How to Respond to a Death on the Street? Another Day in Paterson, NJ, December 28, 2012

I was walking to the bank in order to deposit a paycheck to cover my January rent payment. I don't like walking around after it gets dark. Paterson is a high crime area. I race against the setting sun. At winter solstice, time is not on my side. Already buildings' shadows announced evening's approach. And it was cold.

I rounded the corner of the new Rite-Aid drugstore. I saw a white man, supine, limp as a rag doll, on the sidewalk in front of the store. His face was a hideous color. White. Not "white" as in "Caucasian," but "white" as in the color of newsprint. Grey splotches, every bit as grey as the cement sidewalk on which he lay, interspersed with the white of his cheeks. His loose pants were pulled down below his buttocks. My very first thought was "I don't want to look at this. It is ugly. Watching this man die will ruin my day." Looking at the unnatural white of his limp face, I felt nauseated.

A black man was leaning over the white man. A black woman hovered near the white man's side. "Get his money," the black man instructed the woman. A wad of bills was jammed between the white man's shoe and the sidewalk. The woman grabbed the money.

The white man began to go into convulsions.

I have a slow reaction time. I felt confused. I stopped, wondering what I should do. I felt that maybe I was in someone's way, and felt I should move on. Maybe whatever was happening here was just between these three, and I was in their way.

I saw that the woman was using her cell phone to call 911. The black man was talking to the white man on the sidewalk.

"We are calling 911. You are right in front of a drugstore. Can we get you anything? Will anything help? Try to remain calm."

I stood there staring, stupidly. I realized that I was staring at the man's hideously pale face as if he were putting on some kind of a show. I tried to look away, but then realized I was trying to figure out what to do to be helpful, and that required that I look at the horribly pale man.

The men went into convulsions. His arms, hands, and legs began to shake in a weird way. It was clear he had no control over this. His head lolled against the bricks of the drugstore he was leaning against.

I could hear the woman shouting into her cell phone. I could hear the 911 operator asking all the tedious question they are instructed to ask. Where are you, asked over and over, even after the woman clearly stated where she was. What is the man doing, asked over and over, even after the woman clearly stated.

"Call the police," the convulsing man said.

I could see that 911 had already been called, but I wanted to be helpful, so I called the police. The police said that emergency vehicles were already on their way.

What to do, what to do.

I decided that I would squat down next to the convulsing man and speak to him in a soothing way as he died.

I was trying to map out my space on the sidewalk next to him when I could see some pink reappearing in his cheeks. The convulsions began to lessen. He stood up.

"You shouldn't stand up," I said. "You are still weak. You may fall. Then you will have a concussion."

"I need a cigarette," he said. "Do you have a cigarette?"

The black man approached a white man standing nearby and smoking. "Give that man your cigarette," he said. The smoker did so.

The man who had been going into convulsions took the other man's cigarette and began smoking it. More color appeared in his face. "I have low blood pressure. I need medication. My medication is in the drugstore. I need to raise my blood pressure. That's why I'm smoking." The woman who had dialed 911 mentioned the name of the medication to him. "Yes, that's it. I need my medication. I need my medication," he said, plaintively, as if we could give it to him.

I stood there, wishing I could move on. Sunset was coming and the bank would close soon. I realized I couldn't move on. I stayed out of a sense of duty. I'm glad I have that sense of duty.

I hate to say this, but somehow I didn't like the convulsing man. He seemed annoyed at all of us, as if we had caused the convulsions, as if we were denying him his medication. I was pissed off that he insisted on standing. We had become involved with him by giving our time and presence. His concussion would be our problem. He should relieve us all and sit back down. I was dumbstruck that he regarded a cigarette as a health aid. I wanted to move on! I just stood there. I would not leave till he was okay.

"I'm going to get my medication," he said.

"But the ambulance has not arrived yet!" I said.

"I'll be fine," he said. He tossed away the cigarette and went into the drug store.

The woman and I stayed outside, waiting for the ambulance. It took a while. Finally, off in the distance, the sound of a siren.

