Sister’s Blog Posts

Gaza’s Crisis Is Also Ours

Posted on April 15, 2015

gaza“They are back at it… I guess ‘they’ will never make peace…”  Well, if we say or think of it this way, we are “off the hook” so we can walk on and leave the people of Gaza to continue being bombed, targeted, destroyed… and, yes, massacred.  We in our country, have been viewing a one sided presentation of what happened in Gaza… a very well crafted Israeli construction.  This solitary analysis, of course, is what the Israeli people have had as a steady diet….until now!

This morning, I read with hope a piece by Israeli author Daniel Ben Simon:  “…And then everything changed. Toward the end, the war underwent a surprising turnabout. It began with talk about an imminent cease-fire. Suddenly, Israelis were exposed to the magnitude of destruction in Gaza with an intensity they had not known before. The three main television stations, which had operated in the course of the warfare with one voice, started uncovering the other side of the war. The Palestinian losses that had been reported only in numbers, suddenly were given a face and a form. Palestinian grief filled the screens. Pictures of hospitals in Gaza that collapsed by the burden and overflow of the wounded and dead were featured. Palestinian neighbourhoods were featured. Time after time, the media screened the bodies of children who were killed for only one reason: They had the bad luck to be born and grow up in Gaza.

“In addition to the focus on the Palestinian victims, other dissonant notes began to be heard, notes that had not been heard before. The news broadcasts reported increasing criticism on the part of heads of state, and especially from the president of France and his foreign minister who described what had occurred in Gaza as a ‘massacre.’ What had originally seemed to be a defensive operation over our home front aroused condemnation from foreign leaders.

“’To tell you the truth, I was surprised,” said Avner Azulay, a former high-ranking member of the Mossad, to Al-Monitor. ‘I kept switching channels to make sure what I was seeing. All at once, I was exposed to international criticism against Israel. Suddenly, there’s a confrontation of Bibi [Benjamin Netanyahu] with President [Barack] Obama, a confrontation with Secretary of State John Kerry, maybe sanctions of Spain against Israel and the threat of freezing arms export deals with Britain. The conclusion of the war is definitely different than its inception.’”

On August 8, I read the following in an IMEC report.  IMEC news, unlike the Israeli media, has been faithful to report what was happening in Gaza as it happened. The resumption of violence started this way, according to a report by Saed Bannoura. The Ministry said Ibrahim Zoheir ad-Dawawsa, 10 years of age, was killed after the army bombarded a mosque, where families took shelter, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.

When this all started, I went to New York City to join a demonstration on behalf of the Gazan People.  It was sponsored by a group called: Jewish Voice for Peace, who with other groups met in Bryant Park, the heart of New York City. The program had already started, and for a half an hour we recited the names of children who had been killed by Israeli targeted bombing, then, with our ears ringing we started to walk through the downtown area. I had been given a flyer. It had a photograph of a beautiful little girl with her name:  Janna Mohammed Alhems – Age 3 years… and the hard truth – Killed by Israeli Bombs  Paid for by U.S. $$$. I carried this flyer as a poster to show people who would look and still carry it with me so that others can see this little girl who will never enjoy the freedom Hamas fighters hope to obtain and Israel is determined to deny.

As the war on Gaza heats up once again, there are a few things we all must keep in mind despite the distorted media news. Gaza and Israel are not equal… in any way. One cannot say in the same breath with the same meaning… “Israel and ‘Hamas’ must….”  It is not Hamas, it is Gaza.  Another point is the Human Right of Self-Defense. We hear constantly that Israel has a right to defend itself. That right extends beyond Israel.

According to human norms, natural law, legal norms, and international law and jurisprudence, the Palestinians also have a legitimate right to defend themselves. It is also an obligation for Hamas!  It must be remembered, however, that the Palestinians have been denied a state and an accompanying army by Israel and the United States. Therefore the response available to the Palestinians in Gaza is extremely limited and is confined to rockets fired into Israel. These rockets are primitive weapons and not extremely accurate, which is why they have been defined as fireworks. But that is all that the Palestinians have for their defense. This response is the only avenue open to a society under military attack to try and force the cessation of such an attack when the aggressor will not negotiate with you in good faith.  (Based on an article published on Tuesday, August 5, 2014, by Lynda Burstein Brayer, graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Faculty of Law, political and legal commentator.)

Gaza’s basic terms of a truce are the most basic need for their people to live: establishing either a seaport or an airport in the Gaza Strip to allow this isolated strip an opening to import their material need for subsistence. Israel totally rejects this. Israel also demands to “reserve the right” to conduct targeted killings.

