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Source: Brooklyn – Alcoholism Questions and Answers (1967).mp3 File: brooklyn-alcoholism-questions-and-answers-1967.mp3 Duration: 00:42:00
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We have about 45 minutes for a question and answer period. I would like to suggest to the AA members that they refrain from asking any questions and to leave this period to our guests. Of course, this doesn't count if our guests are a little bit bashful and no questions come up. But initially, please permit our guests to have the floor on these questions. And for the purpose of our tape recorder that we have here, I will repeat all questions that come from the floor.
Now, can we get it started off, please? Yes, sir. In reference to Father Lawrence, at what age would be the earliest that the children have the attention of AA brought to them? Alateen. Alateen, at the family table. Well, again, I believe that the children should hear of alcoholism as a sickness just as soon as you learn about alcoholism as a sickness at the table. As to what age they should join Alateen, it is called Alateen and for a very definite purpose.
The Alateen ages range from 12 to, we hold the young people to 20 and sometimes 21 to give a little stability to the program. This has also provided a problem, however, because in Alateen groups, we find that there is very little in common between someone who is 19 and someone who is 14. And so if we get enough young people, we try to divide them into young Alateen and older Alateen groups, and this would be from 12 to 15 and 15 to 20.
But we try to stay to the teenage years because we do not feel that a child who is younger than 12 can really comprehend to any degree the immensity of this sickness that afflicts you. They do understand sickness, but the complexity of it, but we don't understand it. And how can we expect the children who are less than 12 to understand it? Dr. Block, who of course you know is the man who pushed the disease concept to the Medical Association, he says that he thinks it's unfair to burden a child less than 12 years of age with the complexity of this problem, and I'm inclined to agree with that.
If you just go along with the idea of sickness, the young children can understand sickness and that seems to be sufficient. Dr. Lawrence, you mentioned that there are an estimated 6.5 million alcoholics in this country. What percentage would you say are women? I was privileged to take the course at Yale School of Alcohol Studies in 1956. That's now 11 years ago. And at that time, Mark Keller, who is the eminent statistician that is connected with that school, which now by the way is located in Rutgers over in New Jersey, at that time the estimate was about 4.5 to 1.
However, there seems to be quite a change in this percentage statistically. I'm not sure it has changed as much as is in evidence in the metropolitan area. I think in New York City, they estimate now in memberships for instance of AA, it's almost 50-50. There are some groups that are entirely women, and there seems to be a greater percentage of alcoholic women attending AA meetings in the metropolitan area, and therefore people are concluding that it's about even now.
They back up this conviction by saying that men are bar drinkers, whereas women are home and loan drinkers, and we didn't know about them, and that's why the percentage was about 5 to 1 or 4.5 to 1. But in the 10 years that preceded that statistic that was given to us, it varied. It went like from 4 to 4.3 to 5.1 to 4.6 to 1, and therefore I think it would be safe to say that the number of women alcoholics against men alcoholics would be about 3 to 1. I think that would be a safe proportion today.
Three men to one woman. Yes, John? I'd like to ask Dr. Canavan how he differentiates between a drunk and an alcoholic, and also [unclear] alcoholism [unclear]. To Dr. Canavan, how he differentiates between a drunk and an alcoholic, and would he term alcoholism an allergy?
[00:05:04]
There's a humorous answer to your question that says the only difference between a drunk and an alcoholic is that the drunk doesn't have to go to all those damn meetings. But we of course hold that there's much more to it than this. Actually, there really isn't a great deal of difference between what you call a drunk and what we call an alcoholic. I think the important distinction that we might be intending to make is that there are some people who, however, are extremely excessive drinkers without being truly alcoholic.
The people who deal with this subject in great detail talk at times of someone who is called a plateau drinker. Now, a plateau drinker is somebody who lives in sort of a limbo between being a non-alcoholic and being an alcoholic. He's really not an alcoholic in the sense that he's not a compulsive drinker. If he made up his mind to stop drinking, he could do it without any difficulty. But he just has chosen this life of perpetual intoxication as the plateau at which he wishes to live.
And the feeling is that many of the people who are on the bowery are plateau drinkers. They're not really truly alcoholic, nor are they non-alcoholics in the ordinary sense of the word. They're people who have decided that they want to stay constantly under the influence. I think for practical purposes, if we exclude this group and say, when is a man an alcoholic and when is he a drunk, I would say that the only criterion we could use would be the question of controlled drinking.
