"Putting Christ Back Into Christmas"
There will be much talk this December about "putting Christ back into Christmas". Tragically, in all the holy commotion which will accompany this talk, not one person will speak up and ask that most pertinent question: "But who took Him out in the first place?"
The answer is in no sense a seasonal one. For the attack that threatens Christmas each December is part of an all-out full-time offensive - which will be striking at our parochial schools next March, as our New Testament next May, and at the basic Christian structure of our country next October. It is born of an enmity as old as our Faith. And it is sustained, from father to son, by that curse which a Jerusalem mob called down upon itself when it cried, "Crucify Him! His Blood be upon us and upon our children!"
The drive to "put Christ back into Christmas" makes the ancient enemy only half worried - for, at best, it leaves our shattered word "Christmas" only half restored.
It is The Point's lonely battle cry this December that Christmas be entirely salvaged - that, purged of the tinsel and the trappings, it may become, for all our readers, the Holy and Joyous celebration of "Christ's Mass."
Israeli Inquiry
Q. What will be one of the main objectives of the Jews in America during 1956?
A. They will be striving , with accelerated fervour to maneuver America into the role of big brother to the State of Israel, the protector of its interests and the conqueror of its foes.
Q. What led the Jews to choose the year 1956 fot this campaign?
A. The presidential elections in November - an event which causes politicians to cast greedy eyes upon the fat bloc of Jewish votes, ready to fall into the lap of whatever candidate makes the most enticing offers.
Q. Have the Jews published any announcement of their election-year plans?
A. As outlined in the Bulletin of the Zionist Organization of America, their intention is to "swing American public opinion to come to Israel's aid and exert pressure on the administration of the kind which proved successful in 1947 and 1948, without which the State of Israel would not have come into being."
Q. Under what guise are the Jews trying to win American opinion to their side?
A. They are portraying Israel as a beleaguered little democracy,America's one friend in the Middle East, struggling for existence against hordes of Communist-dominated Arab neighbors.
Q. Is there evidence that this portrayal is not quite accurate?
A. Much. Three samples of which follow.
1) The official report on immigration to Israel, published by the U.S. Department of Commerce reveals that most Israelis come from (and necessarily with the blessing of ) Soviet Russia and her satellites.
2) As a result of the August elections, the Israeli parliament ( the Knesset) is composed of the following elements.
Of the Knesset's 120 seats, forty belong to the Soviet Labor Party (Mapai), an affliate of the Second International; fifteen belong to the Freedom Partry (Herut), political arm of those reportedly - outlawed terrorist gangs whose atrocities shocked the civilized world; ten belong to the Unity of Labor (Ahdut Avoda), an avowedly Marxist group; nine belong to the United Workers Party (Mapam), which advocates "the revolutionary class struggle" and "a firm bond between the workers of the world and the Soviet Union"; and six belong to the Communist Party of Israel - making a total of eighty seats for these extreme factions, or two thirds of the parliament's membership.
3) In June of 1950, an American journalist was told by an official at the Vatican's Department for Extra- ordinary Affairs, that the State of Israel is "obviously an outpost of the Soviet Union in the Middle East."
When the journalist objected that the major Israeli party is Socialist and not Communist, he was told, "It is all camouflage. These people are of one mind when it comes to the Christian religion. They are out to de-Christianize the Levant as part of a world wide plot to destroy what is left of Christian morality."
Q. If Zionism and Communism are, then, so closely akin why is Israel presently scorning Russia and turning to the U.S. for help?
A. This is a move not of necessity, but of prudence. the large quantities of planes, tanks, and guns Israel has already amassed have come to her from behind the Iron Curtain, and Russia is still willing to keep Israel fortified, as she made clear immediately upon announcement of her arms - deal with Egypt. the Jews, however, are genuinely alarmed about the Arab nations , whose lands they have usurped, whose villages they have ravaged and destroyed, whose people they have slaughtered.
Fearful lest the pent up rage of the Arab world should finally burst upon them, the Jews want to see the Arabs knocked out once and for all, leaving Israel undisputed mistress of the Middle East.. If Russia were to take on the assignment, there would be a danger of the U.S. stepping in on the side of the Arabs.
Consequently, the Jews are creating the illusion that Israel is herself a victim of Communist aggression - hopeful that the U.S. can thereby be induced to come to her "defence".
Q. Is there no chance that this Jewish scheme will be frustrated?
A. There is an excellent chance that Americans, weary of fighting fruitless wars, will take the trouble to discover that they are now being invited to do and die for no other purpose than to exalt the Jewish nation - whereupon the Jews are likely to find their boldness met with an unexpectedly formidable reaction.
Q. Is this the only hope of defeating the Jews?
A. There is another and better one. It is the wan but still-living hope that the remnants of Christendom, struck with the terrible realization that the land hallowed by the Birth and Death of Christ is now in the hands of His implacable enemies, will arise and rally to that now-more-pertinent call which Pope Urban II issued to the first Crusaders : "Mark out a path all the way to the Holy Sepulcher and snatch the Holy Land from the abominable people!"
Christian Reminder
For anyone who wonders whether there is provocation for a present day Catholic Crusade to rescue the Holy Land, we are concluding this issue with a partial list of the atrocities and desecrations which the Jews have committed in Palestine since 1948 (we make no attempt to indicate here the loss of lives and property suffered by the nearly one million Arabs who have been evicted from their ancient homes during these past seven years.)
The Jews have defiled and destroyed the following Church buildings: the Church of Saint John the Baptist at Am Karim; the Church of the Beatitudes at Capharnaum, the Church of Mensa Christi on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, the Church of Saint Peter at Tiberias, the Cenacle ( the place of the Last Supper) at Jerusalem, the Convent of Mary Reparatrix at Jerusalem, the Convent and Hospice of Notre Dame at Jerusalem, the convent of the Sisters of Saint Ann at Haifa, the Franciscan Convent at Tiberias, the Patriarchal Seminary at Beit-Jala, the Salesian houses at Cremisan, the Sisters Convent at Am Karam, the School of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Sion at Katamon, the Sisters residence at at Capharnaum, the church and rectory at Ikret.
Catholic authorities have estimated that the Jews have destroyed Church property in the Holy Land at the rate of more than two million dollars worth a year.
To enumerate only French Catholic institutions, they have demolished four hospitals, sixteen dispensaries, two hospices, four seminaries, thirty two schools and orphanages, and seven retreat houses.
Among the countless other desecrations we might mention, none is more heartrending, than that of Jerusalem's Church of the Dormition - the magnificent Roman -esque shrine to the Mother of God which was pillaged by Israeli soldiers and then turned into a Jewish dance hall for the young men and women of Haganah. It was only after a hundred such incidents that the Apostolic Delegate, Archbishop Hughes, unequivocally charged that there is now in operation a "deliberate Jewish effort to decimate the Arabs and to destroy Christianity in Palestine." - From The Point December 1955 -edited under Fr. Leonard Feeney. MICM
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- Gloria in altissimis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis-
* Glory to God in the highest ; and on earth peace to men of good will *
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