We don't need no stinkin' family (until disaster strikes): More notes from Redneck Katrina

Children can be such a nuisance. They're noisy. They're expensive. They have absolutely no appreciation for Thai food. It's a good thing we have a constitutional right to abort them.

There was a time when people needed children. Someone had to milk the cows, feed the chickens, and churn the butter.  And children would be such a comfort to us in our old age--remember that quaint old observation?

But now we live in cities. We get our food at the grocery store. When we are too old to live alone, we go to a Golden Age retirement home to play checkers with the other geezers. We rely on Medicare, pensions, and Food Stamps to see us through old age or hard times.  If we do have a couple of children, they most likely live on one of the coasts--far away from Mom and Pop.

And that's just fine until the Amite River starts flowing through the wall sockets of our lovely ranch-style homes, and the power goes out while we're watching CNN News.  And when we call 911, the Emergency Dispatcher puts us on hold with 150 other people.

And so we decide to wait for the National Guard to arrive in their big trucks to rescue us from the flood, but the Guard doesn't know where we live.  And when the National Guard finally shows up, their truck drops us off at an emergency shelter where we can sleep on a cot with 200 other flood victims; and some of those people snore.

That's when it would be nice to have a family. Or more particularly, that's when it would be nice to have a relative with a boat.

Believe me, I know. My wife Kim and I were trapped by flood water last week along with thousands of other people. A lot of those people were milling around on Route 16 hoping the water would subside or a National Guard truck would rescue them.  And the National Guard did rescue a lot of people.  But some people waited a long time before being evacuated.

Our family was more fortunate. My stepson Charlie has a shallow-draft boat, and he rescued my wife Kim, her brother Jim, Kim's parents, and me. And he didn't dump us off at an emergency shelter. He delivered us to my brother-in-law's house in Baton Rouge, where we celebrated our escape by eating jambalaya and drinking Crown Royal on the rocks.

So families can be handy when you need to be rescued from a flood.

Families can also be handy when you are cleaning up after a flood. My wife's parents lived in a subdivision of around 40 homes.  With one exception, every home in the subdivision was flooded.

People who have been through this know that it is vital to "gut" a home as soon as possible to remove all wet sheet rock and insulation. Mold appears incredibly fast after a flood. In just two weeks, a flooded home can become permanently uninhabitable because of mold.

My wife's parents have a big family; and at least ten family members worked four full days to gut their house.  Four generations participated: Ivy and Kitty, the home owners;  all five of their children; at least a half dozen grandchildren; and three great grandchildren.

The home flooded on Saturday night. By the following Friday, Kitty and Ivy's home was completely stripped of all wet sheet rock and insulation; mold treatment had been applied; and the house was ready for a contractor to install new flooring and sheet rock.

Most of Kitty and Ivy's neighbors were not so fortunate. Some were able to do nothing themselves and had to hire demolition contractors. Others had relatives and friends dribble in to help, but not enough volunteers to get the gutting job done quickly.

As debris piled up in front of Ivy and Kitty's home, I could see we were far ahead of the rest of the neighborhood in the demolition process.  By the end of the week, more than half of the homeowners had no debris in their yards, an indication that the demolition process had not even started.

At first, I reveled in my family's progress compared to the neighbors, but as the week wore on it made me sad to see so many homeowners who had absolutely no one to help them cope with the tragedy of this historic flood.

Most of my family are Catholics or lapsed Catholics; and for Catholics, family is a sacred concept. After all, we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family on the first Sunday of every year; and the Church itself is understood as being part of a family--she is the Bride of Christ.

Blah, blah, blah! How I run on.  If you live in a city and have no family, you will do just fine in postmodern America.  After all, you've got insurance; you've got your pension; you've got your golf buddies; you've got President Obama.

You'll do just fine until you experience a major disaster of some kind--like a flood or a fire, the loss of a job, a serious illness.  And then you might wish you had a family.

Of course, we love our family members, whether they live close to us or far away. My own children live on the East Coast, and I love them dearly. But I often wish I lived closer to my children, not because they could help me, but because I would like to help them.  The older I get, the more I appreciate how hard it is to be young in the United Sates; and I wish I could help my children more.

