Author Archives: Lila

Female Privilege: The Facts

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From Debunker.com:

Yet the notion of the American woman as a powerless “victim” is one of the most absurd notions ever foisted upon anyone. American women live, on average, seven years longer than men. They control 86 % of all personal wealth [PARADE Magazine, May 27, 1990], and make up 55% of current college graduates. Women cast 54% of the votes in Presidential elections, so they can hardly claim to be left out of the political decision-making process! They win almost automatically in child custody disputes. Women suffer only 6% of the work-related fatalities (the other 94% are suffered by men). Women are the victim of only about 35% of violent crimes, and only about 25% of all murders, yet because of our society’s exaggerated concern and respect for them, special legislation has been passed to punish “violence against women” as if it were a more heinous crime than “violence against men”. (Feminists claim to want “equality”, and this is an example of what “equality” means to them, i.e., preferential treatment to address their concerns). Two out of every three dollars spent on health care is spent on women, and even if you don’t count pregnancy-related care, women still receive more medical care than men – yet feminists still holler that womens health is being “neglected”, and far too many of us credulously believe them. Of the 25 worst jobs, as ranked by the Jobs Related Almanac based on a combination of salary, stress, security, and physical demands, 24 of them are predominantly, if not almost entirely, male, which might explain why men commit over 80% of all suicides. (Most of these statistics come from The Myth of Male Power by Warren Farrell.)

Now, if it were really the case, as feminists claim, that men have selfishly arranged everything to be wonderful for themselves, absolutely ignoring womens’ legitimate concerns and needs, would the above be true? Of course not. It is much more realistic to suggest that women have cleverly seized the upper hand by pretending to be helplessly trapped below! Looking at the full picture, and not the tiny, distorted one that feminists and those they have duped present, we see a very different picture: The American woman emerges as perhaps the most privileged large group in history, enjoying a never-before- seen level of affluence, power, leisure, and health, supported by the work, discipline, and self-effacing, life-destroying exertions of a group they have bamboozled – their men – into believing their cries of “victimization”. The links below will help you to start finding your way out of the familiar maze of feminist lies.

Click here to read my article, Feminism, The Noble Lie

Take Back the Campus: refuting the Ten Most Common Feminist Myths (which are more accurately termed “lies,” because feminists just keep on promoting them with reckless disregard for truth, no matter how many times the falsehood of these claims is pointed out to them.).

Read my article Bill Clinton and the Gender Gap, in the August, 1996 issue of The Backlash Magazine.

Read Steven Goldberg’sarticle, Feminism Against Science

Pope Mentions Moses, Forgets Jesus

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In speeches before the Congress and the UN, the Pope managed to mention Moses, but missed Jesus.

In his address to Congress (Sept. 24) he also managed to call for the global abolition of the death penalty.

This is part of the “seamless garment” approach that ties the contemporary church’s position on capital punishment to its position on abortion.

It was not always so and I’m glad to see that I’m on the same side as Thomas Aquinas on the difference between supporting capital punishment (which I do) and rejecting abortion (which I have done for some time now).

The notion that “respect for life” should compel one to reject both is erroneous.

The taking of life is only a wrong when it is done with intent and in violation of moral (natural) law.

You can kill justly in self-defense, if it will stop someone else killing you or a third-party.

In this too (Anti-) Pope Francis is wrong:

Some say that Bergoglio made a “subtle” reference to abortion when he urged lawmakers to “defend life.” Well, he was not so subtle about the death penalty, was he? …..

…To equate the obligation to defend the life of the innocent preborn with opposition to the death penalty is reprehensible, but is also part and parcel of the late Joseph “Cardinal” Bernardin’s “consistent ethic of life” (the seamless garment) that has long been a bedrock of apostasy among the conciliar “bishops” of the United States of America. Karol Wojtya/John Paul II expressed his own opposition to the imposition of the death penalty in Evangelium Vitae, March 25, 1995, in favor of a false concept of “mercy.”

