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Thoughts on the Fourth of July

7/4/2016

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On the Fourth of July—this week—I posted the following on the Internet:

It is July 4th and most Americans celebrate the day as a day of Independence from Great Britain. Do you mind a history lesson?

In Thomas Jeferson's beautiful writing of the Declaration of Independence, the original draft included what has come to be known as the "anti-slavery clause." It read as follows:

"He [King George III] has waged cruel War against human Nature itself, violating its most Sacred Right of Life & Liberty in the Persons of a distant People who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into Slavery in another Hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their Transportation thither. This piratical Warfare, the opprobrium of infidel Powers, is the Warfare of the CHRISTIAN [all caps and underlined in the original draft] King of Great Britain. He has prostituted his Negative for Suppressing every legislative Attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable Commerce, determining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, and that this Assemblage of Horrors might want no Fact of distinguished Die, he is now exciting those very People to rise in Arms among us, and to purchase that Liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former Crimes committed against the Liberties of one People, with Crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another."

I wonder if this was Jefferson at all. It seems much more like John Adams' style and conviction to me. For, in the declaration debate, Edward Rutledge of South Carolina threatened that South Carolina, joined by North Carolina and Georgia, would fight on King George’s side unless “the offending passage be removed.” John Adams warned that, if the passage were removed, then we would fight another war within a few generations over that very issue of slavery.

Jefferson caved in. The passage was stricken from the text. For over half a million of our brothers and sisters, “Independence Day” was a cruel joke. It was not a day of liberation but a day when slavery and bigotry were entrenched in the laws and minds of a new nation.

No wonder I can’t find any good jazz tunes that celebrate July 4th. For the great African-American jazz artists and all of our African-American brothers and sisters, there is nothing to be joyful about.

The realization that must dawn on "white" America that American History IS Black History. The first permanent colony in North America was the Jamestown colony in Virginia which was settled in 1607. The first African slaves arrived there in 1619. Only 12 years after the settlement... and... one year BEFORE the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts.

The African slaves arrived before your ancestors did.

You can now go back to your hot dogs and beer…

I was not expecting what followed. Within seconds I began receiving messages and comments from old classmates, former students, and dear friends.

One former student, Kevin, simply wrote “Drop the mic.”

Another, nicknamed Trey, replied with “I am, and always will be, proud to be a White Christian American although I'm often pre-judged as such. Happy ID!!!!”

My answer to him was “Nobody is suggesting that you should NOT be proud to be who you are. As my friends say, ‘Pro-Black does not mean anti-white.’ Isn't it possible to be pro-everyone? I'd like to think that I am.”

My friend Vincent quoted Theodore Roosevelt with, “Justice consists not in being neutral between right and wrong, but finding out the right and upholding it, wherever found, against the wrong.” Then he followed with a poster reading, “July 4, 1776. While ‘Americans’ were celebrating their independence, Black people were still being beaten, raped, and tortured. While the ‘bombs burst in air’, Africans would still be enslaved for almost 100 more years.”

My old grad school pal, Dr. Gerard O’Sullivan, answered, “Well said. Let's remember to give a shout out to the Quakers. They were excluding slaveholders from membership as early as 1751.”

Then my former student, Cindy Nelson, said this: “I've often wished that Frederick Douglass were required reading every July 4th, right before the anthem and the Pledge, before the music and the food and the fireworks.

'I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. — The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, lowering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.’”

More comments followed but Cindy (and Frederick Douglass) get the last word.

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100 Years of the Sykes-Picot Agreement

5/17/2016

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Today, May 16, 2016, is the one-hundred year anniversary of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Certainly one of the most divisive, even disastrous, documents of the 20th Century.

In 1916, during World War I, France and Britain secretly ratified what came to be called the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which allowed for the post-war partitioning of Arab lands held by the Ottoman Empire.

The outcome of the Great War (World War I) had not even been determined yet when Great Britain, France, and Russia secretly debated and decided how they would carve up the Middle East into "spheres of influence" once World War I was finished. At this point in the war, Germany and the Central Powers were far from beaten. In fact, Russia would be out of the war in just over seven months.

The Ottoman Empire, however, had been on the decline for over two hundred years before the war. They were referred to as “the sick man of Europe.” Like vultures, the European powers were circling and were ready to carve up the vast spoils of the Empire’s body, once the Ottomans fell to the Allies. Britain and France already had already gained significant interests in the region between Turkey and the Persian Gulf, but the defeat of the Ottoman Turks offered a great deal more. Russia wanted a chunk for themselves.

From November 1915 to March 1916, representatives of Britain and France negotiated their secret agreement, with Russia hat-in-hand to accept whatever was thrown to them. This secret treaty, now known as the Sykes–Picot Agreement, was named after its lead negotiators, the aristocrats Sir Mark Sykes of England and François Georges-Picot of France. In a letter from British foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey to Paul Cambon, France's ambassador to Great Britain, on May 16, 1916 the terms of the agreement were spelled out in detail.

A color-coded partition map and text stated that Britain would be given control over the areas known today as Jordan, southern Iraq and the port of Haifa in Israel. France, on the other hand, would obtain the area that covers modern-day Syria, Lebanon, northern Iraq, including the great city of Mosul, and southeastern Turkey, including Kurdistan. Another area that included Palestine, excluding Haifa and Acre, would become subject to international administration, "the form of which is to be decided upon after consultation with Russia, and subsequently in consultation with the other allies, and the representatives of Sayyid Hussein bin Ali, sharif of Mecca." 

Besides carving the region into British and French "spheres of influence," the arrangement specified specific “commercial relations” and other understandings between them for the Arab lands. Sounds like Dick Cheney and Haliburton Industries, doesn’t it?

The Sykes-Picot Agreement initiated a nine-year process—along with other deals, declarations, and treaties—that created the modern Middle East states out of the Ottoman Empire’s remains. The new borders eventually looked very little like the original Sykes-Picot map but that original map is still viewed as the root cause of much that has happened since.