A big black guy got out. The woman and I explained that a young white male had fallen to the sidewalk and gone into convulsions, and that he had entered the Rite-Aid. We described his clothes. The ambulance driver pursed his lips as if we had made a mistake by calling him, or maybe as if the young man had made a mistake by leaving the scene. He was not happy about something, clearly. But he did his duty. He went into the store.

The black woman and I smiled at each other beatifically, with that gratifying sense of group accomplishment. "Happy New Year!" she shouted to me as she went her way.

"God bless you!" I shouted to her.

I went into the bank. When I got out, the ambulance was gone.

"Black." "White." I keep using those words in telling this story. I just want to say, a white man fell to the street in Paterson, New Jersey, and a group of black people gathered round, and did what they could to help him.

I'm not romanticizing Paterson. One of my students was mugged twice in my one day in Paterson. But this happens, too. Black people are kind, are helpful, do the right thing. Enough so that things should be different.

The work of Giovanna Cecchetti

I visited Giovanna, the Italian-American artist who lives upstairs. I had to return to her the blankets that she insisted on lending me when we were without heat or electricity for the better part of two weeks after Hurricane Sandy.

I was a bit nervous. Giovanna is an artist. What if I did not like her art? I had been in her apartment only once before, during the Sandy blackout, and I could not see her art then, because there was no light.

Also, Giovanna had told me that she has an attack cat, and I did not want to be attacked.

As soon as I entered the apartment, Giovanna's beautiful but vicious attack cat hissed at me. It's a long-haired black cat.

"Giovanna," I asked. "Why do you have such a vicious cat?"

She explained that Mike, the guy with the ponytail, had rescued Puss from the streets. He asked Giovanna to "foster" her until he found a home for her. It's been seven years.

Puss may have been abused, Giovanna said.

Mike never smiles, he moves like a bullet, and he wears leather jackets. He looks like a professional assassin. I see him putting out food for feral cats.

I wanted to offer Giovanna some thanks for lending me the blankets. I had tucked into them packages of chocolates, some of which had been sent to me by a kind Polish American woman, Anna Siemienowski Brzuza, who wanted to make sure that I'd have a nice package to open on Christmas day.

Giovanna and I chatted a bit. I need not have been nervous; I genuinely liked her artwork. I admired the view from her window. She sees what I see, only from higher up. She took out her binoculars and showed me a squirrel's nest in a tree across the street. She handed me some walnuts in the shell she purchased for the squirrels. I offered to place the walnuts under the tree as Giovanna watched, to see if the squirrels found them.

***

I'm touched by the love and kindness I witnessed in Paterson yesterday.

Giovanna Cecchetti's webpage is here.

More of her art can be seen here.

A terrific photo, by BC Lorio, of Paterson, NJ Mayor Jeff Jones.
BC Lorio's work can be viewed here.

Thoughts on Donating to the Newtown, Connecticut, Public Library

When I heard about the December 14 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, I decided I didn't want to just cry and feel sad, I wanted to do something concrete, something tangible.

I did three things; maybe I'll blog about the first two later.

Today I did a third thing. I donated a copy of Save Send Delete to the Cyrenius H. Booth Library in Newtown, Connecticut.

I've known suffering. It has often seemed to me that my entire life has been one big waste. One reason I wrote Save Send Delete was to reach out to, and, I hoped, comfort, others who were suffering. In fact, I dedicated the book thus, "For those who suffer alone."

As soon as it occurred to me to donate a copy of Save Send Delete to the Newtown Library, the inner nagging voice began to needle me.

"Those people have suffered great tragedy. You have no right to attempt to comfort them.

You work is inadequate and unworthy.

You're not famous. No one in Newtown will read your book."

I didn't argue with the inner, nagging voice.

In fact, the inner, nagging voice just steeled my determination to donate Save Send Delete to Newtown. I mailed off my copy today.

Everything we do is inadequate. Because we never know what another is going through. And we have to stumble along and attempt to do the right thing, anyway. Because that is the best we can do.

