| Topic: |
Religions > Bible |
| User: |
"Steve Dufour" |
| Date: |
15 Feb 2006 12:20:41 PM |
| Object: |
Turin Olympics bring a little faith to the field |
The Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com
Turin Olympics bring a little faith to the field
By David Crary
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published February 15, 2006
TURIN, Italy -- In a city famed for a holy relic, religious leaders
have mobilized vigorously to provide Olympians with a large corps of
chaplains and services at their villages ranging from Orthodox vespers
to Islamic prayer to Buddhist meditation.
Although some competitors avail themselves of these offerings,
others find their own distinctive ways to fuse faith and sport. U.S.
cross-country racer Rebecca Dussault, for example, has inscribed her
skis with the name of Pier Giorgio Frassati, a beatified Catholic
outdoorsman who roamed the mountains around Turin before his death at
age 24 in 1925.
"My faith comes first," Dussault said. "Then I'm a family woman.
Then I'm an athlete. That's how I find balance."
Home of the Shroud of Turin, believed by many to be Jesus Christ's
burial cloth, the Olympic city has been preparing for the spiritual
side of the Games since local religious leaders formed an interfaith
committee in 2003. The group now coordinates the work of more than 90
chaplains on call to assist the athletes, and some teams have brought
official chaplains of their own.
The two largest Olympic villages -- in Turin and the mountain town
of Sestriere -- have interfaith centers with daily services for
Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists. Attendance is often sparse,
but pastors say there is a steady demand from athletes for individual
counseling and support.
Paul Kobylarz, a Michigan native who played college and minor
league hockey, is in Turin as a pastor, helping coordinate the
Protestant chaplains. He said three kinds of athletes seek out the
chaplains -- the curious, the deeply devout and those in some sort of
personal crisis.
"Maybe they're upset because they lost a medal," Mr. Kobylarz said.
"They build their whole identity through sports, [and] when sports
don't go as they hoped, it can be hard."
Clay Mull, a U.S. speedskater, said his faith makes competing less
stressful.
"It's taken a weight off my shoulders, taken the pressure off,"
said Mull, who was raised as a Southern Baptist and now attends an
evangelical church in Salt Lake City. He and several other athletes are
getting spiritual backing during the Games from a pastor affiliated
with a Dutch-based ministry called Sports Witnesses.
Other openly religious Americans include bobsledder Brock
Kreitzburg, who was a chaplain at a retirement home while earning his
divinity degree, and speedskater Derek Parra, who makes the sign of the
cross before races.
Dussault, from Gunnison, Colo., has made Frassati her patron saint
for the Olympics -- culminating a reverence for him that begin in 1993
when, as a 12-year-old, she heard Pope John Paul II praise the
adventuresome Turin native during a papal visit to Denver.
"There are so many parallels between his life and mine," Dussault
said of Frassati, who like her was a hiker and cross-country skier
before he died of polio contracted during his work with the poor in
Turin. He was beatified in 1990, a key step on the path to sainthood.
Dussault, the fastest American in her opening race Sunday, is busy
with training, races and helping her husband with their 4-year-old son,
but she has found time to pray at Frassati's tomb in Turin and attend a
multicultural Mass in Sestriere.
"That's the No. 1 priority," she said. "I was one of the readers."
At least at her competition venues, Dussault said openly devout
athletes are a rarity.
"We're less than 1 percent," she said. "We did a multifaith Bible
study at the World Cup [earlier this season] in Canada, and there were
two Canadians, one Norwegian and me -- that's as many Christians as we
could round up."
Mr. Kobylarz, the Protestant pastor, agreed that athletes like
Dussault are a small minority.
"But for those who are devout, it's very important to have a
support base," he said.
Aldo Bertinetti, the Catholic representative on the interfaith
committee, was philosophical.
"Society in general is mostly nonbelievers," he said.
Yet Mr. Bertinetti made clear that the corps of chaplains was not
so eager for business that they would start playing favorites in the
Games. He told of one priest who refused an Italian racer's request to
bless his skis.
"It's like when you have two nation's armies, each asking God to be
on their side," Bertinetti said. "How can God know which to choose?"
