Enough already!

By Joseph Walther

I wasn’t going to write any more about it; but I changed my mind after listening to Bill Maher’s latest tirade against religion in general and the Pope specifically. But, Maher’s pontification wasn’t the only one that set me off.

Every national talking head pundit and comedian, including two-bit local wannabes, had to chime in with the same flavor of vocal tripe. All of it demonstrated, at least to me, the depths to which political, anti-religious, and comedic zealots would stoop to make a misinformed point or garner a cheap laugh.

Benedict XVI is the leader of approximately 1.2-billion Roman Catholics, of whom about 60-million reside in the United States. If people are going to level accusations against him, they should at least attempt to find out what they’re talking about.

While the current Pope did not instigate the sexual abuse problem in this country, the fact does not diminish his responsibility in attempting to resolve the matter. But this responsibility and his alleged Nazism are two separate issues.

So, we should deal with them separately, which is what I am going to do with this particular column. The difference is, that relative to the sex abuse scandal, I’m going to go further than Maher did by applying liberal coatings of blame over ALL of the participating parties, not just the Church, Her leadership and ordained priests.

First, those screaming for Maher’s firing need to get a grip. This is not a 1^st Amendment issue nor did Mr. Maher break any laws. HBO is a private TV service. If you don’t like their programming, don’t tune in. And, if you’re already tuned in and hear something offensive, tune out! But, let HBO know your reasons.

In my opinion, Bill Maher’s superior writing ability, issue perspectives, along with an impeccable timing of voice inflection and facial expression, combine to make him one of the funniest people on television. Even so, I do not agree with everything he says on his HBO program, Real Time with Bill Maher.

He missed the mark with his Nazi slam by intentionally omitting exonerating facts; and, he failed to go far enough in spreading the blame for one of the most horrendous sex scandals in modern Catholic Church history to ALL culpable parties.

While young Master Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI) joined the Hitler Youth Group when he reached the age of 14-years, so did EVERY German boy of that era. They were COMPELLED to join upon reaching that young age. Mr. Maher obviously forgot to include this fact.

He left out two other facts, too, both verifiable. The first one, on the record, showed that young Master Ratzinger hated the group, refused to participate, and NEVER attended any meetings.

The second one verified that the entire Ratzinger family detested the Nazis and refused to participate in Nazi programs—at significant risk to their safety—because Nazism violated their religious beliefs.

Such factual omissions were disingenuous at best. There was no legitimate reason to attempt to link Benedict XVI to Nazism. In attempting to do so, Maher offended millions of decent, faith-living Catholics who were every bit as horrified over the sex scandal as he was.

In fact, it seemed to me that his intent was nothing more than a juvenile-style hissy fitter’s attempt to get attention and a cheap laugh. Shame on him! I know a number of 4-year-olds who demonstrate, routinely, infinitely greater skills in controlling their emotions.

He later issued an apology for this aspect of his rant. I’m not going to express gratitude for his doing so because it was the only decent thing for him to do.

On the matter of his criticism regarding the Church’s cover-ups over years of sexual abuses of prepubescent and pubescent boys by Roman Catholic Priests, he was on the mark—except he didn’t go far enough. So, I’m going to do it for him.

I will be 66-years-old in a month and a half. I was raised, from birth, as a Roman Catholic. My parents were staunch in their faith. As such, my siblings and I adhered to ALL of the rules.

In addition, I eagerly embraced one of my late mother’s rules—that I become an altar boy and serve mass on a regular basis at St. Helena’s Parish where I and my siblings attended elementary school.

Not only did I obey HER rule, I achieved the lofty goal, the highest status for altar boys of that era, Master of Ceremonies at solemn high masses, weddings, and funerals.

In fact, the last ceremony that I officiated as a senior altar boy Master of Ceremonies at St. Helena’s was my dad’s funeral mass. He died, along with my 3-year-old brother, as the result of an automobile accident. I was 14-years old.

