Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown

Last night I watched my favorite Christmas special, A Charlie Brown Christmas, for the third time this year. As I listened to Charlie Brown rail against the commercialization of Christmas while pleading for someone–anyone–to explain “what Christmas is all about”, I realized that our national economic crisis has forced many Americans to confront the Truth of “what Christmas is all about”. Below is an example.

Each year St. Ephrem’s Church in Brooklyn, NY, decorates Christmas trees with cards containing the age and gender of a poor child who will have no gifts to open on Christmas morning. Some are orphans; others have families but no money. Parishioners who would like to help these children can take a card and buy an appropriate gift for that child. The gifts are collected and held on the Church’s altar. Last Sunday as I entered the Church for Sunday mass, I noticed that despite the current economic turmoil there were as many gifts on the altar as there had been in years past. It was comforting to see that although people may be hurting financially, they still want to thank God for giving Himself as a gift to Man. And what better way to repay that gift than by giving gifts to the less fortunate.

Keep in mind that these Catholics who donated are not people who have “of their abundance cast into the offerings of God” (Luke 21:4). They are Catholics who have donated despite having lost their jobs or watched their savings plummet because of the tanking stock market. As members of Christ’s flock they know it is their responsibility to take care of the less fortunate sheep.

Maybe it’s naive but based on the outpouring of help that I’ve witnessed, the next time Americans are asked to explain the true meaning of Christmas, I believe more of us–Catholic and otherwise–will respond as Linus did to Charlie Brown:
“And there were in the same country shepherds watching, and keeping the night watches over their flock. 9 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. 10 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. 12 And this shall be a sign unto you. You shall find the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid in a manger. 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army, praising God, and saying: 14 Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace to men of good will.”
Luke 2: 8-14)

Donald Tremblay

Cattle Call

Black Friday lived up to its name last week as a Valley Stream, NY Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death by a mob of shoppers determined to capitalize on the retail chain’s post-Thanksgiving discounts. In a textbook display of the herd mentality, Jdimytai Damour was “bum-rushed by 200 people” who stormed the front doors—tearing them off their hinges—before knocking a half-dozen people to the ground and sprinting across the store. (http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/11/28/2008-11-28_worker_dies_at_long_island_walmart_after.html ) Among those injured was a pregnant woman who reportedly miscarried after the stampede. Sadly, the tragedy is another reminder of how under the right circumstances normal people can behave more like animals than human beings.

One of the most famous incidents of people behaving like a herd of bulls took place in Dec 1979 in Cincinnati, OH at a concert for The Who. Because the concert was staged for general admission seating—meaning first come, first served—thousands of people waited outside the arena, pressed against the locked front doors, eager to grab the best seats. Upon hearing a sound check, fans mistakenly believed the concert had started and surged against the doors killing 11 and injuring many others. (http://www.distant.ca/UselessFacts/fact.asp?ID=308).

Are these herd behaviors aberrations? Unfortunately, based on a number of studies, the answer is no. Numerous experiments have proven that under the right (or wrong) conditions, people can lose the ability to think clearly and rationally. Malcolm Gladwell offers several examples in his excellent best-seller The Tipping Point. Here is one of them:

Stanford University conducted a study in the early 1970s to determine why prisons are terrible places. The scientists erected a prison in the basement of the psychology building and solicited volunteers to participate in the two-week experiment. The 75 people who joined were randomly split into guards and prisoners. After only one night the guards began abusing the prisoners: for ex., waking them at 2am to do pushups and to line-up against the wall. Each day the abuse worsened. At one point on the third day “guards were making the prisoners say to one another they loved each other, and [were] making them march down the hallway, in handcuffs, with paper bags over their heads.” (The Tipping Point, p 154) Several men had to be released after only a few days because of the emotional trauma, and the experiment itself had to be ended after only six days. Along with proving the danger of giving people too much power, the test case also showed how people can get swept along with a crowd under certain circumstance. One guard confessed afterward, “It was completely opposite from the way I conduct myself now . . . I think I was positively creative in terms of my mental cruelty.” (p 154) And it was not only the guards who were caught up in the experiment. One prisoner stated, “I began to feel that I was losing my identity, that the person I call----, the person who volunteered to get me into this prison (because it was a prison to me, it still is a prison to me, I don’t regard it as an experiment or a simulation . . .) was distant from me, was remote, until finally I wasn’t that person.” (p 154)

Should this knowledge about Man’s vulnerability to the herd mentality affect our views about the Black Friday tragedy? Absolutely not. The people who trampled Mr. Damour should be held accountable for their actions. Although it may be easy to get caught up in the frenzy, people still have the Free Will to say no. If this were not the case then every customer that day would have participated in the stampede, which clearly was not the case.

