- though the actual figure, according to town records, is more like $20 million -- and some of his wife's actions have helped him earn performance bonuses from the town.
Rubin and other town leaders, often dressed in Western attire to dramatize the rural character of Southwest Ranches, have made periodic pilgrimages to County Commission meetings to lobby for grant money. During one such gathering last June 22, Wasserman-Rubin asked then-Mayor Ilene Lieberman: "Can I just recognize the members of the town that are here?"
"You may certainly do so," Lieberman answered.
"...We've got Mr. John Canada, town administrator, and we have town grants writer Richard Rubin," Wasserman-Rubin said.
What was amazing about the exchange was that she didn't even note that Rubin was her husband, though county staff and her fellow commissioners were surely well aware of that fact. Shortly after her introductions, the commission voted unanimously to give the town more than $1.1 million.
In Florida, it's a second-degree felony to use one's governmental post for personal financial gain. Wasserman-Rubin strongly denied that her actions on behalf of Southwest Ranches and her husband were a conflict of interest. She said she asked then-county attorney Ed Dion about the matter, and he assured her it wasn't a problem, since she didn't sit on any boards that actually evaluated her husband's grant applications.
"I'm very paranoid about these things," Wasserman-Rubin says. "I am very fearful about those things, and I will not put my career on the line."
Since Richard Rubin was hired by Southwest Ranches (he's currently being paid $156,000 for the year, with the potential of another $90,000 in bonuses), the commissioner's net worth has nearly tripled to $460,000 (though that figure seems terribly low considering the rise in value of their house). In 2002, the couple bought a condo in Davie near a golf course as a second home for $121,000 cash.
Call it a fringe benefit of public service.
It's not so much Rubin's exorbitant pay that rankles Ranchers for a Better Government as it is the way Canada seems to intentionally obscure it with a confusing trail of contracts. The group says that shady financial practices have become the town's hallmark and that Canada and Co. have stripped the Ranches of any semblance of integrity.
They point to the land purchases as the premier example of the town's indecent dealings. Holly Hugdahl, who moved to Southwest Ranches in 2000, has spent months trying to decipher the grants and land deals and says they are rife with "bait and switch" tactics. And Hugdahl isn't just any activist -- she's a certified pubic accountant who contracts with municipalities, most recently Miami Lakes, to troubleshoot their finances.
Hugdahl points out that town leaders like Poliakoff, Canada, and Fink routinely champion the grants coming into the town but always fail to mention the $5 million bond issue that the town approved to finance its land empire. They're also hush about the strings attached to the money. For instance, Southwest Ranches has already agreed to build three museums and a canoe-rental facility, according to Hugdahl's research. Yet the town, which is forbidden to profit from the land it has acquired with grant money, has barely begun to maintain the property. "If people knew how much this is going to cost down the road, I'm not sure they would support it," she says. "I actually have a very selfish motivation: I don't want my taxes raised. This is going to cost us a fortune in the long run."
Poliakoff, whose firm has made nice profits on the land deals, often vacations in Aspen (where he owns a condo assessed at $1.5 million) and declined to comment for this article. But when New Times spoke with him last October, he was aglow about the town's future. "We've obtained nearly $25 million in grants to build some of the most amazing parks in Broward County," Poliakoff said. "It gives Southwest Ranches a chance to preserve some beautiful open space and create tremendous parks for all the people of Broward County."
His son, Keith Poliakoff, admits that the parks are going to be expensive. "You have to have confidence that the town administrator is not leading you astray and, in this case, that the town administrator can satisfy all the requirements within the grants without burdening the public," he says. "You can only tell over time."
The Ranchers for Better Government don't subscribe to blind trust, however. They point to other apparently shady deals, like the town's attempt to circumvent state housing requirements. Because the council didn't want affordable housing in the town (Mayor Fink once remarked that someone would have to put a gun to her head before she'd allow it), Rubin came up with a plan to pay $900,000 to nearby Pembroke Park to build the town's required affordable units. Ultimately, the money was slated to go to Miami-based Pinnacle Housing Group, a politically connected development firm that is represented by Poliakoff's law firm. The scheme, however, died when the Pembroke Park project fell through due to a lack of financing.
"To pay another town for affordable housing might not be a bad thing," Hugdahl avers. "But playing a shell game and converting it to $900,000 to Pinnacle -- that's not what the people agreed to."
Hugdahl and her compatriots have fought hard for the past three years against the machine but have had only nominal success. During one particularly bitter fight in 2003 over the town charter, the group railed about the nepotism, extravagant pay, and other problems. Gary Poliakoff became so ticked off -- or perhaps threatened -- by the group that he typed an open letter to the town. "I am deeply troubled by the smear campaign of lies and deception being waged by some residents and their financial backers," he wrote in the letter, dated October 14, 2003.
Yet Poliakoff, in his three-page screed, clearly engaged in lies and deception himself. "Do you know that the Town does not pay the salaries of Pat Canada or Shari Canada?" Poliakoff wrote. "Not a dime is paid to them by the town."
Perhaps that is technically true, but it's essentially false. In fact, the Ranches pays the money to John Canada, who then distributes it to his wife and daughter.
Poliakoff, who touted the "unbelievable achievements" of the town and "creativity of John Canada and Richard Rubin" in the letter, also mentioned a new equestrian park that was being built, saying it "will open in November without a single cent coming from our Town."
That was untrue. In fact, the town spent more than $500,000 on the park. When it received a county grant to buy the land, Southwest Ranches had to ante up $150,000 in matching funds. And budget records show the town spent at least $400,000 to build it.
But the town has never seemed very honest -- or smart -- about money, critics say. Take the case of Christine Lupo. She is a full-time code enforcement officer for the City of Pembroke Pines, where she earns roughly $45,000 per year. In 2003, Lupo formed a company called Wolf Tech Inc. and was given a contract to also serve as the Ranches' part-time code officer. That agreement paid her firm a whopping $70,000 a year for 20 hours of work a week and allowed Lupo to keep her full-time job in the Pines.
This year, Lupo got a nice raise. Wolf Tech now receives $99,000 a year. The new arrangement calls for the firm, however, to provide 40 hours a week, rather than 20. Yet Lupo is still holding down her job in the Pines. How does she do it? Predictably, Lupo has hired her son to do the Ranches' work.
And then there's the Alyn Kay saga. Kay is a politically active landscape architect who helped run several campaigns, including Fink's. His apparent payoff for politicking was a part-time job as landscape inspector for the town. How much he got isn't clear, since Canada never gave him a contract for the work.
In 2002, as Fisikelli scoured the town's checks, he saw that Kay had received thousands of dollars. An ensuing controversy included allegations that Kay was extorting money from homeowners. So he stepped down from the apparently secret job. Funny thing, though: Kay kept working for the town, helping to landscape the new equestrian park.
Councilman Maines says he asked the town administrator what Kay was doing. "Canada promised me for a year and a half that Kay had no connection to the town and was only volunteering his time," Maines recalls bitterly.
This past March, however, Canada admitted during a council meeting that he had made a "verbal" contract with Kay and that the town owed him $105,000, which it duly paid. When asked about the mess, Canada called it a "misunderstanding" and said he had made a mistake.
"John Canada is a liar," Maines says. "The truth has never come out about the deal that John and Alyn Kay had."
Fisikelli, who still considers Canada a strange kind of friend, says the town administrator is unlike anyone he's ever met. "You cannot understand this man -- he will tell you a bold-faced lie to your face and shake your hand when he's through," Fisikelli says. "I have never met a man like that. I guess he thinks telling lies is OK."
Fisikelli was basically the lone man on the council fighting Canada (though sympathetic, Maines usually voted with the majority). And the farmer realized he wasn't doing much good being on the losing end of 4-1 votes. So prior to the 2004 election, he made a bold move: He gave up his council seat and decided to run against Fink for mayor. It was the only way to fight the clique, Fisikelli decided.
Hugdahl also jumped into the fray, running for commission against rookie candidate Jeff Nelson, who was backed by the political machine (the Becker & Poliakoff firm contributed $500 to his campaign). Rounding out their unofficial ticket was Maines, an incumbent running for reelection. All three won Sun-Sentinel endorsements, but only Maines survived the March election, during which Fink and company trumpeted the town's acquisition of grant money. An example from Fink's campaign brochures: "She has added 173 acres of public green space at no cost to town taxpayers."
Even if you forget about the payouts to Rubin to obtain the grants (a definite "cost to town taxpayers"), Fink also overlooked the $5 million loan, which the town will be paying off for another 26 years.
Nelson, who handily beat Hugdahl, has since become Canada's most vocal critic on the council. He says the town's fiscal policies are almost impossible to decipher, and he believes Rubin has been grossly overpaid. When asked if it's been tough to criticize the people who supported his candidacy, he said simply, "I have to sleep at night."
The 2004 electoral defeat slowed down the Ranchers for a Better Government, but it hasn't stopped the group. "There is nothing they can do to make us roll over," Hugdahl says. "We don't need them for anything. They can't buy us. We're not for sale."
The question now is whether the newest city in Broward County, West Park, will be bought. Because that's where the whole gang that runs Southwest Ranches is planning to go next.
Call it Government Inc.
Mayor Fink tells New Times that she plans to retire from her $78,000-a-year job as the Broward County clerk of court, where she runs its public-access Internet site, to become the administrator of West Park, a south Broward town of about 13,000 that was incorporated in November. She admits that sitting on the Ranches council hasn't taught her everything about managing a town, so she's going to hire John Canada & Associates as a subcontractor. "We will not be partners," she says of Canada. "I will only subcontract work to Canada. I want control -- I want that professional level of control. I am doing this to earn a living for my family."
For the past several months, she has been campaigning for the job in West Park. She promoted the idea to commission candidates, and Canada has already begun "volunteering" for West Park. He worked up a feasibility study showing that the cost of an administration contract would be a mere $775,000 a year in West Park, about $100,000 cheaper than Canada charges in Southwest Ranches, which has about half the population of West Park.
The father-and-son Poliakoff team is also getting in on the action. Keith Poliakoff confirms that his firm, which has given thousands of dollars to West Park campaigns, is vying to become the city's official attorney at a yearly rate of $200,000.
The problems with the scheme are obvious. For one, as mayor of the Ranches, Fink is charged with evaluating Canada's proposals and job performance. If she is in business with Canada, her independence, such as it is, would become extremely dubious. It's also legally problematic because state law forbids a person from signing checks for two different towns because of the obvious conflict of interest.
"It's disgraceful," Maines says of the plan. "You can't serve two masters. She can't even run a Town Council meeting, so I don't know how she's going to run a city. She's been giving [West Park leaders] a good snow job, but all she'll be doing is riding on the coattails of John Canada."
West Park officials say they are considering Fink as city manager and Becker & Poliakoff as town attorney but won't make a final decision for at least a couple of months.
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A fitting symbol of Fink's growing conflict between the Ranches and West Park came in the form of an empty chair. It was the mayor's seat at the March 10 Southwest Ranches Town Council meeting. Instead of doing her job for the town, she opted to go that night to West Park, where the new City Commission was being sworn in by none other than her friend, Diana Wasserman-Rubin. Keith Poliakoff, whose father was on vacation, had an attorney from his firm sit in on the meeting.
Fisikelli sat in the front row of the Ranches meeting that night and stood up several times to criticize Canada's proposals, including the administrator's motion to issue himself a town credit card (which passed by a 3-1 vote, with only Nelson dissenting).
Though no longer elected, the farmer is still filling the same role he's always taken on himself -- town conscience.
"It's hard to believe what's been going on," he says. "This town is heading for some real financial problems. And all I have to say to West Park is that before it makes a decision, it better look long and hard at our town."


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Alyssa Milano's face is immediately recognizable to millions of baseball fans, from her prominent roles in such TV series as "Melrose Place" and "Charmed" to her presence as a longtime Dodgers season-ticket holder. Now her new line of women's MLB apparel is about to become very recognizable as well.
Out of what she called "necessity," Milano teamed with G-III and MLB to create her own signature "touch" line of team-logo fashion for the female fan. The clothing has just arrived at the MLB.com Shop, and not a moment too soon for the countless women who have been asking her about it already this season. The actress, model, designer, humanitarian and baseball lover talked about her new venture in this Q&A.
MLB.com: Did your mom inspire you to get involved in the business?
Alyssa: My mom (Lin Milano) was an amazing women's apparel designer and actually my grandmother was a hat designer. That makes me the third generation of designers in my family. My mom's and grandmother's success definitely gave me the courage to go ahead with the idea for "touch."
MLB.com: What types of fabrics and patterns are you using for the clothing line?
Alyssa: The fabrics and patterns were very important to me. I wanted to use sporty fabrics that are wearable and feel good -- hence the name "touch" -- but also use feminine fabrics as a contradiction. I used a lot of satin to make the sporty looks a little bit more feminine. The silhouettes were equally as important because I wanted women to feel good in the pieces. As a woman, I find it's more important that I feel good in what I wear than the actual styles. So I went through great lengths to make sure all the styles were flattering and catered to a woman's body shape. For instance, my tank tops all have shelf bras attached because I always had a hard time figuring out what to wear under the fan apparel tanks that were available to us. My hoodies have double zippers so we won't have any bulges while sitting in the stands rooting for our teams.
MLB.com: Do the prices increase from the regular women's wear?
Alyssa: I think you'll find the price points to be incredibly reasonable for what you're getting.
MLB.com: How did you alter the designs to be more fashionable and desired?
Alyssa: I really took into consideration the trends that are already in the fashion marketplace. I wanted to create a line that women could wear anywhere and not just to a game. I wanted to bridge the game with the after-party and do for baseball what the hip-hop world did for the NBA.
MLB.com: You said on your website that this was "born out of necessity." Could you elaborate on that, discuss what you would typically wear to a Dodgers game in the past, and if there was a "eureka" moment that you recall?
Alyssa: I have had Dodgers season tickets for four years. Every game I attended, I would rush into the team shop and look to see if there was anything new and cute to buy. I would look for something that would fit my body and that wasn't pink! I was always disappointed that I couldn't find anything. My "eureka" moment came when my friend Chelsea made her own T-shirt. She made a tee that said, "I love Rookies," and she got so many compliments on it. I hope to produce a tee similar to this in the future. That's when the seed was planted and it grew from there. I pitched the idea to my agent, he got me a meeting with MLB, MLB introduced me to G-III, and the rest is history.
MLB.com: What feedback have you received so far from other female baseball fans? And by the way, what do you think guys will think of this, and do men need more style as well?
