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Day: April 3, 2008

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Perspective, Political

4,000

From the Albany Catholic blog: 4,000

Terence L. Kindlon, an Albany lawyer and a Marine veteran of the Vietnam War, writes in today’s Times Union, after American casualties in Itaq hit the 4,000 mark:

“If I were slightly younger … I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines. … It must be exciting … in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger.”
— President Bush, March 13

On the day after Christmas in 1967, I found a young Marine quietly lying on his back near the perimeter wire at our temporary base south of DaNang. He was just a boy, maybe 18, and he looked relaxed, as if he had drifted off to sleep under a warm sun while fishing. But he wasn’t asleep. He was dead and gone, taken down by a sniper’s bullet shot through the center of his chest. When I checked for a pulse he was still warm.

The same day I found that dead Marine, another young man, George W. Bush, then a senior at Yale, was probably home for Christmas vacation. Mr. Bush, 21 and just a few months from graduation, was at an ideal age to enlist in the military, where he could have had — to use his words — the fantastic, exciting experience, in some ways romantic, of confronting danger as a second lieutenant on the front lines of Vietnam. If he wanted, he could have actually had the exact same kind of combat experience he rhapsodized about just a few days ago.

Unfortunately, after graduation in 1968, he decided to cut and run instead…

The rest of his op-ed piece is here. We at Albany Catholic recommend it.

As do I. The op-ed was entitled: Bush’s view of war an insult to all

Fathers, PNCC

April 3 – St. Leo the Great from a Sermon on the Occasion of the Resurrection of Christ

For which reason the very feast which by us is named Pascha, among the Hebrews is called Phase, that is Passover, as the Evangelist attests, saying, ‘Before the feast of Pascha, Jesus, knowing that His hour was come that He should pass out of this world unto the Father…’ But what was the nature in which He thus passed out unless it was ours, since the Father was in the Son and the Son in the Father inseparably? But because the Word and the Flesh is one Person, the Assumed is not separated from the Assuming nature, and the honour of being promoted is spoken of as accruing to Him that promotes, as the Apostle says in a passage we have already quoted, ‘Wherefore also God exalted Him and gave Him a name which is above every name’. Where the exaltation of His assumed manhood is no doubt spoken of, so that He in Whose sufferings the Godheard remains indivisible is likewise coeternal in the glory of the Godhead. And to share in this unspeakable gift the Lord Himself was preparing a blessed ‘passing over’ for His faithful ones, when on the very threshhold of His Passion he interceded not only for His Apostles and disciples but also for the whole Church, saying, ‘But not for these only I pray, but for those also who shall believe on Me through their word, that they all may be one, as Thou also, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us’. — Homily 72, Part VI. A mystical application of the term ‘Passover’ is given.

Everything Else, ,

Veterans program – recording oral histories

My alma mater, Canisius College, will host the New York State Veterans Oral History Program on Tuesday-Thursday May 6th, 7th, and 8th at its archives.

Former New York Governor George Pataki established the program on Veterans’ Day 2000 to preserve the story of New York’s veterans in their own words for future generations. At the time the Governor noted, “The recollections and experiences of New York’s veterans are a precious and irreplaceable resource…(the veterans’) history is our state’s history.”

War has played an important part in the lives of many alums. This project will offer the opportunity for veterans and civilians who worked in the “war effort” of any war -World War II, Korean Conflict, Vietnam, Gulf, Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as well as involvement in Kosovo or the Falkland Islands-to share their memories. Participants will receive a DVD of their oral history, which will be catalogued in the Canisius Archives, as well as the New York State Military Museum & Veterans Research Center.

Michael Russert, Military Historian, New York State Museum & Veterans Research Center will conduct the interviews.

To schedule an appointment or for more information please contact Kathleen DeLaney, Archives Coordinator, at 716-888-2530.

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