Please find our newsletter on the Adeodatus Facebook Page.

Or follow the link to the PDF below:

Spring 2011, Vol. 4, No.2 (click for pdf)

Winter 2011, Vol. 4, No.1 (click for pdf)

Oh baby, love, my baby love I need you, oh how I need you—Diana Ross

Turning Your Own Key

by Anthony

When I look back and take an honest assessment of myself in terms of standing on my own two feet—I’d have to say that I’ve been fully dependent on others. From my earliest memory—someone has housed and fed me. During my early childhood it was my mother who provided for me. Then, from the age of 10-13, a series of temporary foster homes/group homes sheltered me. From early teens (14 years old) until I was 40—I’ve been sheltered, clothed, and fed by institutions, such as St. Michael’s, St. Gabe’s and Vision Quest, or prisons—state and county—or by the many women who’ve entered into dysfunctional relationships with me.

As an adult, there have been a few periods when I was responsible for paying my own way, but lacking a foundation for being self-reliant and being an addict, I soon found myself overwhelmed and looking for someone to take care of me. Looking back, I realize this happened again and again without my even thinking about it. My being dependent upon others seemed as natural and acceptable to me as dependence on heroin.

I’m clean and sober for the first time in my life, 18 months now. My recovery started on the streets, before I was sentenced. It wasn’t until I got clean and became willing to change that I was forced to face the full extent of my dependency. It’s clear to me now that I have never been my own man—that for most of my life I have placed myself under the authority and control of prisons and the women who’ve paid my way.

Not long ago, another inmate and I were recounting for one another the times we were thrown out by the women we were dependent on. One of the most infuriating things I’ve experienced (over and over) is hearing a woman talk down to me as I’m packing my things after she’s told me “Get out of my house!” The other inmate shared with me something he had heard from his father long ago. His father had told him, “Always turn your own key” (meaning: be self-sufficient).

The more I talk to other inmates, the more I realize that I am not alone—that this dependent lifestyle is common among men in prison. I also know that this cycle of dependence can be broken, and that only I can break it. If I don’t change—nothing changes. I no longer find it acceptable for prison guards and women to hold all the keys—I will do whatever it takes to become self-reliant—so that I can turn my own key.

A BRIEF REFLECTION

What a clear and humble statement this former inmate has offered to us! It makes us at Adeodatus especially proud, because Anthony is a participant at our weekly support group meetings. If an individual person like him can rise out of the cycle of dependency he describes, it gives us hope that many can. Thank you, Anthony.

The most amazing point he raises—and one that all of us can learn from—is how seductive dependency is…Someone to take care of me. When you are cold and lonely, doesn’t this sound wonderful? Many love songs suggest this is what we are all searching for in order to be happy…Someone to take care of me. Religions may even present God this way. What would it be like to believe in a God who is truly our Savior precisely when he is coaxing us out of our dependency?

Imagine if many men and women wind up in prison because it actually feels like someone is taking care of them–even in such a humiliating way! Could this be a substitute for an adult relationship of love because no one has ever taught them how to stand on their own. If the prison system simply reinforces this dependency, no wonder the recidivism rate in the Philadelphia Prison is somewhere near 80%! How can we break this pattern? The first step, it would seem, is to recognize and name it as Anthony has done for us. This raises some questions you may want to discuss with your friends:

1. If drug and alcohol addiction is primarily an addiction to dependency, how can we raise this wider and deeper issue in the 12 step movement? In the churches? In our families?  In other words, do you turn your own key?
2. In relationships, are you more likely to be dependent, or is it the other way around? Is there a healthy dependency? What does this look like?
3. How might God be coaxing you out of any unhealthy dependency right now?

How to get involved

We distribute to 12 parishes, and this year to universities in the Greater Philadelphia area. If you wish to distribute this in any way, please let s know. Any donation would greatly help this mission.

ADEODATUS PRISON MINISTRY
P.O. Box 40815, Philadelphia, Pa 19107
www.spirhealth.com

Father Paul Morrissey O.S.A., George Munyan, co-editors

Join us any Wednesday evening (7:30 – 9 P.M.) at St. Rita of Cascia rectory at 1166 S. Broad Street (at Federal) Philadelphia, PA for fellowship and support.

