As I follow the firestorm debate regarding a major reform of America’s healthcare system, I wonder aloud why such a grand nation of  highly evolved and educated people cannot figure it out. A capability for resolving major national problems, which we possessed in the past, is now gone.   Come hell or highwater, some simply will not allow change no matter what the consequences might be.  Special interests are so flush in money and influence and political threat that we are a nation in paralysis.

Civil rights legislation, establishing Social Security or Medicare, or safety rules in the workplace are some of the issues where a Congress in 2009 would be stalemated and impotent.  We have morphed into gridlock, helped in large part by the frenzy that talk show demogogues especially have accomplished.  Their pinhead followers, non-thinkers and trogloydytes march to their beat, and you just feel sorry for their being stooges.  Yet they storm Congressmen’s meeting and are only intent in killing dialogue for change.

A solution to expand health care  really would seem doable. Yet, any observer of the American scene recognizes that we have a huge segment of  the population that simply oppose social policy changes in the U.S. in the 21st century.  Not even a perfect new system would be allowed.   Their only goal is to discredit and throw roadblocks in the way so that the major party cannot and will not succeed at leading.

The polarizing of America seems complete. Among my friends on both sides, there are clear indicators by how they think, what the react to, what they say that determines which side of the line of demarcation they fall on.  I wonder so often about what made them that way — why they cannot see.  I have largely concluded it is how they are wired, with their family rearing and degree of intellectual environment secondary.  I can easily spot the “conservative, authoritarian types” that see genius in Dick Cheney, Bob Burns, Joe Arpaio, Russell Pierce or Karl Rove.  Order and no taxes are paramount for them.

For starters, I sometimes think that President Abraham Lincoln and the Union should have just let the South go and have not fought the Civil War.  Maybe The Great South, with its haves and have-nots,  should have been allowed to implode, shamed into change, treated to harsh trade sanction by the rest of America and the world. What might  such a nation look like today?  Would its hardcore conservative values have made it a kind of  reactionary world of all-white, continued servitude, a place where there are black-and-white answers to everything?  A kind of Taliban-light world?  So often, I regard the Old South as a drag on American development and progress.  The rogues gallery of political demogogues that have come ouf the South is immense.   Nixon took full advantage of the “Southern Strategy” to win the White House.  Surely, under that scenario of having let the South go its own way, the  intelligentsia and the best and brightest would have escaped north and west like has happened all through history, whether it was Europe in World War II or Iran today.

Alas, the American media has allowed the health reform debate to move from discussing the merits of proposed legislation to coverage of the organized disruptions of Town Hall meetings. It’s been quickly evident that the mostly angry white “agin’ it” folks have the same talking points — spew the same tripe full of fear of their medical fate and financial ruin.  They don’t offer constructive ideas to accomplish legislation that will remove us from the International Hall of Shame as the only major First World nations without comprehensive health coverage.

They whine and fuss at Town Halls — diverting discussion from real issues of health care to extremist issues about abortion or those phantom  ”death panels” that would choose which people would bee no longer worthy for care. For the most part, all who are interviewed spout that the system needs to be reformed.  Conservatives say it should be a measured, slow-moving, thoughtful process —taking it to the 2010 or 2012 election cycle where any major legislation dies because all lawmakers sights are on geting re-elected.

Bottom line, we all have bodies.  We all want to be healthy. Good health is a right of  humanhood.  Why should we develop the most sophisticated gadgets like GPS that can guide us through streets but no sound system to lead us through life – healthy, wealthy and wise?

The Rev. Chris Carpenter, the former priest of Christ the King Catholic Church and one-time “Father Flick” movie reviewer for The Catholic Sun newspaper, tells his story about breaking with the Roman Catholic Church on public radio KJZZ (FM 91.5) at 6:33 and 8:33 a.m. Tuesday August 11.

