Dec. 24, 2021 - Bannon's War Room
48:01
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I saw three ships come sailing in on Christmas Day, on Christmas Day. | |
| I saw three ships come sailing in on Christmas Day in the morning. | ||
| And what was it those ships saw three on Christmas Day, on Christmas Day? | ||
| And what was it those ships saw three on Christmas Day in the morning? | ||
| Our Savior Christ and His Lady on Christmas Day, on Christmas Day. | ||
| Our Savior Christ and His Lady on Christmas Day in the morning. | ||
| And where the sailor's ships are free On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day And where the sailor's ships are free On Christmas Day in the morning Oh, they sail into Bethlehem On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day Oh, they sail into Bethlehem On Christmas Day in the morning And there the sails are raised from the ground On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day And there the sails are raised from the ground On Christmas Day in the morning | ||
| And all the angels in heaven shall sing On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day And all the angels in heaven shall sing On Christmas Day in the morning And all the souls in heaven shall sing On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day It is Christmas Eve, and this is our Christmas Eve special here in the War Room. | ||
| Friday, 24th of December, the year of our Lord 2021. | ||
| We've got Ben Harnwell, our international editor. | ||
| He is live at the Vatican. | ||
| And we've got Captain Bennett here in studio, going to be joined in a moment by Rabban Ibrahim. | ||
| Mo, it's the night before Christmas. | ||
| What do you got for us? | ||
| So, A Visit from St. | ||
| Nicholas by Clement Clark Moore. | ||
| "'Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. | ||
| The stockings were hung by the chimney with care in hopes that St. | ||
| Nicholas soon would be there. | ||
| The children were nestled all snug in their beds while visions of sugar plums danced in their heads. | ||
| And a mama in her kerchief and I in my cap had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap. | ||
| When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter. | ||
| Away to the window I flew like a flash, tore open the shutters and threw up the sash. | ||
| The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow gave a luster of midday to objects below, when what to my wandering eyes did appear but a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer. | ||
| With a little old driver so lively and quick, I knew in a moment he must be St. | ||
| Nick. | ||
| More rapid than eagles, his coursers they came, and he whistled and shouted and called them by name. | ||
| Now, dancer, Now Dasher, now Prancer and Vixen, On Comet, on Cupid, on Donner and Blitzen, To the top of the porch, to the top of the wall, Now dash away, dash away, dash away all, As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, When they met with an obstacle, mount to the sky. | ||
| So up to the housetop the coursers they flew, With a sleigh full of toys and St. | ||
| Nicholas too, And then in a twinkling I heard on the roof The prancing and pawing of each little hoof. | ||
| As I drew in my head and was turning around, down the chimney St. | ||
| Nicholas came with a bound. | ||
| He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, and his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot. | ||
| A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, and he looked like a peddler, just opening his pack. | ||
| His eyes how they twinkled, his dimples how merry. | ||
| His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry. | ||
| His little mouth was drawn up like a bow and the beard on his chin was as white as the snow. | ||
| The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth and the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath. | ||
| He had a broad face and a little round belly that shook when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly. | ||
| He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf, and I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself. | ||
| A wink of his eye and a twist of his head soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread. | ||
| He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, and filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk, and laying his finger aside of his nose and giving a nod, up the chimney he rose. | ||
| He sprang to his sleigh, to his team, gave a whistle and away they all flew like the down of a thistle but I heard him exclaim or he drove out of sight happy Christmas to all and to all a good night You remember that from when I read that to you when you were a kid? | ||
| That is fantastic. | ||
| I can't believe you got through that. | ||
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You're a big mark. | |
| Fabulous. | ||
| Talk about what Ben Harnwell tells of the Victorian Christmas. | ||
| You do it three times in a row. | ||
| It's a tradition, right? | ||
| I love that poem. | ||
| Fantastic. | ||
| Night Before Christmas. | ||
| A dramatic reading by Captain Martin Bannon. | ||
| Oh, you break me up. | ||
| We just left. | ||
| Zimerick made a very good point, Mo, I think, about the Feast of the Holy Innocents and the flight into Egypt. | ||
