The Erasure of Easter

Easter is less than a week away. Among non-believers it’s easier to ignore than Christmas, as it always falls on a Sunday. You can say “goodbye” to a co-worker on Friday and return on Monday and Easter weekend will not be noticeably different to the broader culture than the 51 other weekends of the year. I call this phenomenon the “erasure of Easter.” (For more on this, see here.) In the next few days, carefully take a look at what’s in the “Easter” display at your local store. Observe how many times the actual word “Easter” appears paired with “eggs,” “rabbits,” “chocolates,” and so on. There’s likely to be a small aisle of “Passover” goods. Compare how often the word “Passover” appears on those holiday-specific products. Just as December 25 is the “C” word that dare not speak its name, so the consumer class wants to capitalize off the greatest of Christian holidays while refusing the say the name. Compare that to the politicians (and bishops) falling all over themselves in the past month to salute Ramadan.

In my childhood, Holy Week had some public visibility. The Ten Commandments was the three-hour Palm Sunday night movie. Afternoon movies early in the week were of similar genre. There were Easter sales. Kids prepared for “Easter break” (not “spring break”) from schools. You knew Easter was coming. Now look at contemporary culture. If you had to depend on public signals, would you know that Easter is next Sunday? You’re more likely to know the next anti-Trump demonstrations are scheduled for (Holy) Saturday.

Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt has proposed making Easter a federal civil holiday. If adopted, federal practice is that Sunday holidays are observed on Monday, which would make U.S. policy mirror much of Europe (at least Catholic Europe) where Easter Monday, like December 26, is called the “second day” of Easter (or Christmas, respectively).

When will Christians wake up?

Money in Higher Education

The Left is falling over itself in applause at Harvard President Alan Garber’s declaration that the University will not buckle to the President’s demands they comply with certain anti-discriminatory rules. He calls it protecting academic freedom. (Garber succeeded Claudine Gay, who self-imploded after testimony before the House of Representatives why she couldn’t contain antisemitism on the Cambridge campus). I make two observations: First, if you take federal dough, you dance to the federal piper. As Scripture tells us, “you cannot serve both God and mammon” (Mt 6:24), which is why my alma mater, Fordham, so quickly tore crucifixes off its classroom walls. As for Harvard, I’m not worried the lack of federal mammon will cause it to slash programs. It has a $53 billion endowment, which makes you wonder why the feds are subsidizing anything there. (I thought the “wealthy” were supposed to pay their “fair share” — unless they’re liberal institutions, in which case, “never mind!”)

Second, the issue here is discrimination. Harvard was defendant in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which said its differing standards for admitting students (much higher for those of Asian descent) were illegal. That Supreme Court decision still sits in the craws of higher ed, whose demand for “diversity” masks reverse discrimination. So, is the federal government to sit by and watch hardworking Chinese- or Korean-American kids be held to higher standards because of their ethnicity? Nobody would dare say that if they held black students to higher requirements, then the government should do nothing. Probably nobody (we’re in Palestinian-consciousness today) would defend the days when the Ivies had their own numerus clausus to keep Jews off campus. Harvard has allowed “affinity group” graduations, i.e., special ceremonies for favored groups like “indigenous,” “blacks,” “Pacific islanders,” and “Arab.” How do you think the University would receive a proposal for a special “white men’s” ceremony? Or a “Jews” ceremony? As Justice Clarence Thomas noted, there is a weird turn on the “no discrimination” standard. Instead of “no discrimination” meaning no discrimination, some want to say that “helping victims” is legitimate even if the collateral effect is creating different victims. For more on this, see here.

Somehow, I think Americans are not going to be lining up behind poor $53-billion Harvard’s “right” to discriminate. And if Catholic colleges and universities want to avoid dancing to the federal waltz, they might consider scrapping the “poor Church of the poor” shtick and developing the self-sufficiency necessary for them to claim real “autonomy” without depending on taxpayers — as the bishops found out with refugee services.

Nine Brief Ruminations

1) I am not particularly vested in the “traditional Latin Mass” but I do find the argument in defense of ad orientem worship persuasive. Fr. Dwight Longenecker has come up with a pithy but brilliant defense of it. In response to the potential parishioner saying “the celebrant should be looking at the congregation,” he replies: “Look, if I’m a bus driver, do you want me to be looking at you — or looking at where we’re supposed to be going?”

2) Democrats in Virginia are pushing their gubernatorial “vibes” candidate, privileged white liberal Smilin’ Abigail Spanberger, as “protecting” public schools. She’s running against a conservative female black immigrant (the first word cancels all the benefit points of the next three) who supports school choice and parental rights. Let’s start asking this question: Why do Democrats insist on keeping all kids on their monopoly (and largely failing) public school plantation? Like 175 years ago, is this their new “peculiar institution?”

3) Beware of “narrative.” Six women donning skin-tight “Star Trek: Next Generation” costumes and going into “space” for 11 minutes does not “ceiling-shattering” history make.

4) What’s a “good man”? Once upon a time, women knew what it was and looked for it. Then they lamented, “Where are they?” Now, it seems, we’re back to talking about them — except that what men and women understand by “good man” is Mars and Venus. Maybe these are the kinds of discussions the Church needs to lead, rather than arrangement of tables on the synodal deck discussing settled doctrine and discipline?

5) President Trump came out for year-round Daylight Savings Time. Let’s see: The last time this was tried (in 1974) it failed because parents discovered they were sending their kids to school in the dark in mid-January. Our society is less child-centric and more nocturnal than it was 50 years ago, and many schools start later (the “science” of kids “needing more sleep”). Still, I wonder where the warrant for denying astronomy (i.e., noon used to mean the sun is at its daily zenith) comes from. Joshua (10:13) had divine warrant for trying to hold the sun still. (Those who believed that were roundly ridiculed for their “unscientific” faith in Inherit the Wind). Please explain the “science” of how Congress can expand the number of daylight hours during the shortest season of the year.

6) Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, convicted of financial funny business after an extended Vatican trial, is now alleging prosecutorial misconduct. I thought the current Pope was elected to clean up the Curia, not leave it “messier” than he found it. The fact that Cardinal Fernandez is still trying to put together a bench to try Marko Rupnik — something I find risible — does point to the dysfunctionality of the Bergoglio curial “cleanup.”

7) Speaking of Roman scandals, there’s a report out (here) alleging how Marko Rupnik may have gotten his start in “ecclesiastical art” by damaging another icon writer’s work.

8) In the midst of all that, Jesuit General Fr. Sosa is complaining about Western (i.e., American) immigration law enforcement, calling it a “scandal.” On the non-pitching principle applicable to dwellers in glass houses, I’d suggest to Father General that “scandal” include how the Society did not deal with Rupnik earlier before washing its hands and expelling him for “disobedience.” Or how it still protects the dubious in matters of doctrine or morality, like with the spoutings of James Martin, S.J.

9) In his privacy lawsuit against the homosexual dating app Grindr, the use of which cratered Msgr. Jeffrey Burrill’s ecclesiastical career, his lawyers have supposedly claimed “his upward trajectory to the position of bishop has been permanently derailed.” Methinks it raises legitimate questions about the judgment of his then-bishop, William Callahan, for afflicting a parish with him (“returning him to ministry”) or of his current ordinary, Gerard Battersby, for apparently keeping him there. Methinks we may also have just identified — and avoided the bullet of — the next Theodore E. McCarrick.