I was pleased to see this letter from the three bishops of the Nebraska dioceses. It was published on December 12, the feast of Our Lady of Guadeloupe. It appeared in the Catholic Voice, which is the publication of the Omaha Archdiocese (it is online, we no longer have a print edition)
The letter is apparently in response to some of the threats made by the incoming Trump administration.
As of 2023, there were approximately 152K immigrants in Nebraska, or 7.7% of the population. Immigrants are defined as anyone who was foreign born, whether or not they are citizens.
December 12, 2024
Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe
To our migrant brothers and sisters,
In the season of Advent we are aware of the closeness of our savior Jesus Christ. As pastors, we know that Jesus wants to draw close to you during this challenging and perhaps fearful time. We are with you, too, to support and accompany you in the name of Jesus.
As we hear of the possibility of mass deportations, which causes fear and uncertainty, we want you to know that we will advocate in Nebraska and in Washington for the respect for human dignity and for family relationships, as well for the special care owed to children that should characterize a just and lawful community. We invite our neighbors to join in advocating for respectful treatment of all within the law.
You have generously spoken with us of the experiences of your life’s journey. It is often characterized by a sense of abandonment, uncertainty, and fear. At the same time, there are many stories of resilience, hard work, faith, and hope for yourselves and for your children. We remember that the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph became migrants, fleeing with the infant Savior to escape violence and persecution. In those difficult and dangerous days, they put all their hope in the promises of God.
Migrants have come to Nebraska from a variety of countries and cultures. Many of you have looked to the mother of Jesus for protection and strength. It is good that we do so now, as we celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. We remember the words of the Virgin to St. Juan Diego nearly five hundred years ago, “Am I not here, I who am your mother?” At this moment, you are not alone. You have the protection of Mary and the saints, and you have the prayers of many of your neighbors.
May the grace of Advent and Christmas strengthen us all as we journey together to the fullness of God’s Kingdom.
With our prayers, we are sincerely yours in Christ,
Archbishop George J. Lucas
Archdiocese of Omaha
Bishop James D. Conley
Diocese of Lincoln
Bishop Joseph G. Hanefeldt
Diocese of Grand Island
It’s good that at least a few bishops are speaking out.
ReplyDeleteIt is an excellent letter!
ReplyDeleteI saw a comment recently that the spirit of Resistance which characterized the start of Trump's first term, seems to have dissipated. Perhaps that is because Trump as president is better-understood than he was in 2016; and perhaps a big part of it is sheer exhaustion on the part of his opponents. And perhaps some of it is hope (which, personally, I think is naive and misplaced) that somehow his second term will be different.
FWIW, in my view, it is likely to be different only insofar as it would be worse and more dangerous. Trump has weeded out the advisers who were likely to be motivated by fidelity to the United States and its Constitution, rather than to his person. The people who have his ear are, by turns, radical, guard-rail-less and nuts.
...and then there is this, from National Review this morning:
Delete"Americans have finally flipped on Trump for the first time since he first toyed with entering politics back in 1999: 49.4 percent now have a favorable view of the president-elect, compared to 47.4 percent who have an unfavorable view, according to a RealClearPolitics polling average. "
According to the article, this is the first time his favorable ratings have exceeded his unfavorables.
He's already dragged the GOP into his version of reality. Seems he's slowly doing the same with the rest of the country.
I will be more interested in his favorability statistics after he's been in office for awhile. When you play stupid games you get stupid prizes. People may find out they don't like some of the "prizes".
DeleteIt is worth noting that all three of the dioceses here have been engaged in ministry to migrant and minority communities for many years, so the letter didn't just come out of nowhere in response to Maga threats. It has been a requirement in our archdiocese for several years that men in priestly formation need to become bilingual by the time they are ordained.
ReplyDeleteI think the fact that the president-elect's threats against immigrants has been a wake-up call that our resistance needs to be more visible. Hopefully we will see a shift in the wind that we will work with the new administration where we can, but we will resist where policies will result in harm.
Our seminarians also spend an immersion trip in Latin America, in large part to become bilingual (if they aren't already). The Chicago Archdiocese as a whole is said to be 50/50 between English speakers and Spanish speakers. And for years we've been going through a process of parish mergers, so predominantly-English-speaking parishes are being thrown together with predominantly-Spanish-speaking parishes.
