Hurling invectives.

This may seem like a strange thing to put up for Easter Morning, but maybe it isn't.

One of our major elected office holders in this state is a Catholic.  And yet, in spite of that, he makes vile accusations against entire classes of people constantly.  Other members of the "Freedom Caucus" claim to be Christian, but their speech sure doesn't indicate it.  One, the session before last, who claimed in her native state of Illinois that Muslims worship a different God than Christians (they don't, Allah is simply the Arabic word for "God", and while they may understand God's nature differently than we do, they worship the same God) claimed that "we are not our brother's keeper".  The hard populist right around here frequently cites to religion, even if they are not all the same religion.  

Christ could be angry, as his chasing the money changers out of the Temple indicates.  We have to wonder what will occur to a Presidential candidate, whose connection with Christianity is paper thin, will receive in the next life for hawking Bibles as part of his campaign. But for now, we can wonder how a group of people who claim to be the representatives of the culture can behave so badly.

People who do this routinely are not speaking intelligently, and in fact are attempting to distract from intelligent debate.

You should consider that when listening to public figures.

We live in an age in which intelligent debate has declined to an all-time low.  In its place, we have now what the Nazis and the Communist had, insulters who scream, while saying very little that's intelligent or worth considering. Their goal is to inspire hatred, as if love for an idea won't be forthcoming, hatred of a demonized class will do.

Politicians and figures who routinely insert words like "radical", "leftist", "fascist", "Marxist", and "Communist" into their speech are not arguing points, they're trying to inspire hatred and avoiding thought.   

For days, I've been getting emails from a figure I at least somewhat respected, and have voted for in the past, accusing the current administration of being "radical", sometimes in the most absurd ways.  One such missive asserts the Democrats are intentionally out to make things worse for Americans, which is flat out absurd.  It's constant.  The contest locally, right now, is in the GOP itself, and given that, as I'm still reluctantly registered as a Republican, I'll be struggling in regard to my vote in the primary, with the question being whether I should cast a vote at all.  I likely will, but come the general election, I'm going to weigh this behavior.

A current state office holder who is a co religious cannot speak without speaking of his opponents as "Radical leftists and liberal elites", whipping up ire towards imagined categories that simply really aren't here.  There are no Red bands roaming the prairies around Cheyenne.

For that matter, being an "elite" is a good thing.  In this context, "elite" implies highly educated and successful.  If the highly educated and successful think your position is dimwitted, it probably is.

More than one Populist, who are not Conservatives, now run around constantly accusing Governor Gordon of being a Democrat, by which they mean not a Populist. We're teetering on the brink of RINO meaning "not a fascist".  It already darned near means that the speaker is a Southern Populist with ideas that are not native to this state, and which are being spouted in an unthinking manner.

Taking it nationally, the former President, who apparently has so little grasp of political categories that he doesn't understand the difference between communism and fascism (Wharton School of Business. . . why are you respected?) recently stated “We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections”.

A person who links all those categories together is, frankly, is either ignorant or bizarrely deluded.  People who swallow this up, are really ignorant.

Now, let's be honest.  At one time, particularly in the 60s and 70s, the far left did the same thing.  Everyone who opposed them or who wasn't with them was a "fascist".  And in more modern times, the far left progressives have done the same, often with really bizarro accusations that everyone who isn't with them is part of a widespread "white" and "male" conspiracy.  

But that's the point.  To a large degree, nobody really take the far left in the United States seriously, usually, because they are clowns.  Recently they have been successful, however, in a gender bending effort, which is helping to give rise to the Populist far right.

But both sides are anti-natural, anti-scientific, swimming in the toddler section movements.  They're unthinking.

And as we have real problems, we need real thought, now.

And at any rate, running around that your opponent must be a Communist, Marxist, Monarchist, Anarchist, Pedophile, Audiophile, Anglophile, RINO is not dignified. 

And for those who claim to be Christian, well you should reconsider your presentation. 

You might want to reconsider your personal lives also, particularly if you are one of the numerous members of the Christian Nationalist camp whom St. Paul might have a few things to address them about.

