Thanksgiving Day through the Centuries

     A Day to be Thankful for the Sacrifices of all our Ancestors

Thanksgiving day is this Thursday. When you wake up, you'll roll out of bed, into a room heated by your gas furnace. There will be a solid roof over your head.

You'll turn on the electric lights and television. You'll turn on the water to brush your teeth and take a warm shower. You'll go to your refrigerator and get milk, bacon and eggs.

You'll check to see if the turkey you purchased is thawed for cooking in your electric or gas oven. For last minute items, stores will be open. As the day progresses, your odds of being attacked by natives are infinitesimally small.


Life in colonial America wasn't this safe and convenient. The early European colonists came to America for a myriad of reasons.

Jacques Cartier first sailed to America in 1534, on behalf of the French King, in search of gold, spices and a northern passage to the Orient.

A year later, Cartier returned in three small ships. This time, he establish a base or settlement at what is now Quebec, explored the St. Lawrence, as far as what is now Montreal.

On Oct. 11, he returned to winter at Quebec. It was too late in the year to recross the Atlantic to France. Scurvy set in. Nearly every Frenchman was stricken. In his journal, Cartier wrote, "out of 110 that we were, not ten were well enough to help the others; a pitiful thing to see."

There were no supermarkets where they could buy food, and fruits with Vitamin C. They were saved only when Domagaya, an Indian, told them of a concoction, apparently made from arbor vitae bark, which cured the scurvy, but not before 25 Frenchmen succumbed.

From mid-November 1535 until mid-April 1536, the small French fleet sat frozen in the ice, and fishing was impossible. They survived on salted game and fish, prepared before winter came.


Jamestown was an investment of the Virginia Company of London. Like the French in Canada, the English investors wanted a route to the orient, gold and gems. In December of 1606, 143 colonists sailed from England to Chesapeake Bay. On May 14, 1607 they selected a location on the James River to build their settlement, Jamestown.

The location, chosen for reasons of defense, with the coming of summer proved to be a malarial swamp. Worse, they arrived too late to plant crops. As each wild turkey was taken, their food supply moved further from the safety of the settlement.

By spring, before expected supply ships could arrive, more than 100 colonists had died of illness, starvation or small-scale Indian attacks.

Beginning in the spring of 1608, more settlers arrived. But then came the winter of 1609, the "starving time." When spring 1610 came, only 60 of 400 were still alive.


On Dec. 21, 1620, the Pilgrims - 102 of them - sent their first landing party ashore at what has come to be known as the Plymouth settlement. They were fleeing religious persecution, and immigrated to practice their faith as they saw fit.

During that first winter scurvy set in. Many of the men became too sick to work. Gov. William Bradford wrote, "of these one hundred persons who came over in this first ship together, the greatest half died in the general mortality, and most of them in two or three months' time."

Eighteen women had made the voyage: 13 died that winter; one more in May. Only four of the 18 lived to see the 1621 "autumn harvest celebration."

So, as Thanksgiving dawns this year, consider what you have and compare it to what the early colonists had.

They chose to come, anticipating the hardships of making their lives in the wilderness. In America of 1534-1620, their were no stores, or supermarkets. No houses, heat, air-conditioning, electricity, running water, sanitation systems or police to protect them. They brought with them no skilled doctors; no antibiotics.

They and their descendants began America so we would be free of the demands of kings and over-zealous churchmen, and free to earn our livings as we saw fit. So turn off FOX and CNN for one day, and be thankful for all we have in America.

Posted: QCOline.com Nov. 21, 2017
Copyright 2017, John Donald O'Shea

Socialism - Rerum Novarum Revisited

My opposition to "socialism"is grounded on papal teachings.

To remedy economic inequalities, socialists, working on the poor man's envy of the rich, strive to do away with private property.

They hold that by transferring property from private individuals to the state, the present inequitable state of things will be set right.

Each citizen will then get his fair share of whatever there is to enjoy.

But where socialist theories they are carried into effect, the working man is always among the first to suffer.

Socialist remedies are unjust. In addition to robbing the lawful possessor, they distort the functions of the state, and create utter confusion in the community.

When a man engages in remunerative labor, the impelling reason and motive of his work are to obtain property. And to hold it as his own.

If a man hires out his strength or skill to another, he does so for the purpose of receiving in return that which is necessary to satisfy his needs.

He therefore intends to acquire a full, real right, not only to the remuneration, but also the right to dispose of that remuneration as he pleases.

If he saves money, and invests his savings in land, that land is only his wages under another form.

His little estate so purchased should be as completely at his full disposal as are the wages he receives for his labor.

It is precisely in the power of disposal that ownership obtains - whether the property consist of land or chattels.

Socialists, therefore, by endeavoring to transfer the possessions of individuals to the state, strike at the interests of every wage-earner.

They would deprive him of the liberty to dispose of his wages, and the possibility of increasing his resources and of bettering his condition in life.

What is of far greater moment, however, is that the proposed socialist remedy is manifestly against justice. For, every man has by nature the right to possess property as his own.

Man is endowed with reason.

Therefore, it must be within his right to possess things not merely for momentary use, but to hold them in permanent possession. He must have not only things that perish in the use, but also those which continue to be useful for future use.

Man precedes the state. He possesses, prior to the formation of any state, the right of providing for the substance of his body and family.

The fact that God has given the earth for the use and enjoyment of the whole human race can in no way be a bar to the owning of private property.