Three weeks prior to this, however, I found myself on the receiving end of a priest’s sexual advances.

At the conclusion of my serving his 11:30 AM Sunday mass, the late Father Walter Powers decided to show me how much he cared for me. He came up behind me (fully clothed), gripped my hips with his hands, and rubbed himself against my buttocks.

Mostly, his action surprised and scared me. But, it also ANGERED me. I reacted the way my dad had taught me to react to anyone who approached me in such a manner: BY NOT GOING INTO A PANIC.

With a swift body turn and a clenched fist, I delivered a decisive uppercut to his scrotum sac. He went down like an anvil, with a resounding thud. I left the sacristy immediately and rode my bike home.

There were no repercussions. He never spoke to me again, nor I him. I did NOT feel traumatized THEN nor have I ever felt compelled to seek monetary compensation from the Church.

In fact, I’ve often looked back on it with a fond sense of having been an instrument of specific justice, especially as I recall that contorted look of sheer agony on his face.

I did not tell my father about it because he would have ended up in prison as the result of beating the good father to within an inch of his life or, perhaps, going all the way and killing him.

I did not tell my mother because, sadly, she would not have believed me. To her a Catholic Priest was, in fact, another Christ—incapable of such despicable acts.

Here’s my point. Father Powers was only ONE of twenty other priests in the Diocese of Wilmington abusing children. Simultaneously, thousands of others, all of them sexually perverted, were doing the same from coast to coast across the United States.

Many of them got away with it for YEARS before their names came to light. Some, like Walter Powers, died long before that. But, when it comes to tossing blame around, society simply fails to include everyone.

In Catholic dioceses like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Diego, and myriad parishes across Middle America, police departments had standing orders NOT to arrest these priests.

Of course, this was NEVER an OFFICIAL policy. But, It was definitely one of those “wink-wink” policies that came to be “understood” by every street cop, desk sergeant, and precinct commander.

Like it or not, it was a fact back then. Whenever they caught a sexually wayward priest breaking the law, they returned him to his pastor or diocesan bishop and let THEM deal with the issue.

In my opinion, this renders the very police department officials sworn to protect innocent people as inferentially complicit in the scandal. But we never hear this crowd mentioned pursuant to blame delegation, even as passive participants.

At St. Helena’s, a few intrepid folks complained, but EVERYONE knew about Father Powers: The pastor, the nuns who taught in the school, and many, if not most, of the parents of altar boys.

As with the police authorities, the nuns and lay-people are generally absent from mention during the blame game. For whatever, reason they chose NOT to raise too much hell. Nevertheless, they must share in at least partial blame for the scandal.

In my mind, they were just as inferentially complicit in the scandal as the priests who did the abusing and the Church authorities who successfully covered it up for years.

Finally, Benedict XVI did NOT transfer Cardinal Bernard Law to permanent duty in the Vatican just before the State of Massachusetts was to indict him. It was John Paul II. And, I would not bet against the notion that some state-level authority warned him ahead of time, either.

Of all of the people involved, the Popes, as insulated as they are from day-to-day operations, are the least indictable pursuant to this scandal.

I do not doubt Pope Benedict’s remorse and embarrassment at the way the Church leadership performed in this matter. On the other hand, he’d be a lot more convincing to me if he’d do just three things.

First, order Cardinal Bernard Law back to the United States to face his accusers. The second is to toss Cardinal Maloney of Los Angeles out of the priesthood. And third, permit the United States criminal justice system run its course.

This is the last I will write on the topic. I’ll get back to other things next Sunday. Have a great week.

Joe Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. You may comment ohis column by clicking here.

Um, the Pope's here.

By Joseph Walther

Speaking of religion—and I don’t advise doing so—hordes of incessant TV and radio talking heads have analyzed the Holy Father’s visit to death, whether any of them knew what they were talking about or not. So, I’m not going to perpetuate it here.

