Monthly Archives: November 2017

November 30, 2017 · 23:00

Insane, Impaired, or Evil? Questions the Loyal Opposition Must Ask

Edward R. Murrow

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

The great American journalist and pioneering radio and television broadcaster Edward R. Murrow said: “We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.” His words are profound. He, along with William Shirer covered the rise of the Nazis and then lived through the height of the Red Scare and the McCarthy era inquisition. Of course he was right, the fact is that it does not matter which party controls the reigns of government or who the President is that principled opposition is not disloyal.

This is an important fact to remember even as the current President of the United States, his accomplices in the world of Fox News and Breitbart, and his fanatical supporters in what is called the Christian Right dare to say. The fact is that for our government to function as the founders intended it is absolutely necessary for the minority party, as well as other minorities be allowed to dissent. When that Constitutional right is abridged in any way it endangers our society and our way of life. In an age where opinions can be picked up cheap on the internet, television, or radio, and where things like courage, fortitude, and real faith are in short supply, we have to acknowledge as Murrow did “that we are living in an age of confusion – a lot of us have traded in our beliefs for bitterness and cynicism or for a heavy package of despair, or even a quivering portion of hysteria.”

We have a President who has spent the year after his election victory demonizing his opponents, be they members of the press, the Democratic Party, or even members of his own Republican Party for infractions that had they happened under any previous American President of any party would have never happened.

Some politicians, pundits, and medical professionals have suggested that the President is either insane or perhaps suffering from the early stages of dementia. Others disagree and believe that he is neither insane or suffering from dementia but that he is a master manipulator who knows exactly what he is doing. His list of actions that would have certainly damned the candidacy of any previous Presidential candidate, or the term of of office of any other President grows with every passing hour. Despite that whatever opposition there is seems to be ineffectual and shunted aside. In normal times the suggestion that the President might be suffering from a type of mental illness or a medical condition that impaired their cognitive ability would be a cause for bi-partisan concern, and to think that the President might be a manipulative prospective tyrant would as it did during Watergate turn his own party against him. Honestly, the thought of an either insane or cognitively impaired President trying to demonize his opposition or one that is bent on crushing them are both bad scenarios. I think that the latter is worse if his own party has surrendered its soul to their ideological goals so much that they are willing to go along with actions and statements that just over a year ago many of them said should disqualify someone from the presidency.

My problem is that I am a historian and that I have studied totalitarian states and the history of how they became such. What I am seeing going on now frightens me. We are moving closer to a totalitarian system of government than I could have ever thought could have happened in this country. I believed that our system of checks and balances coupled with a free press would keep anyone from overthrowing our system of government and establishing a totalitarian state, but we seem to be moving rapidly in that direction.

Historian Timothy Snyder noted in an interview with Sean Illing: “We think that because we’re America, everything will work itself out. This is exactly what the founders refused to believe. They thought human nature is such that you have to constrain it by institutions. They preferred rule of law and checks and balances.”

The rule of law, the Constitutional system of checks and balances, and the underlying premise of the Declaration of Independence cannot be sacrificed for political expediency. The question one has to begin to ask in light of all of the President’s actions and words is: is the President insane, is he impaired, or is he evil and intent on establishing himself as a tyrant? None of those options are good, but if the President’s supporters were principled as was the Republican Party in 1973-74 during Watergate then such actions can be stopped. However, if they are not, and if the leaders of the President’s Party knows or suspects that he is insane, impaired, or evil and acting against the Constitution, but take no action in order to get their agenda passed then they are no better that the non-Nazi German conservatives of 1932-1935 who abandoned all principle because Hitler gave them some of what they wanted.

I’m going to stop for now, but remember the questions about the President posed by many other than me that must be answered: is he insane, is he impaired, or is he evil?

Honestly I don’t know. I can speculate, but the questions have to be asked by people in elected or appointed offices established by the Constitution, as well,as the press, and the citizenry if we are to retain our republican system of government. Dissent is not disloyalty. Asking such questions is not treason. Our founders wrestled with this. Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

Murrow noted: “No one can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.”

So until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

2 Comments

Filed under ethics, News and current events, Political Commentary

Tagged as , , , , ,

November 29, 2017 · 23:57

Resistance is Never Futile: Sophie Scholl and the White Rose

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I have written about Sophie Scholl and the White Rose resistance against Hitler before, I spent time in September on my last visit to Munich to visit a number of the places where Sophie Scholl, her brother Hans, and other members of the resistance worked to write and distribute six pamphlets exposing the crimes of the Nazi regime. While distributing the sixth Sophie and Hans were caught when a maintenance man at Munich University spotted them and reported them to the Gestapo.

Tonight I watched the German language film Sophie Scholl: The Final Days. I found it to be an intensely emotional experience as I watched the film, shot on location in places that I have walked resonated in real time as I watch the freedoms that the United States was founded on being attacked in real time right now. I wonder how long it will be until the Constitution is turned upon its head and the law and the courts are turned into accomplices of terror.

