Category Archives: Writing

“Reclaiming What We Lost…”

“The Dave Cullen Show” is one of the fandom YouTube channels I watch frequently. The channel…

“is dedicated to Movie Reviews, Film critique, discussion of TV Shows, Pop Culture, and Video Games in my usual caustic and sardonic manner.”

Much of his work involves fandoms, and I largely concur with what he says about them (except for his love for the 1970s TV show, Space: 1999. But I digress.)

This embedded video is a recent one. It embodies much of the reasoning behind why I wrote The Catholicpunk Manifesto. I don’t know what, if any, religious faith Cullen has, but that’s no matter. His thesis is that recent pop culture fandoms (Star Trek, Marvel Cinematic, Star Wars, Disney, etc.) have all sold out to the extremist left-wing agenda and are pandering to satisfy the social justice warrior ‘woke’ crowd. I can only really speak for Star Trek, but I think he’s spot-on. I don’t watch the other current fandom offerings much, I stick to Star Trek and retro fandoms from decades ago. My knowledge of other current fandoms, such as the Star Wars, etc. that I cited, is informed by the opinions of a diverse group of online people whose opinions I respect, and they would agree with Cullen.

One of the intriguing things he proposes in this video is that fans should try and, well, ‘reclaim what we lost’ by creating new works of fiction. Give up patronizing the current pop cultural offerings and just build our own new culture. This is straight-up *punking and I cover a Catholic version of this in the entire Catholicpunk Manifesto.

He offers an interesting plan: start by creating fan fiction. Fan fiction is original creative works that are set in the established works of others. For example, let’s say you really, really, love Star Trek. So you write your own works set in the Star Trek universe. You can’t make any money off of this as it’s someone else’s intellectual property, so you do it for love (true amateur work.) If you have the technical chops for it, create Star Trek fan films. Again, you can’t make money, but Cullen’s point is that in doing all this you connect to a built-in fanbase that will critique your work and your craft will improve. After a fashion, you can utilize your sharpened creative talents and begin making your own original work.

Ultimately, a counterculture of alternative fandoms will arise and grow. Perhaps, if the current culture continues along its trajectory of self-destruction, this ‘alternative’ pop culture will become the dominant. 

Again, as I said in Catholicpunk Manifesto, punkers should provide a way out of the current cultural decline. Or, a way out of the apocalyptic mess the elites are sending us towards.

If you wish to explore written fan fiction, take a look at FanFictionNet and the Archive of Our Own. For filmed works, go to YouTube and just type in the search bar the name of the fandom and ‘fan films’ (i.e. ’Star Trek fan films’) or similar search terms.

PS: ‘Woke’ and ‘woke-ism’ as I understand it, is that sudden ‘awakening’ to the injustices of society and the radical need to eradicate them. Nothing wrong with that, except for the way the wokesters go about it:  unilaterally imposing a radical, extremist left-wing ideology upon society. There is no tolerance for divergent points of view. No mercy or sympathy for those who aren’t woke: they are ‘canceled’ (deprived of a livelihood, de-platformed from social media, and the whole, typical left-wing banishment to a (symbolic) gulag. I have no problem with the concept of social justice, in principle. But the ‘woke’ way is destructive and will lead to a backlash by the extremist right-wing anti-wokesters. 

Are you a creative Catholic? "The Catholicpunk Manifesto" is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone, perhaps yourself, who might like Catholic devotionals for alcoholics? Please take a look at my books! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

An Agrarian hope through Catholicpunk?

At the root of The Catholicpunk Manifesto is the notion that the contemporary world has lost its way and needs redirecting. Jesus Christ is “The Way, the Truth, and the Life,” and He established the Catholic Church to promulgate and defend His teachings, all with the idea of guiding souls to Heaven. Therefore, the Catholicpunk Movement that will hopefully arise from the book is one method by which Catholic creatives will participate in that mission.

All Catholic Christians are called to evangelize. It springs forth from our Baptism and especially from our Confirmation. We are to be ‘Christ-bearers’ to others. 

As I said in this earlier post:

It’s one thing to preach the Gospel by talking about Jesus; it has worked successfully for 2,000 years. But there are additional avenues that the Catholic evangelist can walk down in attempting to convert the world for Jesus.

One method is creating a fictional world that is in marked contrast to our own. I have a belief, unsure where I got it, it might be an actual Original Thought, or it might be derived from someone else, that technology is a sign of a Fallen world. We read in Genesis 3 that Adam and his descendants have to work by the sweat of their brow. Before this, theologians had thought that Adam and Eve were people who had their needs met by God. They didn’t have to ‘work’ for their food. They dwelt in Paradise and had it easy. But that was spoiled by their rebellion and henceforth people have to struggle to meet their needs.

