Paula Deen and How to Confess (and to Who)

"My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.” John 4:34

Dear Brother Knights,

Here’s some advice. Don’t do what disgraced celebrity chef Paula Deen is doing. Don’t let yourself feel what she is feeling. Absolutely, positively don’t say what she has been saying.

By this I mean more than the horrid, ugly “N-word” she claimed to say once during a bank robbery 30 years ago, that more than enough to chase away every company she’d worked with (Target, Caesar’s, Smithield Ha-yams) like rats off her empire’s sinking gravy boat. I’m referring to only her latest among increasingly skin-crawling attempts to apologize, this time to unsympathetic Matt Lauer where she claimed to be a victim of lies and said, in essence, no one could change her. She added, paraphrasing Scripture in a rare bit of sense, “"If there's anyone out there that has never said something that they wish they could take back, please pick up a rock and throw it so hard at my head that it kills me."

SO many lessons to learn, especially from Scripture. All this started with an harassment lawsuit. "Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison.” (Matthew 5:25) Or in this case, lose in 10 days what a lifetime of goodwill and good Southern cooking attained.

But the real lesson is about blind acceptance of who we think we are as we age, seeming wise yet too isolated and immature to learn and reset our lives. Her words “I Is What I Is” echoed Popeye’s “I Yam What I Yam.” He too got strength and fame from food, changing  little in 80 years since he dominated comics while Jim Crow ruled the front page. Deen blamed unknown forces for speeding her downfall when she needed only to look at what success insulated her from: changing moral and social attitudes which made that word a punched ticket to bigotry and ostracism. Settle a lawsuit, say you learned from your mistakes, and move on. But could she do it?

Could WE do it? We have timeless tools of our faith: Ten Commandments to live by, precepts of the Church to uphold, the sacrament of reconconciliation to to tell one man “in persona Christi” our failures and shortcomings rather than a cynical TV journalist and angry audience hungry for celebrity carcass. You leave church knowing you are forgiven.

Not to mention an Order founded to protect outcasts and find unity and fraternity in one another. So true that one of our own, Alan Taylor, made his first, second, and third degrees in one week this month! Congratulations to him and to Gary Hubert, our district deputy, for transporting and preparing him. Thanks too to our financial secretary Robert Forrest (himself a 4th degree Knight now) for organizing our social and bringing one new Knight and three more candidates into the fold. Catholic men NEED the Knights of Columbus, especially in our parish and especially now when we can no longer depend on government (really could we ever?) to even acknowledge the Judeo-Christian values it was built on. But we need THEM too, for the strength and new ideas needed to express these truths.

Right is right, even if no one is right. Wrong is wrong, even if everyone is wrong. Pro-abortion filibusters in Texas, or Facebook picture profiles, wrongheaded Supreme Court rulings, or accusations of bigotry or corporate or personal ostracism now (or tacit agreement and racial jokes as late as 30 years ago) won’t change what is eternal, timeless, and right. Yet one thoughtful, heartfelt, intelligent apology to a forgiving God changes all that is wrong. If you disagree, imagine Paula Deen telling the Today show, “I was wrong and I made my peace with God over what I did.” Who could disagree? Who’d care if they did? He (and she) who comes to Him shall not hunger.

Oh yeah, and I became Grand Knight and can’t bug Steve for a report anymore (except about the Scouts). Come Tuesday, July 2 (one-time only change of date) to our first meeting of the New Year. We have a year to plan and a golf tournament we have to get right. Thank you for believing in and electing me, please keep me in your prayers.