DeleteI took four years of Spanish in high school, back in the 1970s, but I was never much more than a mediocre Spanish student. I don't think multiple languages is one of my gifts. I didn't take a foreign language in college.
DeleteIn our Outreach ministry, occasionally I try to speak in Spanish with one of our Spanish-speaking clients, but I quickly get in over my head.
For the most part the immigrants here are Spanish speakers. Though in Omaha there are parishes which have a lot of Africans, mainly from Sudan and South Sudan. And a parish in Omaha and one in Lincoln which are mainly Vietnamese, Karen, and Khmer (don't know if I spelled that right!)
DeleteI took Spanish and Latin in high school, and a couple semesters of Spanish literature in college. I can read it better than speak it. They speak too fast. (I can say the Hail Mary in Spanish, lol!).
DeleteIt funny but I can follow French a little better than Spanish because they don't speak as fast.
Actually rather than Spanish speakers talking too fast, i think too slowly!
DeleteThe "smart kids" (of which I was one) in high school took Latin, and the "dumb kids" took Spanish. I took four years of Latin, learning amazingly little, almost all of which I forgot instantly. And then, of course, after college I wound up in New York City, where the Spanish would have come in very handy.
DeleteThe "smart kids" in high school took mechanical drawing, and the "dumb kids" took typing. I liked mechanical drawing, but when I got to college, I had to type all my papers, so the typing would have been much more useful. And of course when I began my career in publishing, typing was a must. I had taught myself to type in high school, but still the typing course would have been a better choice than mechanical drawing.
When I think of all that time wasted on Latin, it seems unfortunate. My Mother used to say Latin helped with English grammar and vocabulary, but if I had spent four years studying English grammar and vocabulary, I believe I would be a lot better off.
I am using Duolingo to learn Spanish currently, and it's pretty good. Vivo en un pequeño apartamento en Nueva York. Tengo dos hermanas y un hermano, pero toda mi familia vive en Atlanta, Georgia. Soy muy inteligente!
My freshman Latin teacher was a Christian Brother who had just fled Cuba a few weeks before out classes began. It was in those few short weeks that he learned English. A number of my classmates tried to pronounce Latin the way our teacher did, with Spanish/Cuban accent.
DeleteThe priest when I was in grade school was from Ireland. He pronounced Latin with an Irish brogue when he said Mass.
DeleteDavid, were you an editor in your career? Just guessing that a foundation of Latin may have stood you in good stead for that kind of work.
DeleteI took four years of Spanish, but didn't learn it well enough to be conversational in it. You may have done much better as a high school Spanish student than I did, but I suspect two months working in a kitchen or warehouse with Spanish-speaking co-workers would make us more conversational than the formal education.
Latin was offered in my high school, but it wasn't required, and in my day (mid-late 1970s) there were very few kids who took it. I recall one of my best friends (who, I think, went on to be the class valedictorian) took first year Latin as a senior because he needed an elective to fill out his schedule, and taking study hall wasn't something a kid of his academic caliber would have considered. As I recall, there were only 4 kids in his first-year Latin class.
DeleteA few years after we graduated, the Latin teacher retired and wasn't replaced. I'm not entirely sure why the school kept him on as long as it did, given the low demand for his specialty. I don't doubt the school was being humane by giving him a chance to finish his career and get his full pension (such as it was). And probably, 30+ years earlier when he began teaching, Latin was required in Catholic schools; that would have been the pre-Vatican II days.
And he was said to be quite a good teacher - passionate about the Latin language and classical history and culture. When the county tore down the county courthouse to replace it with a more modern building, he took possession of the old building's Greek columns so they could be preserved. They were enormous. He had nowhere in particular to keep them, so he had them placed on the edge of school property, out behind the school where people rarely went, perched on the edge of a giant quarry. They just sat there all during my school days. They may sit there still.
My public high school offered one year of Latin as an elective. I took it as a freshman so I wouldn't have to take home-ec. I already knew how to cook and sew, figured home ec would be boring. Our teacher was Mrs. Eggers, This was a part time position, her real job was being county superintendent of schools. The rural schools, that is. The town schools had their own superintendent. There wasn't a second year offered, but Mrs. Eggers worked privately with a classmate who was going on to seminary after high school. Ironically, by the time he was ordained, Latin was no longer required of priests. But I think she gave him a good background in it.