So, it does look as if Israel and Gaza will never make peace… not as long as we… that is the U.S. can and did re-arm Israel when they ran out of ammunition used up in the Gaza Massacre. Yes, the keystone to peace is the United States, that is, us. We are morally obliged to bring our Middle Eastern ally into conformity with “human norms, natural law, legal norms and international law and jurisprudence.” Basically, Israel can no longer refuse to treat Gaza as an integral part of Palestine, nor to refuse to acknowledge Palestine as an independent nation. Then we will begin to have peace, and not only in Israel and Palestine, but in the whole Middle East.

— Sister Jean Fallon, MM

People Are The Heart of Mission

Posted on April 15, 2015

FirstVows_blogIt is a very special weekend, beginning with Sr. Marie Patrice Kehoe’s entrance into her new life (in heaven) on August 9 to Mara Rutten’s entrance into canonical year yesterday evening, and now this celebration of Juana Encalada and Susan Wanzagi’s First Vows commitment. We are grateful for all these events that speak of new life – as do today’s readings that were chosen by Juana and Susan.

The first reading from Jeremiah is an apt description of their call – and ours as well.  Even before they were born, we are told, they were set apart and appointed as prophets, as messengers, to the nations.

Yes, Susan and Juana surely fit this description. Their lives and the connections with Maryknoll could be a homily in itself.  Sister Bitrina has already named some of these connections in her introduction. I will name a few more because we know that relationships are at the heart of mission.

Both of Susan’s parents were taught by Maryknoll Sisters in Tanzania. (These include Srs. Josephine Lucker, Noreen McCarthy, Pat Hafey, Ann Klaus and Marion Hughes.)  Her family of 13 belonged to a Maryknoll parish (Zanaki).  Susan was baptized by a Maryknoll priest – none other than our celebrant today, Fr. Ed Dougherty!  When Sr. Connie Krautkremer spoke at her high school in Mwanza, Susan felt called to join us. How could she ignore all those connections to Maryknoll and to global mission!

Truly, God has been with you, Susan, preparing you for this moment, nurturing and strengthening the vocation that was planted in you even before you were born.

Juana also received the call long before she was born. Her ancestors from generations past were among the early converts to Catholicism in Peru. Her parents nurtured the faith in Juana and her nine brothers and sisters. Juana also grew up in a Maryknoll parish (Arequipa) and was taught by Maryknoll Sisters, among them Srs. Jeremy Crowley, Louise Notaro and Teresita Perez.  Sister Helen Phillips was the principal of the secondary school that she attended. Juana joined a lay mission group founded by Maryknollers (none other than our very own Sr. Peg Hennessey and Fr. Tom Garrity, our Sr. Rosemary’s brother).  Juana worked with the poor as a lay missioner in Tacna, Peru, for four years, and there she met Sr. Marie Lynch who planted the seed of a cross-cultural vocation in her. Her call then took her several continents away to Cambodia where she shared her life with women and children living with AIDS and with children with special needs for the next 12 years.

We rejoice, Juana, that your journey has come full circle as you return to Maryknoll and renew your commitment to mission with us.

The reassuring words of Jeremiah ring so true in both of your lives: “Do not be afraid for I am with you and will rescue you.”

In the second reading, the wise and prophetic words of Mother Mary Joseph remind us what should be uppermost in our lives.

“Whether we are working, praying, sleeping or at recreation,” she tells us, “we must be aware of God’s presence.” In other words, everything is holy, everything is touched by God.  These words can guide us as we prepare for our General Assembly of Maryknoll Sisters in a few weeks – aware of the presence of God in all that we do.

Pope Francis puts it this way: “A true missionary, who never ceases to be a disciple, knows that Jesus walks with her, speaks to her, breathes with her, works with her. She senses Jesus alive with her in the midst of the missionary enterprise.”

Today’s Gospel reading is another way of saying the same thing. (We heard the same reading last night and Mara’s moving reflection.) The treasure in the field, the pearl of great price – these are none other than the awareness of God’s presence in our lives and in our world. This awareness we are told is worth more than all worldly possessions and we give up all else to obtain it as Mara, Susan and Juana have done. They left careers, homes, language, culture and even their families because they have found the treasure and don’t want to lose it.  What makes this treasure so different is that we don’t want to hide it and hoard it for ourselves.  Our call to mission is a call to share this treasure with others.

This urge to share the treasure reminds me of a recent reflection by Brother Bill Firmin, Director of Solidarity with South Sudan, about mission to South Sudan.  He begins by quoting a commercial – “A ship in the harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are for.”

Brother Bill comments: “A person in his or her home place can feel very safe, especially if the home country appears nowhere on any list of most fragile states.” (South Sudan now heads that list, overtaking Somalia.)

He tells us: “Religious men and women who have committed to give their lives to help others, live out that commitment by leaving the safety of the harbor – that is what they are for.”

