Justice and Mercy

The Rev. John A. Fale writes:

Yesterday I overheard three pastors seated across from me at a pastoral care conference in Washington, D.C. One of the men remarked, "I'm trying to get my congregation involved in justice ministry. I just can't get them going." Another responded, "When I talk to my people about what they want, they say they want mercy, not justice." After a brief pause, he continued, "Because they know what they'll get if they ask God for justice."

Pastor Fale is the Interim Co-Executive Director, Office of International Mission, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. The above quote begins his message in the March/April 2012 LCMS World Relief and Human Care Sharing newsletter.

Open Letter: Free Exercise of Religion

The following was issued Thursday by the leaders of several religious communities in the United States, including the Presidents/Bishops of four Lutheran church bodies. Written by the Rev. Dr. Matthew Harrison, President of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, he also offers this video introduction. Pastor Zip

Hat tip to Fr. William Weedon at ALPB Forum Online.

FREE EXERCISE OF RELIGION:
Putting Beliefs into Practice

An Open Letter from Religious Leaders
in the United States to All Americans
June 21, 2012

Dear Friends,

Religious institutions are established because of religious beliefs and convictions. Such institutions include not only churches, synagogues, mosques, and other places of worship, but also schools and colleges, shelters and community kitchens, adoption agencies and hospitals, organizations that provide care and services during natural disasters, and countless other organizations that exist to put specific religious beliefs into practice. Many such organizations have provided services and care to both members and non-members of their religious communities since before the Revolutionary War, saving and improving the lives of count- less American citizens.

As religious leaders from a variety of perspectives and communities, we are compelled to make known our protest against the incursion of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) into the realm of religious liberty. HHS has mandated that religious institutions, with only a narrow religious exception, must provide access to certain contraceptive benefits, even if the covered medications or procedures are contradictory to their beliefs. We who oppose the application of this mandate to religious institutions include not only the leaders of religious groups morally opposed to contraception, but also leaders of other religious groups that do not share that particular moral conviction.

That we share an opposition to the mandate to religious institutions while disagreeing about specific moral teachings is a crucial fact. Religious freedom is the principle on which we stand. Because of differing understandings of moral and religious authority, people of good will can and often do come to different conclusions about moral questions. Yet, even we who hold differing convictions on specific moral issues are united in the conviction that no religious institution should be penalized for refusing to go against its beliefs. The issue is the First Amendment, not specific moral teachings or specific products or services.

The HHS mandate implicitly acknowledged that an incursion into religion is involved in the mandate. However, the narrowness of the proposed exemption is revealing for it applies only to religious organizations that serve or support their own members. In so doing, the government is establishing favored and disfavored religious organizations: a privatized religious organization that serves only itself is exempted from regulation, while one that believes it should also serve the public beyond its membership is denied a religious exemption. The so-called accommodation and the subsequent Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) do little or nothing to alleviate the problem.

No government should tell religious organizations either what to believe or how to put their beliefs into practice. We indeed hold this to be an unalienable, constitutional right. If freedom of religion is a constitutional value to be protected, then institutions developed by religious groups to implement their core beliefs in education, in care for the sick or suffering, and in other tasks must also be protected. Only by doing so can the free exercise of religion have any meaning. The HHS mandate prevents this free exercise. For the well-being of our country, we oppose the application of the contraceptive mandate to religious institutions and plead for its retraction.

Sincerely yours,

Leith Anderson President National Association of Evangelicals Gary M. Benedict President The Christian and Missionary Alliance U.S. Bishop John F. Bradosky North American Lutheran Church The Most Rev. Robert J. Carlson Archbishop of St. Louis Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan Archbishop of New York President United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Mother Agnes Mary Donovan, S.V. Superior General of the Sisters of Life Sister Barbara Anne Gooding, R.S.M. Director, Department of Religion Saint Francis Health System Sister Margaret Regina Halloran, l.s.p. Provincial Superior Brooklyn Province Little Sisters of the Poor The Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison President The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr. Senior Pastor, Hope Christian Church Bishop, Fellowship of International Churches The Very Rev. Dr. John A. Jillions Chancellor Orthodox Church in America The Most Blessed Jonah Archbishop of Washington Metropolitan of All American and Canada Orthodox Church in America