Wal-Mart should also be held accountable for doing such a poor job of organizing, as they phrased it, their “door-busters” sale. As Jordan Hecht, the lawyer for Mr. Damour’s sisters, pointed out, “"Hundreds of stores around the country have these kinds of sales, but a tragedy only happens if you don't prepare." (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122818206309671069.html)

One word of advice to shoppers: the next time a store offers a crazy sale on the Wii game console or on the latest Xbox 360 game, wait till after Christmas to buy it. Your child’s emotional well-being will not suffer if he/she has to wait a week or two . . . and you may just save your own physical well-being in the process.

Donald Tremblay

That Most Evil of Holidays

(A speech from a progressive politician in Anywhere, USA)

Attention, everyone! I have an announcement.

It’s that time of the year again—time for the most evil holiday on the calendar.

Christmas.

We must resume our annual battle to prevent the open celebration of Jesus’ birth. Our main point of attack will continue to focus on the notion that Christmas displays create hostile environments for non-believers. Playing the victim card continues to work well. We’ve been able to virtually eliminate Nativity scenes from the public sphere, and we’ve white-washed the term Christmas tree and replaced it with the conventional Holiday tree. Public schools have proven invaluable. Christmas concerts have been replaced by Winter Festivals. Children may sing about Kwanzaa and even Hanukkah, but the only "Christmas" songs allowed are those generic winter songs about sleigh-riding, Santa, and winter wonderlands.

What is that you’re saying in the back of the room? The majority of Americans want Christmas decorations publically displayed? Forget them. We who are offended by Jesus have the final say . . . even if there are only a limited number of us. When you have as many supporters in the judiciary as we have, the number of followers is irrelevant. If those Jesus Freaks want to celebrate his birthday then let them go to a church.

On to the next item: I have in my hand a few of the anti-Christmas strategies that have been put into effect by other towns around the nation. These are just two examples; there are many more that will be enacted over the next few weeks.

Last weekend the town of Patchogue, NY celebrated its 15^th annual boat parade. Formerly the Patchogue Christmas Boat Parade, the name was changed to the Patchogue Holiday Boat Parade because of "complaints that the use of ‘Christmas’ seemed to make the parade less inclusive". (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,443785,00.html) Fireworks by Grucci withdrew their fireworks donation to protest the change, but so what? Getting rid of the word Christmas is what matters.

"Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU) administration has banned all holiday decorations from common spaces on campus and canceled a popular greeting card design contest, which is being replaced by an ugly sweater competition. In Griffin Hall, the university's giving tree for needy preschoolers has been transformed into a ‘giving garden.’" (http://www.news-press.com/article/20081125/NEWS0104/811250380/1075 )

Pretty good, right?

Yes, yes. I understand you’re frustrated because you still have to confront those offensive decorations on people’s private property. Be patient. Think about how much we’ve accomplished in just the past 10 years. Eventually we’ll be able to concoct some law that your rights are being violated by the very sight of these hateful Christian symbols regardless of where they are displayed.

And remember to look at the total picture. Each year more people accept the minimizing of Christmas. We have succeeded in making them feel powerless to stop our onslaught. Plus, we are now rearing generations of children who are clueless as to how widespread the Christmas holiday once was. In another 20 years our followers will be legion.

Let’s meet again next week. We have much work to be done.

Donald Tremblay

Ecumenism Gone Wild

Once again we see the effects of ecumenism gone wild.

Last week as many as 20,000 Muslims attacked a Coptic Orthodox Church in Cairo, Egypt, yelling slogans such as “Islam is the solution” and “No God but Allah” (http://www.christianpersecution.info/news/egypt-thousands-protest-vandalize-church-17223/). Yet despite this latest example of Christian persecution in Muslim lands, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran–head of the Catholic Church's department for interreligious dialogue–“has thanked Muslims for bringing God back into the public sphere in Europe.” (http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-36765320081128)

Ecumenists like Cardinal Tauran ignore the injustices committed in the name of Islam, regurgitating the party line that radicals don’t represent the true Islam, that Islam is a peaceful religion. Well, regardless of whether this assertion contains any truth, and there are plenty of examples proving otherwise, the reality is that many of these radicals are the same European Muslims who Cardinal Tauran is thanking. In its July/August 2005 issue, Foreign Affairs magazine spelled out how deeply Europe is infested with these extremists:

Jihadist networks span Europe from Poland to Portugal, thanks to the spread of radical Islam among the descendants of guest workers once recruited to shore up Europe's postwar. . . . The emergence of homegrown mujahideen in Europe threatens the United States as well as Europe.

