Kyrie Eleison! Christie Eleison! Kyrie Eleison!
“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
We apologize for seeming judgmental right out of the starting box.
[First, let us make ourselves clear: There can be no justification for an unwarranted assault on police officers.]
In January 2024, four (apparently undocumented) immigrants were arrested on charges of assaulting two New York City Police officers and a lieutenant from the Midtown South Precinct. Following their arraignment and release without bail, Jhoan Boada was photographed flashing two middle fingers as he left court. To which (now former) Representative Anthony D’Esposito (R. NY) responded “We feel the same way about you. Holla at the cartels and have them escort you back.”
Not to be outdone, Congressman Mike Collins (R. GA) suggested “Or we could buy him a ticket on Pinochet Air for a free helicopter ride back.”
A bishop’s crozier or shepherd’s staff, the symbol of a bishop’s pastoral office.
That comment was so profoundly brainless and dim-witted, so brutish and inhuman that we can only suggest it might be time for Georgia State University to consider revoking his 1990 Bachelor of Business Administration degree.
Failing (pun intended) to recognize that he had already displayed a massive lack of charity and an amazing lack of understand of history, at 1:09 p.m. on January 21, Mr. Collins posted on X a segment of the closing words of Anglican/Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s sermon during the post-Inauguration prayer service in the National Cathedral with the Constitution-ignorant observation “The person giving this sermon should be added to the deportation list.”
Seems the Georgia freight company owner never attended courses in American history or constitutional law because, apparently, he had not yet learned that someone born in the United States of American citizen parents cannot be deported. (And that has nothing to do with the 14th Amendment or “birthright citizenship.”)
A harsh judgment?
Consider…
Bishop Budde, married and the mother of two sons, was born of American parents in Summit, New Jersey. She earned her Bachelor of Arts (magna cum laude) in 1982 from the University of Rochester and Master of Divinity (1989) and Doctor of Ministry (2008) degrees from the Virginia Theological Seminary. She has served as the Bishop of Washington, D.C. since 2011.
[EDITORS’ NOTE: For context, Father Flynn was arrested by the Pinochet dictatorship on September 16, 1973 and held for eleven days as a political prisoner in Chile’s infamous Estadio Nacional. He was repeatedly told he would be executed “in fifteen minutes,” heard others being tortured, and experienced and witnessed blatant violations of human rights.
On July 1, 2014, the “Associated Press in Santiago” and the British publication The Guardian (“Chilean court links US intelligence to 1973 killings of two Americans”) reported:
“A Chilean court has said US military intelligence services played a key role in the killings of two Americans in Chile in 1973 in a case that inspired the Oscar-winning film Missing.
“A court ruling released late on Monday said a former US navy captain, Ray Davis, gave information to Chilean officials about journalist Charles Horman and student Frank Teruggi that led to their arrest and execution days after the coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power.
"’The military intelligence services of the United States had a fundamental role in the creation of the murders of the two American citizens in 1973, providing Chilean military officers with the information that led to their deaths,’ the ruling said.”
The 2004 state funeral of the 40th President, Ronald Reagan
The 1960s – 1980s military dictatorship of Argentina initiated the practice of “disappearing subversives.” After Patricio Aylwin, Chile’s first democratically elected president following Pinochet’s 1973 coup, assumed office in 1990, he initiated the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, an eight-member committee that ultimately produced The Rettig Report, which focused exclusively on politically motivated murders and disappearances during the Pinochet dictatorship.
The report found that there were 2,115 victims of human rights violations and 164 victims of political violence under the dictatorship; 1068 were confirmed to have been killed, 957 “disappeared” after their arrests, and 90 were killed by politically motivated private citizens.
The 2004 Valech Report – the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture Report - estimated 30,000 cases of human rights abuses (including the case of Father Flynn) with 40,000 tortured and 2,279 executed.
On January 16, 2023, writing in The Guardian (“Adopted by their parents’ enemies: tracing the stolen children of Argentina’s ‘dirty war’”) Lorenzo Tondo, Elena Basso and Sam Jones reported:
“After the 1976 coup, Argentina’s military set about crushing any potential opposition and eventually 30,000 people were killed or disappeared, almost all of them civilians. Pregnant prisoners were kept alive until they gave birth and then murdered. At least 500 newborns were taken from their parents while in captivity and given to military couples to raise as their own…
“…[In] one of the most notorious torture and extermination camps of the dictatorship, where more than 5,000 prisoners were held – including Cecilia (Vinas, who was seven months pregnant at the time and, during her detention, managed to call her family five times pleading ‘Find my son’; neither she nor her remains were ever found). Detainees were hooded and tortured daily. They were subjected to electric shocks, waterboarding, even amputations. More than 30% of prisoners during Videla’s dictatorship were women. Female prisoners, including pregnant women, were sexually abused and gang raped.”
