In Honor of My Father, Tom Siemer, My Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

Tom Siemer Self-Portrait with Greek Sailor Hat

Another Self-Portrait, Tom Siemer 

Dad put this in the paper Summer 2017

     You may copy this, sign it, and send it.  This is my father's last big hurrah, for those who have known him in his peace work for the last 40+ years!  He already has gotten this out to the Catholic world this summer, but I am helping him too!  Thanks Dad!  Pray for us!

One of Dad's many protest signs







Tom Siemer's painting of Dorothy Day





Added to this article Oct. 7, 2017  :  

        A group ICAN (the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons) won the Nobel Peace Prize, announced yesterday, Oct. 6, see below.  Also, this group has begun a campaign to ban nuclear weapons in the world, and on Sept. 21, a high level Vatican diplomat at the United Nations signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in the name of Vatican City (and country), one of three countries to endorse or sign this.  This was after my father had a paid advertisment in a large Catholic paper!  Thank you, dear Holy Papa, for sticking your neck out for peace in the world!  Thanks, Dad!! Our daily rosaries that Mother Mary asked at Fatima "for world peace" are working!

       THIS FRIDAY there will be a BEAUTIFUL mass at St. Catharine Church (503 S. Gould) and procession of Mary to Christ the King Church.  That will last about 45 minutes and will be in Spanish and English. This Friday is the anniversary of the "Miracle of the Sun" at Fatima in Portugal.  Over 70,000 people witness the sun dancing and swiftly moving in the sky!  This procession is on the 100th anniversary of that day, so look up to the sky everyone on October 13th!

      After the section on the Nobel Prize will be a video on my favorite Spanish song to Mary.  It asks Mary to please come and walk with us.  

OSLO/GENEVA (Reuters) - A campaign group seeking a global ban on nuclear arms won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday [Oct. 6, 2017], given the award by a Nobel Committee that cited the spread of weapons to North Korea and said the risk was growing of nuclear war.

The award to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) was unexpected, particularly in a year when the architects of the 2015 nuclear deal between world powers and Iran had been seen as favorites for achieving the sort of diplomatic breakthrough that has won the prize in the past.

Supporters described the award as a potential breakthrough for a global movement that has fought to ban nuclear arms from the day the first atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in August 1945.

“Nuclear weapons are illegal. Threatening to use nuclear weapons is illegal. Having nuclear weapons, possessing nuclear weapons, developing nuclear weapons, is illegal, and they need to stop,” she told Reuters.

My father, Tom Siemer, has been working on this for over 40 years, lobbying and praying at most of the U.S. Catholic Bishop Conference places, driving his van around the country with signs, making his way to gatherings of Church leaders, giving talks, protesting, and discussing with all who would listen, the nonviolent cross and teachings of Christ, especially in regards to weapons of mass destruction of which he was a part for many years. 

Our Lady, Queen of Peace, Pray for us!

Here is the song!  Come, walk with us, Mary, walk with us!  We love you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubYEpijKuHI

One of Dad's many paintings of Our
Lady of Guadalupe

Mother Mary bothered to come six times to earth to warn the world to pray the rosary daily for world peace in 1917.  May we work for peace as hard as we pray for peace!  Thanks Dad for all you have done!

Pacifist Scripture: Convicting and Compelling on the Feast of St. Benedict

Summer Newsletter 2016,  Lamb Catholic Worker 
                                                     By Monica,  The Lamb Catholic Worker, Columbus, Ohio

     In the Divine Office Liturgy of the Hours for today, on the feast of St. Benedict (Dorothy Day was a Benedictine Oblate) is the following prophecy from Isaiah - the build-up lends to its power and truth:

"In the days to come,
the mountain of the Lord's house
shall be the highest mountain
and raised above the hills.

All the nations shall stream toward it;
many peoples shall come and say:
'Come, let us climb the Lord's mountain,
to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may instruct us in his ways,
and we may walk in his paths.'

For from Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

He shall judge between the nations,
and impose terms on many peoples.
They shall beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks;
one nation shall not raise the sword against 
another,
nor shall they train for war again.

