Thursday, January 28, 2010

Jan. 28 - St. Thomas Aquinas

On today's Feast day, I think of Bishop Ahr High School, located in my diocese, which was "St. Thomas Aquinas High School" until the early 1980s. At the time, Bishop (now Cardinal) McCarrick wanted to change the name to honor recently retired Bishop George Ahr of the Trenton Diocese, in whose diocese the school was until Metuchen split from Trenton in 1981. The story is told that, when Bp. McCarrick proposed the name change to Bp. Ahr, he was dead-set against it. He had visions of newspapers' sports sections' headlines that would someday read, "Bp. Ahr defeats Immaculate Conception", and that wouldn't do for a man who chose the episcopal motto, "Mary, my hope".

Sure enough, on the feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas, what's the headline in the Star Ledger?

"Bishop Ahr defeats McCarrick"

I always knew who'd win that fight.

Anyway, most people only know of Aquinas because of seeing him in a stained glass window or a statue in a church. If this is you, the English Dominican blog, "Godzdogz" has a great article about St. Thomas you'll like.

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