Advent in the time of COVID-19

The Advent Wreath at St. Faustina Kowalska Parish in Nanticoke, PA. Picture is a frame grab from the conclusion of the streamed broadcast of the November 28, 2020 Mass. We are attending Mass online, and have been doing so for several months.

Advent, at least according to the homily delivered at yesterday's Mass, is intended to be a time of reflection and penitence. But that's not the way I remember learning about it as a kid in Catholic School in the 1970s. I (mostly) went to school at Blessed John Neumann, the school attached to the parish of Our Lady of Czestochowa, commonly known as St. Mary's. (I attended grades 2, 4, and possibly 6 at St. Stanislaus halfway across town, as part of a facilities-sharing plan that foreshadowed the parish consolidation that was to come decades later.) Every Friday in Advent we would gather in the second-floor corridor and hold a wreath-lighting ceremony, complete with Advent songs - I especially remember "O Come O Come Emmanuel," but we sang other songs like "What Child is This," "The King of Glory," "O Little Town of Bethlehem," and "Behold a Virgin Bearing Him," a personal favorite. For us, Advent was a countdown to Christmas, a time of presents and goodies and time off from school. The Advent ceremonies were little breaks from classes, generally at or near the end of the day.

I have fond memories of Advent. For me, this was a time of preparation and anticipation. This was when decorating would get done - our tree always went up the weekend after Thanksgiving - the time to finalize wish lists and do some Christmas shopping at crowded, lavishly-decorated malls full of music and the sound of Salvation Army bell-ringers, the time to paw through the Wish Book from Sears as well as lesser catalogues published by Stroud's and Jewelcor and Bartikowski's (all local independent retailers, now closed) and Montgomery Ward. It was usually the time of the first major snowfalls, the big, fluffy, fun snows of December, not the more miserable cold, heavy, icy snows of January and February. This was when the Christmas specials would air, the classics from Rankin-Bass and the more modern oddities, when variety shows and sitcoms alike would air special holiday episodes. This was when my mother and grandmother would begin making cookies, chocolate chips and bird's nests (called by others "thumbprint cookies") and sugar ("cut-out") cookies and "rocks," whiskey-soaked fruitcake cookies that were often as hard as their namesakes.  It was a good time, and the weekly lighting of the Advent wreath would slowly mark the passage of time.

The catalogs are gone, for the most part, and much gift shopping is done online. Shopping at a mall, what malls remain, seems like suicidal insanity. Christmas TV specials are mostly offered as Boomer and Gen-X nostalgia. What decorating is done is done, for the most part, by me. What cookies are made are made by me. Temperatures have been unseasonably warm, and there is no snow in the forecast.

I have meant for years to set up a home Advent wreath - an LED one, of course, with three purple candles and one pink ("rose") candle. Year after year I have never gotten around to it, and this is not the year to go rummaging around Michael's or the basement of Boscov's for the required components. So frame grabs from my parish's weekly church services will have to do. 

With each week that ticks by, we are one week closer to Christmas - and to the end of the time of COVID-19.

Fiction: Keeping Christ in Christmas

Every year, we hear about some imagined "War on Christmas." The biggest offenders, we are told, are the people who make Christmas all about Santa and gift-buying. "Keep Christ in Christmas!" we are commanded. Here's a story of a retailer who decides to capitalize on this idea.

First written December 29, 2012, published to my private writing blog March 21, 2013.

Keeping Christ in Christmas

A satire I've been mulling over for years. Finally written out December 29, 2012.


"Esther, why are we here?" Ruth was a plump, grandmotherly woman in a gray blouse and black skirt. She wore a brown shawl against the evening's chill, though November in Louisiana was a bit warmer than she had anticipated. She was one of three women seated at the small conference table. Ruth and Martha had barely had time to drop their suitcases in their rooms and refresh themselves from the long bus ride before Elder Esther had summoned them to the hotel's first floor meeting room.

"I no longer need to keep this a secret from the two of you," the tiny woman in the big chair said. She was dressed in a simple blue dress and a green sweater buttoned at the throat.  Her silver-white hair was freshly permed, and every rhinestone in her glasses shone like a diamond. Even as she sat, she leaned heavily on her jade-handled cane. "We are here to meet Mr. Max Lawtram, the founder of the Lawtram's chain of department stores."

Martha, a tall, humorless-looking sort in a lavender pant suit, gasped. "Max Lawtram himself? Why would he want to meet with us?"

Elder Esther opened her mouth to speak, but suddenly the door to the conference room swung open. A burly, balding man in his early seventies dressed in a business suit entered. The three women stood up.

"Sister Ruth, Sister Martha, Elder Esther, welcome. I have read so much about you and all of your good works. It is so wonderful to finally meet you in person. Please be seated."

He smiled and shook each of their hands, thanking them by name. After some pleasantries regarding their twelve-hour bus ride and the quality of their accommodations, he got down to business.

"Sisters, Elder Esther, as you no doubt know Lawtram's is the number one retailer in the United States. For the last three years our nearest competitor has realized less than half of our annual profits.  And we have done it all while remaining a Godly and righteous company, refusing to cater to consumers of smutty entertainment and other negative elements of our society.

"Yet I have come to realize that we have fallen short in our faithfulness every year. You of the South Central Evangelical Church have been quite active on God's side in the War on Christmas, and your campaign to Keep Christ in Christmas has been far more effective than any other. Your call to action made clear that we at Lawtram's have failed in this regard. We, like every other retailer, have embraced the Godless commercial aspects of the season, with Santa and reindeer and 'Happy Holidays.' So beginning this year, beginning this weekend, we will be making a major change. We will be keeping Christ in Christmas as no other retailer has done.

"I apologize for the secrecy in this matter. We have taken the steps necessary to keep this campaign under wraps until we are ready to unveil it this Friday, on the traditional start of the Christmas season. A media embargo has been declared until that date so none of our competitors might know what we are up to. I have not even disclosed to Esther all that I might have, and I have asked her to keep what she knows secret until tonight. But soon, all will be revealed. Come with me to the Flagship Lawtram's in Bayouville!"

Max Lawtram escorted them out of the room and down the hall into the lobby. Just outside the doors a van from Lawtram Limo Services was waiting.

Once they were on the road Max asked the three ladies about their trip and about their ministry with the South Central Evangelical Church. Ruth and Martha eagerly shared their stories of mission trips into the Godless areas of the east and west coasts. Elder Esther sat straight and silent in her seat, her eyes hidden behind the glare of the dashboard lights on her glasses.

Soon Max Lawtram directed the driver to turn on the radio. "As we approach the store, you will notice the first of our innovations. You will hear it before you see it!"

The radio filled the van with the baby-baby-baby-ooh of the latest pop pap that was filling the airways this week. But soon the song faded and was gradually replaced by Christmas music.

"Not just any music, mind you," Max Lawtram pointed out. "So many popular Christmas songs make no mention of Jesus, or even Christmas. All of these songs, which are being broadcast from short-range towers along the highway, have been specially selected and approved."

The song came to an end, and Arabic-sounding music picked up.

"I'm Caspar!" came a voice.

"I'm Melchior!" said another.

"And I'm Balthazar!" declared a third. "And we are..."

"The THREE KINGS!" they announced in unison.

"We're following the star to savings at Lawtram's!" Caspar announced. "Won't you join us to see what you might discover there?"

The Lawtram's jingle played, followed by another selected and approved Christmas song.

"And now, if you look out of the window towards the glow in the distance..." Max Lawtram began.

"The names are non-canonical," Elder Esther stated sternly.

"I beg your pardon?"

She tapped her cane on the floor of the van for emphasis. "The names Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar do not appear in scripture, nor are they ever stated to be kings. Matthew only refers to them as Magi, wise men from the East."

