Saints of the Day & The Supernatural Church

Here’s the saint’s calendar for March 18, 2019, and some versions, each focusing on individual saints, (all St. Cyril—Bishop, Confessor and Doctor of the Church—today) all wonderful; for they are the Church Triumphant.

The Catholic Church has many saints and reading about their lives has been a spiritual journey Catholics have been on since the publication of the Golden Legend, http://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/basis/goldenlegend/

From Butler’s Calendar of the Saints listing all of the saints of today. https://web.archive.org/web/20061020190006/http://www.catholic-forum.com/saintS/day0318.htm

From Butler’s Lives of the Saints, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Bishop, Doctor of the Church, “CYRIL was born at or near the city of Jerusalem, about the year 315. He was ordained priest by St. Maximus, who gave him the important charge of instructing and preparing the candidates for Baptism. This charge he held for several years, and we still have one series of his instructions, given in the year 347 or 318. They are of singular interest as being the earliest record of the systematic teaching of the Church on the creed and sacraments, and as having been given in the church built by Constantine on Mount Calvary. They are solid, simple, profound; saturated with Holy Scripture; exact, precise, and terse; and, as a witness and exposition of the Catholic faith, invaluable.” http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/lots/lots093.htm

From Franciscan Media, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, (c. 315 – March 18, 386), “The crises that the Church faces today may seem minor when compared with the threat posed by the Arian heresy, which denied the divinity of Christ and almost overcame Christianity in the fourth century. Cyril was to be caught up in the controversy, accused of Arianism by Saint Jerome, and ultimately vindicated both by the men of his own time and by being declared a Doctor of the Church in 1822.” https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-cyril-of-jerusalem/

From a most lovely site, really a daily devotional site offering much more than just saint of the day, Anastpaul https://anastpaul.wordpress.com/

One of my personal favorites, Tradition in Action, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, “The Fathers and the Doctors of the Church – St. Cyril is one of them – played an enormous role in setting the foundations for Scholasticism and establishing the Catholic State in the Middle Ages. They were received with ingratitude by their contemporaries, but they formed the basis for the great triumph of Catholic Civilization.” https://traditioninaction.org/SOD/j171sd_CyrilJerusalem_3-18.html

Here is what the 1962 Roman Missal says about St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Bishop, Confessor, and Doctor of the Church: “When he was a simple priest, St. Cyril used to instruct the Catechumens during Lent. He is still renowned for these admirable homilies, full of divine wisdom, precious documents for Catholic theology. The Arians exiled him thrice. He died A.D. 386.” (p. 1205) The Daily Missal and Liturgical Manual. (2004). Baronius Press: London: https://www.baroniuspress.com/book.php?wid=56&bid=4#tab=tab-1

The Supernatural Church

The following is excellent material for prison ministry, and especially for men doing natural life sentences.

Jacques Maritain—and his wife Raissa, a powerful and influential Catholic couple whose writings I really love, especially their joint written classic, Liturgy and Contemplation, which is available online at http://www.ewtn.com/library/THEOLOGY/LITCOM.HTM and whose celibate marriage was reminiscent of syneisactism (defined here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syneisaktism ) —describes it wonderfully:

“The Church Considered in Her Unity and Her Universality Has a Supernatural Personality Which Transcends That of Her Members

“1. No community of the merely natural order can be a person at the same time as a multitude of human beings. A nation subsists with the subsistence of all its individual citizens; it has a history, it has typical characteristics, common customs, it pursues a common end and has common interests: this history, these typical characteristics, these customs, this common end, these common interests are purely and simply those of its citizens, or of the great mass of them. And it has no divine mission, nor any promise of lasting always and of being constantly assisted by God.

“It is altogether different with the Church. The Church has a double subsistence: a natural subsistence like every human community,–that of the human persons who are her members; if all Christians were exterminated there would no longer be a Church here on earth. And she has, insofar precisely as she is the whole one and universal, of the organized multitude of those who live with her life, a supernatural subsistence, which presupposes but transcends the natural subsistence of the individual persons who are her members.” (p. 18)

Jacques Maritain. (1973). On the Church of Christ: The Person of the Church and Her Personnel. (Translator: Joseph W. Evans).University of Notre Dame Press: Notre Dame

A review of Maritain’s book in The Wanderer Newspaper is helpful:

An excerpt.

At a time of when strong ecclesiastical leadership is warranted as the West drifts further from its historical anchorage, the voice of Church seems to be muted or confused. With reason, Pope Francis has been accused of deliberate ambiguity, given that he has not responded to repeated calls for clarification of his teaching in Amoris Laetitia, and now as reported in the pages of this newspaper [see story by LifeSiteNews, The Wanderer, March 2, 2017, p. 1], the new head of the Jesuit Order, Fr. Arturo Sosa Abascal, seems to call into question the literal meaning of Christ’s teaching on the indissolubility of marriage (Matt. 19:3-6).

“The words of Jesus must be contextualized,” he has said in an interview. “Over the last century in the Church there has been a great blossoming of studies that seek to understand what Jesus meant to say.”

If doctrine must be replaced in favor of the “discernment” of the true meaning of the words of Sacred Scripture, what are we to make of Christ’s words at the Last Supper?

Given that the Church seems to be unsure of itself under its present leadership, Jacques Maritain’s treatise on the Church and her personnel is worth revisiting. “To speak of the ‘person’ of the Church,” Maritain says, “is to recognize a certain transcendence in time of a body that remains essentially the same. Just as a human being is not to be identified with the personality it manifests on a given day or at a given period in life, the visible Church cannot be identified with one council or one papacy.”

Maritain’s reflections on the subject are to be found in his last complete book, On the Church of Christ: The Person of the Church and Her Personnel. Published in English translation from the French in the year of his death (1973), it was ignored by the secular media and given scant attention in the Catholic press.