O house of Jacob come,
let us walk in the light of the Lord!"
                                  - Isaiah 2:2-5

 The link below is partly an interview with Tom Siemer (Monica's Father) promoting beating our drone "swords" into plowshares:         
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqXLR0GZrac

       On this feast of my beloved St. Benedict, the "Father of Western Monasticism," there is so much to be appreciated in his message and way of life.  A key snippet on the walls of most Catholic Worker Houses is his concept of "Ora et Labora," the balance between work and prayer.

       In preaching at Christ the King this morning, Fr. Sylvester spoke of how St. Benedict wanted all to not only live this balanced life but to remove distractions of all kinds in order to do so.  We have to nurture our inward life, nurture the love we have for Jesus and our devotion to Him. In the Benedictine Oblate booklet mailed to me during Lent (in preparation for my oblation) entitled, "Clothed, in the New Self, Christ is All in All," Fr. Adrian Burke, OSB, also adds to be true to your true self in part, by stripping off the old self with its practices (becoming dead to sin), being "renewed in knowledge according to the image of the Creator," and putting on Christ, or as he quotes Thomas Merton: putting on our "true self in Christ."

       Some of the subtitles speak of Benedictine spirituality in this powerful booklet, "Benedictine Life is Life in Christ" are the following:" "Prayer in Solitude," "Praise and Thanksgiving," "Detach, Detach, Detach!" "Humility -- Our Truth," "Benedictine Self-realization," "The Pattern of Our Life," "Retreat to Prayer," "Return to Service," "Blessed are the Peacemakers," "Pax," "and "If You Would be my Disciple."  Also, our "motto" for Benedictine Oblates is: "Seeking God in Everyday Life," and I would add, all day long. During a recent confession with an older wise priest, Fr. Emmanuel Bertrand, I was told to try to: "Cultivate serenity and staying always in the presence of God, every minute of every day, in everything."  These traits and virtues are more than evident in Dorothy Day, a Benedictine Oblate.  I have a lonnnng way to go!

      Here is a gem under "Pax": "Devout Christians don't go out to make peace, ... Rather, we go inward to receive it, to find it, and then having found it, to share it outwardly with the world by radiating that peace ..." (p. 15). Our dear Fr. Meinrad Brune, Director of Benedictine Oblates out of the St. Meinrad Archabbey in Indiana, described in a lenten letter a beautiful tradition that he shared with neighbors while growing up that seems to me analagous to the spiritual (and material!) clearing out necessary.

     "When my two older brothers and I were boys, there were three families on our block who would help each other to do 'spring cleaning.'  We would spend a day at each of the three houses.  Mothers and children would all have to help.  The fathers (before they left for work) would move out all the mattresses, carpets, and rugs to be aired out in the fresh air.  Once those things were removed, we began a thorough cleaning of the entire house....  cleansing and simplifying [and I would add organizing and freeing ones life!]." 

        I cannot imagine that openness to allow others to experience the inner clutter, grime, and science specimens in the deepest recesses of each others' homes, amazing!  How accepting and freeing this whole experience must have been! How HOLY!  It would be a great annual tradition.

           

             In the spirit of Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, St. Francis of Assissi, and Pope Francis, my teensy attempt at becoming more poor is to try, to TRY, to go a year without a car.  I have already gone about two months, borrowing cars to drive at times.  I am stopping this as well.  If I cannot get a ride somewhere, I simply will not go.  I look forward to the day of embracing "Lady Poverty," as Peter Maurin called it, or "voluntary poverty" as it is sometimes called.  Dorothy always said, "If you can get used to bedbugs and lice, you can do the Catholic Worker!"  I don't want to go that far yet!

"We would have no poverty in the world,

if everyone tried to become the poorest."

                            -- Peter Maurin

        

       The frustration level has been high and this in my summer off as a teacher! It will be much more of a challenge in the school year but I work probably less than 2 miles from home, and most of my world is this far away as well. There are bus lines though, and a spectacular sturdy bike my sister Lisa gave me last year.   Already I feel so much more healthy, more alive and one with nature all around me, and more spiritually hungry.  We'll see if it lasts!

       

        The spiritual clearing is even more critical for an Oblate or for anyone. A very Benedictine thing to do is to draw oneself inward, where God truly is, to attempt to catch that wisp of smoke, deliberate attuneness to that still small voice of God as described in the Old Testament. Eucharistic Adoration before our actual Savior Himself is one of the greatest quiet, holy places for this, going into the desert with only God, as Christ did. 

