Barry Hudock's Blog, page 9

In OSV: On Romero’s complex cause

OSV Newsweekly has just published my article on the recent dramatic developments in Archbishop Oscar Romero’s beatification cause. Here’s a snippet:

Many viewed Archbishop Romero as a martyr and venerated his memory from the moment of his death. But others, including some Vatican officials, were more hesitant about offering such recognition.

The reasons for this are complex and not always clear. Msgr. Rafael Urrutia, chancellor of the Archdiocese of San Salvador, told Our Sunday Visitor that officials were hesitant to beatify Archbishop Romero while those he had criticized were still alive and unwilling to offer any encouragement to supporters of liberation theology, which was under close Vatican scrutiny throughout the 1980s. At the Feb. 4 news conference, Archbishop Paglia suggested that negative reports about Archbishop Romero the Vatican had received, some of which accused him of doctrinal errors, also hindered the beatification cause.

Still, Pope John Paul II, during a 1983 pastoral visit to El Salvador, insisted, against the will of the national government, on visiting Archbishop Romero���s grave at San Salvador���s cathedral, waiting outside for someone to unlock the door when he showed up. Pope Benedict XVI said publicly in 2007 that he thought Archbishop Romero was ���worthy of beatification.��� And in the Vatican news conference, Archbishop Paglia revealed that Pope Benedict had taken steps to move Archbishop Romero���s cause forward just prior to his resignation from the papacy in 2013.

The��article��will appear in the Feb. 22 issue of the paper, but the��full text��is now available here at the OSV website. Next month, OSV Newsweekly will feature a set of articles I’m preparing that will explore Romero’s story in more detail.

“This Land Is Home to Me,” 40 years on

Tomorrow, February 1, marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of This Land Is Home to Me, a historic pastoral letter by the bishops of the Appalachian region of the United States. Our Sunday Visitor has just published a new article I’ve written about the origins of that letter, its impact on the U.S. Catholic Church and the region, and its enduring legacy. It’s in this week’s print edition and here on the OSV website.

You can find the full text of This Land Is Home to Me��here��(the link opens a .pdf).��At the same link, you’ll also find At Home in the Web of Life, the letter the Appalachian bishops released in 1995, to mark��This Land‘s twentieth anniversary.��Both documents are well worth a look.

On This Land‘s anniversary,��I’d also point you to “A Judgment upon Us All,” an article of mine published by Commonweal almost two years ago, which offers a more��personal and on-the-ground��perspective on the issues addressed by This Land. Finally, you’ll find a selection of other reflections and comments on Appalachian poverty that I’ve offered on this blog by clicking here.

 

A fine foreworder & more kind words

Two exciting bits of news to pass along today about my upcoming book, Struggle, Condemnation, Vindication: John Courtney Murray’s Journey toward Vatican II.

First, the book will include a substantial foreword by Drew Christiansen, SJ!

Fr. Christiansen (that’s him in the photo) is currently the Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Global Development��at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He is also co-director and senior research fellow��of the Program on the Church and the World at the Berkley Center. A mouth-full! Many, however, will remember him for his fine work as editor-in-chief of America magazine, a post he held from 2005 to 2012.

I’ve had a chance to read��the foreword Fr. Christiansen prepared for the book, and I’m happy and honored to say it’s good bit more than a cursory “here ya go.” Indeed, if you’re interested in John Courtney Murray or the topic of religious freedom, Christiansen’s foreword alone will be worth the price of admission. (So if you buy the book to read what he has to say about Murray��more than��for what I have to say, no hard feelings at all!) ��It’ll be an thrill to have��his insights leading off my book!

Second, Boston College professor of theology��Cathleen Kaveny has now weighed in on the book. Kaveny is an insightful writer and��noted authority on the complex intersections of culture,��law, and Catholic faith. Here’s what she has to say:

Barry Hudock’s account of the life and work of John Courtney Murray shows that the development of Catholic teaching on religious liberty cannot be reduced to abstract, numbered paragraphs in an encyclical or catechism. It is a riveting story of clashing personalities, impossible possibilities, and hope against all hope. It is the story of the Holy Spirit at work in the Church.

