Oklahoma City, Okla., Sep 13, 2017 / 03:16 am (CNA).- Unlikely.
It’s a word often used to describe the story of Fr. Stanley Rother, an unlikely priest who came from an unlikely place in the middle of Oklahoma to take on an unlikely task and die an unlikely death, who is now on the unlikely path of becoming a canonized saint.
All of it certainly seemed unlikely, at least for a while, to Fr. Stanley’s little sister, Sr. Marita, who has been a religious sister since the age of 17.
One never really considers that saints could be found within one’s own family, Sister Marita told CNA.
“As young people, when we learned about the saints, their backgrounds, why they became a saint, we said: ‘How did they do it? We could never do that!’” Sr. Marita recalled.
“And then you see something like this in reality, and it puts a whole new perspective on life, on God’s purpose in our life and why we’re here.”
Sr. Marita’s big brother will be beatified in Oklahoma City on September 23. Pope Francis officially recognized his martyrdom, clearing the way for his beatification, in December 2016.
Fr. Stanley was killed in 1981 while serving at a mission parish in Guatemala, at which he had been stationed for 13 years. While at the mission, he had built schools, hospitals, wells and a Catholic radio station, as well as a strong rapport with and love for the people there. In the midst of Guatemala’s civil war, Fr. Stanley briefly left the country in 1981, but returned to be with his parishioners, which cost him his life.
For those who knew him as he was growing up, the idea that Stanley would become a great leader in the faith on the path to canonization would have seemed, well, unlikely.
Growing up with quiet, ‘occasionally ornery’ Stanley
“He was quiet, kind of bashful in a sense, so was I,” Sr. Marita said. “Introverted or whatever you want to call it.”
She said she remembered teachers calling Stanley, herself and their next brother Jim the “three little bears” at school “because we were just like stairsteps” – very close in age.
Stanley was well-behaved – they all were – at school, said Sr. Marita, because in a the small German Catholic town of Okarche, Oklahoma, surrounded by siblings and cousins and relatives, word spread fast if you decided to act up.
But that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t get up to the occasional “ornery” thing on the farm, Sr. Marita added.
One time in particular stood out to her. She was checking the hen house for eggs with Stanley when he asked her to reach up and check under a hen that she was sure had already been checked.
“And I said ‘well you just did it,’ and he said ‘I didn’t do that one.’ So I reached in,” Sr. Marita recalled.
But instead of grabbing a chicken egg, she got a hold of a big (non-venomous) bull snake that had been hiding out in the chicken house.
“And that made me really mad at him, so I chased him to the house for it,” Sr. Marita recalled.
“He got halfway there and I picked up a can from the yard and flung it at him…and it hit him right over the eye. He had a scar there the rest of his life,” she said. “I got in trouble for that one, because I could have hit him in the eye.”
“But that was probably the orneriest thing he did. That was such a scare for me, and he thought it was so funny, and he knew that it wouldn’t hurt me,” she said, laughing.
Stanley was busy helping his parents on the farm, and became president of the school’s chapter of Future Farmers of America, an agricultural club.
He was talented at farming, Sr. Marita said, but he couldn’t ignore God’s call.
Fostering a vocation
There are some things about Fr. Stanley’s story that are not so unlikely.
The fact that his vocation was fostered in the family home in Okarche, Oklahoma, where life revolved around family, farming, and the Catholic schools and parishes, seems very likely.
In fact, there was a lot of discernment about vocations within the Rother family. Sr. Marita said she doesn’t remember who told their parents first, but she and Stanley both declared that they were pursuing vocations the same summer – he would enter seminary, and she would enter religious life. Stanley had just finished high school, and Sr. Marita still had a year left. They hadn’t discussed their decisions with each other before telling their parents.
“We never talked about it that much in the family,” she said, as far as discerning vocations.
But they were surrounded by family and friends who shared their morals and values, and they prayed together daily.
“We went to Mass, and any time there was prayer in the church we were there. The school was a tremendous support as far as building on what the family had done, and the rosary in our family was an everyday occurrence,” Sr. Marita said.
“After our evening meal we knew that we would kneel for a good 20 minutes, it was our prayer time. And I don’t think we realized the importance of that until we moved on in life.”
The Rother’s parents, Franz and Gertrude, were supportive of their vocations, although they did report that the dinner table felt a little lonelier when it suddenly shrank from six to four.