Nevertheless, the just use of the death penalty, imposed upon malefactors adjudged guilty of heinous crimes after the administration of due process of law, is part of the Natural Law. The Angelic Doctor himself put the matter this way in the Summa Theologica:

I answer that, As stated above (Article 1), it is lawful to kill dumb animals, in so far as they are naturally directed to man’s use, as the imperfect is directed to the perfect. Now every part is directed to the whole, as imperfect to perfect, wherefore every part is naturally for the sake of the whole. For this reason we observe that if the health of the whole body demands the excision of a member, through its being decayed or infectious to the other members, it will be both praiseworthy and advantageous to have it cut away. Now every individual person is compared to the whole community, as part to whole. Therefore if a man be dangerous and infectious to the community, on account of some sin, it is praiseworthy and advantageous that he be killed in order to safeguard the common good, since “a little leaven corrupteth the whole lump” (1 Corinthians 5:6).”

 

Howard Zinn: Card-Carrying Communist

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The Other McCain:

One of the things you can learn from M. Stanton Evans’ recent book on Joe McCarthy’s investigations, Blacklisted by History, is how deeply the FBI had penetrated CPUSA. One reason that McCarthy’s was sometimes unable to publicly substantiate his accusations was that he relied on secret information passed along by the FBI. McCarthy couldn’t identity the source of his information without compromising the FBI’s investigations, so when his critics tried to make it appear that McCarthy’s suspicions were without merit, McCarthy couldn’t simply say, “Here is the FBI file.”

As we see from this file, the FBI had access to the CPUSA mailing list, which is not the same as a membership list, but is certainly strong evidence when combined — as in Zinn’s case — with admitted high-level involvement in a slew of front-group activities.

UPDATE III: Even if all the other FBI files proved nothing, this 1957 memorandum based on information from a former CPUSA member would seem rather conclusive:

So, according to the informant, Zinn appeared to have been a member of the Brooklyn section of CPUSA before the informant joined that section in 1949 — tending to corroborate information previously developed by the FBI.

Here is something very interesting: George Kirschner is named as co-author of Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States: The Wall Charts. Whether this is the same person as the George Kirshner who reportedly hosted CPUSA meetings in Brooklyn in 1952 might be a subject worth researching.

At any rate, the fact that “Informant T-1” was “brought up on charges of ‘white chauvinism’ by the CP” is also very interesting. This was the kind of “thought-crime” inquisition to which CPUSA members were sometimes subjected. Certainly an avid Communist like the informant, who had been a Party member since 1948, could not have been an outright racist, so we don’t know why he would have faced such an accusation. But it should be kept in mind that Stalin purged and executed many of the original Bolsheviks on fabricated pretexts of “deviationism,” and a similar Stalinist impulse might have made “T-1” a scapegoat.


This would seem to be the clincher: “T-1” is reported to have taken a photo of Zinn teaching a class on Communist doctrine in 1951, and to have provided the photo to the FBI in 1956. Zinn reportedly “took the position [in the 1951 class] that the basic teachings of Marx and Lenin were sound and should be adhered to.”

In May 1955, the FBI had de-activated its “Security Index” card on Zinn, who at that time was working on his Ph.D. at Columbia University and teaching at Upsala College in East Orange, N.J. Zinn’s file was re-opened by the FBI’s Atlanta office in 1957, after Zinn joined the faculty of Spellman College in Atlanta. A few years later, during the Kennedy administration, Zinn wrote an article in the Sunday edition of the Daily Worker disparaging Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and the FBI for their supposed failure to protect civil rights  — without ever acknowledging that Zinn himself had been interviewed a decade earlier by the FBI for his own Communist activities.

UPDATE IV: A little more Googling turns up George Kirschner’s December 2008 obituary in the New York Times, with commenters memorializing his association with Zinn:

KIRSCHNER–George. Beloved grandfather and greatgrandfather, father, husband, teacher and friend will be remembered for his contagious smile and energy, unwavering principles, profound sense of justice, unequivocal commitment to activism, and open and welcoming heart. Born in New York City, George served in the US Coast Guard during WWII. He began as a brewer, later went to college, and found his professional love as a teacher of history at the Walden School in New York City.

