9/27/24
The importance of airport chaplains
Check out this fascinating article.

8/6/24
Dreams of a grounded pilot
by Terry Garrity
I fixed a glass of iced tea and went out to the grass strip this morning, dew everywhere. I untied the Cessna Cardinal with 200-hp autogas STC (I did say it was a dream after all), did a casual preflight, the kind I used to hurry when revenue was involved. Being retired, today I took my time and appreciated the talents God gave to Cessna engineers for the Cardinal, a pretty good plane for older pilots with reduced mobility. 

I took off enjoying the sunrise and glass smooth air immensely, red slice of sun on the horizon and pencil thick morning foghaze hugging the earth. When winds are calm or light, as the plane accelerates I love to pull the nosewheel off a little early so I can feel the wings grow fat with lift until the plane floats into the air. To this day I've never gotten over the euphoric sensation of watching the runway drop away out the side window as the world transitions to a model train layout and I leave my worries and cares of the world below to focus on the flying job at hand. Problems are there. But I'm here.

Wing root vent open slightly, the breeze was cool and aromatic with pastoral country smells fading with the climb replaced by the bouquet only an airplane has. The engine hummed and some instrument needles vibrated the way they do that makes you feel as though the plane is a living thing. Flew alongside the eastern range taking in the changing hues. Peaks and valleys remind me of the highs and lows of life but in this moment, none of that matters. Being overwhelmed with God's creation saturating all the senses with joy from this perch, regardless the landscape, leaves little headroom for life's anxiety. The metaphor of the peaks and valleys falls away. Only God's beauty remains.

I landed at Hamilton North Air Heritage Airpark and had lunch at the diner. All the tables face the runway and some rumbly rotary-powered warbirds were doing touch and goes so I enjoyed them with a chargrilled burger with all the toppings, perfect hot fries and an ice cold Coke in a perfectly dew covered sweaty glass. The onions and tomatoes were Indiana crisp and sweet, locally grown and nurtured by God's sweet warm summer rains and loamy soals, the palladia of Indiana. My tastes are simple. Sometimes a burger and fries are enough. 

Walking back to the tiedowns, I could hear the subdued voices in the hangar from a gaggle of shaded pilots flying in their prose as pilots have done since Orville and Wilbur. People get old. Flying talk never does. Hands wrinkle and a pilot's vision fades in due time as accorded by the Lord's design for us all who inherited Original Sin, but hands mimicking flying stay airworthy until we die.

Then preflighted as the sun pumped new BTU's into the atmosphere and then took off and climbed to 500 ft AGL and took in the fields, barns and pastures, the changing lush rural farm crops and animals, textures and checkerboard patterns of the backroads. Circled some kids waving from a baseball field near a small town with an old water rusty and silvered water tower. Headed homeward toward the highland hills and set down onto soft grass carved into the top of a hill like casting a fly softly onto water. On the grass strip where I keep the Cardinal time machine that lets me visit a sublime substitute for heaven now and then. It's all a world apart from the world few will come to know as we who have been fortunate enough to be granted the gift of flight. But that also describes heaven: A world apart.

It's hard to make a bad landing on grass. God looks out for us that way. A landing on grass is like a sigh and this like His pilot debrief if we know enough to hear Him. I hope I have honored Him of His gift by being a responsible pilot conscious that in the air, I'm still Catholic and still a moral agent duty bound to His law. In return the gift He gave me was always priceless.

It was a nice dream.

7/30/24
New idea for EAA: Senior Eagles, take a senior citizen flying
by Terry Garrity

I'm 67 years old. A friend has offered to take me up to update my biennial flight review. I'm not current on it or my medical. I may pursue Basic Med but being retired and on a fixed income, even with modest planning for a reasonable retirement income, wet rental rates north of $125/hour for a Skyhawk and rentor's insurance swell a $100 hamburger flight...well, more like $300 hamburger now, it's a tough call. Being 67 I have no desire to pull the club Skyhawk out of the hanger and do self-serve fueling in January's frigid weather just to stay current. And my wife has no plans to sacrifice her plans for us, versus my pursuing a $300 hamburger on our retirement income.

