HCW newspaper. Jul 2019. Vol. XXXIX, No. 3.

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Mark Zwick Founder

Publication of Casa Juan Diego House of Hospitality

Vol. XXXIX, No. 3

Seeking A Better Way

“You Shall Not Wrong Any Widow or Orphan” husband.

Lawyers visit where he is in detention, but they are very expensive and we have no money. I don’t know what will happen to me if he is deported. He might be released if we knew of a person who would promise to be his sponsor, take temporary practical and financial responsibility for him.” (Casa Juan Diego wrote a letter that we would receive him if he were released, but that was not accepted, as such a letter sometimes is.)

Suyapa‘s situation is all too common.

In the Bible, in the book

of Exodus chapter 22, God pronounces judgment on our current immigration practices: “You shall not oppress or afflict a resident alien, for you were once aliens residing in the land of Egypt. You shall not wrong any widow or orphan.

“If ever you wrong them and they cry out to me, I will surely listen to their cry. My wrath will flare up, and I will kill you with the sword; then your own wives will be widows, and your children orphans.”

Official policy in the

by Michael J. Baxter Michael Baxter co-founded and lived and worked at Andre House in Phoenix (1984-88) and the Peter Claver Catholic Worker in South Bend (2003-09). He directed the Catholic Peace Fellowship from 2001-2012.

He currently teaches Religious Studies and Catholic Studies at Regis University in Denver and is completing a collection of his essays on Catholic social thought in the United States, called Against the Americanist Grain (Cascade Press).

The Ben Salmon story begins in an ordinary way: born on October 15, 1888, the third of four siblings, to Irish-Canadian immigrants; raised in a Catholic household, a practicing member of a Catholic parish, attended Catholic grade school and high school, worked several

jobs, got involved in union activity, increasingly committed to Leftist politics. . . . But it was when the United States went to war against Germany and the Central Powers in April 1917 that Salmon’s life took an extraordinarily radical turn.

On June 5, 1917, the day when young men were required by law to register for the draft, Salmon sent a letter to President Wilson stating that he had registered for the draft that day but would not be complying further with the Selective Service.

The following Christmas he received a draft notice. The next day he hand delivered a letter to his local draft board declaring his refusal and explaining why: “War is incompatible with my conception of Christianity. I positively refuse to aid organized murder, either directly or indirectly. I must serve God first, and, in

serving Him it [is] impossible to be other than loyal to my country—the world.

Ultimately, individuals and nations must awaken and rally to Christ’s Standard or perish. Meantime, I must stand firm and trust in God. . . . I am in the Army of Peace, and in this army I intend to live and die.”

So began a three-year ordeal in which Salmon paid the cost of serving in the Army of Peace. In early January, he was arrested and released on $2500 bond, pending trial. In March, his attorneys argued his case on religious freedom grounds, but they lost because the Supreme Court had ruled that the draft was constitutional.

On May 20, 1918 Salmon was arrested by Denver police and turned over to military authorities, who held him overnight at Fort Logan, Colorado. From there he was transferred to Camp Funston, Kansas (May 22); then to Camp Pawnee, Kansas (June 12); then to Camp Dodge, Iowa (July 2), where he was court-martialed and received the death sentence, later reduced to twenty-five years hard labor. On October 9, 1918, he was transferred to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas to be held with other

Brandon Curry

by Louise Zwick One of our guests sat weeping in our office as she contemplated h er future. Her husband was in immigration detention and the possibilities for his release were not good.

Our Honduran guest (we will call her Suyapa), eight months pregnant, had been released while her husband was sent to further detention in Georgia. Their baby was born here a few days ago. We were very glad to receive her so she would not be homeless or in a detention center jail as she had her baby, but now Suyapa said, “I have nowhere to go. I am depending on my

The Ben Salmon Story

Casa Juan Diego Houston Catholic Worker P.O. Box 70113 Houston, Texas, 77270 Return Service Requested

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A student from St. John’s College High School illustrates family separation.

Immersed in Border Reality

A Visit To El Paso

by Monica Hatcher Monica was a full-time Catholic Worker at Casa Juan Diego for two years.

Her work now is with the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word.

My recent firsthand glimpse of the reality on the border was a sobering shock to me. The vast movement of vulnerable poor, including so many thousands of children, is unlike anything I could have imagined taking place at the southern edge of our nation, even after having seen the large caravans trekking through Mexico on TV. While the news media has done a good job of covering the scope of the situation, in the storm of info in which most of us swim these days, all those border crisis headlines, at least for me, had melded and blended with all the other alarm and cataclysm pumped out every day.

In understanding the dangers of our seemingly digital omniscience, Pope

Francis has warned us many times against allowing the suffering of others, the poor and the Incarnation itself to become mere conceptual abstractions, or mere headlines among headlines. The border crisis was abstract to me.

That concerned me.

So, I took a week off from work and drove from Houston to El Paso to volunteer with Annunciation House, which coordinates a network of non-profit migrant shelters.

I was assigned to a new center with a 500-bed capacity that had been opened a little more than a week. Multitudes upon multitudes arrived, so many children in tow by women and bewildered men. We received anywhere from 150 to 200 per day, 300 the last day I was there. It was dreadful, awful to see so many desperately poor displaced people all at once, so many sick people, and many indigenous people Please see page 7

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Houston Catholic Worker

Small Joys, Beauty, and Sorrows

mind as she shared were: “Why is it that the United States is so successful? What is it about my country that makes us so poor? Do Americans just work harder than us? Do

responsible for arranging the weekly flowers into a vase that we would proudly display in the chapel.

Her work was always beautiful, and her efforts were

Casa Juan Diego, as I review the dozens of names that we’ve etched in our guestbook, and as I broadly reflect on this journey thus far… My mind is flooded with a multitude of memories.

For our readers who do not directly participate in our hospitality, I share with you a handful of recent and/or exceptional moments that encompass my experience of the hospitality offered at the Houston Catholic Worker in the last while.

A teenage Honduran student was staying with us, and I often drove her to and from her high school. One afternoon, after classes, as we progressed along our normal route toward home on Rose Street, the young woman was reflective and quiet, as she observed the whir of Shepherd Drive during midafternoon from inside the car.

Suddenly, she turned away from the window and posed the question: “How did our countries turn out so differently?” I prompted her to clarify her thought a tad, and she surged into a spirited, while soft-spoken, discourse.

Several of the additional ponderings that came to her

Americans have better work ethics than we do? Why does my country suffer so greatly?”

