The Polish Orthodox Church was created as an autocephalous Orthodox Church by the signing of the Patriarchal and Synodal Tomos by Patriarch Gregory VII of Constantinople, recognizing the situation that had been created by the Russian Revolution and Poland's independence.
Mussolini introduced a bill to grant women the franchise in Italy.
Last edition
This is St. Joseph's Catholic Church in the tiny town of Albin. Presently, Masses for this community are being heard in nearby Carpenter, rather than here.
Israel is not "fighting Lebanon". I've seen that claim made, but it isn't.
It's striking Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.
Hezbollah, which translates as the "Party of God" is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group. The party does control large sections of Lebanon where Shia is dominant religious group.
Lebanon itself was carved out of Syria by the French during the French mandate period as it had a majority Christian population. It's one of the few areas of the Middle East which still does, with Islamic repression over centuries having forced conversions and emigration throughout the Middle East. Be that as it may, Lebanon is no longer a majority Christian state, and its a mess because of internal strife and division.
That came in due to the conflicts in the region, with the Palestinian refugee population of the 1970s being particularly problematic. The country fought a civil war that lasted in one form or another from 1975 to 1990. It's never been stable since.
It's very difficult to see a positive future for Lebanon in any form. That doesn't mean it won't occur, but it's hard to see.
What can be seen, in my view, is an Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon coming in the next week or so.
The primary election is this Tuesday.
On that day, people who didn't go down to the courthouse early to vote, like me, and those who didn't vote absentee, and are voting, will cast their votes.
I've been following politics since at least 1972, when Richard Nixon won his second term in office. I can remember doing so as a kid. I was nine. Teno Roncalio, a Catholic lawyer from Sweetwater County, a veteran of Operation Overlord, and a Democrat, was our Congressman. Gale McGee, a University of Wyoming professor, and a Democrat was one of our Senators. The other was Cliff Hansen, a rancher from Teton County when Teton County still had real ranches, and a Republican, was our other Senator. Stan Hathaway, a Republican Episcopalian at the time, who later became Secretary of the Interior and a Catholic, was our Governor.
Yep, that's right. We had more Democrats in Congress than Republicans. Being called a "Democrat" wasn't a slur.
In the 1980s, a very conservative and extremely religious Wyoming politician who was LDS attempted to have a bill passed targeting pornography sales. He was widely lampooned. HE had not, however campaigned on his faith, even though it obviously had informed his legislative effort.
I can't recall, until Foster Friess run for Governor in 2018, any Wyoming politician making their faith central to their campaign. If you knew much about candidates, you often knew what their faith was, but there was never anyone who boldly claimed "I'm a Christian" as a reason to vote for them. People probably would have been offended if they had, and of course Wyoming was and is the least religious state in the Union.
Something that did happen in that time frame was the arrival of the new Evangelical churches. I pass one every day on my way to work, and two gigantic ones have been built. I know very little about the one that I pass, which proclaims itself to be an "Evangelical Free Church", thereby proclaiming a denomination without realizing that its done so, and even less about the two gigantic ones, other than that one has a huge following, including members who are openly living in sin or violating Christ's injunction about divorce and remarriage.
With their arrival, and the campaign of Freiss, who wasn't from here and was never of here, and the evolution in national politics, we now see Evangelical proclamations thickly made, but with the adherence to the message of Christ thinly understood. One Natrona County legislature, newly imported from Illinois, Jeanette Ward, proclaimed her Christianity while asserting in the legislature that we are in fact not our brother's keeper. Numerous politicians in the hinterland have claimed that the Constitution is divinely inspired, a minority Protestant and minority LDS view that seemingly has wide acceptance in the populist right. A candidate in this district proclaimed his Christianity, and his wife, in his support did the same in a mailer, while making statements that are outright lies.
Now someone approached him and said, “Teacher, what good must I do to gain eternal life?”He answered him, “Why do you ask me about the good? There is only One who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” He asked him, “Which ones?” And Jesus replied, “ ‘You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and your mother’; and ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
The young man said to him, “All of these I have observed. What do I still lack?”
Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to [the] poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” When the young man heard this statement, he went away sad, for he had many possessions.
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
Matthew Chapter 19.
We are all familiar, of course, with the uncomfortable comment from Christ that its harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. This statement is so disquieting that one entire branch of Christianity, the heath and wealth gospel group, has dispensed entirely with focusing on it. They aren't alone, however. I heard plenty of homilies in the 70s and 80s, probably the 90s, from Priets who discussed "spiritual poverty".
I don't hear that much anymore from Apostolic Christians, whose clerics have become increasingly more orthodox.
And I think the warming is real. Vast wealth corrupts. You only have to look at the impact of the vastly wealthy to realize that, whether it be Elon Musk or Donald Trump and their personal morals.
People who look at Trump and see him as a devout Christians are fools.
But then, a lot of American Christians are Christian Light.
How does this relate here?
Well, in a culture loudly proclaiming itself to be Christian, that of the American political right, we see an awful lot of people whose adherence to the basic tenants of the Gospel are absent. That's why one right wing commentator could seriously maintain the Hawk Tuah Girl was exhibiting a conservative value (pleasuring her man, she stated), rather than seeing her for what she is, a sad example of a person whose become debased. Whole sectors, however, of the far right have become debased in various degrees, which is not to say that the left is a beacon of moral purity.
Seeing either party as a Christian one is foolish.
Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of men. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign.
And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country. Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not expose them. They share their meals, but not their wives.
They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven. Obedient to the laws, they yet live on a level that transcends the law. Christians love all men, but all men persecute them. Condemned because they are not understood, they are put to death, but raised to life again. They live in poverty, but enrich many; they are totally destitute, but possess an abundance of everything. They suffer dishonor, but that is their glory. They are defamed, but vindicated. A blessing is their answer to abuse, deference their response to insult. For the good they do they receive the punishment of malefactors, but even then they, rejoice, as though receiving the gift of life. They are attacked by the Jews as aliens, they are persecuted by the Greeks, yet no one can explain the reason for this hatred.
To speak in general terms, we may say that the Christian is to the world what the soul is to the body. As the soul is present in every part of the body, while remaining distinct from it, so Christians are found in all the cities of the world, but cannot be identified with the world. As the visible body contains the invisible soul, so Christians are seen living in the world, but their religious life remains unseen. The body hates the soul and wars against it, not because of any injury the soul has done it, but because of the restriction the soul places on its pleasures. Similarly, the world hates the Christians, not because they have done it any wrong, but because they are opposed to its enjoyments.
Christians love those who hate them just as the soul loves the body and all its members despite the body's hatred. It is by the soul, enclosed within the body, that the body is held together, and similarly, it is by the Christians, detained in the world as in a prison, that the world is held together. The soul, though immortal, has a mortal dwelling place; and Christians also live for a time amidst perishable things, while awaiting the freedom from change and decay that will be theirs in heaven. As the soul benefits from the deprivation of food and drink, so Christians flourish under persecution. Such is the Christian’s lofty and divinely appointed function, from which he is not permitted to excuse himself."
From a letter to Diognetus (Nn. 5-6; Funk, 397-401)
I'm fearful of what this election holds in more ways than one. One thing I'm afraid of is that the co-opting of Christianity by the Trumpists will harm it. The only really Christian party in the race is the American Solidarity Party, but it doesn't stand a chance. Some elements of Christian Nationalism are actually deeply Christian, with an understanding of Apostolic Christianity, whereas some parts are American Protestant, which have an erroneous view of the end of the Apostolic Age. They are not compatible. The deeper National Conservatives, for that matter, are an insurgent group within the far right seeking to slip in, take over, and effect a sort of social revolution. They saw J. D. Trump as their Trojan Horse, but thought they were through the gates of Troy too early.
Real Christian movements do rise up periodically. But that's what they do, rise up. They aren't imposed down. Some of that has already occured, with the far left reacting strongly to it. But that doesn't seem to be appreciated here.
I don't see a lot of really deep Christianity out there in the political field. If I did, frankly, quite a few of those things that the Democratic left have proclaimed as weird would be practiced, which may be why J. D. Vance, for all the negative attention he's attracted, is the only really honest figure in the Trump camp. He does believe the traditional things he says, I'm quite sure, currently regarded as "weird" or not. But then, like the members of the New Apostolic Reformation, which he's not party of, he's seemingly willing to make common cause with lies in order to try to advance what he regards as a greater good, something that's always tactically iffy and morally reprehensible.
Satan, we're told, is the father of lies. Lying, we're told, is a sin. In Catholic theology at least, it can be a mortal sin, which has not deterred at least one Catholica elected official here from campaigning on a whopper during the last election. Lying always has a bad end.
Lying will have some sort of existential bad end for those now doing it. Lying to yourself does as well. You can't really be "a devout Christian" with multiple marriages, or when shacked up, or when favoring your career over others or over nature, or while prioritizing wealth,
And if you are seeking to transform society, you have to give society a reason to transform. Simply declaring that you are on the side of God doesn't really do that.
But understand this: there will be terrifying times in the last days. People will be self-centered and lovers of money, proud, haughty, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, irreligious,callous, implacable, slanderous, licentious, brutal, hating what is good,traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,as they make a pretense of religion but deny its power. Reject them.For some of these slip into homes and make captives of women weighed down by sins, led by various desires, always trying to learn but never able to reach a knowledge of the truth.Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so they also oppose the truth—people of depraved mind, unqualified in the faith.But they will not make further progress, for their foolishness will be plain to all, as it was with those two.
_-_The_Last_Supper_(1495-1498).jpg)
A very interesting Canadian agriculturalist whom I follow on Twitter (I don't care with Elon Musk calls it), who is also an Eastern Rite Catholic, noted that he, like me, didn't watch the Olympic opener (as will be noted, I watched the very start of it, grew bored, and wondered off). So he, like me, was left with the media accounts, of which there are plenty, including video, of a group of drag queens mocking Da Vinci's The Last Supper. He goes on to make the point that the sex laden transvestite portrayal was likely calculated to offend, but that The Last Supper is not an icon, which is quite correct.
But, with some exception, the Latin Rite lacks icons. While not the same, the great Medieval and Renaissance works of art in the West tended to be commissioned by the Church, so they have an association with it. Put another way, in order to offend to the degree as denigrating an icon, there'd be little other choice. 1 Again, it's not an icon, but part of a set of religious works of art commissioned by and associated with Christianity in the West.
It's hard to grasp why this would occur, but the outrage in the Catholic Church, and there is a lot of it, is justified. So is the embarrassment in some French circles, particularly French conservative ones. The French far right came with in a gnat's breath of taking over the French government two weeks ago and the ultimate makeup of the upcoming French government is still unknown. Had this happened before the election, I have a strong feeling that the French far right would be forming a government now.
That provides a topic for another thread, which we will address, but we'll note here. Part of the rise of National Conservatism and Christian Nationalism, and even just far right populism, is due to debauchery such as this.
The Olympics itself was quick to claim that the portrayal wasn't not of The Last Supper, which of course is an Italian, not a French, Renaissance work, noting on Twitter:
The interpretation of the Greek God Dionysus makes us aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings.
Hmm. . . Dionysus is a Greek mythological figure, not a French one. . .
Dionysus was the Greek god of is the god of wine-making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre. His Roman equivalent was Bacchus. While celebrated in Roman times, the Romans also restricted unofficial celebrations dedicated to Bacchus due to the excess he was associated with it.
Whatever else Dionysus may stand for or have stood for, it certainly had nothing to do with being against violence between human beings. He really had a lot more to do with booze, drunkenness, sex and insanity, and its interesting that the ancient Greeks linked all of them together. Eirene or Irene was the divinity associated with peace, but she didn't engage in drunken excess.
Another Olympic official also reacted with a series of excuses that were fairly lame. Thomas Jolly, the artistic director of the Olympics Opening Ceremony, said the display was about "inclusion".
When we want to include everyone and not exclude anyone, questions are raised. Our subject was not to be subversive. We never wanted to be subversive. We wanted to talk about diversity. Diversity means being together. We wanted to include everyone, as simple as that.
Whatever diversity means, it doesn't mean "being together". At least to some significant degree, it means being apart, and in the modern era, when this is being self defined in a way contrary to nature, it literally means being a Dionysus until one's self.
Jolly noted:
In France, we have freedom of creation, artistic freedom. We are lucky in France to live in a free country. I didn’t have any specific messages that I wanted to deliver. In France, we are republic, we have the right to love whom we want, we have the right not to be worshippers, we have a lot of rights in France, and this is what I wanted to convey.
Um, okay.
Le Filip, the winner of Drag Race France season three, probably got it more accurate.
I thought it would be a five-minute drag event with queer representation. I was amazed. It started with Lady Gaga, then we had drag queens, a huge rave, and a fire in the sky. It felt like a crowning all over again. I am proud to see my friends and queer people on the world stage.2
Whatever a person thinks of it, Le Filip grasped it better than Jolly did, quite frankly.
For many, as I have often told you and now tell you even in tears, conduct themselves as enemies of the cross of Christ.
Their end is destruction. Their God is their stomach; their glory is in their “shame.” Their minds are occupied with earthly things.o
St. Paul to the Philippians, Chapter 3.
A portion of France, particularly urban France, has waged war with the Church and Christianity since the failed French Revolution. Like all the revolutions that were conducted by populist mobs, their god was their belly and they turned on the Church. The same is true of the Bolshevik Revolution and the Mexican Revolution. The Church stands for the proposition that there is something greater, much greater, than us, where as populism of the left and right, at the end of the day, doesn't. Modern "progressivism", heir to the extreme left that arose in 1798 and 1917 has the same ethos, rejecting anything outside of ourselves and rising each person to an individual Bacchus no matter how much a person's own nature may be corrupted in one fashion or another, as individual natures are the only thing that matters. The portrayal at the Olympic opener celebrated that ethos shamefully mocking Christianity in favor of a world outlook that goes no deeper than a person's gentiles. Their glory, is their shame.
The storms that are raging around you will turn out to be for God’s glory, your own merit, and the good of many souls.
St. Padre Pio.
I'll be frank that I quit watching the opening ceremonies of Olympic games some time ago. I think the last one I actually watched was the Moscow Olympics, which is now quite some time back. They've ceased to make sense to me. The Olympics are ostensibly about sports, not about the glorification of the country where they're held, or drag queens. Indeed, I've frankly lost interest in the Olympics themselves for some reason.