It followed by seven years the publication of Le Paysan de la Garonne, which had earned Maritain the enmity of the Catholic left for its critique of some of the theology developing in the wake of Vatican II. John Courtney Murray in We Hold These Truths (1960) noted happily that the Church in North America was not divided between left and right as it was with destructive consequences in Europe.

By the close of Vatican II, the European virus had spread to North America. Maritain, who had been the darling of the liberal Catholic intelligentsia because of his social philosophy, was suddenly ostracized, his later work ignored. For Maritain, a liberal social policy did not presuppose a liberal Catholic theology, certainly not one at war with the intellectual heritage of the Church. Many American scholars, otherwise cognizant of Maritain’s vast oeuvre, remain unaware of the publication of De l’Église du Christ.

In On the Church of Christ, Maritain speaks of the “profoundly troubled moment” at which he was writing. He calls himself “an old Christian philosopher who has thought about the mystery of the Church for sixty years.”

He is appalled by the appreciable number of Catholic intellectuals who in his judgment employ themselves to destroy the treasure of truth which is the Church’s responsibility to transmit. He would “have done with the tempest of widely diffused foolish ideas that have caused confusion among the faithful.” He would “have done with the demythization of doctrine and the secularization or profanization of a Christianity which our new doctors and spiritual guides would like to entrust to the hands of the sociologist, of the psychoanalysts, of the structuralists, of the Marcusists, of the phenomenologists, and of the pioneers of technocracy.”

The subtitle of On the Church of Christ is indicative of a distinction that is crucial to an understanding of the Church. “Churchmen will never be the Church,” writes Maritain. “One can take a detached view, making positive and negative assessments of the activity of Churchmen throughout the centuries while remaining confident of the holiness of the Church itself.”

This distinction runs through the work, that is, the difference between the “person of the Church” and “her personnel,” the difference between the Church visible to the intellect and the Church as visible, one can say, in the eyes of the public who know it only through the media.

“The Church visible to the intellect” is seen in the writings of Catholic scholars, laymen and laywomen, both on the Continent and throughout the English-speaking world, who have joined Raymond Cardinal Burke and other members of the hierarchy in calling for clarification from the Vatican. Many of these lay scholars, professors, for the most part, may be counted as disciples of Maritain.

Almost as if he were writing today, Maritain acknowledges that inexactness of language often leads some to attribute to the Church an act or decision of her directing personnel without distinguishing whether the act belongs properly to the perpetrator as its sole cause or as an instrument of the Church herself.

Retrieved March 17, 2019 from http://thewandererpress.com/catholic/news/featured-today/jacques-maritain-on-the-person-of-the-church-and-her-personnel/

Saints of the Day & A Prison Psychologist’s Perspective

Here’s the saint’s calendar for March 17, 2019, and some versions, each focusing on individual saints, (though all St. Patrick today) all wonderful; for they are the Church Triumphant.

The Catholic Church has many saints and reading about their lives has been a spiritual journey Catholics have been on since the publication of the Golden Legend, http://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/basis/goldenlegend/

From Butler’s Calendar of the Saints listing all of the saints of today. https://web.archive.org/web/20061019110802/http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/day0317.htm

From Butler’s Lives of the Saints, St. Patrick, Bishop, Apostle of Ireland. “IF the virtue of children reflects an honor on their parents, much more justly is the name of St. Patrick rendered illustrious by the innumerable lights of sanctity with which the Church of Ireland shone during many ages, and by the colonies of Saints with which it peopled many foreign countries; for, under God, its inhabitants derived from their glorious apostle the streams of that eminent sanctity by which they were long conspicuous to the whole world.” http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/lots/lots092.htm

From Franciscan Media, St. Patrick, (c. 386 – 461), “Details of his life are uncertain. Current research places his dates of birth and death a little later than earlier accounts. Patrick may have been born in Dunbarton, Scotland, Cumberland, England, or in northern Wales. He called himself both a Roman and a Briton. At 16, he and a large number of his father’s slaves and vassals were captured by Irish raiders and sold as slaves in Ireland. Forced to work as a shepherd, he suffered greatly from hunger and cold.

“After six years Patrick escaped, probably to France, and later returned to Britain at the age of 22. His captivity had meant spiritual conversion. He may have studied at Lerins, off the French coast; he spent years at Auxerre, France, and was consecrated bishop at the age of 43. His great desire was to proclaim the good news to the Irish.” https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-patrick/

From a most lovely site, really a daily devotional site offering much more than just saint of the day, Anastpaul https://anastpaul.wordpress.com/

One of my personal favorites, Tradition in Action, St. Patrick, “Patrick was the Apostle of a people, the light of Ireland, the father of this nation whose martyrdom will endure for ages. In him the gift of the apostolate shone. Christ put this gift in His Church and it will remain in her to the end times.” https://traditioninaction.org/SOD/j170sd_Patrick_3-17.html

Here is what the 1962 Roman Missal says about St. Patrick, Bishop, Confessor: “The holy Bishop Patrick is the Apostle and Patron of Ireland, He used with profit the talents recewived from God to convert the whole Irish people, which, thanks to him, has always been strongly loyal to the Holy See. He died A.D. 464.” (p. 1205) The Daily Missal and Liturgical Manual. (2004). Baronius Press: London: https://www.baroniuspress.com/book.php?wid=56&bid=4#tab=tab-1

There is an excellent article aout St. Patrick at Catholic World Report, https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2019/03/17/on-the-evangelization-and-re-evangelization-of-ireland/

A Prison Psychologist’s Perspective

Other than criminals themselves, people who work in prisons have the best vantage point to really understand the criminal mind; and the book, As I Live & Breathe, is an outstanding example of this.

People who do not understand that evil exists will eventually allow evil to move freely among us.

An excerpt.

