Novenas for Justice, Peace, and Creation V: Our Lady Mother of Mercy and Saints Vincent de Paul and Louise Marilla

Today begins the Fifth of the Nine Novenas for Justice, Peace, & Creation, and this one is dedicated to the Our Lady Mother of Mercy & Saints Vincent de Paul & Louise Marillac. It runs from July 26 — August 3, 2020. I will not post this every day as the prayers and intentions are the same for each day. I’ll just leave it here for nine days; if I need to blog in the interim, I will just blog a reminder afterwards. For the background, please read this post (especially if you need to learn about who Bob Waldrop, the creator of this Novena, was, and why I am introducing it to you.) Or go here: A Novena of Novenas for Justice, Peace, & Creation.

Don’t worry if you jump in at some point later in the 81 days. To paraphrase Bob “just pick up whenever you happen to join in.”

AFTER THIS SENTENCE, THE WRITING IS ALL THAT OF BOB WALDROP, not me, Paulcoholic.

…

“Getting Started:

Begin each novena prayer with a time of quiet prayer. You may find it helpful to pray some repetitions of the Jesus Prayer (Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner), a decade of the Rosary, the Chaplet of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, or a time of spiritual reading or lectio divina that will prepare your mind and your heart for the prayer to come. This could be a time for a daily examen, where you consider your actions of the day and how they relate to God’s call in your life.”

Our Lady Mother of Mercy & Saints Vincent de Paul & Louise Marillac

General Intention: Justice in the distribution of the Earth’s goods.

Fifth Work of Justice and Peace: Work for reconciliation with truth, evangelism, catechesis, orthopraxis.

Act of Caring for Creation: Walk, ride a bicycle, car pool, and take public transportation more; drive less.

God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me.
+ Let us pray together in peace, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, help the helpless, strengthen the fearful, comfort the sorrowful, bring justice to the poor, peace to all nations, and solidarity among all peoples. Give us strength to stand against the demonic powers which prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.

Open our eyes to see the beauty, joy, redemption, and goodness which comes through obedience to your Son our Lord. Teach us to be a refuge of hope for all who are oppressed by injustice and violence.

Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope! To you do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To you do we send our signs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn, then, most gracious advocate, your eyes of mercy toward us, and afterthis, our exile, showunto us the blessed fruit of your womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.

Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, you are the refuge and hope of all who are excluded from sharing in the goodness and bounty of Creation. Help me, for the love of your son Jesus Christ, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and shelter the homeless. Help me then to ask why so many people are hungry, naked, and homeless so that we know what we must do to ensure justice and peace for all people. Pray for me that I will, my mind being enlightened by the signs of these times, work without ceasing for the reign of justice and peace and the care of God’s holy Creation. I bless and thank Almighty God, who in His mercy has given me this confidence in You, which I hold to be a pledge of my eternal salvation. Mary, my spiritual Mother, help me. Do not abandon me in my hour of need. Mother of Mercy, never allow me to lose my faith, hope, and love. Amen.

Saints Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac, we reverence your lives of heroic justice, compassion, and mercy in defense of the poor. Today we ask you to pray for all who are excluded from participation in the bounty of Creation. Teach us to use the gifts of Creation with moderation, to live simply, that others may simply live. Bless our efforts to ensure just distribution of the goods of the earth with discernment and prudence. Help us to do what needs to be done to replace the structures of greed and gluttony with the reign of justice and peace, Amen.

Prayer to St. John Chrysostom on behalf of the U.S. Catholic bishops:

Most Glorious and Venerable St. John Chrysostom,
Grace shining forth from your lips like a beacon
has illumined the universe.
It shows to the world the treasures of poverty;
it reveals to us the heights of humility.
Teaching us by your words, O Father John Chrysostom,
intercede before the Word, Christ our God, to save our souls!

Pray for the bishops of the United States of America,
who do not teach or practice the Catholic faith in its fullness,
that God will deliver them to orthodoxy,
and reform their ways of living,
so that as exemplars of orthopraxis, they will protect all life,
from the moment of conception to the time of natural death.

Teach them true solidarity with the poor, so that they
understand the consequences of their moral abandonment
of entire nations of human beings to a collective fate of cruelty and violence
because they were in the way of the American Empire and
its gluttonous lust for oil, supremacy, and blood.

As you refused to obey the aristocratic commands of your era,
help our bishops turn away from the political demands
that cause them to preach a false gospel of moral relativism regarding war and peace.

Having received divine grace from heaven,
with your mouth you teach all people to worship the Triune God.
Instruct our bishops with the wisdom of the Gospel,
so that they repent of their material cooperation with the objective evil of unjust war, and call all people, in authentic word and deed, to live in solidarity, peace, and justice.

All-blest and venerable St. John Chrysostom,
we praise you, for you are our teacher, revealing things divine!
Pray for us that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

O God, Who by the preaching and teaching of Saint John Chrysostom
has given us an example of fortitude in the face of persecution and political corruption, grant that we who reverence his life and ministry may also imitate
his example of fidelity to wisdom, truth, justice, and beauty,
through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.

Our Father . . . Hail Mary… Glory be. . .

Thoughts for the journey. From the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “2402. In the beginning God entrusted the earth and its resources to the common stewardship of mankind to take care of them, master them by labor, and enjoy their fruits. The goods of creation are destined for the whole human race. However, the earth is divided up among men to assure the security of their lives, endangered by poverty and threatened by violence. The appropriation of property is legitimate for guaranteeing the freedom and dignity of persons and for helping each of them to meet his basic needs and the needs of those in his charge. It should allow for a natural solidarity to develop between men.”

“2403. The right to private property, acquired by work or received from others by inheritance or gift, does not do away with the original gift of the earth to the whole of mankind. The universal destination of goods remains primordial, even if the promotion of the common good requires respect for the right to private property and its exercise.”

Now is the time to open our eyes to see the sins against just community that occur daily. Merciless and corrupt governments and international agencies encourage the exploitation of the powerless for unjust gain. Globalization, enforced by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the WTO, is making the poorest of the poor even more miserable and wretched and hopeless. Millions die every day from the consequences of chronic poverty — many of them in countries where large corporate farms grow food that can’t be eaten by the locals because it is exported. In the 19th century, people are often shocked by the fact that every year of the great Irish famine, Ireland exported food. But the poor had no money to buy that food, so when their subsistence plots of potatoes failed due to a blight, they starved or emigrated by the millions while their food was sold to those with money in other lands. Why are we shocked by that when this happens every day and people say, “Well, that’s just the way the market works.”

War destroys resources and creates poverty and misery. Billions are at risk. A just community respects both property rights and the social mortgage on the property. Yet, too often the property rights of the poor are accorded scant protection. Traditional lands are appropriated for the enrichment of others, making the original owners tenants on their ancestral farms. (Think about this when you buy a banana from Chiquita or Dole banana corporations.) Sometimes the poor are killed for their land. In the past 30 years, millions of units of low income housing have been destroyed in the US by politicized eminent domain pogroms against which the poor neighborhoods have no defense. When a powerful government agency wants a cross-town freeway, or a new upscale mall or condo development, the nearest poor neighborhood will do just fine.

Saints Vincent de Paul and Louise Marillac are two of the patron saints of justice in the distribution of earthly goods. They lived 350 years ago, and were part of a generation of saints that transformed France after a century of war. Their influence continues today in the many lay and consecrated religious movements that grow from their ministry. The Vincentian apostolates fulfill the Gospel’s call to justice in the distribution of the bounty of creation. They show us that the path towards reconciliation is illuminated by justice.

When property becomes more important than people, that is a sign of disordered priorities. That’s what happens when we don’t have a relationship with Jesus. With Christ within us, it becomes easier to understand what is important. So we always must ask — How is my life open to the reality that Christ is alive and he loves me? Jesus gave his life to save us and our societies from sin and oppression. He was with the Vincent and Louise as they struggled through obstacles to serve the poor in justice. Jesus lives today and is at our side every moment of every day to enlighten, strengthen, and free us. Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, of our journeys of justice and peace.

Act of Caring for Creation: Walk, ride a bicycle, carpool, take public transportation more, drive less.

