The tone-deafness of this just blows me away. The issue of what’s acceptable at Christmas has been in the news, in the culture for decades. It’s amazing that an official statement from a church would sound exactly like an old person who never owned a phone or listened to anything except religious radio and broadcast TV.
I remember, and this will date me, on a local internet provider, one that served just a few hundred people, the owner of that put out a “Merry Christmas” message to his customers. He was unaware of the anti-Christians in his customer base. It was kind of a new thing back then. He had to put out an apology, although he did say that the reaction was a bit overboard. I had sympathy for all of them.
Anyway, that was before the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Anyone who is in a religious leadership position should have at least a passing awareness of this. How many Ten Commandment monuments have to be torn down before they get that they don’t own the month of December? In fact, are there any of those monuments left?
Anyway. If cracks me up. Go Satanists. They exist specifically to get this reaction, and the Bishops just play right into it.