Oh did I say the Dalai Lama?
An electricity company in New Zealand is lighting up the media worldwide with a four-story billboard painting that shows a smiling Pope Benedict XVI blessing a mixed race gay couple, at a time when New Zealand’s parliament is considering whether to legalize same-sex marriage. (source)
Well I say fight the power! It is rather shocking in the current time and we must offer resistance to this volt fraud.
I’ve lamented before about the lack of Catholic podcasts. There are certainly some high quality ones out there, but there are relatively few compared to Protestant and even atheist podcasts
Now one avenue for getting quality Catholic media out there is to take an existing show produced for radio and make it available as a podcast. Catholic Answers, EWTN, and Al Kresta do this. This is an excellent way to increase discoverability and to allow people to listen to shows at their leisure.
Unfortunately I saw today two examples of Catholic media failure in this regard. The examples I found indicated they had no idea what a podcast really was. For one thing making an mp3 file available on a website is not a podcast. An actual podcast provides a syndication feed (RSS) where you subscribe to the podcast to listen to via a podcast application. These podcast application can be used on a computer or mobile device. The podcast application then checks when new shows are available and downloads them for use.
There were a couple of Catholic shows I wanted to check out. One was the Son Rise Morning Show with Brian Patrick and the other is Patrick Madrid’s new show “Right Here, Right Now”
At the top of the Son Rise Morning Show’s site there was a promising tab for “Podcasts”. It even had a Podcast button labeled “Full Feed.” This was not an actual Podcast RSS feed you could subscribe to but just a link to the same page which has a list of shows you could listen to.
Now that was annoying, but I thought maybe I could just download the show to listen to later on my iPad. Nope, no download link just streaming from the site. Plan B: Well I will just load up the page on my iPad to listen to it. Plan B Fail: Page would load, but no episodes appear on the iPad.
Update: Immaculate Heart Radio let me know that they do indeed have podcasts for some of their shows available in iTunes. They will have Patrick Madrid’s show as a podcast in the future.
Second Update: The show is now available via podcast.
Next I went to Immaculate Heart Radio where I saw a banner for “More streams, podcasts, and more!” Now was there an actual podcast I could subscribe to? You guessed it, no. What they did have is a new mobile app for iOS and Android. This app allows you to listen to live streams and what it called “Podcasts”. In this case the only show available was “Bay Area Catholics” and not Patrick Madrid’s show. Plus again it was not really a podcast, but a show available on demand for streaming.
At least on their Audio Archives page you could download individual shows. It is certainly nice to support someone being able to listen to a show by clicking on a link on their site. Actual podcasts allow you to listen to shows when not online.
EWTN’s new mobile app is another thing I found quite annoying. For the most part mobile apps created for Catholic broadcasters are usually just not very good. Now I understand this is something they hire out for and cost is of great concern. This app certainly I think reflects that. On the plus side they had a universal app for both the iPhone/iPod Touch and for the iPad. There was really no consideration is how it looked/worked on the iPad and you could not change orientation from portrait to landscape for the menus. At least videos played in landscape mode (sometimes). If you lost internet connection and wanted to play where you left off for the video – no luck there. Overall the app was just not visually appealing in any way. On the other hand it might be perfectly usable for many people and it does provide something needed. Maybe I am too picky as being both a developer and somebody who has come to understand how important interface and aesthetics are. This app though looks to me like the iconoclasts won.
Here is something else I found embarrassing. EWTN has a page dedicated to using EWTN on your mobile phone.
On your Iphone or iTouch, start Mobile Safari browser.
Wow where can I get an Iphone? Is that a Chinese knockoff of an iPhone?
How about some instructions for Android users or is it this page just never got updated? Possibly since they don’t even mention their new mobile apps.
They do have a Mobile Apps page and here they link to the iOS and Android apps stores to download this. Oddly though instead of using the standard Android icon, they used the Google Play store icon.
Now I might be a pot complaining about the color of the kettle considering the grammar and spelling mistakes that appear on my site. Still I find the problems noted above to be indicative of some Catholic media.
Of course, you’ve heard about the petition on the Whitehouse.gov site that urges President Obama to designate Catholics as a hate group, right?
“Let me tell you about the petition I started to label the Catholic Church as a hate group.”
Well, now there’s a petition to designate the people who made the first petition as a hate group.
My wife says we could turn the other cheek, and she’s probably correct.
But it is kind of funny to call the haters haters. So, let’s turn the other cheek, but also quickly, as we are turning, call them hateful bigots and then finish by turning the other cheek.
Let’s see if we can get 25,000 signatures before the anti-Catholic bigots can get their signatures.
I saw the petition last week and pretty much ignored it. Petitions on the Whitehouse.gov site are a dime-a-dozen and can be just about any idiotic thing. Besides how could this petition really affect the Whitehouse? They already treat Catholics as second-class citizens and certainly many members of the Obama administration already fall inline with this attitude.
I also notice the irony in that those who describe the actions of others as based on hatred, usually fall into a bigoted stereotype that in no way engages in what others think. Really reading what the Pope actually wrote and coming up with the idea that what he wrote was based on hate said more about the people who created and signed the petition than anything about what the Church teaches.
So if turnabout fair play in calling them haters? The problem with the whole hate crime environment is that is a failure of charity to always describe opponents as having the motive of hate.
Maybe the mindset of some who signed this petition was actually motivated by hate, but I think it is mainly motivated by a false understanding.
“There are no more than 100 people in the world who truly hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they perceive to be the Catholic Church,” – Venerable Fulton J. Sheen
This quote is particularly apropos in regards this view of the Church. Condemning homosexual acts is suppose to be based on hatred of the person with same-sex attraction. Yet the action of the Church is based on the love of the person in not wanting them to sin. If we truly hated persons with same-sex attraction we would not warn them against the sin of homosexual acts. Hatred leads to wanting somebody to continue in sin.
Now I don’t expect proponents of homosexuality to agree that this is a sin. What I would expect is that they at least attempt to understand what the Church actually teaches and to make assertions based on that. To call the Church hateful just displays a bigoted and just plain ignorant understanding. Understanding of another’s view point is not the same as agreement.
The fact that they claim that Pope Benedict XVI’s 2012 Christmas address to the Roman Curia “demeaned and belittled homosexual people around the world”, “Using hateful language and discriminatory remarks, the Pope painted a portrait in which gay people are second-class global citizens,” shows something beyond simple ignorance since the Pope said nothing of the kind and had more to say on the state of marriage and the family today than anything about homosexual marriage or homosexuality at all. They had to totally read this into the speech. Most of the reaction seems to be more towards false press reports regarding this document than to the actual words.
So I would not call the creator of this petition hateful. Either they are just plain ignorant and did not read the document themselves, or that they have really poor skills in reading and comprehension, or perhaps purposely distorted what the Pope said to advance an agenda. Whatever motivated this petition I am not much concerned with. I am more concerned with the ignorance and lack of understanding it shows and how many people display the same ignorance. Although it is also certainly true the Church has not really communicated the message regarding Church teaching at a very wide level. Church teaching when wrung through the filter of the media becomes a parody of distortion.
While we can all have fun with the women’s ordination video “Ordain a Lady”, it is really indicative of so much of this movement. The Women’s Ordination Conference (WOC) really does not have serious replies regarding their advocacy.
For example if you read through their “Why Ordination” section they really fail to answer basic objections and introduce very dubious information on past women priestesses. The image of the women with the title of Theodora Episcopa in Rome is suppose to prove this when in fact she was the widowed mother of Paschal, who was Bishop of Rome at the time. Their view of Jesus is also very odd. Instead of the Lion of Judah he is more like the kitten of Judah afraid to ordain women because of the culture of the time. He could change everything else, but not that. Every culture around Israel had women priests, yet this would be too radical to accept. What their cultural conditioning view also forgets is that the reason women priests would have been a new thing to the Jewish people is that God previously had restricted the ministerial priesthood to male members of the Tribe of Levi.
They have really been unwilling to engage with actual arguments both theologically and concerning the nature of the Church. There super-negative view of ecclesiology, the popes, and the teachings of the Church really make you wonder why they want to belong to it at all. It reminds me of Kathy Shaidle’s reaction to 9/11 Truthers “How can you believe that your President killed 2,000 people, and in between bitching about this, just carry on buying your vente latte and so forth?” I have a similar reaction to those who believe such terrible things about the Church and believe she has been resisting the Holy Spirit for 2,000 plus years. Maybe it is the part of human nature when you are told you can’t do something that you are more attracted to doing it.
In the past I reviewed The Catholic Priesthood and Women: A Guide to the Teaching of the Church by Sr. Sarah Butler (Who once was for women’s ordination) In 1978, she headed a task force of the Catholic Theological Society of America that came out in support of female priests. Later though she realized the error of the arguments made and wrote this book that rebuts them and totally supports the Church’s teaching. In this book she looks at all the arguments for women’s ordination and answers them. You just don’t see the same type of rigorous intellectual endeavor on the other side. Instead you get appeals to scripture as if they are the authentic interpreters of scripture. Who needs the magisterium when you have the WOC and the National Catholic Reporter.
Part of their lack of seriousness is that they have really not thought this through. As the video suggests the criteria for becoming a women priest is a perceived call from God. Where is the discernment? Why are there no seminaries created by WOC? When a man perceives such a calling he just doesn’t go to his bishop, get ordained, and assigned a parish. There is a rigorous screening and years of discernment both by the man and by his bishop and the bishop’s representatives in the seminary. There are plenty of men who entered the seminary only to have discerned later that they were not called to the priesthood. Remember when Sinead O’Connor was “ordained” a women priest – yes lots of discernment there.
There is also a distorted view of the priesthood as mainly a means of power. If you don’t have access to the priesthood then you don’t have access to church power. There is also an irony in their non-contextual use of St. Therese “If only I were a priest!” Yes what Therese who is a saint and a Doctor of the Church was lacking was being a priest. If only she had been a priest imagine what she could have done! Funny thing that I am much more likely to run across a parish named after a women saint then one named after a parish priest. I am much more likely to run across a statue of a women saint than a male priest. If only Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, and Hildegard of Bingen could also have been priests. Imagine what they could have done. Really everybody should be ordained priests, imagine what St. Francis could have done if he had been a priest.
The Women’s ordination conference doesn’t seem to have much concern regarding women saints. Their site is pretty much devoid of them and there are no images of these saints. The Blessed Virgin Mary is also noticeably lacking on their site. Maybe it is because there was not a women saint in history who noticed that the Church was persecuting them and that not ordaining women was directly opposed to the Holy Spirit. I guess they were all just tools of the male hierarchy and male magisterium. Although they explain much of this as just cultural shifts of view. Well if the culture can currently be in favor of it, it also means in the future it might not be. Why do they think their view is not culturally conditioned?
Obviously when it comes to discernment we can see that the Women’s Ordination Conference which insults St. Paul and Blessed John Paul II are the ones being lead by the Holy Spirit. A group that could not discern that their video would be a laugh-riot for faithful Catholics is super smart.
On the serious side, what I pray for supporters of women’s ordination is that instead of wasting their time in this advocacy that they dedicate it to becoming saints – as we are all called to do. Nothing is more glorious for the Church than her saints – and you don’t even have to be priest.
When the 113th Congress is sworn in today, its new members will include the first Hindu member of Congress and the first Buddhist to serve as senator. Also for the first time, Congress will welcome a member who describes her religion as “none.”
Democratic Arizona Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, who was raised a Mormon, is religiously unaffiliated but does not describe herself as an atheist. Her campaign was unavailable for comment to Whispers due to the swearing in, but spokesman Justin Unga told the Religion News Service in November that Sinema favors a “secular approach.” He told the New York Times the same month that Sinema “believes the terms ‘nontheist,’ ‘atheist’ or ‘nonbeliever’ are not befitting of her life’s work or personal character.” (source)
Now that is a very odd answer by her spokesman. Not fitting of a life’s work or personal character? What in the world does that have to do with anything? How about fitting of belief? Although the term “believer” seems to usually only get applied to theists, really atheism, theism, and agnosticism is a form of belief – an act of the will based on your knowledge and conclusions.
Atheism, agnosticism, and theism seem to me to be the acceptable choices that pretty much cover the issue of God’s existence. Unless I am missing something here you don’t get to vote “None of the above” and agnosticism covers a lot of the muddle in between. When she votes does she get to choose, yes, no, and present? Perhaps since she also says she is bisexual maybe she is just covering all the bases – male, female, theism, agnosticism, and theism.
On the other hand I can appreciate a politician caller themselves a “None” to some extent. Too many describe their religion as being something that is not apparent in their actions. I would suspect many more to be in the “None” category or honestly in the atheist/agnostic category. She does replace the only admitted atheist in Congress – Pete Stark.
Marc Barnes says of this women’s ordination video “Ordain a lady: that “This might be the greatest video ever to happen to the Catholic Church.” and goes on in post Why The Catholic Priesthood Is Composed of Dudes
This is certainly the funniest thing I have seen in a while and one of the best defenses for the Church’s teaching. I would have been hard-pressed to make a better parody and the words are genius. Well at least it would be a genius video if it wasn’t real.
Though one thing that really gets my ire up. I am so tired of women’s ordination proponents using Saint Thérèse of Lisieux as if she was also a proponent of women’s ordination. This is pure calumny.
“If only I were a priest! How lovingly I would bear You in my hands, my Jesus, when my voice had brought You down from Heaven. How lovingly I would give. You to souls!” “Yet while wanting to be a priest, I admire St. Francis of Assisi and envy his humility, longing to imitate him in refusing this sublime dignity.”
By the logic they use I guess Therese also wanted to get a sex change operation to be a man since she admired St. Francis’ humility. Funny also how women’s ordination proponents also usually leave out the part about envying humility. But humility does not go hand and hand when you say you are right and the Church guided by the Holy Spirit is wrong.
I had originally seen the story of Pope Benedict XVI blessing Jill Filipovic, a politician in favor of the “Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill” on boing boing. I didn’t pay much attention to it since the likelihood of them doing an intelligent story on the pope and getting facts correct approaches zero.
Then I saw that the National “Catholic” Reporter did a similar story “The disgrace of papal blessing for Ugandan homophobia”. I also didn’t pay much attention to it since the likelihood of them doing an intelligent story on the pope and getting facts correct also approaches zero. Really there is not much difference between the viewpoints in boing boing and the National Catholic Reporter.
Today I saw that Marc Barnes of Bad Catholic did a post in response to the NCR piece. Such a brilliant take down. His post is just a great read and includes such choice bits as:
Of course, Church teaching on homosexuality is in the bizarre habit of using verbs besides “Hate!” and thus remains widely incomprehensible to minds forced through our culture-war meat-grinder that renders all disagreement the total deprecation and rejection of the human person.
When I first saw the story I thought that this was the case of the Pope giving somebody a blessing, not endorsing any agenda of the person. The funny thing is that the blessing in this case actually never happened. Still as Marc show it is not surprising to find the Pope blessing people with Culture of Death agendas such as the Obama’s and other examples he gives. I love how he turns around the “Jesus ate with sinners” that progressives so love to use.
Bad Catholic has become one of my favorite blogs and such great writing as is evident here proves once again why. There is much engagement even with such a badly-wrong NCR article that goes beyond just sarcastic sneering with analysis as to where it goes wrong.
I am of the personality that once I find a parish I like I would prefer to make that the only parish I go to. My wife though is of the personality where she likes variety and to alternate among a range of parishes. The positive side of this is that I do see a vast range of how the liturgy is practiced within my diocese. This also means there are about four parishes where I can go to and have zero complaints and several others where my complaints are mainly directed towards the hymns and the folk guitar accompaniment. As a Catholic blogger it also provides me fodder and the ability to commiserate with others regarding the liturgy.
Thus I had two very different experiences on the last Sunday of Advent and Midnight Mass.
To start with the good I was very pleasantly surprised by Midnight Mass at a parish I had not gone to Mass before. I knew they had Life Teen Masses so I was certainly on the skeptical side. This was also the parish that the current Bishop of Birmingham was the pastor of. One of the things I love about Midnight Mass is to arrive early to be able to sing along to and to listen to Christmas Carols. Christmas is one of those few days when you can be pretty much assured of not getting the common Haugen/Daas/Schutte dreck. I was very glad to find a well-trained choir with accompaniment by violin, some brass, and organ. The pre-Mass carols were also an interesting selection including the standards along with some interesting choices such as the Coventry Carol about the slaughter of the innocents – very fitting this year. I was a bit tentative when I saw a bunch of hand bells positioned for use. Again I was surprised when they were put to use by a dozen women quite capably with both a carol done with just the hand bells and other types of bells and with some of the subsequent carols. Really quite beautiful and fitting for a Christmas Mass.
I was also quite delighted with the liturgy itself as much of it was chanted and there was a quite thoughtful homily delivered by the pastor a Vietnamese priest. I was also in for a nice surprise during the “Prayers of the Faithful” where there was intercession for the souls in Purgatory. Now maybe I had heard this done before occasionally and forgot, but really when I heard this I found this so fitting and really something that should predominate.
For a more modern church there were lots of blank walls, but they had a large crucifix in the center and I can forgive much when this is so. That and some good sized statues kept it from being as barren as many modern churches. Plus the Stations of the Cross were quite nice and ones I would not mind meditating before. Usually I find abstract Stations of the Cross where I have to squint to figure out what I am looking at.
The parish I went to on the last Sunday of Advent was another story. It is bad enough to get the folk guitar treatment, but when it is not even good folk guitar it is even worse. Typical Gather hymnal selection with the exception of “O Come Emmanuel.” Now I wouldn’t even mention this since this type of mediocrity is rather common. What punctuated it for me was “Liturgical Gestures” at least that is what they called it. What it really is is a copying of hand motions as practiced by some Protestant churches. They directed the laity to do certain motions with their arms during the “hymn”. Funny how actual liturgical gestures such as bowing during the Creed are never emphasized, but hymn dance moves make the cut.
I try to assign positive motives to people, but the road to liturgical hell is paved with good intentions and hand motions. “Well we have the awesome mystery of the Eucharist, but what can we do to spice it up? Of course hand motions.” The type of thought process that leads to these liturgical experiments betray a certain Protestant mindset totally set apart from the example the Holy Father is giving and and the “reform of the reform” is nowhere to be seen. What concerns me is that this kind of crap is probably not going to be something exceptional in one parish, but is the type of thing to spread to other like-minded parishes. I’ve made peace sort of with folk Masses, but please don’t torment me with “liturgical gestures”, as the Curt Jester I might have a curt gesture for this in response.
Otherwise this will be the next step:
The above is from a helpful Protestant dance ministry that seems awfully close to a parody to me, but if you want to learn messianic dance steps here you go.
Now whenever someone objects to any forms of liturgical dance or other movements some will refer to King David dancing before the Arc of the Convenant. Well when they decide to dance naked like King David I might give more credence to the argument. Though they also forget the part where he had scandalized others and the fact that this was a non-liturgical act outside of the Temple.
Now this is a parish church that has speakers blazoned everywhere in all directions. So that means of course you could not hear the homily or the readings. In contrast the other parish with no speakers in sight, I heard every word annunciated quite well. Now if you are going to use microphones then it just might be a good idea to do some sound testing and to make allowances for the speaking style of different priests. The use of microphones can make people assume that others can hear them. As a child and through my teen years I was trained in the theater to be able to project my voice in an outside amphitheater or a typical auditorium. Yes that does make me a loud mouth, but you knew that already. Maybe the priest’s homily was a good one, but I have really no idea since in 15 minutes I heard words bubble up from time to time. I could have sworn a couple of times I heard “sodomite marriage”, but surely that must have been my imagination. Although I am fairly certain I also heard references to contraception and abortion. If so I would have loved to hear the whole homily from a foreign priest that had not yet had his Political Correctness injection.
On the plus side of things as I had mentioned before from my own Mass-going experience that actual liturgical abuses are becoming much less common and that mostly the problem area now is with the hymns. As most people have assigned this as mostly a subjective area, this area will likely be the last corrected.
Bob Rice and Chris Padgett have a nice parody with “Handmotions in Heaven”
Gay marriage threatens family ‘to its foundations’, says Pope
Pope says future of mankind at stake over gay marriage
And many other headlines playing fast in loose with a cut and paste
He made the comments in his annual Christmas address to the Vatican bureaucracy, one of his most important speeches of the year.
You know an article is going to be really fair when the Roman Curia is called the Vatican Bureaucracy. Though that is fair enough. Really all political reporting should refer to politicians addressing the bureaucracy whether of state, federal, parliamentary, etc stripe.
Still the annual address to Roman Curia being described as one of the Pope’s most important speeches of the year is quite odd and really pure hyperbole. Why is it considered one of the most important speeches of the year? Because the reporter says it is.
The great joy with which families from all over the world congregated in Milan indicates that, despite all impressions to the contrary, the family is still strong and vibrant today. But there is no denying the crisis that threatens it to its foundations – especially in the western world. It was noticeable that the Synod repeatedly emphasized the significance, for the transmission of the faith, of the family as the authentic setting in which to hand on the blueprint of human existence. This is something we learn by living it with others and suffering it with others. So it became clear that the question of the family is not just about a particular social construct, but about man himself – about what he is and what it takes to be authentically human. The challenges involved are manifold. First of all there is the question of the human capacity to make a commitment or to avoid commitment. Can one bind oneself for a lifetime? Does this correspond to man’s nature? Does it not contradict his freedom and the scope of his self-realization? Does man become himself by living for himself alone and only entering into relationships with others when he can break them off again at any time? Is lifelong commitment antithetical to freedom? Is commitment also worth suffering for? Man’s refusal to make any commitment – which is becoming increasingly widespread as a result of a false understanding of freedom and self-realization as well as the desire to escape suffering – means that man remains closed in on himself and keeps his “I” ultimately for himself, without really rising above it. Yet only in self-giving does man find himself, and only by opening himself to the other, to others, to children, to the family, only by letting himself be changed through suffering, does he discover the breadth of his humanity. When such commitment is repudiated, the key figures of human existence likewise vanish: father, mother, child – essential elements of the experience of being human are lost.
While certainly the Holy Father is referencing the crisis that affects marriage, it goes a little far to see this totally in the light of just same-sex “marriage.” It goes deeper than that with divorce, single parenthood, and other deconstructions of the family. You can see this by the simple fact that the Pope is talking about attitudes in actual marriage of lifelong commitment and the false idea of freedom. The idea of self-giving and sacrifice in the face of an individualistic view of marriage where love is a feeling that can pass and not the willing of the good for the other. There is a crisis that goes way beyond same-sex “marriage” that has crippled family life and in fact made the way for the view of marriage that made same-sex “marriage” seem to be the same thing. The Pope does go on to talk about the new philosophy of sexuality that is a profound falsehood and what I would call the “dictatorship of sexual relativity” to mangle a phrase from the Holy Father.
In the Pope’s Message for the World Day of Peace he did specifically talk about same-sex “marriage’.
There is also a need to acknowledge and promote the natural structure of marriage as the union of a man and a woman in the face of attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different types of union; such attempts actually harm and help to destabilize marriage, obscuring its specific nature and its indispensable role in society.
This led to a small protest in St. Peter square by activists. It always seems to surprise them that the Church has not yet become a proponent of homosexual acts and a sterile view of marriage. The Church has become like the prophets of old. Proclaiming the truth to a generation that does not want to hear it. Although the call to repentance is a call we can all be rather deaf to.
This was a part of his World Day of Peace message that I had highlighted when I previously read it.
“The precondition for peace is the dismantling of the dictatorship of relativism and of the supposition of a completely autonomous morality which precludes acknowledgment of the ineluctable natural moral law inscribed by God upon the conscience of every man and woman.”
Wow! How far has the world fallen? A group of parents in Missoula, Mont. are upset over the religious nature of Christmas songs performed at a local elementary school – alleging the songs about the Baby Jesus is unconstitutional and a “form of bullying.”
The parents, who declined to be identified, are threatening to sue the Missoula County Public School District unless songs like “Joy to the World” and “Good Christian Men Rejoice” are replaced with secular tunes. [Via Creative Minority Report]
I’m shocked, shocked I tell you. That there is a public school that was still singing actual Christmas carols is quite shocking. Especially how did “Good Christian Men” get past the inclusive language politically correct carols?
Although Christmas carols are quite dangerous and can have a delayed impact on the young mind. As a young atheist and throughout my life I have loved Christmas carols and specifically the traditional sacred carols. I had zero theological connection with them, but I knew their beauty musically and I reacted to that beauty. While I can enjoy the more seasonal Christmas songs that are more about climate and good feelings during this season (Christmasy songs), the traditional carols were always what I wanted to hear.
At one time you could turn on the radio and be certain to hear a good proportion of the sacred Christmas carols. As years have passed the stations that would play “Holiday” music were concentrating almost fully on the Christmasy songs. I remember once noting on a 24 hour Christmas music channel on a cable network that after a couples of days they played no traditional songs at all.
Wanting my traditional Christmas carol fix I had started to channel hop on the radio trying to find a station that played them. This led me to listening to Protestant radio and putting up with their between song messages. This in turn led me to the seeking phase of my conversion and devouring books at the library on the subject. The hit-and-run accident that had led me to question my atheist faith a couple of years priors had opened me up and of course God was providing me grace to see the world anew.
So atheist parents if you want your kids to grow up to be devout atheists please don’t let them become ritually unclean by listening to actual Christmas carols. Beauty is a devious trick of believers, sow watch out.
The above story though does remind me of a parody I did before:
PORTLAND, OR (Roto Reuters) A new children’s choir groups is getting lots of attention and bookings during the winter season. The Silent Night Seasonal Semi-Singers sidestep the problems inherent in a multi-cultural society and what has been called the “Christmas wars.” Secularists are upset with the lyrics of explicitly Christian carols and Christians become upset when these carols are left out. To solve this problem Ms. Giesel of the the Glencoe school elemenatary choir decided instead of hymns to do hums. Students are gagged while performing to ensure no actual Christian carols are ever sung. The instrumental portions of traditional Christmas carols are slightly altered to ensure no one in the audience might attempt to sing along. Silent Night is sung just as intended – totally silent. To ensure fairness winter holiday songs are also hummed.
Parents at first were hesitant to endorse the idea until they found out how enthusiastic their kids were. Now even students with no musical talent can join the choir and hum along. The provided humnal makes it very easy for kids to learn songs since they do not have to memorize any lyrics. When the audience is invited to join in and hum along nobody ever feels bad or put down since they don’t know the words or only know the first refrain.
The idea is catching on in neighborhoods where kids bundle up and go around the neighborhood from door to door humming or what some have called humoling. People are thrilled to find hummers at their door humming along to slightly familiar tunes invoking the winter season. So if you see a group of humolers approaching your door this season then open your door to the joys of holiday humoling.