        I am not talking about reading or praying set prayers during this time.  Challenge yourself to have nothing to read (bring pen and paper to write!) and of pouring one's heart out, one's deepest longings, fears, praises, desires, inspirations, ...  If you have never stayed for two or three or more hours (my favorite), it is sooo worth it!  This is not wasted time!  Also, it is much more of a "Desert Father" experience when so much can truly, truly come from the deep recesses within, bubbling up to the surface perhaps for the first time.  "Be still ..."

      In the Divine Office book of "Christian Prayers," pp. 2028-2029, St. Augustine writes the following: 

      "To pray for a longer time is not the same as to pray by multiplying words, as some people suppose.  Lengthy talk is one thing, a prayerful disposition which lasts a long time is another.  For it is even written in reference to the Lord himself that he spent the night in prayer and that he prayed at great length [off before dawn, going alone by the wayside]. Was he not giving us an example by this?"  and "To spend much time in prayer is to knock with a persistent and holy fervor at the door of the one whom we beseech.  This task is generally accomplished more through sighs than words, more through weeping than speech.  He places our tears in his sight, and our sighs are not hidden from him ..."

       I admit that I have been perplexed at exactly how the Holy Spirit wants me to pray for exceedingly important things, when surrender, receptiveness and submission to the Will of the Father feels the opposite of pressing or begging God for this or that.  These yearnings, pleading, and crying out seem indeed, acceptable, though when we always end the sentence, as Jesus modeled, with  "not my will but Thy Will be done." 

      St. Padre Pio put it this way:  When we die, we will be presented, in a gold chalice, all of our tears."  He also said that when he dies, his real mission will begin!  So I ask about 30 people from heaven to pray with me and for me every  time I sit down to pray at length in any way (even mass).  He's working for my prayers, calling down the Holy Spirit upon me, to pray in the manner that God wants, and not through my feeble attempts. 

     A final note on passionate prayer is from St. Claude de la Colombiere in the book, Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence (p. 117-118). 

      

       "If after a year we find  that our prayer is as fervent as it was at the beginning, then we need not doubt about the success of our efforts, and instead of losing courage after so long a delay, we should rejoice because we can be certain that our desires will be all the more fully satisfied for the length of time we have prayed."

      And "...it took St. Monica (;) sixteen years to obtain the conversion of Augustine, but the conversion was entire and far beyond what she had prayed for. ...Think what would have happened had she given up hope after a couple of years, after ten or twelve years, when ... her son grew worse instead of better (118) ... " Your every word is numbered and what you receive will be in the measure of the time you have spent asking.  Your treasure is piling up and suddenly one day it will overflow to an extent beyond your dreams (119).."  She had prayed for Augustine to stop being promiscuous and he embraced chastity.  She begged that he come back into the Catholic Church and witnessed him  becoming a bishop!  She was desperate that he turn from his heretical ways and he became a pillar of the Church, defending it in numerous ways. 

     It continues: "Why he should ask us to pray, when he knows what we need before we ask him, may perplex us if we do not realize that our Lord and God does not want to know what we want (for he cannot fail to know it) but wants rather to exercise our desire through our prayers, so that we may be able to receive what he is preparing to give us.  His gift is very great indeed, but our capacity is too small and limited to receive it.  That is why we are told: Enlarge your desires, do not bear the yoke of unbelievers.  The deeper our faith, the stronger our hope, the greater our desire, the larger will be our capacity to receive that gift, which is very great indeed. ... We pray always with unwearied desire. ... The more fervent the desire, the more worthy will be its fruit.  ... The Apostles tell us 'pray without ceasing'."

Saints Louis and Zelie Martin, parents of St. Teresa de Lisieux
(far right) cultivated deep prayer lives in their many daughters
 - five became religious sisters- getting up at 5:00 for daily mass 

         One risks, like Christ, in quiet time of solitude with Christ in Eucharistic Adoration, the stark aloneness, nothingness but our thoughts, our being, with our Maker.  One also experiences the appreciated immense filling up of the soul, as a driving thunderstorm in an arid desert. The contrast lends to the experience, the seeking God's face, God's voice, the voice of the Beloved. 

