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About padresteve

I'm a Navy Chaplain and Old Catholic Priest
August 6, 2017 · 06:30

An Accidental Activist 


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I would have never thought that I would become a civil rights activist. I’ve been in the military my entire adult life and grew up in it as a child. I was raised with the concepts of loyalty, obedience, and honor as being central to my life. Likewise I have been a Christian pretty much all of my life, and a minister, priest, and chaplain for a quarter of a century. Typically when you mix military, Christian, and clergy the combination does not lead to one becoming a civil rights activist. 

But the long strange trip that has been my life to dates has thrust me into places that people like me seldom experience, much less live.  When I was in high school I was part of a school district that desegregated. There was a lot of opposition to it in the community, but my class at Edison High School, Stockton California, was as racially diverse as anyone could imagine and unlike many other places where the experiment went wrong, our class came together and made it work. Many of us have stayed in contact throughout the decades and our reunions are always well attended, we were, and still are, Soul Vikes. 

When left active duty to go to seminary and went into the National Guard, came to know what it is to be poor, to wonder where the next meal, rent payment, tank of gas, or money for prescription medicine might come from. I know what it is like to have a home foreclosed on, to have a car repossessed, to have bill collectors harass one day and night. To work full time with a college degree and not make a living wage because “good Christians” didn’t think seminary students deserved a living wage because they were not going to stay around after they were done with seminary. I know what it is to have lived in a crime and drug infested area in a rented house that did not have heat during the winter. I know what it is like to lose a job when mobilized to serve overseas, and have those that did it blacklist me among my profession when I complained to the Department of Labor when I returned home. 

Likewise, my profession as a military officer, first as a Medical Service Corps officer, and later as a Chaplain in the military and as a civilian hospital chaplain brought me into contact with people and experiences that I would not have had otherwise. I was assigned to help write the Army’s personnel policy for people with HIV and AIDS in 1987 and because I was the junior personnel officer I because the point of contact for every officer diagnosed with that dread disease. The experience made me realize that the people who got it, regardless of whether they were gay or straight were real human beings faced what was then a certain death sentence. So I started speaking up for them. 

When I was in seminary I worked for a social service organization working in the slums and barrios of San Antonio before moving to Fort Worth and for a time working as the administrative coordinator for a homeless shelter. 

When I finished seminary I ended up doing my hospital chaplain (Clinical Pastoral Education) residency at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. While most of my time was spent in the trauma-surgery department and the emergency rooms, I still dealt with many AIDS patients, some whose families rejected them, and if they were Gay, were also condemned by their families, pastors, and churches. While at Parkland I dealt with death every day, much of it violent, and I saw the vast disparity between those who had insurance and those who had to rely on charity or some kind of minimal government provided heath care program. 

When I came back from Iraq suffering from full-blown PTSD I came to understand what it was like to suffer depression, hopelessness, struggle with faith, and contemplate suicide. I also came to know what it was like to be ostracized and then kicked out of my church, and be sidelined by other Navy chaplains. 

As I struggled during the early stages of returning home and dealing with the craziness of PTSD my first therapist asked what I was going to do with my experience. I told him that regardless of the cost I would be honest and speak out. I started doing that with PTSD but soon as I was struck by how unjust I felt that I had been treated, and seeing others being treated the same way because of prejudice, whether it dealt with mental health, race, sexuality, religion, social or economic status, I began to speak up for them as well. Speaking up for the LGBTQ community, women, and Muslims, got me thrown out of the church I had served for 14 years as a Priest, but that only hardened my resolve to fight for others, even in my own neighborhood. 

That has continued now for almost a decade since I returned from Iraq. All of the experiences I had before then came more sharply into focus, and if you read this site regularly or scroll through my vault of over eight years of articles you will see how over the years I have continued to become more of an advocate for civil rights. But I think that this is something that my faith as a Christian and oath as an officer to the Constitution demands I do. The German pastor and martyr to the Nazis Dietrich 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. That means that I have to fight the battle. 

Many of the causes that I fight for are not popular in Donald Trump’s America, but one cannot give up and be silent just because it is unpopular. Mahatma Gandhi said: “It’s the action, not the fruit of the action, that’s important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there’ll be any fruit. But that doesn’t mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.”

I have become an activist, I didn’t plan to become one, it just happened as a part of a very long long strange trip; one that is continuing in ways that I could never had imagined. When people ask how that can be when I am still serving as an officer I believe that my answer is found in the words of the German General, Ludwig Beck who died in the attempt to remove Hitler’s from power in July 1944. Beck wrote: “It is a lack of character and insight, when a soldier in high command sees his duty and mission only in the context of his military orders without realizing that the highest responsibility is to the people of his country.” 

So anyway, here I am an accidental activist. 

Until tomorrow, 

Peace

Padre Steve+

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August 5, 2017 · 06:30

Bomb Threats and Terror: Flashbacks to the Baader Meinhof Gang


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

The last week was stressful for me. I am dealing with a contractor who is causing problems, and I had a number of other issues going on at work. Likewise, as you know from my last two articles, I was dealing with people in the neighborhood who were and still may be working to make sure that the kids in our neighborhood don’t have a safe place to play. Of themselves they would have been stressful and time consuming but not anything that would amp up my anxiety level. 

