May I just say that Cardinal McElroy has it just right?

May I just say that Cardinal McElroy has it just right?

I’ve been honored by invitations to preach in congregations of the Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, African Episcopal, Unitarian, Lutheran, Jewish and assorted other faith traditions.

But if I were Catholic, this week I’d be grateful and proud of the hierarchy I sometimes question: grateful, because an Archbishop bore witness to the truth and proud because the truth is being muffled by much of America’s media.

According to a recent CNN report (July 9, 2025), Cardinal Robert McElroy, the Archbishop of Washington DC, spoke his mind (and his faith) plainly when he said of Trump’s immigration brutalities, “This is simply not only incompatible with Catholic teaching, it’s inhumane and is morally repugnant.”

Agreed. To understand that it is inhumane we need to recognize that those being targeted, hunted, slandered and slaughtered – those whose lives are being shattered by Trump’s war on immigrants – are human. They aren’t abstract objects whose agency has been removed. Neither are most guilty of any offense or crime that merits the assaults they are suffering. They are people like you and me, people who are being sacrificed on the altar of political and economic campaigns. It’s wrong. It’s inhumane.

And what’s being done is “morally repugnant.” To reckon with this we need to have some kind of moral grounding, some sense of right and wrong, some notion about what’s okay and what’s not. Trump and his acolytes appear to have none of this. It’s as if there is no moral compass left in either their speech or their behaviors. Law doesn’t matter. Human rights are trampled. The idea of higher principles that should guide civil behavior is merely that: an idea. No matter how morally repugnant their behavior is, it just doesn’t matter to them.

So what are we to do? What will we say if someday our children or grandchildren ask, “Where were you when the atrocities were being put on full display?”

The response I want to give is, as I wrote in my recently published book, Uneasy Silence, that I was busy bearing witness to the truth, even if doing so became dangerous.

“In ways large or small,” I said there, “depending on the opportunities given to us, we’re called not to cower in silence and fear but to stand up, speak out, and bear witness against evil. It may be across the family dinner table. Perhaps it’s in our office or at the store, in my knitting circle or in your congregation. Maybe the opportunities come because we’ve volunteered to serve a community organization. Maybe we’ve had the courage to become election workers. Whatever the platform, my soul demands that I face lies with truth and threats with courage.”

It's all about bearing witness. Recognizing the torrent of lies, discovering and telling the truth. Being fearless in our willingness not only to know evil when we see it but to speak out against it. It’s in bearing witness that we preserve the ideals and promises made to all Americans in our founding documents.

But what if speaking out doesn’t “work,” doesn’t stop Trump injustices?

As nearly as I can tell, our speaking out still has great meaning, even if it doesn’t completely block the evil. What matters is that we bear witness to the truth no matter what the outcome. It’s in the bearing witness that we give meaning to our lives and leave a legacy of courageous truth-telling.

I don’t know Cardinal McElroy personally. I imagine we disagree on lots of things. But to one who bravely bears witness to what’s clearly inhumane and morally repugnant I’d like to say, “Right on, Cardinal McElroy; right on!!!”

May I just say that the world seems officially, undeniably and regrettably upside down?

When I was growing up, and even as an adult, I knew that fiction was “made up” and reality was “truth.” Made-for-TV game shows weren’t reality. They were entertainment. Game shows were just a way to play — all based on knowing that the show was no more than a made-up fiction that amused us. They were intentional distractions.

Reality, on the other hand, consisted of work, relationships, discipline, tending to our children and our elders, supporting our communities, trusting the general good will of Congress, being responsible with whatever resources were given to us and so forth. We shared.

This view has mostly toppled over, and what was once a frivolous entertainment is now reality and reality is a mere distraction. The current occupant of the White House throws out horrendous distractions that we, unfortunately devour like starving cats. American bombers are sent to do what Israeli bombers couldn’t do. It’s a made-for-TV opening to a made-for-TV war. Congress doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t want to matter. And a heat wave garners more televised attention than the edge of nuclear war, the insanity de jour, today’s distraction.

Given the daily dose of distractions, who keeps us from noticing the destruction of decades of promises (USAID) and years of life-saving medical research, among other features of civility? It’s as if we should be looking right but we’re only looking left. By looking the wrong way, we’re spared seeing the harshest of realities.

Maybe it’s that the reality is still the reality but it’s too frightening to accept; we prefer believing that, somehow, against the odds, this is all going to work out.

Or maybe it’s that each day’s violations of all things we’ve held sacred and true about America have lost their ability to provide shock and awe. Innocents are snatched from sidewalks by armed and masked thugs. Children go to school fearing they’ll never see their parents again. Trump amplifies his lying about “criminals” who don’t exist while those who carry out his brutal campaigns in Nazi-like raids have become the new normal. We see it daily in our Los Angeles neighborhoods. It’s an upside down world where justice is trampled and injustice, especially for those whose skin is Black or brown, is commonplace.

