A slug admires a cicada

Pax et bonum

Planned Parenthood: Government funding is used to help provide abortions

Planned Parenthood doesn't use government funding to perpetrate abortions?

Not directly, but as Lila Rose notes:

FACT: Under Title X, taxpayers directly prop up Planned Parenthood's abortion business by funding:

Staff salaries
Infrastructure
Rent
Utilities
Abortion facilities
Outreach
Lobbying efforts
Expansion

So it is using that money to help promote and provide abortions.

Pax et bonum

That wake stuff

As I tried to compile pictures for my wake slideshow (no, I'm not sick or dying, just proactive), I realized how hard it could be for my survivors.

From my adult life, I was generally the person taking the pictures, so there are only a few times when I was being photographed.

Many are from me as Santa, but I really don't want to use those (Santa died?). A number are from plays, but multiple images from the same event seems too repetitive. Our wedding includes a number of pictures, but the same repetitive argument holds here. Then there are shots of me playing music for Mass or Franciscans. How many of those can we show, though?

I haven't found too many from when I was young. I'll keep looking, but this is not going to be easy.

Given my family history/genetics, I've probably got a couple of decades to go.

Pax et bonum

Stand Out for Life

More than 100 people joined us July 28 for Stand Out for Life outside Rochester's Planned Parenthood on University Avenue. They prayed the Rosary, sang, prayed silently, and listened to speakers.

 

Love will end abortion.

Life will prevail!

Pax et bonum

More potential wake slideshow photos

 

 

 

Pax et bonum

For my wake slideshow video (first batch)

 

Morbid? Maybe. But having been to a few wakes lately where they have those slideshows of pictures from the person's life, with music, I thought gee, maybe I could make it easy on the survivors - and exercise some control over the images and the music - by putting together my own slide show. Maybe I'd even use recordings of me and/or Rock of Faith playing for the music bed! 

 

One problem: I'm usually the photographer, so there's lots of pictures in my files of other people, but not a lot of me. Here are a few I've found. Maybe some of my art and nature pictures to go with them? Hmm.  

 

FYI: I'm not seriously ill or on the verge of death. Given my family's history, I could have 20-30 more years to go!

 

Pax et bonum

Slug poems?

Pax et bonum

Get the facts: Thousands of women weren’t dying from abortion before Roe v. Wade

I've been saying this for years.



Get the facts: Thousands of women weren’t dying from abortion before Roe v. Wade




Pax et bonum

Saluting Frederick Douglass

Abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who lived in my city (Rochester, N.Y.) for some 25 years, is being honored for his 200th birthday in a special way.

Douglass was born a slave. (We don't know his actual birth year; he accepted 1818 as the most likely year.) While a slave, he taught himself to read and write. He eventually escaped slavery and later settled here, publishing a newspaper (The North Star), and becoming a noted writer and speaker (even at the risk of being caught and sent back South), and a friend of Susan B. Anthony.

Indeed, one of the major bridges in downtown Rochester is the "Frederick Douglass-Susan B. Anthony Bridge." There's even a statue of him with Anthony.



Another statue of him is in a local park.

  

A coalition here has started the "Re-Energizing the Legacy of Frederick Douglass" initiative, part of which involves placing new statues of Douglass (for which Douglass's great-great-great-grandson served as the model!) around places that were significant in his life. The first statues are going up this week; a total of 13 statues are planned.

I think that is great. I have long admired his courage and determination, and have used his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave in whole or part in my classes for years. Last year, for example, my middle school students read the chapters about how he taught himself to read and write.

Douglass is a genuine American hero and an important part of our history.

If you have not done so, read his autobiography. It's short, but inspiring.

Pax et bonum

Restoring the Tabernacle!

The Good Looking One and I had to attend Mass at a different parish this past weekend, so when I went to our home parish the next day for daily Mass I made sure I got a copy of the bulletin.