Society is rushing headlong into deeper decadence and depravity; these were motivating factors in my writing the book. And I do not think that the fact that our technology is also developing at an exponential rate is just a coincidence. Technology is not evil in itself; it’s just a  tool. And since Adam after the Fall needed tools to meet his and Eve’s needs, tools have been part and parcel of our march down through the millennia. Often for good; but often for evil. But always to make life easier in response to its difficulties. And this may have moral or immoral qualities. 

Rather than continue in this post on technological development, I’ll switch to the “creating a fictional world that is in marked contrast to our own” point I mentioned earlier. 

While we will probably never return to an idyllic agrarian past, except perhaps as a highly positive or proactive response to a post-apocalyptic scenario, we could take the example of JRR Tolkien’s Shire, and create stories set in an ‘idealized’ non-technological world. While not practically advocating such a future, (except for the post-apocalyptic idea in the previous sentence) creating an idealistic, hopeful setting, and providing therapy for contemporary folk, can at the same time offer radical solutions or alternatives to contemporary problems. How? Have you ever heard the advice about “aim for the highest, so that if you miss, you’ll still land higher than if you settled on a lower target?” That isn’t the exact wording, I searched and kept coming up with Andrew Carnegie quotes and other non-relevant things like song lyrics. But you get the idea. “Don’t sell yourself short,” is another way of putting it. Now, take that concept and extend it to society and culture as a whole. Fundamental problems require radical solutions. Aspiring to create a slower, more peaceful, and humane world by intentionally limiting technology may get people to take a look around and give pause to advancing ever further towards a dehumanizing future. A more balanced society, with technology being responsibly developed with due regard for morality, ethics, and maintaining our essential humanity.

This can be attempted with agrarian fiction, be it science-fiction or fantasy. If you say that science-fiction cannot be ‘agrarian,’ then your perception is biased or you never read Clifford Simak and pastoral science-fiction. One of the definitions of science-fiction that I read when I was growing up and reading Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, and so on was something like it is ‘humanity’s response to the advances in science and technology.’ So, what if that response to science and technology was to rein it in? And so this is a perfect concept for Catholicpunkers.

This is a continuation of the previous post, “Peter Maurin and Catholicpunking” and develops it a bit.

Are you a creative Catholic? "The Catholicpunk Manifesto" is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone, perhaps yourself, who might like Catholic devotionals for alcoholics? Please take a look at my books! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Peter Maurin and Catholicpunking

In my new book, The Catholicpunk Manifesto, I refer to Peter Maurin a few times. He was the co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement with Servant of God Dorothy Day.

Of the things he contributed to the CW Movement, two stand out: his “Easy Essays,” which were short verses that explained complicated concepts. The other was his “Agronomic Universities,” where scholars and farm laborers would work together. Scholars would spend time on CW farms (the “Universities” in the idea) and teach the laborers things, while the laborers would educate the scholars on the value of good, hard work. The idea was more than just that: he envisioned the Agronomic Universities as a means of reinvigorating Catholic rural life and forming a nucleus of vibrant, stable communities. He often said something to the effect that ‘there is no unemployment on the land,’ meaning that living ‘off the land’ should be able to provide a family and the surrounding community with all the basics they need.

Three acres and a cow

This is very close to (if not an outright expression of) the “3 Acres and a Cow made popular by GK Chesterton in his writings on Distributism. The notion was that three acres plus a farm animal were sufficient to provide for a family. There would be enough land to grow their food and support the cow for the meat and milk it provided, and if I’m not mistaken, Chesterton wrote that an artisan’s shop may provide the rest. This is an overly simplistic rendering of the idea, but the point is made that a stable, rural culture can be a reaction to an ever-growing complicated, and problematic society.

You’ll notice I mentioned ‘nucleus,’ ‘stable’ and ‘sufficient.’ These are hallmarks of a culture that is well-ordered, free, and not prone to massive swings in fortune since the economy is largely (not exclusively) local.

What does this have to do with Catholicpunking? Maurin foresaw that society as it had been progressing in the late 19th-mid-20th Century was unstable and he felt that a collapse was inevitable. One of his sayings was a slogan he borrowed from the International Workers of the World labor union, “Creating a new society within the shell of the old.” This meant not waiting for the society to collapse before responding, but putting the new institutions in place, up and operational before the collapse, so that they can serve as the nucleus of the new society that emerges from the ruins of the old.

OK, I’m asking again: “What does this have to do with Catholicpunking?” Easy! Like I said about the book:

“Catholicpunk addresses how the future might look if humanity survives the contemporary social and moral collapse plaguing the Western world and the poverty and oppression prevalent in the Global South and the East. Catholicpunk illustrates how applying CST solves major contemporary challenges made by globalism, militarism, and the anti-life and sexual libertine agendas. When Catholicpunk emphasizes sustainability, it will be with an eye towards responsible management of resources so that there will be plenty for future generations, and not through restrictions on population such as aggressive birth control and abortion agendas. People from womb-to-tomb will be viewed as resources to be cherished and valued, not as parasites or polluters.”

