Word: pawtucket
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...Dennis Lynch, 50, the former mayor of Pawtucket, R.I., one of the highlights of the Christmas season is taking his wife and seven children to visit the Nativity scene in a downtown park. But in order to keep alive the family custom started by his grandfather, Lynch has had to form a private group to purchase the crèche from the city and take over the cost of maintaining it. A federal appeals court ruled last month that Pawtucket's city-funded crèche, and others like it, violate the First Amendment clause prohibiting the establishment...
...confrontations have focused on depictions of the Nativity. The government "may not participate in or promote the Christian celebration of Christmas," explained Judge Hugh Bownes in the Pawtucket case. "The crèche is purely a Christian religious symbol; this is the distinction between the crèche and Christmas as a holiday." Christmas trees, for example, are generally considered secular because of their origins in pagan rituals. Public school Christmas pageants have won court approval as long as the cultural significance outweighed the religious...
...years and is often overshadowed by constitutional struggles waged on the national level, such as that over prayer in schools. But a Rhode Island Circuit Court of Appeals judge last month pushed the creche issue back into the spotlight by upholding a 1981 ruling forbidding the city of Pawtucket from mounting a manger scene. That city responded intelligently, selling its display to a private group which put it up on private property...
...deciding a similar case, the Rhode Island court ruled last week that the city of Pawtucket, R.I., could not construct a Nativity scene on municipal property...
...begrudge a dying baby the means of survival. But Debbie Pinheiro, Justine's mother, admits, "We really get jealous over it." Debbie, 20, and her husband Jose, 24, a welder, have tried to match the Fiskes' effort to focus attention on their daughter's plight. The Pawtucket, R.I., couple have also petitioned their Congressman and been headlined on the front page of the Providence Journal. "I hope that the same thing that happened to the Fiskes happens to us," says Justine's mother. "I'm nobody important, but I'm determined to fight...