Juana and Susan, you chose to join Maryknoll because you are ready to leave the safety of the harbor – whether it be Tanzania, Peru or the United States. Today you proclaim by this public witness that you will seek and share the treasure in whichever fragile state it may take you because that is what we Maryknoll Sisters are for. You will not fear because you trust the words of the prophets Mother Mary Joseph Rogers and Jeremiah.  God is with you and with all of us as we celebrate this sacred call!

— Sister Janice McLaughlin, MM

Jesus Was A Refugee, Too

Posted on April 15, 2015

Border_FallonOne journalist wrote a headline: “Minors arriving at our borders to escape poverty and violence need love, reassurance and compassionate treatment.” Not the kind of headline one sees these days. She gives the reason for this headline: “During several trips to Guatemala over the last few years, I saw firsthand the reality of children living in poverty and fear of violence. The situation has only worsened this year, forcing more than 50,000 children to flee their Central American countries. The United Nations refugee agency on July 8 called on regional authorities to treat the migrants, who are fleeing extortion and gang violence, as refugees.”

This situation has become a very clarifying one… it speaks loudly about ourselves as a people. What have we become?  What have we done?  For one thing, the U.S. trade agreements we have in our name have been a major player in the situations that have driven the frantic parents of most of these children to set their children on a dangerous journey into an unknown future.

For any who are parents, this is the key to understanding why these children are arriving at our back door. Families cannot feed themselves nor their children. Doesn’t this bring you back to the times of our dust bowl?  In case you have never had that page in your history books, History.com describes it as follows:  “The Dust Bowl was the name given to the Great Plains region devastated by drought in 1930s depression-ridden America. The 150,000-square-mile area, encompassing the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles and neighboring sections of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico, has little rainfall, light soil, and high winds, a potentially destructive combination. When drought struck from 1934 to 1937, the soil lacked the stronger root system of grass as an anchor, so the winds easily picked up the loose topsoil and swirled it into dense dust clouds, called ‘black blizzards.’ Recurrent dust storms wreaked havoc, choking cattle and pasture lands and driving 60 percent of the population from the region.”

How I remember it was the degrading name of “Oakies,” given to the sixty percent, as if they were responsible for the Dust Bowl itself. They were derided and not welcomed in the places to which they were forced to flee….by the “good” people in the West.

Have we once again lost our humanity? Have our lives become so centered totally on ourselves? U.S. “selfies,” one and all?

No, we are better than this. Remember the Vietnamese “boat people” who came to our shores, either directly off boats or from refugee staging areas in Asia? This was a time when good people responded quickly as fellow human beings who initiated and organized settlement through the Churches in our country. It was the ordinary people who opened their hearts and homes to welcome families, care for them during their transition into life in America, and learned from and about one another. Most of these families have become an important part of America….and we Maryknoll Sisters have been lucky enough to have two of them as important members of our Community.

Coming back to the situation at the border which is heartbreaking: groups on the ground tell us these tens of thousands of young children, fleeing horrific violence in their native countries, are being crammed into overcrowded Border Patrol jails and held for long periods with no access to family or to legal representation.

At a moment like this, it is helpful to remember that Jesus himself fled violence in his home country as a child — without documentation. He became a refugee in Egypt. Pope Francis has called the situation a “humanitarian emergency” requiring that these children be “welcomed and protected.”

In the name of our shared humanity, we can do more than we are to bring this about. We can clarify our thinking about these children. We can start with seeing ourselves as part of the human family. We can act to promote life for these youngsters; we can promote a refugee status for these children. We, who have been so very gifted by our Creator who has created this earth for all, have more than enough to share.

All of us come from an immigrant background. ALL of us! As humans and Christians we cannot sit idly by while these innocents are sent back to be killed or forcefully recruited into violent street gangs. We agree that it is time to show our leaders just how many of us are outraged at this profound lack of basic human decency. We can do this and more.

Remembering what we did for the Vietnamese refugees, we can think and act creatively and humanely….today.

— Sister Jean Fallon, MM

 

2014 SOA Vigil a Place To Be

Posted on March 10, 2015

SOAThirty four years ago just around this time, our Sisters heard urgent news… the disappearance of our Sisters Maura Clark and Ita Ford.  We knew if anyone disappeared in El Salvador it meant they had been killed by the military death squads.  It turned out that our Sisters had been on an incoming evening flight and their two friends, Dorothy Kazal and Jeanne Donovan drove to the airport to pick them up.  As they started home, they were stopped just outside the airport, taken away, murdered and buried, just like so many of their beloved people.  This was ordered and done by men associated with or trained by the United States at the School of the Americas… the SOA.  Every November, at the Annual SOA Vigil at Fort Benning Georgia, their names are now sung, bringing back the sorrow of what happened thirty four years ago. … Still things have not changed for the better as has been made plain as we see the floods of children fleeing the threat of violence in El Salvador and other Central American countries.  This is an introduction to my blog which follows.  I ask you to sit down and read it in honor of my two friends and their co-workers, four who were so young, courageous and generous; who died December 2nd, 1980. ‘Presente’ and ‘Presente’ to the 75,000 with whom they died.