Russia suffered its own upheaval with the November Revolution and the seizure of power by Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks which created the U.S.S.R. This removed them as partners in the agreement. After all, the terms had been negotiated with Tsarist Russia, not Communist Russia.

The plundering Bolsheviks, however, had discovered the documents of the original agreement in the governmental archives in 1917 and they revealed everything. The British were embarrassed because T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) had been in negotiations with the Arabs. The deal was that the Arabs would be given sovereignty over their own lands in exchange for supporting Britain and the Allies during the war.

In fact, the treaty set aside the establishment of an independent Arab state or confederation of Arab states, contrary to what Lawrence had promised, giving France and Britain the rights to set boundaries within their new spheres of influence, "as they may think fit."

After the successful conclusion of the war, the terms of the agreement were confirmed by the San Remo Conference of 1920 and ratified by the newly-formed League of Nations in 1922. Although Sykes-Picot was intended to draw new borders according to sectarian lines, the simple stupidity and blindness of its straight lines dreadfully failed to understand the actual tribal and ethnic configurations in such a deeply divided region. To put Kurds and Sunnis under the same flag was idiocy.
The Arabs do not hate the West because of religion. Too simplistic. They hate the West because we imposed our will and greed on their lives. And nothing has changed.
 


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Luther After 500 Years

11/3/2015

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Martin Luther has been called “the last medieval man and the first modern one.” Though raised in the distant medieval world of witches and plagues and demons, he has profoundly shaped our own modern world.

Someone once asked Dr. Martin E. Marty, the great church historian, “If Luther were alive today, what would he be writing theses about?”

I find myself wondering if Luther would still be in hot debate with Roman Catholicism today. I realize that the Catholic language of sacrifice in the Mass has remained much the same as it was in Luther’s time. That bothered Luther a great deal. Today’s Catholic understanding of the Mass, however, really isn’t much different than what one would find in most Protestant Communion services. At least, there seems to be a whiff of such an understanding. Perhaps the Roman Catholic Church has simply articulated the message clearer than was understood before.

Furthermore, observing the modern Catholic teachings on Paul’s Letters to the Romans and the Galatians, the Catholic Church pays due attention to the roles of faith and grace, something again central to Luther’s teaching. I think Luther would have been happily smiling at what Catholicism teaches regarding those things today. I don’t think today he would have so great a problem as he did in 1517.

Plus, Vatican Council II truly reformed the Roman Church to a degree that the Council of Trent did not. Trent was a strict lock-down against Luther and the Swiss Reformers. It took 150 years for the Church to cool down. And why not? Luther had led to the fragmentation of the Western Church.

Will there ever be a reunited Western Church? Can the old wounds be healed to the point of reunification within the Western Church? It certainly does not seem probable or even plausible.

What we now have in the western world, indeed globally, are national churches and even independent churches with absolutely no eye towards a central authority within the Church. There is a reason that the Church of England is called by that name. The African Methodist-Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church has its own rich culture and history that has never known connection with the church in Rome.

These church denominations at least have dioceses that have some accountability and authority as a group. The non-denominational or independent churches, however, are (in many cases) strictly autonomous and without submission or accountability to anyone. Once a group or an individual has experienced that type of independence, it is difficult imagining them returning to a place of submission to a hierarchy.

Can there at least be meaningful dialogue and fruitful cooperation? Most assuredly, it happens already. Especially with Pope Francis who has reached out to Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, Judaism and Islam. Francis has championed forgiveness with as much fervor as Martin Luther did. That may be Luther’s longest legacy—the triumph of forgiveness.

Luther also stands as the greatest single factor in increasing the value of the individual. What eventually emerges from Luther and the Enlightenment Period is a new kind of individual. That made democratic government possible. The role of the single voter, the single voice, is critical to modern democracies. This, of course, is under assault in our time with the cacophonous voices of the corporations raised in opposition to the individual. If Luther were alive now, he would nail a new 95 Theses to the doors of CitiGroup.

Along with that, Luther contributed to the rising status of women. Sure, he was patriarchal but we must remember not to judge people outside the context of their time and—for his day—Luther was progressive. He simply assumed that girls, along with boys, should be taught the catechism. In that regard, he anticipated co-education by a couple of hundred years.
He insisted that marriage was just as important a vocation as monasticism, and in that he accorded greater status to a woman’s role in marriage. Like the samurai of Japan, he believed in the authority of the environment. Women were certainly superior in the home. And Luther was married to and proud of a woman (the former nun, Katarina von Bora) who was, in effect, the treasurer, manager, and administrator of a rather complex business—the informal boarding house that the Luthers kept in the old monastery.

Speaking of Luther’s concept of vocation, he highlighted the connection between the gospel of forgiveness and vocation and, if that connection were understood properly, guilt and worry would diminish. Luther taught that each day is a new start. We are not shackled by what was nor are haunted by our future. Again, Luther and Francis would be teaching from the same viewpoint.

Finally, Luther and Pope Francis both teach us not to try to gain God on God’s own level but on the human level. We see God as in a cloud chamber of particle physics—not seen directly, but seen in effects on the world around us. As Luther said, “we must be content to see, not the face, but the hind parts of God.”
 

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Regarding "Reformation Day" -- Part Two

11/3/2015

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After Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses, he got more than the simple scholarly debate that he had hoped to initiate. The wheels of the church machine ground slowly but academia moved a little faster.

A debate was scheduled between the Dominican friar (and well-respected scholar) Johann Eck and Andreas Carlstadt, a friend and colleague of Martin Luther. It would become known as the Leipzig Debate, having taken place in June and July of 1519 at Pleissenburg Castle in Leipzig, Germany. The public debate concerned the doctrines of free will and grace. At least, it was supposed to.

Eck had devoted his life to the defending of Catholic doctrine against heresy. Luther and Carlstadt should have known the accusations that would arise during the debate.

