By DEACON MIKE MANNO, JD
I think some of my fondest memories of my childhood center around Christmas. My dad always decorated the outside of the house, mom did the inside, and we always had a fresh green tree purchased from our parish’s Christmas tree lot.
We’d have two weeks of school vacation and even the nuns — God love them — were in an extra good mood; in other words, no homework.
We’d always go to the midnight Mass, come home and open family presents and then head to bed — not that we could sleep — and wait for Santa to bring the rest of our haul; and our haul was always pretty good. Kids were with their parents, families came to church, and we all dreamed of a White Christmas — well, at least the kids did.
As we approach another Nativity celebration and we look back at Christmas Past, I, for one, have to stop and ask what has happened since those days. Now maybe I’m just too old and time has passed me by, but I wonder if in the space of the last half century the world hasn’t lost its footing, hasn’t somehow jettisoned its historic traditions in favor of some newfangled version of mankind’s role in the universe.
Where have our families gone? Where have all the dads gone? Where has civility gone? Our sense of humor? And finally, maybe most important, where has common sense gone?
I have been very fortunate in life. I have a loving wife of some 43 years — we just celebrated our anniversary and you’ll be happy to know I extended her for another year. We own everything we need, have our health, and our faith.
There is really nothing commercial that I need; okay, perhaps another computer screen — if you’d like to help out just send cash, and while I’m thinking about it maybe a new computer — check out my Go Fund Me page that one of these days I’ll get around to putting up.
Anyway here are a few things that I would like for Christmas, hopefully you do too:
I pray that the world, especially our nation, will be infused with a new sense of common sense and decency. It’s hard every week to write about how some among us are turning up dead-end paths that only lead to misery, frustration, and despair.
For example, common sense should tell us that there are only two sexes. Modern society, however, now recognizes that there are dozens of “genders” from which we may choose, or choose none at all, or switch as we feel the mood. That is simply a proposition that defies logic and biology and yet we are allowing that concept of “gender identity” to spread through government, schools, business, society, and, worst of all, politics.
So, to make everybody happy, we now accept the fact that a lot of folks, who really have something wrong with them, should be allowed to claim a legitimate place in society. Common sense says this is the tail wagging the dog.
And yet politicians and self-appointed sociologists, along with their friends in the media, pander to the gender confused. Now, I’m not talking about those with same-sex attractions, I’m talking about those who don’t know what they are.
Simple Christian decency, I believe, requires us to address their problems, not wink at them and ask for their vote.
Why is there no effort to delve into the psychological problems that produce that confusion? Common sense tells us what we should do, so why don’t we do it? Probably because it is not politically correct — just try to float that idea on a college campus today.
On this year’s Christmas list, I also pray for an increase in tolerance. We’ve become a nation where unless you agree with me I can’t stand to be around you. Once those in religious, ethnic, or sexual minorities asked only for tolerance. And they should be given that. But many moved further and moved from tolerance to acceptance. Acceptance sounds nice but it does connote much more than tolerance.
We can and should tolerate those with alternative lifestyles, but we need not accept their choice. Acceptance became a trap for the unwary.
But it’s gotten worse. In many areas we’ve moved from toleration and acceptance to forced acceptance. That’s why conscience rights are being torpedoed in the public square; we should not let our old-fashioned beliefs stand in the way of someone who wishes to live life differently.
Thus, if you are a physician and you don’t believe in abortion, or any other scenario we regularly discuss in this column, you will be required to provide that service or product to those who wish it. Your right to refuse on religious grounds is simply mean-spirited and bigoted and you need to be punished.
Where are the architects of tolerance now? Are they the only ones to be able to follow their beliefs? We, the deplorables, apparently don’t have the same rights and when we complain — well, we’re just uninformed and deserve some extra time in remedial attitude readjustment, or else.
But the top of my Christmas list is a return to God; our God, the real one, the one who made us, not the one we make up for our own convenience. The lesson from Scripture is that God’s people survive and prosper as long as they are faithful; but when they lose that faithfulness the prosperity ends and they are overcome by enemies of all sorts, both human and satanic.
As we’ve reported in this newspaper, church attendance is down; belief in the divine is on the wane; we write our own catechism and live by feelings and rationalizations, not by the teachings of the Carpenter’s Son whose birth we are about to celebrate.
Instead too many, some in high office, do not have the backbone to stand up for His teachings. In short, we need more St. Catherines of Siena and fewer Pachamamas. That return to God will solve the other problems I pray will be rectified, for as God Himself told Solomon: “If my people…humble themselves and pray, and seek my presence and turn from their evil ways, I will hear them from heaven and pardon their sins and revive their land” (2 Chron. 7-14).
You see, the greatest gift we received was lying in a manger in Bethlehem over 2,000 years ago. But receiving it is only half the equation; the other is that we have to re-gift it to others. Then and only then can we experience the true joys of the season.
Merry Christmas from my family to yours.
Peace. Believe, pray, evangelize.
(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com.)
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