A TALE OF TWO TRINKETS

Anyone that has read Dante's classic, "The Inferno", has a picture in their mind of the clever torments inflicted upon sinners in all the various levels of Hell. The torments are always directly related to the sin and incredibly clever in their application. I wonder what use he would have found for these pens?

On a shelf in my parents house sits a beer mug. It was removed from a dead German soldier during WWII. The artwork on it is a depiction of people working in the death camps with the slogan "Arbeit Macht Frei" shown above the gates. Like the pen given to Sister Kehaan this mug memorialized this soldiers participation in a Holocaust. Like the Sister he was part of the political machine that had as it's goal and made possible the deaths of millions because they were inconvenient, sick, poor or a thousand other reasons.

I pray for Sister Kehaan and that dead German soldier. Honestly though, I wouldn't want to die with either the pen or the stein and what they both signify attached to my immortal soul.

"Sister Carol Kehaan, President of the Catholic Health Association, has been awarded with one of the 20 pens used by President Barak Obama on Tuesday to sign the health care bill.

...Sister Kehaan, who strongly supported the controversial health care bill despite the opposition of the US Bishops, was joined in receiving presidential pens by some of the most strongly pro-abortion members of the Congress and the Senate: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid; Senator Dick Durbin, majority whip; Max Baucus, chairman of the Finance Committee; Senators Tom Harkin and Christopher Dodd; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer; James Clyburn, majority whip; George Miller, chairman of the Education committee; Henry Waxman, chairman of Energy and Commerce; Sander Levin, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee; John Dingell; and Charles Rangel, former chairman of the Ways and Means Committee."
Catholic News Agency