Our Complicity In Evil

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher,

Jerusalem

Last week—Thursday, February 26,--arsonists set fire to the Greek Orthodox Seminary in  Jerusalem and wrote, in Hebrew, insulting remarks about Jesus on the walls. 

Over the last five years or so Israeli settlers who have moved in to occupy Palestinian villages have not only forced out the occupants, but vandalized Christian Churches, monasteries, and cemeteries.  Two years ago the monastery of the Sisters of Bethlehem was firebombed in a midnight attack, the perpetrators of which left graffiti on the outside walls saying “Price Tag,” “Death to Gentiles,” and “revenge” in Hebrew.  The same terms were painted on tombstones in the Greek Orthodox cemetery in Jaffa.  Israeli settlers vandalized the car of a Catholic human rights lawyer in Jerusalem. 

Vandals left graffiti—in Hebrew—stating that “Jesus is a monkey” on the walls of the Dormition Abbey, a Benedictine monastery that marks the traditional site of the death of the Virgin Mary.  “Jesus is a Son of a Bitch” and “Price Tag” had been sprayed on the Abbey’s walls the year before. 

“Price Tag” refers to a campaign initiated four years ago by Israeli settlers on Palestinian lands to intimidate Palestinians and other non-Israelis into leaving the Holy Land.  It refers to the “price” that Palestinians must pay for their opposition to the expansion of Israeli territory into the towns and villages which they have occupied from time immemorial. 

Now the Israelis want to extend their “security wall” into the Cremisan valley and then expropriate the land there that currently belongs to Palestinian Christians.  The mayor, Vera Baboun, met with Pope Francis to ask his help in preventing this land-grab. 

Why don’t we hear more about these atrocities?  CBS reporter Bob Simon who died last month in an automobile crash in New York did a story back in 2012 on the plight of Palestinian Christians.  Then Israeli ambassador Michael Oren put pressure on CBS to squelch the story before it was even completed.  Simon recalled the incident:

According to Israeli government figures, tourism is a multi billion dollar business there. Most tourists are Christian. Many of them are American. That’s one reason why Israelis are very sensitive about their image in the United States. And that could be why Ambassador Oren phoned Jeff Fager, the head of CBS News and executive producer of 60 Minutes, while we were still reporting the story, long before tonight’s broadcast.  

 Don’t misunderstand me.  I have been to Israel four times.  It is an amazing country.  The Israelis have made the desert bloom.  But there is also tremendous human suffering there, a suffering that former President Jimmy Carter compared to the Apartheid of South Africa until its termination in 1994.  Had Mr. Carter wanted to hit closer to home he could have compared it to the plight of African-Americans in Mississippi or Alabama in the first half of the twentieth century.  The Palestinian peoples who are descended from the biblical inhabitants of Canaan and lived there through the kingships of David and Solomon, through the invasion of the Assyrians, who remained in the land when the Jews were taken to Babylon and when they returned, who survived Alexander and his Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, and the Arab invasion of 636 as well as the Turks in the 12^th century, are now being driven out—Christian and Muslim alike—by policies that want to purge the land of all who are not Jews. 

Today the Master Builder of this racist theocracy is addressing the United States Congress as the invited guest of Speaker Boehner.  I am not in favor of denying any one Holy Communion, but if I could make an argument that the Eucharist should be withheld from any Christian, it would be for John Boehner’s betrayal of his Palestinian brother and sister Christians.  Don’t misunderstand me, Prime Minister Netanyahu is not personally interested in driving all non-Jews from the land of Eretz Yisrael.  I would have some respect—profound disagreement but still respect—for him if this was a matter of something in which he truly believed.  But the Prime Minister, to keep his Likud party in power, courts support from those nationalist and those ultra-orthodox parties and individuals who want to make Israel 100% an Orthodox theocracy.  (note: not all ultra-orthodox wish to make Israel a theocracy; there are many who believe that the political questions need await the Messiah who will decide. And, of course, the majority of Israelis are secular Jews who have abandoned the idea that the land is theirs by a “divine right.”)  Tragically our own nation has involved itself in Israel’s racist agenda by our unqualified support for Israel both politically and militarily.  It is time that we reexamine our policies toward Israel and come to a more balanced and just stance. 

