Easter weekend! This is supposed to be one of the holiest times of the year for the Christian world. It is a weekend that we are supposed to reflect on a man that sacrificed everything so our sins could be forgiven. This religious holiday has changed more than any other during my lifetime. When I was a young boy I always used to get new clothes and shoes for Easter. The shoes were always bought a little big because I was still growing and my parents wanted them to last a while. Good Friday, every business would close between noon and three so everyone could go to church. Easter Sunday was a day that pretty much every business was shut down. It was a day we all put on our Sunday best that our parents just bought along with a clip-on tie and those oversized shoes. It was a day for Church, Easter Dinner and Family.

Sixty years later times have really changed. Oh we still have Good Friday but none of the businesses close from noon to three. Easter Sunday is one of the bigger shopping days of the year where we begin to prepare our yards for the summer season. Lowes, Menards, and Home Depot will be busy places. Sure a lot of people will still go to church but I would be willing to bet that more will be at the big garden centers than at church. Sometimes I miss those times were the world would just slow down to give us time to reflect but I am afraid that those days are long gone. Why are they gone? One word, MONEY!

I lost my faith a long time ago and I reflect about why at times like this. When I grew up the Church was all about love at least that was what I was told. The Church was about saving souls and not condemning them. Judge Not least yea be judged. I slowly figured out that what the Church was very much about: judging. The White Anglo-Saxon church of the South was all about judging. They judged a whole race of people as inferior and not worthy of God’s or Jesus’s love. Look back at the 60s. Those were White Christians at the Bloody Bridge outside of Selma Alabama beating Black Marchers. Look at the hate on their faces. Those were White Christians that bombed the Church in Birmingham, Alabama that killed those four young girls in 1963. Many Black Churches were set on fire or bombed during the 60s meant to intimidate Black Christians involved with the Civil Right Movement. I always remember that the KKK was a White Christian organization.

The 70s brought more Church burnings. Even though two Civil Rights Bills had been signed by President Johnson, one in 1964 and one in 1968, the hate, death and burnings continued into the 70s. I guess you just can’t legislate away the hate that the White Christians brought to the American public. In other parts of the world Christianity was under attack in most Communist Counties. Was that what drove some of the hatred that we had against communism, that they were run by atheists? Now we can’t have that. I agree that Communism was not a good form of government but not because they were run by atheists. It took too many freedoms away with free speech being one of them. Some of those are the very freedoms that the church would also take away. The cold war dominated the 70s but so did the racial hate that spilled over from the 60s.

Every decade of my life and being born in 1953 I am in my eighth decade I have witness the riots of hated. I slowly began to realize that this country was not a country of Christian love. It seems like if we don’t have something to hate we are not happy. I have watched people of color demonized by much of the conservative media. As a country I think that we have gone backwards and not forward in the ways to treat our neighbors. The Church has not taken a side in a war for over 100 years. Is that the problem? They are so busy working for the humanity of all that they wind up working for the humanity of none? Is it because the church officially does not take a side in war has it been responsible for the exterminating of 6 million Jews. Jesus was suppose to be the Prince of Peace. When that person was being stoned he did not sit on the sideline not taking a side. He stepped in and stopped it. He was just one man. The church is millions and millions of people. What would happen if they really stepped in and tried to stop all the violence and discrimination in this world?

Today much of the Church and the so called good members of the Church are finding new things to hate. Today the Gay and Lesbian community is under attack. I look at the life of Jesus and his twelve Disciples who were all men and they were very devoted to not only Jesus but to each other. That does sound kind of gay doesn’t it? I am not saying that there was anything wrong going on but what I am saying is that it is a great example of people of the same sex having a great deal of love and devotion to one another. Love. That is what they all shared. Women’s rights and freedoms are under attack when one of Jesus’s closest confidants was a woman. Children’s safety is under attack when Jesus said suffer the children not. I have read a report that in Maryland alone 600 children have been molested by priest in the last 60 years. We are a society that chooses guns over children. People seeking asylum are under attack when Jesus himself was an asylum seeker. The poor that Jesus walked among are now demonized and have been tried to be hidden away. The very people that Jesus chased away from the Temple, the money changes and the merchants that would turn the Temple into a den of thieves are now treated almost like gods themselves because they have the money which gives them the power. These are the things that have caused me to turn my back on the church.

I was reading a book by one of my favorite authors, one of the characters in the book was a mobster that went to confession once a week to be forgiven of his sins. This meant the rest of the week he could commit all the sins he wanted to. I kind of chucked at that because I had actually heard of that before. Sin with no consequences as long as it was confessed. That is not the lesson that I thought that Jesus was teaching. I had read once that the Catholic Church assisted in the escape of Nazi War criminals as long as they confessed their sins. I don’t know how real that is but I hope that it isn’t. There has to be some type of accountability before there can be forgiveness but I could be wrong,

Even though I have turned my back on the teachings of the Church doesn’t mean that I have turned my back on the teachings of Jesus. We have been lied to so much by the church that I don’t know what is real and what isn’t so I just think about his word. I will always admit that his words were so powerful that they are remembered to this day. His words are so powerful that they inspired a whole religion. Was he the Son of God? I don’t know and I don’t care. His words were ones that taught us how we should live and how we should treat one another. I feel that if more people thought about his words and less about the church we would begin to solve many of our problems. I feel that those are the words and lessons that the Church has turned it backs on.

I have known a few Christians that I really admired. One was my mother-In-law. She worked in the rectory and even hired a homeless man to paint her house. To me she was always walking the walk. My two sons were not her grandchildren but she always treated then as they were. I remember when my youngest ran away from home. Where did he run? To my mother in-law’s house. She always knew what to do. She was a good lady that tried. This Easter I will think about her and what she inspired.