Fossil fuels are a primary driver of ecological calamity on this planet. Anything we can do to reduce our use of private cars will benefit the planet, make it safer, more beautiful, and less hazardous. We Americans believe we are entitled to any amount of travel, irrespective of the consequences to the planet. We think we have a grand American Exception to the moral demand to care for Creation. Sure, “care for Creation” is a nice pious statement, but God Forbid that I actually do something real to care for the planet, like giving up my personal car one day a week.

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Militia of the Immaculata Movie

Coming next month, August 2020: (I have no information on its distribution, whether it is straight to DVD or a limited release like the recent film on St. Faustina was). If and when I find out more, I’ll update this post. You can watch the trailer here: Militia of the Immaculata Movie Trailer

Are you a creative Catholic? ""Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics," is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Novena of Novenas for Justice, Peace and Creation IV: to Our Lady Undoer of Knots and Matthew Talbot

Today begins the Fourth of the Nine Novena of Novenas for Justice, Peace and Creation. This, the Fourth of the Nine, is dedicated to Our Lady Undoer of Knots and Matthew Talbot. It runs from July 17 to July 25, 2020.

I will not post this every day as the prayers and intentions are the same for each day. I’ll just leave it here for nine days; if I need to blog in the interim, I will just blog a reminder afterwards. For the background, please read this post (especially if you need to learn about who Bob Waldrop, the creator of this Novena, was, and why I am introducing it to you.) Or go here: A Novena of Novenas for Justice, Peace, & Creation.

Don’t worry if you jump in at some point later in the 81 days. To paraphrase Bob “just pick up whenever you happen to join in.”

AFTER THIS SENTENCE, THE WRITING IS ALL THAT OF BOB WALDROP, not me, Paulcoholic.

…

“Getting Started:

Begin each novena prayer with a time of quiet prayer. You may find it helpful to pray some repetitions of the Jesus Prayer (Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner), a decade of the Rosary, the Chaplet of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, or a time of spiritual reading or lectio divina that will prepare your mind and your heart for the prayer to come. This could be a time for a daily examen, where you consider your actions of the day and how they relate to God’s call in your life.”

General Intention: For all those pushed to the edges of human societies.

Fourth Work of Justice and Peace: Protect the poor and powerless — listen, learn, educate, organize, empower participation, and respect life from the moment of conception to the time of natural death.

Act of Caring for Creation: Commit! Accept personal responsibility to live your life so that your love for God manifests as you care for people, care for Creation, and have a care for the future

God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me.
+ Let us pray together in peace, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, help the helpless, strengthen the fearful, comfort the sorrowful, bring justice to the poor, peace to all nations, and solidarity among all peoples.

Give us strength to stand against the demonic powers which prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Open our eyes to see the beauty, joy, redemption, and goodness which comes through obedience to your Son our Lord. Teach us to be a refuge of hope for all who are oppressed by injustice and violence.

Holy Mary, Undoer of Knots, full of God’s presence during the days of your life, you accepted with full humility the Father’s will, and the Devil was never capable to tie you around with his confusion. Once with your son you interceded for our difficulties, and, full of kindness and patience you gave us example of how to untie the knots of our life. And by remaining forever Our Mother, you put in order, and make clearer the ties that link us to the Lord.

Virgin Mary, Mother of fair love, Mother who never refuses to come to the aid of a child in need, Mother whose hands never cease to serve your beloved children because they are moved by the divine love and immense mercy that exists in your heart, cast your compassionate eyes upon me and see the snarl of knots that exist in my life. You know very well how desperate I am, my pain, and how I am bound by these knots. Mary, Mother to whom God entrusted the undoing of the knots in the lives of His children, I entrust into your hands the ribbon of my life. No one, not even the Evil One himself, can take it away from your precious care. In your hands, there is no knot that cannot be undone. Powerful Mother, by your grace and intercessory power with your Son and my liberator, Jesus, take into your hands today this knot. (Mention your petition here.)

Receive me into your hands and free me of the knots and confusion with which our enemy attacks. Through your grace, your intercession, and your example, deliver us from all evil, Our Lady, and untie the knots that prevent us from being united with God, so that we, free from sin and error, may find Him in all things, may have our hearts placed in Him, and may serve Him always in our brothers and sisters. Mary, Undoer of Knots, pray for me, Amen.

Matthew Talbot, you were born into poverty, among a marginalized people, and you went right to the edge as an alcoholic. In these times, the strong prey upon the weak, and violence, despair, alienation and oppression rule the hearts of many. We pray that your example of solidarity with the poor will inspire us to follow your path and open our hearts, minds, and homes to welcome those who are in need. Pray for all who are bound in addiction to money, power, violence, illicit sex, drugs, tobacco, or alcohol.

Lord, in your servant, Matt Talbot you have given us a wonderful example of triumph over addiction, of devotion to duty, and of lifelong reverence of the Holy Sacrament. May his life of prayer and penance give us courage to take up our crosses and follow in the footsteps of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We ask this through the same Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.”

Novena to St. John Chrysostom on behalf of the Bishops of the United States of America

Most Glorious and Venerable St. John Chrysostom,
Grace shining forth from your lips like a beacon
has illumined the universe.
It shows to the world the treasures of poverty;
it reveals to us the heights of humility.
Teaching us by your words, O Father John Chrysostom,
intercede before the Word, Christ our God, to save our souls!

Pray for the bishops of the United States of America,
who do not teach or practice the Catholic faith in its fullness,
that God will deliver them to orthodoxy,
and reform their ways of living,
so that as exemplars of orthopraxis, they will protect all life,
from the moment of conception to the time of natural death.

Teach them true solidarity with the poor, so that they
understand the consequences of their moral abandonment
of entire nations of human beings to a collective fate of cruelty and violence
because they were in the way of the American Empire and
its gluttonous lust for oil, supremacy, and blood.

All-blest and venerable St. John Chrysostom,
we praise you, for you are our teacher, revealing things divine!
Pray for us that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

O God, Who by the preaching and teaching of Saint John Chrysostom
has given us an example of fortitude in the face of persecution and political corruption,
grant that we who reverence his life and ministry may also imitate
his example of fidelity to wisdom, truth, justice, and beauty,
through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.

Our Father . . . Hail Mary… Glory be. . .

Thoughts for the journey.

Life is complicated. We often find ourselves “tied into knots” spiritually and emotionally. We get ourselves into situations that seem impossible to resolve.

We see this in the world around us. How can the situation in the Middle East ever resolve itself in peace and justice with respect for life for all people there, Arabs, Jews, Kurds, Persians, Yezidis, and many others. What about the Ukraine? In Asia, belligerence grows on the South China Sea. And then there’s North Korea and Iran and Vebenzuela and Central America.

Pope Francis has a strong devotion to Mary as the Undoer of Knots. For Pope Francis, the knots represent the sins that separate us from God, and Our Lady, in untying them, brings us closer to God. As the Pope has said: “Mary, whose ‘yes’ opened the door for God to undo the knot of the ancient disobedience, is the Mother who patiently and lovingly brings us to God, so that he can untangle the knots of our soul by his fatherly mercy.”

Which is to say that the roots of the grave knotty crises of justice and peace lay within our own hearts. It’s tempting to wave that away as pious pap, but it’s the truth. The United States has the foreign and military policies that it does because we are the people that we are. If we were a better people, our government would have better policies. Since any one of us has little control over the government, but a lot of control over our own individual lives, the road to peace for me begins at 1524 NW 21 in Oklahoma City where I live. And also where you live.

What are the knots that bind you?

Let us recall the advice of Mary to the servants at the wedding at Cana? “Do whatever he tells you!” What does Jesus tell us to do? Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, challenge unjust structures, speak out against oppression and hypocrisy, love God and love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Pious phrases, to be sure, but if that’s all they are for us, then our faith is dead as the proverbial doornail. A living faith, begun in a life-changing encounter with the Risen Christ, nourished by Word, Community, and Eucharist, lives these phrases as daily realities. That’s the point, holiness! Orthopraxis — right action! Prudence — understanding the way towards the greatest good in every situation. Discernment — learned and practiced over time, so that we are able to make these phrases real by the way we live our lives.

Matthew Talbot was born in a slum in Dublin, Ireland in 1856, and died in the same town in 1925. His journey led into the dark depths of alcoholism. But by the grace of God, he experienced a true and lasting religious conversion, and spent his life among the poor, practicing evangelical poverty, working at labor jobs and giving most of his money as alms to the poor and for the benefit of missions.

