Your People Are My People; Your God is My God: A Catholic Convert Reflects on His Protestant Ancestors

Last Friday, I attended an appreciation dinner sponsored by Christ the King Church, my local parish, given as a way of saying thank you to the parish's many volunteers.  Father Bob led us in the Catholic grace before we sat down to eat our dinners.

Bless us O Lord,

And these thy gifts which we are about to receive

From Thy Bounty

Though Christ Our Lord

Amen

I have come to love this brief table prayer, said daily by millions of Catholics all over the world.  Those of us who say it are acknowledging our dependence on God and our gratitude for all the blessings of life, including the food we eat.

And I find its brevity, its humility, its almost childlike simplicity strangely touching.  This little prayer is utterly refreshing to me compared to the long-winded Protestant table graces of my youth, with pastors going on and on and on as the fried chicken got cold in front of us.  If anyone wants to know what these Protestant prayers are like, they should see the movie August: Osage County. Chris Cooper's character gives a lengthy mealtime grace, delivered in the sweltering heat of an Oklahoma farm house, that is a pretty good approximation of the real thing.

This prayer forms part of our Catholic heritage--my  Catholic heritage. As I say it, I feel a kinship with all the American Catholics over the centuries who clung to their faith in spite of scorn and prejudice from  the predominant American culture.  The Irish immigrants of Boston, the Italians of New York, the Poles of Chicago, the German Catholics of Texas and the upper Midwest, the Hispanic immigrants of California--all these people are my people.  Their God is my God.

Sometimes when I reflect on my Catholic heritage--freely given to me when I came into the Church--I feel pity for my Protestant ancestors who gave up the power, the beauty and the glory of Catholicism--and for what?  To become Methodists? To become Presbyterians? To become Episcopalians? They threw their inheritance away for a crust of stale bread.

And I wonder sometimes, over the centuries that have passed since the Reformation, did any of my Protestant ancestors turn back to the Mother Faith?  Did some Fossey in ages past marry a Catholic French girl or an Irish-American girl and return to the Church?  Did one of the Andersons stumble upon the reality of Christ in the Eucharist and begin to weep as St. Elizabeth Ann Seton did more than 200 years ago on the coast of Italy?  Did even one of my Protestant ancestors ever wander into a Mass and be overcome by its beauty  as happened to Dorothy Day early in the last century?

Or am I the only one among all the generations of my Protestant ancestors stretching back to Henry VIII who turned back?  Did God call me alone of all my family to return to the fold? Of all my blood relatives who crossed the River Styx in error, am I the only one--through the wideness of God's mercy-- to mysteriously come floating back toward the abundance of life on the healing streams of the Tiber?

"Everyone's problem is no one's problem": Elliot Rodger, the UC Santa Barbara shooting spree, and Dorothy Day

With distressing regularity, young American men are committing mass murder.  The Columbine killings in 1999,  the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, Jared Loughner's killing spree in 2011, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in December 2012.  And now we learn about Elliot Rodger, a 22-year old student at UC Santa Barbara, who killed six people last week before taking his own life.

Every case is different of course--particularly with regard to the casualty lists. So far, I think, Seung-Hui Cho's attack at Virginia Tech holds the casualty record: 32 killed and 17 wounded.

But most follow a common pattern.  First, all the attacks were planned and some were planned meticulously over a period of many months. All the attackers were students or had recently been students at American schools or colleges. All the attackers gave some warning or clear indication that they were contemplating violence. And all were male. (The Amy Bishop killings at the University of Alabama-Huntsville was a case of workplace violence and is in a different category altogether.)

In most cases, the attackers killed themselves before they could be captured; but Jarod Loughhner and James Holmes (the Aurora, Colorado movie-theater shooter) were captured alive.

In most of these cases, the attackers used at least one semi-automatic weapon to shoot their victims. Often they were well supplied with ammunition and extended-ammunition magazines. But Elliot Rodger stabbed three of his victims to death and injured some people with his automobile.

All these cases have provided fodder for media commentaries--from Bill O'Reilly of Fox News to Frank Bruni of the New York Times. (After all, Frank can't devote all of his columns to attacking the Catholic Church.) And everyone has a solution for stopping these killing sprees, which seem to be escalating in frequency.

Some argue for better gun control--particularly restrictions on access to semi-automatic weapons and extended-ammunition clips. Some argue for better mental health care. Some blame violent video games, and some blame America's supposedly misogynistic culture.