Max Lawtram pressed a button on his wristwatch. "You hear that, J.F.? Names non-canonical. No three kings, either. Fix it."

"You got it, boss," crackled a voice from the watch.

"Thank you so much for sharing you knowledge and correcting our error, Elder Esther," Max said sweetly.  "Now, if you look ahead, you'll notice a representation of the Star of Bethlehem rising over the Flagship Lawtram's. One will shine over every Lawtram's across the nation this weekend."

The van turned into the parking lot of the Flagship Lawtram's, past the oversized inflated figures of three men in Persian garb riding camels.

"This is called a 'soft opening'," Max said. "Family, friends, and invited guests only. No media, no corporate spies. Oh, the media knows all about this already, but they also know that if anyone says anything without authorization they'll be punished severely. No more exclusives, no more packages, no more official leaks. And the competition knows about it, too, I'm sure, but they don't know what to make of it."

The van stopped at the main entrance to the store.

"This is where we get off, ladies!" Max Lawtram stepped out of the van and helped each of the women out. He was older than any of them by about ten years - well, probably older than Elder Esther, it was hard to say - but he had the physique of a man twenty years his junior.

They entered through the automatic doors and immediately heard the strains of a country song, as a man sang about a little boy trying to buy shoes for his momma for Christmas, so she would have something nice to wear when she went to meet Jesus. Sister Martha nodded approvingly.

"Thank you for coming to celebrate my son's birthday!" boomed a large man dressed in white robes at the front of the store.

"This is Chuck," Max said in an aside to his three companions. "He was our Santa Claus last year. As you can see, we found a new role for him this season."

Chuck stood over six and a half feet tall and had long, white flowing hair and a full white beard and moustache.  He wore long white robes, sandals on his feet, and what appeared to be a triangular halo on his head.  He was holding about a dozen balloons that said "KEEP CHRIST IN CHRISTMAS".

"Would you young ladies care for a balloon?" he asked.

"Yes, please!" piped Sister Ruth.

Elder Esther remained stern-faced and silent as they passed through the store. Max was speaking enthusiastically as they walked along.

"The problem with the secular commercialization of Christmas - well, one of the problems with it - is that it has become so deeply entangled with the idea of Christmas that it is nearly impossible to cut out he secular commercial aspects of it without removing, in the view of the public, the very 'specialness' of Christmas itself. Santa and reindeer and elves are not truly part of the Christmas story - not as you and I know it - but if you remove them you leave a gaping hole in the public perception of Christmas. So the trick is - the thing that makes the most business sense - is to substitute religious elements for the secular elements that are being removed, secular elements which, in fact, replaced the religious elements in the first place!"

Arabic-sounding music played over the PA system. "Attention Lawtram's shoppers," came a female voice. "The Star of Bethlehem is now shining in our sporting goods department! Follow it for extra-special savings on all rifles and handguns, and ammunition of all sorts, too! Remember, there's no waiting period for Lawtram's Club Card holders, so be sure to stock up and save on all your Christmas guns and ammo today!  But hurry - the Star will be shining in sporting goods for only the next ten minutes!"

Max looked up. "Ah, that reminds me, I'll have to pick up some .22 long rifle rounds for my grandson Bobby! He's only five and he's getting to be a crack shot!" He spoke into his watch again. "J.F., see to it."

"Got it, boss. Five hundred box or the thousand?"

"You have to ask? And better hurry, the sale ends in less than eight minutes."

They continued through the store. Ruth noticed signs over the security cameras that said GOD IS WATCHING YOU. Martha was the first to spot ground level signs that stated SHOPLIFTERS MAKE THE BABY JESUS CRY.

"The centerpiece of many traditional retail Christmas displays is the department store Santa," Max continued. "Santa in his workshop, aided by his elves. Santa on a throne, listening to the wish lists of children sitting on his lap. Parents paying twenty bucks a pop for photos with Santa. These are all things people have come to expect. Removing them would be...disorienting." The moved toward a crowd of people near the back of the store. "This is where we have had our most effective substitution."

Children and their parents were lined up in front of a young, bearded man in robes and sandals who sat on a gilded throne. A banner stretched over him that said SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN TO COME UNTO ME.

Sister Martha stopped abruptly. "You have replaced Santa with...Jesus?"

"Not just replaced Santa with Jesus," Max said, beaming. "We've replaced the elves with Apostles!"

And sure enough, several other men in robes and sandals moved around the crowd, each one wearing a name tag. The one who stood next to Jesus and introduced each child had a tag that said PETER. Another walked by, loudly conversing with a fellow Apostle. "You might be able to find better prices somewhere else this Christmas, but I DOUBT it!"

"See, that one is..."

"...Thomas," Ruth stated. "We noticed."

"And, see, Jesus was a carpenter," Max continued. "So Santa's Workshop has become Jesus's Woodshop. Each kid gets a little wooden toy to take home, very traditional, and we've tested this latest batch right off the boat to be sure they weren't loaded with arsenic." He grinned. "All of Jesus's Apostles help him in the Woodshop, which has the latest power tools and workstations for kids and dads alike, and..."

"Jesus was a carpenter," Martha said coldly, "but the Apostles were not. Many of them were fishermen."

Max's eyes bugged slightly. "Fishermen?" He turned purple for a moment, then repeated "Fishermen?" He pulled up his watch again. "J.F., did you get that? The Apostles weren't carpenters! They were fishermen! Why the hell do we have them in a wood shop? Why the hell aren't they pushing fishing gear? Whose idea was this?"

"Well, boss..." the voice over the watch paused. "It was Johnson. Johnson had the idea for the Apostles in the Woodshop. Said it would move the power tools."

"It was a crap idea! Have Johnson fired. And pull our fishing stuff out of the warehouse! I want boats! Motors! Clothing and gear! I want every one of these Apostles in hip waders and a hat covered with lures for Black Friday!"

Max lowered his wristwatch and took a few deep breaths. Regaining his composure, he turned back to his three guests.

"You see now why I wanted, why I need you here?" he said. "We have a lot of the broad outlines taken care of. We've done a lot of the basic work for our Keep Christ in Christmas campaign. But, as they say, God is in the details, and you ladies are the experts in these details. That's why I want to sign you on as consultants to Lawtram's. With your assistance, we can be certain that Keep Christ in Christmas isn't just successful from a retail point of view, but is also theologically correct. In exchange, or course, each of you ladies will receive a generous stipend, and the South Central Evangelical Church will receive funds that will help it to spread the word about the importance of this campaign. What do you say?"

Sister Ruth and Sister Martha had brightened considerably as Max Lawtram made his final pitch. But they turned deferentially to Elder Esther, who stood off to one side, stern-faced and silent, leaning on her jade-handled cane.

"Well, Elder Esther," said Max. "What do you think?"

The little old lady considered her words carefully, then looked up at the multi-billionare across from her. "What do I think, Mr. Lawtram?" she said. "What do I think of removing the secular commercial elements of Christmas from your store and replacing them with religious commercial elements? What do I think of removing Santa and reindeer and elves and replacing them with Jesus and camels and Apostles? And what do I think of your very generous offer to take the three of us on as consultants and to provide funding to the South Central Evangelical Church, in exchange for our support of your efforts? Is that what you are asking me, Mr. Lawtram?"

"Well..." he said, fighting an urge to tug at his collar,"...well, yes."

One corner of her mouth turned up slightly. "I think it's a good start, Mr. Lawtram. Where do we draw up the agreements?"

"We have a room in the back," he said, escorting the three women past the line of children waiting to sit on Jesus's lap. "And once we're done, I'll be happy to outline for you Phase II of our plan, addressing the issue of the weekly competition between Sunday religious services and the attraction of retail outlets. Now, see, if we were to incorporate religious services directly into the retail experience..."

