May 25th, 2022

ONLY IN AMERICA

Our children are the greatest God given gift we will ever receive and know, they must be treasured and protected with all of our strength and courage and wisdom.

Only in America . . . 
 
Lord forgive us, for what we do and do not do. Lord forgive us, for not protecting the children in our schools and across the country. Children in America are living in fear, our schools and places of worship and where we gather as a community should be the safest places in America. 

America is weeping once more . . .
 
We are doing something terribly wrong in America and our local, state, and federal leaders are all paralyzed. They are incapable of movement and far too many are beholden to the NRA and special interests.  In the politics of the day, they have lost something we should all hold dear, a sense of honor associated with the practice of true servant-leadership.
 
This is NOT what the founders intended in the Constitution. We need to look at the tragic social dynamics taking place today. No one, not one of our nation’s founders in the late Eighteenth-Century, could have foreseen this future. Constitutional originalists — please take note, that this could never have been their intention, far from it I believe. Your positions on the Second Amendment require a more thoughtful scholarship and approach. 
 
Allowing anyone to buy an assault weapon without a comprehensive extended background check and thorough screening via adequate gun safety laws, has nothing to do with supporting a well-regulated militia as written in the Second Amendment. It is the opposite. It is chaos! It is the death of too many!

The Second Amendment to the Constitution, is one simple sentence: “A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” We can look at what the Framers meant in the historical and social context of that time.

​In their time, to “bear arms” meant to be part of an organized militia licensed and supported by the government as an agency of the government to protect the frontier. We see what the Second Amendment guarantees, at work today, through the presence of citizen-soldiers serving in the National Guard as an integral part of the U. S. Military.
 
The Second Amendment does NOT protect the unregulated ownership of military style assault weapons, nor I believe unlawful irregular-aberrant militias. In the District of Columbia ET AL. v. HELLER case, decided on June 26, 2008, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. "Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose." 

There are states that regulate and ban assault weapons, and all these laws have been upheld by the courts. Such laws once existed at a federal level from 1994 until 2004, when it ended with a sunset clause. Several constitutional challenges were filed against provisions of the ban, but all were rejected by the courts. There were multiple attempts to renew the ban, but none succeeded. 
 
If people want to see real change, the only way to create that change is to vote for caring folks at a local, state, and federal level who will do what is needed to protect our children, and who will embrace a broader understanding of what being “Pro-Life” means. Being “Pro-Life” goes beyond the womb too, it should extend across the fullness of a life given to us by God.
 
Comments from many political leaders on the deaths in Uvalde, Texas — are full of compassion, care, and wisdom. But when I listen to some of our more conservative political leaders on gun rights, I must wonder where their moral backbones have dissolved. They are not protecting our children and they are NOT practicing “Pro-Life” in its fullest meaning. And they cannot claim in many opinions and ways of knowing, to be upholding the intention of the Constitution in its fullest moral meaning and guarantees of liberty.

A Prayer for a New Paradigm of Pro-Life Living & Practice

Dear Lord — In these terrible times please open our hearts and minds to make protecting our children our highest priority. Teach us how to practice being "Pro-Life" in a new paradigm that makes our schools, our places of worship, and the public places where we gather as a community the safest places in America.  Help us to love one another as you have loved us in the life and lives we are given to care for and share.  Amen

For Those Who Watch & Weep

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give thine angels charge over those who sleep.  Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for thy love's sake.    Amen.

For the Care of Children

Almighty God, heavenly Father, you have blessed us with the joy and care of children: Give us calm strength and patient wisdom as we bring them up, that we may teach them to love whatever is just and true and good, following the example of our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

For Young Persons

God our Father, you see your children growing up in an unsteady and confusing world: Show them that your ways give more life than the ways of the world, and that following you is better than chasing after selfish goals. Help them to take failure, not as a measure of their worth, but as a chance for a new start. Give them strength to hold their faith in you, and to keep alive their joy in your creation; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

For Our Country

O God our Father, whose beloved Son took children into his arms and blessed them: Give us grace to entrust your beloved children of Uvalde to your everlasting care and love, and bring them fully into your heavenly kingdom. Pour out your grace and loving-kindness on all who grieve; surround them with your love; and restore their trust in your goodness. We lift up to you our weary, wounded souls and ask you to send your Holy Spirit to take away the anger and violence that infects our hearts, and make us instruments of your peace and children of the light. In the Name of Christ who is our hope, we pray. Amen.

(This last prayer was originally shared by Bishop Andy Doyle - Episcopal Diocese of Texas.)

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Ron Starbuck
​Publisher/CEO/Executive Editor
Saint Julian Press, Inc.
Houston, Texas

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