I found myself wondering what Dorothy Day would say about all of this. Dorothy died in 1980, but she saw her share of violence and mental illness. Her writings and diaries contain frequent descriptions of  mentally ill people that the Catholic Worker took in and sheltered. Indeed, she wrote in 1972 that "[i]nsanity is the problem of our era. . . . One can call it many names, alienation, withdrawal, depression, nervous breakdown--we have them all . . ."

Dorothy thought the Catholic Worker's farm settlements were one solution to violence.  She called one CW farm "a school for the living, a school of nonviolence."  Musing in her diary in September 1972, she reflected on our society's tendency to see violence as a collective problem, not a problem that requires an individual response. "'Everybody's problem is no one's problem,'" she wrote. ""Seems to me there is some kind of proverb or aphorism like that."

Dorothy did not have any clear solution to the problem of violence in American society, although she thought state-sponsored abortions--by sanctioning violence against the unborn--might be contributing to the problem.

I do think, however, that Dorothy would counsel us to be kind to all the troubled, unstable people we meet, even though mentally ill people can truly be a bother and an irritation.  Dorothy and her CW comrades certainly lived by that philosophy. They sheltered a number of truly exasperating people--people who clearly suffered from mental illness.

And this causes me to wonder whether Elliot Rodger would have murdered six people last week if just one person had showed him a little kindness on the day before he went on his killing spree.  But who knows? Maybe someone had been kind to Elliot Rodger on the day before he stabbed and shot people. But maybe that person wasn't quite kind enough, patient enough, compassionate enough to turn the tide.

I'm not saying of course that Elliot's friends and acquaintances share responsibility for what Elliot did. But I am saying that we all have opportunities in our day-to-day lives to show a little patience, a little compassion, and a little kindness to the abrasive and annoying people we meet. We never really know, do we, just how close to the edge that any person might be in any given moment.

References

Dorothy Day. The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2008.

Dorothy Day--Patron Saint of Hospice Workers?

Some day Dorothy Day will be canonized--let us pray this day comes soon. And when she is named a saint, for whom will she be a special patron?  Certainly she is patroness of the American poor and the homeless, the patron saint of Catholic journalists, and perhaps the patron saint of women who have had abortions.  And if people who were hounded by the FBI desire a saint, Dorothy could probably fulfill that role as well.

But perhaps she will also become the patron saint of hospice workers.

Dorothy, as she herself acknowledged, was deeply in love with Forster Batterham--an anarchist of sorts and an atheist with a name that makes him sound like a character from Downton Abbey. But Forster left Dorothy after she became pregnant and told him she planned to have her child baptized in the Catholic Church.



Dorothy Day and Forster Batterham

Nevertheless, Forster and Dorothy stayed in touch for the rest of their lives--connected if not by religion, then by the child  they had conceived together.

About three years after Dorothy and Forster separated, according to Robert Ellsberg, Forster formed a new relationship with a woman named Nanette; and Forster and Nanette lived together for thirty years until she died in 1960.

In September 1959, Forster contacted Dorothy and asked her to care for Nanette, who had been diagnosed with incurable cancer.  Dorothy agreed to help, and she nursed Nanette until she died in January of 1960. Along with Forster's sister, Lily Burke, Dorothy became Nanette's informal hospice nurse.

It must have been bitterly hard for Dorothy. Nanette was terrified of death, and Forster could not bear to be alone with her. Indeed, during Nanette's decline, Dorothy saw an unappealing side of Forster. Nanette confided to Dorothy that she had had an affair with a younger man with Forster's complicity--an ugly revelation.

As Dorothy wrote in her diary, this unsavory bit of information shined a light on Forster's character. "It is all part of his absolute rebellion against responsibility, family, religion, tradition, as far as he himself is concerned."

Indeed, Dorothy concluded, Forster was "completely selfish and a coward."

Dorothy owed Forster nothing and she certainly owed Nanette nothing. But Dorothy continued to nurse Nanette. On the night of December 23, 1959, Dorothy wrote this:

Nanette very bad, suffering from nurse's ministrations, her three-way irrigations. Nanette says she is continually wet, flowing from colostomy. She cried pitifully, hating her decay, wishing she could commit suicide, go back to the hospital for a few days, etc. It was a hard day, though we started out well making mince pie, etc.--anything to distract her

By late December, Nanette was near death--her face and legs was swollen. Forster, wallowing in self pity, often wept and constantly fled from Nanette's presence.  At this point, Nanette wavered between a longing for death and the struggle to live. "I am strong-willed and stubborn," Dorothy quotes Nanette as saying. "No one can help me, doctor, psychiatrist, hypnotism, drugs. I am alone."

