Re “Praytell, Is This Anything to be Upset About?”
Mayor Sahli-Wells said this morning her intention only is to change the label “invocation,” which, by dictionaries, carries a religious connotation. “My proposal was to change the title to one that has no religious connotation,” she told the newspaper. – From May 20 edition
Mayor Meghan Sahli-Wells’s by-now-inflamed proposal to remove the term “Invocation” from City Manager John Nachbar’s comments prior to City Council meetings turns up in neon lights on the agenda for Monday’s 7 o’clock meeting.
Her Honor presents it as a harmless upgrade that will remove any scent of religious overtone from Council sessions.
As Mr. Nachbar approaches his fourth anniversary at City Hall, he never has ventured, even by nuance, into a religious channel.
“My comments always have been secular in nature,” said the quiet, gentle Midwesterner. No exceptions.
Councilman Andy Weissman was in the middle the last time this thorny debate arose a half-dozen years ago, not long after Mehaul O’Leary was elected.
The Irishman led the charge against Gary Silbiger and Chris Armenta to change the title “Invocation.” Mr. Weissman and Scott Malsin sided with Mr. O’Leary.
During Mr. Weissman’s one-year term as mayor, he recalled that he began identifying the Invocation as “the Thought for the Day.”
Virtually everyone on the dais agrees that there isn’t anything religious about what Mr. Weissman labels “the inspirational lead-in to the balance of the agenda” – except for the word “Invocation.”
He agrees that the interlude is “completely secular. There is no church (element), no ‘God component.’”
In Mr. Weissman’s early days on the Council, “back in the Dark Ages when we still had a Chief Administrative Officer, he would recite some sort of religious invocation. We stopped that.”
In tomorrow’s edition, Mr. O’Leary’s firmly held pro-invocation views will be aired.
(To be continued)
