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Yesterday I listened to the pain and desperation of a young mother whose husband's paycheck had been garnished by a subsidiary of CitiBank. In light of the current corporate bailout, I could not help but recall Jesus' description of a very similar situation in Matthew 18, as well as the reaction of the kingdom to such behavior. In the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant, after having his own very large debt cancelled, the debtor then had another servant thrown into prison for the inability to repay a small debt.

The bailout has thus far proved itself to be nothing less than another opportunity for the banking interest to practice unmitigated greed. Instead of using the money given them to reopen retail credit markets, they have generally used the windfall to acquire other banks and financial institutions. Many of bailout beneficiaries, including CitiBank, continue to operate highly profitable predatory subsidiaries such as check cashing companies, payday loan companies and title loan companies that exploit the poor.

Each day more families, even those with young children, are being put on the street. Modest homes are being foreclosed at an alarming rate. The wages of the poor are being garnished like never before to pay judgments obtained by bailout beneficiaries. Instead of protecting the poor, the courts are continuing to facilitate these atrocities.

In the area around our Tampa Church, many families live in tents while several dozen boarded up foreclosed homes stand empty.

The Church cannot remain silent in the face of such suffering in our midst! To do so would make the Church irrelevant. To do so would be to forget the priorities and example of Jesus. To do so would be to deny the presence of God with the suffering poor. In its greatest periods, the Church, instead of simply accepting the worldly order, has always challenged the secular order at point after point. Look again at the 17th chapter of Acts. It says that the early Christians were looked upon as subversives who were turning the world from Caesar to another king, Christ. Consequently, it was said of them, "These are the people who have turned the world upside down". If they had listened to the words of Jesus' mother in the Magnificat they would have known this all along.

This bishop, with the approval of church leaders of various denominations, asked that a moratorium be placed on the foreclosure of owner occupied homes under $70,000 in value until the benefits of the bailout could trickle down to the working poor. No positive response has been received.

I believe God's poor should wait no longer for OUR response. The Church must stand in solidarity with them. I will be attending several foreclosure hearings each week and telling the judges and lawyers that what they are doing is wrong. I also plan to stand between the families and the police as a non violent witness when families are evicted from modest foreclosed homes. I urge you to follow this example and to join with me. It is possible that if it takes twenty or thirty sheriff's deputies to carry out one eviction, perhaps the authorities and the banks may be moved by publicity to slow down the process and make an effort to renegotiate predatory mortgages.

"Faced with oppression, pillage, and abandonment, our response is life....It is a new and splendid utopia of life, where no one can decide for others how they will die, where love will be certain and happiness possible, and where those condemned to a hundred years of solitary confinement find, finally and forever, a second chance on this earth."

Thank You Larry, Mike, Megan, Teresa, Sherine,
Holly, Margaret, Rosa and Eddie....Good food, Good Spirit,
Good Friendship....God's Grace!

We, as a nation, collectively made a decision to move all "non-dangerous" mentally ill from safe hospitals to our mean and cold streets. We also created a situation where "old" means used up (instead of wise) and now this man and woman have zero chance of meaningful survival in our country.

Brothers and Sister of the Apostolic Catholic Church,

As your bishop I spoke with the Israeli Consul General and his senior staff about the Israeli bombing in Gaza. I expressed the sadness of Apostolic Catholics over the loss of Israeli lives from rocket attacks. I pointed out the vast disproportion in the Israeli action in Gaza. I made known the sadness of Apostolic Catholics over the appalling loss of life and the suffering of those in Gaza. I communicated the utter outrage of the President of the Florida Council of Churches over bombing and shelling of densely populated civilian areas. The staff promised to send my written remarks on to the Foreign Minister.

I am not so naïve as to think one short visit with mid-level officials will have any effect on Israeli policy. But perhaps many visits by many people might have some effect. More importantly for us we, as the people of God, cannot remain silent while others suffer. We must witness to the reality that we live by different standards which do not permit mass killing and deprivation. Simply because the suffering people are far away and may believe differently from us does not give us leave to stop loving them. When we truly love another we are saddened and perhaps outraged by their suffering. When we love them as ourselves we share in their suffering.

Bishop Chuck Leigh 12/31/08

The old man with bushy concerned eyebrows says "things are not good at the moment."
The dirty blonde looking so very tired through bloodshot eyes smiles a protective, fearful and sardonic smile.
The wide happy eyes of a simpleton react to this momentary gifted place in time.
The rotted grin of one who has been meth-odized and eternally condemned by our types.
The old embarrassed couple, she guarding him and him her confused and fearful of the circumstance. "We lost our house you see."
The skinny, pale black man turned gray by approaching calamity, guards his plate.
The craggy face of a worn old Lady who is street bound for being a societal failure.
The young man is tough, rebellious and dysfunctional with no one to listen or care.

