When you look at the roots of Democracy or democratic values, they trace back to the period of fifth century
Although the roots of liberalism and scientific thought of the left is traceable, this book also discusses a presence. The nature of this presence is very difficult to describe; however, it feels as if someone is watching every movement, trying to exploit situations to exonerate the left, pushing and pulling until the forces of gravity pull you down, and a complete feeling of being a prisoner and a captive of something.
When you read this chapter, understand what has been said and the claims in previous chapters. Do not pay attention to the lies, pay attention to what is asked or demanded. Certain words are repeated such as; fear, police, authority, left, labor, dependence, community, desperation, force, imperfection, extremism, saturation, trickery, and a lack of ability or control to tell the truth. You have a creature on the extremes, refuses the spirit of deference, a creature which cannot get anything right but feels effort will make up the incompetence, you have an angry and upset creature, a hurt creature, a creature who feels it is competitive, a creature who is luring and feel intelligent to lure others, you have a creature tormented by the refusal to tell the truth or forced to be perfect in thought and actions. You have a creature that cannot be reasoned with or taught it cannot win. Call it a mess or call it a threat, the result is the same; the destruction of self identity and the individual for some type of evilness which cannot be defined or understood by efforts or desperation. This creature is tormented by the fact it cannot do anything right or communicate properly; so it must become a predator and seek to discharge this inability and imperfection by seeking an escape or seeking a prisoner. This creature is in pursuit because it is tormented. It seems as if when someone flushed, this entire stink rose to the surface and the question is why or why it is discharging on others and stinking up the existence of earth. Why is this hear and why is it having such an impact on the lives of others? Who cares if it is materially dependent or has built the railroads centuries ago, it is tormented to the point where it cannot speak or write matters down out of fear. Is there some physical being here yet known?
How do you teach reverence or the respect of others? This problem with the left in the stock market of human beings and trade will end up destroying or make business pursuits impossible while everything is being trashed by the left and market terrorists. They push their stocks to the top with dependency while pushing down other stocks which are profitable or sustainable. It is an attack and it is in full swing. If these people from the left and the right want to be political sluts and prostitute like a corner trick, then they should join the appropriate organization which can support their habits or existence as hypocrites and political sluts. It makes people feel cheap how a grown man or woman would want or try to get in their pants or pocket. All you can put your guns up and tell them to take two steps back or remove their dirty little hands mister. A lot of citizens in this world do not respect these natives at all and there is a very good reason, the way they view loyalty is seen by others as political prostitution, a political pervert or whore.
This presence has varied from 1986 to 2008. The awareness of a physical presence began at age 16 but was only relevant years later when these events began to add up. Physical threats to run off the road began in 1988 while working for a nonprofit organization called “The National Right to Work Committee” which is a legal based political organization with the mission statement of combating union violence and force. There have been numerous incidents of sliding across intersections on motorcycles or plowing into the back of vehicles on bikes. There have been many disagreements on how or what the problem is. During high school it was only a job, like flipping burgers, while programming computers but it is taken as a serious threat or a crime. The effort is to interfere or serious injure to prevent future events. Odd occurrences began as far back as 1986 when this attempt to exonerate began and also help; which is actually a way of saying join up. Maybe it began as a competition, but it did not turn out anywhere near a competition or acts of voluntary fortitude. This was about taken someone captive for their entire life with the goal of exonerating a political group which is in contention with its own government and the public. It was only after college that the level of strange events began to really surface and the ability to find employment impossible. Nobody would think their past would catch up with them after ten years but now was some standoff. The ignored attempts to be a friend, confidant, or an influence now began to become forceful and painful.
Part of this problem with physical presence has to do with choices. Those choices are fashioned in a format which asks whether or not we want to vote when it comes to the future of freedom? In 1998, it was clear and evident no choice was ever considered. It was some type of revolution or mutiny and the tables were turned. Employers became employees. Friends became enemies. Opposite sexes had to be ignored. Victims were now aggressors. Dependence became power. Stalking became advertisement. Education was devalued. Labor was invincible and widespread. Same sexes were in pursuit. Every single minute of every single day was scrutinized. It felt like an end of time and an end of reality. Emotional breakdown became a weekly occurrence when they were never a problem.
Even while an entire existence was collapsing, the people behind it were fully and completely aware of what was underway. They would taunt and make statements which allowed identification or knowledge of who was behind it. Alarm and concern began to really matter once this identification was made because it was the left. This presence is not supposed to be happening and these choices are not supposed to be blocked or destroyed.
When the effort began to expose this presence, there was a surge. That surge failed and began to really be careful when the scrutiny of the real authorities began to be present and they knew or had seen this before. An attempt was made to explain the entire situation and a feeling of disgust was furthered by a new voice who claimed to be the authority. Now the people who have the duties to combat or defend are clearly stating they are behind it; that effort is ignored and pushed further. The people behind the situation is finally cornered and made to realize they have been under surveillance and watch while this had been occurring. They begin now a rapid effort to withdraw and destroy anything which can substantiate the effort not realizing they must rewrite, with precise accuracy, the same documents again if exoneration is the goal. The entire presence now has subsided but it has not ceased. It is now attempts to ruin your day at the very beginning and have no presence or feeling of forward movements. The feeling is far distance and static, but the goal now is to upset or create a bad day everyday. The presence at a distance after the surge, turned into a legal and honorable effort where choices are never a problem or were a problem.
Analysis of the attacks and presence will reveal the same sources repeating. By drawing it out, a pattern was possible and data for analysis was plentiful. There were changes in the time line and levels of effort based on the circumstances. The feeling of being trapped or captive is not as strong but the creation of a bad day everyday is still there overtly. This presence is aware of what was underway, they are aware what is going on, they are aware of the affect it has on others, they are aware how upsetting and deplorable the behavior is. It is disheartening how it has such an impact or allowed to affect you daily because it feels like the book of rules was thrown at you while the book of rules were being burned. The same people who were doing it are now protesting and stating how they are victims or being attacked by their prisoners, captives, and hostages. It would make sense if they were hostage rescuers and could prove it. It would make sense if they knew what we were doing or were engaged in while this effort was underway. It would make more sense if someone reads the book and understands it took awhile before we could figure out what was going on.
There is a problem with a presence. There is a problem with what this presence does. There is a problem with what this presence claims as why it is such a powerful presence. There is a problem with how this presence seeks access and proximity over an “object.” There is a problem with what is discharged. There is a problem with a safety net or assurance of success. There is a problem with measurements to determine if the effort or presence was successful. There is a problem with continuing education or reinvigorating this charge to surge a resolve. There is a problem with exposure and behavior when more eyes are present. There is a problem with what happens afterwards and what words are used to either describe or explain the forceful presence. There are a lot of matters which need clear and concise answers instead of some elusive effort or an evasive approach. This is regret and that regret has to do with what will happen when it is done to the best soldiers in the world. The regret is what anyone expects or expects will happen when everything is put on the table.
This effort took three years from 1998 to 2001 and was ended in 2001 when various tests were made to trace it. This matter was completed in 2001 and numerous attempts to measure how much resistance or remainder of the individual remained after prison was made between 2005 to 2008 when we threw our identification and cards down with fury and rage which was not expected. This argument of being attacked by prisoners, hostages, or captives could not hold water because it was clear these are hostage rescuers who were taking action now. It is an attempt to seek protection from military forces and to utilize the power of the military against captives, prisoners, and hostages. While one effort has a negative, the other is a positive. It is viewed as competition and beating someone fair and square. Why someone feels the need to prevent two perfect people who scream each others name out when they see each other, then replace it with waves of flawed witches or hags, defeats logic. Even the women are straight up mean and it is not a problem of them coming to you. Why anyone would say they are not doing anything wrong or want to help when approached or caught doing this, is nauseating. You lock the door, they go to the window, lock the window they go to the back, lock the back they give you the VIP treatment. Is there an answer to this problem and what is effective to prevent this from happening? It is sick, deplorable, and appalling behavior which makes you want to seriously hurt the leftist movement very badly to teach them a lesson about dangerous behavior. The average person targeted would become a statistic because they do not have the tools of the trade hostage rescuers have or utilize.
Professionals are able to get themselves out of difficult or impossible situations at tremendous odds, do not try to reproduce or copy cat the crimes being read. You must fight the left like crazy and unleash hell fire just to fall back or take cover. You must fall back until you can figure out what is going on or have enough to take a guess. They do not see it this way or see it the same way; this is why the effort is doubled and the feeling of being on the verge of victory overcomes them. The political climate values the stock of the truth as a crime while it inflates the stock of the left in an effort to formulate a valuation crisis or devalue until there is no material cost or worth. If the view is of the same or equal cost, then the value can be established based on the earning potentials.
This problem with the left in the stock market of human beings and trade will end up destroying or make business pursuits impossible while everything is being trashed by the left and market terrorists. They push their stocks to the top with dependency while pushing down other stocks which are profitable or sustainable. It is an attack and it is in full swing. If these people from the left and the right want to be political sluts and prostitute like a corner trick, then they should join the appropriate organization which can support their habits or existence as hypocrites and political sluts. It makes people feel cheap how a grown man or woman would want or try to get in their pants or pocket. All you can put your guns up and tell them to take two steps back or remove their dirty little hands mister. A lot of this behavior can be seen in environmental policies where someone is going around and trying to solicit loyalty while acting like a political pervert. A lot of people in this world do not respect these people at all and there is a very good reason, the way they view loyalty is seen by others as political prostitution. This prostitution is both male and female and it hits you from nowhere.
