"First I want to say that I stand here as the beneficiary of visionary parenting. One of the great gifts that I received from my mother and father and beyond them from their parents was a gift of warmth, and openness—concepts of not just tolerance but also inclusion.

 

We talk a lot about tolerance in this country. We hear people say they are tolerant of people regardless of race, creed or orientation. Tolerance is only a first step. My parents taught me that tolerance leaves us short of the ultimate goal of inclusion.

 

What your faith and my faith share is an idea of inclusion. We accept that the creator is the creator of all and as such we are all God’s people and none are to be excluded but rather included as we love one another as ourselves.

 

My home was a place where we learned that."

 

"On my father’s side my grandfather died long before I was born but that man Angelo Lafayette Paterno coordinated and organized an Inter-Faith dialogue group in New York City as early as the 1940s. He talked about all the religious groups reaching out to each other and was inclusive of not only different religions but also blacks. This was in the 1940s—long before the ideas of tolerance and civil rights had become a National cause.

 

When Pope Francis visited New York City I thought of my grandfather and father as I watched the interfaith service at the site of ground zero. It was a beautiful service one encompassing all faiths and proving that we can be inclusive and we can stand and worship next to each other and set aside division, discord and hate.

 

I thought of my father’s funeral at an all-faith spiritual center on Penn State’s campus funded by a campaign that he and my mother helped spearhead. They donated over $1 million of their own money and secured a $5 million gift from Frank and Sylvia Pasquerilla and $1 million from Nike co-founder Phil Knight. T

 

hat All-Faith Spiritual Center at Penn State was the dream of many people—including my parents. Today it is the largest on-campus center of its kind in the country and hosts nearly 4 dozen campus ministries. It includes a kosher kitchen and a Muslim prayer room facing Mecca.

 

Programming at the center encourages dialogue between religious groups that in other parts of the world would be facing off in armed conflict. It was a seed planted in the hopes that it could grow to be an example for other schools and other places.

 

Given the rapidly increasing diversity and the growth of the international student population at Penn State it will have an impact beyond the borders of the campus.

 

It is fair to say that Angelo Lafayette Paterno was a visionary man, a man well ahead of his time and those values were learned by his son Joe Paterno and passed on to his children.

 

My father was a great admirer of the Jewish Faith. He would talk about your commitment to the family, your commitment to education and the deep pride in your traditions and history. He admired how your faith has endured—withstanding adversity and horrors but always seeming to emerge stronger. "

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"Team sports are about commonality. It is about joining together and finding that which binds us together rather than focusing on that which divides us.

 

Football is a beautiful game. It has a place for people of many skills—there are big strong people, there are smaller faster players. There are people who throw the ball, people who catch the ball. There is brute strength, there is speed, there are blunt force plays and there are electric plays. There are violent collisions and graceful moves.