We’re old enough to remember “the Queen of Mean.” The flamboyant and tyrannical New York (and other places) hotelier Leona Roberts Helmsley (1920-2007) with a net worth of over $1 billion, infamous for not or under-paying contractors, who was indicted by Rudy Giuliani in 1988 on charges of tax-fraud and extortion.

“The denunciation of injustice implies the rejection
of the use of Christianity to legitimize the established order.”
Gustavo Gutiérrez, O.P.
Catholic priest and theologian

Jonathan Myrick Daniels graduated from the tradition-laden (and then tradition-of-segregation-laden) Virginia Military Institute in 1961.

Hatred of Notre Dame football and “The Fighting Irish” is a long-lasting family tradition.

Part of our DNA.

Celebrated. Embraced. Preached.

Respecting parliamentary procedure and the “Rules of Decorum & Debate in the House [of Representatives],” we will observe, “The gentlelady from Georgia’s 14th congressional district is as looney tunes as a dodo bird that thinks it can fly and her recent performance deserves a reward for outstanding political thespianism.

Almost two-hundred-and-twenty-six years after her death, Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst’s foresight stands in condemnation of America’s January 6 insurrectionists.

And she was certainly transactionally promiscuous.

(Divina Inspiratione New Service. Chokoloskee, Florida. 8/19/2022)

Earlier this week, in an astonishing – and ofttimes rambling - press conference, one of the earliest leaders of worldwide Christianity addressed a wide range of issues.

"Guilt which remains guilt is dangerous.
It will become too heavy a burden sooner or later,
and may in the end result in blaming the victim…
We must help our students transform their sense of guilt
into a sense of responsibility, for the present and the future."
Holocaust historian Eva Fleischner

The guns fell silent on the Western Front at 11 a.m., November 11, 1918, hours after German representatives signed a peace treaty.

Days later Australian violinist Daisy Kennedy was celebrating in Mayfair, an affluent area in London’s West End, and became absorbed in a conversation with the handsome young officer sitting next to her - a veteran of fighting on the Western Front, and, during the conversation, Daisy mentioned New Zealander Harold Gillies, a fellow Antipodean – person from Australia or New Zealand, whose work was renowned the world over.

Alabama.

Hmmmmm!?!?

Alabama.

Despite the fact that in May U.S. News and World Report ranked Huntsville as the “Best Place to Live,” there’s so much more to say about Alabama.

Rooms in the Gray Bar Hotel are about the size of an elevator and very unpretentious – a steel bunk bolted to the wall, stainless steel combination toilet-and-sink, (maybe a footlocker for the really fortunate) and no view.

Asked to hear second graders confessions, then newly ordained Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois of Lutcher, Louisiana - You know Luthcher: “between Gramercy and Paulina.” – still has one of the best “Confession stories” of all time.

In the Twenty-first Century United States, what happened at Las Llamas under the Chimu empire is incomprehensible.

Except it’s not!

The dream catcher travels no longer.

It has travelled too far.

Too often.

It has captured too much pain.

As “a gift from our hearts,” Debra Gutowski, a member of the Little River Band of Ottawa Native Americans in Muskegon, Michigan, created the dream catcher.

“We couldn’t hold him or hug him or nothing.
They said it was too ugly.
His body was supposedly torn to pieces.
The only way they identified him was because of his clothes
and a scar on his left foot.”
Christopher Salazar, uncle of fourth grader Jose Salazar,
killed at Robb Elementary School, Uvalde, Texas

In an interview with CNN, Jose Sr.
said that a Texas Ranger told him,
“As a father, I wouldn’t let you go back there
and see him, because he was not recognizable.”

“We are all sufferers from history,
but the paranoid is a double sufferer,
since he is afflicted not only by the real world,
with the rest of us,
but by his fantasies as well.”
Richard Hofstadter

Because she had sworn unending loyalty to a despot,
“Tizia” loaded a syringe with carbolic acid and injected it
into the arm of a man who had only been kind to her.

Perhaps because they feared the leader’s wrath,
maybe out of loyalty to the ruler.
In truth, we will never fully understand why –
except for his constant insistence on the equality of all people –
soldiers took the young husband from his cell,
forced him into the jungle and shot him.
First three times. Then twice.
Finally, three more times.

At the recent – and completely over-the-top - Washington Gala for the Benefit of Magniloquence and Theological Self-Aggrandizement, the orotund and supremely well-coiffed and haute-coutured audience held its collective breath, anticipating the announcement of this year’s recipient of the coveted “He Didn’t Really Say That, Did He? Prize.”

“Now I only see one thing – people are dying…
Is it worth all these orphans, widows,
cripples and mountains of the dead…?
Every mother gives birth to a son in the hope of having grandchildren
in old age. And for her, her Vanya or Magomed –
it doesn’t matter – he’s the best.
There’s no need to interrupt this natural life with bullets or shrapnel.”
Alexander Vostrodymov, a Russian Orthodox priest from a village near Moscow

Surely it was not his intention.

Nonetheless, in the earliest days of Lent, 27-year-old Alex Karpenko dared – DARED, perhaps unwittingly - to proclaim an Easter message.