Karl Marx and the Passion of Christ

Happy Easter, all you Christians out there, and a very happy beginning of baseball season to the rest of you! I like Easter, in theory. I mean, I don't specifically have a problem with Easter, although if I think about it too much on the day of, it is a little depressing, mostly because I'm very far from my family and tend not to really celebrate with anyone. But that doesn't matter, because I didn't think about it today and I just enjoyed napping and making the best vegan Greek salad (you guys).

Anyway, I'm not here to talk about Easter, I'm here to talk about Good Friday, because that is a holiday I can get behind. I don't know why I like Good Friday so much, and I imagine that will be useful fodder for some psychoanalyst many years hence, but regardless, it is far and away my favorite day of the year to go to church. I wasn't planning on going to mass this year, because, as you may recall, I have had some rather unpleasant experiences at Catholic churches here in Fargo ("And then they chop up the fetuses!" No, sir.). But I was thinking about how much I've enjoyed Good Friday services in the past, and I thought, what the heck, let me try one more time. Strangely, only one Catholic church in the area was having mass in the evening (all the other services were at 3, which is just not right), and it was a church I hadn't been to before, so I decided to give it a go. Having not been to mass since Christmas (and in Fargo since last summer), I got a little bit dressed up and drove over early to try to get myself a good spot. The first thing I noticed upon driving up, was that there were men standing around the front of the church in some truly unusual hats. It turns out they were the local Knights of Columbus (who I don't think I'd ever seen before). You know, for an organization that is, presumably, pretty anti-gay, they certainly chose some flamboyant uniforms for themselves.

Not the Fargo Knights of Columbus, but here's the get-up, just to give you a taste.

Anyhow, so that was a little off-putting, but I'm committed, and am not going to be dissuaded by any kind of men in surprising outfits, which, to a certain extent, is just something you have to become comfortable with living in Fargo. So, I park and go into the church, and find a seat toward the middle of the next to another young woman. We don't talk at all during the service, but we do kind of smile at each other when one of us puts the kneeler up or down, and it feels good to connect with someone like that, even in such a small way. The good vibes continue when I look around and notice that, although it's still extremely white, there is some racial diversity in the congregation. All right, so at this point I'm feeling pretty good about this church -- it's not super fancy, but the people seem friendly and no one has deeply offended me yet.

The mass began a few minutes after 7, and I won't go into a lot of detail about it (basically the only noteworthy thing that happened was an unusual amount of kneeling and standing), but I'd like to mention the homily, which was very odd. So just for reference, Good Friday is when we remember Jesus's crucifixion and read about the passion, etc., etc. I go back and forth about how important Jesus's death is to me, for reasons I'm not going to go into here, but it's certainly an emotional day for a lot of Catholics, and there's a lot to say about it for the priest giving the sermon. I'll try to paraphrase what was said in this sermon as best I can, and hopefully you can pinpoint where it started going off the rails for me: "It is important to strike a balance between the importance we place on Jesus's life, and the importance we place on his suffering and crucifixion. Focusing on Jesus's life, without mention of his suffering, results in a glib portrait of a traveling preacher among many at that time. Focusing on Jesus's suffering without mention of his life and message is Marxism." At that point I sat forward in the pew and gave the priest what I hoped was a look of incredulity, but was more likely delighted amusement. I'm not sure I totally followed his argument: it was something about how totalitarian regimes focus on the importance of suffering to justify it to the people they are repressing, which is possibly true, but also possibly not true. I'm not exactly sure why he decided to focus on Communist regimes, though, for a couple of reasons: first of all, and I could be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure one of the most important elements of Communist governments is the elimination of religion, so I don't think Stalin was exactly going around justifying peoples' suffering to them on the basis of Christ's crucifixion; second, why focus on Communism? Sure, there are some Communist countries right now, but it's not the most relevant geopolitical issue right now; third, it's not like Jesus would have been super excited about capitalism, and, especially in light of my second question about this homily, it seemed like that's what he was trying to justify. I'm certainly not going to try to argue that we shouldn't have a capitalist society on the basis of Jesus's teachings, but I really don't think Jesus would have been happy about it. It seemed awfully disingenuous to talk about how bad Communism is without mentioning any of the problems with capitalism, from a Christian perspective.

Anyway, so yeah, that was weird. I think I was so confused by the homily that I couldn't really get into the rest of the service, which is usually very emotional for me, but which just seemed kind of silly this time. The funny hats certainly didn't help. It wasn't a uniformly negative experience it was just... odd. I thought about going back for mass this morning, but ultimately decided I would rather sleep in (had a bit of a late night last night at the first show I've seen at the Aquarium in AGES) and do my normal go-to-Starbucks-get-the-paper-read-in-bed thing. It was an otherwise very good weekend, which included, in addition to the concert and reading in bed, checking out a brewery in Moorhead, hanging out and playing games at a friend's apartment, helping out with some cat sitting, and a little Final Four basketball action. I certainly can't complain about my Fargo social life, I just hope by next Good Friday I'm in a city where I can expect a mass with fewer references to the Soviet Union.