We have traced the history of the liberalism and the history of the left in scientific thought or ideological bearings. We have traced the formation of the conservative or the right with an equal format. All of those academic pursuits are mostly theoretical and the question is presence. How strong is the scientific thought related to the physical presence? For this explanation of this physical presence, a historical basis has been done which can either explain or show the pattern of behavior is a repeated theme. It may be genetic, it may be religious, it may be cultural, it may be political, or it may be a lot more not yet understood. However, when you take a look at the accounts and analyze the witness accounts; these presences sound exactly like the psychological profile of other forces in history. You can draw a diagram and determine how much of the behavior overlaps or fits perfectly with other events in history to suggest a clear strategic objective. The tactics have changed and become more sophisticated, but the effort and presence is still the same end result and bottom line. History is a process of documentation and verification; for all efforts to document this matter has allowed a better glimpse into the history of the left. All of the following articles come from Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.
Molly Maguire’s
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Molly Maguire’s were members of a secret Irish organization. Many historians believe the Mollies were present in the anthracite coal fields of
There is little doubt that some Irish miners conspired to commit crime; however, the trusts seem to have focused almost exclusively upon the Molly Maguire’s for criminal prosecution. This may be a consequence of Irish miners acting as the core of militant union activism during a bitter strike provoked by a twenty percent wage reduction. Violence during the period was widespread, with Irish Catholic miners who reportedly made up the secret organization also falling victim.
Some aspects of the investigations, trials, and executions are unseemly. Information passed from the Pinkerton detective, intended only for the detective agency and their client — the most powerful industrialist of the region — was apparently also provided to vigilantes who ambushed and murdered miners suspected of being Molly Maguire’s. The vigilantes did not spare the miners’ families. [1] The industrialist standing to gain financially from the destruction of the striking union acted as prosecutor of some of the alleged Molly Maguire’s at their trials.
Molly history is sometimes presented as the prosecution of an underground movement that was motivated by personal vendettas, and sometimes as a struggle between organized labor and powerful industrial forces. [2] Whether membership in the Molly organization overlapped union membership to any appreciable extent remains open to conjecture. Much remains uncertain, for the Molly Maguire’s left virtually no evidence of their existence, and nearly everything that we know about them was written by biased contemporary observers. [3]
Mollies in
The Molly Maguire’s originated in
Although there was a specific organization called the Society of Ribbonmen, the term Ribbonism became a catchall expression for rural violence in
Agrarian rebellion in
One area of Molly Maguire activity was Donegal, where the practice of rundale, in which land was divided for tenant usage by the tenants themselves, rather than according to the landowner's dictates. For example, the concept of "a cow's grass" acted as a measure of the land which was necessary to sustain one cow through summer grazing and winter fodder. The subdivision of land took into account the quality of grazing, and while some lots of land were frequently subdivided generationally among family members, other land was held in common. Although such practices had existed from "time immemorial," there were no written leases to protect the tenants. As landlords implemented new ways of using the land, such as "highly disruptive" experiments with intensive sheep farming, some tenants in Donegal and elsewhere were moved to resistance. [8]
Most landlords and their agents were Protestant, while the Molly Maguire’s were Catholic — an exacerbating factor that complicated relations. The victims of agrarian violence were frequently Irish land agents, middlemen, and tenants. Merchants and millers were often threatened or attacked if their prices were high. Landlords' agents were threatened, beaten, and assassinated. New tenants on lands secured by evictions also became targets. [9]
Local Molly Maguire’s leaders were reported to have sometimes dressed as women, representing the Irish mother begging for food for her children. The leader might approach a storekeeper and demand a donation of flour or groceries. If the storekeeper failed to provide, the Molly Maguire’s would enter the store and take what they wanted, warning the owner of dire consequences if the incident was reported. [10]
There are a number of folk tales about the source of the Molly Maguire’s name. Molly may have been a widow who was evicted from her house, inspiring her defenders to form a secret society to exact retribution. Molly Maguire may have been the owner of a shebeen, an illicit tavern, where the society met. Another story suggests that Molly Maguire was a fierce young woman who led men through the countryside on nighttime raids.
Kevin Kenny believes that the most likely explanation is simply the practice of men dressing up like women and taking a female name both as a disguise and simple form of social transgression. While the Whiteboys were known to wear white linen frocks over their clothing, the Mollies blackened their faces with burnt cork. Kenny notes similarities — particularly in face-blackening and in the donning of women's garments — with the practice of mummery, in which festive days were celebrated by mummers who traveled from door to door demanding food, money, or drink as payment for a performance. The Threshers, the Peep O'Day Boys, the Lady Rocks, and the Lady Clares also disguised themselves as women. [11]
Mollies in
Many historians believe that Irish immigrants brought a form of the Molly Maguire’s organization into
Historians disagree about the Mollies
A heritage of agrarian violence in
Although a legitimate self-help organization for Irish immigrants existed in the form of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), most mainstream writers accept that the Molly Maguire’s existed as a secret organization in Pennsylvania, and that they used the AOH as a "front." Yet historians are not even in agreement on this last point. For example, Joseph Payback’s 1966 volume A History of American Labor states that the "identity of the Molly Maguire’s has never been proved."[13]
Even authors who accept the existence of the Mollies as a violent and destructive group acknowledge a significant scholarship that questions the entire history. In The Pinkerton Story, authors James D. Horan and Howard Swiggett write sympathetically about the detective agency and its mission to bring the Mollies to justice. Yet they observe, the difficulty of achieving strict and fair accuracy in relation to the Mollie Maguire’s is very great. Sensible men have held there never even was such an organization... We do believe, however, that members of a secret organization, bound to each other by oath, used the facilities and personnel of the organization to carry out personal vendettas... [14] Such disagreements over a period when "labor was at war with capital, Democrat with Republican, Protestant with Catholic, and immigrant with native,"[15] are, perhaps, to be expected.
Media attention
In Labor's Untold Story, Richard Boyer and Herbert Morais put the responsibility for creating the Molly Maguire’s on industrialist Franklin B. Gowen, observing that, a good number of historians now concede that there was never any organization in Pennsylvania known as the Molly Maguire’s—although any militant miner might have been called a Molly Maguire after the newspapers had spread Gowen's charge far and wide. [16] Gowen, who was wealthy, powerful, and the District Attorney for Schuylkill County, contributed to such perceptions when he declared, the name of Molly Maguire being attached to a man's name is sufficient to hang him.[12]
Although newspapers sensationalized accounts of the Mollies, [17] not all media accepted the popular reports. The
History
During the 1870s, powerful financial syndicates controlled the railroads and the coalfields. Coal companies had begun to recruit immigrants from overseas, luring them with "promises of fortune-making." Herded into freight trains by the hundreds, these workers often replaced English-speaking miners who, according to George Korson, "...were compelled to give way in one coal field after another, either abandoning the industry altogether for other occupations or else retreating, like the vanishing American Indian, westward..."[19]
Frequently unable to read safety instructions, the immigrant workers ...faced constant hazards from violation of safety precautions, such as they were. Injuries and deaths in mine disasters, frequently reported in the newspapers, shocked the nation. [19]
Twenty-two thousand coal miners worked in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania.[12] Fifty-five hundred of the mineworkers in the county were children between the ages of seven and sixteen years[20] who earned between one and three dollars a week separating slate from the coal. Injured miners, or those too old to work at the face, were also assigned to picking slate at the "breakers" where the coal was crushed into a manageable size. Thus, many of the elderly miners finished their mining days as they'd begun in their youth. [21]
The miners lived a life of "bitter, terrible struggle."[22] The daily routine of the miner was to crawl in the dim light of his lamp, in mud and trickling water, surrounded by coal dust and perhaps powder smoke... the struggle was a difficult one.[12]
Disaster strikes
Wages were low, working conditions were atrocious, and deaths and serious injuries numbered in the hundreds each year. On September 6, 1869, at the Avondale Mine in
The miners also faced a speedup system that was exhausting. In its November, 1877 issue, Harper's New Monthly Magazine published an interviewer's comments, A miner tells me that he often brought his food uneaten out of the mine from want of time; for he must have his car loaded when the driver comes for it, or lose one of the seven car-loads which form his daily work.[25]
As the bodies of the miners were brought up from the Avondale Mine disaster, John Siney, head of the Workingmen's Benevolent Association (WBA), climbed onto a wagon to speak to the thousands of miners who had arrived from surrounding communities: [26] Men, if you must die with your boots on, die for your families, your homes, your country, but do not longer consent to die, like rats in a trap, for those who have no more interest in you than in the pick you dig with.[27] He asked the miners to join the union, and thousands of them did so that day.[28]
Some miners faced the additional burden of prejudice and persecution. In the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s, twenty thousand Irish workers had arrived in Schuylkill County.[29] The Molly Maguire’s were Irish and Catholic in a time and place where signs in employment windows often declared, "No Irish need apply." It was a time of rampant beatings and murders in the mining district, some of which were committed by the Mollies. [30]
Six years of depression
The period from 1873 to 1879 was marked by one of the worst depressions in the nation's history, caused by reckless speculation and wholesale stock watering. By 1877 an estimated one-fifth of the nation's workingmen were completely unemployed, two-fifths worked no more than six or seven months a year and only one-fifth had full-time jobs. [31] But not everyone had been suffering equally: Labor angrily watched "railway directors (riding) about the country in luxurious private cars proclaiming their inability to pay living wages to hungry working men."[20]
Mine owners move against the union
Franklin B. Gowen, the President of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, and of the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company, a first generation Irish American protestant and "the wealthiest anthracite coal mine owner in the world," hired Allan Pinkerton's services to deal with the Molly Maguire’s. Pinkerton selected James McParlan, a native of County Armagh, to go undercover against the Mollies. Using the alias of James McKenna, he became a trusted member of the organization, and became a secretary for one of its local groups. McParlan's assignment was to collect evidence of murder plots and intrigue, passing this information along to his Pinkerton manager. He also began working secretly with a Pinkerton agent assigned to the Coal and Iron Police for the purpose of coordinating the eventual arrest and prosecution of members of the Molly Maguire’s.[32]
