Thomas Molnar's The Pagan Temptation!!

Yea, Brackettville!

Hooray, Saint Mary Magdalene's Catholic Parish Community!!

Hey, guys: it's like this: have you ever wondered why some folks get up early on a December morning to listen to some long, meandering drivel about how the Virgin Mary had to be "baptized with water?"

Or, as some of the long - suffering ladies at a local leather - work emporium might have paraphrased it, "hearing how Mary had to nag Jesus to pick up His dirty socks, just like we do our teenagers?"

In the case of the Virgin Mary's so -called "baptism with water," if yours truly remembers correctly, the drivel we heard one day from the bully - pulpit between 5:30 am and 6: 00 am at St. Mary Magdalene's Catholic Church in Brackettville, Texas, was that this all took place between "Christ's Ascension and the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost?"

Or later, when in a ha! ha! ha! self - styled Charismatic group the leader told us that the Virgin Mary received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit AT Pentecost, in order to have the Gift of Tongues ?

Because the person in charge in either case was a hard core Gnostic revolutionary, as amply documented in Molnar's book!

As for our fearless pastor himself, Molnar draws an uncanny picture of his type, too, as a materialist (or perhaps an Epicurean), strict on outward manifestations of public piety and ritual, while basically having no visible moral framework in his everyday human relations.

And, of course, himself not actually believing in too much of anything!

Much less an after life where some degree of personal accountability will be demanded of him.

And in each of the three cases oh so tactfully outlined above, the three victims share the same basic pneumopathology, or disease of the spirit, as each one -- with a deadly earnestness and sincerity -- rejects the Incarnation.

And publicly flaunts it... tsk, tsk, tsk!