The following is a quote by Augustine, from the book Christian Faith and Criminal Justice, by Gerald Austin McHugh, Paulist press, 1978.

“St. Augustine…was known to frequently intervene in civil matters in an attempt to inject Christian values into legal and political matters. In one case, involving the murder of friends of his, Augustine wrote a letter to the judge which is one of the most remarkable witnesses to the Christian principle of “love of enemies” ever recorded. Fearing a death sentence, Augustine pleaded:

…by no means do this or permit this to be done. For although we might silently pass over the execution of criminals brought up for trial not by an accusation of ours…we do not wish the sufferings of the servants of God avenged by the infliction of precisely similar injuries in way of retaliation…Fulfill, Christian judge, the duty of an affectionate father; let your indignation against their crimes be tempered by considerations of humanity; be not provoked by the atrocity of their sinful deeds to gratify the passion of revenge, but rather be moved by the wounds which these deeds have inflicted on their own souls to exercise a desire to heal them…The Confessions and Letters of St. Augustine, Vol.I, Letter CXXXIII.” (my emphasis by bold sentence)

1 in 100 Americans are in prison today, 7 times the number in 1970.

Lord, have mercy!

The United States has 25 % of the world’s entire prison population

Christ, have mercy!

40% of the people in prison in the United States are African-American.

Lord, have mercy!

20% of the people in prison in the United States are Hispanic.

Christ, have mercy!

Two-thirds of those incarcerated in the United States are for nonviolent crimes.

Lord, have mercy!

Christ of Self-Defense

There are 250 million guns in the Unites States today; one third of them are hand guns.

Lord, have mercy!

25% of adults and one-third of households in the U.S. have at least one gun.

Christ, have mercy!

There are 30,000 gun deaths annually in the United States.

Lord, have mercy!

Christ of Children

1 in 28 children in America have at least one parent in prison.

Lord, have mercy!

1 in 9 Black children have at least one parent in prison.

Christ, have mercy!

65% of the women in Pennsylvania State prisons are mothers of children under 18 years of age.

Lord, have mercy!

55% of the men in Pennsylvania State Prisons are father of children under 18 years of age.

Christ, have mercy!

The children and siblings of those in prison are six times more likely to wind up in prison themselves.

Lord, have mercy!

Christ of Young Black Men

45% of the 250 murders in Philadelphia in 2010 are still under investigation

Lord, have mercy!

77% of the victims in these unresolved cases are black males.

Christ, have mercy!

79% of these unresolved murder cases are of black males under the age of 30.

Lord, have mercy!

Christ of Poverty

Philadelphia is officially the poorest of the 10 largest cities in the US (25% below the poverty line).

Lord, have mercy!

25% to 30% of prisoners in Philadelphia read at a second or third grade level.

Christ, have mercy!

The First Congressional District in North Philadelphia is one of the hungriest, second only to the Bronx, N.Y. in the United States.

Lord, have mercy!

Jesus said to his Disciples: “Give them some food yourselves.” (Mt. 14:16)

Christ, have mercy!

These figures are a compilation of recent reports: the Pew Center Study, 2009, the House Resolution Bill #203 in the State of Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia Inquirer, November 2010, and The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, an ongoing national poll done in conjunction with the Food Research and Action Center in Washington.

–From Adeodatus Prison Ministry

Serving as a Catholic chaplain in the Philadelphia Prison with its 8000 plus inmates, I hear a lot of ‘confessions.’ It is humbling to hear these men and women tumble out their sins as I sit across from them at a metal table in the cellblock. Holding their hands, I pray with them. At the same time I am struck at how their stories need to be heard by others. The wrongdoings yes, but about the dysfunctional families they grew up in also. The lack of fathering/mothering. The poverty. The lostness and sense of unworthinesss. About how they are being found as well, in of all places–a prison! These are God’s daughters and sons too, and they are being found by the Good Shepherd. If them, why not us?

Click here to read the entire Voices From Prison newsletter.

