UP IN ARMS
By Andy Weddington
Sunday, 31 August 2025
Sanity is all that stands between good and evil. - Raymond E. Feist
Sixty years ago about this time I was in 3rd grade - a parochial school in a typical North Carolina mill (textiles) town.
One Catholic church.
Small school adjacent.
By small I mean one class per grade - K through 8.
Mostly nuns. One or two lay teachers. All female.
When my 8th grade class graduated to best of memory there was 11 or 12 of us. [Somewhere I have a photo. A handful now deceased.]
During those carefree years the student body attended mass every morning then formed semicircle outside around the flag pole for raising of colors and recitation of Pledge of Allegiance or singing of patriotic song.
Learning through routine and reinforcement and example.
Then to class.
Oh, yes, we wore uniforms.
The nuns were school security; sometimes terrorizing students.
The parish priest lived in the Victorian style rectory next door.
Matters of discipline the nuns couldn't handle Monsignor addressed.
You did not want to be "invited" to see Monsignor O'Brien.
There was not fence around school nor church grounds.
School doors were not locked.
Fire drills routine but shelter in place was not so much as dreamed of as necessary.
We were safe.
Or least felt and believed ourselves safe.
But in contrast to today's environment, as happened in Minnesota last week, we were sitting ducks.
Easy prey.
I never saw firearm on school grounds.
I never knew of student taking drugs - illegal or prescribed.
And we surely had no idea a person could be anything other than as born.
For purposes of this commentary all necessary to say about last week in Minnesota is a disturbed young male (believing self female) showed up at a Catholic church/school with several firearms (rifle, shotgun, pistol) and commenced shooting children in church.
Two children killed.
Children and adults wounded.
They were sitting ducks; the praying easy prey.
The shooter ended own life.
The public, understandably and rightfully, is up in arms.
But, I confess ...
(Fire)arms is not the problem.
(Ph)arms is the problem.
And notice ... (P)harms.
That's the change from 60 years ago.
And we, the sane, better stand and get our loving arms around it.
Else evil.
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