I’m excited��about these words, because Professor Kaveny’s experience of reading the manuscript was apparently very similar to my experience of writing it: Murray’s story is indeed a riveting one, with a fascinating cast of characters living out a drama that is very real.

My sincere and enthusiastic thank-you’s to Professor Kaveny and Fr. Christiansen for their gracious support!

��

 

Francis at Tacloban: pointing us to Jesus

Several times��since Friday night, I have watched that homily that Pope Francis offered at Tacloban in the Philippines. One of the things that keeps coming to mind as I do is some commentary I heard Fr Robert Barron offer some months ago, probably in one of his many online videos. He said that we Catholics today are fortunate to be living in a “golden age of the papacy” that has perhaps not been seen since the early Church. Pope after pope has come before us: John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and now Francis — remarkable and holy leaders for God’s church, each in their own way.

In Tacloban on Friday��we saw in��a luminous way��the courage, compassion, and holiness of Francis. He said himself that he had decided at the time of Typhoon Haiyan in November 2013 that he needed to go to Tacloban, where so many thousands died and many more thousands lost family and homes and livelihoods. And so it was not surprising that he fulfilled that intention this weekend, despite the onset of a tropical storm at the time of this pastoral visit to the Philippines. The sight of Pope Francis in that yellow poncho, on that windy and rain-swept makeshift altar, was powerful testimony to his determination to fulfill it.

And then the homily. He didn’t even bother to begin the homily prepared for the occasion. He simply spoke ad lib and obviously from his heart. And what came was a proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, in simple and clear and moving terms: Jesus as Lord, Jesus as incarnate in the suffering of humanity.

As we see in the video��(and the photo above), Francis literally did in this homily exactly what those previous great Popes of ours have each done so insistently, in their own ways and in the circumstances of their own times: he pointed the people, pointed us, to Jesus.

Now this morning comes news of a crowd of 6 to 7 million people for today’s Mass in Manila. (Now that’s a “thrilla in Manila”!) And in today’s homily he reminds us of “our deepest identity,” that of each of us being, together, members of God’s family and that we must live with one another like that is what we are. Again, he says it simply, plainly, winsomely.��What he said and the way he said it��reminds me very much of the thing I often hope my children will always remember as being a fundamental lesson I tried to raise them to understand: God gives us to each other as gifts, to be God’s help and God’s love to one another, to make one another’s lives better, and so��we must always ask ourselves, “Am I being a gift to him or her?”

Rocco comments��on today’s numbers:

Beyond taking the all-time record from the final day of John Paul II’s 1995 visit in the same place, it is significant that today’s mass of humanity did not come in the context of a World Youth Day, unlike the prior title-holder and Francis’ draw of 3 million to the closing of 2013’s WYD on Rio de Janiero’s Copacabana beach. What’s more, while John Paul’s last trip to Asia was commonly understood as a “farewell” to a pontiff who was entering the pantheon of legend in his 17th year as Pope, Francis has now presided over the two largest papal crowds ever within the first two years of his pontificate.

To those who scowl at Francis in our day for characteristics and priorities that we have seen on display clearly enough even on this Philippines visit — because he is not attentive enough to the prettiness of the liturgy (that damned yellow poncho!) or because his language at times lacks theological precision (“if someone says a swearword against my mother, of course he’ll get a punch in the nose”) — we should all have the wisdom and common sense to say, “You are silly,” and then to ignore them. Because may God protect us from getting so wrapped up in those peripherals that we keep��ourselves from following the direction of Francis’s pointing finger, pointing to Christ, and from allowing his simple, loving, and humble witness from forming us into better Christians.

“An extraordinarily important book”

Here’s some exciting advance feedback on my new book��Struggle, Condemnation, Vindication: John Courtney Murray’s Journey toward Vatican II. It comes from Mark Massa, SJ, who is professor of church history at Boston College and��the author of several highly regarded books on the history of the church in the United States. About my book, Massa has said:

“This is an extraordinarily important book — arguably the most important study of the thought and influence of John Courtney Murray in 40 years. Hudock elucidates how Murray’s contribution to North American and world Catholicism transcends the tired political labels of our time, so that both Catholic ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’ have benefited from his forceful defense of religious liberty and freedom of conscience. A must-read.”

My thanks to Fr. Massa for his gracious words!

