New York

In the museum of bogus controversies, the putative «controversy» surrounding Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s appearance on Fox News last Wednesday with a black cross of ashes drawn on his forehead surely deserves a special exhibition space. It happened last Wednesday, I say. That would be March 6, Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent for the 1.2 billion Roman Catholics in the world, not to mention the many millions of other Christians who observe Lent.

What is Lent? Etymologically, the word means that season when the days begin to lengthen, and Spring is nigh («Lenz» auf Deutsch). In the Catholic Church, Lent is the season of reflection and penance on the run up to Christianity’s main event, Easter. On Ash Wednesday, the faithful are invited to remember their mortality. They go to church and a priest imposts a cross of burnt palm ashes on their forehead, reciting the verse «memento homo quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris»: «Remember O man that you are dust and into dust you will return.»

These are not obscure facts. But many groundlings at the great media performance surrounding the Trump administration seemed puzzled by the decoration with with Rubio’s forehead was bedizened. «Why did Marco Rubio draw a cross on his forehead during an interview?» a headline blared. «What’s going on there?» asked another citizen, is «it a religious thing? A political thing?»

But it wasn’t only ignorance on view in the chatter about Rubio’s public acknowledgment of his faith. There was also plenty of anti-Christian politicized animus.

The basic assumption was that it is somehow inappropriate (read: non-progressive) to show up in public bearing the signs or symbols of the Christian religion. «Pride» flags declaring one’s allegiance to the church of exotic sexuality are just fine, as are badges announcing one’s solidarity with Islam or other species of anti-Semitic, anti-Western sentiment. But show up decorated with a black cross on Ash Wednesday and you are somehow challenging the orthodoxy of secular progressivism.

The spurt of unhappiness about Rubio’s ashen cross comes from the same dispensary that pretends to find it offensive that Press Secretary Karoline Levitt and Attorney General Pam Bondi wear a pendant with a cross. In his book What I Saw in America, G. K. Chesterton famously described the United States as «a nation with the soul of a church.» That was in 1922. The edifice was long ago desacralized and converted to other purposes. The faithful persist, but the ambient culture is indifferent if not downright hostile to their observances.