So I'm grounded for now, but I had an idea for EAA chapters to adopt older pilots and take them flying, not unlike the way they carry out the wonderful Young Eagles flights they now conduct. It's one thing for a young person to wonder what it might be like to fly. Grounded senior pilots fly mainly in their daydreams and nowadays maybe on YouTube® but their having known the joy of flight, it's surely painful for them to be grounded as compared to younguns who have never flown. I'm fortunate that I can still get my biennial and Basic Med but some older pilots are grounded permanently. I myself watch a lot of flying videos on YouTube. It only heightens the yearning.

As an example, take this senior citizen up and my CFI instincts will kick in. It happened with one private pilot and we ended up flying together quite a lot and I discovered new knowledge I could impart to our mutual gain. He gained skills and I gained the joy of watching him mature more as a pilot. My CFI-I was expired and I couldn't sign off his logbook but there was an exchange of wisdom regardless, especially regarding his lack of instruction at flying in Class C airspace/airports. If you were a CFI, I operate under the belief that you are always a CFI and if you are flying with someone with lesser certification and ratings and see ways they can fly more safely, you have a moral obligation to speak up--charitably. Let your best teaching instincts take over. Once a CFI, always a CFI. It's a nice way for a senior pilot to rediscover a lost joy.

I doubt it will happen that way for most but every pilot is different and no two God' creatures or flights are ever exactly the same. In such ways do God's gifts so us often work. Such a gift indeed!

So maybe talk to your peers at you EAA chapter meeting. Maybe have a seniors flying day, identify seniors who might like to go up and re-live flying a little and take them up. There's no doubt than a few will be ex-military pilots and you can honor their service and their memories by spending that time with them in the air. No matter what, I'm pretty sure you'll see a smile a mile wide and memories of landings like a lure cast softly on water made real again.

7/29/24
Reaction to Parisian Olympic Blasphemy
by Terry Garrity

I'm boycotting the Olympics but mainly that means I just can't stand to watch. The athletes in the Olympics are going to prosper or fail without my being tuned in, especially the athletes from the world's richest countries and countries which leverage the Olympics for their ideological ego. So an argument I encountered in my Facebook® group Catholic Hoosier that these athletes or the US gains something by my being tuned in and cheering them on is ridiculous. Go ahead, name one athlete who cares one whit whether or not you're tuned into NBC while they labor for Olympic glory.

Actually I don't know if I'm boycotting. I just can't stand to watch for what should be obvious reasons.

Olympic opening scene artistic director Jolly wants to get Christians in a gotcha by doing bait and switch with the Last Supper scene When all of Christianity is normally caricatured as the likes of a Joel Osteen, Oral Roberts, or a corps of sexually deviant priests, making Christianity seem evil isn't much of a stretch in a culture which has no interest in seeing the good Christians do, often with little fanfare.

One essay I read this morning villifies Christians, intentionally re-branding the "Last Supper" to a Greek Bacchanalia, in essence, a drunken orgy meant to worship the god of wine and pleasure Dionysus. The opposition wants to characterize Christians hurt and anger as hate and kneejerk. Stereotyping Christians that way is pretty common in our woke world. Maybe there's some hate out there from the "God hates fags" maladjusted faux Christians, but all I have seen and known in those who are upset is weariness, sadness and just anger at drag queen story hours, using children as perverse human shields and endlessly being caricatured and mocked for their striving to, however imperfectly, follow the teaching of Jesus Christ and opposing sexual filth exhibited publicly.

The suggestion that we pray for the blasphemers is not just good, it is mandatory. Likewise fasting. It is absolutely, positively imperative that we hold in our hearts love for the souls of those driving those nails deep into our Lord's muscle and that is sometimes you and me. Love, properly understood is likewise mandated. We must continue to yearn for and love their souls and to want to meet them in a  fraternal embrace of agape love in heaven.

