November 13, 2023

Most people save cherished things: photos, letters, jewelry, wedding and birth announcements, obituaries. We do, too. I also still have two oddball things: my teeshirts from the 1990 Marine Corps Marathon and the 2011 New York City Marathon.

The New York City Marathon came and departed last week, a glorious hiccup in the sports world. My niece Christine ran, so the excitement came back for us. We watched the live feed from the finish. For some who staggered across, arms raised in joy, it may be a place for love: a guy stepped over the line, got down on one knee, and proposed to his runner-partner. It looked like she said yes.

For the 99 percent of the population who will never run a marathon, the idea, running 26.2 miles, is nutty and eccentric or masochistic and reckless. The months of training required, the risk of injury, the expense, the pain of recovery—the reality of the marathon—brings a loud “Hell no.” 

The NYC Marathon is the biggest deal in the running world. A total of 51,402 entrants finished, 28,501 men, 22,807 women, and 94 “non-binary” runners. The New York Road Runners Club, which sponsors the race, says the club received more than 128,000 applications from 153 countries and all 50 states. The male and female winners in the Open Division (only professionals are eligible) get $100,000, second gets $60,000, then on down to $2,000 for tenth. Prize money also goes to top American finishers and wheelchair racers.

Last week was Christine’s first. I quit running marathon road races years ago, after 16 of them, including three Marine Corps, four Washington, D.C., marathons, and five in Nashville, and shifted to trail running. Trails are slower, easier on the joints and on older folks. But then, the marathon doesn’t go away. It draws you back.

“How to” books have been written about marathons Some of them lurch into philosophy, hinting that the essence of running long distances, e.g., discipline, perseverance, faith, has something to do with discovering the truth about life, about finding joy in sacrifice, pain, and loneliness. We all have some mystery in our private lives. And who knows? The ordeal of the marathon may help us, or some of us, confront and understand it.

Yet the marathon is the marathon. The runner awakens on race day, slips on his/her outfit and running shoes. Most will eat something, a bagel, banana, energy bar, sometimes more. They show up at the start, stretch a bit, strut to the line, and stay silent for the national anthem. Some check their GPS watches. The gun goes off, they surge ahead, feeling the adrenalin rush. If the field is large they’ll tapdance a few steps, banging elbows.

Within a quarter-mile the field starts to extend. The faster people move ahead, creating space. Runners settle into their pace. They maneuver alongside and around each other, measuring progress by noting landmarks along the course. They hear the cheers of the crowd. Then they see the one-mile marker with a clock showing time elapsed since the start.

The first mile of the New York City Marathon crosses the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, which links Staten Island to Brooklyn. Runners cross on both the upper and lower spans, the view of the city skyline and Lower New York Bay is spectacular. The one-mile marker of any marathon fills the runner’s heart with hope. One down, twenty-five point two to go. This thing is doable.  

The Las Vegas Marathon starts in late afternoon so runners navigate the Strip with its night glitter and roaring crowds. Nashville’s Country Music Marathon course passes the honky-tonks of Lower Broadway, the city’s glitzy, scruffy tourist district. On the other extreme, the Washington, D.C., race hauls the runners past the squat bulk of the Commerce and Treasury Department office buildings.

Runners pause at aid stations, grab and gulp cups of water and nod at the encouragement of the volunteers. The field has extended farther, but in the straightaway segments runners can look ahead at the colorful river of humanity flowing ahead, then gracefully making the turns.

The mile markers are passing, the runners are keeping their pace, trying to stay with their race plans. They may be slowing on hills and picking up speed on downhills. The weather matters—too warm can sap energy and spirit.

By the half-marathon marker the field is well spaced. The runners see the marker and feel a jolt of encouragement. But the legs know the body has come only halfway. Many are alternately walking and jogging, some are struggling. Miles 14, 15, 16 come harder, slower. The street is littered with discarded water cups. The course now seems a desert, hot, humid, the crowd thinner. Thighs and calves may seize up with cramps, meaning stop, stretch, work them out. Then keep going.

Around now, when the middle of the pack blends with the back of the pack, runners remind themselves of the “wall,” the overwhelming urge to quit, to stop running forever. Legs feel like lead, hamstrings burn. “Keep moving,” they tell themselves. The philosophy, the “you got this” cheers seem pointless, empty, cruel. Hitting the wall, it’s called, when stopping the pain seems the only reason for living.  

