Heck of a Way To Start Easter Season

Easter, for those who don't know, is not just one Sunday after the first full moon of spring but an entire season devoted to rebirth and renewal.  So bear that in mind when you see Donald Trump's post from yesterday, Easter Sunday, on his misnomered TruthSocial social media platform.

To think, eighty-five thousand people are cheering him on.

Trump is either evil or crazy, though, like the Joker, he's likely both.  And I doubt he's joking.  It looks like he will mark tomorrow, April 7, with the fire and fury he threatened against North Korea in his first term of office.  Bombing power stations and bridges used primarily by civilians is, of course, a war crime, and he will have to answer for plenty to many if he goes ahead with this idea.

And if Trump is interested in a little Easter-time ecumenicalism, he sure has a funny way of showing it with his mocking reference to Allah, which Iranian religious leaders - who are also government leaders - will not forget.  Or forgive.  As an infidel, Trump can expect severe punishment from the mullahs in charge.

Meanwhile, Roman Catholics - already under the gun from progressives for too many reasons to list - have been slighted by the Pentagon.  Evangelical warrior Pete Hegseth - whose boss won the majority of the Catholic vote in 2024 because Trump managed to convince enough of them that the Democrats mocked their values and because Kamala Harris couldn't be bothered to show up at the Al Smith dinner - let Catholic service personnel know that there would be no Good Friday services aimed at Catholics in the Pentagon chapel this year, as his pastor has denounced Catholicism and has called for the banning of Catholic idolatry in public spaces.

Between the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence on one hand and the evangelicals on the other, it shouldn't come as a surprise that Catholics are becoming increasingly paranoid, though Pope Leo XIV has gone a long way toward repairing the Church's negative reputation.

It is in this milieu, in which Hegseth has declared the war against a Muslim country to be a crusade, that Trump is suspected to be planning nuclear strikes.

Today marks the 196th anniversary of the founding of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, i.e. the Mormon Church, whose followers are constantly preparing for End Times, when Jesus returns and the angel Moroni will herald His return with the sound of his horn.

Blow your trumpet, son.  See you in Kansas City.     

Crisis of Faith

As the COVID pandemic is ending (it hasn't ended, it's in the progressive tense of its final act), I've been poking my head outside my foxhole, as it were, sort of like a literal fox daring to step out into the wilderness after a devastating forest fire has run its course.  Most of what I see, though, is still barren land.

In the past three years, I've seen the American health care system collapse, a rising fascist movement of which January 6 was the first salvo, a deterioration of my social life caused by the pandmeic (though it left a good deal to be desired even before COVID hit),  the Supreme Court rolling back liberties for everyone except the greedy bastards who own this country, and American civilization (such as it was) bite the dust in a cloud of gunsmoke from the many mass shootings that have plagued These States.

I am suffering from a deep crisis in faith . . . in anything.  I am not convinced that I have any reason to have confidence in the future, and there is no easy answer.  If it just involved leaving the country, like s many did when Trump took power, that would be hard enough for me, but where would I go?  It seems that the whole world is on fire.

Sometimes I think I should return to my church, the Roman Catholic Church, which, despite the shameful periods of its past (and let's admit it, its present) still has a good deal to recommend about it for anyone seeking Christ.  Mainly it's the sobriety of the Mass, the beauty of the church with its depictions of the Gospels, and, for now, the good luck in having a genuinely caring man like Francis as pope.  It was the Church that liberated Eastern Europe, after all.  The thing is, I'd stuck to the rituals outside of Mass for years, even though I hadn't been to Mass since I was a kid (except for family funerals!), like Lenten sacrifices, which I stopped in 2020 when COVID made me sacrifice just about everything, including my clean mouth (six months into the pandemic, I started dropping F-bombs and have continued to do so). Perhaps returning to the Church in which I was baptized (but never confirmed) may help me (re)discover faith.

I don't know if I'm ready to return to the Church, though, but I know I'm not going to any other sects.  I spent nearly a year attending services at a Congregationalist church, but I found it unsatisfying and stopped going.  A bigger disappointment was a service of the International Church of Christ, which a "friend" invited me to on the Sunday after 9/11, which I regretted later on when I found out how controlling this particular sect is.