Carpenter was excommunicated by Bishop Thomas Olmsted in May for “putting himself in scism” with the church by affiliating with the Reformed Catholic Church in California where he is in the process of becoming the tiny Catholic movement’s vicar for the state.  He had served Christ the King from 1997  to 2006, then abruptly resigned as  parish priest and moving to California. Carpenter had spoken out publicly against policies of Olmsted including the bishop’s position against homosexuaity.  Carpenter, for example, was one of nine priests ordered by the bishop in 2004 to remove their names from the Phoenix Declaration, a letter Arizona clergy signed calling for full acceptance of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people in the life of faith communities.   “Something died as a result of the personal and public showdown” with the bishop, Carpenter would say.  Since Olmsted arrived to lead the diocese in 2003, his actions have had a ‘chilling effect … throughout all Catholic parishes and institutions concerned about outreach and ministry to LGBT persons,” he wrote.  Olmsted made public his letter of excommunication in May and said he was praying for Carpenter’s “reconciliation with Christ and His Church.”

The KJZZ feature which can also be seen and head on the Web site, www.kjzz.org, is titled, “Ousted Catholic Priest Starts Over.”

Just as the so-called “Birthers” have continued to insist President O’Bama was NOT  born somewhere in the United States, there have been those who have kept insisting that homosexuality is a choice and can be purged from oneself through therapy and prayer.   This is the same kind of thinking that Saddam Hussein had a hand in the destruction of the Twin Towers in 2001.

On Wednesday, the  American Psychological Association went on record by saying the therapies to change proclaimed gays into straights is not only useless, but harmful.  The processes that groups like Exodus International or Love Won Out have insisted are effective, in fact , are not credible and no scientific evidence can be put forth to give it credence.  So it is a sham that can have very harmful impact on those gays who are put through it by their choice or pressure from others.

The APA, meeting in Toronto, urged mental health professionals not to tell gay clients that they can become straight through the series of steps and treatments that supposedly turns their compasses from a kind of sexual south to north and become forever attacted to the  opposite sex.  In fact, therapists are advised to offer other choices to gays who are still not accepting of their sexual status — things like celibacy and even changing from churches and religions that are not ready to accept gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgendered people for who they are.

So if they find their Baptist, Catholic, Mormon or Muslim faith communities intolerant to their lifestyles or status, they could well bail and find those religions who have come to understand the realities about human sexualities.  The APA’s governing council drew from two years of research to issue the report.  Michael A. Jones, communications director of the Human Rights Program of Harvard University Law School noted, “The association puts itself firmly on record in oppoistion of so-called ‘reparative therapy’ which seeks to change sexual orientation.”

He noted that there is solid evidence “that efforts to produce change could be harmful, inducing depression and suicidal tendencies.”  Jones said gay human rights activists are encouraged that the top group of psychologists  questioned the tactic of using so-called ex-gays to promulgate the you-can-change notion.  They have said they convereted, even though, in fact, they are still gay.

“This ideas is equivalent to wanting to play professinal basketball, so I begin to identify as a member of the New York Knicks,” he said. “Never mind that I am too short, too old and not good enought to make the roster. If I embrace this surreal existence long enough, I will one day be dunking  the ball under the bright lights of Madison Square Garden.”

The Associated Press quoted Judith Glassgold, a Highland Park, N.J., psychologist who chaired the task force. Glassgold said she hoped the document could help calm the polarized debate between religious conservatives who believe in the possibility of changing sexual orientation and the many mental health professionals who reject that option.

“Both sides have to educate themselves better,” Glassgold said in an interview. “The religious psychotherapists have to open up their eyes to the potential positive aspects of being gay or lesbian. Secular therapists have to recognize that some people will choose their faith over their sexuality.”

All Saint’s Catholic Newman Center in downtown Tempe, integrally part of the Arizona State University campus, has long been listed as a “gay and lesbian friendly” Catholic community.  Its inclusivity, its ministries, its attitude have made the Newman Center an oasis of thought and openness in the Phoenix Catholic Diocese.

But no-nonsense and orthodox Bishop Thomas Olmsted, who has a long record of intolerance toward gays and their having a legitimate place in the church, has played his hand at the Newman Center.

On Sunday, the All Saint’s parish was shocked to learn that the Dominicans, the 800-year-old Ordo Praedictatorium (Order of the Preachers) would be sent packing, and the diocese was sending in its own acceptable priest. Affected would be Dominicans  Father Fred Lucci, the pastor; and Father James Thompson, associate pastor.

During my years as the religion editor/writer for the East Valley Tribune, I was heartened to cover a series of events related to tolerance and ministry to the gay, lesbian and transgendered community at the Newman Center.  I recall listening to Catholics telling their personal experiences of being rejected and their feelings dismissed by Catholic clergy while growing up.  Some found a wholly different attitude at the Newman Center with an outreach ministry to the gay community.

