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By Bishop John, February 7, 2013 4:48 am

There are two extraordinarily important agencies operating in Austin that are desperately needed in our city and deserve the support of the entire community. I am referring to the Austin Children’s Shelter and “SafePlace.” Both are extremely important and, regretfully, sorely needed. SafePlace provides shelter to women and children who have suffered through domestic violence. Austin was one of the first cities in the United States to develop such a program, and we can be very proud of it but we must support it ever more effectively. Austin Children’s Shelter is just that. It is a program that welcomes children who for one reason or another are vulnerable and in difficult straits. Sometimes it is due to violence. Sometimes their vulnerability is caused by sickness, death or even incarceration of the parents.
These two wonderful groups are now coming together to develop an alliance that will allow them to offer new programs to clients, combine their voices to advocate for change and share costs. Their first joint effort will be entitled LIFT. Their first project is the charter school located on the SafePlace campus. It has been operating for years as a K-8 school and is now adding 9-12. This is truly wonderful.
The existence of these two agencies is based agonizingly on need. That need flows from the tragic presence in our culture of DOMESTIC VIOLENCE. Last year 102 women and 246 children were murdered in Texas by family members. As ghastly as these figures are, they do not begin to measure the misery, the suffering, the psychological imprisonment that goes on in tens of thousands of Texas homes where women are trapped in abusive situations, but are too traumatized and terrified to try and escape.
Congratulations and thanks to Karen Bartoletti who chairs the Board of Directors of SafePlace and Jack Worsten who leads the LIFT Board.
If your family is peaceful, loving and secure, give thanks to God but occasionally give some thought and concern to those families that do not have those blessings. The address for the Austin Children’s Shelter is 4800 Manor Road, Austin, Texas 78723, (512) 499-0090. SafePlace is different. For obvious reasons, they don’t give out their address but they can receive correspondence and donations at P. O. Box 19454, Austin, Texas 78760.

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By Bishop John, August 20, 2012 4:39 am

As we walk through life together, we often hear ourselves saying strange things to each other. Because I am a parish priest, one thing that I frequently hear is people (following the death of a friend) saying, “I simply don’t know what to say to her.” Or, “I don’t have the right words when I talk to him”. In my opinion, this is an unnecessary shyness and sensitivity on the part of the speaker. You don’t have to SAY anything! You walk up to the person who has just experienced the loss, and give them a hug. If you are walking down the center aisle and you see them at the end of the pew, put a hand on their shoulder and squeeze it. Bodies speak to bodies. A grieving person can get more out of that hug than any fifty well-chosen words.

Does that mean words are not necessary? Not at all. In an extended visit, it helps strengthen the bonds and alleviate the sadness present in this situation. But what IS important, is in whatever way possible, REACH OUT, touch people, let them know that you share in some limited sense in their suffering, and that you will BE THERE. Words are not important, but presence is everything. Presence is not restricted to standing beside them. We are present with that hug, with a phone call, the scribbled notes or a solid promise to come by as soon as possible. Each of these, and many others, are forms of presence.

We always need to try and support each other and such support is especially needed in times of the loss of a loved one.

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By Bishop John, June 11, 2012 5:08 am

The world always has and always will be a troubled place but many of us sometimes tend to see our own particular age and place as the worst of all possible situations. “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” We almost always describe ones own situation in that manner. While we must be honest and forthright about the burdens and problems that face us, we also must take advantage of every cause of optimism and hope. I now see a very important cause of hope and optimism; namely, the world’s international response to the problem of human trafficking. Several times in the past I have mentioned in my blog the agonizing reality of human trafficking. One of my titles was even “Human Trafficking on IH-35” and I was delighted to see that so many people were shocked and temporarily in a spirit of disbelief.

What gives me great hope and enthusiasm is the fact that there is a growing awareness all across the planet of the horror, cruelty and destructiveness of human trafficking. It takes many forms but most of it involves forceful enslavement of young girls from poorer countries to be used as prostitutes in other countries where they are so far from home that they simply don’t have a way to escape.

