HEAL OUR DEMOCRACY--MEND THE ELECTION REJECTION

 

ad, sad, that we have to watch President “in transition” Trump star as the Bamboozler in Chief sore loser in the Make Me Great Again post-election show.  God grant him the grace to exit to become an ex-president with some charitable character, perhaps even volunteering with Habitat for Humanity or at soup kitchens as others have done.  Use his billions to gainfully employ others in creative projects making life better those in need.  May his next national gig have as its theme and mission, “You’re Hired” not fired or dead from Covid – hiring to put some Americans to work for the common good, not personal profiteering forever padding one’s own wealth.

We should know by now there is danger in making a man with a mania for power and prestige our President.  May Mr. Trump be touched by the Sermon on the Mount.  This Thanksgiving I’ll be thankful for the arrival of a more presidential president—a man disposed to humility and truthfulness, difficult vital virtues for the job.  May God bless Joe Biden and make him faithful to the task.

by Yongsung-Kim

Jesus healing the man born blind from birth.

May the blind no longer lead the blind

And the rest with vision have no excuse,

But to follow the lead of truth and justice, forgiveness and mercy.

Reference

From the conservative Wall Street Journal  Nov. 25, 2020  https://www.wsj.com/articles/republicans-are-souring-on-trumps-antics-11606238991?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

Illumination by Kathy Brahney

OUR SHIP OF STATE IN TROUBLE  -  illumination by Kathy Brahney

My article, Who to Choose, to Truly Respect Life? - as appears in the online Times Herald.

https://www.thetimesherald.com/story/opinion/2020/10/23/mccarthy-respect-each-other-despite-divisions-religion-class-race-politics/3741610001/

THE ATTEMPT TO WALL OUT SUFFERING, WILL ONLY BRING MISERY TO OURSELVES

Reuters photo from the El Paso border detentions

Today I post updates to the immigration situation at our border, and how the Statue of Liberty has been turned on her head.   We close our gates and hearts to refugees at our own peril.  A gated community dies from within.  Joe Biden is not a perfect candidate, but read carefully the 8-24-20 Wall Street Journal article which contrasts his immigration stance against the current administration's policies that have appealed to racism and fear.

Joe Biden Would Likely Use a Familiar Tool—Executive Powers—to Reverse Trump Immigration Policies       https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-would-likely-use-a-familiar-toolexecutive-powersto-reverse-trump-immigration-policies-11598108400?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1

And more links to articles with the details of the current immigration crisis --

Vulnerable Border Community Battles Virus on ‘A Straight Up Trajectory’ - The New https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/19/us/coronavirus-texas-rio-grande-valley.html

PBS video tells a difficult story.  https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/a-firsthand-report-of-inhumane-conditions-at-a-migrant-childrens-detention-facility?fbclid=IwAR15mz6MT6LsZ5yb0QMAQy6_I1VyPV81uHNwoX0aOEziJ3JxTh-DZtN0iLc

Failed policies, even in their quest to be impervious.    After a Lull, the Number of Migrants Trying to Enter the U.S. Has Soared - The New York Times    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/world/americas/mexico-immigration-usa.html

The Mexico side of the border wall in Nogales. In remote areas, far from cities, the wall becomes a fence, or sometimes no barrier at all.Credit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

Hovering the cursor on a link turns it blue, and ready to go to the article indicated.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS--THE MOST DESTRUCTIVE TAR BABY OF ALL TIME

"The (nuclear) arms race is an utterly treacherous trap for humanity, and one which ensnares the poor to an intolerable degree.” 

- Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes (The Church in the Modern World,) no. 81

Fr. Richard McSorley S.J., a respected Jesuit at Georgetown University, with whom my daughter Maura worked for a while there, wrote an article in 1977 Sojourners magazine,  "It is a Sin to Build a Nuclear Weapon."  Time is running out on our charge to heed his admonition, and free ourselves from these nuclear shackles, these occasions of mortal sin. There is renewed hope.

e've just past the 75^th anniversary of the only, and devastating, uses of nuclear weapons in our world’s history thus far—Aug 6^th and 9^th in Japan.  Thanks be to God, and a good number of people’s common sense.  How much longer will political power hunger continue to subject us to the danger of mass self-destruction?  I hope you will spend some time with these references, and take action to support the initiatives that at minimum reinstate the treaties that now help hold back Armageddon.  and then further, to support the 2017 UN resolution [Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons] demands, ban all nuclear weapons, before resumed use ends life as we know it.  The Covid 19 pandemic is bad.  Nuclear war would be so much worse. 

