Posted on 12/21/2003 3:22:24 PM PST by nickcarraway
CHRISTMAS is the second most important festival of the Church, after Easter, but it holds a special appeal for most Christians. The miracle of Bethlehem speaks to the heart of redeemed mankind. The little town had been identified in prophecy as the birthplace of the Messiah and this was only the first of innumerable instances in the life of Our Lord that scrupulously fulfilled the forecasts of the prophets, culminating on Calvary in the realisation of David’s words: "They have pierced my hands and my feet, they have numbered all my bones."
The Feast of the Nativity is very much a Catholic festival, as evidenced by the ban on its celebration, for several centuries, in post-Reformation Scotland. The invariably rich Roman liturgy is particularly luxuriant at Christmas, beginning with the Midnight Mass, Station at St Mary Major, followed by Mass at Dawn, Station at St Anastasia’s - the exotic Vatican funicular railway that fascinated us as children leafing through our missals, which actually refers to the 45 ‘stational churches’ in Rome where the Pope formerly officiated.
From the opening moments of Midnight Mass, the Introit thrillingly proclaims the Christmas message: Dominus dixit ad me... "The Lord hath said to me: Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee." This is followed soon after by the Gradual, drawn from Psalm 109 (Tecum principium), which dramatically invokes the perspective of eternity upon the cosmic event that is the Incarnation: "With Thee is the principality in the day of Thy strength: in the brightness of the saints, from the womb before the day star I begot Thee."
Christmas is a time of refreshment, both spiritually and physically, for Christians; but, for two millennia now, it has also invariably been a brief moment of peace before resuming unending warfare against the forces of darkness. The coming year - indeed, the coming century - can only see an intensification of that struggle. The globalised drive to extinguish not only Christianity but every form of religious belief, is growing exponentially.
In Britain this year, the Christmas festival has been subjected to every harassment that petty, politically correct bureaucracy could devise. Christianity is being crushed between an unholy alliance of the atheistic Left and the globalised forces of capitalist materialism. While local councils behave like soviets, stamping out all evidence of Christian practice and belief, commercial retailers banish ‘uncool’ greetings cards with a religious theme from their shelves, in favour of smutty Santas. So powerful is the anti-religious impetus that even Muslims are now affected.
In France, President Chirac, so recently returned to power on the inspirational slogan ‘Vote for the thief, not the fascist’, has resolved to ban the hajib, the Muslim headscarf, along with Jewish skull caps and Catholic crucifixes, from schools. The ban on crucifixes will be resisted to the utmost by traditionalist Catholics, who now chiefly represent the faith in the country that was once the Eldest Daughter of the Church.
French traditional Catholics know their enemy. They recall the chouannerie - the war of the Vendée against the French Revolution, in which 400,000 Catholics, the majority of them women and children, were butchered by the Republic. They also remember, a century ago, the persecution of the Church by the régime of Combes and Waldeck-Rousseau. So, when they hear Chirac proclaim secularism to be a "crucial element in social peace and national unity", they recognise the sinister mythology of Robespierre’s republic - Marianne, the bloodstained slut of 1793.
The Church has a history of resistance and martyrdom. In the 1930s, during the Spanish Crusade of Liberation, 6,832 priests and religious were murdered by the Reds (customarily denominated "the democrats" in the British press), the most numerous martyrdom of clerics in the 2,000 years of Church history. During the following decade, Dachau concentration camp was the largest Catholic religious community in the world, housing 2,771 priests - more than in the Vatican. If there is to be a fight-back against secularism, the lead must come from Rome: this is a task for the Vicar of Christ, not the Vicar of Dibley.
First, however, Rome must recover her spiritual health, broken by the ravages of the Second Vatican Catastrophe. The Church is in the same predicament as an alcoholic: until the nature of the problem is acknowledged, no cure is possible. Until the Catholic Church accepts that the problem is Vatican II - not, as some hand-wringing conservatives claim, misinterpretations or distortions of it - the current disintegration of Catholicism cannot be halted.
