Easter, Pope Francis, Dying for Sex
Easter has come and gone, without much ado at our house. We’re not Catholic (though the Church continues to have a weird pull on me, particularly the Jesuits) and we don’t have kids or family in the area, so for us, Easter is essentially just another Sunday.
Even when I was a Catholic in reasonably good standing, Easter always seemed like a letdown. Christmas has presents, you get fireworks on Independence Day, football and feasting on Thanksgiving, but with Easter always being on Sunday, there’s not even a day off. As religious as the US is (at least compared to most of Europe), you’d think that we’d have joined Germany, France, Canada, Australia, and the other 40+ countries that have made Easter Monday a federal holiday. But while we certainly love Jesus here in the US, we love commerce even more.
There have been efforts to change this, most recently the Easter Monday Act of 2025, which would do pretty much what you think it would – make Easter Monday a public holiday. It was introduced in the Senate by Missouri Republican Eric Schmitt on April 10th, had zero co-sponsors, and never made it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee (which apparently handles new federal holiday-related legislation).
Schmitt noted that not only is Easter the holiest day in Christianity, but that making Easter Monday a federal holiday would close the only two-month gap in the federal holiday calendar (between Washington’s Birthday and Memorial Day). More importantly, Easter weekend generates around $15 billion for the American economy according to Schmitt, and adding a Monday holiday would add from 10 – 15 percent to that. (Again, Jesus is great and all, but economic growth is even better. Economic growth with an overlay of Jesus – that’s about as good as it gets.)
According to people who study this sort of thing, Jesus rose from the dead (or had his body removed from the tomb) sometime in early April. But very early on, the Church decided that Easter would fall on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the spring equinox. This ensures that Easter stays in sync with Passover, which is pretty important – as my good friend GPT 4o put it, “without Passover, Easter is just a Sunday morning with suspiciously upbeat music”.
Pope Francis managed to hold on through Easter (and a visit from JD Vance), but died the day after. He was the main reason I started going to church again in the mid-2010s. As a longtime fan of the Jesuits (dating from my two years at Jesuit-run St. Ignatius High School in Cleveland) and a person of the center-left, I was excited about the idea of a progressive (well, progressive for a Pope) Jesuit leading the Church, especially after eight years of the far more traditional Benedict. The church thing didn’t stick for me, and while I was happy with many of the changes Francis made, I wouldn’t be too surprised if most of them don’t stick either, especially given that the Roman Catholic Church is growing the most in more conservative areas in Africa and Asia.
Around 20 percent of the people in the US are Catholic, but in the political realm, Catholics do a bit better: about 28 percent of federal judges and a similar percentage of members of Congress are Catholic, as well as six of the nine justices on the Supreme Court. While we’ve only had two Catholic presidents (Kennedy and Biden), Vice President Vance is a convert to Catholicism, though, of course, he’s not a progressive Catholic like Francis was.
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I don’t get to watch too many ‘good’ TV shows with Kimberly, because these days you can’t have Prestige TV without a whole lot of darkness and dysfunction. I’m okay with that, as long as it’s leavened with some humor or a lead character I can root for, but that’s not Kimberly’s thing. She prefers cozy British mysteries, crime procedurals, or heist shows. I’m fine with them too, which means our before-bedtime is filled with plenty of offerings from BritBox and CBS. For anything particularly edgy, I’m on my own.
Recently, I started watching Dying for Sex on Hulu. It’s the story of a woman (played by Michelle Williams) who is diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer and decides to ditch her marriage and non-existent sex life to fully explore her sexuality in the time she has left. It can get kinky at times (though nothing particularly graphic – it’s Hulu, not Max), and every episode has some emotionally brutal scenes. But it’s often hilarious and deeply moving. Plus, Rob Delaney is one of the main characters, and Rob Delaney is fantastic. (If you haven’t seen him and Sharon Horgan – with whom I am completely besotted – in the Amazon Prime show Catastrophe, I envy you the experience.)
I'd never been excited about the prospect of a pope before Pope Francis. Quite unlikely to happen again.