The wall may break runners, but they overcome. The miles creep by. Then at 20 six remain, a 10K, the standard road race all marathon hopefuls have run many times. Finishing now seems possible. Then the 22- and 23-mile markers. Three to go. The wall passes, runners may be walking, backs bent or jogging, but moving. All those chilly early morning runs, the 10Ks, the ten-milers, the agonizing long training runs, now worthwhile.  

The finish line is still a dot in the distance. But the crowd is building, yelling, waving signs. The pack is slogging forward, the energy returning, euphoria building. The pack breaks up, pounds ahead.

The arch of the finish gate is suddenly there, runners feel their bodies surge again in one last burst of will. Then the footfall on the line, a quick glance at the clock, a volunteer is smiling and offering a bottle of water and the finisher’s medallion. The runner glances around, legs stiffening, then moves slowly forward. Behind him or her, others are crossing the line. The sensation is pain, but relief, then joy.

November 6, 2023

Actually, we didn’t see many teeshirts for sale in Dillsboro, North Carolina. Some shirts offered were branded “Great Smokies”; the national park is a few miles west. Which makes sense; who’s going to buy a teeshirt advertising Dillsboro?

The town, announced population 232, is in a pretty place, wedged among the rugged peaks between Asheville and the Tennessee state line. It’s the turnaround point for the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad’s four-hour foliage tour out of Bryson City, which is next to Cherokee, a hamlet that boasts imitation Cherokee gear and a casino, next to an entrance to the park.

We drove up to Bryson Sunday because our kids gave us tickets to the tour for our anniversary. We sat in the Cherokee car, our seats shared a table with a couple from Atlanta.

The train left Bryson City promptly at noon and chugged east along the Tuckasegee River, a fast-moving stream that flows west for about 60 miles to huge Fontana Lake at the western end of the state. The train hugs the riverbank out of town. As we crossed a bridge, the conductor pointed out a bunch of crashed cars that have been partly buried along the riverbank for erosion control. We could see the shiny chrome protruding from the soil.

The antique diesel locomotive hauled the train at around 25 miles per hour past farms, forest, and trailer parks that line the riverbank. Railroad tracks, after all, are built on the cheapest land; well-off people don’t want a track crossing their front lawns. I recalled the view from the Amtrak Metroliner route between Washington and New York: Maryland and New Jersey factory backyards strewn with rusting machinery.

Although Bryson City is nestled in mountains, the track, following the river, is uniformly level, we climbed no heights and saw no spectacular woodland vistas or breathtaking sights. The foliage in warmer South Carolina was still at peak autumn brilliance, the forests of the cooler Smokies already had turned pale brown and started to shed their leaves. 

As we approached Dillsboro the conductor announced we’d pass the burnt-out hulks of the locomotive and bus from the crash scene in the 1993 hit movie, The Fugitive, starring Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones. The county and the film producer apparently agreed it would be too expensive to remove them, and—maybe—they’d become an oddball tourist draw.

Our Atlanta seatmate mentioned he was a construction manager and didn’t believe the bus/locomotive story. “If we left old equipment on a site we’d be hit with thousands in fines,” he said. Then we passed the junked bus and locomotive. “The laws are a little looser here,” I said. The battered ruins lay along the river; the train passengers, including me, snapped pictures.

We pulled into town about 1:00. The conductor warned passengers to be back in their seats by 2:50, meaning the four-hour excursion included a nearly two-hour stop, presumably for lunch at the Forager’s Canteen and the Innovation Brewery, and shopping in Dillsboro’s business district. We detrained and ate our homemade sandwiches at a table next to the track. That took maybe twenty minutes. Sandy surveyed the attractions and opted to get back aboard. I crossed the track and wandered through town.

While about half the train passengers enjoyed lunch or sampled beers at the brewery, the rest strolled along Front Street, browsing the shops. I noted signs that seemed vaguely familiar:  the Chocolate Factory, the Front Porch General Store, Dogwood Crafters, Country Traditions. Familiar, that is, similar or identical, to the names of places in other little towns on the tourist circuit. I walked past some, stepped into others. The salespeople smiled and asked, “How are you?”

The merchandise included things I had seen elsewhere, most tourists have seen: brightly woven quilts, necklaces and earrings, coffee mugs and glasses branded “Great Smokies,” Christmas decorations, rows of jars of jams, jellies, hot sauce, aromatic soaps, dishes with prints of bears. Then teeshirts and sweatshirts. I stepped back onto the street. Although I didn’t buy anything, the clerks smiled again as I left and said, “Have a blessed day.”

