“Stop and think...”

Our father’s voice echoes through the decades. 

They may have been preceded by “Did you bother to…”

And followed by “before you open your mouth” or “before you do something foolish.” (He’d probably say “stupid.”)

The quote struck like a thunderclap…

And we’ll return to it quickly.

Looking for an explanation for why we write AuthenticHealers, we thought of Rabbi Asher Finkel…

I don’t remember my father ever speaking with me about my eleven days as a political prisoner in Chile’s infamous Estadio Nacional or that I had been told that “in fifteen minutes” I would be put “in front of a firing squad.”

“A church that doesn’t provoke any crises, 
preach a gospel that doesn’t unsettle, 
proclaim a word of God 
that doesn’t get under anyone’s skin,
a word of God that does not touch the real sin 
of the society in which it is proclaimed – 
what gospel is that?
Very nice, pious considerations that don't bother anyone,
that's the way many would like preaching to be.
Those preachers who avoid every thorny matter
so as not to be harassed,
so as not to have conflicts and difficulties,
do not light up the world they live in.”
Bishop Oscar Romero, Saint and Martyr
The Violence of Love

In governance and international diplomacy, life is never as simple as badly punctuated (and improperly capitalized) blathering posts would have some people believe. 

History and context are as important as knowing what the hell you’re talking about.

Here’s context.

The final scene is so brutal, so disturbing, so beyond words that it grabs you by the throat and puts such weight on your chest that, for fifteen minutes, it is almost impossible to breathe.

There’s a problem – actually, many – in teetering on the edge of eighty and half-a-century as a priest: We tend to think of the now-grown folks we’ve worked with in counseling or as altar servers as “kids.” 

Goshen, Indiana native and Maryknoll Missioner, Father Bob McCahill 
has lived and served in Bangladesh since 1984. 
Every three years, he moves to a new village 
and resumes his mission of helping obtain medical help 
for the poorest of God’s poor – especially children, 
often carrying them on his bicycle to hospitals or doctors 
whom he miraculously conscripts into this service.
The following is an edited version
of his 2024 Christmas letter to family and friends.

For more than thirty years and as a Christmas gift to his family and friends, Father Skip wrote original short stories as his Christmas homilies. We hope you will accept this whimsical gift from 2008 in the spirit in which it is offered.

For more than thirty years and as a gift to family and friends, Father Flynn wrote short stories for his Christmas Eve homilies. This Sunday, December 15, is celebrated as Gaudete – “Rejoice” – Sunday in the Anglican/Episcopalian and Roman Catholic, Lutheran and some other Protestant Churches. 

Please accept this story from 2018 as a Gaudete Sunday or early Christmas gift.  

Please keep it a secret.

Just between you and us.

If Florida’s governor and the charming Mom’s Against the Freedom to Learn and Think (including the Sarasota politica and her politico husband who were accused of three-soming; he – the one-time Florida Republican chair - was also accused of sexual assault/rape) hear about it, they might develop carpal tune syndrome while pearl-clutching.

Whoa!  

Is he kidding?!?!?

‘Cause news outta a Texas roadhouse “church” is…

It’s wackadoodle Taliban-esque.

Somebody’s gotta say it.

So, we will. (And we’re repeating ourselves.)

We don’t want to go back to a 1950s-style America.

Sometimes I need to explain my punctuation.

Happily (I hope), I learned better-than-average punctuation and grammar from the good Sisters at Epiphany School. Nonetheless, there are times when I depart – not without reason – from the “correct.”

For the moment, we have dropped seven words from the following quote.

“Do you know the country without freedom, 
the country of terror and tyranny?
Yes, you know it well, but are afraid to talk about it. 
They have intimidated you to such an extent 
that you don't dare talk for fear of reprisals. 
Yes you are right…
Through their unscrupulous terror tactics 
against young and old, men and women,
they have succeeded in making you 
spineless puppets to do their bidding.”
Helmuth Hubener

Almost forty years later, the feeling comes back.

Summoned by unwanted memory.

A singular moment during twelve years of being surrounded by murderers, high level drug smugglers, robbers, rapists - often genuinely frightening men. Except for that one event, I had never feared for myself. 

“If I sit next to a madman as he drives a car
into a group of innocent bystanders,
I can’t, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe,
then comfort the wounded and bury the dead.
I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the 
hands of the driver.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Woe to the wicked!
Disaster upon them!...
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,
who put darkness for light and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes
and clever in their own sight…
who deny justice to the innocent….”
Isaiah 3:11; 5:20-21, 23

It’s a good bet the in-the-name-of-the-Almighty Missouri politica never read the works of Christian Johann Heinrich Heine, considered on the most significant German Romantic poets.

Dear Mr. Candidate,

Because we continue to note reports that you converted to Roman Catholicism – after, apparently being reared as an “evangelical” and spending time as an “atheist” (The Sisters in school always taught us “Cattle are ‘raised,’ children are ‘reared.’”), we thought we would take time to offer some insights.