Bright, but in unexpected ways
Never much for academics, Stanley would struggle when he entered seminary in San Antonio, Texas.
Latin was particularly difficult for him, so much so that he ended up failing out of his first seminary. When he returned to his home diocese, they offered him a second chance at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland.
There, he was able to receive the tutoring he needed to eventually graduate and be ordained.
Fr. Donald Wolf is the second cousin of Fr. Stanley Rother, on his mother’s side. Fr. Wolf told CNA that while everyone would “make a big deal” out of Fr. Stanley’s “not being very bright” academically, Fr. Stanley excelled in other areas.
“Everybody makes a big deal of the fact that he was asked to leave the seminary, he was never any good at Latin, and his studies were just not the first thing on his mind,” Fr. Wolf said.
“But he was, as his father was, a really really good mechanic. Not just that he kind of knew how to fix things, I mean he was really brilliant at that kind of stuff, and really really capable,” he recalled.
“So one of the things that marked his life was his mastery of those things – carpentry and masonry and plumbing and mechanics in a really remarkable way. So he did not think of himself as a failure, nor did his family. It was one of those attributes which his father had times 10 – his ability to solve problems, and his sense that he could do anything.”
The perfect fit: called to mission
When Stanley was still in seminary, Pope St. John XXIII asked the churches of North America to establish missions in Central America. Soon after, the diocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa established a mission in Santiago Atitlan in Guatemala, a poor rural community of mostly indigenous people.
Five years after he was ordained, Fr. Stanley asked to join the mission team, where he would spend the next 13 years of his life.
Although Guatemala was a long way from Okarche, the decision seemed to make sense to everyone – priests, family and Fr. Stanley himself believed this mission would be a “perfect fit,” Fr. Wolf said.
“Part of that was he just never fit in very well around here” as a priest in the diocese, Fr. Wolf said.
“He wasn’t very articulate, he wasn’t pushing for change everywhere, he wasn’t one of those guys who could attract notice…so when he volunteered to go to the mission, to do the kind of things that he could do well – taking care of the mechanical needs, taking care of the plants, making sure the plumbing worked and that the electricity stays on – everyone figured that was a perfect position for him, and he figured that it was a perfect position for him.”
Fr. Stanley, tri-lingual pastor extraordinaire
For Sr. Marita, however, finding out her brother volunteered to go on mission to Guatemala was kind of a shock. The two had had limited contact since joining religious life, and communicated mostly through letters, in which Fr. Stanley never expressed a desire for the missions.
“I had no idea he was leaning in that direction,” she recalled.
It wasn’t until she was able to visit him in Guatemala – once in 1973 and again in 1978 – that she was able to watch him in action and see how well it suited him.
By that time, Stanley, the Latin flunkie, had mastered Spanish and the local native Tzutuhil dialect, and had won over the hearts of the people, who seemed to swarm around him everywhere he went, she recalled.
“To see him in that vein was a grace, because I did not know that about him, how compassionate he was with people, how he responded with the young people, they would flock around him, come to chat when they saw him coming down the road.”
She said she remembered watching him help some young people fix a truck that had broken down – a chance to use his master mechanical skills. During his time at the mission, he also built a farmers’ co-op, a school, a hospital, and the first Catholic radio station, which was used for transmitting catechesis to the even more remote villages.
“He evolved very quickly into his role as pastor, as someone who was tri-lingual. He was, it would appear, perfectly equipped to take care of the challenges of the people in the middle of the challenges of that place,” Fr. Wolf said.
‘Absolute, resolute stubbornness’
Over the years, the violence of an ongoing Guatemalan civil war inched closer to Fr. Stanley’s once-peaceful village. Disappearances, killings and danger soon became a part of daily life, but Fr. Stanley remained steadfast and supportive of his people.
“The shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger,” Fr. Stanley wrote in a letter home, which would become his signature quote.
“Pray for us that we may be a sign of the love of Christ for our people, that our presence among them will fortify them to endure these sufferings in preparation for the coming of the Kingdom.”
In 1980-1981, the situation reached a boiling point. At the behest of friends and family and with his name on a hit list, Fr. Stanley returned to Oklahoma for a few months in January 1981. But as the weeks and months went on and as Easter approached, he was anxious to get back to the mission.
