What the hell is a famous Walker Evans picture of an impoverished American mother and her children doing at this point in this video about Nazi sadists?
AI is so so stupid. Don't you guys ever fact check this junk? Artificial "intelligence" is going to be the total death of a sense of reality being reliably attached to reality. Unless law and deputedly democratic governments take serious action to stop it, democracy won't just be endangered, it will be impossible.
Built in 1909, the Johnson Public Library is a Carnegie-style brick building that sat between Railroad Street and the Gihon River. Johnson is a former mill town where two rivers meet. Over the years, countless floods have devastated the library and town, most notably in 1927, 1996 and 2023. The library lost 1,500 books in the recent flood and has been operating out of the basement of the nearby Masonic Temple. When they heard about a grant opportunity, library staff and town leaders worked together to apply, in the hopes that they could create a new future for the library and their town.
On April 25 and 26, the library was transported from its home of more than 100 years and carried half a mile away to higher ground to Legion Field on School Street, below the elementary school. The Herculean effort took all night and included dozens of community volunteers, utility and construction workers, road and moving crews, first responders and 28 bucket trucks. Route 15 was shut down for three hours, and the power lines had to be removed to make way for the formidable 40-by-45-foot library on wheels.
New England Building Movers used diesel-powered hydraulics and a series of six dollies to maneuver the library forward on 48 wheels. It moved slowly and got stuck turning tight corners — a few trees had to be cut down, and three inches were shaved from its eaves to make it fit. Despite the late hour, townsfolk lined the streets to see the slow parade of utility trucks and the glowing brick structure, which took up the entire road and was lit up with lights.
The library’s new location is outside the floodplain; it will be expanded with an addition that will include more space for community activities. This project is funded by a $1.68 million grant from the Vermont Department of Libraries through the U.S. Department of the Treasury Capital Projects Fund grant program. Community members applied for the grant, coordinated the all-night move and celebrated the library’s new home.
In the latest episode of “Stuck in Vermont,” Seven Days senior multimedia producer Eva Sollberger saw the library crossing the Pearl Street bridge in the twilight hours — it had to be lifted above the guardrails — and attended the community celebration in the afternoon on April 26. It rained all day, but no one had to worry about water in the basement at the library’s new home. Staff hope to reopen the new and improved library by the end of the year.
My sister and others I've talked to never had junk calls on their cell-phones until after Musk and his incel-boy army started stealing files in the federal government. I am going to assume they're selling the data they've stolen, including things like contact information. And I have no doubt that they are going to use it for far worse than to financially profit from it. The Constitution and the law has done nothing to prevent this when both should have prevented the executive branch irregulars stealing it to start with. This is a prelude to Communist China style control of the population, that's so obvious that mainstream journalists are noticing it.
if Trump and the Republican-fascists say that parents should replace the toys that won't be under the Christmas tree with guns. I mean, look how many of them have posed with guns on their family Christmas cards in previous years. That he might, and only a very remote might that is, be taken down by the disappointment his policies will cause during the Christmas season is something I might take but it is one of the most terrible of truths about the American public under our Constitution and the culture and legal regime it gave rise to. It should have happened far faster and over the intentional immorality and consequent amorality of Trump and his supporters and the media, the sacralized "free press," which did so much to impose Trump on us in the beginning and reimpose him on us after they sandbagged and forced out Biden, one of the most rarely moral and competent presidents in the history of the country.
Trump is the worst president in history, our Constitution is doing nothing to remove him as he brings on an economic catastrophe because he is too stupid to learn what a tariff is and how they operate as a consumer tax on the citizens of a country that imposes them - no doubt he learned everything he knows about tariffs from his corrupt fascist dad saying they should replace the income tax, something his idiot economic advisors, Navarro (his LARP name: Ron Vara), the idiot Howard Lutnick, the smiling idiot Kevin Hassett . . . tell him because they are whores of Trump and the billionaires who own him. I'll point out two out of just that three are, like Trump, products of Ivy League schools. Just to point out the role that our alleged educational elite played in this.