The day after the day the Report came out

Yesterday was a day we all knew was coming for a long time. A Grand Jury report on sexual abuse of minors and others by Roman Catholic priests, long-awaited and long-delayed through legal maneuvers, finally came out. (Located here, for the moment.) It names names - mostly, except for those temporarily redacted as a result of those legal maneuvers - and details not just the crimes committed by the priests, but the efforts of bishops and others to cover up the facts of the crimes and to silence the victims of the crimes.

The report is huge, coming in at just under nine hundred pages. It lists the offending priests by diocese - there are fifty-nine in the Diocese of Scranton alone - and lists for each offending priest all the parishes they have been assigned to over the years. This list is not entirely accurate. One elderly priest who had been in residence in my home parish for the past few years is listed as a consequence of crimes he allegedly committed before starting here, but nowhere does it mention "Nanticoke" among his assignments.

Most of what is in the report is no surprise to...well, most Catholics. Sexual abuse by priests has been an open secret for most of my life. The Bishop's Annual Appeal, a pledge drive for extra donations with targeted goals for every parish, is also known as "Peter's Pence." A common refrain is that Peter's Pence go to pay for the priests who couldn't keep their peters in their pants.

What is most shocking is the pattern of cover-ups on the parts of bishops. I remember when James Timlin became bishop decades ago. I was just a grade school kid, but even then it seemed that he was young for a bishop. He is no longer the bishop in charge of the Diocese of Scranton, but he still pays a role in diocesan activities. Many of the priests listed are now very old or have died, but Timlin is still around. Will he be called upon to account for all the things he did to cover up the actions of criminal priests?

The dream of cats and dogs

I overslept this morning. I'm wearing myself out. Things seem to be getting worse and worse for my friend - or, at least, she's slipping farther and farther away from the person any of her friends thought they knew. The crisis with the Traitor Trump is escalating. And I had a dream.

There were Jehovah's Witnesses in the neighborhood. This isn't so unusual, in reality; they have a Kingdom Hall just a few blocks from here. Heck, I think my neighbors are Jehovah's Witnesses. But it's unusual to see them going door to door, proselytizing, and when they do, word spreads around the neighborhood fast. I think that's what was happening in this dream. I decided to chase them away - something I wouldn't do in real life - and somehow that involved opening our garage door. When I closed it a few hours later, I discovered that I had accidentally let in about a dozen cats.

I found myself standing in the garage, looking at a dozen cats who had arranged themselves into a semicircle. They were all staring at me, and each one had an empty bowl next to it. I looked at the cats closest to me and realized that at least two of them were not cats at all, but dogs, tiny, cat-sized dogs, with comically distorted features - one of them had a huge nose that covered much of its muzzle. But they had empty bowls, too, and I began going through the house looking for a dozen cans of cat food and a couple of cans of dog food. (We haven't bought dog food in a while, since Hershey died, and I tried to give away all the leftover cans of dog food to a local veterinary hospital, but I still find cans from time to time.)

And then the dream ended. Maybe that's when I woke up. I wonder where it would have gone from there.

Dinner conversation: Sex, politics, and religion

THE SETTING: University of Scranton, 1988. A Presidential election year, with Michael Dukakis running against the incumbent Vice President George H.W. Bush. A group of us were gathered for dinner in the upstairs cafeteria of the (now demolished) Student Center, a room also known as the Pocono Northeast Room. Joining us was a Born-Again Christian friend who had been expressing opinions about the subservience of women, and how they do not belong in public service.

ME: "So if there were a presidential election between a highly-qualified Christian woman and a man who is a Satanist who believes abortion should be mandatory and all Christians should be put to death..."

HIM: "I would vote for the man. Women don't belong in public office."

I just realized that I foresaw the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election, or at least the reason for the Evangelical vote, back in 1988.

Big Day, part whatever

Today I had a Big Day. That's a day where I squeeze in multiple major events or activities, usually one after another.

So today I:

• Went to the dentist for my six-month cleaning
• Went to my cousin's daughter's First Holy Communion
• Went to the reception afterwards
• Went to Free Comic Book Day at my comic book shop and picked up four months of comics (I would swear I was just there a month or so ago!)
• Went to a gathering of bloggers and friends to hang out and watch the Kentucky Derby

While at the church I photographed something I've been meaning to get an image of for a long time. Also, I noticed that some of the azaleas are ready to bloom - maybe as soon as tomorrow! We'll see.

All this has left me a bit tired. So I'll sign off now.

Dirt

Today is Ash Wednesday. For Christians - some Christians, anyway, and specifically I'm thinking of Roman Catholics* - this is a day of somber reflection: it marks the beginning of Lent, a forty day period of self-denial (six days each week, not counting Sundays) leading up to Easter.

Ash Wednesday was a big deal back when I was in Catholic School from kindergarten through eighth grade. Our Ash Wednesday services would take place during the school day. We would march from the school to the church sometime in the mid-morning, sit through Mass, and then line up and get a smudge of ashes - burned palms from the previous year - on our foreheads as the priest grumbled "Remember man, dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return." After we headed back to school we would all laugh at each other's "dirt" for the rest of the day. We weren't supposed to wipe the ash off, or even wash it off before bed. Most of us would come to school the next day with clean foreheads, Usually.

I was in Florida for a Space Shuttle lunch near Ash Wednesday back in the late 1990's. My mom and I found a Catholic Church near Cocoa Beach and went to the Ash Wednesday service there. Later that day we went to a restaurant for lunch. The waitresses kept looking at us strangely, and eventually one of them asked us why we had dirt on out foreheads. We told them, but I think they were still baffled. Throughout the rest of the day, we realized we weren't seeing many people with ashes on their foreheads. I suppose in that part of Florida, Catholics - or maybe Christians in general - are a rare breed.

I went for ashes today after work. The service was packed. The parking lot was filled beyond capacity, to the point that we had to wait for all the cars filling the lanes to pull out before those of us parked in spaces could leave. It was the third of three services today, and the priest pointed out that all of them were well-attended.

Is there a meaning in this beyond tradition, a ritual connecting me to to my own past and to the lives of my parents and grandparents? Is it a time to muse on mortality, to experience a season of self-denial, or to ritually cleanse one's self in preparation for the celebration of Easter?

I don't know. But one thing I can say for sure: Today, I got my "dirt."



*Many Protestant Christians, or "hellbound apostates", don't consider Catholics to be Christians at all. Donald Trump tried to insinuate that Ted Cruz isn't a "real" Christian because his Cuban roots make it more likely he's a Catholic. Go figure.

Lily and Poinsettia Catholics

Easter is a big family visiting time, almost as big as Christmas.  Why, I'm not sure.  Maybe it's the Spring weather that puts people in a mind to travel to the lands of their births and visit with their long-estranged ancestors. And, quite often, their long-estranged churches.

It's a well-known fact that a significant portion of Catholics are actually what are called "Lily and Poinsettia Catholics," people who only find themselves inside a church twice a year, once at Christmas and again at Easter.  The proof is in the packing: on these two days of the year almost every Catholic church is filled to bursting.  It is possible that many of the people in these churches are actually visitors from out of town, regular churchgoers in their own parishes who wish to participate in services with their families.  But if this were the case, it would stand to reason that there would have to be a certain number of churches that would find themselves depopulated at these times, as their congregations attend services elsewhere.  But anecdotal evidence suggests that this is not the case, that instead almost every church finds itself crammed beyond capacity on these days.