On January 8, 1960, Nanette died. She had been in agony for two days. "The cross was not as hard as this," Nanette said in her final hours. But in the end, she died peacefully, "with a slight smile."  Ellsberg records that Nanette was baptized as a Catholic before she passed away.

Dorothy never wrote of these events except to record them in her diary. Yet the nursing of Nannette  is perhaps Dorothy's greatest act of humility, generosity and love. In my view, Dorothy deserves to be canonized for this act of kindness alone.

On December 27, 1959, as Nanette lay a few days from death, Dorothy wrote this:

Food, warmth, shelter, clothing, beauty, yes--ourselves most of all--to be available to men. But in the CW there are so many, and each one wants it all, your time, your love, your attention. "You are never here." This is my suffering, my failure, and my cross.

Rejoice. 

References

Robert Ellsberg (ed.) The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Marquette University Press, 2008.

Happy are those who are called to the Supper of the Lamb: Let us pray for our recent Catholic converts

St. Kateri Tekakwitha

I grew up as a Methodist in southwestern Oklahoma, but almost all my school friends belonged to evangelical Protestant churches. Those were the days when Protestants routinely went to church three times a week and held week-long Revivals at least once a year.

I often went to church with my evangelical Protestant friends and even went to their churches' revivals if I was invited.  Protestant preachers preached fiery sermons in those days--long on descriptions of the fires of hell and short on mercy. The object was to scare the bejeebers out of people--particularly any unchurched people who happened to be in attendance.

Preachers would generally bring the church service to a close with an "altar call" when they would invite people to come down to the front of the church and profess their belief in the Christian faith and join the congregation.  If an unbaptized person came forward, the preacher often baptized the new convert on the spot.  In other words, in the evangelical Protestant churches of my youth, the conversion process was quick--often lasting only a couple of hours.

Well the Catholics don't operate that way. Except in extraordinary circumstances, adult Catholic converts are baptized only once a year--at the Easter Vigil Mass.  The preparation for baptism and communion with the Catholic Church is lengthy, generally lasting six or seven months. An adult preparing to convert to Catholicism is called a catechumen and is usually required to attend once-a-week study sessions where they are introduced to Catholic doctrine.

And prior to baptism and first Communion, the catechumen participates in several preliminary rites: the Rite of Election, the First Scrutiny, the Second Scrutiny, the Third Scrutiny and the Ephpheta rite, which usually takes place early on the day of baptism.

In other words, joining the Catholic Church as an adult is not for sissies.  Thus, I am always moved at the Easter Vigil Mass to see people step forward to be baptized into the Catholic faith.

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

How many Americans join the Catholic Church each year as adults? Between 60,000 and 70,000 I've been told, which is not so many when one considers that the total membership of the Catholic Church in the U.S. is about 70 million.  In my parish church on the LSU campus, only four adults were baptized at the Easter Vigil Mass--a small number out of an LSU student body of more than 30,000. And then we generally have about 35 to 40 people enter the Church from the Protestant denominations and are already baptized.

Still--altogether, less than 50 people a year join the Catholic Church in our parish.  Given the fact that a lot of people leave the Catholic Church as adults--the people who call themselves "recovering Catholics"--it is a miracle that the Church stays so strong.

In fact the Church reminds me a bit of the old joke about the flamboyant used care salesman who makes this pitch: "I buy cars high and sell cars low. How do I stay in business? I'm damned lucky!"

But I am not worried about the future of the Catholic Church. For one thing, as Dorothy Day pointed out, the Catholic Church is the Church of the poor. As long as we have poor people, we will have Catholics. And of course, America has been blessed by millions of Catholic immigrants from all over the world.

And whether they be few or many, our Catholic converts are the leaven of the Church. I know dozens of Catholic converts--all are enthusiastic in their faith and most are quite knowledgeable about it. I don't know a single person who converted to Catholicism as an adult who later left the Church.

And so let us pray for all the adult converts who joined the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil Mass, confident that many of them--like converts Dorothy Day, St. Edith Stein, G. K. Chesterton, Thomas Merton, St. Kateri Tekakwitha, and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton--will shine like brilliant lights before the world, testaments by their faithful lives to the the living truth of Catholicism.

Like all human beings, God called these people to to the Supper of the Lamb.  And through some mystery, some working of the Holy Spirit, these people turned in the midst of their adult lives to the Lord's table.  Happy indeed are those who were called to the Lord's Supper and had the grace, the humility and the courage to accept the invitation.