“I’ve come to believe there are people among us that simply aren’t human. They’re unaffected by the emotions and motivations that are part of the normal human experience. These beings stab their children, stash them under their beds, and continue living in their home until the stench brings attention to their residence. They rape their three-year-old granddaughter and yet feel themselves justified when chronically yelling profane and degrading remarks at correctional officers. They call their elderly mother from prison and demand she talk dirty to them—a request that clearly causes distress to the mother. They impersonate a physician, gain access to communities of vulnerable refugees, and then target adolescents whom they later rape and kill. They stab another inmate so viciously and vigorously they have to stop sand rest in the middle of the attack before continuing with their mission. Only when enough staff arrive on the scene do they lay down the weapon and submit to restraints.

“It may be difficult for the average person to believe, but these individuals usually aren’t intellectually limited or seriously mentally ill. They often have a good sense of reality, organized thoughts, and an absence of delusions. They show no indication of experiencing hallucinations, excess energy or sleep/appetite disturbances. With the exception of the presence of a severe personality disorder, there’s no diagnosis for what plagues them.

“Their real problem is a fundamental incapacity to feel compassion, empathy, or genuine attachment—an inability to value others beyond the superficial use they can serve at any moment. There are theories as to cause and research to support the idea that their brains are wired differently. Regardless of the etiology, I know it exists in this extreme form. And, although those who’ve never actually worked with these individuals might disagree, there’s currently no realistic treatment for their dysfunction. At this level, it’s an unsolvable, unfixable problem. There’s no healing them. They cannot be refurbished or rehabilitated. And what makes them most dangerous, is they can disguise their depravity at will.

“I didn’t always believe in the existence of these convoluted examples of our species: these individuals with “as if personalities,” acting as if they are human. There was a time when I believed criminal behavior was primarily due to circumstances. I believed many of these people had a poor upbringing, had developed a drug addiction due to biochemical unluckiness, had made a series of bad decisions, or were the victims of social injustices.

“I also believed all inmates would benefit from the opportunity for self-improvement. If treated with respect, anyone could become a productive member of society, even if their society was limited to the world inside the walls of a prison. Many people have this same perspective—the fundamental belief that people are good or, at a minimum, can become good, given the right set of circumstances.

“Managing maximum-security inmates—those that are generally described as “the worst of the worst”—changed my view.” (pp. 9-11)

Marla Patterson. www.marlapatterson.com (2019). As I Live and Breathe: A Perspective from a Prison Psychologist. Moonshine Cove Publishing: Abbeville, South Carolina.

 

Saints of the Day & Prisons as Mental Hospitals

Here’s the saint’s calendar for February 6, 2019, and several versions, each focusing on individual saints, all wonderful; for these are the Church Triumphant.

The Catholic Church has many saints and reading about their lives has been a spiritual journey Catholics have been on since the publication of the Golden Legend, http://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/basis/goldenlegend/

From Butler’s Calendar of the Saints listing all of the saints of today. https://web.archive.org/web/20060923063352/http://catholic-forum.com/saints/day0206.htm

From Butler’s Lives of the Saints, St. Dorothy, Virgin, Martyr, http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/lots/lots049.htm

From Franciscan Media, also St. Paul Miki & Companions, https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-paul-miki-and-companions/

From a most lovely site, really a daily devotional site offering much more than just saint of the day, Anastpaul https://anastpaul.wordpress.com/

Here is what the 1962 Roman Missal says about St. Titus, Confessor, Bishop, “St. Titus, Bishop of Crete, was one of the most faithful disciples of St. Paul. The Apostle wrote to St. Titus a letter included in Holy Scripture. He died A. D. 101” (p. 1178) The Daily Missal and Liturgical Manual. (2004). Baronius Press: London. To get this for your library, go to the source: https://www.baroniuspress.com/book.php?wid=56&bid=4#tab=tab-1

Prisons as Mental Hospitals

This did not happen in a vacuum as public leadership decided a few decades ago to close all the mental hospitals in favor of community mental health, which, despite doing some good, has resulted in much worse, as this story from CAL Matters notes.

An excerpt.

Jeffrey Jurgens stood in a cage in an orange jumpsuit, screaming that he was Jesus Christ. From her seat in the Sacramento courtroom, his mother watched through tears.

Joanna Jurgens knew how important it was for the district attorney prosecuting Jeffrey for stealing a car—and the judge deciding his fate—to see the extent of her son’s illness. But it was torture to watch.

For years, she had begged judges to steer Jeffrey, who has schizoaffective disorder, into long-term treatment. She worried he would get hurt. She feared he could hurt someone else.

Joanna, 56, knew Jeffrey, who was 22 at the time of that 2014 hearing, did not belong behind bars. But after struggling to stabilize him through treatment in the community, she’d become convinced the criminal justice system was her last hope.

These days, the main path to treatment at a state psychiatric hospital is through jail. However controversial those state hospitals may be, many families conclude they are the best option for their loved ones.

“That is a sad state of affairs in our society, that only when you get locked up does it become a priority to get you treatment,” said Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey, who said she’s heard many parents describe similar feelings of desperation.

Perhaps nowhere is California’s mental health crisis more evident than in its criminal justice system. After decades of failure to create and fund policies that effectively help people with serious mental illnesses, many now say the jails and prisons have become the state’s default mental institutions.

Close to a third of California’s inmates have a documented serious mental illness,  according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

“We’re going to end up with an incarceration system that’s mainly dealing with people that have serious mental health problems,” said Democratic Sen. Jim Beall of San Jose. “It’s our own fault, in a way, for not having a good mental health system.”

In the past five years, the number of people in California who were deemed incompetent to stand trial after arrest—and ordered sent to state hospitals for treatment—increased by 60 percent, state figures show. Judges make such referrals when doctors determine that defendants are unable to understand legal proceedings or cooperate with their attorneys—the goal generally being that they get stabilized and then return to stand trial.