I was in an accident earlier this year. Broken bone; stuck at home, unable to shop, unable even to open a can of food.

Two kind people brought me bread.

God bless them.

I don't eat bread.

And you know what? That is not the point. The point is that these people, without being asked, without waiting, not worrying whether or not they were doing the right thing, jumped in and did *something.* And that made all the difference. Even though I never ate the bread. Those two loaves of bread were talismans to me. Concrete evidence that somebody cared. Even though I almost never eat bread, I pray God for it every day. "Give us this day our daily bread."

I put the loaves in the freezer, in case I ever figured out what to do with them, and just grateful for their presence. When I lost electricity for two weeks because of Hurricane Sandy, the bread passed beyond any conceivable culinary salvation, and, regretfully, I threw it away. With gratitude.

Because.

So many times in my life people have said to me, "I saw you walking and I thought to offer you a ride but I never did."

Or

"I wanted to apologize and I never did."

Or

"I knew my coworker was depressed and I wanted to reach out to him and I never did. And then he killed himself."

Because I couldn't come up with an elegantly scripted apology … because I knew my little donation would not save the world … because I thought my paltry contribution would be laughed at …

One day, on a college campus, a woman I was sure I had never, ever seen walked up to me. She told me she was about to graduate, and before she left town, she wanted to thank me. I had no idea who she was. She reminded me. One day she had been confused about how to use a computer on campus and I explained it to her. "You were so kind. I'll never forget that. No one else would help me, but you did. I was having a hard time that day. Your help meant so much."

I still didn't remember her. I don't remember her now. I'm sure I didn't do anything special or out of the ordinary. To her it meant so much she remembered it for years.

We have to do something. We may never know which thing we did did any good. We can't let the nagging, needling voice win.

I still fear that my little copy of Save Send Delete sent to the Newtown Library is inadequate. I hope, if nothing else, they can feel about it the way that I felt about the bread.

Donations of inspirational books can be made to the Newtown Library's "Books heal hearts" campaign here.

Journal News Reports Names, Addresses of Gun Permit Holders

If you click on a dot on the map at the Journal News website,
you discover the name and address of the mapped gun permit holder. 

The Journal News of White Plains, New York, published an interactive map with names and addresses of pistol permit holders in Westchester and Rockland Counties. When you click on a dot on the interactive version of the map, on the newspaper's website, the name and address of the gun permit owner appears.

In "The Gun Owner Next Door," by Dwight R. Worley, The Journal News reports:

"In May, Richard V. Wilson approached a female neighbor on the street and shot her in the back of the head, a crime that stunned their quiet Katonah neighborhood.

What was equally shocking for some was the revelation that the mentally disturbed 77-year-old man had amassed a cache of weapons — including two unregistered handguns and a large amount of ammunition — without any neighbors knowing.

'I think that the access to guns in this country is ridiculous, that anybody can get one,' said a neighbor of Wilson's who requested anonymity because it's not known whether the gunman, whose unnamed victim survived, will return home or be sent to prison. 'Would I have bought this house knowing somebody (close by) had an arsenal of weapons? No, I would not have.'

In the wake of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and amid renewed nationwide calls for stronger gun control, some Lower Hudson Valley residents would like lawmakers to expand the amount of information the public can find out about gun owners."

Full text of the article is here.

Les Miserables: Why We Pay to Watch Others Suffer

Les Miserables is very old fashioned entertainment. It's a series of crescendo moments with no build-up, no backstory, no pause. It's like eating just the topping of the pecan pie, and not bothering with the crust or filling. We were just ten minutes into the movie when I had to look at my watch and ask, okay, how long can they keep this up? Climax after climax, plot twist after plot twist, tearjerking scene after tearjerking scene. Oceans! Mountains! Punishment! Suffering! Religion! Redemption! Will there be a break for lunch? Will we be able to catch our breath?