In Honduras, violence, government corruption, and joblessness and underemployment are raging and have victimized the diligent and innocent poor, like this student and her family, for decades. The infectious rhetoric that vehemently suggests that the poor are responsible for their poverty has founds its way to her, too.

Two months ago, a guest in her mid-70s flew back to her home country of El Salvador after spending almost a year in the United States. Most of her time here was spent at Casa Juan Diego. Before she returned to the majority of her family and the land she knows best, she wrote a front-and-back letter to the staff, although she had never received any formal education in reading or writing. Among the things for which she communicated gratefulness, she specifically mentioned the fresh bouquets of flowers that we receive every Monday morning from an anonymous giver. This guest was typically

methodical and thorough. She articulated to us in her letter that when she arrived in this country, she could have never imagined having fresh flowers in her hands as often as she did while she stayed with us.

Around the time of Easter, I had only been in my bedroom upstairs for a few minutes when one of our guests approached my door, loudly knocked, and informed me that she found another woman waiting outside of our front door downstairs. The guest had nearly collided with the woman when she stepped out the door to take out the trash.

The dishes from dinner were in the midst of being washed, the comedor was being comprehensively swept and mopped, and personal preparations for that Wednesday evening’s mass at the men’s house were underway. About 40 minutes remained before we, as the women’s house, were due to parade around the block to join the men for our liturgical celebration. I rushed to the door and found a Guatemalan woman of my same age, 22, standing next to the taxi

that she could not pay. The detention center where she had been confined for nearly a year had released her, without notice, to the sidewalk outside its facility. She found the taxi and had our address, but possessed no more than $5 and a tiny amount of belongings. I paid the kind driver the remainder of the fare and showed the woman inside to introduce her to the house and assemble some warm leftovers for her to eat.

Several other guests were already rapidly readying her room with fresh linens and toiletries. The minutes passed quickly, but everyone, including our new guest, still arrived on time to mass.

Unbelievably, we are often able to meet the greater requests of guests or door visitors in the same moment that they make them, due to the remarkable generosity of Casa Juan Diego’s supporters. One example of this occurred on a radiant spring day, when the highschool-aged son of a woman who participates in our sickand-injured program was at the door, collecting supplies like food and toilet paper for use by his whole family.

Before he departed, he sheepishly wondered aloud if we might have a computer that he could use for his schoolwork.

Amazingly enough, just several days before, a closing business had

Angel Valdez

by Colleen Sheehy Colleen is a full-time Catholic Worker at Casa Juan Diego.

As I approach the 10-month mark of my stay at

Editors Translators Proofreading Technical Director Circulation

Permanent Support Group

Volunteer Doctors

Volunteer Dentists Casa Maria

given much of its gently-used electronic equipment to our house, by way of Dawn McCarty. She and I were both present on that morning to excitedly lift a box containing a desktop computer, keyboard, and hard drive through the door, into the astonished boy’s arms.

We asked him if he would be able to assemble everything.

He gazed down at the box, grinning, then looked back at us and nodded vigorously.

Not too long ago, I answered the door to find a young man with a backpack.

After we exchanged greetings, he burst into tears and hurriedly explained that his elderly father was extremely ill in Mexico, and he feared that he might die.

The man did not have any savings as a new immigrant, and he pleaded for assistance in purchasing a bus ticket so that he could reunite with his father in Mexico, potentially to say goodbye. When Casa Juan Diego did provide him with a ticket, he was overcome with elation and gratitude (albeit tempered, considering the situation) and he left the country just a day later, with a small quantity of pesos in-hand. It is underratedly difficult to be so removed, so isolated, so distanced from one’s family, especially when you were warily spurred to leave your Please see page 5

Houston Catholic Worker Vol. XXXIX, No. 3

Louise Zwick and Susan Gallagher Sofía Rubio, Blanca Flores

Dawn McCarty, Marie Abernethy, Emma Kloes Colleen Sheehy, Clare Wieland, David Miller, Branden Egan, Kenneth Thomas Joachim Zwick Stephen Lucas Victor Díaz , Julian Juarez, Manuel Rangel, Valentin Martinez, Josue González, José Viola, José Salazar, Carlos Varela, Manuel Sierra, Ricardo Rodas, Ernesto Rodas, Ramiro Rescalvo, Felipe Servellon, Diego Rivas, Pedro Chun Louise Zwick Stephen Lucas, Lillian Lucas, Andy Durham, Betsy Escobar, Kent Keith, Pam Janks, Dawn McCarty, Julia Gallagher, Alvaro and Jane Montealagre, Monica Hatcher, Joachim Zwick Drs. John Butler, Daniel Corredor, Nageeb Abdalla, Magdy Tadros, Wm. Lindsey, Laura Porterfield, Joann Schulte Jorge Guerreo, Sr. Roseanne Popp, CCVI, Enrique Batres, Darío Zuñiga, Cecilia Lowder, Jaime Chavarría, Amelia Averyt, Deepa Iyengar, Justo Montalvo, Mohammed Zare, Joan Killen, Tammie Generette.

Drs. Peter Gambertoglio, Michael Morris Mercedes Berger, Jose Lopez, Justin Seaman, Florence Zare Juliana Zapata and Manuel Soto

Casa Juan Diego P. O. Box 70113, Houston, TX 77270 Telephone: (713) 869-7376, email: info@cjd.org World Wide Web: http://www.cjd.org

Houston Catholic Worker

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Dorothy Day’s Pilgrimage Continues in Houston

Vintage Mark Zwick

Aren’t You a Little Crazy After 6 Years?

Yes, Basically With all the work to do and all the problems we face at Casa Juan Diego, we are a little crazy after six years. We survive by praying a lot. If we didn’t meditate and think about what we are doing in the light of the Gospels, we would be more crazy than the little we are. If we don’t pray we waste a lot of energy on anger, frustration and unnecessary tension (See “Wasted

Passion,” Dec. 1986).

Amazing Grace For whatever reason, we seem to be surviving all the work and experiences of Casa Juan Diego. We are not only surviving, but are grateful for being so blessed.

All that has happened has made believers out of us.

Besides being people of work, we have become more and more, people of faith.

The Glue Or Goo For us Casa Juan Diego is a faith operation.

Faith is the glue that holds things together. Faith is the Lord and faith is people and faith is our readers. Without this faith, things deteriorate in all ways and we succumb to the stress and strain of daily burdens. We burn out.

