Saint Patrick's Day and Catholicism

Happy Saint Patrick's Day to everyone, and especially to all those in the U.S. who claim Irish ancestry, myself included. Across the country people will celebrate with parades, parties, wearing green, and eating a traditional dinner of corned beef and cabbage. Some will use the day to get drunk, although as Bill O'Reilly noted, Saint Patrick would not have approved. Noted as a man who brought Christianity to Ireland, he was known for his humble service and his concern for the poor. We should all emulate that spirit of humility and Christian love.
Last week, after a short, two-day conclave, the Roman Catholic College of Cardinals elected a new pope, Cardinal Bergoglio of Argentina, who takes the office as Pope Francis I. In what appears to be an effort toward new beginnings, Pope Francis is the first non-European, and the first Jesuit, to be elected pope. In his first day in office he called on the Church to minister to the poor, declaring that the Church should be "poor, and for the poor."
The Catholic Church has been embattled, particularly in the United States, as reports of pedophile priests abusing children sexually have exploded across the media. The fact that the Church itself was complicit in covering up these crimes and, in some cases, enabling these priests, however unintentionally, has caused some Catholics to question their faith and to drop out. Of course, such stories have not been exclusive to the Catholic Church; some well-known Protestant preachers have been found to be guilty of similar crimes. But as the largest denomination in the world, and the largest in the U.S. with more than 68 million members, the Catholic Church is the most visible. It also seems to be the target of more attacks by a news media ever ready to report the lascivious details of any rumored infraction by Christian leaders.
I am not Catholic; I am a Lutheran. But what I have seen of the Catholic Church in my lifetime has been a church body dedicated to helping the poor and to bringing the gospel to all, not just those in prosperous suburban neighborhoods. Yes, as a Lutheran I have some major differences with Catholicism over doctrine, but I still have to believe what the evidence of my eyes tells me: that the Catholic Church is there in the trenches with the poor and the disenfranchised. And that is what Jesus wants.
Unfortunately, all branches of Christianity are made up of flawed human beings, and I don't doubt that the new pope would agree whole-heartedly with that statement, perhaps even including himself. But the love of Jesus Christ is evident in what the Catholic Church has done throughout her 2,000 year history. My prayers are with Pope Francis, and with the whole Church of Christ, that we may attend to the true work of the church, which is spreading the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

A Time For Change

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

² a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
³ a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
⁴ a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
⁵ a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
⁶ a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
⁷ a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
⁸ a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8  English Standard Version

I received a letter from the Republican National Committee. The subject of the letter was the fact that I have not renewed my membership this year. To be honest, I'm not sure I want to. Don't get me wrong; I'm not considering the Democrat party. But the current state of the GOP is such that I - and a lot of other people like me - think that it's time for a change.

In 2012, I served as a delegate to the Indiana state Republican Convention. It was my first foray into politics. I don't know what I was expecting, but what I saw wasn't it. The state GOP leadership had changed the rules for proposing changes to the state platform, making such changes extremely difficult. In spite of this, one delegate managed to get a proposal forward for a vote calling for a comprehensive audit of the Federal Reserve. The convention chair was clearly reluctant to bring it up for a vote, but he had to. The delegate proposing it had managed to clear all the hurdles put up by those not wanting change. The change passed with a resounding "aye."

The main convention wasn't the only trouble spot. The party leadership had pretty much made up its mind that the GOP nominee for president was going to be Mitt Romney, even though a large number of us weren't sanguine about his candidacy. The district caucuses were intended to be nothing more than a rubber stamp on the predetermined outcome. Those of us who tried to submit a rule change at the beginning of the caucus for my district (3) were shut down by a parliamentary sleight of hand that would have made any congressman or senator on Capitol Hill proud. Romney was to be the nominee. Period. I would like to think that this was an isolated incident, but we heard of similar (and worse) shenanigans in other caucuses and other state conventions. Not that the Republicans alone are guilty. The Democrats have their own skeleton-filled closets.