I've even studied the Mormon faith, inspired by the Latter-Day Saints' clean living, but that church's extremist conservative temporal agenda and its lay clergy turned me off.  I wouldn't want to confide my spiritual burdens to my bishop when he also happens to be my lawyer.  Or my dentist.  (I've also heard about their temple rituals, asn the less said about that, the better.)  And I've actually read the first chapter of the First Book of Nephi in the book or Mormon, which explains how Nephi, the Israelite patriarch who brought his people to the Americas (so they say) had to return to Jerusalem from a stop in Arabia to retrieve an item his father left behind.  ("And it came to pass that my father forgot his keys . . .") I have long given Mormons the benefit of the doubt of how their holy book came to,umm, pass - maybe it was an old Iroquois tablet that told a story remarkably similar to the stories of the lost tribes of Israel, but not so much after I actually read some of it.    

But then, maybe I should not bother with organized religion of any sort.  Perhaps I should instead remember the advice from George Harrison, when he told us to open up our hearts and chant the names of the Lord to be free. 

Though, if the Pope really did own 51 percent of General Motors, then the Vatican must have taken a bath when GM went bankrupt, shut down Pontiac and Saturn, and sold Opel.

Looks like I need to keep searching.

Or maybe I just need a cat.

Heaven Help Us

Donald Trump has decreed that all houses of worship are essential places and that they should all open immediately in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic - and he vows to override any governor who keeps restrictions on houses of worship even though he doesn't have authority.

Even though Trump's ruling applies to all faiths, he is doing this to whip up support from white evangelical churches, whose parishioners would rather back a hedonist like Trump than back a party - the Democrats - who are tolerant of people of other faiths or people who, worse still, subscribe to no faith at all.  The interests of  Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and mainline Protestants like Trump himself don't concern him here.   But Joe Biden, I believe, can get around and possibly even neutralize this issue by re-affirming his own commitment to religious freedom and showing respect for those who practice a faith.  And he's got some ground on which to stand.

In 2007, then-Senator Biden appeared on Bill Maher's show to explain why the Democrats have lost their way with faith-based voters.  He cited his own mother, who regularly went to church and prayed for a brother of hers who ended up missing in action while fighting in the war.  When he told a fellow Democrat about this, the other Democrat said, "Isn't that quaint?"  Biden, a Catholic, said that this unnamed Democrat was trivializing the faith of Biden's mother and the tradition of faith in families like Biden's, and that the Democrats ought to respect the faiths of the voters.  (He wanted to punch the guy who thought Biden's mother's prayer tradition for her brother was "quaint.")  So Biden knows a thing or two about the importance of faith.  He should agree that honoring the right of people to worship in a pandemic is necessary and essential, but he should also urge churches, synagogues, mosques and temples to take the necessary precautions so that parishioners can worship in their houses of God (or gods) so that no one gets sick practicing their faith.  He should also remind voters that it's okay to pray at home while they're at it.

A guy who has been a practicing Catholic all his life should have some more legitimacy on this issue than an amoral person like Trump, who probably can't even remember his denomination.  (For the record, Trump was baptized Presbyterian.)

Justice Kagan

So it's official: Having been confirmed by the Senate, Elena Kagan now becomes the newest Supreme Court, replacing 35-year veteran John Paul Stevens.

Some people have made a big deal about how there are now six Catholics and three Jews on the Supreme Court, without a single Protestant. Religious affiliation shouldn't matter, but it does; it's only a matter of time before there's another abortion case, and that gay marriage ruling in California is coming right at the Court, possibly at the end of the coming term.

In any case, Justice Kagan should help to move the Court to the center. Some say she'll move it in a liberal, progressive direction that " the American people" (i.e., Republicans) don't want, but that's only because the conservative majority has pushed it so far to the right that any move away from reactionarism will seem "liberal."

And now that there are three women on the Court, maybe it would be a good time to stop referring to the justices as "the Supremes." It's a stupid thing to do at any rate.