One week ago today, in my state’s largest urban area, someone went to the Church of the Annunciation.
Then he killed two children who were celebrating Mass, wounded several other folks, and finally killed himself.
He’s still dead, and so are those two kids. But, happily, it looks like the folks who were wounded will live: with varying degrees of lasting consequences.
News coverage has, predictably, shifted to giving politicos and hotheads opportunities for expressing outrage: and explaining why everybody should agree with them.
There’s a refreshing lack of focus on the killer: which lets me hope that a smidgen of common sense may be filtering into America’s news media.
What little I’ve seen reminded me of something from an old movie:
“…You know, sometimes I don’t think she’s really very happy.”
(Fauna, in “Sleeping Beauty” , Walt Disney Productions (1959), from a discussion of Maleficent (Fandom))
Meanwhile, crime scene tape has been taken down around the Church of the Annunciation, and parishioners are celebrating Mass again. I’ll probably be mentioning that on Saturday. I don’t like thinking about how those folks are feeling just now.
More-or-less-related stuff:
- “Catholic School Mass: Murder in the Morning” (August 27, 2025)
- “My Church in Sauk Centre, Minnesota: Vandalized” (September 24, 2022)
- “In Praise of Lilacs, Blue Sky and Rain” (May 29, 2021)
- “Murders, Life and Death” (March 19, 2018)