Although there had been fifty "inexplicable murders" between 1863 and 1867 in
McParlan wrote: I am sick and tired of this thing. I seem to make no progress. [35]
The union had grown powerful; thirty thousand members—eighty-five percent of
One of the burning questions for modern scholars is the relationship between the Workingmen's Benevolent Association, the Mollies, and their alleged cover organization, the Ancient Order of Hibernians. Historian Kevin Kenny notes that all of the men who were convicted were members of the AOH. But "the Molly Maguire’s themselves left virtually no evidence of their existence, let alone their aims and motivation."[37]
Relying upon his personal knowledge before commencing an investigation, James McParlan believed that the Molly Maguire’s, under pressure for their activities, had taken the new name "Ancient Order of Hibernians" (AOH). After beginning his investigation, he estimated that there were about 450 members of the AOH in
In his book Big Trouble, which traces James McParlan's history, Anthony Lukas has written, the WBA was run by
Of the 450 AOH members that Pinkerton Agent McParlan estimated were in
Kenny also notes that one contemporary organization, the Pennsylvania Bureau of Industrial Statistics, clearly distinguished between the union and the violence attributed to the Molly Maguire’s. Their reports indicate that violence could be traced to the time of the Civil War, but that in the five year existence of the WBA, "the relations existing between employers and employees" had greatly improved. The Bureau concluded that the union had brought an end to the "carnival of crime." Kenny further notes that the leaders of the WBA were "always unequivocally opposed" to the Molly Maguire’s. [43]
Kenny continues, most Irish mine workers belonged to the WBA and roughly half the officers of its executive board in 1872 bore Irish names. But, in addition to the WBA, there existed a loosely organized body of men called the Molly Maguire’s, whose membership appears to have been exclusively Irish... Both modes of organization... tried to improve conditions of life and labor in the anthracite region. But the strategy of the trade union was indirect, gradual, peaceful, and systematically organized across the anthracite region, while that of the Molly Maguire’s was direct, violent, sporadic, and confined to a specific locality.[44]
Kenny observes that there were frequent tensions between British miners, who held the majority of skilled positions, and the mass of unskilled Irish laborers. However, in spite of such differences, the WBA offered a solution, and for the most part "did a remarkable job" in overcoming such differences. [45] All mine workers, regardless of craft status, national origin, and religious background, were eligible to join the WBA. As a result, the WBA must have included some "Molly Maguire’s" among its ranks; many of its rank and file were members of the AOH, and there is evidence that some disgruntled trade union members favored violence against the wishes of their leaders, especially in the climactic year of 1875. But there were no Molly’s among the leaders of the WBA, who took every opportunity they could to condemn the Molly Maguire’s and the use of violence as a strategy in the labor struggle. While the membership of the trade union and the secret society undoubtedly overlapped to some extent, they must be seen as ideologically and institutionally distinct. [46]
Whatever the relationship between the WBA and the Molly Maguire’s, their fates were intertwined — at least in part because there were many in positions of power who chose to see no distinctions. [47]
Vigilante justice
F.P. Dewees, a contemporary and a confidant of Gowen, wrote that by 1873 "Mr. Gowen was fully impressed with the necessity of lessening the overgrown power of the 'Labor Union' and exterminating if possible the Molly Maguire’s." In December, 1874, Gowen led the other coal operators to announce a twenty percent pay cut. The miners decided to strike on January 1, 1875. [34]
From the first it was war, Gowen trying for the absolute extermination upon which Dewees wrote he was determined. Led by the president of the
According to Lucas, the Modocs were "a gang of Welsh miners" with whom the Molly Maguire’s sometimes skirmished. [48] Edward Coyle, a leader of the union and of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, was murdered in March. Another member of the AOH was shot and killed by the Modocs led by one Bradley, a mine superintendent. Patrick Vary, a mine boss, fired into a group of miners and, according to the later boast by Gowen, as the miners "fled they left a long trail of blood behind them." At Tuscarora a meeting of miners was attacked by vigilantes who shot and killed one miner and wounded several others. [49]
Pinkerton Agent Robert J. Linden was brought in to support McParlan while serving with the Coal and Iron Police. [50] On August 29, 1875, Allan Pinkerton wrote a letter to George Bangs, Pinkerton's general superintendent, recommending vigilante actions against the Molly Maguire’s: The M.M.'s are a species of Thugs... Let
On December 10, 1875, three men and two women were attacked in their house by masked men. Lukas observes that the attack "seems to reflect the strategy outlined in Pinkerton's memo."[52] The victims had been secretly identified by McParlan as Mollies. One of the men was killed in the house, and the other two Mollies were wounded but able to escape. A woman, the wife of one of the Mollies, was shot dead. [35]
McParlan was outraged that the information he had been providing had found its way into the hands of indiscriminant killers. When he heard some details of the attack at the house, McParlan protested in a letter to his Pinkerton supervisor. He did not object that Mollies might be assassinated as a result of his labor spying — they "got their just deserving." But McParlan resigned when it became apparent the vigilantes were willing to commit the "murder of women and children," whom he deemed innocent victims. [53] His letter stated:
Friday: This morning at 8 A.M. I heard that a crowd of masked men had entered Mrs. O'Donnell's house... and had killed James O'Donnell alias Friday, Charles O'Donnell and James McAllister, also Mrs. McAllister whom they took out of the house and shot (Charles McAllister's wife). Now as for the O’Donnell’s I am satisfied they got their just deserving. I reported what those men were. I give all information about them so clear that the courts could have taken hold of their case at any time but the witnesses were too cowardly to do it. I have also in the interests of God and humanity notified you months before some of those outrages were committed still the authorities took no hold of the matter. Now I wake up this morning to find that I am the murderer of Mrs. McAlister. What had a woman to do with the case—did the [Molly Maguire’s] in their worst time shoot down women. If I was not here the Vigilante Committee would not know who was guilty and when I find them shooting women in their thirst for blood I hereby tender my resignation to take effect as soon as this message is received. It is not cowardice that makes me resign but just let them have it now I will no longer interfere as I see that one is the same as the other and I am not going to be an accessory to the murder of women and children. I am sure the [Molly Maguire’s] will not spare the women so long as the Vigilante has shown an example. [54]
There appears to be an error in the detective's report (which also constituted his resignation letter) of the vigilante incident: he failed to convey the correct number of deaths. James "Friday" O'Donnell and Charles McAllister "were wounded but able to escape."[55] In the note, McParlan reported that these two had been killed by vigilantes. Such notes, possibly containing erroneous or as-yet-unverified information, were forwarded daily by Pinkerton operatives. The content was routinely made available to Pinkerton clients in typed reports. [56]
McParlan believed his daily reports had been made available to the anti-Molly vigilantes. Benjamin Franklin, McParlan's Pinkerton supervisor, declared himself "anxious to satisfy [McParlan] that [the Pinkerton Agency has] nothing to do with [the vigilante murders.]" McParlan was prevailed upon not to resign. [57]
A man named Frank Wenrich, a first lieutenant with the
Union leadership imprisoned
The state militia and the Coal and Iron Police patrolled the district. Union leaders were "excoriated by the press," and were "denounced from altar and pulpit." On May 12, John Siney, the union leader who had addressed miners at the Avondale disaster, and who favored arbitration and had opposed the strike, was arrested at a mass meeting called to protest the importation of strike breakers. An organizer for the miners' national association by the name of Xingo Parkes was also arrested, along with twenty-six other union officials, all on a charge of conspiracy. Judge John Holden Owes instructed the jury that ...any agreement, combination or confederation to increase or depress the price of any vendible commodity, whether labor, merchandise, or anything else, is indictable as a conspiracy under the laws of
The strike fails
The union was nearly broken by the imprisonment of its leadership and by attacks conducted by vigilantes against the strikers. Gowen "deluged the newspapers with stories of murder and arson" committed by the Molly Maguire’s. The press produced stories of strikes in
In
After six months the strike was defeated and the miners returned to work, accepting the twenty percent cut in pay. But miners belonging to the Ancient Order of Hibernians continued the fight.[59] McParlan acknowledged increasing support for the Mollies in his reports: Men, who last winter would not notice a Molly Maguire are now glad to take them by the hand and make much of them. If the bosses exercise tyranny over the men they appear to look to the association for help. [60]
Lukas observes that the defeat was humiliating, and traces the roots of Molly frustration in the aftermath of the failed strike: Judges, lawyers, and policemen were overwhelmingly Welsh, German, or English... When the coalfield Irish sought to remedy their grievances through the courts, they often met delays, obfuscation, or doors slammed in their faces. No longer looking to these institutions for justice, they turned instead to the Mollies... Before the summer was over, six men—all Welsh or German—paid with their lives. [61] Boyer and Morais argue that the killing wasn't all one-sided: Militant miners often disappeared; their bodies sometimes being found later in deserted mine shafts. [59]
McParlan penetrates the "inner circle"
After months of little progress, McParlan reported some plans by the "inner circle."
Gomer James, a Welshman, had shot and wounded one of the Mollies, and plans were formulated for a revenge killing. But the wheels of revenge were grinding slowly. And there was other violence: November was a bloody month what with the miners on strike... In the three days around November 18, a Mollie was found dead in the streets of Carbondale, north of Scranton, a man had his throat cut, an unidentified man was crucified in the woods, a mining boss mauled, a man murdered in Scranton, and three men of [another Molly Maguire’s group] were guilty of a horror against an old woman, and an attempt to assassinate a Mollie, Dougherty, followed and [Dougherty] at once demanded the murder of W.M. Thomas, whom he blamed for the attempt.[62]
On the last day of the month, with Gowen's strikebreakers pouring in, the Summit telegraph office was burned, a train derailed, and McParlan advised [his Pinkerton supervisor] to send in uniformed police to preserve order.[62] A plan to destroy a railroad bridge was abandoned due to the presence of outsiders. The Irish had been forbidden by the English and Welsh to set foot in a public square in
In the meantime a messenger reported that Thomas, the would-be killer of one of the Mollies, had been killed in the stable where he worked. McParlan reported that he, McParlan, had been asked to supply the hidden killers with food and whiskey. Horan and Swiggett write, the probability is that as a man, Bully Bill Thomas, a Welshman, was no better than his enemies, but he was remarkable in other ways. His killers, leaving him for dead in the stable door, were not aware until two days later that he had survived. [63]
Another plan was in the works, this one against two night watchmen, Pat McCarron and Borough Patrolman Benjamin Yost. Accused Mollies Jimmy Kerrigan and Thomas Duffy were said to despise Yost, who had arrested them numerous times. Yost was shot as he put out a street light, which at that time necessitated climbing the lamp pole. Before he died, he reported that his killers were Irish, but were not Kerrigan or Duffy.