His age and biography as a longtime New Yorker would lend credence to the suspicion Kirschner was the same as the “Kirshner” listed in the FBI files as hosting Brooklyn CPUSA section meetings. So we may therefore presume that Kirschner is, like Zinn, now the only kind of good Communist.

UPDATE V: FBI files from the 1960s connect Zinn to a Who’s Who of the New Left anti-war radicalism:

In 1966, the main publication of the Socialist Workers Party, the Militant, reported Zinn joining with then-SDS president Carl Oglesby on a committee to defend a South African activist. After the SDS split in 1969 that led to the formation of the Weather Underground, Oglesby subsequently became a JFK assassination conspiracy theorist.

Zinn participated in a 1967 anti-war “teach-in” at Harvard, sponsored by SDS in cooperation with the American Institute for Marxist Studies, an organization founded by historian Herb Aptheker, chief theoretician of CPUSA.

At an MIT teach-in, Zinn was joined by Noam Chomsky.

In one of Zinn’s most infamous exploits, he traveled to Hanoi in 1968 with the radical priest Daniel Berrigan, an event hailed at press conference involving Tom Hayden (SDS co-founder and principal author of the “Port Huron Statement”) and socialist/pacifist Dave Dellinger, subsequently of “Chicago 7” notoriety.

What we see in all this, then, is how Zinn’s career forms a major thread in a rope that connects ’60s radicalism back to the Stalinism of the 1940s and ’50s. Zinn was a consistent advocate of Marxist-Leninist doctrine throughout his career, and it is amazing that his teachings — his anti-American history — are so popular nearly two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

America won the Cold War, but the Communists won the campuses.”

Did America win the Cold War? Or was that victory simply a propaganda coup?

 

And This Is How You Get To Contribute To The Weekly Standard

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….you grovel to the right people.

P. J. O’Rourke, usually a funny guy, is distinctly unfunny, foul, and flatulent in this grotesque demonstration of ethnic self-flagellation masquerading as an explanation of why Ann Coulter committed pure evil by asking how many “effing” J’s there were anyway in the US .

Coulter was being no more incendiary than she usually is, only this time, the target was the ruling class, which sent out one of its lap-dogs to do its bidding.

 

 

 

Evangelical Poverty: Not For Everyone

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From Tradition in Action, a conservative Catholic blog:

The Church must have differentiated states of perfection:

“There is need in the Church, which is the body of Christ, for the members to be differentiated by various duties, states and grades” (II, II, q.183, a.2, ad 2).

Lila: This is very similar to the Hindu notion of stages of life necessary for most people to go through – Brahmacharya (celibate youth/studentship), Grahastha (married house-holder’s life), Vanaprastha (retirement from active life to the forest) and Sanyasin (renunciation in search of spiritual goals).

In another place he stresses: “Our Lord in proposing the evangelical counsels, always mentions of man’s fitness for observing them. For in giving the counsel of poverty He begins with these words: ‘If thou wilt to be perfect …’” (I, II, q. 108, a. 4, ad 1).

Therefore, the state of perfection is not for everyone, but only to the elite who received such vocation. These counsels must inspire all, but be practiced only by a few, a proportionally small number, just as the head or the heart are small members compared to the whole body.

Hence, these counsels should not be transformed into laws applicable to the whole of society. This is understandable in principle, because given original sin, in a Catholic society only a few seek perfection, while the majority of persons are satisfied to lead an upright life. In practice, moreover, this becomes even clearer, because if one tries to apply the counsels of perfection to everyone, society would be destroyed. Let me demonstrate this point with regard to each of the three counsels.

The easiest to understand is the vow of chastity. As everyone knows chastity, as an evangelical counsel, is to abstain from sexual relations. If you apply chastity to the whole of society, it is doomed to live just for the period of one generation. Since no one would have children, society would disappear.

