A friend I work with through the Hispanic Ministry at my church (I’m involved because I read the gospel in Spanish at Mass) sent me this interesting notice about an upcoming event at the Russell House, hoping for some publicity:
The Consortium for Latino Immigration Studies
invite you for a Q & A sessionTrail of Dreams:
Students March from Miami to DCThe four students, who are on a four month, 1500 mile walk from Miami to Washington DC to protest the lack of legislation granting legal status to illegal immigrants. They are making a stop here on campus at USC. Come to hear their story and to learn more. The protesters include Carlos Roa, 22, who was 2 years old when his parents brought him here from Venezuela, and Felipe Matos, 23, sent from Brazil by his mother when he was 14. They say they support proposals in overhaul bills that would open a path to citizenship for students who came to this country illegally when they were young.
Russell House Theater,
Monday, March 15 at 6:00 PM
Those are some brave kids, coming to South Carolina with that message. This is not exactly what you’d call fertile ground for the seeds they’re sowing. Of course, it can be hoped that they’ll get a warmer reception here than they did in Nahunta, Ga.
To read more about what they’re up to, go here or here or here, at what appears to be the official site.
Don’t know what I think about their cause. They would appear, at first blush, to be from the end of the political spectrum that is equal and opposite to the one my friend Doug Ross subscribes to. Personally, I’m cheering for Lindsay Graham, who apparently is trying yet again (in spite of the fact that there’s little political reward in it for him) to find a comprehensive, reasonable solution.
There was a young woman from Aiken –at USCA– a few years ago. Her siblings were all born here and legal, and she had no recollection of living anywhere else, but she was being deported. It was in The State.
It doesn’t sound like they’re taking liberties with “walking to Washington”. In the article about going through Georgia it states one of the students saying, “Today we drove to Nahunta, GA”.
How can a layman read the Gospel at Mass?
What other laws do you think should be ignored? It’s mind boggling to me that you can get worked up about speed limits, helmets on kids riding ATV’s, etc. but just can’t seem to dredge up much concern about millions of people who have broken the law to enter the country, continue to break multiple other laws (no car insurance, identity theft, tax evasion) and serve as slave labor to the construction, poultry processing, and agriculture businesses of South Carolina.
There is nothing that prevents these kids from going to their homeland and getting in line like all the legal immigrants have done.
I don’t care who enters the U.S. as long as they follow the rules.
because they don’t have a Spanish-speaking priest, and while they are happy to snub women, serving the Hispanic community is important to them….
Kathryn, I’ll take that “happy to snub women” kind of garbage from ignorant people, but not from you. That’s offensive. I realize it’s fashionable, even among people who pride themselves on their tolerance, to trash the church. But I get sick and tired of it.
Sunday at Mass, a woman — Maria Smoak, our Hispanic Ministry director — not only read the Gospel, but delivered the homily. It’s interesting. When we started doing the Mass in Spanish years ago, the homily was in English except when Fr. Filemon Juya (from Colombia) was the celebrant. Then Maria started doing a Spanish translation of Msgr. Lehocky’s homilies, and we would hear it twice, once in each language. Now lately, she just delivers the homily in Spanish, and monsignor stands there and says nothing.
Most of the ministry at our church is done by women — reading, Eucharistic ministers, etc. I make a point of doing those things, too, and it occurs to me sometimes how few men besides me do. You know how slack men can be…
Oh, and the priests — even those whose first language is English — do most of the Mass in Spanish at noon on Sunday (and all of it in Spanish once a month). We just try to get someone who has a better accent than they do to read the Gospel (and, on Primer Domingo, the other readings as well — I did the second reading in Spanish Sunday). It rotates among a list that Maria keeps. Most of the readers are native speakers; I’m one of the few who are not. And yes, most of them are women.
Now that I have, by implication, bragged on my Spanish, I should take myself down a few notches.
When I was a child living in Ecuador, I spoke Spanish just as easily as English. I thought in Spanish; I dreamed in Spanish. While my grammar was nothing to write home about, my accent was pretty much flawless. Kids can do that.
But I came back to this country in 1965, and have hardly spoken the language since then. You can forget a lot in 45 years, unfortunately. Actually, it’s worse than “unfortunately.” I think it’s a tragic loss. I can’t carry on a normal, simple conversation in the language, and I can’t follow the homily or even the readings, even in Maria’s beautifully clear Cuban Spanish, and this is painful to me.
But… when I take a few minutes to read the Gospel or other reading over several times aloud, to loosen up the proper muscles, I can read aloud with an accent that is almost (but not quite; my ear can still hear a difference) as good as it was when I was a kid.
Consequently, monolingual people come up to me after Mass, thinking I’m fluent. I mumble, “Lo siento, pero necesitas hablar con Maria…” and steer them to her.