Often this leaves people who need mental health treatment stuck in county jails. Inmates in Jeffrey’s condition can wait in limbo for months, or even years, before being sent to a state hospital.

Five years ago, an average of 343 inmates with mental illness were awaiting placement. Last year, that number shot up to 819.

The increasing number of people incompetent to stand trial may also reflect changing attitudes among public defenders, who now see questioning someone’s competency as an avenue to a more therapeutic environment, said David Meyer, professor with the USC Institute of Psychiatry, Law, and Behavioral Science. Forty years ago, “we would never, ever refer somebody for incompetency proceedings if we could in any way get away with it,” he said. “People would be incarcerated for mental health treatment at a state hospital for a longer time than they would serve if they simply pled guilty.”

One major reason for the growing waitlist is that, while the number of state hospital beds has increased, it has not kept pace with the need. State hospitals now have more than 6,200 beds—a significant portion of which are reserved for other needs. In recent years the state has added about 700 hospital and “jail-based competency restoration” beds.

A few decades ago, fewer than half of state hospital patients came from the criminal justice system. Today more than 90 percent of them do—with more than a fifth of those individuals found incompetent to stand trial. The next largest group were tried and found not guilty by reason of insanity.

“We have hundreds of people sitting in our (community) hospitals right now who could benefit from a long-term stay at a state hospital, but we can’t get them in there,” said Sheree Lowe, vice president of behavioral health for the California Hospital Association.

That said, many experts believe state hospital stays are so restrictive and expensive that solutions to the crisis must be found elsewhere. The broader issue is that society is “letting people get so sick” that they end up in jails and emergency rooms, Lowe said.

Jennifer Mathis, director of policy and legal advocacy at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, describes state hospitals as “kind of like living in prison.”

“It’s not really a life on a long-term basis,” she said, but added that many families have gone so long without good community mental health services for their loved ones that they see no other real option.

State data show that 47 percent of the inmates who were found incompetent to stand trial last year had no Medi-Cal mental health services during the six months before they landed in jail. Almost half were unsheltered; in many cases, the charges they faced were directly related to their homelessness and untreated psychosis, according to the Department of State Hospitals.

Retrieved February 5, 2019 from https://calmatters.org/articles/california-mental-health-treatment-in-prisons/

Saint of the Day & Proposed Criminal Justice Legislation is Bad

Today, December 6, 2018, is the feast day of St. Nicholas of Bari (270 AD-343 AD) according to Lives of the Saints by Fr. Alban Butler (first published in 1887 under the title Lives of the Saints–With Reflections for Every Day in the Year), read here http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/lots/lots375.htm and a more detailed article from Tradition in Action at https://traditioninaction.org/SOD/j050sdNicholas12-6.htm

The definitive article though is at the Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11063b.htm and here is the Wikipedia link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas

Reading about these saints is a wonderful daily reflection; such marvelous lives the saints lived, such an army, the Church Triumphant, who has our back in heaven.

Proposed Criminal Justice Legislation is Bad

Following up on Tuesday’s post, this article from the Wall Street Journal furthers the case.

An excerpt.

First, do no harm” is a well-known motto of medical professionals. If only our politicians followed it as well.

Democrats and Republicans in Congress are eager to pass something this year under the banner of “criminal-justice reform.” But bipartisan support isn’t an automatic Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. Members on both sides of the aisle can, and sometimes do, team up to pass bad bills, and the so-called First Step Act is a good example. The more we learn about it, the worse it looks.

By a vote of 360-59 in May, the House passed a version of the legislation designed to curb recidivism by helping inmates return to society. It provides for more rehabilitation programs and vocational training, for example. Prison conditions also would improve under the bill: Inmates would be placed in facilities located closer to their families, and women would no longer be shackled during childbirth. So far, so good.

But once the First Step Act moved to the upper chamber for consideration, what had been a federal prison-reform measure morphed into a sentencing-reduction bill. For starters, the Senate bill eliminates mandatory life-without-parole penalties for repeat drug offenders and reduces mandatory-minimum sentences for other serious drug offenses.

On Monday, Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard pointed out that the bill would give prison wardens the authority to deem violent criminals no longer dangerous and make them eligible for early release. “At the very least,” he writes, “this loophole undercuts the claim by supporters of the bill that ‘violent criminals and sex offenders’ would not qualify for shortened sentences.”

Among those supporters are President Trump and many Republicans in Congress who have made common cause with Barack Obama, Eric Holder and others on the activist left in denouncing “mass incarceration.” Some on the right believe that locking arms with liberal criminal-justice crusaders will help Republicans win minority votes. Others, like libertarian-leaning Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky, point to the high costs of locking people up. But you do not help minority communities by going easy on the very people who prey on them. It is black and brown people who benefit the most when violent crime drops.

The costs of incarceration should be measured against the cost of letting criminals go free. The relevant comparison is not between, say, schooling and a prison cell. Rather, it’s between the cost of imprisonment and the cost of criminal activity. What are the costs of stolen or damaged property, lives lost, or families living in fear after dope pushers take over a housing project? And what price will unelected judges and prison wardens pay when their decisions backfire?

Also lost in this debate is sympathy for the law-abiding residents of violence-plagued ghettos who believe that these criminals are not so much victims of “society” or “institutional racism” as they are victims of their own character flaws. The left-wing Sentencing Project reported in 2014 that when Americans were surveyed on whether courts “deal too harshly or not harshly enough with criminals,” 73% of whites and 64% of blacks responded, “not harshly enough.” If nearly two-thirds of black respondents feel that the criminal-justice system goes too easy on lawbreakers, perhaps the mass-incarceration activists aren’t speaking for those in the black community after all.