If someone deliberately goes out and drinks to excess, on that particular occasion he is drunk. If he repeatedly does this, he may be called a drunkard. But if at all these times that he drinks, he has the ability within himself to stop freely at any point, to turn it off, to go home, to sleep it off, to get up the next day and go to work without any difficulty, he certainly is not truly an alcoholic.
But when he reaches the point where he can't turn it off, where he can't go home when he wants to go home, where he can't get up the next day and take a couple of aspirins and moan about his head and go to work and forget the alcohol, where he has to have the eye-opener in order to face breakfast, and the ten o'clock shot in order to get through to noon, and the liquid lunch instead of his ordinary lunch, this is where we're getting into the problem of loss of control.
And I think that's the essential difference. Somebody who drinks excessively but is not out of control could be called a drunk. An alcoholic is a person who no longer is in control. Now, you asked the second question about allergy. Frequently we hear people say that the alcoholic is allergic to alcohol. And when you talk about allergy, you picture the guy who eats some strawberries on his ice cream and suddenly blossoms out with hives.
And you never hear about the guy saying, gee, I've got a quart of strawberries, come on over and let's have hives together. There are certainly tremendous differences in these two groups of people. If you understand fully what allergy is, you'll find that from a medical point of view that it's awfully hard to say that alcohol is an allergy. Because an allergy implies an abnormal use of a normal body defense mechanism.
In other words, a system within the body that is originally intended to protect that individual from some outside stimulus of a noxious nature has now become disturbed so that a normal stimulus can produce an abnormal response. Now, this involves the theory of antigens and antibodies and many, many other things that are very easy to understand if we're talking about allergy, but are very difficult to apply to alcohol or alcoholism in a precise scientific way.
Certainly it isn't an antigen-antibody reaction. If we have a person who has an allergy, for instance, to dust or feathers or wool or moles or things like this, by giving them repeated small doses of the substance to which they are sensitive, we can take away their allergy. No one's ever been able to do this with an alcohol. There are studies such as passive transfer studies that just don't apply.
[00:10:05]
I think in terms of considering it an analogy that alcohol to the alcoholic is sort of like what an allergic substance is to a person who suffers from allergy. It may make you a little bit more able to handle this in your own minds or will give you a comfortable way to think about it. But from a truly scientific point of view, I don't think we can defend the position that alcoholism really is an allergy.
Thank you. Yes? Well, the doctor, about some time in late December, there was a report in the New York Times. It was a summary of the subcommission on alcoholism, a study on alcoholics and people who drink. And in the report, it was mentioned that about one-third of the population, the total population in the United States, don't drink at all. It just doesn't appeal to them. About two-thirds do and then they get into heavy drinking.
In other words, a further comment made that the doers of the world in all fields are either alcoholics or heavy drinkers. I wonder if he has any comment to make on that. Do you know the origin of that report? Do you know the origin of it? I mean, other than the New York Times. What's the nature of the National Alcoholic Study, the report in the New York Times? All right. This report that appeared in the New York Times stated that one…
I didn't read through the report. They were just printing it. Yes, they were printing the report. That one-third of the people in the nation were non-alcoholics, didn't drink at all, were total abstainers, and that the doers of the world were composed of alcoholics or heavy drinkers. Well, I've got this comment. How do you spell that, doers? D-E-W-A-R-S? First of all, I'm not familiar with the article that you quote, so I can't either accredit it or discredit it.
But certainly I think that the figures are probably reasonable to say that a third of the people in the country don't drink and two-thirds do. As you all know, our society today is such that alcohol has become the great social catalyst. It's almost impossible for you to go to a social function, unless you're a vigorous active member of AA, at which alcohol is not served or provided, or at which you're not put in the position of refusing a drink if you choose not to drink.
Now, there are many good reasons why people don't drink. There are religious reasons. There are certain religious groups who do not use alcoholic beverages. There are medical reasons why people don't drink. There are ingrained reasons in the lives of individuals who have been brought up in a family in which they've seen the damage and the destruction that excessive drinking can produce. So the statistics of one-third and two-third we will accept as probably being very reasonable.
