Category: Catholic Church

They Ignored Samuel

I have mentioned here several times since President Donald Trump was reelected that I assumed that Mr. Trump and his cohort recognized that on their best day, they only had the support of half of the American public, and understood that they would need to employ the Nazi model of the 1930s to quickly consolidate their control of our country if they were going to be able to reshape it to their vision.  More recently, I offered that through its deployment of National Guard and active military troops to “Blue Cities” and its intimidating immigration tactics, the Trump Regime might initially have been attempting to subdue the citizens who oppose it by employing the war strategy of ancient Chinese General and Philosopher Sun Tzu, “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”  Yet more recently and a bit whimsically, I suggested that the then-seemingly-mixed signals from the Regime perhaps offered a dark silver-lining hope that Mr. Trump wasn’t going to use the powers of the presidency to impose a dictatorship but to merely achieve the goal of the fictional Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man of Broadway and Hollywood – i.e., enrich himself and his family at the expense of the gullible who believed in him before departing the scene, but leaving our democracy intact if battered.

The Regime’s actions since the killing of Renee Good have made clear:  that Mr. Trump and his acolytes recognize that their best day is past.  And that the strategy urged by Sun Tzu is not achievable.

And that he’s not the Music Man.

The Regime has intensified its brutal immigration enforcement tactics in Minneapolis, and ICE agents have felt emboldened by the Regime’s aggressive defense of the killer’s actions.  The Regime’s Department of Justice has announced that it will not initiate an investigation into whether Ms. Good’s civil rights were violated.  Six Minneapolis-based federal prosecutors have resigned over an expressed Justice Department intent to investigate Ms. Good’s widow and the department’s unwillingness to investigate the shooter.  On January 14, there was a second ICE shooting in Minneapolis.  Credible outlets are reporting that there are now 3,000 ICE agents in Minneapolis, as contrasted with 600 police officers who are generally available to provide public safety for the area.  Unrest in Minneapolis has been increasing as state and city officials plead for calm; even so, credible sources also report that the Justice Department is planning to issue subpoenas to MN Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey in a criminal probe alleging that they are obstructing federal law enforcement.

You don’t need me to draw a better picture for you.

I haven’t seen any federal officials pleading for calm.  They want this. They want to assert their power against those whom they consider their enemies – their fellow citizens.

At the time this is typed, the President of the United States is threatening to invoke the federal Insurrection Act, which, among other provisions, authorizes the president to deploy U.S. active military against American citizens, “Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.”  Let it be stated plainly:  Anyone suggesting that such an extensive ICE presence in Minneapolis is required to enforce our immigration laws is either a fool or a knave.  If Mr. Trump invokes the Insurrection Act, he will, through the unnecessary deployment of ICE agents to Minneapolis and their Nazi Sturmabteilung-like activities, have incited the very unrest that he will cite under the Act as enabling him to deploy our military forces against American citizens.  Such an invocation under the circumstances he has created will be none other than a fascist exertion of power.

Neither Adolf Hitler nor Vladimir Putin could be orchestrating this any more effectively.

[Since I think that immigration has actually become a pretext – a means for the Regime to force a confrontation with those it perceives as its enemies, rather than an end – this is admittedly an aside, but one expressed here just as aptly as in any other post, regarding the far right’s so-called “Replacement Theory”:  You show me a white, male, English-speaking, sexually-straight Christian American citizen who isn’t savvy enough to realize that being a white, male, English-speaking, sexually-straight Christian American citizen is still the demographically best thing to be in America, and I’ll show you a gullible, aggrieved, excuse-ridden, white, male, English-speaking, sexually-straight Christian American citizen who wouldn’t be successful in America even if this nation consisted entirely of white, English-speaking, sexually-straight Christian American citizens.  The suspicion lurks that many of the Regime’s ICE agents now roaming Minneapolis fit into this category, and that these men, given a meaning and an “other” to hate, provide the Regime with an informal paramilitary force that can be readily deployed against anyone that the Regime perceives as its enemy.

And … as long as we’re clearing the decks.  After listening to Trump supporters at Trump rallies wearing MAGA hats, T-shirts bearing Mr. Trump’s picture, and American flag pants covering their behinds, loudly proclaim for a decade that Mr. Trump “Tells the Truth – Tells It Like It Is,” … let’s … for once … Tell the Truth, Tell It Like It Is:  Unless you’ve already got a million bucks in the bank, Mr. Trump has done nothing for you.  He’s conned you.  You think that because he hates those you hate, he respects you.  He doesn’t.  He has nothing but contempt for you.  He thinks you’re suckers.  He doesn’t give a damn about you.  Those of you whom he has pardoned for January 6th crimes may think he did so out of kinship, or perhaps due a shred of guilt because you went to jail and he didn’t for an insurrection he incited, but I would submit that he did so because he wants you free to be riot fodder the next time he stages an unconstitutional coup to stay in power.]