I think the scenes in the film that were the most powerful to me were those that depicted the interrogation of Sophie by the Gestapo investigator Robert Mohr. He is a Nazi, but he is also a professional police office and investigator, devoted to the law, a law which though the words had not been changed since before Hitler’s assumption of power, had been commandeered by the Nazis to prescribe loyalty to the Hitler regime above all. The real Robert Mohr survived the war and lived until 1977

By the end of the film I was in tears, especially in the scene just before her execution her parents are allowed to visit her, and her father tells her that he is proud of her. Try as I might I couldn’t see my mother doing that for me, my late father yes, but my mother no. When in 2009 I visited them shortly after my father had been placed in a nursing home and I was in a state of emotional and spiteful collapse after my return from Iraq, I objected to her agreement with the Fox News pundits our their portrayal of the war and she called me a coward. I had spent seven months in Al Anbar Province with American advisors and our Iraqi allies, being exposed to constant danger and being shot at on several occasions. She would have been a perfect and obedient servant of the Third Reich. As a career officer returned broken from War I would have probably shared the fate of men like Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg and the other anti-Hitler plotters of the July 20th bomb plot. That night I left her house for a hotel, and though I have visited her and been to the house since then, I have always stayed in a hotel when visiting home. I haven’t been back since October 2014 and that is probably a good thing.

In their trial Hans Scholl, though berated by the President of the People’s Court, Judge Roland Freisler told him: I have served on the Eastern Front, as have many others here, but you haven’t. That is my feeling toward those who combat veterans who object to nationalist propaganda being disguised and patriotism by people who have never spent a day in uniform much less who have never put on a uniform, or even fewer who have served in harms way.

Honestly, in our current day I fear for freedom in this land, and I must always do my best to speak the truth. That might mean making waves or enemies, Lord knows how many supposed friends have condemned my political and religious beliefs because they do not reflect the the ideology of the supposedly Evangelical Christian America First followers of our current President, not to mention those who decide that they cannot speak up simply because they do not want to make waves in order to survive though they know in their hearts that their actions betray their faith and life.

Sophie wrote:

“The real damage is done by those millions who want to ‘survive.’ The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.”

Though Sophie, Hans, and a number of their friends were executed and others imprisoned, their message got out. Smuggled out of Germany the sixth pamphlet was reprinted in the millions and dropped by the Royal Air Force and American Army Air Force over Germany. That leaflet said:

For us there is but one slogan: fight against the party! Get out of the party organisation, which are used to keep our mouths sealed and hold us in political bondage! Get out of the lecture rooms of the SS corporals and sergeants and the party bootlickers! We want genuine learning and real freedom of opinion. No threat can terrorise us, not even the shutting down of the institutions of higher learning. This is the struggle of each and every one of us for our future, our freedom, and our honour under a regime conscious of its moral responsibility…

Fellow Fighters in the Resistance!

Shaken and broken, our people behold the loss of the men of Stalingrad. Three hundred and thirty thousand German men have been senselessly and irresponsibly driven to death and destruction by the inspired strategy of our World War I Private First Class. Fuhrer, we thank you!

The German people are in ferment. Will we continue to entrust the fate of our armies to a dilettante? Do we want to sacrifice the rest of German youth to the base ambitions of a Party clique? No, never! The day of reckoning has come – the reckoning of German youth with the most abominable tyrant our people have ever been forced to endure. In the name of German youth we demand restitution by Adolf Hitler’s state of our personal freedom, the most precious treasure we have, out of which he has swindled us in the most miserable way.

We grew up in a state in which all free expression of opinion is unscrupulously suppressed. The Hitler Youth, the SA, the SS have tried to drug us, to revolutionise us, to regiment us in the most promising young years of our lives. “Philosophical training” is the name given to the despicable method by which our budding intellectual development is muffled in a fog of empty phrases. A system of selection of leaders at once unimaginably devilish and narrow-minded trains up its future party bigwigs in the “Castles of the Knightly Order” to become Godless, impudent, and conscienceless exploiters and executioners – blind, stupid hangers-on of the Fuhrer. We “Intellectual Workers” are the ones who should put obstacles in the path of this caste of overlords. Soldiers at the front are regimented like schoolboys by student leaders and trainees for the post of Gauleiter, and the lewd jokes of the Gauleiters insult the honour of the women students. German women students at the university in Munich have given a dignified reply to the besmirching of their honour, and German students have defended the women in the universities and have stood firm…. That is a beginning of the struggle for our free self-determination – without which intellectual and spiritual values cannot be created. We thank the brave comrades, both men and women, who have set us brilliant examples.

For us there is but one slogan: fight against the party! Get out of the party organisation, which are used to keep our mouths sealed and hold us in political bondage! Get out of the lecture rooms of the SS corporals and sergeants and the party bootlickers! We want genuine learning and real freedom of opinion. No threat can terrorise us, not even the shutting down of the institutions of higher learning. This is the struggle of each and every one of us for our future, our freedom, and our honour under a regime conscious of its moral responsibility.