Catholicpunk creatives can take a look at Maurin’s Easy Essays, and Chesterton’s Distributist writings, and create art that can:

…lead the world away from the cliff of self-destruction it is heading towards. It is a literary and artistic movement I am proposing that envisions a society ordered according to Catholic Social Teachings (CST), particularly incorporating the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy, the Sermon on the Mount; as well as any political and economic forms that might be imaginatively derived from CST, such as Christian Democracy, Catholic Monarchism, Subsidiarism and Solidarism, or a host of so-called ‘fringe’ ideas.” (From: The Catholicpunk Manifesto Page.)

If you read them (see the link in the 2nd paragraph) you can see that Maurin’s Easy Essays are very Catholicpunky since they creatively show a Catholic solution to problems.

“Appendix B” of The Catholicpunk Manifesto is nothing but pages and pages of “Creative Prompts.” Many are agrarian and distributist in nature. Buy the book to check them out 🙂 or study Maurin and Chesterton and get inspiration from them. The culture you save may be your own. Or, as the byline of the book reads: “Creatives of Catholicism, unite! You have everything to gain, especially souls!”

So, Peter Maurin might just like the Catholicpunk Artistic Movement. But he might propose artist’s communes? Perhaps he can eventually be a patron saint of Catholicpunk?

Are you a creative Catholic? "The Catholicpunk Manifesto" is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone, perhaps yourself, who might like Catholic devotionals for alcoholics? Please take a look at my books! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

So, what is ‘Catholicpunk’ and what’s a Catholicpunker?

And thus begins a series of posts on who is a Catholicpunker what Catholicpunk is! 

A Catholicpunker is someone who Catholicpunks. Essentially, you are a creative Catholic who believes that there is something seriously wrong with the world and you believe that the Catholic Faith has the answer. After all, Jesus is ‘The Way, the Truth, and the Life,” and He established the Catholic Church to shepherd the world on its way Home to the Lord.

And so you wish to evangelize. Then it hits you: “I can evangelize through my art!” Therefore, you begin to infuse your art with Catholic teachings. It could be easy if you’re a writer of fiction or you make movies and television shows (any type of fiction or filmed stories). Create a world that reflects the doctrines of the Church. There’s the Beatitudes, the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy. There’s an entire economic theory that’s founded on Papal writings: Distributism. There are numerous Catholic political theories: Subsidiarity, Solidarity, Christian Democracy (which incorporates Subsidiarity, Solidarity, and Distributism), and even Catholic Monarchism! Whether you create contemporary dramas or veil your Catholicpunking plans in fantasy or science-fiction, it doesn’t matter. 

But you show via the written word or visual images an alternative to the craziness abounding today. You Catholicpunk. It’s one thing to preach the Gospel by talking about Jesus; it has worked successfully for 2,000 years. But there are additional avenues that the Catholic evangelist can walk down in attempting to convert the world for Jesus. Expressing a Christian culture through art isn’t new, but I think it’s time that we ‘ramp it up’ a lot and engage people that way!

If you engage in other forms of art, I’ll address that in another post soon!

Are you a creative Catholic? "The Catholicpunk Manifesto" is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone, perhaps yourself, who might like Catholic devotionals for alcoholics? Please take a look at my books! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Catholicpunker updates

Go here for a complete list of stuff: The Catholicpunk Manifesto Page.

BUT, there’s a Twitter (or ‘X’) feed now: Catholicpunker on ‘X’.

Also a Facebook Page! The Catholicpunk Manifesto on Facebook

I’ll be adding Reddit, Mastodon (maybe) and Tumblr (even though I just deleted my Tumblr account, I’ll resurrect a new one specifically for this. Tumblr is good for fandoms and artsy, writery stuff. I might add a LinkedIn Page and a MeWe group or account….

Are you a creative Catholic? "The Catholicpunk Manifesto" is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone, perhaps yourself, who might like Catholic devotionals for alcoholics? Please take a look at my books! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

“The Catholicpunk Manifesto” paperback may soon be available!

UPDATE!

Screenshot 2023 09 28 at 3 02 43 PMMy new book, inspired by St. Maximilian Kolbe and my way of working out Total Consecration to Mary, is now available in paperback through Amazon! Some of you were waiting for this! (Thank you in advance!)

AMAZON LINK TO PURCHASE THE PAPERBACK!! 

For info on where you can purchase the ebook version (available NOW!) visit: The Catholicpunk Manifesto

Are you a creative Catholic? "The Catholicpunk Manifesto" is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone, perhaps yourself, who might like Catholic devotionals for alcoholics? Please take a look at my books! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

On statues, slavery and genocide

This is a post initially written as a Facebook reply in defense of my beloved wife’s post on her Timeline in which she agrees with the pulling down of slave-owner’s statues. She compared them to statues of Hitler. I initially disagreed with her (without posting as such because publicly disagreeing with one’s spouse is not always advantageous. 😉 ) But then I thought about it. I briefly contemplated what it must feel like to be property. Therefore I reconsidered and now I agree with her.