If you can watch this film without crying, I don't want to know you. The woman behind me was on the edge of her seat, not just because I smell good. The audience at the 10:40 a.m. matinee – the theater was packed – applauded at the end, and was very slow to leave the theater, even as the closing credits rolled.

Typical of big, fat, nineteenth-century novels, there are numerous implausible coincidences that drive the plot. These coincidences took me out of the movie, but that was a good thing. The human suffering onscreen was overwhelming: suicide, enslavement, exploitation of living humans' body parts, prostitution, disease, spite, malice, child abuse, starvation, sadism, a dying man escaping through very graphic sewerage. I did have to repeat to myself, "This is only a movie" even as tears streamed down my cheeks.

Jean Valjean is imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving children. He slaves for twenty years. He hauls a massive, capsized sailing ship. The scene does look like obviously fake CGI, but that doesn't make it any less gut wrenching. The workers sing, "You'll always be a slave. You are standing in your grave." They are the men we see in Sebastiao Salgado photographs of Third World laborers. They are Ilya Repin's "Barge Haulers on the Volga." Valjean's nemesis is the crazily obsessive policeman, Javert. They spar throughout the film, as Valjean's fate rises and falls and rises and falls and rises … you get the idea.

A story this big, this broad, and this implausible requires one hundred percent commitment from the performers. Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean is superb. He believes. He emotes. He is as big as the story itself. Jackman is the heart and soul of "Les Miserables." I loved him. Anne Hathaway, Eddie Redmayne, Samantha Barks, Helena Bonham Carter, Sacha Baron Cohen – they all had me convinced. Russell Crowe was a surprising disappointment. He's a brilliant actor and I kept waiting for him to bring some fire, some ice, some power, some insight to Javert, the obsessive and punitive policeman who mercilessly hounds Jean Valjean. I wanted a memorable moment that would make me feel that Crowe's performance brought Javert to intimate life for me. That moment did not arrive.

I wondered while watching this movie whether it will be embraced by the political left or the political right. It is a deeply and unashamedly Christian film. A Catholic priest, emulating Jesus, is the catalyst. Valjean spends the rest of the film working to live up to the priest's Biblical example. "Les Miserable" is leftist in that it depicts the poor rising up, but then the poor fail their own putative saviors, and allow them to be massacred, alone. Javert, representing law and order, is a monster. The film's brief glimpse of heaven is like some limousine liberal's fantasy.

I think "Les Miserables" is as popular as it is for the same reason that Cinderella is so popular. When "Les Miserable" was a stage play, tickets were a very expensive and difficult to acquire luxury. It is ironic that a play about the wretched of the earth would be such a luxury entertainment. Why do we enjoy watching people much poorer and more desperate than we will ever be? Why do we pay for the privilege? Because we all see ourselves in Cinderella, in Jean Valjean, no matter how lucky we are. I'll certainly never stand in cold sea water with iron shackles around my wrists and neck, overseen by a cold sadist like Javert. But, along with millions of others, I saw my own struggles in Valjean, and thanked God that I didn't have it as bad as he. If Jean Valjean can go on, I can, too!

I wish the songs had been a tad better. There are a couple of good ones, "I dreamed a dream" and "Do you hear the people sing?" All the actors sing very well. Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman sing especially well.

Cosette, "Les Miserables"

Ilya Repin "Barge Haulers on the Volga." Like "Les Miserables" opening scene. 

Sebastiao Salgado. Mine workers 

You Stupid Christians! Jesus is Really Mithra! Atheists Are So Much Smarter Than Christians!