Without struggling with the profound values of the Catholic Worker movement and the Gospels, the faith glue easily becomes liberal or conservative goo and moves from the hard rock of the New Testa- ment to a house of shifting sands.

Closet Catholic Workers Though the strain and stress of the work is evident, inevitably people come up to us after presentations on the work of Casa Juan Diego and ask why they as a couple can’t do this kind of work. They can, of course. The place to start is with prayer and “Little by Little.” (Robert Ellsberg). It is most important that a couple doesn’t confuse love in action with love in dreams.

Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing at times, but it is the only path, as all Catholic Workers know.

(See Dorothy Day and Dostoevsky). Every couple is called in some way to give witness—not in the same way as we are. Some need to do something, not just stand there, while others should not just do something, but stand there.

Sheltered Life Because people respect our work and say nice things about us, we forget about those who are upset with all that we do and believe as followers of the Nazarene. We lead a very sheltered life. We forget that a few people are suspicious

of our motives, or that they say we are law-breakers, or that we are commies because we work without pay and are pacifists, or that we neglect our children by doing this work, or that Casa Juan Diego is the Garbage pit of the West End and send letters saying the same.

Why Masochists?

Motivations are hard to figure. We hope we are doing the right work for the right reasons—in fact, we would be satisfied with only having one thing right— either the right reason or the right work. But work we do!

Workaholics (Or Prayeraholics) We may be addicted to work, but nothing works and succeeds as well as work.

We don’t know of many saints worth their salt who were not workaholics. Of course, they were addicted to prayer, too—might we say prayer alcoholics.

This combination seems to contain the right ingredients for St. Augustine‘s statement, “Work as if all depended on you, and pray as if all depended on God.” Like Celibates Basically, Catholic Workers must be like celibates, totally committed to the Lord, totally committed to serve, totally committed to the poor. This seems harsh, but maybe the Lord expects us to give, to sweat, to suffer fatigue and headaches, as well as sacrifice and fast. This may even be better than fasting and sacrifice. The early Catholic Workers talked constantly about the Saints and about being saints.

The Real Reason Our motivation for starting Casa Juan Diego was rather simple. It was started to serve a population that was neglected: refugees, Spanishspeaking families, those who could not get help from agencies, and those who fall between the cracks. Still fresh in our memories is the experience of applying to a foundation for help some years ago and the response of its director. Had he spit on us, it would have been easier.

Instead he attacked us for duplicating services and developing programs that

others can organize. The restraints of our pacifism were a bit stretched! If there is any agency or group that can do anything we can do, we much prefer and even insist that they do it. We need all the help we can get.

Law Breakers At Casa Juan Diego we don’t worry about breaking the law, in fact, we are totally distracted by trying to keep the law, the Law of the Gospels that Please see page 7

Enrique Lugo

During the first 20+ years of the Houston Catholic Worker newspaper, we regularly ran a column entitled “The Pilgrimage Continues in Houston.”

Written by Mark Zwick or

by Mark and Louise Zwick together, it was inspired by Dorothy Day’s famous column “On Pilgrimage” and it offered a glimpse of life at Casa Juan Diego. In it, we hoped to share with our readers the challenges and consolations of the daily work of hospitality and also to introduce them to some of our guests, our supporters and even our detractors.

Since Mark’s death in 2016, we have continued the work full throttle, and we still rely on the systems he set up and the approaches he adopted. We quote to each other things he used to say to help keep the right focus.

“We are foot-washers, not hand-holders” for when we have to use some tough love with our guests. Or, when we are feeling frazzled and frustrated, “Push the Jesus button” to find the way to continue to work graciously and peacefully.

We feel Mark’s presence, but nevertheless we miss him.

Recently we have been rereading some of the old columns and we recognize Mark’s characteristic humor and humility. We enjoy his (deceptively) simple way of explaining things. We miss his voice.

The following is a reprint of “The Pilgrimage Continues in Houston” column from the February 1987 issue of the Houston Catholic Worker.

A Portrait of “don Marcos” Enrique is the artist who created this work of art of Mark Zwick. It hangs in the entrance of Casa Juan Diego.

by Enrique Lugo I am going to recount a part of my life and tell you how it was that I arrived at Casa Juan Diego and how I came to know Mark Zwick.

I can say that from this day something or everything began to change in my life.

I had little hope for my life.

I had already lost all my family goods and because of this, I soon lost even my family because seeing me with this illness, they forgot me and put me aside.

At this time for me, my life offered no incentive to go on living.

But in the hospital, they spoke to me of Casa Juan Diego, and as I could, I arrived. I was outside and l came to see a person who

asked me if I needed anything. Without knowing who it was, I told him about my problem, which was that I did not have a place to live. I didn’t know that it was Don Marcos. He told me, let’s look for a place where you can live. And in that moment he took me into Casa Juan Diego, giving instructions that in that very moment I should be given a meal and a roof where I could sleep.

I was so amazed, because never in my life, and even less in those times, had anyone ever done anything for me.

Now I know that the Angels exist and that God never abandoned me, even though before, I was not capable of understanding that. I was always away from him, but now like the lost sheep, I am back in the fold, all thanks to that great man and benefactor, don Marcos Zwick.

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Houston Catholic Worker

by Mary Killeen McCans Killeen spent eight weeks last year as a part of the Summer Service Learning Program of the University of Notre Dame.

Individuals, corporations, and even educational institutions like the University of Notre Dame have collectively donated over $1 billion toward the reconstruction of the Cathedral in the days following the tragic fire at Notre-Dame in Paris. The acts of benevolence have been lauded by some and harshly criticized by others.

Among the tweets and statuses criticizing the donations to the Cathedral, I’ve seen those which place the reconstruction of the Cathedral in opposition to social justice. One such tweet read: “Speaking as a Catholic here… please don’t donate to help Notre Dame.

The Church is worth $30 billion. Donate to help Puerto Rico recover. Donate to get the people of Flint clean water. Donate to get kids out of cages. Jesus didn’t care

Dorothy Day, The World Will Be Saved By Beauty, and Notre Dame Cathedral about stained glass. He cared about people.” (@Kristan_Higgins).

The words of Dorothy Day come to mind: “The world will be saved by beauty.”

During the summer of 2018 I lived and worked at Casa Juan Diego. On my first Monday, I opened the door to find a beautiful bouquet of flowers that had been donated anonymously to the house. While it was kind, I couldn’t help but find the gift totally useless. Why donate flowers when we were in constant need of adult diapers, baby formula, and medications?