This really reinforces that view, particularly as to this particular Olympics.
I feel they should just be permanently placed in Greece, for the summer games.
Make no mistake: God is not mocked, for a person will reap only what he sows, because the one who sows for his flesh will reap corruption from the flesh, but the one who sows for the spirit will reap eternal life from the spirit.
Galatians, Chapter 6.
I suspect most of the viewing audience will simply regard this attack on Catholicism as part of the show, shrug it off, and move on. In doing so, they benefit from the liberal culture the Church created in the West and the fact that central to the Christian worldview is turning the other cheek. In contrast, France has a very large Muslim population that nobody would dare attack in such a fashion, a cartoon depicting Mohammed for instance famously resulting in murder. There will be no drag queens taking on an Islamic topic. None. Islam doesn't turn the other cheek. Likewise, Hinduism, which of course would be completely foreign to France, can't be attacked in this fashion either without almost immediate retribution.3
Catholics aren't going to do that, nor will the rest of the Christian world.
Which doesn't mean that the offense should be ignored.
Footnotes:
1. One religious image that has endured this is the tilmahtli associated with Our Lady of Guadalupe. Back when there was a print Playboy magazine, the company issued a Mexican edition with a Mexican woman featured on the cover replicating the image in a pornographic fashion, which brought a firestorm of criticism.
That, and this, give credence to those who claim a diabolical origin to these events.
2. Are there no French singers to do an Olympic opening? Why Stefani Germanotta as the opening act? That alone is embarrassing for France.
Having said that, the Marseilles was beautifully sung by Axelle Saint-Cirel. They should have just stopped right there.
In case anyone wonders, my watching of the show was basically bookended by those two acts. I grew tired of the masked boofador running over roofs and wondered off to take a shower and watch something else.
3. One religion that has endured something like this is the LDS, Mormon, faith. Target of the satiric comedic The Book Of Mormon, it's basically shrugged it off, probably figuring, correctly, that as a minority religion, it might actually benefit from being mocked, as it at least puts a spotlight on it. I'd guess, however, that Mormons aren't keen on the portrayal, and while I've never seen it, and I'm not a Mormon, I'm not either. As noted, nobody would put on a Broadway satiric "The Koran", nor should they.
Orthodox Easter for this year is yet to come.
Why there?
On Saturday, March 30, Pro Hamas protestors interrupted the Easter Vigil Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City.
Why St. Patrick's?
For the same reason, most likely, that LGBTQ+ figures had a protesting funeral there recently. People are drawn to Catholic places, as they're real, and therefore attention is paid to them.
Why her?
Courtney Love, in an interview with Standard, stated; "Taylor is not important. She might be a safe space for girls, and she's probably the Madonna of now, but she's not interesting as an artist."
This followed Billie Eilish criticizing, sort of anonymously, "wasteful artists" who put out multiple vinyl editions, an apparent softball for sustainability. She later said her comments weren't directed at Swift.
Hmmm. . .
Why are these chanteuses dissing Taylor?
I don't really know, but I will note that Love commenting on who is important and interesting in laughable. Is Love "important" or "interesting"? If she is, she might be interesting as she's the late wife of the tragic Curt Cobane, whom I don't find to have been particularly important, but certainly tragic. And for Eilish, she's sort of a teenage train wreck who probably needs to get over her weird diet and flipping between hiding her form and flaunting it.
Taylor is interesting because she's a musical success. I don't like her music, which I find to be juvenile, but I will note that appearance wise she's a throwback almost to the 1940s, and appears to have gained success while being basically normal in every fashion.
Culturally, therefore, she might be sort of important in a way.
Love, and Eilish, on the other hand, might be fairly unimportant in every sense. Musically, right now, it's hard to see what actually is important. Whoever they are, they aren't in pop music.
Indeed, much of society seems to be grasping for the authentic and important right now, without much out there in the culture offering it.
Appearances
Back in November, I posted this item:
Since that time, this trend locally has noticeably increased. It's really remarkable.
For whatever reason, I'm a student of people, so I take notice of what they wear. I'm probably in a minority of sorts that way. What people wear at Mass is a common topic in Cyber Catholic circles, but the recent turn towards the conservative amongst young, white, female Catholic parishioners is really remarkable. It's a real rejection of the cultural norm of our era.
Indeed, very recently, even amongst those young women who were part of this group, there's suddenly a change. One young woman who is routinely at Mass with her family on Sundays, and who typically showed a lot of shoulder (no, there's no problem with that) is now covering up hugely. Something's changed. It doesn't, however, carry over to Hispanic or Native American young women, both of whom continue to dress the way they have. Hispanics have always dressed very conservatively at Mass, but not in a trad fashion. They're keeping on keeping on with that.
News, real news but in a rumor fashion, leaked out recently that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Byzantine Church is looking at putting in a mission in Casper, which would be a mission of a mission. I don't know how many Ukrainian Catholics there may be in town, but I'll bet it's a tiny number. I also bet that the mission church that's thinking of establishing a mission here, which is out of Cody, serves a mostly non-Eastern Rite community.
Something is going on there too. At a time at which some in the Latin Rite seem focused on a topic that's frankly jumped the shark, by and large, and which is really a matter of European culture, not biology, the young and rank and file in the pews seem to be moving on.
Becoming a parody of yourself
One of the risks of taking the long reach for something is that you can end up actually becoming unauthentic in your quest for authenticity.
I'm reminded of Courtney Love again.
On her Wikipedia page, there's a picture of Love wearing a kokoshnik, a stiff hat associated with Russian women. Russian women don't wear them anymore, and I'm sure they haven't for eons. She's wearing it with a miniskirt. It looked absurd, but was probably meant to make a statement. Or here's another example:
The kind of dumb stuff you say when you actually really care about "your 'basic' fashion sense".
I don't know who Japanese Breakfast is (or for that matter what an actual Japanese breakfast is) but they've showed up on this Twitter headline:
Japanese Breakfast is too busy returning to Coachella and making 'music for bottoms' to care about your 'basic' fashion senseOh, bull. That's the exact thing you say when you've tuned your fashion sense to look like you don't have a fashion sense, so you can appear to stay edgy for Coachella.
M'eh.
Exactly.
I note this as in the pews are a young couple, they're not married but perhaps engaged, whose family I somewhat know. From a very conservative background, they're trying to affect the disaffected but conservative look to the max. Unwashed hair and, for the young man, probably third or fourth hand overcoats from the 1970s with huge hounds tooth pattern. The young woman wears, of course, a chapel veil but also is affecting plain to the maximum extent possible, which is detracting a bit from her appearance. I do love her very round, plain glasses, however.
Anyhow, when going for something crosses over into sort of a parody, you've gone too far.
Lost
Anyhow, I think this trend has been going on for a while. It explains the entire Hipster look that's still with us, and was much in force several years ago.
Some days, when I leave the office, there's a young woman coming in. She's either a Native American or a Hispanic from somewhere south of the border. She's always dressed very conservatively, with dresses that remind me of what Latin American women traditionally wear. She always has a big smile when you see and acknowledge her.
She's authentic.
Last prior edition:
Before this past weekend, I'd never heard Easter called Resurrection Sunday. I heard it twice on the weekend shows, once from a conservative Republican in Congress, and once from a centerist Democrat in Congress. The latter, an African American Congressman from South Carolina, said off hand "we're supposed to call it Resurrection Sunday now".