Freedom and honour! For ten long years Hitler and his coadjutor have manhandled, squeezed, twisted, and debased these two splendid German words to the point of nausea, as only dilettantes can, casting the highest values of a nation before swine. They have sufficiently demonstrated in the ten years of destruction of all material and intellectual freedom, of all moral substance among the German people, what they understand by freedom and honour. The frightful bloodbath has opened the eyes of even the stupidest German – it is a slaughter which they arranged in the name of “freedom and honour of the German nation” throughout Europe, and which they daily start anew. The name of Germany is dishonoured for all time if German youth does not finally rise, take revenge, and atone, smash its tormentors, and set up a new Europe of the spirit. Students! The German people look to us. As in 1813 the people expected us to shake off the Napoleonic yoke, so in 1943 they look to us to break the National Socialist terror through the power of the spirit. Beresina and Stalingrad are burning in the East. The dead of Stalingrad implore us to take action. “Up, up, my people, let smoke and flame be our sign!”

Our people stand ready to rebel against the Nationals Socialist enslavement of Europe in a fervent new breakthrough of freedom and honour.

Honestly, I do not know how many Americans today regardless of their political party who would if faced with the possibly imprisonment and death of speaking out against the anti-American, illegal, and unconstitutional actions of the Trump Administration, or for that matter any administration. Sophie said “Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don’t dare express themselves as we did.”

Freedom matters, as does truth. There is no excuse for the Christian to stay silent in the face of evil. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer noted, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak.”

Never forget that resistance is never futile.

So until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

2 Comments

Filed under christian life, ethics, faith, football, History, holocaust, nazi germany, News and current events, Political Commentary, Religion

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

November 28, 2017 · 23:40

Sailing for a Date With Infamy: The Kido Butai Sails to Pearl Harbor

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Here is a blast from the past to remember the Japanese fleet that on this day some seventy-six years ago that was making its way across the Northern Pacific Ocean to attack the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. In the coming week or so I will post more articles about that attack and what it means today both as a lesson in history as well as a warning.

So until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto

Early in the morning on November 26th 1941 the ships of the Japanese Carrier Strike Force, the Kido Butai under the command of Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo weighed anchor from Tankan Bay in the northern Kurile Islands of Japan. The plan was top secret and very few Japanese officers knew of the target. Many officers presumed that war was immanent but most assumed the target would be the Philippines or other targets in Southeast Asia.

It was an attack that was designed to be pre-emptive in nature. The plan was to deal the United States Navy such a crushing blow that the Japanese could complete their Asian conquests before it could recover. It was a plan of great risk that doomed Japan to horror never before imagined when the United States dropped Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki less than four years later. By then the bulk of the Imperial Navy   would lay at the bottom of the Pacific and millions of people killed.

The Japanese, even Admiral Yamamoto, the man behind the plan assumed that it entailed great risks. A simulation of the plan conducted in early September by the senior officers of the Combined Fleet and the Kido Butai calculated that two of Japan’s precious aircraft carriers could be lost in the operation. But despite the opposition and reservations of key officers, including the Kido Butai commander, Admiral Nagumo Yamamoto pressed forward.

The Kido Butai was the most powerful carrier strike group assembled up to that time. Comprised of six aircraft carriers, the massive flagship Akagi, and the Kaga, the fast 18,000 ton Soryu and Hiryu and the most modern Shokaku and Zuikaku. The carrier embarked over 400 aircraft, of which over 350 were to be used in the two aerial assault waves. Most of the pilots and aircrew were experienced, many with combat experience in China. The carriers were escorted by the old but fast and modernized battleships Kirishima and Hiei, the new heavy cruisers Tone and Chikuma, the light cruiser Abukuma, the new Kagero Class destroyers, Urakaze, Isokaze, Tanikaze, Hamakaze, Kagero and Shiranuhi,the Asashio classdestroyers Arare and Kasumi.Two additional destroyers the Fubuki class Sazanami and Ushiowere assigned to neutralize the American base on Midway Island. The submarines I-19, I-21and I-23 and 8 oilers were assigned to the force. Five additional submarines the I-16, I-18, I-20, I-22 and I-24 each embarked a Type-A midget submarine.

On December 7th the force delivered a devastating blow to the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, however no American aircraft carriers were present. It would go on for the next several months on a rampage across the Pacific and Indian Oceans. However their success would be short lived. Within a year Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu had been sunk at Midway by the carriers not present. Hiei and Kirishima were lost at the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal and over the course of the war every ship of the attack force was lost. Shokaku was torpedoed and sunk at the Battle of the Philippine Sea and Zuikaku, Chikuma and Abukuma were lost at Leyte Gulf, most of the destroyers and submarines were lost in various engagements. However three destroyers, Isokaze, Hamakaze and Kasumi accompanied the great Battleship Yamato on her suicide mission at Okinawa and were sunk on April 7th 1945. The heavy cruiser Tone was sunk at her moorings at Kure during air strikes by the US 3rd Fleet on July 24th 1945. All of the submarines were lost during the war, however I-19 sank the USS Wasp CV-7 and USS O’Brien DD-415 while damaging the USS North Carolina BB-55 on September 15th 1942 off Guadalcanal. Only the destroyer Ushio survived the war and was broken up for scrap in 1948.

Wreck of the Heavy Cruise Tone 1945

Among the leaders of the Japanese strike force, Admiral Yamamoto was killed on April 18th 1943 when his aircraft was shot down at Buin. Nagumo died at Saipan on July 6th 1944.  Most of the sailors who took part in the attack would be dead by the end of the war.