To the extent that there’s some truth in here, and to the extent that I can find that truth when my world has been turned upside down, I tried to offer some sense of sanity in my recently published book, Uneasy Silence.

In art that reveals my sense of today’s realities, and words that convey the worry that we aren’t paying attention to the realities of starving children (for example) or growing economic injustices, I was allowed to say what I believe.

In an upside-down world it may be difficult to know what to believe, or what to say. But this is certain: Those who have endured great loss will grieve, and I’m called to offer comfort. Those who are hungry need to be fed. Children being abused need to be rescued. Such things are unchanged by a White House that is the source of relentless chaos and cruelty. What I need to do, at a minimum, is acknowledge the enduring realities and do what I can to prove I am not indifferent. Or distracted.

As I confessed in Uneasy Silence, “Not caring enough to speak out is my version of indifference. My conscience may be screaming at me but I stay quiet. I spend worry-filled days and sleepless nights, knowing that injustice and suffering are calling my name.” My conscience is not a distraction; it’s a ringing fire alarm or, just as often, a soft whisper of danger. I need to listen, and I need to respond.

What matters is still the truth. Let’s see if I can hang onto that without being distracted.

May I just say that it was a day to remember?

May I just say that it was a day to remember?

In Washington DC, the President spent $40-$45 million throwing himself a birthday party to coincide with the 250th birthday of the US Army. I saw no party hats or birthday cakes. Just one expensive parade.

At the same time, parades of protest break out across America, all distinctly non-military in character. As The Huffington Post (June 14, 2025) reported, Trump’s parade was “dwarfed by the millions who showed up at roughly 2,000 anti-Trump ‘No Kings’ protests in cities and towns all over the country.”

Staging a military parade is, of course, a favorite tactic of dictators and despots. While North Koreans starve, their well-fed Chairman puts on a display of military hardware. Putin stages military parades as a regular feature of his “see how big I am” campaigns. Now comes Trump to show off weapons of war. According to Malcolm Ferguson in The New Republic (June 15, 2025), “Three dozen horses, 28 Abrams tanks, 6,700 soldiers, and millions of taxpayer dollars later, Donald Trump’s military birthday parade was still a flop at best,” a “pathetic event for a pathetic president.”

The biggest story from last Saturday – even if most major US media made Trump’s parade their lead story – was the irrepressible roar rising from some 4-5 million Americans marching in solidarity against Trump and his actions. Rallying under the banner “No Kings,” we marched to express our opposition to Trump and the damage he is doing to America and to the world – from decimating critical medical research to hunting down hardworking immigrants, from rolling back environmental protections to the deadly abandonment of people with HIV/AIDS.

The ”No Kings” protests warmed my heart and inspired me to feel, for the first time in recent memory, genuine hope. Trump’s parade isn’t what America is like: the people’s protests in cities large and small is the “real America.” Name a religion or color, ethnic tradition or preferred gender, and last Saturday it was on display from Boise, Idaho to New York City. Unrelated to the protests were tragic assassinations in Minnesota and the drums of war in Israel and Iran; I saw and heard those too. Even so, my enduring memory of that one remarkable day is that five million (or so) Americans stood up to a would-be king and said “No!”

Passing marchers were handed free water by merchants and neighbors. Speeches were brief. The crowds knew why they had assembled. “No Kings” meant just that: We’ve been guaranteed a president, not a tyrant. Millions of my fellow citizens demonstrated the courage to resist intimidation and invited me to join them. Together, we felt pride. We sang “God Bless America” as if we meant it.

Throughout my recently published book, Uneasy Silence, I urge each of us to stand up for the truth in whatever way suits us best. “I need to do what I can do,” I wrote, but “I’m not being asked to become a martyr.” Last Saturday, some 5 million Americans marched. They were people who teach, people who write, people who raise families, who grow crops, who produce art, who fight crime,  each demonstration “doing what I can do.”

I went to bed Saturday night remembering one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s last speeches before he was killed. In that unmistakable voice and cadence, he rehearsed the Constitution’s promises.

All we say to America is, ‘Be true to what you said on paper.’ If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions. Maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn’t committed themselves to that over there.

But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly.

Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech.

Somewhere I read of the freedom of [the] press.

Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right.

Somewhere last week I saw the soul of America. It poured into the streets, cheerful, honest, resisting calls to meanness and madness. It was accompanied not by threats but by songs. It was what I needed and have gratefully accepted: a day to remember, and to savor, hope.