Dear Friends and Supporters:
Apology
My apologies for being late in posting these greetings and best wishes for this blessed season celebrating the birth of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. My two December trips ended up being far more complicated than I had originally anticipated, and wreaked havoc with my schedule as a result.
Please keep in mind that Christmas is not a single day, but rather a liturgical season -- in fact an entire "matching set" of mini-seasons of increasing scope, like a series of nested boxes, or a matching set of luggage with smaller suitcases fitting inside progressively larger ones.
The smallest, innermost "box" is of course December 25, the Feast of Our Lord's Nativity. But December 25 also inaugurates an entire eight-day octave -- the next largest box -- that culminates in January 1 (the Octave Day of the Nativity, also known as the Feast of Our Lord's Circumcision -- a holy day of obligation).
In the next larger "box," there are the "Twelve Days of Christmas," well-known from the carol by that name, spanning from December 25 through January 6, the Feast of Epiphany. There is a yet larger box after that, liturgically encompassing the days up through January 12. Finally, in the largest, outermost "box," Christmastide is an entire 40-day season (like Lent in regard to length) that only concludes on February 2, the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord and the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Candlemas Day).
Thank you to our donors
Every year I send out Christmas cards to everyone who has made any donation to Biblical Foundations International, regardless of whether they donated $1 or $1000. (We get very few donations of the latter size, by the way: 99% of the donations we receive are $100 or less.) Because I have no secretary or staff, because I have to look up each person's file one at a time to determine whether he or she sent any donation(s) so as to be able to specifically thank him or her for the amount of each such donation, and because I then write personalized greetings and a thank-you inside a Christmas card to each donor, hand-addressing each envelope, this takes many, many full days of work.
Each year, therefore -- even the years when I start sending out cards right after Thanksgiving -- I always have to invoke the fact (and remind my Christmas card recipients of it) that Christmastide is, at its largest extent, a 40-day liturgical season, and that I have until February 2 to get all my cards out! Therefore, if you have donated to Biblical Foundations International during this year of 2009 and have not yet received a Christmas card from me, please be patient. Thank you!
I should add that if you have not yet donated to Biblical Foundations International this year, it is not too late to do so, either by:
a) using the gold-colored "Make a Donation" button in the upper right of the website's home page to donate by PayPal, or
b) calling me at (570) 969-1724 and using your Visa or MasterCard (if I'm away from my desk when you call and you get my private voicemail, please leave your name and contact information -- so I can send you a thank-you -- along with your credit card number, expiration date, and the amount you wish to donate), or
c) mailing a check or money order (made out to "Biblical Foundations International" or "Gerry Matatics") to me at: PO Box Box 569, Dunmore PA 18512.
Any donations sent in any of these ways, even if received after December 31, will be acknowledged with a Christmas card and personalized "thank you" from me.
Completely new website
God willing, on or about January 1 a completely new website will launch, replacing this existing one.
The new website will be fully multi-media, providing not only regular written features but also YouTube videos by me on a variety of topics, downloadable mp3 recordings of my talks, printable PDFs of key documents of the magisterium expounding and defending classic Catholicism and exposing the fradulent "counterfeit Catholicism" promoted by and since Vatican II.
Various tabbed blog sections on the new site will systematically and incrementally proceed, day by day, through every chapter of Sacred Scripture, the writings of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, church history, canon law, Catholic philosophy and apologetics, the Church's social doctrine, papal encyclicals, and a variety of other pertinent disciplines.
News stories culled from the Internet, together with commentary by me, e-mail exchanges and written debates between me and my critics, and many other never-before-seen items will be featured on this new site.
Most importantly, by radically restructuring my life and work, I hope to add new content to the site, in at least one area of the site, every single day. Please pray for the success of this ambitious new venture.
My ongoing megatour -- which has already come to 160 cities, thanks be to God, but has 150 cities still to go -- will continue, God willing. I want to not only re-visit the remaining 150 cities, but also sit down with every key Catholic leader in the land, including all possible future presidential candidates such as Patrick J. Buchanan, Alan Keyes, and others (many of whom I've already spoken with), and make to each one the case for real Catholicism as opposed to the pseudo-Catholicism of Vatican II.
But my megatour -- including both my public lectures as well as my private discussions with such leaders -- will necessarily now have to take second place to refreshing (adding new content to) the website each day. I will therefore be more dependent than ever upon the generosity of our donors, large and small, to enable me to spend the time needed each day to write new articles and produce new videos, new mp3s, new photo essays, and other items to upload to the site. Please consider sending in an end-of-year donation to help finance this new venture.
May Almighty God -- the one, true, triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost -- grant you many graces this Christmastide and throughout the New Year.
Yours for the conversion of America and the world to the one true Faith and the one true Church (the real Catholic Church, not the clever counterfeit masquerading at your local parish, in your diocese, and at Rome itself), outside of which there is no salvation,
Gerry Matatics