“He really did become one of them, and they claimed him as one of them, so when you leave someone you really love, you want to be there for them,” Sr. Marita said.
In Guatemala, Holy Week is “a lived experience, it’s not just portrayal, so he wanted to be back for that, and celebrate that with them,” Sr. Marita recalled.
Sr. Marita was able to visit Fr. Stanley while he was home that winter. It was the last time she would see her older brother alive.
“As we talked about it, I realized more and more, that no matter what any of us said, he knew that he had to listen to how God was speaking to him (and return). And we accepted that, we weren’t too surprised that that was what he wanted to do.”
But not everyone was so supportive of his decision. Fr. Wolf said for years, many people, including people within the family, considered Fr. Stanley’s decision to leave the safety of the United States and face almost certain death as another sign that he just wasn’t very bright.
“One of my uncles in particular just was not at all impressed with Stanley’s decision to do this,” Fr. Wolf said.
Still, it wasn’t surprising to anyone who knew Fr. Stanley or the Rother family that once his mind was made up, there was little anyone could do to change it.
“One of the attributes of the Rother family – just ask around – is absolute, resolute stubbornness that they’re going to do what they’re going to do,” he said.
“And the Lord builds the supernatural upon the natural, and that was one of the natural attributes that he worked with, because Stanley was not going to be deterred.”
“But if you ever spent 10 minutes with his father you’d know that that’s something he came by perfectly naturally. His father, his father’s brothers, my mother, her brothers and sister – I mean it is a pretty tough crowd,” Fr. Wolf added with a laugh.
So Fr. Stanley returned in time to celebrate Easter with his people. A few months later, at 1:30 in the morning on July 28, 1981, three armed hitmen broke into the rectory where Fr. Stanley was sleeping. They were known for their kidnappings, and wanted to turn Father Stanley into one of “the missing.”
Not wanting to endanger the others at the parish mission, Fr. Stanley struggled but did not call for help. Fifteen minutes and two gunshots later, Fr. Stanley was dead. The men fled the mission grounds.
Fr. Stanley’s legacy
While the rest of Fr. Stanley’s body was buried in Okarche, his heart remained in Guatemala, and will become a relic once he’s beatified.
Sr. Marita said that in Guatemala, they were quick to call him a martyr, while the legacy of her brother’s witness continued to grow in Oklahoma over the years.
“Bishop (Eusebius) Beltran told my parents that he’ll be considered a saint one day, and they felt very strong about it, they had that to dream about at least before they died,” she said.
Gertrude Rother would pass away in 1987, just a few years after her son, and Franz Rother died in 2000. The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City officially started working on the cause of Fr. Stanley in 2007, though the church in Guatemala had already gotten it off the ground.
“When they started doing the interviewing it became more of a reality to everybody, that it would be for promoting his cause,” Sr. Marita said.
“It really is difficult for me to express in certain terms, but I am deeply grateful and proud of him. It’s an awesome experience, one that you would never dream of in your own family,” she said.
When asked what she hoped others learned from her brother’s witness, Sr. Marita said she hoped they would notice the steadfast faith with which he answered the call of God and gave his last breath serving others.
“It goes way back to his ordination card, which said: ‘For myself I am a Christian, for the sake of others I am a priest,’” she said.
“I feel like he really lived that out. I think young people today don’t know if they’re called to the priesthood or religious life, but we have to listen to the first call – come follow me – and then every day continue to follow him and hear that call from him.”
Fr. Wolf echoed her sentiments.
“It was his yes to what he was called to,” he said, “that manifests itself with his desire to remain there and to serve the people.”
“But it began when he said yes to his first invitation to vocation, when he said yes even after failing out of seminary, when he said yes at his ordination, and when he said yes to going to the mission and his yes to remain there after all the other Oklahomans had left.”
Fr. Rother will be beatified Sept. 23 at the Cox Convention Center in Oklahoma City. The Mass will be celebrated by Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, and concelebrated by Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City.
It will likely be a fitting celebration for a life of most unlikely circumstances.
[…]
I find it somehow encouraging that the hate-spewing, diabolical left is terrified of the Rosary.
Thanks for pointing that out – somehow it seems to escape our notice – they are TERRIFIED of the Rosary.
With good reason.
“There is one entity that REALLY REALLY has a problem with the rosary.
And trust me, you don’t want to be on his team.”
I thought that was brilliant.
Well said.
