An open letter to the world - We are Fort Wayne, Help Us!

John Hubertz

Sun 11/24

/2019 7:51 AM

• Bishop Rhoades Offi  

My dear Bishop Rhoades,

Well, it seems perhaps fortuitous that I contacted you last week.

While I represent a small community and assembly of like-minded individuals and faith communities here and around the world, I do not at this moment speak to you as their representative.

My name is John Hubertz, and you are my Diocese.  Bishop Kevin Rhoades, in this matter, you are my priest.  I humbly ask you to forgive me if this situation is (as some might claim) not my concern.

Nuclear war.

Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne/South Bend in Indiana USA

To all faith and community leaders of good character who read this, I am begging for your help.  We have but one chance, and even with great effort, we may still lose all.

Raytheon Industries, an international conglomerate of weapons makers and war profiteers, is destroying our community and making criminals out of our neighbors and friends.

Even our silence makes us complicit in International War Crimes - indeed, Crimes against Humanity.

Our Pope's firm and candid speech in Nagasaki Friday is quite specific, and I am very firm in knowledge that now is the time - this task being a clear path of faith that I have followed not just in the 16 months since I first spoke to your office, but since the 1970s. 

I wrote a speech long ago, while attending University here in Fort Wayne on the topic of peace that won a state and national award and was published in a booklet that was distributed at the gathering in Stockholm in 1986 for the Peace Prize award ceremonies.

For over a dozen years I've been working to gather knowledge, engagement with others and put voice to a simple truth.

"Faith without works is dead."  (Gospel of John)

While I am certainly not suggesting we turn in the direction espoused by our Methodist brethren, it does echo rather clearly in what I consider to be a terribly empty room of moral leadership in the United States of 2019.

My commitment to this project is both informed and perhaps divinely inspired in the legacy of both my Great+ Aunt the blessed Mother Theodoro of Indiana, but also stands firm upon a family legacy of Catholic and Anabaptist faith that is rich with a heritage of inspired action and indeed, canonization.

Just as Joan of Arc spoke truth to power, both she and a nation stood up - not upon the authorities of Gold or Power but upon a foundation of clear spiritual authority, indeed the spiritual Necessity of following the call of truth, I must humbly accept that the timing of this might indeed be not just providential, but miraculous.

Bishop Rhoades, my friend Matthew - Please hear me. It is about our faith, our Mother Church 

I know this as well as I know my own name.  The current crisis of attendance, commitment, engagement and purpose within the Catholicism of developed Western nations is not a crisis of culture or of a brief shameful moment of criminal acts, it is a crisis of commitment to moral engagement with the human beings whom we are called to be, to become and yes have the spiritual mandate to both lead and to serve.

We must regain not the pulpit of moral authority, but the humble and reluctant responsibility that each parent, each teacher and (at least in the past) each Bishop had to carry as the great burden of judgement, and firm but compassionate correction of grave error within the context of the moment and the community or family we serve.

The church - and in Catholic commitment, in congress and communion with all Christian and non-Christian churches and organizations of moral character and good intent - The Church must act.  

We must stand, and with a clear and unwavering and if possible, unified voice, point to monsters in our midst, international war criminals, those who compromise the legal status and indeed, the very souls of innocents whom they employ or engage in commmerce with....

We must stand upon this sacred Indiana soil - soil meant for farming and to nurture all that is good, and lift our voices and shout "NO MORE" to sociopaths, strangers in our midst, NO MORE shall we allow the largest manufacturer of the technologies of Nuclear Weapons, the largest maker of ballistic missiles and control systems, Raytheon....   NO MORE shall we allow this horrific behavior in our midst.

We are and shall ever be the CITY OF CHURCHES - and you dare to come here, expropriate our sacred dirt, and build a factory that is illegal by both the laws of man and God?

How dare you.

And we must no longer entertain attendance, contribution or participation by misguided congregants, friends and neighbors who have been so poorly educated, deluded, misguided or perhaps, greedy enough to work for these fiends.

THIS is where our church has lost its way.  THIS is the task we have before us to do.  This is what our Blessed Pope called for we, the community of Fort Wayne, the State of Indiana, to take action on.  Dare we refuse?  

We must set aside our fear, our "polite tolerance", and our acceptance of national priorities that make the United States one of the most evil empires the world has ever known.

Please, for the love of God, help me.

John Edward Charles Hubertz

Saint Henry's Parish

Fort Wayne, Indiana