LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 9-6-12

Community theater
Editor: On behalf of everyone associated with the management of the Raven Performing Arts Theater (RPAT), I extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone who helped to make our annual fundraiser Cocktails and Characters such a success. Although only in its second year, the event sold out and everyone that attended or volunteered that day enjoyed the exhilarating program of theatrical snippets, the idyllic setting and hospitality of Hotel Healdsburg, and the wonderful auction items. All money raised from that event will bolster our budget and go toward running the theater’s diverse programming. Operating a community theater is not easy; we struggle financially and yet we continue to expand our entertainment offerings to you, our community.
In conjunction with our own Raven Players, the Raven just concluded its most successful theatrical series ever. The new series just opened with “Moon over Buffalo” and closes next summer with “Evita.” We also continue to expand our live performance offerings and make the theater available to our local schools and other nonprofit organizations.
We are a volunteer-based organization and as such are continually looking for new recruits. Whether you yearn to perform on the stage, assist with the front or back of the house, have expertise that might benefit our special committees or are interested in joining our board, I encourage you to contact us. Want to learn more about any of these opportunities or perhaps you have some feedback or suggestions? Please let us know, as we value your support and appreciate your input. Care to make a financial contribution, we can use whatever you are able to give us.
We hope to see you at next year’s Cocktails and Characters on August 11, 2013.
Tony Fleming, Board President
Raven Performing Arts Theater
Religious hot button
Editor: Judging from the dismissive tone of Mr. Dave Henderson’s 8/30/12 letter-to-the editor castigating me, my recent letter-to-the-editor plainly struck his religious “hot button”. My letter commented on Tribune columnist Susan Swartz’s use of religion and gender to promote her partisan agenda at the expense of the Catholic Church.
Apparently, Mr. Henderson shares Ms. Swartz’s opinion of the Catholic Church. Unable to restrain his obvious disdain for the Church’s Pope, Bishops and clergy, he found it obligatory to paint them with his “male arrogance” brush. It’s evident that he dipped his ad hominem brush into the same gender based paints as Ms. Swartz who used such descriptors as “male bosses,” “the guys in charge” and the “big boys.”
Because he considers that I don’t share his superior intellectual understanding of what he calls “moral theology,” Mr. Henderson speculates with presumptuous arrogance that “I may not have listened in church.”
His first claim that the Catholic Church has flip-flopped on the morality of charging interest (usury) is a common red herring. A loan that was usurious at one point in history, due to the unfruitfulness of money, is not usurious later, when the development of competitive markets has changed the nature of money itself (return on investment). This isn’t a change of the Church’s teaching on usury. Injustice surrounding money lending was and remains condemned. Four factors possessing economic value support the repayment of more than the money loaned. These include inflation, return on alternate investments, delay in repayment and the risk of non-repayment.
In his interest related flip-flopping claim, Mr. Henderson doesn’t squander the opportunity to implicitly condemn “to hell” financial institutions of Capitalism such as BofA and Wells Fargo. His political ideology is blatantly obvious.
Claim #2 that the Church once taught that blacks have no souls is untrue. Unable or unwilling to support this claim, he blithely instructs the reader to “look it up.”
He would have us believe that these 2 claims prove his assertion that the moral teachings of the Catholic Church have continually “evolved.” Had they been true, 2 issues over a 2000-plus year period is hardly proof of an evolutionary trend.
His prediction of a future female bishop for the Diocese of Santa Rosa clearly reflects his partisan vision for the next century. If his crystal ball is so accurate, he should use it now to purchase stock for his great, great, great, great grandchildren.
Mel Amato
Healdsburg