'Gabby’ Giffords
Good News for Gabby
January 23, 2011, Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 9:3-1 1 Corinthians 1:10-13, 17 Matthew 4:18-23
Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Matthew
Glory to you, Lord.
As Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter, and his brother Andrew, casting a net into the sea; they were fishermen. He said to them, “Come follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”At once they left their nets and followed him. He walked along from there and saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They were in a boat, with their father Zebedee, mending their nets. He called them, and immediately they left their boat and their father behind and followed him. He went around all of Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and curing every disease and illness among the people.
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
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Introduction
Following the non-violent Jesus
The first few weeks in Ordinary Time (whether in liturgical Cycle A. B or C) have the following of Jesus as their theme. The Jesus we are called to follow is among many things non–violent. When Judas the betrayer arrived in the garden of Gethsemane with a gang equipped with clubs and swords, sent by the chief priests, one of the men with Jesus in the garden pulled out his sword to protect Him. In so doing he had accidently cut off the ear of the High Priest’s servant. That prompted Jesus to tell His defender, “Put your sword back into its place. Those who used the sword are sooner or later destroyed by it.” (Mt 26:52)
Gabrielle Giffords
Democratic congress woman from Arizona, Gabrielle Giffords, (affectionately called “Gabby” by her constituents) is a 40-year-old Democrat in her third term in the House of Representatives. In 2007 she married Cmdr. Mark Kelly, a Navy pilot and astronaut. On her wedding day, Gabby Giffords (a committed recycler) wore a second-hand wedding gown. On Thursday, January 6, 2011, Gabby joined other lawmakers in reading the Constitution aloud on the House floor to mark the beginning of the 112th Congress. The reading included the guarantee of “the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” After the reading, she flew home to Arizona to put those words into practice.
When Gabby, recognizing the right of the people to peaceably assemble, held a `town-hall meeting’ on Saturday, January 8, in the parking lot of a Safeway supermarket in Tucson , AZ, she was shot in the head by a young man named Jared Lee Loughner, 22. A check-up on the shooter revealed him to be “mentally unstable," "a loner" and “unbalanced.” The shooting left 6 people dead and 13 others injured. Among the dead was a federal judge, John Roll, who had just attended Saturday morning Mass. and a 9-year-old girl, Christina Green. Representative Gabby is in precarious but hopeful recovery in a Tucson hospital.
Gabby’s centrism
On Friday Jan. 7, a day before she was grievously wounded, Giffords wrote an e-mail congratulating the new director of Harvard’s Institute of Politics, saying she wanted to talk with him about ways to tone down the political rhetoric. She wrote:
After you get settled, I would love to talk about what we can do to promote centrism and moderation. I am one of only 12 Dems left in a GOP district (the only woman) and think that we need to figure out how to tone down our rhetoric and partisanship.
Gabby speaks of `centrism.’ That’s holding a position which stand somewhere in the center. Centrism - that’s a willingness to acknowledge and accept what’s good on the other side of the political aisle. Centrism – that’s a wisdom which recognizes that most of the time truth almost always lies somewhere between two extremes.
Crosshairs -- violent rhetoric
After the horrific event in the Safeway parking lot, Sarah Palin, former Governor of Alaska and running mate with John McCain in 2008, quietly scrubbed her website of a map posted last year which depicted the crosshairs of a gun focused on 20 Democratic lawmakers, whom Palin wanted to see ousted from office in the November election. One of the lawmakers singled out was Gabrielle Giffords, who was criticized for “betraying her district.” Gabby responded by saying, "She (Palin) has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, you got to understand there are consequences for that kind of talk.” (Palin's advisors, on the other hand, were furious that she had been linked to the tragic shooting in Tucson.) At the end of the day, no matter how you cut it, crosshairs is violent rhetoric.
A candidate for the U.S. Senate in Nevada called for people to “exercise their Second Amendment rights” to keep and bear arms, if the election didn’t turn out the way they wanted. And we read also of political activists who attend rallies and town hall meetings with guns strapped to their legs, as they promise to “take the country back.” That too is violent rhetoric.
Replete with inflammatory rhetoric
Some believe that the violent rhetoric of the news media gives an unbalanced person, like Jared Lee Loughner, a feeling of national support, and makes the massacre in Tucson possible. One Republican strategist doesn’t believe this. He writes, "The notion that anyone's rhetoric in the political debate spurs the Timothy McVeighs and the Jared Loughners to commit violent acts against innocent people is insidious, dishonest and divorced from reality." Not so says Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik. In a news conference he said that Arizona had "become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry," and that people with mental issues are especially vulnerable to fiery speech. Sheriff Dupnik has the crosshairs of his gun sight aimed at the right target: “fiery speech.” These days public discourse is so replete with inflammatory rhetoric -- toxic talk – vitriol (however we call it), that we’ve come to accept it as normal and acceptable.
The question of civil discourse
The Tucson massacre has raised the question about civil discourse. In the nation, how can Democrats and Republicans talk civilly to one another? In the Church, how can the followers of the Council of Trent and the followers of Vatican II talk civilly to one another? In the family, how can parents and kids talk civilly to one another? (The three are basically of one cloth.) In her e-mail to the director of Harvard’s Institute of Politics Gabby raised the question of civil discourse: “What can we do to promote centrism and moderation?”At the end of the day, that is reductively a religious question. Religious people know how to compromise. Religious people know how to meet half way. Religious people know how to listen to the other side.
The `Third Way’
On January 25, President Obama will give his second State of the Union address. This year’s address occurs in a changed Washington; Republicans have control of the House. Perhaps even more important than that is the stunned atmosphere in Washington, resulting from the Tucson massacre which left 6 dead and 13 wounded, among whom was one of Congress’s own: Gabby Giffords. The massacre has fired up
a debate about the implications of extreme political rhetoric. And it has inspired a centrist group called the `Third Way’ to write a letter to congressional leaders, in which it makes a very interesting and appealing suggestion. It suggests putting an end to the traditional partisan seating arrangement at the State of the Union Address, which has Republicans sitting on one side of the chamber and Democrats on the other! The letter which pleads for a more civil Congress reads in part,
We urge the leaders of both houses of Congress to agree to end the partisan seating for the State of the Union. We do not see any purpose behind putting Democrats on one side of the floor and Republicans on the other. The spectacle of one side of the room leaping to its feet while the other sits glumly on its hands is just that—a spectacle. Perhaps having both parties sit together, intermingled, would help control the choreography of partisanship that accompanies the President’s remarks. Most importantly, it would demonstrate what is true but not always apparent—that we are one nation, not two, and that Members are unified by their service to our country.
Conclusion
Good news for Gabby
Mixed seating at the State of the Union 2011 address would be a very good `sacramental’ gesture. That is to say, mixed seating would powerfully point beyond itself and would say to the whole nation: “Though we are a nation of two political parties, at the end of the day, we are one nation, and both of us have but one business to accomplish: the business not of our party but of our nation.”
Mixed seating itself won’t solve the pervasive problem of inflammatory rhetoric, toxic talk, vitriol, etc., which blights our public discourse, but it would be a good first big step. And when Gabby, that good apostle of centrism and moderation, becomes fully alert and hears the good news of the mix-seating arrangement at the State of the Union 2011 (which she won’t be able to attend), her recovery will be greatly hastened.
'Gabby’ Giffords