Every Monday thereafter, we received a fresh bouquet.

A few weeks into my time at Casa, we were preparing for an inspection by the food bank and for immigration hearings. With all of this, along with the daily bustle of distributing food, running our medical clinic, and helping community members at the door, we were consumed by the often chaotic nature of poverty. That Monday, the flowers arrived at the door

as usual, and in the evening we gathered together as a community, appreciating the bouquet at the center of our dinner table before moving it to its spot on our simple chapel’s altar. In the midst of suffering, brokenness, and poverty, the flowers were a small reminder of a more beautiful world.

Despite ugliness, chaos, and injustice, they were a sign of the beauty we hoped for. We could always use more diapers, more formula, or more funding, but we were also in constant need of hope, kindness, and beauty.

As Louise remarked, quoting Dorothy, “Who says the poor can’t have nice things?”

I do not mean to say that beautiful churches or nice bouquets will eradicate world hunger. I am not so naive as to believe that breathtaking Gothic architecture and intricate stained glass will dismantle the unjust social systems of our world. But placing beauty in opposition to justice is a false and dangerous dichotomy. Let’s work to address the societal wrongdoings that perpetuate injustice. But do not abandon

beauty

the way.

Unfortunately, beauty in the world has become a commodity.

Precious works of art are housed in places like the Louvre, the Vatican Museums, or the Met, all of which require entrance fees and none of which clamor to welcome in outcasts of society. Even places like the U.S. National Parks and the Gardens of Versailles charge entrance fees, commodifying the natural beauty they preserve.

The artwork preserved in churches, though, has not become exclusive to the wealthy.

Churches remain houses of beauty, art, music, and prayer open to all – to outcasts, saints, sinners, rejects, steadfast believers, serial doubters, and the lonely. The Notre-Dame Cathedral has been a haven of peace and beauty, proclaiming hope for weary and forgotten souls, for more than 800 years. While the world commodifies beauty, it remains steadfast.

If all the world’s corporal suffering were eradicated tomorrow, we would still need hope, joy, and peace. We would still

need beauty. It is as necessary to the soul as food is to the body; the poor person deserves beauty just as deeply as she deserves food, shelter, and education.

To deprive her of beauty is to disregard her humanity in favor of her corporality.

Beauty inspires hope, calls forth contemplation, and awakens childlike wonder even in the midst of suffering. Anyone who has set her eyes upon the rose windows of Notre-Dame, contemplated Van Gogh’s Starry Night, watched a beautiful sunrise over the sea, or listened to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony knows the indescribable song of the soul which beauty can evoke.

I will join you in working to dismantle the unjust systems which pervade our society. I will advocate with you for the people of Flint. I will journey with you to alleviate the sufferings of children at the border. I will support any effort to rebuild Puerto Rico amidst devastation. But Jesus cared about people, and people need beauty. Let’s save it, too.

If you receive a favor or miracle from God through Dorothy Day’s intercession, please write to the Guild or e-mail Msgr.

Gregory Mustaciuolo at Gregory.Mustaciuolo@archny.org.

Prayer cards may be ordered by writing the Dorothy Day Guild at 1011 First Avenue, Seventh Floor, New York, NY 10022 or by emailing dorothydayguild@archny. org.

Much work has already been completed in preparation for presenting Dorothy Day’s cause for canonization in Rome and much is also in process.

The Dorothy Day Archives at Marquette University is now 70% complete with the task of digitally scanning 36 boxes of Dorothy Day’s unpublished writings. The theological censors have read through once/reviewed

all of her published writings, and 62% of these 1,250 publications have been read by two censors. Our Historical Commission has begun a biographical sketch, and 25% of the diaries have been transcribed. Over forty volunteer transcribers are working to transcribe all of the pages of Dorothy Day’s diaries.

along

Servant of God Dorothy Day Benedictine Oblate Layperson and Cofounder of the Catholic Worker Movement

Houston Catholic Worker

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Stories in Arresting Photographs

Putting a Human Face on the Complex Challenge of Immigration

Reviewed by Susan Gallagher How can we understand the situation on the southern border of United States in the midst of the current, highly polarized discussion? Are we being invaded by a dangerous mob which threatens American citizens, or are we being asked to assist refugees fleeing from violence and poverty?

Are the undocumented families arriving at the border criminals, or are they merely seeking to make a claim for asylum according to the provisions of international treaties to which the US was a willing signatory? These are the issues that come to the mind of a reader of John Moore’s arresting, bilingual (Spanish and English) book Undocumented: Immigration and the Militarization of the United States-Mexico Border.

In this stunning collection of photos, taken over a decade, John Moore provides images reflecting on many aspects of the immigration question.

Moore has

America and Mexico and has documented the dangers that prompt people to come to the United States, as well as the various perils of the long journey north. He has photographed the apprehension of undocumented migrants at the border, ICE raids in the interior, as well as the subsequent detentions and deportations.

His book documents the militarization of la frontera and also the lives of migrants who remain in the United States.

Photographs constitute the majority of the book. Out of the 191 pages of the volume, less than 20 pages are text.

Rather than telling us about immigration, Moore is showing us the issues. His material covers the gamut from dramatic (as when he takes aerial photos of the vast desert landscape) to intimate (as when he shows us mothers in detention holding their babies and toddlers close).

His images are beautiful (mist rising up from the Rio Grande River in the Santa Elena Canyon in Big Bend National Park); bizarre (a luxury golf course adjacent to the militarized border); surreal (the border wall between Tijuana and San Diego, California stretching out into the Pacific Ocean) and chilling (a little boy

Shared Reflections

Continued from page 2

travelled throughout Central family because your economic or social circumstances forced you to do so.

On a related note, I remember one weekday when I was driving and completing a few errands with a guest.

We visited various places and traversed through much of Houston during that afternoon. At one point during the ride, the guest reminded me that she never had any desire to leave her home country of Honduras in order to migrate to the United States.

She expressed frustration toward the oftcited “sueño americano” and the perception that life is unimaginably grander in America. She acknowledges that she and her children are

whose shoes and belt have physically safer here than they were there, where they were in immediate danger of being murdered. However, the agony of leaving her remaining family, her friends, her pets, and her culture behind is sometimes too overwhelming to bear.

Amanda Pascali, an immigrant American folk artist based in Houston who hosted a poignant, palpably heartfelt benefit concert for Casa Juan Diego in March, shares a telling lyric in her captivating song “Over the Sea”: Over the sky, the land of the free lies just over the sky; Over the sky, over the sky, we do what we must do so we can survive ... Over the sky, over the sky, I loved you long after I left you behind.

been removed standing alone in a chain link enclosure in a detention center in a warehouse).