The Catholic parishes of Nanticoke have experienced consolidation in recent years.  Church buildings have closed, and where once there were numerous parishes throughout the city and its outskirts, now there is a single Catholic parish with two worship sites, with the former Holy Trinity serving as the primary site and the former St. Mary's - my home parish - serving as the alternate site.  Beautiful churches with proud traditions and rich histories - St. Stan's, St. Joe's, St. Francis, Holy Child - now stand deconsecrated and empty, stripped of their fixtures and ornaments - or in the case of St. Francis, completely demolished.

And why?  Because dwindling parish rolls could not justify keeping so many churches open.

Fair enough.  A church is a big, expensive building to maintain, and if you have only a handful of parishioners dropping money in the collection basket, it may be impossible to keep the lights on.  Though almost anyone affected will tell you that consolidation went too far, resulting in overcrowded services and overpacked parking lots.* And that's on a typical Sunday.

This Easter was insane.

My sister was in for the holiday, and she and my mom headed out to church separately from me.  They left at about 9:10 for the 9:30 mass a mile across town.  I left the house at about 9:20.

The scene that I came upon looked like a carnival.  People in their Easter Sunday finery were milling about in front of the church.  (I wore my typical clothes - a Henley, jeans, and a black raincoat, with a pair of black dress shoes added as a nod to formality.) Cars were everywhere.  I had to park two blocks away and hike up a hill to get to the church.  Halfway up I saw my sister walking along another hill; she had dropped off our mom and parked three blocks away.

As I approached I saw numerous people walking away from the church - they had decided that they were not going to do this, that they would go to another mass elsewhere or maybe none at all.  As I got closer to the church I saw people stationed on the steps, and on the front landing of the church; perhaps they were planning to stay there through the mass, I don't know.  When I entered the church the vestibule was crammed with people, and more people were sitting on the steps leading up to the choir loft.  I had to get up there, so I mumbled apologies and heaved myself up the steps past them, all the while puffing like a steam engine from my recent hike.

The choir loft was more of the same.  Where normally between two and five choir members and maybe two dozen kibitzers would be scattered about the loft, over a hundred people were crammed in the elevated area, filling the pews and the chairs and all the available floor space.  I took up a position at the railing amongst a sea of unfamiliar faces.  I would stand through the mass.  Heck, I used to stand for twelve hours at a time at work; one hour at church wouldn't kill me.

The pews below were full.  The side aisles were full of people.  Normally, I am told, the church has a capacity of 400 people, and most masses have half that number or less in attendance.  On this day there were over 575 in it.**  I recognized maybe one face in every eight.

I have no idea who these extra people were.  Some were visitors, of course, extended families home for the holiday to see their parents or grandparents.  But many, I think, were people who just can't be bothered to  go to church most weekends, but feel that Easter is somehow special and important.

Ironically, the standard Catholic mass is a recreation of the events of Holy Week and especially Easter.  Opening prayers are followed by readings from the Bible - one from the Old Testament (or, between Easter and Ascension Thursday, the Acts of the Apostles), one from the New Testament (except the Gospels), and a reading from the Gospels.  Responsorial Psalms, the Prayer of the Faithful, then the Liturgy of the Eucharist, recounting the Last Supper through the Resurrection. Finally the mass climaxes in Communion, followed by final prayers and a sending forth.  It's the same routine on Easter as it is on any other Sunday. 

The injunction on Catholics is to attend mass every Sunday.  There's nothing magical about Christmas and Easter. People who just go to mass twice a year do their parishes a disservice in two ways.  By displacing regular churchgoers at these holiday masses, they deny some people the opportunity to attend mass as they normally do every other week.  And by not being in attendance the rest of the year, they help contribute to the low attendance rates that have resulted in church closings, consolidation, and overcrowding.  If all the Lily and Poinsettia Catholics had been attending services regularly throughout the year, Nanticoke wouldn't be down to just two churches.


*A similar consolidation of Catholic schools went through a bit earlier, spearheaded by the same now-former bishop who forced parish consolidation on the diocese.  But an explicit purpose of school consolidation was the reduction of  enrollment: the total available student space at the consolidated schools was smaller than the total enrollment pre-consolidation.  It seems illogical and irrational to attempt to pare back the total number of church-goers through parish consolidation.  But perhaps that was, in fact, part of Bishop Martino's plan.

**There are twenty rows of pews on each side of a central aisle.  There are hat hooks in each pew (for holding hats, of course) - twelve in each pew, except for the front three, which have only space for ten hat hooks to allow for wheelchairs and/or maneuvering space around a casket during funerals.  Assuming one (fairly skinny) person per hat hook, that gives a capacity of 2 x ((17x12)+(3x10)) = 2 x (204+30) = 2x234 = 468 people in the pews, plus maybe another 60 or so in the choir loft.  So I think 575 may have been an underestimate.

OK, you win

I don't remember exactly when and where this incident happened.  I think it was in the York, PA school district, and I think it was possibly between 1995 and 2000.

One of the most treasured and despised bits of the U.S. Constitution is the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."  This has been interpreted to mean (to borrow the language favored by Thomas Jefferson) a separation of Church and State.  One of the upshots of this - not actually put into action until the efforts of one woman - is the elimination of overt religious activity in public schools.  Prior to her efforts, Christian prayer in schools was the norm and was required of all students, Christian or otherwise.  Afterwards, even religious trappings commonly associated with holidays were prohibited, though the secular items associated with these holidays were still acceptable.*

Depending on who happens to be in charge of a school board at any given time, numerous school districts try to skirt this issue, coming up with convoluted plans to obey the letter of the law while thumbing their noses at its intent.  Sometimes they don't even try to give the appearance of following the law, but just charge through in an assumption that no one will complain.

In a school district that may or may not have been in York, PA, in a time that might have been sometime between 1995 and 2000, one school decided it would just plow through and put on some display that simply ignored the general interpretation of the Establishment Clause.  I don't recall if this was some Nativity display for Christmas, or crosses for Easter, or just a display of the Ten Commandments**, an old favorite of folks wishing to stick their finger in the eye of those who hold the Establishment Clause dear.  They probably figured they were in a district which was religiously and culturally homogeneous, so the likelihood that someone would complain was low.

Someone complained.  I don't remember the details.  I believe it was a student, or a pair of students, maybe even a group of students, who fancied themselves as Pagans or Wiccans or something else that was popular among kids at the time.  (And for all I know, they might have been serious and honest about it.)  But they made an issue of the overt religiosity of the display in question, and complained that other religions were not getting similar representation, and thus, as public tax dollars were being used to fund the display, there was a clear violation of the Establishment Clause.

I don't think it went to court, which is important to the story.  I don't think there was ever an official order settling this case.  Instead the school conceded the point:  yes, it was wrong to put on a display for one religion without granting others equal time.  So this display would just be the first in a series.  After it came down, the students who raised the objection would be allowed to put up a display, in the interest of equal exposure of other cultures and religious beliefs.  It's all about education, you see.

So the Christian display came, and the Christian display went.  And then the school realized it had made a terrible mistake.  It had been wrong to even contemplate this display in the first place, let alone put it up.  They completely conceded the point that the students had originally raised:  any such display with such an overt presentation of religion clearly violated the Establishment Clause.  They had made a mistake, and had seen the error of their ways, and they would never let it happen again.

Starting with the display the students were going to put up.

See, the students were right, and the school was wrong, and had been from the start.  They should never have put that display up in the first place.  And the students' display would be just as wrong.  It would be compounding the original wrong the school had committed.  Best to just recognize the school's error and move on from there.

But the students weren't going to get to put on their heathen display.  No way no how.

I don't know how this situation ended.  I may have some of the critical details wrong, though I'm pretty sure I got the gist of the story.  The moral is, if you concede a point after conceding the point is completely moot, after you've had your way and had your say, and if the act of conceding will prevent the other guy from having his way and having his say, you have effectively gotten to have your cake and eaten it, too.  You've won by conceding.