Eck invited  Luther to join the debate and, when Luther arrived in July, he and Eck expanded the terms of the debate to include issues such as the existence of purgatory, the sale of indulgences (the original argument of the 95 Theses), the need for and practice of penance, and the extend and legitimacy of papal authority.

Eck was a brilliant debater and those skills allowed him to corner Luther into open admissions of what the Roman Catholic Church considered heresy. Luther declared that sola scriptura (scripture alone) was the basis of Christian belief and that the Pope had limited power since he was not mentioned in the Bible. He, of course, condemned the sale of indulgences to the laity to reduce their time in purgatory, as there was no mention of purgatory in the Bible.

For the very first time, Luther declared his belief that popes, theologians, the Curia, even Church Councils were all subject to error. Only Scripture could be counted on as the supreme authority in matters of faith and morals. This was the revolutionary moment. Sides were taken by theological faculties, priests, princes, monks and nuns.

Luther, however, continued to support the papacy as an institution ordained by God. He simply disagreed with the extent of the pope’s authority. That wouldn’t last long.

The debate led Pope Leo X di Medici to censor Luther, threatening him with excommunication from the Catholic Church in the June, 1520, papal declaration, Exsurge Domine, which banned Luther's views from being preached or written. It was a papal gag order. For Martin Luther, however, it was a declaration of theological war.

In 1520, Luther published three monumental works collectively known as The Three Treatises: To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and On the Freedom of a Christian.

In The Christian Nobility of the German Nation, written in August of 1520, Luther outlined the doctrine of the “Priesthood of all believers” and denied the authority of the Pope to interpret, or confirm interpretation of, the Bible.

On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (October, 1520) was a frontal assault on Pope Leo X and his interpretation of the sacraments of the Church. Luther stated that the Eucharistic cup should be restored to the laity. [The church of that era had only allowed the laity to take of the bread and not the cup] He further stated his opposition to the doctrine of transubstantiation (that the Eucharistic wine physically becomes the blood of Christ) called it a late addition to Church doctrine. [It was adopted at Lateran Council IV in 1215.]

On the Freedom of a Christian (November, 1520) further discussed the justification by faith alone. In it, Luther writes, "A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all."

Those Treatises fanned the firestorm. In January 3, 1521, Pope Leo X excommunicated Luther in the papal document, Decet Romanum. Three months later, Luther was called to defend his beliefs before the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms, where he was famously defiant. For his refusal to retract his writings and recant his beliefs, Charles V declared him an outlaw and a heretic.

Fortunately for Luther, he was supported by powerful German princes. Frederick III, Elector Prince of Saxony, arranged a “kidnapping” of Luther and took Luther to the Wartburg Castle for his own safety. While at the Wartburg, Luther works on a translation of the Bible into German and publishes his New Testament translation in 1522. The Old Testament translation was published later in 1534. That document, the German New Testament, became the standard for what is now the Modern German language.

Luther expanded his teachings to include such revolutionary ideas as the mass being held in the vernacular of the people, the Bible in the language of the people, congregational singing, and a married clergy. In 1961, Pope John XXIII walked over to the Vatican windows and, throwing them open, is said to have declared, “It is time to let in some fresh air.” The next year, he convened Vatican Council II. The results of Vatican II included three out of four of Luther’s revolutionary ideas—all but the married clergy.

Sadly, Luther’s revolution was not limited to one new denomination. Even in Luther’s own lifetime, he witnessed the breakaway of the Swiss Reformers (like Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin), Henry VIII’s “English Reformation” and, later, John Knox’s Scottish Reformation.

The fragmenting was like breaking glass. It continues today, causing many to declare that “Luther was the best thing to happen to the church and the worst thing.”

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Regarding "Reformation Day" -- Part 1

11/3/2015

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Reformation Day is celebrated every October 31 in Lutheran and many of other Protestant Churches across the globe. It is often commemorated as the day when the Western Church (the Roman Catholic Church) was fragmented again. Whereas the A.D./C.E. 1054 split between the Eastern and Western Churches remained relatively stagnant for five centuries, the fracture of the Reformation was a seismic event whose aftershocks are still felt today.

It began so innocently. Dr. Martin Luther, professor of theology at Wittenberg University and Augustinian friar, was disappointed, even disgusted, by something that was going on locally in Germany. He did not intend to rupture the Church, he only intended to correct an abuse within it.

Luther has been called “the best thing and the worst thing to happen to the Church.” You may see why.

In 1517, Archbishop Albert of Mainz had finished borrowed vast sums of money to pay for his church positions. He was a Prince Elector of Mainz which means he was one of the German princes who actually elected the Holy Roman Emperor. [Voltaire said “The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman.” It was actually a German Empire until Napoleon finished it off in 1806. Yeah, Napoleon.] But then he bought the position of Archbishop of Magdeburg. This was a common occurrence in the Middle Ages and was the topic of furious debate. It was called “simony” from the Acts of the Apostles (8:9-24) account of Simon Magus attempting to buy the power of exorcism.

Not only did he buy his position as Archbishop of Magdeburg in 1513, the next year he bought the office of Archbishop of Main even though this was prohibited by canon law. In 1518, he became a cardinal at the age of 28.

He owed Jakob Fugger, a German mining merchant and banker, over 20,000 gold ducats for the purchases of his elevations. To repay his debts, he petitioned Pope Leo X (di Medici) to sell indulgences in Mainz.

Indulgences were completely legal according to law and doctrine within the Roman Catholic Church. According to the Roman Catechism, an indulgence is a “remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints." In other words, indulgences got you out of acts of penance. They were usually not sold but were dispensed for benefits and actions benefiting the church.

Enter Johann Tetzel. Tetzel was a Dominican friar who had also been a Grand Inquisitor in Poland. He was known for selling indulgences for money. This was the one who would be used by Albert of Mainz to raise money—through the sale of indulgences—to repay Jakob Fugger.

