Where has Atticus Finch gone? We need him so

I was getting ready to rush out the door and walk and say the Rosary when I made one last flight through the cable channels ... and there he was.

Atticus Finch, there in the Deep South courtroom, defending a black man wrongly and racially accused.

And then there was the one scene, after an innocent man had been convicted of a crime he did not commit. And Finch's daughter was urged by the black minister beside her in the segregated balcony to stand.

Her father was passing.

Where have you gone, Atticus Finch? Our city, our nation, our profession, our world looks to you to speak out courageously and damn the hypocrites and the abusers.

Where were you at The Tennessean when they laid off the sick and the single moms this week?

Where were you in the Nashville public schools as a school board resegregated children and a mayor so beyond his element and skill fights to take control to keep even more poor and minority children behind?

Where were you when all the Wall Street fatcats got bailed out before Congress while people losing their homes received no help at all?

Where will you be in January when the governor here ravages the sick and the needy on TennCare once more?

Lord, send us another Atticus Finch, for the people suffer and the darkness descends.