He helped people find sobriety. His life was an evangelical witness to the power of Jesus to transform the most alienated & to bring new life to community in the midst of despair. He reminds us of the precarious place of those we push to the edge. Often they fall off, into the abyss. They are all around us, but we don’t notice them because they are really good at hiding from us. In their experience, to be noticed is to be abused, hurt, wounded. Their defenders are few, their enemies are many.

Through the example of Our Lady of Good Counsel and Matthew Talbot, we can learn to open our eyes and hearts to see the poor who are among us, and stop doing harm to them.

How is my life — how is your life — open to the reality that Christ is alive and he loves each and every one of us? Jesus gave his life to save us and our societies from sin and oppression. He was with the Matthew Talbot as he wrestled with the demons of addiction and then later when he lived a life of penance, reparation, and service. Jesus comforted him in life and when he died of a heart attack on a Dublin street while walking to Mass, Jesus was there. Christ is as real to us as he was to Matthew. Jesus lives today and is at our side every moment of every day to enlighten, strengthen, and free us. Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, of our journeys of justice and peace.

Act of Caring for Creation:

Commit! Accept personal responsibility to live your life so that your love for God manifests as you care for people, care for Creation, and have a care for the future

We care for the planet, one decision at a time. Do you really need that plastic straw or that disposal styrofoam cup made by a noxious process that pollutes the planet and that does not decay or compost? Could you carry a cup with you for drinks away from home? Could you carry a little lunch kit, and use that instead of plastic serving ware? Could you carry reusable bags and thus avoid those ubiquitous plastic bags? Sure you could, but will you? It’s only a moderate discipline, it’s not anything like, you know, dying in a concentration camp or being lynched.

We are destroying the planet one bad decision at a time. We will redeem the planet one good — better — or best decision, at a time. Never think that what you do doesn’t matter, because it does. It matters to you personally, to your family, your neighbors, your community, your planet, and to your God. We start small or we don’t start at all. As you practice being kind to God’s Creation in small ways, you will find your heart and your mind and your will increasingly open to doing more. Before you know it, you could be air drying your laundry on a clothesline!

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Novena of Novenas for Justice, Peace and Creation III: Our Lady of the Precious Blood and St. Franz Jagerstatter and St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

NOTE: I forgot to publish this when it was supposed to be; I am backdating it. Today begins the Third of our Nine Novenas for Justice, Peace, & Creation, and this one is dedicated to Our Lady of the Precious Blood and St. Franz Jagerstatter and St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. It runs from July 8 to July 16, 2020.

Don’t worry if you jump in at some point later in the 81 days. To paraphrase Bob “just pick up whenever you happen to join in.”

AFTER THIS SENTENCE, THE WRITING IS ALL THAT OF BOB WALDROP, not me, Paulcoholic.

…

To: Our Lady of the Precious Blood and St. Franz Jagerstatter and St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

“Getting Started:

Begin each novena prayer with a time of quiet prayer. You may find it helpful to pray some repetitions of the Jesus Prayer (Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner), a decade of the Rosary, the Chaplet of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, or a time of spiritual reading or lectio divina that will prepare your mind and your heart for the prayer to come. This could be a time for a daily examen, where you consider your actions of the day and how they relate to God’s call in your life.”

General Intention: The reconciliation of persons and peoples.

Third Work of Justice and Peace: Make injustice visible — witness, remember, teach, proclaim, tell. Light candles, do not curse the darkness.

Act of Caring for Creation: Fast & Abstinence. Refrain from eating meat or fish one day each week. If you are able, fast that day, eating only one full meal. Donate the money saved as a fast offering to a charity working for food security.

God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me. + Let us pray together in peace, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Open our eyes to see the beauty, joy, redemption, and goodness which comes through obedience to your Son our Lord. Teach us to be a refuge of hope for all who are oppressed by injustice and violence.

Precious Blood, Ocean of Divine Mercy: Flow upon us! Precious Blood, most pure Offering: Procure for us every grace! Precious Blood, Hope and Refuge of sinners: Atone for us! Precious Blood, Delight of holy souls: Draw us! Precious Blood, Font of Peace: Reconcile enemies and end all wars.

Remember, O most gracious Lady of the Precious Blood, that never was it known that any of your children, redeemed by the Blood of your Son, sought your intercession and was left unaided. Trusting in the power of the Precious Blood, O Handmaid of the Redeemer, I come before you my Queen and my Mother, and in the bitterness of my sorrow, I place myself at your feet. O Mother of Jesus Crucified, unite my prayers with yours, obtain for me the merciful bounty of the Divine Blood. As I kneel beneath the Cross, O Mother of sorrows, hear and answer me. Amen

St. Franz Jagerstatter, in a time of great injustice and violence, you bore heroic witness to peace, beauty, and holiness. Your devotion to truth shows us the way to reconciliation. Your example of fortitude brings us courage. Your life of beauty in the face of appalling evil fills us with hope. May your heart of love inspire us so that we will witness, remember, teach, and proclaim the Gospel of life and love for all peoples, everywhere, and not count the cost. In Jesus holy name, Amen.

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, child of Sarah, Rebekah, Leah, Rachel, and Mary mother of our Lord, you who were taken to crucifixion by the Nazis, help us, in our own time, and in the ways and opportunities that come our way, to witness and work for justice, peace, and the care of Creation. Help us to always stand firm against every form of racism and persecution. Teach us to understand, and seek forgiveness for, our own complicity in the sins of racism and persecution. Enlighten our minds that we will see clearly the wrongs and evidences of racism in our societies. Help us to speak with clarity, justice, and truth of beauty, wisdom, peace, and racial harmony, denouncing all injustices and social evils in the name of Christ. These prayers we ask, remembering all who have been murdered, lynched, gassed, and tortured to death, Amen.

Prayer to St. John Chrysostom on behalf of the U.S. Catholic bishops:

Having received divine grace from heaven,
with your mouth you teach all people to worship the Triune God.
Instruct our bishops with the wisdom of the Gospel,
so that they repent of their material cooperation with the objective evil of unjust war, and call all people, in authentic word and deed, to live in solidarity, peace, and justice.

All-blest and venerable St. John Chrysostom,
we praise you, for you are our teacher, revealing things divine!
Pray for us that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Our Father . . . Hail Mary…. Glory be. . .

Thoughts for the journey. His lifeless body was taken from the Cross and laid in her blessed arms. How the tears must have flowed as she cradled Him in her arms, He who once had been a little baby, bouncing on her lap, a young man who followed in Joseph’s footsteps as a carpenter and who taught in the Temple confounding the wise, a fearless prophet who healed and taught and brought hope.

How His life must have passed before her eyes, as her tears mingled with His most precious Blood. “A sword shall also pierce your heart.” At the first Eucharist, she received the Cup from His hands — did she understand even then what was to come? “She kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.” What did she tell the servants at the wedding at Cana? “Do whatever Jesus tells you to do.”

“For in Christ all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him, making peace by the blood of his cross through him. (Colossians 1:19-20).

“And all this is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and given us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians 5:18-19)

How great is the need for reconciliation in this world! But reconciliation is NOT an oppressor who says — “I’m sorry” — but then goes and continues a lifestyle of oppression, with eyes closed to the consequences of his or her lifestyle of injustice.

Reconciliation is not the denial of injustice, it is the correction of the objective disorders that cause the harm. The call to reconciliation is not the Voice of the Oppressor saying “Cooperate with our violence against you.” No, it is the witness of the Precious Blood of Christ that reconciliation is orthopraxis — it is right action rooted in our interior personal relationship with Christ, a relationship that changes everything and makes the miracle of reconciliation possible. It is always a life faith that bears fruit, for we know that faith without works is dead.

When Christ is not the center of our lives, when our actions do not flow from our personal interior and devotional relationship with Jesus, reconciliation among peoples is not a comfortable process; it is typically easier to just blame the victims. Many close their eyes to structures of injustice and exploitation and greed, processes that make people poor and keep them “in their place.” The poor become a fearful Alien, the Other, to be mastered, confined, counted, regulated, and exploited for the good of the ruling political and economic elites.

Our Lady of the Precious Blood without fear and full of love stands against all oppression and injustice, she comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comforted and calls us to the same journey. She directs us to her son and says, “Do whatever he tells you to do.