Finally it is no stretch to want to hear some words of just anger and guidance from the pulpit, to be directed to contact NBC and the Olympic Committee to tell them of your hurt and anger. I think doing so is equally mandated as prayer for those telling you how much they disdain you. I'm sad for lukewarm priests and bishops who make no mention of this sad event--I imagine you know who they are, and I'm again glad I never sought the diaconate or parish ministry, their too often living anxiously at being cancelled by a lukewarm bishop or pastor and forced to walk on eggs 24/7 and deliver thin sauce for homiletics.

The glory of heaven matters far more than Olympic glory. At the time of particular judgment I am serious when I say I have plenty to answer for without facing with fear the question "Did you stand up for me when they spit in My Face in Paris, or did you just pour glass of wine and turn on the tee-vee for your own edification while the thorns are thrust deeper into my temple?"

Below is the list of transgressions from this toxic event:

1. Mockery of the Last Supper: The depiction of the Last Supper with drag queens, needs really no words at all other than to point out that the Last Supper institutes the Holy Eucharist.  They were seated in the exact angles and positions as the Twelve Apostles.  By this outrageous blasphemy of the Last Supper not only do they mock Our Lord and Savior, they mock God our Father and the Holy Spirit.  They mock the triune God.

2. Attack of the Eucharist: A drag queen seated at center of the table was wearing a crown resembling a Monstrance.  This was by far the most in your face insult to our Divine Majesty, our Divine Substance.

3. Nude Singer Representing Dionysus: The appearance of a nude singer in the middle of a fruit basket, representing the Greek god of wine, was not only inappropriate as children were on that stage and among those in the audience but highly disrespectful.

4.  Genitalia Exposed:  A dancer on stage exposed his private parts on stage with children dancing on stage!

5. Aerial Dance on Notre Dame Cathedral: The dance segment on the scaffolding of Notre Dame Cathedral, portraying a menage-et-trois was disgusting and tasteless.

6.  Attack on Catholic Queen Marie Antoinette – They depicted a scene of her decapitated body as they sang.

7.  The Golden Calf:  On display was the golden calf idol which is the supreme act of apostasy.

8.  The Pale Horse:  The Olympics had to conclude with this horse.  The pale horse is associated with death and is one of the four horsemen described in Revelation 6.  When the fourth seal is opened, a pale horse appears, and its rider is named Death, with Hell following closely behind. This imagery signifies the power given to the rider over a quarter of the earth, allowing him to kill through various means, including sword, famine, and pestilence.

List credit: Vicki Yamasaki, Corpus Christi for Unity and Peace, https://corpuschristiforunityandpeace.org  (accessed 7/30/24)

6/28/24
CAA So Far: Advancing the Throttle
by Terry Garrity, CAA Vice President

A little transparency here: We're a little outfit being re-booted post-Covid. Everyone involved in CAA is a volunteer. We have no paid board or staff. Actually, we have no staff at all. Right now we're about maintaining what we hope is a pretty good website and an increasingly active Facebook page, both with some [hopefully] insightful articles.

Do you read? Are you a newshound, an adult learner? Myself, I'm an autodidact (self taught) on the Faith. I had the defective wishy-washy catechesis of the 70s, and the majority of my learning about the Catholic faith has happened for me as a Catholic revert post age 25 or so. 

You need to read and to learn about your Catholic faith continually. The CAA resources link offers a list of great Catholic periodicals and sites, select articles and other resources as well. The articles posted there are representative of what's available on the Internet, and are offered to prime your curiosity, to make you want to read more, to know more.

No doubt CAA members vary in their familiarity with these resources. If you're already an avid student of Catholic belief and news and current events, good for you! So many in our pews just go through the motions and don't read or learn. But that we could find a way to reach them and enliven their curiosity, a hunger to learn more and grow spiritually as a result! But maybe outside reading and exploration is new to you. The website and Facebook page serve to whet your appetite and to offer a truly robust, thought provoking spark to ignite the flame of your intellectual hunger, including catalyzing your recognizing and responsibly navigating the crisis in society and our Church.

