Morning Reflections

Living alone, I read during breakfast. During Lent and Advent, I read the PaxChristiUSA reflections. For Thursday this week, the scripture verse is “Tend to the Flock of God in our midst.” 1 Peter 5:2. Brayton Shanley of the Agape community writes about college student interns searching for deeper meaning as parents and schools stress occupational and financial success.

What immediately crosses my mind are thoughts of students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Despite the fantasies of the right wing, my guess is that lots of these students were not single-mindedly dedicating their lives to any political cause – and then the threat to their own lives and the deaths of friends and teachers was a “St. Paul on the way to Damascus” moment. I am sure they are permanently and deeply changed as they address the loss of life in their community, and they are bringing along many other young people to say this must cease. It does remind me of the growth of opposition to the Viet Nam war, many seeing their friends return from a questionable war maimed or dead.

In this case, there is no higher purpose to the carnage. A troubled person was allowed lethal weapons. Yes, this must cease. But what is to be done?

After I finish my Pax Christi reflections each morning, I read The Nation magazine, a sudden transition of thought and feeling. Today it is Patricia J. Williams’ “Shooting Students.” This article was written before Parkland and addresses training of teachers to shoot guns. Williams writes,

In addition to target practice, one day of the training is devoted to “mindset development,” or bolstering teachers’ preparedness to shoot after split-second assessments. Trainees are asked “to close their eyes and imagine the student entering the classroom with a gun” and then are taught how to command the grit necessary to kill that student. One teacher from Colorado told the BBC that “she decided to picture her favourite student during the preparation exercises, in an effort to harden herself to the worst possible eventuality.”

This is absolutely horrifying. Can you imagine doing this in any place in which you minister or serve – or even attend or wander through? Williams goes on to report on statistics about what makes people safer from gun violence, and it’s not more guns.

Then I walk to the gym and put on MSNBC while I bike. Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the NRA, is speaking, another odd situation – not the usual fare I expect. LaPierre suggests a national database of those who are barred from purchasing guns anywhere, which surprised me, because I agree with that. Then he warns against the danger of a federal database to personal information and privacy, a concern I also share – but not in this case. Perhaps that’s because my politics tends toward socialism, which LaPierre proceeds to condemn. I’m sure by now you’ve heard the rest of his ideas, which include armed guards in schools. That’s better than armed teachers, I concede. But I prefer schools to be gun-free zones.

America magazine notes that Bishops are issuing similar statements in response to this tragedy. I was especially moved by the statement by my bishop:

Philadelphia’s Archbishop Charles J. Chaput recalled how he met with the family of victims of the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, when he was archbishop of Denver—and he lamented that the response to these kinds of shootings remain static.

“Nineteen years ago I sat with the parents of children murdered in the Columbine High School massacre, and buried some of their dead. Nothing seems to change, no matter how brutal the cost. Terrible things happen; pious statements are released, and the nation goes back to its self-absorbed distractions,” he said in a statement.

“We need to pray for the victims and their families because—as I witnessed firsthand at Columbine—their suffering is intense and long lasting,” he continued. “And we need to be angry: angry at our lawmakers for doing so little to prevent these catastrophes; angry at our news and entertainment media for simultaneously feeding off these tragedies and fueling them with a steady stream of sensationalism and moral incoherence; angry at ourselves for perversely tolerating these things, and then forgetting them until the next round of violence.”

He said stricter gun control is “vital and urgent,” though he said that alone will not solve the problem of violence. “We’ve lost our respect for human life on a much broader scale, and this is the utterly predictable result,” he wrote.

Being close to this suffering makes it real. May the lawmakers from Florida experience this conversion, and may others who are similarly close to violence speak out. Last week I heard Joshua Hazelton, director of trauma research and a trauma surgeon at Cooper University in Camden on Radio Times. He noted that he has to look in the eyes of parents several times a week and explain that their child has been killed by a gun. We need to think about the great tragedy of “everyday” gun violence as well.

It is my hope and prayer that those students who have already experienced a call to change by interning at Agape community will find meaning in a great cause, as those touched by this tragedy have, and that the Bishops, whom I have so often criticized, lead efforts for this pro-life endeavor. Michael J. O’Loughlin in America has a million good ideas. It can be done, and it will make our mornings more peaceful.

Getty Images. Tyra Heman (R) a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, holds a sign that reads, ‘Enough No Guns,’ as she is hugged in front of the school where 17 people that were killed on February 14, on February 19, 2018 in Parkland, Florida.