| I want to bring in now Raymond Ibrahim. | ||
| Raymond has been a guest many times and a contributor to the show many, many times about things going on throughout the world, particularly the Middle East. | ||
| One of the reasons we always like to focus on the Middle East, on these specials we do around the Christmas season, is the church is from the Middle East, right? | ||
| It's a desert church. | ||
| In fact, the first couple of centuries of Christianity, the church would never survive without the He's got a new book that's coming out later in the spring, I think, Defenders of the West, The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam, Raymond Abraham. | ||
| So Raymond, the flight into Egypt, you're a Coptic Tell us, how important is that to Egyptians, particularly Christians in the Middle East, this flight into Egypt? | ||
| It's a pretty important and a much celebrated thing that they're very cognizant of, as you can imagine, especially in Egypt. | ||
| As you mentioned, the Coptic Christians, and that word simply means Egyptian. | ||
| It goes through a lot of iterations, but it basically means Christian Egyptian, which gives you an idea of what happened to Egypt after the Pharaonic and the Hellenistic Age, which is basically became Christianized as one of the most Christian nations. | ||
| And like you said, the Desert Fathers there and in Syria and elsewhere played a prominent role And, you know, until this day, the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt is demarcated, and they have an actual—you can trace their footpaths, supposedly, all throughout Egypt that's part of their tourist attraction, which is obviously a nice thing. | ||
| But it's also a reminder that how Egypt is happy to exploit something to its own gain monetarily in this context, or even just for their image. | ||
| But in reality, things are obviously not so great for Coptic Christians and Christians elsewhere around the Middle East, and especially around Christmas time. | ||
| Talk to us about that. | ||
| How do Christians, and really the cradle of the church, how do they actually commemorate Christmas Day? | ||
| We know we have still the remaining beautiful churches, basilicas, monasteries, the ones that are still there. | ||
| How do Christians, and I think we went from Somebody told me at the turn of the 20th century, 20% of the Middle East was Christian, and today it's under 1%. | ||
| But how do our Christian brothers and sisters actually commemorate the Christmas season in the Middle East today? | ||
| Well, in the Middle East proper, if you're talking about Egypt and Iraq and Syria and so forth, they commemorate it, actually, by worshipping in church. | ||
| Most Christians of the Middle East are of the Orthodox faith, and all Orthodox, actually. | ||
| That's how they spend Christmas, which is oftentimes, you know, it's in January 6th or 7th, depending on Armenians or Copts or Greeks or Russians. | ||
| But they spend it in the evening, so Christmas Eve is spent in church, worshipping. | ||
| Until midnight strikes, and thereafter, and the worship concludes, and it's a standard church mass with some additions to it. | ||
| But it's allowed right now in certain countries. | ||
| So, for example, going back to Egypt, it's permitted, and cops can meet and go to church. | ||
| In other countries, they're completely banned. | ||
| And even in the countries where they're permitted, so Egypt especially, during Christmas and all their holy days, including Easter or Resurrection Sunday, Palm Sunday and all these days, the cops have been bombed on those days, Christmas and so forth, while their churches were just packed and stuffed with people. | ||
| They were intentionally targeted on those days. | ||
| And, you know, just off the top of my head, I want to say maybe at least 150, if not more, Christians have died in Egypt just in recent years, from between 2016 and on, by various churches being targeted and bombed. | ||
| So the point is, whereas the government allows it, as I mentioned, to portray a certain image of Egypt, a tolerant, religiously tolerant image of Egypt to the international community, they're being attacked in fatal ways. | ||
| And above and beyond the terrorist attacks, which literally bomb churches and leave scores and dozens of dead Christians, almost every single year you're going to have bomb uprisings against various churches throughout Egypt and the greater Middle East as well. | ||
| And these are just everyday Muslims who, for whatever reason, are especially irked at seeing a special manifestation of Christianity being Christmas, and they'll throw stones at it and so forth. | ||
| Now, if you go to other countries like Saudi Arabia, well, they've nipped it in the bud because they've banned it altogether. | ||
| If and when it's happened where Christians who work there meet just in a house to celebrate Oftentimes the state police will break in and arrest them and throw them in prison for a long time and oftentimes torture them. | ||
| This has happened many times. | ||
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In other countries, you know, Nigeria, again, it's actually half Christian, half Muslim, and even a few years ago they even had a Christian president. | |
| And supposedly that's why all these Muslims were angry and finally they got a Muslim president and now it's even worse. | ||