We need not list other recent Regime violations of our democratic order.  If you’re reading this note, you can name a dozen or more such activities – those more recent seemingly even more aggravated than those earlier – that I could list here.  [I deliberately defer to a future post the Regime’s bellicose (a word derived from the Latin bellum, meaning “war”) statements regarding its intent to usurp Greenland.  There’s a lot to unpack there.]

I admit to extreme exasperation with media commentators’ continued somber descriptions of the Regime’s autocratic actions while they simultaneously intone about how the Regime’s actions are going to result in a Democratic takeover of at least one House of Congress in 2027.  I find their nonsequitous observations almost as aggravating as I find the Regime’s autocratic policies terrifying.  I would submit that the Regime’s actions have made clear that when pushed to the wall, it will not allow for free and fair elections, or nor willingly relinquish power.  Not in 2026; not in 2028; not ever.   

Mr. Trump and his minions are no fools.  Credible reporting indicates that they are well aware that his approval ratings are plummeting.  Given their seemingly unalterable course, no bettor would wager that his approval ratings will substantially rise between now and November.  As I’ve mentioned here before, when in a contest always assume that the other guy (in a genderless sense) is at least as bright as you are, and knows at least as much about the given circumstances as you do.  In this case, add another factor:  the other guy is completely unscrupulous.  I mentioned in a recent post a number of the tactics that the Regime might take to ward off a Democratic takeover of a House of Congress, including purging of Democratic-leaning voter rolls and voter (particularly Latino voter) intimidation, perhaps culminating – if polling near the election projects truly dire electoral results for the Regime – in consideration of a declaration of Martial Law to suspend elections.  (Indeed, earlier this week, when asked about his falling poll numbers, Mr. Trump told Reuters, “When you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election,” – a statement quickly taken back by the White House Communications Team.)  But I ignorantly left one out, which was in effect also recently suggested by Mr. Trump himself in a New York Times interview:  seizing voting machines after the election in swing Congressional districts (which Republicans now seem destined to lose) — presumably based upon what will be, if past is prologue, bogus claims of voter fraud.

I recently had a friend tell me that it’s an embarrassment to be an American.  What does one say?

My exasperation with media commentators’ seemingly (at least, on-air) obliviousness to the authoritarian threat that Mr. Trump poses to our election and democracy is, I admit, exceeded by my frustration with the marginal Trump voters who put him in the White House despite the fact – I realize I am obsessing – that he told us what he was going to do.  In a note posted here not long after Mr. Trump reassumed the presidency, I ventured, “Although we will never know … it would seem worthy of betting a dollar that each of the following will occur:  the impoverished mother, who voted for Mr. Trump because of the price of eggs, who loses her SNAP payments; the elderly farmer, who voted for Mr. Trump because he hates the Woke, who has a family member die because the hospital formerly nearest to him closed for lack of Medicaid revenue; the Latino male, who wouldn’t vote for a woman, who watches undocumented family members deported, never to be seen again; and the black male, who voted for Mr. Trump because he was so manly, who is gunned down somewhere by some police officer emboldened by Trump rhetoric.”  [I now realize that I could have added, but didn’t:  and the Wall Street trader, so obsessed with tax cuts, further Trump deregulation and short term market performance, who didn’t see that the foundation of American financial economic credibility and stability would be damaged by Mr. Trump’s stated intent to (and/or the blatantly obvious likelihood that he would) extend the 2017 Trump tax cut (thereby unnecessarily exponentially increasing the federal debt), and impose idiotic tariffs, bully the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates, and intimidate federal financial analysts into manipulating economic data (thereby accelerating inflation and undermining business and investor confidence)]. 

In a note posted here not long before the election, I observed:  “[If Mr. Trump wins the election], [a]t some point [thereafter], some of the citizens who vote for Mr. Trump this November will say, ‘This is wrong.  This is too much.  I never intended this.’  By that time, it will be too late.  In this context, the shame will be on them, not on him; he has made his designs perfectly plain [Emphasis in Original].”

What Trump voters wanted was a king to rule them, to fight their battles; a Messiah, to make it all better.

As many are aware, Catholic Masses are said around the world every day of the year.  Each parish employs exactly the same Scriptural passages in that day’s Masses, translated into the native language of the given congregation.  This is the first reading for yesterday’s Masses, from the First Book of Samuel:

“All the elders of Israel came in a body to Samuel at Ramah
and said to him, ‘Now that you are old,
and your sons do not follow your example,
appoint a king over us, as other nations have, to judge us.’

Samuel was displeased when they asked for a king to judge them.
He prayed to the LORD, however, who said in answer:

‘Grant the people’s every request.
It is not you they reject, they are rejecting me as their king.’

Samuel delivered the message of the LORD in full
to those who were asking him for a king.

He told them:

‘The rights of the king who will rule you will be as follows:
He will take your sons and assign them to his chariots and horses,
and they will run before his chariot.
He will also appoint from among them his commanders of groups
of a thousand and of a hundred soldiers.
He will set them to do his plowing and his harvesting,
and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. 
He will use your daughters as ointment makers, as cooks, and as bakers.
He will take the best of your fields, vineyards, and olive groves,
and give them to his officials.
He will tithe your crops and your vineyards,
and give the revenue to his eunuchs and his slaves.
He will take your male and female servants,
as well as your best oxen and your asses,
and use them to do his work.
He will tithe your flocks and you yourselves will become his slaves.
When this takes place,
you will complain against the king whom you have chosen,
but on that day the LORD will not answer you.’