St. Franz Jagerstatter

St. Franz Jagerstatter was an Austrian farmer who was murdered by the Nazis during World War II because of his refusal to bear arms and serve in the German military. They chopped his head off with a guillotine! His example of fortitude in the face of the most appalling evil is a reminder that reconciliation begins with truth — and grows from a personal commitment to live the Gospel , even at great personal risk that in turn derives from our personal relationship with Jesus. Can anyone doubt that Franz Jagerstatter was in love with Jesus? From what other source could a young man stand against everyone — including his bishop — who told him to “just go along and do what the Nazis say.”

His example is of great importance in our day, as the United States wages unjust wars and our government demands support for its crusades of death and slaughter.

Meanwhile, our own Catholic bishops do not defend the right to life of all people in the face of the State’s demand for war but hide behind ecclesiastical rhetoric and preach a false gospel of moral relativism regarding the unjust wars of the United States.

In the face of so much blood and death, we must remember the victims of imperial tyranny. Because we live in Christ we can live in true solidarity with them and dedicate our works of life as reparations for our nation’s unjust wars and its many other sins against life.

Our prayer is that through the reconciliation of the Blood of Christ, all people will learn to be one in solidarity with each other, so that all persons and peoples acknowledge the human personhood and dignity of each other, and live together in peace upon the earth. And as the song says, let this begin with me. Our praxis is a prayer, and this is the prayer that is most pleasing to God.

How is my life — how is your life — open to the reality that Christ is alive and he loves each and every one of us? Jesus gave his life to save us and our societies from sin and oppression. He was with the Franz Jagerstatter at the moment the guillotine sliced through his neck. He comforted him in life and in death and Christ is as real to us as he was to Franz. Jesus lives today and is at our side every moment of every day to enlighten, strengthen, and free us. Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, of our journeys of justice and peace. How does your relationship with Christ impact your life? What is the orthopraxis that you live that reflects Christ in you?

St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

Edith Stein was a German Jewish philosopher. Surprised by joy, after reading the works of Teresa of Avila, she was called by Christ into relationship with Him, and became a Discaled Carmelite nun taking the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She made notable contributions to what has become known as the personalist school of philosophy, which was later influential in the writings and theology of Saint Pope John Paul II. As early as 1933, she was speaking out against Nazis, and wrote Pope Pius XI asking him to publicly denounce the Nazi regime. Her letter may have been influential in his decision to eventually write the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge (With Burning Sorrow) condemning Nazism and anti-semitism. For her safety, her religious superiors transferred her to a convent in the Netherlands. After the German invasion, the Dutch bishops had a public statement read in all the Catholic churches condemning racism. in response, the Nazis rounded all the Jewish Catholic converts and sent them to concentration camps. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross was sent to Auschwitz, where she died in a gas chamber on or about August 9, 1942, about a week after her arrest. She refused an opportunity to escape, insisting on her right to share in the sufferings of her people.

Act of Caring for Creation: Fast & Abstinence! Refrain from eating meat or fish one day a week. If you are able, fast on that day, eating only one full meal. Give the money you save to a charity that works in food security.

We live in an ocean of plenty while the poor of this world go without. The least we can do is to feel the pangs of hunger and deny ourselves the full bounty that is available to us, not as a matter of ecclesiastical mandate as in days of yore, but as an act of love we take less so that others may have more.

Are you a creative Catholic? ""Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics," is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

On casting a vote for a third-party

The consistent argument amongst the Center/Right against voting for a third party is that it will:

1) help the Democrats win the election. The presumption is that the voter is anti-Democratic Party. There is also the presumption that the voter is essentially ‘owned’ by the GOP and thus going third-party will deprive the GOP of a previously assumed vote, i.e. what would have been a GOP vote is taken away and given to a third party, thus giving the Dems a +1 advantage for every defection.) It is wrong to assume that anyone’s vote is ‘owned’ by any party. Granted, some people are party hacks, but last I checked party registration is in the 30something% each for the Dems and GOP, with ‘independents’ the remaining 30something%.

It also belies an ignorance of the Electoral College, as we do not have a national Presidential election, but, rather, 51 separate Presidential elections (the 50 states + DC.) The first-place winner in each of the 51 has their electors travel to the state capitol in December and cast their vote for the one they are pledged to vote for. For example, NY will undoubtedly be won by Biden. So, electors pledged to him will go to Albany and vote. Trump’s electors will stay home.

2) be a ‘wasted vote’ as the third-party candidate will not win. NO vote is wasted. Apart from the traditional view that a third party vote is a valid protest vote, there is also the undeniable deadlock and corruption in DC (and some state capitols) wrought by the two-party system. The Dems and GOP are solidly entrenched and have, for the past several decades, paid more attention to lobbyists and corporate donors than to the average voter. They see NO threat to their dominance and thus pay little regard to voter ‘rebellion, as that never amounts to much beyond lots of sound and fury that fizzles in the voting booth.

So, voting third-party is ‘wasted?’ When your vote for one of the two major parties only ‘counts’ since a Dem or GOP always ‘wins.’ And that seems to be the chief criterion for voting Dem/GOP: that we HAVE to vote for them as only they will ‘win.

Furthermore, Democrats are convinced that third party votes ‘help Trump win,’ as evidenced by several arguments my wife had back in 2016. Neither contentions can both be true!

How has picking the ‘winner’ been working out for the country? Do you think there will be any real effective change for the better in continuing along the path we’ve been on? One definition of insanity is ‘doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’ The two-party system is now insane. So, hmmm. What to do, what to do.

OK… look at my Electoral College example in point #1. Since Biden is a given winner in NY, why vote for Trump to ‘stop’ him? He’s going to win, so isn’t voting for Trump a ‘wasted vote?’ (See point #2) So, why shouldn’t I take advantage of that and vote third party? This is part of the traditional ‘protest vote,’ but also a step towards busting the two-party system. It will not happen overnight, but a slow erosion of the iron grip the Dems/GOP have would be welcome. Naturally, there will also have to be Constitutional changes as the reason why we have two-parties dominating in the first place is that we have a winner-take-all system rather than some form of proportional voting like Canada and some other countries have. But the Dems/GOP will never allow such changes as they would be a direct threat to their stranglehold; victorious third parties have no vested interest in the current system as it is a threat to them!

Only in the so-called battleground states does the ‘helping the Democrat’ theory in point #1 possibly make sense. Possibly. But a vote for a third-party candidate is a vote for that person, not a ‘helping’ vote for the Democrats or Republicans. This, to me, is symptomatic of how ingrained (or inbred?) the two-party system is. It also illustrates how restricting it is on my freedom of choice. I “have to” vote for only one of the two…

“But…” you respond, “this is a long term solution! We have problems NOW that need solving! ’TRUMP! SUPREME COURT JUSTICES’” Yeah, our problems won’t be solved by short-term solutions like perpetuating the current system. We need to start thinking long-term. The politicians (all Dem/GOP) think only in terms of the current election cycle. We needn’t emulate them.

It may be that this November, it won’t matter who wins. If Trump pulls it off the Left will go utterly berserk and rampage; you think they’re only pulling down statues now? Beating up Catholic old folks praying rosaries? What is going on now is a First Holy Communion get together compared to the meltdown the Left will have in November. It’ll dwarf the tantrums they had in 2016. If Biden wins, it’s curtains for the American Empire. The inmates will be running the jail, the patients the asylum, and the Left will have virtually free rein to finish off the country with their social engineering experiments. Woe be unto any who disagree. This will be the last Presidential election; in a way, I’ll be happy for that as each one from 2004 has been a trauma and I can’t take any more of this crap. A monarchy would be better! 🙂

Pray that God casts His gaze upon us and intervenes. Soon.

Are you a creative Catholic? ""Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics," is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

On statues, slavery and genocide

This is a post initially written as a Facebook reply in defense of my beloved wife’s post on her Timeline in which she agrees with the pulling down of slave-owner’s statues. She compared them to statues of Hitler. I initially disagreed with her (without posting as such because publicly disagreeing with one’s spouse is not always advantageous. 😉 ) But then I thought about it. I briefly contemplated what it must feel like to be property. Therefore I reconsidered and now I agree with her.

