Dear Friends,

Here is what a friend wrote to the LA Dodgers:

“Dear Dodger Organization: One of the great gifts of growing up in Southern California was the LA Dodgers. As a 67yr old man my life memories are filled with Dodger blue. Going to Chavez Ravine for a game and having a Dodger Dog were the highlights of my summer. Listening to Vin Scully was better than watching a game on TV as he could paint pictures with his words. I can hear him now: “2 on, 2 out, the count is 2 balls and 2 strikes. The deuces are wild!”

I watched every inning of Orel Hershiser’s amazing streak, Fernando Valenzuela as a rookie and Kirk Gibson’s first in the air as he rounded first base. Me and my friends new every player in the old days and these days too. My brothers and sisters all bleed Dodger blue…until yesterday.

Besides being a Dodger Fan, I also grew up Catholic. I was shocked to see that you would honor a group, sisters of perpetual indulgence. You made your choice and now I have made mine. My signed baseballs, my hat, my jersey are all going to Goodwill. I will never visit your stadium, watch, or listen to a Dodger game or tell stories about the time I saw Willie Mays and Willie Davis high five each other or when Freddie and Mookie both went 3 for 3.

My days of being a Dodger fan are over. What’s the value of one fan anyway.”

Well said. It bespeaks a time when sports encouraged civic virtues that held us together and inspired us to all that is good and right in the human spirit. Not that the Dodger’s Organization will care about the nostalgic past. They are in the thrall of the rainbow cult. And pride is intolerant, it brooks no dissent, opposition, criticism, or anything getting in its way. It is going to take more than a letter to get them to respect our point of view and to choose to build up community and not tear it apart. But what?

Many have said and more have thought, that if it were another religion that was being mocked, all hell would have broken loose. (And remember no one was protesting that the Dodgers held a Pride Night but rather that they honored and praised a group that is blatantly anti-Catholic.) The Dodgers would be fined massively from the MLB or even suspended for a time. But ours is not the way of creating more damage or using violence to prove our point. The Master himself, told us: “when someone slaps you on one check, turn and offer the other.” “Pray for your enemies, do good to those who insult you.” “And then others will know you are children of my Father.”

I was glad to see that thousands showed up at Dodger Stadium to peacefully protest and to pray. It was hearting to see other Christians present as well as Jews. The way of Jesus is the way of real power. It is the only way to change things for the sake of goodness, truth and justice.

Dr. King understood this better than most. He taught the people who joined his Civil Rights movement the way of non-violence, which teaches that you can resist evil without resorting to violence and seek understanding and friendship with your enemy. And that meant those who follow such a path had to learn to take a beating, repeatedly and not retaliate. It means not firing a shot at your opponent but also refusing to hate your opponent. He knew that overtime, it would become unsustainable for those who inflicted the pain. And it would show society, the strength, righteousness, and truth of his mission. It is really the way of love. And he was right. And of course, the Master was nailed to a cross to show what real love, real power and real strength look like.

So, we too have to take more beatings, turn the cheek many times. Not in an effort to be passive or to be used but to show our true strength and the real power of the Gospel.

Love, Fr. John B

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