Making things right - Ash Wednesday

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. On Ash Wednesday we focus on repentance and reconciliation.

Ninety years ago a tragedy took place in Birmingham; the murder of Father James Edwin Coyle by a Methodist preacher.  The Catholic priest had married the preacher's daughter to a Puerto Rican man. The crime was about race, religion, and hatred. The trial that ensued was about ignoring justice, the Ku Klux Klan, and scandal. The Methodist Church was about silence.

 Father James E. Coyle

The United Methodist Church has finally made things right.

At Highlands United Methodist Church last night Bishop William Willimon delivered a message of repentance for a crime committed so long ago.  In prayer, he offered:

"We ask forgiveness for the indifference of our beloved Methodist Church in the unjust death of Father James Coyle, a servant of God among us, whose ministry was tragically ended. Heal us, we pray, of dissension and hatred for brothers and sisters of other faiths. Reconcile us to those whom we have wronged or who have wronged us. Embolden us to witness to the love of Jesus Christ by loving others as he loved us."

The Methodist clergyman, E. R. Stephenson, had ties to the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK at the time was very anti-Catholic, and in Birmingham there existed a secret anti-catholic political society called the True Americans. Father Coyle defended the Catholic Church and promoted racial harmony amid public persecution of the Church.

Father Coyle had married Stephenson's daughter to a Puerto Rican man, Pedro Gussman. Stephenson's acquittal was a nationwide scandal; a black eye for the city of Birmingham, which has seen so many black eyes.

There is no record of the Methodist Church or any other group ever disciplining Stephenson for this crime.

Now that has been corrected. Through this service the grace and forgiveness of God has been unveiled in a most profound way.

The service included the Rev. Alex Steinmiller, C.P., president of Holy Family Cristo Rey Catholic High School, who said (and I'm paraphrasing), "There is no statute of limitations on forgiveness and reconciliation."

James Pinto, the director of The Father James E. Coyle Memorial Project, spoke as well. He had earlier in the day spoken to a 100 year old woman who had been a parishioner of  Father Coyle and who remembered being ministered to by the priest. This provided a connection to the event, and to a time very different from our own in so many ways, but not unlike ours in others.

Mr. Pinto also read some letters from Catholic officials. One of these mentioned that all of the "disenfranchised" now stand in "solidarity with Father Coyle."

During this Lenten season let the Church (Catholic, Methodists and others) consider the disenfranchisment of the LGBT community. We stand in solidarity with Father Coyle, and with a Jesus who brought his love and extends grace to all.

I look forward to the day when the church extends an apology to the LGBT community and seeks reconciliation with those who it has estranged from its ranks. As was said, there is no statute of limitations for reconciliation. If ninety years of silence can be erased, two thousand years of wrongdoing can be also.

In the meantime, read John Shore's Open Letter From Christians to Gay People.

Catholic Influence

Catholic ideology is really in the news this week, mostly as a result of the HHS policy that requires employers to provide birth control at no cost. As it stands now, Catholic and other churches are exempted, but Catholic owned hospitals and universities are not. The premise is that churches employ members of their own religion, but hospitals do not, and their employees (like everyone else) should have access to contraception.

Also in the news was the overturning of Prop 8 in California by a Federal Appeals Court. This is being framed by conservatives ( including Republican presidential candidate and Catholic Rick Santorum) as a split court decision overturning the will of 14 million voters in California.

What do Catholics think about these issues?

Several reports state that 98% of Catholics use or have used in the past some form of birth control.

Now we learn that most Catholics support the White House position on the issue.

Public Religion Research Institute released a poll yesterday which asked participants to respond to the following: 

All Employers should be Required to Provide their Employees with Health Care Plans that Cover Contraception or Birth Control at No Cost

Fifty eight percent of Catholics agree. That is higher than the percentage of “All Americans" (55%) that agree with the requirement.

At the same time 59% of all Catholics (and 57% of all Americans) agree with the exemption for Catholic churches and other places of worship.

The same polling group also reports that the majority of Catholics (52%) as well as mainline protestants (51%) now favor allowing same sex couples to marry. White evangelical Protestants and African American Protestants still oppose same sex marriage (76% and 60% respectively).

I don’t believe that the Catholic Church is in danger of losing its position as a worldwide power of religion.

But it does look like the Catholic church is losing its influence over Americans.

In the same poll, 69% of Millennials (18-29 year old) agree that religious groups are alienating young people by being too judgmental about gay and lesbian issues.

And Catholic women are ignoring Church teaching in their use of birth control. 

