Project Moses

Louise Noe of Toledo marveled at the nearly 5-foot-tall monument unveiled yesterday outside of St. Hedwig’s Catholic Church on Lagrange Street, and in a quiet, sincere voice said, "That’s beautiful, that’s gorgeous."

The red-tinted, marble monument, with the Ten Commandments inscribed in gold, sits on the church’s front lawn, next to the steps that lead up to the doors of the more than 100-year-old church.

The petite, 81-year-old woman, who was barely taller than the monument, stood with her friend, Lottie Czekaj, 79, of Toledo, as she read aloud the inscription of a psalm at the base of the monument.

The Rev. Marek Ciesla of St. Hedwig’s said the monument, given to the church by the Knights of Columbus Monsignor O’Connell Council 386, is the sign of hope and faith the community needs.

"We don’t want this to be just a piece of marble," he said after yesterday’s unveiling. "We want it to be a sign of something deeper."

St. Hedwig’s is the first church in the Catholic Diocese of Toledo, which encompasses 159 parishes, to erect this kind of monument.

But Father Ciesla hopes it’s the first of many.

The monument is part of a larger fund-raising effort to build a 24-foot-tall bronze statue of Moses in Washington to be called the National Judeo-Christian Memorial. Construction is expected to begin in 2008.

What would be most fitting in our nations’s capitol would be a statue of Moses shattering the Ten Commandments when he finds out what’s been going on on his return.

Thinking about this I just realized Moses is the only one to break the Ten Commandments with approval from God.