Wayne La Pierre, The NRA and Stupidity

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," so says Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the National Rifle Association in a speech carried live on radio and TV today. His response to the Sandy Hook, Newtown, Connecticut Massacre? "Put armed guards in every school in the United States," he says.

LaPierre is dangerously ignorant of basic psychology. In his classic text on serial murderers and
violent behavior in general, Dr. Robert I. Simon, a forensic psychiatrist, says we all have the capacity for violent behavior of the most heinous kind. Our value systems kick in most of the time to reign us back from acting out some of our darkest impulses.

His book is called "Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream." It's a disturbing book because it shatters
the belief that there are good people and bad people. It turns out that there are just people. All of us have dark sides.

.In my Church we talk about how Original Sin, the tendency toward evil, even the attraction to evil is part of every grace-filled person's struggle. Deep down we are twisted, not corrupted.

The vast majority of us learn not to act on destructive impulses but that doesn't mean we don't ever think of murdering the guy next door.

While we sleep and our conscience is resting, we can even plan and visualize what we might do to people or what we might take from them. These dreams of so-called good people can be incredibly violent.

So firstly: LaPierre , spokesman for the National Rifle Association, doesn't know diddly-squat about human nature. Put people in school with guns and you may find someday that the protectors have done bad things.  They were having a bad day.

Secondly: A person without a gun can talk down another person with a gun who is threatening to take a life.  It happens every day when police departments send trained negotiators in to talk violent people out of the killing themselves or someone else. More often than not they are successful.   How can LaPierre, CEO of the National Rifle Association be so obtuse?

I and thousands of other clergymen have been in unstable situations just like I've just described. The disturbed or angry person is there, with a loaded gun.

We listen a lot.  Listening often diffuses violence.  The disturbed (not bad) person is holding the gun
and ready to use it. We try to calm the situation.

I pray a lot. I know that someone could come into the confessional and blow my head off.
I'm no hero but I hope I won't be a coward either, the next time I'm in that situation.. La Pierre should sit in a confessional for about an hour and then tell me if he can separate the sheep from the goats.



 

Sandy Hook, Newtown, Connecticut  and Malice, U.S.A.

As a priest, I have to face hundreds of people in church over the holiday weekends and find  something to say about this awful thing that has happened to us. Newtown Connecticut is downtown Chicago and mid-town Manhattan. Newton is Westmont, Illinois where I live.  The people who attend my church are like people who attend churches in Newtown. I sorely need to find a fragment of hope to lift them up. Last weekend it wasn't easy.

I talked about original sin, actual sin and evil in our world.  As Karl Menninger said in his book "Whatever happened to sin?," the denial of sin in the world is a dangerous.

We are hearing that the Sandy Hook  killer was sick, mentally ill, tortured in his isolated world. His frustration mounted and finally exploded in the moment he destroyed his mother and Newtown's little children.

This killer was certainly derranged, psychotic. But his mental illness is not the whole story.  He could not have had a chemical imbalance in his brain that caused him to destroy children, innocent children, children who had no power to fight back. People who are mentally ill are not typically and more
sinister than anyone else, though they may mess-up their lives.

Although I have some medical background, I've never really understood the scientific justification for blaming chermical imbalances for aberrant behavior.  Sure, if your glucose is dangerously low, you need  glucose to keep you from agitation and violence. If you have too much TSH (Thyroid stimulating hormone) you might be nervous and anxious until medical intervention makes things right again.

 Sin, on the other hand, is as real as the hot touch on the side of your thigh as a pickpocket leans in on you in a crowded bus and removes your wallet in an instant violation of your person. It's the chuckle of the kid who kicks a stray dog and makes it howl in pain.  Sin is the thrill of domination that a young woman feels when she dumps a guy that she's strung along. Sin is acting to end your life and taking random individuals with you.

 Nothing can bring the Newtown, Sandy Hook children back, but we have to do something. I am preaching that we have to counter with kindness. I am signing up for acts of random kindness. Also, put me down for groups that encourage banning easy access to assault weapons and other military armaments. Where do I sign to limit young people (and adults) access to violent video games, games which appeal to the dark side, the destructive side of life.

Put me on the side of  grace  because it's the only thing that can
drive out evil.




 

The National Rifle Association, the right not to bear arms.

The second amendment assures every citizen the right to bear arms. With this right comes the reponsibility to be careful with those firearms.  To its credit, The National Rifle Association sponsors classes in gun safety.  For this reason, I have no problem with hunting, and with hunters owning and using rifles and shotguns. But, because the NRA advocates handgun posession and helps train hand gun owners,the National Rifle Association is not an organization I would belong to.

 Sure, if I lived in the country and not as I do now, in a great metropolis, I'd likely belong to the "Rod and Gun" club. I like to fish and you could probably talk me into a trek through the Northwoods during deer season. But, I draw the line at handguns, a line behind which stands the National Rifle Association.