In November, Barack Obama won re-election by a decisive 52%-48% margin after Mitt Romney failed to overcome the Democrats' portrayal of him as a rich ogre, without aggressively pressing the administration on its many mistakes since January 2009. Since then, President Obama has succeeded in getting a Republican House to agree to a tax increase in January. He has used the impending sequestration to attempt to turn public opinion against the Republican party, blaming them for the consequences to the so-called "economic recovery" if the plan goes into effect, all the while demanding more taxes. Of course, he neglects to mention the fact that the White House was solidly behind the sequester, proposing many of its provisions. And while the administration continues to drag its feet regarding answers to the many questions flowing from the Benghazi debacle, Senators McCain and Graham sharply criticized Senator Rand Paul for filibustering a cabinet confirmation in order to highlight the Justice department's refusal to give an unequivocal answer to the question of drone attacks against U.S. citizens.

It seems that the Republican Old Guard are more worried about losing their power base than they are about losing civil liberties. They don't seem to be at all concerned about the fiscal and constitutional crisis toward which this nation is headed. Which is exactly the point. For those of us who make up the rank and file of American citizens, the Constitution and fiscal responsibility still matter. The federal government, both Democrat and Republican, has not paid much heed to the Constitution for nearly 100 years. For the sake of the Republic, to which the founding Fathers pledged "our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor," and for which so much blood has been shed, the time for change has come.

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Of Self-Reliance and Class Envy

               My column is late this week, and I have no one to blame but myself.  I aspire to be a syndicated columnist. But I lack the self-discipline required to meet deadlines - that is those deadlines where there is no threat of getting a lower grade on an assignment, no threat of having guests into a messy house, or some other unpleasant consequence. The only threat here is that I won't realize my dream, and who is responsible for that, if not I myself?
               I am a member of the "98%," that majority of the U.S. population that is not wealthy. My husband's modest income is sufficient to support us comfortably, if not lavishly, although we occasionally have room in the budget for a few luxuries. I also have a small disability check that comes each month, thanks to SSDI, but that is money due to me thanks to payroll taxes; it isn't a handout. And I am trying to get back into the work force.
              I am not envious of those who are wealthy. The overwhelming majority of them have worked hard to earn what they have, and I do not begrudge them what they have. I would like to be wealthy, but if I never am, I cannot complain that I have been at an unfair disadvantage. God has blessed them, and He has blessed me and my husband - in different ways perhaps, but I know of no universal law requiring God to bless all of us equally.
              For the past two or three years, the news has been full of stories about Occupy Wall Street and its various derivatives. We've heard about how the "99%" or the "98%" have been unfairly denied a piece of the American Dream by the "2%." I have read on my Facebook page comments from people I know which indicate they feel entitled to a share of what the "2%" have earned on the basis that they helped to build it. They seem to forget that they have shared in the prosperity: the wealth of that 2% has provided the jobs which have enabled them to provide for themselves.
             Yes, this country still has a high unemployment rate, four years after electing a president who campaigned on "hope and change," who promised to restore the economic prosperity this nation has enjoyed in unprecedented abundance for more than 50 years. But this president's policies have been rooted in the idea that our problems have been created and exacerbated by that same 2%.
              The Great Recession, which began in 2007, was largely ushered in by misguided government policies encouraging, at times requiring, banks to make questionable real estate loans to people who would not otherwise have qualified. All too often, these people were encouraged to buy more house than they could afford, lured by adjustable rate mortgages and low monthly payments that would increase sharply after 5 years, with the promise that they could then refinance to a fixed rate and not have to come up with the money to make those bigger payments. The problem was that real estate values did not increase sufficiently to allow that promised refinance. Too many of those first-time home-buyers found they couldn't afford the higher monthly payments, and they defaulted.
               Add to all this the fact that many of these banks then bundled these risky loans into securities which they sold in order to spread the risk. When home foreclosures reached a critical mass, the result was plummeting home values. Several investment firms went under, causing a cascade of unemployment. As more and more people found themselves out of work for extended periods, they began filing bankruptcy. More foreclosures ensued.
               The point I am making is that while the actions of some financiers exacerbated a looming market failure, government policies intended to make everything "fair" actually made things worse. And people who bought into the fantasy of owning a big, beautiful home that they would not have been able to afford in any case, contributed to the problem by not planning for those higher payments. Instead, encouraged by loose lending practices, many went deeply into debt to finance lavish vacations, home improvements, furniture, and just about anything their hearts desired. The result was that when the bills came due, they didn't have the money to pay them. Is this the fault of the 2%? Perhaps, in that many of them took advantage of the opportunities afforded by the reckless profligacy of American society. But they didn't hold a gun to anyone's head to get them to make them do it.
                Unfortunately, the cynical manipulation of public sentiment against the 2% by this president has resulted in many people feeling that they are somehow owed a comfortable life, a nice house, health care, a higher education, and who knows what else? Things that my parents and others of their generation assumed they had to work for are now deemed entitlements, and if getting them means that the 2% have to pay more in taxes so that the majority of us can reap the benefits, so be it.
                 In the meantime, more and more people are receiving EBT cards and welfare checks. Fewer Americans are working to pay taxes to provide all those social benefits. And government regulations and taxes make it harder and harder for business owners to earn money so that they can hire employees. And yet we're told that the wealthy have to "pay their fair share," without any specifics on just what that "fair share" is. Personally, I don't want what someone else has earned. I just want the chance to earn something for myself.  The policies of this administration, and the failure of Congress to enact any meaningful reform of spending and the tax code, have made that harder and harder.
                  Let's stop blaming the 2%. Let's roll up our sleeves and get to work.

