Bishops' Blog

And A Little Child Shall Lead Them

For us who are not elected politicians, nor policy professionals, when we should speak is hard to discern. Harder still if we are religious figures. Hardest of all to speak, and be heard, at a time and place as fraught with anger and discord as ours. So we propose a guiding purpose shared by all, namely the welfare of children. What’s more, the child had a particular value for Jesus: ‘what you do unto the least…’, ‘unless you receive the kingdom as a child,’ … Is not this our common ground, however slender?

1. We should protect children from dread communicable diseases such as measles and polio. Vaccines against these have proven safe and effective. We should also be, in this case, grateful for the wisdom involved in their creation. Public officials err in throwing this into doubt.
2. We should not remove school meals for poor children, nor the nutrition for them that SNAP provides, nor their health care (as does the recent federal budget). The prophets’ calls to care for the widows and orphans ring in our ears. 
3. Massive deficits amount to a huge burden on our children and grand-children. (The also pose more immediate economic dangers). Both parties are to blame, though the recent Republican budget has made the road down which the can might be kicked significantly shorter.
4. Though we as a society need to find ways to save money, this should not include mental health services such as counseling for teenagers, among whom there is an epidemic of confusion, anxiety, and depression. This falls under the category of binding up the broken-hearted. 
5. We should work to shield children from inappropriate content on the internet, whose creation (according to Nicholas Kristof of the New York Time on trafficking ) is often itself a crime. Resisting such has more to do with profit than with free speech. In this Texas has done well by blocking minors from such sites.
6. In a similar vein, we should work to reduce the screen time of our children. Schools are right to be moving in this direction.
7. We all, no matter our party, support the vigorous use of all legal means to stem the flow of fentanyl into this country, however it may enter. We choose life, not death, for our children.
8. Of course we can only value children if we have children. Measures to encourage this by either party are to be encouraged. In addition, a generous immigration policy will help here; it would also be in the spirit of the One who was a refugee in Egypt.
9. This item is more amorphous but no less important than the others. Our children deserve a political atmosphere which is not filled with revenge and anger (which social media exacerbate. ‘Do not let the sun go down on your rage.’ (Ephesians 4:26).
10. A foreign policy postscript: our diplomats should press for the repatriation of all children deported and imprisoned by the Putin regime during their brutal aggression against the people of Ukraine. 

May such, and other similar ideas, be a down posit on a public discourse characterized by virtue. In these, we who are Christians, heed the voice of Jesus Himself, the prince of peace, who has after all first claim on our allegiance.

+George Sumner

Parable

Sumptuous displays and tasting stations await attendees of the gourmet trade food show. Brie, gouda, fancy cakes, pureed fruit from the middle east, the finest olives, an array of British and German sausages, etc. A taster’s delight. The evening was at last over and the gourmands headed home.

Then a new task began. Volunteers took what had not been eaten and packed in keeping with food safety standards. It was as if they were moving a high rent delicatessen. The trucks rolled and fanned out to spots across the city. And that next day, in a series of soup kitchens, the homeless, the lost, the mentally ill, the working poor, the undocumented, had a regal lunch, a global smorgasbord. We can so easily imagine the messianic rabbi smiling in the corner…

In every time, in our time, parables of the kingdom and of grace are meant to enthrall, disturb, upend…

+GRS