OF SIMPLICITY, OVERSIMPLIFICATION, AND SIMPLETONS
Pauly Fongemie
November 30, 2009

This column continues our running series on the war against Christ and His Holy Mother being waged in divers ways in our land. Two recent events, on their face appearing to be disjoined, are thereby all the stronger as co-weapons striking at the sanctity of the eternal verities: There is but One True God, and that He took on human nature in order to be crucified upon the Cross in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world; that He received His human nature from His Holy Mother, Mary, ever a Virgin; that He is both True God and True Man and salvation is only through Him and His Holy Church, the Catholic Church.

As always the marauding hordes of malcontents interspersed with misguided do-gooders seek every opportunity to dim the Light of the World, Jesus Christ, in particular during the holy season of Christmas. The enemies of Christ are two-fold in kind: [1] the malicious who know what it is they do in so far as they are jealous of the power and rule of Almighty God, His perfection, His very essence and Being --- this kind is the most prevalent in the juridical sense; [2] and those who do not have the gift of true faith, who reduce the wholeness of the Truth of Jesus Christ by their diminution of the role of the Mother of God, Most Holy Mary, not only as a perpetual Virgin but as the mediatrix of all graces as willed by her Son, Jesus. These are more numerous in the practical, everyday sense. They are far more insidious because they come disguised as friends, not the enemy. Both deny Eternal Truth, one in frontal attacks by way of a concerted effort to have it banned from the public sphere, the other by the distortion of doctrine itself, thus the very suppression, the invasion of our hearts, minds and souls. We no longer can think and are almost afraid to say what we ought to believe and used to know, long ago. The two small but mighty cataclysms of which I speak come from these two armed camps arrayed against God in all His glory and in all truth.

I will address the second kind of attack herewith.

There is a former presidential GOP candidate, who has written a book, titled, A SIMPLE CHRISTMAS; at first blush the work seems to be inspirational, to uphold the real meaning of Christmas, and I am certain that this is precisely what the author intended. He is a former Baptist minister as I understand it, and typical of his class, filled with zeal, acquainted with the Bible and little else doctrinally speaking, certainly not the light of the only true religion, the Catholic faith. One of the lessons depicted in the book that he is most proud of is that Mary was just like every other human mother and that her virginal womb was not inviolate [he does not use this phraseology, but this is the very essence of his thesis] but that she bore Christ in physical agony. Where is the outcry against this blasphemy? Was the affront so subtle we missed it altogether? We no longer can think and are almost afraid to say what we ought to believe and used to know, long ago.

The rupture that would have engendered such pain would have penetrated through her physical perfection, beauty and purity, if not her spiritual "fullness of grace". This claim debases the Mother of God by raising us up to her equal, quite ironically. She isn't any more in nature than we are, thus we must be her equal in childbirth. He wants us to identify ourselves with her in our childbearing experience, or rather have her identified with ours. All human mothers, save one, are conceived with Original Sin, our heritage from our great great, so great grandmother of long ago, Eve. In the book of Genesis God tells women part of their punishment: that they will bear their children in pain. And so it has ever been. The new Eve, who is to be the mother of the new Adam, Christ, in order to be worthy to give her human nature to Him cannot be so conceived. Not only is her womb to be pure and inviolate, the marriage act by which God created her could not have passed on the taint of Original Sin. This is the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church. The Church has always taught that Mary is ever Virgin, and conceived without Original Sin so that she had no concupiscence, her virginity was not only physical, it was whole, that is in mind, heart and in her soul. Whole means that the physical cannot be separated from the rest. Her only object of love was God alone! She neither had any rupture from God, in sin, no matter how small, nor in her womb.

The great mystic Ven. Mary of Agreda was permitted sublime glimpses of the Divine mysteries; in her treatise on the Nativity of Jesus she writes [emphasis mine]:

"The most holy Mary remained in this ecstasy and Beatific Vision for over an hour immediately preceding her Divine delivery. At the moment when She issued from it and regained the use of her senses She felt and saw that the body of the infant God began to move in her virginal womb; how, releasing and freeing Himself from the place which in the course of nature He had occupied for nine months, He now prepared to issue forth from that sacred bridal chamber. This movement not only did not cause any pain or hardship, as happens with the other daughters of Adam and Eve in their child births; but filled Her with incomparable joy and delight, causing in her soul and in her virginal body such exalted and Divine effects that they exceed all thoughts of men. Her body became so spiritualized with the beauty of Heaven that She seemed no more a human and earthly creature. Her countenance emitted rays of light, like a sun incarnadined, and shone in indescribable earnestness and majesty, all inflamed with fervent love. She was kneeling in the manger, her eyes raised to Heaven, her hands joined and folded at her breast, her soul wrapped in the Divinity and She herself was entirely deified. In this position, and at the end of the heavenly rapture, the most exalted Lady gave to the world the Only-begotten of the Father and her own, our Savior Jesus, true God and man, at the hour of midnight, on a Sunday, in the year of the creation of the world five thousand one hundred and ninety-nine (5199), which is the date given in the Roman Church, and which date has been manifested to me as the true and certain one." [From THE MYSTICAL CITY OF GOD.]