Alyssa: The best part of this experience has been the feedback from the female fans. They finally feel that there is someone speaking on their behalf in a male-dominated industry. It's really rewarding to see how excited they are about the styles and just the concept in general. As far as the guys go, I have a 24-year-old brother who is also a huge baseball fan. He just said to me the other day, when we were getting ready to go watch the Freeway Series, "Lyss, please do a men's line." I would love to do a men's line incorporating the Cooperstown logos and give it a real vintage feel.
MLB.com: Is there one piece in this new line that's your favorite?
Alyssa: I love all the pieces, and my favorite design changes daily. I really love the jeans. I love the satin jacket. The two-in-one baby doll tee. All of it is stuff I would wear and look forward to wearing.
MLB.com: How did you come to be such a huge baseball fan, how many Dodgers games would you guess you'll go to in 2007, and how do you feel about every preseason publication picking the Dodgers and Angels to win their divisions, and Sports Illustrated picking the Angels over Dodgers in the World Series? Seems like people think it's L.A.'s year.
Alyssa: [General manager Ned] Colletti, if you're reading this -- we need a power bat! I am a huge baseball fan because I grew up [in New York] watching it on my dad's lap. Baseball is my escape. The sights, the sounds, the way the park smells. There is truly no place I would rather be than at a game. I couldn't even count how many games I went to last year. Baseball represents family. It represents my childhood. As far as it being L.A.'s year, I'm not getting my hopes up. The beautiful thing about baseball is that anything can happen. It's like life in that way. As soon as you think you have it all figured out, something happens that makes you realize -- you know nothing. The only thing that's guaranteed is that it will be an exciting ride.
MLB.com: Where can all your fans find Alyssa Milano this year and what's she up to these days besides helping women with their ballpark look?
Alyssa: I just finished a pilot for Warner Brothers and ABC called "Reinventing The Wheelers." My fingers are crossed that it will be picked up. It's a really special show. I am also beginning production in May on a film for Lakeshore Productions and MGM called "Pathology," starring Milo Ventimiglia. I will be traveling a lot this year as well with UNICEF and The Global Network For Neglected Tropical Diseases for my Ambassadorships. But really, you're most likely to find me at Dodger Stadium rooting for my boys in blue. Go BLUE!


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Production of the Mustang began in Dearborn, Michigan on March 9, 1964 and the car was presented to the public on April 17, 1964 at the New york city World's Fair. It is Ford's 3rd oldest nameplate currently in production. Initial sales projections forecasted less than 100,000 systems for the very first year. This mark was exceeded in three months from rollout. Another 318,000 would be sold during the design year (a record), and in its very first eighteen months, more than one million Mustangs were developed.
Best Deals Buy Classic Ford Mustangs
All these were VIN-identified as 1965 models, but several changes were made at the conventional opening of the new model year (beginning August 1964), including the addition of back-up lights on some designs, the intro of generators to replace generators, and an upgrade of the V8 engine from 260 cu into 289 cu in. When it comes to a minimum of some six-cylinder Mustangs fitted with the 101 hp 170 cu in Falcon engine, the rush into production consisted of some uncommon peculiarities, such as a horn ring bearing the 'Ford Falcon' logo beneath a trim ring emblazoned with 'Ford Mustang.' These characteristics made sufficient difference to necessitate classification of the 121,538 earlier ones as "1964 1/2" model-year Mustangs, a distinction that has actually withstood with purists. Mustangs For Sale in Andover NY are easy to find now with online shopping.
The 1973 OPEC oil embargo brought with it more stringent pollution laws and the desire for fuel-efficiency. This was also the very first time in automotive history that the Huge 3 were having to compete with imports. The new Mustang II was smaller than the first variation but, due to the added equipment required to meet brand-new United States emission and security policies, was much heavier than the very first design. Efficiency was decreased and in the very first year only 385,993 cars were offered.
2nd generation Mustangs for sale in Andover NY were offered in between 1974 and 1978 and available in a coupe and hatchback variation. 1979 the Mustang was redesigned a 3rd time. This time it was based upon the bigger Fox platform and the interior was actually large enough for 4 people. The trunk was larger and so was the engine bay. The body styles readily available consisted of a coupe, hatchback and in 1983 a convertible. In 1979 the Third generation Mustang served as an Indianapolis 500 speed vehicle and Ford developed 10,478 commemorative reproductions. The 3rd generation Mustangs were produced from 1979 to 1982.


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Manly P. Hall
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Manly Palmer Hall (18 March 1901 – 29 August 1990) was a Canadian-born American author and mystic. He is perhaps most famous for his work The Secret Teachings of All Ages: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy (1928) published when he was 27 years old. It is considered a classic work of esoteric literature, divided into hundreds of entries examining aspects of myth, religion, and philosophy from around the world and throughout history.
