GUEST COLUMN
By Debbie Tubertini

I recently went to the movie theater to see “Sound of Freedom” which is based on a true story. It tells of an anti-child sex trafficking organization centered on Operation Underground Railroad by a former federal agent, Tim Ballard. Ballard is portrayed in the film by Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in “Passion of the Christ.”

I was hesitant at first about going to see this movie because I knew it was going to be heart breaking and make me angry. Yes, it was heart breaking and, yes it did make me angry; however, it provided information that made me feel more aware and informed about how this happens all over the world, even in Mississippi. It also made me appreciate how one person can make a difference if they know what to look for and what to do in the event you suspect someone is in this situation.

What is sex trafficking? Sex trafficking involves a wide range of activities where a trafficker uses force, fraud or coercion to compel another person to engage in a commercial sex act. Trafficked victims can be of any age, race, sex, culture, religion, economic class and any level of education.

The traffickers’ aim is to profit from the exploitation of their victims using a multitude of coercive and deceptive practices. Traffickers can be strangers, acquaintances, or even family members who prey on the most vulnerable in our society. They frequently target victims who are looking for a brighter future, those hesitant to call the police, or those who feel excluded or ostracized from family or their community.

Human trafficking is the fastest growing international crime network the world has experienced. It is a $150 billion-dollar annual industry. The United States is considered one of the top destinations for victims of child trafficking and exploitation. The top recruitment location is the internet. Traffickers also use online dating platforms to identify victims. Traffickers will present themselves as recruiters or modeling agents on these dating platforms luring victims with attractive career opportunities. According to UNODC (United Nations Office on Drug and Crime) female victims continue to be primary targets, however there is a huge increase in male targets.

The following statistics are from Angel Studios Fight Against Child Trafficking website.

• The United States is #1 in the world for sex trafficking.
• Over 500,000 children go missing each year in the United States.
• Greater than 50% of victims are between the ages of 12-15.
• 25% of child pornography is created by a neighbor or family member.
• Over 500,000 online sexual predators are active each day.
• Over 80% of child sex crimes begin on social media.
• As of 2021, there were 250,000 websites containing images or videos of children sexually abused and that number continues to rise.
• Globally, 27% of human trafficking victims are children.
  Items to note:
• “Sound of Freedom” was filmed in 2018 and has just now been made available in the theatres in 2023. According to Jim Caveziel they ran into one roadblock after another with this movie. The movie was first bought by 21st Century Fox but shelved when Disney purchased the studio. The movie was finally acquired by Angel Studios.
• A common misconception is that human trafficking requires crossing state lines or national borders. The correct term for this is human smuggling. Human trafficking requires no movement. Victims are trafficked in their own states, towns and even in their own homes. In many cases these children are “groomed” by adults they know.

So, what can we do?

• Pray for the victims who are in this horrible situation.
• Educate ourselves and our children on the specifics of child trafficking.
• If you are a parent, educate your children on ways to stay safe on the internet. They need to know how to protect themselves from online exploitation. Also, monitor their social media activity.
• Make sure your state legislators are putting laws in place to increase accountability for human traffickers in our state.
• Make sure this topic is kept in the forefront of our national security.
• For those who feel called to do even more, investigate ways you can educate and help in your own community. A step further, reach out to organizations within your community that are working to rescue and restore trafficked children.

The National Human Trafficking Hotline is 1-888-373-7888. Anti–Trafficking Hotline Advocates are available 24/7 to take reports of potential human trafficking situations.

(Debbie Tubertini is the Office of Family Life coordinator for the Diocese of Jackson.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

A number of years ago, I attended the funeral of a man who died at the age of ninety. From every indication, he had been a good man, solidly religious, the father of a large family, a man respected in the community, and a man with a generous heart. However, he had also been a strong man, a gifted man, a natural leader, someone to whom a group would naturally look to take the reins and lead. Hence, he held a number of prominent positions in the community. He was a man very much in charge.