Few present at Tankan Bay on that fateful November morning could have expected the triumph and tragedy ahead. However Yamamoto was probably more of a realist than many in the Japanese government and military leadership when he told Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe “In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.” Yamamoto was eerily prophetic and those that counsel pre-emptive war need to never forget his words or the results of his decisions.

1 Comment

Filed under History, Military, national security, Navy Ships, US Navy, world war two in the pacific

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

November 27, 2017 · 23:59

“I Have No Idea What the Mission for General Westmoreland Was” Matthew Ridgway and the Questions We Need to Ask About Today’s Wars

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Tonight is one of those nights where I want to write about a number of topics but cannot really figure out which one to do a deep dive into, so I will post a thought from David Halberstam’s great book The Best and the Brightest. In it Halberstam write of an encounter in the White House between General Matthew Ridgway and Vice President Hubert Humphrey in February 1968 when President Lyndon Johnson was distracted by a phone call. They had been discussing the situation in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive regarding whether to increase or limit further involvement in the war. Halberstam wrote:

Ridgway was sitting talking with Johnson and Vice-President Humphrey when the phone rang. When Johnson picked it up, Ridgway turned to Humphrey and said there was one thing about the war which puzzled him. “What’s that?” Humphrey asked. “I have never known what the mission for General Westmoreland was,” Ridgway said. “That’s a good question,” said Humphrey. “Ask the President.”

“I have never known what the mission for General Westmoreland was…” Think about that for a moment. Matthew Ridgway was one of the great field commanders and thinkers ever produced by the United States Army. He opposed escalating military involvement in Vietnam when John F. Kennedy was President. He understood that military action must be connected to a coherent strategy and that the mission has to be understandable not just to the military but to the public. It also has to have the chance to succeed. The policy makers have to understand what is happening on the ground, understanding the history and culture of where they are committing troops. The also have to speed out the ends of the mission, that is what the desired end state, the way they intend to accomplish it, and the means, the assets; military, diplomatic, and economic needed to accomplish the mission which in an ideal world would support the desired end state.

That didn’t happen in Vietnam and it hasn’t happened in some 16 plus years of war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Northern, Central, and Northeast Africa, not to mention Syria. Three administrations have failed the test of understanding what the mission was and what was needed to accomplish it. There appears to be no real idea how to fight these wars, and no appreciation of just how important that stable governments that have the trust of their people are even more important than all the troops we can put on the ground. We didn’t deal with that in Vietnam, and we haven’t done it in Afghanistan or Iraq. Instead we prop up unpopular and corrupt host governments and pretend that they represent what is going on in their country.

Now we have a President who is threatening other wars while a depleted military is still engaged fighting or supporting the efforts of various allies in the Middle East.

What is the mission? If we cannot answer that most basic question it matters not how many troops or how much of our national treasure we waste to accomplish goals for which we cannot describe the end state, remain committed to a coherent strategy to accomplish it, and yes provide the means to accomplish it. Playing whack a mole while insisting that we support the troops is not a strategy, it is not a plan, and it does not do anything but waste lives, prolong suffering, and weaken the nation to the point that when a real crisis comes that the government, the military, and the people will not be able to deal with it.

Honestly, it’s all basic stuff, but leaders have to be honest with themselves and the people. Presidents have to be looking out for more than what the polls say about them or how to please their base. That is something that we have struggled with for the past fifty years regardless of who was President or what party controlled Congress. We have had a great military which has done all that it has been asked to do, but the military is not the end of national power. Americans as a whole don’t understand or appreciate that fact.

We live in very dangerous times and someone has to start asking the hard questions, starting with “what is the mission?” If you cannot answer that coherently then nothing else matter because the military can win every battle and still lose the war.

So anyway, until tomorrow.

Peace

Padre Steve+

3 Comments

Filed under Foreign Policy, History, Military, News and current events, vietnam

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

November 26, 2017 · 23:45

Drive a Spoke into the Wheel of Injustice: Christ the King Sunday 2017

A Nazi Propaganda Poster Showing the Costs of the Sick and the Disabled

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Today I did some substitute preaching at my chapel. For me Thanksgiving weekend can be a challenging time to preach. It always falls on the Solemnity of Christ the King or the First Sunday of Advent, neither one of which works well with the holiday that we call Thanksgiving.

Today was Christ the King Sunday and the Gospel lesson was from Matthew 25 verses 31-46. Believe you me it’s not a lesson that you will hear preached in most of Trumpified Evangelicalism, or anywhere in the Prosperity Gospel movement that has sidled up to Trump and men like Roy Moore. Somehow I can hear the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer when I read this passage fully understanding that many of my fellow Christians in the United States today have completely abandoned the Gospel message for the raw and shameless pursuit of political power, masking it under the pretense of values that they blatantly; through their lives, actions, and silence, mock. Bonhoeffer wrote:

“Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness and pride of power and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear rather than too much. Christendom adjusts itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more, than they are doing now. Christian should take a stronger stand in favor of the weak rather than considering first the possible right of the strong.”