The people, however, refused to listen to Samuel’s warning and said,


‘Not so!  There must be a king over us.
We too must be like other nations,
with a king to rule us and to lead us in warfare
and fight our battles.’ 

When Samuel had listened to all the people had to say,
he repeated it to the LORD, who then said to him,


‘Grant their request and appoint a king to rule them.’

  • 1 Samuel 8:47, 10 – 22a

Of course, by this time you have realized that this post is titled misleadingly 😉.  Samuel was only the Messenger.  It wasn’t Samuel’s warning they ignored. 

At this moment, all Americans, no matter whom they voted for, and the many millions across the globe whose lives are affected by the American election but didn’t get to choose, are — as did the Elders’ sons, daughters, and servants, not only the Elders themselves – reaping the whirlwind of a gross miscalculation by the decisive segment of tragically deluded American voters last November.

I would submit – at least as of today; events in Minneapolis, or the high likelihood of provocative clashes between Trump forces and protestors during the upcoming summer months, could quickly alter this calculus — that there is still a decent distance for those who believe in American democracy to save it.  It may not be a question of how far the Trump Regime is willing to go, but for how long and how far our professional armed forces will follow it.  However, if citizens who believe in American democracy don’t recognize and lay plans to contest Mr. Trump’s telegraphed intent to intrude upon our voting processes to maintain control of the government, we have significantly less hope of avoiding its execution.

Let’s hope that we can still find our way – but it is imperative that we remain peaceful.

What Makes … a Christian?

One of the advantages of my consciously stepping back from a day-to-day focus on the machinations of the Trump Administration is that it has enabled me to read across a wider gamut of my long-term mental reading checklist.  Over the last couple of months – entirely by coincidence; no Armageddon in mind 😊 – I happened to pick up a series of volumes addressing when and by whom the Christian Gospels were written – which in fact is a story of how Christianity evolved in the decades after the Lord’s death.  I had been intending to work a number of those volumes’ authors’ premises into this Christmas message.

As I labored to blend what I had said in the past with what I had recently learned, the result was becoming unduly long and unwieldy (I know, I know – it’s never seemed to bother me before. 😉)  Even so, it seemed best to return to a discussion of these authors’ assertions at some point in the near future, with a suitable introductory warning for those that have no interest.  In the meantime, some of you who might be willing to wade through that post when it is published can consider it a Holiday gift from the Noise that you will have no need to determine whether you have the sufficient internal fortitude to take it on until after the Holidays. 

A second major reason I decided to defer a major discussion is that my recent reading has arguably increased my knowledge without markedly altering my own fundamental beliefs expressed here in earlier notes.  What follows are excerpts from a post that I have published here in 2023 and 2024, including the “preliminary note.”  Since the edits I’ve made from the earlier Holiday posts in no way alter its substance, I am going to take the liberty of not indicating them.  May you have wonderful and blessed Holidays with family and friends.          

[A preliminary note:  my comments below will undoubtedly reflect my Roman Catholic training, and may not relate exactly to all Christian faiths.]

As Christmas is upon us, I’ve reflected upon what I think makes … a Christian.  Traditional Christian theology holds that Jesus of Nazareth was God made man, conceived in the womb of a virgin without sin, who came into the world to teach us an affirmative life of love (as a complement rather than as a contradiction to Judaic law, which I understand tends to focus on prohibitions), and willingly died as a sacrifice to God the Father as expiation for the sins of humankind.  His themes as recorded in the Gospels – what Christians call, “the Good News” — are compelling but relatively few.  What theologians have erected upon them over the last two millennia can be likened to an exponentially mushrooming coral reef. 

I’m pretty confident that the hierarchy of my Roman Catholic Church would take significant issue with some of what follows; they might well consider me a fallen-away Catholic, perhaps even a fallen-away Christian.  That’s as may be.  One tenet that I am confident that religious scholars of most if not all faiths agree upon:  each of us is responsible for his/her own soul.  I personally would add another tenet, with which many of these worthies might not agree:  That those of us who claim to believe in Him can, at best, only do what we have faith He wants.  During the last 60 years – let alone the last 2000 years — there have been Popes who have had such different theological emphases that such differences have seemed to come precariously close to differences in kind.  I don’t see how those of us with no claim to infallibility can expect to have any greater degree of enlightenment or unanimity.