A Pope Francis Holy Card

Pray and Act   --  Ora et Labora

What we can do to make a more peace filled future

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, ICAN, won the Noble Peace Prize in 2017.

https://www.icanw.org/  -- Join them..

A film to promote discussion - The Beginning of the End of Nuclear Weapons - {submitted by Marty         Habalewsky of our Blue Water Pax Christi group}

References

https://www.ploughshares.org/issues-analysis/article/real-lessons-trinity-and-hiroshima

A book review on this spiritual problem - https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/risk-cross-reckons-our-nuclear-danger

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/world/asia/hiroshima-japan-75th-anniversary.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/world/asia/hiroshima-japan-setsuko-thurlow.html

A video of Pope Francis' message that needs to be taken to heart, esp. here in the USA

Pope in Hiroshima: nuclear weapons are immoral  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pChlH2SH2gw&feature=emb_rel_end

Current global status of UN nations' support for the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons --two thirds. -- counting yet none of the world's nuclear weapons possessors.  

Don't let the world backslide on nuclear disarmament as our current administration intends - From the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops - Action Alert: Tell Your Members of Congress to Extend New START and Reduce the Nuclear Threat!

https://www.votervoice.net/USCCB/campaigns/75604/res

Illumination by Kathy Brahney

Hovering cursor on grey texts reveals links for click

Commemorate the 75 Years Since Nuclear Attacks: Tell Congress to Support Nuclear Nonproliferation.

Commemorate the 75 Years Since Nuclear Attacks: Tell Congress to Support Nuclear Nonproliferation.

FRENCH COUNTRY PRIEST--DESERTED WAR

When I was in 8^th grade thinking of becoming a priest, I read a short book on the life of St. John Vianney, the Cure of Ars.  He was a simple parish priest in France, and a child at the time of the French revolution, who was a mediocre preacher, yet sought out by a multitude of pilgrims to his remote parish, for his compassion and advice in the confessional, and as a counselor.  He’d spend 12-16 hours a day giving absolution. 

That was all I knew of him, a good solid unassuming model for the priesthood.  Today I’ve learned on his feast day, that he was also a conscientious objector to war.  This wasn’t mentioned in the book, or any of the other articles I’ve read on him through the years.  Our Sunday Visitor [a national Catholic publication I’ve come to respect for its balance] has a short note on him as their saint of this week:  “His studies were interrupted when he was drafted into the army to fight in the Napoleonic Wars.  Deserting, he returned home and when to Lyons seminary.”

There are so many saints who’ve chosen to follow the way of Jesus out of the fog of war, “Put away the sword.”  We’re seldom told the full measure of their stories.  The duty of defending the countries of the world is redeemed by our God who comes to earth saving us by dying on a cross, rising  beyond all worldly kingdoms, defeating death by loving and forgiving the enemy.  Death is not the end.  Do you believe?  A young man, who was to become a small town priest in war torn France, visited by multitudes for his straight forward wisdom, knew the answer.

 More recent conscientious objectors

Jane Kopecky, author or "World War II Conscientious Objectors Germfask, Michigan, The Alcatraz Camp", next to the Camp Germfask CCC camp sign. (Photo: Susanne Barr

A recent article in Times Herald, and Detroit Free Press tells of a little known camp in the U.P. for conscientious objectors in WWII—and mentions there were 151 of these work camps throughout the country, with some 12,000 C.O.s interned.  

Sol Gadol, New York, hauls fuel wood into one of the buildings at the camp- Wood cutting was one of the important jobs at the camp- Photo Escanaba Daily Press handout.

Because of good example and encouragement by many, including a priest in a rural parish with farmers and migrant farmworkers, I became a C.O. during the Vietnam War. 

References

https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-john-vianney/   This is the usual biography, made more complete by the Our Sunday Visitor entry in their Aug. 2-8, 2020 issue.

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/07/12/germfask-michigan-american-siberia-world-war-2/5168666002/

 

DIALOGUE ON TRUTH, IN A TIME OF FAKE NEWS

From Columbia Journalism Review

A dialogue continued from my article two weeks ago on the problems of discerning truth in the media, FOURTH OF JULY ADVISORY—BEWARE THE FATHER OF ALL LIES.  It came from a long-time friend at our local St. Mary parish who often takes the time to respond to my messages.  Jim is a conservative, competent, compassionate businessman who has travelled widely.  Our viewpoints are often different, but our discussions remain thoughtful and respectful.  That’s a blessing.