Tetzel, however, was not just selling indulgences—which was not beyond the acceptance of church—for getting out of penance. Tetzel began to sell indulgences as a guarantee against future sins. As in going to confession and, before the priest can pronounce penance, waving the indulgence through the screen and sneering at the priest.

Even more, it became a means, Tetzel proclaimed, of getting out of purgatory early. Tetzel had a chant that sounded something like, “When a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs!” Mothers would buy indulgences to rescue dead children from purgatory or even for children who died unbaptized who were supposed to be in limbo.

Prince Frederick the Wise and Prince George of Saxony refused to allow such sales to go on in their provinces but the masses would simply travel Mainz to obtain the indulgences. Such people believed that these certificates granted them forgiveness of sins and began refusing to go to confessions.

Martin Luther reacted. As a professor of theology, he was incensed by the improper use of such instruments and for “buying with coin what God has already freely given.” Furthermore, it was being taught that the veneration of relics would bestow release of penance and even forgive sins.

Luther’s own prince, Frederick the Wise, was said to have had 19,000 relics. Relics which ranged from a vial of the Virgin Mary’s breast milk to a nail from the cross of Christ to straw from the manger of Jesus. There were so many frauds that Luther was said to have remarked, “I have seen five shin-bones from the donkey that carried Jesus into Jerusalem, enough nails from the cross to make a suit of armor and enough beams from the cross to build a ship!”

The grace made available to humanity through the offices and sacraments of the Church were precious to Luther, too precious to sit silently while they were being mishandled and abused.

On the night before All Saints’ Day—on the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg—Martin Luther nailed a placard with 95 statements on indulgences, simony and the wealth of Church officials. It became known as The 95 Theses. On the same day, Luther mailed copies to Albert of Mainz and his own superior, the Bishop of Brandenburg.

It was never in Luther’s mind to break with the Church or even to stop the sale of indulgences. What he wanted was a wholesome, scholarly debate. What he got was the Protestant Revolution.

Keep that in mind. It really should not even be called the Reformation. Only the Roman Catholic Church could reform itself. Once Luther was excommunicated and was, effectively, outside the Church, all that was left was revolution.

End of Part One.

 
 
 

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Paderewski of Poland

1/15/2014

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I was a teacher of history and theology for many years so I am always aware of what makes this or that date significant. As I thought about January 15, so many events come to mind. The easiest, of course, is the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.—a lifelong hero of mine. However, he is always in my thoughts and weighs heavily on my writings. So, I decided to go for something a little less well-known.

On January 15, 1922, Michael Collins became the first prime minister of the Free State of Ireland. In 1961, the Supremes signed to Motown Records. I could go on and on about either of those and so many other events. For me, however, one of the most interesting and touching stories comes from this date in 1919. So, let me set the scene.

Ignacy Jan Paderewski was a Polish pianist and composer born in the Russian Empire in 1860. His mother died only months after his birth and his father was arrested by Russian authorities in 1863. Young Ignacy was adopted by an aunt who provided piano lessons for him.

Eventually, he won a scholarship to the conservatory in Warsaw. He was a brilliant student and showed signs of brilliant performance and even composition.

He married in 1880 but his own dear wife died not long after the birth of their son. He devoted his life to music and continued studying with various masters. His talents made him wildly popular as a concert pianist. His fame grew so far and wide that one critic, upon hearing Paderewski perform, remarked, “He plays well, I suppose, but he is no Paderewski.”

His compositions were well-received and respected, from sonatas to an opera. He went to the United States to perform and see his own compositions performed by American musicians and opera companies.  

While in America, however, World War I erupted all over Europe. He bought an estate in California and lived as an exile.

Far from remaining aloof from politics, he joined or founded several organizations dedicated to the relief and independence of Poland. He became an active member of the Polish National Committee in Paris which was soon accepted by the Allies as the representative of the movement to create the state of Poland.


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His music allowed him to move to and fro across borders and he became the chief ambassador for Polish independence in the middle of the European conflagration. He formed other social and political organizations, including the Polish Relief Fund of London.

In his travels to the U.S., he met with President Woodrow Wilson and played a key role in achieving the explicit inclusion of an independent Poland as point number thirteen in Wilson’s Fourteen Points, the peace terms that would guide him in the treaty conference following the cessation of hostilities in 1918 and would became the principles of the Treaty of Versailles which concluded World War I.

Before that treaty was adopted, however, the city of Poznan and the whole region of Wielkopolska (Greater Poland) remained in German hands and the fate of the region was still in the balance. Paderewski decided to visit the city of Poznan and gave a rousing speech to the inhabitants on December 27, 1918. An uprising ensued against the German occupiers and the German yoke was thrown off with Poland finally gaining the longed-for independence.

On January 15, 1919, Ignacy Jan Paderewski was appointed as Poland’s First Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs. He played a key role in defining the 1919 Polish Constitution and he represented Poland at the Paris Peace Conference. It was Paderewski who was Poland’s signatory on the Treaty of Versailles which restored the territories of Wielkopolska and Pomerania around the city of Gdansk.

Later that year, on December 4, Paderewski resigned as Prime Minister and accepted the role of Polish Ambassador to the newly-formed League of Nations. Over the course of the next twenty years, he remained politically while maintaining his lively career in music.

Tragically, Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, igniting the Second War War. Paderewski—now aged 79—was in exile again as he traveled to London where he served as President of the Polish National Council, the government-in-exile. As part of that office, he set off for America to meet with yet another American wartime president, this time Franklin D. Roosevelt. His cause was the same, to campaign for Polish independence as part of any treaty.

While he was in the U.S., Paderewski died on June 29, 1941 at the age of 80. President Roosevelt authorized that Paderewski be buried in Arlington National Cemetery until such a time as his could be returned to a free and independent Poland.

That, however, would take some time as the Soviets placed Poland behind the Iron Curtain following the war. Poland had become a satellite state to the U.S.S.R.