For anyone who thinks that the comparison between slave-holders and Nazis is harsh; let me remind you that both slavery and the Nazis’ “Final Solution” fundamentally dehumanized people. One difference is that slavery has been with us for 1,000s of years and perhaps we’ve become somewhat “immune” to its horror. The ancient Romans and Greeks practiced it, various Asian cultures did so, as well as Arabs, sub-Saharan Africans, and indigenous American peoples like the Aztecs. Desensitized may be the more proper word. It’s been with us for so long that we overlook the abject horror over the “thingification” of people, reducing them to objects of work and drudgery, no more, and subject to the absolute and capricious will of another. Say what you want about how this or that society may have ‘reformed’ slavery by giving slaves some rights and protections; still, the reduction of a human person to that of a chattel object, to be bought and sold like a thing is a grave evil. Another difference is duration: if you were sentenced to a Nazi concentration camp, you’d be dead within days or weeks. Rare was anyone who survived longer than a few months. You might survive the Soviet Gulags longer (I don’t know; I wouldn’t want to experience either to find out.) So there is a difference in degree and duration: condensed in the intense, short, horrific, and barbarous term in a death camp versus being spread out over arduous, barbarous decades as a slave. Destruction is destruction, the human person becomes a dehumanized thing regardless of whether it’s quick and painful, or slower and prolonged. People can debate forever which is worse. Which is stupid, both are evil and shouldn’t be done. To think that one is worse implies that the other is not so bad. 

The Nazi Death camps are an aberration in human history. Including the Turkish genocide of Armenians, the Soviet Gulags, and the Chinese Communist “Cultural Revolution” and later prison systems; such an organized, systematic, intentional destruction of human beings have been comparatively rare in human history. And as seen in the above examples, it has been restricted to our advanced, enlightened “modern times” and its secular, republican, and democratic forms of government.

As a result, we see that comparing slavery to Nazism can be initially off-putting with a knee-jerk reaction of “You gotta be kidding.” But once you dwell on and contemplate the horror that slavery is, you can see why statues of slave-owning individuals can be seen by some to be on a par with seeing statues that glorify Hitler (or Marx, Lenin, Mao, or Margaret Sanger; the latter being the white supremacist, racist, pro-Eugenics founder of Planned Parenthood.)

One issue I have is the mob violence associated with the pulling down of statues. Even so, I have to stop and think whether I would willingly participate in the pulling down of a Hitler, Marx, etc., statue. The answer is that I might consider it. Whether I’d follow through, depends. But the thought would cross my mind as I may see in the spontaneous act of destroying symbols of evil a morally good action that transcends other human notions of propriety. But I would have to evaluate the action in terms of whether the ends-justifies-the-means. For impure acts can never be used to achieve a good end. Would this “spontaneous act” be an “impure act”? Could the removal of statues be done in other ways that do not provoke the hardening of positions thus increasing division? The political change wrought by violence usually envelops and devours the violent. Recall the French Revolution of 1789, the European revolutions of 1848, the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1950s-60s.

The other issue is the indiscriminate selection of statues targeted, which implies either a fundamental ignorance on the part of the mobs doing the action or a hidden agenda. Recently, a Frederick Douglas statue in Rochester, NY was allegedly vandalized. He was a freed black slave and abolitionist. The monument to a black Civil War regiment in Massachusetts was vandalized. A U.S. Grant statue was torn down (the Union General in the Civil War, and US president immediately following it and de facto military governor of the South due to Reconstruction.) Why pull theirs down? (Unless white supremacists are sneaking in and taking advantage of the chaos and doing their evil, but it does seem that other racially-motivated groups are also taking this action. I don’t know, but if, in fact, these other “racially motivated groups” are infected with Marxism, then I can see the basis for their indiscriminate targeting. Marxists typically seek to erase the past to better reconstruct a new society. Nevertheless, it would impact my decision-making in whether or not the “spontaneous act” is impure and would I take part.) How about statues of St. Junipero Serra and King St. Louis IX? Never. Opponents of their statuary are blindingly ill-informed as to who they were and what they did. They were powerful forces for good concerning the people they cared for or governed. What about the statues of Washington and Jefferson? Granted, they were slave owners but given their fundamental contributions to American history, they can be given a pass. “What?!?! But, they owned slaves!!!!” No one is flawless, we are all sinners and have done worse if not evil things. Including slavery. If you have ever initiated or cooperated in dehumanizing or objectifying another, such as maltreating employees or staff, then you relegated them to be like a slave. Perhaps Washington and Jefferson and some others can be demoted in the pantheon of Saints in the American Civil Religion, but deleted (or ‘canceled’) from our history? Never. In some circumstances, the entirety of the life of a person must be weighed and evaluated and viewed in a proper, comprehensive context. Good and bad, warts and halos. To focus on slavery is too narrow a vision. The unfortunate consequence is that entire swaths of human history would have to be “canceled” because slavery was a part of the social fabric. Slavery, despite its evilness, should not cancel out other elements of the persons’ life or that of an entire culture. Too much of what makes our contemporary cultures would be lost. Does this mean I am contradicting myself, given my equating slavery with Nazism, etc.? No; there was little else of virtue that Hitler, the Turks, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Sanger have done to merit being “given a pass.” Their evil was pure and unadulterated and they did nothing to cause anyone to reconsider their evil in any “proper, comprehensive context.” Washington and Jefferson did, even if you disagree with their politics.