Mike,

I see you’ve started writing a bit of comedy.

“If good reliable sources of news can be regularly discredited, then we are hostages to the political leadership.”

Haha, “good reliable sources of news”. Funny stuff.

Name one...

Your friend,

Jim

Jim,

WSJ, the AP, and NYT, and NPR on the airwaves.  They have journalistic standards and editors who guard the store in terms of reliable, confirmed stories.  Respectable journalism does exist in a few national and local newspapers.  None are absolutely infallible, but these, and others like the San Jose Mercury News, have good editors, and a very good record.  These all contrast the liberal and conservative perspectives in search of the truth. If we have no trustworthy news, we have no democracy.

      Your friend,

              Mike

Mike,

I do not trust much that comes from any of the organizations you name, especially the NY Times (the “old gray lady” died decades ago) , and I do not know the San Jose Mercury News. In fact, I don’t trust much of anything that is reported in the media today, and that includes Fox News if you’re wondering.

They’re all in the same boat. It’s all entertainment and sensationalism.

They should not have to balance the liberal and conservative views. In news reporting there should NOT be any liberal or conservative views. It is news. It is facts. They should be reporting the facts. Facts and truth do not have a liberal or conservative bent to it. It is what it is. Tell us what happened and only tell us what happened. Nothing more and nothing less. Show us the pictures and the video and let us decide what we want to do with that information. Let the viewer decide what to think of it.

Do not try and tell me your opinion or your side of the issue. Get rid of these so-called “panels of experts” (I love the word “expert”. It tells me that the person is nothing more than an “ex-spurt” if you know what I mean) and just tell us what is happening in the world without a slant right or left.

Journalism is dead in this country and has been for years. They all want to be the next Woodward and Bernstein. So called journalists today are all about trying to catch someone doing something wrong and to be the “first” to get the story told. Even if that story is untrue or they don’t know all the facts. It is more important to be first than to be correct. No one reports the news anymore, they try to invent it.

It is unfortunate as the country does need a news source (I agree with you there) and none exist at the moment. All of today’s media outlets are nothing more than vendors selling a product. Every one of them. And do you know what that product is? It is you and me. We are the product. We are sold by the networks to advertisers when they show them their ratings. They tell them they have “X” number of millions of viewers or listeners and that they should advertise on their network. We are the product, the media is the vendor, and the advertiser is the customer. So they try to make the news as sensational as possible in order to raise their viewership numbers and sell their air time to the advertisers.

What a person has to do today is read and watch many sources and decide for themselves what makes sense. Do not blindly listen and believe. Be a skeptic and dig further. And use what is in such short supply today…. common sense. If a story seems unreal or unlikely then it probably is. I try to do that but at times I have to step back from any news before it drives me crazy.

Your friend,

Jim

Jim,

     I don't have quite the negative view that you have on the character of many of our reporters and news agencies, but agree with your premise and sentiment, and commitment to do our own diligent search for the facts.  I've read your note here just after having written my latest web article which I think you'll appreciate.  Would you agree to my adding your words here to my article as a guest commentator of often different opinions than my own?

      Your friend,

             Mike

Jim agrees to my publishing our back and forth on this issue, and, after his read of my second article on the subject of the media, THE TRUTH THE WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH?, responded—

Well written, Mike. 

Jim

May all of us keep striving to reach some common ground on the problems that confront our country and world.  Grounded in the truth, firm yet forgiving, so help us God.

 

Jesus before Pilate - "What is Truth?"

THE TRUTH THE WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH?

From the Pew Research Center website - 1-17-20

Discerning truth in our times of prolific fragmented media can be very difficult.  In a drawn out discussion with my nephew this past weekend, we went back and forth on whether Fox News commentators, or NYT and WSJ editors, were to be trusted for the facts.  He’s a committed young evangelical pastor in South Florida who believes very much in Jesus, and also that President Trump is the best choice to lead our country.  Our faith in God is the same, the way in which God would have us direct our political lives starkly different, as are our sources of information.

t is problematic for us people of faith to confront parts of our traditions, and secular histories, that are myth, or misdirections of true faith in a merciful nonviolent God of unconditional love.  God’s truth can open the way.  The way of Jesus is not the way of the world.  We are all caught between this world or Jesus ways in countless little decisions we face each day.  We can help discover ever more of God’s love and mercy in our lives, or we can try to conquer and overwhelm truth playing into the hands of evil means because we think our goals, personal or as a country, are so important.

