Madden Mischief

What religion we adopt or that adopts us usually stems from where in the world we were born and most likely from what faith our parents practiced.

Mine were Catholic.  So, soon after I was born, they had me baptized and later confirmed in their faith when I was still a kid growing up in what was then known as “the world’s playground,” Atlantic City, NJ.  Today my hometown’s known for another form of worship, gambling.

I was even an Altar Boy while I attended St. Nicholas Catholic School next to St. Nicholas of Tolentine Church built in 1905.  In 2001 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places for majestic architecture that would crescendo into steeples. 

I was a playfully adventurous lad growing up nearby on Belfield Avenue just across New York Ave from where St. Nicholas still stands so stoically on Pacific Avenue. 

Today it’s flanked by towering tabernacles called casinos where patrons pray to win at poker, blackjack and slot machines, instead of for forgiveness and eligibility for entry into heaven for which we prayed so fervently in church.  

Yes, A.C. was my hometown where my concert-violinist dad faithfully fiddled at The Traymore Hotel and conducted his Festival Orchestra on Garden Pier, while my mom baked lasagna between booking acts and musicians for parties at the business they ran together, The Convention Entertainment Bureau. 

This was long before my hometown turned from a place where people came to go to the beach and go swimming, where sinners went to confession for absolution and penance.  Today holy mackerel it’s a new kind of mecca where rivers of gamblers flood in to win jackpots and be rewarded by access to pricy suites at casino hotels.  

John Bowker’s fascinating book “World Religions” is a Bible of religions, what they are, how they came to be uplifting to billions of believers, from Hinduism and Buddhism, Judaism to Islam and to the one that adopted me, Christianity. 

One by one, the various epochal religions came to represent something so meaningful, so inspiring to their legions of followers. 

Religion humanized and transformed populations worldwide from savagery to spiritual, from selfish pettiness and shortsightedness to belief in a blissfully everlasting reward through gateways they opened to The Almighty.

What does religion really mean?

As religion deals with the whole of human drama, it can mean many things to many people throughout the world from instilling peace to inspiring hope for salvation.

For millennia, human beings have searched for the meaning and truth of not only their own nature, but of the universe in which they play a human role.  Once even natural sciences were religions.  Only in the last few hundred years have they come to be regarded as serious methods of exploration and discovery.

Religions today are vast communities of people who share common practices and beliefs, often in God or gods.

The religious gather in special buildings for worship or meditation called mosques or synagogues, temples or churches, and live in certain uplifting ways amid a sometimes despicable, often cutthroat world.  

However little or how much people do for, with or about religion, the fact is that more than three-quarters of the world’s population belong to one. 

Some even act as if their own daily work and earthly endeavors were a religion, like politics.  Vote for me, they say, and not only you but your 401(k), the stocks you own, and all your crypto coins will all go to heaven too!

From white puffs and windy city cometh a new pope!

Speaking of voting, as I’m writing this there was an important vote occurring in the Vatican by a collection of cardinals embarking on the herculean task of selecting who amongst them will next hold that prestigious post of pope. 

From those miraculous puffs of white smoke over the Sistine Chapel came a new pontiff from the windy city of Chicago. 

The crowd in St. Peter’s Square erupted in cheers, priests made the sign of the cross, nuns wept, and the crowd cheered “Viva il papa!” as the now famous white smoke wafted into the sky.

Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected the first native-born American pope in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church taking the name Pope Leo XIV. 

Is there a bug in the anointment?  Before he was elected as the leader of the Catholic church, Pope Leo had shared social media posts criticizing President Trump and Vice President Vance for their stance on immigration.

No worries.  Shortly after news broke that Prevost won, Trump said he would pardon the pope, and Vance promised to go to confession. Just kidding! 

Trump immediately congratulated and welcomed the new pope and said he can’t wait to meet him.  Undoubtedly, he’ll present the new pontiff with the newest, brightest, most colorful MAGA hat ever seen.  Amen.

In his first homily as leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, Pope Leo said that where Christians are “mocked, opposed, despised or at best tolerated and pitied” is where the Catholic Church’s “missionary outreach is most desperately needed.”

During Mass in the Sistine Chapel, he told cardinals that “there are many settings in which the Christian faith is considered absurd, meant for the weak and unintelligent, settings where other securities are preferred, like technology, money, success, power or pleasure.

“This is the world that has been entrusted to us, a world in which, as Pope Francis taught us so many times, we are called to bear witness to our joyful faith in Jesus the savior,” the new pope said.   

Amen²

This is a part of the intro to Tom Madden’s soon to be published seventh book titled: Among Openings to Heaven Will Christianity Be Coolest? 

Besides an author and blogger (www.MaddenMischief.com), Madden and his daughter Adrienne Mazzone run the public relations firm, TransMedia Group serving clients worldwide from their headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida.