One Year

Today is the first anniversary of the death of my father, Robert. In your charity, kindly say a prayer for the repose of his soul. It is a good and beneficial thing to pray for the dead, that they might be loosed from their sins and come at last to their eternal happiness with our Father in Heaven.

“Then he would have contribution made; a sum of twelve thousand silver pieces he levied, and sent it to Jerusalem, to have sacrifice made there for the guilt of their dead companions. Was not this well done and piously? Here was a man kept the resurrection ever in mind; he had done fondly and foolishly indeed, to pray for the dead, if these might rise no more, that once were fallen! And these had made a godly end; could he doubt, a rich recompense awaited them? A holy and wholesome thought it is to pray for the dead, for their guilt’s undoing.”
- 2 Maccabees 12:43-46

Change the Clocks

"Do we even still need daylight savings time?" my sister asked.

"Only in the Fall," I replied.

Bury Me, Don't Burn Me

One advantage to finally building our own church is that we now have a property where we can house our own cemetery. One chap at the parish was able to bury his mother in the chapel cemetery last year.

Jason had previously bought a plot in the Catholic section of an existing Atlanta cemetery – Arlington, which is a nice location - so after burying his mother at St. Michael’s he attempted to sell the purchased plot: he contacted quite a few parishes in the area to let them know there was this plot at Arlington for sale if anyone was interested.

The overwhelming response he received - from the priests, married deacons, and bereavement committees - was “we don't do that anymore” (i.e. bury the dead).

The reason? They are now actively encouraging cremation and are building cremation walls (i.e. “columbariums” with niches for urns) at their churches.

Modernism is the new paganism.

A Card to Remember

This morning Gail was ringing me up at the grocery store checkout counter when she spied the mother's birthday card I'd selected.

"Everyone's mother's birthday seems to be this month," Gail said.

"January sixth," I replied. "And she should get her card on time too."

Gail laughed. As she was bagging me up, she said, "Now don't forget your card!"

"It's funny you would say that," I said. "I bought this exact same card on Saturday, but when I got home it wasn't in the bag."

After a brief exchange we determined that I'd left it in the shopping cart in the parking lot.

Gail turned to her manager, who was standing just behind her, and asked if a birthday card had been found on Saturday. The manager looked up from the checklist on her clipboard and asked, "Was it a blue card?"

Hopeful, I said, "Yes -- in fact, I just bought the same exact card right here." The manager smiled and nodded.

"Can I take it off?" Gail asked.

"Yep," the manager replied, returning to her clipboard.

Gail reversed the charge for the birthday card. I gave her a big smile and said thank you.

If you're ever shopping at the Publix on Rucker Road in Alpharetta, drop in and tell Gail hi for me and mom.

Love of the Father

The Catholic Faith began with a family -- Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. The same Faith continues much as a family, which is why our parish priests are addressed as Fathers, and our religious men and women are addressed as Brothers and Sisters.

"Honor your father and your mother, that you may be long lived upon the land which the Lord your God will give you." - Exodus 20:12

"Call none your father upon earth; for one is your father, who is in heaven." - Matthew 23:9

We have a Father in Heaven, who suffers no rival -- "I am the Lord your God, mighty, jealous..." (Exodus 20:5)

To the extent we place something created in God's place and make that our primary frame of reference, we violate the admonition of Christ to call none on earth our father (cf. St. Matthew's Gospel above). That place is reserved for the Almighty.

To the extent we show honor and obedience for our parents and guardians and teachers and patrons and governors and officials, we exercise the virtue of justice, which is to render to a man all that is owed him. In so doing we practice suitable proportionate honor (cf. Exodus above).

Our goal is to have nothing in our soul contrary to the Divine will -- no undue attachment that would leave us subject to a creature or created thing, or that would cause us to act out of love for an inferior cause as if it were our chief purpose.

Veteran Relatives

Three of my Great Uncles served in WWII.

Cyril F. Wehrkamp
* January 21, 1922 - November 8, 1944 (age 22)
* Served with the 318th Infantry Division, Company C in France under General Patton.
* He was killed in France just before the Battle of the Bulge.
* He was awarded the Meritorious Service Award and the Purple Heart.
* Buried in the St. Aloysius Catholic Cemetery, Carthegena, OH.

Frederick ("Bud") W. Wehrkamp
* Great Uncle Bud was my grandmother's twin brother.
* September 8, 1924 – January 8, 1954 (age 30)
* Entered the Air Force and served in the Pacific Theatre of War with the 5th Air Force.
* Was wounded several times and was awarded the Purple Heart.
* Dad said it was the war wounds that eventually caused his death.
* Buried in the St. Aloysius Catholic Cemetery, Carthegena, OH.