| There's a massive jihad against Christians. | ||
| Their churches are continuously bombed during Christmas. | ||
| Many of the Nigerians are Catholics and Protestants, so they're celebrating it right around now. | ||
| And their churches get bombed, burned, destroyed, and I'm talking literally dozens every Christmas season. | ||
| And since I've been following this, well into the hundreds, several hundreds are attacked. | ||
| Even supposedly moderate nations, we hear about Indonesia and Malaysia, they also have the same thing, where Muslims are literally banned from saying Merry Christmas to Christians. | ||
| And every year when Christians do meet in small churches, the state actually provides—this isn't just in Indonesia and Malaysia, but also Egypt and elsewhere—they provide state security, because it's such a volatile event, these Christians meeting to worship and celebrate the birth of their Savior. | ||
| It brings up, as I mentioned, all these violent types. | ||
| So it's a scary time for Christians in the Middle East and the Islamic world in general. | ||
| During this season, Christmas, they try to do what we do, but there's repercussions. | ||
| And I think there's also a lesson for us, because if we understand anything about the so-called left, it has a strong synergy with Islam, aside from their ostensible differences. | ||
| One is supposedly liberal and one's draconian, but they're both very draconian. | ||
| in certain things as we've increasingly seen, and especially towards Christianity. | ||
| So whereas now, you know, we hear about the war on Christmas and things that are rather mild compared to what happens in the Islamic world, I have no doubt that if and when they could, they will reach, they will take it to that level if they can. | ||
| So I think there's a lesson in that to see there's a vast continuum, and the actors are different, the hostile actors, but they all have one common enemy. | ||
| And I think, you know, we're in the early part of that continuum, and we can see what's going to happen in the endgame, and hopefully it doesn't reach that point. | ||
| We're going to talk about your book in a second, about Christian heroes. | ||
| Ben, I know that the Feast of the Holy Innocents has always been something for you. | ||
| you talk to me about the flight into Egypt. | ||
| Let's try to get him hooked back up. | ||
| Mo, why don't you try to get Ben hooked back? | ||
| Okay, we'll get Ben in the next segment. | ||
| Ben's in the Vatican. | ||
| Battery may be running down. | ||
| Do we have Ben? | ||
| Ben, do you have us? | ||
| Yeah, I can hear you perfectly. | ||
| Perfect. | ||
| Flight into Egypt? | ||
| Yeah, it's mysterious, isn't it? | ||
| From the outside, what we see is a family under the threat of persecution. | ||
| fleeing, and you can see into a different country, and you can say, well, you know, why didn't God kill Herod? | ||
| Why didn't he just strike him down? | ||
| Why didn't he intervene to save the babies, the massacre of the innocents? | ||
| Why didn't he let the Holy Family go up to Nazareth or something? | ||
| Why did they have to flee into Egypt? | ||
| All these questions are legitimate questions. | ||
| They remain legitimate questions. | ||
| We can ask them. | ||
| We don't know. | ||
| What we do know is that God was active in this situation, working through his plan of grace and salvation. | ||
| And it's the same thing in a certain sense with our own lives, on a day-to-day basis. | ||
| We certainly don't have the pleasure of getting an angelic instruction of what we have to do. | ||
| But all we can do is do the best that we can and commit it to God. | ||
| Ben, hang on. | ||
| You're at the Vatican. | ||
| We've got Rabin Ibrahim. | ||
| He's the author of the new book, Defenders of the West. | ||
| We've got Captain Bannon. | ||
| He's going to talk to us about the wreaths across America, how it got started. | ||
| We're going to take a short commercial break. | ||
| We'll be back with our Christmas Eve special in the room in just a moment. | ||
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Oh | |
| Is Foreign Foreign Oh Oh Is It's the way. | ||
| you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Oh tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy. | ||
| Oh tidings of comfort and joy. | ||
| From God, our heavenly Father, the blessed angel came. | ||
| And on the news that you've shared, I've brought tidings of the same. | ||
| How glad and glad I am to stand by thee. | ||
| Oh tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy. | ||
| Oh tidings of comfort and joy. | ||
| Now to the Lord's embrace, as all you within this place, we lift you up and brotherhood in each other now embrace. | ||
| This holy tide of grace, by some others doth their face. | ||
| Oh tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy. | ||
| Oh tidings of comfort and joy. | ||
| Aum. | ||
| Welcome back to our Christmas Eve special. | ||
| It is Friday, the 24th of December, Year of the Lord 2021. | ||
| I want to thank everybody who's helped us put this show together, including our musical director, incredible music and art. | ||
| I want to thank the team in Denver for making all this possible. | ||
| Real America's Voice, Tim Hovland has produced this show today. | ||
| I also want to thank our sponsor, MyPillow.com, Promo Code War Room. | ||
| It's absolutely extraordinary. | ||