To my delight, I discovered a small announcement:

"BRINGING THE HOLY EUCHARIST INTO THE MAIN BODY OF THE CHURCH"

Yes!

Back in 1998, our parish church was "renovated." The pastor at that time wanted it to be the latest thing. He spent a lot of our cash reserves because the people wouldn't put up the money for his dream. (We quit the parish for a while over that one.)

The church building was old, worn out, and did need some work. But this went much further than painting, re-carpeting, or repairing. The building was transformed from a long traditional church into one of those church-in-a-semicircle sort of modern things to encourage a sense of community and closeness, or some such reason. The altar was moved from one of the long ends of the church to one of the side walls around which the pews were arranged a semicircle. A new main entrance/gathering space was installed on the opposite side wall.

The balcony/choir loft that used to be at the back of the church (where the main entrance had been) was kept, but the stairs up to it removed and two confessional rooms and a perpetual adoration chapel installed beneath it. That balcony is unused - no way to get to it except by ladder - so it just sits up there gathering dust. (Never understood that move.) Meanwhile, the choir/music groups now stand to the left of the new main altar, blocking access to one of the side altars making it more difficult for people to get to that altar to light votive candles.

Not sure who did this planning.

Back to the back. The new perpetual adoration chapel that was built there was kept open 24-hours a day, the door to it kept unlocked, with the door into the main church kept locked except for Masses, confessions, and church events. The Tabernacle was placed in the chapel, allowing for perpetual adoration. I did like having the chapel, and made use of it. But I always wondered about how safe the Tabernacle was there, and about the hassles of having to send someone there during Masses to retrieve or return the blessed hosts.

According toe the bulletin piece, the parish is requesting permission from the Bishop to move the Tabernacle to the Sanctuary. "We believe that this change will foster our efforts to emphasize the real presence and mystery of Christ in the Mass and in the Eucharist," the piece notes. "The Chapel will continue to be used for private adoration."

The parish is awaiting permission to make the move, and hopes to have the new Tabernacle installed before Advent.

I applaud this effort. I think the Tabernacle belongs in the main church in the Sanctuary. I never understood the renovation projects and new church buildings that stuck it off to the side somewhere.

Maybe having the Body of Christ right there will help to increase reverence.

Maybe people will stop carrying on the loud conversations and leaving Mass early if that sense of reverence increases.

Okay, maybe I'm overly optimistic about that.

But I will welcome the Tabernacle being back in the church.

Now if we can only figure out a use for that dust-gathering balcony. Or how to even get up to it other than by ladder.

Perhaps we should ask St. Joseph of Cupertino to offer some suggestions or to say a few prayers for us ....

Pax et bonum

Why I Never Go to Mass, er, Shower

Reasons I never go to Mass shower

 

1) I was forced to shower as a child.

2) People who shower are hypocrites. They think they are cleaner than everyone else.

3) There are so many different kinds of soap, I could never decide which one was right.

4) I used to shower, but it got boring so I stopped.

5) I shower only on special occasions, like Easter and Christmas.

6) None of my friends shower.

7) I’m still young. When I’m older and have gotten a bit dirtier, I might start showering.

8) I really don’t have time to shower.

9) The bathroom is never warm enough in the winter or cool enough in the summer.

10) People who make soap are only after your money.

 

(There’s more)

 

– I get along very well without showering.

– I work hard all week and am too tired to take a shower on the weekend.

– The first bar of soap I ever used gave me a rash, so I haven’t gone near soap since.

 (Allegedly posted by a priest in Ireland in his parish bulletin.)

Pax et bonum

The Faith-Tinged Haiku of Johnny Baranski

Johnny Baranski (May 1, 1948 - Jan. 24, 2018) and I had been following each other on Twitter for a while. I always appreciated his haiku, and had a sense of his spirituality and commitment to social justice. But, to be honest, I did not know a great about him personally.

Sadly, he died in January after a battle with cancer.