Instead, I’m going to use the occasion to examine why religion, in general, tends to be such a potentially lethal subject—both physically and culturally.

In the United States, from the moment they become self-aware until the moment of their death, people express a blind belief in God. In fact, it takes a fair amount of guts to express otherwise.

The polls all agree; we are a religious lot. About 72% of the world’s population—around 84% in the United States—believes in a Deity, including a belief in Heaven and Hell. Here’s a breakdown of world religions.

As religious as we claim to be, though, we know little about our religion, and virtually nothing about most of the world’s other religions.

It’s a sad commentary that, in America, ample numbers of Protestants can’t differentiate between the Old and New Testaments, correctly recite the Protestant Version of the Ten Commandments, or name all four Gospels.

Equal numbers of Roman Catholics don’t know the Stations of the Cross, can’t name all the mysteries of the Holy Rosary, name all of the Sacraments, or the Ten Commandments. And, as many Catholics as Protestants can’t name the four Gospels, either.

The Jews don’t score any better. Many can’t adequately define the difference between Orthodoxy and Reform Movements or adequately define their own precepts. Neither can many of them name the five books of Moses.

Not so in European countries! Even though average Europeans would as soon have their hemorrhoids ripped out with needle-nose pliers… WITHOUT anesthesia, than attend church services, they know plenty about religion.

They know all about the things that we Americans don’t. More importantly, they also know many things about most of the world’s religions: the 4-Noble Truths of Buddhism, the 5-Pillars of Islam, the 8-Fold Path of Buddhism, the Ten Commandments (Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant Versions), to name just a few of them.

In this country, we don’t teach people about religion. In fact, the ACLU bounds out from the public school corridor shadows at the mere mention of the word religion. Public school officials assume a fetal position as the pros and cons take to microphones condemning each other.

In European countries, comparative religion courses are part of public school curricula from the beginning. They are also part of all university programs.

This is a dangerous situation in this country. Not only do we appear blindly dogmatic, it makes us look a bit silly to the rest of the world: not our blind belief in God, but rather our obvious cluelessness about religion.

It is more than a simple question of cultural diversity. Even before, but especially since 9/11, ignorance of various religions has proven, in some cases, to be physically lethal.

I wonder what would have happened in Waco, Texas if the FBI had assigned a religion expert to the case, especially regarding apocalyptic Christianity. Such and individual could have done a profile on David Koresh’s crackpot interpretation of the book of Revelation.

I’m not saying that it would have turned out differently. I’m merely saying that it could have had the FBI understood that Koresh believed with every fiber of his being that it was his God-destined duty to bring about the kind of apocalyptic end that ultimately occurred.

I read about a man from India who lived in Arizona. Right after 9/11, he was at a gas station, putting gas in his car, when some loony-assed, self-professed patriot zealot shot and killed him.

Because the man was wearing a turban, the assassin thought he was another one of those “towel-heads” gassing up to go and kill other Americans.

Muslim or not, it was not justification for murder. But, the victim was not a Muslim; he was a Sikh. But, what the hell, they all looked alike to this idiot. And, I’m afraid; they all look alike to many Americans.

I wonder how things would have turned out had George Bush attempted to learn, just a little bit, about the religious tenets of the multiple religious factions residing in pre-invasion Iraq.

The religious strife in the region, especially between Iran and Iraq, had been going on for centuries. The real fundamentalists are in Iran. Iraq was a secular country under Saddam Hussein, who wanted no part of radical Islam.

Iran tried numerous times to get rid of Saddam so that they could move into the country and install an Islamic Government. But, religious ignorance and all, George and his band of Neo-Cons took care of it for them. We’ll be living with that mess for decades.

All we ever seem to hear about in this country is the multiplicity of legal cases involving separation issues over “church and state.” While some of them are legitimate, many are not.

Regardless, however, teaching about religion has nothing to do with the theology of religion and our Constitution does not prohibit our public schools from teaching the former.