There was a comedian who did a routine about this, about dealing with a rambunctious son.  (Maybe it was supposed to be how his father dealt with him as a child.  The comedian may or may not have been Rondell Sheridan.)  He would play a game:  let's see who can punch the other on the arm the softest.  First the kid would go, giving a light tap.  Then the father (I think) would take his turn, inflicting a punishing smack, followed by the concession "OK, you win!"  (The joke also works if the father goes first and concedes while his son is writhing in pain, and that may have been the way the joke went.  The same idea was used in the South Park episode "Mecha-Streisand.")

In 2009, the Health Care Reform legislation debate had been intentionally dragged out by Republicans so that there was no vote and no resolution prior to the summer Congressional recess, when members of Congress traditionally return home and have meetings with their constituents.  For many constituents the reaction to Health Care Reform was "meh," "whatever," or "Didn't Bill Clinton try to get this passed in 1995?  Good Lord, this is way overdue!"  But not for constituents who were taking their marching orders from right-wing radio and TV.  Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Back were busy firing up the troops.  Sarah Palin was warning about "Death Panels" that would be a natural consequence of health care reform.  This was treason, they told their loyal listeners; that guy in the White House was running roughshod over the true interests of the people of America, and was arrogantly planning to impose his own vision of America on them all.  So the voices on the radio came up with a plan for the summer:  Hijack these town hall meetings.  Shout down any opposition.  Travel en masse to wherever a member of Congress was holding a meeting - even if they weren't constituents of that member of Congress - and get their message across, loud and clear.  Particularly loud.

And that's what happened.  These people went to these meetings and vented their fury.  What they were furious about, they weren't entirely clear.  But they were mad as hell, and they weren't gonna take it anymore.  Not from Democrats, or Liberals, or Progressives.  And especially not from that Negro Mulsim Kenyan in the White House.

And it worked.  Democrats brought sheets of paper to a rock fight and were trounced.  Anyone with a genuine question or concern about Health Care Reform got drowned out by all the people screaming with rage because they had been instructed to scream with rage.  Participatory Democracy was derailed in favor of mobocracy.  Somewhere, Rush Limbaugh leaned back and lit another cigar that had been paid for by the Insurance lobby, satisfied with a job well done.

The Democrats never recovered.  The unfocused rage spiraled and coalesced.  The 2010 elections saw many Congressional Democrats swept from office by the activism of the people who had worked so hard to derail Health Care Reform.

And now it's our turn.  Republicans are everywhere.  They just got sworn into office this week.  They're not going to be able to turn this thing around, not in six months.  Not before the summer recess, and the summer town hall meetings.  Time for them to face some rage - or at least some heat - from the other side.

Today a mentally deranged and well-armed man opened fire on an open-air "town hall" sort of meeting in Arizona.  Representative Garielle Giffords, D-AZ, who was one of the Democrats targeted with crosshairs of a gunsight by Sarah Palin in an ad during the 2010 election, was shot in the head at close range.  She was seriously injured, and several other people (including a young child) were killed.  Giffords had been targeted by violence in the past, including someone who brought a weapon to a town hall meeting, and she had spoken out about the rise of violence in what passes as political rhetoric.



Maybe this is just a case of a lone psychopath operating for his own purposes.  Maybe it was someone who was influenced by the violent rhetoric expressed by Republicans and Tea Partiers.  In any event, it is likely that, starting now, constituents will have far less access to their Congressional representatives than they did before today.  

Huffington Post: The End Of Access

Anyone who tries to express Summer of Rage-level political opinion is now more likely to be arrested than to be featured on CNN and Fox News.  At last the nation is willing to recognize that there is a point when the rhetoric is so out of control that it has come to represent a serious threat to individuals and to the political process itself.  Finally the nation may be willing to see that the Summer of Rage was taking things too far.  The other side is willing to say, "OK, you were right all along" - after they've had their say and gotten their way.





*Except, for some reason, Halloween.  Thought this is a relatively recent development and may be part of a religious backlash.
**In which case they would probably have been the version used by the apostate hellbound Protestants, rather than the correct version used by Catholics.

A day to stand against religious fanaticism

It's ironic that a day that commemorates the day when terrorists motivated in part by a twisted and fanatical understanding of their religion struck a blow against Western civilization using the tools of Western civilization has been, to a vastly media-inflated extent, hijacked by another religious fanatic bent on maximizing publicity for himself and his beliefs.

Some atheists have said that moderate religious thought is even more perniciously dangerous than radical and fanatical religious expression, because it makes religion seem almost palatable and reasonable.  I don't believe this.  But I don't know what the cure is for religious fanaticism.  It's easy to talk about tolerance, but there are some things that simply should not be tolerated.

The day after the National Day of Prayer

Well, the "National Day of Prayer" has come and gone, and I didn't hear a peep about it online, in the blogosphere or on Facebook. Maybe I just wasn't listening closely enough. Still, for all the scuttlebutt about it in these last few weeks, and for all the people on Facebook who have been "Like"-ing the prayer for President Obama's death*, I thought there would be a little more action out there.

I had a prayer that I'd been saying for the past few years, since shortly after Joseph Martino's installation as Bishop of the Scranton Diocese:

Lord, grant our Bishop wisdom, understanding, and compassion;
or, failing that, grant us a new Bishop.

Martino never did develop wisdom, understanding, or compassion. Instead he earned the "odium populi", the "hatred of the people", and was removed from office / resigned after a mere six years. After a lapse of nearly eight months, Joseph Bambera was installed as the new Bishop of Scranton.

And how is he doing? Well, considering that with a single act he managed to piss off both an outspoken local atheist and an outspoken local "traditionalist" (who wants to see a return to pre-Vatican II conditions in the Catholic Church), I have to say that on balance he's probably doing pretty well, so far.

Now, let me work on a prayer for all those people who "liked" the prayer for President Obama's death.


*"DEAR LORD, THIS YEAR YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTOR, PATRICK SWAYZIE. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTRESS, FARAH FAWCETT. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE SINGER, MICHAEL JACKSON. I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW, MY FAVORITE PRESIDENT IS BARACK OBAMA. AMEN". I find it amusing that whoever cooked this up didn't know how to spell "Swayze" or "Farrah."

Easter schedule

Well, I failed to accomplish three major things scheduled for Friday: I didn't start any seeds, I didn't prune my rosebush, and I didn't finish pruning my grapevines. The chocolate Easter Egg making process became very stretched out: I made the batter (a double batch) and shaped the eggs late Thursday night, I dipped the eggs midday Friday, I applied their color-coded decorations Friday afternoon, and I boxed them up for safe keeping and easy delivery Friday evening.

The temperatures today made it seem more like a Summer day than an early Spring one. I wonder if all the people who were declaring Global Warming a hoax a few weeks ago because, astonighingly enough, it actually snowed in Frbruary were now sitting down and writing letters of apology to Al Gore as the temperatures soared into the high 70s and low 80s on the second day of April.*

Tomorrow (actually, later today!) I will take our Easter basket to be blessed, an old tradition among the Polish, Slovaks, and others. After that I am off to a birthday party. And after that, I'm not sure when I'll be able to post again - I may actually miss a day or two. We'll see!



*Of course there is a difference between weather and climate. My point is not that a warm spell in early Spring proves anything; my point is that an unusually heavy snow in mid-Winter in one part of the country doesn't prove anything.

The Stations of the Cross for Children

This is the season of Lent, a forty* day buildup to Easter. When I was a child attending Catholic school each Friday in Lent meant three things: pizza for lunch, fish for dinner, and Stations of the Cross in the afternoon.