I learned he was indeed Catholic - I saw him described at "devout." I learned about his long career of opposing war and nuclear weapons, and supporting social ministry. I learned he had spent time in jail for his opposition to war and weapons - something I respect and which I consider honorable.

I wish I had known him better when he was alive. We could have talked about faith, helping the poor, protesting, and more.

Below are some of his haiku related to his faith and time in prison.

winter moon
the A-bomb dome
casting a shadow

our time together
short but sweet
prison yard snow

in ten summers
the convict’s first visit
dragonfly

in the prison graveyard
just as he was in life—
convict 14302

a walk-off home run
up and over
the prison wall

for a moment
the war be damned
cherry blossoms

prison lights out
drifting off to distant places
a train whistle

road to freedom
just a stone’s throw beyond
the prison yard

 

Nagasaki sunrise
their shadows tell
the story    

 

predator drone the butterfly is yellow  

 

off prison barbed wire
snow taking
the edge

 

prison lights out
drifting off to distant places
a train whistle

 

           moonlit spider
web weaving
          cell bar to cell bar

 

chrysanthemum garden
in this world too
bomb makers

 

basketball stops
in the exercise yard–
convicts shoot the breeze

 

jail visitor:
the warmth of her eyes
through bulletproof glass

 

amber wheat fields —
no one talks about
the missile silos

 

far from the mainland
reaching through the fog–
prison lights

 

                 In my jail cell
a shrinking pencil point
      grows many flowers
                                                           

Here is his "death" poem, written two days before he died:

one last breath
before dying—
plum blossom

Pray for us, Johnny.

Pax et bonum

Touched By Two Deaths

 

This past week I learned about the deaths of two old friends: Father Ted Metzger and Tom Dietz. 

They were not friends who had been active parts of my life recently (for various reasons), but they were friends who had been important in my life around the same time, and who affected me in ways that touch me still.

I first met Father Metzger in 1976. I was in the college seminary at the time, and I needed a place to stay for the summer. He agreed to let me live in the rectory of the parish where he was pastor.

I had a job as a security guard working an afternoon/evening shift, he was taking classes, so during the week we had little interaction. But on the weekends we talked.

He was a gentle, caring person, and I needed that at the time as I struggled with whether or not to continue in the seminary. He listened, asked questions, but didn't push. I did ultimately leave the seminary, but it was my choice and he helped me to understand why I made that choice.

We also shared a love of old movies. We talked about them, and he even introduced me to Gone With the Wind, which, at that time, was playing in theaters, and which I had never seen before.

In addition, he allowed me to join the small "folk group" that played at Mass at his parish. I had never really played in public before (other than one joke performance in high school). Although I only played with the group for a few months, it led me into liturgical music, something I've continued doing in one form or another for more than 40 years (including my current involvement with Rock of Faith). The leader of the group also wanted to form a group to play more secular folk music at coffee houses. We practiced, I learned a good deal, and we did play out once - the first time I ever played in public (other than at church).

During the down times when Father wasn't there and I wasn't working, I did a lot of reading and writing. The rectory was topped by a cupola - a small room on top of the roof sometimes called a "widow's walk"  or "widow's watch." I used to go up there, and remembering the legend that these small rooms were where the wives of sailors would go to watch the sea to see if their husbands were coming home, I wrote what became my first published poem:

The Widow's Walk

A sail!

The young trip as they run.
The old curse their stiffness.
And all eyes turn to the sea
as on the widow's walk they stand.

There is motion on the sea road;
hearts flutter
as moving shapes become faces.

The exodus begins.
The young run down the stairs.
The old no longer curse.
Doors open.
Arms open
and close in warm embrace.

Far above,
silent eyes watch
as the road empties.
Tears begin to fall
down the stairs
as on the widow's walk she stands.

I left the rectory at the end of the summer, though I kept coming back to the parish for a while to play with the folk group (not having a car, though, by winter I had stopped doing so). Because of my work and family, and his various assignments out of the area and even out of the country, Father and I were not in regular contact. Still, I did see him occasionally through diocesan events and my work with the diocesan newspaper. Whenever he saw me he'd smile and declare, "It's a Lee."