CAA is a work in progress. What's a good model for what CAA can be? Being a member of the Aircraft Owners' and Pilots Association (AOPA) has some superb benefits like rentors' insurance, flight planning and great safety seminars and lobbying, but members don't regularly "participate" in the work of AOPA. There are no AOPA chapters. The Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) on the other hand is more active on behalf of homebuilders and enthusiasts and you can join and become active in an EAA chapter.

Contact Tom Beckenbauer, especially if you have interest in starting a local chapter. But also let us know what you would like CAA to become. It's perhaps cliche to say that CAA is your organization. Perhaps that's not altogether accurate. In reality it's God's organization to direct as He desires through the intercession and patronage of our patrons Our Lady of Loreto and St. Joseph of Cupertino. With the graces and guidance of the Holy Spirit you are the instrument by which God's of building the kingdom of Jesus Christ will happen through your CAA membership. To that end we will be in touch with you but if your grace-driven hunger means you can't wait, let us know and we'll do our best to get you up and running in a meaningful way.

Aviation people are almost universally respected and admired. People have a natural affinity for those of us who count Armstrong, Lindbergh and Wright as our vocational ancestors. This underlies and forms the aviation-esque part of the  foundation for CAA people as evangelizers, courting non-believers, lukewarm and fervent believers all to greater spiritual heights and therefore, their salvation. Please hang with us while we find our footing post-Covid and thank you for being a part of CAA. Pray for us and tell a friend!

1/30/24
65 Airport Chapels Globally. Why So Few?
by Terry Garrity, CAA Vice President

Ever go to a hospital without a prayer chapel? No? Me either. So why is it remarkable when an airport with Part 121 operations has a chapel?
On its web page Airport Ministries the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops states: "The first airport chapel was established in 1950 in Boston at Logan International Airport by the late Cardinal Cushing. Shortly afterward, in 1951, a chapel was opened in New York at Idlewild Airport, now called John F. Kennedy International Airport. From these humble beginnings arose 65 airport chapels in 30 nations. Just like the world of aviation, airport chaplaincy is growing quickly."(1)
(italics added)

Growing quickly? Really? I find the availability of airport chapels to be sadly deficient considering the number of years commercial airports have been in existence. ChatGPT reveals over 500 airports in the U.S. alone with scheduled Part 121 passenger operations. 65, a global figure, out of 500 with chapels is pretty thin sauce.

Hospitals and commercial airports are both large operations with considerable human traffic. Granted, while hospitals tend the sick and while their chapels seek healing for the sick and comfort for their families and friends, aren't the needs of travelers just as significant? I for one haven't met a traveler who isn't a sinner. And I know few people, traveler or not, who aren't carrying a cross in life. People who work in airports themselves have spiritual needs and flight crews are subject to temptation to sin in ways unique to the aviation profession in both kind and magnitude. Finally, many who travel do so for funerals, family emergencies or other life crises. Moreover, to travel under this kind of duress is stresful, sometimes in the extreme, especially in the post-Covid airline misery zeitgeist.

Is there anyone described above who doesn't need the healing hand of Jesus? Or His forgiveness? In the end the need and desirability of an airport chapel is every much as great as a hospital and arguably far more people pass through a commercial airport than any single hospital!

Several airports actually do have a full Mass and even Confession schedule. Atlanta's Hartfield International Airport even has perpetual adoration in arguably the busiest airport in the world peopled by men and women of all faiths. In spite of the diversity of people of every global belief system imaginable passing through Atlanta''s airport, so far as I know, no one objects to the Real Presence there.

Given the priest shortage, a staffed chapel with Mass may not be practical in all places but when it is, a chapel area dedicated to Catholics should take priority just as high as with hospitals. And no new airport construction should ever be undertaken without provision of a readily accessed chapel, pre-security, with designed-in Catholic friendly space.
_______

(1) United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Airport Ministries, accessed 1/30/2024, https://www.usccb.org/committees/pastoral-care-migrants-refugees-travelers/airport-ministries

12/15/23
Discerning airline versus non-airline vocations
 by Terry Garrity, CAA Vice President

