J. Christian Adams, Miracle in Virginia, An Unexpected and Unusual Ordination of a Priest, Father Rich Dyer
From Family Security Matters January 31, 2012.
“This is a true story about Rich Dyer, a Virginia man who never expected to become a priest, but became one sooner than he expected. Dyer, 48, left behind a successful career in business after hearing a calling to the priesthood.
Some of you don’t believe in miracles, and others are certain they exist. But, this is a story for the multitudes who still wonder. C.S. Lewis, in Surprised by Joy, his autobiography of his journey from atheism to faith said, “You may take any number of wrong turnings; but keep your eyes open and you will not be allowed to go very far before the warning signs appear.”
Naturally, it would be easy if bushes regularly burned and spoke, erasing all doubt. But revelations so cheap and easy, dispense with human freewill. How difficult would moral choices be when faith has no role? If the answers were so obvious, goodness and grace would not be human choices, but rather servile obedience to a revealed omnipotent.
Instead of miracles, many have experienced a weighty and unmistakable synchronicity, where seemingly impossible events occur. Answered prayers fall into this category. But so do smaller revelations, joyous moments when blessings reveal themselves in hindsight, blessings that once seemed ordinary, or even dreadful. Those who have experienced this weighty synchronicity know there is no such thing as a coincidence.
C.S. Lewis described moments of revelations as being “surprised by joy.” Sometimes they are as gentle as an unseen sparrow’s song that reminds you spring has arrived. Other times, they are as bold and unforgettable as a grand pastel sunset.
Last December, the unusual ordination of Father Rich Dyer took place in Virginia.
For those unfamiliar with the Catholic priesthood, a brief aside. Holy orders, when a priest is ordained, is one of the seven Catholic sacraments. Seminarians study for years before being ordained. Beyond study, seminarians seek to discern whether they are truly called to the priesthood. After they complete their studies, conclude that they are committed to the vocation, and are called to orders by their local bishop, priests are ordained by the bishop of the diocese. In the Diocese of Arlington (Virginia), this occurs in June of each year in a celebratory mass. Canon law vests the bishop with authority to alter the date of the ordination, but use of this power is not common.
In the summer of 2011, Rich Dyer learned that his father was sick with cancer. His fellow seminarians asked him if he considered asking Bishop Paul Loverde for special permission to be ordained early.
The week before his December finals at Mt. St. Mary’s Seminary in Maryland, Dyer had his regular meeting with a representative of Bishop Loverde. He wondered if anyone had ever been ordained ahead of schedule. He wrote to Bishop Loverde: “I seek God’s will. I do not know what His will is regarding the date of my priestly ordination, but I know and trust that He speaks through you. I am not asking that you accelerate my ordination date, only that you prayerfully discern God’s will regarding it and then communicate this will to me.”
It appeared to Dyer, and anybody else, that a December ordination was impossible, and January was unlikely because the bishop would be in Rome. An early ordination, if it were to occur, could only be in February.
Then on Tuesday, December 20, Dyer received a telephone call. The bishop had read and considered the letter. Dyer was given the choice to be ordained as regularly scheduled on June 9, 2012, or, if Dyer wished to be ordained earlier, the Bishop was available … the following Tuesday, December 27.
Being the feast of St. John the Apostle, December 27, was a special day to Dyer. For years, his computer’s screen saver had a quote from St. John – “Perfect love drives out fear” (1 John 4:18).Dyer did not come to the priesthood the traditional way. He obtained a degree in electrical engineering from Notre Dame, and joined the Air Force on graduation. After the Air Force, he returned to Notre Dame and received a masters degree in business. He went on to a successful career as an executive with an independent power producer in Virginia before hearing a calling to become a priest. “I had a great life, but I knew I was called to the priesthood, even if sometimes I didn’t want to do it,” Dyer told me by telephone.
Bishop Loverde ordained Dyer as a priest in a ceremony at St. Andrew the Apostle Church in Clifton, Virginia on December 27. His father Richard Dyer was at the ordination.