This was the church that nurtured Neil Giuliano, a Catholic who acknowledged his homosexuality during the 10 years he was mayor of Tempe and who then moved on to lead the national organization Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) for more than four years.

At the end of Sunday night’s Mass, a letter was read from the bishop announcing that there would be a change of the management of the Newman Center. They were told that the diocese would be using the ASU Catholic Center as a great incubator for fostering the vocations of the Catholic Church – steering the right kind of ASU Catholics toward helping to close the overwhelming gap in men and women willing to devote their lives to the celibate life as priests and nuns.

One e-mail that went out Sunday night said, “The Dominicans of Newman Center are out by the end of the month for their Liberal and pro-gay stance. They have been at the church since 1969. The Phoenix Diocese is taking back the church.”

Another said, “They’ve had a large gay and lesbian ministry there that Olmsted has been displeased with.”

One report was that the Rev.  Matt Lowry, a 2000 graduate of ASU who was ordained a priest in 2008, might be dispatched to lead the ASU Newman Center.

He has spent almost a year at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Mesa and was starting at the Northern Arizona University Newman Center as the priest as well as vicar of vocations for Northern Arizona for the Diocese.

The Dominicans  state their purpose thusly:

• “Our reason for being is PREACHING the Good News of JESUS CHRIST, who came that we might live abundantly.

• “Our lives and words preach God’s great COMPASSION for all people, especially the poor and disenfranchised.

• “Looking for TRUTH untiringly, we STUDY to find answers to give men and women today.

• “Living with MINDS set on God and open to the newness of the world, we work at the frontier where a new culture is forged.

• “We live in COMMUNITIES of discipleship so that our preaching springs from our authentic living of the Gospel.

“Our lives are a response to God’s greatest commandment: to love God with all our heart and to love our neighbor as ourselves. As Dominicans, we emphasize sharing the Word of God as the way to love our neighbor. For our own salvation and for the salvation of others we make profession to a rule of life that incorporates us into the community of preachers. Thus we are a family of brothers and sisters bonded by our common vocation and dedication to preaching.”

One Valley blogger with the Phoenix Catholic Examiner, Max Lindenman, was there Sunday night and gave his observations in this blog on Monday: www.examiner.com/x-7216-Phoenix-Catholic-Examiner~y2009m7d6-Diocese-to-assume-control-of-All-Saints-Catholic-Newman-Center

Meanwhile, the economy has further affected the diocese, which is shuttering the Diocesan Center in downtown Phoenix and sending employees home. Furloughs are across the dioese.  This is the announced on the diocesan Web Site:  “The Diocese of Phoenix Pastoral Center Office, located at 400 E. Monroe St., is closed from Friday, July 3, 2009, to Sunday, July, 12, 2009.  The public is asked to be aware that staff will return phone calls and e-mails the week of July 13, 2009, when all normal Pastoral Center activities are expected to resume.  The Diocese thanks you for your patience and understanding.”

South Florida is all abuzz with word that a popular Cuban-American priest has fallen in a love with a woman.  As would be expected, the Roman Catholic Church will have none of it. The handsome TV priest, Rev. Alberto Cutie,  has been swiftly removed from roles of responsibility to  shake it off and get back to thinking his only love must be centered on Jesus Christ and the church.  His Miami Beach parish is divided over his pecadillos.

How encouraging that a red-blooded male raises new questions about  the church’s bizarre millenia-old obsession with celibacy.  Cutie, 40, apparently has had a relationship with a woman for some two years, but it took a Spanish tabloid, TVnotas, to make it public by publishing 25 papparazzi photos of  him and the female, including some of them embracing on a beach.   Since 1999, the youthful, charismatic priest has had TV programs watched across the Americas and as far away at Spain.  The Puerto Rican-born pastor, ordained in 1995, headed the Archdiocese of Miami’s Radio Paz  (Radio Peace) broadcasts.  His warmth and personality had won him the affectionate title of  “Father Oprah,” suggesting he had the wide appeal of an Oprah Winfrey.  He further was author of a book, “Real Life, Real Love; 7 Paths to a Strong, Lasting Relationship.”