The Lost Keys Of Freemasonry (1923)[edit]
- What nobler relationship than that of friend? What nobler compliment can man bestow than friendship? The bonds and ties of the life we know break easily, but through eternity one bond remains — the bond of fellowship — the fellowship of atoms, of star dust in its endless flight, of suns and worlds, of gods and men. The clasped hands of comradeship unite in a bond eternal — the fellowship of spirit.
The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928)[edit]
- The great materialistic progress which we have venerated for so long is on the verge of bankruptcy. We can no longer believe that we are born into this world to accumulate wealth and abandon ourselves to mortal pleasures. We see the dangers and realize that we have been exploited for centuries. We were told the twentieth century was the most progressive that the world has ever known, but unfortunately the progression was in the direction of self-destruction.
- Preface to the Diamond Jubilee Edition of The Secret Teachings of All Ages
- To avoid a future of war, crime, and bankruptcy, the individual must begin to plan his own destiny, and the best source for the necessary information comes down to us through the writings of the ancients. The greatest knowledge of all time should be available … in a book that would be a monument, not merely a coffin.
- Preface to the Diamond Jubilee Edition of The Secret Teachings of All Ages
- The yoni and phallus were worshiped by nearly all ancient people as appropriate symbols of God's creative power.
- European mysticism was not dead at the time the United States of America was founded. The hand of the mysteries controlled in the establishment of the new government for the signature of the mysteries may still be seen on the Great Seal of the United states of America. Careful analysis of the seal discloses a mass of occult and Masonic symbols chief among them, the so-called American Eagle. … the American eagle upon the Great Seal is but a conventionalized phoenix... Not only were many of the founders of the United States government Masons, but they received aid from a secret and august body existing in Europe which helped them to establish this country for a peculiar and particular purpose known only to the initiated few. The Great Seal is the signature of this exalted body —unseen and for the most part unknown — and the unfinished pyramid upon its reverse side is a trestleboard setting forth symbolically the task to the accomplishment of which the United States Government was dedicated from the day of its inception.
- p. xc
- Philosophy is the science of estimating values. The superiority of any state or substance over another is determined by philosophy. By assigning a position of primary importance to what remains when all that is secondary has been removed, philosophy thus becomes the true index of priority or emphasis in the realm of speculative thought.
- Introduction, p. 4
- A nation with culture is blessed. To live in the world without becoming aware of the meaning of the world is like wandering about in a great library without touching the books. It has always seemed to me that symbolism should be restored to the structure of world education. The young are no longer invited to seek the hidden truths, dynamic and eternal, locked within the shapes and behavior of living beings.
- Quoted in the tribute of The Lost Symbol (2009) by Dan Brown
- The accepted theory that the serpent is evil cannot be substantiated. It has long been viewed as the emblem of immortality. It is the symbol of reincarnation, or metempsychosis, because it annually sheds its skin...It was also believed that snakes swallowed themselves, and this resulted in their being considered emblematic of the Supreme Creator, who periodically reabsorbed His universe back into Himself.
- Chapter: Fishes, Insects, Animals, Reptiles and Birds
Meditation Symbols in Eastern & Western Mysticism (1988)[edit]
- The alchemical tradition assumes that every physical art or science is a body of knowledge which exists only because it is ensouled by invisible powers and processes. Physical chemistry, as it is practiced in the modern world, is concerned principally with pharmaceutical or industrial research projects. It is confined within the boundaries of an all-pervading materialism, which binds labor to the advancement of physical objectives.
Quotes about Hall[edit]
- Manly Hall's great work is a classic in the world's literature. It will guide historians, philosophers, and lay seekers of esoteric wisdom for centuries.
- Edgar Mitchell, Apollo Astronaut, on The Secret Teachings of All Ages


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It is interesting to note that when Jesus tells his great parable of judgment we call the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Mt 25:31-46), the big dividing line between sheep and goats is not their views on justification by faith alone, their sacramental theology, their opinions on the papacy, their thoughts on just war and gun control or even their visible membership in the Catholic Church. It is how they treated "the least of these."
It is easy to draw wrong conclusions from this, and our polarized culture is good at doing that. So for some Catholics, the conclusion is that one's views on these other subjects don't matter at all. As long as you are serving the poor, it doesn't matter if you make it to Mass, or listen to the Church's teaching on the pelvic issues, or bother with the sacraments or pray. The faith begins and ends with "social justice," and "social justice" more or less means "voting liberal and recycling." For others, the alarm bells go off when you start talking about the least of these, and a complex defense mechanism kicks into gear in which the eyes narrow, adrenaline starts to squirt, and preparations are quickly made to say things like "Social justice stuff has its place, I suppose, but at the end of the day, the unborn are the only 'least of these' who really matter and the rest of all that stuff about the poor is just prudential judgment and liberal hand-wringing."
