Journeys of a Catholic Poster Girl

Am I the only one who attends a parish that recycles the same 5 or 6 Christmas songs over and over all season? I mean, we only get Christmas for two (or three?) Sundays anyway, the only time all year we can access the great Christmas hymnody that our Church has. And we always get stuck with the warhorses– “Joy to the World”, “O Come All Ye Faithful”, “The First Noelle”, “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, “What Child Is This?” What about “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear?” “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” (which is one of my favorites, but probably too politically incorrect!), “Of the Father’s Love Begotten”, “The Holly and the Ivy”, “Angels from the Realms of Glory”, “Good Christian Men, Rejoice!”, etc? Why is it always the same five? I’m starting to get a wee bit irritated. And we don’t even do “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”, which I love .

Do other parishes do this? Or is it just mine? Have we really sunk to the musical low of not being able to sing more than 5 or 6 songs and writing the others off as “too hard” or “too old”? Say it ain’t so!

Mel–play me a good Christmas song, quick!

I was in German Village in Columbus yesterday (which may explain this occurence, for those of you who understand the eclectic make up of the place), and saw both of the following on one vehicle:

1) a rosary dangling from a rearview mirror
2) a sticker that read “in case of rapture, this car will be empty”

This is strange because, as a rule, Catholics don’t believe in the rapture. At all. The fact that we don’t, and because of many other things, has even led to the book Will Catholics Be ‘Left Behind?’ , by Carl Olson, which explains the faults of Rapture logic and debunks it. It’s a great book, available via Ignatius Press.

Oh, and another note, while were on the topic: please, good Catholic people, don’t read the Left Behind books, or get the kids’ ones for your children. They ar virurently anti-Catholic dressed up as Christian literature, but it’s pretty clear that the Catholic Church is (again) the anti-Christ. Just because it’s an NYT best-seller (indeed, maybe because it’s an NYT best seller) doesn’t mean it’s good! (see my thoughts on the DaVinci code other places in this blog). What amazes me about this Protestant notion (and yes I know not all Protestants believe in the Rapture, or think we’re the anti-Christ) is that it directly contradicts the biblical idea of a tree and its fruit. It we really were the anti-Christ, then I don’t think we’d have over a billion members that believe Jesus Christ is their savior and are living to serve Him and believe in Him. I don’t think there’d be anything good coming out of the Church, and yet there is much good fruit. But we’re still the anti-Christ. Isn’t this a little old? Just a bit? And to go in the “if this happened to Jews/ Muslims/ other Christians, the reaction would be…” category–can you imagine if someone wrote a book saying these same things about Jews/Muslims/ other Christians? The reaction would be incredible.But you can say it about Catholics and end up on the best seller lists for years. Sigh.