Bonhoeffer’s words like those of the Gospel stand in stark contrast to people who seem intent on pursuing policies that not only are attacks on the poor but on all but the richest of the rich. They stand against the words and actions of Christian people who would in the face of overwhelming evidence would support the actions of men who are serial adulterers, perpetrators of sexual assault, abuse, rape, and even men who force their girlfriends to have abortions all because they support their political agenda. Honestly, if I was not already a Christian there is nothing that these people could say to ever convince me to become one. As Gandhi said: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

That being said these are the words of the Gospel in today’s lesson from Matthew 25:

31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33 and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. 34 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ 40 And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family,[a] you did it to me.’ 41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ 44 Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ 45 Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

Jesus Christ is a different kind of King. He is not like the Kings of Europe who the founders of the United States rejected. He is not the one who insists on his “divine right to kingship”, nor is he a despot as much as some of the testimony of various church leaders and even biblical writers occasionally make him out to be. He is one who takes up the cause of the poor, the outcast, the sinner, the unbeliever, and yes, even the repentant perpetrator, for because they share his humanity they are all also his brothers and sisters. Juergen Moltmann wrote:

“In the raising and exaltation of Christ, God has chosen the one whom the moral and political powers of this world rejected – the poor, humiliated, suffering and forsaken Christ. God identified himself with him and made him Lord of the new world ….. The God who creates justice for those who suffer violence, the God who exalts the humiliated and executed Christ – that is the God of hope for the new world of righteousness and justice and peace.”

That was the message I preached today in somewhat a truncated form without mentioning any of the names of the politicians, preachers, or pundits that I was critiquing on both sides of the political divide; but the implication was clear. This isn’t just politics it is a matter of faith as my friend Father Kenneth Tanner, a theologically conservative and truly pro-life Priest noted:

“No. It is never OK to turn a blind eye to multiple and credible witnesses against a leader running for public office because utilitarian politics are more important than principles and human decency. It matters not one wit if a presidential agenda or a senate majority or the makeup of the Supreme Court or any other grave moral challenge—like the precious life of the unborn—hangs in the balance.”

I do not know many men like Father Kenneth, but hopefully he and others like him will become that voice that cries out in the wilderness of what calls itself conservative or Evangelical Christianity to bring life to what has become death. Bonhoeffer wrote:

“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”

With every breath I take and every word I speak I will endeavor within the scope of my faith, my priesthood, and my office to do exactly that. I never want to have the burden around my neck that Martin Niemoller had around his when he remained silent, and even supported Hitler until too late he recognized his error. His words remind me of how until just ten years ago that I supported men who were willing to turn the Christian faith upside down for the sake of a place at the victor’s table. Niemoller’s words haunt me.

“I hated the growing atheistic movement, which was fostered and promoted by the Social Democrats and the Communists. Their hostility toward the Church made me pin my hopes on Hitler for a while. I am paying for that mistake now; and not me alone, but thousands of other persons like me.”

Thankfully I know a number of Evangelicals with a conscience both inside and outside the military who do not bow the knee to political expediency, not to mention some more moderate, liberal, and progressive Christians who also speak out. That gives me hope to keep speaking and working regardless of the cost because no matter what happens with Donald Trump or Roy Moore I don’t see anything changing the amoral and diabolical political schemes of the Christians that support them. They will simply sell their souls to the next best beast who will satisfy they longing for political and religious power over others, completely disregarding the words of Jesus.

So until tomorrow I wish you a good night,

Peace

Padre Steve+

Leave a comment

Filed under christian life, civil rights, ethics, faith, History, holocaust, News and current events, Political Commentary

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

November 25, 2017 · 23:59

Black Friday, the Golden Ticket, and Christmas Preparation

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

The past two days have been different from my typical Thanksgiving weekend. The first thing that was different that for the first time I went out on Black Friday with the intention of buying something. Now for those who have read my articles of the years know that I have pretty much been a critic of the culture of Black Friday, but something came along this year that allowed me to get a good deal and stand outside in the cold with friends, mostly my age or older, having great conversations and fun while waiting for our local bar, The Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant in Virginia Beach to open.

Most of us had been there Wednesday afternoon and evening, otherwise known as Thanksgiving Eve, for the tapping of this years Winter Bock, a wonderful beer that is very nice. But what drew us out was a chance to purchase a book of coupons for $50 which gives the purchaser a coupon for 52 growler (a 64 to 72 ounce jug) fills of locally brewed craft beer. Since the normally with tax come in at just under $14 dollars each the cost of those 52 growlers is about $725. So for the approximately 150 who were able to get a coupon book it was a great deal. Not only that they were selling 16 ounce beers for a dollar, with a limit of two. The atmosphere outside and inside the restaurant was like a gathering of friends and a party, so unlike the rush to grab one of a limited number of HDTVs at a big box store.

For me it was like getting the Golden Ticket.

Today we began preparing the house for Christmas, lots of work but we’re managing to enjoy it because we are both in a much better place emotionally than we have been in years.

So anyway, until tomorrow when I will be substitute preaching at my chapel, have a great night.

Peace

Padre Steve+

Leave a comment

Filed under culture, Loose thoughts and musings

Tagged as , ,

November 24, 2017 · 23:37

The Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1863

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

In October 1863 President Abraham Lincoln declared that the fourth Thursday of November the following year would be declared a day of thanksgiving. His words reflect the times. The nation was at war with itself. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers fighting for the Union or the rebellious Confederacy had been killed or wounded in the two and a half years since South Carolinian militia had opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor.

