Anti-war protestors interrupt an Easter Mass at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago by yelling and spilling stage blood on the nave and worshippers. Catholic churches have experienced any number of such assaults by activists of various kinds and as you watch the video note that the Cathedral, perhaps from past experience, had hired private security guards anticipating just such a possibility.

There are a growing number of people who feel it’s their right to protest larger social issues or individual items of church policy or doctrine by using worship services as stages for their grievances. Interestingly this seems to be a phenomena, at least in this country, directed almost entirely at Christian churches. I’ve not heard of a story where a group of protestors, for example, stand up and interrupt Muslim prayers to make a point. Perhaps it feels “edgy” to invade a parish and desecrate the service (especially knowing the congregants aren’t likely to fight back) or maybe these are just folks who see themselves as above the rights of others because of of their perception of the righteousness of their cause. Certainly there is a double standard at work. Imagine the outrage if a group of observant Christians stood up in the middle of a service of the Metropolitan Community Church and protested in the same way as the Rainbow Sash folks do every year in your local Catholic parish!

Regardless, we Orthodox should not expect that we’ll be immune from these attacks and desecrations. We live in an amoral time when the basic common sense rules of decency don’t seem to apply from Congress to classrooms so why should a parish be immune? The truth is that one day our own vision of faith and its implications for people’s lives and the greater society, hidden for decades under our ethnic cloak, will become known and we will be a target as well.

Expect it but don’t be afraid. Attacks like these indicate the desperateness of the attackers. Having failed to convince people, and sometimes themselves, by rational argument they seek ever more dramatic measures to make their point. Why would a mature, self confident, gay person feel the need to wear a rainbow colored sash and disrupt a worship service? Why would people supposedly arguing for peace feel the need to harrass the very people they are trying to convince? In that uncertainty action replaces introspection and inflicting onself on others becomes a form of validation when the normal channels are insufficient.

It may also be that God is allowing a little fire to come our way to burn away the flabbiness and help us to be who we were meant to be. Having been given all the priviledges of American law and society it is safe to say that we American Christians, certainly we Orthodox, have accomplished only a tiny fragment of what we should have with all our blessings. We, and I, remain self absorbed and in many ways identical to the larger materialistic culture around us. Perhaps we need some pressure, certainly I know I do, to help us put aside lesser things and direct our lives to things higher. In an off beat way these sad, desperate folks interrupting services may be a kind of prophet, their own actions and character warning us of things to come and calling us back to that which matters.

What do you think?

Some of you of my vintage may remember Ken Curtis who played the nasally deputy Festus to Matt Dillon in TV’s “Gunsmoke”. Well, that man had pipes and worked as a singing cowboy in the movies, with the Sons of the Pioneers, and as a solo. He’s passed on now, but if you like cowboy music take a listen. By the way, are you as shocked to discover this as I am? The best equivalent I can remember is the magnificent voice that came out of Jim Nabors who played the nerdy hick “Gomer Pyle” on The Andy Griffith Show and Gomer Pyle USMC.

Frank Marino, Mahogany Rush, Psychedelic Rock, Orthodox Christian.

Extremely cool.

What binds the religious right and left in America is a sense of utopianism, the belief that the Kingdom of God, as each defines it, can be established in law before it is established in hearts. And although they would claim to disagree with each other on issues they are amazingly congruent with each other in principles and the means to the ends they seek.

It’s Good Friday in the West and the news on the radio this morning began with “In the Philipines the event is marked by people nailing themselves to crosses and flogging themselves…” or some such twist.

For the most part I am appalled at media’s coverage of religion. There are few reporters willing to do the leg work to go beyond the stereotypes and many who seem to approach the topic the same way a child approaches a plate of brussel sprouts. The complaints, especially from the religiously observant, about bias and incompetence in the media regarding religion are mostly true.

This story is an example of that, although the ABC radio journalist did mention after the fact that the Catholic Church frowns on the practice of self crucifixion. What was important was not how many millions around the world were commemorating the death of Jesus but rather what kind of bloody freak show they could dig up combining both an attempt to snare the gullible into listening while also conveying contempt for Christianity. If you have the patience don’t be suprised if a story like this leads the news next year as well.

That kind of shoddy work is why I almost always start my day with a quick peek at www.getreligion.org , perhaps the single best www site out there examining the way the media covers, or fails to cover, religious news. GetReligion asks the important questions and evaluates the data in a professional and thoroughgoing way and especially now in the Lenten season when mainstream media outlets deliberately seek out controversy, sideshows, and heretics to cover it can be a most valuable place to get some focus.

If you give it away…

An interesting article from “First Things”.

It looks like a night and day of snow here in Minnesota even as we’re on the cusp of spring.

That’s not unusual, though, because even as the daylight grows and the fierce northwest winds subside the snow still comes. Thick flakes today, wet with moisture and covering everything in a coat of white. By tonight most of it may be gone because the weather and the change of seasons cannot be denied but still in the small hours of the morning there is a kind of beauty to it all, a memory of the best of winter.

Being the stoic folks we are we often find ways to rationalize about the weather. In winter when the snow falls deep and travel becomes messy and the pace of our lives unwinds we often rationalize it all by saying “Oh well, we need the moisture.” It’s our way of coming to terms with a nature that’s bigger then us and our own fragility in the face of it all but right now it’s actually true as well. We’re pretty dry. Most of the large snow storms this past winter have journeyed south of us into Iowa and through Illinois, nicking the edge of Wisconsin as they pass. We’re below average, water wise, and every bit of wet we get will make a difference months from now.

There is a double blessing in a March snow. In a dry time it brings vital water and no matter how much we get in March there is a different sense about it. A March snow still brings things to a crawl, still messes up our lives, still makes everything inconvenient to us as defined by our current “gotta have it now ” culture, but its different. A foot of snow in December means we have at least two months to deal with it. A foot of snow in March may be gone in two days. On occasion tulips will show their leaves right through a March snow, and our own hope emerges as well. Spring is coming and nothing snow can do will change it.

Yup, he’s one of ours.