Handguns are for killing people. I don't want one in my house and I don't want you sitting at the next table in a restaurant with your 357 magnum hanging at your side as if you are somebody because you carry a gun. I don't want to assume that the bulge in your coat pocket is a gun, either.

I think the second amendment was intended to assure that a militia could be raised if and when it was necessary to defend American territory. With this idea in mind, the National Rifle Association has turned the second amendment into a mandate to carry arms for personal defence. Instead, I want to see that right curtailed as stictly as possible. Yes, I'll defend home and turf but in my own way.

In my lifetime, I have asked two people to get out of my car because they flourished handguns, neither was a member of the National Rifle Association. One was a salesman-friend who carried his hand gun in his front pocket wrapped in a thin white handkerchief. He said he just wanted to show it to me. He was chuckling as he brought it out.  Even though I knew him well and we were not near our destination, I pulled over and quietly asked him to get out.  He thought I was joking. I wasn't. The NRA would not have approved.

When I needed directions in an unfamiliar city, a man, dressed in a nice suit volunteered to direct me to my destination and I let him get into the back seat of my car.  I'd offered him a ride of a couple of blocks.When he brandished a handgun and asked me what I thought of it, the following words ran through my head: "Why did I let myself get into this situation?"

Fortunately, the man did exit the car without further incident.  I concluded he wanted to show the gun to me because in his eyes it equalized me with his condition. I had an impressive brand new car, he had a big, shiny handgun. The National Rifle Association  would have supported this show-off.

I'm glad that in each case I did not reach for my pistol, simply because I didn't have one with which to threaten either of these guys.

I can think of a hundred different ways to counter an intruder.  The last thing I would do is go run for a handgun. I'd use my head and not try to blow his off.

 

What's in a Name? Everything.

"What's in a name? "That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Shakespeare certainly had a way with words, didn't he?

Would it make any diffference to you if that fragrant, beautiful, red  flower with delicate petals and sharp thorns were called somethng else? Probably not. When I speak the word "rose" I do not have to say much more for you to understand, and somehow feel, the presence of that flower.

Would it make any difference to you if you were called something else?  There are a ton of individuals named Mary or Alice but nevertheless every Mary or Alice --or Joe, for that matter--recognizes  immediately when someone speaks their name.

Your name is uniquely yours. At a party, there can be an entire room full of people talking at the same time in various conversations but you can hear your own name above all the talk, no matter how loudly or softly it is spoken.

Someone recently asked me why Catholics choose a new name at their Confirmation. 
Everyone knows that at Baptism the new Christian is called by name and christened
personally, using a given name: "I baptize you Theresa in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." But, why at Confirmation do we choose another name?

At Confirmation no new name is required.  Your baptismal name is fine. Sometimes, another name, a saint's name is chosen because the person to be confirmed has a favorite saint. "Francis," for St. Francis; "Ann" for St. Ann," are common examples.

Someday God will speak your secret name, a name that He alone knows (Rev. 2:17).  He will speak it out of the immense silence of the universe and you will hear it and you will embrace it as your own. You will understand finally that God knows you as He knows Himself. And, you will know Him and speak His Name in love and thereby, please Him.
 

Trappists, Cats and Peace.

Recently, I spent four days with Trappist Monks on retreat in Iowa.  Yes, I was in full retreat from the noise of my life including ringing cell phones, blaring ambulances, and the people babble of T.V.s, radios, and office small talk. I needed this retreat. I needed the monastery and the Trappist monks who live there.
 
Outside, the trees are bare and the air is brisk and cold in the mornings. I like to take a walk on the monastery grounds especially here where quiet rules in the back fallow fields of Winter Iowa. The walk is a metaphor for my retreat journey, and for my life's journey. It seems I'm always on the way somewhere.

The chapel looks cold when you walk in.  Where is all the religious art? The altar of sacrifice is way back near the far wall. It's a simple table. The dark wooden stalls of the Trappist monks face one another across the nave, lined up for choral recitation of the Divine Office, the monks' prayers for the world. That's the Trappist way of warming up their souls and ours, too. It feels great and heart-warming to join the rythym of morning song and evensong with the chanting monks. "Retreat" is a good word for taking a step back and rediscovering prayer.

I prayed with the monks as they sang the Office at morning, noon and night. at other times, too. Reverently, deliberatively, they prayed.   I sought reverence as they sang  but most of all I loved the silence, the unhurried pace of the life of the monks. There can be no retreat for me without quiet.

Someone told me recently that he likes cats as pets because they are peaceful. To watch them undulate through their lives effortlessly in your home can bring healing to a harried soul. However, I don't like cats much. I do like monks.

The Trappists who read the sacred scriptures during the Mass were deliberate and spoke full-voiced without being loud. The scriptures seem so much richer when pronounced with understanding and affection.  My roots soaked up this welcome rain.

I'm home now.  My retreat with the Trappists is over, but I'll be back again next season. Meanwhile I've taken the monks and the monastery home with me, here in the midst of the noise of my life.
I am still inside, though, a place within me where I want to live. The monks sing and bow there and wake to pray in the night.