Dear MGMers,
Your grandmother had many teachers as she grew. Some taught her profound things like, Jerome, the radicalized young black man who offered information. He would have been surpised to know that as they talked she was putting a mental puzzle together.
***
Jerome was the President of the campus Afro-American group. He was working the system, but he was unflinchingly direct about it, and SL was at ease with directness; however, her internal alarm button was set on "go," allowing for a quick retreat in the event that her respect was misplaced.
SL played the role of a listener. Jerome had no idea that she had confronted a radical brother before Dr. King hit the streets in Selma, or that she was terrorized by night-callers who growled, “Nigger lover.” He had no way of knowing that she was for the rights of all individuals, including her own.
SL's belief in human rights, as opposed to racial or gender rights, divided the two. Jerome had not yet demonstrated an interest in a similar universal ethic. He was, in SL’s estimation, necessarily focused on his own need for civil-rights. A universal, humanitarian ethic would come - she believed and hoped - in time, “perhaps a hundred years from now when generations have passed.”
The two played an informational exchange game. SL was careful not to give up too much information. Jerome liked to talk, even brag. She listened patiently, hoping to uncover the real reason behind his calls. The pay-off for her patience came one evening when Jerome laughingly confided that Afro leadership had been offered full scholarships if they would “radicalize.”
Annoyed and alerted, SL inquired, “Who would want you to become radicals?” “A priest,” he replied, totally oblivious to his disclosure's effect.
For a second, words evaporated into a black hole. Silence replaced communication. SL was momentarily stunned. The answer to a perplexing question that had troubled her for several years had just been dumped into her memory's trap door. She hadn't sought specific information, yet, here it was. She needed a second to recoup and did, among, uh huhs, hmms etc. Her memory's door opened and there he was: the radical's radical.
SL worked for a time as a human relations representative for her local parish church. She was encouraged to attend training workshops, the purpose of which was to "educate" her on the grueling experiences of black Americans.
SL had successfully organized a community forum to discuss the needs of minority blacks, and participated in the formation of her home town's first human relations council. She hoped to help make a difference and a better world. But, she had not anticipated that she would be tested by a noxious revolutionary.
Initially, the workshop leaders, under the guidance of Detroit's Archbishop D., were restrained and helpful, however, a new speaker appeared. He threatened the group with in-your-face diatribes. Angry at the man's obvious ignorance about the prices she paid to be there, SL walked up to him during a break and whispered that he was a SOB and left, never to look back on her church's civil-rights activism again. Her own vision of human relations evaded gender and racial specificity in the future.
What had the revolutionary said that angered her? "We are armed," the radical had shouted at the white audience, then hurled the final insult: "You aren't here because you care: you are scared." Those words still echo in her memory. SL knew in her soul that this was a bonified communist I'll-kill-you if-I-can, bully. The perplexing question was how did her fellow Catholics get mixed up with communists of any kind?
The question lurked in the back of her mind. However, SL would have to wait for another time when another black man misspoke. Her suspicion that communists had infiltrated her beloved church was a lonely cross that she would carry for many years.
“Are you sure that he is a priest, Jerome?” “Yeh!” “What is his name?” Jerome hesitated then named his benefactor. She didn't recognize the Irish surname, but would check it out, later. She deduced with ample angst that if the bandit priest was offering scholarships, he must be working in Detroit's Archdiocesan offices.
Recovering shattered calm, SL’s angst was momentarily aimed at Jerome’s indifference. “Why would you bargain with the devil, rather than try to climb the ladder on your own?
SL realized that she was accusing him of wanting to take the easy way out. Jerome responded quickly to the challenge and asked her, “Would you refuse the goose who laid a golden egg?” She responded that she would refuse, but realized the assertion was based on faith. She wondered if Jerome ever knew faith's blessings as she did.
SL was not overcome by the kind of rage and hate that consumes souls. She understood the source of Jerome’s animus, but was completely at a loss to explain the priest’s soulless offer. Then, she recalled Nikita Khrushchev’s brag to bury America, without a shot being fired. She realized that the Russian's comments weren’t founded in bombastic braggadocio, but stemmed from a cruel plan that had been implemented in the totalitarian past, reaching down into the sixties with Vietnam. Could they have put faux priests in place? The intriguing question was answered in the affimative, years later.
SL riled at the thought that several years earlier she herself may have been identified as a useful pawn in the early days of Vatican II, when powerful moles and radicals within the church hierarchy handily adopted liberation theology and, under the cover of church unity, agreed through the Moscow-Vatican Agreement to cease all criticism of communism.
http://www.catholictradition.org/Mary/fatima5.htm
SL hypothesized that moles vandalized by finding weak links in America and elsewhere, and coalesced with radicals in America to effect social change.
The mighty Catholic Church had to be auto-demolished or destroyed from within, while preserving a Catholic exterior. The new church would be friendly to a socialist one world order. Working like a mycoplasma bacterium, communists worked the useful parts of her remnants to serve communist revolutionaries everywhere. Jerome and SL had their small parts to play. She resisted. He welcomed the moles as manna to feed his opportunism.
SL would cross racial barriers and worked to establish understanding and mutual responsibility, but she could not accept communism or radicalism as a cure for economic and racial injustice, only God’s grace could accomplish such a fete.
In SL's mind, church and state had ironically fused, resulting in a cruel auto-demolition. Only twisted parts of each remained to serve coming generations that were sensitized to welcome socialism as their religion of choice.
In a shift of fate, a young black radical-to-be unknowingly helped SL put the pieces of a complex puzzle together, with a late night phone call. He would call again, but it would be the last time the two would speak.
To be continued
