TORONTO – It is the start of “Holy Week” for traditionalist Christians and Catholics. It is a powerful ritual. As I recall the significance of the week, it is a time of reflection on the meanings of events leading up to the last moments of the temporal life of Christ prior to His Crucifixion, Burial and Resurrection. All for the betterment of the human condition.
That experience conditioned, nurtured and developed a body of thought, convention and political order (Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman) which have become the foundation stones upon which Contemporary Western Societies are based. It has been two thousand years since.
Irrespective of the extent to which, as individuals or communities, we accept and live out the messages of the ideology based on its trilogy of tenets exemplifying faith, hope and charity, it is that Christian “philosophy” that permeates the rationale of “acceptable behaviour”. Christian rites and rituals harken us to the conduct that we expect of ourselves and of all those who share our beliefs.
It comes down to that. The goals and objectives – the standards by which we then claim as “standards” – though not always accepted by everyone, are easily identifiable and their veracity rarely contestable. Even if they are not, rarely, if ever, is there a counter-culture capable of displacing those values and tenets to the good of a greater number.
Today, the “great religions” (wokeism and environmentalism) of the glitterati, in their good or their weakness, have yet to inspire what even casual observers at the funeral of Brian Mulroney will have noticed: order, deference, the creativity of the human mind manifested in the beaux arts (music, poetry, paintings, architecture and altruism) they all embody. And yet, the Rt. Honorable B. Mulroney, a Catholic, was a lightning rod for antagonistic views; notwithstanding, there were no “anti-phobias” present at his state funeral.
Many ironies permeated a different environment outside the basilica where Canadians convened express their last adieu, to someone who left the political world thirty one (31) ago. In the Middle East, proponents of peace denouncing the already 33,000 dead civilians in Gaza and calling on Israel to stop what would be a “catastrophic” tragedy if it continued its plans against Rafah, were denounced as anti-Semitic. In the main, they are/were Christian leaders appealing to Peace by means other than annihilation of one’s enemies.
Speaking of some of those enemies – radical Islamists, a group of declared enemies of western civilization – chose this weekend, co-incidentally (?), to rain their murderous venom on innocent Russian citizens. One hundred and forty-three reported dead-on-arrival, so far.
After many years of absence, yesterday, I stopped at my local church on my way to the office for a moment of reflection. The [early] Sunday Mass, fairly well attended – had already begun. A lay assistant greeted me and offering me several sheets of palms (in the pic below) whispered the Easter message” “peace on earth to [men] of goodwill”.