The Annual Protestant Meatless Friday Freak Out, Inconveniently Moving Easter for Convenience, and Oliver Cromwell, fun sucker.

I started this post right at the start of Lent, didn't finish it, and was going to trash it, but due to a late Lent event, I'm picking it back up.

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.

Holy Week.

 This is Holy Week.  It commenced yesterday with Palm Sunday, which we noted  yesterday:

Palm Sunday

 

Zdzisław Jasiński Palm Sunday 1891.

From City Father:

Palm Sunday

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.

April 25, 1943. Easter

Easter occurred on the latest possible calendar date of the year in 1943, the last time it had done so being April 25, 1886.  This will next occur on April 25, 2038, which I probably won't be around to see in my temporal form.

President Roosevelt attended Easter services at Ft. Riley, Kansas.  His wife Edith was in Los Angeles.

My parents would have attended Easter Mass, assuming they had not the night prior, and likely have enjoyed a celebratory midday Easter meal.

Polish American children in Buffalo, New York, waiting to have Easter baskets of food blessed at their local parish on Easter Saturday. The food was for Easter Sunday.

Today is Easter for Churches using the "Old Calendar"

 

On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning,while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb.

So she ran and went to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them,

“They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.”

So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb. They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first; he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in.

When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there, and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.

Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed.

For they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.

Jn 20:1-9

Monday, April 2, 1923. Easter Egg Rolling, Oil Swindlers, Bad Debt Shooting, Japanese portrait.

The annual White House Easter Egg Rolling event occured.

The news of the day declared there to be oil stock swindles and a local shooting.  A New York crime waive was declared broken.
 

Two young ladies were photographed in Nippon.

They were sisters Matsu Miyoko 松美代子 ten year old and Matsu Shizue 松静枝 eight year old.

Easter Sunday, April 1, 1923

Members of the Wasatch Mountain Club members on the porch of the Hermitage, Ogden Canyon, Utah, Easter Day, 1923

It was Easter Sunday for 1923. 

The silent classic Safety Last!, starring Harold Lloyd and Mildred Davis, premiered.   The movie is famous for its harrowing stunts, which were preformed by Lloyd.

The United Kingdom began numbering its highways.

France reduced the compulsory military service period from two years, to 18 months.

Churches of the West: Pope Francis' Urbi et Orbi blessing 2022

Churches of the West: Pope Francis' Urbi et Orbi blessing 2022:   Dear brothers and sisters, Happy Easter! Jesus, the Crucified One, is risen! He stands in the midst of those who mourned him, locked behin...

Monday, April 17, 1922 Monday after Easter

Trees were planted by the famous.

Clara Barton tree planting, 4/17/22

Easter Eggs were rolled.

 Children at Easter Egg Roll at the White House.

The offspring of the positioned were photographed:

Children of cabinet officers.

And the lost were brought back into the fold.

Easter Sunday, 1922

 April 16 was Easter Sunday in 1922.

On that date, Michael Collins survived an assassination attempt when his attackers failed to recognize him in Rutland Square in Dublin, and shot at some cars instead.  Collins was carrying a revolver and fired at his would be attackers.

Germany and Soviet Russia entered the Treaty of Rapallo which renounced all territorial and financial claims the two countries had against each other and restored diplomatic relations.

Japan's famous Imperial Hotel sustained damage in a fire.

Blog Mirror: A Hundred Years Ago: 1922 Easter Menus

 

1922 Easter Menus

Saturday, April 15, 1922. The Teapot Dome Scandal Breaks.

The Saturday Evening Post decided to grace the cover of its Easter issue, with Easter being April 16 that year, with a Leyendecker portrait of a woman looking at her Easter bonnet.

Country Gentleman, however, went with a different theme.

Some in Washington, D. C. took time to play polo on this day.

Horses were much in evidence on that Holy Saturday in Washington, D. C., as a Junior Horse Show was also held.

The White House received visitors.

Which included a party of Camp Fire Girls.

Not everyone was taking the day off, however.

