Easter isn't over yet, at least not for Catholics. The Easter season will end this year on May 27 when the Church will celebrate Pentecost.
Instead of taking a lunch break, I go to mass daily at St. Patrick's Cathedral. It's a blessing to work six blocks from the place I consider to be the most beautiful and sacred space in Manhattan. As the early April days warmed, I would walk back to my office and delight upon the display of bunny rabbits in the windows of the Brooks Brothers store. The white rabbits were to me a symbol and a welcome visual as I collected my thoughts to enter the building where I work.
Easter isn't over but the bunnies are gone now.
Something about this is profoundly devastating for me. Perhaps it is because the situation reminds me of that moment in Brideshead Revisited when Sebastian Flyte recounts how he misplaced his teddy bear, Aloysius. He says, "I took Aloysius and left him behind I didn't know where. I prayed like mad to St. Anthony of Padua that morning, and immediately after lunch there was Mr. Nichols at Canterbury Gate with Aloysius in his arms, saying I'd left him in his cab."
No matter how much I might pray to St. Anthony of Padua, I highly doubt I'll see those bunnies again. They've been sacrificed to Baal for the sake of new displays pushing more products in the American WASP tradition.
Despite enduring capitalism's abuse of yet another Christian holiday this past week, I'm still enjoying the Easter liturgy. Since Easter started and until it ends in May, the first reading on practically every day, has been and will be from the Acts of the Apostles, the fifth book of the New Testament and the first book after the four Gospels, which open the New Testament. The Acts of the Apostles narrates the stories of what happened after the crucifixion to the people who followed Jesus while he was alive. The zeal of Jesus's first followers sets a mighty example for today's Christians who cannot boast of experiencing the kinds of miraculous manifestations of the Holy Spirit that are said to have taken place at the time chronicled in the Acts of the Apostles.
On April 15, the second Sunday of Easter, I was thrilled by the first reading at mass:
The community of believers was of one heart and mind,
and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own,
but they had everything in common.
With great power the apostles bore witness
to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus,
and great favor was accorded them all.
There was no needy person among them,
for those who owned property or houses would sell them,
bring the proceeds of the sale,
and put them at the feet of the apostles,
and they were distributed to each according to need.
I've been heartened by the way Catholic bishops in the United States have criticized the Republican Party and the House of Representatives for its recent budget. A letter by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops addressed to Congressmen on April 16 -- one day after the reading quoted above was read at mass -- stated, "Just solutions ... must require shared sacrifice by all, including raising adequate revenues, eliminating unnecessary military and other spending, and fairly addressing the long-term costs of health insurance and retirement programs. The House-passed budget resolution fails to meet these moral criteria."
John Boehner, the Speaker of the House and a Catholic, responded to the bishops on Wednesday asking them to "take a bigger look" and consider that without cuts these programs won't exist in the future. I don't understand this request, especially because it seems to me that if the GOP got its way, the programs would be done away with entirely, and today. The cuts the GOP wants to impose in the federal budget would effectively cripple these programs, and almost immediately.
Representative Boehner said, "I don't know how often some of us have to talk about the fact that you can't spend $1.3 trillion more than what you bring in -- that's what's going to happen this year, $5 trillion worth of debt over the last five years -- and think that this can continue."
The issue then is that the federal government doesn't have enough money to keep these programs going. The GOP refuses to consider tax increases on the wealthy in order to ensure that the poor, who have been most adversely affected by the Global Financial Crisis and the Great Recession, which one-percenters at Lehman Brothers caused, continue to be protected during these difficult times. Effectively, the GOP wants to get our fiscal house in order on the backs of the poor. While the GOP prances around Washington on a religious moral high-horse calling upon the sanctity of marriage and the sanctity of life in promoting the unequal treatment of the LGBT and women, respectively, in the eyes of the law, the GOP also hypocritically picks and choses what morals are convenient for the purposes of winning votes and raising money from people like the Koch brothers and their Kochtopus to get those votes. On the issues of the wealth gap and inequality, the Republican Party is choosing to ignore the model set by the earliest Christians-Jewish converts who opposed the inequality, injustice and intolerance perpetuated by the priestly class in Roman-controlled Judea at the start of the Common Era.
Catholicism and Capitalism by Murray N. Rothbard
Can Catholics Be Capitalists? - Daniel Indiviglio - Business - The ...
Catholicism as Antidote to Turbo-Capitalism - NYTimes.com
"Ever try to read a road map without understanding the map 'keys'?" Experience Life among the Ordinary and learn about map keys click at
http://lifeamongtheordinary.blogspot.com/2012/04/map-keys.html
Americans have come to accept this mega size industrial military complex as a necessity for our security. nothing could be farther from the truth.
Our national ego is one of super power status even if we have to borrow hundreds of billions to maintain that status to be number one in the world with our military might.
Religion has become nothing more than a mafia....
It is interesting that most americans love their capitalism more than the teachings of Jesus. Capitalism appeals to the human ego of greed and selfishness and separation.
It is also interesting that the christians love their survival of the fittest capitalism but hate the teachings of darwin.
Even the liberals and progressives love capitalism as it takes americans to a two world society of a few haves and mostly have nots.
Even more interesting is that the unions love capitalism as it attempts to eliminate them one by one.
Reagan economics is nothing more than unchecked capitalism. Leave it competely alone and see what it does to a society.
But the net result, which cannot be disputed, and which is neither a matter of faith, nor a matter of political convictions or preferences, and not a matter of one's wallet or tax bracket is this:
What republicans say to legitimize their worldview is full of self-contradictions. It is hence not reliable. They are at this moment in time not a party fit for office, because they cannot be trusted, not because of the personality traits they have, but because they have a track record of incompatible views that make it logically impossible for them to act in any sense that satisfies minimal criteria of accountability.
They have brought this onto themselves. It was clear by 2008. They had 4 years to recover from that state of affairs. They did nothing. They chose denial. They will pay for that.
Everybody can only hope that the genius of democracy will make sure that this political party will remain the only agent who pays for that.
And there's actually no reason why the pain that stems from this amount of ignorance and denial should affect anybody else.