Whole stories are contained in some images, which are paired with brief captions.

Often at Casa Juan Diego we have heard of the infamous freight train “la Bestia” (the Beast). Now we can see it.

Moore rode it himself to photograph the scores of migrants who hitch a ride

Daniel Erlander

Undocumented: Immigration and the Militarization of the United States-Mexico Border Photographs and text by John Moore. Powerhouse Books, Brooklyn NY, 2018.

north on its roof. Access to the train is controlled by gangs and traffickers and the trip is full of dangers. Riding on top for days, migrants face heat and thirst; robbery and assault; and the danger of falling asleep, slipping from the top and sustaining loss of limbs or mortal injury.

Certain photos raise more questions than they answer.

On portrait is captioned only “Elvira, 22, Guatemalan” and it depicts a young woman with one leg supporting herself on crutches. Did she lose her leg on la Bestia?

The reader cannot know.

Another heartbreaking series of pictures depicts the personal effects found with migrants who died on the journey, which are kept by coroners in an effort to identify the bodies.

One image shows a baggie containing two wrinkled dollar bills, several small family photos and a holy card with the likeness of St. Torbio Romo, a Mexican martyr who is honored as the patron saint of migrants.

Another image shows a baggie holding a crucifix on a chain and a few coins. Who were the owners of these few possessions? Will their families ever know what became of them? There are no answers.

Numerous photographs document the increasing militarization of the border.

Recruits at the US Border Patrol Academy are shown undergoing military style training.

Military veterans receive expedited entry, and border enforcement uses helicopters, drones, surveillance cameras and assorted repurposed military equipment from Afghanistan and Iraq. One image depicts a CPB agent in a helicopter with a machine gun trained on the Rio Grand River below. A dozen portraits of Border Patrol Agents reveal individuals from a variety of backgrounds and ethnicities, including an Iraqi and a Vietnamese immigrant.

A number of detention facilities are depicted.

In some, detainees are housed in tents. In others they are kept in chain link enclosures and in still others they are held in solitary confinement. Moore writes, “The biggest winners in the new detention-focused equation are for-profit prison companies, in particular CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America) and the GEO Group, both of which supported the Trump campaign. More than half the immigrants arrested inside US borders are sent to a for-profit prison” (152).

Numerous collections of portraits punctuate the book – portraits of migrants, of gang members, of border agents and finally of new citizens who had just become Americans. Moore writes, “I took the portraits … to make the coverage more personal.

My aim was literal: to put a human face on a complex story…

I hope these photographs have dealt all the players the measure of respect they deserve” (178).

This humane and sensitive collection of photographs makes a valuable contribution to the discourse concerning immigration.

Surely, the reader who has looked at the faces in these portraits and perceived the individuality of the people depicted there will seek a more sensitive and nuanced response to migration at the southern border.

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Houston Catholic Worker

Ben Salmon, Catholic Conscientious Objector

Continued from page 1

“absolutists,” Anabaptist and Leftist pacifists for the most part. His stay there lasted some twenty months. In June 1920, he was transferred to Fort Douglas, Utah, where he began a hunger strike in protest of his mistreatment.

He nearly died, was force fed, and then was put on a train in early August to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital for the Insane in Washington, D.C. There he remained in custody until he was discharged dishonorably and released on November 26, 1920, more than two years after the war itself had ended.

Perhaps the most trying part of this ordeal was that Salmon had a wife and child back in Denver, where he planned to return. But the locals still held him in such contempt that he was warned not to return and settled instead in Chicago, where his wife and son later joined him.

They had three more children, but health problems arose related to his years of imprisonment. He died on February 15, 1932.

What is significant about the Ben Salmon story is that it so clearly and compellingly challenges the usual story that American Catholics tell themselves, a story of God and country, church and nation, joining together in a kind of politicalreligious marriage, working hand-in-hand to bring about justice, freedom, and democracy to all other nations of the world. This Americanist story, as we can call it, was the story American Catholics told themselves during World War I. It saturated the consciousness of America Catholics during the Great War, thanks to Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore and the clergy and laity who, at his behest, founded the National Catholic War Council in 1917. The purpose of the War Council was to mobilze Catholics in support of the war effort. By all accounts it worked well on the national level, on the diocesan level, and on the parish level—including Holy Family parish in Denver,

Ben Salmon’s parish. After circulating a pamphlet opposing the war in the fall of 1917, he was expelled from his parish’s chapter of the Knights of Columbus. It was the first of many rebuffs from his felllow Catholics.

The most egregious mistreatment came when he was near death during his hunger strike. The priest summoned to attend him refused to administer the sacraments on the specious grounds that he was committing suicide and thus violating church teaching.

And then there was the general neglect of his case by church officials. Msgr. John A Ryan lobbied for his release, but only after the ACLU had taken up his legal defense and his case had gained national atenttion in the press. None of this is urprising, given the nationalistic fervor of American Catholics during the Great War. Within that nationalistic context, that Americanist narrative, Ben Salmon was a sign of contradiction, enacting a counter-narrative within which one strives to follow the teaching and example of Christ no matter what the cost. The challenge is to adhere to divine law over the false claims of a militaristic state that goes to war for the sake of profit.

If you think this is stating Samon’s position in overly intellectual terms, think again. In the final months of his incarceration at St. Elizabeth’s in Washington, D.C., Salmon typed out a 130,00-word, 229-page statement setting forth the reasons for his conscientious objection to war. Its leading emphases anticipate the central themes that emerge within Catholic pacifism over the course of the twentieth century: the profit motive operative in nations going to war, the specious character of the notion of “just war,” the narrow allegiances fosterd by nation-states, the teaching of the apostle Paul that we cannot do evil that good may come about (Romans 3:8), the teaching of Jesus on

Ben Salmon peace and forgiveness (Matthew 5-7), the grounding of a conscienitious objection to war in abiding trust in Divine Providence.

The document is a testimony to someone who had deep convictions and the wherewithal to set forth his reasons clearly and compellingly in humanitarian, moral, and religious terms. After being held by military authorities for three years, Salmon finally had the opportunity to articulate the faith and reasoning that undergirded his refusal of conscription, citing an impressive array of arguments and authorities, ranging from the Catholic Encyclopedia to the The Nation, but most of all, from sacred scripture, especially

Catholic Worker in 1937, as a way to bolster the Catholic Worker’s pacifist stand, and then again in 1942 as the nation was going to war. She found in Salmon one of those exceptional figures, like herself, for whom traditional Catholicism and political radicalism posed no inherent contradiction but fit remarkably well together.