In Honor of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, Let's Plant Tomatoes

Homegrown tomatoes homegrown tomatoes

What'd life be without homegrown tomatoes

Only two things that money can't buy

That's true love & homegrown tomatoes

                                Guy Clark

We meet Christ in three ways, Dorothy Day wrote: in the Eucharist, when two or three or gathered together, and in the poor. Dorothy was speaking about all the poor, but the urban poor had a special place in her heart.

Peter Maurin working in the soil

On the other hand, Peter Maurin, Dorothy's lifelong collaborator, was an advocate for communitarian farms. On farms, Peter believed, people could live in Christian fellowship and raise their own food--insulated from all the evils of urban life.

Dorothy was skeptical.  "I loved the life of the city," she wrote. "Especially I loved the life of the Lower East Side, where, in my neighborhood, every Italian backyard had its own fig tree and grape arbor."  Moreover, she reminded Peter, "Heaven is portrayed as a heavenly Jerusalem."

As we all know, the Catholic Worker movement started a few farms, and some Catholic Worker farms may still exist.  Nevertheless, I think most would agree that the Catholic Worker movement is primarily an urban phenomenon. Dorothy, at least, will always be associated with the cities and with the urban poor.

Personally, I share Dorothy's reservations about communitarian farm life. I am not an expert about rural utopian experiments, but I know most have floundered.  Farm life is romantic from a distance, but speaking as one who grew up with farm animals, I say with authority that there is nothing romantic about the rear end of a cow.

But as a person who has gardened for many years, I strongly recommend it for everyone--particularly urban dwellers. I am proud that my son and his wife, who live in Washington DC, maintain a community garden plot in Columbia Heights; and my daughter and her husband keep a small garden on the rooftop of their Brooklyn loft apartment.

What are the benefits of urban gardening?

First of all, there is something self-affirming about growing one's own food--even if it is just a few herbs to season a jar of store-bought spaghetti sauce. To plant vegetables, see them grow until the harvest, and then  eat them in one's own kitchen connects us with our  ancestors.  We may make our living doing one high-tech thing or another, but we all have to eat; and it is good to be able to produce our own food--even in a small way.

Second, gardening reminds us of the healing power of nature. Last winter, South Louisiana endured several hard freezes, and tropical plants died all over the city.  Surely our ancient philodendron, with stalks so big it looked like a coiled python in our garden, was a goner. Surely our new grapefruit trees were headed for the dumpster. Surely our palmettos and our bougainvilleas were dead.

But no. It is now late March, and new leaves have sprouted from our philodendron. Our grapefruit trees are still alive and show promise of producing fruit. The palm leaves of our palmettos are yellow at their tips, but all the palmettos survived.  Only the bougainvilleas succumbed.

Nevertheless, last winter reminds us to be cautious when planting a spring garden. Don't plant your garden until St. Joseph's Feast Day, the old timers caution, and this year's spring weather proved them right.

Now is the time to plant our gardens--at least in the deep South. And I urge everyone to begin gardening, at least in a small way. At the very least, let's plant tomatoes--if only the patio variety that  can be grown on the balcony of a city apartment.

Here are some things I've learned from gardening that have carried over into the rest of my life.

First, you must visit your garden every day and see how it is doing.  You never know when a leaf-eating insect might arrive, or a cat who wants your garden for a napping place.  And doesn't that hold true for all we hold dear--we have to connect with what we care about on a daily basis--and that goes especially for people.

Second, the way to begin gardening is to begin. If you are a back-to-the-earth environmentalist, you may want to grow your own seeds and raise only heirloom vegetables. But for most of us, the place to start is Home Depot, where we can buy plants that have already pushed through the earth.

And isn't that true of everything we do? If we wait until conditions are ideal or until we can construct something perfect, we will never begin.

Third, let's think of gardening as participating in the divine. Even the wine we drink at communion--the blood of Christ--is "the work of human hands."  Our gardening may be as important to our physical and spiritual health as anything we do on a given day.

If we plant a garden and don't neglect it, we have a good chance of getting at least some of our vegetables to hang on until the harvest; and we can eat something we grew ourselves.

And when we do, let's think of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. Peter had a vision of a a rural Catholic utopia, while Dorothy would probably have been content with a fig tree growing in a back yard on the Lower East Side.  Together, however, they constructed a model for being Catholic in the modern world.  Urban dwellers though we are and living in a postmodern environment that is hostile to faith, we can follow their example. And when we Catholics plant our small gardens, let's do so as a tribute to Dorothy and Peter.