McParlan recorded that a Molly by the name of William Love killed a justice of the peace by the name of Gwyther in Girardville. Unknown Mollies were accused of wounding a man outside his saloon in Shenandoah. Gomer James was killed while he tended bar. Then, McParlan recorded, a group of Mollies reported to him that they had killed a mine boss named Sanger, and another man who was with him. Forewarned of the attempt, McParlan had sought to arrange protection for the mine boss, but was unsuccessful. [64] While there was concern whether enough evidence was collected on reprisal killings and assassinations that sufficient arrests of the Mollies could be made, McParlan's identity had been discovered. [65]
The trials
When Franklin Gowen first hired the Pinkerton agency, he had claimed the Molly Maguire’s were so powerful they had made capital and labor "their puppets."[66] When the trials of the alleged puppet-masters opened, Gowen had himself appointed as special prosecutor. He thus put himself in the position to personally ask the state, in courtrooms that were guarded by militia with bayonets fixed, to execute the union men that had struck his coal mines. [67]
The first trial of defendants McGeehan, Carroll, Duffy, James Boyle, and James Roarity for the killing of Benjamin Yost commenced in May, 1876. Yost had not recognized the men who attacked him. Although Kerrigan has since been described, along with Duffy, as hating the night watchman enough to plot his murder, [68] Kerrigan became a state's witness and testified against the union leaders and other miners. However, Kerrigan's wife testified in the courtroom that her husband had committed the murder. She testified that she refused to provide her husband with clothing while he was in prison, because he had "picked innocent men to suffer for his crime." She stated that her speaking out was voluntary, and that she was interested only in telling the truth about the murder. Gowen cross-examined her, but could not shake her testimony. Others supported her testimony amid speculation that Kerrigan was receiving special treatment due to the fact that James McParlan was engaged to his sister-in-law, Mary Ann Higgins. [69] This trial was declared a mistrial due to the death of one of the jurors. A new trail was granted two months later. During that trial Fanny Kerrigan did not testify. The five defendants were sentenced to death. Kerrigan was allowed to go free.
The trial of Tom Munley for the murder of mine foreman Thomas Sanger and his friend, William Uren, relied entirely upon the testimony of James McParlan, and the eyewitness account of a witness. The witness stated under oath that he had seen the murderer clearly, and that Munley was not the murderer. Yet the jury accepted McParlan's testimony that Munley had privately confessed to the murder. Munley was sentenced to death. [70]
Another four miners were put on trial and were found guilty on a charge of murder for which they had previously been found innocent. The testimony against them came from only two sources: James McParlan, and "Kelly the Bum." McParlan had no direct evidence, but had recorded that the four admitted their guilt to him. Kelly the Bum was being held in a cell for murder and he had been quoted, "I would squeal on Jesus Christ to get out of here." In return for his testimony, the murder charge against him was dismissed. [71]
A. “Coffin notice", allegedly posted by Molly Maguire’s in
A. "Coffin notice", allegedly posted by Molly Maguire’s in
In November McAllister was convicted. McParlan's testimony in the Molly Maguire’s trials helped to send ten men to the gallows. The defense attorneys repeatedly sought to portray McParlan as an agent-provocateur who was responsible for not warning people of their imminent deaths. (Kenny 232-33) McParlan testified that the AOH and the Molly’s were one and the same, but most historians disagree. (Kenny 234-5)
Many years later in preparation for a different trial, James McParlan would tell another witness, a confessed mass murderer by the name of Harry Orchard, that Kelly the Bum not only had won his freedom for testifying against union leaders, he had been given one thousand dollars to "subsidize a new life abroad." McParlan was attempting to convince Orchard to accuse the leadership of an entirely different union, the Western Federation of Miners (WFM), of conspiracy to commit another murder. [72] Unlike in the case of the Molly Maguire’s, the union leadership of the WFM was acquitted. Orchard alone was convicted, and spent the rest of his life in prison.
The executions
On June 21, 1877, six men were hanged in the prison at
Four members of the Molly Maguire’s, Alexander Campbell, John "Yellow Jack" Donohue, Michael Doyle and Edward Kelly, were hanged on June 21, 1877 at a Carbon County, Pennsylvania prison in Mauch Chunk (renamed Jim Thorpe in 1953), for the murder of mine bosses John P. Jones and Morgan Powell, following a trial that was later described by a Carbon County judge, John P. Lavelle, as follows: The Molly Maguire trials were a surrender of state sovereignty. A private corporation initiated the investigation through a private detective agency. A private police force arrested the alleged defenders, and private attorneys for the coal companies prosecuted them. The state provided only the courtroom and the gallows.
Michael J. Doyle and Hugh McGeehan were led to the scaffold. They were followed by Thomas Munley, James Carroll, James Roarity, James Boyle, Thomas Duffy, Edward J. Kelly, Alexander Campbell, John Donahue, Ten more of the condemned men, Thomas P. Fisher, John Kehoe, Patrick Hester, Peter McHugh, Patrick Tully, Peter McManus, Dennis Donnelly, Martin Bergan, James McDonald and Charles Sharpe, were hanged at Mauch Chunk, Pottsville, Bloomsburg and Sunbury over the next two years.
James Ford
Many accounts of the Molly Maguire’s that were written during, or shortly after, the period offer no admission that there was widespread violence in the area, that vigilantism existed, nor that violence was carried out against the miners. In 1910, industrialist and historian James Ford Rhodes published a major scholarly analysis in the leading professional history journal: [73]
Many of the Mollies were miners and the mode of working the mines lent itself to their peculiar policy. Miners were paid by the cubic yard, by the mine car, or by the ton, and (in the driving of entries) by the lineal yard. In the assignment of places, which was made by the mining boss, there were "soft" jobs and hard. If a Molly applied for a soft job and was refused, his anger was aroused and not infrequently in due time the offending boss was murdered. If he got employment, there was a constant chance of disagreement in measuring-up the work and in estimating the quality of the coal mined, for it was the custom to dock the miners' wages for bad coal with too much slate and dirt, and a serious disagreement was apt to be followed by violence. Little wonder was it that, as the source of the outrages was well understood, mining bosses refused to employ Irishmen, but this did not ensure their safety, as they might then be murdered for their refusal. A good Superintendent of any colliery would, in his quality of superior officer, support an efficient mining boss and would thus fall under the ban himself. John T. Morse, Jr., who made a contemporaneous study of the Molly Maguire’s, wrote in his vivid account of their operations: "The superintendents and 'bosses' in the collieries could all rest assured that their days would not be long in the land. Everywhere and at all times they were attacked, beaten, and shot down, by day and by night; month after month and year after year, on the public highways and in their own homes, in solitary places and in the neighborhood of crowds, these doomed men continued to fall in frightful succession beneath the hands of assassins."[74]
The murders were not committed in the heat of sudden passion for some fancied wrong: they were the result of a deliberate system. The wronged individual laid his case before a quasi judicial tribunal demanding the death, say, of a mining boss and urging his reasons. If they were satisfactory, as they usually were, the murder was decreed; but the task was not assigned to the aggrieved person or to any one in his and the victim's neighborhood: perhaps directly-aggrieved parties might be tempted to use more force or more cruelty than necessary. Two or more relatively disinterested Mollies from a different part of the county or even from the adjoining county were selected to do the killing because, being unknown, they could the more easily escape detection. Refusal to carry out the dictate of the conclave was dangerous and seldom happened, although an arrangement of substitution, if properly supported, was permitted. The meeting generally took place in an upper room of a hotel or saloon and, after the serious business, came the social reunion with deep libations of whiskey.
In attempting to give precise figures, some writers have undoubtedly exaggerated the number of murders by this order from 1865 to 1875; but no one can go through the evidence without being convinced that a great many men were killed to satisfy the vengeful spirit of the Molly Maguire’s. Some of the victims were men so useful, so conspicuous, and so beloved in their communities that their assassinations caused a profound and enduring impression. In some cases, so Dewees (who has written a very useful story [75]) asserts, robbery was added to murder: superintendents, who were carrying the money for the monthly pay of the miners and laborers, were waylaid as they drove along some lonely road in the desolate country. While the murders were numerous, still more numerous were the threats of murder and warnings to leave the country written on a sheet of paper with a rude picture of a coffin or a pistol and sometimes both. One notice read: "Mr. John Taylor — we will give you one week to go, but if you are alive on next Saturday you will die." Another, to three bosses, charged with "cheating thy men" had a picture of three pistols and a coffin and on the coffin was written, "This is your home."[76] In other mining districts and in manufacturing localities, during strikes and times of turbulence similar warnings have been common and have been laughed at by mining bosses, superintendents, and proprietors; but, in the anthracite region between 1865 and 1876 the bravest of men could not forget how many of his fellows had been shot and suppress a feeling of uneasiness when he found such a missive on his doorstep or posted up on the door of his office at the mine. Many a superintendent and mining boss left his house in the morning with his hand on his revolver, wondering if he would ever see wife and children again.