Today In Wyoming's History: April 15: 1922  1922  Wyoming Democratic Senator John Kendrick introduced a resolution to investigate oil sales at Teapot Dome, Wyoming (the Naval Petroleum Oil Reserve).

As the U.S. Senate's history site notes:

Senate Investigates the "Teapot Dome" Scandal

---

April 15, 1922

On April 15, 1922, Wyoming Democratic senator John Kendrick introduced a resolution that set in motion one of the most significant investigations in Senate history. On the previous day, the Wall Street Journal had reported an unprecedented secret arrangement in which the secretary of the Interior, without competitive bidding, had leased the U.S. naval petroleum reserve at Wyoming's Teapot Dome to a private oil company. Wisconsin Republican senator Robert La Follette arranged for the Senate Committee on Public Lands to investigate the matter. His suspicions deepened after someone ransacked his quarters in the Senate Office Building.

Expecting this to be a tedious and probably futile inquiry, the committee's Republican leadership allowed the panel's most junior minority member, Montana Democrat Thomas Walsh, to chair the panel. Preeminent among the many difficult questions facing him was, "How did Interior Secretary Albert Fall get so rich so quickly?"

Eventually, the investigation uncovered Secretary Fall's shady dealings, and Senator Walsh became a national hero. Fall would end up as the first former cabinet officer to go to prison. This and a subsequent Senate inquiry triggered several court cases testing the extent of the Senate's investigative powers. One of those cases resulted in the landmark 1927 Supreme Court decision McGrain v. Daugherty that, for the first time, explicitly established Congress's right to compel witnesses to testify before its committees.

Not unexpectedly, the Teapot Dome story, which was just breaking, and had been broken in the East the day prior, was big news in Wyoming.

April 17, 1941. Contrasts.

It remained the Easter season and Orthodox Easter had not yet occurred. Armenian Orthodox at St. James Church in Jerusalem were conducting the foot washing ceremony associated with the season.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, Italian forces assaulted Tobruk but were repulsed by artillery.  The military government in Iraq that had seized power there in a recent coup asked the Germans for military assistance against the British.

On the same day, Yugoslavia surrendered to Germany, although that would not bring any semblance of peace to the country, which would soon be the location of a protracted guerilla war.

Igor Sikorsky, the legendary Russian aviation designer now living in the US, made some progress in his helicopter designs.

April 11, 1941. Scenes of the old world in more or less modern times.

Ceremonies in Jerusalem Easter period, 1941. Nebi Musa banners presented by Mr. Keith Roach. Group at Bab es Silseleh with Mr. Keith Roach and army staff officer."

 

April 11 in 1941 was a Friday, and not just a regular Friday, it was Good Friday on the Latin calendar.  

Then, as now, this was a day of celebration and religious observance in Jerusalem, just of course as it is all over the world.  The day is special in the Holy Land, of course.

At the time, the Holy Land was the British administered Palestine, a League of Nations mandate.

By some accounts, this is the day that the siege of Tobruk commenced.  I ran the date from the first armed contact, which occurred yesterday.

Today in World War II History—April 11, 1941

The siege of Tobruk begins

Hungary stepped in to occupy territories in defeated Yugoslavia, invading territory adjacent to it.  The worst instincts of nations were coming out, which sounds rather obvious, but is evident here as countries made territorial adjustments at the expense of their neighbors, looking back to imperial borders that died during World War One. When World War Two ended, nations making such adjustments often were severely punished for having done so.

Here, Hungary and Italy took territory that they saw as theirs dating back form the those days. Germany took territory that it considered German via Austria.  Bulgaria also seized Yugoslavian territory.

To the south of the Kingdom of the Southern Slavs, the German and British Commonwealth forces clashed in Greece for the first time.  The battle would run two days and result in an Allied defeat.

Australian troops in Greece, April 1941.

March 28, 1921. Empires coming and going.

Street in Seattle on March 28, 1921.

Things went from bad to worse for Charles I, the last Austro Hungarian Emperor, when newly created Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia warned Hungary that if the regained the Hungarian throne, they'd declare war on Hungary.