MLK's "Dream" 50 Years Later

Today is Inauguration Day (the ceremonial version, that is). President Obama was sworn into office for his second term yesterday, January 20th. Today is a significant day, because it is also the anniversary of Martin Luther King's birth. In today's ceremony, the president will be sworn in using not one, but two bibles: one which had belonged to Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, and another that belonged to King. The significance of Obama's presidency as it relates to these two great men should not be ignored.
In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington D.C. He called for an end to the inequities that hampered the lives of blacks in the United States. He called for justice for blacks. He called for the United States to "rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.' "
To a large extent this nation has done that, as witnessed by the fact that we elected a black man president, not once, but twice. Blacks are represented in every segment of society, in the business world, on college campuses, and in every day life. Race or color are no longer impediments to higher education or higher earnings.
That's not to say that racism is dead. It is unfortunately alive and well, if my brief scan of internet blogs is any indication. But the opportunities are there for those with the will and the drive to take advantage of them. Unfortunately, more blacks than whites still live in poverty; black children too often languish in failing inner-city schools, and inner-city neighborhoods where drug deals and prostitution appear to be the only future available for a people trapped in a welfare system that was intended to help them. And any mention of change, of overhauling the welfare system or the school system is met with howls of outrage from those who claim to represent the interests of the black community, yet nothing changes or gets better for those who are caught in the hopelessness of welfare dependency. Chalk it up to the law of unintended consequences.
King's dream of having his children judged by the content of their character rather than their skin color is unfortunately still only a dream. A political system which still sees only black and white is unable to be color-blind. As long as the powers that be in this nation continue to make judgments about a person's abilities based on the color of his or her skin, we will never be able to move beyond race as a factor in the way this nation conducts its affairs. Until educational opportunities at the primary and secondary level are truly equal, the blacks trapped in failing schools will never be equal. Until we can hire - and fire - based on an individual's job performance without fear of a class-action lawsuit for racism, black workers will never be equal. And until the day that blacks can be freed from the destructiveness of illegitimacy, drugs, welfare, and ghettos, there will never be true justice in this country.

What Have We Wrought?