The young men of the order were selected for the commission of murder; above them were older heads holding high office and, in a variety of ways, displaying executive ability. They were quick to see what a weapon to their hand was universal suffrage, and, with the aptitude for politics which the Irish have shown in our country, they developed their order into a political power to be reckoned with. Numbering in
The question of justice
Some have declared unequivocally that justice was done. An industrial spokesman proclaimed after the last trial, Peace once more reigns in the anthracite coal regions. Mollie Maguire’s is practically dead. The inhabitants of the anthracite coal regions are now enjoying the blessed peace which has recently come to them. God rules, justice must reign, and right must triumph. [82]
Others do not seem so certain. Horan and Swiggett, ever supportive of the Pinkerton cause that is the subject of their book, declare that "evil men had conspired for years to do evil things and the law had at last overtaken them." Yet a footnote suggests that their verdict concerning the trials that condemned the Molly Maguire’s is heavily qualified. They write, "There was much, of course, in the practices and outlook of the times which is abhorrent today." The footnote to this observation explains, at the trials, special assistants to the district attorneys were supplied by the
Horan and Swiggett also note that others have argued ...punishment had gone too far, and that the guilt of some of the condemned was that of association more than participation and but half established by other condemned men seeking clemency for themselves. [22] Boyer and Morais wrote, McParlan agreed to testify, and did testify, that all those whom Gowan wanted removed had freely and voluntarily confessed to him that they had committed various murders. His word was to be corroborated by various prisoners at various of the county's jails, freedom the reward for corroboration. Among those who buttressed McParlan's testimony at the ensuing trials was a prisoner known as Kelly the Bum, who admitted that he had committed every crime in the calendar. This person was another prisoner was one Jimmy Kerrigan whose wife testified that he himself had committed the murder with which he was charging the miners of the AOH. [59]
Joseph G. Rayback, author of A History of American Labor, has observed:
The charge has been made that the Molly Maguire’s episode was deliberately manufactured by the coal operators with the express purpose of destroying all vestiges of unionism in the area... There is some evidence to support the charge... the "crime wave" that appeared in the anthracite fields came after the appearance of the Pinkertons, and... Many of the victims of the crimes were union leaders and ordinary miners. The evidence brought against [the defendants], supplied by James McParlan, a Pinkerton, and corroborated by men who were granted immunity for their own crimes, was tortuous and contradictory, but the net effect was damning... The trial temporarily destroyed the last vestiges of labor unionism in the anthracite area. More important, it gave the public the impression... that miners were by nature criminal in character... [84]
The union point of view is expressed by the Miners' Journal of June 22, 1877, which asked simply: What did they do? Whenever prices of labor did not suit them, they organized to proclaim a strike. [85]
The aftermath
When organized labor helped to elect Terence V. Powderly mayor of
__________
Know Nothing Party
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Know Nothing movement was a native’s American political movement of the 1850s. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by Irish Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to American values and controlled by the Pope in
The movement originated in
History
The immigration of large numbers of Irish and German Catholics to the
Although Catholics asserted they were politically independent of priests, Protestants alleged that Pope Pius IX had put down the failed liberal Revolutions of 1848 and was an opponent of liberty, democracy and Protestantism. These concerns encouraged conspiracy theories regarding the Pope's purported plans to subjugate the
Fear of Catholic immigration led to a dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party, whose prominent membership included many Irish-American Catholics. Activists formed secret groups, coordinating their votes and throwing their weight behind candidates sympathetic to their cause. When asked about these secret organizations, members were to reply "I know nothing," which led to their popularly being called Know Nothings. This movement won elections in major cities from
In spring 1854, the Know Nothings carried
The key to Know Nothing success in 1854 was the collapse of the second party system, brought about primarily by the demise of the Whig party. The Whig party, weakened for years by internal dissent and chronic factionalism, was nearly destroyed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Growing anti-party sentiment, fueled by anti-slavery as well as temperance and natives, also contributed to the disintegration of the party system. The collapsing second party system gave the Know Nothings a much larger pool of potential converts than was available to previous native’s organizations, allowing the Order to succeed where older nativist groups had failed.
– Tyler G. Anbinder, Natives and Slavery, p. 95
In 1854, members of the American Party allegedly stole and destroyed the block of granite contributed by Pope Pius IX for the
In
In spring 1855, Levi Boone was elected Mayor of
The party declined rapidly in the North in 1855–56. In the Election of 1856, it was bitterly divided over slavery. One faction supported the ticket of presidential nominee Millard Fillmore and vice-presidential nominee Andrew Jackson Donnellson, who won 23% of the popular vote and
Some historians argue that in the South the Know Nothings were fundamentally different from their northern counterparts, and were motivated less by natives or anti-Catholicism than by conservative Unionism (preserving the Union of states rather than labor unions); southern Know Nothings were mostly old Whigs who were worried about both the pro-slavery extremism of the Democrats and the emergence of the anti-slavery Republican party in the North. In
Usage of term
The term "Know Nothing" is better remembered than the party itself. In the late 19th century, Democrats would damn the Republicans as "Know Nothings" in order to secure the votes of Catholics. Since the early 20th century, the term has been a provocative slur, suggesting the opponent is both natives and ignorant. In 2006, an editorial in the neoconservative magazine The Weekly Standard by William Kristol attacked populist Republicans for not recognizing the danger of "turning the GOP into an anti-immigration, Know-Nothing party."[5]
The lead editorial of the New York Times for Sunday, May 20, 2007, on a proposed immigration bill, referred to "this generation's Know-Nothings...."
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Opus Dei
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Opus Dei, formally known as The Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei, is an organization within the Roman Catholic Church that teaches the Catholic belief that everyone is called to holiness and that ordinary life is a path to sanctity.[1][2] The majority of its membership are lay people, with secular priests under the governance of a prelate appointed by the Pope.[1] Opus Dei is Latin for "Work of God", hence the organization is often referred to simply as "the Work".[3][4]
Opus Dei was founded in
Opus Dei has been described as the most controversial force within the Catholic Church. [8] Controversies about it have centered around criticisms of its recruiting methods, the alleged strict rules governing members, its acknowledged practice of mortification of the flesh, its alleged secretiveness and elitism, the alleged right-leaning politics of most of its members and the participation by many in extreme right-wing governments, especially the Francoist Government of Spain until 1978.[9]
According to several prominent Catholic journalists, most of the criticisms against Opus Dei are mere myths created by its opponents. [8][10] Several Popes and other Catholic leaders have endorsed what they see as its innovative teaching on the sanctifying value of work. [11] In 2002, in a move interpreted by both sides of the debate as signaling his approval of Opus Dei, Pope John Paul II canonized Escrivá. [12]
Opus Dei has about 87,000 members in more than 80 different countries. About 70% of Opus Dei members live in their private homes, leading traditional Catholic family lives with secular careers,[7][13] while the other 30% are celibate, of whom the majority live in official Opus Dei centers. As well as working in more traditional charitable work through its members, Opus Dei is involved in setting up and running universities, university residences, schools, publishing houses and technical and agricultural training centres.
History
Opus Dei was founded by a Catholic priest, Josemaría Escrivá, on 2 October 1928 in
Initially, Opus Dei was open only to men, but in 1930, Escrivá created a women's branch.[6] In 1936, the organization suffered a temporary setback with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, as many Roman Catholic priests and religious, including Escrivá, were forced into hiding (the many atrocities committed on all sides during the civil war included the murder and rape of religious by government loyalists).[20][citation needed] After the civil war was won by General Francisco Franco's Nationalists, a coalition of Roman Catholic traditionalists, monarchists and falangists that rebelled against the democratically elected Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic, Escrivá was able to return to Madrid.[21] Escriva himself recounted that it was in Spain where Opus Dei found "the greatest difficulties" because of traditionalists who he felt misunderstood Opus Dei's ideas.[22] Despite this, Opus Dei flourished during the years of the Franquismo, spreading first throughout Spain, and after 1945, expanding internationally.[6]
In 1939, Escrivá published The Way, a collection of 999 maxims concerning spirituality.[23] In the 1940s, Opus Dei found an early critic in the Jesuit leader Wlodimir Ledochowski, who told the Vatican that he considered Opus Dei "very dangerous for the Church in Spain," citing its "secretive character" and calling it "a form of Christian Masonry."[24]
In 1946, Escrivá moved the organization's headquarters to
One-third of the world's bishops sent letters petitioning for the canonization of Escrivá.[26] In 2002, approximately 300,000 people gathered in St. Peter's Square on the day Pope John Paul II canonized Josemaría Escrivá.[27][28] According to one author, "Escrivá is... venerated by millions".[8]
There are other members whose process of beatification has been opened: Ernesto Cofiño, a father of five children and a pioneer in pediatric research in Guatemala; Montserrat Grases, a teenage Catalan student who died of cancer; Toni Zweifel, a Swiss engineer; and Bishop Álvaro del Portillo.
In September 2005, Pope Benedict XVI blessed a newly installed statue of Josemaria Escriva placed in an outside wall niche of St Peter's Basilica, a place for founders of Catholic organizations. [29] During that same year, Opus Dei received some unwanted attention due to the extraordinary success of the novel The Da Vinci Code, in which both Opus Dei and the Catholic Church itself are depicted very negatively. The film version was released globally in May 2006, further polarizing views on the organization.
Doctrine
Main article: Teachings of Opus Dei
Opus Dei is an organization within the Catholic Church. As such, it shares the theology of the Catholic Church.