But this week, my base and another one nearby were the targets of a significant number of bomb threats, in fact on Wednesday we had five separate bomb threats on my base and I ended up spending over half of my day in our Emergency Operations Center. Now I know that for most Americans that bomb threats are of little concern, mainly because they have never really experienced actual terror threats in their neighborhoods that impacted their daily lives for months on end. Bigger events like the 9-11 attacks are a different matter. 

Most Americans live in a nice cocoon of comfortable safety were  terrorist bombs are something that blow up in other countries. But my life, and that of my wife have been different from most Americans. For almost three years we lived with the very real threat of being bombed, kidnapped, or killed by members of the Baader-Meinhof Gang, or as it is sometimes known as the Red Army Faction when we were stationed in what was then West Germany during the Cold War. Not only them, but by Muammar Ghadafi’s regime was was sending out terrorists bombers who were bombing places where Americas congregated, clubs, and shopping areas.

Of course I also dealt with the possibility of being blown up by Improvised Explosive Devices during much of my tour in Iraq. So for me, and to some extent Judy, a bomb threat is a source of real anxiety because on two occasions we barely missed being blown up by Baader-Meinhof bombs in 1985, and two years after we returned from Germany the aircraft that we flew home in was blown out of the sky over Lockerbie Scotland by a bomb planted by Libyan terrorists. 

When we lived in Germany in the mid-1980s the threat was real and as I said on two occasions, once at the Frankfurt Post Exchange and once at Frankfurt International Airport, we almost ended up in the middle of bomb blasts that killed and wounded a good number of people. The threat was such that before you got in your car in the morning or started it, that you looked to make sure that there was nothing suspicious. When you entered a base, not only was your identification checked, but your car was inspected. Units on the base had to supply soldiers to patrol the perimeter of the base, and as a young officer I often had to be in charge of the overnight patrols. 

Likewise, because of the threat you remained observant to things around you even when out in town. One Saturday in 1986 while walking through the parking lot at an early version of something like a Wal-Mart in Wiesbaden, a place called Wertkauf we noticed something unusual. As we walked toward the store there was a van that had it back hatch open and a number of people sitting in it. For a moment our eyes locked that the people in the van watched us until we got out of site. Both of us noticed the obvious suspicion and hatred in their eyes. But we went in and did our shopping. When we left they were gone. We mentioned to each other how strange it was but we went home. The next day we went to dinner at a restaurant downtown and as we past the main Police station, we saw a wanted poster for Baader-Meinhof/Red Army Faction members, so we went in and made out report, which the Polizie took seriously and interrogated us for over two hours. Most of these people were arrested and tried for their crimes after they lost sanctuary in East Germany when the wall came down. 

So when these threats occur, especially when they appear to be well coordinated in order to maximize the disruption, I get amped up. My mind goes back to those days in Germany and Iraq. But not only does my mind go back to those places, but it imagines the reality of what could happen if whoever was calling in the threats was also intent on actually killing people. Sadly, it wouldn’t be that hard to kill a lot of military personnel in an attack around our area, there are far too many soft targets, and as a matter of course I pretty much avoid them, even when there are no broadcast terror or bomb threats. When I do go to them I am on high alert looking for things that might be out of place. Hypervigilance is a part of my life with PTSD, and bomb threats only make me more hyper vigilant. 

The threats we had this week were all false alarms. Thankfully no one set off any actual bombs, but at the same time I wonder if the strategy of the callers is to lull people into a sense of complacency, thinking that there is no basis to the threats. If so that would be a good strategy, because people might stop taking them seriously, opening a gateway for a real bomber. 

The Navy has put out a reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever has been behind this weeks’ threats. Personally, if I ever found out who was doing this I would do my best to have them locked away forever. 

Thankfully my stress level has gone down over the past couple of days, with Wednesday being the worst day this week. I stil might have to deal with fallout from my contractor over the weekend but I am prepared for that. So until tomorrow. 

Peace

Padre Steve+ 

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August 4, 2017 · 06:30

Fighting for Justice in My Neighborhood Update: Let Freedom Ring and I Have not Yet Begun to Fight


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Today I made the first step against the racists in our neighborhood who on Wednesday succeeded in convincing the man who put the basketball hopes in our neighborhood to take them down. 

I called the neighborhood association office as soon as it opened this morning to ask what the hell was going on and to express my displeasure in what happened. I’m not going to go into detail today, but according to the lady who works in the office the hoops will come back this weekend. She told me about the alleged complaints and I told her what I had dealt with for a certain older white lady in the neighborhood last week. She knew exactly who I was talking about and she mentioned some of the complaints that were being made against the kids. So I told her about how much worse that I and the kids in the various neighborhoods that I grew up in behaved compared to these kids, and then said but we were white kids in a white neighborhood. She remained silent after that. 