A white ex-Dallasite reflects on the killings of 5 white Dallas police officers by an African American: "We do the things that come to hand"

A few years ago, while living in Dallas, I had a harsh encounter with a Dallas police officer--an encounter that scared me and made me angry. I had gone to DFW Airport to drop my wife off for her flight, and I pulled into the designated parking area for my wife's departure gate. A Dallas police officer blocked the entrance and told me to drive to the next parking area--about a half block away. I asked if I could stop just long enough to allow my wife to get out of the car, and the officer screamed at me. "Get out of here right now," he bellowed.

I was shocked by the officer's menacing rage, and it made me mad. I thought about confronting him and getting his name so I could file a complaint, but I knew if I did I would probably wind up in handcuffs with my face on the pavement.

In the months to come, I continued thinking about this incident, which I internalized as an assault on my human dignity. Why was the cop so irrational? Why did he block me from parking where I am normally allowed to park? Was he reserving the parking lot for a VIP? Was he on edge because of an oncoming crime? I didn't know.

And I recall thinking how much angrier I would be if I were a young African American or a Hispanic. I think I would have assumed the officer's rage was triggered by my race.

Then a few months later, I had another encounter with a Dallas cop--this one in downtown Dallas. I was driving to St. Jude's Chapel on Main Street for noon Mass and I inadvertently made an illegal left turn right in front of a Dallas cop in a police car.

I didn't wait to be pulled over. I immediately parked at a curb and waited for the officer to approach me. Before the officer said anything, I apologized, telling him I recognized that I had made an illegal turn.

The officer's response surprised me. "Are you OK?", he asked. I told him that I was. "Do you know where you're going?", he asked me next; and I told him I was headed to St. Jude for noon Mass.

Then he asked a final question: "Do you know how to get there?" And I told him that I did.

The officer then wished me a good day and waved me on.

This brief exchange completely neutralized the smoldering resentment I had harbored toward the Dallas cop at the DFW airport. I felt like the Holy Spirit had intervened on my behalf to heal a small but festering wound I had been nursing.

I realize of course that the second friendly cop was asking me questions to determine if I was drunk or otherwise impaired. But he did it in a courteous and respectful way. He had no way of knowing that his demeanor restored that part of my dignity that a DFW cop had deprived me of when he yelled at me a few months earlier.

This brings me to the terrible shooting incident that took place in Dallas not long ago when Micah Johnson, an African American, killed five white Dallas police officers who were guarding a peaceful protest demonstration. What prompted Johnson's insane rage? Had Johnson been treated rudely by a white cop sometime in his life?

And this caused me to ask myself what I can do to reduce racial tensions in my own home town--Baton Rouge, where a white police officer shot and killed a black man just a few days before the Dallas shootings.

The troubles of this world seem overwhelming. In spite of all the public rhetoric, racial tensions are getting worse in the United States, not better. The gap between the rich and the poor is growing in this country. Terrorism can strike anywhere: in a movie theater, a nightclub, a seaside promenade. What can I do to help make the world a better place?

Dorothy Day asked herself this question while locked up in jail, and this is the answer she came to:

When I lay in jail thinking of these things, thinking of war and peace and the problem of human freedom, of jails, drug addiction, prostitution, and the apathy of great masses of people who believe that nothing can be done--when I thought of these things I was all the more confirmed in my faith in the little way of St. Therese. We do the things that come to hand, we pray our prayers and beg also for an increase of faith--and God will do the rest.

So, like the kind Dallas police officer, let us do the things that come to hand. Let's treat everyone we meet with respect and courtesy, let us look for opportunities to perform small acts of kindness, let us follow the little way of St. Therese and Dorothy Day.

That's really about all most of us can do to make the world a better place; but, as Dorothy reminds us, we must trust that God will do the rest.

___________

Note: My quotation of Dorothy Day comes from Loaves and Fishes. I italicized part of the passage for emphasis.

So many white martyrs: How many nameless American Catholics suffer silently and willingly in faith?