A short block away, a small Presbyterian church with a picturesque steeple announced Sunday services. Looking past Front Street I spied a post office, a barbershop, the Haywood Smokehouse, the Artsy Olive and the Corn Crib. I peered through the windows, more quilts, mugs, jams, soaps. My fellow passengers crowded in, the clerks rang up their purchases.

The shopping stretched down the end of the street, where the train crew were shifting the locomotive to a side track to reposition it for the trip back to Bryson City. No industrial sites or other non-tourism businesses were visible. A few old homes lined the side streets beyond the shops.

I wondered what the local folks do when the bitter Smokies winter sets in. The trains operate through the year, but winter schedules are limited, fewer runs, weekends only. Presumably, as in other tourist places, they earn enough in the busy months to tide them over. Or they leave town.

Available history notes the town once had two sawmills, two clay mines, a pin company, a corundum crushing plant, a tannery, a hotel. But the larger sawmill moved to nearby Sylva in 1894. Population declined but the tourist business grew to serve the folks coming on the trains.

This is the way it is in dozens, maybe hundreds of small, isolated American towns. Businesses close, young people move away, life gets hard. Some, like Dillsboro, are lucky to be near a tourist attraction or railroad junction. The economy becomes selling stuff to visitors.

I climbed back aboard the Cherokee. The shifting of the locomotive to the opposite end of the train meant—I didn’t know this—that the return to Bryson would follow the same course as it did to Dillsboro. The conductor announced that all passengers should trade seats with those on the opposite side. The four of us switched with those who had sat across from us.

We watched the opposite-side scenery flow by. The car teetered along a rock wall that blocked the sunlight. Past that, we noted a farmhouse festooned with a 100-foot-square American flag. The train picked up speed, we flew by the trailer parks and across the Tuckasegee. A few fishermen stood flycasting in the rapids. At Bryson we jumped off, a full load of passengers were eager to board for the 5:00 run. Dillsboro was waiting.

October 30, 2023

Sassafras Mountain, the highest point in South Carolina, is just barely in South Carolina. The state line (S.C.-N.C.) runs straight through the center of the observation platform. At least half of what you see from the perch is in another state.

As mountains go, Sassafras is fairly humble, at 3,554 feet. North Carolina claims 28 peaks above 6,000 feet starting with Mount Mitchell, just north of Asheville. Tennessee has 16 “sixers,” led by Clingman’s Dome in the Great Smokies, the class of the western end of the Blue Ridge. New Hampshire’s Mount Washington is close to 6,300 feet.

We came again to Sassafras with Virginia friends Pat and Mike. We were lucky, the sky was bright and blue out to the pale mist of the horizon. On three previous visits fog and clouds locked the summit in. Twice I started five miles west at a lonely place called Laurel Valley and hoofed up the Foothills trail to the top in cold rain, the place was deserted. The silence then spoke to me of the isolation of the wilderness, of the heart.

The road trip for us is an even 50 miles, up U.S. 25 to S.C. 11, then eight miles of winding and climbing on U.S. 178 to a mysterious unincorporated place, Rocky Bottom, site of a Conference Center for the Blind and a small church or two. There the road widens just a bit before the turn onto Sassafras Mountain Highway (or F. Van Clayton Memorial Parkway) for five miles. The narrow two-lane road bisects the Foothills trail at a small clearing called Chimney Top. Then it’s up, up, past a second trail junction, to the summit.

On Sassafras, although it’s way down the list of high places, you are up there. A black painted stripe marks the state boundary, visitors get a mild thrill in planting one foot in North Carolina and the other in South Carolina. Tennessee and Georgia are on the horizon. You can see some of the tourist town of Brevard, N.C., to the east, Mount Wolfe and Mount Pisgah, and odd places like Dunn’s Rock. The gorgeous Chattooga River, the northern boundary with Georgia, flows to the west.

Sassasfras’s shiny observation platform, parking lot, and restrooms make it an easy spot for the tourists, but the place is on the fringe of wildness. The thick forests surrounding the summit are deep within the Jocassee Gorges Management Area, 50,000 acres of wilderness penetrated by wild white-water rivers and plunging waterfalls, a few meandering trails and fire roads, and a few isolated communities.

The view from the west of the summit picks up Lake Keowee and Lake Jocassee, shimmering in the afternoon sun. Jocassee is a vast manmade lake of 7,500 acres, 300 feet deep. The flooding submerged neglected structures, including a church. The lake’s creation, starting in 1972, was the theme of the movie Deliverance, set in the rugged country of north Georgia, that captured the dark side of human nature meeting wilderness.