But I was reminded of a story that my late dad told me about a man in his neighborhood in Huntington, West Virginia, who harassed kids for playing in the neighborhood. After being harassed and screamed at by the old man who lived on 18th Street Hill, my dad, his twin brother, and their friends waited until after dark one night when the man went into his outhouse. Once the hatful old geezer was safely in the outhouse they gathered around and pushed it down the hill, with him in it. Then they ran away, and never got caught. To me that was impressive. It wasn’t that they were bad kids, it was just that the old fart was an asshole. Sadly, we have indoor plumbing and no hills in my neighborhood or I would d what my dad and uncle did to the old racist bitch who has caused this situation in my neighborhood. 

But instead of just simply complaining and being a part of the problem I offered a solution. I offered to open and close the gate of the court, and spend time with the kids to make sure things were cleaned up at night and the area was secure. I have other neighbors who are willing to do the same. I also said that the association needs to post the rules about the use of the courts and reiterated my belief that since the developers and city haven’t done anything to give our kids a safe place to play that it was our responsibility to do so. I got no argument. I also announced my intention to run for one of the vacant seats on the homeowners association board of directors. For years people have asked me to do that but I didn’t want to, I just wanted to mind my own business. 

But now it’s different. My wife and I have an investment in this neighborhood. Though I have been deployed, been assigned as a geographic bachelor, and travelled a lot because of my military duties, Judy has lived here for fourteen years and we have been homeowners paying dues to the association for twelve years. We don’t have kids, but the kids of our neighborhood are our kids, and I will be damned if I stand by and let them be treated like crap, as less than human by people who should know better, 

I am hoping that the association will take up my offer and that of my friends to help the kids of our neighborhood. They are good kids, they just need a safe place to play, and if we as homeowners and association members cannot facilitate that then what the hell good are we?

I have become a civil rights activist over the years. I will fight for these kids who are mostly African American, I will fight for women, LGBTQ people, and immigrants. I believe in the proposition of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  To me that means everyone, including the black kids of my neighborhood. They are my neighbors and they are the children of God as much as anyone else. 

That may make me unpopular in some circles but I no longer give a damn, because I share the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal…” 

I re-read Dr. King’s speech last night and as I did tears welled up from my eyes. In fact I had a hard time containing them as I read the majestic cadence of his words: 

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood…

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character…

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And let me add, Let freedom ring in the suburbs of Virginia Beach Virginia and on on a unused tennis court on which kids can safely play basketball. 

And as Doctor King concluded:

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

As of now I don’t need to go to my city council member, I don’t yet need to go to the NAACP, ACLU, or the local media, but if I have to I will. I will run for one of those vacant seats on the board and I will speak out every day until I see the dream of Doctor King realized in my neighborhood. 

I will not stop speaking out and I will work with my neighbors to do the right thing for our kids, the thing that developers, the city, and homeowners associations don’t do around here because honestly they really don’t give a damn about the kids. That is evident in the way the these neighborhoods were designed, with lakes, golf courses, and tennis courts, but no ball fields or basketball courts. Don’t get me wrong, I like the lakes, and the golf course, but why the hell should the kids have to play on the streets while unused tennis courts sit idle instead of being converted into basketball courts and a skateboard park? It wouldn’t be that hard, but some of my neighbors don’t want the kids here, so I am standing up today for the kids. I am not going to stop speaking out and I will be part of the solution, not just a complainer. If I am going to complain then I need to be part of the solution or I am no better than the people who do all that they can to oppress others. Actions speak louder than words. 

Anyway. Thank all of you for your kind and inspirational words on this website, on Facebook, and on Twitter. 

Spread the word my friends because in the words of the American naval hero, John Paul Jones, “I have not yet begun to fight.” 

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+ 

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August 3, 2017 · 06:30

Going to War Against Neighborhood Racists and the Kempsville Lakes Homeowners Association: The Kids are Still Alright


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Last week I wrote about the lady who came to my door trying to get me to join her in trying to get recently installed basketball hoops removed in our neighborhood. Yesterday, after the National Night Out  gathering in our neighborhood on Tuesday where at least 30 kids were playing basketball, those hoops were taken down with no notice to anyone. So now, the kids of of neighborhood have no safe place to play. If you want to read the details of the history behind this just go back a week or so on this site. I’m not going to rehash details today. 

I found out about this while talking to a couple of my neighbors after a pretty shitty day at work with multiple bomb threats and a couple of shit bombs left by one of my contractors. It was the whipped cream on my shit sundae for the day. 

My neighbors and I are all going to complain to the association tomorrow since the association office was already closed. But besides complaining to people who a few years ago objected to the idea of basketball courts by telling my wife Judy that they didn’t want “unwanted elements”  and tried to tell her that we have a “gang problem” I plan on doing more. 

The fact of the matter is that our homeowners association board which is composed mainly of older white people does not like the fact that we have a mixed race community and that most of the younger families with kids in the area are minorities, many who are military families. I am career military, having spent 36 years in the Army and Navy and having grown up as a Navy brat, where I was always an outsider. I am white. I am 57 years old. We have lived in this neighborhood for almost 14 years, though I have been deployed or assigned elsewhere much of that time. We like our neighborhood, we like our neighbors. Our town home block has been very stable with good neighbors, quite a few, including Larry, a junior high teacher and coach who has lived here longer than us, are African American. Crime is low and kids are well behaved, the biggest problem is that they have to play in the street because when this area was developed the land that could have been used for parks or playgrounds was turned into lakes. 

