New York Catholic Gets Cromwell Evicted

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Aug. 6 —Since 1976, the town of Huntington on New York's Long Island has used the family crest of Oliver Cromwell in its coat of arms to commemorate Huntingdon, England, the one-time English dictator's birthplace. However, recent protests cited his harsh Puritan rule and vicious persecution of Irish Catholics, the wire service reported.

Huntington resident William Farrell, a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, wrote to town supervisor Frank Petrone, saying Cromwell “is clearly ineligible for such homage, and to pay it to him is to insult the memory of his many victims.”

On Aug. 5, the Huntington town board voted unanimously to abandon the coat of arms.

‘Give Us the Big Picture, Boston Globe’

CATHOLIC CITIZENS NEWS, Aug. 5 — According to the Web site Catholic Citizen News, the Massachusetts Department of Social Services has reported 62,506 cases of child abuse and neglect in the year 2000.

Lay activist Bob Bland accuses The Boston Globe of focusing disproportionately on the cases alleged against priests. He told the Web site: “The Boston Globe has played right into the hands of the Massachusetts attorney general's outrageous agenda to bash the Catholic Church” by running inflammatory headlines and articles that did not provide any basis for comprehending the statistics cited.

Bland suggested The Globe offer its reading public global statistics for child abuse in the state during the past 60 years — by way of comparison with the 1,000 alleged Church-related cases. He noted that according to the numbers, a child's own home is a much more likely site for abuse than any Church facility.

New Catholic Media Source: Culture & Cosmos

C-FAM, Aug. 5 — The Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, a lobby at the United Nations, has formed a new alliance with the Culture of Life Foundation. Together they have launched a weekly e-mail bulletin called Culture & Cosmos.

Like the institute's Friday Fax, it is sent free to subscribers, who can sign up at www.culture-of-life.org.

The new bulletin promises to “cast a wider net than the Friday Fax,” covering “the entire waterfront of culture of life issues,” said institute president Austin Ruse. Its first issue dealt with the recent Vatican statement on homosexual marriage.

They Call it Choice …

THE NEW YORK POST, Aug. 6 — Jennifer James’ boss reminded her that she has choices. But according to a lawsuit she has filed, he intimated that she only had one.

James, 24, alleges that she was fired from John Harvard's Brew House in Lake Grove, N.Y., for bearing her child. In a federal lawsuit against the Braintree, Mass.-based restaurant chain, she says she told a superior that she was pregnant and that he responded by warning her to “consider her options.”

According to James, before the pregnancy she had been advancing quickly up the ranks from server to trainer to supervisor at John Harvard's. After revealing her pregnancy, she said, she was dropped from a manager-training program and then fired.

John Harvard's president, Michael Hackney, called her charges “surprising, unfounded and factually flawed.”