Imam Faizul R. Khan Founder and Leader Islamic Society of Washington Area The Very Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky Director of External Affairs and Interchurch Relations Orthodox Church in America Most Rev. William E. Lori Archbishop of Baltimore Chairman USCCB Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty Sister Maria Christine Lynch, l.s.p. Provincial Superior Chicago Province Little Sisters of the Poor Sister Loraine Marie Maguire, l.s.p. Provincial Superior Baltimore Province Little Sisters of the Poor The Rev. John A. Moldstad President Evangelical Lutheran Synod Deaconess Cheryl D. Naumann President Concordia Deaconess Conference The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez President NHCLC Hispanic Evangelical Association Sister Joseph Marie Ruessmann Generalate Secretary Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma, Michigan The Rev. Mark Schroeder President Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod L. Roy Taylor Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America Sister Constance Carolyn Veit, l.s.p. Communications Director Little Sisters of the Poor Dr. George O. Wood General Superintendent The General Council of the Assemblies of God

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The Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, president of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS), authored and issued “Free Exercise of Religion: Putting Beliefs into Practice,” an open letter to all Americans voicing opposition to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) contraceptive mandate and pleading for its retraction. Twenty-four religious leaders joined President Harrison in signing the letter, which was issued June 21, 2012.

For more information about the LCMS response to the HHS contraceptive mandate, please visit www.lcms.org/hhsmandate or call 888-THE LCMS (843-5267).

Air Force's X-37B Space Plane Lands

Courtesy Space.com, here's official video of the US Air Force's unmanned X-37B landing early this morning at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Lompoc, California (about 100 miles or 177 kilometers from where I grew up). According to the report, the secret, experimental craft aka Orbital Test Vehicle-2 (OTV-2) had been in orbit since being launched March 5, 2011 (15 months), and was the second one flown by the Air Force. The X-37 project began in 1999 as a test bed for NASA until its funding ended. DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) took over the project in 2004, with the Air Force taking charge in 2006.

The video released by Vandenberg AFB begins in infrared light, so the bright parts would represent heat from the X-37B's descent into the atmosphere. Then it switches to normal light, which is not very bright since it is ten minutes to six o'clock in the morning at the Pacific Coast base. Note that the plane is only 9.5 feet (2.9 meters) tall and 29 feet (8.9 m) long, with a wingspan of 15 feet (4.5 m). Its payload bay is about the size of a pickup truck's bed. Boeing has done some study for a larger X-37C, which could be configured to carry a crew of 6 astronauts in low earth orbit.



More photos and graphics of the X37-B can be found here.

Requiescat in pace: Ray Bradbury

What then shall we say about this? Ray Bradbury is dead.

The book is called The Martian Chronicles. Its introduction is the short-short story, "Rocket Summer," dated (for the book) January 1999. It's now June 2012, and I'm still waiting for Rocket Summer, though Elon Musk's SpaceX (on which I posted recently) offer us belated encouragement. But I digress.

I discovered Bradbury through The Martian Chronicles. It's not so much a story as it is a collection of short stories from the 1940s and published in both mainstream and sf magazines (with all due respect to Forrest J. Ackerman, "science fiction" ought not be shortened "sci-fi") that Bradbury wove together and published as a book in 1950. Old Time Radio would re-broadcast the 1950s NBC Radio programs Dimension X and X Minus One, which included adaptions of several of these stories. The stories were magic when I discovered them as a young teen, and they remain magic when I return to them in my "advanced youth." (In the 1979-80 TV miniseries starring Rock Hudson, the magic is excised -- so don't bother.)

There's much, much more, of course. I'll leave that to the obituary writers, pointing you to this page from the Los Angeles Times where you can see an important side of Bradbury that others may not notice, but with which I connect.

And from the front page today of raybradbury.com:

...In 2005, Bradbury published a book of essays titled Bradbury Speaks, in which he wrote: In my later years I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I've worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior....

Throughout his life, Bradbury liked to recount the story of meeting a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, in 1932. At the end of his performance Electrico reached out to the twelve-year-old Bradbury, touched the boy with his sword, and commanded, Live forever! Bradbury later said, I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard. I started writing every day. I never stopped.

