Hopes for compassion in the new year

Last June, the hopes of undocumented folks on the verge of being separated from family, friends and livelihood went way up . John Morton, President Obama's director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), sent out a memo to his officials across the country asking them to use discretion and concentrate on deporting convicted criminals. Clearly this was meant to put the brakes on deportations that separate families.

That directive is surely making a difference at some times and in some places. But it is being widely overlooked. The buses that regularly take convicted felons to the border continue to also deport great numbers of the very people the Obama administration memo was talking about. (See my December 13 blog entry.)

For now, there is a new pilot program that at least has federal immigration prosecutors going through the files in Baltimore and Denver to find low-priority cases. That program may expand to other cities in mid-January.

In the meantime, the Justice Department's immigration review office has been frozen by a hiring freeze. This means that there is presently such an extreme shortage of immigration judges that the lives almost 300,000 undocumented people are in limbo while their pending cases await a decision.

All the Tea Party-style ranting and raving is bound to increase in the political frenzy that officially begins on Tuesday in Iowa. This will be ever harder on one's ears over the next ten months. But that is nothing compared to the agony of those whose lives and families might be torn apart if they are grabbed on the street or at work by ICE.

Despite this fierce environment, let us hope that in 2012 the voices of compassion and sanity will finally prevail.

"New" translation of the Mass

Since the First Sunday of Advent, I have wanted to write about the new English translation of the Mass. Eventually I will do that, but so far I have not been able to do so with any reasonable brevity. I was ordained in 1964, just four months before we began to use English, and it was a wonderful joy to experience this very first fruit of the Second Vatican Council. Now, 47 years later, in the midst of a decades-long process of "restoration" of the "good old days," the English-speaking countries are forced to use this thoroughly clunky new translation. I for one simply cannot pray with it. More commentary later, but for now, here is a fine piece written by a Catholic in Toronto, Canada:

The new Order of Mass

Where is the Abba-God who loves us, walks with us, encourages us? How much does this new Mass reflect the Jesus of the Gospels? Is my relationship with the Divine supposed to be primarily one of a sinner and an all powerful (even if merciful) male Lord-God?  

If I counted right, using Eucharistic Prayer I, in this Mass the word "sin/sinner" is mentioned 16 times; my "fault" two times  and "grievous fault" once. I am asking to be delivered from damnation, and am not worthy "that the Lord should enter under my roof".  (During the whole liturgy, love of God is mentioned once and goodness of God twice.) In the about 60 minutes' long Mass I am being reminded twenty times of my sinfulness in one way or another; that is on the average about every three minutes (not spaced evenly).

My conclusion is that if--in our society-- anyone repeatedly kept diminishing another person, s/he could be charged with mental/emotional abuse.  I don't think I can risk to submit my grandchildren to such treatment from "my church".

MC Toronto

"DO NOT SEPARATE FAMILIES"

Yesterday, the annual feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, about 200 of us gathered for an interfaith prayer service at St. Monica's church here on Tucson's south side. Then we all walked three miles through the drizzle to the federal immigration enforcement office near the airport. The theme of our service and march was quite clear on signs and buttons: DO NOT SEPARATE FAMILIES and DEPORTATION DESTROYS OUR FAMILIES. We all stood together outside the ICE office while attorney Margo Cowan delivered paperwork requesting a stay of deportation for 50 people in accord with the new approach announced by the Obama Administration a half year ago. (The 50 include parents of U.S. citizen children, spouses of U.S. citizens and six families with multiple members facing deportation,)

In the meantime, deportation buses continue to run to the border night after night, even when it is literally freezing. While three of us were documenting bus arrivals at Nogales just before midnight last Tuesday, I took this photo one block north of the Port of Entry. Within 15 minutes, another bus arrived with yet more deportees.

My number-one forward ever

Over the many years that I have sent -- almost daily -- articles on social justice and peace to my lists, I have occasionally marked one as a must-read.

This morning I read an article by Chris Hedges that I immediately sent out. In the subject line, I said that I consider it my number one must-read. And I said that very deliberately.

The article is titled: "Where Were You When They Crucified My Movement?" It is only two pages in length, but it says very clearly and succinctly what many of us have tried to communicate perhaps much less succinctly in the past.

Here is a quote from Hedges' opening paragraph:

"The Occupy movement is the force that will revitalize traditional Christianity in the United States or signal its moral, social and political irrelevance. The mainstream church, battered by declining numbers and a failure to defiantly condemn the crimes and cruelty of the corporate state, as well as a refusal to vigorously attack the charlatans of the Christian right, whose misuse of the Gospel to champion unfettered capitalism, bigotry and imperialism is heretical, has become a marginal force in the life of most Americans, especially the young."

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