Click here to download Voices From Prison – Issue #6

He trudges down the stairs from his cell a little rumpled, carrying a sheet of paper. “Something I wrote for you,” he quips as he sits near me on the metal seats at the table in the cellblock. His square face, dark buzz-cut hair, lips that make funny grimaces when he speaks, broad shoulders which I hit lightly sometimes as we converse, and endearing manner though he robbed his grandmother for drug money, make me love him like one of God’s lost sheep, even though when I walk away I think he may actually be hopeless.

We get increasingly communicative as we spend the half hour together in view of the female Correctional Officer and the other inmates who are milling around. At times he runs back to his cell to get pictures of his family (never shown to me in the past three years) and a book he offers me to read about a guy who carried a full-size crucifix around the world as his mission. Tom tells me he feels like giving up at times as he lays on his bunk with nothing to do. I draw him out about the depression he has spoken about before. Words like “empty” and “lonely” come up. I go for them, ask him about trying to write to his father who is a “mean old guy but I love him.” Tom says his dad is not the kind of guy whom you write your feelings to, this 50 year old truck driver who left his wife when Tom was seven years of age and the oldest of three, the mother a heroin addict and who died soon after. “No wonder you feel an emptiness,” I say, searching for his feelings. He doesn’t show any.

We get to talking about his fears of not making it when he gets out, maybe going to a half-way house. “Didn’t you do that the last time?” I ask. “Yeah,” he gives me a rueful look. I remind him of how he told me about his running wild in the drug scene, “how you would hustle while your girl friend waited.” I wanted him to remember that he had told me these things before. “Yeah, and then I made her get into a car while I waited.” “What do you mean?” I ask. “I know she belongs to me, even though she has sex with a john to get us drug money,” he explains, though his grimacing lips show me he realizes how crazy that is. “Oh man!” I hit him on the shoulder.”

This reminds me of something I read in Scripture this morning. I pick up his Recovery Bible he has with a few paper stubs marking key passages for him. “Hey, let me see if I can find something I read this morning. It reminds me of you.” I then tell him partly–with him picking up the thread–of the story of the birth of Ishmael. “A wild ass of a man,” I tell him. “What’s that mean?” he asks. I then find the passage and read it to him, while he looks over my shoulder:

You are with child, and shall bear a son; you shall call him Ishmael, because the Lord has heard of your humiliation. He shall be a wild ass of a man, his hand against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him; he shall dwell apart, opposing all his kinsmen.

I repeat, “You are like that Tom, a wild ass of a man.” Not sure he gets this or likes it, but I explain a little, “You’re always running wild, running to fill up the emptiness…” He continues for me, “…and doing drugs to escape it.” “Yeah!” I punch him on the shoulder, then blurt out, “It’d kill me if you died from drugs, you know?” He looks at me quizzically. I think this was the point when he ran to get the pictures of his family.

He shows me the pictures, faded color copies on thin paper with curled edges, and I see his good- looking dad and Tom’s brothers and sisters and their little ones. He points them out and names them. I ask their ages. His father, he explains, raised a few other kids as well as his own three. “They’re the children of his second wife. He’s been going with her a while but they just got married a couple of years ago. She doesn’t like me.” Tom is holding up one picture of his younger brother with a little child at his cheek. “That’s good to see a man holding a kid so close,” I say, “like a father’s love should be for his child.” Tom gives me his wide-open look.

I remember another Scripture passage and try to paraphrase it, “God is describing himself as a father here, holding up Israel….no, he’s holding Ephraim, to his cheek.” I make a gesture with my hands against my cheek. With excitement now, and while making a joke about how I am not as good as the Baptists who can remember the precise citations for these passages, I grab Tom’s Bible again and search. “It’s from Hosea, I think.” I begin to page through the minor prophets. Miraculously, I find the passage in a few minutes. “Hosea, Chapter 11,” he says, pointing to it as I begin to read:

When Israel was a child I loved him, out of Egypt I called my son. The more I called them, the farther they went from me, sacrificing to the Baals…(“false idols,” I explain to him.)…and burning incense to idols. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, who took them in my arms; I drew them with human cords, with bands of love; I fostered them like one who raises an infant to his cheeks; yet though I stooped to feed my child, they did not know that I was their healer…