For though God has granted the earth to mankind in general; no part of it was assigned to any one in particular. The limits of private possession have been left to be fixed by man's own industry, and by the laws of individual races.

Socialists assert that it is right for private persons to have the use of the soil and its various fruits, but that it is unjust for anyone to possess (own) outright the land on which he has built or brought under cultivation.

They do not perceive that they are defrauding man of what his own labor has produced.

Soil which is cultivated with toil and skill utterly changes its condition. It was wild before; now it is fruitful. Is it just that the fruit of a man's own sweat and labor should be possessed and enjoyed by any one else?

The principle of private ownership is in conformity with human nature, and conductive to the peace and tranquility of human existence.

The contention that the civil government should exercise intimate control over the family and the household is a pernicious error.

True, if a family finds itself in exceeding distress, utterly deprived of the counsel of friends, and without any prospect of extricating itself, it is right that extreme necessity be met by public aid, since each family is a part of the commonwealth.

Should the socialist philosophy prevail, no one would have any interest in exerting his talents or his industry. The equality about which socialists dream would result in the leveling down of all to a like condition of misery and degradation.

The main tenet of socialism - "community of goods" - must be utterly rejected. It injures those whom it is meant to benefit. It is directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind. It would introduce confusion and disorder into the commonweal.

The first and most fundamental principle is, therefore, that if one would undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, private property must be inviolate.

Whose teachings?

Leo, XIII's: Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891.

My words are his.


Posted: QCOline.com Nov. 7, 2017
Copyright 2017, John Donald O'Shea

Religious Freedom - Martin Luther's Legacy

Oct. 31 marked the 500th anniversary of the day Martin Luther wrote to his bishop, protesting the sale of indulgences.

Luther also sent along a copy of a document that has come to be known as his "Ninety-five Theses." Oct. 31, 1517 may very well be the most important day in the last 1,000 years of Western history.

It marks the beginning of the right of western European men to hold and practice their religious beliefs of choice -- even if deemed "heretical" by the Roman Catholic Church.

Luther did so at the very real risk of being burned at the stake. Before Luther, Catholics whose beliefs were deemed heretical, including those who had left the church to adhere to any reforming sect, such as the Cathars, risked being hauled before the Inquisition, and upon conviction being burned at the stake.

Where heresy was widespread, Rome initiated crusades to suppress the heresies. In 1209, the Albigensian Crusade was initiated by the Catholic Church against the Cathers in Languedoc - now southern France. That crusade, instigated by Pope Innocent III lasted for 20 years.

During that time, lands and cities of the Counts of Toulouse were ravaged by the Pope's crusaders. Between 200,000 and a million heretics - and others - were killed. The pope raised his crusading army by repeatedly offering orthodox Catholic warriors indulgences and titles to all lands they conquered.

In 1215, Innocent III and the Fourth Council of the Lateran, promulgated "Canon 3 - On Heresy."

"We condemn all heretics. ... The goods of the condemned are to be confiscated ... Those who are only found suspect of heresy are to be struck with the sword of anathema, unless they prove their innocence by an appropriate purgation ... Let such persons be avoided by all until they have made adequate satisfaction. If they persist in the excommunication for a year, they are to be condemned as heretics. Let secular authorities ... be advised ... and if necessary compelled ... to expel from the lands ... all heretics designated by the church in good faith. ... If a temporal lord, required ... by the church, neglects to cleanse his territory of this heretical filth, he shall be [excommunicated] by the metropolitan and other bishops of the province. If he refuses to give satisfaction within a year, this shall be reported to the supreme pontiff [who] may then declare his vassals absolved from their fealty to him and make the land available for occupation by [crusading] Catholics ... Moreover, we determine to subject to excommunication believers who receive, defend or support heretics. If any refuse to avoid such heretics after they have been pointed out by the church, let them be punished with the sentence of excommunication until they make suitable satisfaction. Clerics should not, of course, give the sacraments of the church to such pestilent people nor give them a Christian burial."

Luther was fully aware of the case of John Huss, a priest, who sought to reform the Bohemian church. He espoused the teachings of John Wycliffe. In 1415, he sought to defend his teachings at the Council of Constance.

The church found him guilty of heresy, and directed him burned at the stake. It was against the threat of John Huss' fate that Luther began his reformation efforts. Rome responded with the papal bull, Exsurge Domine, listing 41 errors advanced by Luther.

Error No. 33 states: "It is contrary to the will of the Spirit that heretics be burned." Luther responded by burning the bull.

When Luther failed to recant, the pope issued the bull Decet Romanum Pontificem declaring that Luther had been formally excommunicated. Luther escaped the fate of Huss only because Frederick III, the elector of Saxony confined him at Wartburg Castle.

Europe divided into two camps. Thirty years of religious war followed in central Europe until the opposing sides exhausted themselves. Some eight million died. The war ended Rome's power to enforce orthodoxy, at least in the Protestant states recognized by the Treaty of Westphalia (1648). There, the power of the Inquisition was smashed.

The religious toleration and freedom we have come to know in the U.S. would not have blossomed when and as it did without Martin Luther and the shameful religious wars that followed.

Today western man worships as he pleases. Christians no longer burn each other for heresy. Even if you disagree with Luther's teachings, he deserves credit for risking his life to profess the faith he believed. Our religious freedom did not come cheaply.


Posted: QCOline.com Nov. 5, 2017
Copyright 2017, John Donald O'Shea