        Dorothy Day seems to paint eloquently what happens when one emerges:

    "...the seeds in the desert, the seed scattered by the solitary, Charles de Foucauld, those who go out into all the poverty-stricken places in the world and work for their daily bread and live the life of a contemplative in the world....and the greatness means the overcoming of temptation and laying down one's life for one's fellows ... the victory of love over hatred and mistrust." (from a column of Dorothy's reprinted in "The Catholic Radical," Worchester).

       One cannot speak of poverty without the life witness of the saint of whom our beloved Pope Francis is named after:  St. Francis of Assissi.  His life legacy of living in poverty is well-described in his article on the Catholic Encyclopedia website.  From a former seminarian who nearly became a Franciscan Brother Minor, he said that Francis, like Dorothy Day, was torn between the contemplative life with his intense communion with God (ecstaties that would render him like a corpse, the stigmata, or actual physical wounds of Christ in the hands, feet, and side, etc) and with the active life, going out to preach, take care of the sick, etc. 

      The story goes that he was so torn that he asked God for two different people from different places to give him an answer to this question for his life, because he was far more drawn to the contemplative life than to the active one.  Sure enough, God sent two separate people to say the same thing to him clearly - that he is to have the active life among people, among the wider Church, so in dire need of his way of holiness in that era. St. Francis' way of life so surpassed what was known that even members in his own order tried to have him kicked out of it! He was pressed and pressed to have a rule, and he finally came up with this: "Yes, here is my rule - the folly of the Cross."   

    One reason why the picture above is one of my favorites is because, like Christ, his life was not easy at all as shown!  It was far far more stressful and challenging than we can imagine.  It even looks as though he has an eye infection, his clothes are very tattered, there is a certain sadness in his eyes.  Yet, like Christ, his radical love and humility was and were so far beyond those around him, that he was misunderstood, rejected, and sometimes even hated.  This, we would say, is what we are seeking most at The Lamb Catholic Worker:  contemplatives reverently loyal to their Catholic Church (Bride of Christ) and to the Chair of St. Peter, Pope Francis, willing to embrace voluntary poverty in the deep inner city (and/or on a Catholic Worker sister farm).  Like Dorothy Day, we are hoping for those willing to look beyond the judgment and flaws of others to see only Christ, to have eyes and ears for His voice alone in the poor. 

    Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta once put it this way:

"We have done

so much with so little,

for so long,

we now deserve

to do everything

with nothing."

 Happenings of the Lamb     

    Well, nothing to tell in terms of taking in the homeless yet.  There are very interested people though, more so than in a while!  Come Lord Jesus.  St. Francis of Assissi once said, "Sanctify yourself and you sanctify society."  That's what I am sticking to right now as I go back to D.C. for another few weeks to take care of my Dad.

      On a very positive note, more and more people are beginning to take on as part of their way of life, besides daily mass and rosary, the Divine Office of the priests.  Eleven people were praying it together in the Guadalupe Chapel at Christ the King after the 7:00 mass a week and a half ago.  Fr. Coleman encourages every single person to do so in many many homilies, that we are a priestly people needing this to keep us following Christ faithfully.  It also has a beautiful prayer for every single morning, the Gospel Canticle of Zechariah (St. John the Baptist's father) which ends: ".. and guide our feet into the way of peace."  It's right there!  Some who pray this still guide our feet into the way of war, but perhaps if many more people do so, we will indeed create more "John the Baptists" (the Canticle of Zecharia is one addressed to the infant John the Baptist), heralding Christ and guiding "our feet into the way of peace."

      I will also say that any parts of the Old Testament within the Divine Office that seem to contradict Christ's message and way (as he contrasted many ways of old with His new way - "...before it was an eye for an eye,.. but now I say love your enemies..."), I substitute in my heart what Christ would say consistent with His words and actions.  For example instead of praying, "... in the Lord's name I crushed them," I pray "in the Lord's name I pray for them" as Jesus commanded and modeled to do with our enemies.