In addition to teaching Americans about religion—starting in grade school--perhaps we should also begin teaching our schoolchildren the difference between a scientific theory and a theological belief.

Of course, this must include the fact that believing in God is not grounds for non-believers to declare believers stupid. It’s just that such a belief isn’t a scientific theory because there’s no way—at least not yet—to develop a falsifiable a hypothesis.

Maybe… if we do this, we can vastly improve our religion literacy quotient and possibly avoid going to war so quickly and stupidly. And, let’s not discount improving our ability to compete with the rest of the world in science and math.

Back next week. I’m sure that something Earth-shattering will happen before then, especially with Barack and Hillary at each other’s throats. If not, I’ll come up with something.

Joe Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. You may comment on his column by clicking here.

At times, some people should just SHUT UP!

By Joseph Walther

This past Monday, I received word that the 78-year-old mother of a friend of mine had died. It wasn’t a surprise; she had been terminally ill for some time. I stopped by their house to see if I could help out and to offer my condolences first hand.

While I was there, my friend let me read some of the letters, cards, and best wishes she and her mother had received from people—some of them from perfect strangers.

There were the usual get-well wishes, “we’re praying for you” wishes, etc. All of these were nice and certainly most welcomed.

However, I read six letters, two from acquaintances of the mother and four from perfect strangers. My friend has no idea how they found out about her mother’s illness in the first place.

Regardless, the themes of those letters were not only rude, but personally invasive. Here’s a bit of context for clarity.

Her mother had discovered a lump on her breast. She went to her doctor to have it checked. Between the time that she discovered it and the time she had a doctor examine it, fifteen days had passed.

This wasn’t a serious time lag, but, just the same, her doctor had offered to approve a referral had she wanted to have it checked out sooner. She declined.

Unfortunately, this lump, though small, turned out to have been a nasty, very aggressive, and rapid growth malignancy—I have the clinical name somewhere around here.

But, it’s not important. It would not have made a bit of difference how soon a doctor could have checked the lump.

By the time they were able to do a biopsy, it had already spread; involving one of her lungs and throat.

They gave her two options. She could do nothing and die—I’m paraphrasing, of course. They were much kinder, professionally clinical, and empathetic.

If she chose this option, they assured her that they could administer routine maintenance treatments to maximize her life-quality over the time she had left.

The second option was a procedure called a hemiquadrantectomy. The detail behind this procedure is extensive and very technical. So, let me describe what they do.

The surgeon begins the incision approximately an inch and a half below the ear. It follows a winding path down the side of the neck, across the chest to the other side of the torso. It then reverses direction, coming back to end just below the armpit.

The surgical team then removes everything outside the cut boundary. And, I mean EVERYTHING—arm, ribs, lung.

Would she have better odds of survival under such conditions? “Yes,” they told her. They would improve—again, I’m paraphrasing—from zilch to slightly better than slim.

This hinged, of course, on the assumption that the procedure itself or an unforeseen circumstance during a long and painful recovery period didn’t kill her first.

She chose the former option. Her family—daughter, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren—accepted her decision and supported her every step along the way.

She lived the rest of her life on her terms, enjoying shopping sprees, particularly with her great-grandchildren, putting her affairs in order, and enjoying her family as much as she could for the time she had left.

When she died, she did so peacefully, with dignity, and surrounded by people who loved her dearly.

So, what happened to upset her daughter, not to mention me? Strangers sticking their “religious” noses into other people’s business, THAT’S what.

We have no clue how six unrelated strangers found out about the decision to let nature take its course. But, somehow, six people took it upon themselves to write letters to a dying woman, expressing their concerns that she failed to put her trust in God.

The letters had a common theme. The wording of the comments, while different from letter-to-letter, carried the same messages.

”Choosing to die without a fight is not your right,” was one of the comments. “Only God can give life and only God can take it,” was another one.