I was attending Christmas – Sorry! – Solstice services at the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Bloomington, Indiana. An associate pastor of the church handed out a photocopy. The photocopy had a series of bullet points:

Mithra, the photocopy claimed, was an ancient Roman God. Mithra, the photocopy claimed, was the origin of the Jesus story. According to the pastor's handout:

***

Mithra was born of a virgin on December 25th, in a cave, attended by shepherds
Mithra had twelve disciples
Mithra performed miracles
Mithra was buried in a tomb and after three days rose again
Mithra was celebrated each year at the time of His resurrection (later to become Easter)
Mithra was called "the Good Shepherd"
Mithra was considered to be the "Way, the Truth and the Light," and the "Logos," "Redeemer," "Savior" and "Messiah."
Mithra celebrated a Eucharist or "Lord's Supper"

***

After the congregants read the pastor's handout, she gave us all a look that made me a bit queasy. Her look was triumphant, superior, and pitying. "See?" she said. "Those poor Christians. They are so deluded. They don't realize that their 'messiah' is really just a rehash of the Roman god Mithra."

***

In Save Send Delete I tell the true story of my yearlong debate, and love affair, with a prominent atheist. He also insisted to me that Jesus had never existed, and that the story found in the New Testament is all a mixed-up version of the Mithra myth. Interestingly, at an earlier point in his life, he had been a Christian.

***

"Atheists are smarter than Christians" is a very big selling point for atheism.

Are Christians just plain stupid?

Are Atheists just plain smarter?

Is Jesus based on the Roman god Mithra?

Mithra was originally not a Roman god. He was Zoroastrian, from Persia, today's Iran. Romans adopted Mithra, dubbing him Mithras.

It's interesting that many atheists, Pagans, and New Agers make the claim that Jesus is Mithra or Mithras and that knowing that makes them smarter and Christians stupid, and that saying that makes atheists, Pagans, and New Agers honest and Christians liars. It's interesting because the claim itself is false, and it is based on ignorance and misinformation.

In fact, the bullet points about Jesus equaling Mithra, listed above, have been proven to be false.

***

The Jesus-equals-Mithra claim insists that Jesus never existed.

The historical consensus is that Jesus did exist. Both religious and secular historians agree that Jesus was a flesh-and-blood man who lived and died in ancient Israel approximately during the years 0-33 A.D., give or take seven years. Historians agree that the New Testament documents are not myths, but are attempts to record the Jesus biography, and the history of the early church, accurately and factually. Historians agree that the earliest books of the New Testament were written between twenty and forty years of Jesus' death, by people who knew Jesus or knew people who knew him, and were part of a coherent and tight-knit community.

Very important to scholars, but less understood by lay people, is the question of genre. Folklore scholars like Bronislaw Malinowski emphasize that traditional people know the difference between myth and non-fiction account. The difference between genres was so strong that a tribesman could be punished for telling a folktale at the wrong time. The New Testament was not myth, was never meant to be myth, and only someone who knows nothing about traditional people and their worldview would assess the New Testament as myth.

Myths are meant to be symbolically true. The New Testament was meant to be reportage: this is what I saw. This is what reliable people saw. This is what was reported.

Why do historians, both religious ones and secular ones, agree that Jesus, the flesh-and-blood man, existed?

Several reasons.

One is texts.

Quick question – who is the best attested figure from the Ancient World? About whom do we have the most, and the most reliable, textual documentation?

Alexander the Great?

Cleopatra?

Julius Cesar?

No. Jesus.

Jesus – a Jewish peasant and laborer, a man who never traveled more than two hundred miles from his birthplace, who didn't publish anything, who never held public office, who had no significant wealth, who died a horrific slave's death – Jesus is the best attested figure from the Ancient World. We have better, and more reliable, textual documentation of Jesus' existence than we have of Alexander the Great's, or Julius Cesar's, or Cleopatra's.

Please do check this for yourself – do a Google search on attestation. It may well surprise you – how few documents we have attesting to some Ancient World figures, and how distant those documents are in time from the figures and events they cover. And then there is Jesus. Simply much better attested.

Another reason historians agree that Jesus existed: extra-Biblical mention. Jewish and Pagan authors mention Jesus.

Another very important reason historians agree that Jesus lived: behavior change. *Something* big happened in Ancient Israel around 33 A.D. A tiny group of impoverished nobodies overcame the Roman Empire.