(http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050701faessay84409/robert-s-leiken/europe-s-angry-muslims.html)

Ecumenists will argue that supporting Islam is necessary to combat the growing secularism that has overtaken Europe and is threatening to wipe religion from the continent. Yes, atheism is the greatest threat to the human race, as Nazism and Communism proved in the 20^th century; however, embracing the strategy that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is hypocritical--and hypocrisy disgusts the faithful and poisons their trust in Christ’s Church. It’s not coincidental that Christ continually addressed hypocrisy in his teachings. He recognized that a major reason why the children of Israel had turned away from God was because of the Pharisees’ insincerity.

Ironically, if the ecumenists continue along this path, they will be responsible for the very outcome they are fighting against: an irrelevant Church and a global rejection of Christ.

Donald Tremblay

Wolves in Sheep's Clothing

It is no secret that a significant share of the USCCB (U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops) is composed of liberal bishops. These are men who were ordained in the 1960s and 1970s during the greatest social upheaval in American history. This societal tumult combined with the Second Vatican Council’s decision to open the doors of the Church to the world resulted in an entire generation of clergy ignorant to the instruction, “Be in the world, but not of the world”.

It was during this era that the American Church foolishly partnered with the rest of American society in embracing the progressive, morally relativistic, anti-hierarchical, “primacy of conscience” lifestyle promoted by the baby-boom generation. Since then our nation has found itself sliding headlong down an immoral slippery slope toward high abortion and divorce rates, increased violent crime among ever-younger children, and greater demands to expand our Culture of Death to include doctor-assisted suicide, euthanasia, and embryonic stem-cell research.

Yet, despite these horrific facts, liberal bishops still refuse to acknowledge the fallacy of their “enlightened” thinking. Worsening matters is that these leftist shepherds are many in number and their clout within the American Church is widespread. Last week Washington Times religion editor Julia Duin referenced the continued influence of this liberal branch of the Church in her column, “Double-Minded Bishops”. (http://washingtontimes.com/weblogs/belief-blog/2008/Nov/11/double-minded-bishops/)
“As I have been covering the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops off and on since 1986, I've learned there are small ways of learning who is in and who is out, who is rising in status and who is losing power. One thing reporters have learned to look for is who wins or loses yearly elections as chairman of a variety of USCCB committees. I have noticed, strangely, that the most outspoken bishops on the pro-life issue always lose these elections.”

As examples Ms. Duin cites St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke, who was rejected as chairman of the Committee for Canonical Affairs, and Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput, who was by bypassed for the position of Washington See. What do the two men have in common? Burke “famously told Sen. John Kerry during his presidential run in 2004 not to try taking Communion in his diocese,” while Chaput “is another key bishop who has spoken out forcibly against pro-choice politicians.”

Some may argue that these men were “punished” not for what they said, but for the outspoken manner in which they said it. It’s possible, but I don’t believe it. Clearly cowards exist among bishops just as they exist among the general populace, and I’m sure there are also those clergy who don’t want to rock the boat out of fear that they’ll lose their comfy lifestyle.
But aside from these men there is also a large section of the USCCB who are at odds with “fire and brimstone” theology. Love everyone; make peace, not war; cast no stones; remember the beam in your own eye . . . and never, ever criticize anyone.
Ironically, anyone who disagrees with them is blackballed.

How pathetic. Bishops punished by their brethren for zealously defending Church teachings.
St. Peter must be furious.


