Comments on: IHM nuns and friends share the Inauguration

By: Sister MB

Sister MB — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 20:30:45 +0000

Dear Julia,
I hope you might return to this blog someday because I want to comment on your comment. I think I understand your dilemna. On one hand President Obama seems to engender so much hope. Bu on the other hand, how do you reconcile this hope with his apparent lack of concern for the unborn. I think a lot of us felt conflicted around that issue. I’ve read a number of reports over the last months that say the most powerful preventive for abortion is giving women the social resources they need. Poor women have the highest percentage of abortions because they often lack health care, job, education and other necessary supports. This is a question for which there are no easy answers. Here are a few links you may find interesting: http://www.catholicsinalliance.org; http://www.capcomm.org/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilders/reese.pdf; http://www.catholics-united.org. Good luck, and thank you for your sensitive comment.

By: Sue Rakoczy IHM

Sue Rakoczy IHM — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 10:16:38 +0000

This is a bit late I know. I gathered with a group of friends here in South Africa Tuesday evening since 12 noon Washington time is 7 pm our time. Everyone was very moved by the ritual and the sense of history being made. There was great relief (!!) that the Bush years are finally over. Since for eight years I have been castigated by various people for being an American (the accent gives me away immediately) and thus assumed to support Bush, it is very nice to be congratulated for the immense step Obama’s election marks in American history. Two friends who are in their 20s had many questions about how the US political system works.
Here is South Africa elections will be held in April and the probable president (elected via the African National Congress) is Jacob Zuma, acquitted of rape, with hundreds of corruption charges over his head which he has been fighting for years. Many South Africans noted the immense difference between Zuma and Obama. Nelson Mandela r\spoke of how the Obama moment is so similar to what we felt here when he became president in 1994.

By: Connie IHM

Connie IHM — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:35:00 +0000

I am seeing blog thisblog a little late, but Inauguration day and moment are no less vivid for me. I live in Southwest Detroit and drove to our college, Marygrove, where the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights sponsored a simple projection from a TV to a projector screen. The room was filled with a couple hundred folks from the Detroit (largely African-American) community and several IHMs. All of us held our breath, cheered, jabbered, wept, and clung to each other as tho’ we had known each other all our lives. The joy in the room was palpable, and was deepened as Obama challenged us to be ONE and as we experienced ourselves to be so and watched tjhose on the mall feeling that, too. All boundaries were down, and we wept for joy together, really. I ate lunch in the cafeteria with 2 of my sisters and tens of grinning folks and went home utterly spent and grateful.
I grew up in Virginia, where as a little girl I felt so bad on the city bus that I went to the back with the Black people. I saw all our city schools close against integration except the Catholic ones when I was in 8th grade, and we stood in the street from bomb scares all freshman year while police searched our lockers. I have marched all these adult years for civil rights. This IS a line crossed, the dawning of a dream – Martin’s dream, God’s dream for us all. Let us pray to be faithful to it. And support one another in that. our dear co-founder, Mother Theresa Maxis Duchemin, so persecuted for being bi-racial, must be dancing in heaven!

By: Dave Vanderah

Dave Vanderah — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 23:08:00 +0000

Good day, the inauguration. Perhaps someone pointed this out:
our new President did NOT stumble over the words of the
oath of office; our Chief Justice Roberts blew it. He got the
words wrong; three times including saying the last sentence
wrong substituting “you” for “me.”
What pleased me is that Obama smiled bemusedly as he
realized Roberts was fumbling and, to be polite, didn’t stop him.

No wonder Roberts had to return the next day to do it right.
Thanks for letting me sound off on this.

By: Mary Catherine Q IHM

Mary Catherine Q IHM — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:33:34 +0000

I watched it all with tutor volunteers and ESL or Basic Adult Learners at the Dominican Literacy Center. All of us were excited and grateful for a leader who calls us all to greater responsibility for all of us rather than the selfish consumerism that greedily piles up OUR stuff and denies access to basics for so many. Hopefully we can change our way into a new economic model that pays attention to what is going on outside our/my borders both within and beyond the national boundaries we have forzen ourseolves into.