One of his sons, a Catholic priest, gave the homily at his funeral. He began with these words: Scripture tells us that the sum of a man’s life is seventy years, eighty for those who are strong. Now our dad lived for ninety years. Why the extra twenty years? Well, it’s no mystery. He was too strong and too much in charge of things to die at seventy or eighty. It took God an extra twenty years to mellow him out. And it worked. The last ten years his life were years of massive diminishment. His wife died, and he never got over that. He had a stroke which put him into assisted living and that was a massive blow to him. Then he spent the last years of his life with others having to help him take care of his basic bodily needs. For a man like him, that was humbling.

But this was the effect of all that. It mellowed him. In those last years, whenever you visited him, he would take your hand and say, “help me.” He hadn’t been able to say those words since he was five years old and able to tie his own shoelaces. By the time he died, he was ready. When he met Jesus and St. Peter on the other side, I’m sure he simply reached for a hand and said, “help me.” Ten and twenty years ago, he would, I’m sure, have given Jesus and Peter some advice as to how they might run the pearly gates more efficiently.

That’s a parable that speaks deeply and directly about a place we must all eventually come to, either through proactive choice or by submission to circumstance; we all must eventually come to a place where we accept that we are not self-sufficient, that we need help, that we need others, that we need community, that we need grace, that we need God.

Why is that so important? Because we are not God and we become wise and more loving when we realize and accept that. Classical Christian theologians defined God as self-sufficient being, and highlight that only God is self-sufficient. God alone has no need of anything beyond Himself. Everything else, everything that is not God, is defined as contingent, as not self-sufficient, as needing something beyond itself to bring it into existence and to keep it in existence every second of its being.

That can sound like abstract theology, but ironically it’s little children who get it, who have an awareness of this. They know that they cannot provide for themselves and that all comes to us as gifts. They know they need help. However, not long after they learn to tie their own shoelaces this awareness begins to fade and as they grow into adolescence and then adulthood, particularly if they are healthy, strong and successful, they begin to live with the illusion of self-sufficiency. I provide for myself!

And, that in fact serves them well in terms of making their way in this world. But it doesn’t serve truth, community, love or the soul. It’s an illusion, the greatest of all illusions. None of us will enter deeply into community as long as we nurse the illusion of self-sufficiency, when we are still saying, I don’t need others! I choose who and what I let into my life!

G.K. Chesterton once wrote that familiarity is the greatest of all illusions. He’s right, and what we are most familiar with is taking care of ourselves and believing that we are sufficient onto ourselves. As we know, this serves us well in terms of getting ahead in this life. However, fortunate for us, though painful, God and nature are always conspiring together to teach us that we are not self-sufficient. The process of maturing, aging and eventually dying is calibrated to teach us, whether we welcome the lesson or not; that we are not in charge, that self-sufficiency is an illusion. Eventually for all of us there will come a day when, as it was with us before we could tie our own shoelaces, we will have to reach out for a hand and say, “help me.”

The philosopher Eric Mascall has an axiom that says we are neither wise nor mature as long as we take life for granted. We become wise and mature precisely when we take it as granted – by God, by others, by love.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

Scripture tells us that in this life we have no lasting city. True enough. But, it seems, we also don’t have a lasting house, school, neighborhood, town, zip code address, or most anything else. Eventually nothing lasts.

Perhaps my case isn’t typical, but a lot of things in my life haven’t lasted. My grandparents were immigrants, Russian-Germans, moving to the Canadian prairies and being among the first farmers to break the soil there at the beginning of the 1900s. They were young, so too was life then on the prairies, and their generation planted new farms, schools, towns and cities across the great plains of Canada and the USA. I was born into the second generation of all that – but just as urbanization and other changes were already beginning to cause the disappearance of a lot of what they had built.

So, here’s my story of having no lasting city. The elementary school I went to closed after I’d finished the sixth grade. We were bused to a bigger centralized school and our old school building was carted away. Nothing remains today to indicate there once was a school there. The new school I attended closed several years after I’d graduated. The building itself was razed and today the entire former campus is part of a farmer’s field with only a small plaque to indicate there once was vibrant life there, with hundreds of young voices filling the air with energy. That school was a couple of miles out of a small town and that town itself has now completely disappeared, without a single building left.