Let us pray for Dorothy Day's canonization in our lifetime

Designation as a saint is by no means the only measure of a person's virtue and ability to inspire spiritual seekers on the path to union with God. Yet, in a world populated with 1.1 billion Catholics, it is surely a powerful way for the Catholic Church to officially multiply the effect of saintly persons on others, through increased awareness of their exemplary lives and contributions. 

                                               Marilyn H. Fedewa

                                               Mariá of Ágreda : Mystical Lady in Blue

I just finished reading Marilyn Fedewa's biography of Mariá of Ágreda , the mystical lady in blue.  Mariá of Ágreda was a seventeenth century mystic who spent her entire adult life as a cloistered nun in a convent founded by her mother in her home town of Ágreda in northeastern Spain. 

Maria of Agreda:
The Mystical Lady in Blue

Although she never left her convent, Mariá became a trusted advisor to King Felipe IV, engaging in an intense correspondence that accumulated to a total of more than 600 letters. She was investigated by the Spanish Inquisition when she was in her 40s, kneeling before her questioners for six hours a day for eleven days. She dazzled her inquisitors, however, with her piety and sincerity, and was exonerated.

Mariá has been named one of the nine most influential women in Spanish history, but she was also an important figure in the American Southwest. Through bilocation, she visited Native Americans in what later became Texas and New Mexico, evangelizing them before they were reached by Spanish missionaries. That a woman who could be in two places at once--places separated by an ocean--seems fantastic to the modern mind; but these incidents of bilocation were thoroughly investigated by ecclesiastical authorities in the New World and were accepted as bona fide by the religious figures of her day.

Mariá of Ágreda was a prodigious writer, but her crowning achievement was Mystical City of God, her multi-volumed biography of Mary.  This work has been translated into many languages and remains today as one of the great contributions to Catholic mystical literature. 

When Mariá died in 1665 at the age of 63, a great clamor arose to canonize her. The Vatican designated her as venerable in 1673, the first step to canonization. Unfortunately, although the cause for her canonization has waxed and waned over the centuries, Mariá of Ágreda has yet to be canonized.

Why it takes so long for some worthy people to be canonized I cannot say. Even St. Thomas More, who was beheaded for the Catholic faith by Henry VIII in 1535, was not canonized for 400 years. 

Dorothy Day, Servant of God

Canonization is not simply an honor for particularly pious Catholics. As Marilyn Fedewa explained in her biography of Maria of Ágreda, canonization is a means for the Catholic Church "to officially multiply the effect of saintly persons on others, through increased awareness of their exemplary lives and contributions." As the Mass reminds us, we can invoke the intercession of the saints on our behalf, to strengthen us and aid us in the challenges of life.

And this brings me to Dorothy Day. I am one of thousands of people who pray for the day Dorothy Day will be canonized, and we have powerful allies among the clergy. The American Bishops have endorsed her canonization, and Pope Benedict spoke of her holiness in a public address he made shortly before stepping down from the papacy.

So far, although she has been named a Servant of God--the first step toward canonization--and her cause has been enthusiastically taken up by the Archdiocese of New York and Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Dorothy has not moved up the ladder to canonization.  So far, she has not even be beatified.

What does she need to become a Saint?  Two miracles.  Miracles have been attributed to her.  The eminent psychologist and author Robert Coles attributed his wife's recovery from cancer to Dorothy's prayers while she was still alive.  These are Dr. Coles' words, which are taken from his biography of Dorothy:

[S]he often wrote to me, and when my wife became seriously ill in 1973, she prayed long and hard for her. My wife miraculously--the doctor's words--survived  the illness, and she and I have never really been the same since then with respect to our feelings for Dorothy Day, who wrote to us every single morning for a while: a testimony of concern we scarcely know how to acknowledge, even now. God bless her soul. (Coles, 1987, p. xx).  

I myself have reported on the miraculous recovery of Sarah Dorothy Maple, whose brain tumor disappeared after I sought Dorothy Day's intercession, in spite of the fact that Sarah's doctors gave her no hope for recovery.  My intercession was documented in the Houston Catholic Worker, which also printed Sarah's own testimony of her miraculous recovery.  I sent a copy of Sarah's medical records to the New York Archdiocese.

Perhaps Sarah Maple's recovery from brain cancer  is not the miracle Dorothy Day needs. If not, let us keep praying for other miracles.  Let us have faith in Dorothy's power to intercede on our behalf.

