Punditry

John
Allen Jr. reports on Benedict XVIs appearance at Romes La
Sapienza this coming Thursday and a letter from 63 professors and
students, including the entire physics faculty, demanding that the
invitation be withdrawn.

 …Their charge? That
Benedict XVI is an enemy of science and
reason.

Specifically, the letter points to a speech given on March 15, 1990, by
then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in Parma, Italy, in which he addressed
the notorious Galileo case. On that occasion, Ratzinger quoted Austrian
philosopher Paul Feyerabend that the churchs verdict against Gaileo
was rational and just.

The physics professors described themselves as indignant as scientists
faithful to reason, and as teachers who dedicate our lives to the
advancement and diffusion of knowledge. These words offend and
humiliate us. In the name of the secularity of science, we hope that
this incongruous event can still be cancelled.

In media interviews, the professors have also cited Benedicts recent
encyclical, Spe Salvi, as hostile to modern science.

…The 18-year-old speech cited by the popes critics, for example,
offered a reflection by Ratzinger on what he saw as a change in the
secular intellectual climate, re-evaluating Galileo as part of a
growing awareness of the ambivalence of scientific progress —
especially under the shadow of the bomb. In that context, Benedict
quoted the judgment of Feyerabend, an agnostic and skeptic, on Galileo,
along with similar statements from Ernst Bloch and C.F. Von Weizsacker.

Here’s what Feyerabend wrote, as quoted by Ratzinger: “The church at
the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than Galileo
himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social
consequences of Galileos doctrine. Its verdict against Gaileo was
rational and just, and revisionism can be legitimized solely for
motives of political opportunism.

Ratzinger actually called the statement drastic” — upon reflection, a
fairly striking term from a figure who, at the time, headed the
historical successor to the Inquisition.

Ratzinger concluded the speech by saying, It would be absurd, on the
basis of these affirmations, to construct a hurried apologetics. The
faith does not grow from resentment and the rejection of rationality,
but from its fundamental affirmation, and from being rooted in a still
greater form of reason.

In a nutshell, therefore, Benedict is being faulted by the physics
professors for quoting somebody elses words, which his full text
suggests he does not completely share. (Readers who remember Regensburg
can be forgiven a sense of dj-vu.)

Mr. Allen nailed that one since once again
the Pope is taken to task
for quoting someone else with much less than full agreement.  
The part in Spe Salvi that they object to is:

Francis Bacon and those who
followed in the intellectual current of modernity that he inspired were
wrong to believe that man would be redeemed through science. Such an
expectation asks too much of science; this kind of hope is deceptive.
Science can contribute greatly to making the world and mankind more
human. Yet it can also destroy mankind and the world unless it is
steered by forces that lie outside it.

The objection to this is hard to fathom
unless they really do see science as replacing redemption.

The reason modern scientists chaff is the
same reason that Galileo did and both display the same arrogance.
 Galileo got in trouble for leaving the sphere of science and
entering the sphere of theology with his interpretation of scripture.
 He also left the sphere of science by teaching as fact what
would not be proven to way over a hundred years after his death.
 Many modern scientists so much of the same by entering the
sphere of theology and trying to define what is ethical and what is
not.  To demand the ability to experiment without moral
restraint is not science, but scientism.  The truth is that it
is the scientist who would define theological truths and not the Church wanting to define scientific truths.

…First, stop thinking about God as a super-scientist or master craftsman, who designs our nervous and circulatory systems and gives us brains by which to read the stars and thus reason to His existence, but as an artist, and writer, like Shakespeare, who wants to come and live with us. Not because He’s lonely or wants to teach us something, but just because He loves us so much he wants to live our lives — and suffer our death.

Well if Shakespeare does want to come and live with me I won’t even charge him rent. Roy Schroth in a article on a new book by George Dennis O’brien says he wishes the above analogy was his own. As an analogy though it isn’t very good and you want to shout BOTH/AND at him. But I did have a pretty large guffaw at the "Not because He’s lonely" line. Does he perhaps think that God submitted a classified ad known to us as the Bible because of his loneliness? EGSE – Eternal GOd Seeking Everybody. TOP (Trinity of Person) seeking companionship.

…The American bishops, he says, have lost their public voice not merely because of the sexual abuse scandal. Even though American Mass attendance surpasses that of de-Christianized Europe, here the younger generation is falling away from Christian belief. One reason is that once the Vatican Council closed, "the spirit of dialogue evaporated." John Paul II and then Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, conducted a teaching papacy, not a learning papacy, as if they feared open discussion.

Yes let is have an open discussion on issues. First off let us all get together and decide if racism is really all that bad in the first place. We can get groups on both sides of the question get together and have a dialogue on racism. There hasn’t been any infallible statements made or encyclicals specifically referencing racism so it must be an open issue. So what if racism as a sin is a consistent teaching of the Church. If Ordinatio Sacerdotalis doesn’t close the door on the discussion of women’s ordination then surely there is nothing to prevent a frank open discussion in support of racism.

While we are at it how about the preferential option for the poor. Isn’t it time that we stop stigmatizing selfish people as greedy? Have we sufficiently walked in a greedy man’s patent leather shoes to understand his desire to ignore the poor. Shouldn’t greedophobia be inspected in light of modern times? Surely the Sensus Fidelium has moved from a individual preferential love of the poor to a "isn’t there a government program to take care of them?" If we have a prophetic and listening heart then no doubt we will come to realize that a individual responsibility towards our neighbors is a tradition that should now be reevaluated.

I only throw these example out since for some strange reasons progressives always want to have dialog on the same predictable subjects. If you don’t want to have a discussion on racism and greed then you are closed minded and dogmatic on these subjects.

…Thanks to modern communication techniques, the Pope has become the public "voice" of the church. The trouble with this, suggests O’Brien, is that of the many "voices" the Pope could use he has chosen those that cannot be heard effectively in the modern world. We have become accustomed to the Pope as "super-professor" or "judge." He writes long encyclicals and delivers homilies in which he tells us definitively — sometimes infallibly — what to think. At one time he said the issue of women’s ordination was settled, and not to be discussed.

But our experience of the professor and judge model is that they are not infallible. Historians, for example, admit there is much they don’t know and invite colleagues to correct them. O’Brien suggests that the Pope play the role of "patriarch," a "father" who has authority in his family based on his love for them, even though good fathers are sometimes wrong.

In our experience not only is the professor and judge model not infallible, but neither are Commonweal writers, critics of the Pope, etc. In fact I will go so far as to say that you can name any profession and say that are not infallible. But then again Vatican I did not look at scripture and Apostolic tradition and decide that professors and judges are infallible.

…O’Brien closes with the suggestion that the Pope every five years should invite the world’s leading intellectuals, including both Catholic theologians and those who opposed the church’s teachings, to a meeting in the Sistine Chapel, where, under Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, they discuss the world’s biggest problems. The Pope’s role is to sit quietly and listen. Then consider all they have said, and publish their papers with his replies.

I don’t know about you but I would pay to see a Sistine Chapel cage match on PPV between faithful and dissident theologians.

The silliness of this whole idea is that it is not the role of the Pope to keep revisiting Church teaching, but to go deeper into the deposit of faith that is the Church’s heritage. When it comes to the deposit of faith progressives keep wanting to make a withdrawal.

This article was titled Can the "Church learn to listen?" and listening was the main brunt of it. I just want to know why progressive who won’t listen to the Pope and the teaching authority of the Church and are tone deaf to the consistent teaching of the Church should be lecturing us on listening anyway?

Carl Olson has also fisked this article and surely there is enough material for multiple fiskings.

“I am going to try to be so persuasive, so that those of you who are still wavering . . . will suddenly come to the conclusion — a light beam will shine through — will light you up — and you will experience an epiphany — ‘I have to vote for Mike Huckabee!’ “

Well actually this explicit religious appeal was made by Barack Obama. But as Deal Hudson referenced this won’t set the theocracy watch types into any kind of frenzy. Well I already had a epiphany with Barack when Gerald Augustinus aptly wrote "That he’s more pro-abortion than Planned Parenthood, …" A nice bright light beam powered by a 100 watt incandescent bulb no less shined through since that it was good true rhetoric does.

I found it rather strange with Hillary’s push calls challenging Obama’s abortion record. Let them get into a who is more pro-abortion fight. While it might help them in the primaries this type of debate would be poison in the General Election since it nulls out all of those references about wanting abortion to be rare, etc. Hillary voted in favor of the Born Alive Infants Act while Obama just voted "present" on a similar bill in the Illinois version of the act.

