Good morning, Everyone! Six years ago, Academy Awards were given out
to a picture called, “A Beautiful Mind.” This picture involved the
life and story of Professor John Nash, a world-renowned mathematician
who won a Nobel Prize for his efforts. He suffered from severe mental
illness, SMI, known as schizophrenia. Within a few months of watching
this movie, my own family would experience this plight.

Leprosy is similar to SMI. It has been feared by mankind for
thousands of years. A long time before Christ, leprosy so ravaged the
Jewish nation that Moses called those people suffering from leprosy
to be isolated and to be shunned by members of the community. People
with SMI currently are shunned by our society. They are isolated with
hopelessness as their only fate. They are identical to the lepers
found on the island of Molokai. But the lepers there found love and
support in the form of Father Damien. Father Damien arrived on the
island in 1873. He personally took it upon himself to build roads,
build orphanages, and blast sea docks out of the cliffs. His only
sorrow was his own isolation. He felt cut off from the world. When
his story got out, funds were raised in Europe and the Americas, and
the plight of the lepers improved dramatically. He was canonized a
hundred years after his death.

In the late 1800’s a famed social activist by the name of Dorothea
Dix who was the head of the Union Army Nurses discovered that SMI
victims were being abused in prisons. When asked why they didn’t have
heat in their jail cells, she was told “The insane don’t need heat.”
She spent the next two decades of her life advocating for the rights
of SMI victims. She was credited with convincing thirty State
Legislatures to build asylums so that people suffering from this
disease could be taken care of. By the early 1900’s however, the
mental hospitals were a wreck. Frankly put, they were called
“snakepits.” They were the equivalent of Nazi concentration camps. It
was so bad that President Truman signed a bill creating the National
Institute for Mental Health. A few years later, a drug by the name of
Thorazine came on the market. People thought it was a wonder drug,
but it turned not to be. Asylums were considered to be evil and
people were turned out and they were closed. (Because of) the
evilness, supposedly, of these safe places (By the way, “asylum” is
the Latin word for “a safe place.”).... people were taken out.
Hospitals were evil and this was captured in the film “One Flew Over
the Cuckoos Nest.”

In the early sixties, John F. Kennedy signed a bill twenty-two days
before he was assassinated, authorizing the spending of three billion
dollars to help people who were transferred out of hospitals, to be
taken care of in community care centers. These centers would replace
the giant state hospitals and return these people to their
communities so that the local people, such as we, could care for
their needs. However, three weeks later, he died. Vietnam occurred.
The money never was authorized by Congress.

However, in the next decades. we found SMI victims a new place to
live. These were jails, prisons, and the streets. By the end of the
century, one should expect about a million people to be cared for in
State hospitals. However, at this time, there are only about fifty-
five thousand of them. “Where are the rest?” you may ask. Where are
they? Well, about a half a million of them are in prisons. Three
hundred thousand of them are on court-ordered probation. Do you know
what the largest public medical facility for treatment of SMI victims
here in the country is? It’s not a hospital. ... It’s the L.A. County
Jail. On any given day, this houses three thousand victims of serious
mental illness. During the last twenty years in California, we have
been witness to the building prisons and jails. We have spent
billions of dollars building these jails and prisons. Victims of
serious mental illness do not get effective treatment there.
Currently, two federal judges have been issuing orders to the State.
They have been telling us, “These are over-booked, at over-capacity.”
We can’t continue in this line of work because these jail cells cost
way too much money, as opposed to giving these people treatment at
local treatment centers. Starting in 1969, the executive directors of
this State told us that the State failed to provide the savings
generated by the closure of the hospitals to the local community care
centers.

Still, at the present date, only about forty percent of people
suffering from this disease get treated to any extent. Here, locally,
in our county, the County Board of Supervisors has closed the
psychiatric wing of the Martinez facility. They see thousands of
psychiatric patients there a year. Do you know how many beds there
are in a County of one million, fifty thousand people for psychiatric
patients? There are exactly twenty-three. Think about it! One million
people, twenty-three beds! In Central Contra Costa County, there are
only fourteen mental health care workers who handle nineteen cases
each. That’s two hundred fifty cases they can see. There are over two
thousand victims of this disease here in Central Contra Costa County
alone.

So, what can we do as a Catholic Community? We can remove the stigma
associated with this mental illness, through our prayers and through
our efforts. We need to accept these individuals, open our arms to
them, pray for them. We can pray for them at Mass. We pray for people
with HIV, with cancer and other such diseases. Why can we not pray
for them? When we can break down their walls of isolation and their
walls of being shunned by us, their needs will be met and addressed.
We can reject these stereotypes. You know, Hollywood calls them
“psychokillers” and “madmen.” Law enforcement statistics tell us that
these individuals who suffer from this disease have no higher rate of
incidence of crime than the general public. Yet, we associate them
with criminals. They are not. Generally speaking, they suffer more
from crime than we do because of their confusion, their
disorientation and their vulnerability.

We can demand, as a Catholic community, political asylum. Let your
leaders know how you feel. Contact them. We have a brochure that we
have asked you to pick up. There is a yellow sheet in your bulletins.
Please sign it. We will make sure that your leaders receive a copy of
that. You don’t have to put your address on it. If you care to, go
ahead. But we are going to make sure the leaders of this county, of
this community, know how you feel about this issue.

Finally, we can demand permanent support for housing. Prop 63 was
passed by you in November of 2004. Currently Sacramento holds about
1.7 billion dollars. Contra Costa is going to get its fair share of
that money. The Concord Naval Weapons Station is going to come online
in four to five years from now. We can put permanent supportive
housing in place by voting today. There are five thousand acres out
there. Treasure Island was redeveloped and, in that island, which is
four hundred acres, they are giving three hundred seventy-five multi-
bedroom units for the homeless. In this county, which is a base ten
times larger, you would expect to find ten times larger of an
allocation. In fact, our leaders have proposed only twenty percent,
seventy units. In our judgment, as social justice committee persons,
this is outrageous. We need to stop and think about this.

The deadline for submission of notices of interest occurs in ten days
from today. The door is almost closed. So, we need to stand up now
and tell the people in charge we can do better. How can we do better?
Let me give you an example. Last year, NAMI, which is the National
Alliance for the Mentally Ill, received forty-two thousand dollars,
or thereabouts, from the general public in donations. ARF, a well-
known animal rights foundation (And by the way, I’m an animal rights
lover. I have a big dog and three kitties. So, I’m not a hater.).....
ARF, on the other hand, which has a PO box about ten steps down from
NAMI in Walnut Creek received a hundred times more money from the
general public because why? They have a celebrity in charge of their
foundation. They can generate public interest, and when people become
interested, they can fund these projects. And I say to you, where do
your priorities lie as a member of this Catholic community?

I’m here today to announce the beginning of a new support group
called, “HELP.” It stands for Hope, Encouragement, Love, and Prayer.
We are going to have it here every Tuesday for the next four months,
and see how it goes. If your family, your family member, or yourself
are suffering from mental illness, come. Receive the support. Share
your burden with us. You will find that there are others in need,
and, together, we can form our own political action group that can
have and will make a difference. Sign the letters. Drop them in the
box. We’ll get them there. In your brochure, Father Brian set out all
the e-mail addresses for you computer geeks. If you want to get
online today, it will take you five minutes. Put that distribution in
there and send your thoughts to your political leaders. It will help.
There are pamphlets of information if you are interested in it
becoming a social justice issue. There is a wonderful article
available for you after Mass. And remember, in the final analysis,
you will receive your own Academy Award at the end of the day from
the good Lord! It just won’t be in Hollywood! Thank you very much.