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.