Bethlehem’s Hollow Symbolism Masks Spiritual Desolation
The EWTN News portal (December 8, 2025) reports on Bethlehem’s resumption of Christmas celebrations, including a tree lighting ceremony near the Church of the Nativity after a two-year hiatus during the Gaza conflict. Mayor Maher Canawati justifies the decision by citing economic necessity (“tourism was down to zero”) and vague appeals to “hope,” while Fr. Gabriel Romanelli describes ongoing bombings near Gaza’s Holy Family Church. This spectacle of empty festivity amid violence epitomizes the conciliar sect’s surrender to naturalism.
Economic Pragmatism Replaces Supernatural Faith
The mayor’s admission that Christmas celebrations serve economic recovery (“We’re all living here from tourism”) reduces the Incarnation to a commercial commodity. Contrast this with Pius XI’s encyclical Quas Primas (1925), which decreed Christ’s social kingship to combat precisely such secularization: “When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony.” Bethlehem’s authorities invert this order, treating Christmas not as the Adventus Redemptoris but as a stimulus package.
The article’s focus on tree lightings in Beit Jala and Beit Sahour further illustrates this desacralization. Nowhere is there mention of Midnight Mass, Eucharistic adoration, or the Forty Hours Devotion — the true markers of Catholic celebration. Instead, the “light of hope” (lux spei) becomes a paganized symbol, divorced from its source: “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12).
Silence on Apostasy and Interfaith Syncretism
Fr. Romanelli’s account of shrapnel damaging a crucifix at Holy Family Church frames the incident as mere misfortune: “Thanks be to God more people weren’t harmed.” Yet his report omits any call for repentance or recognition of divine judgment. The Syllabus of Errors (1864) condemns such indifferentism: “The Church has not the power of using force… nor has she any temporal power” (Error 24). By reducing the Church’s mission to survivalism, the conciliar clergy abandon their duty to preach the Regnum Christi even amid persecution.
Moreover, the article ignores Bethlehem’s demographic reality: a Muslim-majority town where Christians now comprise less than 12% of the population. The tree lighting’s interfaith audience implicitly endorses Pius IX’s condemned proposition: “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion” (Syllabus, Error 18). True Catholics would instead process with the Blessed Sacrament through Bethlehem’s streets, proclaiming Christ’s exclusive lordship over the Holy Land.
Naturalism Replaces Sacramental Life
Nowhere does the article mention sacraments — not Confession for war-weary souls, nor Viaticum for the dying. This omission flows from Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes, which secularized the Church into a humanitarian NGO. Compare this to Pius X’s condemnation in Lamentabili Sane (1907): “The Church listening cooperates… in such a way that the Church teaching should only approve the common opinions” (Proposition 6). The conciliar sect’s “Christmas” is thus reduced to a festive veneer over spiritual bankruptcy.
The True Light Extinguished
Bethlehem’s celebration occurs while Gaza’s Catholics endure bombings without sacramental sustenance. Yet Fr. Romanelli’s X post about explosions near his parish contains no appeal for the Tridentine Mass or rosary processions. This aligns with Bergoglian pastoralismo, which St. Pius X foresaw as Modernism’s fruit: “They will put aside the old philosophy and the old theology, they will put them aside… as antiquated” (Pascendi Dominici Gregis, 1907).
The true light of Christmas — the Verbum caro factum est — demands not tree lightings but the Gloria in excelsis Deo of the Traditional Latin Mass. Until Bethlehem’s clergy renounce the conciliar revolution and restore Catholic integralism, their celebrations remain what Pius XI called “a hollow sham” (Quas Primas).
Source:
Bethlehem lights Christmas tree again while conflict still echoes nearby (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 08.12.2025