Bullying

Paul Moses on Pax Christi's Good Friday Way of the Cross across 42nd Street and through Times Square:

One of this year’s more striking meditations came from students at the Christo Rey High School in East Harlem who spoke at the fifth station – Simon of Cyrene is forced to help carry the cross — about bullying. “Like Simon, we are called to help carry the cross of those who are bullied,” as one student said. But as the students pointed out, bullying is too often condoned by inaction – and then those who condone it are surprised when the victim does not want to become a Facebook “friend.”

In many ways, bullying was the theme of all the meditations on that ultimate act of bullying that is recalled on Good Friday. For many of the issues raised during the morning walk involved misuse of power – racial profiling of law-abiding minority youths stopped by police and frisked; human trafficking; abusive treatment of immigrants. Bullying.

Why Is This Friday "Good"?

A four-minute homily from Cardinal Dolan on Good Friday.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh visited Capitol Hill last autumn for a lecture and an overnight retreat for members of Congress.  The New Republic's account is here.  A snippet:

Last year’s congressional retreat was Hanh’s second. The first, in 2003, was attended by nine members. Among them was Ohio Democratic Representative Tim Ryan, who sits on a cushion and meditates for 45 minutes in the morning before leaving for work. “My thoughts will carry me away ... and then you just try to come back to your breath,” Ryan told me. “Because the only moment you have is the present moment.” He continued, “The best thing you can do for your future is to be here in the present, and that will affect the decisions that you make, because you’ll be making them based on clarity, on what’s going on right now.” Ryan was raised Catholic, and he hasn’t left the Church, but meditation has “changed everything” for him. “It helps me resolve conflicts better than I used to,” he says. “You don’t hold onto [things] as much. If someone says something nasty to you, you let it go.” Ryan is now writing a book called A Mindful Nation: How a Simple Practice Can Help Us Reduce Stress, Improve Performance, and Recapture the American Spirit.

No Greater Love

Sgt. Dennis Weichel, 29, died in Afghanistan last week as he lifted an Afghan girl who was in the path of a large military vehicle barreling down a road.

Lt. Col. Denis Riel, a spokesman for the Rhode Island National Guard, said Weichel embodied values that can’t be taught. “I have heard nothing but incredible stuff about this kid, selfless beyond our core values that we live up to,” Riel said. “As I hear more from family and others, he was the living embodiment of the Army’s core values: courageous, selfless and loyal. All values we expect from our soldiers. We mourn all combat deaths, but this one is a significant loss.”

Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee has ordered flags in the state to be flown at half-staff until Weichel’s burial.

more: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/03/hero-u-s-soldier-gives-life-to-save-afghan-girl/

Quote for the Day

Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna, confirming the election to a parish council of a gay man living in a "registered partnership":

I thank the many candidates for the parish council elections. By their candidacy they showed their concern for the Church and the Faith. Thus they witness to the vitality of the Church. In their diversity they reflect the diversity of the life and faith journeys of today. Thus there are many parish councilors whose lifestyle does not in every way conform to the ideals of the Church. In view of the life-witness that each of them gives taken as a whole, and their commitment to the attempt to live a life of faith, the Church rejoices in their efforts. She does not thereby call the validity of her ideals into question.

More details here: http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/?p=18270

The Bible and Homosexuality

If this is an issue you're seriously interested in, you'll set aside 67 minutes to hear the full lecture.  This remarkable young man says everything that needs saying.  Dan Savage provides some background:

Matthew Vines is a young gay man who grew up in Kansas. His family is Christian and very conservative. After coming out, Vines took two years off college to research and think deeply about what the bible says—and doesn't say—about homosexuality. You could argue that what Vines has to say is irrelevant to non-Christians. But Vines' argument and his insights are highly relevant to gay Christians, to their families, to Christians who point to the bible to justify their bigotry and the pain they inflict on LGBT people (including their own LGBT children), and to anyone who happens to live in a country that is majority Christian. Vines delivered these remarks at College Hill United Methodist Church in Wichita, Kansas, earlier this month. Watch this video: Vines is brilliant. He has a post up at Huffington Post that gives some context and background. Go read it.

Nostalgia

"One writer accused me of succumbing to Stockholm syndrome because I wrote so benignly about the nun who brainwashed me into thinking diagramming was fun."  --  Kitty Burns Florey, on the lost art of diagramming sentences

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/26/a-picture-of-language/?ref=opinion 

Quote for the Day

“If doctors and nurses do not step up and provide these services or if so many obstacles and restrictions are put into place that women cannot access the services, then the stream of women seeking abortions tends to flow toward the illegal and dangerous methods.”

An unnamed physician explains to Frank Bruni why he performs abortions.  The full story is here.  I abhor abortion but like many Catholics I want it to be safe and legal.

Mental Health Break

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz3CPzdCDws

Slain for His Flock

Today marks the 32nd anniversary of the martyrdom of Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador, here, some pieces of the homily he was giving in a hospital chapel, cut short by an assassin's bullet:

You have just heard in Christ’s gospel that one must not love oneself so much as to avoid getting involved in the risks of life that history demands of us, and that those who try to fend off the danger will lose their lives, while those who out of love for Christ give themselves to the service of others, will live, live like the grain of wheat that dies, but only apparently. If it did not die, it would remain alone. The harvest comes about only because it dies, allowing itself to be sacrificed in the earth and destroyed. Only by undoing itself does it produce the harvest....

This is the hope that inspires us as Christians. We know that every effort to better society, especially when justice and sin are so ingrained, is an effort that God blesses, that God wants, that God demands of us.... Of course, we must try to purify these ideals, Christianize them, clothe them with the hope of what lies beyond. That makes them stronger, because it gives us the assurance that all that we cultivate on earth, if we nourish it with Christian hope, will never be a failure. We will find it in a purer form in that kingdom where our merit will be found in the labor that we have done here on earth....

Dear brothers and sisters, let us all view these matters at this historic moment with that hope, that spirit of giving and of sacrifice. Let us all do what we can. We can all do something, at least have a sense of understanding and sympathy....

[I]t is worthwhile to labor, because all those longings for justice, peace, and well-being that we experience on earth become realized for us if we enlighten them with Christian hope. We know that no one can go on forever, but those who have put into their work a sense of very great faith, of love of God, of hope among human beings, find it all results in the splendors of a crown that is the sure reward of those who labor thus, cultivating truth, justice, love, and goodness on earth. Such labor does not remain here below but, purified by God’s Spirit, is harvested for our reward. 

The holy Mass, now, this Eucharist, is just such an act of faith. To Christian faith at this moment the voice of diatribe appears changed for the body of the Lord, who offered himself for the redemption of the world, and in this chalice the wine is transformed into the blood that was the price of salvation. May this body immolated and this blood sacrificed for humans nourish us also, so that we may give our body and our blood to suffering and to pain --- like Christ, not for self, but to bring about justice and peace for our people.

Let us join together, then, intimately in faith and hope at this moment of prayer....

At that, a postscript reads thus: "a shot rang out in the chapel and Archbishop Romero fell mortally wounded. He died within minutes, on arriving at a nearby hospital emergency room."

http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2012/03/in-memoriam.html