Cletus J. Wehrkamp
* August 3, 1919 – July 2, 1978 (age 58)
* Served in the U.S. Army December 6, 1941 - March 31, 1963.
* Great Uncle Cletus took officer training at Ft. Monmouth, New Jersey, and was stationed in Vint Hill, VA and England, Italy, Japan, Korea, Turkey, and Germany.
* He died at Walter Reed Hospital in 1978 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery (grave 884, section 65 on Marshall Drive).

That part of the family is German Catholic (with a Prussian army officer thrown in to boot). The various German families came to the States in the 1840s and 1850s and settled for the most part in Ohio.

My father’s father also served in the US Air Force in WWII. He was a bombardier navigator on a B24 that flew sorties over Germany and took out oil refineries. My grandpa blew up Nazis.

In your charity, kindly remember the repose of the souls of these veterans this Veteran's Day.

He Should Have Been a Surgeon

My father made it through his surgery this morning; he’s home resting and recuperating now. He’s in a bit of pain, so he’s on some strong pain killers. He’s bed-bound after years of dealing with Multiple Sclerosis, and he’s frequently in and out of the hospital. I try to get down to see him and to help my mother and brother when I can. In this case the surgery was non-emergency, but serious enough (especially given his frailty) that they had to knock him out. With the additional logistical problems caused by yesterday’s storms, it turned out to be good that I was present.

Mom’s a champ, and dad’s heroic about it; I try to provide relief when I can, even just to lighten the mood. Case in point: with the power outage, mom couldn’t find the power of attorney paperwork she needed to sign for dad for his surgery, so the nurse had him sign his own forms. With his MS dad can barely hold a pen, let alone sign anything, so his John Hancock was just a faint scribble on the signature line.

"Dad, with a signature like that, you should have been a doctor," I told him.

"A surgeon," he said.

You see where I get it from.

Holy Family Update

In this post I sent out an appeal on behalf of the Holy Family assisted living facility in Idaho. Sad to say, the facility was not able to raise the needed funds, and is closing effective April 1.

Please pray that the residents who were living there are able to find accommodations elsewhere in a timely manner. And pray our Lord and Lady bless the dedicated workers who in their charity did what they could to care for the elderly.

St. Mary's Jog-a-Thon

The students of St. Mary's Academy in St. Marys, Kansas is conducting a jog-a-thon fund-raiser. The school needs new roofs, alarm systems, and other safety improvements.

This year's jog-a-thon will be in mid-April. Each lap is 1/4 mile. Students have one hour to run or walk. Students average 8-15 laps walking and 25-35 laps running.

You can donate a Pledge Per Lap from $0.25 to any amount, and the school will send you a card with your total pledge results. Or contribute a one-time donation now.

Contributions will be used for repairs and remodeling of several buildings, as well as other grounds upkeep and improvement requirements on our beautiful historic campus.

Send donations to:
St. Mary's Academy and College
P.O. Box 159
St. Marys, KS 66536

Or donate online at www.smac.edu and please specify our names when donating in either fashion.

Thank you and may God bless you for your donation.

One More Eagle

Today young Everett was formally recognized as an Eagle Scout. I was able to attend the Boy Scout ceremony in picturesque Helen, GA.

As a lad I'd made it to the rank of a Cub Scout WeBeLoS myself -- received my Arrow of Light, earned a gold and four silver arrows as a Wolf and again as a Bear. By then my own interests had turned more towards sports, especially soccer, but I still have happy memories of my scouting years.

A few years ago Everett asked me to be his sponsor for his Confirmation, which I was glad to do.

Congratulations to Everett for twelve years of persistence and hard work.

Appeal from Holy Family

Appeal from Holy Family Adult Care Home in Post Falls, ID

Holy Family Adult Care Home in Post Falls provides a traditional Catholic assisted living facility affiliated with the SSPX. Recent Medicaid cuts in Idaho and other circumstances have left the foundation with a shortfall of funds, and they have sent out an appeal for help (see their letter below). In you charity, kindly remember this matter in your prayers.

=======

January 14, 2011

Dear Benefactors,

Fr. Granges not only gave us permission, but advised us to write this letter because this assisted living facility is in financial difficulty. He believes that it is God’s will that we continue this work of mercy because so much good has been done.

We have had two conversions and a potential conversion by a resident who daily prays the rosary with the other residents, and gets a weekly blessing from Fr. Haynos when he brings the Sacraments. We also advise on end-of-life decisions from a traditional Catholic perspective.

