Controversy in Clarksville

In the town of Clarksville, Missouri, there is a controversy as to whether a long-closed tourist attraction, built on an Indian burial mound, should be reopened. The Clarksville Skylift, a chair lift of the type normally seen on ski slopes, used to take visitors from the town next to the river, to the top of the bluff, offering stunning views of the river below; the top structure is built directly on a burial mound, and the graves are now being exposed due to erosion. The current owner wants to reopen the attraction, while the Sac and Fox Nation want the graves protected.

Clarksville is located 75 highway miles from downtown Saint Louis, in Pike County, on route 79 between Elsberry and Louisiana, Missouri. It is situated on the Mississippi River at the base of steep bluff called The Pinnacle, which towers more than 300 feet above the river. Federal Lock and Dam 24 is here also. Clarksville is near the mouth of Calumet Creek, named after the American French dialectical word for an Indian ceremonial pipe.

The Skylift closed in the 1990s due to safety concerns. According to a Hannibal Courier-Post article, neighbors were also concerned with dogs collecting bones from the site. Local business owners would like the Skylift reopened to help encourage the tourist trade, especially since many of the business owners are artisans who have set up shops in this spectacularly beautiful area, and depend on outsiders for sales. Some local political leaders, such as the current mayor, are more sympathetic with the concerns of the Indian tribes, although they are under pressure from potential lawsuits. It is a Class D felony in Missouri to disturb unmarked graves, and the Federal government has additional laws regarding Indian remains.

Some possible solutions to this problem are rebuilding the Skylift, ignoring the Indian claims; removing the Skylift and keeping the site as a cemetery; and third, removing the remains. Clearly, the first won't happen -- graves are there and the law won't allow it. The third solution would be the contemporary solution.

In our current Culture of Death, we both want the right to kill our unwanted children, elderly, depressed, and disabled, but we don't want any reminders -- or evidence -- of it. Moderns don't want to be reminded of death, which is so very far removed from the ancient Catholic practice of being in the presence of death daily. Cremation and scattering of the ashes is the most progressive manner of dealing with the dead, which leaves absolutely no evidence that a loved one is gone; no grave, no body, no monument, no relics, no reminders of mortality. That way we can live our lives without any unpleasant reminders. Perhaps, we think, our departed friend is just away on vacation. This is also the best way to run a concentration or re-education camp: leave no evidence of atrocities committed.

As a child, I used to fear the old churches, which had adjoining cemeteries, and especially the Catholic churches which had above-ground tombs or even exposed relics. As I matured, I gained an appreciation of these reminders of my own mortal existence. Now as a Catholic, I am joyful at the opportunity of being able to pray in the presence of relics of a Saint, and also to pray for the repose of the soul of the departed.

Our modern churches, even Catholic churches, are sanitized and have few reminders of our earthly fate. Cemeteries are no longer adjacent to the church, and altars are no longer icons of tombs, or even actual tombs, like the ancient altars of the catacombs.

So the Indian burial mounds are an unpleasant reminder of death and most would have them done away with or ignored. And progress is being impeded. Current practice for subdivision development is the removal of the old pioneer cemeteries, and recently a massive removal of graves was done next to the Lambert-Saint Louis airport. The cemeteries of downtown Saint Louis were removed after the Cholera epidemic of 1848-1849, for health reasons, but the modern removals are to avoid unpleasantness. We all will die sometime, but we don't want to be reminded of it.

Some Christians worry that giving the land back to the Indian Nations would be inviting unwanted heathen practices in their town. Heathen or not, however, all human remains are holy relics, remnants of a temple of the Holy Spirit made in the Image and Likeness of God, and deserve to be protected. I understand that the Skylift is in disrepair; perhaps a better site could be found for a new Skylift nearby?

Catholic missionary work with the Indians in the United States centered primarily along the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, and was wildly successful, and even now half of American Indians are Catholic. This model of missions was successful because it worked with populations in their own environment, land, and culture, and didn't try to make the Indians just regular Americans nor did it try to change their way of life; moral standards, if not practice, among the heathen Indians were quite high and were not much different from the moral standards of Catholicism. This should not be surprising, since the Moral Law is written into the hearts of all men, of all nations. A Catholic missionary, helping Indians live up to their own moral code, did God's work, for many Indians, like Whites, were greedy and lustful, caused pain to their fellow countrymen, and did not follow the Universal Moral Law. And they knew it: most Indians of the Missouri River Valley were very happy to be visited by the Black Robes, or Jesuits. They hated the constant intertribal wars, adultery, drunkenness, and murder as much as anyone else, and Catholic missions worked against these evils. And Catholic Christianity has been well-received everywhere it has been preached, and the American frontier is no exception. Much Protestant missionary work did not succeed, since it too often was used by the Whites as a way of manipulating the Indians to go on reservations. Compare the U.S. experience with Latin America: in the South, the Catholic tribes remain where they always were, keeping their customs and lands, but now living up to their own moral code, in peace, and being a part of a larger whole: their country and the Universal Church. Of course, secular Latin American governments do not like this, and are attempting cultural genocide (and eliminating Catholicism while they are at it), by forcing people to move to the cities for wage labor.

Sadly, Progressive-minded Americans of the late 19th century saw the Indians as impediments to the expansion of the country and attempted to either eliminate or relocate the Indians. This is quite unlike the experience in Latin America. Not willing to coexist with them, they had them killed. I recall reading some accounts of the Army attacking villages while Mass was being said, with the priest being killed along with his flock. The typical Cavalry-versus-Indians war had as actors secular Americans fighting Catholic Indians. Scientifically-educated men of the 1880s knew that Indians were evolutionary behind Whites, and Darwinian Survival of the Fittest ensures, and may even morally demand, the elimination of weaker races. Catholicism was viewed as not being a progressive religion, since it dogmatically preached that all men are created equal, while ignoring scientific theories that proposed that some races are more highly evolved than others.