For anyone who thinks that the comparison between slave-holders and Nazis is harsh; let me remind you that both slavery and the Nazis’ “Final Solution” fundamentally dehumanized people. One difference is that slavery has been with us for 1,000s of years and perhaps we’ve become somewhat “immune” to its horror. The ancient Romans and Greeks practiced it, various Asian cultures did so, as well as Arabs, sub-Saharan Africans, and indigenous American peoples like the Aztecs. Desensitized may be the more proper word. It’s been with us for so long that we overlook the abject horror over the “thingification” of people, reducing them to objects of work and drudgery, no more, and subject to the absolute and capricious will of another. Say what you want about how this or that society may have ‘reformed’ slavery by giving slaves some rights and protections; still, the reduction of a human person to that of a chattel object, to be bought and sold like a thing is a grave evil. Another difference is duration: if you were sentenced to a Nazi concentration camp, you’d be dead within days or weeks. Rare was anyone who survived longer than a few months. You might survive the Soviet Gulags longer (I don’t know; I wouldn’t want to experience either to find out.) So there is a difference in degree and duration: condensed in the intense, short, horrific, and barbarous term in a death camp versus being spread out over arduous, barbarous decades as a slave. Destruction is destruction, the human person becomes a dehumanized thing regardless of whether it’s quick and painful, or slower and prolonged. People can debate forever which is worse. Which is stupid, both are evil and shouldn’t be done. To think that one is worse implies that the other is not so bad.

The Nazi Death camps are an aberration in human history. Including the Turkish genocide of Armenians, the Soviet Gulags, and the Chinese Communist “Cultural Revolution” and later prison systems; such an organized, systematic, intentional destruction of human beings have been comparatively rare in human history. And as seen in the above examples, it has been restricted to our advanced, enlightened “modern times” and its secular, republican, and democratic forms of government.

As a result, we see that comparing slavery to Nazism can be initially off-putting with a knee-jerk reaction of “You gotta be kidding.” But once you dwell on and contemplate the horror that slavery is, you can see why statues of slave-owning individuals can be seen by some to be on a par with seeing statues that glorify Hitler (or Marx, Lenin, Mao, or Margaret Sanger; the latter being the white supremacist, racist, pro-Eugenics founder of Planned Parenthood.)

One issue I have is the mob violence associated with the pulling down of statues. Even so, I have to stop and think whether I would willingly participate in the pulling down of a Hitler, Marx, etc., statue. The answer is that I might consider it. Whether I’d follow through, depends. But the thought would cross my mind as I may see in the spontaneous act of destroying symbols of evil a morally good action that transcends other human notions of propriety. But I would have to evaluate the action in terms of whether the ends-justifies-the-means. For impure acts can never be used to achieve a good end. Would this “spontaneous act” be an “impure act”? Could the removal of statues be done in other ways that do not provoke the hardening of positions thus increasing division? The political change wrought by violence usually envelops and devours the violent. Recall the French Revolution of 1789, the European revolutions of 1848, the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1950s-60s.

The other issue is the indiscriminate selection of statues targeted, which implies either a fundamental ignorance on the part of the mobs doing the action or a hidden agenda. Recently, a Frederick Douglas statue in Rochester, NY was allegedly vandalized. He was a freed black slave and abolitionist. The monument to a black Civil War regiment in Massachusetts was vandalized. A U.S. Grant statue was torn down (the Union General in the Civil War, and US president immediately following it and de facto military governor of the South due to Reconstruction.) Why pull theirs down? (Unless white supremacists are sneaking in and taking advantage of the chaos and doing their evil, but it does seem that other racially-motivated groups are also taking this action. I don’t know, but if, in fact, these other “racially motivated groups” are infected with Marxism, then I can see the basis for their indiscriminate targeting. Marxists typically seek to erase the past to better reconstruct a new society. Nevertheless, it would impact my decision-making in whether or not the “spontaneous act” is impure and would I take part.) How about statues of St. Junipero Serra and King St. Louis IX? Never. Opponents of their statuary are blindingly ill-informed as to who they were and what they did. They were powerful forces for good concerning the people they cared for or governed. What about the statues of Washington and Jefferson? Granted, they were slave owners but given their fundamental contributions to American history, they can be given a pass. “What?!?! But, they owned slaves!!!!” No one is flawless, we are all sinners and have done worse if not evil things. Including slavery. If you have ever initiated or cooperated in dehumanizing or objectifying another, such as maltreating employees or staff, then you relegated them to be like a slave. Perhaps Washington and Jefferson and some others can be demoted in the pantheon of Saints in the American Civil Religion, but deleted (or ‘canceled’) from our history? Never. In some circumstances, the entirety of the life of a person must be weighed and evaluated and viewed in a proper, comprehensive context. Good and bad, warts and halos. To focus on slavery is too narrow a vision. The unfortunate consequence is that entire swaths of human history would have to be “canceled” because slavery was a part of the social fabric. Slavery, despite its evilness, should not cancel out other elements of the persons’ life or that of an entire culture. Too much of what makes our contemporary cultures would be lost. Does this mean I am contradicting myself, given my equating slavery with Nazism, etc.? No; there was little else of virtue that Hitler, the Turks, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Sanger have done to merit being “given a pass.” Their evil was pure and unadulterated and they did nothing to cause anyone to reconsider their evil in any “proper, comprehensive context.” Washington and Jefferson did, even if you disagree with their politics.

I think we have lost sight of the bigger picture. People on both sides of the political spectrum have lost the concept of the entirety of an issue; and the value of a perspective that differs from their own. Everyone is looking at things with blinders on and not taking a step back and empathizing with our brothers, who may diverge from us in appearance and outlook but are still our kin. (Perhaps it related to the first part of my earlier post, “Two Theories on the Ending of the World”, the serious part on conspiracy theories and the “why’s” of their popularity, and decidedly NOT not the more humorous second half that blames aliens. Read it to find out more.)

My wife inadvertently caused me to think and challenge my initial superficial reaction in that because it’s mob violence it’s wrong. Wimmin! And I agree with her. The statues, at least some of them, should go. But so should statues of Marx, Che Guevara, Margaret Sanger and others of similar ilk. Should they be removed by a popular “spontaneous act?” No.

So there.

Are you a creative Catholic? ""Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics," is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Heavenly Helpers Cage Battles

Years ago MTV had a show called “Celebrity Death Match” wherein stop-motion animated figures of celebrities would go into a boxing ring and fight. Hilarity abounded as much as their personas clashed.

I think EWTN should have a similar show in which saints, blesseds, venerables and servants of God would go into an MMA-style cage and have at it! Their scripted lines would be derived from their writings and sayings attributed to them. Hilarity would abound as much as their differing viewpoints on theology, dogmas and doctrines. “Unity in the essentials, but diversity in the details, ” and it’ll be in the details where the spiritual blood and guts would pour forth.

There would be 5 classes of fights: saints vs saints, blesseds vs blesseds, etc. Plus an “Open Tournament” where, for example, a saint could do battle against a servant of God.

The Blessed Virgin Mary would be the referee, of course.

I really think that “Heavenly Helpers Cage Battles” would be an excellent catechetical and evangelical tool. Imagine how much you could learn about Just War Doctrine by having St. Maximilian Kolbe (not a pacifist) go up against Servant of God Dorothy Day ( a pacifist) in an Open Tournament.

They needn’t use stop-motion animation, they could use CGI, vector graphics, whatevs.

🙂

Are you a creative Catholic? ""Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics," is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Novena of Novenas for Justice, Peace and Creation II: Our Lady of Guadalupe, Blessed Stanley Rother, and All the Martyrs of Latin America

And today begins the Second of the Nine Novenas for Justice, Peace, & Creation, and this one is dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe, Blessed Stanley Rother, and All the Martyrs of Latin America. It runs from June 29 to July 7, 2020.

Don’t worry if you jump in at some point later in the 81 days. To paraphrase Bob “just pick up whenever you happen to join in.”

AFTER THIS SENTENCE, THE WRITING IS ALL THAT OF BOB WALDROP, not me, Paulcoholic.

…

Novena of Novenas for Justice, Peace and Creation II: Our Lady of Guadalupe, Blessed Stanley Rother, and All the Martyrs of Latin America

“Getting Started:

General Intention: the unjust exercise of authority, and the sins and structures of sin against life.