Day’s portrayal of Salmon caught the attention of Gordon Zahn, a conscientious objector during World War II who thought he was alone in his CO stand until encountering the Catholic Worker movement. After the war, Zahn went on to study sociology and eventually wrote German Catholics and Hitler’s Wars (1962) and then In Solitary Witness

Dorothy Day found in Salmon one of those exceptional figures, like herself, for whom traditional Catholicism and political radicalism posed no inherent contradiction but fit remarkably well together. the New Testament, which brings us the teaching and example of Christ.

The Ben Salmon story might have faded from memory were it not for Dorothy Day telling it in The

(Templegate, 1964), the story of Franz Jagerstatter, the Austrian farmer who refused to serve in the Army and was executed in Berlin on August 9, 1943. Toward the end of his long career as a scholar

and peace activist, Zahn told a graduate student about the Ben Salmon story he had discovered a half century before and urged him to look into it. The fruit of Zahn’s suggestion was Torrin Finney’s Unsung Hero of the Great War (Paulist, 1989).

The book sparked interest in Salmon’s story on the part of Catholic pacifists and scholars. Daniel Berrigan, the Jesuit priest, poet, and peace activist, composed a meditation about Salmon’s witness. Robert Ellsberg included an entry on Salmon in his book All Saints, William McNichols, the Catholic priest and artist, painted (or “wrote”) an icon of Salmon, based on a photo taken at Fort Leavenworth.

The Catholic Peace Fellowship published a feature article on Salmon in its Spring 2007 issue of The Sign of Peace. Now, more than a century after the Great War, Catholic peace activists in Denver and around the country are urging the Denver Archdiocese to initiate his cause for canonization. At the very least, these activists maintain, the Catholic Church should name Ben Salmon alongside Dorothy Day as a “Servant of God.” But even if such efforts don’t catch the attention of our ecclesiastical authorities, it would be incumbent on us to broadcast the Ben Salmon story far and wide, for it urges us, in our time and place, amid our own wars and rumors of wars, to join the ranks of the Army of Peace.

To endorse the petition to initiate the Cause for Beatification of Ben Salmon, go to http://www.bensalmon.org/ sainthood.html, scroll down to the yellow background area and there click “Sainthood.”

For people who don’t use the Internet, you may leave your name, city of residence and parish affiliation as voice mail at: Phone: 724-523-0291.

whose vulnerability made me shudder.

There were never ending intakes and phone calling to connect people with loved ones, all the individual needs as well. It’s truly an incredible situation.

Aside from the limited photos in the news, the daily arrival of these thousands of migrant people to our country happens largely unseen by the residents of border communities because of places like Annunciation House. The ministry and dozens of churches in the area, and really along the whole Southern border, ensure no one is left to roam the streets.

These groups receive and help migrants apprehended and released by ICE because there is no place to hold families with children. They connect migrants with their

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says that we must love our neighbors as ourselves.

Rejecting homeless people, refugees, mothers and children because they don’t have I.D. is like rejecting Jesus. True, we may be too fundamentalist or literal in our interpretation of Matthew 25, but then we are stuck with being Catholic Workers.

Anyway, we haven’t met an illegal alien in our six years as Casa Juan Diego. We have met a lot of people, though.

Bad Samaritan If you help the poor, the world calls you a Good Samaritan. If you help the poor without pay and promote pacifism, your motives are suddenly suspect.

If you ask the world why the poor are poor, you are a bad Samaritan- a communist.

Many of the bullets we send to Latin American countries to fend off the falling dominoes and to fight communists have ended up in the bodies of good people, labor leaders members of the base communities who have asked the question and who were never communists.

Commies, No We are not communists, nor are we capitalists, as Pope John Paul

families and sponsors, who then arrange travel to cities and towns all over the land.

Most are gone from El Paso within 48 hours.

Astonishingly, in the streets and neighborhoods of this quiet city, there is scant evidence that since October of last year some 74,000 family units have been apprehended in the area, the greatest increase of any section of the southern border.

Those numbers, those abstractions, became flesh, blood and water to me the day I arrived at Annunciation House. ICE dropped off two buses of newly arrived migrants before my volunteer orientation had even finished, sweeping me off my feet in a torrent of urgency. The week I was there we would receive nearly 1000 people. The week

after I left, I read in the news that Annunciation House received 1000 in a single day.

That same morning of my first volunteer day, I offered to take the overnight shift, which meant sleeping in the enormous dormitory and being on call in the rare case of emergency. I would work 12 chaotic hours that day, assisting scores and scores of exhausted migrants and children.

People needed medicine, food, phone calls, clothing.

Shuttles departed for airports and bus stations and ICE buses arrived sparking a flash flood of new faces, dialects, needs, names. The activity swirled and washed over me and through the warehouse like the Rio Grande, stripping everyone down.

By lights out at 10 p.m., there were several hundred staying the night.

The cavernous dorm was still alive with movement and murmuring when I laid down in my cot, depleted. Babies and children cried, but in my exhaustion, I fell fast asleep.

Around 3 a.m., I awoke amid profound silence. I looked out over the dim room and the figures of God’s sleeping children. They were at peace.

They were safe. We were all equal in our dignity, our fragility and need.

It occurred to me, though, that amid my slumbering companions, I was the only one who had been born in this land of plenty and order, but that my American citizenship was only an accident of my birth and I had done nothing to merit its privileges. As such, I felt no

Mark Zwick and the Catholic Worker

II keeps saying, we are Personalists. Personalism is the philosophy of the Catholic Worker movement, persons taking responsibility for persons. We are not an agency, an institution, a church. We are people. We trying to be persons, helping other people and helping in such a way that preserves the dignity of the individual. We don’t always succeed, but we try.

Revolutionaries, Si The only revolution we are interested in is the one that will change our hearts and change our society so that we all have enough dignity. We believe that both revolutions are needed- you choose the system- but please let us not choose old worn out ones that have failed and are only defended by those who have benefitted and who have their foot on the neck of the poor. We believe that the only good revolution is a non-violent one.