I don't like it.
Apparently, what this relatively newly coined word is, is part of a widely held angst that everything on the liturgical calendar might have some pagan origin. This is silly.
The classic one is that Christmas falls on top of a Roman holiday, which is particularly odd given that the Roman holiday so noted first came into existence after the first Christian texts noting the celebration of Christ's Mass in December. The deal with Easter, apparently, is a fear that it is tied to the northern European goddess Eostre, who was the goddess of fertility and the goddess of the dawn. People like to say that this is "German", but in actuality it would be Norse, with the Anglo-Saxons having close connections with the Scandinavians even before they became illegal immigrants on Great Britain. The Venerable Bede made that claim, and he lived from 672 to 735, so in relative terms he was sort of close, but not all that close, to when the Angles, Saxons and Jutes had first shown up.
Bede further claimed that British Christians, using the Saxon calendar, starting calling Easter by that name as it occured in Eosturmonath (April) or Eastermonað. If so, it also helps explain Easter eggs and the Easter Bunny, although it wouldn't explain why a bunny would leave boiled eggs all over, or why Easter Eggs are so famously associated with the East, as in Ukraine and Russia, either.
That the egg custom is really old and seems to ahve been adopted from a Persian Nowruz tradition actually would serve to explain the eggs. . . The tradition was old by the time it showed up on Great Britain.
The Easter Bunny is more obscure. Rabbits had no association with Eostre, however. About all we really know about the Easter Bunny is that it was a German Lutheran custom, and originally it played the role of a judge, evaluating whether children were good or disobedient in behavior at the start of the season of Eastertide, making the rabbit sort of scary.
Back on topic, and be all that as it may, some believe that the word Easter comes from an old Germanic, in this in context it would be Low German, probably Saxon, word for "east" which also, if fully extended to "Easter" grammatically meant to turn to the east. When the etymology is really examined, this is in fact the most likely explanation. Some who have looked at it go further and claim that the word came from a Latin loan word (of which there are a surprising number in German), that being Auster, which sounds a lot like Easter, but actually had sort of a complicated meaning, the most simple being south, but the word apparently having other more complicated implications associated with the dawn. However, some would say, including me, that instead Auster and East have the same Indo-European root word, that being *h₂ews-, which means ‘dawn’, with the sun rising, of course, in the East. Those people claim the Germanic East is a variant of the root *h₂ews-ro-, whereas Auster is the Italic reflex, from *h₂ews-teros. And it goes from there.
The latter sounds complicated, but this too is more common than we imagine. Certain elemental Indo-European words have ended up in all the Indo-European languages, twisted and turned over the millennia, which all make sense if their roots are explained, but which don't seem to when you first hear them. Indeed, there's the added odd widely observed phenomenon that certain words in other languages that depart widely from your native language, almost instantly make sense when you hear them, an example being Fenster, the German world for "window", which is fenestra in Latin and fenêtre in French. Just my hypothesis on the latter, but it's like because of some deep Indo-European root that we otherwise understand.
Anyhow, for what it is worth, as Americans tend to believe that things are uniquely centered around us, the German word for Easter is Ostern. I note this as I've seen repeated suggestions that only in English is the word "Easter" used. This isn't true. Ostern, which has the distinct "Ost", or "East" in it, is pretty close, suggesting that the directional origin of the name is correct. I.e., in German Ostern derives from the Ost, the German word for East.
Likewise, the Dutch, who speak a closely related Germanic language, call the day Ooster. The Dutch word for East is Oosten. So here too, the Dutch word for Easter derives from the Dutch word for East.
Applying Occam's Razor, and keeping in mind that English is a Germanic language related to German and Dutch (Dutch more closely), leads us to the conclusion that the word "Easter" derives from the cardinal direction East, particularly when the cousin Germanic languages of German and Dutch are considered, which they usually are not. Once that is done, and it is realized that at about the time the word Easter was first used all the northern German languages were much closer to each other than they are now, and they are still pretty close, logic pretty much dictates this result.
Most language groups do not, however, call Easter that. The word seems to behave the way German words did and do, and has "East" as its major component, hence "East"er, "Ost"ern and Ooster.
The Scandinavian goddess explanation is considerably more complicated in every fashion.
Most non-Germanic language speakers, and some Germanic language speakers, don't use a word anything like this, of course.
Latin and Greek, with together with Araamic, would have had the first word for the Holy Day, and they have always called Easter Pascha (Greek: Πάσχα). That is derived from Aramaic פסחא (Paskha), cognate to the Hebrew פֶּסַח (Pesach), which is related to the Jewish Passover, all of which makes both linguistic, historic, and religious sense, although in the latter case one that causes some irony as we'll explain below. Pascha actually shows up in English in at least Catholic circles, as the term Paschal is given frequent reference in relation to the Last Supper, but also beyond that in relation to Easter.
Of interest, the Swedish word for Easter is Påsk, the Norwegian Påske, the Danish Påske and the Icelandic Páskar. If the word derived from a Scandinavian goddess, we'd expect the same pattern to hold in Scandinavia, which was the origin point of Eostre, although that would not obviously be true. Instead, in all of Scandinavia, the word derives from Pascha.
The Frisian word for Easter is Peaske, which is particularly interesting as Frisian is extremely closely related to English and some people will claim, inaccurately, that it's mutually intelligible. Peaske is obviously from Pascha, but it's almost morphed into Easter, which could cause some rational explanation if Easter is just a badly mispronounced Peaske. Wild morphing of words can occur, as for example the Irish Gaelic word for Easter derives from Pascha, but is Cháisc, which wouldn't be an obvious guess.
Given the German and Dutch examples, however, the Frisian word almost certainly doesn't suggest that Easter came from Pascha.
The use of Pascha makes sense, as every place in Western Europe was Christianized by the Latin Rite of the Church, which would have used a Latin term for the Holy Day. The difference is, however, they weren't all Christianized at the same time. The Anglo-Saxons encountered Christianity as soon as they hit the British shores in the 400s, probably around 449. At that time, most of the residents of the island were British or Roman Christians, and they would have sued the Latin term. Conversion of the invaders is, however, generally dated to the 600s.
The Scandinavians were however much later. Christianity appeared in Scandinavia in the 8th Century, but it really began to make major inroads in the 10th and 11th Centuries. When the Church sent missionaries to the Saxons, it remained a much wilder place than it was to be later. Scandinavia was very wild as well, in the 10th and 11th Centuries, but Scandinavian roaming was bringing into massive contact with the entire Eastern and Wester worlds in a way that sort of recalls the modern impact of the Internet. They changed quickly, but they were, ironically, more globalist and modern than the Saxons had been a couple of centuries earlier. They also became quite devout, contrary to what Belloc might imagine, and were serious parts of the Catholic World until the betrayal of Gustav Vasa.
But here's the added thing. What if, in spite of the lack of evidence, the day's name in English recalls Eostre or Eosturmonath (Eastermonað"? So what?
Well, so what indeed. It really doesn't matter.
Early Greek and Aramaic speaking Christians took their term for the day from Passover, or rather פֶּסַח (Pesach). So they were borrowing a Jewish holiday for the name right from the onset. Nobody seems to find this shocking or complain about it. As far as I know, Jews don't complain about it. It simply makes sense.