I went from high school to an Oblate novitiate house situated in the heart of the Qu’Appelle valley, a beautiful stately building on a lake. Several years after I’d graduated from there, the building was sold and soon afterwards was destroyed in a fire. Only an empty stretch of prairie sits there now. From there, I moved to another seminary, a magnificent old building (formerly the Government House for the Northwest Territories) and spent six wonderful years there. Again, several years after I’d graduated, the building was abandoned, and it too was eventually destroyed by a fire.

From there I moved to Newman Theological College in Edmonton where I spent the next fifteen years. Newman College had a beautiful campus on the outskirts of the city, but several years after I’d left, the campus was expropriated by the city to build a ring road and all its buildings were razed. From there, I moved to a wonderfully homey building, the Oblate Provincial residence in Saskatoon. Several years later, after I’d moved out, that building too was razed and nothing remains where it once stood. And, while all this was happening, the little town to which our family was connected (for mail, for groceries, for services, for identity) became a ghost town with no inhabitants, all its buildings shuttered.
Eventually, I moved to Oblate School of Theology in Texas to live in a welcoming little house designated for the president of the school. However, after a few years, the land it was on was needed for a new seminary and that house too was razed. Finally, most painful of all, two years ago, our family house, our home for more than 70 years, was sold and the new owners (sensitive enough to ask our family’s permission to do so) burned the old house to the ground.

That’s a lot of roots disappearing: my elementary school, my high school, the town our family was connected to, both seminaries from which I graduated, the college where I first taught, both Oblate houses I’d spent wonderful years within, and the family house – all gone, razed to the ground, nothing left to go back to.

What does that do to you? Well, there’s nostalgia, yes. How I would again love to walk into any of those buildings, feel what they once meant to me and bask in memories. None of that can happen. Each of these is a mini death, leaving a part of my soul rootless. On the other hand, more positively, all that unwanted letting go is helping prepare me for an ultimate letting go, when I will be facing my own death, and not just some haunting nostalgia.

As well, this has taught me something else of substance. Buildings and houses may disappear, but home is not contingent on them. Rene Fumoleau, a poet among the Dene tribes, shares how he once visited a family the day after their house had been destroyed by fire and had this conversation with a young girl:

The next day I visited the burned out family.
What could I say after such a tragedy?
I tried with the ten-year old daughter: ‘Joan, you must feel terrible without home.’
The young girl knew better: ‘Oh, we still have our home,
But we have no house to put on it.” (Home – Here I Sit)
Yes, we can still have a home even without our former house on it.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

For the Journey
By Effie Caldarola

As my mom grew older, she became less mobile. When we’d visit the mall she wouldn’t walk to the parking lot; we’d find a secure bench outside a store, and she would wait there for us to bring the car around.

Often, when we’d drive up, Mom would be engaged in conversation with someone, sometimes another elderly person sharing the bench. Mom would tell us what she’d learned of that person’s life, and we’d chuckle about her uncanny ability to extract information from strangers – and cringe a little to imagine what she might have shared about us.

Most of us have seen that television commercial where an insurance company, tongue in cheek, explains how new homeowners shouldn’t become their parents. Funny, yes, but I detect a whiff of ageism as the millennials need help not becoming the kind of people – like their boomer parents – who chat up someone in an elevator or attempt to help some stranger find a product on the store shelf.

Admittedly, the ad is a little exaggerated, but is friendliness such a bad thing?

When I visited my daughter on the East Coast, I would often travel along a busy river walk near her home. It was striking to me how no one spoke. Everyone looked determinedly straight ahead. I thought perhaps I’d been a native Midwestern and an Alaskan for too long.

Then, I moved to a small eastern town. Everyone walks here and, almost to a person, everyone says hello. I’ve had 15-minute conversations with strangers who stop to chat. A person I’d never met introduced herself and gave me a treat to feed her little dog. A nanny stopped with her stroller and pointed to a house where she noticed Amazon packages had sat for several days. Should we call in a wellness check? A young man stopped to converse about a house for sale on my block.