Whenever you hear one of the As Seen On TV lawyers talk about the Constitution saving us you should now start to believe they have gone from being naive to being liars because if the Constitution were going to save us from what the Constitution should never, ever have permitted to start with, letting an insurrectionist, a known asset of Vladimir Putin and whatever corrupt billionaire, despot or not who says they'll build a building he can put his name on, a criminal who stole and very likely sold some of our most important security secrets, . . . . . . . . . be nominated and elected as president after the most corrupt and criminal first go round, that would have happened long ago.
Our Constitution had corrupt features installed in it from the beginning, many obvious ones, many less obvious ones and some enhanced or installed later by, for example, Supreme Court rulings - never installed by Constitutional means, the absence of a provision forbidding the Court to do that one of those most dangerous of features - it will not save us. Republicans, their theorists and, most importantly of all LAWYERS AND LEGAL SCHOLARS have identified and weaponized every defect in that document, intended by the framer-slaver holder-financiers and the more subtle and Court invented ones to install corrupt politicians and TV stars to serve anti-democratic ends. It is a document and a political system AND A LEGAL SYSTEM which has been so weaponized and once that has been done, the thing cannot be turned back to something less bad that ran on the tolerance of a margin of corruptible voters of sometimes good will and the sense of "honor" among politicians and "justices" of that dangerous court.
If I sound like a broken record on that it is because you have to repeat the hard truth more times than even a flimsy lie constructed for easy sale in order for that truth to overcome even temporarily told lies. The lies of our Constitutional lore and civic religion are far more deeply embedded than that and getting that corrupt document changed AND REMOVING THE POWER TO OF THE SUPREME COURT TO AMEND IT AT WILL is going to be a huge job, one which I will almost certainly not live to see happen, short of a disastrous and bloody and catastrophically failed revolution that will teach that lesson faster. I doubt that will happen, a bigger miracle of a revolution coming up with something better is less likely than a divine miracle doing that. The putrid and lying civic piety that has been installed in the American public about the Constitution is, itself, a barrier to peaceful change. One of the reasons I had the reaction to the lying history of "Hamilton" was because it added a huge lie about one of the worst of the framers, one who at least one historian said was one of the three most dangerous men in the United States at the time of his death - his killer being one of the other two. But he was hardly alone in those who early on tried to game the Constitution they had constructed for evil ends, that is the real history of that document in the hands of the framers, themselves.
Update: I can't recall who the third one of the three named by the historian as being the most dangerous men in the United States in 1804 was but I'd put John Marshall, the author of Marbury v Madison the year before in that position.
IF I WASN'T AFRAID THAT I'D JINX HIM I'd announce that I am 100% all in on Pritzker for president.
Of those being often mentioned, he seems to be the best to me, so far. He seems to know what is needed whereas Gavin Newsome doesn't. He has Washington experience which I consider an absolute requirement for anyone who wants to be president. But I won't jinx him by supporting him until after the convention.
I DON'T WATCH movies about the Catholic Church because they're either nauseatingly and dishonestly pious or sensationally and dishonestly anti-Catholic. I never watch movies about real People because they are so unreliable and, so, inevitably bear false witness. That didn't bother me until I found out in conversations online that many PhD holding teachers at accredited universities and prep-schools mistake movies for history or biography. If they're so duped by Hollywood why should anyone expect those with lesser educations to make the distinction between reality and make-believe? Make-believe is dangerous when it's mistaken as reality.
In the many things I read and heard about the upcoming conclave and about the events leading to it, I was horrified to hear someone say how many People on their plane trip to go to Rome for the funeral of Good Pope Francis were watching the movie INCLUDING A BISHOP. I mentioned how I suspected the putrid and pious and grotesquely unrealistic "The Shoes of the Fisherman" led to the election of Karol Wojtyla as John Paul II - a really bad papacy - so hearing that bishops were watching that movie put me on my guard.