The Second Work of Justice and Peace: Hear the truth when it is spoken to you. Discern the signs of the times and speak truth — to power, to the people, and to the Church.

Act of caring for Creation: Start a compost pile and compost your organic waste.

God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me.

+ Let us pray together in peace, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Open our eyes to see the beauty, joy, redemption, and goodness which comes through obedience to your Son our Lord. Teach us to be a refuge of hope for all who are oppressed by injustice and violence.

O Mary, blessed Lady of Guadalupe, bright dawn of the new world, Mother of the living, to you do we entrust the cause of life: Look down, O Mother, upon the vast numbers of babies not allowed to be born, of the poor whose lives are made difficult, of men and women who are victims of brutal violence and unjust wars, of the elderly and the sick killed by indifference or out of misguided mercy. Grant that all who believe in your Son may proclaim the Gospel of life with honesty and love to the people of our time.

Obtain for them the grace to accept that Gospel as a gift ever new, the joy of celebrating it with gratitude throughout their lives and the courage to bear witness to it resolutely, in order to build, together with all people of good will, the civilization of truth and love, to the praise and glory of God, the Creator and lover of life.

Pray for us, Blessed Stanley Rother and all Martyrs of Latin America! Bring to our remembrance this day all people who are killed in wars, acteal martyrstortured in jails, disappeared in the night, starved for food, subjected to oppression, driven from their homes, unlawfully imprisoned, denied religious liberty, excluded from economic opportunity, marginalized by poverty, targeted by racial and cultural prejudices, silenced by violence and injustice. Help us to hear and remember the tragedy, joy, despair, and hope of the voices that call to us and to history for justice, reconciliation, and peace. Pray for us so that by the grace of God we will build a world without injustice. Amen.

Prayer to St. John Chrysostom on behalf of the U.S. Catholic bishops:

Most Glorious and Venerable St. John Chrysostom,
Grace shining forth from your lips like a beacon
has illumined the universe.
It shows to the world the treasures of poverty;
it reveals to us the heights of humility.
Teaching us by your words, O Father John Chrysostom,
intercede before the Word, Christ our God, to save our souls!

All-blest and venerable St. John Chrysostom,
we praise you, for you are our teacher, revealing things divine!
Pray for us that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Our Father . . . Hail Mary… Glory be. . .

Thoughts for the journey. In this Novena we honor Mary as Our Lady of Guadalupe, protector of all children, whatever their social, political, or physical location may be. She is patron of all those who are oppressed and persecuted and patron of the Americas. We also remember the martyrs of Latin America, victims of cruel conflicts between world empires and corrupt ruling classes. Many of these killings were committed with arms and money provided by the United States, by military personnel trained by the United States. All of us must examine our consciences as to how we benefit from the evil done by our governments.

We name in particular Blessed Stanley Rother, born on a farm near Okarche, Oklahoma. Not a great student, he had to leave one seminary because of academic concerns, but was accepted elsewhere which was better equipped to help him meet the academic standards of ordination. Sent to the mission church of Santiago Aititlan in Guatamala, he not only celebrated the Sacraments, he helped the people better their lives. He introduced new crops, organized a farmers marketing coop, and did all he could to help them to help themselves. This brought him into conflict with the government, whose policy was that the indigenous peoples should be poor, and remain poor, so they could be exploited for the benefit of the ruling class. They were consistently supported in this evil by the United States government, which in the 1950s conspired with the Guatamalan ruling classes to overthrow the only freely elected democratic government that nationa had experienced. It is not too much to say that the guns and bullets used to murder Blessed Stanley Rother were paid for by the US taxpayers.

Throughout history, we have drawn circles around certain groups and said, “These people are not human — dispose of them as you choose.” The holocausts are too many to count. Do we really believe that human life is precious and deserves respect and protection? That depends on where the alleged person is located, socially and physically.

Some people simply aren’t considered to be real people. They may be too old, and too sick, and too poor, or located someplace “inconvenient.” Perhaps they live on land which is coveted by others more powerful than they. Maybe their nations have resources that we want. This was the attitude of nearly everyone in the United States, including sadly the bishops and most of the clergy of the Catholic Church in the United States, towards the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. We have for the most part stood by and done nothing as they were “caught in the crossfire.” All of us must examine our consciences concerning our complicity with the unjust murder that has gone on in the name of the US Government in Iraq and Afghanistan, Africa, Central America, and elsewhere in the world. We have stood in the streets, and instead of crying out against unjust war, we have instead screamed repeatedly — “Crucify them! Crucify them!”

Society has developed many ways to ease this process, starting with the NewSpeak vocabulary that describes these events passively so they don’t see so “bad”. Structures of sin always defend themselves vigorously. There is enough tragedy in this to go around more than once.

Abandonment by fathers, violence against women, unjust economics that encourage abortion, terrorism, mandatory contraception & sterilization, demonization of the poor (especially young single mothers), cartelized and corporatized health care and so on. Here is where we remember that the Lady of Guadalupe took upon herself the image of a young pregnant Aztec maiden in a place of oppression and injustice, demonstrating God’s love for everybody.

We find this message also in the mysteries of Blessed Stanley Rother and the many Martyrs of Latin America. They were condemned by politicians. The bullets and bombs that killed them were paid for by the powerful. They were targeted because they were poor. Their deaths were enabled by structures that dehumanize and depersonalize human beings. Like unborn children, a circle was drawn around them & they were proclaimed as fair game. Empires counted their deaths as collateral damage. Most of us stood by and did nothing, or actively supported our crusade of brutal violence against the poor. Their voices call to us for justice & remembrance.

How is my life — how is your life — open to the reality that Christ is alive and he loves each and every one of us? Jesus gave his life to save us and our societies from sin and oppression. Does that reality have an impact on the way we live? He was with the Martyrs of Acteal and the Four Churchwomen and the Blessed Oscar Romero and the Blessed Fr. Stanley Rother and all the other martyrs of Latin America at the time that demonic evil so cruelly ended their lives. He comforted them in life and in death. Jesus lives today and is at our side every moment of every day to enlighten, strengthen, and free us. Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, of our journeys of justice and peace.

Act of Caring of Creation: Compost!

God designed this planet to work in accordance with natural laws. So when living organic matter dies, it goes back to the earth, decays, and is reborn as new plants starting a new cycle. This is the natural way our planet works. But we are the Americans! We have a Better Way! We should wrap our organic wastes in black plastic and bury it in holes! Surely we are Smarter Than God! Well as a matter of reality we are not smarter than God, and our fetish with stuffing black plastic bags with trash and burying them in the ground is a moral crime against Nature — which is the Creation of God. So a compost pile is not some foolish activity of hippies. To package your kitchen waste in black plastic, robbing the earth of those nutrients, contaminating them with chemicals and other industrial wastes, is (for most of us) sin. Think of this unnatural practice as. . . “environmental sodomy.” Holiness demands a better way, and that’s what composting is about.

If you don’t know how to compost, read this short article that I wrote and recently revised:

Compost! Because a rind is a terrible thing to waste.

If you want to grow your own food, the place to start is by making compost. Some people make this out to be much more complicated than it really is. Here is a basic recipe for making compost.

Select a place for a compost pile, and dig the ground up a bit. Put down a layer of twigs and small branches, and then make alternating layers of “brown and dry” materials and “green and wet” materials. Brown and dry can include leaves, shredded tree limbs and bark, newspapers (no shiny slick papers or colored inks), brown cardboard, dried grass clippings. Green and wet includes kitchen scraps, green lawn trimmings, green leaves, flowers, weeds, plants, etc. It’s best not to put fats or meats in the pile, as that will attract varmints, but they will compost if not eaten…

Wet each layer thoroughly, and toss a shovel of soil on each layer and a couple of small branches. Pile it up at least 3 feet high and 3 feet wide, & then leave it alone for a year. If it’s a dry summer, water it so it stays damp inside (like a wrung out sponge). After about a year, rake away the leaves still on top, and inside will be a nice, rich, dark loamy compost that smells like forest dirt when you sniff it.

If you can’t wait a whole year, you can make compost faster by fussing with it a bit. Every week or so go out and “turn it”, that is to say, use a pitchfork and move the compost to a different spot, so that what was “outside” on the pile is now inside, and what was inside is now on the outside.

