Organ techniques stand the test of time
A few thoughts on Joseph Graif’s letter to The Catholic Virginian (Aug. 5).
The 18th century organ was always a tracker organ. This type of organ gets its name from “trackers” which are slender rods which connect the keys on the keyboard to the valves under the pipes.
In Europe, there are tracker organs everywhere! The tracker organ at Saint-Sulpice in Paris, built from 1857 to 1862, has never had a major rebuild. Almost every town or village church has a tracker organ that has been there for a very long time. The organ in Sion, Switzerland, at Basilique Notre-Dame de Valère, was built around 1434 and is still played at Mass.
The fact is that an organ with tracker (mechanical) action is the most cost-effective option when installing a new organ. It may cost more to install but will last for centuries with almost no need of any major repairs or rebuilding.
The electro-pneumatic organ I play at Sacred Heart, Norfolk, is 99 years old and has had quite a bit of servicing and one major rebuild to keep it working over the 44 years that I have been the organist.
Every other electro-pneumatic organ in the area has been taken out at least once and replaced with a totally new organ. It is not an “unwarranted dedication to outdated building techniques” that keep builders coming back to this type of organ, but instead it is simply that tracker organs last longer, require less maintenance, and perhaps, after two or three centuries of playing for Masses, requiems, and marriages, lead the people to feeling a connection with its sound and history.
— Dr. James A. Gallatin, Norfolk
No “right” exists with abortion
In the upcoming election, many voters will sacrifice moral ethic, principle and integrity at the altar of abortion.
Their god is the god of vengeance and hate (Roe v. Wade vengeance and Donald Trump hate).
Their all-consuming reverence for abortion supersedes any concerns they may have about the threats to the well-being of all American citizens, such as inflation and the economy, lawlessness, racism, loss of national sovereignty, weak national defense, surrender of international respect, propagandized and indoctrinating education, and unnatural sexual identity.
Abortion is a fatal denial of truth and reality. Abortion denies that at the moment of conception, a new, unique and individual human being comes alive; deliberate action to snuff out that human life constitutes murder.
Abortion advocates had a long escape from reality in the permissive euphoria of Roe v. Wade. That decision defiled the Constitution by fabricating a “right” where no right exists or should ever exist. The Supreme Court caved to the anguished cries of “It’s my body!” and “Get the government out of my bedroom!”
In the upcoming election, advocates will push for a constitutional amendment giving license for unfettered abortion nationwide. It is the selfish objective of a special interest group with a deceptive cry for “reproductive freedom.”
There is nothing remotely reproductive about abortion! Rational thought should lead to the logical conclusion that elective abortion is immoral.
Those who have been seduced by it are desperate to find a means of making a moral wrong a moral right. Instituting abortion as a government-sanctioned national right would not be the hallmark of a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles!
— Jerome C. Burchard, Gainesville
Women were definitely at the Last Supper
The letters to the editor regarding the recent opinion piece concerning the appropriateness of ordaining women expressed divergent opinions that merit consideration.
However, the position which proposes that the absence of any mention of women in attendance at the Last Supper Passover meal provides definitive proof against female ordination seems problematic.
I offer the following for consideration: the Gospels were written by Jewish men whose custom, culture and religion placed females on the lower/lowest rung of personhood. To have mentioned women in this momentous meal would likely have diminished its attention and importance.
And because of the prevailing custom, culture, and religious mores, these men would very likely have been incapable of gathering for and preparing a meal themselves. This activity was women’s work!
— Paul Schellhammer, Virginia Beach