In 1989, Poland had peacefully overthrown the Communist state of Poland. On June 29, 1992, Paderewski was returned to a free and independent Poland. It was 51 years to the day after his death. He received a state funeral at St. John’s Cathedral in Poland—the returning and too-long-absent hero.

He moved audiences with his music. He moved musicians with his compositions. He moved presidents with his will.

Never disregard the power of music and the will of a musician; they really do change the world.


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"When Peace breaks out" -- a True Christmas story

12/24/2013

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This is my favorite Christmas story and it has nothing to do with me, except my love of seeing people act as humans should.    
    
It was called “The Great War” until a second such war caused it to be renamed World War I. It was brought about by nationalism crashing headlong into entangled alliances. All sides believed that—when war erupted across Europe in August, 1914—they would be “home for Christmas.” 
    
The advances, however, ground to a halt and both sides dug trenches and a long war of attrition began. Sometimes the trenches between the lines were no more than 150 feet apart leaving a tiny strip of “No-Man’s Land.” For four long muddy, disease-riddled, shell-shocked, gas-poisoned years the war was at a stalemate with few gains and horrible losses.
    
It was the war that ruined Europe, especially seeing that this one was the direct cause of the next one. This one witnessed almost 30 million casualties—8 ½ million dead, 21 million wounded.
    
By that first Christmas of the war in December, 1914, the soldiers in the trenches were already sick and weary. They were stuck in vermin-filled and water-logged trenches. They were hungry and freezing and away from loved ones in those barbed-wire-entangled trenches of Flanders fields in Belgium.
    
There were new innovations in war; machine-guns barked out deaths by the dozens, mustard gas was sprayed across the open fields to blister the lungs and flesh of the enemy, huge artillery pieces like “Big Bertha” lobbed huge shells from miles and miles away, and even the skies were no longer a place to look for something peaceful as “aero planes” dropped bombs from flying crates. There was simply no respite from the carnage.
    
Pope Benedict XV proposed a Christmas cease-fire and both the Allies and the Central Powers rejected the very notion of such a thing. The killing would go on. But human decency must sometimes reject the horrors enforced upon itself by those in command.
    
On Christmas Eve, the German soldiers—having received Christmas boxes with gifts of small trees and candles—placed the Christmas trees atop the gun parapets and lit the candles on those trees. The German soldiers then began to sing Christmas carols.
    
Although the British soldiers (and in some cases, Belgian and French soldiers) didn’t understand the German lyrics, they certainly knew the tunes. As the Germans sang Stille Nacht, the British sang Silent Night.

By Christmas morning, “No-Man’s Land” was the scene of soldiers from both sides coming out of their trenches. They shared chocolates and smokes and treats from home. The soldiers from both sides  brought out photos of their sweethearts or parents or children and shared them with each other.

They also buried each others’ dead between the lines and sang together solemn hymns.

According to the official war diary of the 133rd Saxon Regiment, "Tommy (British) and Fritz (Germans)" kicked about a real football supplied by a Scot. "This developed into a regulation football match with caps casually laid out as goals. The frozen ground was no great matter ... The game ended 3-2 for Fritz."

The truce lasted until New Year’s Day. Both British and German officers ordered their troops to resume the fighting but it was seen clearly that these soldiers could not now kill the men whose wives and girlfriends and children they had seen in photos and had learned their names and had shared in Christmas songs and treats. They were threatened with courts-martial and punishment. According to British Pvt. Percy Jones of the Westminster Brigade, they parted "with much hand-shaking and mutual goodwill."

The soldiers could not, would not fight each other again. The only solution was mass transfers of entire units. British units were moved miles down the line and Germans moved farther up the line, so they could once again be ordered to fight against the strangers in the opposite trench.

Stanley Weintraub, author of Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce, described it in great detail and his book is certainly worth reading. He wrote: “However much the momentary peace of 1914 evidenced the desire of the combatants to live in amity with one another, it was doomed from the start by the realities beyond the trenches.”

“The Christmas Truce” is a sweet celebration of the human heart and the tragic absurdities of war. A virtually unknown Scottish poet from the Great War named Frederick Niven said it so well in his splendid poem A Carol from Flanders. He closed with these lines,

O ye who read this truthful rime
From Flanders, kneel and say:
God speed the time when every day
Shall be as Christmas Day.





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The Eddie Potocnik Story...December 23, 1944

12/17/2013

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PictureThe crew of the doomed B-29 Marauder.
The Battle of the Bulge was the final offensive staged by the Germans against the Allies on the Western Front. The D-Day campaign had resulted in driving the German forces out of France and back into Germany and occupied Belgium.

The Germans had launched their last assault through the Ardennes Forest and had created a salient or “bulge” in the Allied lines, thus the name of the campaign. That was launched on December 16, 1944.

Months before, six airmen from Wisconsin and Illinois had been assembled as a crew for a Martin B-26 “Marauder.” Included in the crew were radioman and waist-gunner Corporal Edward L. Potocnik of Owen and engineer and waist-gunner Private Joseph W. Kowalski from Illinois.

They were part of the 391st bomber group and departed Maine for the European Theater of Operations August 17, 1944. After stops in Labrador, Greenland, Iceland and Ireland they finally flew their B-26 to their new base in Roy Arhmede, France on October 1 whence they would fly missions against German targets along the Mosel River.

After five recorded bombing missions, the 574th bomber squadron of the 391st bomber group was ordered into the Battle of the Bulge with the primary target of the railway bridge at Ahrweiler near Eifel, Germany. This was a key factor in the German supply line for the Ardennes front. Both sides knew the value of the target.

There were thirty Allied planes in the raid. Fourteen made it back to base.

The German air defense strategy was effectively simple: anti-aircraft (“flak”) guns would rake the fuselage and engines of the Allied aircraft from the ground, thus “softening them up” for the fighter pilots of the German Luftwaffe. In this raid, in particular, it was terrifyingly efficient. Adding to the chaos in the air, an unusually large fighter group—numbering sixty—jumped the wounded 574th squadron.