Some heresies of the past, such as that of the Albigensians, tried to apply chastity to the whole of society. The medieval world would have been defeated by nature if the Church had not condemned their doctrines and stopped their march.

Obedience, as an obligation to do always the will of another under penalty of sin, if applied to the entire society, would create the most radical despotism. It would destroy the natural liberty that the common man possesses in his actions, and would consequently create a whole society of slaves.

In some ways the ephemeral communist republic of Savonarola in Florence was an example of this.

Poverty, understood as a complete abandonment of temporal goods and living from a common burse according to one’s needs, if applied to the whole society destroys any encouragement for progress, levels the competent and the incompetent, and smashes the natural differences of personalities, creating a society of penury.

It appears that some heresies of the past, such as the Fraticelli, attempted to realize this utopia and faced complete failure and the condemnation of the Church.

I believe that this demonstrates that the practice of the evangelical counsels is for a few, not for everyone in society. As a general rule, the various members of society should marry, have property, and enjoy a proportional natural freedom. At the same time, for society to have balance, the example of those who practice the evangelical counsels is indispensable:

For couples to be faithful to one another in their matrimonial duties, for youth to be chaste until marriage, for persons to look to the pleasures of Heaven instead of earth, it is indispensable to know that some men and women live in a state of perfect chastity out of love for God and Heaven.

For subjects to properly accept the orders of their civil superiors, for citizens to not revolt against just laws, for society to respect the highest classes, it is indispensable to know that a few who chose the state of perfection obliged themselves to live in a state of perpetual obedience.

For superiors of all kinds, be they ecclesiastic or temporal, to know that some of their neighbors chose to renounce all earthly power in order to follow Our Lord Jesus Christ, gives a good example that helps them moderate their use of power and be clement with their subjects.

For all members of society to know that some of its members renounced their legitimate properties to live in complete poverty, helps them limit and balance the use they make of their own properties and money.

The conclusion is simple and clear. The practice of the evangelical counsels is an extraordinary call to a few members of society. They are not the rule for all, they are the exception. Being an exception, they balance the life of the entire society. However, if someone tries to apply these counsels to all of society, he goes against natural order, he creates a monster, and he is destined to fail.

It seems to me that Fr. Vincent McNabb missed his target. As long as he struggles for evangelical poverty to be applied to all of society, he promotes a utopia. He is proposing something that is impossible and sooner or later alienates his more sensible followers.

To promote such an error as we are seeing Distributists do in the U.S. is just another attempt to mislead traditionalist Catholics toward the long, winding and sinister river of Socialism.”

NWO Shill Says Forget NWO

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One Jake Anderson of Anti-Media says forget about the New World Order  – it’s sophomoric. Deep thinkers, such as Anderson, use sophisticated terms like Deep State….

Oh.

And I thought people used that term to distract attention from the people behind the Deep State.

And to make sure that readers stick with Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Peter Dale Scott (all name-checked in the piece), and the rest of the Anglo-American mouth-pieces making sure that the eyes of 7 billion people world-wide watch only what those activists tell them to watch, repeat what those activists repeat, and listen to them.

Seven billion.

All those interests and voices must be screened out for a dozen or so over-exposed Westerners.

Can propaganda be any more transparent? Is this the best intelligence can come up with?

 

Dorothy Day: Catholic Saint?

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Pope Francis recently paid his respects to four “great Americans.”

They were Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King,  Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton.

I was disappointed but not surprised, as this pope seems to be very much in step with the spirit of the times, something one neither wants…nor expects…from the leader of a two thousand-year-old religious tradition that claims eternal validity.

The pope’s picks are all very political ones.

ARE there no “great Americans” among the millions who lead lives in the private sector, uninterested in politics?

Lincoln was a president; King was a political activist; Day was very political, indeed, a former communist; Merton was the conscience, so it is said, of the non-violent civil rights movement of the 1960s.