Which makes me feel like a real heel, because I bet they think I just don’t want to be bothered…
Thanks Brad, for a wonderful explanation of our Sunday services intended to make our Hispanic brothers and sisters feel welcome in God’s house. And yes, feel free to brag on your Spanish. You do a great job, esp. this past Sunday on such a short notice!!
I’ll apologize when the Roman Catholic Church puts women on a par with men–no sex-based exclusions. A female Pope. Until then, count me snubbed.
FWIW, I also don’t like Orthodox Judaism, many fundamentalist Christian sects, Islam, or any other religion or subset thereof that counts me a second class (and separate is NOT equal) human. I’m an equal opportunity feminist.
Doug, Isn’t there a law against “slave labor”? Why don’t you rail against failing to enforce the workplace laws instead of picking on those who are so desperately impoverished that they find those wages acceptable? I could accept your position much better if that were the point of attack. I doubt if a legal citizen making as poor an income as most of them do reported taxes, he would have to pay anything. If they do make enough to be worth going after for tax evasion, don’t you think they’d be more likely to report if they weren’t afraid of summary deportation. As for car insurance, lets see–car insurance or food? Gee, do ya think food might win out? I agree that Sen. Lindsay is seeking legislation that is workable. The way it is now clearly isn’t. By the way, speeding is breaking the law, and endangers others. If you have sped, you are just as much a law breaker as they for far less pressing reasons.
Immigration laws are fairly recent and were enacted after most European immigration stopped and brown and black people wanted to start coming. They have a racist past and racist present.In addition, they keep out some of our most desirable potential emigres, like former students, and give precedence to someone’s old parents. We should reconsider our laws, decide if we even need them, and if so what they really ought to look like, and then enforce them.
I very much sympathize with Karen’s sentiments, except that where do we draw the line? There are plenty of hungry people here–do we let them take whatever they want from a grocery store? Homeless people are not allowed to squat. We really need to have comprehensive social safety nets and then we can ethically enforce the laws.
And see, Kathryn, that’s just absurd to me — the idea that women are “snubbed” or “second-class” because they can’t be priests. Personally, if it were up to me, I’d say have female priests. But I don’t consider it an “anti-woman” thing if the church doesn’t.
Guess what? I can’t be a priest, either. Not that I want to, but then that’s irrelevant, too — it shouldn’t be according to what I want. Burger King is about having it your way. The church is not, and shouldn’t be.
I DID always want to serve in the military, ever since I was a kid, but couldn’t. When I was young enough, they wouldn’t take anybody who’d had asthma after the age of 15, which counted me out. Now the thing is, I could have served and served well. That “handicap” wouldn’t have prevented that. But so what? The military had plenty of people to choose from who had never had asthma, and it was considered consistent with the good of the service to choose from among those people, and I accepted that. It makes sense. Because we don’t have a military for the purpose of making me feel good about myself and realize all my ambitions. That’s not what it’s for.
Consequently, I don’t get worked up about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The only question I have is whether the policy is or isn’t good for the service. The jury is sort of out on that at the moment, now that some senior military folks are saying it’s time to move past it. What I thought was a BAD policy was the one that preceded it, when the military wasted resources in active efforts to find and discharge homosexuals.
Back to the Church: Here’s the beef I have with feminists. I firmly believe, and every experience of my life tends to back it up, that men and women are different in important ways.
They TEND to have different gifts and abilities. Want somebody with upper-body strength? You’re generally looking for men. Want someone who can empathize effectively with other human beings? You’re generally looking for a woman. It’s not sexist, or wicked, or exclusionary, to notice this. There are certain professions, and specialties within professions, that TEND to be better suited to one gender or the other. And they’re not necessarily the traditional ones. For instance, I believe that women are generally better suited to being physicians than men are. Most men are decidedly ill-suited to dealing directly with sick people, in my experience.
The thing is, there’s enough wiggle-room and give-and-take that there are relatively few lines of work that I would say should be done by only one gender or the other. Some, but very few. (Here’s one: combat infantry soldier, which remains an all-male preserve, and should.)
Is the priesthood something that lends itself more to men than women, or to neither more than the other? I don’t know. I can see arguments either way, and I think there are probably more arguments (that I can think of, anyway) in favor of women being priests than men.
So if it were just up to me, I’d say sure, go ahead. Unless there are some arguments that I’m missing. But it’s not just up to me.
But I suspect that the big difference between you and me is that I consider it valid to consider gender differences, and you consider it a huge injustice to do so.
My friend Claudia Brinson once insisted that, despite my protestations to the contrary, I was a feminist — it’s just that I was something called a “difference feminist.” I think she was just trying to be nice, in her way. I don’t think I’m any kind of feminist.
