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The Last Word to Graduates It’s that time of year: high school and college graduations. Some commencement speakers, recalling the wisdom that made them so successful in life, inundate the ears of our graduates with advice, much of it self-congratulatory. With all the happy talk being dished out to Generation Y, there is something of a disconnect. We tell them: your limit is the sky, yet our gas guzzlers are spewing tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each day, thus warming the globe and lowering the limits of breathable air while the price of gas hovers around 3 dollars a gallon. We tell the young to make their way resolutely in the world, but then offer them a world of shrinking job opportunities, except for a military career offered with high sounding patriotism and promises of exotic travel, good pay and perks. Get a higher education is another nostrum, but the campuses are booby-trapped with ROTC recruiters with inducements of uniforms and cash for signing up. If one visits a shopping mall there is the temptation to fall into a snare proffered by military recruiters on the prowl. Wise words to the Gen Y are to save money, build a nest egg early with the hope of retiring from the work force under a golden umbrella. But the young generation have not only the prospect of going off to Iraq or other hot spots to dodge roadside bombs, but the burden also in the years to come of paying off the deficits incurred by current military spending, debts growing beyond a billion dollars each week. In 1960 John Kennedy urged the young of mind and heart to join the Peace Corps. They did, and went to far away places doing good and winning the respect of the world for our America. Our current president started a pre-emptive war to bring democracy to the Middle East and as a result our young boots are bogged down in harm’s way in Iraq and tested to the breaking point not to harm children and non-combatants. Meantime, the entire world trembles in fear of further strikes for ‘peace’ from our rogue empire. In short, our young men and women are leaping into the lion’s den of a militaristic state, one that in Georgia sponsors the SOA, the School of the Americas, which the people del sud experience as ‘a school of assassins’. It is a state, too, that puts full faith in nuclear weapons of mass destruction to keep the peace. Can the young turn to their pastors for counsel? It better be better counsel than that in 2004 when a traison des clers profaned our pews with a pharisaically parsed Voters Guide for Serious Catholics produced by right-wing conservative Catholics in southern California. Under the guise of ‘pro life’ this ‘guide’ led to the election of persons who have made a mockery of life with their policies on war, nuclear arms, the death penalty, guns in the streets, minimum wage, health care, etc, and it subverted the reasoned statement, Faithful Citizenship, from our national bishops’ conference on the real issues in that election. We elders have made a mess of the world we are hypocritically welcoming the young to enter. We should just lay off the rhetoric and ask them to move in, take over for us, and try to set things aright. How? A modest start would be nurturing a peaceful revolution at the ballot box. Get them registered and encourage them to vote. Contact your local legislator’s office; ask for a pack (100) of mail-in voter registration forms, then go to work. Take a few forms with you each time you go out in public, shopping for example, and approach and ask young people if they are registered to vote. If they are, thank them and tell them you are proud of them. If they are not registered, give them the mail-in form. It is as easy as that, and you will also get into a lot of interesting conversations. Like the sower in the parable some `seed’ will fall by the wayside, some among thorns, but a few will find a fertile field and sprout forth a fervent crop with a shepherd boy, David, who will sling shots at the congressional-military-corporate Goliath, and a Catherine of Siena who will tell a president a truthful thing or two. What has this to do with peace in Iraq and elsewhere? Peace will come when the great mass of our people again decide that enough is more than enough of war, and the politicians will quickly get the message and respond to a ground swell of sentiments for peace. The last word for the young should be Pax vobiscum. Frank McGinty |