Quick Links – SC, the Confederate Flag, Speaking Out Against Bigotry. Sursum Corda!

As I write this, there’s a rally at the SC Statehouse about to get underway, and you can read what the organizers had planned at Brad Warthen’s place.  [Tip: He’s a good guy to follow for all things SC Politics.]

Some quick thoughts and links:

1. It’s time for the Confederate flag to move all the way off the statehouse grounds.

2. I love this photo of the Daughters of St. Paul praying in front of Mother Emmanuel AME Church. Put that in your head as you read Peggy Noonan’s tribute to the mercy that’s flowing in Charleston just now.  The Catholic Miscellany covers some of that graciousness here.

3. Erin Arlinghaus writes here about the importance of speaking up when you’re that person in front of whom people feel safe to spout their bigotry.  Charity is more than just putting on the nice face all the time.  Sometimes charity is putting on your not-nice face.

4.  A good place for that flag to go, and for you to go, is this museum.  It must be the epitome of the complicated world that is our state, because a name like “The Confederate Relic Room” conjures up images that are exactly the opposite of what’s in the place.  I mortify the director by saying it, but the CRR is one of the best-curated museums anywhere, because it’s run by a guy who can think straight and love people both.  You don’t get that too often.  Call ahead and arrange a tour, and if you have a particular interest speak up at the outset, because the humans in South Carolina have been up to far more than you’d think.

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You want to know something? South Carolina is complicated, like your family is complicated, but the raw sanity you’re seeing in the wake of these horrid murders?  This is what we are like.  I guess it’s true, we are indeed backwards.  Loving your enemies is all backwards and upside down, isn’t it?

Image courtesy of Wikimedia [Public Domain].  If you wish to be amused, read Dr. Boli’s History of the Confederate Battle Flags.  Here’s a link to some real flags, check out page two for why I picked the theme that I did for this post. . . . If you wish to see the Confederate battle flag that bears the inscription Sursum Corda, inquire if it’s currently on display at the CRR.