Never Close the Churches Out of Fear Again

April 9, 2023 | By John Kass

My cousins and I got our ears boxed one Easter Sunday long ago. The whipping that we deserved involved snakes. We’re not complaining. Whenever the Kass boys got together with Ekonomou boys, there was trouble, something would be broken, something would be smashed, some aunt or uncle would be at their wit’s end and the only solution was grabbing us by the ear and cracking us on the back of the head.

We called this, onomatopoetically the good old kaff-keef or better yet a hastouki. A good thwack or two with a wooden spoon or koutala wouldn’t hurt.

How did the snakes enter in on Easter Sunday? Let me tell you. We were compelled to wear our itchy Sunday Best clothes including ties, and we asked my mom if we could go on a bike ride. We rode off angelically, seven boys between the ages 8-11, to Lawn Manor Park eight blocks away. Oak Lawn was then spanking brand new, even the parks were brand new, and the open grassland was full of snakes. It was a boy’s delight.

There were Garter snakes. There were green snakes. None of these were poisonous. My cousins Jimmy and Johnny were experts in the ways of snakes. We caught them by the handful and filled two large egg boxes full of snakes. Then we rode home.

“Come and see!” We told our aunts, uncles, and parents, “look here!” and then we poured the snakes onto the patio. There were conservatively 200 snakes at least. I silently dodged a kick from my father, but my brothers Peter and Nick weren’t so lucky. Our cousins weren’t so lucky either. And I remember it now in stop-action with blows to the head with open palms and the hastoukis and kaff-keefs raining down upon us all.

The thing to remember about such events—is that they’re often quickly forgotten. And in about a half hour we’d forgotten our punishment for introducing the Evil One into our Easter celebration. I almost wanted to say Jesus loved children, but I thought discretion was the better point of valor.

Why did I bother telling you of the boys and the snakes, and the Greek family descending on us with slapping hands?

Because Easter Sunday is all about family and love. And though today April 9th, 2023, is Easter for Western Christianity, our own Orthodox Easter is the following Sunday. And there still are mischievous boys in all families. And I also mentioned it because my brothers and I love and miss our cousins and the way our families were then. We are not the kids with snakes. Now we are the village elders with our aches and pains and canes and white hair.

One special talent we have as human beings is that we can easily forget painful memories. We easily forget some social failure in school, our regrets, the score of that horrible game. And we’ve easily forgotten, I think what happened to us just a few years ago. When the real snakes entered our lives and closed our churches during Easter Sunday.

I remember writing just three years ago now, that the ancient Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem was last closed during the Black Plague of the 1300’s. Then came COVID 19, the political stampede and Fauchism.  And the Holiest church of all was closed again. The heavy bolts fell into place like thudding hammers upon the heart of the Christian world just before Easter. And the closing of churches all over the world, of the East and the West, came at the worst possible time.

Do you remember what it was like then when we thought we had everything, when our families could be together at Easter? But then churches were closed, and families were isolated and hurting.

 Many of us barely remember what happened. Oh yes, we remember church doors being closed in our faces but many of us forget why.They sold it to us by  telling us it was for our own safety. But it wasn’t. It was about soothing political fear.

Back then we carried our phones in our pockets and could pull forward the sum of all human knowledge with a touch of a button. The economy was thrumming, there was money in our wallets, there was no inflation to speak of. Employers were desperate to find workers and anyone who wanted to work could find a job.

But we forget the spiritual chasm. Now many of those jobs are gone, people are afraid, and some of us barely remember how we attended church via laptop, and missed Ecclesia which means gathering, which means church.

Going to church via laptop is not being in the pew next to your family, kneeling and begging forgiveness, thinking of the Publican and the Pharisee whispering Lord have mercy, Kyrie Eleison, Lord have mercy.

When the politicians and the holy men join to close us off from church services, we learned some truths about ourselves. We learned that secular media is extremely uncomfortable with religion, particularly Christianity, at times barely tolerant at most other times quite hostile. Athletes score touchdowns, dunk basketballs, and praise the lord. Politicians can campaign in urban churches seeking the political blessings of clergy and journalists are cautiously benign. They don’t dare roll their eyes.

Other times you can hear the eyes rolling, popping out in rage, sounding like heavy ball bearings rolling about in a tin pan. These are the eyes of angry parents, who are trying to protect the innocence of their children during public political appeals for Drag Queen Story Hour at your local library.

We are engineered by God to be able to forget so much. But if there is one thing we must never forget, is that our political leaders including many governors and presidents, and many senior clergy joined together when we needed to be in church and told us the doors weren’t open.