He has now appeared on  Spanish and English news shows to address his behavior and offer thoughts on whether he will start behaving himself and kiss off the relationship with the woman; or leave the priesthood and maybe marry the woman.  “I’m now in the process of thinking about all those things, of making decisions,” Cutie told the Associated Press. “And my bishop has given me the time to think about it. This is a difficult time. It’s a time of transition, it’s a time of thinking about the future.”

Of course, priests choosing women and love over the church — or choosing both females AND the church – are not new.  Clandestinely, priests have had robust relationships with females since the church imposed the celebacy rules in the 11th century. Supposedly, goes the argument, an unmarried clergyman can give his undivided attention to God and not be distracted by things like women or children.  Then, supposedly all the self-restraint and denial will mean embracing a holier life and draw one closer to Jesus. Scholars believe the church was more able to pay priests paltry  wages to single people living on their own.  (Just look at the health cost savings alone.) Moreover, they wouldn’t be bequeathing any acquired wealth, upon their deaths, to heirs.

According to historical sources, Pope Benedict VIII in 1022 banned marriages and mistresses for priests. In 1139, Pope Innocent II voided the existing marriages of priests. Moreover, all new priests had to divorce their wives.  But it may not have been until the 16th century that such rules were really enforced.

One group, “Celibacy Is The Issue,” is a national lay organization that works for change. It contends it is made up of 2,500 former Catholic clerics who resigned, many of them subsequently to marry.  Many boldly carry out priestly duties without the blessing of the church, some under the group “Rent A Priest.” 

Pity a priest like Cutie who has to say, “I believe that I’ve fallen in love, and I believe that I’ve struggled with that, between my love for God and my love for the Church and my love for service,” he was quoted by AP. He said, “I think we all have ideas and we have ways of living.” Regretably, Cutie also said, “We want to do things right, but sometimes we fall short. I fell short.”

And here is a huge worldwide church begging for males to step forward to be priests and to sacrifice a central part of the humanness – the gift  to love, to  be husbands and have children. The stark shortage will continue until one pope has the intellectual courage to change a cruel rule that neither serves itself nor the genuine all-male believers who want to serve.  And that all applies to women who want to serve in religious life.

May there be other ordained Roman Catholic priests and nuns who challenge the oppressive and unhealthy rules.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix has made public the action of Bishop Thomas Olmsted to excommunicate Father Chris Carpenter, former pastor of Christ the King Catholic Church in Mesa and one-time “Father Flick” film reviewer for The Catholic Sun newspaper. Ordained in 1995, he served the Mesa church from 1997 to January 2006.

The Sun’s Web Site on Monday posted a story by the Sun’s editor Rob DeFrancisco that said the bishop sent a letter to Carpenter, who now lives in Long Beach, Calif., notifying him that he has been excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church for aligning with the Reformed Catholic Church, which is not in communion with Rome and which embraces such progressive ideas as female and married priests.   On April 21, we made public Carpenter’s letter to friends in which he stated he was sending a letter that week to Olmsted to say he had no choice but to leave Roman Catholicism.  He said he was finding new spiritual fulfillment in Reformed Catholicism and was newly appointed vicar for California. “Their leadership has welcomed me with open arms and I am grateful,” he said.  He explained that he found it likely that, once Olmsted got his letter, he could be excommunicated or disciplined in other ways. That came to pass.

The Sun’s Web story explained, “According to canon law, baptized Catholics who knowingly place themselves outside  of full communion  with the church  and in opposition to the legitimate authority of the church are subject to excommunication.”  Said the Sun: “The excommunication became ‘automatic’ once Fr. Carpenter became affiliated with the Reformed Catholic Church. The bishop’s notice to him, ‘the Decree of Excomunication’ was the formal declaration of what had already happened by virtue of his schismatic act.”

By putting himself in “scism,” Carpenter has willingly separated himself from the Roman Catholic Church and censure follows. With this action, the 41-year-old  Phoenix native cannot participate in a Roman Catholic Mass celebration  “or in any celebration of worship,” the Sun said. “He is also prohibited from celebrating or receiving any of the sacraments and cannot represent himself as a priest.”  That is a Roman Catholic priest.