Amen Brineyman. Amen.
FYI – I wear a Rosary around my neck made of paracord and have for a few years. Prior to that I wore a replica of the Rosary issued to troops in WW1 – Google ‘Rugged Rosaries’.
Just when I dare to hope that people CAN’T get ANY dumber, someone like this comes along and – effortlessly – proves me wrong.
Again
Sigh
Addendum – To my c.v. I can now add the title “extremist” to stand proudly next to the original title of “deplorable”.
The honors just keep adding up, and originally I thought that “old coot” was as high as I could go.
Life is good
Let’s face it, Christ was an extremist. The truth is that if you’re a traditional, orthodox Catholic, you’re extremist. Attending Mass, praying the rosary, going to Eucharistic adoration, serving the poor and the homeless and preaching Christ crucified for our sins are all the actions of extremists.
By the way, I’m not going to play your game, Satan.
Attendees at TRADITIONAL CATHOLIC LATIN MASS on the feast day of the Assumption heard the first reading from the 1962 Roman Missal the “Lesson” of Judith, 13:22-25; 15:10. The OT Judith mystically prefigures the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Mary most assuredly strikes and will continue to strike at satan’s head while all he can do is aim at the heel of her seed. Praying the Rosary is like putting holy water on a fire, and satan’s friends in the liberal unGodly secular world despise it because it hurts them while it helps Mary and her friends.
No matter how worrisome, frightening, or desperate worldly events appear to the unaided human eye (without fullness of faith or grace or trust in Him and Mary), those who trust in Him and in her Immaculate Heart will see the glory of God and its reflection in her. Without fear, worry or desperation and no matter the apparent chaos.
The ‘left’ is spoiling for a fight. My weapon is the Rosary; I’m ready for them.
Bring it on!
Jesus I Trust In You
Well said! Our Blessed Mother’s Rosary has won many battles launched against her Son throughout history.It is our decisive answer to the “War of Wokeness” now being waged against her Son today.
Of course Catholic beliefs are seen as extreme by the immoral wing of our society. Imagine believing that a child is a human being at conception? Imagine believing that treating other humans as less is acceptable? Imagine believing that the individual can determine his/her own sex/gender? Imagine being proud of taking God’s place (PRIDE)? The list is endless in our culture. But, wait, Joe Biden touts his “devout Catholicism” by bringing the rosary out of his pocket when the situation warrants, especially when defending the murder of babies in the womb. Imagine being a hypocrite . . .
That should read: “Imagine believing that treating other humans as less is unacceptable?”
Nothing could be a better putdown of The Atlantic piece than Fr. Aquinas’s photo quip warning viewers about images of rosaries. If the rosary is being abused, aggressive marketing for profit by sellers would be the prime cause.
Perhaps The Atlantic should follow this piece up with an expose on how bad it is for anyone to walk the now popular El Camino de Santiago de Compestela pilgrimage route in Spain because in medieval times St. James was turned into the patron saint of bloodthirsty warriors against the infidel Moors. Even as late as the 1700s,the standard battle cry for Spanish soldiers and mercenaries was simply called “the Santigo.”
Atlantic Mag represents, ideologically, the direction of the Church, apparent in Vat policy of secularization. Any identification with Apostolic tradition and the permanence of moral precepts, traditional forms of devotion fall under radical right wing Catholicism resistant to change.
This is exactly parallel to the present political Administration and its policy of identifying any criticism of its policies, election results as radical and dangerous threat to democracy deserving of investigation and prosecution by the Justice Dept.
That the Vatican seems content with the current Administration and its leadership, particularly approval of faux Catholicism practiced by Catholic politicians spells, persecution of faithful Catholics. With persecution our sincere faith will be strengthened, our witness rewarded by Christ at judgment. Keep praying those rosaries and stand fast in witness to the Christ of Apostolic tradition.
The Atlantic article is paranoid and crosses the border into delusional at times. It helps me to understand, however, how nearly a third of the Russian people reportedly believe “the New Chronology”:
https://www.crisismagazine.com/2022/the-bizarre-conspiracy-theory-that-might-be-driving-russia
This article (The Atlantic’s article) strikes me as very strange. The rosary is in the headline but it takes a back seat to plain right wing bashing. It’s basically a long string of assertions with no links to actual examples, only links to other spurious news articles. And who is this author?? He has no credentials whatsoever. This was either a ploy to boost The Atlantic’s media presence, or it’s a trash piece from some nobody with a grudge against the Church.