 

The mass media, relying on seductive fleeting audiovisual messages that you must follow at their speed with little time for reflection, has brought us to a dangerous juncture.  Print media is being abandoned.  Yet when you read, you can much better compare and substantiate the opinion you are forming and its factual basis.  Words have to stay there in front of you, ready while you determine their worth. 

Video seeing and hearing on an electronic screen is not believing.  The truth required for belief takes much deeper thought, work and prayer.  Consider all the alternatives.  Take time to make up your mind and heart.  Then may we be given the courage to act positively on our decisions.

We need to be well informed, researching and comparing sources, listening to and contrasting information presented by the other sides on issues.  Wise as serpents gentle as doves.  Sheep of responsibility, following the Good Shepherd, and not the blind purveyors of the latest powerful political product line.

Op-ed on media bias by the Columbia Journalism Review

https://www.cjr.org/opinion/bias-journalism.php

From CJR also, article on TV commentator affiliation disclosure

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/state-of-the-union-commentators.php

Illumination by Kathy Brahney

FOURTH OF JULY ADVISORY—BEWARE THE FATHER OF ALL LIES

Does anyone remember reading in George Orwell’s “1984” about the memory holes.  Out of print, shredded, down a hole—it virtually never happened—out of sight out of mind erased from the public consciousness.  Modernize this with current electronic media manipulation possibilities and the massive amount of mind-diversion info flooding towards us daily, and you have an informed-democracy destroying poison.

This national administration’s outcry of “fake news” whenever its script is challenged, has an eerie ring to it, often creating a real fake news in its own crying wolf.  If good reliable sources of news can be regularly discredited, then we are hostages to the political leadership.  This tactic has been employed all too often worldwide and in the land of the free. 

It was first made most obvious to me, and those paying attention, in the Iran-Contra trials of the mid-1980’s.  Colonel Oliver North testified [paraphrased] -- I lied to serve my country.  He, and many others, promoted the concept of disinformation as a common acceptable method for achieving America’s valued objectives.  Disinformation directed outwardly, and also towards our own nation’s citizenry.

But to quote Jesus, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” We must be on guard against disinformation, another tool of the father of all lies.   It’s a free press, a balanced search for the facts, and a full gospel of justice and mercy faithfully lived, that can make us a free people.

  

A balanced bio on Oliver North

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-03-01-mn-7033-story.html

More opinions - We all fail to some degree in living the truth [to be continued next week]

https://theintercept.com/2018/05/12/oliver-north-nra-iran-contra/

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/opinion/trump-russia-iran-contra.html

MYSTICAL ETERNAL MOLECULES OF LOVE

Painting by Ande Gaines McCarthy - from Hubble telescope photo

As we lose our friends and family through death, we must keep in mind that we are a mystical communion, that surpasses our worldly existence.  This is our Christian faith and promise.  Ande and I sing at more funerals as we grow older.

Riding past the cemetery this morning after daily mass I see thousands of headstones.  Where are their souls now?  -- miniscule spirit molecules that have been distributed throughout eternity – important fragments of the mystical body of Christ – completed personal particles of our common life in God, forgiveness and love without end, no longer limited by our logic, time, and space definitions.

rayer for a church striving to live into its new evangelization.

      Lord, send us servant leaders.  Priests and other faithful, according to the Order of Melchizedek steeped in knowledge and tradition, yes.  But let us not hitch our star to the hierarchical, and lose that youthful inclusive closeness to Jesus.  Because Our Savior is the servant leader merciful God model for us all clergy or laity male and female, lowly washer of the feet in John’s Gospel—John’s only way of describing the Last Supper Eucharist, our communion with Jesus.

 Illumination by Kathy Brahney

BLESSINGS ON MAURA AND BILL'S WEDDING

Photos by Graydon Allerton

The father of the bride’s toast that wasn’t given at the open-air reception after the beautiful front doorstep wedding.  A wedding full of sunshine more-so in the present moment weathering the pandemic.