The adoption of a Protestantised form of Mass has subverted the liturgy. Very few Catholics under the age of 60 have a true understanding of the Mass as the bloodless continuation of the sacrifice of Calvary. Beyond that, instruction in the faith has been withdrawn from young people, few of whom today could with confidence say how many persons there are in the Blessed Trinity. The sacred species is handled with no more reverence than a fish supper by a laity with little notion of transubstantiation and the Real Presence.
Catholic doctrine has been abandoned in favour of an ecumaniac agenda; "respect" for other faiths takes precedence over the inculcation of the true faith; and a sin-free mélange of justice-and-peace, pick-’n’-mix relativism empties the pews, accompanied by the increasingly plaintive mouth music of meaningless episcobabble.
Clerical celibacy? The bishops lack the courage or the conviction to proclaim simply that, if a man is not exclusively steeped in love of God, but also wants a wife, then he has no priestly vocation. How many women would tolerate their husband introducing a second wife into the house? Then why should God be expected to play second fiddle in his relationship with his priests?
Nor have they spelled out clearly the eternally insuperable objections to the purely pagan concept of priestesses. Our Lord had 12 apostles and, below them, 72 disciples - all male. The notion that Christ, who as God the Son knows all things past and future, was too unenlightened to see the need for priestesses in the 21st century is as infantile as the idea that he, who consorted with tax-gatherers and repentant prostitutes, who healed on the sabbath, who provoked the Pharisees at every turn, was too hidebound by convention to ordain women. He fashioned his Church precisely as he intended it to be, with a priesthood founded on the Order of Melchisedech.
Beyond that, at the solemn moment of consecration in the Mass, the celebrant momentarily acts in persona Christi - that is, he takes on the personality of Christ who, in his human nature, is male. The notion of the Church having received an incomplete revelation from Christ and awaiting the advent of Germaine Greer to complete the deposit of faith is ludicrous.
Christmas, then, is a prelude to battle. Where there is a crib, the catacomb is not far distant. Three days after Christmas, the feast of the Holy Innocents reminds us of the toll of abortion in our neo-pagan world. We inhabit today the society that would have prevailed if the pagan Maxentius had defeated Constantine at the Milvian Bridge in 312. The triumphant message from the crib is that, one day, the latter-day pagans will similarly be constrained to exclaim: "Galilean, thou hast conquered!"
The Feast of the Nativity is very much a Catholic festival, as evidenced by the ban on its celebration, for several centuries, in post-Reformation Scotland. The invariably rich Roman liturgy is particularly luxuriant at Christmas, ...
True, and it is a call to the Church Militant (that's YOU and Me):
The globalised drive to extinguish not only Christianity but every form of religious belief, is growing exponentially.
And there are challenges:
The adoption of a Protestantised form of Mass has subverted the liturgy. Very few Catholics under the age of 60 have a true understanding of the Mass as the bloodless continuation of the sacrifice of Calvary. Beyond that, instruction in the faith has been withdrawn from young people, few of whom today could with confidence say how many persons there are in the Blessed Trinity. The sacred species is handled with no more reverence than a fish supper by a laity with little notion of transubstantiation and the Real Presence.
But the message is clear; each of us need to be engaged in the battle we took on at Confirmation. To NOT fight is to turn our backs on Our Lord. To abandon the battle while the Enemy is destroying souls is treason to His Most Holy Majesty. Voting is just the smallest of our civil obligations.
GET INVOLVED. YOU ARE NEEDED NOW, MORE THAN EVER.
Garbage.
Clerical celibacy? The bishops lack the courage or the conviction to proclaim simply that, if a man is not exclusively steeped in love of God, but also wants a wife, then he has no priestly vocation. How many women would tolerate their husband introducing a second wife into the house? Then why should God be expected to play second fiddle in his relationship with his priests?
More garbage. Does this dolt think God plays second fiddle to married people?
Let's pray that Christ brings His Peace to this very angry man.
How many women would tolerate their husband introducing a second wife into the house?
But God is already seeing other priests.
Then why should God be expected to play second fiddle in his relationship with his priests?
So the relationship between God and his priests is the same as that between the priest and his altar boys.
It's a silly analogy.
There are married priests in the Catholic Church: in the Eastern Rite, and in the Latin Rite (married Anglicans who convert).
And, 15,000 married deacons in the United States, most of whom are married.
I guess God plays second fiddle to all those guys!
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