2014 SOA VIGIL– A PLACE TO BE

In the Biblical story of Noah after the floods began to subside Noah sent out a dove and because she could not find a place to ‘put her foot’ she returned to the Ark…

We are like this dove in the middle of a flood: violence in our cities that is exacerbated by police killing unarmed men… if they are black; corruption of electoral systems; wars without end; corporations hell bent on destroying our land, our water and our weather…for profit of course; Immigrants being swept up by Immigration and Border Police who then disappear them before our very eyes; vicious racism still alive and well…  If this is not a flood then we are really in denial, big time.

The problem for us is there is no Ark to return to!  So, that leaves us with a choice… while we still have one:  We either have to change ourselves and our society or live with the consequences!   Who did this to us?  Well, could I say, we were too busy watching football games?  How did this happen when there really were warning signs… and prophets who warned us. Resist the evil of our institutions or we will inevitably come to unending violence. Martin Luther King said it specifically, the six Jesuit martyrs of El Salvador, our own Church Women testified to it by their lives.

I know one place to go before the floods get any worse.  It has been a place where memories are held with loving respect and voices are raised in truth and prayer.  It is a place where we can call those to be present with us who were massacred because their existence got in the way of power and wealth.  This holy place reveals the ‘how did this happen’… and is itself a connector of causes of our present day flood.  We call it the SOA.  It is a name that we refuse to change as it holds such tragic memories. It is a school that trains foreign military personnel how to torture, how to perpetrate the successful overthrow of national governments, how to set up the military into power, and even how to massacre locals and get away with it.  If we look at the history of the Central American nations now, the SOA has had a very big part to play in the present numbers leaving behind guns, fear… and man-made poverty.  That the SOA has set off this movement of people is demonstrated by those who murdered the six Jesuits and their housekeepers… by those who both ordered and murdered our beloved Sisters and Church Women. The SOA connects directly to the coup d’état in Honduras and to the present military ruler. Thus this school and its graduates are the dots that actually tie this history to the immigrant children now flooding our borders.

So, we go to the SOA year after year… Whom we met there this year, were people from all over the U.S. and beyond, two thirds of who were there for the first time.  They felt the need to connect the dots, to stand with people just like themselves and with those who were struggling against the flood.  This year those gathered were able to reach out and ‘touch’ one of the ‘dots’ connecting the escaping   ‘undocumented’ immigrants.

Leaving Ft. Benning we drove through beautiful but empty countryside to a little town called Lumpkin.  From there we walked together* the mile and a half to THE detention center… the largest in the nation, made to hold 16,000 immigrants, more people than live in the town. The first thing we saw when we arrived was the huge sign over the entrance of the facility, “CCA”, the company runs it:  As their website says: “Welcome to CCA, America’s leader in partnership corrections. We provide solutions…”  In other words it is a for-profit industry. This is why ICE is so busy collecting undocumented immigrants… CCA needs to fill this prison and others like it to make profit.  Depressing?  It reminded me of the Japanese concentration camps of the 1940’s!

The intention of our SOA Group was to stand in front of this abomination of all we hold sacred.  Here we prayed and sang and heard from a man who had been detained in that prison for one year and a half.  Five of our March volunteered to do civil-disobedience to focus attention on this hidden ‘dot’ and to do penance for our selfish and racist politics and policies, our Industries that negotiate in human lives.

Returning to the gates of Fort Benning we all gathered again to greet those who came to protest ‘The  School’ right there on the grounds of this military base.  On the street, music and talks had already started and booths were ready for the crowd.  We had our own table with Maryknoll pamphlets magazines and books, all hand carried!  Within a very short time all the books were gone.  The crowd, though small, was searching and found something to help ground themselves.  In the evening our Maryknoll Gathering reflected the larger group. The people in our circle came just to be with us as we shared our Maryknoll reality together with our faithful prophet, Roy Bourgeois, Founder of the SOA Movement

Then on Sunday we joined together in the solemn Vigil procession honoring, by name and song, the so many killed by former SOA trainees in El Salvador, Columbia, Guatemala and now Honduras.  All held high white crosses and as the choir sang the names we lifted them up with our sung prayer, ‘presente’.  We planted these crosses on the fence that surrounds the Entrance of Fort Benning and returned a second time to tie black ribbons on them.  Thus we came full circle to the precious ‘dots’ that are our own Sister Martyrs along with the many whose names and ages we hold in precious memory.

The SOA Vigil is a holy place place to be… maybe from among those who companioned us, some might even be able to hold back the flood we experience rising around us.  Where is your ‘place to be’… the solid and safe ground ‘to put your foot’?

* See the scene on http://soaw.org/