I think we have lost sight of the bigger picture. People on both sides of the political spectrum have lost the concept of the entirety of an issue; and the value of a perspective that differs from their own. Everyone is looking at things with blinders on and not taking a step back and empathizing with our brothers, who may diverge from us in appearance and outlook but are still our kin. (Perhaps it related to the first part of my earlier post, “Two Theories on the Ending of the World”, the serious part on conspiracy theories and the “why’s” of their popularity, and decidedly NOT not the more humorous second half that blames aliens. Read it to find out more.)

My wife inadvertently caused me to think and challenge my initial superficial reaction in that because it’s mob violence it’s wrong. Wimmin! And I agree with her. The statues, at least some of them, should go. But so should statues of Marx, Che Guevara, Margaret Sanger and others of similar ilk. Should they be removed by a popular “spontaneous act?” No.

So there.

 

Are you a creative Catholic? "The Catholicpunk Manifesto" is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone, perhaps yourself, who might like Catholic devotionals for alcoholics? Please take a look at my books! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Heavenly Helpers Cage Battles

Years ago MTV had a show called “Celebrity Death Match” wherein stop-motion animated figures of celebrities would go into a boxing ring and fight. Hilarity abounded as much as their personas clashed.

I think EWTN should have a similar show in which saints, blesseds, venerables and servants of God would go into an MMA-style cage and have at it! Their scripted lines would be derived from their writings and sayings attributed to them. Hilarity would abound as much as their differing viewpoints on theology, dogmas and doctrines. “Unity in the essentials, but diversity in the details, ” and it’ll be in the details where the spiritual blood and guts would pour forth.

There would be 5 classes of fights: saints vs saints, blesseds vs blesseds, etc. Plus  an “Open Tournament” where, for example, a saint could do battle against a servant of God.

The Blessed Virgin Mary would be the referee, of course.

I really think that “Heavenly Helpers Cage Battles” would be an excellent catechetical and evangelical tool. Imagine how much you could learn about Just War Doctrine by having St. Maximilian Kolbe (not a pacifist) go up against Servant of God Dorothy Day ( a pacifist) in an Open Tournament.

They needn’t use stop-motion animation, they could use CGI, vector graphics, whatevs.

🙂

Are you a creative Catholic? "The Catholicpunk Manifesto" is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone, perhaps yourself, who might like Catholic devotionals for alcoholics? Please take a look at my books! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Novena to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Servant of God Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin.

Today begins the First of the Nine Novenas for Justice, Peace, & Creation, and this one is dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Servant of God Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. It runs from June 20 — June 28, 2020.

I will not post this every day as the intentions are the same for each day. I’ll just leave it here for nine days; if I need to blog in the interim, I will just post a reminder afterwards. For the background, please read this post on my other blog, Sober Catholic (especially if you need to learn about who Bob Waldrop, the creator of this Novena, was, and why I am introducing it to you. In short, Bob was a guy I discovered online in the early 00s. He was the founder of the St. Oscar Romero Catholic Worker House in Oklahoma City. He ran several websites that are profound and deep in their knowledge of Applied Catholicism. A few years after I joined Facebook I found him on there and I decided to connect with him. From him I learned a lot, and it was the information on his websites that started to direct my thinking of Catholicism as something more than liturgy, sacraments and prayer. I had known that, but he (along with some other sources) gave some concrete form to my thought. You’re really going to have to read that post on Sober Catholic to learn more about him and his work. He died on August 30, 2019.)

The original novena site is here: A Novena of Novenas for Justice, Peace, & Creation.

Don’t worry if you jump in at some point later in the 81 days. To paraphrase Bob “just pick up whenever you happen to join in.”

AFTER THIS SENTENCE, THE WRITING IS ALL THAT OF BOB WALDROP, not me, Paulcoholic.

…

Novena of Novenas for Justice, Peace, & Creation I: to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin (June 20 — June 28, 2020)

“Getting Started:

Begin each novena prayer with a time of quiet prayer. You may find it helpful to pray some repetitions of the Jesus Prayer (Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner), a decade of the Rosary, the Chaplet of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, or a time of spiritual reading or lectio divina that will prepare your mind and your heart for the prayer to come. This could be a time for a daily examen, where you consider your actions of the day and how they relate to God’s call in your life.”