Today I am going to war. I will call the association, then I will call my local city councilman, the I will call the local chapters of the NAACP, and the ACLU, the latter which I am a member of at the national level, as well as local media, including television news outlets. What is happening is not right. When I was a kid we were allowed to play in our neighborhood and we were a lot less well behaved than these kids, but then most of us were white, living in predominantly white neighborhoods. Race does have its privileges. 

I am going to protest the overt racism of our homeowners association as well as some of our neighbors, especially the old bitch who showed up at my door last week complaining about the kids. They are going to get a fight from me and as much as I hate doing it I will probably have to run for one of the vacant seats on the homeowners association board. 

I’ll be damned if I let them get away with this. I am going to fight for the kids. I am going to war for them. They deserve better than this. 

Pray for me.

Peace

Padre Steve+ 

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August 2, 2017 · 15:05

Books: The Window to My Soul


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

George R.R. Martin wrote in his book A Dance With Dragons:  “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”

I constantly read and because I try to imagine what I am reading so that in a way I live it. I have been to places that have never traveled to before and on entering them I know exactly where everything is and what happened there. I remember leading a group from my Army chapel in Wurzburg Germany to Wittenberg, where Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation. As I lef d the group through the town a couple of people asked me how many times I had been there. I told them, “physically, never until today, but I have been here a thousand times before because of books. I saw Wittenberg in my minds eye before I ever saw the city.” They were surprised and both said that it seemed like I had been there many times. 

I have had the same thing happen other places that I have visited, and again, it is because I read, and as I read, I imagine and occasionally dream. 

I have a huge number of my books in my office most dealing with the history, especially the American Civil War and Reconstruction, the World Wars, and the insurgencies and counter-insurgency wars of the past seventy or so years. I have a lot of biographies, books on American history, military theory, sociology, philosophy, psychology related to war and PTSD, and a few theological works, though most of my theology books are at home because I don’t have room for them in the office. 

Coupled with mementos of my military career, other militaria, artwork, and baseball memorabilia the sight and smell can be both overwhelming and comforting at the same time. I hear that a lot from my visitors, including those who come in for counseling, consolation, or just to know someone cares. They tell my visitors volumes about me without them ever asking a question or me telling them, and occasionally someone will ask to borrow a book, and most of the time I will lend them the book, or if I have multiple copies even give it to them. 

In a sense my books are kind of a window to my soul, the topics, and even how I have them organized, and they are not for decoration. Many times while I am reflecting on a topic, a conversation, or something that I read in the news I peruse my books and pull one or more out to help me better understand it, or relate it to history. 

Likewise my memorabilia is there to remind me of all the people in my past who I have served with. I don’t have all my medals, honors, and diplomas up for everyone to see, instead I have pictures and collages, many signed by people who made a difference in my life. When I see the signatures and often all too kind words on them I am humbled, and in some cases a tear will come to my eye, but I digress…

I always try to read a decent amount everyday. I in the past couple of weeks I have finished reading a number of very good books dealing with different historical dramas. I read Stephen Sears’s Lincoln’s Lieutenants which deals with the high command of the Army of the Potomac during the American Civil War. Sears is a great historian and I really enjoyed the book even when I had a different evaluation of several of the men that he wrote about, but that is one of the fascinating things about history. Historians can evaluate the same literature and come to different conclusions about people or events. In my case with Sears it was with his evaluation of people, not his conclusions about different battles. 

I love complex characters, people who may be heroes and at the same time scoundrels. I like the contradictions and the feet of clay of people, because I am filled with my own, and truthfully saints are pretty boring. 

I also finished Mark Bowden’s new book about the Battle of Hue, Hue 1968: A Turning Point in America’s War in Vietnam. This was a fascinating read for me because I have read other book about the subject and know a decent number of men who fought in that battle. It too is well worth the read.  Before that I read James Robertson’s After the Civil War: The Heroes, Villans, Soldiers and Civilians Who Changed America. This is a good wavetop biographical history of many of the people whose lives were impacted by the war, and who through their heroism or cowardice on the battlefield or off, moral courage or failure, and contributions they made to science, literature, politics, social justice, industry, technology, military art and science were important in making the country that we know. As with Sears’s work I didn’t always agree with his conclusions about certain people, but it is worth the read for anyone desiring to know a bit about a wide range of characters. 

With this being the anniversary of the beginning of the First World War I have decided to re-read Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August and Max Hastings’ Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War. I figure that both are good reads with which to reflect on what is happening in our world today, and wondering if world leaders will allow hubris, arrogance, greed, and pride to drag the world into another catastrophic war. Sadly the American President doesn’t read and doesn’t learn from history and for that matter his ignorance is very much a reflection of our culture. 

But books are important, far more important than anything that is shouted at you from the television. Barbara Tuchman wrote:

“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.”

But anyway, I was late getting this out. So have a great day and a better tomorrow.
Peace

Padre Steve+

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August 1, 2017 · 06:30

The Kaleidoscopic Combinations of the Pictured Present


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I am trying to place what is going on in the Trump White House, the country, and the world in some frame of reference for some time now. There are many historical parallels to draw from and make analogies, but like all analogies they tend to break down at some point, none are perfect, but some tend to resonate more than others. Mark Twain wrote“History never repeats itself, but the Kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends.” 