PictureEdward Potocnik
Eddie Potocnik’s friend, Joe Kowalski was the first crewmember wounded. According to an interview once given by Potocnik, “the planes were so confined that it was not uncommon for the airmen to not wear parachutes during flights.”

As a result, Kowalski was injured and losing blood so rapidly that he could not don his own parachute. In addition, if the plane were to return to base, Kowalski could not survive the flight. Potocnik buckled on Kowalski’s parachute and pushed him from the waist window at 8,000 feet.

The B-26 was then hit by enemy aircraft fire as a mixed group of Me-109’s and FW-190’s who caught the bomber group by surprise, coming out of the sun.

According to Potocnik, all of the remaining crew were in their positions but the plane had taken far too much damage to survive. The pilot, Lt. Dale Detjens of Wausau, tried to maintain control of the plane and would not leave his seat.

It should be remembered that when a plane is going down and spins out of control, gravitational forces (G-force) increase due to effects of centrifugal force. It becomes impossible to move as the g-force increases. Potocnik knew that his time to act was limited.

As Potocnik and tail-gunner Staff-sergeant Joseph J. Miller were trying to make it to the waist window. Again Potocnik recalls, Miller “who was not wounded, tried to come to the waist to bail out but didn’t get to the window in time when the plane suddenly went out of control. I looked down at the tail-gunner and made eye contact with him, and we both knew that I was going to survive and he would not. We both knew that he would not make it to the waist in time to bail out because of the G-force of the plane. The image of his eyes is, and has always been, forever imprinted in my mind. That image is what I have always carried with me throughout my life.”

In what must have seemed an eternity, Potocnik jumped from the plane only 30 seconds after he had pushed Kowalski out. He barely had time to open the parachute before he was on the ground.

“I landed so close to the plane,” he remembered, “that the explosion and concussion of the plane helped slow the speed of my fall.” The B-26 hit the ground 200 yards west of a farm and went nose-first into a wetland cow pasture, near the small hamlet of Bauler.

In a field, an eleven year old German boy watched the plane go down.

When Edward Potocnik’s parachute settled, he was immediately surrounded by a group of young German boys, probably the Hitler Youth, who had only one weapon between them. They had been told to keep watch and to capture any enemy fliers or soldiers.

What Potocnik could not have known was that Joe Kowalski, the wounded waist-gunner whose life Potocnik had saved, was also taken prisoner by a lone German soldier where Kowalski came to earth. The soldier took him to the nearby village of Bauler where his wounds could be tended quickly.

Earlier in the war, Luise Vetter moved her family out of the city of Dusseldorf which was suffering from the heavy and repeated bombing from the British and Americans. Her daughter had become a nurse and was away working at a hospital in Adenau, Germany. Frau Vetter had moved her family to the old family hunting cottage at Bauler.

When Kowalski was taken to Bauler, villagers took him to the home of the only woman in the village who could speak English, Luise Vetter. In her diary, Frau Vetter said that she “first soothed him, then dressed his wounds while he lay on our kitchen table which was under the Advent wreath the family had made from berries and vines from the garden.”

She recalled looking down and thinking “this boy is some mother’s son.” Instead of seeing him as an enemy soldier, she saw him as a son. That day, Luise Vetter reached beyond nationality and into humanity.


The following poem is a re-interpretation in English of the original German language poem by Luise Vetter of Bauler, District of Ahrweiler, Germany.

Before me, the enemy, wounded lies
Mid agony, pleading, still he defies.
The sky gave forth a deafening drone
As human targets fell to the snow.

Before me, the enemy, wounded lies
His plight’s solution, time defies.
The enemy, helpless, cries and pleads
My heart for my homeland weeps and bleeds.

O’er stripes and stars, blood freely flows
My hand, reluctant reached, then froze.
Is this not another mother’s son
Are his wounds less, his needs undone?

Oh fear, oh death, oh horrors of war
When will this misery at last be o’er?
What end to see this hatred cease
And in its place, eternal peace?

Compassion’s foe, no longer blind
The victor’s spoils now re-defined.
May the secret of war this simple truth impart
That the surest target is a mother’s heart!

Picture
Frau Luise Vetter, circa 1940, the author of the poem. She is the who tended the wounds of the downed enemy flyer.

When Kowalski was stabilized, he was then able to be moved to a hospital. He was taken to Adenau Hospital where he was treated by Luise’s daughter, Freya Vetter. When Kowalski opened his eyes to see his nurse, he said “All German women seem to look alike.” Of course, the only two German women he had met were mother and daughter.

Eddie Potocnik was taken by his captors to a Prisoner-of-War (POW) camp. He was given a small tin for his rations and each prisoner was given additional rations of cigarettes and chocolate. Potocnik claimed that he was kept alive by not smoking. He would trade his rations of cigarettes for chocolates which gave him needed calories. Instead of sleeping on cots in the POW barracks, Potocnik would sleep in slit-trenches outdoors to avoid the dangers of bombing.

Shortly after the events of December, 1944, Luise Vetter wrote a poem describing her experience with the wounded airman. It is a telling description of doubt in the face of an enemy that is overcome by human compassion.

The war in Europe ended May 8, 1945. It was Eddie’s birthday.

Potocnik and Kowalski made it back to the United States. Kowalski was sent to a Chicago hospital where a finger was amputated and he suffered pains in his leg. Potocnik suffered from shrapnel wounds that caused him great distress. Their four crewmates were buried in Germany.

Eddie came back to Owen-Withee where he married Berniece in 1947 and raised turkeys. Joe married and moved to California.