| In fact, when you open up your Christmas gifts, either tonight at midnight or tomorrow morning, if you're looking around and seeing somebody's got the great MyPillow gifts and they didn't think of you, make sure you go take care of yourself. | ||
| Go to MyPillow.com, Promo Code War Room. | ||
| 600 different items out there on sale, so make sure you go there. | ||
| Captain Banner, one of the big things that happened as we tracked on the war room was wreaths across America. | ||
| By the 18th, they get to all the national cemeteries, Arlington National Cemetery, the other national cemeteries. | ||
| Talk to me about the wreaths across America, people. | ||
| So it actually started with the owner of Worcester Wreath Company, Morrill Worcester. | ||
| When he was 12, he was a paperboy for the Banger Daily News in Maine, and he won a trip to Washington, D.C. | ||
| And on that trip, he saw Arlington National Cemetery, which left a big impression on him. | ||
| And then in 1992, his company had extra wreaths ending the holiday season, so they coordinated with the Maine Senator Olympia Snow to put them on the headstones, or lay them against the headstones of | ||
| The one of the older sections of the cemetery that was not very much visited and this continued on until 2005 without many people knowing and then in 2005 an image circulated with the wreaths placed against the headstones covered in snow and then it garnered national attention at that point and it only grew and then in 2007 the wreath company and veterans | ||
| decided to found the wreaths across America and it has only grown since then. | ||
| In 2008, over 300 locations held wreath laying ceremonies in every state, Puerto Rico, and over 24 overseas cemeteries. | ||
| And then in 2014, Reese Across America and its national network of volunteers laid over 700,000 memorial wreaths at a thousand locations in the United States and beyond. | ||
| And it has continued to grow since then. | ||
| It's incredible. | ||
| And it turns, you know, when he first saw the cemetery without the wreaths, it can be a little bit of a forbidding place in the middle of winter, but it's really made a huge difference to the national cemeteries and to the families. | ||
| And I've known people that have volunteered to lay the wreaths on those headstones, and it is a very humbling, somber time to do it. | ||
| Yes, and very moving. | ||
| I think people, once they do it, it's incredible. | ||
| I want to go back to Raymond Abraham. | ||
| Raymond, the new book you've got, the book is going to be published in the spring of this year, Defenders of the West? | ||
| Yes, it will. | ||
| Defenders of the West, the Christian heroes who stood against Islam. | ||
| It was supposed to come out in March, actually. | ||
| I finished it several months back, but due to supposedly all the COVID slowdown in production and paper shortages, it's been pushed to July. | ||
| So it'll be out this July, but people, I think we put it up, people can actually pre-order it. | ||
| Yeah, it can be pre-ordered right now. | ||
| We only got a couple of minutes here, but what inspired you? | ||
| I know you wrote Sword and Scimitar, and I keep telling people, if you want to know essentially the military history of Christianity or the Judeo-Christian West in Islam, that's the book to start with, the Sword and Scimitar. | ||
| What inspired you to take the stories of the Christian heroes of this conflict? | ||
| Well, Steve, they're actually very much connected, the two books. | ||
| They're complementary to one another, companion books, if you like. | ||
| And it's basically, I saw the success of Sword and Scimitar, and it was a well-liked book in the overseas. | ||
| And what I decided to do is, whereas Sword and Scimitar discussed the decisive battles between Islam and the West, | ||
| I highlighted and profiled the eight, what I call the eight decisive men of the Christian West who actually confronted and fought against the Islamic world, and I profiled their lives, one in each chapter, and I think it's actually a very necessary thing because some of them weren't even very successful, but they're considered great heroes and, you know, they made massive sacrifices on behalf of their civilization, vis-a-vis Islam, and I think that's one thing I wanted to bring out to show you that | ||
| It's not just having a strong military or economic economy, such as the West does vis-a-vis the Islamic world, that actually keeps you safe and to maintain your integrity, including national integrity. | ||
| It's actually the blood and grit of men, like the ones that I profiled. | ||
| And I show how their motivations, religious, cultural, civilizational, came into play into the great sacrifices that they made to stand against Islam. | ||
| So I think it's a great companion piece to Sword and Scimitar, and it shows another angle. | ||
| And in fact, I made it a point, because in Sword and Scimitar, I covered literally almost 14 centuries. | ||
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So I made it a point to bring in things that I didn't talk about in Sword and Scimitar, So most of it, there's really very little overlap. | |
| Many of the men that I talked about weren't even mentioned in Sword and Scimitar at all. | ||
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I think it'll be a good companion book. | |