In the Trump world I see fragments of the worlds of Richard Nixon, of Kaiser Wilhelm II, King Leopold of Belgium, Adolf Hitler, and Pierre Laval; of of the Robber Barons, the owners of the Titanic, and other leaders going back to antiquity. I have written about some of those parallels, even recently; however the past few days of turmoil have caused me to step back a bit as I try to find the right manner in which to write about them. 

Marcus Tillius Cicero wrote something that in the midst of the self-inflicted chaos of the Trump administration that we should try to heed right now. I wish that the President would stop for a brief moment to ponder before he does something incredibly rash that leads him and the nation to disaster. Cicero wrote: “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?”

So I am reading and researching and trying to make sense of the madness that we are all witnesses to, and if we do not speak out complicit in.  

Until tomorrow,

Peace 

Padre Steve+eee

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July 31, 2017 · 06:30

Trump and “Total Solutions” 


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

On this day in 1941 it appeared to Hitler and his henchmen that the Wehrmacht would soon defeat Stalin’s Red Army and Complete Hitler’s conquest of the European continent. In the cold blooded calculations of the Nazis it was time to begin the planning to settle their accounts with the Jews. On that day, seventy-six years ago Herman Goering, acting on the orders of Adolf Hilter sent the following order to Reinhard Heydrich, the head of Himmler’s Sicherheitsdienst and the Reichssicherheitshauptamt or Reichs Security Main Office: 

Berlin, July 31st 1941

To: Gruppenfuhrer Heydrich

Supplementing the task assigned to you by the decree of January 24th 1939, to solve the Jewish problem by means of evacuation and emigration in the best possible way by according to present conditions, I hereby charge you to carry out preparations as regards organizational, financial, and material matters for a total solution (Gesamtlosung) of the Jewish question in all the territories of Europe under German occupation.

Where the competency of other organizations touches on this matter, the organizations are to collaborate. 

I charge you further to submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for the carrying out the desired final solution (Endlosung) of the Jewish question.”

Goering

That order set the stage for the completion of a program of mass killing that had already began as Heydrich’s Einsatzgruppen followed the Wehrmacht into the Soviet Union killing hundreds of thousands of Jews up close and personal. The order would eventually form the basis of the final solution which would be fully implemented as policy after the Wansee Conference of January 20th 1942 and Heydrich’s killing by Czech commandos not long afterward. During that time men who had previously unblemished records of service sacrificed their sacred honor to carry out Hitler’s decrees, while many more remained as silent witnesses of their evil deeds. 

The German program of genocide was replicated by Stalin against Jews and other non-Russians of the Societ Union, without the Nazi’s racial bloodlust. 

Timothy Snyder in his book Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin wrote something that we should be concerned with today as Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin each work to secure their greatness on the lives of others deemed to be their enemies: 

“Dead human beings provided retrospective arguments for the rectitude of policy. Hitler and Stalin thus shared a certain politics of tyranny: they brought about catastrophes, blamed the enemy of their choice, and then used the death of millions to make the case that their policies were necessary or desirable. Each of them had a transformative utopia, a group to be blamed when its realization proved impossible, and then a policy of mass murder that could be proclaimed as a kind of ersatz victory.”

So far only Putin has used a policy of mass murder to achieve his goals, but if actions follow words, then President Trump will not be far behind his Russian tutor in tyranny. The President has already named who he blames for his failures: liberals, Democrats, blacks, LGBTQ people, Mexican and other Hispanic immigrants, Muslims, women, the news media, educators, scientists, and more recently the former GOP mainstream headed by Senators John McCain, Susan Collins, Lisa, Murkowski, and his former chief of staff Reince Priebus. 

In the past few days I know of a number of politically liberal military officers, all junior chaplains, whose conservative chaplain superiors are threatening their careers and freedom to voice their faith online, simply because they and their churches stand against Trump’s latest attack on transgender military personnel. This, despite the fact that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has said that as of now there is no change in policy towards transgender personnel and the fact that chaplains may faithfully stand by and proclaim their churches or religions teachings, even if they conflict with the views of those in power. 

My question is simple: If the President continues threatening American citizens, will he finally decide that his opponents need to be liquidated to achieve his goals? In light of the President’s words and tirades against his opponents, which grow increasingly more violent on a daily basis, this is a fair, if still hypothetical question. But even so, since he, and many of his supporters openly speak of using violence against their opposition, and voice their admiration for Putin, Turkey’s Erdogin, and other dictators, it must be asked especially when a Fox News host, Jesse Watters, even said “A lot of people wish President Trump was a dictator…” 

A dictator? If I recall correctly our founders warned of us of this day as they debated the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

I just wonder, if the President were to give such orders, just who in his administration or among its allies will be the modern Goering and Heydrich? Who will be the men, or women, who given the chance would order, coordinate, and maybe even kill for the President to set the stage whatever final solution he is attempting to achieve. I wonder who will write the order after Trump tweets it, and who will sell their souls to execute it. Honestly, I don’t know who will eventually do that. All I know is that I take my lead from General Ludwig Beck who resigned his office rather than lead an invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and who gave up his life in the attempt to overthrow Hitler in July of 1944: 

“It is a lack of character and insight, when a soldier in high command sees his duty and mission only in the context of his military orders without realizing that the highest responsibility is to the people of his country.” 