The Ancient Roots of The Palestinian Problem

Interior of a Palestinian Christian

home in the mid-19th century

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that he plans to promote legislation that will constitutionally establish the country’s status as the nation-state of the Jewish people.  This will effectively scuttle the two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and it plays into the favor of those Orthodox extremists who, believing that the Land of Israel was given by God to the Jewish People and exclusively for the Jewish People, want non-Jews to be expelled because their presence defiles the sacredness of the land given them by God.  (It needs to be clarified that not all Orthodox Jews favor the establishment of a Jewish State as they believe that only the awaited Messiah has the divine authority to restore Israel.)  

The posting that I did recently on Rabbi Steven Pruzansky of Teaneck New Jersey and his suggestion to relocate the Muslim Noble Sanctuary from Jerusalem’s Temple Mount to “Saudi Arabia, Syria or wherever it is wanted” as well as his encouragement to push the Arab/Palestinian population from Israel/Palestine is symptomatic of this sort of thinking.  After all, it makes sense—the Arabs are latecomers to the Promised Land.  What claim do they have to live in this land that God promised to Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, and gave to Joshua and the children of Israel more than 3200 years ago?

There is some confusion about the Palestinian people and that leads to this racist misconception.  We call them Arabs because they speak Arabic, but their ethnic identity is a bit more complex.

There were native Syrian peoples living in the lands that today are called Israel and Palestine more than 12,000 years ago.  They began as nomadic tribes with their domesticated sheep and goats, but gradually settled down on the rich soil and began raising crops. Like other peoples in the “Fertile Crescent”—that geographic strip that runs northward from Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the East and then crescents south along the coast to Egypt, there was a flourishing civilization in the region some six millennia or more ago.  At this time—c.4000 BC—various tribes such as the Jebusites, Hittites, and Amorites migrated into the land and established their own settlements side by side with those already there. These people are often referred to as “Canaanites” but that term can mislead us to think of them as a single homogenous people. In fact, these various peoples tended to have distinct settlements with a minimal amount of inter-marriage except among the ruling class where inter-tribal marriage forged political alliances.  While they may have borrowed various cultural elements from one another and even borrowed the worship of various gods, they tended to remain distinct from one another with their own rulers and socio/legal traditions. 

Sometime around 2300 BC the Phoenician peoples made settlements along the coast.  Through this period these people tended to be even more unique than the various Cannanite tribes and the Phoenicians, being a sea-going people, branched out westwards into the Mediterranean establishing trading posts and colonies in what is today Sicily, North Africa, and Spain. 

The Israelite exodus from Egypt and their entrance into the land is usually dated between 1250 and 1200 BC.  The Israelites found the land already occupied by the aforementioned peoples but throughout the period of the Judges gradually carved out territories for themselves where they established their own towns and villages.  One of the chief concerns of the Judges, of Kings Saul, David, and Solomon, and later of the Prophets, was to prevent cultural assimilation with their non-Israelite neighbors and maintain their distinct tradition, Law, and religion.  This met with mixed success as we see with the infidelities of David and Solomon as well as the criticisms of the later kings for idolatrous practices by the prophets. 

The Israelites were not the last people into the land.  Only a generation after the Children of Israel entered the land of Canaan, the Philistines came and established settlements along the seacoast.  A century later the Arameans came in. 

The Assyrians, the Babylonians, and then the Persians invaded the land in 722, 587, and 540 BC respectively.  The difference with these invasions is that the invaders came to conquer but not to settle, and so they did not leave the imprint on the ethnic makeup of the land that the various settling peoples had.  The Greeks under Alexander the Great would be the next invaders in 333 BC.  They were followed by a small but not insignificant Armenian invasion around 100 BC.  In 63 BC the Romans annexed the land as a “client kingdom” under the Hasmonean dynasty until Herod Archelaus, son of Herod the Great, ruled so badly the kingdom was taken from him and formed into the Roman Province of Iudaea. 

During the period of Greek domination under the rule of the Antiochean Seleucid Kings who ruled the land after the death of Alexander the Great, the policy had been to homogenize the diverse peoples, cultures, and religions of the land into a single Greek culture.  While most of the various peoples dwelling in Syria/Palestine/Judea acceded to this plan and began to cede their unique cultural identities, the Jews, under the leadership of the Macabees, resisted this Hellenization and did so to the point of martyrdom. 

Mark 7:26 has an interesting description of a woman as “Greek, a Syro- Phoenician by nation.”  This indicates that while there was a certain amount of assimilation, particular ethnic identities survived.  One group that was distinct that we have not yet mentioned are the Samaritans.  The Samaritans were Israelites who never accepted the hegemony of the Temple at Jerusalem but had (and have today) their own Temple on Mount Gerizim in what is today Israel.   They were regarded as heretics by the Jews for whom the Temple at Jerusalem was the only place where sacrifice was to be offered.   The Samaritans, a small community today, have retained their distinct ethnic identity to the present day. 

the Jews were expelled from the land of Judea after the failure of the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 135 AD.  While small groups were able to remain in the Galilee, most of what is today Israel remained without Jewish inhabitants until the late 19^th century and the Zionist movement which encouraged Jews to return to the ancient land they claim as their patrimony. 

Under Roman Rule the remaining population continued to homogenize and as the Roman Empire gradually slid into its Byzantine Identity in the fourth and fifth centuries, Christianity gave an even more unifying force to the once distinct peoples.  Christianity was not totally unifying, however, as the segment of the population that was descended from the various Canaanite peoples and who tended more to be rural, followed the West Syrian liturgy known as the Liturgy of Saint James, while the Byzantines—townsfolk and predominately descendants of the Greeks and the Romans—followed the Greek Rite that would come to be called the Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom.  The Armenians retained their distinct identity with their own liturgical rites as well as some basic doctrinal differences with both the Greeks and the Syriacs. 

In the seventh century, invaders came up from the Arabian Peninsula bringing Islam.  While they seized control of the land from the Emperor at Constantinople, they did not force either Islam or the Arabic language on the local population.  Indeed the native population remained overwhelmingly Christian for centuries and Aramaic, the common language of the land in the time of Jesus, remained the ordinary language of most of the population. 

What one had then in the land was a base population that was, except for pockets of Druze and Samaritan minorities, predominately Christian divided into their different villages according to their specific liturgical/ethnic peculiarities: Syrian, Melkite (Greek), Armenian, Maronite and with an Arab Muslim ruling class.  During the period of the Umayyad Caliphate at Damascus, Christians often held key administrative posts.  The father of Saint John Damascene, for example, was a court official of the Caliph. 

Non-Muslims were free to practice their religion but they did have to pay an extra tax, the jizya.  This tax was an exemption from serving in the military, participation in which was limited to Muslims.  Over a period of time, of centuries, more and more of the population converted to Islam, in part to avoid this tax.  Nevertheless, at the time of Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, almost half of the Palestinian population, descendants of these Greek-Syriac peoples who themselves were descended—at least in part—from the ancient Canaanite peoples—were still Christian.  They were about half Greek Orthodox, with the other half divided between Roman Catholics and Melkite (Byzantine) Catholics.  There were also significant Armenian and Syriac Orthodox communities and a smaller Coptic Christian community.  As the situation in Israel made life more and more intolerable for the Palestinian peoples, many emigrated to the United States, to Canada, to Australia and to other parts of the world where they would not suffer the limits of freedom and opportunity imposed on them by the unabashedly apartheid policies of the State of Israel.  The Christians, being mostly townspeople and merchants, have found it easier to emigrate than the Muslims who, being predominately farmers, are more closely tied to the land and orchards their families have operated for centuries and which are now being confiscated and turned into “settlements” for the refugees that have flooded Israel from Russia and other Eastern European countries.  

When Religion Goes Rogue



Mosaic in the Church of the

Holy Sepulcher, Jerusalem

Pope Francis goes to the Holy Land next week and the welcome is not universal.  Over the past several weeks a number of Christian churches have been vandalized by ultra-orthodox Jews in protest of the Pope’s visit.  While the majority of Israel’s Jews are highly secularized, there is a small minority that, due to the idiosyncrasies of Israel’s parliamentary constitution, wield disproportionate power over the Israeli government.  The plurality of political parties in Israel almost always ensures that no one party has sufficient support in Parliament to govern without bringing the small ultra-orthodox political factions into a coalition government in order to have the number of votes in the Knesset to insure its policies can pass.  By threatening to withdraw from such coalitions, the small orthodox groups can pressure the larger secular parties to take positions that impose Jewish theological perspectives on the larger and secularized society. 

One of the positions held by Orthodox—and some not-so-orthodox—Jews is that the land is theirs by the gift of God and that they have an absolute right to it.  This compromises the safety of non-Jews in Israel.  Orthodox Jews have gone with impunity onto lands held for centuries by Palestinian farmers and uprooted their olive groves, devastated their farms, and demolished their homes to build new settlements for Jewish settlers.  Since the land belongs by right to the Jews (to whom God allegedly gave it) Muslims and Christians have no right to it and it can be taken away from them at any time. 

In anticipation of the Pope’s visit some ultra-Orthodox have, not unlike cats pissing in corners to mark their territory, taken to spray-painting hostile messages and otherwise defacing Christian Churches including some of the most sacred shrines of the Christian faith. 

The historical facts of the matter are that the Palestinian people are the descendants of the ancient Syro-Phoenician Canaanite peoples who inhabited the land at the time of the Exodus and from whom much of the land was taken in the times of the Judges and of Kings Saul and David.  These people, along with the Greek settlers who came there about three centuries before Jesus converted to Christianity in the Byzantine period and a significant number of them converted to Islam between the seventh and the twelfth centuries.  As late as the time of the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 about half of the Palestinians were still Christians.  As the majority of the Christian Palestinians were merchants and townspeople it was easier for those in Israel, and after 1967 those in the West Bank and Gaza, to sell their businesses and emigrate in order to escape the apartheid policies of Israel that discriminate against them, than it was for the Muslim Palestinians who were, by and large, tied to the land by their farms, orchards, and groves.  Nowadays, only about ten percent of the Palestinians who remain are Christians.  The plight of the Palestinians in the West Bank or in Gaza, Muslim or Christians, is desperate as more and more land is confiscated for Israeli “settlements.”  

The visit of a Pope to the Holy Land always shines a bit of a spotlight on the plight of the Palestinians—especially the Christians—and this makes the Israeli government very uncomfortable as their racist policies are exposed for the world to see.  But for the ultra-Orthodox the visit of such a prominent Christian leader is not so much an embarrassment as it is a sacrilege that a gentile is allowed not only to tread the land given to them by God, but to offer worship where God should be honored only by his own people and according to the rites he established for them in the sacred books.  But such fanatical views are not restricted to ultra-Orthodox Jews.

I noticed in one of the Katholic Krazy blogs a few days ago a complaint about Buddhist and Shinto worship being allowed in the Cathedral of Saint James in Compostella and how this “desecrated” the shrine.  Christian worship being offered in Jerusalem would have just the same stigma in the minds of the more extreme Orthodox Jews.  I think this highlights the danger of religious extremism whether by Muslims or Jews or Christians.  Religion, for too many people, has become an end it itself—and the supreme end of life.  They confuse their love for religion—with its ceremonies and dogmas and regulations—with the Love for God.  They take the created reality of religion and it becomes their god.  Jesus in his day had issues with both the Temple cult and the Pharisaic interpretation of the Law over this very thing. In this idolatry religion becomes more important than the believer; the cult more important than the person.  At least in Christianity this can never be allowed to be.  The Sabbath is made of us, not us for the Sabbath.  The Dalai Lama—who I admit does not share in the magisterial office of the Church (but who is a much more authentic teacher than many who do)—admonishes us that “the aim and purpose of religion is cure the pains and unhappiness of the human mind.”  He later expands this idea: “Finally, I would like to point out that the purpose of religion is not to build beautiful churches or temples; it is to cultivate positive human qualities such as tolerance, generosity, and love.  Fundamental to Buddhism and Christianity, indeed to every major world religion, is the belief that we must reduce our selfishness and save others.”  While this teaching come from a most eminent Buddhist teacher, it is totally consistent with the Gospel which Jesus entrusted to his Church. 

The greatest possession of the Church is not itself, it is the Gospel which Christ entrusted to it.  I think we too often forget that.  Too often he Gospel is something we have encased between golden covers to carry high overhead and then to sonorously proclaim as we surround it with candles and swing a censer rather than be the living message that transforms our lives.  If there is one thing that this blog is dedicated to making manifest is that the Church is most authentically the Church of Jesus Christ not when it is absorbed in its own religiosity but  when its members are focused on putting the Gospel of Christ into practice in our lives.  And if there is one thing I hope to expose is that obsession with its own power and majesty that is the greatest threat to the fidelity of the Church to its Lord.

Church Under Attack In Holy Land

Christian clergy examine Church property destroyed

by Jerusalem Municipality

The municipality of Jerusalem has launched an attack on Arab held property in the “Old City” of Jerusalem including property held by the Roman Catholic Church.  According to reports, this past Monday bulldozers came and razed a house owned by the Latin Patriarchate and inhabited by an Arab Catholic family.  Patriarch Fuad Tawwal, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Jerusalem, came to inspect the ruins of the house and told journalists: "This act is against the law, against justice and against humanity, against any ideology upon which peace can be built and increases segregation and hate."  The Israeli government spokesperson claimed that the house had been built illegally without proper permits but Archbishop Tawwal pointed out that, in fact, the house had been built prior to the 1967 invasion of the Old City when control of the area passed from Jordan to Israel.  Archbishop Tawwal said that both the Israeli government and the Jerusalem municipal officials knew that the house belonged to the Church and that this demolition was an attack on the Church and its property. 
Many Americans are very naïve as to the complexities of the Palestinian situation.  Before the 1948 creation of the State of Israel, when the Holy Land was in the British Protectorate of Palestine—and even before that when it was part of the Ottoman Empire—the Palestinian population was approximately evenly divided between Christians and Muslims.  The Christians were Greek Orthodox, Melkite Catholic, or Roman Catholic.  (The Melkite Church is a Byzantine Rite Church in Union with the Holy See.)  Christians tended to be merchants and professional people living in the cities and towns; Muslims tended to be more farmers living in the rural areas.  After 1948 the State of Israel made living conditions very difficult for the Palestinian population, giving them disproportionately low representation in the Israeli Knesset (Parliament), as well as funneling government money for urban development, schools, recreational areas, and hospitals to the Jewish settlements and mostly ignoring the Palestinians.  Former President Jimmy Carter compared the treatment of Palestinians in Israel to the situation of Africans in South Africa under apartheid.  One could not even call the Palestinians “second-class” citizens as they were excluded from the tremendous economic development the Israelis have been able to achieve.  Water was cut off from their lands to irrigate the orchards and fields of Israeli farmers; schools were ramshackle affairs without books or the basic educational needs, children had no place to play or exercise but in the streets. 
The Israelis were Jews who had in the late nineteenth century begun to migrate back to Palestine from the Russian, Austrian, and German empires where they often suffered discrimination at best and too often bloody pogroms aiming for their elimination.  The horrors of the Nazi Holocaust convinced the world that the Jews needed a “homeland” where they could be secure from further attempts to wipe them out and in the years after the Second World War, the British protectorate of Palestine was flooded with Jewish refugees who came as settlers.  They had to fight a dual war to establish their homeland—a war against the British for independence and a war against the Palestinian peoples for control of the land.  
The Palestinian people, while called “Arabs,” are not the descendent of the Arab invaders who conquered the Holy Land from the Byzantine Empire in the seventh century, but are descendants of the ancient Syrian, Canaanite, Phoenician, Greek and Roman people who inhabited the land from antiquity.  At the time of the Islamic conquest, these people were Christian and a significant number of the population, approximately half, remained Christian until the mid-twentieth century.  As their life deteriorated under Israeli government, many opted to emigrate to the United States, to Canada, Australia and other nations.  It was easier for the urban population—mostly Christian—to sell homes and shops and to leave than it was for those who livelihood was on the land—mostly Muslim.  Today less than 10% of the Palestinian people who remain are Christians, but the Church is still a significant presence in the Holy Land as Christians—and Catholics in particular—support hospitals, schools, and even a University in the Palestinian territories. 
Political pressure on the Israeli government from religious extremists in the ultra-Orthodox factions of society has caused the government to continue to harass the Palestinian people in hopes of forcing them to leave Israel.  The ultra-Orthodox want the land entirely for Jews and believe that this is God’s destiny for this ancient land which God “gave” their ancestors.  The Catholic Church (along with the Orthodox) is very concerned about the future of an Israel without the historic presence of its Christian peoples.  There is fear for the survival of the shrines connected with the life of Our Lord, but there is also a concern for the people themselves to maintain their culture and faith in this hostile environment.  For political reasons in our own country, the United States, news about the plight of Palestinians, and in particular Palestinian Christians, is often embargoed.  If American Christians knew the truth about the injustices foisted on the Palestinians and the infringement on the religious freedom of Christians in the Holy Land, the political pressure on our government to review its Israel policy would be to Israel’s grave disadvantage. 

I would suggest you might look to the Holy Land Ecumenical Foundation (http://www.hcef.org/) for more information about the plight of Palestinian Christians, both Catholic and Orthodox. 

 

True and False Religion

Model of the Second Temple, Israel Museum,

Jerusalem

I was struck reading Morning Prayer today by the words of Azariah in the Canticle from the Book of Daniel. 

For we are reduced, O Lord, beyond any other nation,
brought low everywhere in the world this day
because of our sins.

We have in our day no prince, prophet, or leader,
no holocaust, sacrifice, oblation, or incense,
no place to offer first fruits, to find favor with you.

But with contrite heart and humble spirit
let us be received;
as though it were holocausts of rams and bullocks,
or thousands of fat lambs,
so let our sacrifice be in your presence today
as we follow you unreservedly;
for those who trust in you cannot be put to shame.

And now we follow you with our whole heart,
we fear you and we pray to you.

The context is, of course, the time of the Babylonian Exile.  In the all-but- abandoned City of Jerusalem, the Temple of the Lord sat in ruins.  There was no sacrifice, no evening offering of incense.  Indeed the Cult had come to a halt—how was God to be served when no sacrifices could be offered?  And the lament of Azariah over this tragedy led to the great breakthrough in our Jewish/Christian tradition.  “Let us be received with contrite heart and humbled spirit”—this is the true sacrifice.  What use does God have for bulls and goats—and should he want them, the hills are covered with them and they are his for the taking (cf psalm 50: 8-13). The time of the Exile was a “Dark Night of the Soul” for Israel where they were taught by God what he truly wants: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; setting free the oppressed, breaking off every yoke.  (Isaiah 58:6) 
I bring this up because of an article I read yesterday about aggressive plans being made by certain factions tied to the Netanyahu Government to seize the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in order to build a “Third Temple. (The first was the Temple of Solomon; the Second Temple was the Temple that stood in Jesus’ day.)  There is a strong desire in certain factions of moderate Orthodox Judaism to rebuild the Temple and restore the Cult.  The Ultra-Orthodox say that the Temple cannot be rebuilt and the sacrifices reinstituted until the Messiah comes and sorts things out. The Conservative and Reform branches of Judaism do not seem to have much interest in restoring the sacrificial rituals.   But that is not what I am writing about—nor, for that matter, is the rebuilding of the Temple and the restoring of the Cult.  Though I do want to bring up the issue, before I move on to my main point, of how can people be anxious to restore Cultic Worship when, at the same time, they see themselves as having a right to seize farms and groves and houses from the Palestinian people who have lived on this land since the time before Joshua brought the Children of Israel into the Land of Canaan approximately thirteen centuries before Christ? Though, again this being a history blog, it would be more accurate to speak of a series of migrations from the fifteenth through the twelfth centuries Before the Common Era (1499-1100 BC) than a single “Exodus.”  What is the point of building a Temple or sacrificing bulls and goats if one does not honor the commandments of God?  That was the message of the prophets as distinguished from the priests who supported the Cult qua Cult.  Jesus, of course—at least from the Christian understanding—reinforced this prophetic tradition that what God wants is mercy, not sacrifice (cf Matthew 9:13). 
Now let’s bring this over to issues that face us as Catholics today.  We too have people for whom everything is the Cult and for whom the greater commands mean little or even nothing.  They worry about issues such as using glass chalices or home-made breads for the Eucharist but want illegal immigrants rounded up and “shipped home.”  They want to deny those whom they deem unworthy Holy Communion but they support economic policies that leave the poor without access to health care or a chance for higher education.  They want to bend the knee to receive Christ in Eucharist while kneeling but they don’t bend their hearts to Christ in the least of his brothers and sisters. The women veil their heads but their hearts remain hardened and stiff.  The men put pro-life bumper stickers defending the unborn alongside NRA stickers and don’t see the contradiction.  The children are shielded not only from sex-education but from meeting their peers who are Black or Hispanic or Asian.  They want Mass in a language few if any understand because, “God-forbid we understand the Word of the Lord: we may have to change our attitudes.”   It is all magical mystical mumbo-jumbo that gives them a sense of otherworldliness when what Christ calls us to is change—deep, personal, change-of-heart change—in this world and in this life.  One might belong to the True Church but still have false religion.