The shooting in Minnesota is, was, and shall remain a tragedy.
The shooter must face our Lord, and we must trust in God’s perfect justice and mercy.
Two children plus the shooter are dead, and their families must pick up the fragments of their lives while coping with public grief and speculation and politics and media that circles around such stories.
The other families who have children at that school, the other eighteen injured in the attack, and those who love them, likewise must grope through the trauma of this event while having their every action and inaction weighed and measured as to how it fits the narrative of the ones doing the weighing and the measuring.
Camps declared, prayer! Guns! Mental health! 5th Amendment! Deaths! Rights! Activism! Wokeness! Blindness to violence!
Scream about everything and rage at everyone else who is not screaming at the right things the right way. The guns were legally purchased. Our society does not seem to understand how to allow for discussion, only shouting these days.
None of this brings one bullet back or one child. Likewise, none of these arguments, none of the shootings, none of the deaths, none of the situations seem to move our politicians to change their own hearts and minds about what to do.
I grew up in Texas. My family owned rifles, locked in a gun closet. My brothers and brother-in-law, uncles, Dad and countless cousins hunt. I’ve shot a gun but only at skeet (clay pidgeons). Never felt the need to get up at four in the morning to go sit in a cold mosquito, water-moccasin infested, alligator laden swamp. Didn’t see the allure. So I am not anti gun. I don’t own one, but I understand people wanting to protect their families if there are alligators or bears or abusive people they need to keep at bay.
Likewise, I do not see the need for guns that can fire off rounds designed for military operations on a battlefield. No matter who is in charge, Red Dawn is a warning against thinking we should consider ourselves civilian commandos. Bullets may end wars but only when one side gets tired of bleeding.
Right now, we need our politicians to see, we are tired of all the bleeding.
Statesmen understand there is room between no gun regulation and all guns gone, and how to broker something that no one will be completely satisfied with, but that advances the good of the people over lobbyists, superpacs, corporations, and political parties. We need people who understand the difference between a politician and a statesman, who aspire to be statesmen. We need unbought leaders, who do not bow to one party or one partisan, but work for all of us, all of us, all of the U.S.
We also need to (as Catholics in particular) offer our prayers and our service to this community and every community that has been riddled with bullets, to be an army of restorative servants to the families injured by our governments’ unwillingness to act.
Even if we cannot change the laws, we must go out to the community and provide an alternative witness to the very public violence, by our words, our deeds, our actions online and in real life. This is the work the world needs from each of us, and it does begin and end with prayer, but the middle part of it, is our efforts, our work that reveals that our faith is not lip service.
Right now, if you google, you can find some family affected by gun violence in your area. Donate blood or read up on their needs and their go fund me if there is one. Check with your parish pantry or local women’s shelter. Volunteer with the soup kitchen or the local public school with an after school program for teens. Become a sponsor of a club that gives kids alternatives. Plant flowers or give them. Be the reason someone else knows, the world holds salt and light.
There is a temptation when we see such reckless hate, such wanton destruction, to despair. To be Catholic is to say no to that temptation, and to witness something better, something hopeful, something that hints at the ressurection.
We are called to be such a people.
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