Carpenter intends to be busy as the first  Reformed Catholic Church priest in California. He is at work establishing a parish in Long Beach that he has named the Community of the Resurrection, and he will remain active in a non-denominational interfaith hospice chaplain. He has long been open about his disagreements with Olmsted. He was among nine priests ordered by the bishop in 2004 to take their names off the Phoenix Declaration letter that Arizona clergy signed calling for full acceptance of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people in the life of faith communities.  He would say later that “something died as a result of the personal and public showdown  … A chilling effect has been experienced throughout all Catholic parishes and institutions concerned about outreach and ministry to LGBT persons.”

The Sun explained the actions this way, “The primary purpose of excommunicationis to repair the scandal caused by the teachings and actions of the cleric, to restore justice inthe church and to reform the offender.”  The bishop said he was sad to take the action and was praying for Carpenter’s “reconciliation with Christ and His Church.” 

My sense is Carpenter is not looking back and believes he is out in front in serving Christ’s true church.

Last April, I wrote a feature for the Tribune’s Spiritual Life section about Judi Gyory Missel of Mesa and her being chosen to be among the first 40 people active in the Jewish Genealogical Society allowed to do some research in Germany. Her group examined Nazi records of Jews who were arrested, put into concentration camps and murdered.  The International Red Cross Tracing Service established the archives in 1955 after getting control of the Nazi files. They were as systematic at keeping records of their victims as they were in putting them to death.

Her talk is titled, “My Trip to the Bad Arolsen Holocaust Archives.”

Missel lost as many as 20 relatives in the camps and ovens during the Holocaust. That included all four of her grandparents.  She was allowed into six buildings near Frankfurt, Germany, where about 40 million index cards contain information on the people the Nazis found worthy of the “final solution.”

Missel has talked to private groups about her findings during her week of research in Germany.  But this Thursday night, April 23, she will give her first public talk about  her discoveries and observations.  She will speak 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Valley of the Sun Jewish Community Center, 12701 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale.  If you need more information, call (480) 215-6150.

For more than 20 years, Missel, who works for the Mesa Public Schools, has regularly pored through microfilm and online data at the Mesa Family History Center, operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Much of her research dealt with ancestors who were largely in the area of Budapest, Hungary.                                                       

 I was routinely checking the East Valley Tribune Web site about dinnertime Monday and gasped when I saw that the Tribune had won a 2009 Pulitzer Prize for local new reporting.  I was so elated to learned that my former colleagues for the newspaper were rewarded for their  tenacity and smart reporting last year on the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and the impact of Sheriff Joe Arpaio zealous enforcement of immigration laws at the expense of other law enforcement work.  Ryan Gabrielson and Paul Giblin are first-rate journalists.  Their five-part series, “Reasonable Doubt,” published last June, has won a number of awards, including the George Polk  Award.

As one of the Tribune staff who lost his job in January– along with Paul —  in wake of major downsizing and revamping to stay financially viable, I feel like the man whose wife divorced him and then she won $5 million in the lottery.  My desk was about 10 feet from Ryan’s before I left the Tribune. We faced one another and I watch his  fearless, diligent work  and heard his frustrations hitting walls with those in law enforcement and others as he and Paul painstaking ferreted out the layers of the story.  I watched the PBS film team work with them to hear them lay out their project and findings.   Ryan and Paul are smart, intuitive journalists who could work for the nation’s top media. Maybe they will.  Paul didn’t miss a beat as his job went away. He teamed with three other Tribune staffers laid off in founding the Arizona Guardian, an online political news and commentary site.

The Pulitzer Prize, of course, is the most coveted prize in the news industry.  Commonly it is won by the big boys — the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune or Boston Globe, with some middle size papers here and there winning.   I always have liked to say that I once replaced a Pulitizer Prize-winning reporter.  In 1972 at the Waterloo (Iowa) Courier, Rich Whitt gave up his job as farm editor and assistant state editor. I was transferred from courthouse reporting to that job.  Rich went to the Louisville Courier Journal as a reporter.  Then in 1978, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting (same category of the Tribune’s win) for his thorough coverage of the fatal Beverly Hills Supper Club fire in Southgate, Ky.  It took place May 28, 1977,  and was the deadliest nightclub fire in U.S. history.  There were 3,000 patrons and 182 employees inside that Memorial Day weekend night, and 165 persons died more than 200 injured.  Rich Whitt would write exhaustively about the fire in which numerous fire and safety code violations were found. His findings led to the national award.  A modest guy, he never made that much about the prize.  We exchanged e-mails over the years, mostly sharing common information about our former newspaper.