And borrowing holidays that preexist and even simply using the dates is smart. The date of Easter doesn't fit this description at all, but if the word does, borrowing it would have been convenient if a holiday existed that was celebrating rebirth. Explaining concepts through the use of the familiar is a smart thing to do, and indeed in the US this has been done with a civil holiday, Cinco de Mayo, which Americans inaccurately believe is a Mexican holiday celebrating Mexican independence, and which have made the We Like Mexico holiday.
So, if Eostre had a day, or if the day in Saxon was named after the month named after her, it really doesn't matter.
Indeed, on that latter note, we've kept the Norse goddess Frig in Friday, the Norse God Thor, in Thursday, and the Norse God Woden in Wednesday., in English, and we don't freak out about it. Sunday originally honored the Sun, and we don't find Evangelical's refusing to use the word Sunday, as it's also the Christian Sabbath
So what of Resurrection Sunday?
I'm blaming Oliver Cromwell, fun sucker.
Great Britain's experience in the Reformation was nearly unique, in some ways. Really radical Protestant movements, such as the Calvinists, took root in some places on the European continent, but by and large they waned, leaving isolated, for the most parts, pockets in areas in which they were otherwise a minority. Looked at from a distance, the initial round of Protestant "reformers" didn't seek to reform all that much. Luther continued to have a devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and Lutheran services today look pretty Catholic.
In England, however, official religions whipped back and forth. King Henry VIII didn't want a massive reform of theology, he wanted to instead control the Church, but things got rapidly out of hand. After him, the Church of England struggled between being very Catholic in outlook and being a "reformed" church.
Cromwell came up as a childhood beneficiary of the theft of Church property in the form of the dissolution and appropriation of the monasteries. He evolved into being a radical sola scriptura Calvinist and saw the suppression of the Catholic and Anglican Churches come about. Under his rule, religious holidays were made illegal under the theological error of sola scriptura. After his death, the English Restoration brought a lot back, but it was never able to fully bring back in Calvinist who had adopted a rather narrow provincial English, or Scottish, view of their Christian faith, filtered through the language that they spoke. They heavily influenced Christianity in the Americas, and their influence continues to carry on, which explains how they can adopt a view that ignores the other Germanic languages and which, in seeking to give a new term to Easter, ignores the fact that the logical choice would be the Aramaic word פסחא (Paskha) which would appear in the Bible as it would have applied to Passover, or the Greek word Πάσχα, Páscha, which means Easter and Passover. So modern Evangelicals have inherited the Puritan narrow focus, ignored the other Germanic language words, and ignore the original Greek and Aramaic ones, in order to come up with a new one with no history of use whatsoever.
Let's just stick with Easter.
The KKK was in Lilly for one of their ceremonies in a local field and was returning to the station for transport to Johnstown, PA. They did catch the train, and upon arrival at Johnstown they were met with 50 policemen who arrested 25 Klansman and confiscated 50 firearms. The next day, an additional four residents of Lilly were arrested. Twenty-nine people were charged with murder.
Lilly was a mining town, and like most of them it had a strong contingent of Catholic and Orthodox miners, members of ethnicities that the Klan didn't like. A strong UMW union town, the residents weren't cowed by the KKK. A monument to their efforts has been placed in the town in recent years.
Locally, there were concerns about spring floods. And the flight around the globe was suffering delays.
In Catholic circles, you could almost hear the groan when it was announced prior to Easter that Pope Francis and Víctor Manuel Cardinal Fernández were issuing a new writing on something.
"Oh no" went up the collective mental though of millions of Catholics, and the written comment in social media by some.
In the end, it was just the Pope's meditations on the Stations of the Cross for this year, which didn't stop his most ardent critics from launching into them. There's nothing inappropriate with a Pope doing this, however, and there's recent precedent for that matter.
Nonetheless, the groan beforehand shows the extent to which people are weary of hearing from Pope Francis, as so much of what he writes results in controversy. And that ought to give him pause. At some point, if people are reluctant to hear from you, and dread it, they aren't likely to take it to heart.
The United States and Canada are Protestant nations. They don't really notice it as a rule, and quite a few cultural Protestants like to deny it, but if you are an adherent member of an Apostolic Christian religion, or for that matter probably if you are Jewish or Muslim, you'll definitely notice it.
One of the ways that it oddly comes up is the annual "it doesn't say anywhere in the Bible that you can't eat meat on Fridays" discussion that Protestants in particular, and some very weakly evangelized lapsed Catholics, like to have. It's ironic as some of the same people will insist that grape juice was served at The Last Supper (nope, definitely wine) or that the Bible says once you accept Jesus into your heart you can go back to sinning (nope, St. Paul in particular warns you can do that and still go to Hell).
Of course, it doesn't say that you must abstain from meat on Fridays. It's a law of the Church, not biblically imposed. The Bible discusses fasting and gives lots of examples, and it left the office of Bishops to bind and loose. This is a rule of the Church, which has been bound.
It only applies to members of individual Churches. I.e, Catholics are bound, not Lutherans, or members of make it up as you go Christian churches. Moral laws bind everyone. Church laws bind the members of the church.
Also, FWIW, fasting and abstention from meat go way back in Church history and used to be much stricter as a practice than it is now. It's still much stricter in the Eastern churches. In the East, fasting involves abstention from alcohol, eggs, dairy, fish, meat, and olive oil for the 40 days of Great Lent and Holy Week. So the Orthodox, for example, are really down to a very bland menu at this point.
That group of people who like to claim that the Latin Rite practice was made up to support the fishing industry are really out to lunch on this one, particularly as the claim is based on a grossly misconstrued concept of what the food economy was like in the ancient world. If you lived, for example, in a Sardinian fishing town in the Middle Ages, fish is what was for dinner every night. The fishing industry didn't really need anyone's help to be economically viable. And at one time the Latin Rite fast more closely resembled the Eastern one. Claims like that are generally myths of the Reformation, created in jolly old England to justify carrying on with the Reformation when they couldn't come up with any actual good reasons to do so.
For most non-Catholics and non-Orthodox, however, this isn't in the forefront of people's minds. Restaurants get it, as there are a lot of us, which is why fish based fare shows up this time of year darned near everywhere. But rank and file Protestants, particularly of the Christmas/Easter variety, really don't ponder this much. If you live in a state like Wyoming, that's really obvious, as we have very low religious observation here anyhow. There are a lot of Catholics, but we're a minority. Protestants who don't go to church often are no doubt the majority, followed by Protestants who go to the new "non-denominational" churches, which is to say the quasi Baptist, churches (there are no "non-denominational" churches). They can't be expected to know Canon Law.
When you go to a function of any kind during Lent, this becomes pretty obvious. "Here's your entrée". . will say the server, serving the beef sandwich between two slabs of beef served with beef fries. "Would you like gravy with that?"
Oh, well.
That you can't suspend this and just go to meatless on Saturday is something people don't grasp. "You can skip it this time". No, you can't. Violation of the rule is a mortal sin. That seems extreme to non-Catholics, and probably has for a long time, but by the same token we live in an era when a host of other mortal sins, the sexual and marital ones in particular, are ignored by even devout church going Protestants. If you can convince yourself, getting married for the third or fourth time doesn't mean that you are an adulterer, you can pretty easily convince yourself that eating a hamburger on Fridays in Lent is okay this one time. Indeed, in some odd ways, the logic isn't that much different. They both involve appetites and excuses.