The hike to the mountaintop, for those who try it, hints at some of that. Much of the 76-mile-long Foothills trail is hiker friendly, but the nine miles up from the east and the five miles from the west drain the spirit. From the access point near Rocky Bottom the route rises and falls to the Chimney Top road crossing, then climbs relentlessly through thickets of vines and over huge boulders until it twists in circles to the summit.

We read that Sassafras is the boundary for three watersheds. Water draining from the mountain’s east side flows to the South Saluda River, Broad River, and Congaree to the Santee-Cooper Lakes, to the Atlantic. The southside drainage runs to Lake Keowee and giant Lake Hartwell, on the line with Georgia, then out to the Atlantic. Rain and snowmelt from north and west end up in the French Broad River, then the Tennessee and Ohio rivers before dumping into the Gulf of Mexico.

So the place is a geological inflection and a tourist attraction. But we find a personal touch, both sad and joyful, in the hundreds of inscribed bricks laid at the base of the observation platform. In 2019 the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources raised funds for the platform by offering to donors bricks they could engrave with personal commemorative messages. You stand over the space and browse. A few celebrate nature and wilderness: “Find Solitude and Renewal in Mountain Beauty”; “Love this place”; “A place of serenity”; that kind of thing.

But others honor parents, grandparents, children, friends, now lost, some with birth and death dates. Some are simple: “Ken and Karen”; “William Beckwith Family.” There are dozens of “In Loving Memory of …”; “Know What You Believe and Why You Believe It,” and so on. You think of a stroll through a cemetery, where poignant messages speak.

At Sassafras these persons linger here in the language of those who loved them, and, it seemed to me, a little closer to the Almighty. They lie at rest somewhere else, but they also are here on this rocky point in the sky, immortal, insofar as a humble brown brick can speak to the world.

We talked a bit with others milling about the platform, a woman from New York’s Adirondack region, a couple from East Tennessee. They know about mountains and bracing cold. Like us, they stared out at the deep brilliant fall colors that extend to the horizon. Like us they read the messages of the bricks.

This is a remote, rugged place, hidden in the far northwest corner of a state better known for its beaches and near-tropical humidity. Majestic Great Smoky Mountain National Park, visited by millions each year, is about 100 miles west. The Smokies tourist clout has brought the shlock, the miles through Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, Tenn., of cheap motels, wax museums, Dollywood, a space needle, Titanic museum, a rainforest zoo. Pigeon Forge offers a “We the People” Trump souvenir store.   

As a tourist attraction, Sassafras is a minor afterthought. The solemnity, the humanity of the place spoke to us, speaks to everyone. Sassafras is the mountain, the rocky trails, the deep forest, the steep, breath-stealing access road. Then too, the messages of ordinary people, who decided they love this humble, beautiful place.

October 23, 2023

“Fall for Greenville” brought thousands of people, we heard 250,000, to Main Street. The weather for the three days was glorious. Something like 60 local restaurants had booths, 80 bands performed, 50 beer vendors and vineyards showed up.

Like most of the crowd we strolled the length of Main to the West End, beyond the Reedy River, which flows through downtown. We listened for a while to soft country played by “Remember Me,” who call themselves a “Willie Nelson Tribute Band.” We stepped out and danced to a few Willie and Kris Kristoferson tunes, then got some Greek food and ate it sitting on a wall near Falls Park and watched the people flow by.

“Fall” seemed a little bit of a dream. The Main Street foliage swayed in a soft breeze, the sun shone brilliantly, the temperature stayed mild. The shimmer of the tents and canopies and the kaleidoscope of colors elevated the crowd. Rides had been set up for kids on side streets. Restaurants and bars were packed. The world we live in seemed very far away.

The day was a moment in the history of the place that, like anywhere else, creates its own rhythms of life. The energy of the city rushed forward, as if extricating itself from the three timeworn features of Southern life: fundamentalist religion, textiles, and segregation. You turn your head, everywhere you see steeples. Everywhere you see those billboard-like signs with the tacked-up invitations to attend Protestant services of every strain.

Greenville is probably the only American city that has honored a Revolutionary War British soldier. Paris Mountain State Park, within the city limits, remembers Richard Pearis, an Irish immigrant who first settled in Virginia. He served with the British during the French and Indian War, then moved to South Carolina. He tried to sell Cherokee land to white settlers, and in 1770 built a home near the Reedy. In 1775 he became a Tory officer and fought with the British, was captured by the Colonials, then escaped to the Bahamas.

