History Rhymes
By April of 1775, the town of Dedham, MA, had been a hub of anti-British resistance for years.
A mere 21 miles from Boston, the town harbored a cache of gunpowder and muskets, along with hundreds of men trained to use them. That ordnance was brought to bear on April 19, 1775, when more than 300 Dedhamites mustered to pursue British troops falling back from historic battles in Lexington and Concord.
Engaging the enemy near the town of Menotomy, Dedham militia and Minute Men were among four thousand Colonials sent from towns across the region. Firing relentlessly from behind trees and rock walls, they killed 40 retreating redcoats over a three-mile stretch of Concord Road.
The day ended in a clear victory for the colonists—but it would be a grim eight years before the nascent United States of America finally expelled the Brits from New York Harbor and US territory.
***
Two-hundred fifty years later, history isn’t repeating itself, exactly—but echoes of the past reverberate incessantly in present day America. And Dedham’s legacy of resistance to a corrupt, widely despised regime lives on.
Leaders at St. Susanna’s Parish in Dedham said they will keep the “ICE Was Here” sign in a half-empty manger outside of the church, despite condemnation from some Catholic leaders and community members.
Statues of Jesus, Mary and Joseph are missing from the Dedham church’s annual nativity scene this year. In their place was the sign about ICE, implying that immigration agents had taken the religious icons.
Below it was a smaller sign that read “The Holy Family is safe in our Church ... If you see ICE please call LUCE at 617-370-5023.”
Father Stephen Josoma said he chose to focus the nativity on immigration after speaking with several of the refugee families the church has worked with in the past few years. Several of his congregants, who come from countries like Honduras, Guatemala and Afghanistan, expressed fear about what the stepped-up deportations could mean if they were sent back to the violence they fled.
The condemnation noted above comes from an incongruous alliance: ICE (of course), marching arm-in-arm with…the Archdiocese of Boston and the head of the Catholic Action League?
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Acting Director Todd Lyons is calling for the removal of a nativity scene at a Catholic church in Dedham that protests U.S. immigration policies.
Lyons told Fox News: “The actions of the activist reverend, Stephen Josoma, are absolutely abhorrent and add to a dangerous narrative responsible for a more than 1,150% increase in assaults on ICE officers.”
It’s not surprising that irony is dead among ICE “leadership,” but given current events and their supposed familiarity with the Bible, one might expect a different response from the local Catholic hierarchy.
Instead, demonstrating that they have no earthly idea what Jesus would do...
The Archdiocese of Boston on Friday called the sign and missing figures a “politically divisive display” and said the parish should restore the créche to its “proper sacred purpose.”
“The people of God have the right to expect that, when they come to church, they will encounter genuine opportunities for prayer and Catholic worship — not divisive political messaging,” the statement read.
In what apparently is Breaking News to the Boston Archdiocese, it should be noted that Jesus (and, let’s face it, all religion) is political.
Which may be why the well-intentioned writers of the US Constitution insisted, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or (it goes on) abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
These heretical ideas are part of some fairly familiar foundational documents like the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence.
Jesus had some thoughts on such matters as well, though one might not think so, given the frenzied pushback from some of the faithful…
CJ Doyle, head of the Catholic Action League, said he was furious about this year’s scene after receiving complaints from local residents. He accused the parish and Josoma of creating “sacrilegious” political theater.
“This is a case of a dissident priest who has a long history of these crackpot, publicity stunts,” Doyle said. “He’s politicizing Christmas, he’s exploiting the Holy Family, he’s trivializing it and he’s using his position as a pastor to promote his left-wing political ideology.”
CJ Doyle is furious! He doesn’t like complaints! And he really dislikes the very left-wing dissident Jesus who inhabits most non-Trump Bibles. Imagine that.
You know who does have a pretty good handle on what Jesus would do (and by extension what the flock might want to consider)? The current head of the Catholic Church—who, it turns out, is not an acolyte of Republican Jesus or seething CJ Doyle…
Pope Leo XIV said he is troubled by the violent and at times “extremely disrespectful” ways migrants have been treated in the United States.
“We have to look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have. If people are in the United States illegally, there are ways to treat that. There are courts. There’s a system of justice,” the Pope said.
“No one has said that the United States should have open borders,” the Pope continued. “I think every country has the right to determine who enters, how, and when.”
However, he added, “when people have lived good lives—many of them for 10, 15, 20 years—treating them in a way that is, to say the least, extremely disrespectful, and with instances of violence, is troubling.”
There’s a centuries-long tradition of Catholics opposing the Pope, of course—just as there are a lot of self-proclaimed American “christians” who praise Jesus for an hour on Sunday but worship anti-Jesus policy (and politicians) the remaining 167 hours of the week.
Which is how it came to pass that among all the actors in this morality play, only the folks at little St. Susanna’s in Dedham, Mass. are on the good side of God (and US history). Arguments to the contrary from ICE, apostates at the Boston Archdiocese, and Elmer Gantry CJ Doyle are an intentional, ahistorical slurry of propaganda, gaslighting, and muddied water.
They dishonor the memory of those who risked everything in 1775, and of subsequent generations who said, “This far and no farther will you come. Here your proud waves must stop.”
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”