The Dawn Patrol: Alex Pretti, my brother in Christ: I want to tell you about Alex Pretti, my fellow Catholic, my brother in Christ; Alex Pretti, the good Samaritan who stopped to help his i...
I noticed a Mass was said for Pretti the day of after his death. That could be a bit deceptive, Masses are offered for people who aren't Catholic, and a Jewish congregation offered the Kaddish.
But somebody had hung a rosary on a photograph of him at a private memorial.
My suspicion proved correct.
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace.
Amen.
I try not to interject politics into this blog, and my two other blogs about churches. But it has, frankly, become impossible. Donald Trump and his fellow travelers have made it impossible. The populist far right contingent of the Evangelical churches and their New Apostolic Reformation have introduced a perverted brand of Christianity into what was already a Puritan country, bringing back the worst sort of attitudes that were every improperly associated with Christianity. As an Apostolic Christian, a Catholic, I've been afraid the entire time that this would serve to be used against all Christians, but most particularly the Apostolic Christians, the Catholic and the Orthodox, whose religion has an unbroken 2,000 year history untainted by the theological innovations of men. Street level Americans, including those who loosely consider themselves Christian, do not really know the difference between Evangelicals and Catholics, let alone between Evangelicals and Oriental Orthodox, but we're all going to get tarred with the same brush. "Why did you Christians. . . " we'll be asked, both because some of us went along and participated (Vance, for example), but also because those same people don't realize that Christian denominations that only barely tolerate Catholicism, if tolerate it at all, really have a much different worldview than we did.
Indeed, it'd serve us well to remember that these same groups actively oppressed us not all that long ago, and their intellectual ancestors were willing, in many instances, to see us dead.
In the face of this some of us have to do what Jewish intellectual Victor Klemperer did and titled his book about the Nazis with, "I will bear witness".
Pretti was bearing witness.
And then he went to help, as we who are real Christians are obligated to do. He was pepper sprayed, disarmed, put on the ground, and shot multiple times.
We should all bear witness to that.
