America Can Step Up in the Refugee Crisis

In response to the current refugee crisis, Pope Francis has asked every Catholic parish in Europe to take in at least one refugee family. With 25,000 parishes in Italy alone and another 12,000 in Germany, this could be tremendously helpful in reducing human suffering. But what about the United States? If Germany, with a population roughly one quarter of ours, can take in 800,000 people in 2015, surely the U.S. could do much more than it currently is to share the humanitarian burden more equitably. Our moral obligation to act is especially strong, considering the role misguided U.S. Middle Eastern policy over the past 60 years has played in creating the current turmoil in that region.

The logistical problems in pulling this off would be substantial, but manageable. The Federal Government would have a large role to play, but equally important would be grass roots efforts from various faith communities and others of good will at the local level. There would be opposition of course, given the ugly nativism that permeates our political discourse these days. But the world needs to know, and we need to remind ourselves, that Americans are capable of great generosity in times of crisis.

A look at the Big Picture tells us that any lasting solution requires an end to the violence in the Middle East and Africa. But the Even Bigger Picture shows endless repetitions of these tragedies, as more and more people are forced to leave their homes in the face of war, poverty, political persecution and environmental degradation. I don’t pretend to have the answers to these problems, but serious discussion and urgent action to address them are long overdue.

Michael Wilson,

Brunswick

Air Show Honored Violence

Steve Levesque, the Executive Director of MRRA, has stated “That the whole reason MRRA gets involved in putting on the air show is to remember those who served from WW2 to the modern age of aviation.”

I assume that those who served includes all the airmen of all the combatants.

So when the Blue Angels came roaring over Brunswick, I remembered Nanking and Guernica, Rotterdam, Coventry and London, Pearl Harbor and Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo, but most of all, I remembered Hiroshima and Nagasaki where tens of thousands of children were vaporized in the blinking of an eye.

Then I thought, when will we ever stop honoring and exalting wars and violence? Will peace ever be glorified and war called by its true definition, an exercise in criminal insanity?

Herschel Sternlieb,

Brunswick