So far as I know, very little about what has gone on in any modern conclave has been leaked by a reliable source and what has leaked is often tainted by ulterior motives so I doubt much about it is accurate. Much of the lore surrounding the elections of Popes is sensational and even more obviously ideological and polemic so it's mostly useless if you want to really know. That is what happens when such a choice is made in secrecy by a small group of insiders - like the legendary smoke-filled rooms where presidential candidates of the major parties were said to have been chosen. Of course, back then we got a few good ones whereas today good presidents are even rarer than they once were, The well meaning democratic reforms of the primary system were more than swamped by the Courts opening up the airwaves to millionaires and billionaires flooding the American political system with lies so as to influence voters. I don't think opening up the choice of the head of the Catholic Church to that would be likely to make things better. Imagine if the likes of Tim Busch and the media operations like EWTN and The National Catholic Register (NOT TO BE MISTAKEN WITH THE GENERALLY EXCELLENT NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER!) and their like around the world flooded the airwaves with American style lying.
For some ideas of what might be an alternative to that but which is almost certainly not likely to ever happen, you might look at this piece at Religion Dispatches. Much as I favor democracy as the only potentially valid means of selecting a legitimate secular government, without major protections against the influence of lie campaigns and prejudice ruling, its capacity for producing better results drastically erodes. There is no world-authority who could do that for the Catholic Church. Hell, we can't even protect American democracy at home from it under our Constitution.
As I said, we'll have to see what the Cardinal Electors give us. If they give us someone at least as good as Francis was - and while I think he was a great Pope, he was hardly perfect - all well and good. If they give us someone as timid as Paul VI, as power-hungry and controlling as JPII or as incompetent as Benedict XVI (dear God, not another academic theologian!) that will be typical. There have been remarkably few great presidents of the United States, even though we get a new chance to get a new one every four years. There have been remarkably few great Popes though I think there have actually been a higher percentage of good ones than we've had good presidents. Some of them like Benedict XV have been far better than they have been accorded by history (the late Richard McBrien convinced me of that) some have been downright awful. Just like leaders in putative democracies are, it's a mixed bag.
It's a lot safer and easier for movie makers to make a sensational and false movie about the Catholic Church than it is about secular politics, the old idea that a Catholic audience is going to refuse to watch a movie if the bishop tells them not to was likely always exaggerated and is certainly not true today. I don't care to watch fiction when I can read about reality. I like fiction to be fictitious and not something that tries to risk rational people mistaking it for reality. I've heard at least two people who believed "Conclave" informed about the truth when it is reported to contain nonsense - an unknown Cardinal presenting himself to the Conclave as a Cardinal Elector when those qualified to participate have to be publicly declared by the Pope before hand and a Cardinal breaking the seal of confession - which would mean automatic and immediate excommunication if they did it and every other person in the Conclave would know that. Lord knows what's in it that I haven't read about, yet.
Here are words to live by, which come from my favorite comedy series, Corner Gas "MOVIES AREN'T REAL."
We continue to celebrate the memory of writer Jennifer Johnston who died on the 25th of February 2025. Best known for her novels including The Captains and the Kings, How Many Miles to Babylon?, Shadows On Our Skin (which was Booker shortlisted in 1977) and The Old Jest (which took the Whitbread Book Award in 1979), Jennifer was also a prodigious playwright.
Tonight Drama on One presents, Old Men Are Jealous by Jennifer Johnston - A reimagining of WB Yates's, Deirdre of the Sorrows
Eileen Colgan played the old woman
King was played by Ger Carey
Dee was Roxanna Níc Liam
Laurence Kinlan played Nick
The Dramaturg was Jesper Bergman
Sound Supervision was by Damien Chanel, and
the broadcast coordinator was Margaret Hayes.
Old men are jealous by Jennifer Johnston was produced by Kevin Reynolds
Old men are jealous was a commissioned response to WB Yates's, Deirdre of the Sorrows
The late Jennifer Johnston, gave the announcements to her play.
THE ADMIRABLE RMJ who is more qualified than I am to have an opinion on the topic has a critique of Jeffrey Pullum's video on the passive. It's certainly worth reading.
