April 1

… is more than “April Fool’s Day.” It’s the end of the first quarter of the year. Ninety days of 2025 down. Last year I made a point of marking each quarter of the year to invite readers to consider what they’d done (or not done) with New Year’s resolutions, offering an opportunity to get (back) on board. I do that again now, not just because it’s the first quarter down but because we’ve also passed the halfway mark of Lent. Sunday was Laetare Sunday. Two weeks from today we will be in the midst of Holy Week. If you’ve been persistent and consistent, great! If not, God isn’t so much interested in what you’ve failed to do as much as what you’ll do moving forward. Take to heart St. John Chrysostom’s counsels in one of his Paschal homilies:

If anyone has arrived at the sixth hour, let him have no misgivings; for he shall suffer no loss. If anyone has delayed until the ninth hour, let him draw near without hesitation. If anyone has arrived even at the eleventh hour, let him not fear on account of his delay. For the Master is gracious and receives the last, even as the first…

So, how about it?

What’s in a Name?

Nameberry.com is a website that specializes in what today’s parents are naming their offspring. They parse their data seven ways to Sunday, including most common names by sex (and gender neutrality) in blue and red states. (For more, see here.) Surprisingly, of the top ten boy names in blue states, six have some religious connection: Moshe, Muhammed, Yusuf, Ari, Ibrahim, and Ali. You might note that none of them is Christian (though I know some folks might argue for “Yusuf”/Joseph). That two-thirds of them are typically Muslim names does speak about demographic shifts in our national fabric. Paradoxically, of the top ten boy names in red states — which one would think is Bible Belt Central — only one (Cohen) arguably has a religious connection. Red state boys are getting named Briggs, Gunner, and Tripp (name your kid something you don’t like to do). A popular red-state boy name is Stetson; a popular girl name is Hattie. If they marry, will they name their kid Derby?

Girl names in America traditionally are more cutesy, but in blue states, both Maryam and Miriam — roots of Mary — made the list. Parents in red states, on the other hand, seem to combine cutesy with a quasi-literate tree fetish: four of ten names were variants of “oak” but the parents couldn’t decide on spelling: Oaklee, Oakley, Oakleigh, or — for the wild and crazy — Oaklynn. Once popular, Aspen is in eclipse. (I’m seeing decided discrimination against conifers; maybe someday “Spruce” will make it. For more on spruce, see here.)

There are certain entry points where one learns unexpectedly what’s going on in a culture. What we name our kids is one of them. On none of those lists is any saint’s name. Clearly, though we tell our kids about the necessity of “networking” and “having connections.” That assumption apparently does not include things of God rather than mammon. Doesn’t that tell us something — survey data aside — about the practical agnosticism many Americans have towards “the life of the world to come”?

And while the absence of patronal names among American Protestants (e.g., many red states) reflects their antipathy to the Christian doctrine of the “communion of saints,” that’s not always been true. American Protestant presidents included George, John, Thomas, James, Andrew, and Martin. But there’s also another venerable Protestant tradition that seems in desuetude: using old Testament names like Abraham, Benjamin, David, Jacob, Moses, Joshua.

“What’s in a name?” asks Juliet. A lot more than a fragrant flower or a particularly strong tree. There’s also a sense of what a culture does (and doesn’t) value.

“Forced Joy”

Beth Kowitt of Bloomberg Opinion identifies (here) a new corporate trend: “forced joy.” It means that not only does one do one’s job and do it well, but one should feign “joy” and exude a “vibe” about it — like a barista inscribing my coffee cup with my name and wishes for a “grrrrr-eat day!” Maybe it’s the Protestant roots of this country, but Americans seem to have a problem with the concept in media stat virtuus (virtue is found in the middle). For Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, virtue is normally found as a balance between excess and defect: being generous entails being neither cheap nor spendthrift. Yes, when I buy a product, I do expect some measure of common courtesy as part of customer service but even more so as the minimal tie between two human beings interacting. I do not want to hear a litany of your troubles (we all have them), but neither do I necessarily want to waste time while you scribble faux Tony the Tiger sentiments to me on a coffee cup. After all, it is just a cup of coffee.

