Father James Manship

St Rose of Lima Parish

115 Blatchley Ave

New Haven, CT 06513-4206 US

Father Manship:

I am hoping that this letter from Philadelphia will offer a bit of confirmation for your acts done on behalf of parishioners from the New Haven/East Haven area as well as provide a modicum of mental respite for your trying, arduous efforts. I will state in advance that I am agnostic but was raised attending St Michael’s Ukrainian Catholic Church of the Byzantine Rite in Terryville, CT. I now live in Philadelphia and visit my father in Wolcott, CT during major holidays. Although I no longer practice religion, we both attend Mass during my visits and I am quite cognizant of the net good which worthy, well-run churches (of any faith) provide in terms of ongoing social stability, insight into difficult interactive matters, and sane, predictable escape from unyielding, soulless secularism. I recognize the inherent good in the Church’s teachings related to character sublimation, because those teachings, which I offer to describe here from the perspective of an agnostic, seek to unfold the historical Christ figure as a theoretical ideal to be worthy of striving towards. Few secularists, such as me, would be comfortable in attempting to refute that highly relevant statement.

Father Manship, your refusal to stop videotaping police activity in East Haven was more an act of honest desperation than brash, naked defiance against authority. Your ego did not play a part here. You clearly weighed the real animus, concerns and pleas of your parishioners and, conflated with your in-depth academic study and real world understanding of just what Jesus Christ was meant to represent, found that there was simply no alternative at your disposal in order to fairly, completely, and uncompromisingly “do what Christ would have done”. Without knowing you, but still “knowing you”, I believe that you suffer no guilt when defying authority in this meaningful way.

Oddly, going forward, those particular East Haven police are not your greatest concern. Like spoiled brats who persist in getting their way through obstinate behavior, it is primarily the parents who are really at fault. The unswerving support and fund raising for those arrested police officers solidifies this metaphor. These East Haven residents, who choose to be blinded by their desperate attempt to escape democracy, are attempting to carve off a fiefdom of their own liking which follows no federal mandates regarding a messy ethnic, legal equitableness. This is why I advise you not to focus solely upon the RESULTS of that mindset and, instead, ask you to spend considerable time dissecting the dichotomy which, on one hand, “cherishes America” through a display of an ostentatious, hyperbolic patriotism while, on the other hand, persistently degrades our Constitution’s mandate which states plainly that all men are created equal. I think that you would be best suited to unclothe that oxymoron and help meld this dangerous bifurcation in order that that disquieting dichotomy shall cease to have further reason to exist. Indeed, Father, “Taking America back” just might hold different meanings for different folks.

If it is legal to videotape police why does it become suddenly “illegal” to do so when police see you doing just that? Answer: Because many police hate power separation and attempt to become, at least at the street level (where they can get away with it), a conflation of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. For them, “checks and balances” is the real enemy. Naked power, acquired in any way possible, becomes their private mandate and raison d’etre. This usurpation verily and narrowly defines policing to many.

Although I could never honestly feel that Catholicism would ultimately provide definitive respite or reconciliation, I also never found its basic teachings to be incongruent with a persuasive, sensible pragmatism which prudently parses life as an unfolding set, or continuum, of hurdles, each new one best overcome with the careful learning and evaluation of the previous. Here, with this letter to you, Father, my fury emanates in part from a desperate lust to “get back”, channeled in a positive way, at the mindset which beat me, humiliated me, spat upon me, ostracized me, and did everything possible to defame me during the twelve years I attended the Wolcott, CT public school system (class of 1968). My crime was being born queer. But then, as now, the bullies were only part of the problem. Ominously, I had never escaped a pervasive feeling that the administrators and teachers who would casually and quietly observe these assaults were really “voicing” tacit approval for a faggot-sissy to be kept “in his place”. All my assailants were white: there was no ethnicity-clash to uphold as “proof”. But there was, nevertheless, an ongoing attack upon one who was decidedly different and did not fit squarely into the “macho mold”. (I had to suffer quietly because, back then, committing murder was more acceptable than being homosexual.) Father, many of these school bullies later seek out professions where they can continue, even augment, their insecurity tactics. By doing these things, denigrating people who are vulnerable, they “prove” to both themselves and a constituency which thinks likewise, that they are invincible supermen without flaws. Many of these men die without having the slightest understanding of how weak their characters really are because they are too cowardly to look inwardly.

Policing, especially if done under a pusillanimous Chief like East Haven’s Leonard Gallo, becomes especially attractive for men such as these four who were arrested by the FBI. How much clearer can I be? The police-supportive East Haven residents are the REAL problem here. Bad policing could be stopped within 24 hours, nation-wide, if people cared enough about fairness, instead of choosing to USE police as WEAPONS in order to achieve a collective hegemony which pays homage to nothing intended in our Constitution and serves merely to feather private fiefdoms. “Patriotism” has many facades; two of the more pejorative are utter greed and ostracism. Our Flag provides convenient cover and safe refuge for this deviation.

Father Manship, your human value is uncontested and, through priesthood, your inherited mandate and responsibilities are profound. I hope that I have at least provided an extra dimension for you to ponder. It would be very hard for anyone to match your steadfast rectitude which is continually buoyed by a desperate, noble commitment towards the people you are entrusted with guiding. You provide ballast for East Haven’s future; you provide impetus for this urban model to be studied, analyzed and ultimately used as paradigm for towns and cities nationwide. Unfortunately, the Vatican has a checkered history when supporting defenders such as you, as when it castigated many priests and nuns for pursuing “Liberation Theology” during the latter part of Latin America’s sorry history. In your immediate case there are no real monetary assets to be “lost” by upholding basic human values as there were when some heroes within the Catholic Church, male and female, defended, by death, justice in countries such as Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador during, and before, the Reagan Administration’s strident, unwavering support of brutal right-wing dictatorships under the guise of “protection from Communism”. Hopefully, as a nation, we will learn the folly of these pecuniary pursuits and determine definitively that the interests of big business can readily prove to be an obstacle towards the achievement of a genuine human freedom and dignity that is surely owed to all. – David Lyga (6 Feb 2012)

David Lyga

2003 Chestnut Street #308

Philadelphia, PA 19103

Land line: 215.569.4949

Email: david33x@yahoo.com