Planning a trip to see Joe in the early 1952, Eddie and Berniece Potocnik were preparing for their trip when they received a call from Joe’s wife. They were told not to come. Joe Kowalski had died.
Picture
In 2010, Freya Vetter, former nurse and daughter of Luise Vetter, contacted the Bauler village historian Hermann Bierschbach with the poem composed by her mother. She was 92 years old and wanted to fulfill her mother’s wish that the poem somehow make it into the hands of the young soldier she tended. Bierschbach immediately agreed. After all, it was an 11 year-old Hermann who witnessed the falling of the B-26 near Bauler. Freya Vetter died five weeks later, having passed the poem to the next leg of the race.

Three Wisconsin travelers fulfilled the quest, as far as was possible. Dale and Kathy Bartz with Rosemary Berchem had traveled to Germany where they met Arnhild Wöste who introduced them to Hermann Bierschbach. Herr Bierschbach passed the poem on to the three travelers who, with Frau Wöste’s help, translated the poem into English.

Eddie Kowalski was long dead and he left no heirs. They did, however, find Eddie Potocnik. They were able to meet with Eddie and Berniece and bring the poem to the United States—a poem of great beauty and compassion.

A letter from Germany
The following letter was sent to & Mrs. Edward
Potocnik from the translator in Germany


Dear Mr. and Mrs. Potocnik,
    It means a lot to me to write this letter to you today but let me introduce myself first.
    My name is Arnhild Wöste. You may have heard of me by my American friends Rosemary Berchem and Kathy and Dale Bartz who visited with you last year.
    Together we had done a trip to the area where you, Mr. Potocnik, crashed with a warplane on December 23, 1944. During our visit we learned about you, Mr. Joseph Kowalski and the other members of the crew who unfortunately didn’t survive. Your terrible fate moved us very much when Hermann Bierschbach, the elderly man pictured in the newspaper article, told us about it and showed to us the photos and the documents he had collected.
    The villagers never forgot about the tragedy of December 23, 1944, and they still talk about it today.
    Please know that people here in Germany are very grateful for what you Americans have done for us and our country. We are aware that our situation would be very poor and bad if you and others wouldn’t have risked and
often even given your lives to free Germany.  We are trying hard to keep these memories alive with the young ones. I’m a teacher of history myself.

    Thus, this newspaper article attracted a lot attention. People got in touch with Hermann Bierschbach, the journalist and the newspaper to thank them for the information and to let them know how much they had been moved by it.
    Hermann Bierschbach gave me the photos that show the place where you landed with your parachute. Peter Schmitz, who, at the age of nine, witnessed the scene, showed the exact spot.
    It’s my hope that your fate and the tragedy of December 23, 1944, together with the poem, will help to make people aware that we are all brothers and sisters and how terrible wars are. I have experienced that it does work – and not only in Eifel area but also further north where I live. My students were very touched when I told them about you, Mr. Joseph Kowalski, the other crew members and the poem.
    Thank you for risking your life and bearing the horrors of war in order to save Germany.
    Herman Bierschbach and other people in Eifel area asked me to send you their greetings, thanks and best wishes.
    Wishing you and your family all the best,
 
                                                                Arnhild Wöste



All but one of the B-26 crewmates are gone. Luise and Freya Vetter have passed, as well. On opposite sides of the Atlantic, Hermann Bierschbach and Eddie Potocnik sit and remember December 23, 1944 and a plane falling from the sky/

Picture
Hermann Bierschbach, the 11 year old boy who saw Eddie Potocnik's plane go down.

September 20, 2015

Picture
Eddie Potocnik now sits in a nursing home in Owen, WI. What he remembers of December 23, 1944, he no longer tells.
I just received news that Eddie passed away today. He was 92 years old. I got to visit him once after writing the above story.
He didn't know me and couldn't communicate but I just had to spend some time with him. When a writer devotes so much time to the research and writing of someone's story, a bond develops. His passing leaves me grieved but grateful that I got to tell a small part of his story.

On the evening before his funeral service, I got to meet with some of Eddie's family. What lovely and charming people. Berniece is a adorable now as when Eddie married her. The family is absolutely charming.

In that small town in Germany, there is a small shrine dedicated to the events described above. I am honored to report that this article is a part of that display.

God bless you, dear Eddie.

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On the Passing of Nelson Mandela

12/13/2013

2 Comments

 
Picture
There are personalities that affect our cities, like a great mayor; or our states, like a great governor. We are moved by heroic national figures like Abraham Lincoln or Theodore Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy and we continue to feel their impact and importance on our lives and collective consciousness or even conscience.

However, there are world figures who touch us no matter how far the distance or political barriers; figures of immeasurable profoundness who do not just shape events but affect us to our very soul. Churchill may have emboldened Britain to withstand the onslaught of Hitler and encouraged Franklin D. Roosevelt to participate in "the Great Crusade" but wartime strategies and simple politics do not move the spirit.

Then, and all too infrequently, there comes a person of such depth and dignity, power and passion, honor and humility
, that the world must pause at his or her passing. Persons who make us see the world and, more importantly, ourselves different than we ever could have before. I have seen two such people in my lifetime: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela.

The resistance against apartheid in South Africa and the Civil Rights movement in the United States were related struggles and each had a profound effect upon the other. Martin Luther King’s phrase “Let freedom ring” was reiterated by Mandela in his speech upon his release from prison. It is not simply a black vs. white issue. It is not simply an African or an American problem. It is part of the struggle for freedom everywhere. Mandela and King both proclaimed that it is equality before the law that must be achieved because in an oppressive system it is both oppressed and oppressor who are belittled. In Mandela’s words, “When one man has his boot on the neck of another, both are suffering.”

Nelson Mandela was not perfect and he declared as much. “I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps trying.” Yes, he had flirted with communism in the 1950’s and found it inadequate for South Africa’s needs. Yes, he had started to embrace armed conflict in the late 1950’s. He had his hatreds but “hatred clouds the judgment” and he was able to look beyond it. No, he was not perfect but he was on a path of perfection. That path had its starting point in prison then on the Robben Island facility off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa. He was determined to maintain his dignity in the face of inhumanity and he began to understand himself. He made peace with his jailer and his warden and turned his enemies into friends.