I find it disquieting that the Pope could not find at least one great contemplative or visionary or healer or scientist or businessman or scholar or artist outside the realm of politics, among the tens of thousands of Americans born since the inception of the republic.

People like

George Washington Carver,

Herman Melville,

Clara Barton

and Walt Disney.

I fell under the influence of Hegel and (for about 6 weeks) Marx when I was around 12. Then I went to a cartoon festival. The Russian cartoons, if they can be called that, were a revelation.

What kind of a system killed man’s sense of humor so thoroughly?

I was converted to “free markets” by  Tom & Jerry, Mickey Mouse, Beep-Beep, Sylvester & Tweetie bird.

At the very least, Pope Francis shows questionable judgment.

It is poor judgment for someone in such a profoundly influential position to pick political sides and make the Catholic church, which he represents, a partisan actor.

I read that Dorothy Day is being considered for canonization.

Perhaps she deserves it. I don’t know.

But there are some things that need to be considered first:

Day might have converted to Catholicism, but she openly admired the most blood-thirsty communists.

She praised Marx not merely as a theoretician, but as a human being. She considered the murderous Lenin admirable.

I don’t know how representative these statements are.

It’s something to think about though.

Given Pope Francis’ economic and political activism, it is a good guess that there is more to Dorothy Day than meets the eye.

 

 

 

Lebanese Minister: 2-3% Of Refugees Are ISIS

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A Lebanese minister that ISIS fighters constitute 2-3% of the numbers at refugee camps in Lebanon, as well as of those entering Europe:

The Mirror:

At least 20,000 bloodthirsty jihadis have infiltrated Syrian refugee camps and are plotting to enter Europe, a senior official warned tonight.

Lebanese Education Minister Elias Bou Saab said he fears Islamic State radicals make up at least 2% of the 1.1million Syrians living in camps across his country.

And he warned of a covert jihadi “operation” to get across the Med and into Europe. His warning came as David Cameron made a whistle-stop tour of refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan yesterday to try to win back public support on the Syria crisis.

“My gut feeling is they (IS) are facilitating such an operation. To go to Europe and other places… From Turkey to Greece,” Mr Bou Saab said.

“You may have, let’s say, 2% that could be radicals. That is more than enough. We have had that also with our camps here – you find 2-3% of them.”

What makes this claim plausible is the number of accounts of  rapes being reported among  the migrants, for instance, in Germany. These rapes are not only migrant-on-migrant, but are migrant-on-native.

Some people are even calling it a rape epidemic. I haven’t looked into it enough to know if that claim is hype, propaganda, or cold fact.

Whatever it is, it is added evidence that the migrants are not solely refugees.

Is ISIS behind the rape? Or are there Muslim gangs infiltrating the refugees? Are they mercenaries? Is this Operation Gladio all over?

 

 

Did Medieval Rabbi Forecast Future Of Jerusalem?

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The internet is circulating a prediction about Israel, supposedly made by Judah Ben Samuel, a 12th century rabbi:

Ben Samuel was often called “Light of Israel.” Even bishops came to him for advice. If anyone asked him where his wisdom came from he would answer, “The prophet Elijah, who will precede the Messiah, appeared to me and revealed many things to me and emphasized that the precondition for answered prayer is that it is fueled by enthusiasm and joy for the greatness and holiness of God.”

But to recap the astonishing predictions: In AD 1217 this scholarly and pious rabbi prophesied that the Ottoman Turks would rule over the holy city of Jerusalem for eight Jubilees. Now, keep in mind, he made this prediction 300 years before the Ottoman Turks seized control of Jerusalem in 1517. If indeed 1217 and 1517 were jubilee years as Judah Ben Samuel believed, then his prophecy was exactly right, because exactly 400 years after the Turks took control of Jerusalem they were driven out of the city and the holy land in 1917 by the Allied forces under the command of General George Allenby – on Hanukkah, by the way.

But it gets more interesting still.