I’m not even going into the rest of the garbage this woman had to put up with from these… so-called “Christians.”

I respect people of ALL religious faiths. Most of the ones I know are very kind, considerate, and intelligent. They both talk the talk and walk the walk. They manifest the very epitome of religious conviction and sincerity.

Unfortunately, though, there are those who do no such thing. They do nothing more than meddle in the personal affairs of others, using the guise of religious conviction as a convenient justification for their insipid moralizing and self-righteousness.

Dying is ALWAYS the last thing that can happen to people. Many times, however, it is not the WORST thing that can happen.

While it was difficult for her loved ones, they took great solace and much satisfaction in helping her die surrounded with love. They’ll never forget her, but time will help them learn to live without her, as it does all of us when people we love die.

We have reached a point in medical science where we can keep people alive almost indefinitely. But, sometimes we have to ask why? For what purpose and for who’s edification do we do it?

God notwithstanding, it’s time that we all learn that state of the art medical care and love are sometimes NOT the same thing.

If you are one of those who simply must preach the will of God under these circumstances, DON’T! Just send a nice religious get well or, ultimately, a religious sympathy card.

I’ll leave you now. I’ll be back next week. I have a memorial service to attend in honor of a life well lived.

Joe Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. You may comment on his column by clicking here.

So, what's all this stuff about the "good ole" days!?

By Joseph Walther

“Look, I’m old enough to remember when gas was seventy-five cents a gallon, dude.” Yes, that’s what the man said. I don’t know how the subject of gas prices came up; it just did. Someone else blurted out, “But, those were the good old days.”

As I gazed around the room, I realized to myself that I probably have socks older than most of the others in the room. But, try as I did to stifle it, I laughed aloud. I swear; I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t mean to sound as condescending as it must have appeared to most of them.

The silence in the room was deafening. The crowd, about fifty-five people ranging in age from early 20s to mid-40s—the speaker was only 30, for God’s sake—appeared to be waiting for this old sage to impart some ageless wisdom. And I feared that it had better be good, too!

The speaker asked me if I’d like to come to the podium. I accepted, but only because the podium was closer to an exit than where I had been.

I began by telling them that I would not give my age until the end of my comments. I challenged them to guess my age by the things I was going to tell them.

With that, I pulled my jacket sleeve up above my wristwatch, pointed to it, and explained that it’s a Bulova, a watch that my late mother gave to me the day I graduated from high school. “I still wear it, and I suspect that it is older than most of you.”

The room was deadly silent as I began to explain. Starting with my junior year in high school, I worked a part-time job at a local ACME food store. It was a Saturday in mid-June. My mother had asked me to pick up a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk, and two-dozen eggs on my way home late that afternoon.

In appreciation—provided I would stop and put some gas in it—she let me drive her brand new, less than two-months-old Chevy Bel Air ($2,500 loaded) to work that morning.

My hourly rate at ACME (the part-time rate) was $1.335 per hour. In case you think that was cheap, the minimum wage was only $1.00 an hour. I worked an average of 25-hours a week—sixteen-hours during the week after school and nine-hours on Saturday.

My weekly gross pay was about $33. Subtracting the standard wage taxes and a once a month deduction of $5 for union dues, I walked out of the store each payday with about $28. Employers didn’t give employee discounts, either.

And, YES, my mother expected ME to pay for the bread, eggs, and milk on those rare occasions when she asked me to pick them up. It was also a foregone conclusion that, EVERY TIME I drove her car, I would “gas” is up. Failing to do so, Hell would freeze over before I’d get to go near her car again… EVER!

It wasn’t too bad, though. A loaf of bread was 19-cents—and it was FRESH, too. Milk went for $1.01 a gallon; the containers were GLASS and had about 2-inches of cream at the top—no one gave a crap about cholesterol back then. The price of a dozen eggs was 85-cents.