The next day, December 28, Dyer celebrated his first mass at St. Andrews, a mass which began at 11:00 a.m. His father, meanwhile, was with two family friends miles away. As Father Dyer said mass, the two friends taking care of his father noticed the elder Dyer’s breathing became heavy and labored. They adjusted him in the bed and “he became alert,” Father Dyer told me.
The family friends reported Richard Dyer “seemed to be looking at things all around the room, his eyes moving all around,” looking at things that nobody else could see. While the friends then prayed aloud around Richard Dyer, and his son continued celebrating mass miles away, the elder Dyer hushed their prayers. “I’m trying to listen to it,” he told them.
The friends continued their prayers in silence before one of them came to the elder Dyer’s bedside, held his hand, and prayed that the Holy Spirit come and take the elder Dyer home. The friend’s eyelids began to flutter uncontrollably, his body began to shake, and he became very warm as he felt something like an energy pass through him to the elder Dyer. The elder Dyer’s face became very peaceful as he looked to the ceiling and asked for his wife before saying, “I have to go now,” Richard Dyer said, and then died. The elder Dyer died at 12:05 pm just as his eldest son finished celebrating his first Mass.
Not far away, the son of the friends watching the elder Dyer was playing outside. This now-healthy child had been cured of a rare form of cancer. Richard Dyer had prayed for just such a cure for the boy. Looking up at a break in the clouds, at the rays of the sun, the boy said aloud to his companions, “I think Mr. Dyer just went to the Lord.”
It is beyond our capability to say with certainty what these events mean. But one thing is certain, these events occurred. They occurred not on the pages of a dusty storybook, or in a fable passed through generations. They occurred in Virginia, just a few weeks ago.
Some will reflexively suggest worldly explanations. They will afford no possibility other than the laws of science, and random chance when those laws prove inadequate. Others, like the “mouse chasing the cat,” have experienced the awe of stumbling into a new understanding, of unintentionally running into the cat.
Next June, the Bishop of Arlington will assign Father Dyer to a parish somewhere in Northern Virginia. Father Dyer didn’t expect to find himself where he is now, or will be next June. “I’m rather shy,” he told me. For people who wonder, who question whether something guides our course, perhaps there is something in the contemporary story of one shy, already successful, 48 year old man becoming a priest, and how it happened.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor J. Christian Adams is an election attorney who served in the Voting Rights Section at the U.S. Department of Justice. He is author of the bestselling book Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department (Regnery) His website is http://www.electionlawcenter.com.”
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11330/pub_detail.asp
Citizen WElls 
Huffington Post lies on Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy comments, anti-gay stance is a lie, Cathy pro marriage and family, Huffington Post awarded 5 Orwells
Huffington Post lies on Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy comments, anti-gay stance is a lie, Cathy pro marriage and family, Huffington Post awarded 5 Orwells
“We’re not anti-anybody. Our mission is to create raving fans.”…Dan Cathy, Chick-Fil-A President
“If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world but I am sure we would be getting reports from hell before breakfast.”… William Tecumseh Sherman
“‘You haven’t a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston,’ he said almost sadly. ‘Even when you write it you’re still thinking in Oldspeak. I’ve read some of those pieces that you write in The Times occasionally. They’re good enough, but they’re translations. In your heart you’d prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning. You don’t grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?’
Winston did know that, of course. He smiled, sympathetically he hoped, not trusting himself to speak. Syme bit off another fragment of the dark-coloured bread, chewed it briefly, and went on:
‘Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we’re not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak,’ he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. ‘Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?'”…George Orwell, “1984”
I am not anti gay or anti anyone else. I am anti thuggery, anti lies and anti destruction of the English Language and Law.
From the Cornell University Legal Information Institute.
“In the English common law tradition from which our legal doctrines and concepts have developed, a marriage was a contract based upon a voluntary private agreement by a man and a woman to become husband and wife. Marriage was viewed as the basis of the family unit and vital to the preservation of morals and civilization.”
“In 1996, President Clinton signed into law the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which, for federal purposes, defined marriage as “only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife” (1 U.S.C. § 7).”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/marriage/
From One News Now August 16, 2012.
