Willie James Howard was just like – and, in some ways, different from – many other fifteen-year-old boys in Live Oak, Florida in 1944. Because of his cheerful personality, his parents called their round-face, stocky son “Giddy Boy.” A classmate described him as clean, neat and always dressed nicely because he was an only child and his parents could afford to dress him well.

Because it doesn’t end with a zero, Thursday, December 2, the forty-second anniversary of the sexual assault and brutal murder – martyrdoms – of four “church women” will go unrecognized by too many Americans.

“A lie gets halfway around the world before
the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
Winston Churchill

When the Universe tips back to balance, there will be a special place in a prolonged Purgatory for Andrew Wakefield.

Who are these people and when did The Almighty designate them “Divine Declarers?”

Yes! We said “Divine Declarers” - a whole new theological category, separate from priests, prophets and kings.

Next week marks the eighty-third anniversary of “Kristallnacht.”
We believe it is vital that we “Never forget!”
Father Roger and Father Skipper

In 2018, eighty years later, Ruth Winkelmann still remembered the night of November 9-10, 1938.

In a too-tired world, the death of David Amess, a married father of five who was stabbed to death in Belfairs Methodist Church, serves as a call to reflection for the people of a nation that never knew him.

“Whoever saves a single life,
it is as though he has saved the lives of all.”
The Koran

“Whoever saves a life,
it is considered as he saved an entire world.”
Yerushalmi Talmud

After her father’s death when she was ten-years-old, Tracy Edwards began to get in trouble and fail academically – especially after her mother remarried and the family relocated from England to Wales. By age sixteen, she had been expelled from school, trekked across Europe and signed on as a stewardess (the title in the 1970s) on a luxury yacht; she learned navigation and worked her way from deckhand to first mate. She came to worldwide prominence in 1989, when she recruited the first-ever 12-woman crew and captained the 58-foot yacht Maiden through the 27,000 nautical mile Whitbread Round the World Race; the Maiden finished first in its class and second overall.

Why are you a bystander in your own life?
You’re supposed to be a star in your own life.
Tracy Edwards

Pity the poor people of Idaho – one of the least vaccinated states in the nation!

It’s bad enough that their state’s major hospitals must now ration health care – meaning ICU beds will be allotted only to the patients most likely to survive.

Truth-tellers have never been popular with would-be tyrants – including more than a handful of American politicians - and their derriere-canoodlers.

A Tennessee state legislator is a COVID coward who gives new meaning to the idea of betraying his family, those he represents and his very self.

Alexander Schmorell was a hero; today he is a saint.

In the era of the Great Lie of a stolen presidential election, the words of Sophie Scholl should resonate through the corridors of Congress and the streets of America:

“How can we expect righteousness to prevail
when there is hardly anyone willing to
give himself up individually to a righteous cause….”

It is rare that a man is prepared to pay with his life
for such a minimal achievement as causing cracks
in the edifice of the existing order.
Inge Scholl

Forty-five years after Germany’s defeat in World War II, Gustav’s son asked the Simon Wiesenthal Center to investigate his father’s past.

We’re flummoxed trying to find a word to describe him as an adolescent. He sounds, at that age, like too many American politicians.

The newest (but truly old) big lie: They’re gonna come into your house, tie you to a chair and stick a vaccine into your arm and, while they’re invading your private space, they’ll confiscate your bibles and guns.

Our father was the quintessential man of his times – member of The Greatest Generation, salesman, man of family and faith. I don’t think we ever heard him utter anything stronger than “damn.” His greatest insult: “Too stupid to come in out of the rain.”

It’s tempting to say “The world can use more men like Robert J. Schadewald.”

Tempting.

And true.

The greater truth would be to say “As self-proclaimed ‘Christians” continue to attack LGBT children and adults, the world could use new versions of Mr. Schadewald.”

Remember “the good ole days” when some “trolling-the-gullible” politicians and “religious leaders” preyed (definitely not “prayed”) on their victims’ fears with the catchy accusation “They want to bring Sharia law to America”?

The following is the eulogy/homily offered by Father Skip Flynn at the Memorial and Mass of the Resurrection for his mother, Mary T. Flynn, on Monday, June 14, 2021 at Epiphany Church, South Miami. Mrs. Flynn died on Thursday, June 3 at age 102.