The west rose window was dedicated in 1977 in the presence of both the 39th President, Jimmy Carter, and Queen Elizabeth II (as Supreme Governor of the Church of England).
On Tuesday, January 21, 2025, the Abuelas de Paza de Mayo – Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo - reported that they had located 132 of the 500 Argentinian children – their grandsons and granddaughters - whose mothers/parents were tossed into the ocean from Argentinian military planes and helicopters or unmarked graves, and these now-adults have had some form of reunion with their parental families.
USA Today reporter Amanda Lee Myers (“’We found your birth mother’: How Chile’s children were stolen and adopted worldwide”) reported:
“Between the 1960s and 1990s in Chile, human rights groups believe that upwards of 20,000 babies were taken from mostly low-income mothers and adopted out to unsuspecting parents in foreign countries.
“The practice amounted to an elaborate human-trafficking operation that involved a network of midwives, doctors, social workers, nuns, priests and judges, many of whom got rich off the scheme while fulfilling a key goal of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s regime to make Chile an economic success.”]
Apparently, a sitting member of the United States House of Representatives finds the extrajudicial murders of U.S. citizens, gang rapes, the stealing of children, and dropping into the Pacific Ocean tied-up men and women from helicopters and planes something to joke about.
Dear God, have mercy on him and all of us!
Bishop Budde’s sermon was seconds short of fifteen minutes. By her own report days later, she had been thinking about, planning, writing and rewriting her words since October. She spoke eloquently of the need for national unity and described the essential elements of that unity.
At the twelve minutes and twenty-three seconds mark, she looked up from her printed text and said, “Let me make one final plea,” addressing herself to “Mr. President.”
Looking east, looking up to the choir of the cathedral
In the following two minutes and thirty seconds, the Bishop used the words “mercy” twice and “merciful” once:
“In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now…
“I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away…
“Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land….”
It seems strange, possibly unorthodox or heretical, that the Georgia representative whose congressional biography describes him as “Methodist” should take such umbrage as to feel it necessary to call for the deportation of an American-born bishop who spoke of mercy. His own Church’s official hymnary has three titles that refer specifically to this virtue: “I Will Sing of the Mercies of the Lord,” “There’s Wideness in God’s Mercy” and “God of Mercy, God of Grace.” There’s also “Oh Lord, Have Mercy,” “Have Mercy in Your Goodness,” and “Psalm 51: Be Merciful, O Lord.”
A thirty second search of YouTube uncovers a seemingly endless collection of Methodist choirs and congregations singing “Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison” – “Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy” - one of the oldest liturgical prayers of Christianity
A plea for mercy is one of the most oft-repeated supplications of all Judeo-Christian scriptures:
“Have mercy on me, O God…” Psalm 51
“All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth…” Psalm 25
“No one who conceals transgressions will prosper, but one who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy…” Proverbs 28
“Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show mercy to you…” Isaiah 30
“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end…” Lamentations 3
“But God, who is rich in mercy…” Ephesians 2
“He saved us not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy…” Titus 3
“But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy…” James 3
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By His great mercy He has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…” 1 Peter 1
Most importantly:
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy…” Matthew 5
And…
“Jesus told them a parable…
He said, ‘In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor had any respect for people. In that same town there was a widow who kept coming to him and pleading, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’
“For a long time he refused her request, but finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I neither fear God nor have any respect for people, yet because this widow keeps pestering me, I will see to it that she gets justice. Otherwise, she will keep coming and wear me out.’
“Then the Lord said, ‘You have heard what the unjust judge says. Will not God, therefore, grant justice to his elect who cry out to him day and night? Will he delay in answering their pleas? I tell you, he will grant them justice quickly. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?
”
“He also told the following parable to some people who prided themselves about their own righteousness and regarded others with contempt: ‘Two men went up to the temple to pray. One was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and said this prayer to himself: ‘I thank you, God, that I am not like other people - greedy, dishonest, adulterous—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and pay tithes on all my income.’
“The tax collector, however, stood some distance away and would not even raise his eyes to heaven. Rather, he kept beating his breast as he said, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner.’ This man, I tell you, returned to his home justified, whereas the other did not. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.’”
Luke 18
Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.
Immediately before her sermon, Bishop Budde echoed again a prayer from the Anglican/Episcopalian Book of Common Prayer:
“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, for you are our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen”
The God of Mercies heard her prayer and Bishop Budde proclaimed His Word.
Thanks be to God.