ECCLESIA is not about commemorating chocolate bunnies. It is not about glorifying the yellow sugar peeps. And though we are the creation of God that forgets our pain, there is one thing we should never forget: Our lost feeling when we closed the churches of God in the mistaken belief that we would feel safe.

This is the season of Easter, the season of Ramadan, the season of the Jewish Passover, the Pesach. However you worship, please remember the love shown to all of us by the carpenter’s son.

-30-

Comments 51

  1. Happy Easter Mr, Kass. Beautiful column, I admire your faith and am thankful you are here to continue sharing your talent. Continued blessings🙏

    1. Happy Easter! I enjoy your Family stories. They bring back lots of fond memories. Your comments are in a wonderful contrast to the Headline on the Front Page of the Chicago Tribune: “Stalled Justice”. The half page showed a picture of several inmates in jail! While an important issue, I can’t think of a less appropriate picture for Easter Sunday! And the Trib wonders why it’s readership is rapidly declining. The Trib may or may not be a paper of so called “misinformation”. But it certainly is a paper of “Journalistic Omission”.

      Jim Ihlenfeld

  3. Thank you John. It’s incredible that God would make a way for our redemption and pay such a high price for it through Jesus. The stone being rolled away and the body no longer there. A resurrected Christ changes everything for all time. Such love for a fallen world. The love that can heal our broken hearts. Easter tops all “Best Practices” as he said, It is finished. We pray for peace, but peace with the creator is where peace begins. If we can have peace with God peace with others comes into view.

  9. Thanks John. You were the first one I read this morning. It was a great way to start Easter Sunday, to reflect on family and God this Holy Day.

  14. Never forget the lies! Covid would run rampant in churches, schools and small business. They were not safe or necessary but “essential” business’s like liquor stores, pot dispensaries, and abortion clinics had to be kept open. Christianity and traditional family values have been under attack for years and it’s only going to get worse if they keep electing these Godless democrat’s.

  16. Happy Easter and glad to have you writing John! Praying for your continued recovery from all the physical challenges you have been facing! Thanks for encouraging us to remember that just a couple of year’s ago, governments around the world took away the celebration of Easter and the weekly gathering of churches to “protect us” from a disease unleashed on us by the godless Chinese Communist Party (likely developed there by funding from our American taxpayer dollars provided by Fauci). People should have the choice to decide for themselves to freely gather, even if there are “health risks”!

    I remember in some states they punished families that gathered on Easter in their own homes! That evil attack on God’s people in this world continues to cascade it’s negative effects upon us still! Never again should our spiritual hospitals called the Church be closed by government edict, at least in the land of the first amendment (which too many now in this nation believe wrongly is “granted by the government”)! As the Apostle Paul quoted, “it is for freedom that Christ set you free, therefore, be not conformed again to a yoke of slavery”. That was written about spiritual freedom, but also applies to our physical freedom. Let families and the Church never again conform themselves to be slaves to government dictates not to gather!

  19. Secular media is extremely uncomfortable with not only religion, but all values, views, philosophies, etc., “they” do not hold themselves.

    But John, while they have indeed run amok and hijacked the Dem party, higher Ed, the legacy media, our friends on the right have been complicit, enabling, and negligent in their said hijacking, and I’ll explain how.

    While “the left” seems to have perfected cancel culture via adept use of social media, the “red scare” of the 50’s was a similar thing John. People lost their livelihoods, their reputations, everything because they had the temerity to associate with those who thought about a change in the political system, or maybe a way to spread the wealth a little more equally.

    Vietnam War, Iraq War, Reaganomincs, NAFTA, Savings and Loan debacle, Iran/Contra: there are many “good people on both sides” in these calamities. There is really only one party now. The corruption is endemic to both sides. Now, it’s just opposing culture war and virtue signaling while they continue to rob us left and right.

    Who were the original corporatists? Who was traditionally aligned with big business? Who deregulated the banks? Who promoted “free trade” that hollowed out much of the Midwest, and instead of investing in economically depressed areas, chose to throw countless people who’ve lost hope in jail? Who has ushered in the consolidation of businesses and turned very sector of our economy into zero sum game profit driven, soulless.

    Look at our Congress. They bought pharma, tech an and other sectors and made a killing off of the pandemic, and they’re all making a killing on this bogus war for Ukraine.

    So if we want to be free. Let’s let the people speak, let them worship, get the big money out of politics, health care, and education. We need to bring back true journalism and we need to bring back the teaching of and discussion of history. All history, not just fables of Washington cutting down a cherry tree, or some bullshit about Columbus being a great man.

    Back to your main point, it was a travesty that churches were close down while the tax coffer filling “sin dens” were open. But profit was the motive. Science and data were set aside to promote the culture of fear that enabled our affluent class to stay home and relax, while our poor had to risk their lives, and our elderly, the truly vulnerable were neglected and left to die by the likes of Cuomo, who knowingly sent infected patients back to rehab centers and nursing homes.

    Plenty of good people on both sides John. But let’s keep arguing about things that should be no ones business like gender, sexuality, religion, anything but the crooked corporate duopoly that is hollowing out this nation.

    Let’s continue to divide, hide in the cornfields of Indiana, and call for more people to be locked up, but not for housing, health care, jobs, academic rigor in the schools, honest reporting, and brotherhood.

    Christ prayed for his killers John. He ministered to the lepers, the prostitutes, the downtrodden. He did not move to Indiana to insulate himself from the evil that was taking over those who have lost hope.

    20% of poor children live in poverty, don’t have adequate health care, a significant number are food insecure, and go to lousy schools. We have 600,000 homeless, many are military veterans John, we have countless illegal immigrants being preyed upon by pimps, thugs, employers and our political class and demonized by conservative media.

    Instead of fighting for them, let’s Blane the left!

  20. Funny thing though, Yianni, our churches remained open in Florida! Interesting…no? Oh well, that’s a story for another day. So today, our Palm Sunday, we will enjoy the after service luncheon, which starts a week of fasting. We will once again live on peanut butter sandwiches, tarama, hummus, spanakorizo, xorta and miscellaneous forms of vegan proteins to get through the week, until anastasi – followed by loukaniko, lamb on the spit, pastitsio, pilafi and more xorta! My prayers for your successful recovery have apparently been answered, so now I pray for our once great city and its new mayor. I’m not terribly enthused about his prospects, and still wonder why Lori lost, and another, just like her – or worse – was elected. But again, that seems to be “the Chicago Way,” a story for another day, that we can take up after May 25th….
    Meanwhile, I wish you, Betty, and your boys, kali anastasi, and kalo pasxa. Good to have you back. But remember paidi mou, mind your health!!!

  23. John, May your Easter today and next week be thoughtful, humble and faith reaffirming. And, more importantly, thank you for reminding me, somewhat wistfully, of one of my dad’s favorite phrases/warnings “Keep it up and I’ll box your ears”…. an invaluable management tool when raising a baker’s dozen. I think I can still hear his school teacher baritone thundering from his place in heaven!
    We grew up just a half block away from each other on Kedvale Avenue. Thank you for reminding me of the simple days of youth at Lawn Manor Park, playing Army in the prairie behind the Hi-Low food store on Pulaski and the daily walk up to St. Catherine’s to be trained!
    Happy and Blessed Easter to you and yours.

  24. Happy Western and Orthodox Easter to you and your family, John! I’m trying to focus on positive things this Holy Week/season. I’ve enjoyed seeing Timothy Cardinal Dolan on Fox this week with his blessings and thoughts about Easter during these difficult times and one of his messages is that during times of crisis, Faith becomes more important once again. Yes, it’s true that many across Faiths failed all of us during Covid when we needed them most….and continue to fail us with their silence during the chaos that seems to be prevailing. I hope and pray that the good NY Cardinal is right about Faith being resurrected along with Our Savior on this most Holy Easter!

  26. Couldn’t have been said any better. The one take I did get though as much as the political buffoonery is something else lost today. Discipline. Can you imagine the media outcry if your parents reaction happened now. They’d be in jail most likely. It really is a by-product of religion…you know like having respect and behaving in a civil manner, all the Christian-like stuff. What would have happened then for example, if you staged a walk out of a class because you didn’t like something. You probably wouldn’t have sat for a week !

    I’m not nearly as religious as I was growing up. But, there are occasions I take the time to think about it and realize that what was then is what makes me today. Heck, I was an altar boy and was actually thinking about that a little over the last week. Scary thought for the future, what was allowed then vs now. Thanks for bringing back that kind of memory. It was a good time unlike now.

    Happy Easter to all who observe today.

  28. Fantastic column! Lockdowns provided us a window into a hellish American existence. We will have to stand together to fight against this authoritarianism next time. Yes, I believe, there will be a next time.

    For today, let us rejoice together His light, His wisdom, His grace. Jesus is risen. Happy Easter!

  31. We played in the new Scottsdale neighborhood in empty patches of grass and old trees,
    calling it The Prairie. In later years those patches were covered with more houses and
    small parks.