The town has a gritty industrial past. Gristmills for processing grain were built as early as 1816, the hulk of the Vardry-McBee Mill remains on the river near Falls Park. A statue on Main Street recalls McBee (1775-1864), who in 1815 owned most of the town. Greenville once was called, or called itself, the “textile capital of the world.” The textile business drifted into town before the Civil War. In the early 20th century the city produced 10 percent of the nation’s textiles. Forty-three mill presidents lived in Greenville.

The Reedy offered a setting for new mills. Camperdown No.1 was built on the river in 1874 by three Massachusetts men after a fire destroyed their Boston mill. Camperdown No. 2 started operations in 1876 farther upstream. No.1 failed but was put back into service around 1900. Soon eight mills were running within two miles of downtown producing thirty thousand bales of cloth a year, with dozens more on the outskirts. A Farmers Alliance cotton warehouse was built in 1890.

By the 1950s Japanese competition had put the mills out of business, leaving hundreds without work. Some were demolished, a few still stand. No. 2 was torn down in 1959.

An artifact of the textile business is represented by the Milliken & Company corporate headquarters outside Spartanburg, 30 miles north. Milliken lobbied for decades for government protection against foreign competition and fought an organizing campaign by the United Textile Workers of America, closing its Darlington, S.C., plant to avoid the union. In 1965 the Supreme Court ruled against the company. Fifteen years later the company paid the affected workers and sold off most of its textile business.

Greenville has its sliver of high-tech fame. Albert Einstein came to town several times to visit his son, Hans Albert Einstein, who in 1938 worked for the city’s Soil Conservation Service. Einstein Sr. delivered several lectures at nearby Furman University.

Charles H. Townes, inventor of the laser, grew up on a farm near Greenville, attended Greenville High, and graduated from Furman in 1935. He did graduate research at Columbia and developed the maser, an earlier technology, and then the laser in 1960. Townes was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1964. Later he led the effort to calculate the mass of a black hole at the center of the Milky Way. A statue of Townes stands at the corner of South Main Street and Falls Park Drive.

Local cheerleading doesn’t obscure the hard past. On the corner of Main and Washington Streets statues of two Black students represent those who in the late 1960s demonstrated and marched to desegregate Greenville’s schools.

Sterling High started as Greenville Academy early in the 20th century, a school for African-American students financed by local White businessmen. It was renamed Sterling in 1929. Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson graduated from Sterling in 1959. A president of the student body became the first Black student admitted to Furman when the university desegregated in 1965.

The Main-Washington street statue, dedicated in November 2006, recognizes the campaign by Sterling students to achieve racial integration. The corner is adjacent to the former site of a Woolworth’s store, where students began in July 1960 to demonstrate peacefully to protest segregation, following the lead of students in Greensboro, N.C. Students also conducted sit-ins at W.T. Grant’s and S.H. Kress & Co. All the stores shut down their lunch counters, refusing to serve the students.

Sterling High burned to the ground in 1967. City fire officials and other experts investigated the suspicious circumstances.  In 1968 the state Supreme Court ruled that the state schools must desegregate. Greenville schools began to integrate black and white students in 1970.

A few days after “Fall” we walked by the statues. An elderly woman stood reading the inscriptions. “I was in the class of ’67,” she said in a soft voice. “It was arson. But the community came together.”

She motioned at the inscriptions of names of contributors to the site. “Anyway, we have this,” she said. We looked at the inscribed bricks. I remembered the party feel of “Fall,” and the grim events now tormenting the country. Later, recalling the woman, I thought, we can move forward.

October 16, 2023

We settled into our usual pew for the 5:00 PM Saturday Mass, surrounded by senior citizens. We were part of the surrounding. It’s the same at the early Sunday Mass. Mainly old folks, just the way it is. Maybe the young ones come later.

We didn’t know it then, but Hamas terrorists already had started their attacks on Israel, murdering hundreds of civilians. Israel, the Holy Land, the birthplace of the three Abrahamic religions, has again become a bloodbath.

Individuals may endure private agonies of spiritual doubt. In the Middle East, religious conflict eternally tortures nations and communities. Disagreement and discord translate to fundamentalism and fanaticism. That is going on now in America, as “evangelical” Christians campaign for extremist Republicans, while so-called “traditionalist” Catholics attack the Pope.