Today is the Feast Day of St. Justin the Martyr, who was beheaded in Rome by order of Junius Rusticus sometime around 165 A.D.

Father Matthew reminded us at the noon mass that there are two kinds of martyrs: red martyrs and white martyrs. Red martyrs who die for the Christian faith. Over the long history of the Catholic Church, there have been thousands of red martyrs, in fact millions. Some of them are famous and lived in ancient times: St. Agatha, St. Stephen, St. Lawrence, St. Cecilia, and many more. Others died more recently:  Thomas More, John Fisher, and Margaret Clitherow, who died during the English persecutions of the sixteenth century. And there are the famous North American martyrs of the seventeenth century: Rene Goupil, Isaac Jogues and Jean Lalande and others

Robert Royal, author of The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century, persuasively argued that the twentieth century produced more Catholic martyrs than any century in the history of Christendom. Millions of Catholics died for their faith in Europe, Asia and Mexico. Two million Polish Catholics were killed by the Russians or the Nazis during the Second World War, and most of them are unremembered.

And then there is white martyrdom, which is martyrdom without blood or the violent taking of life. As Paula Anne Sharkey Lemire explained:

White martyrdom, is a total offering to God, a 'dying' to the world and its allurements. A white martyr willingly gives up worldly concerns and makes his or her life a perpetual pilgrimage. A white martyr lives a life of heroic devotion for Him alone, eagerly uniting that devotion with Christ's sufferings.

Who might be described as white martyrs? Kateri Tekawitha, for one; John Paul II, and Therese of Lisieux. Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin might justly be described as white martyrs. And of course, there are thousands and thousands of others, most of whom died in obscurity and without being formally recognized in any way.

In contemporary American society, we do not think much about martyrs or martyrdom--whether red or white. We are a culture obsessed by the quest for power, for wealth, and for fame. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are the people of the hour. Barrack Obama had his long moment in the sun: Editor of Harvard Law Review, President of the United States, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. But now he fades into hoary obscurity while others scramble to be just as powerful and as famous.

But white martyrs are all around us; many are my friends. I have a friend who unjustly lost his job at a Catholic university and now works as an adjunct professor  at three universities located in three different cities. He drives  300 miles or more a week to teach five classes. He and his family are suffering because an adjunct's salary is not a living wage. But he is steadfast in his Catholic faith and active as a layperson in the life of his parish. Maybe he is a white martyr.

I have another friend who was swept up in an ugly family quarrel that left her disinherited. Without question, she needed her share of her parents' estate more than the siblings who received a bigger portion of the family wealth when she was cast out. But she goes to Mass every week.  Perhaps she is a white martyr as well.

How many people do we know who are struggling with old age and illness but are not bitter, who still go to weekly Mass? How many people nurse aging spouses who suffer from dementia, Alzheimer's Disease, or some other hopeless illness? How many people have lost their jobs before they were ready to retire and see their lives stretching before them as a slow decline into humiliating poverty? And how many of these people still go to Mass?

None of these people will be recognized as saints. No feast day will be set aside to give them honor. And when they are dying, there may not even be a priest available to administer last rites. These are America's white martyrs, and as long as we have them, there will always be a Catholic faith.

Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin

References

Paula Anne Sharkey Lemire. The White Martyrdom of Kateri Tekawitha. Catholic Online. Accessible at http://www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=980

News Flash!! Catholic Law Students Take Over Harvard Law School's Langdell Library, Demanding an Endowed Chair in Thomistic Studies and Renaming of Library after Catholic Woman Hanged by Puritans

African American students at Harvard Law School have taken over the student lounge, renaming it Belinda Hall in honor of a slave owned by one of Harvard's early donors.  The group issued this statement of grievances:

Since the law school refuses to provide adequate institutional support for an office of diversity and inclusion, hire critical race theorists, promote staff of color in the workplace to management positions in their due course, provide adequate contextualization in curricula, educate its professors, its staff and its students around cultural competency, take the steps that are necessary to accord adequate and equal dignity to marginalized students and staff, Reclaim Harvard Law aims to provide that space at the law school. Reclaim assumes the burden of educating ourselves and others in spite of this institution and not because of it.