We used a special book of Stations of the Cross for Children. The books were old when I first saw them, back in the mid-1970's, but I have no idea when they were actually printed. After the old school closed nearly thirty years ago, one of the books came into my possession. I scanned parts of it back in March of 2001, but never finished scanning the entire thing. Unfortunately, I cannot now locate it - suggesting that in the intervening nine years it has been moved from the place of storage underneath my scanner. These are the pages I scanned.

This was a small book, pocket-sized. I've tried to reproduce it here actual size, but how large it appears depends on your specific screen settings. Note the absence of a copyright or publication date.

I always got a kick out of the way the Foreword talks around children - it's apparently not intended for them. Or maybe it is. But the tone and the language are much less simplistic than the "Preparatory Prayer" on the facing page.

The priest at St. Mary's when I went to school there was Fr. Piontek. Big, gruff, curmudgeonly, often seen walking around with a cowboy hat and cigar, or on more formal occasions the black vestments and robes that, after 1977, called to mind Darth Vader. He had recited and chanted these prayers so many times that they became just slurred sounds coming from his throat. So the opening verse on this and the following pages came out sounding like "WE ADORE THEE O CHRIST AND WE BLASPHEME". It was hard not to laugh.

This book introduced me to a few things. The concept of miniature art, for one: the illustrations were probably full-sized, full-color paintings that had been reduced to tiny grayshade images for the book. But they retained many little details, and there seemed to be tremendous expression in those shades of gray. Eventually I made a hobby - for a little while - of creating miniature art using a stamp magnifier and very sharp, very hard pencils. I might someday be able to locate some of those drawings.

Enlarged to show detail.

There were two other things to which this booklet introduced me. One was the concept of "etc." I had never encountered that odd abbreviation before I read it here ("Recite the Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, etc.") in first grade.

The other was the "Stabat Mater". I found these little interjections of verse much more interesting than the call-and-response ritual of the Stations of the Cross. I was fascinated by the rhyme scheme and the meter - a concept I instinctively understood, though I wouldn't learn that term until years later. (The meter of the Stabat Mater, I have just learned, is trochaic tetrameter.)

The Stations go on, and on, fourteen in all. Call and response, repetitive prayers, the slow grind of ritual. I remember the spectrum of feelings I felt as we just got started at Station I, as we crawled on to Stations IV and V, as we rounded the bend at Station VII, limped our way past Station XI, and finally made it to Station XIV, a virtual Via Dolorosa for children.

I haven't gone to the Stations of the Cross in many years. I may have one Friday open at the end of March this year. But it wouldn't be the same.

If and when I locate that booklet - and I am confident I will, eventually - I will scan the rest of the pages, and maybe post them to this entry. Part of an effort to preserve a vanishing world, I suppose.


UPDATE: I decided to Google "stations of the cross" and "a religious of the cenacle" - and - BOOM - found an online copy of the complete book! The cover is white and the images are in color, but otherwise it looks like the same thing. And the copyright and publication date information was on the last page - copyright 1936, Imprimatur July 21, 1920.

Stations of the Cross for Children on scribd.com

*Forty days, not counting Sundays. This is why Lent lasts for nearly seven weeks.

Pat Robertson on Haiti: Jackass, Douchebag, or Useful Idiot?

Yesterday Haiti experienced its greatest earthquake in over 200 years, with a massive loss of life - estimates range from the tens to the hundreds of thousands dead. The national government is in shambles (more so than usual) and the country is in ruins (again, not to be snarky, but more so than usual.) A country that was already one of the poorest and most miserable in the Western Hemisphere has been dealt a crushing blow.

Help is on the way. Even the blogosphere is mobilizing to provide help - see, for example, this post on the very popular Cake Wrecks site, which not only directs would-be donors to sites that can best utilize their donations, but also provides information on avoiding the inevitable scammers.

By now you've probably seen this video, or at least heard of it:



From the CBS article on this:

As Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said "well over" 100,000 people may have died in the natural disaster, Robertson took to the airwaves Wednesday on his show and said that the country has been "cursed by one thing after another" since they "swore a pact to the devil."

"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about," Robertson said Tuesday.

"They were under the heel of the French, you know Napoleon the third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said 'We will serve you if you will get us free from the prince.' True story. And so the devil said, 'Ok it’s a deal.' And they kicked the French out. The Haitians revolted and got something themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after another," Robertson said.

I've made my feelings about Pat Robertson known in the past - more often than I remembered:

For anyone who thinks "Intelligent Design" ISN'T religion in disguise...
November 11, 2005: Pat Robertson tell residents of Dover, PA who had just voted "Intelligent Design" proponents off the school board "If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city."

Pat Robertson Is Not A Christian
January 6, 2006: He no more speaks for Christians than Osama bin Laden speaks for Muslims. Which a lot of people would say means "He absolutely speaks for Christians." I don't even remember what brought this on.

Pat Robertson, weatherman
May 18, 2006: Pat Robertson prophetically predicts the weather for the rest of the year - and gets it wrong.

God to Pat Robertson: Can you hear Me NOW?
November 30, 2006: One of the mildest hurricane seasons in years draws to a close. But Pat Robertson had pledged to have aid ready to roll in the event of a disaster. "So we're positioning supplies in California. We've got supplies positioned in Florida. We'll have others, and, of course, we have a major presence in the Gulf right now. We're there because we feel the Lord wants us to help people. We feel it's our duty to help the poor and the needy. "


So do the people of Haiti, pact with the devil or not, qualify as the poor and needy?

In answer to the question raised by the title of this post: yes. Yes, Pat Robertson is a jackass. Yes, Pat Robertson is a douchebag. Yes, Pat Robertson is an asshole. Yes, Pat Robertson is the antithesis of a true follower of the teachings of Jesus.

And Yes, Pat Robertson is a useful idiot.

Because he is helping to channel much-needed aid to Haiti. Jackass, douchebag, and asshole, he also has an enormous network capable of raising enormous contributions very quickly - and is doing so. Unlike, say, media mogul Rush Limbaugh, who is (surprise, surprise) using this incident as an opportunity to attack Barack Obama* rather than using his immense influence over his army of devoted listeners to work for good. Pat Robertson's good deeds may not be sufficient to excuse his reprehensible comments and conduct, but he is accomplishing some good. We should all strive to accomplish at least as much.


THIS JUST IN FROM THE WORLD OF PERFORMING ARTS: For those of you in the Washington, D.C. area, please consider attending a special benefit performance of the Cheeky Monkey Sideshow:

Cheeky Monkey Sideshow's Jan 15th show @ the Palace of Wonders is now a BENEFIT FOR THE PEOPLE OF HAITI!

BETTER THE DEVIL THAN PAT ROBERTSON!

The people of Haiti have suffered a devastating tragedy. Cheeky Monkey Sideshow invites you to join us for a benefit show to raise money to aid the earthquake victims.

This is an opportunity to help those in desperate need, and have a wonderful night of fun and sideshow freakery.

You want special guests? We've got special guests!

This month, we are thrilled that spectacular burlesque goddess, L'IL DUTCH is joining us again. We love this lady!

Friday, January 15th
Palace of Wonders
1210 H St., NE
Washington, DC

Show starts @ 10:00 pm

Tickets: $10 @ the door

Hope to see you there!

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=236512244625

*Who is, one should note, a Wartime President; this action may constitute "Treason" by the definitions being tossed about during the previous administration.

As 2009 grinds to a close

Christmas Day is over, though as our priest keeps reminding us, Catholics* observe Christmas all the way through to January 10, which is when we observe the Feast of the Epiphany. I have no problem with leaving my Christmas decorations up until then, and beyond.

It's been a busy past few days, and this is the first time in a while I've really had a chance to sit down and compose at the keyboard. Which is a damned shame, because unless something happens (and it might), I am at the top of the overtime list for tomorrow, so I will most likely be going in to work tomorrow night. I won't know for sure until Monday morning.