One thing about the abortion debate in politics today is what candidates can get away with saying. They are allowed to say things that are so incoherent that it would give debate teams strokes and yet interviewers will sit there like they just said something sane and rational.

For example I saw an interview where Obama said that abortion is a moral question, but that we should trust women to make the right decision. Why don’t we trust women when it comes to murder of their spouses or boyfriends? If something is a moral question it is objective instead of being subjective. If in fact if we can just trust women to make the right decision on a issues, then why can’t we just trust men on other issues. This logic leads in fact to the idea that we don’t really need laws in the first place since we should just trust people to do the good.

In a sane world the interviewer would have dropped his jaw in disbelief at such an answer. A rational interviewer would have followed up asking why it was a moral questions and if this moral question is seen as murder why would it be left up to an individual within a gender group to make it?

Gerald in a post titled The "narrative of the transgendered" writes:

Deconstructionism is entrenched in Academia. Nothing is what it is, only a person’s "narrative" is true. Everything is a construct. Male and female ? Constructs imposed by society. Unfortunately, politicians like Schwarzenegger are either giving in to or promoting the ideology of these fiends. Because they hysterically bitch, people give in to their demands, hoping they’ll go away. Corporations are even more cowardly than politicians, since they can be hurt where it counts. These leftist enemies of society wield power far beyond their numbers. How else could one explain the absurd accomodation of the mentally ill "transgendered" people? If you think to yourself, "Man, I feel like a woman", you’re free to use the women’s restroom. After all, it’s your "narrative", "your truth" that counts, everything else is a societal "construct". This is niftily protected by the BS known as hate crime laws – federal, no less. Mind you, I don’t care if some dude looks like a lady, but you can’t convince me, under penalty of law, that it’s just as "normal". I never had a problem with tolerance, when it meant that you live and let live. But, nowadays, if you don’t accept that 2+4=666, you’re prone to be sent to the re-education camp. It is what Nietzsche called the Umwertung aller Werte – the "re-evaluation" of all values. In order for wrong to be right, right must become wrong.

And then goes on to link to an article in the Opinion Journal "Crossing Over:
What will prevent the 250-pound linebacker from deciding he wants to share the locker room with the cheerleaders?"

Which makes me wonder if people can be transgendered why not trans-race? I mean if biology lies and people who are biologically of one sex and feel that they are another sex can advance this position and seen as perfectly normal why can’t other equal positions be advanced without ridicule? Surely if something like XX and XY karyotypes mean nothing than the amount of melanin in your skin along with other physical racial characteristics also mean nothing if the person “feels” that they are of another race.

I wonder what would happen if someone applied for a minority scholarship at a university even though they were white and then said "I always felt I was a black man and never felt comfortable as a white man." Most likely they would be given directions to the latest psychiatric ward. Too bad they don’t apply the same common sense to those who think they are transgendered and the ridiculous idea that their biology lies. Though if President Clinton could be called the first "black president" by fellow liberals than why can’t others say they belong to some race other their own. Having a problem getting a job because of affirmative action? All you have to do is to find that you feel that you belong to a minority group currently favored by a quota.

In modern liberalism feelings always trump facts which is why those who have a mental illness and think they are transgendered don’t get treatment, but special treatment as a protected class.

On a quick trip to Rome a few weeks ago, I made it a point to visit the Gesu, the mother church of the Society of Jesus, and to pray for the Jesuits and their general congregation opening January 7. I found much of the church’s magnificent Baroque interior concealed by scaffolding set up for a housecleaning before that crucial event.

The symbolism couldn’t have been more apt. Just as the Gesu, in the historic heart of Rome, needed renovating, so does the Society itself. Rather than operating at the cutting edge of the Church, Jesuits in recent decades have fallen increasingly behind the times and, not unlike the Gesu, now stand in need of some serious renewing.

This is not an anti-Jesuit polemic. I am grateful for the education I received from the Society. Over the years I’ve known many Jesuits, and most have been and still are admirable men, loyal sons of the Church deeply devoted to the service of the people of God. Many have been, and still are, my friends. Yet as 217 Jesuits from around the world convene at the Society’s headquarters near St. Peter’s Square for the 35th general congregation in the order’s history, they face the challenge of not only electing a new General Superior but setting directions for a body in long-running crisis.

