Happy Feast Day … New CDs … New weekly bulletins from me … Facebook Live Videos resume on Sat, Dec 9 … Free Advent/Christmas gift for you: one free hour lesson (or TWO!) on any topic you like!
Dear Friends:
I hope you and yours enjoyed a blessed Feast of the Immaculate Conception today. May Our Lady’s loving maternal intercession bring many graces from God to you and your loved ones this day, and in all the days to come!
Please know that I and my family pray for you and yours every day as well, in our daily rosaries, novenas (such as the St. Andrew Novena we currently pray, which we began on his feast day on November 30 and pray each night until Christmas), and many other daily prayers.
One of the discs in a new multi-CD set I’m finishing up entitled “The Problem with Protestantism” is dedicated to showing you how you can lovingly, patiently prove to any Protestant willing to open his or her Bible with you that absolutely everything the Catholic Church teaches about Mary — including her immaculate conception — is supported by Scripture. The problem is, Protestants just don’t see it.
(Other discs in the set deal with all the classic obstacles Protestants have to seeing the Biblical basis of Catholic teaching on other controverted points, such as salvation, the sacraments, the saints, the papacy, purgatory, etc. I’ll be providing more details about this new set in the first of my new, now-weekly bulletins I’ll be posting from now on each Sunday on this website — www.gerrymatatics.org — and on my public figure Facebook page — www.facebook.com/catholicapologist — as well as distributing to my e-mailing list.
Don’t you love it when God continually gives us fresh opportunities to begin anew? Every day is just such an opportunity, of course, but I further appreciate other such occasions: every Sunday (the first day of the week — not the last day of the weekend!); every first day of the month; New Year’s Day; and the real CATHOLIC New Year’s Day, the first Sunday of the new Church year (i.e., the first Sunday of Advent, which we celebrated at the beginning of this week).
Many of us resolve anew to enter more deeply into the mysteries of the Church year at this time of Advent, and our family is no exception. We not only use Fr. Goffine’s one-volume The Church’s Year (available from our online store, www.gerrymatatics.org/shop, for still only $39.95 for this magnificent nearly-800-page book), some of us read Dom Guéranger’s 15-volume masterpiece The Liturgical Year (also available from our online store).
You will recall that a year ago I launched a series of free broadcasts on Facebook Live (which you don't need a Facebook account to be able to see) to discuss each week the readings for that previous week in Guéranger’s work. The series went on for many weeks but eventually fizzled out some time around Easter due to insufficient interest in it and support for it.
But I’m not a quitter! So we’ll try it again — with all-new talks this year, and hopefully with more desire to keep up with it among the listeners/viewers this time through. The first broadcast will be tomorrow night, Saturday, December 9, at 9 pm Eastern Time. In tomorrow’s broadcast we’ll discuss the readings for this past week, the week on which the broadcast ends, i.e., from the First Sunday of Advent to the First Saturday of Advent.
Each subsequent week’s broadcast will likewise be at Saturday evening at 9 pm, covering that week’s readings. My plan is to, barring any unforeseen catastrophes, broadcast each Saturday evening, without canceling, re-scheduling, or additional “make-up” broadcasts due to having more material than we can cover in an hour — all of which we did the last time through, which some people understandably found confusing or even (for the especially hard-to-please) off-putting.
If you watch the broadcasts live at that time you can of course join the conversation by commenting, asking questions, etc. If that time is not convenient for you, each broadcast will be immediately uploaded to my Facebook page and available for viewing whenever you like, 24/7.
I’d like to resume my many other Facebook Live broadcast series as well — on the Old Testament (starting with the book of Genesis), the New Testament (starting with the Gospel of St. Mark), dogmatic theology (based upon the 12 volumes by Pohle-Preuss), Christian Social Principles, the Mysteries of the Rosary, etc. etc.
But we’re going to take it one step at a time, adding one series at a time to the weekly schedule as support comes in, enabling these series to continue. Remember that at many folks’ insistence I’d switched to teaching via free broadcasts rather than doing so via new CD releases in order to save money on production costs, as well as in order to get the information out more quickly, and to a much wider audience. I said I was happy to do so but, since preparing all these many series took much time, I hoped people would donate to support these efforts — even as little as $1 per hour-long episode.
Unfortunately that never happened. One gentleman in California sent a much-appreciated small amount each time he’d watch a broadcast, and a couple of other people sent a small donation as well once or twice, but that was it.
I had turned down other financially-remunerative activities to devote my time to researching and doing the broadcasts (at one point I was broadcasting six nights a week!), but I never saw the support I’d been led to expect. After months of broadcasts, totaling over 75 of them, each of them viewed by over 100 different people that I knew of (and perhaps thousands more people I wasn’t aware of), I had hoped to have received (if you do the math) at least $7500 (assuming a minimal $1 donation per person per broadcast). Instead I found myself $7500 in the hole (and still am), and was forced to discontinue the broadcasts and do other things (e.g., going to used book sales at libraries and reselling the purchased books online) just to keep this apostolate, Biblical Foundations International, able to pay its many monthly bills. Hopefully we’ll get more support this time around.
Since Advent is a penitential season, it’s a great time to renew our commitment to becoming saints, and one cannot become a saint without acquiring the virtues. If you don’t already own a copy, please go to my online store and read the detailed description of the 12-CD set we sell entitled “Victory through Virtue” (based on Fr. Donald Miller’s marvelously detailed and edifying 40-page pre-Vatican II examination of conscience).
To give you an extra incentive to acquire this set (or, if you already have a copy, to buy a second copy for a loved one as a Christmas present), I am offering a FREE hour of teaching — on ANY topic of your choosing, either in Scripture, Church history, philosophy, theology, apologetics, canon law, literature, world or US history, or any other field of knowledge I offer courses in — to anyone who purchases “Victory through Virtue” between now and Christmas.
And to provide an even greater incentive, I will also give an ADDITIONAL free hour of instruction — totaling TWO free hours — to the first ten people to respond to this order.
Look for my Facebook Live broadcast tomorrow night at 9 pm, and the first of my weekly bulletins on the following day, Sunday. May Almighty God grant you and yours a grace-filled Advent season.
Yours in Christ our coming King,
Gerry Matatics