Charlie Dittmeier's Home Page
When the Maryknoll NGO was here, we met after work each Christmas Day for a meal together. They were always great. The Maryknoll NGO is gone now but some of the former group of lay missioners and others got together for a Christmas lunch today.
Cambodia is 94% Buddhist and Christmas Day is a regular work day, not a holiday. Here are some images from Phnom Penh streets today.
Merry Christmas!
Tonight we began our celebration of the Christmas season with a 6:30 PM mass on Christmas Eve. We had a lot of people we don’t usually see and it was a good group. Here Fr. Charlie and the thurifer (incense bearer) bow as they approach the altar in the entrance procession. A Christmas nativity scene is set up before the altar.
On Sundays we have our second English mass at St. Joseph Church. Yesterday their workers were setting up a stage and decoration for a large-scale mass on Christmas Eve that will attract many from the neighborhood.
Nineteen years ago I witnessed the wedding of Sarah Igboeli to Paul and then in 2007 they relocated to Australia. This evening I got to catch up with Sarah who was very much a part of the deaf program and the Maryknoll community and the Catholic community back in “the old days.”
Today was graduation day for our Year 2 Education Project students and our Job Training Project trainees. It was a joyful experience.
I was the opening act after we sang the national anthem in sign language. I welcomed the parents and thanked them for supporting their deaf daughters and sons in getting an education at the Deaf Development Programme. These young people have great economic value for dirt-poor families in the rural provinces and many parents will not allow their children to come to us.
Then I told the young people I am proud of them and was happy to have had them with us, and that was especially true for this delightful group.
The Deaf Leadership Training Program now going on at DDP has invited deaf leaders from other countries to share with the DLTP team their wisdom and experience with national associations of the deaf. This week Tien (far left), a deaf leader from Vietnam, came to work with our staff.
Cambodia has two seasons: hot and wet, and hot and dry. It’s always hot. The heat doesn’t prevent women from wearing gloves year round, though. Gloves on a hot day is better than letting the sun make your skin a little dark. At least this woman wears her gloves in style!
Come Jan. 20, on the inaugural day of his second term, President-elect Trump has promised voters that he will begin a massive deportation effort. It is a deeply menacing threat without any indication of how matters of due process, human rights, respect of persons, respect of families and other matters of human dignity, justice and mercy will govern the deportation. And though we see indications that some Republicans will try to tone down Mr. Trump’s threats, many members of the party that will take control of every branch of our government on that day have not taken any evident steps to address the massive deportation itself.
I, for one, am not waiting for Inauguration Day. I think the threat of mass deportation needs to be urgently addressed by bishops, teachers, theologians, politicians and preachers. We cannot wait to see what happens, especially since the President-elect insists that he means business on that day.
James F. Keenan, S.J., in America