Business as usual won’t work. The Jesuits need an overhaul and they need it soon.
Numbers underscore the urgency. Forty years ago there were 35,000 Jesuits in the world. Now there are 19,000. The dropoff has been even steeper in the United States, where the Society counted over 8,000 members in 1965 and now has under 3,000.

…Two years ago Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J., General Superior of the Society since 1983, announced that he would retire in 2008 when he turned 80. The delegates to the 35th general congregation have the task of choosing a successor and setting policy for the years ahead. People who care about the Jesuits should wish them much success. That’s what I prayed for at the Gesu when I was there.

The problem with so many religious orders and what is evident with the Jesuits that instead of refocusing on their orders charism and jettisoning what gets in the way of it they also jettisoned essentials. It is like the old comedies taking place on a train where pieces of the train are taken apart to feed the boiler and everything else is thrown over the side to keep it moving. Vatican II’s Perfactae Caritatis called for a "constant return to the sources of all Christian life and to the original spirit of the institutes" not throwing the surrender flag to modernity.

Unfortunately Jesuits being faithful to the Magisterium are the exceptions and not the rule, but I certainly do hope and pray that an election of a new General Superior of the Society can help them return to the Jesuits of old that will take their charism into the modern world in a more faithful way.

The questions is will they elect someone who realizes just how far the Society has fallen or someone that will say the parrot is not dead. The current Jesuit General had this to say in an interview this year.

In recent years, the Society of Jesus has seen a drop in candidates for the novitiate. What are the reasons?

Sometimes we forget that a religious family is, in a happy expression of the Second Vatican Council, a gift of the Spirit to the church. The church cant be the church without clergy and laity, but it can be church without religious life in its present form. The church lived for centuries without the Jesuits! Religious families are born and they disappear, not because they did something wrong, but because the church requires other gifts to meet other needs of the people of God. The simple fact that today a young man who wants to put himself at the service of the church doesnt necessarily have to choose between the seminary and the novitiate, but can also find his mission in one of the new ecclesial movements that are also a gift of the Spirit, changes the whole context of consecrated life.

To quote Monty Python once again "What are you going to do? Bleed all over me." Talk about denial.

Over the years, youve handled delicate relationships between some Jesuit theologians and the Vatican. What are the necessary limits, and whats the space for welcoming a plurality of theological reflection in the Society?

[Theology] unfolds today in a nervous atmosphere of conflicts and polarization, in which everything is immediately classified as either right or left, as conservatism or progressive thought. Even a constructive critique by a theologian, based on deep competence, pastoral concern and discernment born in prayer, runs the risk of being taken up by the mass media in a partial fashion (either unwittingly or deliberately) in order to turn it into front-page news. On the other hand, the church cant renounce its right, and its duty, to protect the faithful against errors or possibly erroneous interpretations of a given theological work, even if its valid in itself. In this context, which at first blush can seem discouraging, its important to be grateful for so many theologians among them, not just a few Jesuits who provide the church the indispensable service of positive, clear and creative theological reflection, which serves the greater good of the whole church in its socio-cultural diversity.

No wonder that out of the really small number of theologians that have been investigated by the CDF, four of them have been Jesuits. You also get the feeling the Jesuit theologian he is praising are not in the mode of Cardinal Dulles, S.J. May the next "Black Pope" have a lot firmer ideas about both the charism of their founder and an understanding of the problems.

Tony Blair joins Catholic Church

Former prime minister Tony Blair has left the Anglican Church to become a Roman Catholic.

His wife and children are already Catholic and there had been speculation he would convert after leaving office.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Conner, who led the service to welcome Mr Blair, said he was "very glad" to do so.

Last year, Mr Blair, who is now a Middle East peace envoy, said he had prayed to God when deciding whether or not to send UK troops into Iraq.

And one of Mr Blair’s final official trips while prime minister was a visit to the Vatican in June where he met Pope Benedict XVI.

‘Regular worshipper’

Mr Blair was received into full communion with the Catholic Church during Mass at Archbishop’s House, Westminster, on Friday.

Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, who is the head of Catholics in England and Wales, said: "I am very glad to welcome Tony Blair into the Catholic Church.

Fr. Z. has some cogent remarks about this in consideration of Mr. Blairs past support for homosexuality and abortion.