The argument that the doers of the world are those who drink might have some substance in the sense that in the life of the very successful individuals, the high levels of business and finance, this social use of alcohol is, of course, far greater. Any of you who work in the field of sales know that the sales approach today in many ways is associated with the social function, whether it be the conventions, whether it be entertaining the clients, whether it be taking them to dinner or to lunch or out for a drink, so that so many of our business deals are sort of sealed in alcohol.
And I have heard many people who are alcoholics say that their great problem is, what do I do when I go out to lunch when this guy wants to buy me a drink? If I refuse a drink, he'll suspect that I'm an alcoholic and may be afraid to trust me. So that because in our higher echelons of business and finance the social use of alcohol may be great, I could understand that perhaps a high percentage of the people you call the doers are drinking excessively because this is part of our society.
But I think that this article, or at least the way it was presented, is meant to imply that in order to be a success you've got to really be a boozer, and this I don't buy. There are many, many people, far too numerous to list here, who are eminently successful in various fields of human endeavor who are not excessive drinkers.
[00:15:00]
There are far many more than this who are normal social drinkers, who do have a cocktail or may enjoy a cocktail party with their friends and have two or three drinks and not get intoxicated, not lose their senses or equilibrium, who still are eminently successful. And I would be wont to say that if there was some way to prove this point, that we would find that in the long run, the very excessive drinkers are rather the failures than the success.
Thank you. Just before the meeting, a bashful guest asked me to ask a question for them, and there would be a question posed to Mr. Reardon, that this individual had read one time that about 75% of the crimes committed were done under the influences of alcohol. Mr. Reardon, would you comment on that, please? Crimes vary from very minor ones to the most serious, of course, being murder. But it's been our experience that most of the people that we get, the percentage would run somewhere around 28 to 30% where alcohol had been a factor.
Now, people will frequently see in the newspapers the big story. The same applies when a parolee commits a crime. A serious crime, particularly. The impression one gets from the papers is that parolees should never be released. They should be kept in prison forever. The newspapers are not interested in the run-of-the-mill news. In fact, it really isn't news as far as the general public is concerned when several hundred parolees finish their terms satisfactorily and are supporting their families and are no problem in the community.
But it is news when a parolee shoots a cop or rapes some elderly woman on her way home and so on. But it's been our experience that it runs somewhere around 28 to 30%. But again, this type of case usually gets much more publicity than the run-of-the-mill offender. Thank you. Ma'am? I would like to ask a doctor. We hear a lot about alcoholic blackouts. Can you explain what an alcoholic blackout is? Addressed to Dr. Canavan, would he explain an alcoholic blackout?
All right, first of all, I want it understood that blackouts are not a necessary part of the disease of alcoholism. You don't have to have blackouts to be an alcoholic. And I make this point because in discussing what is an alcoholic in our hospital, I often hear people say, well, an alcoholic is a guy who has blackouts when he drinks. Blackouts are things that happen to some alcoholics and not necessarily to all.
And having a blackout doesn't mean that you passed out cold on the linoleum, but it means that somewhere during your drinking experience you have had a period of temporary memory loss, a period of temporary amnesia, if you want, during which time to all outward appearances you are behaving in your normal, rational way, whatever that may be. The example of the man who can't remember what happened after 9 o'clock on Saturday night and finds himself on Monday afternoon in a strange town, in a strange hotel room with a strange woman.
And what transpired from 9 o'clock Saturday when he was drinking quietly in his neighborhood tavern until this entirely new experience three states away, three days later, is lost to him. This is a blackout. Now, in medicine there is a condition that we call a fugue state.
[00:20:00]
It has a fancy name. It's called psychomotor epilepsy, which is ordinarily considered to be a type of seizure disorder in which this selfsame experience could occur in a person who is not an alcoholic. A man might leave his house in the Bronx to go downtown to work in New York and find himself three days later on a bench in a park in Philadelphia with no idea of what happened in the interval. Yet in between that time he got to Philadelphia, he apparently ate his meals and took care of his other vital functions and wasn't in any physical or medical trouble at the time.
So this is the type of thing that a blackout is. It's a period of temporary amnesia comparable to what we call a fugue state or psychomotor epilepsy. Doctor, would it really be when you said that there was compulsion only when the person was already under alcohol or they were having to eat or some chemical response in the body had to take alcohol and that there was no compulsion in that other part and that there was no compulsion to take the first drink in the mental part which is described as being the obsessive preoccupation with alcohol?