I do hope others will do the same if the President issues orders that are illegal, unconstitutional, or go against American values or international law. There was a time that I could not imagine that happening, but with every passing day of the Trump presidency I become less sure of that. 

Likewise, I wonder who will get the blame for the catastrophes unleashed by our President, but based on his past actions and current words, there is one person that will not accept any blame, and that is the President. He never has in done so in any private, public, or political venue. 

So in the midst of this I am reminded of the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and I must ask the question he did: 

“We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, and straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?”

So until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+ 

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July 30, 2017 · 06:30

“Everything Tends Toward Catastrophe and Collapse…” The Trumpian World Order


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

On the night of July 28th 1914, as Europe slipped into the embrace of war, Winston Churchill, in one of his less statesmanlike moments wrote his wife: “Everything tends towards catastrophe, & collapse… I am interested, geared-up and happy.”

One hundred and three years ago the nations of Europe were careening towards war, a war that would destroy the old order, devastate the flower of European youth, energize revolutionary movements on the far left and far right, and impact the world up to today. The war which began with the Austrian-Hungarian Empire declaring war on Serbia two days prior would eventually claim 20 million dead and another 21 million wounded. It would be followed by the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919, and massive political, geographical, and economic crises which led to the Second World War Two decades after the Treaty of Versailles. 

The outbreak of the war was the result of a complex web of personalities, politics, prejudices, and per-conceived fixed notions, and wrong-headed assumptions by the leaders and the peoples of the nations involved. In his book The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 Christopher Clark wrote:

“Moreover, the complexity of the 1914 crisis arose not from the diffusion of powers and responsibilities across a single politico-financial framework, but from rapid-fire interactions among heavily armed autonomous power-centres confronting different and swiftly changing threats and operating under conditions of high risk and low trust and transparency.” 

As they moved ever closer to calamity many could not believe that disaster was hanging over them as surely as the Sword of Damocles. Barbara Tuchman noted: “One constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.”

The world that we live in is much like that of August 1914, as Clark describes them. Unklike 1914, when the United States was an emerging power on the periphery of the conflict, the United States is the great power, with a Navy like Britian’s and Army like Imperial Germany’s, but with a leader who does not seem to be able to control himself from his worst instincts. 

I shudder as I watch the regime of President Trump descend into self-inflicted chaos driven by the whims of a narcissistic President who has no capacity for self-reflection, who relishes in humiliating those who are most loyal to him, and who lives in a cloud-cuckoo-land of fact-free paranoid fantasies run amok, at the very point the country’s most dangerous potential adversaries threaten at every corner of the globe and long-standing allies wonder what has happened to the United States. Tuchman described the President, who she never met, in his domestic and foreign policies, when she wrote: 

“Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.” 

One hundred and three years ago far more able men than this President were making decisions based on their own self-deception and unwillingness to face the facts that we staring them in the face. Believing that victory would be quick and their cause vindicated governments mobilized their fleets and armies, and began to declare war. 

President Trump, who ironically avoid serving in the military believes in military power and surrounds himself in with Generals and military hardware. At the commissioning ceremony of the new aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford he said “When it comes to battle, we don’t want a fair fight. We want just the opposite. We demand victory, and we will have total victory, believe me.” He reflected that belief this week when in tweeting about banning transgender persons from the military he said “Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory…” even as he weakens our alliances, praises dictators, and his Secretary of State continues to erode the country’s diplomatic power. It is as if he is determined to find a war in which he will be remembered as a great warlord, like Kaiser Wilhelm II envisioned himself. 

As I observe the actions of our President in relation to our enemies and allies alike and watch their response to him, I am reminded of Tuchman’s description of Sir Edward Grey on the eve of the First World War, “Watching with his failing eyes, the lamps being lit in St. James Park, Grey was heard to remark that “the lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them again in our lifetime.” 

I don’t want to sound like a pessimist but every night I go to bed wondering if early the next morning the President will tweet us into a war. Likewise I wonder what the President will do if Kim Jong Un will fire the missile that brings Armageddon to an American city, or a terrorist group finally succeeds in detonating a weapon of mass destruction on American soil. The latter question is not just how he will respond militarily, but rather how far he will go in curtailing political dissent, free speech, and civil rights. I wonder if the President, to use the words of a less experienced and statesmanlike Churchill is geared up and happy as events tend toward catastrophe and collapse. 

Anyway, for now I’ll do my best to remain hopeful that disaster can be avoided but with every passing day I get more concerned about the future of the country and the world. 

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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July 29, 2017 · 06:30

The Transgender Soldiers of the American Civil War


Friends of Padre Steve’s World

President Trump let loose a series of tweets yeasterday morning saying, based on the advise of his generals,  that he was going to kick out transgender soldiers from the military. The irony was not only that the military, immersed in a six month long study of they issue was blindsided by the President, and yesteryear General Dunford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff announced that nothing had changed regarding the treatment of transgender military personnel, and instructed the military to continue to respect every military member. 