Many years ago, when my daughter was five or six, we were standing in line at the checkout in the base exchange at Soesterberg Air Base in the Netherlands. The music playing over the store's loudspeaker system was Madonna's "Justify My Love." My daughter, a very bright child, turned to me and, referring to the sounds of the "song," asked "Mom, why is that lady making those sounds?" A very apt question. My daughter wanted to know what was the meaning of sounds that were clearly intended to imitate a woman in the throes of passion. Not wanting to get into a discussion of human sexuality right then and there, and certainly not in that context, I told her I didn't know, but I wished they wouldn't play that song.
At that point, a young airman standing in line behind me chimed in with "It's my right to listen to that music." I don't remember exactly what I said (this was over 20 years ago, after all), but I do remember that I wimped out. I think I didn't say anything to his comment. What I wish I had done was reply in this way: "Your right? What about my right not to have my daughter exposed to this kind of thing? If you want to listen to it, fine, but why should the rest of us be forced to listen to it?
On another occasion, when we were at RAF Lakenheath, England, I was browsing the magazine rack at the Stars and Stripes bookstore. My then four-year-old pointed to a slew of "girlie" magazines (which were in plain sight on the bottom shelf, right at his eye-level) and asked "Mommy, why is that lady dressed that way?" Once again, I don't remember what I said, since this was even further back, but I moved him away from the offending magazines and distracted his attention (thank heaven for a four-year-old's short attention span). What I wish I had done was to have asked to see the store manager and asked him if it was appropriate for those kinds of magazines to be down where a four-year-old could see them and get curious - not too mention an older child who might be in the store, and who might pick up one of those magazines. I wish I had confronted him, and asked him to move them.
In both cases, I wimped out, and I have been kicking myself ever since. You see, I had bought into the lie that other peoples' rights to do as they please, watch what they please, listen to what they please, look at what they please, were more important than my right not to have to do any of those things; more important than my right not to have my children exposed to them. And I was unprepared to deal with something that only 20 or 30 years earlier would not even have been on the radar.
Now I'm not arguing for censorship. I don't dispute that the young GI in the exchange had every right to listen to Madonna, or that other young GI's have a right to look at photos of nude women. I wish such things didn't exist, but they do, and I don't want this country turned into a police state. But one cannot argue that parents do not have a right, no, a responsibility, to raise their children away from such influences, at least until they are old enough to understand all the implications and ramifications.
In the nearly 50 years since the beginning of the "sexual revolution," much in our society has become coarsened. Forcible rapes are up from 9.4 per 100,000 population to 26.8 per 100,000, a greater than 280% increase, and all violent crime is up more than 200%. Children are taught "sex education" in schools, which has done little to teach them self-control and self-denial, while they are lagging in their knowledge and abilities in traditional subjects. Divorce is rampant. It's gotten so bad that when my eldest was 10 (around 25 years ago) he came home one day and asked me what was wrong with our family since he and his siblings had only one mom and one dad. Pornography pervades almost every corner of our society, and people who attend church regularly are considered "weird" by a sizable segment of the population.
Is this what the new morality has wrought? Are we really better off because of it?

A New Beginning, or More of the Same?

On Sunday, January 20, 2013, President Barack Obama will be sworn into office in a private ceremony. The public inaugural will take place on Monday, January 21, and life in the United States will go on. The question many are asking is "Go on to what?"

 A small majority voted for Obama in November, either because they thought he is doing a good job, or because they didn't like Mitt Romney, choosing the devil they already knew. Since winning re-election, the President has made clear his "my way or the highway" position, refusing to compromise in any meaningful way with the Republican House. He has made clear to Republicans in the House that he will not yield on matters pertaining to budgetary cutbacks, claiming a mandate to continue the policies which arguably have done little to improve the economy, and forgetting that voters also voted to retain the GOP majority in the House. He has hinted that he might issue an executive order raising the debt ceiling, circumventing the constitutionally mandated responsibilities of the House. He is using the New Town Connecticut massacre to push a strict gun control agenda, giving rise to fears that he will try to abrogate the 2nd Amendment, or push to have it repealed. He is reportedly contemplating new regulations requiring industrial polluters to slash their greenhouse gas emissions by 20%. And one member of the House is trying to introduce legislation to repeal the 22nd Amendment, which established term limits on the office of the president, so that Obama could, like FDR, run for the office repeatedly.

Add to all of this, the encroachment of "Obamacare," which has already placed a heavy financial burden on those who can least afford it in the form of sky-rocketing health insurance premiums, and the expiration of the payroll tax holiday, a de facto tax increase on the very people he swore would not see a tax increase

At a time when unemployment is still hovering near 8%, and record numbers of Americans are receiving food stamps, one wonders just whose side the President is on. The middle class, whose cause he professes to champion, is the very segment of society that will be hardest hit by rising costs inflated by tax increases and the latest slew of regulations. And many wonder how, on January 20th and 21st, he can swear to uphold the constitution of the United States when he continues to show so little regard for it.

Although the new year promises new beginnings for some, it appears that, in Washington, at least, it will bring more of the same.