By leading his readers to think of Our Lady as physically the same as you and I in the matter of Jesus' delivery in the stable at Bethlehem, the author oversimplifies to the point that one of God's greatest miracles is denied Him in actuality, for the Incarnation [and Birth of Jesus Christ] is truly such a miracle, beyond human comprehension at all without the gift of true faith which enlightens human reason. If Mary is conceived without Original Sin there is no need for the punishment of painful childbirth; not that the Mother of God is spared human suffering, but her daily trials and mortification are in union with that of her Divine Son in His human nature, not the kind of suffering that is merited because of sin; rather the suffering in reparation for the sins of others.

The simplicity of Bethlehem is worlds away from the simple Christmas, the banality of the modern world in denial of the Truth that can set us free. Mike Huckabee sees with "a glass darkly". The same author needs to be reacquainted with Scripture. He says: "Peace on earth and good will to men." The Gospel of St. Luke, Chapter 2:1-14 reads:

"AT THAT time, there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that the whole world should be enrolled. This enrolling was first made by Cyrinus, the governor of Syria. And all went to be enrolled, everyone into his own city. And Joseph also went up from: Galilee out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea to the city of  David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, to be enrolled with Mary his espoused wife, who was with child. And it came to pass, that when they were there, her days were accomplished, that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her first-born Son, and wrapped Him up in swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds watching, and keeping the night watches over their flock. And behold an Angel of the Lord stood by them, and the brightness of God shone round about them, and they feared with a great fear. And the Angel said to them: Fear not; for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, that shall be to all the people; for this day is born to you a Saviour, Who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David. And this shall be a sign unto you: You shall find the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid in a manger. And suddenly there was with the Angel a multitude of the heavenly army, praising God, and saying: Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace to men of good will."

 This, too, is worlds away from the former Arkansas governor's wishful phrase.

The juridical, frontal assault, as always has its roots in the Anti-Christ Litigating Union or ACLU & Company. The locale is Washington State of a curious liberal bent, aided by the sorely misguided, grace-bereft Supreme Court. The story goes like this. Last year the governor took some heat because she permitted non-Christian and anti-Christian displays at Christmas in the capitol rotunda. The rubric used to justify this blasphemy at Christmas, a sacred holiday, was "freedom of speech". Now our benighted court and its lower satrapies have held that freedom of speech demands that any and all such "speech" must be allowed on public grounds, at all times in the interest of fair and balance so to speak. To forego more public outrage the state is not having any displays at Christmas this year; the only symbol will be the "holiday" tree. In effect the atheists win anyway you count. The whole point of their tedious exercise is to blunt the proclamation of Christ; any evangelization for their cause is a bonus.

Now this action on the part of the state of Washington is to "reason" without the aid of grace and natural reason itself. There is no national holiday for Atheists United, no national holiday for Hanukkah and so forth. Christmas is a national holiday, the most sacred one of the year. Let us use an analogy. It is Martin Luther King Day. The festivities have been in the works for weeks. A renegade group arises, claiming to have an equal right to display their ideas, their doctrine of White Supremacy, and on a par and in the same venue as the speakers and displays honoring the slain civil rights hero. They insist they have a right to march in the local Martin Luther King parade. What has been the proper response in the past? Yes, common sense, not to mention plain old justice has up to now prevailed. Even the befuddled courts have said that no one who opposes an organization's beliefs and goals has a right to march in a parade sponsored by said organization. Thus the "Gay Pride" sect cannot march in a St. Patrick's Day parade. It is free to have its own parade at another time as we all know too well and much to our repulsion at such garish, depraved exhibitions. If the Washington pismires want displays in the rotunda to counterpose Christmas, let them petition their legislature for their own public holiday. If we were sane and still normal, this would be our approach to their reproach, their encroachment. Afraid to not invite them to the picnic, we declare a day of artificial rain and cancel the great event except in name only and only a half name at that. Some strategy: bargaining with the devil!

I repeat, Christmas, the annual remembrance of the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ, is a national and state holiday. A nativity scene is the moral, metaphysical equivalent of a parade and should not be trampled on or assaulted by competing displays at that time and in that place. If the state of Washington thinks it has no choice but to permit Atheists and Festivists a place in the public square, then by all means, do so, some other time, in an "ordered" fashion. If the "Gay" activists cannot march in a St. Patrick's Day parade why should anti-Christians "march" in on the Christian crèche? Logically, they cannot. Having denied the Social Kingship of Christ in practice, we find ourselves hostage to the denial of right reason itself because we have spurned the grace of God and courted His anger. To scorn the filial fear of God is to show contempt for His holy love for filial fear is born of love. We are now denied the public expression of the love of the Infant Savior within our midst.