This does make Catholics stick out, and the Orthodox even more, maybe. In some ways, as the Catholic Church has suspended so many of these rules, the fact that there are some remaining makes Catholics stick out all the more and, in turn, the few remaining rules offend people all the more. And that is in a way part of the point in the modern world. It sets us apart, and it should. Like those who appear with ashes on their forehead on Ash Wednesday, it's going to mark you.
This came to mind as when I got home last night, Long Suffering Spouse announced, "my mother proposed to have Easter Dinner this Friday. . ."
Eh?
Now, by way of an obvious point, we're clearly a "mixed" family. My side of the family is all Catholic. LSS's is all non-Catholic.
I don't know where the dinner suggestion stands right now, as LSS isn't saying, which means it must be in the air. She protested this as we have "town jobs" which means that a Friday gathering really isn't a viable option anyhow. And one of the things about being married to a Catholic means is that the Catholicism will start to be picked up by the non-Catholic party, no matter what.
Beyond that, however, under the current rules for Latin Rite Catholics, (and I'm sure for Eastern Rite Christians as well) on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, the fasting rules allow Catholics to eat only one full meal and two smaller meals which, combined, would not equal a single normal meal. We've already seen that the Eastern Rite is fasting by this point every day. Catholics may not eat meat on these two days, or on any Friday during Lent.
Now, I'm over 60 years old, which means the fasting rules no longer apply to me. As it is, however, that's my normal daily routine anyhow. I never eat big breakfasts or lunch. I used to often skip both, but thanks to my thyroid medication, I'm hungrier than I used to be. Be that as it may, I'm not comfortable with a feast on Good Friday. That's weird, from an Apostolic Christian prospective. "This is the day our savior was murdered. . . let's just skip ahead to the day he was raised".
You can't really do that.
Of course, in Cromwellian influenced Protestant America, you probably can. He wouldn't, as he didn't approve of observing things anyhow, but he so messed stuff up it's never recovered in the English speaking, non-Catholic, world. Another reason that they've had to hide his head.
Anyhow, I love my in-laws, who are great, but this is pretty much something I'm not going to be able to do. I can't go to a big Easter dinner on Good Friday and do something like, "wow, that ham looks great. . . I'll just have the mashed potatoes. . . thanks". The meatless rule still applies to me, and there's probably not going to be a giant cod for an "early" Easter dinner.
That would be weird.
Also weird is that on Good Friday, I have people trying to make appointments. Most law offices are closed on Good Friday. I guess there were enough old Irish and German Catholic lawyers, even here, to make that impact. But most Americans work as Oliver Cromwell was a theologically deficient fun sucker and our Puritan heritage is ruining everything. Working to the grave is one thing that our Protestant founders in this country really gave to us, and it's one of the things that's really wrong with the culture. Now, I usually do work, but I've long looked forward to most of the office being out, and only working a partial day. And it gives me a chance to take Holy Saturday off.
I'm going to have to handle this today. In prior years I think I would have just said yes, to somebody wanting in, or "the office is closed". But instead I'm going to just say, the "office is closed for Good Friday".
I'll let the Puritans ponder it.
This is Holy Week. It commenced yesterday with Palm Sunday, which we noted yesterday:
In those countries which were spared the cultural impact of the Reformation, at least directly, at the entire week is one of celebration and observance. In a lot of those places, people have the whole week off. Some of Spanish and Central American friends, for example do.
Well, in the English-speaking world we've had to continue to endure the impact of Cromwell and all his fun sucking, so we'll be headed to work instead.
Trowels and muskets.
BYU is taking flak for making its incoming students read Jeffrey Holland's "trowel and musket" speech regarding BYU's second century, which he delivered back in 2001.
Holland is a figure in the LDS's governing body. His speech, is copyrighted, but under the fair comment exception I'm setting it out here. It stated:
Someone once told me that the young speak of the future because they have no past, while the elderly speak of the past because they have no future. Although it damages that little aphorism, I who have no future have come to you as the veritable Ancient of Days to speak of the future of BYU, but a future anchored in our distinctive past. If I have worded that just right, it means I can talk about anything I want.
I am grateful that the full university family is gathered today—faculty, staff, and administration. Regardless of your job description, I am going to speak to all of you as teachers, because at BYU that is what all of us are. Thank you for being faithful role models in that regard. We teach at BYU.
I can’t be certain, but I think that it was in the summer of 1948 when I had my first BYU experience. I would have been seven years old. We were driving back to St. George in a 1941 Plymouth from one of our rare trips to Salt Lake City. As we came down old highway 91, I saw high on the side of one of the hills a huge block Y—white and bold and beautiful.
I don’t know how to explain that moment, but it was a true epiphany for a seven-year-old, if a seven-year-old can have an epiphany. If I had already seen that Y on the drive up or at any other time, I couldn’t remember it. That day I probably was seeing it for the first time. I believe I was receiving a revelation from God. I somehow knew that bold letter meant something special—something special to me—and that it would one day play a significant role in my life. When I asked my mother what it meant, she said it was the emblem of a university. I thought about that for a moment, still watching that letter on the side of the hill, and then said quietly to her, “Well, it must be the greatest university in the world.”
My chance to actually get on campus came in June 1952, four years after that first sighting. That summer I accompanied my parents to one of the early leadership weeks—a precursor to what is now the immensely popular BYU Education Week held on campus. That means I came here for my first BYU experience sixty-nine years ago, with a preview of that four years earlier. If anyone in this audience has been coming to this campus longer than that, please come forward and give this talk. Otherwise, sit still and be patient. As Elizabeth Taylor said to her eight husbands, “I won’t be keeping you long.”
My point, dear friends, is simply this: I have loved BYU for nearly three-fourths of a century. Only my service in and testimony of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—which includes and features foremost my marriage and the beautiful children it has given us—have affected me as profoundly as has my decision to attend Brigham Young University. No one in my family had. In so testifying, I represent literally hundreds of thousands of other students who made that decision and say that same thing.
So, for the legions of us over the years, I say: Thank you. Thank you for what you do. Thank you for classes taught and meals served and grounds so well kept. Thank you for office hours and lab experiments and testimonies shared—gifts given to little people like me so we could grow up to be big people like you. Thank you for choosing to be at BYU, because your choice affected our choice, and, like Mr. Frost’s poetic path, “that has made all the difference.”
“A Trowel in One Hand and a Musket in the Other”
I asked President Kevin J Worthen for a sample of the good things that have been happening of late, and I was delighted at the sheaf of items he gave me—small type, single-spaced lines, reams, it looked like—everything from academic recognitions and scholarly rankings to athletic successes and the reach of BYUtv. Karl G. Maeser would be as proud as I was.
But President Worthen and I both know those aren’t the real success stories of BYU. These are rather, as some say of ordinances in the Church, “outward signs of an inward grace.”2 The real successes at BYU are the personal experiences that thousands here have had—personal experiences difficult to document or categorize or list. Nevertheless, these are so powerful in their impact on the heart and mind that they have changed us forever.
I run a risk in citing any examples beyond my own, but let me mention just one or two.