Until recently, the most vocal opponent of the First Step Act was GOP Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas. But the more Republicans learn about the sentencing provisions in the measure—and how different it is from the version that passed the House—the less they like it. I’m told that Republican critics now include, among others, Sens. John Kennedy of Louisiana, Marco Rubio of Florida, Ben Sasse and Deb Fischer of Nebraska, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, Ted Cruz of Texas, Richard Shelby of Alabama and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. Law-enforcement agencies like the National Sheriffs’ Association also are pressing for changes to the bill. Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, has kept his opinion to himself, but his staff has disseminated articles critical of the legislation.

Retrieved December 5, 2018 from https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-the-senate-surrender-on-criminal-justice-1543966360

Saint of the Day & Releasing Prisoners

Today, December 4, 2018, is the feast day of St. Barbara, Virgin, Martyr (Third Century) according to Lives of the Saints by Fr. Alban Butler (first published in 1887 under the title Lives of the Saints–With Reflections for Every Day in the Year), read here http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/lots/lots373.htm

There is a more detailed article from Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Barbara

The definitive article though is at the Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02284d.htm

Reading about these saints is a wonderful daily reflection; such marvelous lives the saints lived, such an army, the Church Triumphant, who has our back in heaven.

Releasing Prisoners

Ann Coulter nails the untenable logic included in the latest proposed criminal justice reform.

An excerpt.

In the systematic dismantling of common sense in America, Jared Kushner’s “sentencing reform” bill is the coup de grace — a Mack Truck hurtling down the highway about to take out thousands of Americans. The Idiot Army is already in place to fight and win this battle.

Jared and the hip-hop artists currently advising him have decided that too many people are in prison. If you think you’ve heard this before, you have: Genius insights of this sort have preceded nearly every major crime wave this country has experienced, from Philadelphia to California to a bloody period known as “the Warren Court.”

As anyone with an amoeba’s understanding of recent history knows, beginning in the early ’60s, assorted heads-up-their-asses liberals jettisoned logic, common sense and a basic understanding of human nature by releasing criminals from the prisons where they belonged.

Instead of punishing criminals, we would give them social services, education and job training — with the implied understanding that they wouldn’t move next door to any of the reformers. The experts assured a disbelieving public that these policies would reduce crime.

As Thomas Sowell writes in The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy, the stage was set. Liberal criminologists’ soft-on-crime policies were in place. We only needed empirical evidence.

“THE RESULTS: Crime rates skyrocketed. Murder rates suddenly shot up until the murder rate in 1974 was more than twice as high as in 1961. Between 1960 and 1976, a citizen’s chances of becoming a victim of a major violent crime tripled.”

Prior to this period, crime had been declining for three decades.

Thousands of Americans were murdered, raped, assaulted, disfigured and robbed as a direct result of the exact same policies that Jared and his assistant, Donald Trump, are trying to foist on the country right now.

Then-Princeton professor John DiIulio Jr. looked at the consequences of a single order by a Carter-appointed judge, Norma Shapiro, that put a population cap on Philadelphia prisons in the 1990s. In an 18-month period between 1993 and 1994, 9,732 prisoners released as a result of Judge Shapiro’s order were re-arrested for committing 79 murders, 90 rapes, 701 burglaries, 959 robberies, 1,113 assaults, 2,215 drug offenses and 2,748 thefts.

It took more than a decade of Reagan and Bush judges, Republican mayors and governors, and the endless complaints of ordinary people to produce the low crime rates we have today. Their formula was: Do the precise opposite of whatever the ACLU, the Brennan Center for Justice and The New York Times recommend.

In New York City alone, at least 10,000 people — mostly minorities — are not dead because Rudy Giuliani revived the idea of punishment for criminals, in lieu of understanding them.

Progressive young hipsters living in Brooklyn today have no concept that their trendy neighborhoods would be uninhabitable war zones but for Mayor Giuliani. If you don’t have order and safety in big cities, you can’t have anything else.

In 1991 the U.S. murder rate was well over twice what it is today.

Normal person: Thank God we started putting criminals in prison again!

Jared: LET’S RELEASE THEM.

A 2014 study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that, within five years of release, 82 percent of property offenders, 77 percent of drug offenders, 74 percent of public order offenders and 71 percent of violent offenders were arrested for a new crime — after not getting caught committing God knows how many others.

This is not rocket science. Lock up criminals and they can’t commit any more crimes. As a New York Times headline put it in 2004 with characteristic cluelessness: “Despite Drop in Crime, an Increase in Inmates.”

Retrieved November 23, 2018 from http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2018-11-21.html#read_more

Saint of the Day & Giving Books to Prisoners

Today, November 15, 2018, is the feast day of St. Albert the Great, Bishop, Confessor & Doctor of the Church, (c. 1193 – November 15, 1280), (and the teacher of St. Thomas Aquinas) according to the 1962 Roman Missal, and you can buy a copy of the 1962 Missal at Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Roman-Missal-1962-English-Latin/dp/0954563123/ref=sr_ and there is an article about him at Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertus_Magnus

The definitive piece though is from Tradition in Action at https://traditioninaction.org/SOD/j230sd_AlbertusMagnus_11-15.html

Reading about these saints is a wonderful daily reflection; such marvelous lives the saints lived, such an army, the Church Triumphant, who has our back in heaven.

Giving Books to Prisoners

Very nice work being done by this nonprofit in Appalachia, as reported by BuzzFeed. (Hat tip to Stacy)

An excerpt.

There’s a scene in The Shawshank Redemption — that 1994 feel-good prison break classic — when after more than six years of effort, our scrappy inmate-hero, Andy (Tim Robbins), finally receives funding to begin building a prison library. Soon, bookcases are being assembled, boxes of dusty used novels are being unpacked, and Andy is rattling off where to file the works of authors like Robert Louis Stevenson and Alexandre Dumas (whose name is initially pronounced “dumbass” by the inmate doing the filing).

“By the spring, Andy had transformed a storage room smelling of rat turds and turpentine into the best prison library in New England,” a dulcet voiceover from Morgan Freeman tells us, as the camera pans to a bustling room filled with inmates plucking books from well-stocked shelves and crowded around hand-carved wooden reading tables.