 

Tom's death came more recently. I met him at college after I left the seminary. We had some mutual friends, and were part of the same circle. We shared a love of music - he taught me some ways to improve my playing, we frequented the college coffee house, and so on. He even tried to teach me how to box. We'd spend hours talking and telling jokes. He was such a caring, decent person.

I wrote a song about this time about a woman who drank too much (the typical good-hearted but flawed woman bluesy type song) and Tom showed up in one of the verses:

Maggie met Dietz one time in a bar
he'd been singing and playing guitar all the night.
Maggie got up, and started to sing,
Dietz didn't mind 'cause together they sounded so right.
She sang the high parts, he sang the low,
She ran out of steam when her whiskey got low,
Dietz didn't mind he just went home and played some mo'.

(What helps to make this song extra special to me was while I wrote most of it, my good friend and playing partner Dave Nittler later helped with a couple of lines, and we used to play it at local coffee houses. Dave, sadly, died a couple of years ago. So this song now reminds me of two old friends.)

I last saw Tom shortly after college. We had to part ways for personal reasons, though there was no fault on his part for those reasons. But I've thought of him often in the years since, and have told stories about him. One was about the time when he was a child and had wandered out of his home and gotten lost. He then spotted a synagogue, and sensing it was a church and had people in it, walked in in the middle of a service and called out, "Take me home!"

The other story, which I used to illustrate courage and decency just this past year, involved a party in his dorm that was beginning to get out of control. At one point, a freshman girl, very drunk, ended up in his suite bathroom, and Tom, realizing that some of the other students were trying to take advantage of her, brought her into his room, locked his door, and kept her there safe. If they had found out, he could have faced some problems, maybe even violence, but Tom was protecting someone, and was willing to take that risk. That's the Tom I knew and liked.

God sends special people our way, and even if they are not in our lives every day, they are still a part of us. Father Metzger and Tom Dietz are and always will be part of me.

Pax et bonum

Praise God and console the soul

"Brother, the children of this world have no understanding of the things of God. Formerly, the saints used such musical instruments as the zither, psalteries, and others to praise God and console their soul; now these instruments promote vanity and sin, contrary to the will of the Lord." - St. Francis of Assisi

I came across this quotation while reading John Michael Talbot's The Lessons of St. Francis: How to Bring Simplicity and Spirituality Into Your Daily Life (written with Steve Rabey). (The book did not give notes about where Talbot/Rabey found this quotation, and I have not been able to locate the source with a quick search. I'd like to know where it came from so I can read more.)

I immediately thought of contemporary music - so much of it full of messages that promote vanity and sin. Then I thought of contemporary Christian music, some of which is wonderful and inspiring, but some of which, sadly, seems banal, overly pop-influenced, and ultimately not really worshipful.

But then I thought about the local art museum.

We were there last week. There were many wonderful paintings, sculptures, and so on. I paused in front of many works to take them in.

So much truth, beauty, and goodness.

But I noticed that there were a number of modern/contemporary works that were disturbing, and not in a good sense. Yes, it's fine if a work disturbs us because it helps us to see something that needs to be corrected or improved, or shows us something about ourselves that we may not have realized. But these works were violent, disturbed, chaotic, discouraging. Rather than uplifting us or rousing us to take action, they made us feel worse about the world and ourselves.

They created hopelessness, not hope. Ugliness, not beauty. 

They struck me as false, not true.

I actually hurried out of one room full of these works to seek out a room with the works of some Masters. Yes, the Masters also showed some of the darker parts of life, but they conveyed a sense of hope. You got a sense that we can do better.

Too much of the modern/contemporary work seemed to convey the message that we can't expect anything to get better, so we might as well just give up trying.

I later scribbled:

At the museum
seeking truth, beauty, goodness -
find the Masters' rooms.