Christopher Columbus Langdell:
Anti-Catholic Bigot &
Harvard Law School Dean

Heartened and emboldened by these events, Catholic law students at HLS took over Langdell Hall, the world's largest law-school library. Catholic students charge that  the library's name honors Christopher Columbus Langdell, an anti-Catholic bigot.  Langdell  was Harvard Law School Dean during the late 19th century and enforced a policy of refusing to admit any student to the law school who had graduated from a Catholic college. Langdell''s policy was upheld by Harvard President Charles Eliot, who once wrote that he hated Catholicism "as I do poison." The Catholic protesters renamed the library Glover Hall, in honor of Ann Glover, a Catholic woman hanged by the Puritans on the Boston Commons in 1688.

The Catholic students issues a list of demands, including the establishment of an endowed chair in Thomistic Studies, a 'Catholic-friendly" menu at all Harvard dining facilities during Lent, and an official apology from Harvard President  Drew Gilpin Faust for the prejudicial treatment of Catholics during the Langdell-Eliot years. They also want Eliot House, which was named after President Eliot, to be renamed Feeney Hall, in memory Father Leonard Feeney, a 20th century Catholic priest who was parish priest in Cambridge, Massachusetts for a time and who preached that all non-Catholic Harvard professors were going to hell.

Father Leonard Feeney:
No salvation outside the Church

President Faust issued a statement promising to burn all Catholic law students at the stake in Harvard Yard if they do not decamp from the law library with 24 hours.  Faust stressed that no student would be burned until after receiving a full due process hearing.

References

Minority Students Take Over Lounge at Harvard Law. Inside Higher Education, February 22, 2016. https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/02/22/minority-students-occupy-lounge-harvard-law?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=194526da11-DNU20160222&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-194526da11-198564813

"I hate Catholicism as I do poison": Harvard University President Charles William Eliot (1869-1909) and anti-Catholicbigotry in the 19th century

Years ago, on a TV comedy talk show called Fernwood Tonight, comedian Fred Willard made this observation to talk-show host Martin Mull: "Isn't it funny how times have changed?" Willard remarked. "During World War II, people were encouraged to shoot Germans. You might even get a medal for shooting one. But, boy, if you shoot a German today, you're in big trouble!"

I thought about Willard's remark as I considered recent efforts to condemn important historical figures--Americans who were once greatly honored. Take President Woodrow Wilson, for example. The New York Times recently editorialized in favor of striking Wilson's name from Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs based on his record of racism.  Wilson might have thought his legacy would be secure after he died; after all, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize! But the revisionists finally rooted out the racist rascal--exposed like a retired Nazi living in Argentina.

In New Orleans, a groundswell of local opinion will probably force Robert E. Lee's statue off its pedestal at Lee Circle, where it has stood for 100 years. I'm a little more ambivalent about outing Robert E. Lee. I read Douglas Southall Freeman's multi-volume biography of Lee  several years ago, and I became convinced that Lee had many noble qualities.

Nevertheless, I sympathize with the people who want to knock Lee of his perch. As a Catholic, I am offended by the many historical figures who continue to be honored in spite of their clear records of anti-Catholic bigotry.

For example, Christopher Columbus Langdell, Dean of Harvard Law School and father of the case method of teaching, barred graduates from Catholic colleges from being admitted to Harvard Law School. Yes, and in spite of this well-known fact, Harvard's law library is still named Langdell Hall.

Harvard's president, Charles William Eliot, supported Langdell's bigoted policy, claiming it was based on the inferior quality of Catholic colleges and not prejudice. Was President Eliot himself an anti-Catholic bigot? This is what Eliot wrote about Catholicism when he was a young man visiting Europe in the mid-1860s: "I hate Catholicism as I do poison, and all the pomp and power of the Church is depressing and mortifying me."

Charles William Eliot, President of Harvard  1869-1909
"I hate Catholicism as I do poison . . ."

So, let the revisionist historians have a ball. Down with all the statues of Confederate generals! Agitate for the revocation of President Wilson's Nobel Peace Prize!  Remove Andrew Jackson's picture from the twenty-dollar bill!