DeleteI took three years of Spanish after that, and enjoyed the two semesters of Spanish literature in college. But it was book Spanish, and not as it is currently spoken. I should have worked more on conversational.
My high school was a small, public school in a small town in the mountains. There were 300 students. Latin and Spanish were both offered for four years. I took Latin for all four years and I actually did find it useful in later life. It made learning French in college easier, and I could read Spanish well enough to get the gist, but it really came in handy when I was working at the World Bank and reviewed reports and articles in German. I was expected to decide if the content was useful enough to send to the translation department. So I took a course in German for Reading Comprehension designed for PhD candidates. Fortunately we weren’t expected to be able to pronounce it. Latin sentence structure and its use of both declensions and conjugations prepared me well for German. The electives for boys included Shop. For girls it was home EC. There was also typing, taken mostly by girls but also by some savvy boys in the college prep track. Unlike Katherine, I had no domestic skills (my mother wasn’t domestic besides basic cooking) and no interest in them. So I took typing. That - along with memorizing the multiplication tables - was probably one of the two most useful classes I took in grades k- 12.
DeleteAnne, I agree with you about the multiplication tables, and typing. I also took typing on high school. I wasn't stellar at it, I'm not a fast typist (and not very accurate, thank goodness for computers, where mistakes are easily corrected!). But I needed the skill in college, along with lots of correction tape. And I had to type a lot of reports in the Canvas format at work.
DeleteI didn't take typing in high school, but I took a summer school course at the local community college before I left for my freshman year of college. It was a good move on my part, as I definitely had to type papers in college.
DeleteI confess I didn't actually complete the summer-school class (it was an evening class and interfered with my social life) but I attended enough sessions to learn to type. I think the remainder of the class was focused on increasing typing speed. I never got very fast or very error-free. Later, when I worked as a computer programmer, I had to type lines of code, and became fairly proficient; I'd occasionally time myself, but never got above 50 words per minute (after deducting for typos). My wife, who was a better student than me and surely completed her typing class, could do 80+ words per minute, error-free. She worked in clerical office jobs during summers.
Despite my relative lack of proficiency, I taught typing for a summer session at a community college when nobody else was available. By then, typewriters had been removed from office desktops and consigned to storerooms; I taught the course on PCs, with the students using WordPerfect or some similar word processing software. And secretarial jobs were becoming fewer and fewer. I don't think I've ever crossed paths with a secretary at my current employer (which employs 100,000+ employees); I am sure the very senior-most execs probably have some, in the same way they have company-paid country club memberships and helicopter service. But throughout my career, everyone has done their own typing.
As far as I can tell, Catholic parishes are the last preserves of secretarial work. But even the young priests being ordained these days are comfortable with technology.
Jim, the typewriters we had in high school were the old style manual ones where you had to hit a lever to return the carriage at the end of a line. I much prefer typing on a computer!
DeleteI don't know how much typing parish secretaries really do. They serve other functions. Each of the three of the parishes in our town have a secretary. With priests being spread so thin now, lay people, including secretaries, have to take up part of the slack. They are the "face of the parish" for people who call or come to the office. Our parish secretary, who came on board a couple years of years ago, is a very personable, friendly person. I think our priest, who is a little introverted, chose her for that reason. She is also very organized. The parishes share three priests, along with three retired ones, and four deacons. It takes human "border collies" to figure out everyone's schedule, and have print outs of who is on where.
Our parish still uses typewriters for old-fashioned functions like completing marriage licenses for the county. There may be other forms that are still filled out with typewriters. I've done it once or twice over the years; I think our secretaries have IBM Selectric or similar typewriters. I think you type the text, then hit enter or something similar and it types it on the page.
DeleteFWIW, the companies I've worked for since 2007 have been paperless. I never print anything for work. It's all done via software and the Cloud these days.
The transition from typewriters to computers was very interesting especially for administrative assistants. In the days when administrative assistants did the typing for their bosses they always knew what the boss was doing before everyone else. Once the boss did his own typing and often came to the meeting with freshly printed handouts, they did not know what was happening before the other members at the meeting. It was quite a come down in power.
DeleteBefore the age of computers, I had the equivalent of a half time secretary as well as a full-time research assistant. After the computer I pretty much did most of the work that they did. Did I get a salary increase that was the equivalent of their salaries? Of course not. Did we fire them? Of course not. They simply did other things.