Donald Tremblay

And So It Begins

And So It Begins

Despite being president-elect for less than two weeks, Barack Obama has already made it clear that he “plans to reverse an existing executive order against federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research.” (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081110/sc_nm/us_stemcellresearch_shares_1) This decision should surprise no one. Over the years Obama has shown complete indifference to the lives of the unborn. Remember this is the same man who as a member of the Illinois State Legislature rejected the Born Alive Infant Protection Act (BAIPA) which “mandate[d] that all babies born alive receive immediate medical attention.” (http://www.catholic.org/politics/story.php?id=29138) In comparison, when a similar bill was proposed to the House of Representatives in 2000, “no one, even those who had most staunchly supported abortion over the years, wanted to be on record as supporting what was, in effect, infanticide.” (See above link)
With his embryonic stem cell research plans revealed, expect him to next announce his intention to sign the granddaddy of all abortion rights legislation: the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA). In July 2007 Obama told guests at a Planned Parenthood Action Fund event that “the first thing I'd do as president is, is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That's the first thing that I'd do." (http://www.jillstanek.com/archives/2008/07/one_year_annive.html) According to Americans United For Life, below are some of the “550 federal and state laws” that will be nullified by FOCA:
· Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003
· Hyde Amendment (restricting taxpayer funding of abortions)
· Restrictions on abortions performed at military hospitals
· Restrictions on insurance coverage for abortion for federal employees
· Informed consent laws
· Waiting periods
· Parental consent and notification laws
· Health and safety regulations for abortion clinics
· Requirements that licensed physicians perform abortions
· “Delayed enforcement” laws (banning abortion when Roe v. Wade is overturned and/or the authority to restrict abortion is returned to the states)
· Bans on partial-birth abortion
· Bans on abortion after viability. FOCA’s apparent attempt to limit post-viability abortions is illusory. Under FOCA, post-viability abortions are expressly permitted to protect the woman’s “health.” Within the context of abortion, “health” has been interpreted so broadly that FOCA would not actually proscribe any abortion before or after viability.
· Limits on public funding for elective abortions (thus, making American taxpayers fund a procedure that many find morally objectionable)
· Limits on the use of public facilities (such has public hospitals and medical schools at state universities) for abortions
· State and federal legal protections for individual healthcare providers who decline to participate in abortions
· Legal protections for Catholic and other religiously-affiliated hospitals who, while providing care to millions of poor and uninsured Americans, refuse to allow abortions within their facilities
(http://www.aul.org/FOCA)

Earlier I stated that Obama’s treatment of the unborn has been one of “indifference”. I was wrong. “Disdain” more accurately describes his treatment. The idea that a fetus is a human life is anathema to him, so much so that in response to the question, “When do babies get human rights?” he sarcastically answered, “I think that whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity is above my pay grade.” (http://www.catholic.org/politics/story.php?id=29138) Interesting. It’s above his pay grade to know when a baby should get rights, but it’s not above his pay grade to deny a baby those rights. The hubris is sickening.
Considering his track record and his recent statements, it appears our president-elect is targeting the unborn.
I hope I am wrong; I fear I am not.

Donald Tremblay

Screening Out The Unborn

Now that Barack Obama has been elected president, Catholics can expect the battle to defend the unborn to be fiercer than ever. Feminist groups like NOW will demand legislation that removes all restrictions to abortion, and they will find a sympathetic ear in the White House. Pro-life supporters will need to join forces to withstand the onslaught, and one group whose assistance would prove invaluable is the medical community. Unfortunately, this group primarily has remained silent in defense of the unborn.

This realization struck me yesterday as I read the Wall Street Journal’s “Letters to the Editor” section. Two doctors had responded to an October 25 Wall Street Journal article entitled, “The Toughest Test”, which discussed how prenatal genetic testing is influencing parents’ decisions on whether to abort their children. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122238185398776759.html) Below are the two doctors’ letters in their entirety:

· “For-profit companies that offer prenatal genetic testing services are shameful; they play upon the fears of expectant parents, gladly accept testing fees, and then leave these parents and their (ill-equipped) doctors to deal with the aftermath.

I loathe the day that my daughter shows up at her first prenatal visit, only to be handed a list of "diseases" to test for, just to make sure that "everything is OK with the baby." This represents a giant step backward for modern medicine. We should remember that it is genetic diversity that is essential for the survival of all species, including human beings.”

Timothy P. Madion, M.D.
Fellow, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
Chief of Surgery
Munson Medical Center
Traverse City, Mich.

· As a physician who daily performs ultrasounds and has delivered many babies over the years, I read with sadness that physicians "tried, but failed to persuade" a couple to terminate a pregnancy that they felt wasn't worthy and that 80% of women choose to terminate their pregnancies after receiving a positive diagnosis of Down syndrome ("More Prenatal Testing Brings New Worries," Oct. 25).

As one who took the original Hippocratic oath that directs physicians to "first do no harm" and "never proscribe abortion," I find myself trying to persuade couples of the value of each human life whether disabled or not.

Prenatal testing itself may put a physician in material cooperation with the destruction of a human life whose future is uncertain. Let us give the unborn the benefit of life and support through possible cures or through hospice until natural death.

Mark Druffner, M.D.
Hudson, Wis.

Granted there are physicians who would disagree with the above assessments. Yet, I suspect there are many more who would agree but who remain silent.

Someone needs to remind them that the unborn cry out for their voices.

Donald Tremblay