“Report: Chick-fil-A controversy ‘manufactured’ by gay activism”
“A report from a Christian activist group in North Carolina says the alleged “anti-gay statements” by Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy last month not only were taken out of context, but also were used by homosexual activists to “manufacture” the ensuing controversy.
The journalist who initially interviewed the Chick-fil-A executive in early July was K. Allan Blume, editor of the Biblical Recorder — the journal of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina. That interview was subsequently picked up by Baptist Press, which gave the story greater exposure and provided the spark for the controversy in the mainstream media.
Blume now says that during his interview with Cathy, the restaurateur “said nothing offensive, nothing putting down anyone” and that “the whole thing was distorted … an invented, manufactured story.” Never once during the interview, notes the editor, were the words “gay marriage,” “lesbian,” or “homosexual” spoken.
In its “story about the story,” the Christian Action League of North Carolina quotes Blume on the reaction of the homosexual activist community:
“It is obvious the gay community was looking to twist this because they don’t like the fact that Chick-fil-A invests some of their money in groups like Focus on the Family and Fellowship of Christian Athletes. They stirred this up, literally invented it.”
Also according to Blume, the businessman’s “guilty as charged” comment was in response to a question about Chick-fil-A’s commitment to and support of family values — not a confirmation of an “anti-gay stance,” as conveyed in the headline of a Huffington Post story.”
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Culture/Default.aspx?id=1655748
Do a search on:
“Huffington Post Chick-fil-A anti-gay stance”
You will notice that the Huffington Post, in Orwellian fashion, has proliferated the phrase “anti-gay.”
Here is one example.
From the Huffington Post July 17, 2012.
“Dan Cathy, Chick-Fil-A President, On Anti-Gay Stance: ‘Guilty As Charged'”
“In a new interview with the Baptist Press, Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy — the son of company founder S. Truett Cathy — addresses what the publication describes as his franchise’s “support of the traditional family.”
Cathy’s somewhat glib response: “Well, guilty as charged.”
He went on to note, “We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that…we know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles.”
Cathy then reiterated his stance during an appearance on “The Ken Coleman Show,” Good as You blogger Jeremy Hooper reported.
“I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage,’ and I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to try to redefine what marriage is about,” Cathy said in that interview, which can be heard here.
Needless to say, Cathy’s remarks quickly sparked the ire of a number of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) advocates and bloggers. “Regardless of where you stand, the placement of LGBT people within our societal picture and within our body of laws is the conversation at hand,” wrote Hooper. “That is not the same thing as ‘support for the traditional family,’ no matter how aggressively the self-appointed values movement attempts to (mis)name reality!””
“Cathy also noted, “We’re not anti-anybody. Our mission is to create raving fans.””
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/17/dan-cathy-chick-fil-a-president-anti-gay_n_1680984.html
Why does the Huffington Post, now owned by AOL, continue to do the bidding of the Obama Camp?
The past is usually a good predictor.
From Citizen Wells May 25, 2010.
“In 2008, the Obama Campaign used a great deal of money from undocumented donors, a legion of paid bloggers, internet thugs and a complicit press to spin their Orwellian lies. The Obama Campaign paid The Huffington Post $ 55,354 in 2008. That of course is what was reported to the FEC and is the tip of the iceberg. I have heard Obama refer to The Huffington Post on several occasions. The last time was the last straw. The Citizen Wells blog has written about The Huffington Post acting as an arm of the Obama camp to smear opposition to Obama. You can expect more.
Listen to the following Obama speech, if you can stomach it. He mentions The Huffington Post at around 1 minute 57 seconds. The speech is cleverly (in the wicked sense) written. It mixes truths, half truths and lies.”
https://citizenwells.wordpress.com/tag/obama-campaign-paid-huffington-post-55354-in-2008/
For their continued efforts to represent Big Brother and spin Orwellian Lies, I award the Huffington Post 5 Orwells.
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Tagged anti-gay stance is a lie, Cathy pro marriage and family, Huffington Post awarded 5 Orwells, Huffington Post lies on Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy comments