Maura and Bill,

Maura our firstborn:  From early on we called you Momo, Momocito.  You were a small gift and began, as shot from a cannon eager to learn and do everything in body mind and spirit.  And you’ve come to do so much for so many, by being inclusive, ingenious, and compassionate.

Bill, I know you certainly less well, but from what I know I can imagine a wee one bristling with ideas, projects, and the perseverance to complete them.  And you’ve come to benefit so many with your wealth of talents.

God bless you both now, in your promises, and keep you in your love that is so generous, creating new possibilities for good innovative jobs for others, and for more justice and truth in our troubled world.  And may we your friends and family help give life to your efforts.

Some of what they've done thus far --
https://www.bluhomes.com/   

https://www.dragonflytx.com/

https://www.skyhawktx.com/  initiated by daughter Kathleen.
https://www.worldconnect-us.org/

https://www.uncommonproductions.com/  plus a number of Bill's previous startups.

P.S.  Ande and my 42nd wedding anniversary is tomorrow.  I thank you Jesus, and Ande, for such overwhelming love.

Artwork by Chagall

RIDING THROUGH THE PANDEMIC TO DAILY MASS

Photo by Michael McCarthy

Riding up the highway to daily mass again this early morning, the wind is neutral and bike shocks disengaged for easier miles on main road blacktop shoulder.  Five miles to St. Eds and five miles back.  It's one of about 3 different morning mass treks I try to do regularly.  Mass schedules are fluctuant with the pandemic, and the priest shortages.  Still good exercise for body and soul.

Having been an episodic daily mass goer since early childhood, I’ve been well blessed with health work and family.  Looking about the other faithful attendees I’ve always thought I was amongst the youngest there, so much grey hair about.  Now at age 72 I’m still pushing youngest, but most all of us grey heading towards eternity.

As I pedal along Lake Huron shores I pass by a hundred long little lanes leading to houses on the lake.  These entries wind through the forest that borders the shore.  Bright green narrow passages each leading to a sunburst lake household of individual lives.  Beautiful expensive and difficult to sustain.

n the highway’s other side I see, many less spectacular dwellings, and two spacious nursing home complexes, open and communal, front sides blazing in the morning sun, no tree canopy shading access.  Many of us are on the route there, together yet more isolated from the rest of society.

At mass the sun pierces the stained glass, and ancient scripture enlightens the current political darkness and our individual quandaries.  Familiar faces now wear masks to protect each other.  There is no sermon, but the Gospel is from the Sermon on the Mount, my favorite.  God continues to confound, and inspire.  In this time our Catholic church launches a New Evangelization to promote this Good News, we are all pummeled with the pandemic.

In our local parishes a full year before this health crisis, the intentions of the Prayers of the Faithful, which had invited the people to voice their personal petitions, have now been sanitized to only the pre-prepared list.  This verbal social distancing discourages an evangelical spirit.  With the pandemic the congregation’s interaction to greet each other with a sign of peace, has been dropped altogether.  The common handshake could have been supplanted by an open-palmed acknowledgement of each other from our 6 feet spacings.  Instead, we’ve quickly kissed goodbye to the Kiss of Peace.

Skywriting above St. Peters, Rome, Italy

So I’m missing some of the “open windows and doors” of Vatican II inspired church celebrations.   Riding the miles home the wind is at my back, and I’m confident the all-merciful God will heal us all if we’ll only listen to God’s Word, and live God’s socially unifying justice.

Full disclosure—I live on this lakeshore, in an old-school comfortable home built in 1925. [First photo above -- taken from our house]

Illumination by Kathy Brahney

SAINTS FOR OUR TROUBLED TIMES

Franz Jagerstatter -- Born June 7, 1907 -- Executed 1943 refused to support the Nazis, despite the pressure his village placed on him--Styria Verlag.

George Floyd -- Born 1973

Died 2020 of police brutality, for passing alleged counterfeit $20 bill. Ex-con, was in Christian ministry, known as "gentle giant."

n the world of Franz Jagerstatter it was lethally dangerous to be resolutely against war.  An Austrian farmer and family man, he was beheaded for refusing to swear the oath to Hitler during WWII.  There’s hope in his faithful courage.  During our present time it’s dangerous to be black in areas of our country where police authority is on militarized steroids.  Most recently, George Floyd choked to death, a police knee on his neck.  There’s hope in the many overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrations of outrage, in the USA and elsewhere, with black and white multi-racial groups demanding significant change of racist policies and hardened autocratic hearts.  Much more needs doing to achieve a real democracy, with liberty and justice for all.