Pie in the Sky Marxists say that Christians don’t believe in changing society, that they don’t believe in justice for the poor, that Christians believe we should suffer here, carry our cross here and we will receive our reward in heaven:

“Pie in the sky when you die,” is their taunt. The Marxists are correct, but only half correct. Christianity also demands a piece of the justice pie right now for the oppressed and starving. We are not saying that the poor should take your piece of pie, nor ours. But do we really need two pieces of pie or three, etc. All in the name of Jesus, or in the name of “By God, I earned it.” Those who die with many pieces of pie may have already received their reward and will have none left at the final reckoning as the rich man, discovered as he crossed over. A full barn looks good to the world, but not to the Lord. “What you do for the least of the brethren you do for me” Matthew 25.

Garbage, Garbage Everywhere Casa Juan Diego distributes tons of used clothing, used food and used furniture.

Some of our donations have been used a long, long time before they come to us and the possibility of being used again is very, very marginal.

We don’t mind taking the risk on receiving used things, but it does mean that 365 days a year there will be some unusable stuff (aka

garbage) around. We tolerate this is in the name of Jesus.

We know that cleanliness is next to godliness, but our value system says that having a disordered place because you want to clothe the naked is also godliness. We pray that the God of cleanliness and the God of the Poor can be reconciled for the

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Immersed In Border Reality

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pride in being American, sensing keenly the one eye with which God sees and loves us all.

These migrant people have the same rights to life and the goods of the earth as we do, as the Church says, and God wants the same for me and for all of them. I understood that clearly and that I and my countrymen who confess Christ as Lord bear the responsibility at this time to speak for them, to care for them and help them. For me, now, there is nothing abstract about that.

In Mass yesterday I was trying to recall individuals that I assisted, to see their faces again.

I could only remember a few, there were just too many, but God knows each completely, each sleeping, each wakening and the secrets in each heart, so

benefit

of all of us.

Bottom Line Despite all these words of defense, we are really guilty of sin. lt is this: Many times we have forgotten that man and woman do not live by stress alone. Pray for us.

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You Are My Other Self

Salvation History and Solidarity

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victimization by organized crime; inadequate one room dirt floor houses for eight persons; displacement from land by corporations like the

of each other. Tu eres mi otro yo binds us so closely together so that, if I hurt you, I hurt myself. If I am part of your light shining, mine

L.V. Diaz

United States and in many other countries is doing the opposite of what the Lord asks so clearly in this passage. We are not helping widows and orphans. Instead, as we separate children from their parents and target husbands for deportation while receiving some pregnant mothers (thank the Lord we receive the mothers), governments are creating widows and orphans who may never see their husbands or fathers or mothers again.

According to press reports, government lawyers recently argued that it was not necessary to provide toothbrushes or soap or beds for detained unaccompanied children – that cement floors were quite good enough.

These are de facto orphans being mistreated.

There are other ways to respond the cries of the poor.

There are ways to address immigration without creating widows and orphans or oppressing the stranger in overcrowded, cruel, and dangerous conditions.

Casa Juan Diego is receiving a steady stream of immigrant and refugee families and individuals, many from Honduras, but also from the Congo.

Guatemalan families are appearing in many parts of Houston.

Forced Migration or Why Do People Come?

According to Msgr. Arturo Buñuelas of El Paso, “Human rights violations in the countries of origin are the cause of forced migration. It is essential that the human rights of immigrants are protected upon their arrival at our border, and it is also imperative that we focus on human rights violations as a cause and not just a consequence of migration.”

Msgr. Buñuelas told of his recent visit to Guatemala and what uproots the people: “We visited Guatemala last month and witnessed what is emblematic of all Central America: that is, lifethreatening poverty; extreme hunger; lack of school teachers; scarcity of health care; relentless death threats; dreadful non-stop violence;

African Palm industry; shameful government corruption; servitude with undignified low wages and long working hours; repression; and painful trauma as the result of civil war. Basic human rights are not afforded the poor, so they are forced to leave simply to survive.”

Solidarity: Tu Eres Mi Otro Yo Arturo Buñuelas relates salvation history as lived today to the plight of immigrants and refugees among us: “For us, people of faith, the plight of immigrants is the point of departure for the manifestation and unfolding salvation plans of God among us today. The struggling immigrants, seeking a new life beyond their sufferings, call us to a special encounter of solidarity that goes beyond empathy and charity.

“My indigenous ancestors, in their wisdom, teach us the meaning of this encounter of solidarity. They say: Tu eres mi otro yo – you are my other self. We are all intimately interrelated, interdependent, and essentially a sacred part

shines all the brighter.”

(From the 2019 Fr. Lydio F. Tomasi, C.S. Annual Lecture on International Migration Border Spirituality).

Why People Are Leaving Their Countries Violence, threats of violence, and relentless poverty have overwhelmed many. The stories recounted to us of the realities from the Congo are difficult to hear, and the stories of the journey almost as bad.

The numbers of Hondurans leaving their homes reflect their terrible reality.

During their Assembly in June of this year the Catholic Bishops of Honduras put out a statement on the current crisis situation. They spoke of the consequences of problems not only in health care and education (where massive protests against privatization have paralyzed the country), but “problems in the way the National Congress of Honduras legislates, problems of the decision of the Executive Branch, the crisis of State businesses, in the services of energy, water, transport, etc.”

– warning of “consequences

that can sink Honduras into a crisis that will be difficult to overcome.”

A brief look at not very distant history leads us to see the footprints of the United States in the countries of the northern triangle of Central America, source of so many desperate immigrants.

Honduras is a dramatic example.

In 2016 a well-known indigenous Honduran environmental activist, Berta Cáceres, was gunned down in her hometown. Writing in the NCR in 2016 Stephen Zunes, a professor at the University of San Francisco, declared that she was “just one of thousands of indigenous activists, peasant leaders, trade unionists, journalists, environmentalists, judges, opposition political candidates, human rights activists, and others murdered since a military coup ousted the democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya in 2009.” Zunes noted that the United States, in this case, did not cause the coup, but neither did we support the president who had made some initial steps toward raising the minimum wage, providing nutritional assistance for young children, and assisting with education and transportation for the people.

This apparently caused the wealthy and

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powerful, feeling threatened, to act to protect their interests. A general trained at the infamous School of the Americas in the United States, led the coup, removing the president physically. The United States did not support the president’s return, as most of the international community did, but instead played a leadership role in supporting the junta that carried out the coup and their very questionable elections that gave power to the junta.

Democracy lost.

