Blogging Beyond Theocracy

Gut yom tov, merry Easter, and Ramadan kareem to all who celebrate, and at least some merriment to those who don't (I got to attend the extended family seder last night, for the first time in three years, and that's something to be grateful for), because we could all use some merriment right now, regardless of faith or lack thereof.

St. Conilius of Bologna, British Library Medieval, Add. 49622., via.  Just kidding. But the manuscript shelfmark is real.

The tradition of the Easter egg commemorates a miracle in the vita of the martyred Saint Conilius, deacon in a congregation of 5th-century Bononia, who found his family at the end of one Lent too poor for meat with which to break the fast, except a little bacon. He saw a fat hare in his garden, nibbling at the new ramps, and lunged for it—but as he was readying himself to break its neck he saw its eyes filling with tears, and bethought himself of the Blessed Virgin's suffering through the death of her Son on the Cross, and let the animal go. It scampered away, but not without pausing here and there in the bushes, where it miraculously laid a sequence of eggs about the size of duck's eggs and equally rich, in a rainbow of different colors. Conilius gathered up a dozen or so and brought them home, where he invented spaghetti alla carbonara.

Wrote this back in 2013, and reprinted the original post that contained it in 2015, and always felt it has not been sufficiently praised, possibly because it came at the end of the o.p. and nobody ever read that far, so this is a re-up of the 2017 version.

Of course it is an alternative fact, not true, or #fakenews, depending on your political opinions. It did not happen, nor has anybody other than me ever said it did. It is an inauthentic myth, as is the story circulating on Twitter:

Bafflement, Odium, and Blood

I dunno, in some Yellow families Dad's always around.

The secret masters who run the Deep Times, the esoteric newspaper in the subtext of the New York Times of which the profane catch a glimpse whenever Jeremy Peters is sent to eat breakfast with the Trump voters in an off-the-Interstate diner, had a job for the Op-Ed page for which David Brooks, remarkably enough, wasn't stupid enough.

A guest piece by somebody called Matthew Schmitz explaining to sophisticated Times readers why it is that white Christian Pennsylvanians and Michiganders think of President Trump as a moral role model, "Trump's 'Purple' Family Values". You may have seen the money sentence on the Internet somewhere in the last hours:

Baffling as it may be to elites, Mr. Trump embodies a real if imperfect model of family values.

Schmitz is a senior editor diplomatically representing the Roman Catholic faith at the evangelical theoblog-magazine First Things, where his most recent outing on his home turf was a heliotrope- and candle wax–scented review of Alfred Hitchcock's great Catholic film, maybe you weren't aware that's what it was, Vertigo (1958):

Curb your Pride

Gym bunnies, by Rabbids/Giphy.

In an astonishing and totally unexpected development it turns out that a substantial number of members, coaches, and staff members of an Indianapolis CrossFit affiliate gym, CrossFit Infiltrate, don't hate gay people! It's possible that some of them may even be gay themselves! So that, according to WTTV,

when a special workout planned by coaches at CrossFit Infiltrate in support of Indy Pride was cancelled by gym ownership[, i]n an email sent to members by gym management, it was explained that the event was cancelled because “the owners of the gym value health and wellness, and they believe that this event does not”

—they got upset, though the box's local owner, Brandon Lowe, tried to soothe them by explaining they weren't opposed to gay people, merely to pride, which is unhealthy:

Blogging Past Theocracy

St. Conilius of Bologna, Briish Library Medieval, Add. 49622., via.  Just kidding. But the manuscript shelfmark is real.

The tradition of the Easter egg commemorates a miracle in the vita of the martyred Saint Conilius, deacon in a congregation of 5th-century Bononia, who found his family at the end of one Lent too poor for meat with which to break the fast, except a little bacon. He saw a fat hare in his garden, nibbling at the new ramps, and lunged for it—but as he was readying himself to break its neck he saw its eyes filling with tears, and bethought himself of the Blessed Virgin's suffering through the death of her Son on the Cross, and let the animal go. It scampered away, but not without pausing here and there in the bushes, where it miraculously laid a sequence of eggs about the size of duck's eggs and equally rich, in a rainbow of different colors. Conilius gathered up a dozen or so and brought them home, where he invented spaghetti alla carbonara.

Wrote this back in 2013, and reprinted the original post that contained it in 2015, and always felt it has not been sufficiently praised, possibly because it came at the end of the o.p. and nobody ever read that far, so here I go again.

Of course it is an alternative fact, not true, or #fakenews, depending on your political opinions. It did not happen, nor has anybody other than me ever said it did. It is an inauthentic myth, as is the story circulating on Twitter:

Beleaguered, Battered, and Bewildered

Update: Welcome back MBRU readers, thanks as always Batocchio!

Eggs Benedict, via Wikipedia.

Monsignor Ross Douthat, apostolic nuncio to 42nd Street, rises "In Defense of the Religious Right"—that's the "beleaguered, battered, all-but-broken religious right" to you, but he's not defending them against the forces that broke them, the indifference to theological niceties of their own voters, who turn out to be more invested in xenophobia than in the man who hung out comfortably with the Samaritan woman at the well in spite of her foreign culture and her colorful sexual history (John 4:4-26); what he's defending them against is words, from those mean old liberals mocking the theocrats in their moment of grief and weakness:

Babalú!

Santería practice on church steps, image via Ghost Lounge.

Trump plays the Santería card on Ted Cruz!

"You gotta remember. In all fairness, to the best of my knowledge, not too many evangelicals come out of Cuba, OK? Just remember that, OK? Just remember," he told the crowd in Council Bluffs, Iowa. "When you're casting your ballot, remember."

No indeed! What kind of religion comes out of Cuba? Something they don't hear much about in Council Bluffs, I bet!

A Libertarian Easter

How conservatives really think about the Lord.

From the monumental OMFG Raptor Jesus by Benpadiah.

Via Chris Allen. Good post, too.

Drawing by A.F. Branco for The Liberty Alliance. This one apparently not meant ironically.

For a more serious approach, don't miss Tengrain and Vixen Blogging Against Theocracy.