The feast day of Blessed Franz Jagerstatter is commemorated by the Franciscans as yesterday June 7.  [There are multiple Catholic calendars of the saints, Mar. 21 being also listed for Franz.]  Please see their summary of his life and death--and return to previous entries of my own, for further information.  There are 52 saints listed on the date of Mar. 21.

There is now an inspiring contemporary full-length film on Franz, A Hidden Life, to complement the more accurately faith-based, 1971 film, The Refusal.

The poet musician Leonard Cohen sang of the challenge now brewing for our democracy before his death in 2016.  Lyrics below, song here.

Democracy

It's coming through a hole in the air
From those nights in Tiananmen Square
It's coming from the feel
That this ain't exactly real
Or it's real, but it ain't exactly there
From the wars against disorder
From the sirens night and day
From the fires of the homeless
From the ashes of the gay
Democracy is coming to the USA
It's coming through a crack in the wall
On a visionary flood of alcohol
From the staggering account
Of the Sermon on the Mount
Which I don't pretend to understand at all
It's coming from the silence
On the dock of the bay,
From the brave, the bold, the battered
Heart of Chevrolet
Democracy is coming to the USA

It's coming from the sorrow in the street
The holy places where the races meet
From the homicidal bitchin'
That goes down in every kitchen
To determine who will serve and who will eat
From the wells of disappointment
Where the women kneel to pray
For the grace of God in the desert here
And the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the USA

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on

It's coming to America first
The cradle of the best and of the worst
It's here they got the range
And the machinery for change
And it's here they got the spiritual thirst
It's here the family's broken
And it's here the lonely say
That the heart has got to open
In a fundamental way
Democracy is coming to the USA

It's coming from the women and the men
O baby, we'll be making love again
We'll be going down so deep
The river's going to weep,
And the mountain's going to shout Amen
It's coming like the tidal flood
Beneath the lunar sway
Imperial, mysterious
In amorous array
Democracy is coming to the USA

Sail on, sail on

I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can't stand the scene
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight
Getting lost in that hopeless little screen
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
That Time cannot decay
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
This little wild bouquet
Democracy is coming to the USA

Previous entries on Franz

http://mccarthysweekly-paxvobiscum.blogspot.com/2011/07/blessed-franz-jaggerstatter-family-man.html

http://mccarthysweekly-paxvobiscum.blogspot.com/2012/06/2012-blessed-franz-jagerstatter-novena.html

http://mccarthysweekly-paxvobiscum.blogspot.com/2014/07/blessed-franz-help-us-stop-trusting-war.html

http://mccarthysweekly-paxvobiscum.blogspot.com/2010/07/innocence-sacrificed-to-warblessed.html

References
https://www.franciscanmedia.org/blessed-franz-jagerstatter/
     "A Hidden Life", film by Terrence Malik  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5827916/
"The Refusal" a story of Franz Jägerstätter, a semi-documentary filmed in black-and-white in German with English subtitles alternating dramatizations with actual interviews with Jägerstätter's wife, priest, and other villagers, Der Fall Jägerstätter (1971

     Democracy, by Leonard Cohen - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU-RuR-qO4Y

https://acatholiclife.blogspot.com/2005/09/catholic-feast-days.html
     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_J%C3%A4gerst%C3%A4tter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd

Illumination by Kathy Brahney

BLACK LIVES MATTER, OR NONE OF OURS DO

Good update on this terrible Detroit 1967 time of police & army over-reaction to be found here

I remember the riots in Detroit summer of 1967.  Having attended Sacred Heart Seminary at Chicago & Linwood near the center of the clash between inner city residents and police/national guard, I returned at the end of that summer to help a couple of days at a child care center in the area.  The rage and distress of some of these young black children shocked me—the white caregiver.  The gulf between their life and mine all too evident.  An extensive Kerner Commission Report was written in 1968 for Congress, trying to explain the roots of this explosion of violence breaking forth from the suffocation of society’s racism.  But very little has changed.  Governmental, economic, & political abuse of power is a virtual jailor for a major portion of the black community, especially those most poor.  And few of us who live on the other side have family or real personal relationship with people of color.