What was going on here? In this town, an historic town with lots of big old houses, the population seems racially homogeneous, fairly prosperous and similar in many ways. Does this make people feel safer and more open? The river walk, on the other hand, was a much more diverse mix, from different neighborhoods. And in all fairness, those on the river walk were perhaps more focused on exercise than the neighborhood walkers.

Still, what are the barriers to our friendliness?

I thought about this at Sunday’s greeting of peace at Mass. Still in no-touch COVID mode, people turn, give a little wave and mouth the word “peace.” I smile, but despite our split-second attention to each other, I know that when I leave Mass I won’t know those folks any better.

Coffee and donuts, anyone?

I assure you, I’m not the person who starts a conversation on an airplane. I say hello and pull out my book. I do not chat people up on elevators.

But neither do I want to create a shield to protect me from others. I want to be aware of the person who needs help, who appears ill, or who just needs a friendly smile. I don’t want to fear diversity, or become that person who mutters, “I don’t want to get involved.”

Despite the fact that in our country, people have been shot for turning up the wrong driveway, or for being a Black person shopping for groceries, I want to be with those who notice and care about each other, and act with friendliness. I think this is part of our faith commitment, our seeing Christ in each person we encounter.

Perhaps I am becoming my mother, after all. And you know what? That’s a good thing.

(Effie Caldarola is a wife, mom and grandmother who received her master’s degree in pastoral ministry from Seattle University.)

Reflections on Life
By Melvin Arrington

This time of year families travel to vacation destinations, hoping to occupy their days away from work and school with plenty of fun-filled activities and relaxation. While away, they seek distraction in various forms of entertainment, especially novelty, something unavailable in the locale where they reside. At vacation’s end, many of them, if they are honest with themselves, are actually eager to return to the familiar surroundings of that special place they call home. Whenever I’ve been away for an extended period, I too have been happy and excited when the time came to leave and go back to my family.

Home holds precious memories and evokes a powerful sense of place and of belonging. Everyone sooner or later hears and responds to its irresistible call. Every year at homecoming alumni return to college campuses to renew old friendships and show support for their alma mater. And during the holidays, especially Thanksgiving and Christmas, family members inevitably converge on their parents’ or grandparents’ house, as if drawn there by a magnet.

We all have a location of one sort or another we can go back to. It may be our birthplace or where we were raised. It may be where we have lived the longest or even where we currently reside. In any case, it’s that specific spot to which we feel deeply connected, the place we love that grounds us and sustains us. It’s where we feel at ease – comfortable, safe and loved. It’s our center, a geographical area we might even refer to as God’s country. As the saying goes, home is where the heart is. Perhaps this is why so many people desire to return to the land of their birth to be buried.

Born and raised in Jackson, I called the Capitol City home for most of my early life. After graduating from college, I moved away and lived for about ten years in several other states before returning to Mississippi and settling in Oxford, where I have resided for the last 40 years. Mississippi is where I’ve spent most of my life and career. It’s where my wife, children and grandchildren live. It’s home, a term that surely must be on the short list of the most beautiful words in our language.

When I fill out forms that ask for my permanent address, I write the location of the house my wife and I live in. But my domicile is not really permanent in the strict sense of the word because this world and everything in it is transitory; it’s slowly but surely passing away. However, one thing will not pass away, and that’s the church.

As members of the Mystical Body of Christ we can all say that our real home in this world is the church. When we’re in God’s house praying along with our brothers and sisters in Christ, uniting our worship with that of the saints in heaven, and receiving communion – the Precious Body and Blood of Our Lord – it’s heaven on earth!