This is not to say that there were not some wonderful works among the more modern. There were indeed some really nice pieces. But they seemed to be the exceptions, not the rule.

The St. Francis quotation gave voice to what I've been thinking since: We do indeed need more that praises God and consoles the soul.

Pax et bonum

King Saint Henry Clerihew

Saintly King Henry

was generally courteous and friendly.
But he could be a bit of a crank
If you dared to call him “Hank.”

Pax et bonum

Some wisdom from Peter Maurin

The aim of the Catholic Worker
is to create a new society
within the shell of the old
with the philosophy of the new,
which is not a new philosophy,
but a very old philosophy,
a philosophy so old
that it looks like new.
~Peter Maurin

Pax et bonum

God sends a bird

I don't use an alarm clock. I don't need one. After years of getting up early - paper route, radio shift, teaching, dog waiting to be walked - my internal clock is set for around 5 a.m.

But many mornings, I wake long before that time. I turn over, drift back to sleep, wake again, check the clock, drift back, and so on until it's finally time to get up.

This morning, the usual pattern.

But then when it was almost time to get out of bed, and I turned over for a moment more, suddenly a bird began to sing. The song came through the open window. Loud, beautiful, joyful.

And what passed through my mind was, "Thank you, Lord."

I got up smiling. As I stepped out to walk the dog a couple of minutes later, the bird was still singing.

So was my heart.

Thank you, Lord. 

Pax et bonum

Ancient deity (haiku)

ancient deity,

downsized to mythology,
checks out the want ads  

Pax et bonum

Godzilla's loneliness

Pax et bonum

The Death Penalty

One charge often leveled against pro-lifers is that they are inconsistent. They only oppose abortion, and that they support war and the death penalty, don't care about social welfare, don't help the women and children after the child is born, and so on.

Of course, that charge is false. All you need do is look at the Catholics who have an extensive network of hospital, health clinics, homeless shelters, food pantries, clothes closets, and more. They do care.

Moreover, the critics try to make each issue of equal weight. This is a false comparison. Not all issues have  the same absolute nature like intentional abortion, which is never morally permitted. Prudential judgment comes into play with many of the other issues. And abortion is immediate and in the U.S. claims just under a million lives a year. No other issue involves the immediate killing of so many.

Take the death penalty, for example.

The number of people who might be subject to the death penalty under current law is relatively small. Indeed, the number is fewer per year than the number of babies killed every day through abortion.

And the Catholic Church opposes the death penalty under most circumstance - but does acknowledge that that opposition is not absolute.

As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

2267 Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.
 
If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person. Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically non-existent."

Note that the Church teaches in situations in which the only way to protect human lives against an unjust aggressor is execution, the death penalty is permitted, but under most circumstances in places like the United States, where the violent can be contained or controlled (such as in prisons), the death penalty is not a necessity.

So the Church - and many pro-lifers - oppose the death penalty under most circumstances.

I am among those pro-lifers - and that's in spite of the fact that my brother was murdered. I have spoken out against the death penalty for decades. We currently do not need it in the U.S.

One can point out the truth on the other issues as well.

Being truly pro-life involves respect for all lives.

Pax et bonum

We can judge actions

 

What do you think Jesus meant when he said, "Judge not"?

 

Do you think he meant "don't judge deeds, don't believe the Commandments, don't morally discriminate a just war from an unjust war or a hero from a bully"?

 

He couldn't have meant that. 

 

He meant "don't claim to judge motives and hearts, which only God can see."

 

I can judge your deeds, because I can see them.

 

I can't judge what your motives are, because I can't see that.

- Peter Kreeft -- A Refutation of Moral Relativism.
 








Pax et bonum

Abortion deaths

Note that in 1972, the year before Roe, 63 women died from induced abortions, not the tens of thousands prochoicers claimed (that was an intentional lie, as Dr. Bernard Nathanson later admitted). And of those 63 deaths, 24 were from legal abortions.

These figures do not include the millions of children killed, of course.

Pax et bonum