Divisive opinions
Both sides are wrong. And they maintain their wrongness by the standard blunder of taking some real Catholic truth and pitting it against the whole of the Tradition. In the case of the "social justice" guy who doesn't care about questions like "Who is Jesus?" or "Why bother with Mass?" or "Could the Church be right about human sexuality?" what is typically asserted against the whole of the Tradition and the common good is "conscience." Meanwhile, with the guy whose attention to the works of mercy boils down to the formula "Opposition to abortion taketh away the sins of the world," the notion is that "prudential judgment" means you don't have to pay any attention to the Church's guidance unless it is given in the form of a dogma.
Key components
But the reality is that works of mercy — though there is no dogma commanding us to do them or outlining which ones we are to do, nor how many times — are essential components of healthy Catholic life, and we are to seek ways to either do them ourselves or help others do them. That's the meaning of the parable, and the implication is both shocking and stark: Whatever we do or do not do to the least, we do or do not do to Jesus. In other words, we do them because our neighbor is a sacrament to us and we to him — because all that stuff about Jesus being the Word made flesh and fully present on the altar and coming to us in a human way and us having to have the mystical eyes of faith to see it is true — all that is what undergirds the Church's teaching here. We Americans imagine that social safety networks, and care for the poor, and pity for the weak and reverence for childhood and equal rights are all just "self-evident" as the Declaration of Independence put it. But in fact, apart from faith in Jesus Christ, there is no particular reason not to return to the horrible world of pre-Christian paganism in which none of these things were self-evident and the rule of thumb was "The strong do as they will, and the weak suffer what they must." One of the gifts the Christian tradition has kneaded into Western culture for 2,000 years is this regard for the "least of these." Without the Church quietly operating in the background, doing works of mercy that nobody will ever hear of for the love of Jesus Christ, present in the weak as he is in the Eucharist, civilization would have overheated and burned down a long time ago.
For body and spirit
So what are the corporal works of mercy and where do they come from? They are: feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, harbor the harborless, visit the sick, ransom the captive and bury the dead. As you can see, they are rooted in the Bible itself (half of them come from the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, and the rest are virtuous acts we see attributed to various heroes of the Bible such as Moses or Tobit). The corporal works of mercy are addressed primarily (though not exclusively) to bodily needs since we are embodied creatures. However, they are also charged with sacramental significance too, as we shall see. The works are the response of love to the fact that the Word became flesh and, in the least of these, still dwells among us. Let's take a quick look at each.
Mark Shea writes the Catholic and Enjoying blog at www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/ and is the author of "The Heart of Catholic Prayer: Opening the Our Father and the Hail Mary" (OSV, $12.95) and "The Work of Mercy" (Servant, $14.99).
Feed the hungry
Feeding the hungry, like many of the other corporal works of mercy, is tough in our culture since we live in a weird historical moment where the poor in the First World suffer from obesity, not starvation. Still and all, there are things we can do.
The poor are not helped if you give them the means to pay for more alcohol or crystal meth. But they are helped by food. My wife and I have made a habit of keeping tasty health bar thingies in our car for handing out when we are stopped at a light.
In addition to these minor acts, you can help support apostolates, either with hands-on activities such as actually preparing food and serving it to the poor, or with funding organizations that feed people who are literally starving in other parts of the world.
Feeding the hungry, like all the corporal works of mercy, has a spiritual dimension as well, since the ultimate food is the Bread of Life: the Eucharist.
If you bring somebody to Mass or introduce them to Jesus Christ, you are feeding them not merely temporarily, but eternally.
As Christ himself put it: "Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of man will give to you; for on him has God the Father set his seal" (Jn 6:27).
Mercy Corps helps people in the world's toughest places turn the crises of natural disaster, poverty and conflict into opportunities for progress. Driven by local needs and market conditions, their programs provide communities with the tools and support they need to transform their own lives. Their worldwide team of 3,700 professionals is improving the lives of 16.7 million people in more than 40 countries.
Mercy Corps
P.O. Box 2669, Dept. W
Portland, OR 97208-2669
Phone: 800-292-3355
Website: www.mercycorps.org
Food for the Poor is the third-largest international relief and development charity in the United States, feeding 2 million daily. Its Christian relief programs and projects help children and the poorest of the poor by providing food, housing, health care, education and micro-enterprise assistance in the Caribbean and Latin America.
Food for the Poor
6401 Lyons Rd.
Coconut Creek, FL 33073
Phone: 954-427-2222 or 800-427-9104
Website: www.foodforthepoor.org
Bury the dead
Burying the dead seems to many moderns like a weird work of mercy since we tend to think of the body as a sort of Tupperware container for the soul. Who cares what happens to the dead meat after death? The only thing that requires mercy is the soul, right?
Well no, because we believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead in a glorified body. So the body is holy, because it is both the temple of the Holy Spirit and the seed of the Resurrection, destined to be raised in glory just as Christ's body was raised. We honor that by burying the dead instead of just chucking their corpses into a garbage dump.