The book will be available in May. More on it (including the chance to pre-order a copy) here.

Let me introduce you and your group to John Courtney Murray

I’m interested in spending a good chunk of my time during 2015 talking about Fr. John Courtney Murray. This guy lived out��a real-life theological adventure story, he faced some powerful opposition gracefully and obediently, and he ended up having a bigger impact on the doctrine of the Catholic Church than any American has ever had. I had such a great time learning about him and writing about him for my new book, I’m itching to get the word out about him among Catholics today. Not enough of us know about him.

If you’re interested in hearing about him at a parish adult education program, a conference, or other event, drop me a line and we’ll talk. I’ll make sure it’s affordable for your organization or parish. What you’ll get is a dynamic presentation — no monotonous droning on, no reading from Powerpoints or texts — that is interesting and even surprising.��And it won’t be something you need a theology degree to understand. I’m not a professional academic;��I’m in Catholic publishing, and I know how to make things clear and engaging.

You’ll hear about where things stood in Catholic theology on the topic of religious freedom when John Courtney Murray took up the question, the fascinating way he offered a new way of looking at the topic while constantly insisting on being faithful to orthodox Catholic teaching, and the result that shook up the Second Vatican Council and led to the remarkable achievements of people like Pope John Paul II that would not have been possible without Murray.

I’ll talk for about 50 minutes (and you will not be bored), backed up by plenty of��helpful photos, and then there will be time for question and answer. I’ll have copies of my new book, Struggle, Condemnation, Vindication: John Courtney Murray’s Journey toward Vatican II, available for purchase and signing. For a sense of the sort of presentation I give, take a look at this article on one that I recently delivered at the annual University of Dallas Ministry Conference (written by a reporter I didn’t know was in the room at the time).

Oh, and 2015 is a great time to learn about Murray, because this December will mark the fiftieth anniversary of Dignitatis Humanae, Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Freedom, of which Murray was a central architect. Let’s mark the anniversary in a fitting way.

I’m not out to make a killing;��it just doesn’t work that way for this kind of work.��What I want is to make the great stuff I’ve learned more widely available. (And if you want to really make the visit worthwhile and arrange for a second dynamic talk the next day — for example, on Pope Francis and Catholic social teaching, on Oscar Romero, or the crucial place of the Eucharistic prayer in Catholic worship —��we can do that, too.)

If this sounds worth looking into, email me at barryhudock[at]gmail[dot]com, and we’ll talk. Thank for considering it.

Romero the martyr

There’s been some breaking news today on the recognition of Oscar Romero’s martyrdom by the theological committee of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. It seems that everyone��is citing and linking to��this page from the Italian newspaper Avvenire’s website, and as far as I can tell — to my surprise — there’s almost nothing available yet in English.

I’m sure that will change soon, but in the meantime, here’s a quick translation of the entire Avvenire report there. (At the conclusion of that summary, there’s a link to “Read the Entire Article,” but you need a subscription to get to that.)

Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero was assassinated “out of hatred for the faith.” This is the news in the preview edition of Avvenire��for Thursday, January 9, 2015. The members of the Congregation of the Causes of Saints’��theological committee��have expressed their positive unanimous vote on the martyrdom undergone by the Archbishop of San Salvador on March 24, 1980. It is a decisive step needed for [the cause of] the Latin American bishop who was killed while celebrating the Eucharist and who is already considered to be a saint by popular acclaim. All that remains now, according to canonical practice, for��Romero’s beatification is the judgment of the congregation’s bishops and cardinals and finally the approval of the Pope. His cause, introduced in March 1994 and concluded in its diocesan phase the following year, landed in Rome in 1997, promoted by��its postulator, Msgr. Vincenzo Paglia.

Pope Francis cited Romero during his most recent general audience. The Archbishop of San Salvador, Bergoglio recalled,��“said that mothers lived a ‘maternal martyrdom.’ In a homily for the funeral of a��priest assassinated by the death squads,��he [Romero] said, echoing the Second Vatican Council: ‘Everyone must be��ready to die for our faith, even if the Lord doesn’t grant them this honor… To give one’s life does not mean only being killed; doesn’t it also mean to give one’s life, having the spirit of martyrdom, to give oneself in duty, in silence, in prayer, in the honest completion of one’s responsibilities, in that silence of daily life, giving one’s life little by little? Yes, like a mother gives it, who without fear, with the simplicity of the maternal martyr, conceives a child in her womb, gives birth to it, nurses it, helps it to grow, and attends to it with affection.��She gives her life. She is a martyr.'”