I’ll bet you’ll agree with that.
This, by the way, is related to my communitarianism, to my tending to view society through the prism of responsibilities as well as rights, rather than considering just rights. I tend to value that which strengthens important institutions in ways that serve us all well.
I tend to think, “What’s the best and fairest way to arrange society overall?” rather than “Does everyone get to do exactly what he or she wants to do?”, which tends to be the prevailing attitude in our society, both on the right at the left. And consequently I get misunderstood a lot. We don’t have a common vocabulary for these concepts.
Hence you’ll see me wondering about the good of the service (which serves all of us) on military matters, and wondering how the church best serves God’s will — which is not the same as man’s (or woman’s). And I certainly don’t know all the answers to those questions, but those are the questions I tend to ask…
Kathryn and I just crossed messages. I typed those above BEFORE seeing her most recent comment.
And in reaction to her latest, I say — spoken like a true communitarian…
Karen,
Everyone who works is supposed to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes. There are plenty of illegals earning well above the poverty line who are not paying taxes (and have not for years). Any discussion of amnesty should begin with repaying all unpaid taxes first.
Will you cover the costs of car repairs and medical bills when an illegal immigrant is involved in an accident? Should legal citizens also have the right to opt out just because they think insurance is too expensive? A good friend of mine was hit by a truck while riding a bike. The driver was an illegal immigrant with no insurance. She had to pay several thousand dollars of emergency room bills. And what happened to the illegal immigrant? Nothing.
We have limited resources to expend on those in need. They should be expended on people who are citizens. If you want to help people in other countries, donate to churches and charities that have that objective. Don’t expect me to pay my tax dollars to do it.
And if I speed and I am caught, there are consequences, right? What are you trying to suggest? That illegal immigrants should get a free pass as long as they can make it over the border? Should we remove all border security?
“And see, Kathryn, that’s just absurd to me — the idea that women are “snubbed” or “second-class” because they can’t be priests. Personally, if it were up to me, I’d say have female priests. But I don’t consider it an “anti-woman” thing if the church doesn’t.”
Not allowing someone to the highest positions of power simply because of their sex is snubbing and making them second class. I failt to see what is so “absurd” about saying that.
My sister-in-law is an excellent Lutheran pastor, as are several other women I know. Exactly what is so very different about being a Catholic priest? Y’all even allow married priests.
Men and women *as a whole* are different in some significant ways, but every individual is not. Some women cannot even give birth. I’m sure I could find women who are physically stronger than you, and plenty of men are more nurturing than I. So why the ban on women in the highest positions of the Church?
Heck, y’all even allow Episcopal priests, and plenty of Episcopal priests are women–d*&n good ones, too. How come you only allow the male ones to cross over, even if they are married?
In the Myers-Briggs, about 35% of women are T and the same percentage of men are F. Fs make good empathizers. Ts do not.
There were two female priests at Trinity many years ago. One was the warmest person you’d hope to have at your deathbedside. The other was more suited to an exorcism–she routinely made babies cry when she baptized them. She is a wonderful preacher, though. Different gifts–but not at all gender determined.
As far as women in combat infantry positions, in the current wars, women are doing jobs indistinguishable from combat positions in terms of danger and bravery and general front line exposure, so why the artificial line for “combat infantry” positions?
Speaking of gender issues (and how DID we get there?; I thought we were talking immigration), this kind of cracked me up:
Roger Ebert retweeted it, and so did I.
My dear husband almost posted about women priests–but I suggested that any post that had the words “a priori” in it might be too “absurd”….
and I have often been complimented on my posture….
K-9
There’s a program on NPR at 1PM with a black moderator. I think her name may be Michelle. A week or two ago she had a guest who was talking about the high unemployment rate for blacks being tied to illegal immigrants. I think some of us have observed on the side of the road and at chicken processing plants that seems to be the case. The guest was saying it was time to speak out about it, that we need to worry about our own struggling citizens first.
If black people organize and take up for themselves on this issue, Lindsey may have to listen to some of the black voters in his state and give some additional thought to it.
Please thank your husband for me. I think my head might have started spinning if he had said a priori. Whenever anyone says a priori, I think of those long-winded Russian novel dialogues that Woody Allen mocked in “Love and Death.” In fact, I’m pretty sure either he or Diane Keaton actually said “a priori” at one point….
And Martin — you must not have driven past the chicken plant lately. The Hispanic employees are pretty much gone; the workers coming to and fro are mostly black now.
Or maybe you’re thinking of another chicken plant…
Yep, I was right. It was Diane Keaton. Here’s the clip. Isn’t YouTube wonderful?