    Thank you for writing today, it is a great reminder of what we soon forget.
    The Covid Shutdown came very fast and most people thought it would only last 2 months,
    not 2 years. Closing the Churches, schools, workplaces, etc. Even hospitals were closed to family, particularly cruel when a loved one was dying.

    It was a time of fear – “Be afraid, be very afraid”!

    Dr Fauci and many others stretched it out into a very thin line.
    People learned one does not have to be afraid, but to be cautious.
    Cautious of the control that can take over our lives and very belief systems.
    Thought control, media manipulation, labeling, whatever.
    The hate, finger pointing, name calling has to stop.

    Families, Christianity and all Faith beliefs are under attack.
    The laws of the land are being devalued.
    We have to work hard, protect and defend what we believe in.
    We live in a great country, there is much to remember and be grateful for.

    Happy Easter Week to you and your Family, John.

  32. God bless you and yours John Kass this day and every day. You fill me with an abundance of love for my faith and exuberance with your story about the snakes. You have to admit that God has blessed all of us in so many ways to include canes for the elders who no longer have the reach to crack some young whippersnapper in the rear area when required!
    I thank God that you are better and getting back in the pool, so to speak. I hope that your family has a great time next Sunday and experience the art of family love as I do today. My eldest son shall pick us up in about two hours to get along to my youngest son’s home to enjoy a major portion of my family. Yes, I am anxious as we no longer drive account medical stuff… My prayers still go out to God for you to get better each and every day.
    Always with my best and thank you again for your column….we are all blessed by that.

  33. A delight to read your column today. I was raised Catholic and loved to think about the adults at Ascension in Oak Park at Mass, all known to me. I used to wonder about their lives, their sufferings (especially the father of a classmate with rheumatoid arthritis before ANY TREATMENT to relieve pain or movement existed). I remember several cold soggy Easters, one when I wore a new pink straw hat. Usually leg of lamb or a roast for Easter dinner and the best roast potatoes. What I’d give to have one more dinner with my late parents, late brother and four other siblings around the same table.

  35. Excellent read John. There is a fine line between “for your safety” and “for your enslavement”. People are easy to rule when they’re afraid. This is why one of our favorite popcorn reads is Michael Crichton’s “State of Fear”.

  37. Yeah but….

    I sadly note that American Christian Conservatives will:

    “Never miss an opportunity to… miss an opportunity”

    The hard core, anti Christian, anti Traditional American Left, LGBT, BLM, Antifa, CRT, ADL, MSNBC, CNN, NyTimes, Hollywood, Communist, J Neo Conservative, George Soros international Whatever we want to call these #*$&@ (Jesus Christ Called them the Children of the Devil, through the money changers like Soros out of the Temple) These bad people play to win.

    As sort of our Chicago Rahm Emanuel (born in Israel son of Irgun terrorist, served in the IDF, rose to power 2B Chicago congressman, then Obama’s Chief of Staff, then Mayor of Chicago now this guy’s the Ambassador to Japan, who is he representing? His Hollywood agent brother?)

    “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”

    ― Rahm Emanuel

    These bad people used Covid to attack Conservatives, close our churches. They used 9-11-01 Islamic illegal aliens’ slaughter of our people here in USA to spin it in to yet another Neo Conservative J war, intervention on Secular Nationalist Iraq. Look at the recent slaughter of young Conservative Christian school children in Nashville TN by some Norman Bates Psycho crazy Trannie. Instead of implementing sensible laws, policies against these bat sh*&& crazy psycho Trannies possessing high caliber guns, the Left is now on the Lugenpresse MSM demanding Conservatives lose their 2nd Amendment gun rights.

    Sigh.

    We have to start paying, fighting to win – like the anti Christian, anti traditional American Left and others do. We have to stop being reactionary and just whining and complaining that nothing is “fair” No Shi* Sherlock!

    We lost all the important Chicago, Crook county positions to Soros funded BLM, CRT, CTU, “let the B Criminals, BLM looters all go free” – these bad people now control the Mayor’s office, County Board Chairwoman, DA, $ 8 billion public school budget. That’s life. This same sh*#& happened in all US major cities in the 1970s, and 1990s. Remember when DC Crack Cocaine addict BLM Marion Barry was the DC Mayor, mayor of our nation’s capital. How f*#&$@ was that.

    Face it, we’re out of power in Chicago and elsewhere. What exactly do we want to “Conservative”

    Time to regroup and resist. If not in Chicago the City then in the Suburbs, Will County or as our great John Kass did, in Chicago flight Indiana.