       Keep the prayers coming strong for The Lamb Catholic Worker!  I feel we are on the brink.  Pray for Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin's canonization too!  Also pray, on this feast of St. Benedict, for more Third Order Benedictines, or Benedictine Oblates, like Dorothy Day.  Amazingly, you can be as young as fifteen and it is inter-denominational (it's true!).  St. Benedict, pray for us!

       When I get to whining about all the walking and trips by bike I have to make, I think of the Montgomery Bus Boycott which entailed well over a year of walking almost everywhere for people who had to perform hard labor each day too.  This was bravely undertaken in order to end the discrimination laws on buses.  Women older than myself would sometimes walk for almost two hours to work, clean all day, and walk home again!  The task was daunting amidst deaths and many many threats.  They pushed onward though, healthier, stronger, and more determined with each passing day partly because they walked so much!

      

          I also think of Harriet Tubman, the Moses of the people, who went back into the deep south 17 times - mostly by foot - to bring people to freedom, to "set the captives free." This was with a $50,000 bounty on her head, a serious ankle issue from youth and black outs from a heavy weight that had been thrown at her head while defending a young  man about to be whipped. She said, "I freed a thousand slaves and I would have freed a thousand more if they knew they were slaves."  Pray for us Harriet!  We, like you, want to "set the captives free," especially those who only know captivity (who do not realize they are enslaved).

      By the way, my ESL student Michael and I wrote a compelling letter, dated Dec. 18, 2014, to President Barack Obama to have Andrew Jackson removed immediately from the twenty dollar bill.  Three months later a new organization sprung up called Women on the Twenty.  I believe it was Michael's letter and push that someone saw and ran with, personally, and we are excited, even if he never gets the credit!

Hana at Carey

 The Lamb Catholic Worker

Fall 2014 Newsletter

"We Want Peace! We Want Peace!" 

             -An Iraqi-American Catholic woman at the Shrine and Basilica of Our Lady of Consolation, Carey, Ohio August 14, the Vigil of Feast of the Assumption of Mary

                                                                   By Monica Siemer

Chaldean Masses (about 10 in one day) at Our Lady
of Consolation Shrine in Carey

Beautiful "halo" around Fr. John Stowe and my friend, Hana,
not seen through the lense, but appeared in the picture

     I had the priviledge of accompanying a dear Syrian Muslim friend, Hana, who has lived in the United States for 20 years (and was my former instructional assistant in my ESL classroom) to the Shrine and Basilica of Our Lady of Consolation in Carey, Ohio on the vigil of the Feast of the Assumption of Mary, August 14.  This was a very special day, a day of the "Chaldean masses," about 10 masses in the upper and lower chapels, to celebrate this special Marian feast day vigil for the Iraqi and other middle-eastern Catholics that live in several states nearest to this most holy shrine to Mary.  They have a special love and affinity for our Lady and I am amazed at the outpouring of love that the Franciscans there extend to this most beloved community, especially in light of the heavy persecution going on in parts of Iraq right now. 

       I took my friend, Hana, because she is a walking miracle, attributed to the heavy-duty intercessory prayers of Mary, or "Mariam" to the Muslim world, Jesus' mother, Dorothy Day, and Peter Maurin. She was told two years ago, August of 2012, by Mt. Carmel doctors (a Catholic hospital) that she could have no more chemo and radiation and to make her [final] arrangements.  Previously, at about 35,  she had had breast cancer, surgery, radiation, and chemo, and went to Haj at Mecca (because her case was so serious).  Approximately 1 and a half to two years passed where she felt she had been healed. 

      In late 2012 though, it had come back with a vengeance, to her brain (paralyzing half of her face so that she could not consciously shut her left eye nor smile with the left side of her face), her bones, her liver and her thyroid glands.  This was very late stages cancer, and once it gains in the soft tissue of critical areas, it grows quickly.  At this time I asked her to ask Mariam, or Mother Mary, for help to bring it before God (our Catechism teaches that it is the same God as Christians, Muslims, Jews, etc.  Also, "Allah" is simply the word for "God"), and to ask for Dorothy Day's prayers as well, to help attain her canonization.  I asked her to go to Carey then, but she had switched doctors to Ohio State University cancer hospitals and was given new chemo (even though they said the same thing). 