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Turin Olympics bring a little faith to the field |
18 Feb 2006 07:25:03 AM |
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Steve Dufour wrote:
The Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com
Turin Olympics bring a little faith to the field
By David Crary
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published February 15, 2006
TURIN, Italy -- In a city famed for a holy relic, religious leaders
have mobilized vigorously to provide Olympians with a large corps of
chaplains and services at their villages ranging from Orthodox vespers
to Islamic prayer to Buddhist meditation.
Although some competitors avail themselves of these offerings,
others find their own distinctive ways to fuse faith and sport. U.S.
cross-country racer Rebecca Dussault, for example, has inscribed her
skis with the name of Pier Giorgio Frassati, a beatified Catholic
outdoorsman who roamed the mountains around Turin before his death at
age 24 in 1925.
"My faith comes first," Dussault said. "Then I'm a family woman.
Then I'm an athlete. That's how I find balance."
Home of the Shroud of Turin, believed by many to be Jesus Christ's
burial cloth,
The Fraud of Turin is as genuine as xianity.
http://www.freeinquiry.com/skeptic/shroud/
The Shroud of Turin
http://www.skeptic.ws/shroud/
From the page:
"According to Dr. Walter McCrone and his colleagues, the 3+ by
14+ foot cloth depicting Christ's crucified body is an inspired
painting produced by a Medieval artist just before its first
appearance in recorded history in 1356."
[...]
"The carbon-dating results from three different internationally
known laboratories agreed well with his date: 1355 by microscopy
and 1325 by C-14 dating. The suggestion that the 1532 Chambery
fire changed the date of the cloth is ludicrous."
The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/kersey_graves/16/
Xianity is just the latest in 3000+ years of retelling the same
myths based on localized stories. Mithras, Krishna, Osiris,
and - in an Olympic year - Dionysis.
Bob Dog
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Turin Olympics bring a little faith to the field |
21 Feb 2006 05:41:30 PM |
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wrote:
The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/kersey_graves/16/
Xianity is just the latest in 3000+ years of retelling the same
myths based on localized stories. Mithras, Krishna, Osiris,
and - in an Olympic year - Dionysis.
"Note: the scholarship of Kersey Graves has been questioned by numerous
theists and nontheists alike; the inclusion of his The World's Sixteen
Crucified Saviors in the Secular Web's Historical Library does not
constitute endorsement by Internet Infidels, Inc. This document was
included for historical purposes; readers should be extremely cautious
in trusting *anything* in this book." -- Internet Infidels, on the link
given above.
"In general, there are ten kinds of problems that crop up in Graves'
work here and there:
+ Graves often does not distinguish his opinions and theories from what
his sources and evidence actually state.
+ Graves often omits important sources and evidence.
+ Graves often mistreats in a biased or anachronistic way the sources
he does use.
+ Graves occasionally relies on suspect sources.
+ Graves does little or no source analysis or formal textual criticism.
+ Graves' work is totally uninformed by modern social history (a field
that did not begin to be formally pursued until after World War II,
i.e., after Graves died).
+ Graves' conclusions and theories often far exceed what the evidence
justifies, and he treats both speculations and sound theories as of
equal value.
+ Graves often ignores important questions of chronology and the actual
order of plausible historical influence, and completely disregards the
methodological problems this creates.
+ Graves' work lacks all humility, which is unconscionable given the
great uncertainties that surround the sketchy material he had to work
with.
+ Graves' scholarship is obsolete, having been vastly improved upon by
new methods, materials, discoveries, and textual criticism in the
century since he worked. In fact, almost every historical work written
before 1950 is regarded as outdated and untrustworthy by historians
today." -- Atheist apologist, Richard Carrier, from Internet Infidels.
In short Graves book is unscholarly, ignorant nonsense. Please explain
why you are offering material from it.
All the best,
Roger Pearse
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| User: "Zadok" |
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| Title: Re: Turin Olympics bring a little faith to the field |
21 Feb 2006 07:05:57 PM |
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<roger_pearse> wrote in message
In short Graves book is unscholarly, ignorant nonsense. Please explain
why you are offering material from it.
That would make it just like your web page!!
That you like to SPAM on the groups, and even offer a CD for money.
Someday when you write a book, maybe we will pay some attention to you, and
your hair brained schemes to make money and SPAM the newsgroups.
All the best.
Smile.
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