Rabbi Shaye J. D. Cohen, the Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations of Harvard University, said,

"The triumph of Christianity is actually a very remarkable historical phenomenon. ... We begin with a small group from the backwaters of the Roman Empire and after two, three centuries go by, lo and behold that same group and its descendants have somehow taken over the Roman Empire and have become the official religion, in fact the only tolerated religion, of the Roman Empire by the end of the 4th century.

That is a truly remarkable development, and a monumental historical problem, trying to understand how this happened. Of course, pious Christians have no doubt about how or why it happened: 'This is the hand of God working in history.' And the Christians of antiquity already made this very point; the fact that Christianity triumphed is proof of its truth.

For historians, that answer, while maybe correct on one level, on another level it is not entirely satisfactory. We historians would like to find other explanations for the triumph of Christianity and indeed, ever since Gibbon wrote his famous history, historians have been trying to understand what it was exactly that pushed Christianity to the top. I can't fully answer that question myself."

Okay. So, the Pagans, New Agers, and Atheists who say that Jesus never existed are simply wrong. The consensus of qualified historians is that Jesus existed.

What about all those parallels with Mithra?

Some are made up. That's right. Just invented. Mithra wasn't born of a virgin, for example. He was born of a rock. Roman Mithra religion does not predate Christianity, it postdates it. If there are similarities to be found in Mithraism to Christianity, and if any copying took place, Roman Pagan followers of Mithraism copied from Christianity, not vice versa.

One source used to support the claim that Jesus was copied from Mithraism is the scholarship of Lord Raglan, a folklorist not much respected today. In fact, his theories have been made fun of by other folklorists. Folklorist Francis Lee Utley made fun of Lord Raglan in his article, "Lincoln Wasn't There, Or Lord Raglan's Hero" that uses Lord Raglan's theories to prove that Abraham Lincoln never existed. Dorothea Wender wrote an hysterically funny article, "The Myth of Washington," proving that George Washington never existed.

The Jesus=Mithra claim is not the only New Age or Pagan attempt out there to discredit the historical Jesus. There are many. They are all over the internet.

An example. I recently saw the poster, above, on facebook.

This poster takes words from Jesus and attributes them to an Egyptian god, maybe Horus  – the god with the falcon head – or Anubis – the god with the jackal's head.

This attribution of Jesus' words to a jackal or a falcon could not be more inaccurate.

Ancient Egyptian religion was utterly hierarchical. It existed for one purpose – to guarantee heaven to the pharaoh. Heaven was a highly materialistic place where the pharaoh would engage in the typical activities of a rich Egyptian: hunting, boating, wearing gold and precious gems and applying heavy eye make-up. Yes, pharaohs brought their eye makeup with them to heaven, or so they thought.

Too, the pharaoh's retinue was, in some cases, murdered upon his death, so that he could enjoy his wives, concubines, and personal slaves in heaven. He dies, they all die, immediately, and are buried with him. The tens of thousands of slaves who built the pyramids were not mummified, and were denied heaven. The pharaoh's pets were mummified, and were allowed into heaven.

Christianity had an utterly different message: In God there is no Jew nor Greek, no male nor female, no slave nor free man. God so loved the world – every last person in the world – that he gave his only begotten son, so that whoever believes in him should not die, but should have everlasting life. This message would have been anathema to a pharaoh. Celsus, an early Pagan critic, condemned Christianity as a religion of "women and slaves," that is, the most despised of society.

I wrote to Betsy M. Bryan, the Alexander Badawy Professor of Egyptian Art and Archaeology at Johns Hopkins University, and asked her if there is any truth to the New Age claim that "The kingdom of God is within you" is written on a temple at Karnak, as some New Agers claim. She wrote back. No, it is not, she told me.

Again, a now discredited scholar is behind this falsehood. Gerald Massey was a nineteenth-century autodidact who insisted that Christianity was a copy of ancient Egyptian religion. Massey is not supported by Egyptian scholars. Massey came up with nine claims, rooting Christianity in ancient Egypt. Professional Egyptologists reject every one of Massey's claims.