The strictest view of Christianity is that followed by those who rigidly adhere to all of the dictates of the hierarchy of their given Christian Church.  (Some – including Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Mike Johnson – maintain that they are following the Bible’s precepts.  I respectfully disagree.  The Bible can be cited for just about anything anybody wants.  It’s a Church’s elders who decide which of the Bible’s passages will be emphasized, which ignored.)  From the Roman Catholic perspective, strict Catholics would be those whose beliefs include, as the Church hierarchy declares:  that the physical expression of homosexual love is a sin; that Mary, the Mother of Jesus – for whom I have the deepest reverence — was not only a virgin when the Lord was conceived in her womb, but was ever-virgin (i.e., never engaged in sexual relations despite the fact that she was a married woman); that women are inherently unqualified to be priests; and that it is a sin to fail to attend Mass on the Church’s designated Holy Days of Obligation.

Abiding by a set of such rules is the correct approach for some.  Everyone finds spiritual solace in his or her own way.  Not all can be as unquestioning of church elders’ pronouncements.

A second, less formalistic view holds that Jesus is the Son of God, but that the Lord’s fundamental message focused little on legalisms and mostly on love.  Jesus did seemingly pay lesser heed to ritualistic observance of religious rules:  “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites!  You lock the kingdom of heaven before human beings.”  (Matthews 23: 13); “Who among you, if your son or ox falls into a cistern, would not [despite Judaic law] immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?”  (Luke 14: 5).  This at first does appear to provide a theological safety net for those reluctant to abide by rigid dictates; that said, the core of the Lord’s teaching, while simple, is in fact exceedingly challenging in our competitive, materialistic (capitalistic? 😉 ) culture:  “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the greatest and the first commandment.  The second is like it:  You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  (Matthew 22: 37 – 39); “[L]ove your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.  To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other one as well, and from the person who takes your cloak, do not withhold even your tunic.  Give to everyone who asks of you, and from the one who takes what is yours do not demand it back.  Do to others as you would have them do to you.”  (Luke 6: 27-31); “[I]t is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 19: 24).  Finally, when one analyzes it perhaps the most perilous line in all of Scripture, recited by rote by millions of Christians every day:  “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us [Emphasis added].”

If you’re shifting a bit in your chair as you’re reminded of these, you’re not alone.  These teachings are something to strive for – while setting an unnerving standard.

Finally:  Does one have to believe that Jesus was God in order to be considered a Christian?  I suspect that the hierarchy of every Christian denomination would answer resoundingly in the affirmative, many presumably quoting John 14: 6:  “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.’ [Emphasis Added].”  Put aside the fact that biblical scholars agree that John was the last Gospel written, and that John reports Jesus as affirmatively declaring his divinity in a manner that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, written closer in time to Jesus’ life, fail to record.  (I think biblical scholars also agree that none of the Gospels were written by the men to whom they are respectively attributed.)  Even so:  Is the way to salvation only through Him, or can it be through living His message (whether or not one is even aware that it was His message)?  Have the deceased human beings who have lived existences of caring and giving  — among them, Jews, Muslims, those subscribing to Eastern faiths, indigenous peoples around the world, and those who follow no specific faith – been condemned because they have/had either never heard of Jesus or do/did not accept his divinity?

I reject the notion that a loving God could be so harsh to so many of the creatures He has brought forth. 

At the same time, we are all in need forgiveness.  Our faith lies in the confidence that the Almighty will look past our transgressions if we try hard enough.

“But when they continued asking him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’  … [T]hey went away one by one, beginning with the elders.  So he was left alone with the woman before him.  Then Jesus … said to her, ‘Woman, where are they?  Has no one condemned you?’  She replied, “No one, sir.’  Then Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you.  Go, and from now on sin no more.’”  (John 8: 7 – 11).

Not sinning in the future is probably not a realistic expectation for most of us; trying to live a more giving life perhaps is.  So to all Christians – which I would submit includes all of those of any or no faith who are trying to live in accordance with the principles the Lord set forth:

Merry Christmas and a Blessed New Year.

Focusing My Antipathy

It might appear from your side of the screen that I have contributed little to these pages in recent months, but not from this side.  My document store is cluttered with any number of posts begun but abandoned. My reticence has arisen from the realization that my antipathy for Mr. Trump’s behavior has so colored my perspective on our political dynamic that figuratively standing back a bit to attempt to maintain a broader perspective has been the appropriate approach for me.  I literally fast forward by his comments and those of his spokespeople whenever they come up on TV.  I don’t believe a word they have to say.

To what do I attribute my deep emotions regarding the President’s actions?  It is not his policy choices.  Make no mistake:  I consider Mr. Trump’s and his MAGA Administration’s approaches on taxes, tariffs, Medicaid, the budget deficit and the federal debt, the environment, science, education, NATO, Ukraine/Russia specifically, immigration — and probably ten other issues we could name if we took a minute — to be substantively idiotic.  But perhaps because of my legal training, I don’t take substantive differences to heart, so Mr. Trump’s substantive positions, as sad and counterproductive to our nation’s long-term wellbeing as they are, warrant vigorous debate but don’t strike a visceral cord within me.

What I find distressing is that Mr. Trump’s abhorrent past actions are seemingly fading from the collective American consciousness – like they never happened.  He’s lied them away.

They haven’t faded for me. 