But we can take it a step further because our ultimate dwelling place is the one our Blessed Lord has prepared for us. We believe this because of His promise: “In my Father’s house there are many mansions … I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I am coming again, and I will take you to myself; that where I am, there you also may be.” (John 14:2-3) No one knows what it will be like, but it will surely be more beautiful and wonderful than anything we can imagine: “Eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what things God has prepared for those who love him.” (I Corinthians 2:9)

So, what does this strong impulse to return to one’s point of origin mean? Is it part of a ritual of self-discovery and a search for the meaning of life? Does it signify an archetypal journey back to the source – to God, our Creator and the source of our being? Is it a longing for heaven? Whatever the case may be, in the meantime we remain here in a world dominated by the philosophies of materialism, hedonism, relativism and all the other “isms” that run counter to the Kingdom of Heaven. As C. S. Lewis noted in Mere Christianity, “we are living in … enemy-occupied territory – that is what this world is.” But then he goes on to say “I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death … I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.”

As I get older, I find myself thinking more and more about my ultimate destination. Maybe it will be like Lewis’ beautiful description of Aslan’s country at the conclusion of The Last Battle, the seventh and final volume of The Chronicles of Narnia. Near the end of the book, one of the characters, upon arriving there, remarks: “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now.”

I love these lines because they perfectly summarize the way I felt when I was received into the Catholic Church. That day, after many years of searching and seeking, I finally reached the end of my journey to the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church established by Jesus Christ. I found the fulfillment of my deepest longings and rest for my restless heart. It was like coming home. And as Dorothy says in The Wizard of Oz, “There’s no place like home.”

(Melvin Arrington is a Professor Emeritus of Modern Languages for the University of Mississippi and a member of St. John Oxford.)

Faith in Action
By Jacob Eftink

TUPELO – For many years Knights of Columbus council #8848 has supported the local crisis pregnancy center, Parkgate Pregnancy Center. Parkgate offers high quality, confidential services. The center has an outstanding, dedicated staff including supportive counselors and a sonographer to guide their clients along the way. All services are free of charge made possible by generous community members, including the Knights of Columbus.

Services include pregnancy tests, ultrasound sonography, and counseling. Parkgate also provides the Empower program, a relevant, real-life class for students in grades 7-12 teaching healthy decision making, sexual risk avoidance and more. Other services include parenting for first time parents; mentor programs to support new parents. Parkgate also connects clients with other resources in the community.

The unique location of the pregnancy center provides visibility to potential clients in an underserved community. The nearest abortion clinic is in Memphis about 100 miles away. There are two major universities and a U.S. Air Force base within 60 miles of the center.

Parkgate’s needed to replace their aging, leased ultrasound machine and the Supreme Knights of Columbus Ultrasound Program was a natural fit. The program has well defined parameters and criteria. With the support of Knights of Columbus supreme and state officers, the local council was able to successfully navigate through the process. Ultimately, Parkgate Pregnancy Center formally qualified for the ultrasound program after a thorough survey on Dec. 6, 2021 by the Diocese of Jackson.

The Tupelo Knights of Columbus council’s major fundraiser event, the 6th Annual Charity Concert Gala, took place on Aug. 13, 2022, at St. James Catholic Church in Tupelo. The concert featured extremely talented musicians from the region. There were over 200 concert goers from the parish and community. Ultimately, about $11,000 was raised at the event. The Mississippi council generously contributed $7,000 for a total of $18,000 raised. Supreme Knights of Columbus ultrasound program added the other 50% of funds for a grand total of $36,000 for the final purchase of the GE ultrasound machine. Collaboration among the Pregnancy Center, the Diocese of Jackson, then local, state, and supreme Knights of Columbus council was been inspiring. This was truly a blessed project.

The local ultrasound program officially concluded with a dedication ceremony on May 23, 2023 at Parkgate Pregnancy Center. Parkgate staff, board members, parishioners from St. James Catholic Church, and Knights of Columbus members were in attendance to enjoy the celebration.

One of the highlights was when the sonographer, Stacy Armstrong, demonstrated the new machine and the images of unborn babies it produces. She commented the new machine’s quality is a marked improvement over the old one. We agreed the ultrasound room is sacred space where decisions for life are made every day as a direct result of mothers seeing the images of their unborn children.

(Jackob Eftink served as chairman for the ultrasound program for the Father Reitmeier Knight of Columbus Council #8848 in Tupelo)