Why put Jesus' words in the mouth of a jackal-headed God who never said them?

To discredit Christianity. By any means necessary.

It's funny that some New Agers claim that Christianity was copied from ancient Egyptian paganism, and others say it was copied from ancient Roman Pagan beliefs. Christianity couldn't have been copied from both!

I could say much more about the intellectual and ethical bankruptcy of the Jesus-equals-Mithra claim, or the Jesus=Horus claim, but I'll stop here.

And ask why.

Why do some Pagans, New Agers, and atheists make the already discredited claim that Jesus is a copy of Mithra?

I think it's because some want to reject what they think of as Jesus, but they don't know how. So they reject a made-up version of Jesus, like the Jesus=Mithra construct. Rather than attempt to deny Jesus' real truth, they make up a fake version of Jesus, and deny that.

As I record in "Save Send Delete," I'm a Christian not for one reason, but for many reasons. I traveled. I lived other faiths. I lived Paganism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam. I read. I studied.

Nothing I have ever experienced is at all comparable to the Jesus I encountered in the New Testament.

If you haven't yet read that document, I hope you will.

Merry Christmas.

Cardinal Dolan: Anne Marie Murphy Was Like Jesus. Tell Me Again Why Women Can't Be Priests?

Anne Marie Murphy: Like Jesus 

Dylan Hockley, age 6. Anne Marie Murphy shielded him as they died. 

Anne Marie McGowan Murphy was 52 years old and a mother of four. During the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shootings, she shielded her student, six year old Dylan Hockley, and other students, with own her body.

The Hockley family released a statement. "We take great comfort in knowing that Dylan was not alone when he died but was wrapped in the arms of his amazing aide, Anne Marie Murphy."

Cardinal Timothy Dolan eulogized Anne Marie Murphy:

"Because I know Jesus, I feel as if I know Ann Marie McGowan Murphy quite well! Like Jesus, Annie was an excellent teacher; Like Him, she had a favored place in her big, tender heart for children, especially those with struggles; Like Jesus, Annie laid down her life for her friends; Like Him, she has brought together a community, a nation, a world, now awed by her own life and death; Like Jesus, Annie’s life and death brings light, truth, goodness, and love, to a world often shrouded in darkness, evil, selfishness, and death."

It was only after an hour of tearful thought and prayer that I realized. I am a Catholic woman. The church tells me that I, and other women like me, can't be priests because we women are too unlike Jesus to be priests.

Cardinal Dolan's eulogy demonstrated why that reasoning is incorrect.

Cardinal Dolan's eulogy is online here 

Gun Advocates: Stop Exploiting the Holocaust

Gun advocates have been posting Holocaust photos on Facebook implying that if there had been no gun control, six million Jews, and the Nazis' millions of other victims, would not have been murdered.

This is not true.

Much of the Holocaust took place in Poland. As per the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Poland was invaded by both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in September, 1939. Both of these superpowers conducted genocidal warfare in Poland. Nazi Germany bombed Poland from the air. Civilian targets, including hospitals, were bombed. In the end, Nazi Germany used flamethrowers in house-to-house searches. The Soviets rounded up and murdered armed military officers in the Katyn forest and elsewhere. Some Poles had guns, but even if Poles had had the money such that every citizen in Poland owned a handgun, it is questionable that civilian handguns would have made much difference in the face of that kind of a coordinated invasion by two immense, genocidal superpowers.

In any case, the Nazis were experts at divide and conquer. Under Nazi domination, a significant number of Ukrainians used their guns to murder, not invading Nazis, but their own Polish neighbors. In the unlikely event that the US ever faced an equally overwhelming invasion as that which Poland faced – and such a possibility simply does not exist right now – the invading power could easily use Nazi-style divide-et-impera tactics to turn armed American whites against armed American blacks, for example.

As for the even more bizarre gun advocate argument that had there been no gun control in Germany, Hitler never would have risen to power, The Straight Dope reveals that gun advocates have been circulating falsified material on that question. You can read that Straight Dope column here.