If the compost heap starts to smell bad, something’s wrong, probably either too much “wet and green” or it has somehow gotten so compacted that air can’t get in. For the problem of too much wet and green, add more brown and dry. If the pile has become compacted, then stir it up a bit and add some small branches (the purpose of the branches is to keep the pile from compacting and to help air circulate).

If you dig into the pile, you will find lots of little creatures at work, rolly pollies, worms, etc. That’s good, because that’s what’s supposed to happen.

If you want a nice garden, the place to start is by building your soil. No chemical fertilizer has the advantages of home made compost, & it has the added benefit of recycling your food waste, lawn & garden trimmings on site, rather than sending them off to be buried wastefully in a landfill. Composting is the beginning of a beautiful home garden. Start your compost pile this week, a rind is a terrible thing to waste!

By Bob Waldrop

Are you a creative Catholic? ""Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics," is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

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Novena to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Servant of God Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin.

Today begins the First of the Nine Novenas for Justice, Peace, & Creation, and this one is dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Servant of God Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. It runs from June 20 — June 28, 2020.

I will not post this every day as the intentions are the same for each day. I’ll just leave it here for nine days; if I need to blog in the interim, I will just post a reminder afterwards. For the background, please read this post on my other blog, Sober Catholic (especially if you need to learn about who Bob Waldrop, the creator of this Novena, was, and why I am introducing it to you. In short, Bob was a guy I discovered online in the early 00s. He was the founder of the St. Oscar Romero Catholic Worker House in Oklahoma City. He ran several websites that are profound and deep in their knowledge of Applied Catholicism. A few years after I joined Facebook I found him on there and I decided to connect with him. From him I learned a lot, and it was the information on his websites that started to direct my thinking of Catholicism as something more than liturgy, sacraments and prayer. I had known that, but he (along with some other sources) gave some concrete form to my thought. You’re really going to have to read that post on Sober Catholic to learn more about him and his work. He died on August 30, 2019.)

The original novena site is here: A Novena of Novenas for Justice, Peace, & Creation.

Don’t worry if you jump in at some point later in the 81 days. To paraphrase Bob “just pick up whenever you happen to join in.”

AFTER THIS SENTENCE, THE WRITING IS ALL THAT OF BOB WALDROP, not me, Paulcoholic.

…

Novena of Novenas for Justice, Peace, & Creation I: to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin (June 20 — June 28, 2020)

“Getting Started:

Begin each novena prayer with a time of quiet prayer. You may find it helpful to pray some repetitions of the Jesus Prayer (Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner), a decade of the Rosary, the Chaplet of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, or a time of spiritual reading or lectio divina that will prepare your mind and your heart for the prayer to come. This could be a time for a daily examen, where you consider your actions of the day and how they relate to God’s call in your life.”

General Intentions: For the redemption of structures of violence, oppression, exploitation, and despair with beauty, goodness, mercy, and peace. Reparation for sins against life.

The First Work of Justice and Peace: Live simply and justly in solidarity with the poor and marginalized and be a good neighbor. Make no war on them, rather, be one with them in spirit, truth, and love.

Act of Caring for Creation: Pick up trash in a public place.

God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me. + Let us pray together in peace, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Open our eyes to see the beauty, joy, redemption, and goodness which comes through obedience to your Son our Lord. Teach us to be a refuge of hope for all who are oppressed by injustice and violence.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for those who serve the poor and who accompany them in their journeys; may we who keep this sacred commemoration experience the joy and love of the grace of your Son; may His most Sacred Heart, together with yours, pierced with sorrow for the evils of the world, be a sure refuge of hope in a time of trouble for all who are oppressed by injustice and violence.

The Magnificat of Mary. My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; for He has looked with favor on His lowly servant. From this day all generations shall call me blessed.

The Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is His Name. He has mercy on those who fear Him in every generation.

He has shown the strength of His arm, He has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He has sent away empty.

He has come to the help of His servant Israel for He has remembered His promise of mercy, the promise He made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children forever.

Dorothy Day: Dorothy Day, friend and partner of the poor, guiding spirit for the Catholic Worker, home always open to the unwanted, early, often lonely, witness in the cause of peace and conscience, eloquent pattern of gospel simplicity, Dorothy Day, disciple of the Lord, may we continue your gift of self to the needy and your untiring work for justice and peace. Help us to follow your example and dedicate our lives to the creation of structures of beauty and goodness, wisdom and mercy. Amen.

Peter Maurin: Peter Maurin, Holy Fool, teach us to give and not to take, to serve and not to rule, to help and not to crush, to nourish and not to devour. As we create a new society within the shell of the old, remind us that ideals and not deals, creed and not greed, are what makes humanity humane. Amen.

Prayer to St. John Chrysostom on behalf of the U.S. Catholic bishops.

Most Glorious and Venerable St. John Chrysostom,
Grace shining forth from your lips like a beacon
has illumined the universe.
It shows to the world the treasures of poverty;
it reveals to us the heights of humility.
Teaching us by your words, O Father John Chrysostom,
intercede before the Word, Christ our God, to save our souls!

Having received divine grace from heaven,
with your mouth you teach all people to worship the Triune God.
Instruct our bishops with the wisdom of the Gospel,
so that they repent of their material cooperation with the objective evil of unjust war,
and call all people, in authentic word and deed, to live in solidarity, peace, and justice.

All-blest and venerable St. John Chrysostom,
we praise you, for you are our teacher, revealing things divine!
Pray for us that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

O God, Who by the preaching and teaching of Saint John Chrysostom
has given us an example of fortitude in the face of persecution and political corruption,
grant that we who reverence his life and ministry may also imitate
his example of fidelity to wisdom, truth, justice, and beauty,
through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.

Our Father . . . Hail Mary… Glory be. . .

Thoughts for the journey. Today many swords pierce the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Injustice, oppression, violence, war, murder, the rape of Creation — all these and more are sins and structures of sin against justice and peace. We know that within our hearts are the seeds of the problems the world faces.

This redemption begins in my heart and your heart. It all starts, as they say, with the man — or the woman — in the mirror.

If we want to see a better relationship of Christ and the world, we must ask first about our own personal relationship with Jesus. Is he the Easter Bunny? Someone who makes us feel good, but who is remote and not really involved? A cultural construct? A topic in a religious education course?

Or is Christ a living reality in my life?

We are in this for the long haul, and it will be a long haul. We will not wake up on the 82nd day after 81 days of nine novenas and discover that we have prayed and worked ourselves into a new world of justice and peace that cares for Creation as God intended for all of us. There is much more work and prayer to come.

If we think we can do this in our own strength, we are wrong.

If we are going forward in the work of justice and peace, the place to start is with an examination of our own lives. How do my sins of omission and commission create and support structures of injustice and oppression? How do I participate in and profit from the social sins and unjust wars of this age? What must be redeemed in my life so that I live in solidarity with those our society has pushed to the edge and further, into the abyss? How can I change my life so that I promote peace, rather than demanding war? Can I end (or minimize) the ecological harm I cause to Creation by my lifestyle?

Have I abandoned Christ for secular saviors? Do I bury myself in the busy-ness of life and ignore God’s call?

As you pray these novenas for the next 81 days, let this be a time when your personal relationship with Christ blooms and flowers. Our prayer for everyone who takes up these novenas is that their hearts will be open to the reality that Christ is alive and he loves each and every one of us. He gave his life to save us and our societies from sin and oppression. He lives today and is at your side every moment of every day to enlighten, strengthen, and free you. OK, I am paraphrasing Pope Francis here, but I think the point is clear: the journey of justice and peace is a journey with Christ.

If we are to change the world, each of us must begin with himself or herself as we ourselves become the change we wish to see in the world. That change is the fruit of the Spirit that grows from our personal relationship with Christ.

Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin:

Dorothy Day was an early advocate of women’s rights who wrote for radical leftist newspapers in the early years of this century. She was a bohemian as they said in those days — but when she looked in her heart of hearts, she found it empty. By the grace and providence of God, she found our Lord and was baptized into the Catholic Church. Thus began a journey which led to the founding of the Catholic Worker movement, together with Peter Maurin and the other first Workers.