Atheists can intrude on Christmas, an irrationality, but homosexualists cannot intrude on St. Patrick, a rational norm. The Saint is greater than God. The principle is precisely the same in both cases, yet it is applied only in one. The blind leading the blind into complete chaos, social meltdown and the tyranny of the unnatural, anti-reason, and the absurd! We have exchanged the exquisite simplicity of human reason and right balance for the pose of simpletons who are interchangeable with Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, dumb, dumber, now dumbest, revealing a death wish however we may protest otherwise.

We only have to look to Europe, at last rising up in response to the Islamization of their countries largely due to mass apostasy joined to an overbearing, unwise PC ethos that only benefits the interloper with an agenda and who holds no such ethic, but is practical and crafty enough to use it to gain a strong foothold by which to undermine western society from within. It appears that it is already too late now, there. Let us pray and hope it is not, here. I do not have much hope because our leaders are by and large in apostasy themselves, and where there is some semblance of the Christian creed, that creed has been cannibalized because heretical and or apostate Catholics and Protestants have thrown aside the gift of faith or have never had it to begin with. How much of the debacle is our fault, that of you and me, who have failed to bring others to Christ, to His One True Church, to the Truth? Only you and I can answer this in our hearts. The "Reason" for "the Season" cannot even be publicly honored, because we have lost the seasoning of "salt" and all human reason ...

THIS IS A CHRISTMAS TREE, GET OVER IT---GET A LIFE! 
Pauly Fongemie
December 11, 2008 A.D.

It is that time of year again, time for our annual countdown of the war against Jesus Christ, Our Savior. The assorted and sordid secularists and their allies never rest in devising schemes to eviscerate Truth from their midst, as if they own the public square which is becoming a swirling sewer of impious provocation. This year it is impossible to award the most extreme or most offensive, although a sodomite "crèche" in the Netherlands---how aptly named---is a close runner-up. The blasphemies and impieties are so outlandish they are superfluous by the standards of this motley crew of unhappy, miserable creatures who have nothing better to do, it seems, than rail against the only name by which they may be saved, Jesus. We will continue to pray for their salvation; they are beyond mere human help of any kind.

The theme for the year of our Lord, 2008, a watershed year to be sure, is a non-religious symbol that is already being banned in some quarters as offensive, the Christmas Tree, even if someone says its is only a "holiday" tree. The situation is beyond sardonic and laughable. First the principalities and powers told us we had to accept the tree in lieu of the manger because the sight of the image of the Infant Savior was just too much for modern sensibilities of "tolerance"! Never mind that tree is not religious, in of itself; those of us Christians who do decorate with a fir tree and lights do so, as a backdrop or adjunct for the nativity scene, without which Christmas is bereft of its reason. Now they are telling us that the tree itself must go at the library at the University of North Carolina. In some libraries, such as our public library here, we can have any religious symbol the public deems except for the crèche. This means it is not religion that offends per se, but which one.

Apparently the tree, sans manger, is still too "religious", that is, "too Christian" for some. This would be bad enough, but some Catholics are imbibing of the sacrilegious spirit of the age, to the point of being besotted. In a discussion on FOX News one Catholic commentator regaled his audience with his insipid ideas, to wit, that he did not mind that Christmas plays were banned because he believed in tolerance, that is to say, that other religions had rights, too. He failed to explain why this demands the banishment of Christmas. After all, does not tolerance mean exactly this? No, we all know what is meant by tolerance and it is anything but. This man is on the verge of losing his soul, he has already lost his head.

By now we all know about the scandal in the state of Washington. I have only one set of questions for the so-called Catholic governor: Is not Christmas a federal holiday? Would you permit ingrates and malcontents to insist on an anti-Thanksgiving display on public grounds at Thanksgiving time? Of course, not, because there is never any such display of mean-spiritedness. Would you agree to allow the peaceniks to put up large anti-military posters in the Veteran's Day parade? Of course not. These national holidays are held in reverence and no one is permitted to molest the celebration, although protesters may proclaim their spite elsewhere at other times. Of all the US holidays, the one most sacred of all, is the only one that is desacrilized and in the most cruel manner. Governor Gregoire [I cringe at the sound of such a French name], why are not the sensitivities of devout Christians taken into account, and only the sensitivities of others? Do you not know that you will have to account to Almighty God for your service in office?

To quote another Catholic, whose name I do not know:



By what right do those with no national holiday of their own disrupt a federally established holiday of long-tradition? Let the malcontents and nihilists demonstrate to their hardened hearts content, in the proper place and time, if necessary. I find it curious and most telling that only one tradition is so dishonored and relentlessly so. "Peace on earth to men of good will", not good will to all men.



E-MAIL

HOME-------------------SOUND-OFF ARCHIVES

www.catholictradition.org/Christmas/holiday6.htm