He achieved the most difficult of all things: to love one’s enemies. He managed that by learning about his own weaknesses and hatreds. When he looked into his own heart, he began to see what was in others’ hearts. Most importantly, he began to desire their freedom as much as his own. The world feared what would happen if the white minority lost control of the government. William F. Buckley, Jr. of National Review said that civilization would collapse if the whites lost political control. They feared “a river of blood” if the black majority ascended to power.

On February 11, 1990, Nelson Mandela walked to freedom after serving 27 years of a life sentence in prison. He began work with President F.W. de Klerk to establish equal voting rights and in 1994 was able to vote for the first time. His first-ever ballot was for himself as the next president.

Instead of a Reign of Terror, there was the Peace and Reconciliation Commission led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It was a bloodless revolution that allowed true equality before the law. Whites were not oppressed and no longer were blacks oppressed.
Picture
He sometimes embraced America’s enemies like Castro and Qadaffi but he also embraced our presidents from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush. In the midst of President Clinton’s disasters, Mandela visited him and said “Our morality must not cause us to desert our friends.” Above all, he had learned forgiveness.

He was not always a cheerleader for America’s adventures and misadventures. He cheered for the action in Afghanistan, he derided the incursion in Iraq. He was speaking as friends do. It was the same love of friend and enemy that allowed him—even propelled him—to reach out to Castro and Bush, Qadaffi and Clinton. In fact, he had discovered the same truth that Lincoln discovered; “I destroy my enemies by making them my friends.”

Seeing the citizens of the world through the eyes of understanding and love was what brought him humility and that humility brought South Africa peace. No, he was not a saint, at all. He could, however, point out his well-traveled path to humility and wisdom and love and that, surely, must be the road that leads to sainthood. At least he kept trying.

Picture
The joy that can only come from inner peace.
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Francis and Benedict; March 23, 2013

3/24/2013

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Picture
Francis and Benedict meet for lunch
Pope Francis has finally met with his predecessor Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. No such meeting of this sort has taken place for at least 600 years.

What took place in the meeting we do not know for certain and, according to BBC’s Alan Johnson, “We will never know the details of their talks.”

It was a simple lunch meeting between the two of them. While details are not available, it is certain that this meeting is far more cordial than the last such meeting of two popes.

That last meeting in 1294 saw Pope Celestine V who had resigned after only five months as pope meeting Boniface VIII who had been had been elected days after Celestine V’s resignation. Boniface VIII then had his predecessor imprisoned. Poor Celestine was dead within a year.

Fortunately, Pope Francis has only spoken warmly Pope Benedict and one of his first acts as Pope was to telephone Benedict at his temporary residence in Castel Gandolfo, where the former pontiff had been watching the proceedings on television.

Saturday’s lunch was a bit of a protocol nightmare, seeing that there was no protocol for this type of meeting which was never expected to be necessary. The results were a blend of formality and informality—all carefully choreographed.

Benedict greeted Francis with a warm embrace and the two priests then prayed together in the villa’s private chapel where Pope Francis knelt beside Benedict, shunning the prepared papal kneeler. “No,” Francis insisted, “We are brothers. We pray together.”

It was indeed another sign of the new pope’s humility.

The new head of the Catholic Church is usually elected after the death of the previous pope and there is no public record of any previous meeting between an incumbent pope and a former pope. Hence the protocol nightmare.

One thing certainly on the agenda for this meeting was the passing of a top secret document from Benedict to Francis. The document was prepared by Benedict regarding last year’s information leaks.

Pope Francis has chosen to begin the Church's most important liturgical season on Sunday with a Palm Sunday Mass in St Peter's Square. This will be followed by six more liturgies during the coming week which will conclude with the Easter Sunday Mass and the Urbi et Orbi blessing.

One marked difference between this pope and the last is clearly seen in the clothes they choose to wear. Pope Francis dresses very simply, preferring to wear plain black shoes under a simple white habit rather than the red leather loafers and ermine-trimmed cape worn by his predecessor.

Furthermore, Pope Francis places himself on the very same level as his guests, rather than greeting them from a throne on an elevated platform. This is being seen as a powerful gesture after centuries and centuries of Vatican extravagance.

Pope Francis has also started inviting guests to his early morning Mass - including Vatican gardeners, street sweepers, kitchen staff and maids working at the hotel where he is currently staying.

In a stunning announcement, the pope has scheduled to celebrate Holy Thursday Mass—not in St. Peter’s or even St. John’s basilicas—but in Casal del Marmo, Rome's prison for minors. Pope Francis intends to hold mass for the young prisoners and will wash the feet of 12 inmates in commemoration of Jesus’ washing of the feet of the 12 disciples.

This seems to be a personal tradition of this new pope, begun when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires and would visit jails, hospitals and other places where the poor and rejected would meet.

According to Agence France-Presse, Pope Francis has spoken in favor of narrowing the gap between laypeople and the Church and where he chooses to share Mass and wash the feet of others is a certain sign of his ever-unfolded attitude toward the poor and rejected.

While there is a difference in style, there is a "radical" convergence in their spirituality, according to Civilta Cattolica, the Italian Jesuit magazine.

"They are two figures of the highest spirituality, whose relationship with life is completely anchored in God," the magazine wrote. "This radicalness is shown in Pope Benedict's shy and kind bearing, and in Pope Francis it is revealed by his immediate sweetness and spontaneity."


The Church has awaited this very type of pope.







This site and the material contained herein is protected by copyright and trademark laws under U.S. and International law. No part may be copied without written permission of the author.
© copyright 2011-2013. Travis Rogers, Jr. All rights reserved.

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    Travis

    My love of history developed right alongside my love of music. I have taught it and written at length on it. This is my place for quick musings or sharing favorite stories.

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