Religious acrimony, sometimes as small-minded pettiness, shows up in strange places. Our daughter is a graduate of Belmont Abbey College in Belmont, N.C. So is Republican Rep. Patrick McHenry (N.C.) who became speaker “pro tempore” of the House of Representatives last week. The college president sent an email asking for prayers for McHenry. This was just after McHenry expelled the former speaker, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, from her office. No prayers for Pelosi, though.

So Mass started, we stood, Father Steve approached the altar. He’s the new priest, a humble guy who will laugh at himself.  A week or so ago he began his sermon by talking about the U.S. Tennis Open. I don’t recall any connection to the Gospel. Sometimes I nod off. Sandy nudges me, I open my eyes and try to listen.

The tennis metaphor was unique. I guessed he looks to grab the audience with an offbeat, attention-getting opening. More priests need to do the same.

He talked about the Gospel (Matthew, chapter 21, verses 33-43), the one about Jesus debating the Pharisees and Scribes, the officials who controlled nearly every aspect of Jewish life at the time. Jesus describes a landowner who planted a vineyard and leased it to tenants. When he sent his servants to receive the grapes, the tenants killed them. A second delegation of servants also were killed. The owner then sent his son, the tenants also murdered him.

Jesus asks, “What will the owner do to those tenants?” The answer is, he’ll put them to death and lease the vineyard to others who will surrender the grapes at the proper time. Jesus then says to the Pharisees, “Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to people who will produce its fruit.”

Father Steve wrapped up, saying, “Jesus is challenging the Pharisees, calling them out, because he sees through their hypocrisy in using legalisms and empty rules to maintain their authority.”

I heard something different. This humble priest in this modest parish in Upstate South Carolina was talking about present-day Pharisees and Scribes. He was challenging the Catholic cardinals and bishops who think they know Pope Francis’s job better than he does. These are the leaders who for decades covered up the church’s sex scandal and fail, even now, to communicate the truth of Christ’s message, while Catholics young and old abandon the Church.

Last week Pope Francis opened his “Synod of Bishops,” a conference of 450 bishops that is examining the future of the Catholic Church. On the agenda are tough questions: the place of LGBTQ persons in Catholicism, increased decision-making authority for women and lay people in the Church, and the still-simmering crisis of sexual abuse by priests.

As the Synod started, Francis wrote, “This is the primary task of the Synod: to refocus our gaze on God, to be a church that looks mercifully at humanity.” Meanwhile five so-called “conservative” cardinals sent pointed questions to Francis challenging him on his teaching. Francis deftly turned the questions aside, as Christ answered the Pharisees who tried to trap him.

Then last week Francis said, unambiguously, “Israel has a right to defend itself. I pray for those families who saw a feast day turned into a day of mourning, and I ask that the hostages be immediately released.”  

Through his ten years as Pope, Francis has communicated Christ’s message of compassion. That means looking beyond rigid doctrine. The so-called traditionalist cardinals, bishops, and others have relentlessly criticized him, called him a heretic and worse.

Francis hasn’t tried to overturn or ignore Catholic teaching on abortion, marriage, and sin. But he preaches that Christ never used legalisms or doctrine as a weapon.

The “traditionalists” are outraged at that. In August 2020 a priest from La Crosse, Wisc., Father James Altman, posted a video saying Francis has excommunicated himself. His bishop banned him from saying Mass. In 2021 Altman led the opening prayer at the right-wing Conservative Political Action Conference. Several bishops and actor Mel Gibson defended him.

Francis challenged the cardinals and bishops who attacked him, calling them backward-looking and reactionary. “Instead of living by the true doctrine that always develops and bears fruit, they live by ideologies,” he said.

Francis has not achieved everything he tried. When elected he promised “zero tolerance” for sexual abuse. But cases still show up. In February 2019 he convened a church summit on sexual abuse that produced no policy decisions.

I tracked down Father Steve after the Mass. I said, “I hope those angry cardinals don’t come after you.” He smiled and said something like, “yeah, there’s a parallel between the Pharisees and the people attacking the pope. That’s how I look at it.”

He added, “some of these issues are confusing. But the Holy Father is leading us to follow the teachings of Christ.”

In 2015 I stood in a crowd of maybe 25,000 below the Capitol to hear Francis speak after he had addressed a joint session of Congress. The cheers were deafening. At that moment he was a star. That was before the “traditionalists” or “conservatives” went after him.

Meanwhile the Israelis are bombing Hamas hideouts into rubble. The present-day Pharisees are looking for ammunition. Francis still is seeking, for all of us, the peace of Christ.