I trace my visceral feelings about his behaviors to these instances:

His traitorous behavior.  He lied, and continues to deny, his loss in the 2020 presidential election.  With millions of dollars at his disposal, he lost about 60 lawsuits in swing states challenging former President Joe Biden’s victory.  That election was unquestionably close; but to use a trite sports analogy, during the World Series they have about six cameras covering first base from every angle.  If the 2020 election is imagined as Mr. Trump running down the first base line, all six cameras would have shown that the ball hit the first baseman’s glove just before Mr. Trump’s foot hit the bag.  He was out.  It was close, but he was out.  His unwillingness to admit it to this day has groundlessly and execrably undermined the Americans’ confidence in our voting processes, the foundation of our system of government.  The fact that anybody with a lick of sense should have been able to see through his lies – and millions haven’t – doesn’t excuse his behavior.

His incitement of an insurrection.  You saw his speech on January 6, 2021.  You saw the result.  Calling it a lovefest doesn’t make it one.  The attack on the Capitol was an insurrection – an attempted coup – which came within a hair’s breadth of succeeding.  Mr. Trump should be in jail, not in the White House.  Ditto the comment above regarding anybody with a lick of sense.

His dictatorial behavior.  Some of our most renowned presidents have exercised broad presidential power, some skating to or over the limits of presidential power drawn in the Constitution.  That said, as far as I’m aware, of our presidents only Mr. Trump – save perhaps President Abraham Lincoln, who had ample reason to call out southern secessionists – has referred to other Americans as “Enemies of the People” – a phrase used by Nazi Propagandist Joseph Goebbels against the Jews, Russian Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin during his Great Purge, and Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong during his Cultural Revolution.

His demonization of immigrants – at least immigrants of color.  It obviously started with his 2015 trip down the escalator, calling Latin Americans “murders and rapists,” continued throughout his first term, further continued during the 2024 campaign with his reference to them as “vermin” – an epithet Adolf Hitler used about those he considered undesirable – and now with his Administration’s indiscriminate, terrorizing deportation activities.  Undocumented immigrants are indeed criminals – they have entered the country in violation of our immigration laws, no matter how law abiding they’ve been since crossing our border — and what we do about them is a policy issue.  But dehumanizing them for doing what anyone with courage should be willing to do if necessary to ensure a better life for his/her family — in practical terms what the forebears of every American citizen save Native Americans and those brought here in chains did do — is a malign act.

His bullying, self-dealing, and dividing Americans – in some cases, dividing families — for his own political gain.  His actions in these regards are so well settled that, as lawyers sometimes say, they need no citation.

You could add others; I have limited my list to actions for which there is no reasonable doubt. 

All that said, I have come to view Mr. Trump as a personal spiritual as well as temporal challenge.  Throughout this note, I’ve referred to my antipathy for Mr. Trump’s actions.  The very word, “antipathy,” is obviously a softer, ten-cent synonym for more provocative alternatives. In my faith, and I suspect in many faiths, we are taught that one can “hate the sin, not the sinner”; every day, millions of Christians ask the Almighty to “forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” — which one could argue amounts to those of less forgiving nature rotely giving a merciful God license to judge them more harshly than He (excuse the male pronoun for a genderless being) otherwise might.  I don’t believe that I can wish ill upon another.  Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, a fellow Catholic, has said that she prays for Mr. Trump; he has mocked her for it.  (I must sheepishly admit that Ms. Pelosi has greater faith than I do; although all things are possible with God, unless we can get Mr. Trump on a horse on the road to Damascus, I see little prospect that he will change his ways.  😉 )  I can’t claim to have said many prayers for the President, but I am focusing my antipathy on his behaviors. 

For the sake of my soul, as I fast forward by his lies, rants and inanities, I hope I’m succeeding.

We’ll soon get back to regular programming. Stay well. 🙂

On Lenten Fasting: Redux

[There is obviously much to address in our current state, but Ash Wednesday comes but once a year, and it is today.  I reenter a post from past Ash Wednesdays – and will very likely continue to reenter it on future Ash Wednesdays – because I find its teaching a more spiritual perspective than the traditional concept of Lenten denial.]

Today is Ash Wednesday:  in the Christian world, the beginning of Lent, the 40-day period of reflection and performance of penance for one’s sins in preparation for Jesus’ Passion and Death on Good Friday and Resurrection on Easter Sunday.  It is a time in which Christians have traditionally fasted – customarily understood to mean that one of faith will willingly bear the pang of hunger, or endure some other discomfort – so as to identify in a microscopic way with the Lord’s suffering.  Even so, I offer the following Scriptural description of another means of fasting by which one might embrace the spirit of Lent:

“Would that today you might fast so as to make your voice heard on high!

Is this the manner of fasting I wish, of keeping a day of penance:

That a man bow his head like a reed and lie in sackcloth and ashes?

Do you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?

This, rather, is the fasting that I wish:

Releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke;

Setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke;

Sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless;

Clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own.

Then, your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed;

Your vindication shall go before you, and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.

Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and He will say:

‘Here I am.’”