General Intentions: For the redemption of structures of violence, oppression, exploitation, and despair with beauty, goodness, mercy, and peace. Reparation for sins against life.

The First Work of Justice and Peace: Live simply and justly in solidarity with the poor and marginalized and be a good neighbor. Make no war on them, rather, be one with them in spirit, truth, and love.

Act of Caring for Creation: Pick up trash in a public place.

God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me. + Let us pray together in peace, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, help the helpless, strengthen the fearful, comfort the sorrowful, bring justice to the poor, peace to all nations, and solidarity among all peoples. Give us strength to stand against the demonic powers which prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.

Open our eyes to see the beauty, joy, redemption, and goodness which comes through obedience to your Son our Lord. Teach us to be a refuge of hope for all who are oppressed by injustice and violence.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for those who serve the poor and who accompany them in their journeys; may we who keep this sacred commemoration experience the joy and love of the grace of your Son; may His most Sacred Heart, together with yours, pierced with sorrow for the evils of the world, be a sure refuge of hope in a time of trouble for all who are oppressed by injustice and violence.

The Magnificat of Mary. My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; for He has looked with favor on His lowly servant. From this day all generations shall call me blessed.

The Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is His Name. He has mercy on those who fear Him in every generation.

He has shown the strength of His arm, He has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He has sent away empty.

He has come to the help of His servant Israel for He has remembered His promise of mercy, the promise He made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children forever.

Dorothy Day: Dorothy Day, friend and partner of the poor, guiding spirit for the Catholic Worker, home always open to the unwanted, early, often lonely, witness in the cause of peace and conscience, eloquent pattern of gospel simplicity, Dorothy Day, disciple of the Lord, may we continue your gift of self to the needy and your untiring work for justice and peace. Help us to follow your example and dedicate our lives to the creation of structures of beauty and goodness, wisdom and mercy. Amen.

Peter Maurin: Peter Maurin, Holy Fool, teach us to give and not to take, to serve and not to rule, to help and not to crush, to nourish and not to devour. As we create a new society within the shell of the old, remind us that ideals and not deals, creed and not greed, are what makes humanity humane. Amen.

Prayer to St. John Chrysostom on behalf of the U.S. Catholic bishops.

Most Glorious and Venerable St. John Chrysostom,
Grace shining forth from your lips like a beacon
has illumined the universe.
It shows to the world the treasures of poverty;
it reveals to us the heights of humility.
Teaching us by your words, O Father John Chrysostom,
intercede before the Word, Christ our God, to save our souls!

Pray for the bishops of the United States of America,
who do not teach or practice the Catholic faith in its fullness,
that God will deliver them to orthodoxy,
and reform their ways of living,
so that as exemplars of orthopraxis, they will protect all life,
from the moment of conception to the time of natural death.

Teach them true solidarity with the poor, so that they
understand the consequences of their moral abandonment
of entire nations of human beings to a collective fate of cruelty and violence
because they were in the way of the American Empire and
its gluttonous lust for oil, supremacy, and blood.

As you refused to obey the aristocratic commands of your era,
help our bishops turn away from the political demands
that cause them to preach a false gospel of moral relativism regarding war and peace.

Having received divine grace from heaven,
with your mouth you teach all people to worship the Triune God.
Instruct our bishops with the wisdom of the Gospel,
so that they repent of their material cooperation with the objective evil of unjust war,
and call all people, in authentic word and deed, to live in solidarity, peace, and justice.

All-blest and venerable St. John Chrysostom,
we praise you, for you are our teacher, revealing things divine!
Pray for us that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

O God, Who by the preaching and teaching of Saint John Chrysostom
has given us an example of fortitude in the face of persecution and political corruption,
grant that we who reverence his life and ministry may also imitate
his example of fidelity to wisdom, truth, justice, and beauty,
through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.

Our Father . . . Hail Mary… Glory be. . .

Thoughts for the journey. Today many swords pierce the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Injustice, oppression, violence, war, murder, the rape of Creation — all these and more are sins and structures of sin against justice and peace. We know that within our hearts are the seeds of the problems the world faces.

This redemption begins in my heart and your heart. It all starts, as they say, with the man — or the woman — in the mirror.

If we want to see a better relationship of Christ and the world, we must ask first about our own personal relationship with Jesus. Is he the Easter Bunny? Someone who makes us feel good, but who is remote and not really involved? A cultural construct? A topic in a religious education course?

Or is Christ a living reality in my life?

We are in this for the long haul, and it will be a long haul. We will not wake up on the 82nd day after 81 days of nine novenas and discover that we have prayed and worked ourselves into a new world of justice and peace that cares for Creation as God intended for all of us. There is much more work and prayer to come.

If we think we can do this in our own strength, we are wrong.