The rabbi also prophesied that during the ninth Jubilee Jerusalem would be a “no-man’s land.” This is exactly what happened from 1917 to 1967, due to the fact that the Holy Land was placed under British Mandate in 1917 by the League of Nations and literally “belonged” to no nation.

Even after Israel’s war of independence in 1948-49, Jerusalem was still divided by a strip of land running right through the heart of the city, with Jordan controlling the eastern part of the city and Israel controlling the western part of the city. That strip of land was considered and even called “no-man’s land” by both the Israelis and the Jordanians.

It was not until the Six Day War in 1967 when the entire West Bank of the Holy Land was conquered by the Israeli army that the whole city of Jerusalem passed back into the possession of Israel. So once again the prophecy made by the rabbi 750 years previously was fulfilled to the letter.

It certainly would be significant if both 1917 and 1967 were Jubilee years, considering the significance of what happened in Jerusalem on those years. But it gets even more interesting, because Judah Ben Samuel also prophesied that during the 10th Jubilee Jerusalem would be under the control of the Jews and the Messianic “end times” would begin. If he’s right, the 10th Jubilee began in 1967 and will be concluded in 2017.”

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2012/11/12th-century-rabbi-predicted-israels-future/#3FaZmsvhvW9GtlOy.99

Trying to figure out where and when this “ancient prophecy” emerged as yet another spin-off from Jubilee year prognostications, I came across this skeptical analysis by another end-timer:

Since Jack Van Impe has broadcast this “prophecy”, and has also put his own ending on the “prophecy” for all the world to believe, I thought a little more balance was needed on the Internet about this “prophecy”. Otherwise, the next crop of turnips may just sell the farm and rot on a hilltop waiting for the Rapture.

I am not going to just repeat everything said in the “prophecy” like everyone else. Read the Israel Today article that I linked to if you want to read the original source. Basically, the “prophecy” is based on Jubilees and the land of Israel. The claim of those referring to this “prophecy” is that two prophecies were already fulfilled as written, so the third prophecy falling on 2017 AD would also take place.

The last Jubilee fulfilled is said to be 1967 and the next Jubilee in the prophecy would take place in 2017. We know what happened in 1967, it is when Jerusalem was returned to the Jews. Ludwig Schneider, actually only said in his article, that it is possible that 2017 or 2018 could be a decisive year for Israel. Joseph Farah said he would leave what would happen in 2017 to our imagination. F. M. Riley thought it meant that Jesus would return in 2017 and the tribulation would start in 2010 (apparently we are missing it). Jack Van Impe thinks it means the 70th week of Daniel and tribulation start in 2017. However,  no where in the Israel Today article is the speculation of Riley or Van Impe even suggested.

I have come up with six criticisms of the prophecy and what Van Impe suggests. (I think the criticisms made in the article that I linked to above are better researched and are better than the criticisms that I list, so you might read that article.)

1.  Other than what Schneider wrote, I have no reason to believe that Rabbi Judah Ben Samuel ever even gave such a prophecy. Should I just believe that this Pentecostal pastor even saw and could even translate such a document from the 13th century? Where is the document and any peer review of such a significant fulfilled prophecy?

I would not even be able to translate English properly from 800 years ago, so how does this pastor translate whatever language this was written into modern English with any accuracy? There are over 5000 ancient manuscripts of the Bible, most dating from near the same era and they do not totally agree with each other, but I should just believe that one document from one Rabbi of the 13th century was recorded and has been translated without error?

Why do I have the sneaky feeling that pastor Riley constructed his thesis in hindsight to make whatever it is that he may have read to come out the way he thought it should be? This Pentecostal pastor may have just thought that he had divine help that makes his translation and backdating inerrant. We can’t be sure what was said by Rabbi Judah Ben Samuel, without the documentation, and pastor Riley offers none in his article. I am surprised that Israel Today even published something that could not be documented.

2. We really do not even know that a Jubilee is 50 years. Many scholars believe the Jubilee cycle is 49 years because they believe the 50th year is also the first year of the next Jubilee cycle. If a Jubilee cycle is 49 years all the claims of fulfillment would be false.

