Cardinal Balks at Sunday Youth Ball
Cardinal John O’Connor wants an end to youth baseball and soccer games on Sunday mornings.
“Is it more important for a youngster to go to church than to play baseball or soccer?” O’Connor asks in his most recent column in Catholic New York. “Don’t we normally give prime time to what we believe is most important? Surely, prime time for church for families continues to be Sunday morning.”
In an April 16 column, O’Connor said he was boycotting big league baseball because games were played on Good Friday.
In Thursday’s column, he wrote that he is sympathetic to the demands put on parents, coaches and others who try to provide kids with wholesome activities.
“It is a tough job,” he said. “So I do not write in criticism, but in hope: the hope that there can be a reevaluation of what we are doing, a reassessment of values.”
Little League spokesman Lance Van Auken said that when his organization was founded in 1939 it prohibited Sunday games. Today, its popularity has spread to 92 countries with three million players, and the Sunday ban was dropped about a decade ago.
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