Here's the deal. Many religious leaders, including the Pope and other Catholic Bishops, ignore hard science and social science in their policy development. 

Science and sociology tell us that birth control is necessary and warranted in this country (and world wide) to help prevent unwanted and unplanned pregnancies as well as for population control in other overcrowded countries.

Science also tells us that gay people are here because of  natural reasons and not by choice and that acceptance of LGBT people contributes to better mental and physical health for the group.

Religion needs to catch up with its followers in living in the 21st Century. This can be done while still holding to the core values of their faith traditions. This applies not just to the Catholic Church, but to the United Methodist Church and other denominations as well. 

Religion by its very nature tries to adhere to the status quo. But all one has to do is look back at the early Christians or Christianity in the Middle Ages or Christianity in Early America or Christianity at the turn of the 20th Century to realize that the Church can, and does, and will, change.

Manure

Two separate conversation in two counties this past weekend focused on manure. The virtues of such, you know, the stuff that is cleaned out of barns or feedlots, when applied to a garden, were extolled. Large watermelons and an abundance of potatoes would be the result.

With no livestock at the farm, we have no source of fresh manure for our garden, neither here nor there.

The only manure I have access to is the recycled kind that is transmitted along radio waves and cable lines.

Like yesterday when the world fell apart because President Obama was lifting the Bush ban on embryonic stem cell research, which will allow federal funding to back such research.

Among the things the right wing is saying to try to skew people's knowledge and understanding:

The moment a sperm impregnates an egg, and the resulting cell divides, it is a human being. Sometimes they even say "living, breathing human being." Bull Crap. First of all, the cells don't breathe. Respiration goes on, at a cellular level, but that is hardly breathing. Second, if the embryos are "human being," capable of all the human emotions and feelings as they claim, then isn't it cruel to keep them frozen for indeterminate periods of time. I mean, you wouldn't put a real live baby in the freezer, would you? But you claim these embryos are babies, I don't get it.

Barack Obama is a demon. In a cartoon she received before the election, Obama was morphing into a demon, a woman said. Now she knows it's true, and its not funny anymore. In fact, she and others said that Barack Obama was destined for Hell because of the signing of the documents yesterday. He would be solely responsible for millions of deaths. Horse Crap. Well, these embryos are frozen and later discarded like medical waste, so who is responsible for those embryos' deaths? Are they going to Hell also? Nice job of being God's gatekeeper, lady.

This is Brett Dennen's song "Heaven," and this seems like an appropriate place for it. The maker of this youtube vid had this to say about the picture: "The picture used is unrelated to Brett or the song. I took that picture with my Macro lens of the bottom of the fire pit at camp. Yes, that's what burning wood looks like. Beautiful, isn't it?"

I chose this version so your mind could create its own images during the song.



This move will require millions of embryos to be created and destroyed to supply the demand for research. Malarky. They used terms like "embryo farming" to describe the scenario they envisioned.

The Catholic Church was throwing out plenty of manure too. I accidentally landed on EWTN last night, and there was a talk show on. The conversation shifted from embryonic stem cell research to abortion, and they were trying to say that one third of all U. S. hospitals will be forced to close if FOCA (Freedom of Choice Act) is passed and signed into law, (they are claiming that 1/3 of all hospitals are Catholic Hospitals, which might be true), because if the hospitals refuse to perform abortions that Kathleen Sibelius will order them closed. She's Catholic, by the way. Of course she would also close Baptist Hospitals and any others that refuse, so the health care in our country would crumble even more. What a crock. That is not what the bill says or supports.

See, I can't take anything the Catholic Church puts out seriously. I mean, here, at The Wild Reed, is one example why. A ways down in that post is this:

A third example - one that is making international news: Time magazine is reporting on the outrage among Catholics in Brazil about Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of Recife (pictured above) who recently announced that the Vatican was excommunicating the family of a local girl who had been raped and impregnated with twins by her stepfather, because they had chosen to have the girl undergo an abortion. According to Time, the Church has also “excommunicated the doctors who performed the procedure as well.”

Keep reading and you will learn that the rapist was not excommunicated. Another writer is quoted:

[Many are] furious with the Church [for] not excommunicating the girl’s stepfather. The truth is the stepfather has not engaged in an excommunicable offense. In fact, raping his stepdaughter is actually seen as a more moral sexual act than having sex with his wife if they were using birth control. Raping his nine-year-old stepdaughter is a sexual act open to procreation. According to the Church, God’s law favors rape over birth control. God’s law is sure tough on women and nine-year-old girls.

Rape is procreation, they say, so that's OK? How can anyone support a church, created and run by men, that has such a policy? Give me a break.