So, today I am posting an article about the women soldiers of the Civil War, many of who based on their personal narratives would be considered transgender today. I hope that you enjoy.

Peace

Padre Steve+

Of course when the Civil War broke out the logical end of this train of though was that should women be allowed to serve in the military. Legally and socially it was not possible for women to serve in the military in 1861, but this did not stop women in the Union or the Confederacy from doing so. Quite a few women on both sides of the conflict chaffed about not being allowed to fight for their countries, their families and their causes, and despite official prohibitions that kept women from serving in any capacity but nursing, a good number of women found their way to go to war. While men in the North and South “were expected to enlist, any woman actively participating in the Civil War was an oddity if not a renegade.” In some cases this involved hundreds of women taking male identities in order to fulfill their desires to serve their countries.

The motives of these women varied. In some cases women wanted gain the economic privileges of full citizenship, and for others the glory reserved to only to men. In our modern parlance those that took male identities would be considered transvestites or possibly transgender, but for them “transvestitism was a private rebellion against public conventions. By taking a male social identity, they secured for themselves male power and independence, as well as full status as citizens of their nation. In essence the Civil War was an opportunity for hundreds of women to escape the confines of their sex.” 

During the war hundreds of women went to war, taking on the identity of men. They enlisted under male names and pretended to be men. Unless they were discovered to be women, or unless they confessed to their wartime service either during or after the war, most women managed to serve without being caught. Sadly, most of their service records were lost. In 1861 Private Franklin Thompson “enlisted in Company F of the 2nd Michigan Infantry…unknown to comrades, Thompson actually was Sarah Emma Edmonds.” Edmonds served in the illustrious Iron Brigade until the disaster at Fredericksburg. Well known for her courage as Franklin Thompson, Edmonds participated in some of the bloodiest combats of the war. At Antietam she was caring for the wounded when she came upon a soldier who had been wounded in the neck. That soldier informed Edmonds that she was dying and after a surgeon came by and confirmed what the soldier said the dying soldier told Edmonds:

“I am not what I seem, but I am female. I enlisted from the purest motives, and I have remained undiscovered and unsuspected. I have neither father, mother nor sister. My only brother was killed today. I closed his eyes about an hour before I was wounded….I am Christian, and have maintained the Christian character ever since I entered the army. I have performed the duties of a soldier faithfully, and am willing to die for the cause of truth and freedom….I wish you to bury me with your own hands, that none may know after my death that I am other than my appearance indicates.”

That unknown woman was not alone, at least nine women, eight Union and one Confederate, fought at Antietam and of those five were casualties. Five women, two Federal and three Confederate took part at Gettysburg. All three Confederate women at Gettysburg were either killed or wounded, or captured, including two women who took part in Pickett’s Charge.


Sarah Edmonds published a book Nurse and Spy in the Union Army while recovering from malaria in 1863. The book, which was published the following year, sold 175,000 copies, the proceeds that she donated to care for sick and wounded Union veterans. After the war, Edmonds attended Oberlin College, married, had three of her own children and adopted two more. She “became a member of the Grand Army of the Potomac, the organization for Union veterans of the Civil War. She applied for, and received, a military pension, and upon her death in 1898 was buried with full military honors.” She was the only women admitted to the Grand Army of the Republic.


Another of the women to serve was Frances Louisa Clayton. Fighting for the Union as a member of the Minnesota State Militia Cavalry and 2nd Minnesota Battery, serving under the command of Ulysses S. Grant she was wounded at Fort Donelson. Like many other women soldiers, Clayton mastered the art of behaving as a man. She “became “a capital swordsman,” but also commanded attention with her “masculine stride in walking” and “her erect and soldierly carriage.” After the war she promoted her service in a book.


However, most women were more discreet during and after the war regarding their true sexuality. Private Albert Cashier hid his sexuality identity for his entire term of service. He enlisted in August 1862 as a member of the 95th Illinois. Cashier was born in Ireland as a woman, Jennie Hodgers. He fought in forty battles and was discharged with the regiment in August 1865. At Vicksburg he was briefly captured by the Confederates while conducting a reconnaissance “but managed to escape by seizing a gun from one of her guards, knocking him down, and outrunning others. Comrades recalled Private Cashier climbing to the top of their fieldworks to taut the enemy into showing themselves.”

After the war “Albert” returned home and lived as a “farmer and handyman and served as a caretaker in his church. He never married.” In 1890 he applied for and received a military pension and in 1911 the now elderly “man” was struck by a car and suffered a broken leg. The doctor threating him discovered that Albert was not a man, but a woman. But the doctor kept his confidentiality and without revealing “Albert’s” secret had the Union veteran admitted to the local Soldier’s and Sailors’ Home at Quincy, Illinois.” A few years later the elderly “man” began to exhibit erratic behavior and was “committed to a public mental hospital and the word was out.” With her story now sensational front page news and “old comrades in arms came to her defense.” Her comrades had never known that “Albert” was a man during or after the war, while the news was a surprise to them they came to her defense. To combat some of the sensationalism in the media Albert’s fellow soldiers testified “to Albert’s bravery in combat and public good works in later life. Albert/Jennie died at Watertown State Hospital in 1915 at age seventy-one. The local post of the Grand Army of the Republic arranged for her burial. Her headstone reads: “Albert D.J. Cashier, Company G, 95th Illinois Infantry.”

