Easter Thoughts

Happy Bunny Day! May your life be full of Easter Eggs! Have you ever wondered what bunnies and eggs have to do with each other? Shouldn't it be a chicken who delivers eggs? I suppose you could stretch the concept and settle for a tortise. I must admit though that the term "Easter Chicken" does not quite have the ring of "Easter Bunny."

Did you also know there are NO Easter Eggs in Windows XP? Something to do with its use by various governmental agencies. Hence a prohibition against anything that could be viewed as a security risk. However, other operating systems have been used by govenmental agencies, and they have said binary spheroids. Sooooo?

"The big shocker, for Catholics and non-Catholics alike, has been not so much the abuse itself -- awful and heart-breaking though it is -- as the coldly bureaucratic "handling" of it by heirarchs like Law and the current Archbishop of New York, Edward Cardinal Egan, who faced yet another such scandal for several years when he was Bishop of Bridgeport, Connecticut.

The anger of Catholic commentators has been astonishing. One of many who have weighted in wrote, 'The resignation-in-disgrace of Cardinal Law would be meaningful only in the context of an equivalent resignation my John Paul II, of whose antireform policies -- closed, secretive, dishonest, totalitarian -- Cardinal Law is a mere functionary.'

And another: 'The crisis in the Catholic Church lies not with the fraction of priests who molest youngsters but in an ecclesiastical power structure that harbors pedophiles, conceals other sexual behavior patters among it clerics, and use strategbies of duplicity and coutnerattack against the victims.' "

Although I was brought up in Catholicism, I left the church in college. In my junior year, the tone of the local church was one of moderation toward issues of morality. But the next year, the mood was far more strident. Between the two years, there had been a change in the personnel, and I realized the shift in attitude was a reflection of the personalities, more than any inherent movement in church dogma. Although closeted at the time, I also concluded there was no legitimate place for me there as a gay man.

Yet, here it is years later. And the church appears to have made little progress. In a way, it may be far worse because of the ultra conservatism of the current Papacy. Over the length of his tenure, John Paul II has stacked the College of Cardinals with men like himself. So even with his demise, it is highly unlikely that the philosophy will vary.

There is a saying in Ireland, "Once a Catholic, always a Catholic." So even though you may leave, you are still regarded as a member of the fold. Albeit, a very lapsed one. Several years ago, CBS ran a program about a flawed priest and a disfunctional parish called "Nothing Sacred." Truth be known, at first I watched because of the actor playing the priest. But then I found myself drawn to the story and to some of the liturgical language. By no means was this a "soft" view of the Church, nor was the priest without fault. But it was a humane, tempered view of a troubled institution. Of course, some were outraged by its depictions, and the network cancelled it. I've read that one of the unseen episodes involved a priest who was HIV+.

Even though I've moved from Catholcism to Episcopalianism, I can not say that I feel any more connected. Part of this, I'm sure is due to my feelings of disconnected in general. And indifference to almost all institutions. It may be that I'm far too much on isolate, or too contrary, to view myself as being linked to any group.

PAX!