I never made it past Part 135 flying and being a flight instructor, flying Part 135 mostly in Cessna 310 and similar-sized twins but in 1980 with the talented and seasoned Vietnam-era pilots coming home and grabbing up the airline jobs, my 20/400 uncorrected vision was toxic to the majors and corporate flying world. At first glance my choice of flying vocation was an instance of the triumph of hope over reason, my being as smitten as any aviator who was ever infected with the aviation bug. In that dark ages of the regionals I came to have zero interest in flying Beech 99's and Metroliners with poorer IFR radio resources and equally poor single engine performance (or worse) than my FBO-supplied aircraft. I was usually manning a nicely equipped Cessna Turbo 310 that was a very nice way to ply the skies. Or I had an easy ride flying right seat Piper Navajo Chieftain with a friend and mentor. That and the variety of destinations I enjoyed flying Part 135, people and freight, appealed more than living in a tin can commuter-liner going to the same airports daily while being funneled career wise into flying "real" airliners. And usually I knew and enjoyed my passengers personally. For a time I enjoyed my Part 135 work and my station as assistant chief instructor, answering only to a chief instructor who seldom flew at all.

I applied for a flying position with now defunct Air Indiana about a week before their DC-3 crashed and killed the entire University of Evansville basketball team at Evansville Regional Airport. That same year a colleague rolled an Air Wisconsin Piper Navajo Chieftain inverted after an engine failure at Cincinnati, killing everyone on board. Sadly, he had falsified his logbook to gain the pilot position. Another colleague was killed in post-impact fire after losing an engine in a Cessna Stationair after a night takeoff in northern Michigan. Being realistic about my impossible prospects for the airlines, burned out from instructing and seeing the aviation world around me not faring so well, I probably should have concluded that perhaps God was trying to point me elsewhere but at that time in my life, my radar wasn't pointed to track God's voice. Regardless, probably in spite of myself, I ended up faring reasonably well in the family manufacturing business and I retired from manufacturing 35 years later.

Recently I reflected on my having never sought out alternatives to the airlines and having come back to the Church about age 25, my now-aged soul's eyes sees things differently as a Catholic, including aviation vocations. There is of course the need to pray for God's guidance for a vocation, aviation or other. But if discernment leads to your serving the Kingdom and people as a pilot, here are some thoughts to help keep you from getting tunnel vision thinking the airlines or corporate flying are the only way to go. I don't counsel any young man or woman to give up their dreams of airline or corporate flying, far from it. But I understand the divorce rate for airline employees who fly is about twice that of the population overall. Having myself spent considerable time on the road living the motel life in business, I recall the lonlieness and isolation that Satan uses to drive a wedge into the human heart which he then intensifies to the point of adultery and divorce. I myself remained faithful but I could sense the edge of the demon's wedge working on imagination.

Alternatives to airline and corporate flying? One of my college friends spent his career flying in Alaska and later fixed wing air ambulance. Monthly a pipeline patrol flies over our house. Likewise there are also powerline patrols. There's ag flying, too. A recent survey revealed that flight instructors are now better paid than in my flying era. Few things are nobler than teaching, especially when you can integrate a lived faith with instruction, even if it means just planting a seed for a life of faith in students. At the least you'll be in a position to insist on moral behavior even if it means you students may often live it out in a secular way.

Perhaps what felt like an impulse to become a pilot is better directed at support services such as weather reporting, flight plan handling, aircraft maintenance, airway maintenance, air traffic controller, employment with the FAA in a non-flight capacity. All these allow you to be immersed in the aviation world and culture where you can evangelize both passively and actively, practicing the art of fraternal guidance and correction with the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the tools of your Catholic faith to great joy and fulfillment.

I know a couple currently in divorce proceedings. The husband is a corporate pilot, seldom home. Absolutely his corporate flying played a role in their marital breakup and, sadly, I know more of these scenarios than I know of happy marriages in the profession.

My own moral standards when I was flying, that and those of my peers were, frankly, reprehensible. "It's only sex" was a common attitude in the company and "sex positive" meant anything was allowed, heavy off-duty drinking included, notwithstanding we managed to maintain high standards on the safety side, never seeing the possibility of high safety moral standards standing shoulder to shoulder with high moral standards outside of work. The benefit of a sterile cockpit is smudged if when taxiing you have to listen to yet the latest details of a peer's divorce woes. The story always smells of misery and its odor colors the cockpit.

