If you believe that this essay was posted on April 1, 2013, you can thank Pope Gregory XIII. If you identify the date this article was posted in some other fashion, April Fools' Day is for you.
Prior to 1582, much of the world used a calendar that was developed under Julius Caesar, known as the Julian calendar. The Romans identified January as the first month of the year. However, there were many people who recognized March 25 as the beginning of the new year. Because of Easter, they would celebrate the new year on April 1. The Julian calendar has a technical problem in how it handles leap years. The days have been slipping for centuries. By the mid 1500s, the date of Easter no longer aligned to the lunar cycle. The current difference stands at 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar. Thus, April 1, 2013 in Gregorian is March 19, 2013 in Julian. This issue was known by astronomers for centuries, but no one had an alternative.
Pope Gregory XIII enlisted the best minds and made a commitment to correct the technical problems with the Julian calendar by adjusting how leap years are handled. The purpose of the Gregorian calendar was to establish the dates of Catholic feast days. Over the course of the next few centuries, the Gregorian calendar became the accepted secular calendar in most countries. Those countries that adopted the Gregorian calendar also adopted January 1 as New Year's day. In the United States, January 1 is the legal holiday for New Year's day.
Unfortunately, during the long transition from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, there remained confusion about when New Year's Day should be celebrated. There were those that adopted January 1 as New Year's day and those that continued to celebrate April 1 as New Year's day. These latter celebrants were known as April Fools. They were often the butt of practical jokes.
What started as good natured humor has become a daily barrage of name calling (and calling people fools would be a step up from today's discourse). It is common practice now to resort to name calling whenever people disagree about religion, politics, and social issues. Even when people are attempting to serve the common good, they routinely tear down those who oppose their ideas. Rather than address the issues directly, opponents are attacked personally and it is not good natured humor. In his most recent inaugural address, Obama called for an end to name calling in politics. In his book on the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Lencioni highlights mistrust among team members and unhealthy conflict as two foundational dysfunctions of effective teams. Calling people fools (and worse) breeds division and mistrust not only in teams but also communities and society.
During his mass of installation last month, Pope Francis gave a different message for serving the weakest and the poorest in the world: we need to serve one another with love and tenderness. Jesus Christ calls upon us to love our enemies. To be called a child of God means you must be a peacemaker (Matthew 5:9). In Jesus' last public prayer, he called for unity (John 17: 20-21) as the ultimate strength. Conflict is inevitable and healthy when focused on the issues and not the person. Pope Francis' message is that these conflicts should be rooted in love for one another. That is the hallmark of a Catholic as well as most religions.
Although religion has been crowded out of the public, political sphere, it is a unifying force within communities. In searching for empirical solutions, it would be helpful if political leaders actually paid attention to empirical data. There is ambiguous data at best that firing teachers and principals and closing schools leads to better outcomes for children. There is also empirical evidence that these strategies make children's lives worse. However, there is empirical evidence (p. 178, Figure 6.7) that the social bonds of the community surrounding a school can ameliorate the effects of poverty on children's lives. In particular, poor communities with high percentages of religious participation in the community achieved higher outcomes in their schools than poor communities with lower percentages of religious participation in the community. Rather than stamp out religion from the public sphere, we should be embracing religion as a powerful tool for community building and school reform.
Pope Francis' message calls for an end of everyday as April Fools' day and calls for embracing service with love for another as the means to protect and serve the world's most vulnerable people.