3. Why would God reveal to someone who rejects Jesus as the Messiah the prophetic timing of the end? For what purpose? What good will this 13th century “prophecy” do for the Jews living in the past or for the Jews existing just prior to the last seven years? If the “prophecy is for the Church to know the timing of the end, than why use an unbeliever to give revelation to the Church?  It simply is not logical that God would reveal the future to an unbeliever blinded by Satan. And as I implied before, Satan does not know the timings set by God.

4. In one of my searches, I read that Rabbi Judah Ben Samuel claimed to have talked directly with Elijah and he claimed to have received his information from Elijah. I do not know if that is actually documented somewhere or not as coming from Rabbi Ben Samuel, but if Ben Samuel talked to Elijah you would think that this Rabbi would have converted to Christianity. Instead, there is a claim that this Rabbi afterward prevented a child from being baptized into Christianity and that this has been documented by the Roman Catholic Church.

5.  The “prophecy” says that 2017 is a Jubilee. Jack Van Impe says he believes this Jubilee year will start the tribulation. It seems to me that the second coming and the thousand-year reign starts with a Jubilee. Therefore, there cannot be a 2017 Jubilee and just seven years later a 2024 Jubilee as well. The concept of a God determined Jubilee starting the tribulation does not even make sense. Some Jubilee!

6. If Jesus announced a Jubilee year around 26 to 30 AD, with the start of His ministry when he announced the acceptable year of the Lord in the Temple (Lk 4 19-21), how can the dates mentioned in this “prophecy” be Jubilee years? For example, forty Jubilees that are fifty years each from about 26 to 30 AD would be fulfilled about 2026 to 2030 AD, not 2017. Likewise, the prior dates in this “prophecy” also would not fit.

Different Strokes

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This past year, I’ve been trying to go to church again.

I used to go to church fairly often in my childhood. Then almost regularly when I was an undergraduate.

Then not at all for a few years.

Later, I went on occasion – at Christmas, Lent and Easter. No more.

Of late, I’ve felt a real desire to go more often.

In the last couple of months, I’ve gone three times. For me, that’s a lot.

One was a Byzantine Rite Catholic church.

Another was Lutheran, which is my family background.

The last was a radical, leftist church.

The leftists had the best music – gospel-type singing and lots of clapping, spontaneous outbursts, and terrific piano-playing. The preacher (pastor?) was funny and referred to his gay partner casually. A woman gave communion. It wasn’t my thing, but it was genuinely infectious and welcoming. No harsh words. The crowd was about 65% gay, a number of black people, some seniors.

The Lutheran church was definitely much more bourgeois and more formal. The priest was stout and cheerful, I remember. The hymns were the old ones and the liturgy was traditional, but not in any way boring. The crowd was mostly white, middle and upper- middle class folk. They went out of their way to talk to me and ask me to come back.

Culturally, they were closest to me.

The Byzantine Rite Catholic church was mostly Eastern European. I understood the service only intermittently by reading the translation. The music was unaccompanied chant and there was a lot of standing and kneeling. My knees hurt. A young man crawled on his stomach the full length from the door to the iconostasis. The women were carefully dressed and their heads were covered. They lifted up the little children so they could kiss the Bible and the crucifix. From every corner,  red candles flickered and the somber faces of ancient saints and angels looked down on the congregation.

 

There was no quick good feeling to be had. No infectious singing.  The chants were spare and medieval.

Yet it was here I was most at home.

Each church offered something.

For those who scoff at foot-thumping, head-nodding services, I say, remember King David.

He danced and sang in exaltation in his worship. He even took off his robes while he sang. Some people pointed the finger and scorned him for it.

For those who mock the stuffy middle-class, remember that Jesus never did. He was at home in the houses of tax-collectors and publicans, drank at their marriage feasts and played with their children.

He didn’t deride their conventions, even when he flouted them. Instead, he kept traditional feasts in the traditional manner.