From footage of 9 minutes of a police asphyxiating George Floyd--from Fox News

Full video can be seen here--tragic & disturbing

One terrible recent result: the death of George Floyd with a white policeman kneeling relentlessly remorselessly on his neck.  And the death of countless others down through back alleys of current American history.  We are a divided country founded to a significant degree on the backs of African slaves.  There has been a brief period of recognition brought to us by African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement.  The danger now is that we become ever again more divided in a resurgent economic and social racism.

here is much to do for people of faith, and for the whole country.  The Sermon on the Mount is not a sermon of law & order, to the victor go the spoils, might makes right.  We must all reach out in ways that go way beyond the offer of a handout.  Firm personal and societal connections must be made which bridge the gulf and persist, providing paths to true justice and mercy.  Jesus is a person of color.  Praise the Lord, all brothers and sisters, whites too, are invited to the heavenly banquet! 

Sources & references

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/1968-kerner-commission-got-it-right-nobody-listened-180968318/

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6159291724001?fbclid=IwAR0rl6RtPnwxTYbdW5sybH5BWd6ek5BkvdPnWqrSX9WIJy1cU2CHYmKzO-A#sp=show-clips

More info on how this happened

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/05/29/why-george-floyd-was-arrested-and-what-happened-in-the-minutes-following/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/derek-chauvin-george-floyd-worked-security-el-nuevo-rodeo-nightclub-shifts/

The U.S. in these violent times faces a violent challenge to family values. Some personal reaction

Living Abroad Is My Way of Prolonging My Black Son’s Life - The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/parenting/black-child-safety-america.html?action=click&algo=als_engaged2_desk_filter&block=editors_picks_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=333502436&impression_id=845739131&index=2&pgtype=Article&region=ccolumn&action=click&module=editorContent&pgtype=Article&region=CompanionColumn&contentCollection=Trending

Illumination by Kathy Brahney

PANDEMIC PERFIDY – MIGRANT CHILDREN ABUSED BY OUR SYSTEM

 Border Patrol agents detaining immigrants near Mission, Texas, on 12-11-19 - The government has put a halt to most immigration since the pandemic began. PHOTO: JOHN MOORE/GETTY IMAGES

Veterans for Peace, Northwest Michigan Chapter 50 publicly honors fallen Michigan service men and women with flags and crosses on Memorial Day and Veterans Day.
Photo Special to the Insider – Photo credit: VFP

Do we remember this Memorial Day the values that so many died in war for?  Will the spirit of welcome, liberty and justice for all, die with an ever-increasing tendency to shutter our borders to those who seek our shelter?  Are we becoming Fortress America?  Walls do a prison make, on both sides of the wall.

From LIfeZette

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-administration-changes-rules-for-migrant-children-during-pandemic-11590141601?mod=hp_lead_pos6&mod=djemCapitalJournalDaybreak

“The Trump administration is reversing longstanding policies on the treatment of children and families who come into the U.S. illegally, citing laws and court rulings related to the coronavirus pandemic as reasons for changes it has long sought.”

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-trump-administration-is-rushing-deportations-of-migrant-children-during-coronavirus

“As the nation remains focused on COVID-19, the U.S. government has aggressively begun to rush the deportations of some of the most vulnerable migrant children in its care to countries where they have been raped, beaten or had a parent killed, according to attorneys, court filings and congressional staff.”(ProPublica and Texas Tribune) Read this full article for a better personal understanding of this governmental attack on family values.

ave faith.  There is hope to bring our country to a new appreciation of welcoming the alien, since we are almost all historically immigrants.  For a deeper understanding of what we face as we come to grips with the continued violent results of our past wars in Central America and the Middle East, please visit the site Interfaith Immigration Coalition -  “People of Faith to Trump Administration- Stop Abuse of Migrant Children” http://www.interfaithimmigration.org/2020/05/20/people-of-faith-to-trump-administration-stop-abuse-of-migrant-children/.  They have resources for continued prayer, study, action.

May we be part of a solution to these refugee families’ struggle to build a renewed life, despite the double jeopardy of pandemic and political stumbling blocks.

More personal stories from the New York Times, 10 Years Old, Tearful and Confused After a Sudden Deportation .

"When Jesus saw this, he became angry and said, "Let the children come to me! Don't try to stop them. People who are like these little children belong to the kingdom of God." Mark 10:14

 Illumination by Kathy Brahney

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