All of those countries, combined with Austria, had been part of the Austro Hungarian Empire and they feared that Charles I's restoration as King of Hungary would be followed by a claim to restore the Austro Hungarian Empire.

Winston and Clementine Churchill were the subjects of a reception at the Government House in Jerusalem.

Also present was Abdullah I and his entourage.  Abdullah's army had occupied Jordan without opposition.  He was a British client, but the situation was tense as his actions were not yet recognized as legitimate.

The U.S. launched the USS Corry, a Clemson class destroyer that would serve only nine years.  The ship had been ordered in World War One, like all of the ships then being commissioned, but finished to late to serve in the war.

The Corry was one of 60 ships decommissioned as too expensive to maintain at the beginning of the Great Depression.

The Australian Department of Civil Aviation was formed as the Civil Aviation Branch of the Australian Defense Department.

An Easter Egg roll was held on the White House grounds.  Easter was the day prior in 1921.

Easter 2020

For those on the Gregorian Liturgical Calendar, which is most of the world outside of the Orthodox Churches that retain the "Old Calendar", and in various places not all of them do, this is Easter Sunday for 2020.  For those on the Old Calendar, next Sunday, April 19, is Easter.

This is a sad and strange Easter for Christians.  Many will not attend services. Some will watch them on television or make other observances, but it just isn't the same in all sorts of ways.



This is because, of course, of the Coronavirus Pandemic.



Maybe this gives people time to pause and think a bit.  Quite a few people who know that Easter means something give it no more attention than going to church once a year, or maybe twice if they also observe Christmas, and otherwise get tied up in a secular celebration involving a big meal and the like. 



Easter is a feast, but it's a feast because of what it is, not what it is because of a feast.  In a season, now, of isolation, perhaps that's more apparent.

Easter Sunday, April 20, 1919

April 20, was Easter Sunday in 1919, in both the East and the West.

Things weren't going well that Easter Sunday in much of Christendom, including in the domain of the largest Orthodox Church, the Russian Orthodox.  On this day in 1919, the Red Army's First Army surrendered to the Ukrainian Blacks, a quixotic anarchist army, in the Ukraine. The blacks were an army that was fighting for a stateless state. . . which sounds like it'd be just about as successful as it turned out to be, but they were having some military success at the time.

Ukrainian black cavalry.  They did have commanders, and the like, which makes their being anarchist problematic right from the start.

In the same war, but in Moldova, the French army blew up a Bridge in order to keep advancing Reds from taking the town of Bender.

On the same day, Hungarian Communist Bela Kun asked for volunteers for the Hungarian Red Army, proclaiming the Hungarian Communist revolution in danger.  It indeed was in danger as its support was limited.

Kun, as we earlier noted, would end up in Russia after the failure of the Hungarian Communist revolution and end up as a figure in the Russian Civil War in the Crimea, where he played a part in ordering the execution of civilians, the Communist being fond of executing the people in the name of the people's state.  Large number of people would die in this instance.  Following that, the Soviets sent him to Germany where he backed a Communist revolution in 1922 which was a failure, and in turn Lenin blamed himself for sending Kun to Germany in the first instance.  Returned to the Soviet Union in 1928 he spent the next decade in internal Communist infighting, sometimes denouncing fellow Hungarians, until his opposition to the Popular Front concept lead to his arrest and execution.

Bela Kun as a prisoner in 1937, before he shared the fate he'd approved of for others.

In Germany, things remained in a state of turmoil, although newsreel footage shows that a lot of people actually turned out in Berlin this day to generally enjoy Easter.

On the same day, the newspaper The Sun ran scenes of the German government's response to the thread of further Communist uprisings in Berlin.

Crowds gathered as the zoo in Washington D. C. for an Easter Egg roll.

Things were much more normal that Easter in the United States.

And in far off Alaska St. George's Episcopal Church was dedicated near Valdez.

In Wyoming, the "ain't no Sunday's west of Omaha" type of logic was apparently at work:

1919  A pipeline was completed between Lost Soldier and the site of the former Ft. Fred Steele. Ft. Fred Steele was a railhead on the Union Pacific Railroad at this time. Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.