I still agree with the fuller arguments that Pullum made. Here's a post to what will play as a play list if you follow it up. It takes a few of the short videos to get to the heart of his argument.
who will be elected to replace Good Pope Francis but I doubt it will be the candidate I'm seeing pushed all over the trad-cath web, Robert Sarah, who has been rumored to aspire to be Pope Pius XIII. For one thing he's almost eighty, for another he was clearly an enemy of Francis and, indeed, of the entire last sixty years of modern Catholicism. I can't think of anything the Cardinal Electors could do that would more damage not only what Francis has accomplished but, in fact, every Pope since Pius XII. As I mentioned here the other day the real hard-core trad-caths think Pius' changes such as having the Epistle and Gospel read in a language the congregation could understand, who knows if someone as wacky as Sarah would try to go back even farther than that.
As I said the largely multi-millionaire-billionaire financed "trad-catholic" LARPing cult* will almost certainly either mount or force a schism between those who believe the Catholic Church is a Christian Church and those who don't have much need for Jesus other than the name and title and holy pictures and statues. If someone like Sarah became Pope those who take Jesus seriously would have no home in the Church.
I've read that the millionaire-billionaires have had hired hacks digging up dirt and rumors on alternative candidates and there are at least several of those who will be in the Conclave who would carry that into the meetings. They dug it up on Francis even as he was Pope, even some of those who he either appointed or kept in offices, Sarah's infamous book which he lied about Benedict XVI co-authoring was part of that kind of stuff. The late and scandal tainted George Pell anonymously during his life and explicitly after his death was another such prominent vilifier of Francis. He was often named as an alternative to Sarah in the dreams of the trad-caths, he definitely wanted to turn back to some of the worst of the pre-Vatican II church.
I would guess that by this time next week we will know who they've given us and within six months we'll have a pretty good idea of what they've given us. Till then, it's going to be a bumpy ride no matter who comes out a Pope and not a Cardinal.
* Every time I see a young Woman or Girl wearing a mantilla at mass (a good sign of someone trad-cath LARPing) I remember when, before they relaxed the rule about Women having their head covered in the 1960s the ones who wore the longest mantillas often had the shortest mini-skirts on. I'd forgotten that but it must have made an impression on me at the time. I should talk to some of them because I'd really like to know what they imagine they're getting out of it. Especially those whose families aren't affluent, I know what the affluent hope to get out of it.
Update: I forgot, they changed the rules so it will be a couple of weeks before we have a new Pope. The Conclave won't even have begun by a week from now, at least I think that's true.
HERE I AGREE WITH attorney Dave Aronberg in my extreme dislike of Sarah Palin and everything she stands for - or rather sinks to - while I think he, like the conventional lawyer's POV, entirely misses the real significance of her second loss in her lawsuit against the New York Times.
First I'll give him his say:
I analyze this differently, it's Sarah Palin getting bitten by a Supreme Court ruling and media practice that no side has benefited more from than her Republican-fascism and, especially Trumpism. If the Sullivan decision had been a loss for the NYT and the instruction was that they pay a nominal fine and court costs and issue a retraction the entire sixty years of Republican-fascist ascendancy through media lies about Democrats would never have happened. She and Trump and a series of the worst politicians in the subsequent decades would never have had political careers and the subsequent Rehnquist and Roberts Courts would likely never have been appointed to the Court. In no area is the legal profession as this one exposed as being supremely superficial and wrong.
Most consequential to our situation today, if the Sullivan Decision had never been issued, the New York Times would not have so freely slandered Hillary Clinton, they would not have issued lies about her immediately before the 2016 election, piling on with the Republican-fascist enabling and grotesquely sanctimonious James Comey to sway the election to objectively the worst president in American history, appointing the worst Supreme Court since at least the Taney Court of the 1850s.
If the Sullivan Decision and the line of those decisions building on it, Donald Trump would probably never have had a political career, he may have ended up sued into the flames of hell by those he slandered and libeled, including in a paid opinion piece published by the NYT as it published the original factually deficient ad that led to that decision.