Reality, though, isn’t so charmingly bespoke. Today, prison libraries are hit-or-miss, more often falling on the “miss” side: frequently barebones, stacked with outdated textbooks, or littered with battered romance novels. Some prisons are even attempting to do away with libraries entirely, instead placing the burden on inmates to pay for e-books. In Pennsylvania, inmates have to pay for a $147 tablet in order to read books.

“The quality of the libraries is very uneven. People don’t have access to the books they really want to read, particularly if they’re on a specific subject. Some prisons try to do interlibrary loan, but it’s a very delayed service and, again, limited,” explains Katy Ryan, a professor at West Virginia University and cofounder of the Appalachian Prison Book Project.

Ryan shows me a recent letter from an inmate in Tennessee describing the library at his correctional facility. “Our library here isn’t very big, and besides, getting to it takes an act of Congress,” he says in nimble, attentive handwriting. “I am an indigent inmate and have no T.V., radio, etc., so books are my life. A fellow inmate said you guys could help me get some new reading material.”

Fortunately, he’s written to the right place.

The Appalachian Prison Book Project (APBP) is a nonprofit organization based in Morgantown, West Virginia, that sends free books to incarcerated people across six states in Appalachia: Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. Founded in 2004 by Ryan and fellow professor (and recently elected Morgantown deputy mayor) Mark Brazaitis, APBP was born out of a class Ryan taught on the literature of incarceration.

“While reading works from formerly incarcerated or currently incarcerated people, we learned how important books were to them,” Ryan explains. “I mentioned to the students that I didn’t know if a prison book project existed in West Virginia. It turns out, there wasn’t one in the entire region. So, we carved out those six states, and committed ourselves to sending books to people who wanted them.”

Ryan’s all-volunteer organization started its work from a church basement, then operated briefly out of a graduate student’s apartment, then finally found a home inside the Aull Center, a historic building in downtown Morgantown where the small, donated office space — which Ryan says has “an ineffable spirit” and volunteers frequently reference in magical terms — is stacked high with incoming letters and outgoing books. At any given time, there are up to a dozen volunteers, all of whom have been trained in the APBP system, matching inmate request letters with books on hand — or putting out feelers to rustle up a book on the topic (or by the author, or in the language) requested. The majority of books donated are from the local Morgantown community, but APBP also regularly receives packages filled with novels, how-to guides, and beyond from across the country. Soft-covered books are preferred to hardbacks (which are more difficult to get into prisons), and when it comes to anything small-press or handmade — comic books, zines — staples are a no-go. The entire process is powerful in its simplicity: Once a letter is paired up with a proper book, volunteers simply record it in a handwritten log as a “match,” then deliver it to the post office.

Retrieved November 13, 2018 from https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/sarahbaird/appalachian-nonprofit-sends-free-books-prison-inmates

Saint of the Day& True Conversion

Today, October 22, 2018, is the Feast Day of St. Abercius & St. St. Peter of Alcântara, according to Tradition in Action at https://traditioninaction.org/SOD/j228sd_Albercius10_22.html for St. Abercius and https://traditioninaction.org/SOD/j043sdPeterAlcantara10-22.htm for St. Peter of Alcantara.

Reading about these saints is a wonderful daily reflection; such marvelous lives they lived, such an army who has our back in heaven.

True Conversion

In reading a wonderful book by Rachel Fulton (Now writing under her married name Rachel Fulton Brown), I read this paragraph so relevant to Lampstand where she is writing about the Real Presence in the Eucharist in the conversion of the Saxons, with the key Lampstand related point which I have bolded:

“To understand why, it will be necessary to consider not only the Frankish program for the conversion of the Saxons but also the contemporary reform of the Frankish liturgy and the corollary effort to instruct the laity (the “people of God”) in its significance. Above all, however, it will be necessary to consider in some depth the process of conversion itself. As we shall see, for Augustine and his readers among the Frankish clergy like Paschasius, who were concerned with the instruction of the “people,” conversion was to be understood as a process not only of instruction but of translation. In this context, Paschasius’s representation of the body and blood as historically present was an attempt to translate the written history of the Incarnation into a spoken history of the Word-made-flesh. The gap that made this translation necessary had as much to do with differences between Saxon and Frankish perceptions of history as it did with any arguable differences between “oral” and “literate” tradition. The Frankish clergy were conscious of this gap, and they were also convinced that they knew how best to overcome it: as they saw it, real translation could be effected only in a moment of sympathy, the potential convert or catechumen becoming capable of understanding and learning from the missionary only from the moment that the missionary adapted his speech to the understanding of the catechumen. Whether or not it was usual (or possible) to realize this moment in practice, [effective ministry to criminals is only possible by a transformed criminal] the effort to do so was paradigmatic for Paschasius’s attempt to make sense of the Eucharist for Warin’s Saxon novices, and it was fundamental to his conception of the efficacy of the sacrament as a moment of translation at which God became flesh in order to adapt his divinity to the understanding and experience of human beings, making of them through the Eucharist one flesh with his own (in Christo naturaliter unum corpus)” (p. 16)

Rachel Fulton. (2002). From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ & the Virgin Mary, 800-1200. Columbia University Press: New York.