But let's not let the anti-Catholic bigots lie undisturbed. Harvard's Langdell Hall must be renamed! Surely some Catholic Harvard law students are willing to take over the dean's office to make that happen. And Harvard should take down all the portraits of President Eliot and place them in a broom closet--and I mean now!

Indeed, there are scores of anti-Catholic bigots who should be posthumously humiliated: Horace Mann, John Dewey, Lyman Beecher, and President John Adams; and that's just for openers.

As for you, Ulysses S. Grant, don't get too comfortable in that tomb of yours. If the revisionists examine your views on Catholicism closely, you might be evicted from your final resting place and replaced by someone whose life contained no whiff of bigotry. In fact, we 're measuring Harriet Tubman  for your spot right now! Tubman's Tomb--it has a ring to it, don't you think?

Grant's Tomb:
Hey, Ulysses, don't get too comfortable in your tomb. You might get evicted!

References

Daniel R. Coquilette & Bruce A. Kimball. On the Battlefield of Merit: Harvard Law School, The First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015.

No country for angry old white men: A Catholic's reflections on Dorothy Day and the Colorado Springs shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic

Pancho needs your prayers it's true, but save a few for Lefty too

He only did what he had to do, and now he's growing old

Townes Van Zandt

Robert Lewis Dear

America has two kinds of serial killers. First, there are the angry young white men who have serious psychological problems and often want to commit suicide after killing the maximum number of people. We've seen a lot of these guys: at Columbine High School, Virginia Tech, the Aurora movie theater, and Sandy Hook. Their body counts are impressive.

Second, we have the angry old white men who are frustrated by their misspent lives and who often obsess on some personal injury or a particular social injustice. There are fewer of these guys, and in general, they kill fewer people. John Russell Houser, age 59, killed two people and wounded nine in a Lafayette, Louisiana movie theater in July 2015. Robert Lewis Dear, age 57, killed three people and wounded nine in Colorado Springs earlier this week.

Houser and Dear had similar profiles. Both men were estranged from their families, both had had minor run-ins with law enforcement, and both were loners with mental health issues. Both killers' motivations are unclear, although Dear's attack may have been triggered by his feelings about abortion.

What can we say about murderers like Houser and Dear? We can pontificate about stronger gun-control laws like President Obama routinely does--taking time away from his golf game to express his outrage. We can lament the fact that our nation doesn't have better mental health care, which is a convenient way of saying the government should do something.

But the truth of the matter is this: America has always had angry old white men living on the margins of our society.  At one time, men like Houser and Dear might have had union jobs, which would have provided them with health care and a pension. But the union jobs are mostly gone, and we have millions of aging men with poverty-level jobs or no job at all and no health insurance. A great many of them once had wives and families, but these were lost in some mysterious way that men like Houser and Dear do not understand.

Suicide rates for middle-aged men are going up, and mortality rates are going down for people in Houser and Dear's demographics. White people with less than a college degree are killing themselves or succumbing to drug- and alcohol-related diseases in higher numbers than they did 20 years ago.

Let's face it: our society doesn't think much about angry old white men unless they shoot someone other than their relatives. At least, by killing strangers, Houser and Dear forced Americans to acknowledge their existence, which in their minds perhaps, is at least something.

What can we do to help prevent men like Houser and Dear from shooting people? And by we, I mean by us individually, not the government?

I think we can begin by showing some respect for aging people who are not important to anyone. We all subscribe to the slogan that "Black Lives Matter," but almost no one articulates the notion that old white guys matter.

And perhaps we can school ourselves to see the poor as Dorothy Day saw them--as the living embodiment of Christ. Men like Houser and Dear are poor, and they have serious mental health problems. They're no fun to be around. But Dorothy Day spent her whole life with people like them--smelly, mentally unstable, poor people. You can't read Dorothy's Loaves and Fishes without coming to the conclusion that she voluntarily chose to live in a nut house.