Coworkers from Cranbrook Elemen at chemo with Hana
Dec. 2012,  Face half paralyzed, I am at right

      Finally, by December of 2012 when Hana  could not go to Carey after repeated attempts, I went in proxy for her and Fr. John Stowe prayed over my body in place of hers for her healing, and involved the other Franciscans in praying heavily for her, asking Mary and Dorothy Day's intercessory prayers.  They have a lot of time to pray (seven times a day!).  I also obtained the amazing holy water from Carey too.  She used it every day, and in five months, she was still alive, her liver cancer had shrunk in half, and her face was no longer paralyzed.  She could shut both eyes at will and with effort, smile, although the paralysis had caused some permanent damage so it was with difficulty.

  

      Satan had continued to bite at her heals, as he has all along (to mine as well), and a spinal tumor grew and paralyzed her whole leg in June of 2013.   She and I had lulled a little in daily pleading her case to Mary and Dorothy, and she had run out of holy water and did not tell me.  I raced to get more holy water (this time from Christ the King), and we asked Peter Maurin's intercessory prayers as well.  Msgr. Mottet, overseeing this community, has always prayed that Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, co-founders of the Catholic Worker Movement, would be canonized together.  Dorothy always said that Peter founded the Catholic Worker, not her, and that it was his vision, his ideas, his everything.  He only lived to see it take off for 15 years while she did for almost 50 (and as a prolific writer).  People attribute the Catholic Worker solely to her, but both need to be honored for their holiness.

       The doctors have been saying for that past year or so that my friend still has the cancer but that she is a "Mystery," a "Mystery..."  Why will this woman not die, really!  I said, "You are another "M" word; you are a MIRACLE!"  

       The beauty in all of this is that while she is a practicing Muslim, Our Lady, "Mariam," has looked down upon her with great love just as she is, as she does to all in the world.  All can come to this most amazing vessel of love and motherliness.  In fact, Fr. Emmanuel Bertrand, a Dominican missionary to Pakistan (for over 40 years) in community with the Dominicans at St. Patrick and St. Thomas Aquinas in Zanesville has visited nearly all the mosques in Pakistan and said that 100% of them have a statue to "Mariam," or Jesus' mother.  They honor and revere her sometimes more than Catholics do!  It is also moving that Mary chose to visit, or God chose to send her, to a city named after a very holy Muslim woman, one of Mohommed's daughters, Fatima.  Interestingly, Mother Mary was once quoted at Medjugorie as stating: "The holiest woman in this city is a Muslim.  She gets down on her knees every day in humility, ...." Finally, it is exquisite that Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, genuine peacemakers who TRULY believe in the sacredness of ALL human life and lives are to be possibly canonized in part by a miracle of a practicing Muslim woman.  It is beautiful, then that my friend wants to tell people about "this place."

       The first thing greeting my friend as we approached the actual basilica was the most, most beloved Fr. John Stowe who has prayed for her ceaselessly.  

           

      While she did not want to go into the upper church during a mass, she wanted to go into the basement to see evidence of the many, many miracles that have happened through Mary's intercession.  When I was a child, the large basement was overflowing with these, but they  have limited them to a few cases.

          Outside, she witnessed gentle, holy older Franciscans, mostly with grey beards, hearing confessions and giving council to people in numerous stations around the lawn.  She rested on the bench outside, having undergone hours of chemo that morning, to the powerful and booming voices through the windows, of the Chaldean Catholics inside singing praises.  She witnessed another religion not her own, that also ministered and guided people.  

           We had been approached at one point, in the midst of the Arabic being spoken all around her from approx. 20 van lines of out-of-state middle-eastern Catholics, by an Arabic-speaking woman.  She stated emphatically and almost woefully, "We want peace!  We want peace!" It was probably the fervent prayer inside as well. I am thinking this may be because the U.S. is sending more troops into Iraq and planning to bomb certain places.  She seemed desperate to say not to have that war mentality again that desecrated their home country once.