Burying the dead is, in a certain sense, the most purely merciful thing we can do, since the dead we bury are both victims of the tragedy that is the common lot of all fallen human beings (and therefore the most pathetic of our race and deserving of our pity), as well as the most helpless. Here, supremely, is the beggar who is powerless to repay your kindness to him, and therefore the very least of these. At the same time, this body you honor will one day be like Christ's in glory. We can do this work by such means as supporting Catholic cemeteries or supporting pro-life ministries that offer Christian burial to those most forgotten of our dead: aborted children.
Reverence for the body is an extension of the reverence for life.
The International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide exists to support each person's right to die a natural death in an environment of love without being murdered by a culture eager to dispose of the weak and inconvenient.
The International Task
Force on Euthanasia
and Assisted Suicide
P.O. Box 760
Steubenville, OH 43952
Phone: 740-282-3810
or 800-958-5678
Website: www.internationaltaskforce.org
Clothe the naked
Clothing the naked is not something we think about too much today, since we seldom meet nearly naked people dressed in rags. In our culture, pretty much the only people you meet who are naked are people who want to be that way, owing to some loopy theory of nudist naturalism.
What they demonstrate, of course, is that naturalism is unnatural and that the normal state of the human person is to be clothed in some way, even if that clothing is just a grass skirt in some tropical outpost somewhere. That tells you something about clothes: namely, that they exist to express (and guard) our dignity as much as, if not more than, to keep us warm.
That clothes are bound up with our dignity is made clear, not only in our species' perpetual fascination with changing fashions, but in such violent assaults on human dignity as the Holocaust, in which victims were routinely stripped naked precisely in order to humiliate them. To clothe the naked, therefore, is to give them their dignity. Happily, this is something we can do very easily in the First World.
From the Salvation Army to St. Vincent de Paul to Goodwill, there are tons of places we can provide clothes for people that need them here in the United States, as well as helping to provide for those who literally are naked in, say, Calcutta.
In doing so, we clothe them with the dignity of Jesus Christ, who was himself stripped of his garments on Golgotha, so that we could be clothed in him (see Rom 13:14).
The Society of St. Vincent de Paul helps the poor with needs, especially clothing.
Check the local phone directory for one of its local ministries, or contact the national office:
National Council of the United States
Society of St. Vincent de Paul
58 Progress Parkway
St. Louis, MO 63043-3706
Phone: 314-576-3993
Website: www.svdpusa.org
Catholic Relief Services carries out the commitment of the bishops of the United States to assist the poor and vulnerable overseas. It is motivated by the Gospel of Jesus Christ to cherish, preserve and uphold the sacredness and dignity of all human life; foster charity and justice; and embody Catholic social and moral teaching.
Catholic Relief Services
228 W. Lexington St.
Baltimore, MD 21201-3413
Phone: 888-277-7575
Website: www.crs.org
Give drink to the thirsty
Giving drink to the thirsty is, again, hard to put legs on in the First World, since water is as close as the nearest public fountain. In the developing world, though, having something to drink can still be a dangerous and chancy business. In some areas, the phenomenon of withering drought can still kill thousands of the old, sick, weak and very young. In addition to such natural scourges, there are man-made ones such as war, despotism, and even planned genocide that deliberately denies water to those who need it. And on top of this, there are corporations from the West that market things like baby formula to new mothers, telling them to ignore their own breast milk in favor of the new technological hotness, while failing to warn them that the formula, mixed with cholera-infected water, will kill their children. Happily, there are also initiatives proliferating to help sink wells in drought areas and that provide water filtration and sterilization for people living in impoverished conditions. Moreover, as with feeding the hungry, so also giving drink to the thirsty has a secondary meaning in our tradition. Jesus says of natural water, "Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life" (Jn 4:13-14). The best drink we can give to the thirsty is the waters of baptism and the living water of the Holy Spirit.
Global Water was founded in 1982 by former U.S. Ambassador John McDonald and Dr. Peter Bourne to help save the lives of people in developing countries that are lost due to unclean water. Rather than providing short-term supplies like food and bottled water that are quickly consumed, Global Water focuses on permanent solutions to a region's water needs.
Global Water
Project Management Office
3600 S. Harbor Blvd., No. 514
Oxnard, CA 93035
Phone: 805-985-3057
Website: www.globalwater.org
H2OAfrica's objective is to increase awareness of the African situation; empower people to action; and create sustainable alliances between people who want to help, the best organizations in the field to make it happen, and some of the communities of Africa that have no clean water.
920 Main St., Suite 1800
Kansas City, MO 64105
Phone: 816-877-8400
Website: www.water.org
Harbor the harborless
Harboring the harborless can take many forms up to and including the daring (and often dangerous) form of taking people into one's home. It can also include doing things like helping refugees get settled in their new life in your country, or helping battered women or children establish themselves in a new place, or helping people who have been institutionalized get established in an independent living situation. It can most certainly apply to those who choose to adopt children, and particularly children from dangerous and difficult origins such as a Chinese orphanage.