Opus Dei places special emphasis on certain aspects of Catholic doctrine. A central feature of Opus Dei's theology is its focus on the lives of the ordinary Catholics who are neither priests nor monks.[30][31][32] Opus Dei emphasizes the "universal call to holiness": the belief that everyone should aspire to be a saint, that sanctity is within the reach of everyone, not just a few special individuals.[33] Opus Dei does not have monks or nuns, and only a minority of its members are part of the priesthood.[34] A related characteristic is Opus Dei's emphasis on uniting spiritual life with professional, social, and family life. Whereas the members of some religious orders might live in monasteries and devote their lives exclusively to prayer and study, members of Opus Dei lead ordinary lives, with traditional families and secular careers, [35] and strive to "sanctify ordinary life". Indeed, Pope John Paul II called Escrivá "the saint of ordinary life". [36]
Similarly, Opus Dei stresses the importance of work and professional competence.[37][38] While some religious orders encourage their members to withdraw from the material world, Opus Dei's members are exhorted to "find God in daily life" and to perform their work excellently as a service to society and as a fitting offering to God.[39][40] Opus Dei teaches that work not only contributes to social progress but is "a path to holiness",[41] and its founder advised members to: "Sanctify your work. Sanctify yourself in your work. Sanctify others through your work."[42]
The basis for this Catholic doctrine, according to the founder, is in the Bible's teaching that "God created man to work" (Gen 2:15) and Jesus’ long life as an ordinary carpenter in a small town. [43] Escrivá, who stressed the Christian's duty to follow Christ's example, also points to the gospel account that Jesus "has done everything well" (Mk 7:37). [44]
According to its official literature, some other main features of Opus Dei are: divine filiations, a sense of being children of God and bearers of Christ's mission; freedom, personal choice and responsibility; and charity, love of God above all and love of others.[35]
At the bottom of Escriva's understanding of the “universal call to holiness” are two dimensions, subjective and objective. The subjective is the call given to each person to become a saint, regardless of his place in society. The objective refers to what Escriva calls Christian materialism: all of creation, even the most material situation, is a meeting place with God, and leads to union with Him. [45]
Structure and activities
Leaders of Opus Dei describe the organization as a teaching entity, whereby Catholics are taught to assume personal responsibility in sanctifying the secular world from within.[46][16] Its lay people and priests organize seminars, workshops, retreats, and classes to help people put the Christian faith into practice in their daily lives. Spiritual direction, one-on-one coaching with a more experienced lay person or priest, is considered the "paramount means" of training. Through these activities they provide religious instruction (doctrinal formation), coaching in spirituality for lay people (spiritual formation), character and moral education (human formation), lessons in sanctifying one's work (professional formation), and know-how in evangelizing one's family and workplace (apostolic formation).
Supporters often liken Opus Dei to a family, and many say members of Opus Dei resemble the members of the early Christian Church — ordinary workers who seriously sought holiness with nothing exterior to distinguish them from other citizens.[47][48][49] In Pope John Paul II's 1982 decree known as the Apostolic constitution Ut Sit, Opus Dei was established as a personal prelature, an official structure of the Catholic Church like a diocese which contains lay people and secular priests who are led by a bishop.[1] In addition to being governed by Ut Sit and by canon law, Opus Dei is governed by the Vatican's Particular Law concerning Opus Dei, otherwise known as Opus Dei's statutes. This specifies the objectives and workings of the prelature. [50]
The head of the Opus Dei prelature is known as the Prelate.[1] The Prelate is the primary governing authority and is assisted by two councils — the General Council (made up of men) and the Central Advisory (made up of women).[51][52] The Prelate holds his position for life. The current prelate of Opus Dei is Monsignor Javier Echevarria, who became the second Prelate of Opus Dei in 1994. [53] The first Prelate of Opus Dei was Monsignor Álvaro Del Portillo, who held the position from 1982 until his death in 1994. [53]
Opus Dei's highest assembled bodies are the General Congresses, which are usually convened once every eight years. There are separate congresses for the men and women's branch of Opus Dei. The General Congresses are made up of members appointed by the Prelate, and are responsible for advising him about the prelature's future. The men's General Congress also elects the Prelate. [54] After the death of a Prelate, a special elective General Congress is convened. They elect from their ranks one individual to become the next Prelate — an appointment that must be confirmed by the Pope. [54]
Opus Dei has about 87,000 members in more than 80 different countries.[55] About 60% of Opus Dei members reside in Europe, and 35% reside in the Americas.[56] The organization's assets total at least $2.8 billion.[57] Two members of Opus Dei, Juan Luis Cipriani and Julián Herranz, have achieved the rank of Cardinal.[58]
Opus Dei runs residential centers throughout the world. [5] These centers provide residential housing for celibate members, undertake recruitment, and provide doctrinal and theological education. Opus Dei is also responsible for a variety of non-profit institutions called "Corporate Works of Opus Dei."[59] A study of the year 2005, showed that members have cooperated with other people in setting up a total of 608 social initiatives: schools and university residences (68%), technical or agricultural training centres (26%), universities, business schools and hospitals (6%).[8] The University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain is a corporate work of Opus Dei which has been rated as one of the top private universities in the country,[60] while its business school, IESE, was adjudged one of the best in the world by the Financial Times and the Economist Intelligence Unit.[61]
Spiritual practice
All members - whether married or unmarried, priests or laypeople - are trained to follow a 'plan of life', or 'the norms of piety', which are some traditional Catholic devotions. This is meant to follow the teaching mentioned in the Catholic Catechism to "pray at specific times...to nourish continual prayer,"[62] which in turn is based on Jesus' "pray always" (Lk 18:1), echoed by St. Paul's "pray without ceasing" (1 Thes 5:17). According to Escriva, the vocation to Opus Dei is a calling to be a "contemplative in the middle of the world," who converts work and daily life into prayer.
Daily norms:
* Heroic minute, waking up on the dot and saying "Serviam!" (Latin: I will serve)
* Morning offering, fixing one's intentions to do everything for the glory of God
* Spiritual reading and reading the New Testament, a practice recommended by
* Mental prayer, conversation with God
* Mass, Communion and Thanksgiving after Communion
* Rosary, a traditional Catholic prayer to the Virgin Mary,
* The Preces (the common prayer of Opus Dei)
* Angelus prayer which recalls Christian belief in God's becoming man, said at noon
* Memorare prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary offered for the Opus Dei member in most need at that exact moment
* Visit to the Blessed Sacrament, a Catholic practice of greeting Jesus in the Eucharist
* Examination of conscience at the end of the day:
* Three Hail Mary’s before bed to pray for the virtue of purity
* Short, spontaneous prayers throughout the day, offering up to God one's work, sufferings etc.
Weekly norms:
* Confession, in pursuit of the Catholic recommendation on frequent confession
* A group meeting of spiritual formation ("the Circle")
* The praying of a Marian antiphon on Saturdays
* taking Psalm 2 as the basis of mental prayer on Tuesdays
Additionally, members should participate yearly in a spiritual retreat; a three-week seminar every year is obligatory for Numeraries and a one-week seminar for supernumeraries. Also members are expected to make a day-trip pilgrimage where they recite 3 5-decade rosaries on the month of May in honor of Mary.
The observance of these acts of piety lead, through the sanctification of work and everyday life, to a spirit of joy and peace, according to Catholic spirituality.
Much public attention has focused on Opus Dei's practice of mortification — the voluntary offering up of discomfort or pain to God. Mortification has a long history in many world religions, including the Catholic Church. It has been endorsed by Popes as a way of following Christ who died in a bloody crucifixion and who gave this advice: "let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me." (Lk 9:23)[63] Supporters say that opposition to mortification is rooted in having lost (1) the "sense of the enormity of sin" or offense against God, (2) the notions of "wounded human nature" and of concupiscence or inclination to sin, and thus the need for "spiritual battle,"[64] and (3) a spirit of sacrifice for love and "supernatural ends," and not only for physical enhancement.
As spirituality for ordinary people, Opus Dei focuses on performing sacrifices pertaining to normal duties and to its emphasis on charity and cheerfulness. Additionally, Opus Dei celibate members practice "corporal mortifications" such as sleeping without a pillow or sleeping on the floor, fasting, or remaining silent for certain hours during the day.[65][66] They may also wear a cilice, a small metal chain with inward-pointing spikes that is worn around their upper thigh. The cilice's spikes cause discomfort and may leave small marks, but typically do not cause bleeding. [67] Numeraries in Opus Dei generally wear a cilice for two hours each day. [65][68]
Although use of the cilice is no longer common, its practice in the Catholic Church is "more widespread than many observers imagine."[8] In modern times it has been used by Blessed Mother Teresa, Saint Padre Pio, and slain archbishop Óscar Romero. On the other hand, critics state that self-mortification is a "startling," "extreme," and "questionable" practice — one that borders on masochism. [69]
Escrivá's opponents refer to his personal mortification practices that were even more extreme than those typically performed by Opus Dei numeraries— in one incident, Escrivá flailed himself over a thousand times.[70][71] Opponents likewise criticize Escrivá's maxim on suffering: "Loved be pain. Sanctified be pain. Glorified be pain!" [65][72] Critics have cited mortification as one of the reasons for their opposition to Opus Dei.
Types of membership
Main article: Types of membership of Opus Dei
Opus Dei is made up of several different types of membership: [7]
Supernumeraries, the largest type, currently account for about 70% of the total membership. [73] Typically, supernumeraries are married men and women with careers. Supernumeraries devote a portion of their day to prayer, in addition to attending regular meetings and taking part in activities such as retreats. Due to their career and family obligations, supernumeraries are not as available to the organization as the other types of members, but they typically contribute financially to Opus Dei, and they lend other types of assistance as their circumstances permit.
Numeraries, the second largest type of members of Opus Dei, comprise about 20% of total membership. [73] Numeraries are celibate members who usually live in special centers run by Opus Dei. Both men and women may become numeraries, although the centers are strictly gender-segregated. [74] Numeraries generally have careers and devote the bulk of their income to the organization. [75]
Numerary assistants are unmarried, celibate female members of Opus Dei. They live in special centers run by Opus Dei but do not have conventional jobs outside the centers — instead, their professional life is dedicated to looking after the domestic needs of the centers.
Associates are unmarried, celibate members who typically have family or professional obligations. [75] Unlike numeraries and numerary assistants, the associates do not live inside the special Opus Dei centers. [76]
The Clergy of the Opus Dei Prelature are priests who are under the jurisdiction of the Prelate of Opus Dei. They are a minority in Opus Dei— only about 2% of Opus Dei members are part of the clergy. [73] Typically, they are numeraries or associates who ultimately joined the priesthood.