When a stunner is no longer so stunning

We���re already ���getting used to��� Francis and his distinctive priorities, so even the ���stunner��� of yesterday���s announcement of new cardinals is not very surprising to anyone, is it? After nearly two years of Francis, many would have been more shocked if he had named a slew of new cardinals to the traditional, powerful cardinalatial sees, right?

So it���s worth taking a step back and using this little event and our lack of surprise about it as a single fascinating indicator of where Francis has brought us and continues to lead us as a church.

I���m unashamed to admit I profoundly admire the leadership of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI ��� neither of them perfect, but both great in their own ways. Still, only a few short years ago, seeing this as the opening lines of an article by the top U.S. journalist on things Catholic would have seemed fantastical, like some dreamy passage from one of those ���if only the church could be this way��� novels by Joseph Girzone:

ROME ��� With his picks for new cardinals announced on Sunday, Pope Francis continued his campaign to reach out to the peripheries. The pontiff bypassed traditional centers of power and awarded red hats to such typically overlooked locales as Panama, Thailand, Cape Verde, New Zealand, and the Pacific island of Tonga.

For the second time, there were no new cardinals from the United States on the list announced by Francis. There were also no Americans in the first crop of cardinals named by Francis in February 2014.

(That���s from the article John Allen posted yesterday at Crux.)

God bless our Holy Father. And may God���s Holy Spirit make our hearts ever more receptive and malleable to the Christian witness he is offering all of us by word and example. May we all continue to be “stunned,”��but more importantly, to be formed by it.

Where Mother Jones betrays its own great principles

I am a subscriber to the��bi-monthly print edition of��Mother Jones, as well as a follower of the magazine’s Twitter feed. It’s a smart and quirky journal that��informs, challenges, and��sheds light��on many important issues. Often these issues are crucial ones at at the forefront of our social conversation — like Chris Mooney’s fine cover story��to this month’s issue about the psychological pathways that lead to racism —��and sometimes��they are those��that more of us should be paying attention to but are not — like an article in the same issue about the disastrous impact of solitary confinement on adolescents held in youth detention facilities.

In short, I’m a fan of the magazine, its values, its thoughtful and incisive approach,��and the work of its staff and contributors. Usually.

Unfortunately, this magazine that��is practically the epitome of a principled��journalistic stand for “the little guy,” the marginalized among us (as the above two referenced articles illustrate), falls far short of this ideal when it comes to the topic of abortion. They have chosen a firmly pro-choice editorial stance, and apparently (since there is no sign of a differing opinion in what they produce) no dissent will be brooked, no nuance considered.

I came across a discouraging example of this early last night — New Year’s Eve —��as I perused my Twitter feed. The magazine was preparing to ring in the new year by tweeting links to interesting year-end��articles with intro lines like “2014 was the year we finally started to do something about climate change,” “The 40 greatest things people said to us in 2014,” and “The worst things that appeared on Cable News in 2014.” (That last one‘s a doozy. Want to bang your head against a wall at the stupidity on Fox News? Check out that one.)

And then there was this one: “The War on Reproductive Rights Will Get a Lot Uglier Next Year,”��by Mother Jones staffer Molly Redden. Actually, what caught my attention and compelled me to read through the article was its tagline: “Mandatory adoption seminars, discredited science about fetal pain, and many more highlights of anti-abortion bills coming to a statehouse near you.”

“Discredited science about fetal pain”? I’ve read about the issue of pain experienced during abortion by fetuses after a certain level of development, and though I don’t think it’s a central aspect of the moral issue of abortion, it has certainly seemed to me to be one of the more grisly ones. It’s also quite pertinent. Even if you’re unwilling to grant the philosophical premise that the unborn fetus is a person, surely the scientific, biological data that an abortion causes intense physical agony to the fetus is relevant, no?

“This science has been discredited?” I wondered. Fetuses don’t feel pain when being torn apart or burned from the inside out? Scientists are saying that? Had to check.