It’s clear from their writings that both Dorothy and Peter experienced a tender and intimate relationship with Christ. This relationship was the source of all that they were able to do for the cause of justice and peace. Dorothy was not a stranger to activism; for years she had struggled in the streets as part of the great social battles of the first years of the 20th century — women’s suffrage, the 40 hour week, the right to join a union, justice for workers.

Peter Maurin, a French peasant who came to the United States via Canada, taught that it was a great blessing to assist the rich in coming to the assistance of the poor. Too often, “never the twain shall meet,” and certainly, in this day and age, communication between the poor and the rich is as bad as it has ever been. Communication requires that each person who wants to be heard and understood must see and hear the “Other” as a human person. It’s not easy, and it takes practice.

The program that Peter and Dorothy offered to the world was direct, personal involvement with other human beings. They called us to open houses of hospitality, to engage in clarification of thought so we would understand what needs to be done, and to found agricultural communities as the seeds of new villages. They believed in the importance of the Eucharist, the Rosary, and many traditional devotions — because their work responded to their lively interior relationship with Christ. They were suspicious of the imperial State. They wanted the Catholic Worker movement to be an organism, not an organization, that drew its strength from the Eucharist and the real presence of Christ in the lives of the workers.

As the United States empire entered a time of great triumph, they called for establishing the seeds of a new society within the “collapsing ruins of the old. ” They taught that the poor should be fed by Christians, not by large government bureaucracies. Peter wrote many “Easy Essays” — short little works, almost poetry in their simplicity, each one packed with intense theological concepts about the human person and how we relate to one another in community. He also reminded us of the nobility — and the necessity — of manual labor (something we’d often like to forget in this day of convenience and instant gratification).

Dorothy and Peter worked to create and live structures of beauty and goodness. In the midst of the slums of New York, they provided hospitality to the poor while working for social justice. They learned that the works of mercy and the works of justice and peace are one and the same, different aspects of the same journey, all going the same direction.

Long before it was a theological mantra, the “preferential option for the poor” was a living reality in the life and work of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. They were informed critics of current events, prophetically looking for the truth in the signs of their times, and finding Jesus in the poor, rejected, and marginalized.

Their example inspires us today to consider how we can ensure fair distribution, subsidiarity, economic opportunity, justice, and food security for everyone everywhere. As we open our eyes, our minds, and our hearts to the Spirit’s guidance, we can discern our response to the signs of these times. We then can see the structures of sin that bind us in poverty and war, and name the demons which oppress us.

We can buy farms and dedicate them for the purpose of raising food for the hungry. We can organize microenterprise co-operatives in every city to provide opportunity for the poor. We can look at our own individual situations, and adopt lifestyles of simplicity and frugality, rejecting the culture of materialistic conspicuous consumption in favor of a life of living simply, that others may simply live. We can minimize our use of fossil fuels and thus remove one of the major causes of war. We can buy our food directly from farmers, and stop funding the destruction of the family farm community. We can discern the cry of the widow and orphan in our own neighborhoods, and be the hands and feet of God in relieving distress and creating justice. We can open our own hearts to the reality of life in Christ, and embrace him as savior and friend.

Dorothy Day used to quote St. Catherine of Sienna — “All the way to heaven is heaven.” May this be our prayer, in Jesus’ holy name.

Caring for Creation

Our act of reparation during this 9 day novena, and going forward, is to pick up trash in a public place. You won’t have to look far, but I think there are extra blessings for picking up trash in low income neighborhoods. Trash is endemic everywhere. It is a sign of our careless attitude towards the gifts of this Earth that God has so freely given us. Much trash is useful — many items can be recycled or repurposed, but often we think only of our selfishness and do not take the time or the care to do the right thing by Creation and reduce our impact on the planet by recycling. Examine your conscience! Do you sin against God’s Creation by your casual attitude towards waste? Now is the time for actual works of penance, which is why we pick up trash in public places.

Courtesy: Bob Waldrop, St. Oscar Romero Catholic Worker House

…

(I’m, back. Thank you for reading and praying. Just a few thoughts of my own, here, on some of the language Bob used, particularly referring to the US as an “empire,” within a pejorative context. Well, it is painful, but the United States IS an Empire. While an Empire in and of itself is not a bad thing, ours is costly. Excessive tax dollars are spent on maintaining a military presence overseas we can hardly afford; money that could be spent domestically on infrastructure, healthcare, education and other things. In my thinking, there is little reason why we should still be maintaining military bases in Europe. They can potentially defend themselves. NATO served its purpose as the defense of the West against any potential Soviet/Warsaw Pact invasion; after the fall of the Communist alliance NATO should have been mothballed and the European nations taken upon themselves some form of collective defense, if needed. While engaging in military action against terrorists might have seemed a good idea in the early 00s, in reality continued action in the Middle East has only served to create more terrorists. I’m uncertain as to the solution, but the way things are going there and domestically, I think we should cut our losses and our troops recalled. )

Are you a creative Catholic? ""Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics," is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone who is an alcoholic or addict?
"The Sober Catholic Way" helps Catholics by describing the many ways in which their faith can assist in maintaining sobriety, and is a basic handbook on how anyone can live a sober life. . (Thank you!!)

Willing to be ridiculous to obtain the miraculous, so please help

I tried posting this on LinkedIn either as a stand alone post or a profile description, but it exceeds the maximum length for either. Then I remembered that I have two blogs and so I decided to make use of them for this personal matter. The post title is an allusion to a famous quote of Mother Angelica, the Foundress of EWTN. She said, “Unless you are willing to do the ridiculous, God will not do the miraculous. When you have God, you don’t have to know everything about it; you just do it.” This kind of post sounds ridiculous, and proper people with proper concerns about proper appearances probably wouldn’t bother, but I am looking for the miraculous, and so be it. (However, I know quite a bunch about what I’m looking for, so there’s that…)

In this time of pandemic, with the relevant health concerns, (or scares, depending upon your POV) I am considering a career change. I hinted at my day job on a prior LinkedIn profile description (now edited out in favor of the current transitional one) but I would now like something different. What have I done for a living? Nice that you should ask: I am currently laid-off (due to the pandemic) from a thrift store chain where I received used goods at an outdoor remote donation center. What was a temporary job “until something better came along” has endured for over six years now. So, loyalty and perseverance are expressed character traits! I found that I actually enjoyed the work, hard as it was at times given the need to work in all types of weather and dealing with all types of individuals. I found the diversity of people and their offerings interesting, especially when they talked and told stories about themselves or their goods. I’d often wonder about the history of unusual or odd donations. Also, during periods in between receiving and sorting/stocking duties I found plenty of time to read and think, which assisted my enduring for 6 years. I even got a great idea for a novel which I have been puttering with.

My company is considering reopening next week (June 1st) in an upcoming “Phase.” Although I do welcome the opportunity to return, I have also enjoyed staying safe at home these past few months. I have health concerns which render me susceptible to COVID-19, although my health care professionals think I’ll survive. But given the impermanence of unemployment insurance, generous though it is, work is a need for personal dignity, economic sustainability and independence. I find myself wanting something that can make better use of my past professional, academic and general life-skills. And thus I am pursuing a career-change. I am seeking a remote (telework, “work-at-home”) position in what might variously be called “content creation,” or “freelance copywriting” or “copyediting,” in other words, you have a site or product that needs words, well, I got loads of ’em and I know how to use them, too! Another position that I would be interested in is chat-based customer service. After completing training on your company’s products and services and assimilating appropriate knowledge, I can serve customers who have issues and problems in a chat interface. (I prefer the written word to the spoken.) I use a Mac, hopefully this is not an impediment to any proprietary software.

If you’re interested, or have job leads, or even advice and prayers, please email me at the addresses found here: MY CONTACT INFO. You can also reach me through LinkedIn; my profile is Paul Sofranko on LinkedIn. The “About Me” page on my busier blog tells much. I am diligent, loyal, and possess a great work ethic. Salary is negotiable, I’d prefer flexible hours, or if fixed hours, then afternoons through evenings (i.e. “second shift.”) I am looking forward to hearing from you. Thank you for considering me, I do appreciate any interest.

Are you a creative Catholic? ""Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics," is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone who is an alcoholic or addict?
"The Sober Catholic Way" helps Catholics by describing the many ways in which their faith can assist in maintaining sobriety, and is a basic handbook on how anyone can live a sober life. . (Thank you!!)

Paul Sofranko Space

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