| Raymond, thank you very much for joining us. | ||
| Merry Christmas and thank you for taking time away from your schedule to join us here on Christmas. | ||
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Merry Christmas, Steve. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Merry Christmas. | ||
| Okay, let's bring in Jason Jones now. | ||
| Jason is an activist that has sacrificed so much of his life in the defense of the life movement here in the States, but he's also somebody that's focused very much and gotten all of us to focus on the plight of the Christian church, of the desert church and the church in the Middle East. | ||
| In 2021, this Christmas, Jason, what's the status of our brothers and sisters in Christ in the Middle East? | ||
| Merry Christmas, Steve, and just thank you for everything you're doing. | ||
| You've become where all of my friends around the world gather, and so being on your show as I'm with my friends all over the world, and it's what you're doing here is marvelous. | ||
| So to you and all my friends, Merry Christmas. | ||
| It's heartbreaking, you know, Steve, in 2003 there were 1.5 million Christians in Iraq. | ||
| there are 1.5 million Christians in Iraq. | ||
| Today, there are 150,000 embattled Christians in Iraq. | ||
| If Donald Trump wasn't elected in 2016, There would be no Christians left in Iraq because ISIS was left unchecked and they were wiping not only those ancient first century Christian churches off of the map but other even more ancient communities like the Yazidi and today from Nigeria and Sudan and in Syria and Iraq, Lebanon and probably | ||
| The worst place to be a Christian in the world today is Afghanistan. | ||
| You know, when we were kids, Steve, we would joke, if you were bad, what did you get in your stocking? | ||
| What do bad kids get in their stocking? | ||
| You got coal. | ||
| Switches and coal, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I was never a bad kid, so I didn't have to worry. | ||
| I don't know if anyone believes that, but I will say this. | ||
| My organization, I never thought I'd be in the business of distributing coal for Christmas, but for the past eight weeks, all of our effort has really been harnessed distributing coal for heat to Christians across Afghanistan. | ||
| Coal and food. | ||
| We're getting desperate messages from people who are freezing to death. | ||
| And all they want is coal. | ||
| All they want is fuel for heating. | ||
| And so we've been in the business of distributing coal to beautiful people, beautiful Christians. | ||
| And so there's a sorrowful irony there. | ||
| And so now here it is. | ||
| It's the eve of when a very small community, it was revealed to them that God became man. | ||
| And now for 2000 years, that message is spread around the world. | ||
| But where did it go to first? | ||
| And now we're out here on your show, Steve Bannon. | ||
| We're continuing what began with an angel. | ||
| We're continuing to share that message with the world that God has become man for love of us. | ||
| And really the passion began with the Annunciation and with the birth, right? | ||
| To me the passion of Christ really began prior to the Nativity, the suffering. | ||
| But what we've learned through Jesus Christ is that we should order our life to serve the vulnerable. | ||
| And we should start with our own, the persecuted church around the world. | ||
| Jason, can you hang with us through the commercial break? | ||
| We're going to return. | ||
| We're going to get Ben Harnwell's wrap-up from the Vatican, if he's still got power. | ||
| Captain Ben is with us, talking about Norad. | ||
| And Fr. | ||
| Robert McTeese, who will join us, Society of Jesus, all next in the room. | ||
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Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? | |
| Where shall they in the storm of worry So bring him incense, gold and myrrh, Come, Pearsons, King to own him. | ||
| ♪ The King of Kings salvation brings ♪ ♪ Let loving hearts enthrone him ♪ ♪ Praise, praise the sun gone high ♪ ♪ The Virgin sings her lullaby ♪ Joy! | ||
| Joy! | ||
| Our angels we have heard on high Sweetly singing o'er the plains And the mountains in reply Echoing their joyous strains Gloria in excelsis Deo | ||
| Gloria in excelsis Deo Come to Bethlehem and see Him Whose birth the angels sing Come, O come, let us be Christ the new-born King | ||
| Gloria in excelsis Deo | ||
| Sing in hymn of major glory Whom the voice of angels brings Major Joseph, major David, By the power of our sins It is Christmas Eve and our Christmas Eve special, Friday the 24th of December, the year of our Lord 2021. | ||
| I want to go to the Vatican and Ben Harnwell, our international editor. | ||
| Ben, thank you for staying with us the entire time. | ||
| Any summary thoughts on the eve of Christ's birth? | ||
| Yeah, the point I was making earlier about tradition, and we discussed some of the sentimental Pius legends in Europe, some of them are endearing, some of them outright terrifying, but they all float around in orbit, as it were, around this fundamental story of the birth of Christ. | ||
| And the point I'd like to make about tradition, Hey, because people can look at the Catholic Church and they think, oh, it's a traditional organisation, thinking perhaps by tradition you mean this is how it's been done and, you know, and you have the vestments and all the rest of it. | ||