If you expect to marry and have children, prayer and discernment take on a different solemn direction since your responsibilities will include the spiritual care and leadership of souls and material welfare of wife and children. Airline and corporate flying schedules can be brutal. Think of missing kids' baseball games, school plays, anniversaries and birthdays. And while corporate and airline pay is at the top of flying professions, consider the beauty before God in living a simpler life with perhaps fewer material possessions.

So someone says "You lived the life. Who are you to lecture?" Well, that's partly true (I never made it to the airlines but accumulated about 3500 hours) but it is what also gave me the insight and, hopefully, the wisdom to want better for another. In many ways it has taken most of my 66 years to finally come out on top of life's cloud cover to see the horizon and to feel fully the warmth of God's desire for us all.

At the end of life one will see the beauty and value of children, grandchildren,  a treasured spouse and a life long after the memory of the exhilaration of a good flight has long faded. And I think, sure, couples of great commitment and moral strength CAN accommodate an airline or corporate career. In fact, I'm in awe of couples who have pulled that off and I do in fact know several. The thing I want to emphasize here is to 1.) know and acknowledge the risks and unexpected effects of choices before it is too late; and 2.) arrive at your life's vocational destination through prayer and listening for God's guidance. I wish I had done as much but, thankfully, God pointed me pretty much in spite of me.

Be willing to keep a truly open mind and imagination, and an ear for the still small voice of God. Consider the beauty of the humbler, simple life as a possibility knowing that many aviation jobs still pay very well--and an aviation vocation may be yours but at the least, life will be an adventure traveled hand in hand with Christ to land at a destination beyond imagination and to bring loved others with you.

12/14/2023
A woman’s dignity is discerned not in how closely she can imitate a man, but in how virtuously she exemplifies her unique and God-given feminine glory. Our Lady, the New Eve, is the exemplar of true femininity. 

10-19-23
Faith, Flying, Fellowship and Reaching Out
By Terry Garrity, CAA Vice President

I am reminded of some back-to-basic duties that I'd like to write down for our mutual benefit. CAA is about evangelization foremost. I have waited literally for years to find out what is meant by the New Evangelization. I've decided that I'll freeze as Lot's wife if I keep waiting for the answer rather than respond to God's grace and just get to work.

CAA members and all Catholic swim against the tide in turgid waters to promote Jesus in our culture, to reach these people in no particular order of priority:

1.) Lukewarm Catholics and Catholics at risk. Those at risk of making life-altering bad choices (e.g. abortion, adultery); one where a major life event, usually adverse, compels a return to faith; and those who have decided for whatever reason that they want to begin taking their faith seriously and work at it.
2.) Non-Catholics. The joy of discovery and insight, of knowledge they were always denied or simply missed in and beyond Scripture awaits.
3.) The unchurched who have never been exposed to the Gospel message and the evidence for belief, or who have left the practice of faith entirely.

For some time now it has been up to us (lay Catholics) to carry the torch of evagelization. Bishop Fulton Sheen in this reworked paraphrase said this about our Church but it also applies to the broader culture, about the United States, really about the world:

Who’s going to save our [country] Church? It’s not our [political leaders] bishops... It is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes and the ears to save the [country] Church. Your mission is to see that the [political leaders] priests act like [Americans] priests, and so on.

With that in mind, Catholic Aviation Association is foremost be about the business of evangelizing, and therefore saving souls. The joy of flight and aviation and camaraderie that comes from fellowship catalyzes the task so that sharing the Gospel should becomes part of our nature--really, just responding to God's free gift of grace that's always here for us.

10-11-23
 A Dose of Encouragement
By Terry Garrity, CAA Vice President

Here is your dose of encoragement for today. From enthusiast to pilot, or line assembler, to air traffic controller: Reflect on your vocation in aviation and in your very life with these words by St John Henry Newman:

"God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments. Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about."