Posts Tagged ‘holy week’

While Don Surber is right to hit General Miley both on his destruction of the morale, discouraging recruitment and getting Afghanistan wrong I have to give him a little bit of a mulligan in terms of Kiev.

To my knowledge while very few people were cheering for Russia to conquer Ukraine to my knowledge very few outside observers anticipated a successful defense of Kiev. In fact I think the only public figure that had any confidence in Ukraine resisting Russia was Zelenskyy.

It is of course still early and the Russian Bear might return in force or even bearing battlefield nukes but right now it looks like Ukraine will still exist as a nation and the person who deserves the credit for it is Zelenskyy who shocked everyone by deciding to stay and fight rather than take the money and run.

Corruption and patriotism are apparently not mutually exclusive.


Between Catholic Cardinals and Bishops in Germany saying we need to rethink the catechism on Sodomy in Germany and Pope Francis excluding the crucifix from an event in Malta in Lent so as to not offend Muslim migrants who might attend it’s a very interesting time to be a Catholic of faith.

A great way to get though this is to remember that while people and cultures may change neither God, nor the message of Christ nor truth has and Truth is always pastoral and that this isn’t the first time we’re run into this kind of thing (remember when there were multiple Popes all claiming the chair of St. Peter?)

The Best way to get though it however is to keep the basics

  1. Go to mass
  2. Pray (particularly the Rosary)
  3. Have faith in the Holy Spirit and Christ words that the gates of Hell will not prevail against his church

And never forget love is being willing to say the truth to a person who might not want to hear it, but needs to hear it.


The most interesting thing about the pushback on the Florida law not allowing teachers to push sex on kids eight years old and younger and younger is the absolute apoplexy of teachers, particularly gay and transgender teachers at the thought of not be able to do so.

By any objective standard this should be the golden age for such people in the west. In three generations this stuff has gone from being illegal to being celebrated and affirmed to the point where if you don’t completely embrace the LGBTQ ETC ETC ETC agenda you risk your livelihood, your reputation and angry mobs harassing you.

So why are such folks, during the easiest time in the last 1000 years to be gay or lesbian or transgender in western civilization so insecure about their identifies and proclivities that they can’t function without pushing it on kids?

My own theory is that reality doesn’t care about such false cultural trappings. I think a creature that is made in the image of God can’t run from the internal, even instinctual feeling that something about them is wrong, so no amount of affirmation is enough to get them though the day.

That’s what happens when you take God out of society and replace it with an idol.

Having my own sins to deal and per the command of Christ I can’t judge such people but I do pity them.


The latest inflation numbers are out and are the worst that Americans under 40 have ever seen. and the worst since the days of Carter.

That Brings up an interesting thing about both the Biden and Trump administrations, I had very low expectations for both of them.

The degree of success he had both at home and domestically of those years was astounding. Repeatedly the good economic news was reported as “better than expected” by a press flummoxed by said success. The Trump years were the most prosperous years of my life since the early days of the George W. Bush Administration.

Trump not only exceeded my low expectation but did so beyond my wildest expectations.

As for Biden my expectations were even lower given the theft of the election. I expected a tough time.

We now have war in Europe, Inflation at Carter Admin levels, Oil and gas prices through the roof, Supreme Court Justices who don’t know what a woman is and don’t believe in natural rights and food shortages. FOOD SHORTAGES!

As I said I had very low expectation for the Biden administration but even these failures were beyond my wildest dreams.

If you told me in 1997 that twenty five years later I’d consider Bill Clinton would the most competent Democrat to hold the Whitehouse since Johnson and the Least Corrupt since Carter I wouldn’t have believed you.


Finally apparently we’re reached the point in Seattle where if you’re the victim of a sexual assault as far as the city is concerned you’re on your own:

So here we are in 2022 and as predicted the public safety situation has become untenable. The city lacks enough officers to investigate sexual assault cases. Maybe no one predicted this specific outcome but many warnings were given multiple times over the past 20 months that public safety was going to suffer because of the lack of staffing. That’s what happened. The predictions were correct. The defund the police supporters on the city council put the city in this position. They should be the ones answering for this mess.

This would be bad news for the woman of Seattle but as neither the mayor’s office nor the police are staffed by biologists apparently the city won’t come to that conclusion.

I find myself completely unable to muster any outrage over it as the people, like many others in blue cities are getting exactly the government they deserve.

Palm Sunday

By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – As Christians around the world prepare for Holy Week, I’ve been thinking a lot about church attendance. Christmas and Easter are the two days of the year that you can well assume that the pews will be filled. Even the days leading up to those services start to see a slight uptick in attendance; yesterday we had our Palm Sunday service and had perhaps 25% more people in church than in past weeks.

We have a new Rector at our church which is also helping the attendance numbers; he’s been onsite for about five weeks, and people are showing up to see what the buzz is about. Whether or not they will continue to show is the question.

Church attendance across denominations is low. In March 2021 there was a Gallup poll conducted on this:

The proportion of Americans who consider themselves members of a church, synagogue or mosque has dropped below 50 percent, according to a poll from Gallup released Monday. It is the first time that has happened since Gallup first asked the question in 1937, when church membership was 73 percent.

That’s both sad and scary to me.

I’ve not always been the most faithful in attendance, but it seems the older I get, the more I realize how important it is, and how meaningful the liturgy is to me. We attend the Episcopal church that my parents took us to when I was a kid, so I have strong sentimental attachments and memories there. It felt rather like coming home when my husband and I started going back to church on Sunday.

Religious services are simply not a priority for so many these days. In our congregation our average age is easily in the 60s-70s range. We have some young families, but not in overwhelming numbers, and those that are actually members don’t attend because they have soccer games or softball tournaments for their kids, or some other such activity that is always more important.

I’m not judging anyone, but I do wonder why events like that are scheduled for Sunday morning? I don’t recall that always being the case.

And with most things, politics causes a divide in religious congregations sometimes. Congregations wrestle with issues like sexual orientation and abortion, and try to determine where as a congregation we stand on these things? Are we a big umbrella welcoming all? Why is our Rector teaching a book written by a gay priest? (gasp!). Do we allow gay marriage or not? When does life begin? When does it end? How does it end? Does it end?

So many issues can bog us down. Faith is such a personal thing but also something we find strengthens in fellowship with others.

It seems to me in an ever more complex and confusing world, the only place I find peace and stillness is in the church. My head clears, my heart listens, and I find hope and clarity. It is my hope that as Holy Week and Easter begins to fill the pews, if only for a short time, at least a few people will also find this same peace and will continue to come back.

It sure couldn’t hurt anything. With the state of society these days, it sure could not hurt.

Pat Austin blogs at And So it Goes in Shreveport and at Medium; she is the author of Cane River Bohemia: Cammie Henry and her Circle at Melrose Plantation. Follow her on Instagram @patbecker25 and Twitter @paustin110.

It is available here a snippet:

I remain within, and love, the Catholic Church because it is a church that has lived and wrestled within the mystery of the shadow lands ever since an innocent man was arrested, sentenced and crucified, while the keeper of “the keys” denied him, and his first priests ran away. Through 2,000 imperfect — sometimes glorious, sometimes heinous — years, the church has contemplated and manifested the truth that dark and light, innocence and guilt, justice and injustice all share a kinship, one that waves back and forth like wind-stirred wheat in a field, churning toward something — as yet — unknowable.

The darkness within my church is real, and it has too often gone unaddressed. The light within my church is also real, and has too often gone unappreciated. A small minority has sinned, gravely, against too many. Another minority has assisted or saved the lives of millions.

To say that the whole thing should be read is the understatement of the year. She has gotten interesting comments, about which she says:

Speaking of which, the comments at NPR are interesting and a little amusing, to me. Scorn is so incredibly simple and simplistic, and faith is so incredibly hard, and yet somehow the “world” thinks it’s the other way around – that my faith is simplistic and unthinking, but scornful kneejerkism is profound and deep.

But scornful or faithful she welcomes comments.

BTW you might note we have been very Catholic this week, even more than normal, well this is Holy week and if there was ever a time for religion to be first, this is it.