Pace e Bene

Friar Louie Vitale and Fr. Jerry Zawada engaging in nonviolent action at the White House in 2007 as part of Christian Peace Witness.

On the Eve of Lent

Pace e Bene staff member Fr. Louis Vitale, 77, began serving a six-month prison sentence on Monday, January 25 for nonviolent, prayerful protest calling for closure of the School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, Georgia. On February 25 he was transferred from Crisp County Jail in Cordele, Georgia, where he has been held for the past month, to the US Penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia.  You can write to at the following address:

Louis Vitale #25803-048

USP Atlanta

U.S. Penitentiary

P.O. Box 150160

Atlanta, GA 30315

To see updates from and about Fr. Louie, please click here.

On the Eve of Lent

 February 18-19, 2010

I have never really felt comfortable with the newer Catholic insistence that Ash Wednesday is not the beginning of Lent.  My mother is from News Orleans and we always had a consciousness of Mardi Gras.  If we visited New Orleans we would find our cousin Merlie making beautiful ball gowns.  The rest of the year shed made wedding dresses.  Although devout Catholics cleaned out indulgent foods on Fat Tuesday and Mardi Gras was a time of “debauchery,” at 12 bells in the French Quarter (my mother was born across the street fro  St. Louis Cathedral on Royal Street).  As the bells went silent (hard to hear over the noise on the street), Lent began – a somber time.  We put on ashes.

It is now Lent — what will change in me?

For us, we were by now to have solidified our Lenten resolutions – what would we give up – candy, smoking, movies, dances.  Later it became more the mode to make positive resolutions – visit the sick, help Mother with housework or Dad with yardwork.

Now Lent, we are told, does not begin with Ash Wednesday but the first Sunday of Lent, four days later.  That seems to throws off the cycle of debauchery and then manifest repentance.  So here in Crisp County Jail on Thursday night I am in limbo.  We fasted on the “Wednesday before Lent” (herein the “dustbin,” as Phil Berrigan referred to county jails) and had only dust (no burnt palms available).  We put on ashes and then we were set to prepare for the first Sunday of Lent – not so visceral, more spiritual, more transformative.  Metanoia.

Here in jail my cellmates have noticed I regularly fast on Fridays.  No objection – even my sparse vegetarian tray is a boon to share.  I explained yesterday that I switched my fast day.  Will they still await my Friday tray?

But what will change in me?

I have been thinking to abstain from criticizing, especially verbally and complaining, especially about and even to the guards – “deputies.”  That is the hard one.  I worked on that in Imperial County Jail two years ago.  I learned from Gandhi to go into my cell and be with God and let go of it.  It worked.  But I am back at it.  When things do not go right (“my right”) I get anxious, then agitated, argumentative and even condemnatory (no, not combative, not at 77).

I noticed even yesterday (Ash Wednesday) I got excited about my store account (it showed a balance of $8.00).  I would not pay for my 60 stamped envelopes as they were also out of them.  I exploded, “But I have money in the account and I need those envelopes with 40 letters ready to mail!” I finally calmed down.  I took refuge in the comfort it was not Lent yet!  Today the sergeant – my rep as a federal prisoner – brought the corrected account to me — $122.66, which was the figure I had (so I am vindicated!).

It may not be Lent yet but I am off and running.  I got impatient with one of my cellmates who is very agitated about his arrest – battery of his girlfriend.  We were walking in the yard – so I raised my voice.  Then I allowed my harshness to dissipate in the open yard, which is used to much louder, hostile voices during the basketball games there. Our cell only goes out with other “seg” (segregated) cells.  We are somewhat sheltered – apart from the larger, much noisier and volatile group.

Yes, we are easing into Lent.  Tomorrow morning, Fr. Bob Cushing, dear pastor in this neighborhood, will visit.  He is a good friend, a fellow activist priest, removed from his previous parish for writing “A Letter to Victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” for dropping the A-bombs on them.  The ultimate act of destruction – an act of anti-creation and ultimate alienation.  I was with Bob when he delivered that letter last August 6-9 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to stunned but enormously grateful tears and applause.

Bob’s listeners/readers stomped into the Bishop’s office — with the upshort (or “happy fault”) that he was moved to Cordele, where he has been my rescuer, confessor, Christ-bearer (with communion), bearer of books, warm socks, and thermals.  We meet on Fridays.