The Priestly Society of the Holy Cross consists of priests associated with Opus Dei. Part of the society is made up of the clergy of the Opus Dei prelature — members of the priesthood who fall under the jurisdiction of the Opus Dei prelature are automatically members of the Priestly Society. Other members in the society are traditional diocesan priests — clergymen who remain under the jurisdiction of a geographically-defined diocese. Technically speaking, such diocesan priests have not "joined" Opus Dei membership, although they have joined a society that is closely affiliated with Opus Dei. [77]
The Cooperators of Opus Dei are those who, despite not being members of Opus Dei, collaborate in some way with Opus Dei — usually through praying, charitable contributions, or by providing some other assistance. Cooperators are not required to be celibate or to adhere to any other special requirements. Indeed, cooperators are not even required to be Christian. [77]
In accordance with Catholic theology, membership is granted when a vocation or divine calling is presumed to have occurred.
Statements of Catholic leaders
Main article: Opus Dei and Catholic Church leaders
The bishop of Madrid where Opus Dei was born, Leopoldo Eijo y Garay, supported Opus Dei and defended it in the 1940s by saying that "this opus is truly Dei" (this work is truly God's). Contrary to attacks of secrecy and heresy, the bishop described Opus Dei's founder as someone who is "open as a child" and "most obedient to the Church hierarchy."[78]
In 1960, Pope John XXIII commented that Opus Dei opens up "unsuspected horizons of apostolate". [11] Furthermore, in 1964, Pope Paul VI praised the organization in a handwritten letter to Escrivá, saying:
Opus Dei is "a vigorous expression of the perennial youth of the Church, fully open to the demands of a modern apostolate... We look with paternal satisfaction on all that Opus Dei has achieved and is achieving for the kingdom of God, the desire of doing good that guides it, the burning love for the Church and its visible head that distinguishes it, and the ardent zeal for souls that impels it along the arduous and difficult paths of the apostolate of presence and witness in every sector of contemporary life."[11]
Despite his praise, the relationship between Paul VI and Opus Dei has been described by one Opus Dei critic as "stormy".[79] After the Second Vatican Council concluded in 1965, Pope Paul VI — according to this critic — denied Opus Dei's petition to become a personal prelature.[80]
Pope John Paul I, a few years before his election, wrote that Escrivá was more radical than other saints who taught about the universal call to holiness. While others emphasized some monastic practices applied to lay people, for Escrivá "it is the material work itself which must be turned into prayer and sanctity", thus providing a lay spirituality. [81]
Attacks on Opus Dei have prompted Catholics like Piers Paul Read [82] and Vittorio Messori to call Opus Dei a sign of contradiction, in reference to the biblical quote of Jesus as a "sign that is spoken against." Said John Carmel Heenan, Cardinal Archbishop of
With the 1978 election of Pope John Paul II, Opus Dei gained one of its greatest supporters.[84] John Paul II cited Opus Dei's aim of sanctifying secular activities as a "great ideal." He emphasized that Escrivá's founding of Opus Dei was ductus divina inspiratione, led by divine inspiration, and he granted the organization its status as a personal prelature.[1] Stating that Escrivá is "counted among the great witnesses of Christianity," John Paul II canonized him in 2002, and called him "the saint of ordinary life."[85] Of the organization, John Paul II said:
"[Opus Dei] has as its aim the sanctification of one’s life, while remaining within the world at one’s place of work and profession: to live the Gospel in the world, while living immersed in the world, but in order to transform it, and to redeem it with one’s personal love for Christ. This is truly a great ideal, which right from the beginning has anticipated the theology of the lay state of the Second
One-third of the world's bishops petitioned for the canonization of Escrivá. During the canonization, there were 42 cardinals and 470 bishops from around the world, general superiors of many orders and religious congregations, and representatives of various Catholic groups. During those days, these Church officials commented on the universal reach and validity of the message of the founder. [10]
The current pope, Benedict XVI, is also a particularly strong supporter of Opus Dei and of Escrivá. Pointing to the name "Work of God", Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger), wrote that "The Lord simply made use of [Escrivá] who allowed God to work." Ratzinger cited Escrivá for correcting the mistaken idea that holiness is reserved to some extraordinary people who are completely different from ordinary sinners: Even if he can be very weak, with many mistakes in his life, a saint is nothing other than to speak with God as a friend speaks with a friend, allowing God to work, the Only One who can really make the world both good and happy.
Ratzinger spoke of Opus Dei's "surprising union of absolute fidelity to the Church’s great tradition, to its faith, and unconditional openness to all the challenges of this world, whether in the academic world, in the field of work, or in matters of the economy, etc."[17] He further explained:
"The theocentrism of Escrivá...means this confidence in the fact that God is working now and we ought only to put ourselves at his disposal...This, for me, is a message of greatest importance. It is a message that leads to overcoming what could be considered the great temptation of our times: the pretense that after the 'Big Bang' God retired from history."[17]
Controversy
Main article: Controversies about Opus Dei
Critical views
Catholic journalist John Allen, Jr. described Opus Dei as "the most controversial force in the Catholic Church", and Escrivá as a "polarizing" figure. [8] [87]
In the English-speaking world, the most vocal critic of Opus Dei is a group called the Opus Dei Awareness Network (ODAN), a non-profit organization that exists "to provide education, outreach and support to people who have been adversely affected by Opus Dei." ODAN is headed by Diane DiNicola, mother of a former member, Tammy DiNicola. [88] Other major critics are Maria Carmen del Tapia, an ex-member who was a high-ranking officer of Opus Dei for many years,[89] liberal Catholic theologians such as Fr. James Martin, a Jesuit, and supporters of Liberation theology, such as Penny Lernoux and Michael Walsh, an ex-Jesuit.[73][90]
Critics state that Opus Dei is "intensely secretive"— for example, members generally do not publicly disclose their affiliation with Opus Dei, and under the 1950 constitution, members were expressly forbidden to reveal themselves without the permission of their superiors.[91][16] This practice has led to rampant speculation about who may be a member.[16] Opus Dei has been accused of deceptive and aggressive recruitment practices such as showering potential members with intense praise ("Love bombing"),[91] instructing numeraries to form friendships and attend social gatherings explicitly for recruiting purposes,[75] and even requiring regular written reports from its members about those friends who are potential recruits.[92] Most of all, critics allege that the group maintains an extremely high degree of control over its members— at one time numeraries submitted their incoming and outgoing mail to their superiors to read,[93] and members are still forbidden to read certain books without permission from their superiors.[93] Critics charge that Opus Dei pressures numeraries to sever contact with non-members, including their own families.[91]
Critics assert that Escrivá and the organization supported the governments of Francisco Franco[94][95] and Augusto Pinochet,[96] and Alberto Fujimori of Peru during the 1990's[97], both of which included members of Opus Dei amongst their ministers and prominent supporters. It has even been alleged that Escrivá expressed sympathy for Adolf Hitler.[98][99] One former Opus Dei priest, Vladimir Felzmann, who has become a vocal Opus Dei critic, tells the story that Escrivá once remarked that Hitler had been "badly treated" by the world, and that "Hitler couldn't have been such a bad person. He couldn't have killed six million [Jews]. It couldn't have been more than four million."[100][101][102] (see Opus Dei and politics)
Opus Dei central headquarters in
Opus Dei central headquarters in
Concerning the group's role in the Catholic Church, critics have argued that Opus Dei's unique status as a personal prelature gives it too much independence, making it essentially a "church within a church".[103] Some critics state that Opus Dei exerts a disproportionately large influence within the Catholic Church itself, citing for example the unusually rapid canonization of Escrivá, which some considered to be irregular.[104] Lastly, Opus Dei, as a part of the Roman Catholic Church, also shares many criticisms of Catholicism in general— for example, some criticize the fact that female members of Opus Dei cannot become priests or prelates.[105]
Supporting views
John Allen, Jr., [8] Vittorio Messori, [10] Patrice de Plunkett, [106] Maggy Whitehouse [107] journalists who did separate studies on Opus Dei, state that Opus Dei has been falsely maligned. [108][109][91] Allen explained this view by saying: "There are two Opus Deis: an Opus Dei of myth and an Opus Dei of reality," since he perceived that Opus Dei members generally practice what they preach. [110][111]
Allen says "Opus Dei cannot be called secretive." Accusations of secrecy, he says, stem from a clerical paradigm whereby Opus Dei members are expected to behave as monks and clerics, the traditional models for sanctity, who are externally identifiable as such. Instead, its lay members, like any normal Catholic professional, are ultimately responsible for their personal actions, and do not externally represent the organization which provides them religious education. Opus Dei itself, he says, provides abundant information.[112] To explain the celibate lifestyle of numeraries and their relationship with their family, supporters quote Jesus’ comment that "He who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me".[113] Catholic officials say that church authorities have even greater control of Opus Dei now that its head is a prelate appointed by the Pope and thus members are "even more conscious of belonging to the Church".[50][114]
British historians Paul Preston and Brian Crozier state that the Opus Dei members who were Franco's ministers were appointed for their talent and not for their Opus Dei membership. [115][116] Also, there were notable members of Opus Dei who were vocal critics of the Franco Regime such as Rafael Calvo Serer and Antonio Fontan, who was the first Senate President of Spain's democracy. Thus German historian and Opus Dei member, Peter Berglar calls any connection made between Opus Dei and Franco's regime a "gross slander."[117] at the end of Franco's regime, Opus Dei members were 50:50 for and against Franco, said John Allen. [8] Similarly Álvaro Del Portillo, the former Prelate of Opus Dei, said that any statements that Escrivá supported Hitler were "a patent falsehood," that were part of "a slanderous campaign". [118] He and others have stated that Escriva condemned Hitler as a "rogue", a "racist" and a "tyrant". [119] various authors state that Escriva was staunchly non-political, and repeatedly stressed that freedom is an essential element of Opus Dei. Allen states that Escriva's relatively quick canonization does not have anything to do with power but with improvements in procedures and John Paul II's decision to make Escriva's sanctity and message known.[8] (see Opus Dei and politics)
While Opus Dei spokespersons have admitted mistakes in dealing with some members and do not as a rule contest their grievances, [57] [120] supporters have also questioned the motives and reliability of some critics. Sociologists like Bryan R. Wilson write about some former members of any religious group who may have psychological or emotional motivations to criticize their former groups, and they state that such individuals are prone to create fictitious "atrocity stories" which have no basis in reality. [121] Many supporters of Opus Dei have expressed the belief that the criticisms of Opus Dei stem from a generalized disapproval of spirituality, Christianity, or Catholicism. Expressing this sentiment, one Opus Dei member, Cardinal Julian Herranz, stated "Opus Dei has become a victim of Christianophobia."[122] Massimo Introvigne, author of an encyclopedia of religion, argues that critics employ the term "cult" in order to intentionally stigmatize Opus Dei because "they cannot tolerate 'the return to religion' of the secularized society".[123]
Regarding women, John Allen states that half of the leadership positions in Opus Dei are held by women, and they supervise men. [124] The Catholic Church teaches that "the greatest in the
Other views
Sociologists Peter Berger and Samuel Huntington said that Opus Dei is involved in "a deliberate attempt to construct an alternative modernity," one that engages modern culture while at the same time is resolutely loyal to Catholic traditions. Van Biema of Time Magazine emphasized Opus Dei's Hispanic roots as a source of misunderstandings in the Anglo-Saxon world. As the
In her 2006 book, Opus Dei: The Truth Behind the Myth, Maggy Whitehouse, a non-Catholic journalist, believes that part of the problem of Opus Dei is the relative autonomy of each director and center which has produced serious mistakes at the local level. She recommends greater consistency and transparency for Opus Dei, whom she sees as having learned the lesson of greater openness when it faced the issues raised by The Da Vinci Code.
