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/