Saint Thomas Moore

MoreFest Promises Fun For All Ages

St. Thomas More Church may be new to the business of holding festivals, but in just a few short years they have been able to boast one of the largest in the area. 

This weekend is only the fifth annual MoreFest and, with the help of other churches "showing them the ropes," the festival brings in more than $80,000 during the four-day event.

"Chairmen of other festivals were nice enough to show us how it's done," said co-chairperson Mary Swindal as she made her rounds helping sell raffle tickets for the event.

Swindal said being in the infancy stage of organizing festivals has been kind of a blessing for their church.

"It's easier to change things up and be open to newer things," Swindal said knowing the fresh ideas help draw big crowds to the festival.

Friday night Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers were the main headliners as hundreds of people gathered to watch the famous local musicians complete a musical set with carousels, merry-go-rounds and other rides surrounding the stage.

"This is western Pennsylvania, baby," Joe Grushecky shouted right before his set. The band gives a nice discount to church organizations.

More than 20 parish members co-chair the event which takes a good part of the year to plan. Countless other volunteers help operate more than 50 booths.  There are poker games inside for adults and 15 to 2o more games outside for kids and adults alike.

And you can't have a festival without rides. There is a ferris wheel, merry-go-round, kiddie plane rides and of course spinning cups...if you dare! The rides are $2 each.

If it's carnival food you like, it's carnival food you'll get. There is everything from hot dogs to haluski. You can even purchase beer and wine if you would like. Nothing is more expensive than five dollars.

Saturday night is the final evening for the festival that runs right next to the church from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.  It's Polish night, their biggest night each year. It starts with a mass in the church at 5 p.m. followed by one final evening of fun. The musical performance Saturday night will be Henny & the Versa J's + Ray Jay & the Carousels. It will also be the last night to buy a raffle ticket for thee biggest prize of the festival: a $10,000 cash award.

The Uncompromising St. Thomas More | Regnum Novum

You may perhaps remember a scene from Braveheart with Robert the Bruce and his father the leper.

When his son first brings him news about the rebellion led by William Wallace, a commoner, the father instantly devises a plan by which the Bruce clan can gain favor with the Scots and with the English. You get the feeling that Robert is a bit taken aback by the so easy and cold calculation of his rotted father.

He says,

“Uncompromising men are easy to admire.” There is in this world, and it seems more so today, a habit of admiring the compromising fellow. With the ubiquitous dictatorship of relativism that oppresses so many minds, it only makes sense that the general public would take offense at anyone who dares stand up for something with uncompromising stolidity.

The holder of objective truth claims is – so the sages of Manhattan and Melrose Place tell us – no different than the Nazi who insists on the claim to racial purity or the Islamic bomber who literally does cling to his religion and guns.

For this reason, the figure of St. Thomas More, whose feast it is today, can be such a perplexing figure for the modern mind. And even the Catholic who consumes their breakfast whilst pouring over the latest moto proprio can miss this astonishingly great man. I have to admit having skipped over him in my studies, chalking him up with all the other saints and blesseds who gain God’s favor by losing their heads. But St. Thomas More is more than just a martyr. He’s an example of such exquisite lack of compromise that he can teach us a great deal about the Catholic Social Doctrine we long to understand and live out.