Leadership, continued from page 3
Fritz Bauerschmidt, referring to that photo on the
blog Pray Tell, wrote, “Every Ash Wednesday we are
reminded of our mortality and of our sin, and of the
mysterious connection between them. But yesterday
we were reminded in a particularly horrific way of the
covenant that we have made with dust, the promise
that our race has made to serve death, and the impera-
tive to turn from the covenant of sin and death and
to embrace the covenant
of love and life that
is offered to us in
Jesus Christ. Like
the women in
the picture,
we who are
marked with
mortality
cling to one
another,
and we cling
to the hope
that even the
ashes of death
can be washed
away by the
blood and wa-
ter that flows
from the side
of Christ.”
“Choose life, then, that you
and your descendants may live….”
Lent is a time to listen to the voices that
surround us and make choices that lead to life and
growth—for ourselves and for others. What are the
voices that surround us? Gratefully, many of them
right now are high school students. They have had
enough and they are speaking out, and I pray that they
keep speaking until we hear them and respond with
change. We have the power to choose.
I invite you to listen to some of the many who have
and continue to speak out.
They say that criminals get guns no matter what
laws you have in place. That might be true, but we
don’t have to encourage them to get those guns. We can
make it harder...and we can prevent some seriously
nasty crimes and some seriously indescribable trag-
edies from occurring. And if somebody doesn’t want to
4 • The New Wine Press • March 2018
do that at this point, that’s pathetic.… We keep telling
them that if they accept this blood money, they are
against the children.... You’re either funding the killers,
or you’re standing with the children. The children who
have no money. We don’t have jobs, so we can’t pay for
your campaign. We would hope that you have the de-
cent morality to support us at this point.… Every single
person up here today, all these people should be home
grieving. But instead we are up here standing together
because if all our govern-
ment and President
can do is send
thoughts
and
prayers,
then it’s
time for
victims to
be the change
that we need
to see.…In
Florida, to buy
a gun you do not
need a permit,
you do not need a
gun license, and once
you buy it you do not
need to register it. You do
not need a permit to carry a con-
cealed rifle or shotgun. You can buy
as many guns as you want at one time.
(Emma Gonzalez, Parkland)
It’s absolutely terrifying, the fact that he immedi-
ately got up and started talking about how gun control
is not the solution. Every answer is the solution at this
point because we haven’t tried any of them.… If you
can’t get elected without taking money from child mur-
derers, why are you running?… We’ve seen a govern-
ment shutdown, we’ve seen tax reform, but nothing to
save our children’s lives. Are you kidding me? You think
now is the time to focus on the past and not the future
to prevent the deaths of thousands of other children?
You sicke