As the old Christmas hymn attests, long our world has lain "in sin and error pining."  We live in a culture that has lost its way--drugged by materialism and selfishness and the insatiable lust for power and recognition. Dorothy--through her humility, through the clarity of her beautiful writing, through her saintly lifelong witness--can show us the way home.

Even now, she waits with other saints of the ages--Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross--to aid us.  Let us pray for Dorothy Day's official recognition as a saint--sometime within our lifetimes.

References

Robert Coles. Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1987.

Marilyn H. Fedewa. Maria of Agreda: Mystical Lady in Blue. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2009.

Sarah Maple. Dorothy Day Miracle Visits Casa Juan Diego. Houston Catholic Worker, November-December, 2011. Accessible at: 
http://cjd.org/2012/02/05/answer-to-prayers-miracle-visits-casa-juan-diego-2/

Sarah Maple. Miracle After Prayers to Dorothy Inspires New Convert: My Long, Circuitous Journey into Catholicism. Houston Catholic Worker, June-August, 2013. Accessible at:  http://cjd.org/2013/07/05/miracle-after-prayers-to-dorothy-inspires-new-convert-my-long-circuitous-journey-into-catholicism/

Paddling Children is Contrary to Catholic Values: Catholics Can Help Wipe Out Corporal Punishment in the Public Schools

To strike a child in any way, to make him kneel in a painful position, to pull his ears, and other similar punishments must be absolutely avoided.

                                                                   Saint John Bosco (1815-1888)

Sister Mary Stigmata (The Penguin)
The Blues Brothers (1980)

Almost everyone is familiar with the stereotype of the Catholic nun who wields a ruler in the classroom, banging kids on the hand for the slightest infraction.  Who can forget Sister Mary Stigmata ("The Penguin"), whopping Jake and Elwood Blues with a rattan stick in the Blues Brothers?

But Catholic schools have stopped beating the kids.  According to the Center for Effective Discipline, an aggressive opponent of corporal punishment, not a single Catholic diocese permits corporal punishment in diocesan schools. 

Catholic schools did not stop administering corporal punishment due to a change in Catholic doctrine. In fact, corporal punishment is not even mentioned in the Catechism.  Rather we have come to a more Christ-like understanding of the dignity of a child and the obligation of adults to protect them from harm. Most Catholics would agree with Archbishop Gregory Aymond of New Orleans, who spoke out forcefully against corporal punishment in 2011. "I do not believe the teachings of the Catholic Church as we interpret them in 2011 condone corporal punishment," Archbishop Aymond remarked.  "It's hard for me to imagine in any way, shape or form, Jesus using a paddle."

Unfortunately, however, kids are still being beaten in some of he public schools.  Although 31 states have abolished corporal punishment in the schools, 19 states still allow it.  Thirteen of these 19 states are in the South. In fact, according to the Center for Effective Discipline, 75 percent of all school-based corporal punishment takes place in just five Southern states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas.



Red states still permit corporal punishment in schools.

Catholics can help abolish school-based corporal punishment in states where it is still permitted.  Let's support school boards that abolish corporal punishment as a matter of local policy, something urban school boards are increasingly willing to do. Let's let our state legislators know that we support a state law abolishing corporal punishment in schools.  And let's support federal legislation to ban corporal punishment in schools.

Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy of New York introduced legislation to abolish corporal punishment in schools during the last Congressional session, but the bill died in Committee.  I am going to contact Representative McCarthy and urge her to reintroduce the bill. I encourage you to do the same.


References

Richard Fossey & Robert Slater (2012). “The only thing I wanna hear out of you is nothing!” Is it time for federal legislation to ban corporal punishment in the schools? Teachers College Record, tcrecord.org. ID Number: 17008.

Christopher B. Goodson & Richard Fossey (2012). Corporal punishment is on the wane in Southern schools: Encouraging evidence from Florida, North Carolina and Texas. Teachers College Record, tcrecord.org. ID Number: 16940.

Stephanie Phillips & Richard Fossey(2012). Retiring the paddle: Local school boards wipe out corporal punishment in urban Texas. Teachers College Record Online, tcrecord.org. ID Number 16745.

Dr. Gregory Popcak. Catholic Bishops Weigh in on Corporal Punishment. Patheos.com blog site. July 9, 2013.  Accessible at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/faithonthecouch/2013/07/catholic-bishops-weigh-in-on-corporal-punishment/

Note: Dr. Gregory's blog posting on Catholicism and corporal punishment is excellent. I obtained the quote from Saint John Bosco and Archbishop Aymond from Dr. Popcak's blog.