Let me see if I have that straight now. Did the doctor say that compulsion did not exist unless alcohol was present? I think he understood that, yes. Well, first of all, to defend my position in terms of what I really meant, I really meant what I said, okay? And I didn't mean one thing and say something else. So the things I have expressed are my thoughts precisely as I mean them and as I believe them.
And I really did say that the compulsion exists in the alcoholic only after the chemical substance alcohol has entered his body. Now, I'm talking about an entirely new drinking episode. I'm talking about an individual who has been sober a couple of weeks, a couple of months, a couple of years, whatever it is. I'm not talking about the alcoholic who gets up the next morning after drinking all day the day before.
This is simply a continuation of the same old episode. But in an entirely new episode where the alcoholic has been totally withdrawn from alcohol, there is no shred of alcohol anywhere within his body, when he takes that first drink, the physical compulsion, the uncontrollable force that we mean by compulsion that makes him drink, that robs him of control, that robs him of free will, is not in operation.
Now, I did not say, nor did I mean to imply, that when the alcohol is withdrawn from your system that you'll never have a thought of a drink or a desire for a drink or a craving for a drink or a preoccupation with the idea of a drink. I merely differentiate the point that before you take the first drink in any drinking episode, you are in the driver's seat. You have the ability, if you choose to use it, to refuse the first drink until the very moment that it has passed your lips, and you are not under the influence of a compulsion at that point.
Now, that's what I said, and that's what I mean, and that's what I think. Thank you very much. Barbara? Is there such a thing as a psychotic alcoholic, an alcoholic who will beat up his wife with an instrument? Is that person actually insane enough to do that? Is there such a thing as a psychotic alcoholic, an alcoholic who behaves irrationally, beats up his wife, etc.? Is there such a thing as an insane alcoholic?
Is that correct? In describing alcoholics earlier, I made the point that there are two types of alcoholics that we deal with. First of all, I said there is someone who is a symptomatic alcoholic, and secondly, a person who we call a simple alcoholic. And I made the point that the symptomatic alcoholic
[00:25:01]
is someone who suffers from serious underlying mental or emotional illness, and in those patients, the alcoholism is a symptom of the emotional disease. So in that sense, we could say that that particular person could be called a psychotic alcoholic. Now, let's go a little further and talk about the simple alcoholic, because the effect of alcohol as an intoxicating beverage on the alcoholic who is not psychotic, on the normal person who is not an alcoholic but who may on occasion drink to excess, can be such that under the influence of alcohol, when our normal controls, our normal inhibitions, the control of the higher centers of our brain have been sedated, these people may, under those circumstances, in what could be called a psychotic way, so that a person who is not a truly symptomatic alcoholic, meaning he has serious mental disease, could act in the way that you described because of the momentary or temporary effect of alcohol in his body at the time that he performs these acts.
Thank you. Father? I'd like to address my question to Dr. [unclear], but please forgive my ignorance in this field. However, I probably [unclear] with the alcoholics in the last 30 years of my priesthood. Now, the question is, you stated that alcoholism is a disease, a mental disease. Is it hereditary? That is, does one have a predisposition or tendency towards alcoholism in order to become deprived of it?
And if so, is it an obligation of the parents or the children of that family to tell them of the problems of alcoholism in the past history of the family, of the brother or sister, of the parents or the uncle or the father or mother? Addressed to Dr. Canavan, is alcoholism hereditary? And if so, is it incumbent upon the parents to pass this information on to the children as they're growing up? Father, your question could be the subject of an entire panel discussion.
This is a very important part of the whole problem of alcoholism, and it's a subject on which there is a great deal of controversy in the field of medicine today. So permit me to preface my remarks by saying, first of all, that what I'm going to tell you are my own personal convictions and that I'm not dictating articles of faith, so I don't want to be hung after I sit down for what I've said. This is what I believe.
If it appeals to you, accept it. If not, forget it. I believe that the alcoholic inherits from his forebears, not only his immediate mother and father, but from all of those who have contributed to his direct line of descent, a basic inborn potential to be alcoholic. And I believe that this potential is present in the alcoholic at the time of his birth. And I believe that unless this potential is present, that an individual cannot become alcoholic.
If I could be somewhat blasphemous, I might say that many are called, but few are chosen. That you have to have this potential. Now, I believe the potential has two parts. First of all, a factor of personality, and secondly, a factor of body chemistry. The factor of personality I described to you earlier when I described the personality traits of the alcoholic, and it is these personality characteristics that later on in life will lead the alcoholic to use alcohol as an escape from reality, to use it as a crutch to face the problems that he feels inadequate to handle.