“This was either a ploy to boost The Atlantic’s media presence, or it’s a trash piece from some nobody with a grudge against the Church.”
Yes. My reading is that it is both. The Atlantic, not many years ago, was a decent and often good source of news and commentary. Not so much anymore.
Publications like The Atlantic are trying to attract attention & remain relevant in an increasingly online world. So, they feature this sort of drive by article. It’s a shame.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-debate-over-the-catholicism-trend/ar-AA10IjuI?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=bda60d7dfab043349016c5771643007e
More of the same idea. Julia Yost of FT apparently wrote letter or op-ed and NYT published it. Interesting.
When we think that the radical left wing press, it continually strains to plumb the depths. The Atlantic collapses (a shameless sheet) as a servant to cultural Marxism and the politically correct.
Prayer never is amiss.
Just when you think the left cannot spew any worse unhinged hatred based on NOTHING, you get something like this. The pure lies and fantasy presented as fact is so typical of Marxist group-think. Very sad to find it growing in acceptance in the US. This is in fact why they want to control and expunge REAL American history, control the schools,and detach parent’s legal rights over their kids.( FBI investigating those “threatening” parents, anyone??) That they were able, with the help of hapless higher clergy, to shutter our churches for months due to covid, must have whet their appetite to do this more frequently, or even permanently. What better way to suppress moral teaching? Whether the accusation is based on spread of disease, “Racism ” or “sexism”,or the supposed suppression of womens’ “reproductive care”, they are working like busy vermin to find a way to devalue the church and make it look subversive and violent. . Articles like this one in the Atlantic helps to normalize the bogus accusations of potential church violence among the ill-educated left (of which we have too many) until it reaches general societal acceptance as a “fact”. You know, the “big lie”. Just keep repeating the same garbage over and over until people accept it as fact. Disgusting.
I’m with Brineyman above.
Why react violently to the article in The Atlantic as if it referred to all Catholics? It’s clear when get to read the article itself that it simply referred to a tiny minority of Catholics who are whites, Christian nationalists, gun-loving, war freaks, and Rosary (as charm) carrying, and who believe in the fear, hate, and grievances fed to them by Trump. If you belong to this demographic group understandably you react as being offended in being handed a mirror for you to look on and be told the truth about who you are. If you are not in this demographic, then you should be grateful in being informed about how some fringe Catholics have become violently inclined extremists and sacrilegiously use the Rosary like an amulet. Pray for their conversion. You could even be like them in another sense when you dangle a rosary in your car’s center rear view mirror!
One problem (among many) with the piece is that uses an age-old tactic: it takes a small subset of folks and then, through repetition and insinuation, casts shade on any and all Catholics who take the Rosary, our Lady, and many other beliefs (especially morals) seriously. The author’s disdain for Catholicism is fairly obvious to me, but (again) he pretends to be doing readers a service by highlighting a vocal and hyperbolic fringe. It’s a typical form of pseudo-sophisticated elitism that clutches its precious secular pearls while the dominant secular culture is burning down and collapsing in so many obvious ways. Finally, there is this: “The theologian and historian Massimo Faggioli has described …” Anyone familiar at all with Faggioli knows that he is hyper-partisan, sloppy, and incredibly clueless about Catholicism in the U.S. The author could have found countless better commentators on this topic, who would have presented actual context and perspective.
The Rosary is the one piece of Catholicism that the Freemasonic Infiltrates didn’t get to corrupt. Bugnini had plans, of course, because the 1958 coupe d’état was spiritually and not merely politically motivated. Readers need directing to Fr Charles Theodore Murr’s wonderful book on the Gagnon Report years: Murder in the 33rd Degree.
Why be offended by the article? For the same reason I am offended by this comment, though it also doesn’t apply to me. It’s a fever dream straw man, made up for people to hate.