And here are my other Ray Bradbury posts.

Memorial Day 2012

Today has been Memorial Day. This is what we remember:

From the days of the Revolution, through the struggles of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, Vietnam, the first Gulf War and the present War on Terror, the strength of our nation is in the spirit of its men and women who fought and died for a nation determined to know its ancient liberty. 4,435 combat deaths in the Revolutionary War, 2,260 in the War of 1812, 1,733 in the Mexican War, 140,415 on the Union side in the Civil War, 74.524 on the Confederate, 385 in the Spanish-American War, 53,513 in World War I, 292,131 in World War II, 33,667 in the Korea War, 47,393 in the Vietnam War and 148 in the Persian Gulf War. Over 4,477 have died as a direct result of hostile action in Iraq, with 1,803 more in Afghanistan. The loss of life to American military men and women in all of our nation’s wars exceeds 1,340,000.

There's more in Michael Avramovich's post at Touchstone magazine's Mere Comments as he says a bit more about the beginnings of this American holiday and two of our most sacred pieces of land, Iwo Jima and Gettysburg.

And pardon me if I'm a bit of a grump about it, but today is about those 1.3 million men and women who gave the ultimate service for our nation. Veterans, for whose service we are also thankful, have their own day — Veterans Day, November 11, and we thank them then.

Today, the last Monday of May, when we remember those who died serving in our armed forces, has been Memorial Day.

Entering the Mouth of the Dragon

Here's a key follow-up from a post of nearly 2 years ago, Launch of Falcon 9 -- SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft has become the first commercial space vehicle to attach to the International Space Station. Thanks to private enterprise, American remains a space faring nation.

Here you can see ISS astronauts open the hatch and enter the Dragon.


Dragon was launched on the Falcon 9 rocket last week:


Liftoff from SpaceX on Vimeo.
The Falcon 9 launch vehicle carrying the Dragon spacecraft,
climbing from the launch pad. 5/22/12
Over the next few days the Dragon cargo (over 1000 pounds of supplies for the Space Station) will be emptied and return cargo (including experiments) will be put onto the craft for return to Earth next Thursday, May 31. The Dragon is scheduled to splash down that day in the Pacific Ocean, west of California.

California: From Another Age

The following concludes Literature Reader: Sixth Year, edited by Leroy E. Armstrong, a sixth-grade reader from 1916 used in California at least through the mid-1920s. This weblog post is inspired today in part because I read the news from my home state, in part because I posted a new "cover" for my Facebook page featuring a postcard of downtown Los Angeles from the early '60s, and in part because I was thinking of essential things I learned in (California's public) schools that simply aren't taught any longer. Those were the days, my friends, and they seem long gone...

California

(Poets, dramatists, and historians are quite as useful and helpful to society as are wonder-workers in plants. John Steven McGroarty has served the people of California well by writing the Mission Play—a highly interesting portrayal of the days when California was owned by Spain. Mr. McGroarty has also written a pleasing book entitled California: Its History and Romance. The introduction to this book is a poem that is a worthy tribute to California. The author’s love for our beautiful State is felt in every line.)

’Twixt the seas and the deserts,
    ’Twixt the wastes and the waves,
Between the sands of buried lands
    And ocean’s coral caves,
It lies not East nor West,
    But like a scroll unfurled,
Where the hand of God hath hung it,
    Down the middle of the world.

It lies where God hath spread it,
    In the gladness of His eyes,
Like a flame of jeweled tapestry
    Beneath His shining skies;
With the green of woven meadows,
    And the hills in golden chains,
The light of leaping rivers,
    And the flash of poppied plains.

Days rise that gleam in glory,
    Days die with sunset’s breeze,
While from Cathay that was of old
    Sail countless argosies;
Morns break again in splendor
    O’er the giant, new-born West,
But of all the lands God fashioned,
    ’Tis this land is the best.

Sun and dews that kiss it,
    Balmy winds that blow,
The stars in clustered diadems
    Upon its peaks of snow;
The mighty mountains o’er it,
    Below, the white seas swirled—
Just California stretching down
    The middle of the world.

—John Steven McGroarty

Hat tip to Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor.