December 2004

Dear Brother Knights,

Advent and the coming Christmas season are upon us. As always I know you will be witnesses to the true meaning of the season. Today, more than ever before, we have to put Christ back into Christmas.

Recently, I heard a song played for a mixed audience of Catholics and Protestants that upset me. You may have even heard the song in your parishes during the past few years, MARY DID YOU KNOW. It has a pretty melody, but I must warn you that it was written by a lyricist who explicitly intended to prosletyze and refute Catholic teaching regarding the Blessed Virgin Mother.

Here are the pertinent verses:

"Mary, did you know that your baby boy
would one day walk on water?
Mary, did you know that your baby boy
would save our sons and daughters?
Did you know that your baby boy
has come to make you new;
and this child that you delivered
will soon deliver you?"

Mary certainly did know and says as much at the Annunciation when she makes her wonderful Magnificat. She calls God her Savior, not in the future tense, but as a current fact. The line, "this child that you delivered will soon deliver you?" is a direct attack against the Catholic dogma of the IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. This important Catholic teaching is a hallmark of Catholic pro-life thinking. Things are not preserved from sin, only persons. Mary is preserved from sin from the very first moment of her life in the womb of St. Ann by the merits of Christ cross reaching backward into human history-- just as they reach forward to us in faith and baptism.

The song represents heresy and blasphemy to discerning Catholic ears and it is a scandal that so many parochial schools and parish choirs often sing it mindless of the doctrinal content. It is a Protestant song that is incompatible with the Catholic faith. I urged the firing of a parish musician at a Catholic church back in 1999 for performing the song after I told her to omit it.

As the Methodists would remind us, hymns are also tools to teach. Singing is praying and praying is believing. If you hear the song this year in your churches or if it is performed in the Catholic schools, make some quiet mention of the problem with your pastors and principals. Feel free to show them this message.

Mary was preserved from sin so that Jesus, the source of holiness, could come into this world through a pure vessel. Make this Christmas, a time to reaffirm our Catholic faith-- trusting in Mary's motherly intercession, Joseph's patronage as the guardian of the family, and Jesus' saving work and mercy. Christ was born into the human family so that we might be born again into eternal life.

God bless and keep you all,
Father Joe Jenkins