          Her desperation reminded me of a conversation my father, Tom Siemer, had with Archbishop Oscar Romero less than a year before he was assassinated. We were at a synod of all of the cardinals and bishops of the world in Mexico City, I believe it was in 1979 when I was 16 yrs old (and I was there but standing away from him). We were appealing to Pope John Paul II for Catholics to be told to have no part in weapons of mass destruction (manufacturing, handling, potential use, etc).  Archbishop Romero thought my father was from the press (with his "Press" badge) and begged and begged him to go back and tell the president (Carter at the time, who gave $5 million per year in "military aid") to stop funding the government with military money, which was being used against the people. 

       He explained that the money went into armaments and training of the soldiers in the military and in the juntas of the oligarchy who were terrorizing the campesinos, killing and mutilating many of them. 

        My father called over both Roy Larson, of the Chicago Sun and Ken Briggs of the New York Times to talk with him.  Ken told my father later that Romero would not live long by talking like that, and my father replied, "They would never kill an archbishop!"  Our government not only did not listen, but when President Ronald Reagan became president, shortly after, he quintupled the funding, giving a huge green light to those committing atrocities.  Archbishop Oscar Romero was martyred within a year. The U.N. reports that over 75,000 people, many poor women and children, were killed over the course of the next decade or so in El Salvador.   

In front of the Synod, Mexico City, 1979, with a group of protesting mothers of the "Disappeared" in El Salvador.  I am at the right and my mother, Dorothy Siemer, at the far right in red pants.

Salvadorean mothers of the "disappeared," those whose tortured bodies were never found.  I am on far right, with literature for the Pope, cardinals, bishops, and press against weapons of mass destruction

Mothers of the "disappeared" (sons, husbands, brothers, etc) desperate for help from the Church.

My father, Tom Siemer, and I in Mexico City, 1979

         A few years later I worked at the Center for Peace Studies at Georgetown University with Fr. Richard McSorley, S.J.  At that time another Georgetown professor, Dr. Jean Kirkepatrick, who was a campaign advisor to President Reagan then cabinet member, blamed the murders (Dec. 2, 1980) of the three religious sisters and an American lay worker on themselves for even being there with the poor: Jean Donovan, Sr. Maura Clarke, Sr. Ita Ford, and Sr. Dorothy Kazel.  Kirkpatrick believed that, according to Noam Chomsky, "traditional authoritarian governments are less repressive than revolutionary autocracies," and so her views were put into practice "most clearly in Central America, by supporting the Contra rebels in Nicaragua, and the military juntas in Guatemala and El Salvador, all of which perpetrated massive human rights violations while countering a perceived communist threat." (Chomsky, Turning the Tide, 1985).  She was not too thrilled when the United Nations Security Council came down on the United States and she talked of withdrawing much of the monetary support to the U.N., as well as for the United States to withdraw completely. This would have been quite a role model of genuine virtue, Christian values, and peace to the world.

       I witnessed firsthand large graphic close-up pictures being sent to the Center for Peace Studies at Georgetown University (that I helped Fr. Richard McSorley, S.J. run in the 80's) from El Salvador.  Neutral brave witnesses and groups were trying hard to document the atrocities and sent these pictures to several places as documentation, including to ours.  Prior to the Reagan Administration, the bodies of the dead at the hands of the military and juntas had one form of killing done to them (besides the women always having been raped).  As Fr. McSorley always said, "When you choose the lesser of two evils, you soon forget you chose evil in the first place."  There is always a third choice.

       When Ronald Reagan became president, and particularly after the stepped-up "anti-communist counterinsurgency training," or terrorist/guerilla warfare training ("terrorist" in the true sense of the word) at Ft. Benning of "Latin American personnel" from El Salvador at the U.S. Army School of the Americas, now called Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), things drastically changed.  To describe,  murdered victims appeared with three or four forms of torture performed, acid in the eyes being one of the favorites.  This spilled over to Honduras and Nicaragua as well, sadly. 

        Many Americans turned a blind eye to all of this because of the fear whipped up by those who would even sell their soul to the devil against the "Communist scare."  The same whipping up of hate and suspicion, and angst has been set in our country against African Americans after the Civil War, Irish Catholics in the early 1800's, and now, against Muslims both living in our country and beyond. 

