Leadership
The Power to Choose by Fr. Richard Bayuk, c. pp. s., Vice-provincial Director
Christopher de Vinck in his book, The Power of the Powerless, tells the following story. He writes:
One spring afternoon my five-year-old son David and I were planting raspberry bushes along the side of the garage. A neighbor joined us for a few moments. David pointed to ground.“ Look, Daddy! What’ s that?” I stopped talking with my neighbor and looked down.“ A beetle,” I said. David was impressed and pleased with the discovery of this fancy, colorful creature. My neighbor lifted his foot and stepped on the insect, giving his shoe an extra twist in the dirt.“ That ought to do it,” he laughed. David looked up at me, waiting for an explanation, a reason. That night, just before I turned off the light in his bedroom, David whispered,“ I liked that beetle, Daddy.”“ I did too,” I whispered back.
De Vinck concludes the story by saying,“ We have the power to choose.”
Yes, we do. In the first reading for Thursday after Ash Wednesday, we heard Moses speaking to his people:“ Today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and doom.… I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the Lord, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him.”
Just three months ago I wrote the following words, referring to comments made by someone after the Las Vegas shooting in which he called those deaths the price of freedom:“ I fear it has become the freedom to not give a darn. A few tweets about prayers for the victims and then on with life. Really caring about this would require a commitment to solve the problem. A very serious problem we have with gun violence.… More than 33,000 people die from gun violence in this county each year. This will continue. As will the hand-wringing and the unwillingness to address the problem.… I don’ t expect anything to happen soon, if ever. Until it does, we will witness more of the same carnage. And tweets about‘ thoughts and prayers’ and the‘ price of freedom.’”
Universal background checks( not yet a reality) were then and are now supported by a huge majority of Americans( 97 % in Quinnipiac poll on 2-20-18; the same poll showed 66 % support for stricter gun laws, the highest ever). The nra is no longer an organization that advocates and educates for responsible gun ownership and use. It is instead primarily a powerful lobbying group for the companies that manufacture weapons, giving millions of dollars to help elect( and control) politicians.( An aside:
2 • The New Wine Press • March 2018