I pause. I so want to make sure this young man from the streets, whose mother was a heroin addict and whose father and family won’t talk to him, gets the connection with him and God. I shift my face closer to his, look in his eyes. “So, even if you have done things you are ashamed of, or feel empty and hopeless, let God go down there to that place and love you, claim you Tom…he wants to, don’t you see?” He nods his head slightly. “Even if you are a wild ass of a man like Ishmael, God can’t bear to lose you…see?” I read further, particularly wanting him to hear the feelings of God shown in this Bible passage. “Look! It says God roars,” I tell him. Clenching my fists and widening my eyes, I show him what I imagine God’s passion is for him, for us. “It’s not just an angry roar, Tom; it’s a hurt roar, the roar of a man in love whose been left…he doesn’t want to be like humans and simply destroy what has hurt him, left him, thrown away his love. He will roar until we return to him. “I point back to the passage, “…like trembling sparrows and doves,”

Our time was getting short. He asks if we can pray before I leave. We join hands in our fashion, he gripping my fingers intensely with his head down. I ask if he wants to pray first. “Yeah,” he says. I joke and say he’s the only one who does. “All the others want me to do it first.” He prays for his family, then for me and the other guys in the jail, and finally for himself. Soon we end. As I leave he asks if I could bring him a copy book to write in. “I’ll try.” We shake hands. “I’m gonna get a cup of coffee now, Father Paul, and go back to my cell and read those passages.” “Good.”

Later that night I remember him and our time together. I had felt some hopelessness in his regard as I walked away earlier. Over three years now working as a prison chaplain. I recognize Tom’s addictive patterns and how drugs destroy even the best of intentions of these inmates. “It is a spiritual disease, a hole in the body, the heart, the soul,” explained one of them as he showed me the Big Book of AA recently. I pray anyway, “Please Lord, bless Tom. I love him as you do.” Making a gesture as of a father pulling his child up to his cheek, I say, “I beg you Father, don’t let my son be lost.” I’ll roar later…

-Fr. Paul Morrissey, OSA

St. Rita’s Parish Rectory (South Phila.) and the Bevilaqua Center (Kensington)

Please join us weekly on Wednesday evenings from 7:30-9 P.M. at St. Rita’s Parish Rectory 1166 South Broad Street (at Ellsworth) in South Philadelphia. Use the rectory door on the left of the Church. Welome!  (Call ahead 215-331-3640 to check for cancellation due to weather, etc.)

In November of 2011, (Thursday, November, 3rd), we will begin our monthly support group for families of inmates as well as ex-inmates themselves. This will be our next step in an attempt to foster healing in the broken relationships that result from crime. We will meet at the Bevilaqua Center, 2646 Kensington Avenue (Kensington and Lehigh Ave) from 7:30-9:00 P.M, and will meet monthly on the first Thursday of each month. All are welcome

Adeodatus is a spiritual program helping those recently released from prison adjust to and remain in society through prayer, support and understanding of Christ. Meeting once a week in communal fellowship, it is the belief of Adeodatus that every person is good and worthy of another chance in life, and that in helping them we help their families and ourselves.

Click here to read our Prison Ministry newsletter.

On April 5 he had remembered it was his birthday and cried bitterly. There was no cards, no cake, no recognition by anyone that he was alive. We talked about AA and places for help, but he admitted he still loved alcohol too much to give it up. I told him unless he controlled it in the end it would win. Briefly, slightly wistfully he acknowledged the demon but then changed the subject. Although I was 10 minutes passed giving him a few bucks, I was drawn to give more even though he didn’t ask for it. I told him that God didn’t forget his birthday and gave him 20 dollars. He was someone and he got a birthday present no matter what he did with it. His joy was intense.

So there we were on the Walmart parking lot surrounded by people buying more stuff. It was strange to find a man with nothing at a place that boasts it has everything. I wondered who was richer Joey or the shoppers. I reminded Joey that Jesus had little of this world just like him. They were friends, Jesus and him, travelling the cruel way of the cross. But now and then He uses someone to remind the crucified that are not forgotten and are so loved in their passion and suffering. Joey and I parted as friends and he went off to Burger King for dinner. The sun was setting over all of the franchises and the cars continued their endless suburban parade. America 2010.

Source: http://sundialmoments.blogspot.com/2010/04/joey.html