As it turns out, Redden is referring in her article to (1) a Missouri informed consent��law that says women who want an abortion must watch a video that offers “medically accurate information” about the abortion method and (2) the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act currently being considered by the South Carolina state legislature.

About the Missouri law,��Redden writes:

The video would tell women that fetuses 22 weeks and older can feel pain and that there are “adverse psychological effects associated with abortion.” Mainstream medical organizations reject both of these assertions. The video will also tell women that “the life of each human being begins at conception. Abortion will terminate the life of a separate, unique, living human being.”

One should certainly note, first of all, that even Redden realized that her line about mainstream medical organizations rejecting assertions had to come before, not after, the following two sentences about life beginning at conception and abortion ending the life of a unique and separate human being. This is, of course, because among the most certain and unassailable medical facts related to the abortion debate are that the life of each human being begins at conception and that abortion terminates the life of a separate, unique, living human being.

Also worth noting��is the fact that the link Redden provides to back up��her assertion about medical organizations rejecting the video’s assertions — another Mother Jones article — dismisses the idea of fetal pain at 20 weeks as “scientifically dubious”��and asserts instead:��“The majority of the scientific literature on the subject finds that the brain connections required to feel pain are not formed until at least 24 weeks.” (The other link Redden provides makes absolutely no reference to fetal pain capacity.) .

So��the science regarding fetal pain has not been discredited. To say it has is misleading. Fetal pain during later-term abortion is a fact. What is in question is whether that capacity to experience pain has kicked in by five months gestation. Even the strongest pro-choicers agree that by around 6 months, it has. (I note that the New York Times reported this same uncertainty in a 2013 article on the topic.��For a list of reasons that some researchers and doctors find it reasonable to think the fetus is capable of feeling pain at 20 weeks, see this site.)

There is not, in other words, a very big difference of opinion on the topic. I’m sure that the supporters of these bills would be perfectly happy to begin the ban at six months rather than five, if that would placate the opposition.

And let’s keep in mind that according to the pro-choice Alan Guttmacher Institute��only 1.2% of all legal��abortions happen after 20 weeks gestation. In rejecting the laws in question, Redden is insisting on protecting some of the rarest abortions.

But these are not the only potential laws troubling Redden. Among��a long list of concerns, she includes bills under consideration in various states that

ban “physicians from giving instructions on abortion-inducing drugs by webcam or phone”
prevent towns or counties from passing laws that regulate crisis pregnancy centers
require consent from the child’s father
require the consent of both of the mother’s parents when she is a minor
require doctors to perform an ultrasound before performing an abortion
ban abortions sought for the purpose of sex selection

These are startling to me. Is abortion so sacrosanct that even abortion by phone must be defended and protected? or abortion because the mother was hoping for a boy rather than a girl?

All of this is is obviously a far cry from any pretension that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” It is stance that refuses to consider for a moment��the most obviously relevant scientific data or the slightest nuance in ethical thinking.

In other words it is the same kind of thinking that Mother Jones consistently and competently deplores and demolishes when it comes to issues related to racism, sexism, and economic inequality.

Sisters in America: Thank you!

This morning brought the release of a long-awaited “Final Report” of a historic Vatican investigation of every community of Catholic sisters in the United States. That investigation — as John Allen, Jr. points out��in this helpful��article — began in 2008 with criticism��by Vatican officials of American nuns having a “secular mentality.”

Today, we read in the report that “Since the early days of the Catholic Church [in the United States], women religious have courageously been in the forefront ��� selflessly tending to the spiritual, moral, educational, physical and social needs of countless individuals.” We also read of “the profound gratitude of the Apostolic See and the Church in the United States for the dedicated and selfless service of women religious in all the essential areas of the life of the Church and society.”

Amen to that.

A few months ago, Sr. Mary Ann Walsh (a long-time communications director for the U.S. bishops’ conference) suggested that the most appropriate feedback that the Vatican could probably offer to the American women religious is simply to say “Thank you.” It seems that the Vatican has decided that was good advice. That’s what I call good discernment.

Anyway, when I read those passages from the report I quoted above, they brought to mind a little essay that I had published here on this blog over two years ago. On the occasion of the anniversary of the arrival in 1727��of the first religious sisters, a group of Ursuline nuns, on American shores, I took��the Ursulines’ presence here as��emblematic of a much broader history.��I figured that today might be a good occasion to point it out here again. Here ’tis.