Wartime records are sketchy but as a minimum it is believed that “between 250 and 400 women disguised as men found their way into either the Federal or Confederate armies.” Women known to have served had a “combined casualty rate of 44 percent” including the fact that “eleven percent of women soldiers died in the military.”  Some of those women are now well known but many others are lost to history. Most women tried to keep their sexual identities secret, even to the point of their death on the battlefield. Most of the women who served in the armies returned home to resume relatively normal lives after the war.

Of the women that served in the ranks, some were discovered, and many remained protected by their fellow soldiers. Quite a few received promotions and even served as NCOs or junior officers. With women now serving in combat or combat support roles in the U.S. Military since Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the stigma and scandal that these cross-dressing women soldiers of the Civil War has faded and as scholars and the public both “continue probing cultural notions of gender and identity, the reemerging evidence that women historically and successfully engaged in combat has met with less intellectual resistance and has taken on new cultural significance.” As the United States military services examine the issues surrounding further moves to integrate the combat arms we also should attempt to more closely examine the service of the brave and often forgotten women who served on both sides of the Civil War.

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July 28, 2017 · 22:38

Thumbs Down: McCain, Collins, and Murkowski send ACA Repeal to the Dust Bin 

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

It was an eventful week. In addition to the President’s tweet about baring transgender persons from the military, an action which blindsided the Pentagon leadership and caused a lot of consternation in the military and the GOP, a hyper-political address to the Boy Scouts, another North Korean ballistic missile test, a Congressional vote in favor of more sanctions against Russia, and the end of the attempt by Trump and the GOP leadership the scuttle the Affordable Care Act, more popularity known as Obamacare. 


The end of the GOP Congress’s attempt to repeal the Affordable Health Care came to an appropriate end last night at the hands of Senators John McCain, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski who joined with ever Democrat in the Senate to place the repeal attempts in the dustbin of fail legislation. 

After seven years of ranting and raving, failed votes and shear legislative incompetence the efforts of Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and President Trump demonstrated that hubris, coupled with incompetence is no way to go through life. Ignoring polls which said less than 20% of Americans were in favor of their various legislative proposals; against the advice every major medical association, the insurance industry, the AARP, and even veterans organizations the GOP leadership goaded by President Trump who blatantly ignored his own campaign promises to make healthcare more affordable and available, pressed ahead. 

A good number of GOP Senators voiced concern, but only McCain, Murkowski, and Collins held the line. A number of Senators voted for the doomed act hoping that if it passed the House would do nothing with it, reject it, or send it back. 

McCain stole the show by coming back from Arizona after surgery which revealed that he is suffering from a deadly form of brain cancer, the same type that ended the life of Teddy Kennedy, to cast the final and deciding vote Thursday night. His action, which followed an ovation to welcome him back was dramatic. As the last Senator to vote he walked up to the clerk of the Senate under the glowering face and folded arms of majority leader McConnell, voted no and for dramatic effect turned his thumb down. It was possibly the crowning moment of McCain’s Senate career. I think that he must have relished it. He came back and voted to allow the GOP repeal efforts to come to the floor, and then voted against every one of them. He could have ended things by voting not to allow the vote to go forward, but it seemed that he savored the opportunity to torpedo Trump who had on numerous occasions during the campaign disparaged McCain’s military service, including his years in a North Vietnamese prison camp at a time the President was using ever deferment and excuse that he could to avoid serving in the military. 

In light of his cancer diagnosis this may be one of his last acts in the Senate, I hope not because I think we still need him, but I am a realist and know how devastating this cancer can be. 

But McCain’s dramatic comeback would have been impossible had not Senators Collins and Murkowski held the line, braving physical and political threats from various Republicans and Trump supporters and not wavering in the face of tremendous opposition. 

So the ill-advised, moronic, and badly botched GOP effort to destroy the ACA failed. President Trump appears not to be deterred and will probably do whatever he can to destroy the ACA even as the GOP Senate leadership begins to work with Democrats on a more bipartisan attempt to improve the ACA. 

It was a humiliating end to seven years of bluster to repeal the ACA without any serious effort to come up with something better, especially since the ACA had its origins in the Heritage Foundation and its trial run in Romneycare. It was a Republican proposal put into place by Demcrats alone because Mitch McConnell and othe GOP leaders decided on the day that President Obama was inaugurated to do all they could to make his presidency a failure and him a one-term president. 

Now, no-matter what President Trump says or does, the GOP needs to decided to work with Democrats. This is not about the President’s ego and need to win at all costs. It is about so much more. Healthcare is one of the largest sectors of the economy, public health is a strategic concern that impacts national security. The health and well-being of people impacts every part of our economy and the future of our country. It cannot be left to ideologues bent on destroying our health care system for next quarter’s profits and tax write offs. 

So anyway, until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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