| That's not really what tradition is. | ||
| The point about the tradition, as I understand it, is that we're handing on something. | ||
| We're taking care of something. | ||
| I quoted St. | ||
| Paul earlier. | ||
| We're taking something, we're giving something by the Lord and we're handing that on. | ||
| That is the point of tradition. | ||
| I was going to say earlier that the Latin verb tradere, which means to hand on, to hand over, which is the essence of the concept of tradition. | ||
| You see behind me the Vatican, St. | ||
| Peter's, and you marvel at its spaces, at its magnificence. | ||
| The sculptures, Michelangelo's Pietà, you go in and you're overawed by everything and you think, now I understand how Rome is the mother diocese of Christianity. | ||
| A month ago, for the first time ever, I went down into the crypts, the crypt, and for the first time I actually realised, though I'd heard about it, I didn't truly appreciate it, this isn't really what it's This isn't really the heart, right, of what the Vatican is. | ||
| It's beneath the ground, out of sight. | ||
| Right directly beneath the high altar, in a tiny little box, are the bones of about 12 metres, I think, below ground. | ||
| It's a little perspex box with the bones. | ||
| And the Greek, I should say, graffiti is still there. | ||
| Here is Peter. | ||
| And you see something and you think, this is what it's about. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| But it's not really. | ||
| It's an emanation of what the story is really about. | ||
| We looked at the legends earlier. | ||
| That's not really what Christmas is about, right? | ||
| Christmas is about the birth of Jesus Christ, this historical event. | ||
| Which, sure, the world is never the same again, not culturally, not politically, not philosophically. | ||
| But beyond that, deeper than that, is a fundamental philosophical, excuse me, a fundamental metaphysical change, an ontological change. | ||
| The whole of the created universe wasn't the same again. | ||
| And that's a reality that we can feel, right, on our knees, in prayer, Reading Scripture. | ||
| This is a reality that we can feel ever more specially at this point of Christmas. | ||
| Ben, thank you so much for being part of this. | ||
| Thank you so much for taking time and making sure this is all done properly at the Vatican. | ||
| Really appreciate it. | ||
| Ben Hornwell, International Editor. | ||
| And Ben, Merry Christmas. | ||
| Thanks, Stephen. | ||
| And from everyone here at the International Bureau in Rome, a Merry Christmas to you, to the War Room, to Denver, and to all the great folks following with us this great festival at home. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| I want to bring in now Father Mattig. | ||
| We're going to get to Jason in a second to talk about the persecuted church. | ||
| But I want to bring in Father Robert Mattig, who's become a real favorite here on The War Room. | ||
| Father, we've asked you on, and it'd be, I think, so appropriate following Ben. | ||
| You have all these Christmas traditions. | ||
| What is the true meaning of this deeply religious time? | ||
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Christmas is a comprehensive story about a comprehensive truth. | |
| And to embrace it rightly, we have to ask ourselves three questions. | ||
| Why did Christ come? | ||
| Where does Christ remain? | ||
| And why is He coming back? | ||
| The Eternal Son of the Father, the Only Begotten Son of the Father, became flesh, became human, because human beings, with an abuse of their free will, they broke human life. | ||
| They spilled on the ground their gift of grace. | ||
| They couldn't recover it. | ||
| You needed someone who was both human and divine. | ||
| to set things right. | ||
| And so, in the fullness of time, Christ comes to us as a child. | ||
| That gives the human person, body and soul, a dignity, an identity, and a destiny that the pagans could not have imagined, that the moderns could not understand, and the postmoderns couldn't even begin to articulate. | ||
| He came to elevate human nature beyond even the original purpose of creation, The Eastern Christians would say apotheosis, divinization, that we remain truly ourselves and yet we are united with the Godhead. | ||
| So Christ came to achieve and exceed God's purposes for human nature. | ||
| Where does Christ remain? | ||
| Yes, he's seated at the right hand of the Father, but he's not an absentee landlord. | ||
| Christ crucified and risen Yes, returning in glory, but he's also reigning here and now. | ||
| He's a present in the life of the church and the proclamation of the gospel and all of sacred scripture and sacred tradition and in the sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist. | ||
| And Christ will return. | ||
| He will turn in glory to judge the living and the dead and the world by fire so that we can see in time the eternal victory that he has won for us. | ||
| So his victory, already won on Calvary, vindicated in the Resurrection, will be plain to all of creation. | ||
| So what we celebrate is Christ coming to restore sinful, fallen creation, to drive out Satan, the usurper, to restore all of creation to the reign of His Heavenly Father, and to give us the matchless dignity to fight at His side. | ||