Jesus is there wherever I turn. He gazes curiously at me, expectant of me, anticipating God knows what and I fail to acknowledge. Oh dear God .....not again.
Dear God how will I ever come to know you!

Thoughts from our outreach program this night of August 5, 2007 here in America. How blessed am I to have parishioners who can see.

"Ignorance and Want" the endgame of the "NeverEnding Story"
Christmas 2004

I came across the "NeverEnding Story" as I sifted through my VHS archives several weeks ago. On impulse I popped it into the player and sat back to watch it for the first time in many years. It turned out to be an unnerving an experience as I realized that it had moved from a prophetic to a post historic film.

If you are not familiar with the movie then get it and become familiar. Briefly it tells the story of a fairy tale place called "Fantasia" where imagination and creativity flourish and nourish ever expanding vistas in the human mind. Fantasia is under an assault by a dark and sinister force called the "Nothing" that steals the very breath from this world leaving the emptiness of ignorance in its wake. Fantasia must depend on the faith and heart of a child for its survival.

In the span of a few decades, our own country, if not the world, is threatened by a similar evil, cloaked in darkness and anger, claiming that imagination, creativity, freedom of thought and inclusion of all life's stories is hideous and vile. Already it has sucked the life breath of history and culture and literature and music and spirit. In my lifetime the histories and stories of Vietnam, Cambodia, South Africa, Russia, South America, Black Americans, Babylon, the Arabian Nights and Arab peoples to name a few have disappeared. Anywhere where aspirations and hopes and cultures have advanced civilization, their stories are not to be heard anymore. The history and geography of peoples have been muted into the political "scientology" of banal multimedia .

Good scholarship has surrendered to masonic folklore, De Vinci Codes and the partial truthing and false generalizing of anything imaginable. Good screenplay is now "The Apprentice", "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy", "Survivors" or "A" through "Z" CSI formats. Spirituality is the realm of hack psychologists or self- helpers with all the depth of a puddle. News is now the self-serving hype and gratuitous, angry, nasty propaganda of the power brokers. Of course all schools are Universities now, towers of learning, expanding the minds of youth for the next spring break. Business schools bob and weave in this post business world created by their outsourcing of a nations very soul. Centers of learning are European or Asian now, look at test scores. How many truly excellent books, plays, movies or songs have you experienced this lifetime? Let's be honest.
Does an enlightened populous vote against social safety nets for the poor, healthcare, public education and public transportation? Does an enlightened nation ignore 150 million that will die of AIDS, 45 million children who will starve or even worse live this year? Does a civilization willfully destroy it's flora and fauna? it's environment? It's planet? It's own children? Is God about secret coding, lost manuscripts and logistic maneuvering of nation states on the fields of Armageddon? Have we no bastion of good to be our Bastian? (read the book) Perhaps some will be jolted and challenged this Christmas season if they watch the appalled Ebenezer Scrooge asks Christmas Present to whom these two children, ignorance and want, belong.
'They are Man's,' said the Spirit, looking down upon them. 'And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writings be erased. Deny it.' Cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. Slander those who tell ye.'

The church calendar may say so but "ordinary time" it is not. What time do we think it really is?

Some would say that it is time for the return of Jesus Christ and that the chaos swirling around us portends that very event. They would even be willing even active contributors to that chaos, they would facilitate the climate changes, start the wars and allow the famines and suffering that can then be interpreted as "signs" of the imminent return of Christ. Manipulating God has been an obsession with humanity since the fall.

I look at photos of suffering souls in South America and Iraq, on the horn of Africa and on the Indian sub-continent and Asia. The faces that stare back at me are not ever nameless. Brother and sister , mother and father, son and daughter they cause me great pain but not such pain as theirs. I see the face of the Suffering Servant, the Redeemer, the Messiah, Jesus the Christ. These poor, these needy, these hurt and dying Christs, need not worry of accepting Jesus as personal Savior as some bankrupt heretics would have it. Jesus is one with them in their agony and closer to them than to the sinful such as me. Jesus waits as He has since He created all of this. Patiently waiting for us to recognize Him is, indeed, the eloquence of this benevolent God.

He waits for that recocognition that never seems to come from us. We who feel so comfortably close to Him. This Jesus who lives in our fears and in our angers and in our hates and in our often desperate weariness continues to wait ........ for He is the Christ!

Perhaps one day we will pool our pathetic accumulations of grace and be able for the first time to see how bright is the light of this God and how truly in opposition that light is to the darkness of our greed and pettiness. Then we shall be able, through that admission, to enter into the light and be changed by It forever!