I've been laying pretty low this Christmas, shopping-wise. I know that if I leave the house now I will spend some money. Actually I want to spend some money on an Astronomy calendar (or, should I say, the Astronomy calendar.) And maybe a few other things.

2009 hit the rest of the country pretty hard economically. Here in NEPA, not so much - because we've already been in severe economic and employment straits for several years now. (I lost my decently-paying white-collar job back in February 2007, back when folks were still laughing at suggestions of a coming recession.) A friend in the D.C. Metro area tells me that some of her fellow government employees were having a conversation prefaced with the statement "Now that the recession is over..." When she pointed out that the recession is far from over for people in a lot of places outside of their insular little bubble community, they pretty much responded with a sneering "sucks to be them." (For more on this, see this post from Robert Reich.)

I think I'll be doing some blog housekeeping for the new year. There are a few blogs and associated sites that have gone away and are almost certainly not coming back. Pruning these dead sites away is personally painful because at least one of them represents a friend - now a former friend, or maybe a never-really-was-a-friend - who has also gone away and is almost certainly not coming back, at least not anywhere that I will be able to - or welcome to - interact with her.

A new year represents a blank slate on which all our hopes and fears exist only as potentialities that have yet to be actualized. Starting from where we are, I guess it's easy to hope that things will get better, and maybe they will.


*In the most recent local episode of "The Culture Wars", there was a bit of a brouhaha about a manger scene set up on the Luzerne County Courthouse lawn, with a token menorah tossed in for balance. You can read more details about this here. The punch line is, more than a few Catholics were among those talking about how Christianity is a part of our nation's founding tradition and culture. I think if they studied history more closely, they would find that damned dirty Papists were regarded by the Americans of the days of our Founding Fathers about as highly as gay Muslim pedophiles would be in today's culture.

Bishop Martino

Joseph Martino, the abrasive, divisive, and controversial Bishop of the Diocese of Scranton, has stepped down from his position - and retired at the age of 63, twelve years before the mandatory retirement age.

I've been pretty clear on my feelings about this bishop in the past. An excellent timeline of the controversial events during the bishop's six-year reign at the Diocese can be found here. A full archive of Citizens' Voice articles about Bishop Martino can be found here. And of course, the always-take-it-with-a-grain-of-salt Wikipedia entry on Joseph Martino can be found here.

This weekend an article appeared that analyzed the events that led to the bishop's resignation. It's an excellent analysis. Some of the most chilling comments come from Reverend Patrick Sullivan, formerly of the Diocese and now based out of Boston. I reprinted an open letter from Father Sullivan to Bishop Martino in February 2008, and one of his other sermons (he was on the rotating roster of assistant priests in Nanticoke for the past few years) was the basis for this post. From this most recent article:

The Rev. Patrick J. Sullivan, C.S.C., a longtime professor at King's College who is now the executive secretary and chaplain of the Labor Guild in the Archdiocese of Boston, once published a letter questioning the bishop's decision to de-recognize the Catholic teachers' union after his letters and phone calls to the bishop about the matter went unanswered.

It was significant, he said, because many priests felt they had to watch what they said to avoid censure by the bishop.

The Rev. Sullivan, who is also an expert on local ethnic history, would not participate earlier this year in a Sunday Times article about ethnic Catholic parishes. He said at the time he feared the bishop would take away his ability to say Mass if he was quoted in the piece.

"He had built up an atmosphere of fear and intimidation among laity and religious and priests, that depending upon the issue or how he read it, one could be suspended or not suspended," he said. "That was my fear at that time. I could be wrong on it, but that was not only my opinion, it was the opinion of other people."

For years I have had my own little prayer that I have said whenever I thought about Bishop Martino and the things he has done to the Diocese of Scranton - my diocese:

Lord, grant our Bishop wisdom, compassion, and understanding,
Or, failing that, please grant us a new Bishop with these qualities.

It remains to be seen how this prayer will be answered.

Atheists, Nihilists, and Agnostics explained

I really like Metalocalypse more than I should. It's not like I'm into this sort of music. But having been in the industry a little, and having known a few musicians and audio engineers in my personal and professional life, I get a lot of the stuff here. Plus, I'm pretty sure in one episode they referenced My Bloody Valentine, as band leader Nathan Explosion erases several albums' worth of recorded, completed tracks because he's dissatisfied with them. (My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields did the same thing, eventually resulting in a hiatus of fifteen years or so that was only broken last year.)

In this episode, bassist William Murderface has decided that he needs to find religion. But which one? Here the band sits in at a service in the Church of the Athiests.

The Bishop is not the Church

Bishop Martino of the Diocese of Scranton arrived in the middle of a panel discussion on faith issues and the Presidential election in Honesdale on Tuesday - and effectively shut it down.

Scranton bishop tells forum his letter is ‘only relevant document’ for diocese

Local and national Catholics reacted Tuesday to statements by Bishop Joseph F. Martino apparently discounting teachings of the national body of bishops during a political forum at a Honesdale Roman Catholic Church this weekend.

BY LAURA LEGERE, STAFF WRITER

...Martino arrived unannounced in the midst of a panel discussion on faith issues and the presidential campaign at St. John’s Catholic Church on Sunday. According to people who attended the event, the bishop chastised the group for holding the forum and particularly took issue with the discussion and distribution of excerpts from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ position on voting issues. The document defines abortion and euthanasia, as well as racism, torture and genocide, as among the most important issues for Catholic voters to consider. “No USCCB document is relevant in this diocese,” he was quoted as saying in the Wayne County Independent, a Honesdale-based newspaper. “The USCCB doesn’t speak for me.”

... “The only relevant document … is my letter,” he said at the forum, according to the Independent. “There is one teacher in this diocese, and these points are not debatable.”

To read the full article in the Wilkes-Barre Citizens' Voice, go here.


Essentially, Bishop Martino has let local Catholics know that discussion of issues is not necessary and will not be tolerated, since he has reduced Catholicism in the Scranton Diocese to two simple words: Obey ME.

I've been a Catholic all my life. I've been a Catholic under Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul I, Pope John Paul II, and now Pope Benedict XVI. I've been in the Scranton Diocese under Bishop McCormick, Bishop O'Connor, Bishop Timlin, and now Bishop Martino.

This current bishop is just another caretaker entrusted with the pastoral guidance of the the Catholics of the Diocese. But he is not the Church. He is a Bishop, but he is also a man, fallible and imperfect. He is doing nothing - he has done nothing - to slow the exodus of Catholics from the Church. Indeed, his arrogance and belligerence are major factors in many Catholics choosing to leave the Church - or at the very least, to withhold financial support from the Diocese.

Many of the Catholics who remain active in the Diocese of Scranton do so in spite of Bishop Martino, not because of him. They know that their faith, their religion, their Church, is much bigger than a single man. The Bishop is not the Church. And after he is gone, these things will remain - and if their faith and their will is strong enough to make it through this test, so will a few members of the Diocese.

At this point Bishop Martino's efforts are bordering on voter intimidation. Whether or not they actually cross that border will depend on the interpretation of the law by legal professionals. But things may become clearer after the detailed results of the November 4th election become available.

The Diocese of Scranton consists of these eleven counties, according to a map from the Diocesan website:
According to Robert Vanderbei's "Purple Map" of voting proportions from the 2004 election, these counties range from solidly Republican red (Tioga, Lycoming) to strongly Democratic blue (Lackawanna), with various shades of purple in between. (Luzerne County, where I live, is a bluish purple.)


