In the middle of detailing the horrors the Roman emperor Decius loosed on Christians in AD 250 for a book I'm writing, a friend sent round an Internet story concerning the latest battles in the war against Christmas, part of the effort to entomb Christ with boulders of legalism.
---The Woodbury, N.J., school board has forbidden a high school's brass ensemble to play Christmas carols at their "winter holiday" concert --- not even as instrumentals. Mention of Jesus, angels and even Santa Claus will not be tolerated.
Well, it's a slippery slope, getting presents from Santa to devoting your soul to Jesus, you know.
---From Mayor Joe Curtatone of Somerville, Mass.: "A press release issued from my office last week mistakenly identified this month's City Holiday Party as a 'Christmas Party.' I apologize for the mistake and to anyone who was offended by it."
When did Christmas, the feast of "peace on earth," become an obscenity?
---A high school principal in Kirkland, Wash., has cancelled a performance of A Christmas Carol, citing concern that Tiny Tim's line, "God bless us, everyone," might unduly promote the cause of religion.
This is as nonsensical as believing that, if you read Dickens' narrative backward, you'll discover that Scrooge was Jack the Ripper.
---A Beverly, Mass., elementary school production, "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" is now "How the Grinch Stole the Holidays" and Santa is called "the holiday fairy."
Methinks the principal of this school/Has been made the unwitting tool/Of anti-Christians. So now it's a cinch,/His bigoted policy out-grinches the Grinch.
This is not the first time Christmas has been under attack in America. In Puritan New England, celebrating Christmas was a crime. Anyone making mince pies or plum puddings was fined --- but this was in the 1600s, before "freedom of religion" became a cherished American constitutional virtue.
At least Decius was honest. He fought against Christ in the open. Today's persecutors mendaciously hide behind "political correctness" --- as specious a term as Auschwitz' motto, "Work Will Make You Free."
The War against Christmas is a tactic of the new fascism: a culturally hedonistic barbarism, a sensual gluttony that Pope John Paul II has aptly entitled "the culture of death." Political correctness has become its major tool, subverting constitutional guarantees by encouraging "aggrieved parties" to bring to court what, in more enlightened ages, would have tossed out as frivolous lawsuits.
The culture of death's greatest enemy is the intact, loving Family. Depravity has a hard time existing there. So what better than, at Christmas, to make an all-out "legal" assault on the Holy Family, the ideal of all families?
A cadre of like-thinking judges force compliance to the will of this vocal, fanatic secular materialist minority, handing down opinions to implement social engineering instead of sound legal decisions. Invariably even neutral public activities sponsored by religion are banned, since any mention of Jesus is a reminder that fetal murder, euthanasia, and sexual deviancy are evils in the eyes of God.
Judges are not above supporting evil in the name of "legality." The Nuremberg trials showed how judges habitually pointed to Nazi-initiated laws to prove Hitler's national extermination policies were "legal."
And let's not forget the postwar show trials of Cardinals Stepinac and Mindszenty who had acted so heroically in Eastern Europe against the Nazis. When they also vigorously opposed the Communist tyranny, they were accused of treason. Stalin may have pulled the strings but the condemnations were handed down by judges from Croatia and Hungary. All done within legal form; all according to writ, but always contravening basic human rights, making a mockery of the majesty of justice impartially applied.
Today's politically correct fascism manipulates laws and regulations to legislate against tolerance and common sense, encouraging various segments of the population to be offended at practices that never bothered them before. This practice insults the intelligence of reasonable individuals, while baffling the folks being "protected," who are too often unaware of being insulted in the first place. The problem is not confined to America.
A 2003 law passed in Great Britain --- a country whose Anglican denomination is supported by taxes --- ended distribution of hot cross buns to school children during Lent, a tradition dating to the 1300s, since the pastries might offend non-Christians.
Jewish congregations and Moslem councils expressed their dismay at being used as political pawns, having made no complaint against the practice. Within the culture of death, if there is no complaint, invent one.
This fatal philosophy denies the possibility of eternal life with a God of infinite and absolute goodness. Yet, recent polls show these same possibilities are held by more than 90 percent of Americans. So the culture of death doesn't legitimately represent the beliefs shared by a whopping majority of citizens, which is the proper goal of democratic law.
Speaking of democracy, the Cupertino, Calif., school board has excluded the Declaration of Independence as a teaching aid because it mentions "Nature's God." Isn't this attempt to rewrite history the same "censorship" loudly decried when applied to sexually explicit activity in films?
Junk science is another tool employed by the culture of death.
Margaret Sanger began Planned Parenthood as a eugenics program, hoping, through birth control and abortion, to rid the U.S. of undesirables whose forebears were African and Jewish. She promoted her "freedom from pregnancy" programs among Irish and Hispanic Catholic immigrants she saw threatening the Yankee Protestant status quo. Sanger even visited Hitler in Germany. Her suggestions to Der Fuhrer about how to best implement his extermination policies were loudly trumpeted in her own publications --- until Dec. 7, 1941.
Big Brother's watching, but it's not the military-industrial complex we were against. Big Brother's the same people who warned us in the first place
The culture of death knows no party. It's composed of liberals and conservatives gathered from Ronald Reagan's "Me Generationers" to Hillary Clinton's "Nanny-Staters." Political correctness is really political tolerance of moral degradation. It is politically intolerant of anything opposing its rampant societal selfishness, including God, common sense and basic human decency.
This situation strongly reminds me of the "Twilight Zone" episode, "The Obsolete Man." Romney Wordsworth, a librarian, is on trial for his life. Since there are no more books, there are no libraries, the Chancellor of the State informs him. So, without books a librarian is as obsolete as the nonexistent God.
"There is a God," Wordsworth insists.
The Chancellor suavely chuckles, "There is no God. The State has proven there is no God."
Wordsworth's heartfelt retort is too chillingly relevant today: "You cannot erase God by edict!"
Yet this is what the culture of death has in mind. Political correctness wants to erase Christ. That's why the people who fought tooth and nail against "The Passion of the Christ" are now out to kill Christmas. They seem to be unaware that, as G. K. Chesterton pointed out, Jesus Christ is used to dying.
He's also well known for rising from the dead. Sean M. Wright, a member of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, Santa Clarita, lectures on Catholic history and art at schools and parishes. He can be reached at FriarTuk49@AOL.com. |