One form of harboring the harborless that often gets overlooked is to welcome new people into your parish and help them get connected with friends, work, and ways in which they can share in the service of other people's needs. Catholic parishes can be desperately lonely places for many people, especially new people who are either recently arrived in the parish or recent converts or reverts.
The Catholic instinct to let people alone and "give them space" can often be a fine thing, but not at the cost of making people feel frozen out and unconnected. Here again, there is a spiritual principle at work too. For in welcoming people into your parish and your lives, you are fulfilling the promise of the Gospel that we "are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God" (Eph 2:19).
Incorporated in 1972, Covenant House has been leading the effort to help homeless kids. Today it is the largest privately funded agency in the Americas that provides food, shelter, immediate crisis care and an array of other important services to homeless, throwaway and runaway kids. Covenant House doesn't stop at offering an immediate safe harbor to homeless youth; it strives to move each kid forward down the path to an independent adulthood, free from the risk of future homelessness.
Covenant House
461 Eighth Ave.
New York, NY 10001
Phone: 800-388-3888
Website: www.covenanthouse.org
Sheltersforwomen.org has information on shelters for battered women, families, youth, homeless people and drug addicts, as well as links that help get people back on their feet.
Ransom the captive
Ransoming the captive has a distinctly pre-modern ring to it. It's been a while since the president of the United States, returning from a Crusade, has been captured by Saracens who demanded 2,000 gold doubloons for his safe return. Indeed, our culture tends to view paying ransoms as "capitulating to terrorism," not as a noble act worthy of praise. That's because we have developed mechanisms and systems for dealing with criminals more sophisticated than simple ransoms.
But the principle behind it — freeing those held in bondage — is as honorable as ever. We don't tend to think too much about that these days, since slavery has not been on our minds since 1865 or so. But beyond our borders (and, in a certain sense, within them) slavery is still a live issue. On our own soil as well as abroad, there is the ongoing crime of sex slavery. There are goods bought at your local big-box store that were made by people who are, for all intents and purposes, slave laborers. There is, throughout much of the Islamic world, the ongoing fact that slavery has never disappeared and remains a thriving institution at this hour.
So, there are whole organizations dedicated to freeing people from slavery and to making economic changes that make slaveholding a financially losing proposition. We can support those, as well as watching where and what we buy so as not to prop up corporations that profit from slave labor.
And we can bear in mind that Christ is the ultimate liberator from the slavery of sin.
Anti-Slavery International works at local, national and international levels to eliminate all forms of slavery around the world.
Anti-Slavery International
Thomas Clarkson House
The Stableyard
Broomgrove Rd.
London SW9 9TL U.K.
Phone: 011[from USA] +44 (0)20 7501 8920
Website: www.antislavery.org
The Not For Sale Campaign equips and mobilizes smart activists to deploy innovative solutions to re-abolish slavery in their own backyards and across the globe.
Not For Sale
270 Capistrano Rd., Suite 2
Half Moon Bay, CA 94019
Phone: 650-560-9990
Website: www.notforsalecampaign.org/
Visit the sick
Visiting the sick is something any of us can do, but most of us are not super eager to do since, you know, sick people are sick. You might catch something. But, of course, the reality is that we aren't really in danger of catching AIDS or car accident injuries or broken legs or strokes or heart attacks. And even with communicable illnesses, there are lots of ways to visit the sick without getting what they have what with hand sanitizers, soap and water and such like. But we still have an aversion to visiting the sick unless it is somebody pretty close to us, like our kid with the measles. That's because bodily infirmity or any kind is a reminder that we are dust and to dust we shall return. So we tend to want to warehouse and put from our minds the ill and infirm. Nonetheless, Jesus confers a blessing on those who visit the sick and opportunities to do this work of mercy abound. You can, for instance, volunteer at a hospice, or become an extraordinary minister of holy Communion and bring the sacrament to shut-ins. Much of this work of mercy is actually very simple. It consists of giving somebody a little time and attention. You sit and listen and drink tea and chat.
Now and then, it may require more (and that "more" may require calling a nurse or doctor). But mostly visiting the sick is, well, visiting, just as Christ visits us and stays with us in our trials. You don't just deliver the sacrament; you become the sacrament.
The Hospice Volunteer Association is a diverse, well-trained, and globally unbounded volunteer community with a shared commitment to provide the most compassionate service possible to those who are dying and their bereaved.
Phone toll-free: 866-489-4325
Website: www.hospicevolunteerassociation.org/default
Ronald McDonald Houses provide a "home-away-from-home" for families so they can stay close by their hospitalized child at little or no cost. They are built on the simple idea that nothing else should matter when a family is focused on healing their child — not where they can afford to stay, where they will get their next meal, or where they will lay their heads at night.
Ronald McDonald House Charities
One Kroc Dr.
Oak Brook, IL 60523
Phone: 630-623-7048
Website: rmhc.org
"What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them 'Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,' but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it? So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead. Indeed some might say, 'you have faith and I have works.' Demonstrate your faith to me without works, and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works."
— James 2:14-18
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