John McCain has no chance whatsoever to win the Presidential election if he does not win Pennsylvania. It is a necessary but insufficient condition for victory. He almost certainly cannot win in Philadelphia, but Philadelphia is only a part of the Pennsylvania puzzle. There are several ways to win Pennsylvania without winning Philadelphia. One of those ways would be to turn all of those purplish areas in the East and West to red like the middle parts of the state. And there are two ways of doing that: convince people who are not planning to vote for McCain to vote for McCain, or convince people who are planning to vote for Obama to stay home.

Bishop Martino's edicts have the effect - and possibly the intent - of doing both. By convincing Catholic voters who might otherwise not have voted at all that they have a moral obligation to vote for Republican candidates, Martino adds some red to the mix. By convincing Obama supporters that their souls will be in mortal danger, and possibly in a state of mortal sin, if they cast a vote for Obama, he may be able to get some Obama voters to stay home, and remove some blue from the map.

But is this voter intimidation? Again, I think that will be determined by Bishop Martino's reactions once the district-by-district results come in. What reprisals will Catholics in districts that go for Obama face? Perhaps nothing. But who knows? Fear has long been a major motivating tool in the Catholic Church. And no decisions have officially been made on parish closings yet. Well, it looks like there aren't any Catholics here in this district. So I guess no one will mind if I close the local church...

This weekend I may find myself face-to-face with Bishop Martino as a family member receives the sacrament of Confirmation. I will try my best not to do anything that may get me arrested and/or excommunicated. And I will be repeating to myself over and over again: the Bishop is not the Church, the Bishop is not the Church, the Bishop is not the Church. The Church is something much larger than the Bishop. I am a part of it, as are all Catholics who came before me, and all Catholics who will come after me.

The Bishop is a part of it, too. But the Bishop is not the Church.

Angel, Dark Angel

My parish church is closing. Probably. Maybe. Churches throughout the Diocese of Scranton are closing, and St. Mary's in Nanticoke (a.k.a. Our Lady of Czestachowa) is shortlisted for closing. Though Bishop Martino has recently stated that nothing is final, nothing is decided yet. Maybe he's waiting for election results to come in to let him know which parishes voted according to his directive issued last week.

I'm operating on the assumption that St. Mary's will be closed, and that we will be consolidated along with two or three other parishes into a single church with no air conditioning, poor handicapped access, and ample parking for up to 30 vehicles. Word is that St. Mary's will be a backup or secondary church to be used for special occasions, like when more than one Nanticoke couple wants to get married in a Catholic Church on the same weekend. Still, I worry that it will fall into disrepair while it is idle, and some things will be lost forever due to neglect.

Among these are the stained glass windows. These are magnificent works of art, perhaps as old as the church itself, more than a century old. They bear the names of their donors, and some of these names are familiar to anyone who lives in Nanticoke. For example, one was donated by a "K.M. Smith." For decades I have assumed that this means it was donated by the children of the K.M. Smith Elementary school. But only last week it occurred to me that this was donated by the school's namesake. Now I want to find out who K.M. Smith was.

I've started photographing these windows. This is something I have thought about for a very long time. Ideally a project to capture these windows as photographic images would involve a large-format camera on a rig that allows it to image a small section of each window at a time, and create a mosaic of the window that will avoid having any distortion due to perspective issues. Less ideally the project would be undertaken by some guy with a Nikon Coolpix L4 who was waiting for his cousin's wedding to begin. But, hey, it's an imperfect world.

So before the wedding, and after Mass the next day, and after Mass today, I have been trying to capture each and every stained glass window in the church. The pictures are not perfect: they are sometimes blurred, rarely encompass everything I would like to grab, and always involve some perspective distortion. But they're better than nothing. I will not let this church, and these windows, pass beyond the veil unremembered.

I've got them all, I think. I'll go back and get them again and again, as often as I can, trying to achieve quality through quantity. But I've got them all. Here's one that's been a favorite of mine since I was a little kid.

This window is remarkable for several reasons. It may contain the only image of the adult Jesus in the main church windows. (I think there's another in the baptismal font area, but I think that's a later addition.) It's the only window that I could see that shows signs of wear, on both the images of St. Michael and Jesus. (A cleaning attempt gone awry?) It's the only one that shows an angel, as far as I know the only angel who is also classified as a saint. (Gabriel is a named angel, but I'm not sure he/she/it is considered a saint.) It's the only figure in the windows holding a weapon. (Others hold miniature churches, books, staves, crowns, but only Michael gets a sword.)

And...it sure as heck looks like a black guy.

Try to understand: Nanticoke was a coal mining town, settled primarily by Roman Catholic Poles, though several other nationalities and religions were represented. Until the middle of the last century the population was fairly static: your parents lived here, you lived here, and odds were your spouse was someone from in town. Very few people moved into town. So very few black people moved into town. Having a black guy in a century-old stained glass window in church is a pretty big thing. (Though I cannot say for sure if anyone else has ever remarked upon it.)

Brightness and contrast enhanced to show detail

Of course, one could argue that St. Michael was an angel, and as we all learned from the St. Joseph's Baltimore Catechism, "Angels are spirits that ain't got no bodies." (Well, that's how I remember learning it. From the older children.) So the artist had pretty free reign to depict St. Michael in whatever way he wanted. As a black guy with an Afro or whatever. And apparently, that's just what he did.

Damn, he looks pretty pleased with himself.

For all these years, a black guy has looked over the Polish parishioners of Our Lady of Czestachowa, sword in his hand, wings on his back, crown on his Afro, a crocodile-lizard-serpent version of Satan under his feet.

Note the distinctly Medieval footwear here. I only just noticed the flipped-up
portion of the hem of St. Michael's skirt. Is he preparing to pee on Satan?
No wonder the crocodile-lizard-serpent looks worried.

It's a little thing. Just a window, just a detail in a building slated for closing. But it's part of the story of this Parish, of the city of Nanticoke itself. And it's something that should not be lost. Somebody needs to remember it.


Title Reference: "Angel, Dark Angel", short story by Roger Zelazny.

A sign

I have a bunch of things I want to post about, but I'm tired and my computer is being very slow, though the antivirus/spyware scan I just ran came up clean.

I have a decent list for "How to Fight like Karl Rove, Part 2" (see here for the original.) I had a quote relevant to the ongoing worldwide financial collapse from V for Vendetta - the book, not the movie - but it would have to be taken completely out of context to make it work.* Which reminds me of a quote from another Alan Moore work that I really want to use as a post title sometime soon. And then there's that video about the other upcoming crisis, the one that will hit a few weeks after a new President is sworn in...

One thing I will post about. A few weeks ago I mentioned that the local bishop had renamed the "Bishop's Annual Appeal" to "Our Grateful Faith Annual Appeal," probably because the bishop has made many of the people of the Diocese of Scranton hate and resent him through his union-busting, school-closing, parish-closing, parishioner-ignoring, mafia-hugging, pedophile-shielding, and now vote-manipulating ways, so putting his name on the fund drive would not be a way to guarantee success.

"Our Grateful Faith" has been announced at all the Masses for a while now, and people know about it, that ever-dwindling fraction of Catholics who actually attend Mass on Sundays at least. For those who don't attend Mass - well, what are the odds they're going to donate, anyway?

So as I was driving to work the other day and approached the point where I-84/380/Rt. 6 splits from I-81, I got to wondering who the big expensive ad for "Our Grateful Faith" on the big giant electronic billboard over the highway was targeted towards? And how much it cost? And where that money was coming from? Because, obviously, the people most likely to donate had already been reached through the weekly Mass. I wonder if there is any way of measuring the return on investment for this ad?

Oh, well. At least the people who own the billboard got a nice big fat check, most likely made from the meager contributions of the people of the Diocese of Scranton to last year's Annual Appeal.



*Unless anyone believes that this crisis is actually the result of actions taken by a masked anarchist trying to save the world from itself.