And for insight to the author, here is a link to her blog and a recent post about why she studies Mary, https://fencingbearatprayer.blogspot.com/2017/06/why-i-study-mary.html?fbclid=IwAR1GGazd6znUSvmHWhEZxUbZ_ZLx0FC5KuA9-CBgfOMSwgjhQ8K5X_i4m5E

An excerpt from the Lampstand book on prison ministry (The Lampstand Prison Ministry: Constructed on Catholic Social Teaching & the History of the Catholic Church) can be read at https://davidhlukenbill.wordpress.com/category/publications-book-excerpts-holy-prisoner-monks/

 

Saint of the Day & Mass Incarceration Propaganda

Today, October 18, 2018, is the feast day of St. Luke according to Lives of the Saints by Fr. Alban Butler (first published in 1887 under the title Lives of the Saints–With Reflections for Every Day in the Year), read at http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/lots/lots324.htm and a more detailed story from Tradition in Action at https://traditioninaction.org/SOD/j150sd_Luke_10-18.html

Reading about these saints is a wonderful daily reflection; such marvelous lives they lived, such an army who has our back in heaven.

Mass Incarceration Propaganda

In the ongoing argument over mass incarceration the propagandistic claim is made that the United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world.

Lampstand’s position has long been that many of the Communist/Socialist countries incarcerate far more but hide the fact, as this story from the Wall Street Journal reveals.

An excerpt.

BEIJING—A senior Chinese official offered the government’s fullest defense so far of its mass detention program for Muslims in China’s far west, saying it formed a bulwark for social stability and suggesting the detentions are voluntary.

In a lengthy interview published Tuesday by the government’s Xinhua News Agency, the chairman of China’s Xinjiang region, Shohrat Zakir, portrayed the camps as generously equipped vocational schools that are vital to a crackdown on religious extremism. He said the clampdown helped bring an end to terrorism and a drop in crime in the region.

“Facts have proven that vocational education and training fits the reality of current efforts in countering terrorism, maintaining stability and eradicating extremism in Xinjiang,” he said, according to Xinhua.

The interview, published in Chinese and English, is part of an evolving strategy by China to explain the campaign. U.S. officials and United Nations experts estimate hundreds of thousands of Muslims, mostly from the Uighur ethnic group, have been detained in the past two years. While the detentions initially attracted little attention, criticism—from the U.S., Europe and some Muslim groups—has been building in recent months.

Chinese officials equivocated over the mass detentions before a United Nations panel in August, saying minor criminals in Xinjiang had been sent to vocational schools to learn how to reintegrate into society. Revisions to Xinjiang’s counterterrorism regulations, made public last week, acknowledged for the first time that the vocational training centers were being used for “deradicalization” work.

“They clearly want to get out in front of the story after a year of trying to deny it,” said James Leibold, an expert on Chinese ethnic policies at La Trobe University in Australia. Part of the current effort, he said, is likely aimed at pre-empting further criticism at a U.N. review of China’s human-rights record, scheduled for November.

Reporting by scholars outside China and interviews with former detainees and their relatives by foreign media, including The Wall Street Journal, have documented the expansion of the detention program and the intense political indoctrination those held are subjected to. They described being held against their will, forced to sing patriotic songs and prohibited from praying.

In the Xinhua interview, Mr. Zakir contradicted those accounts, suggesting enrollment in the institutions is voluntary. He said the facilities sign “training agreements” with each trainee.

Chinese law doesn’t allow for indefinite detention without trial, so Xinjiang’s camps can only be legal if they are voluntary, according to Jeremy Daum, a senior research fellow at the Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center. If they are, he said, independent experts should be allowed to inspect the facilities—something that authorities have refused to allow thus far.

Offices with Xinjiang’s Communist Party Committee either declined to comment or didn’t respond to a faxed request for comment.

China’s resort to mass detentions comes after a yearslong government campaign to suffocate an occasionally violent Uighur separatist movement that Beijing says has links to extremist religious groups abroad. Islamic State has produced videos aimed at recruiting Uighurs, some of whom have left China to fight with the organization in Iraq and Syria.

Human-rights groups and Uighur activists living abroad say the violence is driven by extreme restrictions on Uighur religious and cultural activities and by state-sanctioned policies that ultimately benefit Han Chinese at the expense of minorities in Xinjiang.

In the interview, Mr. Zakir cited several laws and regulations he said justified the campaign. He reiterated earlier government statements that the centers are intended to rehabilitate minor criminals.

He described the vocational centers as resort-like facilities equipped with volleyball courts, ping-pong tables and film-screening rooms, where ethnic customs are respected, nutritious meals are provided “free of charge” and each air-conditioned room comes with its own TV.

According to interviews with former detainees and their family members, conditions in the centers vary widely. While some resemble vocational schools, others seen by the Journal look more like prisons, surrounded by thick walls topped with razor wire and watched over by armed police in guard towers.

Several former detainees told the Journal they were subjected to hours of political indoctrination daily and forced to denounce Islam. One said he was strapped to a chair for hours with his hands shackled behind his back and interrogated about ties to religious groups abroad, which he denied having. Authorities declined to comment.

Retrieved October 17, 2018 from https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-ending-denials-defends-muslim-detentions-as-vital-for-stability-1539691263

Saint of the Day & Holy Prisoner Monks

Today, October 9, 2018, is the feast day of St. Dionysius and his Companions, Martyrs & St. Louis Bertrand, according to Lives of the Saints by Fr. Alban Butler (first published in 1887 under the title Lives of the Saints–With Reflections for Every Day in the Year) read about these saints at http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/lots/lots315.htm

It is a great daily refection reading about the saints.

Holy Prisoner Monks

This wonderful story from the New York Times about how a reformed criminal benefited during his prison term from the help of other prisoners serving long sentences reminded me of a piece in my book about prison ministry; how some lifers can become holy prisoner monks, which you can read on our website at https://davidhlukenbill.wordpress.com/2018/10/08/publications-book-excerpts-holy-prisoner-monks/

An excerpt from the New York Times story.

I can speak for both myself and my older brother, Darryl, when I say that March 8, 2000, was the most regrettable day of our lives. On that day, I accompanied Darryl to an encounter with a gang member who, days earlier, had sexually assaulted Darryl’s wife. We were both armed. Rather than report the assault, we set out for a confrontation. Within seconds, the situation escalated and Darryl fired several shots in a struggle for the gun, wounding the gang member and himself. Darryl and I survived. The gang member did not.