And somewhere along the line, when this inadequate personality leads him to use alcohol in this way, the factor of body chemistry will come into play. And I believe the factor of body chemistry is the thing that is responsible for the compulsion. In the field of medicine, we talk about a whole category of diseases that we refer to as inborn errors of metabolism. And the common denominator of this group of diseases is that there is a defect somewhere in the body chemistry that accounts for the disease state.
And I like to believe that at some future date, alcoholism will be shown to fit rightly into this category of disease. So these two factors then, the factor of personality, the factor of body chemistry, combined to produce this potential. Now, in addition to the potential, something else is required.
[00:30:04]
And that something else is obviously the consumption of alcohol. You could have the greatest potential in the world for alcoholism and never be an alcoholic if you never got around to taking your first drink. By the same token, in certain individuals, this potential is so strong that the first day in their life that they taste an alcoholic beverage, they are immediately alcoholic. And in others, the experience is the opposite, that it may take 20 or 30 years of heavy social drinking before that critical point between social drinking and alcoholic drinking occurs.
So, in summary, I believe that heredity plays a role. I believe it occurs through this potential. Now, what difference does it make? What difference does it make whether you inherited this disease or you acquired it? Are you more of an alcoholic or less of an alcoholic because you inherited it? And the answer, of course, is no. But the difference is what Father brought up, and this is in dealing with your children.
Because I am convinced, and I think there are statistics to bear me out, I can't quote the sources at the moment, but we know that the children of alcoholics stand a much greater likelihood of becoming alcoholic than the children of non-alcoholics. If both parents are alcoholic, the likelihood is tremendously increased. So that you see, the importance of this knowledge is not in your own alcoholism, but in dealing with your children.
Because I believe that the children of alcoholics, in justice, should be taught the nature of their parents' illness and should be cautioned about the wisdom of a life of total abstinence. These kids represent a high-risk group. To them, the likelihood of becoming alcoholic is far too great to justify the experiment to see whether or not they're going to get away with it. I think this answers your question.
Thank you. Yes, Captain. I'd like to ask Dr. Canavan to say something about this, the pills that we've seen in the last two years. There's a tremendous amount, or a tremendous number of alcoholic people [unclear] pills. Now, I feel very strongly that there's altogether far too much emphasis placed on pills in these outpatients. [unclear] the hospitals. They dole them out like nothing. And a lot of people I know have never had a drug problem before.
I think they get a dependency, a forced dependency on pills that leads them into other pills which are addictive. I'm not saying [unclear]. But I think they give them a forced dependency. In the last two years, the group of people I know who have gone on pills and never had a pill problem before are absolutely shocking. And I'm just wondering what Dr. Canavan thinks [unclear] to stop what they're doing.
They don't do any good to my knowledge. To Dr. Canavan, you want to generalize on the pill problem that's coming up in conjunction with alcoholism. Well, first of all, in talking about pills, there's big pills and little pills, and there's round pills and square pills, and there's good pills and there's bad pills. And I think we've got to understand when we talk about pills which pills we're talking about.
Because there's a little pill called Digitalis, which is one of the greatest pills that was ever created. And there's another pill called Penicillin, which is a very effective drug in stamping out disease. So when we talk about pills and the alcoholic, you hear so much about the alcoholic shouldn't take pills, some people get the idea you shouldn't take any kind of pill because a pill per se is wrong.
So let's come back and get our feet on the ground because when we talk about pills, we're talking about two specific classes of pills. And these are specifically sedatives and tranquilizers. We're not talking about Digitalis or Mercuryhydrin or Penicillin or all the other many valuable drugs that we have available in our armamentarium today which come in a pill or tablet or capsule form. We're talking specifically should the alcoholic take sedatives, should he take tranquilizers?
And the answer to this question is simply no. The experience of people who have dealt with large numbers of alcoholics is that when the alcoholic is put on sedatives or tranquilizers, one of two things invariably happens. Either he begins to use these pills as he used the alcohol. If one is good, three are better, and two before lunch, two before supper, one in the middle of the afternoon will help calm the anxieties of the day.
Or secondly, and even perhaps more frequently, he ends up back on the bottle.