If we are going forward in the work of justice and peace, the place to start is with an examination of our own lives. How do my sins of omission and commission create and support structures of injustice and oppression? How do I participate in and profit from the social sins and unjust wars of this age? What must be redeemed in my life so that I live in solidarity with those our society has pushed to the edge and further, into the abyss? How can I change my life so that I promote peace, rather than demanding war? Can I end (or minimize) the ecological harm I cause to Creation by my lifestyle?

Have I abandoned Christ for secular saviors? Do I bury myself in the busy-ness of life and ignore God’s call?

As you pray these novenas for the next 81 days, let this be a time when your personal relationship with Christ blooms and flowers. Our prayer for everyone who takes up these novenas is that their hearts will be open to the reality that Christ is alive and he loves each and every one of us. He gave his life to save us and our societies from sin and oppression. He lives today and is at your side every moment of every day to enlighten, strengthen, and free you. OK, I am paraphrasing Pope Francis here, but I think the point is clear: the journey of justice and peace is a journey with Christ.

If we are to change the world, each of us must begin with himself or herself as we ourselves become the change we wish to see in the world. That change is the fruit of the Spirit that grows from our personal relationship with Christ.

Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin:

Dorothy Day was an early advocate of women’s rights who wrote for radical leftist newspapers in the early years of this century. She was a bohemian as they said in those days — but when she looked in her heart of hearts, she found it empty. By the grace and providence of God, she found our Lord and was baptized into the Catholic Church. Thus began a journey which led to the founding of the Catholic Worker movement, together with Peter Maurin and the other first Workers.

It’s clear from their writings that both Dorothy and Peter experienced a tender and intimate relationship with Christ. This relationship was the source of all that they were able to do for the cause of justice and peace. Dorothy was not a stranger to activism; for years she had struggled in the streets as part of the great social battles of the first years of the 20th century — women’s suffrage, the 40 hour week, the right to join a union, justice for workers.

Peter Maurin, a French peasant who came to the United States via Canada, taught that it was a great blessing to assist the rich in coming to the assistance of the poor. Too often, “never the twain shall meet,” and certainly, in this day and age, communication between the poor and the rich is as bad as it has ever been. Communication requires that each person who wants to be heard and understood must see and hear the “Other” as a human person. It’s not easy, and it takes practice.

The program that Peter and Dorothy offered to the world was direct, personal involvement with other human beings. They called us to open houses of hospitality, to engage in clarification of thought so we would understand what needs to be done, and to found agricultural communities as the seeds of new villages. They believed in the importance of the Eucharist, the Rosary, and many traditional devotions — because their work responded to their lively interior relationship with Christ. They were suspicious of the imperial State. They wanted the Catholic Worker movement to be an organism, not an organization, that drew its strength from the Eucharist and the real presence of Christ in the lives of the workers.

As the United States empire entered a time of great triumph, they called for establishing the seeds of a new society within the “collapsing ruins of the old. ” They taught that the poor should be fed by Christians, not by large government bureaucracies. Peter wrote many “Easy Essays” — short little works, almost poetry in their simplicity, each one packed with intense theological concepts about the human person and how we relate to one another in community. He also reminded us of the nobility — and the necessity — of manual labor (something we’d often like to forget in this day of convenience and instant gratification).

Dorothy and Peter worked to create and live structures of beauty and goodness. In the midst of the slums of New York, they provided hospitality to the poor while working for social justice. They learned that the works of mercy and the works of justice and peace are one and the same, different aspects of the same journey, all going the same direction.

Long before it was a theological mantra, the “preferential option for the poor” was a living reality in the life and work of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. They were informed critics of current events, prophetically looking for the truth in the signs of their times, and finding Jesus in the poor, rejected, and marginalized.

Their example inspires us today to consider how we can ensure fair distribution, subsidiarity, economic opportunity, justice, and food security for everyone everywhere. As we open our eyes, our minds, and our hearts to the Spirit’s guidance, we can discern our response to the signs of these times. We then can see the structures of sin that bind us in poverty and war, and name the demons which oppress us.

We can buy farms and dedicate them for the purpose of raising food for the hungry. We can organize microenterprise co-operatives in every city to provide opportunity for the poor. We can look at our own individual situations, and adopt lifestyles of simplicity and frugality, rejecting the culture of materialistic conspicuous consumption in favor of a life of living simply, that others may simply live. We can minimize our use of fossil fuels and thus remove one of the major causes of war. We can buy our food directly from farmers, and stop funding the destruction of the family farm community. We can discern the cry of the widow and orphan in our own neighborhoods, and be the hands and feet of God in relieving distress and creating justice. We can open our own hearts to the reality of life in Christ, and embrace him as savior and friend.

Dorothy Day used to quote St. Catherine of Sienna — “All the way to heaven is heaven.” May this be our prayer, in Jesus’ holy name.

