Good morning.
Christmas in Whitewater will see a morning dusting of snow on a cloudy day with a high of thirty-nine. Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:26 PM, for 9h 02m 26s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 88.4% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the seven hundred seventy-sixth day.
On this day in 1914, a series of informal ceasefires, now known collectively as the Christmas Truce, begin along the Western Front in the First World War.
Recommended for reading in full:
Jason Horowitz reports Pope Francis, in Christmas Message, Emphasizes ‘Fraternity’:
ROME — As nationalist forces rise globally and populist leaders emphasize the primacy of their own people, Pope Francis used his annual Christmas Day address on Tuesday to voice his conviction that all humans are part of an extended holy family that has lost its sense of fraternity.
“My wish for a happy Christmas is a wish for fraternity,” Francis, 82, said during his “Urbi et Orbi” (“To the City and to the World”) benediction from a balcony above St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City.
“Fraternity among individuals of every nation and culture. Fraternity among people with different ideas, yet capable of respecting and listening to one another. Fraternity among persons of different religions.”
He added, “Our differences, then, are not a detriment or a danger; they are a source of richness.”
The pope, who has been an ardent defender migrants in a period when speaking in their defense has largely fallen out of fashion, specifically addressed the scars of war in Africa, where “millions of persons are refugees or displaced and in need of humanitarian assistance and food security.”
Ruby Mellen describes What Christmas traditions look like around the world:
For some Venezuelans, it’s important to get to Christmas Eve Mass in style. That’s why they strap on roller skates and barrel down the streets to church.
It’s not clear how this tradition started, but some say it’s a warm-weather alternative to sledding or ice skating. It’s so popular in the heavily Christian country that the government has closed down streets in the past to ensure families can skate safely.
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For many people, Christmas calls to mind roasted ham, eggnog and green bean casseroles. But in Japan, the menu is often centered on one food: Kentucky Fried Chicken. More than 3 million people each year celebrate the holiday with KFC. It’s gotten so popular that families have taken to ordering from the American fast-food chain weeks in advance to avoid having to stand in line for hours come Christmas.
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For centuries, Christmas in Norway was thought to coincide with the arrival of evil spirits and witches. Families still hide brooms during Christmas to keep witches from flying off with them.
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Possibly the most terrifying Christmas tradition is in Austria, Germany and other parts of Central Europe, where revelers dress up like a hybrid demon-goat called Krampus who scares children into being nice — and punishes the ones who refuse.
I am a fan of the pope’s “crusade” to restructure some of the Catholic church’s excesses. His restoration of at least a semblance of humility to the Catholic clergy is a welcome change from B-16 and JP-2. He has laid some serious wood on the Vatican Bank, the deceptively named “Institute for the Works of Religion”, which was essentially a Mafia money laundering operation.
That is all good, but is really nibbling at the edges of the paramount problem that the Catholic church faces, which is how to atone for centuries of institutionally ingrained pedophilia. Happy sermons about “Fraternity” on Christmas do nothing to deal with this issue.
Pedophilia is not unknown in other religions, most of them insular. Mormons and Amish have long had this sort of problem, as have many other Jim-Jones-like fundamentalist sects. The Catholic Church is not some off-brand polygamist cult living somewhere in the nether regions of Northeast Nevada, though. The Roman Catholic Church comprises half of the Christians on the planet. That makes it an enormous problem. The Church estimates that 5% of their priests are pedophiles. That is certainly looking like a very low-ball estimate, judging from recent news. It’s not just a problem in the US and the developed world, but also all over the planet. The scope is enormous, and is impossible to put off as merely coincidental. It is becoming clear, with each bankrupted diocese, that the Catholic church clergy operate in an organization specifically structured to enable, and cover-up, their pedophillic excesses. A cold-eyed look can come to no other conclusion.
F-1’s problem, despite his best intents (and I don’t doubt them), is that there is no way he can fix the problem without blowing up the religion. If those that knew, those that enabled, those that covered-up, and those who did the deeds were excommunicated, there would not be much left of the Catholic clergy. The concept that there were only a few “bad-apples” that operated in secret strains credulity to the snapping point. F-1’s third in command just got popped. B-16’s own brother was a boy-choir pervie. This goes all the way to the top of the Catholic church hierarchy.
The Catholic church’s dilemma mirrors, in a strange way, what is going on the the Republican Party. If the Catholic church divests itself of it’s pedophiles, it will no longer exist. If the Republican Party divests itself of it’s racists, it will no longer exist, either.
Neither problem is tractable.
Educated, progressive evangelical Elizabeth Bruenig (who writes on religion at politics at the Post) wrote about the Church’s present condition a few days ago in The Catholic Church scandal casts a shadow over the season. But Christmas is a time for hope. It’s notable that she offers no program of change; she’s educated in religious studies (Brandeis University, BA in English & sociology; University of Cambridge, Jesus College, MPhil in Christian theology; Brown University, PhD candidate in religion, incomplete) and so if she had a proposal, she’d surely offer it.
(Accidentally omitted from my original reply: Bruenig’s story on sexual assault in a small town, Twelve years ago, Amber Wyatt reported her rape. Few believed her. Her hometown turned against her. The authorities failed her, is an stark account of the darkness of sexual assault in a rural context.)
The problem of intractability, so to speak, is a true problem – first for people who are injured (the most important matter), and second (less important but still meaningful) as an impediment to advocacy on other issues.
That advocacy on other issues includes a reminder that Trump and his hardcore supporters have neither a secular nor religious claim on morality and ethics. Our society would be stronger and safer for individuals (who have been injured, and to avoid further injury) and for whole groups (racial and ethnic minorities).
I’m of a mixture of mainline Protestant and Catholic teaching, but when one describes oneself that way (as a mixture), candidly, one is beginning with a mainline Protestant view of the world. It’s much a part of that background to select, to choose (often personally, sometimes theologically, sometimes confusedly between the two).
It’s an honest reminder that choosing that way has moral consequences that cannot be avoided, for what one chooses, and just as much for what one leaves aside.
Quick words on Bruenig and politics: She’s a Bernie supporter, then and even now. I voted Clinton in ’16, and would vote for any Democrat over Trump or the GOP in ’20, but it’s impossible for me to see how Sanders is the best option. (I don’t now have a favorite.)
Funny but serious point: it’s easier for me to see Bruenig’s left-of-center evangelicalism than her support for Sanders as the best ’20 political option. Some political choices are more inscrutable than religious ones…