Of course, it is so bittersweet for the Tribune and Paul and Ryan to win this grand prize. There is irony that the Tribune had to part ways with Paul and the editor who shepherded the project, Patti Epler, because of the economic downturn, the  newspaper world’s partial collapse (due in large part to the Internet)  and the need to  cut payroll sharply to stay viable.  What a thrill it must have been in the Tribune newsroom today.   From afar, I send my hearty congratulations and feel that old joy to have been part of the Tribune, to have been there, at least, when the award-winning work took place.  Despite its troubles, journalism remains a noble trade.  I can always vicariously say I worked for a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper, come what may.

I also see the irony of the Tribune Newspapers winning this award for investigations into the bowels of Joe Arpaio’s  world of law enforcement.  I recall working at the Tribune with Joe’s daughter when she was a reporter in our newsroom, a place where she met her husband, who was metro editor. Their engagement came as such a shock because their courtship had been kept such a deep secret. We attended their wedding in Scottsdale at the home of our Scottsdale Progress Tribune office manager. Joe gave away his daughter in the backyard on a day of vicious winds that made it impossible to hear the vows exchanged.

For all of us who have gotten  to work with pros like Ryan Gabrielson and Paul Giblin, we  just say it was one of  the unexpected good fortunes of chosing a career that has purpose.  May this award only drive home the importance of  a strong media and a commitment to watch-dog  journalism. Without the courage and grit of reporters  to question authority through sound and thorough  investigation, democracy itself is at peril.

It’s April, so it means my wife and I would sign up again to deliver water to the tanks in the southwest Arizona desert in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. It’s one of our favorite volunteer projects — helping what’s called “Humane Borders,” a humanitarian effort on the state’s southern flank.

We deliver water to blue tanks strategically placed so, should migrants from Mexico cross the parched and hostile desert in that corridor, the water could be the difference between their living and dying. The water is made available in 50-gallon tank positioned on their sides with spigots that can be turned on to refill jugs.

For one month every third month, my Tempe church is responsible for sending a small team each Saturday to Ajo to pick up the customized truck equipped with a large plastic tank, a set of five-gallon jugs, two wheelbarrows, tools and chlorine tablets.  We have five teams, primarily married couples, who are often joined with one or two others on each trip.   We drive to Maricopa to Gila Bend and then to Ajo. There we pick up the truck, service it and drive 30 miles on Highway 85 to Organ Pipe.

There we back up the truck, under a canvas spigot at the maintenance yard behind the Monument headquarters and put 150 gallons into the tank, throw the truck into overdrive and head on roads to the tanks. For one station, we fill the jugs and put two or three of them in each wheelbarrow and push them over gritty desert terrain, up hilly paths and through sandy washes to the tanks. There we test the tanks’ water for the proper chlorine level and fill each tank to the brink. We gather any trash in the area and take that back with us. In mid-summer we leave as early as 5 a.m. from Tempe so we are not working in the afternoon in the desert.

In June and during the summer months, our corridor has five stations in the desert — some deep in the desert with hard-to-follow paths.  We bounce over rough terrain. Sometime the truck crawls to get over rough landscape, pass through arroyos and squeeze past prickly brush, cactus and trees.

During the trip, we never have seen migrants. This Saturday, outside the park, the Border Border had apprehended three men and had them in handcuffs.  A helicopter buzzed overhead.

The Arizona State University graduate student accompanying us, who was born in Mexico, found a tuna can and about eight Mexican coins in a shady area while we were doing.  Several times we have found discarded bicycles, plastic gallon jugs and clothing.  The Bible says:

“They will neither hunger nor thirst, nor will the desert heat or the sun beat upon them. He who has compassion on them will guide them and lead them beside springs of water.”

         — Isaiah 49:10

Founded in June 2000, the program is based at First Christian Church in Tucson, whose senior pastor,  The Rev. Robin Hoover, is president.  The first Humane Borders water station was set up March 7, 2001.  I have taken part since January 2005, and my wife joined in 2007.  The non-profit organization operates on about $200,000 annually, most of it from churches and corporate sponsors, although the Pima Country Board of Supervisors provides some help.