 

“Sisters in America”

Here���s an anniversary that generally passes unnoticed, though perhaps recent ecclesial developments demand that attention, this year, be paid. On August 6, 1727, a ship named La Gironde docked at New Orleans. Among the passengers who disembarked, after a difficult six-month journey from France, was a group of twelve Ursuline sisters: the very first Catholic religious sisters in ���the New World.���

Be careful of the New Orleans you imagine. The village had been founded less than a decade earlier and was described by a visitor in 1721 as a collection of a hundred wretched hovels amidst a swampy land infested by alligators and snakes. Before the year was out, the sisters had founded a rudimentary school for girls. It would become Ursuline Academy, which is today the oldest continuously-operating school for girls and the oldest Catholic school in the United States. Before long, the sisters also established an orphanage and began holding classes for African slave and Native American girls. One of the original group, Sister Francis Xavier Hebert, became the first woman pharmacist on these shores.

Of course, the Ursulines would be joined in ministry by many other women of many other religious communities. The Ursulines are by no means the most numerous nor the most well-known of them. But their history and their work serves as a window into the American experience and as an indication of the place that women religious have held in American life and culture.

One of the most notorious expressions of the anti-Catholic nativism that held a grip on American society in the early nineteenth century has the Ursulines at center stage. On August 11, 1834, a crowd of angry citizens attacked the Ursuline convent in Charleston, Massachusetts, then a working class town across the harbor from Boston. Lyman Beecher (father of Harriet Beecher Stowe) had recently passed through the area offering a series of fiery speeches about a papal plot to take control of America. As the sisters fled into the night, the mob set fire to the convent and cheered as it burned to the ground.

(The incident also, it might be noted, offers a picture of the tough and feisty side of many American sisters that many Catholics even today will recognize. An eyewitness account of the evening���s events reports that as the threatening crowds gathered around the convent, the mother superior appeared at one of the windows and warned, ���The bishop has twenty thousand of the vilest Irishmen at his command, and you may read your riot act till your throats are sore, but you���ll not quell them!���)

In the 1880���s Ursuline sisters joined Jesuit priests in Montana, in the Rocky Mountain Missions. Sometimes with the help of funding from Saint Katherine Drexel and her sister Elizabeth, they established churches and schools, many still in operation today, to reach and serve the native American population.

In 1980, Ursuline sister Dorothy Kazel was one of four American women raped and murdered in El Salvador by members of a military bent on extinguishing the work of the Church there. Dorothy had worked for six years in the country, teaching, catechizing, and doing ordinary parish work. When that nation���s civil war began in 1977, she offered support and comfort to war refugees and widows and mothers who had lost sons. To a family member who urged her to consider returning to the United States, she wrote, ���I could not leave Salvador, especially now ��� I am committed to the persecuted Church here.���

Of course, throughout the nearly three centuries since those twelve sisters stepped off La Gironde, thousands of other Ursulines have engaged in ministries, mostly educational, that rarely gets recounted but has contributed richly to the Church and to society in America. Catholic Charities USA recognized it earlier this year by presenting the prioress of the Ursuline Sisters of New Orleans, Sister Carla Dolce, OSU, with a Centennial Medal, recognizing her community���s important contributions to the reduction of poverty in the United States.

I saw it myself during two years living in Mingo County, West Virginia, the heart of Appalachian poverty, in the lives and ministries of Ursuline sisters Brendan Conlon and Janet Peterworth. They founded and directed two nonprofit agencies that have served, educated, and empowered residents there for nearly twenty years. The two women, now retired, reminded their staffs almost daily that the reason for the work they did was to serve Christ present in the poor, as he himself insisted we do.

Today the Ursulines in America struggle with dwindling numbers, dwindling income, and an aging community. In this way, too, they represent so many other American religious communities.

Though it���s unfortunate that the August 6 anniversary will pass unnoticed by most Americans, it���s not surprising. The work of religious sisters in America has been underappreciated and largely overlooked for nearly three centuries, even within the Church. The anniversary provides an apt moment to offer them���and the Lord���a big thank you.