When I was teaching at Seton Hall, I’d stop mornings at Texas Lunch, a now defunct diner across the street from the train station in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Evelyn would pour me a cup of coffee. We talked, not because Texas Lunch’s coffee was exciting but because over the years we got to know each other. There was a joy that was natural and in no way forced. But Starbucks now wants to mandate these “moments of connection.” The problem is: our connection is you give me coffee, I give you money, that’s it. Don’t unnaturally make it a “moment”… because it isn’t.

“Forced joy” is somewhat akin to what a French commentator once called the “therapeutic voice,” the mellifluous calming voice that flows out of public address systems no matter what the announcer has to say. The Washington Metro excels at it, which is frankly a morning irritant: When you hope to relax and doze, you’re interrupted by the speaker asking, “Is this your first time using Metro?” and then providing equanimous guidance on how to ride an escalator. (If you need instructions how to use an escalator, should you be on one?) It’s like the demand that a politician show up to show “solidarity” with a problem, even if he can do practically nothing about it and his presence is just as likely to impede help. But it’s “therapeutic.”

Our society is drowning in the loss of normal, rational, intelligent discourse, which has been replaced by a tide of feelings, real or canned. We even had a Presidential campaign last year that aspired to win the White House on “vibes.” Can we scrap the play-acting and get on with normal relationships in real life?

A “Harrowing” Experience

One thing about being Catholic is you learn big, uncommon words. Immaculate. Grievous. Consubstantial. Or “harrowing.” One woman (here) reported a “harrowing” experience. She claims she was “harrowed” by a coworker who won’t speak to her as “they/them” — her pronouns. “Harrowing” usually refers to the “harrowing of hell,” i.e., Jesus’ descent to limbo to liberate the just souls and take them to heaven after His Death. Or now, apparently, in its evolved meaning, to pronoun distress.

The “Business” of Government

Last week I wrote (here) about the flaws in the slogan currently in ecclesiastical vogue, “a poor Church for the poor,” defending the argument that the Church needs her own entrepreneurial economic ecosystem that affords real financial independence to sustain her ministries long-term. Somehow a mentality has gained ground in certain circles that a “Christian” use of money and resources should ignore basic economic rules about how money is made, multiplied, and disbursed. I noticed this same mindset in a social media exchange over a claim attributed to Elon Musk saying that the government does not run like a business and so risks financial ruin. The pushback from commentators pretty much ran as “the government is not a business, so it should not function according to business models.” Implicit in that thinking is that government should “care” about people’s problems, something to which business is supposedly indifferent.

Look, I am not an Adam Smith purist. I had and have real doubts about some of the neo-liberal/neo-Catholic circles that, 30 years or so ago, thought Smith and the economic liberals (along with the American Founders) were all sorts of “anonymous Catholics” (in a Rahnerian kind of way). No: economic liberalism and Catholicism start from different anthropologies and the twain only goes so far. But that’s not to say that we can’t find common ground as far as the twain goes nor that the Church can’t learn something about how money is made in the modern world. For all the aspersions cast against it, capitalism has done far more to lift more people out of poverty than all the anti-capitalist or even “third way” schemes devised to achieve that goal. The government is not a business, but it has to have resources (i.e., money) to do what it does. To get those resources, it has three choices:

(1) make money according to the general rules of economics (i.e., like businesses do);
(2) make money by turning on the printers (feeding inflation); or
(3) make money by upping your taxes to engage in “do-goodism,” without necessarily the accountability safeguards of normal business practices.

So, yes, without conflating business and government, I do want government to act a little more like business in terms of fiduciary responsibility, since the money it has is not the “government’s” but yours and mine. Our Constitution still starts, “We, the People…”