       Most of the refugees at our Catholic Worker in D.C. witnessed much of this firsthand, and yes, it was the country's military doing much of it. Huge Carlos witnessed a savage group murder from a corn field, and when he tried to run, they caught a visual of him and hunted him down.  He and his wife Maria (pregnant) got their six other children to another part of the country and ran to the U.S. where they were the first Salvadoreans to be granted political asylum.  Their baby Leonardo was baptized with my first son, Shamus, at our Catholic Worker, St. Francis Catholic Worker, in Washington, D.C. (now the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker), in a Catholic worker soup pot.  It had been the former mother house of the Trinitarian order, and they had a fully functioning chapel in the basement.

     Very sadly in parts of Iraq right now Christians being severely persecuted.  They are "marked" on their doors or gates as Christian and are given time to convert to Islam or be forced to leave, or even killed.  More than 500 have been killed so far. Many must take only what they can carry or what they are wearing.  The following is a recent prayer written by Lous Rafael Sako, Chaldean Catholic Patriarch of Iraq, and read last Sunday across the United States according to directions from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops :

"Lord, the plight of our country is deep

and the suffering of Christians is severe and frightening.

Spare our lives and grant us patience and courage 

to continue our witness of Christian values

with trust and hope.

Peace is the foundation of life;

Grant us the peace and stability that will

enable us to live with each other ... with 

dignity and joy.  

Glory be to you forever."

     At the Lamb Catholic Worker, our prayers are for the Christians and for the Muslims of Iraq, both at great danger right now, for the love and peace of God to reign in their hearts as brothers and sisters of one God.  We pray for the persecutors, for their salvation and for an open heart to respect and love those of another religion who nevertheless are as made in God's image and likeness as they are. May all of us intervene in our prayers and in moral responses, pleasing to the Lord.  May we, as Pope Francis has preached so passionately about, not be a part of two great evils in the world today:  "the culture of indifference and the culture of distraction."  May we set aside our computers and cell phones for much more time spent in prayer and meditation.  They say, "Satan doesn't make you bad, he makes you busy." 

      I pray that we not ignore the pleas for peace of this desperate Iraqi-American Catholic woman, who could possibly have Christian relatives still there, yet who knows the sick and hideous bloodiness of bombings and war.  She is more worried about the U.S. response than even the persecution by extremists in a remote pocket of Iraq. I pray that we listen to this pleading, holy woman at Carey.  Our Lady, Queen of Peace, pray for us and for Iraqi people of all kinds!  Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, and Archbishop Oscar Romero, please pray for them!   

My Father, Tom Siemer, and Dom Helder Camara, 1978

OUR NEEDS:

• Our greatest need is prayer and thankfulness for the more than 22,000 views on this site from over 80 countries.  Interestingly, the highest numbers are coming from the Ukraine right now.  God be with them all.  Please read our article about becoming a "sick and suffering co-Catholic Worker."  We need that level of prayer and sacrifice to get this off of the ground, like Blessed Mother Teresa whose ministry could not start without those valiant ones who offered up their physical, psychological or emotional suffering for her and her ministry.  Please consider this! :)  We will in turn pray for you as well.
• We need workers in the field, those who feel they are at a point in their lives to make a life change completely, to throw off their old life and live as the early Church in "profound poverty, profound joy," and solely being instruments of God's love and peace to the world.  Eventually we will have community members of varying degrees of commitment, but for now, we need full-time ones
• We also need funds to buy the properties in order to help us get started.  This is a huge task.  Any way that you could help us would be greatly appreciated, even simply praying and spreading the word!  We have a fully approved 501c3 nonprofit number if you feel you need this.  Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin encouraged all giving though to be a full sacrifice with no strings attached for the giver.  It is still a sacrifice though, even if part can lower ones taxes a little.  

     One last note is that we have a potential "relic" given to us by Dorothy Day's grandaughter, Martha Hennessy.  It is a part of a blue blanket she had crocheted for a grandson.  Martha placed it inside a seashell, which is touching because Dorothy so loved and meditated while on the beach.  Dorothy and Peter, please continue to pray for us. 

   One final note is that Bishop Richard Pate of Des Moines, Iowa and a contingent of 11 other bishops are going to the Holy Lands to pray and be a presence for peace in the Middle East.  This is soon to be announced nationally.  Pray for them!  Our Lady, Queen of Peace, pray for peace, for these most dear peacemakers, and for all peoples of Iraq.