The reason the chicken plants had illegal hispanic workers in them was because they underpaid them and got away with that and other very poor working conditions because the illegal people dared not protest. When black people protested (because the jobs had been theirs-at higher wages), the owners/management found themselves in trouble over labor laws and illegal hiring. When they had to straighten out, the illegal aliens were no longer in the plants.
Kathryn–It is not my belief that illegal immigrants should get away with lawlessness. I simply think that we have set up our laws in such a way that they are forced to break them to get what they need. The alien finds himself in a “catch 22” situation. To expect a person who is working and supporting a family (probably here and in his/her native country) to pay income taxes when reporting income is almost certainly going to lead to loss of job and deportation is not reasonable. If that person was desperate enough to leave family and country, and move to a foreign land where a foreign language is spoken in search of a job, then that person is going to try to hang on to that job. He is unlikely to be worried about (or possibly even understand) tax evasion. If that person gets a job, and does well enough to need to pay taxes, we might want to look at giving that person a way to citizenship–he’s proven that he’s a potential asset.
Doug, will you cover the cost of repairs, etc. when a legal citizen doesn’t have insurance? There’s a lot of that going around in this state. Should we deport these scofflaws? I’m sorry your friend was involved in an accident, but would it have made it any better if the person who hit her had been a legal resident? Wasn’t the driver arrested and deported once he was identified as an illegal alien? If not, why not? My argument is not that we should coddle illegal aliens, but that it makes much more sense to go after those who hire them, and thus provide the reason that they are here. The way the systme works now, we rail against these aliens. We effectively force them undergound and effectively force them to commit other crimes in order to stay. This situation makes it impossible to complain about wages or working conditions. The people who employ them get rich, and the rest of us get some goods (probably) cheaper. The aliens hide more and take more evasive action. This method of enforcing our immigration laws is clearly ineffective, and effectively inhumane. I say again, go after the employers who break the laws, and the illegal immigrants will have no reason to stay.
>Wasn’t the driver arrested and
>deported once he was identified as
>an illegal alien? If not, why not?
No, he was not arrested. The policeman told my friend the process of trying to deport an illegal immigrant is too difficult to make it worth the effort.
I agree with you – the true criminals in this situation are the employers (like the construction companies around the Columbia area) who hire them. This is why I don’t trust the motivation of the amnesty supporters like Lindsey Graham. I’m not convinced they are for amnesty for purely moral reasons. There’s a lot of money to be made by providing a cheap labor force.
The punishment for hiring illegals should be so severe that there are no jobs for them to commit a crime to obtain.
Brad, I obviously did not make myself clear. The chicken plant situation you described is what I was trying to point out. When the feds swoop in on an immigration raid, the (underpaid) unskilled illegals lose their jobs and native unskilled black workers can get hired again. I think that’s a good thing for our country, our own taking care of themselves.
I have been hearing the crud from employers that black people won’t take these jobs for 25 years. It started with the farmers and migrant labor. A bunch of poor, black people in a rural county frequently don’t have reliable transportation to get to a field job a few miles away on time. Most don’t live in the tenant shacks right on the farm anymore.
The migrant crew chief brings ’em in on an old school bus, housing them a dozen to a room, and giving them a cut of what he makes. It’s a much better deal for the farmer.
I’ve seen young black men washing cars in 40 degree weather all winter. They don’t want to work?
Karen is right, our employers don’t hesitate to take advantage of the illegals. But, not all are coming here to work in landscaping or for the free schools (I had one give me that reason once).
Read the LA Times. They ran a series last year about Mexican drug dealing gangs, complete with interactive map with dots showing where they were operating across the country, including in SC. A couple of weeks ago, they ran a series specifically naming Myrtle Beach, SC as one of the hubs in the Mexican black tar heroin trade. Read the Washington Post about the suburban high schoolers ODing on heroin.
Not all illegal immigration is benign or exists because of amoral American businessmen. Some of it is just drug dealers getting closer to the customer and the source of their guns.
I think we can all agree that the laws should include deportation of illegal aliens independently caught engaging in criminal acts. Meanwhile, Doug, has your friend sought civil justice against this person without insurance? Or has that person no assets?
Also Doug, is that person at least facing the penalties you or I would face if found driving without insurance? Was he driving a “company” truck? If so can the company be brought into this?
@ Doug–
“No, he was not arrested. The policeman told my friend the process of trying to deport an illegal immigrant is too difficult to make it worth the effort. ”
The police also told a neighbor, a lawyer at a prominent firm, that in order to assist him to get someone to leave his front porch, he had to post a “No trespassing sign.” They also told another neighbor that after 24 hours’ residence, a person of the opposite sex can claim to be common-law married, and thus they will not assist in his removal.
Neither of these assertions are borne out by the facts. It is such a pity that some of our law enforcement personnel spread misconceptions. It appears that some are simply loathe to do their jobs or make any judgment calls.