Vote for Joe

We traveled into Cortland, Ohio, where I gave a talk at St. Robert’s Church.   I said World Hunger is a “Pro-Life issue,” with 24,000 people starving to death in the Third World every day.   Afterward, Fr. Karl Kish at St. Roberts told me his church has developed a Sister Church relationship with a church in Mexico.   What’s more,  his parishioners are doing the “Crop Walk” this year to impact World Hunger, St. Roberts helps support a local Food Pantry and they are involved with an ecumenical outreach to send clothing, school desks, and a variety of other items into the Third World…   Later today I told the Cortland News’s Jim Woofter that St. Roberts is one of the most vibrant churches we’ve come across in Ohio.   Note:   In downtown Cortland,  a woman approached us tremendously excited about the campaign, saying she’d recently seen us on TV news.

average JoeOhio Tour cont:   I gave a talk at Immaculate Conception Church in Willoughby, Ohio, today.   I noted that we stood in a Life Chain that included some 150 people in Mentor, Ohio, the day before.   And it probably would have been more “…if the Brown’s game hadn’t been on at the same time.”   I added that we are living in a modern day Holocaust with abortion, but many Pro-Life people will prioritize a sports event over trying to stop: mass killing. Note:   I just read an Associated Press article that said Hillary Clinton and Rudy Gulliani are starting to look past the Primaries and to squaring off against each other because of what the polls are saying at this time.   Neither of them are Pro-Life.   We are.   And the time to start supporting our campaign, at every level, is now.

average JoeOhio Tour cont:   We headed down some back roads in Northeastern Ohio this Saturday, passing out information and putting up flyers.   About mid-afternoon we stumbled across the Huntsburg Pumpkin Festival where they don’t have a parade, but they do block off the road for a time for the: “Pumpkin Roll.”   People in groups of five stand at the top of  a steep hill and, that’s right, roll pumpkins.   Whichever pumpkin rolls the farthest, wins.   As a presidential candidate, I would have loved to have ‘rolled out the first pumpkin.’   But alas, we got there halfway through the event…   Liz,  Jonathon and I then walked through the festival  and handed  out literature, talked about politics and  learned that at the “Great Pumpkin Weigh-in,” the winning pumpkin was: 1,050 lbs.   Rolling that one down the hill would have been something, huh.  

average JoeOhio Tour cont:   We are in motion again, heading into the Norhteast sector of Ohio.   We stopped in Mentor where I sat in on an  excellent  talk by North Canton Catholic psychologist Ray Guarendi.   Guarendi, who has a nationally syndicated radio show, said he had 10 children himself — and none of them were “strong willed.”   He said the reason for this is because he and his wife are “stronger willed.”   His point is that modern culture is allowing for  more and more lax  discipline, which in turn allows for more and more problems with children.   And in regard to culture in general these days, Mr. Guarendi said modern culture is exceedingly “shallow and seductive” to youth.   He said he’s talked to so many parents who look at their children at age 18 and lament:   “But I didn’t raise them that way!”   Mr. Guarendi’s response:   “But you understimated what (culture) did.”   …Interestingly, the talk was at St. John Vianney Church.   St. John Vianney once said in a sermon that if your children are going to Hell, there’s a good chance you’re going to Hell.   And he exorted parents to supervise their children at every turn and help them in as many ways as possible to be formed in the ways of holiness.

We traveled to Peebles, Ohio, where I talked with Fr. Paul Donohue who is a Comboni Missionary for the Catholic Church.   He was stationed in Kitgum, Uganda for a time.   When I asked him about the poverty he saw, he said “poverty is a cultural concept.”   He said many in Kitgum were part of subsistence farmer families who were just getting by.   He said at one point he took a boy from the Sudan (Third World) to Italy (First World).    Going  down a street the first day, the boy stopped and stared at a woman — with an obvious  mental disorder — walking down the street animatedly talking to herself.   The boy later said to Fr. Paul that his country would never be so poor that a person wouldn’t have “someone else to talk to.”   Note: During Campaign 2000, we interviewed a priest in Hart, Michigan, who takes upper-middle class American suburbanites to some of the poorest parts of Mexico.   He doesn’t take them there to help.   He takes them there to experience the solid sense of faith, family and community that can develop in places where people are unfettered by all kinds of material pursuits.   The priest calls it a: “reverse mission.”   (This doesn’t mean, of course, that people in the Third World shouldn’t have all the basics in food, medicine, shelter…)