Saving Christmas

Dear Colleagues,
Please use your resources to strongly encourage Americans to see “The Nativity Story” movie, which opens in theatres December 1. It is a powerfully sacred family movie about the birth of Jesus Christ. It is sure to become an American classic. Important Hollywood insiders including Writer/Director, Jonathan Flora and Movie Guide’s Ted Baehr, are promoting this movie. We all have a responsibility to do our part to help make this film a blockbuster.

Hey, here's a thought.
In addition to putting Christ back into Christmas,
how about we also put the MASS back into Christmas?
Let's see the Protestants put their money where their mouth is - all of them should go to Catholic Mass on Christmas.
After all, Christ's Mass - that's the reason for the season!
Yeah, I didn't think the non-Catholic Christians were really serious either...
Steve

Hi Steve,
Interesting idea and thank you for your comments.
Blessings,
Michael

Interesting idea and thanks for my comments?!?
Isn't that exactly the kind of response the Christians get upset with when they get it from Desperate Housewives or Walmart's Gay Initiative?
Explain to me exactly how your response differs from the non-committal nonsense Dr. Dobson refuses to put up with.

I don't believe that you and I have a disagreement.

Abortion is murder, the practice of homosexuality is an abomination, unions are using their powers to promote anti social cultural changes and the list goes on. I cover all of these issues and take the gloves off while doing it.My site clearly testifies to this.

I have many Catholic friends that I work with regularly but there are millions of non Catholic Christians that do go to church on Christmas and all the other days that their churchs are open. It isn't what we call ourselves, it is what we believe.
Dr. Dobson is one of the people I look up to and he takes on the issues. As you say he " refuses to put up with the non-committal nonsense.

So please don't let that brief response color your opinion of my positions. Simply take a look at the papers on our site and it will clearly testify that we are solidly committed, put the cause above ourselves and do what we can to fight the fight.

Blessings, Michael


Michael,
I believe we do have a disagreement.
Read the following two essays and maybe you'll see why I think you and the inestimable Dr. Dobson are hypocrites.
http://bridegroompress.com/catalog/article_info.php?articles_id=204
http://bridegroompress.com/catalog/article_info.php?articles_id=207

Yes, you may take Catholic positions on some moral issues, just like you use some parts of the Bible the Catholic Church wrote and preserved for you, but you have never celebrated Christmas if you have never participated in Christ's Mass.
That's the reason for the season.

You are exactly right - it isn't what we call ourselves, it's what we believe.
And Protestants refuse to believe that Jesus Christ makes Himself present at Christ's Mass. So you get in high dudgeon about the missing Christ, but you are pretty darned pleased that you aren't attending the missing Mass.

It never occurs to you that by missing Mass, you have already missed Christ, and thus aren't that much different from the pagans you declaim against.

Dr. Dobson is a coward on the issues.
Have you ever heard him talk about the problems contraception causes in marriages?
I haven't.

Have you ever heard him mention that every Christian who ever lived, including every Protestant reformer, uniformly denounced the use of contraception until 1930?
I haven't.

Have you ever heard him defend the practice of masturbation as an essentially harmless practice?
I have.

The man refuses to take on the root of the abortion/homosexuality problem.
Homosexuality is simply contracepted sex, rendered sterile by the partners' very beings, but not particularly different from the temporarily sterile sex that most Christian married couples engage in. Take a look at this: http://bridegroompress.com/catalog/article_info.php?articles_id=63

So, don't expect me to get upset with the pagans when they keep Christ out of Christmas.
The Protestants stripped Him out of Christmas quite a long time ago.

The atheists are just trying to match the rhetoric with the reality.
I can't very well find any fault with them for wanting to be honest.

Steve

Steve,

There are thousands who follow my site and Jim has millions who follow his work. In fact it was a Catholic leader and friend in Hollywood who asked me to post the Ted Baehr piece.I did, by the way, completely agree with Ted and his piece.

Just where do you get off calling Jim Dobson and myself hypocrites?

That is plainly ridiculous, false and a self-righteous assumption in your own mind.What is your agenda, what are your credentials and how do you have the right to be so judgemental of fellow Christians genuinely working so hard to change the direction our degrading culture is going?

While I appreciate the Catholic positions on the values issues I don't use the Catholic church or any other denomination as my guide, I use God's word laid out in the Bible.

We are all pitiful sinners who deserve the pits of hell and it is only because of Christ dying on the cross that we are redeemed.
Faith + nothing = salvation. Salvation isn't based on works and you receive grace by faith alone.

As the body of Christ we should not be attacking each other but working together for the good of God.

You are in my prayers. You need the prayer and I need the practice.
Blessings,
Michael

Michael,
To say that a Catholic leader asked you to post the piece is not really responsive to any of the
points I made. My point is that Protestants began the de-Christianization of Christmas, so you can hardly complain about it today.

As for where I get off calling you hypocrites, I thought I made that clear.
It is hypocritical to attack abortion and be silent on the thing that cause abortion: contraception.
It is hypocritical to attack pornography while being essentially silent on the thing that drives pornography: masturbation.

Jim Dobson is either ignorant as a stone, having completely failed to think through his position, or he is a hypocrite. Are we clear on the concept now?

As for my credentials: I am a Christian who is tired of Christian hypocrisy.
I didn't know we needed any more credentials than that.

And you aren't really working that hard to change the direction of the culture.
You are attacking fruits without attacking roots, so you will fail.

Your position is crap.
The problem is precisely that you DON'T use God's Word laid out in the Bible.
You just use the parts of the Bible you happen to agree with.

For instance, Matthew tells us that if two Christians have a disagreement, we should take it to the Church, which will settle the matter.
Now, you have just told me that you refuse to use any church as your guide - you don't listen to any church.
Thus, you have already dismissed out of hand the Biblical guidance on how to resolve disputes.

I thought you followed the Scriptures???
He was handed over for our transgressions and was raised for our justification.
His blood redeems us, but it is only at the resurrection that we were redeemed, justified.
Or don't you accept Romans 4:25?

You may have read the whole Bible, but you never understood it.
If I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.
If faith alone saved, then having all faith, so as to move mountains would give me salvation, right?
But it doesn't.
Your theology is as bankrupt as your efforts to have Christmas without Christ's Mass.

And, of course, since grace is necessary for salvation and "You are not saved by faith alone", then grace does not ordinarily come through faith alone.
Seems to me that is Scripture too, and the Word of God cannot be broken.

As the Body of Christ, we have a duty to correct one another's faults.

Your efforts to "save Christmas" cannot succeed because you aren't interested in saving Christmas.
You are interested in saving Christ without His Cross.
That's all the Mass is - the presentation of His Cross to each generation.

You can't have Christ without the Cross, so a pox on your attempt to "save Christmas", sir.
The very idea that Christmas can be "saved" by concentrating on a cross-less Christ is absurd.

Steve