Lawyers are not, it turns out, deep thinkers. Their ability to miss the ultimate consequences of their own profession's actions for the immediate benefits strikes me as more and more important. It extends to the senior ranks of the profession in the judges and, especially the "justices."
I'D RECOMMEND LISTENING to all six as a bare minimum. Then maybe we can have a brawl over it. I'd say easily 9 out of 10 times when someone pulls the old "passive" on someone they don't even know what passive mood is.
Update: I'm surprised you didn't catch my mistake, I meant "voice" not "mood". I guess I should have taken more than a minute to respond to the criticism. Actually, that's a lie, I'm not surprised.
Our "unique constitutional system" produced Trump and permitted him to not only misrule once THEN MOUNT AN INSURRECTION TO KEEP POWER ILLEGALLY, it let him off and permitted him to do it again . The American "free press" invented the monster and promoted him politically TWICE as it sandbagged the most competent president of my lifetime, Joe Biden. Without addressing that and, frankly, the disaster of allowing the Supreme Court to re-write the Constitution (such as the 14h Amendment) without any means of recourse, we're assuring that the world will be right if they judge the United States to be unreliable and that they have to treat us more like Putin's Russia than a reliable democracy.
Everything he's done, including crimes of the most serious potential and likely factual consequence that he has gotten away with only to gain power again HAS BEEN, IN FACT, PERMITTED UNDER OUR DANGEROUS CONSTITUTION AND THE "RULE OF LAW" AS IT IS DEFINED BY THE COURTS AND, ESPECIALLY THE CORRUPT ROBERTS COURT. To merely want to go back to 2014 and do the typical American thing of refusing to learn the lessons of the most dangerous experience, relying on the failed 18th century theories embedded in the U.S. Constitution only means that our recurring though ever worsening history will continue to spiral.
Jerome Richerdson(flute)
Hank Jones (piano)
Wendell Marshall (bass)
Shadow Wilson (drums)
Betty Carter - vocals
Ray Bryant - piano
Jerome Richardson - flute
Wendell Marshall - double bass
Philly Joe Jones - drums
I needed some Betty Carter just now.
SEVEN POPES have died during my lifetime and this is the only one whose death has really shaken me. I hardly remember Pius XII, so his death had no impact on me. I was too young to really take the death of Good Pope John the way it should have struck me.
Paul VI's death didn't leave me feeling much, I was far from the Church at the time and saw it mostly as a political event. His papacy seemed to diminish in importance as it continued.
At the death of John Paul I did have deep feelings only because I had some real hopes that he would renew things after the increasingly timid unwillingness of Paul VI to build on the great work of Vatican II and because I found the circumstances of his sudden death a month after his election to be disturbing, something I still feel.
I felt revulsion at the disgusting show biz elaborateness and obvious right wing political spectacle surrounding the death of JPII and admit that I thought and still think he was the worst Pope of my lifetime, reactionary, power hungry, dictatorial, vindictive, appointing some of the worst bishops and cardinals in modern Catholic history (who still dominate the US Catholic Conference of Bishops) and someone who often seemed to me to be a lot more of a CIA asset than the representative of Christ. His early betrayal of the peasants and clergy of Central America and Archbishop Romero (St Oscar Romero) fixed my opinion of him and his cult.
Benedict did one and only one wise and pastorally responsible thing in his entire Vatican career, retiring from the papacy. He was, if anything, even more of a pastoral disaster than JPII or Pius XII though in some ways he was a better Pope than either of them. His clear desire to take back in some of the worst of the schismatic far right, the likes of the fascist-loving antisemite members of the cult of Marcel Lefebvre (whose excommunication was one of the highlights of JPII's reign) proved to be a disaster. That along with his revolting attempt to revive the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass was even more of one, something which will eventually lead to a major schism backed by fascist Catholic millionaires and billionaires whose motive is to use that cult to further their enrichment and undermining democracy. The fascist-right-wing Catholic movement here and in many other countries is building into being one of the most serious problems that the Catholic Church and democracies everywhere where there is a significant Catholic population will face I will remind skeptics of the role that such "Catholics" have among prominent Republican-fascist politicians (especially those recent "converts" such as Vance, Gingrich and Brownback) and among sitting members of the Supreme Court.
Of course I knew that Francis couldn't go on forever, he was 88 and doing one of the more demanding jobs in the world. It is remarkable how active he was up till the end, even from the hospital and even during Holy Week and Easter, though it was clear that he was not doing well on Sunday, the pictures that showed his one last day of pastoral activity show that it took a lot out of him.
I think the first appearance of his successor my well tell us if he will be another Francis or if he will be a return to the unfortunate tradition of the "traditionalists." Scarlet, gold and ermine and a gold cross instead of one made of more modest materials will be a bad sign. A pope who takes the style of Francis as a much needed reform, in itself, will be a good one but it will be what the new Pope does and very fast which will tell us what we're getting. I hope it is someone who upsets the "trads" for having the odd idea that the Catholic Church should follow the teachings of Jesus. I hope they're not influenced by Hollywood as I'm convinced was the case with JPII. If that damned Anthony Quinn movie hadn't been made, that wouldn't have ever happened.
St. Francis Bergoglio, pray for us, all of us, even us Catholics.
I've put the two posts I was writing off for now.
WHEN AND NOT if Pope Francis is canonized as a saint, I hope that will be what he's called instead of the dreadful style of "St. Pope xxx whatever name and number." Actually, I hope they don't canonize him at all and The People of the Churches canonize him in the old-fashioned way, by popular acclamation. "Pope" is an earthly title, "Saint" is a higher title, the saint whose name Pope Francis chose had no such earthly title, unlike most recent Popes' choices. And there has been no less popely Pope than Francis Bergoglio. At least none who I'm aware of. His refusal of the scarlet and gold at his first appearance of Pope in favor of the white cassock I mentioned here a few days ago was only the beginning of that, his choice to live in an apartment in an apartment building instead of the papal apartmet as well.
Pope Francis joins John XXIII in the significance of their papacies in asserting the Gospel of Jesus above medieval traditions and feudalism. I'd say that Francis was even far less attached to the medieval detritus attached to the papacy than Good Pope John was.
I think Francis' encyclicals will become even more continually cited classics of theology when much of the academic theology of the theologians, including that of his immediate predecessor, the lauded academic theologian Joseph Ratzinger is mostly of interest to academic theologians. I think that is the case because Laudato Si, Fratelli tutti and Dilexit nos are about real life more than about theology. Much as I find reading theology interesting, when it becomes about theology instead of real life its importance sinks often quite rapidly.
The world needs that his successor as Pope is good, though I wouldn't hold my breath on that, it's unusual to have one great Pope followed by another. Elector Cardinals seldom have the courage to do that, though one can hope. Francis did disappoint my wishes such as opening up ordination to married People and Women, though modest in numbers and in power, his opening up of offices of actual power in the Vatican to some Women and others who were not ordained as priests was significant. I say that even as I'm aware that no Pope is going to knowingly risk a major schism and knowing that the conservatives among the bishops and cardinals have proven to be among the most schismatic forces in the church - the most lunatic of current ones think Pius XII was too progressive - and I mean that literally. They will know that millionaires and billionaires are a force even as medieval, baroque monarchs and emperors and even princes exercised power in the Church in the past. We need a good if not great Pope now and perhaps the conclave will surprise the like of me and give us another one. I certainly was't expecting a Francis a dozen years ago. St. Francis Bergoglio, help us.
The Women of Mark 16:8
"He is risen! He is not here!"
we heard - and fled
from the empty tomb,
our lips sealed by fear,
to cower in the upper room.
The Good News stayed dead
until, fed by the power
of Bread
broken,
we arose from our dread
and the Good News was spoken.
Sr. Irene Zimmermann OSF
One of the interesting things about the Resurrection narratives is the place that bread plays in it, the staple of the daily diet. And the most interesting thing about that is that it is BROKEN bread, bread broken to share it. I don't think that that is merely incidental, I think that to hold a sacramental view of the breaking of the bread and sharing the cup of wine you can't leave out that it is food that is broken, shared from that view of it. That the narratives of the sacramental institution of the Eucharist has Jesus specifically stating that the broken and shared bread, the shared wine are his body and his blood, which I think more than just implies that the action of sharing and eating and drinking is as central to the sacramentalism of the act as the so-called elements of it.
Mark's ambiguous ending which has the Women at the tomb told by a mysterious young man dressed in white that Jesus is risen and that they are to tell his disciples that he has gone on before them and will see them in Galilee. But, as the poem notes, they are presented as having been terrified and that the fled, not telling what they'd seen. Which you have to ask, how did Mark know about it, in that case. The several extensions of that ending which scholars don't believe was the original ending of it provides accounts of post-Resurrection appearance. Some think Mark ended at 16:8 with the Women not telling anyone, some theorize that the original ending was lost early in the manuscript tradition of Mark, though there isn't any way to know which is the case. It's clear that Mark did teach the Resurrection of Jesus, though he may not have chosen to go into much detail about it. It's clear from even earlier in the canonical texts, especially in Paul that the earliest known tradition is that Jesus died, was buried and on the third day he rose from the dead into a state of glory.
I generally prefer the Luke tradition with Matthew's coming in second. I don't know to what extent those might be elaborations of the account in Mark - truncated or extended - or how much variation there was in the manuscript tradition. I do think that all of the New Testament is a product of the early followers of Jesus and the earliest converts expressing their experience of the Living Jesus after his death and Resurrection. I don't think it was just spinning tales. I know that some evangelicals like to use Mark's "bare bones" account of the suffering, execution, burial and Resurrection of Jesus in their line of evidence to "prove" the factual historicity of all of that, which seems to me to be alien to the tradition I was raised in. It is in that large category of mystery for which historicity in a valid sense is not possible. I think real belief in it requires that it be on the basis of experience and choice to believe. Just as every single thing in human life which is believed or taken to be known is a matter of choice based on experience. If you don't like that, it's just the way that human life is, in everything up to and including valid science and rigorous mathematics as well as things without that kind of evidentiary basis. Bread broken seems to me to be as good a basis of belief as the general cargo-cult or ideological belief in science. And it's a lot more nourishing than mathematical proof.
CATHOLICS TRADITIONALLY say the Apostles' Creed at mass though apparently the choice to say that or the Nicene Creed is a choice left to the celebrant, something I never knew until very recently. I never remember hearing the Nicene Creed said at mass. I don't remember ever hearing it set to music in a mass setting by a western composer, either, though I'd have to check if my memory is right about that.
The thing in the Creed which I never felt very good with saying was the statement that after his death Jesus "descended into hell," something I never heard discussed in any Catholic context. I was in college when I first came across literary mentions of "the harrowing of hell" in which Jesus went there to preach salvation to the souls of those who died before his death so that they could be rescued from what western Christians call "hell" but which must have been to the Apostles, the Jewish version of that, sheol. I had assumed it was from the extra-canonical writings, maybe those unofficial "gospels and epistles" that are so much peddled by ahistorical "scholars" and other such anti-Christian hucksters these days. Only I, as well as so many other too casual readers, didn't notice the subtle references to that idea contained in the canonical books of the New Testament. I won't comment on this passage from Luke Timothy Johnson's book, The Creed: What Christians believe and why it matters. It's a good Holy Saturday meditation, better than anything I could offer you.
The final moment of Jesus' earthly existence noted by the creed is that he was buried. Once more, we find the tradition of Jesus' burial both in Paul and in the Gospels.
Writing to the Corinthians around the year 54, Paul provides the summary of the good news that he had himself received and had handed on to them, and "by which you are being saved if you hold firmly to the message: (1 Cor. 15:1-2). It begins, "that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried." Note that Paul reports that in an unadorned fashion. It is simply one of the facts" about Jesus that he received from the first believers, therefore within some few years of Jesus' death. He does not suggest that, like the death for sins and like the resurrection on the third day, these are matters predicted by the scriptures.
The same matter of factness about the burial is found in the Gospel narratives, which several small variations (see Mark 15:42-47; Matt 27:55-66; Luke 25:50-55; John 19:38-42). More striking is the strong agreement on the basic characters and actions, and above all on the fact of the burial itself. That Jesus was buried and remained in the tomb for some length of time certainly serves to confirm the reality of his death. Compare Martha's comment concerning her brother Lazarus, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days." (John 11:32), and the resurrection of a body so thoroughly dead must also be regarded as an act of God.
But another dimension of the burial is equally ancient and important. The burial symbolizes Jesus' descent into the realm that in ancient cosmology was most removed from "heaven" or the place of God's dwelling. He goes "under the earth," which in the Psalms is called sheol, and in the Greek translation, hades In Peter's speech at Pentecost, he quotes Psalm 16 in connection with Jesus' death; "You will not abandon my soul to hades, or let your Holy One see corruption: (Acts 2:27).
This connection may help account for the conviction that Jesus, after his death, entered into the dungeons of the lower depths in order to free those most distant from the divine presence, a motif that was subsequently termed "the harrowing of hell" or, in the Apostles' Creed, "the descent into hell." In Ephesians 4:5; Paul asks cryptically, "when it says 'he ascended,' what does it mean that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth?" The conviction is stated more clearly by I Peter 5:18-20:
He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah
Peter continues, "For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, even though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the sprit and God does: (1 Pet. 4-6).
The descent of Jesus into hell is, in this view, an expression of God's universal will for salvation and a part of his cosmic victory, so that every tongue, even those "under the earth," should proclaim that Jesus is Lord (Phil 2:10). In terms of the movement of the creed, the burial represents the nadir of downward descent, the ultimate expression of Jesus' sharing the human condition, even to the depositing of the flesh in the soil like a seed (John 12:24; see 1 Cor 15:35-41).
The extreme dangers of the presidential system of government which has devolved into dictatorship in so many places who modeled their governments on ours have reached maturity here. Since the Republican-fascists and the lawyers and law scholars who favor imposing fascism here under the Ivy League invented "unitary executive" theory of the presidency have made this try, and a lot of those sit on the Roberts Court which made Trump a monarch with impunity for his law breaking (and by extension and with the idiotic blanket pardon power in the badly written Constitution, his henchmen) we can never, ever have any confidence that our presidential system will not become the dictatorship which Trump has, to date, had a remarkable success in imposing on an unwilling country. IT IS THAT OUR COURTS HAVE YET TO STOP HIM WHICH IS THE NEWS, NOT THESE TEMPORARY ACTIONS BY LOWER COURTS.
We will either change our system, at its foundation or we will watch democracy implode into fascism. That's the choice.
LAST LESSON
(John 13:3-16)
The festive table glowed with candles,
warding off the darkness lurking
in the corners of the upper room.
As soon as we had found a place,
for once not quarreling over who
sat next to Jesus, he removed
his outer robe, wrapped a towel
around himself, poured a basin
full of water, and knelt at Peter's feet!
"Lord," he blurted, "you shall never
wash my feet!" Jesus warned him:
"If you do not let me wash you,
you can have no share with me."
Poor Peter begged, "Then wash my hands
and head as well." But Jesus answered:
"Those who bathe need only have
their feet washed." We sat embarrassed,
listening to the water splash.
Still on his knees, the Master looked
at us then. "You are clean,"
he added, "though not all of you."
And so we let him wash our feet!
Afterwards, he questioned, "Do you
understand what I have done?"
Our hopes of glory gone, we sat
in silence. He went on: "You call me
Lord and Teacher. You are right.
Tonight I, your Lord and Teacher,
have set you an example: Do
for one another as I have done."
The supper table glowed with candles
warding off the crouching darkness
as we - his chosen servant leaders -
listened to our Master Teacher
nailing down his final lesson
on the night before he died.
Sr Irene Zimmerman OSF