One of our colleagues seated here this morning wrote of his first-semester, pre-mission enrollment in my friend C. Wilfred Griggs’s History of Civilization class. But this was going to be civilization seen through a BYU lens. So, as preambles to the course, Wilf had the students read President Spencer W. Kimball’s talk “The Second Century of Brigham Young University”3 and the first chapter of Hugh Nibley’s book Approaching Zion.4
Taken together, our very literate friend said these two readings “forged an indestructible union in my mind and heart between two soaring ideals—that of a consecrated university with that of a holy city. Zion, I came to believe, would be a city with a school [and, I would add, a temple, creating] something of a celestial college town, or perhaps a college kingdom.”
After his mission, our faculty friend returned to Provo, where he fell under the soul-expanding spell of John S. Tanner, “the platonic ideal of a BYU professor—superbly qualified in every secular sense, totally committed to the kingdom, and absolutely effervescing with love for the Savior, his students, and his subject. He moved seamlessly from careful teacher analysis to powerful personal testimony. He knew scores of passages from Milton and other poets by heart, [yet] verses of scripture flowed, if anything, even more freely from the abundance of his consecrated heart: I was unfailingly edified by the passion of his teaching and the eloquence of his example.”
Why would such a one come back to teach at BYU after a truly distinguished postgraduate experience that might well have taken him to virtually any university in America? Because, our colleague said, “in a coming day the citizens of Zion ‘shall come forth with songs of everlasting joy’ [Moses 7:53]. I hope,” he wrote, “to help my students hear that chorus in the distance and to lend their own voices, in time, to its swelling refrain.”
Such are the experiences we hope to provide our students at BYU, though probably not always so poetically expressed. But imagine then the pain that comes with a memo like this one I recently received. These are just a half-dozen lines from a two-page document:
“You should know,” the writer said, “that some people in the extended community are feeling abandoned and betrayed by BYU. It seems that some professors (at least the vocal ones in the media) are supporting ideas that many of us feel are contradictory to gospel principles, making it appear to be about like any other university our sons and daughters could have attended. Several parents have said they no longer want to send their children here or donate to the school.
“Please don’t think I’m opposed to people thinking differently about policies and ideas,” the writer continued. “I’m not. But I would hope that BYU professors would be bridging those gaps between faith and intellect and would be sending out students who are ready to do the same in loving, intelligent, and articulate ways. Yet I fear that some faculty are not supportive of the Church’s doctrines and policies and choose to criticize them publicly. There are consequences to this. After having served a full-time mission and marrying her husband in the temple, a friend of mine recently left the Church. In her graduation statement on a social media post, she credited [such and such a BYU program and its faculty] with the radicalizing of her attitudes and the destruction of her faith.”7
Fortunately we don’t get too many of those letters, but this one isn’t unique. Several of my colleagues get the same kind, with almost all of them ultimately being forwarded to poor President Worthen. Now, most of what happens on this campus is absolutely wonderful. That is why I began as I did, with my own undying love of this place. But every so often we need a reminder of the challenge we constantly face here. Maybe it is in this meeting. I certainly remember my own experiences in these wonderful beginning-of-the-school-year meetings and how much it meant to me to be with you then. Well, it means that again today.
Here is something I said on this subject forty-one years ago, almost to the day. I was young. I was unprepared. I had been president for all of three weeks.
I said then and I say now that if we are an extension of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, taking a significant amount of sacred tithes and other precious human resources, all of which might well be expended in other worthy causes, surely our integrity demands that our lives “be absolutely consistent with and characteristic of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.”8 At a university there will always be healthy debate regarding a whole syllabus full of issues. But until “we all come [to] the unity of the faith, and . . . [have grown to] the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ,” our next best achievement will be to stay in harmony with the Lord’s anointed, those whom He has designated to declare Church doctrine and to guide Brigham Young University as its trustees.
In 2014, seven years ago, then Elder Russell M. Nelson came to campus for a BYU leadership meeting. His remarks were relatively brief, but, tellingly, he said:
With the Church growing more rapidly in the less prosperous countries, we . . . must conserve sacred funds more carefully than ever before.
At BYU we must ally ourselves even more closely with the work of our Heavenly Father. . . .
A college education for our people is a sacred responsibility, [but] it is not essential for eternal life.
A statement like that gets my attention, particularly because just a short time later President Nelson started to chair our board of trustees, hold our purse strings, and have the final “yea” or “nay” on every proposal we might make—from a new research lab to more undergraduate study space to approving a new pickup truck for the physical facilities staff! Russell M. Nelson is very, very good at listening to us. We who sit with him every day have learned the value of listening carefully to him.
Three years later, in 2017, Elder Dallin H. Oaks, not then but soon to be in the First Presidency, where he would sit only one chair—one heartbeat—away from the same position President Nelson now has, quoted our colleague Elder Neal A. Maxwell, who had said:
In a way scholars at BYU and elsewhere are a little bit like the builders of the temple in Nauvoo, who worked with a trowel in one hand and a musket in the other. Today scholars building the temple of learning must also pause on occasion to defend the kingdom. I personally think this is one of the reasons the Lord established and maintains this university. The dual role of builder and defender is unique and ongoing. I am grateful we have scholars today who can handle, as it were, both trowels and muskets.
To this, Elder Oaks then challengingly responded, “I would like to hear a little more musket fire from this temple of learning.” He said this in a way that could have applied to a host of topics in various departments, but the one he specifically mentioned was the doctrine of the family and defending marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Little did he know that while many would hear his appeal, especially the School of Family Life, which moved quickly and visibly to assist, some others fired their muskets all right, but unfortunately they didn’t always aim at those hostile to the Church. We thought a couple of stray rounds even went north of the Point of the Mountain!
My beloved brothers and sisters, “a house . . . divided against itself . . . cannot stand,” and I will go to my grave pleading that this institution not only stands but stands unquestionably committed to its unique academic mission and to the Church that sponsors it. We hope it isn’t a surprise to you that your trustees are not deaf or blind to the feelings that swirl around marriage and the whole same-sex topic on campus—and a lot of other topics. I and many of my Brethren have spent more time and shed more tears on this subject than we could ever adequately convey to you this morning or any morning. We have spent hours discussing what the doctrine of the Church can and cannot provide the individuals and families struggling over this difficult issue. So it is with a little scar tissue of our own that we are trying to avoid—and hope all will try to avoid—language, symbols, and situations that are more divisive than unifying at the very time we want to show love for all of God’s children.
If a student commandeers a graduation podium intended to represent everyone getting diplomas that day in order to announce his personal sexual orientation, what might another speaker feel free to announce the next year, until eventually anything goes? What might commencement come to mean—or not mean—if we push individual license over institutional dignity for very long? Do we simply end up with more divisiveness in our culture than we already have? And we already have far too much everywhere.
In that spirit, let me go no farther before declaring unequivocally my love and that of my Brethren for those who live with this same-sex challenge and so much complexity that goes with it. Too often the world has been unkind—in many instances crushingly cruel—to these, our brothers and sisters. Like many of you, we have spent hours with them, and we have wept and prayed and wept again in an effort to offer love and hope while keeping the gospel strong and the obedience to commandments evident in every individual life.