But most of us can't live like Dorothy Day lived; God has not given us the grace or charity to do so. But at least we can smile at people like John Russsell Houser and Robert Lewis Dear; we can lend them a helping hand when they come our way. Maybe a smile at the right moment would have stopped John Russell Houser from shooting people in a Lafayette movie theater. Maybe a smile in the parking lot in front of the Planned Parenthood clinic would have caused Robert Lewis Dear to leave his weapons in his car and simply drive away.

I know this is a simple, even simplistic thing to say, and I am giving advice I often don't heed myself. But I am certain of this: Our society, and each of us individually, bear some responsibility for the angry old white men who, bereft of family, friends, or jobs, begin shooting people for no apparent reason.

Dorothy Day

For what cause would I send my own children or grandchildren to die overseas? Genocide in Iraq

As my small band of readers know, I have two blogs: a blog on Catholicism and culture and a blog on the federal student loan program. Occasionally, I comment on foreign affairs at both blog sites. Why do I do that?

Regarding my blog site on the federal student loan program, here is my explanation: The federal student loan program props up our nation's amoral, arrogant, and vapid higher education system; and it is this system that has educated our nation's political leaders who are now making disastrous foreign-policy decisions. 

President Obama and almost all his cronies were educated at places like Harvard Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, Georgetown, etc., where they evidently learned no problem-solving skills or even the capacity to make foreign policy decisions based on our long-term national interests or fundamental principles of morality.

And you see where we are now: huge messes in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, sub-Saharan Africa, and Iraq.  So I have commented from time to time that the global mess we are in has its roots in our elitist, arrogant universities.

As for my blog on Catholic culture, I comment on international affairs because my Catholic faith compels me to take stands on international affairs if moral principles are at stake. Servant of God Dorothy Day was a pacifist; she even opposed American involvement in World War II. I am not a pacifist; but I believe we should not send Americans to die or be maimed in order to defend unjust national interests.

Now to the subject of this blog.  Ever since the United States abolished the draft, it has excused everyone from joining the military who choose not to do so.  Since that time, it has been mostly young men and women from working-class and impoverished families who went to war.  Barack  Obama's children will never put on a uniform, and neither will the children of most of the people who serve in his administration or in Congress. I can almost guarantee you that no hedge fund manager or corporate CEO has a child who served in a combat role in Iraq or Afghanistan.

And--to be fair, I would not willingly see my own children or grandchildren fight in Afghanistan or Iraq. I am grateful that none of my family members have had to go to either place.

So  for what cause would I send my own children or grandchildren to die overseas in a foreign war? To fight Hitler, obviously.  That would have been an easy decision for me. But I would not have supported the firebombing of a civilian population as the U.S. and Britain did in Germany. Nor would I have supported the bombing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki--even though my own father was in a Japanese prison camp when those bombs were dropped and the dropping of those bombs may have saved his life.

So here is my position. I believe the United States should calibrate its policy of military intervention around basic human rights and the rights of religious minorities and virtually nothing else.  In the Middle East right now it is almost impossible to tell the good guys from the bad guys. Is the Assad regime in Syria morally superior to the forces that oppose it? Who knows? Is the military regime that runs Egypt better than the Morsi government that the military overthrew? Again, who knows?

So I propose that the United States should take this stand: We will not go to war against any government that protects  basic human rights and respects the rights of religious minorities.  Thus if the Assad regime protects Christians in Syria, we would support it over ISIS.  If the Military junta respects Egyptian Christians, then we would support it over the Islamic Brotherhood. And we would intervene to help nations facing outrageous atrocities against innocent civilians like the genocide in Rwanda and the kidnapping of more than 200 school girls in Nigeria by Muslim extremists.

Right now, ISIS is overrunning parts of Iraq and threatening Kurdistan.  ISIS terrorists are committing genocide against religious minorities in the region--including Christians.

The Christians of the Middle East (and increasingly in sub-Saharan Africa) need American military help. With apologies to Dorothy Day, I think we should give it to them. Surely, if there is any emergency important enough to send a hedge fund manager's son to die in the Middle East it is the current crisis in Iraq.  God help me--this emergency might even justify sacrifices from my own family.