Earlier this week, an opinion piece entitled “Skipping Christmas“ on the Associated Baptist Press’ website addressed this trend. Brett Younger wrote:

The big issue is not that people will skip church on Sunday. The real problem is that churches are failing to tell the truth about Christmas. … On Sunday, Christians would do well to gather, sing, pray and listen to the story. We should celebrate by remembering the first Christmas and giving ourselves again to the one born in Bethlehem.

In general, I agree (although I take odds with the part about skipping Sunday worship not being a “big issue”; Christians ought to worship every Sunday). I chimed in with this comment:

I think the Catholic Church has the right emphasis on Christmas. It is a holy day of obligation regardless of what day of the week it falls on. Gathering together for worship is the primary emphasis of this holiday (holy-day), and the rest (family meals, exchanging gifts, etc.) is secondary. Perhaps all Christian congregations regardless of denomination should be encouraged to have a Christmas Day service every year, even if it isn’t on Sunday. Our culture won’t “put the Christ back in Christmas” if we believers don’t do it first.

When asked what my family and I will be doing for Christmas, I try to make a point to my friends, extended family and coworkers that we’ll be attending mass. I’m not obnoxious about it, but I try to gently convey that worship is the main purpose of the holiday. After all, it is “Christ’s Mass,” the day we celebrate the Nativity of the Lord.

So if you get in conversations today, encourage people to worship either at a Christmas Eve service or a Christmas Day service. That’s the real meaning of Christmas!

Get the full article here: “Episcopal nuns become Catholic nuns“

When I was a Lutheran (from my early 20s until my late 30s), I read the Augsburg Confession, which is the primary confession of faith for Lutherans, as well as the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, written in response to Catholic objections to the Augsburg Confession. I must admit that in reading these two documents, I did not understand why the Catholic Church objected to them. I had to deduce what the Catholic position was through the arguments made in the Apology.

Fortunately, I eventually was able to find the “missing link” — the Catholic rebuttal to the Augsburg Confession which prompted the writing of the Apology of the Augsburg Confession. This document is known as The Roman Confutation against the Augsburg Confession and is available from the Lutheran Project Wittenberg. If you are curious why the Church said “No” to many of the Lutheran positions back in the 16th Century, I encourage you to read this document (available as a free PDF). It’s only 24 pages, and it proved to be a powerful influence on me becoming a Catholic. If you’d like to study it alongside the Lutheran documents, both the Augsburg Confession and the Apology are part of the Book of Concord, also available as a free PDF online.

Laura and I just had the great joy and privilege of worshipping here in Beijing, China. You know, it just goes to show that God is universal and God is love. And no state, man or woman should fear the influence of loving religion.

(Watch the YouTube clip)

That last remark was apparently an allusion to the millions of Chinese who brave harassment and arrest to worship at unregistered “house” churches.

This raises an important question for us comfortable Americans: if you were threatened with serious social ostracism or government arrest for going to church, would you still go?

Not to offend any of my fellow Southerners, but one must admit that many stereotypes are at least in part rooted in reality. Let’s take the prototypical Southern male, who for the sake of this example we will name Billy Bob.

If Billy Bob starts to feel drawn by the Lord into a deeper spiritual life, he might briefly survey the various congregations in his town. And of all the prospects, the last on his list will be some church with a traditionally Catholic name, like, oh let’s say Saint Francis of Assisi Catholic Church. No disrespect toward the founder of the Franciscan Order is intended either by me or our imaginary friend, but Billy Bob’s initial reaction upon seeing a painting or statue might be something like, “A guy named Francis? Well, he sure looks like a-sissy to me in that dress!”

My point is that the name of the local parish can have an influence on whether or not Billy Bob ever sets foot there.

Based on a quick Google search, I found that two Southern parishes have done a fine job in selecting their names, whether intentionally or not. I’m talking about Saint Cletus Catholic Church in Gretna, Louisiana and Saint Clement parish in Calhoun, Georgia. Cletus and Clem sound like good ol’ boys. The kinda fellas you might want to go fishin’ with. Name the parish after either of these men, or even both – Saints Cletus and Clem Catholic Church, for example – and we Southern boys will feel right at home, or at least feel much more welcomed. (If you don’t know, Sts. Cletus and Clement were the third and fourth Bishops of Rome, respectively – early Popes that sound like they’d fit right in here in the South.)

It would also be quite easy to further serve the needs of your local community by making mass times a bit flexible – check the local fishing forecast to make sure mass doesn’t overlap prime fishin’ times. These times will vary each day, of course (see the following):

This makes sure the avid fisherman will have time to fulfill his Sunday obligation without conflict. Employing this variable-schedule technique can improve mass attendance significantly.

If you have a hunting-and-fishing apostolate affiliated with your parish – call it something like “Fishin’ at Cletus and Clem’s” and maybe hold it in conjunction with the Lenten fish fries – you can probably anticipate an annual membership recruitment rate well into the double digits.

I just bought and watched a great DVD called Common Ground: What Protestants and Catholics Can Learn from Each Other. I found this to be a helpful, charitable dialogue between a Protestant minister and a Catholic priest.

Pastor Steve Andrews is the founding pastor of Kensington Community Church in Troy, Michigan. Kensington is a large, non-denominational, evangelical-Protestant church modeled after the successful Willow Creek Church near Chicago. Several years ago, some Kensington members who had left the Catholic Church to become Protestants were giving Catholicism a bad rap. Pastor Andrews thought there was a need to set the record straight, since he and other leaders considered Catholicism to be a significant part of Christianity.

This DVD presents Pastor Andrews’ interview of Father John Riccardo, pastor of nearby Saint Anastasia Catholic Church. The interview took place at St. Anastasia’s sanctuary, just in front of the tabernacle containing the Blessed Sacrament. Father Riccardo does an excellent job explaining Catholic beliefs and practices in a way that non-Catholics can understand.

If you’re looking for a video that you can share with non-Catholic friends who might be interested in learning what Catholics believe, this is an excellent resource.

A sample video clip is available from publisher Nineveh’s Crossing. Also available is a free study guide to the DVD, prepared by Catholic apologist and writer Dave Armstrong.