Thoughts on Boston

A few years after I was elected but before we had moved into our new government building, we had a bomb threat.  Our protocol was followed to the letter, except for me, and I did what I shouldn’t have, which was to run back about 30 feet to my office to grab my purse!  As a result I was the last one out of the building.  As I got to the exit door a car pulled up to the curb and a lady jumped out, saying she couldn’t believe that she had found a parking place right in front of the door.  I explained that she couldn’t stay there, nor could she go into the building because of the bomb threat.  Visibly shaken, she asked, “Terrorists?”  Nah, I replied.  Probably just some home grown nut.  “Oh, that’s OK then”, she said, quite relieved. 

I am constantly amazed at people’s reactions to unsettling events.  My response is to go into a “dealing with it now” mode, and I don’t fall apart for a couple of weeks, when, of course, everyone else is over it and I get absolutely no sympathy.  Other people fall apart instantly.  Others sort of panic.  Others seek someone or something to blame.

It is this last reaction that has me worried about what happened in Boston this week.  Immediately the radical right wanted to stop the immigration reform legislation, name the surviving bomber an enemy combatant so that he can be tried by a military tribunal, and because I don’t frequent radical right wing blogs, I’m sure there are many comments that it is all of Islam that is at fault, and we as a Christian nation must fight Islam to the core.

To take these in reverse, we are not a Christian nation.  We were not founded as a Christian nation deliberately.  Europe had not too long before emerged from a religiously motivated 30 year war, and our nation’s founders wisely did not want sectarianism to infect our body politic. 

Also, radical Islam has about as much to do with main-stream Islam as the Westboro Baptist Church has to do with my own Catholic parish, which is nothing at all.  We have in this country people who in the name of being Christian pro-life blow up abortion clinics, kill doctors who provide women’s health care, which may include abortions, and other atrocities. 

Senators Grassley and McCain, and the others who want the bomber to be named an enemy combatant so that he can be tried by a military tribunal can only see one solution to any problem the United States has, and that is a military one.  This lack of any thought that there might be a more peaceful solution to problems than the military is really sort of frightening.  So far, these old guys are in the minority, and let us all hope that is where they stay! 

Stopping the immigration reform legislation because two immigrants perpetrated an absolutely horrific thing is absurd!  There are 11 million undocumented immigrants in this nation who have not blown anyone or anything up.  And one of the two immigrants is a naturalized citizen.  To put the fates of 11 million people up against the actions of two people is about as asinine as one can get. 

Let us pray for the complete recovery of the victims, and for their ability to overcome the horrible trauma to their bodies.  And let us remember that there are radical Muslims, radical Christians, radical Jews, radical secular humanists, radical what evers.  Let us not be caught up in the same mindset as these two young men who see a whole group of people as the enemy.  It is too easy a step from that to violence.