| To be his battle companions of the victorious king, so that we have a good reason to live, a good reason to die, and no excuse ever to be bored. | ||
| Whatever our circumstances were in, young or old, rich or poor, sick, healthy, persecuted, free, what Christ wants to give us that was brought into this world, the world cannot contain. | ||
| So let's use our time to get ready for eternity. | ||
| That's the most succinct account of Christmas I can give, Steve. | ||
| Not too shabby. | ||
| Father, where do you think we stand as a religion, as a church, as a people on Christmas Eve of 2021? | ||
|
unidentified
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Boy, that's tough. | |
| I know that there are a lot of people distracted, disillusioned, discouraged. | ||
| And I want to say, be of good cheer. | ||
| The Hebrew word, Emanuel, God is with us. | ||
| God is not the absentee landlord collecting the rent at the end of days. | ||
| He is with us. | ||
| He dwells among us as one of us now, as our reigning king. | ||
| So we need to push aside our distractions. | ||
| We need to move beyond our discouragement, and we need to let go of the souvenirs of sin that we're clinging to, and proclaim what the shepherds saw with their own eyes, what the angels sang with glory. | ||
| That Christ has come among us. | ||
| He dwells with his people to share in his victory. | ||
| That's so much larger than politics or economics. | ||
| It's so much larger than the business of churchianity. | ||
| It's so much larger than maintaining mere institutions which cannot stand the test of time. | ||
| The world is heartbroken and sick to the degree that it does not know Christ. | ||
| We Christians who've received Christ, let us be refreshed by Him in this holy time, and then go out into the world to proclaim that saving truth. | ||
| Christ wants to share His victory over sin and death with all of humanity. | ||
| It's madness not to join Him. | ||
| Father, how do people get to your podcast, your show? | ||
| And I know you've got a book coming out next year, but how do people get to your podcast? | ||
|
unidentified
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I can be found every day at the Catholic Current at thestationofthecross.com or in every podcast platform imaginable. | |
| We have the app called the iCatholic Radio mobile app. | ||
| You can look for my books on Amazon, Real Philosophy for Real People, Tools for Truthful Living is a Moral Methodology. | ||
| If you think you're being lied to, this is the book to help you detect the lies, tell the truth. | ||
| God willing, early in the year, in the spring, maybe the summer, but I hope the spring, there'll be a book called Christendom Lost and Found, Meditations for a Post-Post-Christian Age. | ||
| Father Robert McTighe, Father, thank you so much for joining us, taking his time away on Christmas Eve to join us. | ||
|
unidentified
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Certainly. | |
| Merry Christmas. | ||
| God bless you all. | ||
| Merry Christmas, Father. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Okay, we're going to take a short commercial break. | ||
| We're going to exit with some more great music. | ||
| Jason Jones is going to be with us on the other side, and Captain Bannon is going to tell us about tracking Santa with NORAD. | ||
| We're going to take a short commercial break. | ||
|
unidentified
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We're going to be back in the war room in just a moment. | |
| The little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head. | ||
| The little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head. | ||
| The stars in the sky looked down where he lay. | ||
| The stars in the sky looked down where he lay. | ||
| The little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay. | ||
| The cattle are going up for any race. | ||
| The little Lord Jesus no crying he makes. | ||
| I love thee Lord Jesus, who come from the sky. | ||
| to watch the world burn. | ||
| And stay by my cradle to watch the world burn. | ||
| A brave young angel, not grieved for his dead, A young angel, not grieved for his dead, The little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head. | ||
| The stars in the sky. | ||
| I need him not. | ||
| I need him not. | ||
| Olle schläft, einsam wacht, Nun das traute, hochheilige Paar, Olle Knabe im lockigen Haar, | ||
| Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh. | ||
| Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh. | ||
| Kirchengellacht, heilige Nacht, Mitten ist kundgemacht, Durch die Engel alleluja, | ||
| Tüteres Laut durch fern und nah, Christi Rente ist da. | ||
| Welcome back, Christmas Eve special, Friday the 24th of December, the year of our Lord 2021. | ||
| I want to thank everybody that's been here and everybody that's helped us produce it, particularly the people at MyPellet.com. | ||
| Make sure you type in promo code War Room to get all the best available specials. | ||
| Mike Lindell and the team there, really want to thank them for making Christmas so Special. | ||
| Jason Jones has dedicated his life to helping his fellow Christians. | ||
| He is an expert on the persecuted church of our Desert Fathers, the church in the Middle East. | ||
| Jason, the audience wants to know, always, when you're on, how can they help? | ||