But it will assist all of us—it will assist everyone—trying to provide help in this matter if things can be kept in some proportion and balance in the process. For example, we have to be careful that love and empathy do not get interpreted as condoning and advocacy or that orthodoxy and loyalty to principle not be interpreted as unkindness or disloyalty to people. As near as I can tell, Christ never once withheld His love from anyone, but He also never once said to anyone, “Because I love you, you are exempt from keeping my commandments.” We are tasked with trying to strike that same sensitive, demanding balance in our lives.
Musket fire? Yes, we will always need defenders of the faith, but “friendly fire” is a tragedy—and from time to time the Church, its leaders, and some of our colleagues within the university community have taken such fire on this campus. And sometimes it isn’t friendly, wounding students and the parents of students—so many who are confused about what so much recent flag-waving and parade-holding on this issue means. My beloved friends, this kind of confusion and conflict ought not to be. Not here. There are better ways to move toward crucially important goals in these very difficult matters—ways that show empathy and understanding for everyone while maintaining loyalty to prophetic leadership and devotion to revealed doctrine.
My Brethren have made the case for the metaphor of musket fire, which I have endorsed yet again today. There will continue to be those who oppose our teachings—and with that will continue the need to define, document, and defend the faith. But we all look forward to the day when we can “beat [our] swords into plowshares, and [our] spears into pruninghooks” and, at least on this subject, “learn war [no] more.”16 And while I have focused on this same-sex topic this morning more than I would have liked, I pray you will see it as emblematic of a lot of issues our students, our communities, and our Church face in this complex, contemporary world of ours.
But I digress! Back to the blessings of a school in Zion! Do you see the beautiful parallel between the unfolding of the Restoration and the prophetic development of BYU, notwithstanding that both will have their critics along the way? Just as has the Church itself, BYU has grown in spiritual strength, in the number of people it reaches and serves, and in its unique place among other institutions of higher education. It has grown in national and international reputation. More and more of its faculty are distinguishing themselves, and, even more important, so are more and more of its students.
Reinforcing the fact that so many do understand exactly what that unfolding dream of BYU is that President Worthen spoke about, not long ago one of your number wrote to me this marvelous description of what he thought was the “call” to those who serve at BYU: “The Lord’s call [to those of us who serve at BYU] is a . . . call to create learning experiences of unprecedented depth, quality, and impact. . . . As good as BYU is and has been, this is a call to do [better]. It is . . . a call to educate many more students, to more . . . effectively help them become true disciples of Jesus Christ, [and] to prepare them to . . . lead in their families, in the Church, [and] in their [professions] in a world filled with commotion. . . . But [answering this call] . . . cannot be [done successfully] without His . . . help.” The writer, one of you, concluded, “I believe that help will come according to the faith and obedience of the tremendously good people of BYU.”
I agree wholeheartedly and enthusiastically with such a sense of calling here and with that reference to and confidence in “the tremendously good people of BYU.” Let me underscore that idea of such a call by returning to President Kimball’s second-century address focused on by President Worthen.
Our bright, budding new commissioner of education, Elder Clark G. Gilbert, is one of my traveling companions today. You may be certain that Elder Gilbert loves this institution—his alma mater—deeply and brings to his assignment a reverence for its mission and its message. As part of his introduction to you, I am asking Elder Gilbert to come on campus on any calendar date he and President Worthen can work out, and whether those visits are formal or casual or both, I hope they can accomplish at least two things:
First of all, I hope you will come to see quickly the remarkable strengths Elder Gilbert brings to his calling, even as he learns more about the flagship of his fleet and why our effort at the Church Educational System would be a failure without the health, success, and participation of BYU.
Second, noting that we are just a few years short of halfway through those second hundred years of which President Kimball spoke, I think it would be fascinating to know if we are, in fact, making any headway on the challenges he laid before us and of which Elder David A. Bednar reminded the BYU leadership team just a few weeks ago.
When you look at President Kimball’s talk again, may I ask you to pay particular attention to that sweet prophet’s effort to ask that we be unique? In his discourse, President Kimball used the word unique eight times and the word special eight times. It seems clear to me in my seventy-three years of loving it that BYU will become an “educational Mt. Everest”19 only to the degree it embraces its uniqueness, its singularity. We could mimic every other university in the world until we got a bloody nose in the effort, and the world would still say, “BYU who?” No, we must have the will to be different and to stand alone, if necessary, being a university second to none in its role primarily as an undergraduate teaching institution that is unequivocally true to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. If at a future time that mission means foregoing some professional affiliations and certifications, then so be it. There may come a day when the price we are asked to pay for such association is simply too high and too inconsistent with who we are. No one wants it to come to that, least of all me, but if it does, we will pursue our own destiny, a “destiny [that] is not a matter of chance; . . . a matter of choice; . . . not a thing to be waited for, . . . a thing to be achieved.”
“Mom, what is that big Y on that mountain?”
“Jeff, it stands for the university here in Provo: Brigham Young University.”
“Well, it must be the greatest university in the world.”
And so, for me, it is. To help you pursue that destiny in the only real way I know how to help, I leave an apostolic blessing on every one of you this morning as you start another school year. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and with gratitude for His holy priesthood and as if hands were on your head—had we time to do that, we surely would—I bless you personally, each one of you personally. I bless the students who will come under your influence, and I bless the university, including its marvelous president, in its campus-wide endeavor. I bless you that profound personal faith will be your watchword and that unending blessings of personal rectitude will be your eternal reward. I bless your professional work that it will be admired by your peers, and I bless your devotion to gospel truths that it will be the saving grace in some student’s life. I bless your families that those you hope will be faithful in keeping their covenants will be saved at least in part because you have been faithful in keeping yours. Light conquers darkness. Truth triumphs over error. Goodness is victorious over evil in the end, every time.
I bless each one of you with every righteous desire of your heart, and I thank you for giving your love and loyalty to BYU, to students like me and my beloved wife. Please, from one who owes so much to this school and who has loved her so deeply for so long, keep her not only standing but standing for what she uniquely and prophetically was meant to be. And may the rest of higher education “see your good works, and glorify [our] Father which is in heaven,” I pray, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Now, I'm not a Mormon. Far from it. I'm an Apostolic Christian, and more particularly a Latin Rite Catholic. Mormon's believe in a Great Apostasy that conclusively be demonstrated never to have occured. That fact, amongst others, makes the underpinnings of Mormon theology hugely problematic.
But here's the thing. BYU is a Mormon university, and Mr. Holland is basically simply saying a Mormon institution must defend its beliefs.
That is, frankly, correct.
The required reading has provoked the ire of some civil libertarians and more particularly the LGBTQ+ community, which supposedly finds it "dangerous".
Well, whatever. What the reaction really demonstrates is the "cake and eat it too" attitude of modern Westerners, which want all the benefits of believing in something, with no duty or obligation of any kind being imposed by it.
As noted, I'm not a Mormon, and I think the Mormon faith is manifestly incorrect. But that a Mormon institution would defend its faith makes sense. Otherwise, it wouldn't have a point.
Which is a lesson that Catholic higher educational institutions, and post Kennedy Catholicism in the US in general, failed to learn to a large degree.
Missing the point, maybe.
On a somewhat related item, an item I saw in the Trib, in the local advice column:
"Am I getting hung up by this country’s puritanical attitudes toward sex and my Roman Catholic upbringing. . . "
I'll skip the background, which had to do with his daughter, but;