At the same time, none of us are finished products yet. I suspect Mr. Blair or other politicians will not change his positions if they are constantly blasted with nastiness. Persuasion is needed. In no way does this condone public denial of Catholic doctrine. I am trying to underscore the fallen dimension of our human experience.

Thus, I am glad that Mr. Blair desired closer unity with the Catholic Church and acted on it. However, I would like some clarifications.

Hopefully we will get some clarifications on this. If he has not changed his positions that are contrary to Church teaching I would certainly like to know how the Cardinal would justify brining him into the Church at this time. As I have mentioned before in connection to this is that one of my favorite stories from Alice Von Hildebrand’s book "Soul of a Lion" about her husband Dietrich is that when he was taking private instructions to come into the Church he announced to the priest that he was ready to enter the Church. The priest knowing Dietrich’s opposition to the Church’s teaching on contraception told him he would not bring him into the Church unto he accepted this. Dietrich then made an act of faith and said that he believes all that the Church teaches and then later became a great teaching on the truth of the evil of contraception.

None of us enter the Church perfected, though I would think that when we make the Profession at Faith when being received into the Church and saying that we believe all that she teaches that there should be a reasonable chance that we are telling the truth. To bring someone in that we knew to not hold all that the Church teaches would be to have them perjure themselves before God.

I sincerely hope that he has had a change of heart and if not that he will in the future.

Update: I see that Diogenes is on the same page as myself on this:

Tony Blair recants position on abortion!

Well he did, didn’t he? And somehow I just missed the headline?

In order to be received into the Catholic Church, one must make a profession of faith, affirming that one believes all that the Church teaches. And the Church teaches that support for abortion is gravely wrong, and so now we know– don’t we?– that Blair recognizes his past public stance was gravely wrong. Don’t we?

Don’t we?

Hello? Hello?

A statement has been issued from the Diocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Charges about Father Leo Tibesar & St. Frances Cabrini Parish

Various bloggers and websites have reported that Father Leo Tibesar, of Saint Frances Cabrini Parish in Minneapolis announced his intention to bless same sex marriages. Those reports are not true. Father Tibesar has never blessed a same sex marriage nor does he intend to do so, which would be a violation of his priestly vows and state. He made this very clear in a public clarification issued by Saint Frances Cabrini’s parish council and following a meeting with Archbishop Harry J. Flynn.

During his meeting with Archbishop Flynn and Auxiliary Bishop Richard Pates, Father Tibesar also agreed to remove any language from the St. Frances Cabrini parish website that is in opposition to Roman Catholic Church doctrine and to refrain from statements in any form that are contrary to Church teaching. He confirmed these commitments to Archbishop Flynn in a letter following their meeting. Communications Office, Archdiocese of StP&M

I find the parsing of what they said to be a tad disingenuous.

Charges about Father Leo Tibesar & St. Frances Cabrini Parish
Various bloggers and websites have reported that Father Leo Tibesar, of Saint Frances Cabrini Parish in Minneapolis announced his intention to bless same sex marriages. Those reports are not true.

Well what the parish website said on reconciliation with homosexuals.

"Publicly bless the relationships of a same sex couple after the couple completes a process of discernment similar to that completed by heterosexual couples before marriage;"

How is this not an intention to bless so-called same sex marriages? You could say that it certainly might be true that Fr. Tibesar did not say this. Though you might think he has some responsibility for what is written on his parish’s website, especially something up their for a while. This page is now removed so certainly they knew what pages had to be removed.

For years Fr. Tibesar has been part of the Leo Tibesar pro-homosexual lobbying group dignity as part of their National Leadership Team. He was made pastor even after this. In July of 2007 he once again participated in Dignity’s annual convention where one of the workshops said "We will discuss John Paul’s definition of marriage in his
day and how it supports gay marriage today." From his homily last month:

Two people came into Church to pray, one was a Catholic Archbishop who refuses communion to Rainbow Sash people at the Cathedral on Pentecost Sunday who prayed " I give you thanks oh God that I am not like others – greedy, dishonest or like others who need to make their dissent from official Church teaching so public and divisive.

The other were Rainbow parents of GLBT people at the Cathedral on Pentecost who stood off on the side and prayed, "Oh God be merciful to us for failing to attend our own Churches more often; they say they love God then turn there backs on us in hate directly contrary to 1:John,4 – whoever loves God must also love the neighbor."

The Rainbow Sash Movement also supports same-sex marriages among other things totally against the truth of Catholic teaching. So I guess we are to believe that since he belongs to a pro-homosexual acts lobbying group that specifically supports so-called same-sex marriage, and his own parish’s website does the same, and he supports a homosexual movement that does the same "that these reports are not true".

I know it is too much to expect that a diocese/bishop actually thank bloggers and others for bringing things to their attention. I am really glad that the Bishop has spoken to Fr. Tibesar and especially glad that Fr. Tibesar has agreed to remove those pages on his website and to refrain from making statements in opposition to Church teaching. Though I must wonder if "these reports are not true" why is the diocese asking him to refrain from making statements in opposition to Church teaching? Which is it.

I also wonder when they will ask St. Joan of Arc in the same diocese to remove all of their pages they have on their site in opposition to Church teaching?

Father Z comments on this story since he is originally from this diocese and has some good points about not taking delight in the misfortune of others, though I think within the Catholic blogosphere this has not been done in reference to this story.

I think though why this statement has fired me up is that the diocese was saying that what bloggers reported was not true. I looked through the less than 20 blogs that reported on this story and not one of them asserted that this priest was performing same-sex marriages. They posted on what the parish’s website said, his involvement in dignity, and the contents of his homily last month. None of these facts are in contention and for them to say otherwise is less than the truth.

A reader sent me the following story:

The Archbishop of Canterbury said yesterday that the Christmas story of the Three Wise Men was nothing but a ‘legend’.

Dr Rowan Williams has claimed there was little evidence that the Magi even existed and there was certainly nothing to prove there were three of them or that they were kings. Archbishop says nativity ‘a legend’

Dr Williams argued that the traditional Christmas story was nothing but a ‘legend’ He said the only reference to the wise men from the East was in Matthew’s gospel and the details were very vague.

Dr Williams said: “Matthew’s gospel says they are astrologers, wise men, priests from somewhere outside the Roman Empire, that’s all we’re really told. It works quite well as legend.”

The Archbishop went on to dispel other details of the Christmas story, adding that there were probably no asses or oxen in the stable.

He argued that Christmas cards which showed the Virgin Mary cradling the baby Jesus, flanked by shepherds and wise men, were misleading. As for the scenes that depicted snow falling in Bethlehem, the Archbishop said the chance of this was “very unlikely”. advertisement

In a final blow to the traditional nativity story, Dr Williams concluded that Jesus was probably not born in December at all. He said: “Christmas was when it was because it fitted well with the winter festival.”

Fr. Dwight Longenecker has some interesting comments about the Anglican Archbishop’s comments.

Archbishop Rowan Williams has publicly debunked the traditional Nativity as ‘legend’. Anyone who has read the New Testament in detail will know that the stuff of medieval paintings, crib scenes and Christmas cards include a good deal of non-Biblical ’embroidery’. However, one doesn’t need to deconstruct all of that to somehow prove one’s intellectual credentials.

The Archbishop presents himself as an intellectual Anglo Catholic, but all his recent comments do is prove his Protestant mindset. The liberal Protestant is essentially a critic. He is a critic of the Bible, a critic of tradition, a critic of traditional Christian morality, a critic of anything that is the received religion. The liberal Protestant feels obliged to pick it apart, reduce it to facts and submit the mysteries of the faith to human reason.

What interests me is that many of our conservative Evangelical friends want to distance themselves from the liberal intellectual reductionism of the Archbishop of Canterbury, but when it comes to Catholicism are they not just as critical, just as rational, just as reductionist as the ABC? In fact, Protestantism has in its very genetic code the same rationalism, reductionism, individualism and humanism which is exhibited by the Archbishop’s comments–it’s just that in Evangelicalism it comes to move ‘conservative’ conclusions.

It is certainly true as Fr. Longenecker said that there is a lot of non-Biblical ’embroidery’ on the Nativity story, but really what has happened over time is that events have been compressed just as what often happens when a book is turned into a movie. What we have in Matthew is a mentioning of wise men who first visited Herod, later gave gifts to Jesus and then being warned in a dream left without seeing Herod first. The great Catholic apologist Frank Sheed argues in his book "To Know Christ Jesus" that they must have appeared after Mary’s Presentation in the Temple since her and Joseph paid a poor mans sacrifice of "a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons" which they wouldn’t have done if they already had the gifts given by the wise men.

So in reality the Christmas Card view of the Nativity doesn’t fit reality and we just don’t even know for sure the number of wise men. Though surely the traditional number of three wise men is because of the gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh along with the Trinitarian overtones. The ideas of them being Kings instead of astrologers though is surely an addition. But this type of reductionism would ruin great songs and who wants to sing "We undetermined number of wise men who are probably astrologers and not kings coming somewhere from the East though sometimes after Jesus’ birth are,"

What is so silly and needless about the Archbishop’s remarks is that surely he knows how his remarks will be portrayed and seen as not only casting doubt on aspects of the Nativity story, but also on the birth of Jesus. To make these remarks just before Christmas plays right into the media’s hands. The BBC has the audio of the interview with the caption ” Simon Mayo talks to the Archbishop of Canterbury and asks if he really believes that there’s a Big Wizard who lives in the sky?”

Early in my blogging career another Church of England bishop concerned about the accuracy of the Nativity gave me the opportunity to pun away.

A Church of England bishop has attacked "sentimental" Christmas card portrayals of the Nativity, saying that Jesus’s family were asylum seekers and the three Wise Men were part of an assassination plot.

The Bishop of Lichfield, the Rt Rev Keith Sutton, said the shepherds were not the lovable characters depicted in Nativity plays but were on "the fringes of society" and that, for most people, Christmas was a chore.

Did Herod the Great contract out a hit to three foreigners for plausible deniability? How did this assassination go awry? Did King herod say "Go and murder him" and they thought he said "Gold and myrrh to him"?, frankly that makes sense.

First Things has a interesting post Looking for Mary in Christmas Carols By Michael Linton where he references just how few Christmas carols actually reference Mary.
It is hard to imagine a Christmas Crèche without Mary, but I guess most carols written since the Protestant reformation have done so.

Though this is not just a Protestant divide and something that effects just carols. Think of all the modern hymns that have unfortunately become standards in so many Catholic churches. I can think of only one one: Hail Mary: Gentle Woman. While the lyrics are okay I find the melody to be rather droning and when compared to some of the magnificent hymns for Mary, it is severely lacking. Funny with all the talk about inclusive language in the liturgy there has been no outcry against the lack of Marian hymns at most modern Masses.

Around this time of year we often hear about the "common knowledge" that the date of Christmas was in fact based on the date of a Pagan feast to do a sort of holiday one-upmanship. I have already heard this at least once this year during a television drama and often heard it from my Uncle as I was growing up.

Even in Catholic circles we often hear about Pagan holidays and practices being "baptized." Mostly we hear about this in regards to All Saints Day and Christmas. The facts are otherwise and what is not true about All Saints Day is also not true about the date of Christmas. Last year Mark Shea posted a section from his upcoming book on Mary.

Time was when I, like most people, took it for granted the winter solstice and, in particular, the Roman Feast of the Birth of the Unconquered Sun were simply pagan celebrations that hung around into Christian times. In fact, when I set out to write this book I still thought this. But I discovered the reality is far more complicated and interesting. Indeed, it turns out this widely assumed “fact” that “everybody knows” is probably another sample of pseudo-knowledge. For according to William Tighe, a church history specialist at Pennsylvania’s Muhlenberg College, “the pagan festival of the ‘Birth of the Unconquered Sun’ instituted by the Roman Emperor Aurelian on 25 December 274, was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians. Thus the ‘pagan origins of Christmas’ is a myth without historical substance.”

For the fact is, our records of a tradition associating Jesus’ birth with December 25 are decades older than any records concerning a pagan feast on that day.

[T]he definitive “Handbook of Biblical Chronology” by professor Jack Finegan (Hendrickson, 1998 revised edition) cites an important reference in the “Chronicle” written by Hippolytus of Rome three decades before Aurelian launched his festival. Hippolytus said Jesus’ birth “took place eight days before the kalends of January,” that is, Dec. 25.

Tighe said there’s evidence that as early as the second and third centuries, Christians sought to fix the birth date to help determine the time of Jesus’ death and resurrection for the liturgical calendarlong before Christmas also became a festival.

Read the rest of his informative post to find out why originally the early Christians had determined that Dec 25th was the date of our Savior’s birth.