| How can they help assist you in your great efforts to help the persecuted church and the persecuted Christians in the Middle East? | ||
| Steve, thank you for giving me the privilege to answer this question on Christmas Eve. | ||
| You know, the first thing you can do is pray for these communities by name. | ||
| Pray for the persecuted church in Iraq and in Syria. | ||
| Today in Iraq, they're under the boot of Iran, just getting out of the boot from ISIS. | ||
| Pray for the church in Afghanistan. | ||
| Pray for the persecuted church in China by name. | ||
| Teach your children about the church in Iraq and Syria, these ancient churches. | ||
| And if you, you know, I'd like to ask your audience, all of you can help us deliver coal this Christmas for $70 at thegreatcampaign.org. | ||
| You'll support a family of five for a month with coal and food. | ||
| Lifesaving coal and food at thegreatcampaign.org. | ||
| Pray for these communities by name. | ||
| I remember coming back from Iraq to my local parish the first Sunday back with the smell of ISIS still in my nose and they were praying for ISIS and they had never prayed once for the persecuted church in Iraq. | ||
| I think so often this is the case. | ||
| It's very important that we're mindful of these communities. | ||
| We educate our children about these ancient communities that are still there and they're embattled and that we support them. | ||
| In the Pauline Letters, 75% of the time Paul asks us to tithe. | ||
| It's to support the persecuted church. | ||
| And so often I think in the West we despair remission and they're despairing because they're carrying way too much of the world's suffering and we can share some of that. | ||
| Jason, Merry Christmas. | ||
| Thank you so much, and thank you for all the efforts, and we'll make sure that we pray by name for the persecuted church throughout the world, from China to Persia to Iraq to all over. | ||
| Thank you so much, Jason, for the work you're doing. | ||
|
unidentified
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Merry Christmas. | |
| Thank you, Steve. | ||
| Merry Christmas. | ||
| There's been another tradition. | ||
| You did the Reads Across America. | ||
| There's been another tradition that the military has helped out Captain Bannon for many, many decades. | ||
| What is that tradition? | ||
| So it's tracking Santa. | ||
| In 1955, a young boy dialed a number that was printed in a local paper, but it was misprinted. | ||
| So instead of calling Santa, the child called the Continental Air Defense Command Operations Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. | ||
| And Air Force Colonel Harry Shoup, the commander on duty that night, answered the phone. | ||
| And when he quickly realized the mistake, he informed the child that he was, in fact, Santa. | ||
| And let him know that he was on his way. | ||
| And after more incoming calls, Shoup assigned a duty officer to continue answering the calls and a tradition was born that continued when NORAD, which is the North American Aerospace Defense Command, Uh, was formed in 1958, and every year since then, NORAD tracks Santa. | ||
| So I encourage the War Room Posse to go to www.noradsanta.org to track Santa. | ||
| And I can tell you from experience that Captain Bannon, when she was smaller, when she was small, that's when we always thought she would pick the Navy or maybe the Air Force. | ||
| We were very pleasantly surprised when she picked the Army, right, to go to West Point instead of Annapolis. | ||
| But we think since you were a big tracker of Santa on Norway, were you not? | ||
| I was, and the tradition has actually continued in our family. | ||
| So some of my cousins that are younger than me track Santa, and now some of my cousins that are older than me, their children track Santa along with those cousins. | ||
| You know, starting after dinner tonight, they will start tracking Santa, at least in our family. | ||
| How do people get you on social media so they can track you over the holidays? | ||
| So you can find me on Instagram at Real Maureen Bannon and then Twitter and Getter at Maureen underscore Bannon. | ||
| Merry Christmas, honey, and thank you for doing this. | ||
| You're so stylish in this. | ||
| I try. | ||
| I'm glad you finished hair and makeup and made it on time. | ||
| OK, I want to thank the entire team and thank everybody. | ||
| Have a Merry Christmas to the entire posse. | ||
| Merry Christmas to the entire posse. | ||
| Merry Christmas, and we have our Christmas special tomorrow. | ||
| Patrick K. O'Donnell and myself will be for the combat history of Christmas. | ||
| We go through the patriots that had to serve their country on Christmas Day, all the way from General Washington, all the way through the Chosin Reservoir, World War II, all of it. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I want to thank everybody to put this together. | ||
| Thank you for assisting, Denver, and of course the great production team here. | ||
| We're going to leave you with some more great Christmas music. | ||
| Merry Christmas. | ||
| Thank you for joining us. | ||
| See you tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. | ||
| for the Combat History of Christmas, a tradition we do. | ||
| And then Raheem Kassam will have Boxing Day on Monday. | ||
| See you tomorrow morning. |
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