† PRAYER TO ST. JOSEPH OVER 1900 YEARS OLD †

My mother gave me a copy of this prayer some years ago but I began praying it each morning starting in 2001, as my first marriage began to crumble. St. Joseph is the patron of workers and fathers and I knew that was where my life would have to focus as it changed. So many good things in my life happened around now. I was first approached by Gartner in March 2002 for a job I'd get and be successful at two months later. I first dated my future wife Michelle on Palm Sunday March 20, 2005. I was hired at the Naples Daily News March 18, 2009. I pray this every morning when my feet hit the floor. I hope it helps you as it has helped me. His feast day is today and we honor the silent hero of Scripture and Jesus's foster father. † PRAYER TO ST. JOSEPH OVER 1900 YEARS OLD †

My letter to the Knights of Columbus, to be printed in this weekend's newsletter:

The last time I wrote you, things seemed so much different.

Our country concluded a long, divisive election season by essentially keeping the same people in we’d complained did nothing the last four years. Michelle and I were but weeks away from a trip to Rome we anticipated and saved for for three years. Beautiful children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut anticipated Christmas with their families.

We concluded 2012 seeming to count only on two constants we long joke about with resignation: death and taxes. We wonder who will pay more than discover the joke’s on us. We look toward heroes of our shared pop culture past (Whitney Houston, Dick Clark, Davy Jones, Andy Griffith, et al) trying to remember when they - and we - were young.

Any death takes part of your innocence with it. Twenty-six deaths that demonic December morning in Newtown tore more than those loving, beautiful children from their families and people who loved them. They reset everything we treasure, put a nation’s entire set of priorities in perspective. It is one thing to discuss an ever-growing national debt our children will never live to pay. It’s another to realize children paid with their lives for our violent, vengeful culture, our treatment of mentally ill, our fear of overbearing government and yes, our irresponsible handling of guns. It has to do with how little human life is valued next to ego, status, revenge.

Trace the slippery slope back to the January day 40 years ago when abortion on demand became legal and with it, a pro-life movement galvanized over two generations. It’s victories are recognized: a January Time magazine story notes four states have but one abortion clinic in operation and overall more than 1,000 such centers have closed nationwide. The same article mentions 41% of the population consider themselves pro-choice.

Approaches can change even as pro-lifers work together. Nearly 600,000 people, many your brother Knights and their families, converged on Washington for its March for Life. But are they confronted with bloody images of aborted children to remind them abortion is murder and its practicers criminals? Or are they empowered with ultrasounds, heartbeats and images to see the potential a young, scared woman holds inside her for her future?

Al Kresta, national Catholic radio host (if a rather humorless one), debated this issue with National Catholic Register blogger Simcha Fisher (who opposed these images as scary to children and accusatory to post-abortive mothers) and pro-life pioneer Dr. Monica Miller, with the stridency and militancy you expect from people on opposite sides of a timeline (but not opposite sides of an issue.) But even as Dr. Miller correctly states these pictures show these children did not die in vain, she failed to understand a new generation would not be scared or grossed out into saying yes to life. It’s the difference between being anti-abortion and pro-life, the difference between needing to fight an injustice and making the philosophy behind it work in every area of your life.

Count our Order with those standing for what life can be, and in a positive way. We gave out Precious feet pins after Masses January 20, the actual date Roe v Wade was handed down. We raised money at our Paul Bunyan breakfast to award some to a church group of stay at home moms. That on top of Diane Hanson twice visiting our church to update us on what Immokalee Pregnancy Center is doing to save babies and women’s lives.

Rocker Lenny Kravitz starred in “The Hunger Games” a thought-provoking, disturbing yet wildly popular film about teens hunting each other in a post-apocolyptic America. Seeing the horror of Sandy Hook he asked, “Would you give up your rights to guns to have those children back?” The tragedy is we are not given the chance to answer. We can only protect what we still have and fight abortion where we still can, with prayer and service. It’s only then you can help see no one dies unloved, umourned, or unnoticed from their conception to their natural death.

It was a busy January and early February. We’ll recap it and plan for two of our signature events - the Lenten fish fries and essay contest - at our next meeting. See you there.

STANDALONE PLAYER/RESTRICTED TUNES-#2 (playlist)

Stephen Stills - Stephen Stills (Full Album)

Full Albums (playlist)

The Jeff Beck Group - Beck-Ola (1969) Full Album