Due to unforeseen circumstances and Idaho Medicaid cuts, we have raised the monthly resident rates, but it is not enough to absorb our monthly expenses. If we do not receive $25,000.00 within the next two weeks, we will have to close our home It is also realistic to say that $10,000.00 will be needed monthly above the income from our residents to keep our home in operation. This will help offset the cost of those residents on Medicaid who cannot afford any out of pocket healthcare costs.

We have given our heart and soul into the care of our residents and the success of the facility, but we cannot provide charitable work without the community of the faithful.

We are hopeful that you will make an immediate donation and return the enclosed pledge card to help support this work of mercy.

We are a non-profit corporation and your contributions are tax deductible under Internal Revenue Code 501 (c) (3).

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Administrator

Holy Family Adult Care Home
816 N. Brigger Ave.
Post Falls, ID 83854

Email: HolyFamilyHome1 at verizon.net

Let's Scrabble

I asked Dad whether I should bring his Scrabble board with me when I returned to the hospital to see him tomorrow.

He gave me an incredulous look.

"I fully expect to be trounced," I said.

"As you should," he replied.

Dad's Arena

The Scrabble board is an arena where Dad consistently excels. Colleagues routinely reach for a dictionary when he speaks; his gift for writing is likewise extraordinary.

"Did you know that 'Aa' is a word?" he asked.

"Do you mean as an acronym for Alcholics Anonymous?"

"No, it's a Hawaiin word for a type of volcanic rock."

"Has it made its way into the the standard American lexicon?"

"I don't know, but it is in the Scrabble official dictionary."

"Great," I said.

"The letters 'Ae' and 'Ai' are also words in the dictionary," he concluded.

Upon returning home I confirmed that "Ae" is a Scottish word meaning one and "Ai" is a word for a three-toed sloth. All are considered standard English.

I'm gonna get creamed.

Weekend with Dad

The Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

I spent the weekend visiting my father in the hospital. I think he'd rather be doing just about anything else than sitting around a hospital room for 4-6 weeeks, but he's a trooper about it.

For example, the hospital staff likes him, and yesterday one nurse bragged on him when she told me that Dad was her best patient.

"Wow, you must really have a lot of bad patients," Dad interjected.

You see where I get it from.

Longinque Oceani

Source

"As for what more closely touches spiritual interests, which are based upon the exercise of Christian virtues, many facts have been brought to Our notice, whereby We are animated with hope and filled with joy, namely, that the numbers of the secular and regular clergy are steadily augmenting, that pious sodalities and confraternities are held in esteem, that the Catholic parochial schools, the Sunday-schools for imparting Christian doctrine, and summer schools are in a flourishing condition; moreover, associations for mutual aid, for the relief of the indigent, for the promotion of temperate living, add to all this the many evidences of popular piety.

The main factor, no doubt, in bringing things into this happy state were the ordinances and decrees of your synods, especially of those which in more recent times were convened and confirmed by the authority of the Apostolic See. But, moreover (a fact which it gives pleasure to acknowledge), thanks are due to the equity of the laws which obtain in America and to the customs of the well-ordered Republic. For the Church amongst you, unopposed by the Constitution and government of your nation, fettered by no hostile legislation, protected against violence by the common laws and the impartiality of the tribunals, is free to live and act without hindrance...

Nor, perchance did the fact which We now recall take place without some design of divine Providence. Precisely at the epoch when the American colonies, having, with Catholic aid, achieved liberty and independence, coalesced into a constitutional Republic the ecclesiastical hierarchy was happily established amongst you; and at the very time when the popular suffrage placed the great Washington at the helm of the Republic...

From Our knowledge of the American character, We are fully confident that the example set by this noble man will incite others of your citizens to imitate him; they will not fail to realize that liberality exercised towards such an object will be repaid by the very greatest advantages to the public...

All intelligent men are agreed, and We Ourselves have with pleasure intimated it above, that America seems destined for greater things. Now, it is Our wish that the Catholic Church should not only share in, but help to bring about, this prospective greatness. We deem it right and proper that she should, by availing herself of the opportunities daily presented to her, keep equal step with the Republic in the march of improvement, at the same time striving to the utmost, by her virtue and her institutions, to aid in the rapid growth of the States...”

– Pope Leo XIII, Longinque Oceani, January 6, 1885

Thanks to Ed Waggoner Sr. for the tip.

Important to Whom?

I was having lunch one day with a woman who said that her mother was struggling to find meaning in her life after the youngest child in the family had gone off to college.