If as your signature implies, you are a priest, you are in the wrong profession, given the heated and unfounded accusations in your post. “Whites, Christian nationalists, gun-loving, war freaks…” etc.REALLY?? Not very Christian in sentiment, and totally untrue. I am not familiar with any “violently inclined extremists” attending daily Mass with me.Quite the contrary. I am however, very familiar with the fact that numerous churches are burned and otherwise vandalized and attacked each year, to the general shrug of the secular authorities. I am not concerned about “fringe” Catholics. I am concerned about the folks holding power on the left who appear to think its ok to rob people of their civil rights and then pretend they are not.As one conservative famously said, ” Dont pee on my shoe and tell me it’s raining.” Trump never fed his followers hate and fear and grievances. His enemies, including the media, did so constantly. If anything, he is a man who loved his country as many of us do, and made no bones about it.I have zero respect for those who riot, topple statues of our historical figures, erase our national history or distort the truth. That, of course, is a specialty of the Left. Trump supporters do not qualify. Finally Father, it was not Trump who closed our churches at EASTER and months thereafter, in a spasm of cowardly and unfounded fear. It was the left, most egregiously in blue states, who gleefully and dishonestly separated the people from their ability to worship. Exactly WHO is the bearer of hate here?? May be time for an honest examination of conscience.
The author of the screed condemns Catholic men for being prepared to “violently” defend their families from attackers. Let that sink in for a minute. Resistance is not just futile, but also damnable.
Amidst all of the (justifiable) rage at such a piece, methinks that one rather obvious truth must be stated – this dude is a SERIOUS MORON. He sets new standards for the word, one which I hope will never be exceeded, but, unfortunately, I’m probably wrong – somewhere out there I fear there lurks one who has in hsnd a freshly written degree in ‘What’s Happenin’ Studies from ‘Everything Is Groovy” University who aspires to the title ‘Moron +’ and he/she/it will stop at nothing to reach that plateau.
A casual Internet search of the young man’s background reveals that he is described as a Canadian Toronto-based writer, a public historian, a museum worker and an online hate researcher. He is on the staff of the Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre. The Atlantic’s editor in chief is Jeffrey Goldberg.
Oh dear. Comment sections never fail to disappoint.
🙁
It’s not just disappointing to read this but it casts CWR readers in a poor light. We can do better than this.
To be sure it is all quite disappointing, but is anything in my post untrue? I only reported what I turned up with an Internet search engine. But, of course, they’re hate facts, so self-appointed gatekeepers must take it upon themselves to squelch all discussion about them. Next time I go to confession, I’ll repent for the sin of noticing things. To round out the story on the Atlantic article since I gave the background of the author and named the editor, I’ll mention that the webzine is now owned by the very deep-pocketed widow of Steve Jobs, Laurene Powell Jobs. It is helpful to know who your enemies are, even if you would rather not.
Imagine if a Christian editor of a respectable political journal commissioned a Christian writer to pen a similarly outrageous essay concerning Jews or Judaism. The former’s head would be on the chopping block immediately and the latter’s career as a writer, or even an online hate researcher, would be over just as fast. There is a double standard that everyone prefers to ignore but that eventually must be faced head-on while we still have any freedom left in the West.
Since the day I was invested with the habit, I, like most religious who still wear the habit, have worn a rosary hanging from the cincture on the left side. Why the left side? Because that’s where knights and warriors wear their sword. The Rosary is the most powerful weapon. Only a fool isn’t in awe of its power. The enemies of Christ are right to fear it. And anyone who disparages the Rosary is an enemy of Christ.
Growing up, my best friend was Jewish. I saw the horrible tattoo on her aunt and when I found out about the Holocaust I asked my dad (a Marine Colonel) to teach me to shoot. I took to heart, “NEVER AGAIN.” As an adult I converted to Catholicism and now I have my shooting skills and MORE POWERFULLY, MY ROSARY!! Yes, I AM an extremist and proud to be one. I am. SOLDIER of God.
Thirty years ago, a dear friend of ours was assaulted & strangled just outside her parish church. She was a small lady with no way to defend herself. Like you, I took that to heart & vowed I’d not become a victim. I carry a firearm for self-defense. Along with my rosary.
I’m much more of a pacifist than anything else but self-defense & the defense of our families is an important right under the 2nd Amendment.
GUNS & ROSARIES
We have weapons from which we can choose
To defend rights that you want to abuse:
Perforate you with holes?
Intercede for your souls?
Which one would you rather we choose?
Thank you Mr. Duplantier. The criminal who took our friend’s life I suppose deserved both of those weapons but they never caught him.
Knowing there are people like that wandering around at large makes me more determined to protect myself and my family.
“But I say to you: Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. And pray for those who persecute and slander you.” Matthew 5:44