 Isaiah 58:  4-9 

DOGE and the Mark of Cain

“Cain said to his brother Abel, ‘Let us go out into the field.’  Now when they were in the field, Cain turned against his brother Abel and slew him. … And the Lord said, ‘What have you done? … [N]ow cursed are you in the soil which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. … [A] fugitive and a wanderer shall you be on the earth.’  Cain said to the Lord, ‘My punishment is too great to bear. … I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.’  But the Lord said to him, ‘Not so!  Whoever kills Cain shall be punished sevenfold.’  So the LORD put a mark on Cain, lest anyone should kill him at sight.”

  • The Book of Genesis 4:8, 10, 12-15.

The Genesis verses cited above were read worldwide at yesterday’s Catholic Masses.

I expressed a deep regret yesterday in these pages for the federal employees whose careers are being mindlessly destroyed by President Donald Trump “and his acolytes” – i.e., Elon Musk and his minions.  The Scripture passage made me reflect on the potential consequences for another group that I had not previously considered. 

If numerous reports I have seen are accurate, Mr. Musk is doing a large share of his culling of federal workers through a force of elite college graduates in their 20s.  Those of us with a little more seasoning realize that when you’re in your early 20s, it doesn’t matter how academically bright you are or what school you went to; you don’t even know what you don’t know.  These youngsters probably think that these heady times are going to last forever. But if rational democratic forces do stage a return at some point in the future, and the ways of Messrs. Trump, Musk, and their MAGA lot are cast aside, it almost certainly won’t affect Mr. Trump personally; he’ll be insulated by his Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling and grateful benefactors who will ensure that he has a cushy existence to the end of his days.  It likewise won’t affect Mr. Musk personally; he’ll be insulated by his fortune and will be able to live wherever in splendor for the rest of his days. 

It is Mr. Musk’s young vigilantes who have long lives ahead, and who won’t be protected by court rulings, fortunes, or benefactors.  It is these youngsters who will ultimately face the wrath of their republic.

The priest who said yesterday’s Mass chose to characterize the Lord’s action as one of mercy toward Cain – that He could have destroyed Cain, or let others kill Cain, but instead chose to let Cain go forth to walk the earth.  (Let’s put aside the obvious question as to whom Cain feared would kill him – after all, his parents were the first people, and he and Abel were their first children.)  Although I have very high regard for this priest, I was not so sure I agreed with his interpretation of the Lord’s action; I wondered whether the Lord didn’t instead punish Cain by ensuring that he had to wander the earth for his sin – as a “fugitive,” presumably for decades – when death might have been the more merciful sentence.

If the MAGAs aren’t successful in establishing an American Apartheid and these young Musk minions haven’t broken any laws, they, like Cain, will be left to wander the earth.  Given the enmity that Messrs. Trump and Musk have now engendered among so many throughout the democratic world, where will they be able to go to fulfill the potential they had the day that Mr. Musk first laid eyes on them?

While of no consolation to those whose careers they are ravaging, these young vigilantes may find that “DOGE” is ultimately their Mark of Cain.  Some, as they grow older and wiser and no matter the fate of the MAGA crusade, will find that it is indelibly branded on their psyches; on their souls.

What Makes … a Christian?

[What follows is a post – which included the bracketed italicized “preliminary note” immediately below – published in these pages on December 22, 2023.  (There are two italicized clarifications:  the first relating to the timing of a statement by Pope Francis; the second relating to Holy Days of Obligation falling on Mondays.)  As I evolve in my own faith (whether it ultimately inures to my eternal benefit or ill 😉 ), I found that when I looked back on what I entered last year that last year’s note captured my current sentiments as well as anything I might observe this year; thus, I’m taking the liberty of resetting it here.  Have joyous Holidays!]   

[A preliminary note:  my comments below will undoubtedly reflect my Roman Catholic training, and may not relate exactly to all Christian faiths.]

As Christmas is upon us, I’ve reflected upon what I think makes … a Christian.  Traditional Christian theology holds that Jesus of Nazareth was God made man, conceived in the womb of a virgin without sin, who came into the world to teach us an affirmative life of love (as a complement rather than as a contradiction to Judaic law, which I understand tends to focus on prohibitions), and willingly died as a sacrifice to God the Father as expiation for the sins of humankind.  His themes as recorded in the Gospels – what Christians call, “the Good News” — are compelling but relatively few.  What theologians have erected upon them over the last two millennia can be likened to an exponentially mushrooming coral reef. 

I’m pretty confident that the hierarchy of my Roman Catholic Church would take significant issue with some of what follows; they might well consider me a fallen-away Catholic, perhaps even a fallen-away Christian.  That’s as may be.  One tenet that I am confident that religious scholars of most if not all faiths agree upon:  each of us is responsible for his/her own soul.  I personally would add another tenet, with which many of these worthies might not agree:  That those of us who claim to believe in Him can, at best, only do what we have faith He wants.  During the last 60 years – let alone the last 2000 years — there have been Popes who have had such different theological emphases that such differences have seemed to come precariously close to differences in kind.  I don’t see how those of us with no claim to infallibility can expect to have any greater degree of enlightenment or unanimity.