    Let’s meet and plan in the real world

    Our Chicago lives are about to get “interesting” as they were in 2020 and 1968.

    JR
    Chicago Resistance
    Jackryanod (at) Protonmail (dot) com

  38. Happy Easter, John. I believe it was two-three Easter’s before C-19 that I first commented to you (you were still in the Pioneer Press in Saint Paul) about your Easter column. That column is worth a repeat (can I find it in some archive?) You returned a kind and thoughtful reply, letting me know we were both of the Catholic faith, one western and one eastern. So again, I wish the blessings of Easter be upon you today, next Sunday, and forever. And hopefully for the next 20 years in this life. 😊

  41. Happy Easter, John. So glad you are doing better and writing regularly. Living in Nashville for the past 28 years, I enjoy a little bit if Chicago and Oak Lawn (that park is just a few blocks west of my childhood church formerly known as Elim Baptist but now Crosswinds). God’s blessing on you and your words!

  42. You warm my heart every time you mention Oak Lawn. I’m old enough to be your older sister and grew up there from the age of 8 until I was old enough to move downtown. I didn’t realize until much later what a magical place that was for kids “our age,” and there were a ton of them. We rode our bikes everywhere, played softball in the church parking lot after hours, didn’t come home until the street lights came on. Lucky, lucky us.

  43. Churches closed because of a once in a lifetime event, a deadly pathogen that had ravaged Europe. We had no frame of reference, no previous ‘North Star’ to guide policy, it was all new and deadly. So, governments acted out of an abundance of caution to protect the people that elected them. Churches closed because it was unsafe for people to remain essentially motionless for an hour, cheek to cheek with hundreds of strangers, passing along the virus. Liquor stores remained open because you mask up, walk in and walk out (and let’s face it, we needed a coping mechanism..) There is NO moral equivalence, no choice between the two. Moreover, covid was the lead story in 2020, today is 2023. The ‘war on Christianity’ is manufactured drama for the MAGA crowd, nothing more. More ‘us against them’ nonsense. Our economy is recovering from a traumatic event (much like someone who has had a cardiac event) and it’s going to take time, but we will get there, as will you. Hope you had a great Easter, I was looking forward to some lamb grilling techniques but got grievance instead.

  45. Hey John Kass,

    I hate to say “I told you so” but…..

    I TOLD YOU SO!

    We should have run a well known, well liked Chicago ex sports star like Bears Mike Singletary or Garry Fencik for mayor. Regular Chicagoans remember the 1985 Bears as Chicago’s greatest sports team. These two guys were/are practically Gods to Chicagoans.

    It’s just reality that regular Chicagoans including lots and lots of immigrants, son of immigrants from countries that don’t have traditions of citizen voting simply aren’t plugged in to insider Chicago politics so that they know who some (admittedly honest, intelligent) policy wonk like Paul Vallas is.

    So what happened is the CTU Chicago Teachers Union that controls now $8 billion a year of our tax $ and “votes” every year to give themselves huge raises, pensions, and even do remote in COVID Or other years as these highly, highly paid “teachers” don’t want to be actual classroom teachers and have to face Chicago’s hostile, disrespectful lowest class “students”. Look at Brandon Johnson – he only taught classroom school for what 2 years? He passed all his student with social promotion so they and their parents didn’t yell at him, then he somehow finagled a $125K a year CTU “Consulting” job. That’s Chicago Democracy, but you’ve written extensively about “The Chicago Way” you should have seen this one coming.

    We needed some smart political operatives like Mayor Daley Sr. Whatever you think of him and his way, Mayor Daley Sr won pretty much every election he/we cared about from 1955-75. With Mayor Daley Sr and his Bridgeport DeLasalle brain trust there is no snowball’s chance in Hell that some BLM, “let the brothers’ shoplift and loot” radical Leftist would have been elected our mayor. No Way.

    Political operatives like Lee Atwater, Joe Kennedy father of President John F Kennedy and yeah, Saul Alinsky played to win.

    In this Mayoral election – we/YOU did not play to win and we lost. We may have lost most all of Chicago forever – our city becoming a Philadelphia PA, Detroit MI, Portland OR, or Minneapolis or some hell in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela or Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.

    OK – that’s really bad.

    So John Kass, I hate to tell you “I Told You So” but….

    I TOLD YOU SO

    PS. You should write for “Takimag” – the political and cultural perspective is very similar to yours/ours. And the owner, patron is a rich Greek shipping guy, Greek like you.

    Here’s the latest Takimag on our horrible Chicago mayoral election

    https://www.takimag.com/article/the-left-has-killed-our-great-cities/

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