When Lincoln wrote the text of the proclamation the war had shifted in favor of the Union. Vicksburg had fallen and Robert E. Lee’s invasion of Pennsylvania had been crushed by the Army of the Potomac at Gettysburg, and the Emancipation Proclamation had changed the tenor of the war. European leaders, pressured by their own people turned their backs on the Confederacy and brought a new source of manpower to Union ranks, men not motivated by money or simply patriotism, but their own freedom. Even so in the East the fall brought stalemate, and in the West more desperate battles were being fought in Tennessee and northwestern Georgia at Chattanooga and Chickamauga. In the North the Copperheads were agitating for peace at any price with the Confederacy while despite food riots, military setbacks, internal strife between various governors and the central government in Richmond, and the impossibility of foreign recognition; the leaders of the Confederacy plodded on in a war that they could not win.

By November of 1864 the Union military forces were bleeding Robert E. Lee’s Army to death following intense battles in the Wilderness In which Ulysses S. Grant’s armies drove the Confederates into a desperate defense around Petersburg. In the Shenandoah Valley Philip Sheridan’s troops had gutted the breadbasket of the Confederacy, and in the South, William Tecumseh Sherman’s armies had taken Atlanta and were preparing to blaze a path across Georgia and the Carolinas that would devastate those areas even as Admiral David Farragut’s fleet had defeated the Confederate defenders of Mobile Bay.

Lincoln’s words reflect the Union advantage during the stalemate of late 1863 but also look forward to the healing of the nation.

Washington, D.C.

October 3, 1863

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward,

Secretary of State

I think his words are worth pondering in an era where the nation is divided in so many ways.

So until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

1 Comment

Filed under civil war, History

Tagged as , ,

November 23, 2017 · 23:58

Thanksgiving Blessings and Perspectives

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Judy and I spent Thanksgiving doing what has become our custom, cooking dinner and inviting single friends over to share the meal with us. The first time we did something like this was when I was a young Army Lieutenant in Germany back in 1985 when we hosted some of my enlisted soldiers to our quarters for the holiday.

I’ve spent Thanksgiving in a lot of places, including Iraq in 2007 and as we have gotten older I think that we appreciate the time together more when we work together to prepare the house and a meal for people that we love and appreciate. In fact the truth is even if no one came over we would probably do the same for ourselves. It is fascinating to see how well we work together in the kitchen now, especially after returning from a three year geographic bachelor assignment in Camp LeJeune in 2013. I think the most despondent Thanksgiving we shared together was in 2011 or 2012 when I traveled up from LeJeune for the weekend and we ended up eating at Golden Coral. The lines, the impersonal nature, and the poor quality and blandness of the mass produced food compounded by the fact that neither of us were in a very good place emotionally made it something that we would never do again.

There is something about preparing a meal and sharing it around a table with friends that is incredibly meaningful. I think for many people in the rush of the holidays that it sometimes is a lost art. That being said the time around the table, especially when it is unhurried and relaxing is something to behold. It reminds me of time in Germany with our friends Gottfried and Hannelore whether we sit around their dining room table or go to a local restaurant enjoying a meal, some drinks and conversation.

When our guests left I did the cleanup and the kitchen, dining room, and living room are set to begin to transformed on Saturday into our little Advent and Christmas wonderland. Then we relaxed with our Papillons, Minnie, Izzy, and Pierre, who unlike most days got some turkey as I stripped the carcass of the meat after dinner. For Pierre I am sure this was his first experience of this treat and he did enjoy it, as did Minnie and Izzy. We are very fortunate to have such good babies, they were sweet and well behaved the entire time our guests were here.

When we finally settled down we watched Young Frankenstein and Ghostbusters with the dogs on our laps and drinks in our hands.

I also took some time to check the news and found out that that the search for three U.S. Navy sailors who were about a C-2 Greyhound transport aircraft that crashed near the USS Ronald Reagan had been called off. They will probably never be recovered and this Thanksgiving will be one of great sadness as Navy Casualty Assistance Officers and Chaplains show up at their doors. Since when something like this happens Navy Ships set condition River City which cuts off almost all communications from the ships except for the Commanding Officer, Executive Officer, Operations Officer, Command Master Chief, and Chaplain; a situation like this means that families will probably not learn of their loved ones deaths by a Facebook message, or an email. Having made all too many notifications in my career I know that from now on Thanksgiving will be a day of mourning for these families.

I also read the news that the Argentine Navy has basically given up hope for finding the submarine San Juan which was last heard from Sunday. The families and loved ones of those 44 officers and sailors now know that what little hope they might have held out for their loved ones is ended.

I think that puts Thanksgiving into perspective for me. I have been in the military over 36 years and I have been to war, as well as being on other hazardous missions, and situations and come home, changed certainly, but still alive. Likewise it was the Sunday after Thanksgiving in 1985 when Judy and I narrowly avoided being at the scene of a terrorist bombing at the Frankfurt PX. We were on our way there and probably would have been in the blast area had Judy not felt well and asked to go home. Within minutes of getting home in Wiesbaden I was called by my Colonel to put my Ambulance Company on alert because the PX had been bombed. Thirty four Americans were wounded in that attack.