The strictest view of Christianity is that followed by those who rigidly adhere to all of the dictates of the hierarchy of their given Christian Church.  (Some – including Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Mike Johnson – maintain that they are following the Bible’s precepts.  I respectfully disagree.  The Bible can be cited for just about anything anybody wants.  It’s a Church’s elders who decide which of the Bible’s passages will be emphasized, which ignored.)  From the Roman Catholic perspective, strict Catholics would be those whose beliefs include, as the Church hierarchy declares:  that the physical expression of homosexual love is a sin (Pope Francis’ authorization [in 2023] for priests to bless same-sex couples is certainly a softening but seemingly not a reversal of the Church’s traditional position); that Mary, the Mother of Jesus – for whom I have the deepest reverence — was not only a virgin when the Lord was conceived in her womb, but was ever-virgin (i.e., never engaged in sexual relations despite the fact that she was a married woman); that women are inherently unqualified to be priests; and that it is a sin to fail to attend Mass on the Church’s designated Holy Days of Obligation (unless the Holy Day falls on a Monday; apparently, Mondays are less Holy than other days).  [Note:  Catholics were required to attend Mass on Monday, December 9, 2024, for the Immaculate Conception, the first such Monday obligation I can recall in some years.  Perhaps members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops are reading the Noise; but if so, I am in dire theological straits  😉 .]

Abiding by a set of such rules is the correct approach for some.  Everyone finds spiritual solace in his or her own way.  Not all can be as unquestioning of church elders’ pronouncements.

A second, less formalistic view holds that Jesus is the Son of God, but that the Lord’s fundamental message focused little on legalisms and mostly on love.  Jesus did seemingly pay lesser heed to ritualistic observance of religious rules:  “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites!  You lock the kingdom of heaven before human beings.”  (Matthews 23: 13); “Who among you, if your son or ox falls into a cistern, would not [despite Judaic law] immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?”  (Luke 14: 5).  This at first does appear to provide a theological safety net for those reluctant to abide by rigid dictates; that said, the core of the Lord’s teaching, while simple, is in fact exceedingly challenging in our competitive, materialistic (capitalistic? 😉 ) culture:  “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the greatest and the first commandment.  The second is like it:  You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  (Matthew 22: 37 – 39); “[L]ove your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.  To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other one as well, and from the person who takes your cloak, do not withhold even your tunic.  Give to everyone who asks of you, and from the one who takes what is yours do not demand it back.  Do to others as you would have them do to you.”  (Luke 6: 27-31); “[I]t is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 19: 24).  Finally, when one analyzes it perhaps the most perilous line in all of Scripture, recited by rote by millions of Christians every day:  “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us [Emphasis added].”

If you’re shifting a bit in your chair as you’re reminded of these, you’re not alone.  These teachings are something to strive for – while setting an unnerving standard.

Finally:  Does one have to believe that Jesus was God in order to be considered a Christian?  I suspect that the hierarchy of every Christian denomination would answer resoundingly in the affirmative, many presumably quoting John 14: 6:  “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.’ [Emphasis Added].”  Put aside the fact that biblical scholars agree that John was the last Gospel written, and that John reports Jesus as affirmatively declaring his divinity in a manner that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, written closer in time to Jesus’ life, fail to record.  (I think biblical scholars also agree that none of the Gospels were written by the men to whom they are respectively attributed.)  Even so:  Is the way to salvation only through Him, or can it be through living His message (whether or not one is even aware that it was His message)?  Have the deceased human beings who have lived existences of caring and giving  — among them, Jews, Muslims, those subscribing to Eastern faiths, indigenous peoples around the world, and those who follow no specific faith – been condemned because they have/had either never heard of Jesus or do/did not accept his divinity?

I reject the notion that a loving God could be so harsh to so many of the creatures He has brought forth. 

At the same time, we are all in need forgiveness.  Our faith lies in the confidence that the Almighty will look past our transgressions if we try hard enough.

“But when they continued asking him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’  … [T]hey went away one by one, beginning with the elders.  So he was left alone with the woman before him.  Then Jesus … said to her, ‘Woman, where are they?  Has no one condemned you?’  She replied, “No one, sir.’  Then Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you.  Go, and from now on sin no more.’”  (John 8: 7 – 11).

Not sinning in the future is probably not a realistic expectation for most of us; trying to live a more giving life perhaps is.  So to all Christians – which I would submit includes all of those of any or no faith who are trying to live in accordance with the principles the Lord set forth:

Merry Christmas and a Blessed New Year.

On the Power of Faith

[As always, please excuse my use of male pronouns when referring to a Supreme Being without gender.]

During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln regularly pondered the irony that two sets of peoples were fervently praying to the same Deity for diametrically opposed ends.  In September, 1862, he wrote:

“The will of God prevails.  In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God.  Both may be, and one must be, wrong.  God cannot be for, and against, the same thing at the same time.  In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something quite different from the purpose of either party – yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect his purpose.”  [Emphasis Mr. Lincoln’s]

In a letter to a friend on September 4, 1864, Mr. Lincoln wrote:

“The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance. … God knows best … We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom and our own error therein.  Meanwhile we must work earnestly in the best light He gives us trusting that so working still conduces to the great ends He ordains.”