A few weeks ago, there was a major conference in Rome pulled together by Bishop Patrick Lynch, Chair of the Office of Migration Policy of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales along with the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace led by Cardinal Peter Turkson. In preparing for the conference, Church leaders worked closely with Human Exploitation and Organized Crime Command of Scotland Yard. They did a great job of generating interest, concern and follow-up work in other countries. Countries of origin of human trafficking, including Thailand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Nepal, Vietnam, China and the Czech Republic, are also developing programs and much needed responses.

This is a horrible situation and the whole world needs to confront it. I am glad to see Church organizations and governmental organizations working hand in hand in order to achieve the necessary results.

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By Bishop John, April 16, 2012 5:28 am

One of the best organizations around is the Better Business Bureau. Its principal role is to protect businesses, individuals and other generous donors and would be supporters of various charitable programs, and verify the authenticity of a project and make sure that the dollars are spent properly and according to the intention of the donors. This is a very necessary service because when this or that head of a charity operation is caught with their hands in the till, regretfully it motivates some to paint all charities with the same brush and hold back on their support.

It broke my heart two weeks ago to see that the author of Three Cups of Tea, Mr. Greg Mortenson, mismanaged the non-profit organization he had cofounded to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He raised millions of dollars for this work. He also spent millions of dollars of charity money on charter flights, family vacations and personal items.

I read Three Cups of Tea when it first came out and Mortenson did a marvelous job of describing what at the beginning was really a wonderful effort to bring education, especially to females, in these two backward countries. His early projects were tremendously successful, and his book being a best-seller motivated many people to want to join in and help the author. His organization, the Central Asian Institute, continues and aspires to do yet greater things, but they have been badly damaged by the carelessness and dishonesty of its founder. We all need to be careful as to how we utilize our charitable contributions, but we do have an never ending responsibility to use a portion of our resources to lessen the pain of this world.

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By Bishop John, March 21, 2012 4:23 am

When I was a kid in the 1930’s and ‘40’s, the nations frequently interfered with one another but it was usually on the basis of attack and invasion – Russia into Finland, Germany into Poland, Italy into Ethiopia, Japan into China and then finally the whole world was engulfed in what was truly a WORLD war. That was a terrible scene and while aggression frequently rolled over borders, as powerful nations abused weaker neighbors, no government that I knew of ever got involved in the internal problems of another country if they did not have to. Of the examples mentioned above, at the time of the invasions other nations remained neutral. While they might have criticized or condemned the attackers, they would never consider joining the fray in order to help an oppressed people.

Today is a better world! While nations were tragically slow on Rwanda, move they finally did. The United States and the U.N. stepped in dramatically in Bosnia when Serbia was attempting a modern form of ethnic cleansing. Recently, the whole world witnessed the fact that heroic revolutionaries in Libya received dramatic help from the outside world and thus toppled the tyrannical world under which the people had suffered for 40 years.

Now it is Syria! The Syrian people are suffering terribly by a government that is brutally murdering them. While citizens have the moral support of the rest of the world, the agonizing question goes on: will the outside world act to end this slaughter? I think they will because the mindset has changed across the planet and we realize that safe, developed nations don’t have the luxury of watching their neighbors being slaughtered by unjust and cruel governments.

The world is a long way from being “fixed” but we are certainly moving in the right direction.

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By Bishop John, March 19, 2012 5:18 am

Image from http://365thingsaustin.com

I think that there is a tendency among us that once we have been asked to help with this or that program, need, charity, or undertaking we feel that we have properly responded and then go on to think about other things. Several times over the last two years, I have used this space to remind people about the continued suffering in Haiti. When something horrible happens the media covers it immediately and effectively, and the generous response I mention above occurs, but life moves on and gradually these horrors recede from our consciousness.

There is no evil in our forgetting the problems of yesterday. It is simply regrettable. I think we should work hard to maintain sustained assistance to difficult situations if they are not ultimately taken care of and provided for.

Let me take advantage of this opportunity to mention to you once again the Capital Area Food Bank. We know that there is hunger in the South Sudan and that there are really difficult problems in food distribution in Northern Mexico. However, we need also to be conscious of the fact that there are real serious food problems in Austin, Texas.