For us, Thanksgiving has become a day to be savored and appreciated. We usually avoid Black Friday at all costs but tomorrow we will be waiting outside Gordon Biersch with many friends for a very special deal on a coupon book for growler fills for a year.

So anyway, until tomorrow,

Peace and happy Thanksgiving,

Padre Steve+

1 Comment

Filed under Loose thoughts and musings, marriage and relationships, Military

Tagged as , , , ,

November 22, 2017 · 19:33

What I’m Thankful for this Year

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I my opinion the secular holiday of Thanksgiving is incredibly important in terms of spiritual or emotional health, for that matter maybe even physical health unless you choke on a turkey leg.

While there are a lot of things to be deeply concerned about in our country and the world there are still many things to be thankful for, and today I am expressly staying away for anything political, not that there is much to be thankful for me there anyway, but I digress…

First of all I am thankful for my wonderful, talented, and extremely patient wife Judy who has remained married to me despite how incredibly inept I remain at the art of marriage.

Second I am thankful for my three Papillon dogs, Minnie the Scule, Izzy the Belle, and Pierre. Honestly there is nothing like having three puppies who even when everything else goes to shit still love and comfort you. Minnie is my brat, she channels my inner delinquent and I reciprocate. Pierre is daddy’s boy. I haven’t had a boy puppy since I was a kid. Despite being a mere 4.8 pounds Pierre fills the room with his presence and is all boy. Then there is Izzy, or Miss Iz. She is amazing. She is my emotional support so many times. She can read my moods better than anyone except Judy and I am going to talk with my shrink about getting her certified as my emotional support dog.

Third there is my little brother Jeff, the mature one who has taken on the task of dealing with my dear mom in all of her craziness, up close and personal. Of course I love and appreciate her too when she is talking to me which she hasn’t since I shared a Doctor Pimple Popper MD video with her by email over a month ago. Mom, if your reading this I am not so traumatized by your popping my pimples when I was a kid not to have a morbid fascination watching Dr. Pimple Popper’s work. Honestly I can’t stop watching her videos, even at dinner. So I love you mom and believe it or not I’m thankful for you, which since I’m including this in my thanks to Jeff I am still thankful for you.

Fourth I am thankful for my staff at the Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek Fort Story Chapel who are simply the best and an amazing group of people to share what I expect my last tour in the Navy before I retire in 2020 or 2021. Since I have been passed over for promotion twice and don’t think I have a bats chance in hell of getting promoted I am okay with that, but if by some chance that happens I do promise to be a total pain in the ass to the system that I am now, after all I’ve got the PTSD stigma and possibly the Mad Cow since I can’t give blood because of living in Europe in the 1980s and 1990s. So to Chaplains Amanda Lurer, Dave Peterson, Charlie Mallie, and John Potter, thank you. To my enlisted staff, Chief Petty Officer Tisha Draper, First Class Petty Officers Tiara Spearman, Ralph Oliver, Second Class Petty Officers Melissa Mason, Doug Grap, and Joseph Edwards, thank you. You are the best.

Next are my friends, both my local friends and the people who I went to school, church, worked with, or served with in the military who still remain my friends through thick and thin I love all you guys. Even the people who have dropped me from their Facebook friends lists.

To my readers who now number some 700 subscribers to my website and the other whose readership and kind words mean so much to me.

Finally to steal a line from so many sports figures when they win a championship I am thankful to my Lord and Savor Jesus Christ, even if he is no help with the curveball.

So I am thankful for all of you and wish you the best of Thanksgivings.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

1 Comment

Filed under Loose thoughts and musings

Tagged as

November 21, 2017 · 22:25

The Tip of the Iceberg: Sexual Assault and Harassment in the Age of Trump

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

The Greek father of medicine Hypocrites had as his foundational rule, primum non nocere, or first do no harm. Sadly, it deny theseems that many powerful men have never understood that their actions in regards to women or for that matter men who have no power, political, economic, or sexual must be established on the same basis that Hypocrites understood medicine. Today President Trump basically gave Roy Moore a pass and endorsement for his Senate campaign by saying that Moore denied any wrongdoing. His comments came a day after his Press Secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders implied that if a crime is not admitted by the criminal it didn’t happen after Senator Al Franken admitted and apologized for his photographed groping of a female journalist while on a USO tour to Afghanistan. Evidently if Trump or Moore deny similar or worse escapades their denial should be believed at face value.

Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Bill O’Reilly, Roger Ailes, Roy Moore, Kevin Spacey, Harvey Weinstein, Al Franken, Charlie Rose, Glenn Trush, and so many more who demonstrated their contempt for women by abusing, harassing, threatening, or demeaning them managed to maintain their power, reputations, and riches. Hopefully that era is ending even as the list of verifiable predators keeps growing, as women, so long afraid of having their careers or lives destroyed by powerful men begin to speak out. Of course if we look back to history so many other powerful and respected men we find that it is littered with the less than commendable deeds of men.