Opus Dei in popular culture
In the 1997 novel The Genesis Code by John Case, the leader of Opus Dei is portrayed as the novel's antagonist. In the novel, Opus Dei members are sent on a mission to execute children who were conceived using genetically engineered oocytes.
Since 2003, Opus Dei has received world attention as a result of Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code and the 2006 film based on the novel.[126] In The Da Vinci Code, Opus Dei is portrayed as a Catholic organization that is led into a sinister international conspiracy.[127]
In general, The Da Vinci Code has been sharply criticized for its numerous factual inaccuracies, and its conspiracy theory has been debunked by a wide array of scholars and historians.[128][129] According to the Bishop of Durham, the Rt Rev Dr Tom Wright, the novel is a "great thriller" but "lousy history".[130] For example, the major villain in The Da Vinci Code is a monk who is a member of Opus Dei — but in reality there are no monks in Opus Dei.[34] The Da Vinci Code implies that Opus Dei is the Pope's personal prelature — but the term "personal prelature" does not refer to a special relationship to the Pope: It means an institution in which the jurisdiction of the prelate is not linked to a geographic territory but over persons, wherever they be.[63] Nonetheless, Brown states that his portrayal of Opus Dei was based on interviews with members and ex-members, and books about Opus Dei.[131] An Opus Dei spokesman questions this statement.[132] See Criticisms of The Da Vinci Code.
A Franco-Belgian comic book (bande dessinée) on the life of Escriva was published by Coccinelle BD in 2005. The title is through the mountains, in reference to Escriva's escape from the Republican zone through the mountains of
The 2007 movie Breach details the capture of the spy Robert Hanssen. Breach briefly includes dialog that refers to Hanssen trying to recruit his assistant's wife into Opus Dei. In the movie, Hanssen is portrayed as a devout Catholic who attends traditional Latin masses.
A film on the life story of the founder Josemaria Escriva and the history of the organization was announced by the Italian production company Lux Vide in February 2007. Possible stars to play the role of Escriva are Robert de Niro, Nicolas Cage and Antonio Banderas. [134]
“Keep Your Hands to yourself” lyrics by Georgia Satellites
I got a little change in my pocket going jingle lingle ling
Want to call you on the telephone baby I give you a ring
But each time we talk I get the same old thing
Always no huggin no kissin until I get a wedding ring
My honey my baby dont put my love upon no shelf
She said dont give no lies and keep your hands to yourself
Cruel baby baby baby why you want to treat me this way
You know I’m still your lover boy I still feel the same way
That’s when she told me a story bout free milk and a cow
And she said no huggin no kissin until I get a wedding vow
My honey my baby don’t put my love upon no shelf
She said don’t hand me no lies and keep your hands to yourself
You see I wanted her real bad and I was about to give in
That’s when she started talkin true love started talkin about sin
I said honey
She said no huggin no kissin until you make me your wife
My honey my baby don’t put my love on no shelf
She don’t hand me no lies and keep your hands to yourself.
“Revolution” lyrics by The Cult
Pictures, of never ending dreams
I can't see what these images mean
Locked inside me
Can't set the rainbows free
Like perishing flowers
They sag and twist and die
(Chorus)
There's a revolution
There's a revolution, yeah
There's a revolution
There's a revolution
Sorrow
What does revolution mean to you?
To say today's like wishing in the wind
All my beautiful friends have all gone away
Like the waves
They flow and ebb and die
(Chorus x2)
Joy or sorrow
What does revolution mean to you?
To say today's like wishing in the wind
All my beautiful friends have all gone away
Like the waves
They flow and ebb and die
(Chorus)
Revolution
Revolution
Revolution
Revolution
Revolution
Revolution
Revolution
Revolution, yeah
“Smooth Criminal” lyrics by Alien Ant Farm
As he came into the window
Was a sound of a crescendo
He came into her apartment
He left the bloodstains on the carpet
She was sitting at the table
He could see she was unable
So she ran into the bedroom
She was struck down
It was her doom
(Chorus)
Annie, are you OK
Are you OK
Are you OK, Annie?
Annie, are you OK
You OK
Are you OK, Annie?
Annie, are you OK
You OK
You OK, Annie
Annie, are you OK
You OK
Are you OK, Annie?
Annie, are you OK
Will you tell us that you’re OK?
There’s a sign at the window
That he struck you
A crescendo, Annie
He came into your apartment
He left the bloodstains on the carpet
Then you ran into the bedroom
You were struck down
It was your doom
(Chorus)
You’ve been hit by
You’ve been struck by
A smooth criminal
So they came into the outway
It was Sunday
What a black day
I could feel your salutation
Sounding heartbeats
Intimidations
(Chorus)
Annie, are you OK
Will you tell us that you’re OK
There’s a sign at the window
That he struck you
A crescendo, Annie
He came into your apartment
He left the bloodstains on the carpet
Then you ran into the bedroom
You were struck down
It was your doom
Annie, are you OK
You OK
Are you OK, Annie
You’ve been hit by
You’ve been struck by
A smooth criminal
Annie, are you OK
Will you tell us that you’re OK
There’s a sign at the window
That he struck you
A crescendo, Annie
He came into your apartment
He left the bloodstains on the carpet
Then you ran into the bedroom
You were struck down
It was your doom
(Chorus)
"Shadow of the Day"
I close both locks below the window
I close both blinds and turn away
Sometimes solutions aren't so simple
Sometimes good bye's the only way
(Chorus)
And the sun will set for you
And the sun will set for you
And the shadow of the day
Will embrace the world in grey
And the song will set for you
In cards and flowers on your window
Your friends all plead for you to stay
Sometimes beginnings aren't so simple
Sometimes good bye's the only way
(Chorus)
And the shadow of the day
Will embrace the world in grey
And the sun will set for you
And the shadow of the day
Will embrace the world in grey
And the song will set for you
“Thrash Unreal” lyrics by Against Me!
If she wants to dance and drink all night
Well there’s no one that can stop her
She’s going until the house lights come up
Or her stomach spills onto the floor
This night is going to end
When we’re damn well ready
For it to be over
Worked all week long
Now the music is playing on our time
Well we do what we do
To get by-high
And then we need a release
(Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.)
You get mixed up with the wrong guys
You get messed up on the wrong drugs
Sometimes the party takes you places that you didn’t really plan
On going
When people see the track marks on her arms
She knows what they’re thinking
She keeps on working for that minimum
As if a high school education gave her any other options
Oh he knows
They don’t know nothing about redemption
They know nothing about
Re-cov-ery
Some people just ain't the type for marriage and family
No mother ever dreams that her daughters going to grow up to be a junkie
(Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.)
No mother ever dreams that her daughters going to grow up to sleep alone
(Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.)
No mother ever dreams that her daughters going to grow up to be a junkie
(Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.)
No mother ever dreams that her daughters going to grow up to sleep alone
(Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.)
She’s out of step with the style
She don’t know where the actions are happening
You know the downtown club scene ain't nothing like it used to be
You reach a point where there’s not a lie in the world
That you could use to make the boys believe your still in you twenties
That kid keeps getting younger till they’re a baby
She’s not waiting for someone to come over
And ask for the privilege
She can still here that Rebel Yell just as loud as it was
In 1983
Oh they know
There ain't no Johnny coming home to share a bed with her
And she don’t care…
No mother ever dreams that her daughters going to grow up to be a junkie
(Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.)
No mother ever dreams that her daughters going to grow up to sleep alone
(Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.)
No mother ever dreams that her daughters going to grow up to be a junkie
(Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.)
No mother ever dreams that her daughters going to grow up to sleep alone
(Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.)
No mother ever dreams that her daughters going to grow up to be a junkie
(Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.
Bah, bah, bah… bah, bah, da bah ah-bah.)
And if she had to live it all over again
You know she wouldn’t change
Anything for the world-irls…
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