"My mother has nothing in her life to give her value," she said, slurping on a straw. "She's never done anything of real meaning."

I haven't chatted again with this individual, in part because I wonder how much I'd enjoy another conversation with someone so obtusely selfish.

The mother in this case had been the stay-at-home variety who'd looked after several children -- which meant that there were a number of years when the mother was the most important person in the world to a bunch of little ones. That one of the little ones would grow up to be the oblivious individual sitting across the table from me was disappointing -- after all, it's sad when a person looks on others as existing mostly to gratify one's ego, but to escape adolescence and still be thinking that way about your own mother? What a clueless way to go through life.

High Tory

The High Tory is a Brit (or sometimes a Canadian) who is pro-tradition, conservative, suspicious of novelty, and prone to sound like an aristocrat even when the family line is mongrel stock. In my experience he is given to magniloquent utterances. His natural sympathies are with gentry and landowners, whether patrician or plebian; his antithesis is the modern democratic mobile money-grubbing capitalist devoid of pedigree, heritage, or a sense of place.

Jolly Old England (rooted in an Englishman’s perception of an Englishman) gave way to the Englishman of The Stiff Upper Lip (rooted in an American’s perception of an Englishman), and (national perceptions aside) I’ve yet to read a satisfactory account of what precipitated the change. One possibility* is the influence of the pessimist Thomas Malthus, who married English economic notions with un-provable assertions about the probabilities of species survival. Malthusian economics produced new miseries for the poor with the approbation of men of means, who were excused from alleviating the sufferings of the lower class. Darwin, for the record, adored Malthus.

In my time I’ve come across pro-monarchy Americans who aspire to High Tory-dom (in sentiment if not in name). I don’t mind the phenomenon – it can be quaint in its own way, except for when the would-be monarchists are also sycophant Anglophiles. In that case you can forget the English charm.

During one online exchange I had with such a chap -- he was berating America and Americans not ashamed of their country** -- I declared that America is the best country in the history of the world, and if you don’t feel the same way about your country, why not? A string of sanctimonious salvos and smug barbs were promptly directed my way. I looked in vain for examples of British orthography in the assault, but the cavilling (sic) used only the uncivilized American spellings. Go figure.

For the record, as St. Thomas More is the patron of my confirmation, I hope to be excused at least of harboring anti-English sentiments as such.

Old Glory First Hoisted
Flying High Above the Union Jack

* This theory of causation is just speculative, no doubt idle, on my part.
** Patriotism in that particular venue was permitted only as a banal platitude, and then only if accompanied by numerous qualifiers and energetic hand-wringing to soften the effect. In my critic’s view, my unreserved love of country made me worse than a socialist. Bother.

God Bless the USA

This rendition of God Bless the USA was performed by Anthony DeLallo, the son/nephew/cousin of some friends of mine -- see Anthony's YouTube Video.

It turns out Anthony has one of these surprise good voices -- i.e. a few years ago he opened his mouth to sing something, and everyone around him sat up and took notice. He's been singing ever since, and has produced a few music CDs along the way.

Letter #3: Kith and Kin

In March 2007 the Beacon published an op-ed piece favoring expedition of the naturalization of illegal immigrants on economic grounds. My response was published the next week.

Here are links to the originals:
* Original Article: p. 34 of http://beaconcast.com/downloads/20070703_5
* My Response: p. 29 of http://beaconcast.com/downloads/20070703_6

Below is my letter.

=======

Do economics trump kith and kin?

Kith and kin specifically means “near acquaintances and relatives.” Frequently the phrase is used to describe a more or less cohesive group with whom one shares common language, customs, and history. Down to my bones, I have affection and gratitude for my country, my family, my faith: I can’t imagine who I would be without them.

Urging me, as do Joseph Davis and Bernard Lobracco, that I should put all this aside and endorse putting the naturalization of illegal immigrants on the fast-track because it is good for the economy is comparable to telling me that the most important factor in choosing a wife is to find a woman with prospects for a large fortune.

Thanks for the dime-store wisdom, but my heart is not up for the bidding; neither am I a mercenary who would sell out my heritage just to make a buck. There’s an opportunity cost to reducing all considerations to dollars and cents: the most valuable commodities life has to offer are always lost in the exchange.

Where to Put the Books?

The downstairs of the townhouse is one open room with a counter separating the kitchen from the dining and living areas. I can work in the kitchen and still carry on a conversation while company reclines in the living room.

Today I acquired a nice collection of hardback books, sent by my grandmother. The books belonged to my grandfather; I'll be installing some new bookshelves (probably upstairs in the office or master bedroom) to hold this heirloom collection.