 Still, records show that from Oct. 1, 1999 to Sept. 30, 2007, there were 1,138 migrant deaths in the desert. Humane Borders’ symbol is appropriately water pouring from the big dipper or the “drinking gourd” from the slavery abolitionist movement.

 There are about 65 of us drivers, but Humane Border has about 10,000 volunteers.  Combined there are 70 trips per month May to September to fill the tanks. It is reduced to 30 trips monthly October through April.

The Associated Press on April 9 reported that despite a 25 percent drop in Border Patrol arrests along the border, deaths in the dessert had gone up.

“The number of migrant deaths along the roughly 2,000-mile border increased by nearly 7 percent between Oct. 1, 2008, and March 31, 2009, though apprehensions of people crossing illegally from Mexico into Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California decreased in the same period from a year ago, the patrol said,” AP said. “Migrant rights groups said the number of deaths directly correlated to increased enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border.”

Our church is assigned the Saturdays of  January, April, July and October. For our team, it is a 10-hour commitment to make the trip in our own cars to Ajo, get the truck ready, handle the task, and return home. .  When equipment problems arise, new flags need to go up after fierce winds or we get lost finding stations, it can be a 12-hour day.  But always fulfilling even if we never see those we serve.

Guys like Carl Mawhinney are wondering what is the latest holdup in getting former Monsignor Dale Fushek on trial for sexual misconduct. After all, the criminal complaints were first brought in late 2004, and it’s been 4 1/2 years of legal maneuvers and courtroom procedures before any testimony can be heard.

The founder of the international Life Teen Catholic youth program and one-time vicar general of the Catholic Diocese of Phoenix won a Maricopa County Superior Court ruling Feb. 5 that granted him five separate trials to resolve the seven misdemeanor charges brought by five males who were teens when they say they were abused by the priest while he led Life Teen and was pastor of the large East Valley parish, St. Timothy’s Catholic Community in Mesa.

The Maricopa County prosecutors had insisted they should be able to bring the evidence together from all the incidents between 1984 and 1993 involving the alleged victim in order to establish a clear pattern of misconduct and abuse.  Fushek, who previously had won an Arizona Supreme Court ruling that he should get a trial by jury instead of before just a judge, faces one count of assault, one of indecent exposure and five counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. 

In February, Superior Court Judge Joseph Kreamer ruled that the series of alleged incidents were separate and that it would be unfair to bundle them together as if they were related. “The court does not believe that the alleged offenses are based on the same conduct, or are otherwie connected in their commission,” the judge said in his ruling.  He said they allegedly occurred across almost 10 years, took place in various settings and were not “otherwise connected.”

Now prosecutor Barbara Marshall and her team from the county attorney’s office want to make their case for separate trials to the Arizona Court of Appeals. There, a panel of three judges will hear from the two sides. I has been put on that court’s calendar for April 29. 

 Whether the ultimate ruling is stayed and Fushek will be able to meet his accusers one by one — or it is reversed and one trial is set — it would be scheduled in the San Tan Justice of the Peace Court (Gilbert jurisdiction), which is located in the court complex in downtown Chandler.

Last September, Goodman himself had ruled that the trials should be separated, but the prosecution appealed that to Superior Court, where his decison was upheld.

He had said the five trials would take place from the oldest alleged incident to the newest. Each trial would follow the other “as soon as practical following the conclusion” of each previous trial.  The first is contributing to the delinquency of a minor complaint by Mawhinney, who accuses Fushek of  “numerous sexually related discussions” about his sex life betwen 1984 and 1988. It would be followed by a trial, on charges of assault and contributing  to the delinquency of  a minor between 1985 and 1987, brought by Marc Tropio. The third trial would involve charges of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and indecent exposure, between 1987 and 1990, brought by Marc Olson.  The fourth trial would involve contributing to the delinquency of a minor between 1989 and 1991 where Doug Cordano contends Fushek  discussed his sexual activities. The final trial would focus on a count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor between 1991 and 1993 brought by Russell Swingle.

Fushek was one of the highest ranked officials charged in the sexual abuse scandals that have rocked the Roman Catholic Church. In late 2007, Fushek, while on a paid leave of absence pending resolution of the charges, started a non-denominatinal church, the Praise and Worship Center, with another former, now married, priest, Mark Dippre.  It was in defiance of orders of  Bishop Thomas Olmsted, who has since excommunicated both men.