Months later, we stood shackled and handcuffed inside a muggy Brooklyn courtroom. I was 20 and Darryl was 21. We had every reason to think we’d spend the rest of our lives in jail. But Justice Gustin L. Reichbach did something unexpected, something that probably saved both our lives: He did not impose the maximum prison sentence of 40 years to life — the equivalent of life without parole — and instead sentenced each of us to serve 17½ years to life.

We were taken to Five Points Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in upstate New York, to serve our time. That Darryl and I were in the same prison gave us both real advantages. Friends and family could visit us in one place, helping us maintain a connection with the outside world. We were able to reflect together on where we had gone wrong and to commit ourselves to turning our lives around. Seeing each other every day provided a constant reminder of the worst choice we’d ever made.

We made a pact not to ever do anything that would separate us. We became partners in accountability, supported each other during difficult times and deepened our faith with the help of wonderful chaplains there. We also had the guidance and wisdom of several “old-timers” — prisoners decades older than us, some serving life sentences, who committed themselves to keeping us out of trouble. It worked. After seven years of good behavior, Darryl and I were granted permission to become cellmates and spent the next 10 years sharing a bunk.

Soon enough, we followed the lead of those old-timers. We mentored younger inmates. We were co-chairmen of the Youth Assistance Program, where we re-enacted our crime and relayed our life experiences to young men, many on probation or taking part in diversion programs, which offer young offenders alternatives to criminal prosecution With the help of other inmates, we also created the Prison Community Awareness Program, mentoring inmates aged 16 to 21, some of whom were serving life sentences. The institutional example we set simply paid forward the wisdom and guidance those older men extended to us.

In 2017 Darryl and I were paroled just after serving our minimum sentence. This was rare. When we entered the system in 2000, only a very small percentage of violent offenders — by some estimates, roughly 3 percent — serving life sentences in New York had been paroled after serving their minimum sentence. That aversion to parole, together with tougher sentencing laws, has contributed to what is now an aging prisoner population, with New York housing more than 10,000 inmates age 50 or older.

Today, I’m a full-time student at Cornell, majoring in government, while Darryl is making his mark in the Justice-in-Education program at Columbia. The most frequent question Darryl and I get is: “Exactly how did you guys do it?”

Evidently, the notion that convicted felons can ascend from the lowest depths of maximum security to the Ivy League is counterintuitive. But I’m quick to deny that Darryl and I are somehow exceptional. In prison, we shined because of, not despite, our circumstances, especially the presence of the “old-timers” who helped guide us to our coming-of-age. We owe them tremendous credit.

Retrieved October 8, 2018 from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/06/opinion/sunday/aging-inmates-prisons-mandatory-sentencing.html

Saint of the Day & Freed After Wrongful Conviction

Today, October 6, 2018, is the feast day of St. Bruno, founder of the Carthusians, according to Lives of the Saints by Fr. Alban Butler (first published in 1887 under the title Lives of the Saints–With Reflections for Every Day in the Year) read about this saint at http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/lots/lots312.htm and a much more detailed account from Tradition in Action at https://traditioninaction.org/SOD/j041sdBruno10-3.htm

Freed After Wrongful Conviction

Good and very tragic story of a man freed after 27 years imprisoned for a murder he should not have been convicted for, as reported by the New York Times.

An excerpt.

Larry McKee’s eyes lost their glimmer the second he stepped out of a car on a recent morning and recognized the Bronx corner where a street fight derailed his life more than 20 years ago.

Mr. McKee had returned to the corner in Morris Heights to make peace with his past, he said somberly, but most importantly to embrace his future. A laundromat had been replaced by a delicatessen, but other than that the corner retained the same bustling feel.

“This is where I was taken from,” he said, almost in a whisper. “It’s a hurt feeling, but I’ve got to move on.”

Mr. McKee spent two decades in prison for a murder he has long maintained he did not commit. Eight months ago, a state judge threw out his conviction on the recommendation of the Bronx district attorney’s office, which determined important evidence had never been given to the defense.

Ever since his release from the Adirondack Correctional Facility in Ray Brook, N.Y., Mr. McKee, now 47, has been learning to live in a very different world than the one he left in 1997. It is a difficult adjustment that parallels the experiences of many others who have been released in recent years after serving time for wrongful convictions.

“Technology’s changed,” he said, holding his iPhone 8 curiously. “The phone. I’ve still got problems with it, with emails and texts.”

A jury found Mr. McKee guilty of murder after a 16-year-old witness testified that he saw Mr. McKee shoot Theodore Vance, 29, after a fight on the corner, at 176th Street and University Avenue. The fight turned into an all-out brawl in which brickbats and other debris became weapons.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers agree Mr. Vance struck Mr. McKee with a pipelike object during the melee, and then was shot by someone. Mr. McKee insists he ran away before the shot was fired. The gun was never recovered.

Mr. McKee was released after a new witness came forward last year and gave a different description of the killer. The Bronx district attorney’s office, after a six-month investigation, also determined important grand jury testimony was never shared with the defense. A person who knew the victim told the grand jury that in his last moments, the man had described his killer as a “Spanish guy.” Mr. McKee is black.

In January, the Bronx district attorney, Darcel D. Clark, asked Justice Robert E. Torres to throw out the conviction, which he did. Ms. Clark’s office also dismissed the indictment.

Mr. McKee’s lawyers argue the grand jury testimony alone would had been enough to clear him of the murder charge in the 1990s.

“He would have never gotten convicted if the jury heard the victim’s last words,” said one of the defense lawyers, Oscar Michelen. “Here the prosecutor intentionally withheld evidence that could have proven that Larry was innocent. There is no excuse.”

Retrieved October 6, 2018 from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/nyregion/wrongful-conviction-larry-mckee.html