As Zunes noted in his 2016 article, “In the subsequent six years, the horrific repression and skyrocketing murder rate—now the highest in the world—has resulted in tens of thousands of refugees fleeing for safety in the United States.”

The response of the U. S. government to this situation has been to demonize the “terrible,” desperate people leaving their country.

Forced to Wait Outside Our Borders For Asylum Claims Those fleeing violence in their own country are protected by international law with the right to apply for asylum, but the U. S. policy requires them to Remain in Mexico while they wait months for an appointment to Please see page 9

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Like the Sorrowful Mother

May the Holy Spirit Bring Harmony to the Torn Body of Christ

blame?

Some blame immigrants and refugees for their difficult financial situation instead of the real culprits who engineer the economy and the tax code to ensure the inequality.

Various commentators trace the growth of populism/nationalism around the world through this stark inequality.

Unfortunately politicians in various countries have encouraged people to find scapegoats for inequality in immigrants and refugees leaving the dangers and terrible inequities of the homelands to seek peace.

The papal ambassador to the U. S., Archbishop Christophe Pierre, recently commented on this tendency: “When the migrants are ‘new’ people - new for their race, their color, their religion and so forth - it creates a lot of fear. This is what happens today,” he said. “I think it’s important for the politicians, for those who govern the nations, not to take the opportunity to exacerbate the feeling of the people, and to build upon the fear for pure electoral reasons.” (CRUX, 6/11/2019.)

Hope in the Spirit of God Reflecting on the masses of low-income people in the United States or those leaving their countries in droves when life has become insupportable, one can become discouraged or

desperate.

In December of 1977, when death squads roamed the streets in El Salvador, torturing and killing anyone involved in group reflections on the Gospel and daily life, Archbishop Oscar Romero. gave a homily addressed to the mothers who had lost children who were “disappeared” during that time, never to be seen again.

Saint Oscar Romero’s words led us again to reflections on the mothers (and fathers) separated today from their children and/or their husbands or wives by cruel immigration policies: “Like Mary at the foot of the cross, every mother who sees her child maltreated is a denunciation. Mary is the sorrowful mother standing against the power of Pontius Pilate who has unjustly killed her son. She is the voice of justice, love, and peace; she is the voice of what God desires standing against what God does not want, against abuse and all that should not exist…

“And so we declare: This must not be! Return these children to the place that the rights of God and the law of the Lord demand!”

In another of Archbishop Romero’s sermons, on October 29, 1978 the first reading of the Mass was from Exodus 22 (quoted above).

His commentary: “Christ sees everything that is done to poor people.”

At Casa Juan Diego we are finding inspiration in the homilies of Oscar Romero.

We have been able to acquire a six-volume collection of his sermons. At present they are our spiritual reading and content for our “clarification of thought” discussions. Saint Romero’s profound faith and spiritual/biblical/Catholic social teaching perspective can bring hope in this difficult time.

We recommend it for spiritual reading: A Prophetic Bishop Speaks To His People: The Complete Homilies of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero (6 vols.) translated by Joseph Owens, SJ, published by Convivium, now available from The Crossroad Publishing

Company.

May the Holy Spirit Bring Peace Pope Francis teaches us all to be hospitable to immigrants and refugees, to get to know them as persons.

In his homily on Pentecost this year, Pope Francis spoke of the unity of peoples that can be brought by the Holy Spirit. We pray that that same Holy Spirit can help us to understand the suffering peoples on the move and understand our faith from a perspective of unity with them: “In today’s world, lack of harmony has led to stark divisions. There are those who have too much and those who have nothing, those who want to live to a hundred and those who cannot even be born… We need the Spirit of unity to regenerate us as Church, as God’s People and as a human family. May he regenerate us! …

“The Holy Spirit brings together those who were distant, unites those far off, brings home those who were scattered.

He blends different tonalities in a single harmony, because before all else he sees goodness. He looks at individuals before looking at their mistakes, at persons before their actions.

Nowadays it is fashionable

Daniel Erlander

present their asylum claim in the United States.

Church, government, and humanitarian groups have housed and provided food for as many as they can on the Mexican side.

Among families waiting there are refugees from violence in Africa, from conditions of hunger and coercion in Cuba, and the large numbers of Central Americans seeking a way to survive. The children have sometimes been traveling for a year or more through various countries.

They are traumatized, have serious health problems, and may not have been to school for a year or two.

We address some of the health problems when refugees arrive at Casa Juan Diego before they become so serious that the children may not live. We provide food each week for families in Houston who do not live at Casa Juan Diego.

Tragic History of Separation of Families Separation of families is not new in the history of immigration to the United States.

We were quite surprised to hear some years ago from an Italian priest of the Scalabrini order who celebrated Mass for us that when Italian immigrants came to the U.S. many years ago, the men were separated from their families and sent to Brazil. According to our visiting priest, it was those Italian men in Brazil who wrote to Bishop Scalabrini in Italy and asked him to send priests to them there, and the Scalabrini order was founded.

We can do better now in our age and not continue to repeat the mistakes and sins of the past.

Income Inequality and Scapegoating Immigrants The average person hardly needs academics to remind him or her of the fact that “The richest 0.1% take in 188 times as much as the bottom 90% (Emmanuel Saez, UC Berkeley, Inequality.org). It is painfully obvious.

Those who do not belong to the 0.1% are often frustrated. Headlines blare that the economy is doing very well, that there is very

low unemployment. If one only goes by measures like the GDP, it sounds as if that is all true. The economy has been doing well for the 0.1%, for CEO’s. But jobs do not pay enough for the workers and their families in this economy. The families are often on the edge of disaster, financially. Who should they

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to hurl adjectives and, sadly, even insults. It could be said that we are living in a culture of adjectives that forgets about the nouns that name the reality of things. But also a culture of the insult as the first reaction to any opinion that I do not share. Repaying evil for evil, passing from victims to aggressors, is no way to go through life.

“Those who live by the Spirit, however, bring peace where there is discord, concord where there is conflict. Those who are spiritual repay evil with good. They respond to arrogance with meekness, to malice with goodness, to shouting with silence, to gossip with prayer, to defeatism with encouragement.

“Brothers and sisters, let us daily implore the gift of the Spirit.

“Holy Spirit, harmony of God, you who turn fear into trust and self-centredness into self-gift, come to us. Grant us the joy of the resurrection and perennially young hearts.

Holy Spirit, our harmony, you who make of us one body, pour forth your peace upon the Church and our world. Holy Spirit, make us builders of concord, sowers of goodness, apostles of hope.”