[00:35:00]
Now, these aren't my rules. I didn't make them up. But this is the experience of people who deal with large numbers of alcoholics. One of the problems with the alcoholic, as I said, is that he's an immature person. He finds it difficult to cope with the reality of everyday life. And in his alcoholic days, he uses alcohol as a tool to help him cope with the problems that he is unable to cope with himself.
And when alcohol is taken away, many alcoholics turn to some pill to do this for them. I had two people in my office last night, two people who are alcoholics, a man and a woman. Neither of them very successful in controlling their problem. One of them, the man involved, the brother of one of my very best friends, somebody I've seen repeatedly, who has no more interest in helping himself than the man on the moon, who called me last night and berated me over the phone at great length and finally insisted that if I didn't give him a shot, that I was the worst guy that ever came down the pike.
And I told him if he came to my office, I would give him an injection of some vitamin B1, which I thought would help him over the hurdles. And his supposedly successful alcoholic fiancee, told him to be sure to tell me to give him some pills. And of course he got no place because he was barking up the wrong tree. I've been through this too many times to know what alcohol and pills, or what the combination will do.
Unfortunately for the average alcoholic who consults the average physician, this is not the experience. There is a gross lack of knowledge on the part of organized medicine today about the full nature of this disease, alcoholism. Now obviously as you look at me here, I'm not a very old doctor. But I have been a doctor now for, this is 1967, I've been a graduate of a medical school for over 14 years this year.
Now I went through what I think is one of the best medical schools in the country. And in four years in this top school, I cannot recall one lecture on the subject of alcoholism. Now, since the doctors have learned so little, at the fountain source of their knowledge, is it surprising that when you go to their office, they're unsympathetic, un-understanding. All they're concerned about is, my God, how do I keep this guy quiet and get him out of here, before he creates chaos in the office.
This is the attitude that meets you. And it's because the doctor is ignorant. Ignorant in the sense that he has never been taught. When I was in medical school, say 15, 16, 17 years ago, I bought a copy of the latest edition of one of the textbooks of medicine. And shortly after I finished medical school and I became particularly interested in this problem, I leafed through the chapters again that did discuss the problem of alcoholism.
And found the answers that were offered were pretty vague and hopeless. No mention was made of AA. The only thing was sedation and so on and so forth. And I'm happy to say that about 12 years later, I bought a new copy of the textbook of medicine in order to try and keep up with what was going on. And because of my personal interest in alcoholism, the first place I looked was at the chapter on alcoholism.
And I was delighted to find the discussion of the value of the AA program and the wisdom of the doctor learning about the facilities and the groups and so on in his area. Because so far, nothing could compare in medicine to the results that had been found through AA. There has been a tremendous change in the attitude of medical educators in terms of bringing knowledge about alcoholism to medical students and of course to practicing physicians.
But the problem with the practicing physician, despite all the nasty reports you read about us, is that the average guy is so busy seeing sick people that he doesn't have the time that he would like to have to go to the medical meetings that are offered. And the doctor is constantly torn between the telephone that is calling him to see a sick child or deal with a sick patient and the letters from the schools and the medical societies offering this meeting and that.
And so it becomes a difficult thing for him to keep up with all the advancements. But I think as the new generation of doctors comes through, that the attitude towards the alcoholic will be different. But pills are verboten. I think we have come to the end of a tremendous meeting. A footnote I'd like to add about our speakers.
[00:40:01]
All of them have traveled quite a distance to come here. Dr. Canavan came from Paterson, New Jersey, Father Fred from Sterling, New Jersey, and Mr. Reardon all the way down from Ossining. So unselfishness certainly isn't cornered by the AA market by any means. I know that you all share with me our untold gratitude to these three speakers for this marvelously informative meeting. Once again, I'd like to note our gratitude to Monsignor Genova, to the Holy Family Church for the use of these facilities.
There are so many people that worked hard to get this thing together. It's too numerous to mention. But all of you know who you are. I do, too. And that includes the marvelous people of Allen. After the meeting, there will be refreshments served in the cafeteria. At the end there, we would like to ask some of the members, the male members of the Brooklyn groups to hang around. We have to get these chairs set up, but enough of a stay. It should only take a couple of minutes.
It has been a truly marvelous meeting. I'd like to ask Father Fred to close. We would like to invite all of you who would like to join us in the recitation of the Lord's Prayer. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.