Honestly I do not understand why these men did these things. Perhaps power over others is an aphrodisiac that they cannot resist. But them maybe I am somewhat of an anomaly and not because I am a better man or more ethical person than any of the men I have mentioned. Actually the fact is that I am a terrible shy person, so much so that shortly after we were married Judy walked into the bathroom where I was taking a bath and I said something like “get out, I’m bathing” and she replied, “we’re married.” Honestly I couldn’t argue with her logic.

But the fact is I have always been rather shy, insecure, and terribly respectful around women. When I was in high school and junior high their was a girl named Robin that I so wanted to ask out, she was a sweetheart, but I couldn’t do it. I finally told her that at our 25th high school reunion. We are both happily married now, to other people and I am glad that I never did anything unseemly around her or to her. There was another girl, very pretty, named Janet who sat behind me in one of my classes who told me “you’resuch a Fox,” and being the shy history and ROTC geek that I was said, “ya, like Rommel, the Dessert Fox” at which point she shook her head and kept going.

When I first met Judy in my freshman year of college I was still terribly shy and insecure, so much so that when I asked her out for our first day that she was relieved because she thought I was going to ask her to marry her. It had something to do with how I stammered out the words “will you…” thankfully about five years later did say “I do” to me when we were married, and despite my many fuck ups we are still married some thirty-four and a half years later. I think in large part this has more to do with her character than mine, for even when my ambitions were not sexual in nature they catered to my need for military or academic achievement versus anything dealing with love, emotional, or sexual intimacy. But as bad as those those things were for our marriage they also kept me from doing things that all of these other men did as a matter of how they lived life. Evidently, all of them regardless or politics, ideology, or religion, thought that they could get away with groping, exposing themselves to, harassing, molesting, or even raping women simply because they had the power to do so.

In a way I guess that when it comes to these issues I have to say that I was lucky to be so insecure, prudish, and shy around women. It probably kept me from doing things that had I not been that way that I would have regretted and that women who I (to use the words of former President Jimmy Carter “lusted after”) would have had to deal with the scars of such abuse for decades. My insecurities, shyness, and basic loyalty to Judy kept me from doing things that a young man with a measure of power and ambition, or an older ( or more powerful) man seeking to use sex or position over women to force women into sexual compromises, or worse. I could never do it, even when I was sexually attracted to other women.

None of this makes me a better person than any of the men that I named at the beginning of this article. I guess that I am lucky that I was so shy, insecure, and prudish. I am blessed to still be married to a woman who I not only love but also respect, and the women that I didn’t use my person, position, or power to manipulate or abuse because of my introverted, insecure, and shy nature to cause harm to over all of these years.

But that leads me to an interesting question. How can I excuse the nefarious deeds of men whose policies and politics I admire when I condemn their counterparts on the other side of the aisle for the same deeds, regardless of whether they are admitted or on the same scale of moral bankruptcy as the men that I admire? Honestly as a Christian I can’t. I can believe in grace and God’s forgiveness of sins, but as painful as it may be to my politics I cannot let men who I otherwise admire like Al Franken, a man that I could have otherwise supported for election to the Presidency in 2020 because of their policies get a free pass as some many of Trump and Roy Moore’s religious supporters give them.

That doesn’t mean that I believe in a one punishment fits all system. Like any crime or infraction of justice there is a gradient of evil. Some people are sociopaths who have made a lifetime of abuse, others were simply occasional dumb shits and idiots. That being said I think that the punishment must fit the crime and not all cases are equal, even so it is important that in each case the appropriate justice be meted out. That might mean criminal charges, firing from lucrative employment, voluntary resignation, or some kind of censure. All of the accusations against them are deserving of a full public airing and if that leads to criminal, legal, financial, or public censure that is fine with me and I don’t care if they share my political or social beliefs.

Can there be redemption for these individuals? Yes I do believe that, especially for the people whose actions were simply lame, stupid, or ignorant; but for those who are pathological abusers, liars, and sociopaths whose actions were so obviously premeditated and heinous there is little likelihood of reform I think that redemption is a likely option. Such people, even when they “repent” tend to revert to their old behaviors as soon as the spotlight is off of them. Psychologist Judith Herman wrote:

“In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure no one listens.”

Over the years too many women or in some cases men have been silenced. That can’t be allowed to continue. The voice of those previously silenced needs to be heard and those accused need to be exposed and held accountable.

Personally I have no problems with the crimes or abuses of such men, and yes even women in some cases being exposed so that other people will not be victimized. If this scrutiny ends up helping to change our culture it is worth it. The culture that accepts rape, sexual assault, abuse, and intimidation has to be changed, and that will not happen if these crimes remain blanketed in silence.

I think that many more powerful men, politicians, business leaders, actors and Hollywood moguls, and even religious leaders whose lives which have involved the serial abuse of women, or in some cases men will be exposed, and that is not a bad thing. Sadly, in the case of some men, particularly the current President I don’t think justice will be done. A poll released today indicated that the vast majority of members of his political party don’t think that the issue matters when it comes to retaining political power.

So until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

2 Comments

Filed under ethics, Navy Ships, News and current events, Political Commentary

Tagged as , , , , , , ,