Caring for Creation

Our act of reparation during this 9 day novena, and going forward, is to pick up trash in a public place. You won’t have to look far, but I think there are extra blessings for picking up trash in low income neighborhoods. Trash is endemic everywhere. It is a sign of our careless attitude towards the gifts of this Earth that God has so freely given us. Much trash is useful — many items can be recycled or repurposed, but often we think only of our selfishness and do not take the time or the care to do the right thing by Creation and reduce our impact on the planet by recycling. Examine your conscience! Do you sin against God’s Creation by your casual attitude towards waste? Now is the time for actual works of penance, which is why we pick up trash in public places.

Courtesy: Bob Waldrop, St. Oscar Romero Catholic Worker House

…

(I’m, back. Thank you for reading and praying. Just a few thoughts of my own, here, on some of the language Bob used, particularly referring to the US as an “empire,” within a pejorative context. Well, it is painful, but the United States IS an Empire. While an Empire in and of itself is not a bad thing, ours is costly. Excessive tax dollars are spent on maintaining a military presence overseas we can hardly afford; money that could be spent domestically on infrastructure, healthcare, education and other things. In my thinking, there is little reason why we should still be maintaining military bases in Europe. They can potentially defend themselves. NATO served its purpose as the defense of the West against any potential Soviet/Warsaw Pact invasion; after the fall of the Communist alliance NATO should have been mothballed and the European nations taken upon themselves some form of collective defense, if needed. While engaging in military action against terrorists might have seemed a good idea in the early 00s, in reality continued action in the Middle East has only served to create more terrorists. I’m uncertain as to the solution, but the way things are going there and domestically, I think we should cut our losses and our troops recalled. )

Are you a creative Catholic? "The Catholicpunk Manifesto" is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone, perhaps yourself, who might like Catholic devotionals for alcoholics? Please take a look at my books!
"The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Willing to be ridiculous to obtain the miraculous, so please help

I tried posting this on LinkedIn either as a stand alone post or a profile description, but it exceeds the maximum length for either. Then I remembered that I have two blogs and so I decided to make use of them for this personal matter. The post title is an allusion to a famous quote of Mother Angelica, the Foundress of EWTN. She said, “Unless you are willing to do the ridiculous, God will not do the miraculous. When you have God, you don’t have to know everything about it; you just do it.” This kind of post sounds ridiculous, and proper people with proper concerns about proper appearances probably wouldn’t bother, but I am looking for the miraculous, and so be it. (However, I know quite a bunch about what I’m looking for, so there’s that…)

In this time of pandemic, with the relevant health concerns, (or scares, depending upon your POV) I am considering a career change. I hinted at my day job on a prior LinkedIn profile description (now edited out in favor of the current transitional one) but I would now like something different. What have I done for a living? Nice that you should ask: I am currently laid-off (due to the pandemic) from a thrift store chain where I received used goods at an outdoor remote donation center. What was a temporary job “until something better came along” has endured for over six years now. So, loyalty and perseverance are expressed character traits! I found that I actually enjoyed the work, hard as it was at times given the need to work in all types of weather and dealing with all types of individuals. I found the diversity of people and their offerings interesting, especially when they talked and told stories about themselves or their goods. I’d often wonder about the history of unusual or odd donations. Also, during periods in between receiving and sorting/stocking duties I found plenty of time to read and think, which assisted my enduring for 6 years. I even got a great idea for a novel which I have been puttering with.

My company is considering reopening next week (June 1st) in an upcoming “Phase.” Although I do welcome the opportunity to return, I have also enjoyed staying safe at home these past few months. I have health concerns which render me susceptible to COVID-19, although my health care professionals think I’ll survive. But given the impermanence of unemployment insurance, generous though it is, work is a need for personal dignity, economic sustainability and independence. I find myself wanting something that can make better use of my past professional, academic and general life-skills. And thus I am pursuing a career-change. I am seeking a remote (telework, “work-at-home”) position in what might variously be called “content creation,” or “freelance copywriting” or “copyediting,” in other words, you have a site or product that needs words, well, I got loads of ’em and I know how to use them, too! Another position that I would be interested in is chat-based customer service. After completing training on your company’s products and services and assimilating appropriate knowledge, I can serve customers who have issues and problems in a chat interface. (I prefer the written word to the spoken.) I use a Mac, hopefully this is not an impediment to any proprietary software.

If you’re interested, or have job leads, or even advice and prayers, please email me at the addresses found here: MY CONTACT INFO. You can also reach me through LinkedIn; my profile is Paul Sofranko on LinkedIn. The “About Me” page on my busier blog tells much. I am diligent, loyal, and possess a great work ethic. Salary is negotiable, I’d prefer flexible hours, or if fixed hours, then afternoons through evenings (i.e. “second shift.”) I am looking forward to hearing from you. Thank you for considering me, I do appreciate any interest.

Are you a creative Catholic? "The Catholicpunk Manifesto" is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone, perhaps yourself, who might like Catholic devotionals for alcoholics? Please take a look at my books!
"The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)