Clarksville is the home of Mary Queen of Peace Catholic mission, which holds Mass on Sunday at 8:30 a.m. Do not forget that this is still mission territory.

Illinois Governor Blagojevich Denies Pharmacists' Conscience

Gov. Rod Blagojevich recently filed an emergency order requiring pharmacies to issue prescription contraceptives, even if a pharmacist has moral opposition. Pharmacies are required by this order to either provide another pharmacist to fill the prescription or to fill the prescription with another pharmacy of the patient's choice.

According to the Governor: "Our regulation says that if a woman goes to a pharmacy with a prescription for birth control, the pharmacy or the pharmacist is not allowed to discriminate or to choose who he sells it to or who he doesn't sell it to, the pharmacy will be expected to accept that prescription and fill it. No delays. No hassles. No lectures."

No freedom of conscience, and no freedom of speech. If a pharmacist does not comply, he is guilty of discrimination, which is one way of saying that he is guilty of a hate crime. The pharmacist also cannot do his job, which may include checking for drug interactions, since he cannot choose who he sells it to. Note that he says "woman", although a man my be picking up the pills for his girlfriend, so perhaps he is trying to imply class conflict. And his tone is completely nonconciliatory, showing contempt.

A spokesman said that pharmacists have an obligation to provide women with good health care. How about men and children? And are businessmen obliged to do things against their conscience? And what if a pharmacist thinks that some contraceptives are bad for a patient's health? Or the health of possible children that the woman may unknowingly be carrying?

The Governor made this ruling when a pharmacist refused to provide so-called emergency contraception.

The New York Times says that this is “an intolerable abuse of power by pharmacists who have no business forcing their own moral or ethical views onto customers who may not share them...any pharmacists who cannot dispense medicines lawfully prescribed by a doctor should find another line of work.” So instead, the State will impose its moral and ethical views on the pharmacist, even if this is a violation of his freedom of religion, and the Times suggests that he should be forced out of his profession for ideological reasons.

The order is effective immediately, and lasts for 150 days, when the Governor will try to implement a permanent rule.

The Chicago Area Planned Parenthood is delighted with the ruling.

Four states have laws allowing freedom of conscience, while four other states have laws that prohibit this freedom.

Source

1978-2005 Ioannes Paulus P.P. II

Our Holy Father died today on the Vigil of the Divine Mercy.

May he rest in peace.

Do not be afraid...

The Life of Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II

May 18, 1920 Karol Wojtyla born in Wadowice, Poland (a town near Krakow) to Karol Wojtyla, a retired army officer and tailor, and Emilia Kaczorowska Wojtyla, a school teacher
June 20, 1920 Karol is baptized
1926 Attends elementary school
1929 Mother dies of heart and kidney ailments
1930 Attends secondary school
1932 Brother Edmund dies of scarlet fever
1938 Confirmation. Enters Jagiellonian University to study philosophy and literature. He enjoyed acting, singing, and writing.
1939 Germany invades Poland
1940 Karol escapes Nazis by taking a job as a stone cutter
1941 Father dies
1942 Begins studies in a secret seminary
1944 Injured after being hit by an automobile. Karol escapes Nazis by moving to archbishop's residence
November 1, 1946 Karol ordained to the priesthood; spends next two years in graduate studies, Studies under the Dominican Garrigou-Lagrange in Rome
1948 Appointed assistant pastor; chaplin to university students
1951 Returns to his studies
1953 Wrote first doctoral thesis "Evaluation of the possibility of Constructing a Christian Ethic based on the System of Max Scheler"
1954 Communists shuts down theology department at university; joined faculty of the Catholic University of Lublin, which was the only Catholic university in the Communist bloc.
1956 Appointed to Chair of Ethics
September 28, 1958 Consecrated auxiliary bishop of Krakow
1960 Writes "Love and Responsibility", on sexual ethics
1962 Appointed acting bishop of Krakow. Attends the Second Vatican Council, Contributed to "Gaudium et spes"
1963 Visits the Holy Land. Named Metropolitan
January 13, 1964 Named Archbishop of Krakow
1967 Named a Cardinal
1969 Publishes "The Acting Person", a document on phenomenology
October 16th, 1978 Elected Pope after eight rounds of balloting. Takes the name John Paul II, after the previous Pope, John Paul I, who reigned for only 34 days.
1979 Visits Poland, Communist authorities were very worried. First Encyclical Redemptor hominis
1981 Mehmet Ali Agca attempts assassination of the Pope, who is hit with two bullets. Agca was working for the Bulgarians, at the request of the Soviet Union
1984 Diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the United States
1987 Donum vitae and Redemptoris Mater. Visited by Dimitrios, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople
1988 Ecclesia Dei
1989 Restoration of diplomatic relations with Poland.
1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church
1994 Reaffirms the celebate male priesthood. Publishes "Crossing the Threshold of Hope"
1995 Evangelium vitae and Orientale lumen
1997 Visits Poland again
1998 Visits Cuba. Fides et ratio
1999 Pope visits Mexico and the United States, including Saint Louis, Missouri
2002 Rosarium Virginis Mariae
2004 Mane nobiscum Domine

Short Biography of Pope John Paul II

New Pro-Life Religious Order

Fr. Frank Pavone, of Priests for Life, has founded a new religious order, the Missionaries of the Gospel of Life. The new order can found seminaries, do ordinations, and send priests and brothers where needed. This will be an active order, based in the Diocese of Amarillo.

May this order raise up many holy priests.
May this order help move our culture back to a respect for human life.

Apostolic association summary
Press release
Diocese of Amarillo
Priests for Life