Finally, in his March, 1865, Second Inaugural Address, delivered on the cusp of what had become an overwhelmingly-likely Union victory, Mr. Lincoln noted the aspect that faith was playing in the conflict:

“Both [Union and Confederate adherents] read the same Bible and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. … The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully.  The Almighty has His own purposes.”

For someone who has been so viscerally engaged in our current electoral struggle, I find myself, if not serene, with at least a level of equanimity as we contemplate today’s uncertain outcome.  I have realized that it is because I believe – as Mr. Lincoln held – that God knows best.  What follows is the passage we chose as our wedding Gospel so many decades ago and has since been included in each of our children’s wedding celebrations:

“Therefore, I say to you, do not be anxious for your life, what you shall eat; nor yet for your body, what you shall put on.  … Look at the birds of the air:  they do not sow, or reap, or gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are not you of much more value than they?

… Consider how the lilies of the field grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these.  But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which flourishes today but tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more you, O you of little faith?

Therefore, do not be anxious … But seek first the kingdom of God and His justice ….”

 Matthew, 6:25-26, 28-31, 33

As this Election Day unfolds, I know what I think is the best way forward for our country; but about half of my fellow citizens feel just as strongly to the contrary.  I have frequently referred in these pages to what I consider to be our struggle to maintain democracy; yet it cannot be forgotten that the peaceful expressions of different views are the essence of a democracy.  Given these circumstances, I feel fortunate – nae, blessed – to have the consolation of my faith.  Today, I am confining my prayers to this:  that the Almighty bring about the victory of the presidential candidate who will do the most good for our nation, our children, our grandchildren, and – given our geopolitical, financial, and military standing in the world – who will provide the most good for all of His people of the earth.

If you haven’t yet voted, quit reading this and go vote.  If you have voted, it’s time to sit back and embrace what has been, for over two centuries, the most magnificent expression of public will in the history of the world.

The Most Wondrous of Seasons

“The Great Spirit is an omnipresent supreme life force generally conceptualized as a Supreme Being or god. The Great Spirit is a central component in many … indigenous cultures in Canada and the United States.”

  • Wikipedia

Perhaps nature’s greatest affirmation of the Great Spirit is the coming of spring.

“Ramadan is a month in the Islamic calendar – Islam’s holy month, because during it Muhammad received his initial revelation and (ten years later) made his historic Hijrah (Migration) from Mecca to Medina.”

  • The World’s Religions; Huston Smith

“Passover, [in Judaism, commemorates] the Hebrews’ liberation from slavery in Egypt and the ‘passing over’ of the forces of destruction, or the sparing of the firstborn of the Israelites, when the Lord ‘smote the land of Egypt’ on the eve of the Exodus.”

  • Britannica

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that those who believe in Him may not perish, but may have life everlasting.”

  • John 3:16

Whether one sees this season of the year as one to mark the time at which the Almighty established a pact with His people, or liberated His people, or redeemed His people, or simply as one of renewal, it is the most wondrous of our seasons:  the time to appreciate and – if you believe in a loving and merciful God – to give thanks for the Blessing of Life.  

On Lenten Fasting: Redux

[What follows – save the conclusion, specific to this year – was posted in these pages last Ash Wednesday.  I find the quoted Scripture passage sufficiently helpful that it is likely that the passage will be reposted (without the conclusion 🙂 ) on future Ash Wednesdays.]

Today is Ash Wednesday:  in the Christian world, the beginning of Lent, the 40-day period of reflection and performance of penance for one’s sins in preparation for Jesus’ Passion and Death on Good Friday and Resurrection on Easter Sunday.  It is a time in which Christians have traditionally fasted – customarily understood to mean that one of faith will willingly bear the pang of hunger, or endure some other discomfort – so as to identify in a microscopic way with the Lord’s suffering.  Even so, I offer the following Scriptural description of another means of fasting by which one might embrace the spirit of Lent:

“Would that today you might fast so as to make your voice heard on high!

Is this the manner of fasting I wish, of keeping a day of penance:

That a man bow his head like a reed and lie in sackcloth and ashes?

Do you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?

This, rather, is the fasting that I wish:

Releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke;

Setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke;

Sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless;

Clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own.

Then, your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed;

Your vindication shall go before you, and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.

Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and He will say:

‘Here I am.’”

 Isaiah 58:  4-9 

Today is, of course, also … Valentine’s Day – celebrated in the Catholic Church, except for a rare occasion such as today, as the Feast Day of St. Valentine.  Although my Church might find what I am about to propose to be sacrilegious (and if so, I am confident that it would not have been the first time 😉 ), I will suggest that any changes in behavior that one might be intending to undertake in the coming weeks in an effort to help improve one’s essence might perhaps be started … tomorrow. 

Today, use every minute you have to cherish your special loved one.

Happy St. Valentine’s Day.