Best of all, from fumes to a full tank at 30-cents a gallon, it only cost $5.10 to “gas” up her car. But, I don’t remember it ever costing ME more than $2.00 to do it.

My mother was a widow at the time. My father died in 1956. He was a good provider, though. His life insurance paid off the mortgage on our home, which he bought for a whopping $6,000 in 1947 based on a twenty-year mortgage.

My mother had a formal education sufficient to earn at least the average weekly wages at the time, about $108 a week. With what she netted, she raised my siblings, including the cost of sending me to a Catholic high school at a tuition rate of $90 a YEAR.

You know what else I remember about those times? ALL of the adults in my life; including my mother, aunts/uncles, teachers, neighbors, and virtually everyone I overheard speaking in general, seemed to be seriously obsessed with the impending demise of civilization as they knew it.

You want to know why? It was because of the way that we youngsters—the “younger” generation of THEIR time—were turning out: disrespectful, slothful, academically lazy, beer-drinking, cigarette smoking, sex-obsessed, and self-centered whiners.

Oh, yes, about those “good” ole days… as I look back on them, they weren’t all that good. Some things were. For example, it cost less to live in those days and the real value of the dollar (what it could buy) was much greater than now. But, so many other things were not good at all.

Kids were dying on a regular basis from things like polio and childhood leukemia. Scarlett fever was dangerous and still required penicillin shots every 6- to 8-hours.

Breast cancer was an automatic death sentence. In fact, many of the things that we can cure now, killed with speed and certainty then. We didn’t even have the means for early detection for most to them.

In 1951, my best friend in the whole school, Roger Coyne, died from leukemia. One fall-morning he threw up on the classroom floor and his mother came and took him home. He was dead before Christmas.

In 1952, sixty-thousand kids contracted polio in this country. Three-thousand of them died. Shirley Trotter, another beloved classmate of mine was among them. I still think about her.

No, I don’t think of those as better days. They were simpler. But just because ignorance is so blissful, doesn’t make it desirable.

The world was smaller then. Not geographically, but in the sense that it wasn’t as crowded. It took much longer for news to travel from one continent to another—no Internet! No Email! No cell phones!

It isn’t that these things are bad for us. It’s just that we fail to realize that the more crowded the world becomes, the crankier PEOPLE become. Crime rates in most categories were about as high then (as a percentage of the population) as they are now.

It’s just that there were no 24-hour cable news outlets to bombard us, CONSTANTLY, with the same negative stories for weeks on end. The world seems to be on fire and we’re all seemingly doomed to go to hell in a hand-basket because that’s what we hear… day in and day out!

We face serious problems today. We faced serious problems back in the good “ole” days, too. We found ways to solve them, though. Today, we have unprecedented technological capabilities. We will solve today’s problems, also.

As for the younger generation of OUR era, it will do just fine. They’ll grow up and worry about THEIR “younger” generation just as we did about ours.

Just as we were, they’ll be convinced that their “younger” generation, with all of its drugs, slothfulness, disrespectfulness, academic laziness, sexual depravity, and self-centered whiners, will destroy civilization.

They won’t, though. And, ha ha, what the hell, even if they do, it won’t matter to me, being as how I will have taken the off-ramp to life’s interstate long beforehand.

So, yes, maybe you guys have some problems. I’d stop worrying about them, though, and do something about them. A good start is to stop assuming that everything you hear coming out of Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC is biblically veracious.

It would also pay all of you to remember that Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Keith Olbermann, Al Franken, and all the folks at Air America Radio are 99% wind and water—intrepid windbags as it were.

Oh my God! WAIT a minute. I just realized something. My parents, as well as we youngsters of that era, didn’t have these morons telling us what to think the way that you people do today.

So, yes, I guess you folks DO have something to worry about. Let me just slip out this here side door. Where is Jack Kevorkian when I need him? Anyway, I’ll be back next week. Well, maybe, if you young people don’t destroy all of us before then!.

Joe Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. You may comment on his column by clicking here.