Moral issues

Educating Ignorance

January 9, 2013January 14, 2013 by Orthodox Editors

University Indoctrination Center by Janice Shaw Crouse –
The best-kept secret in America today is the precipitous drop in the quality of college since the Left seized power in higher education. Every year, various magazines publish a list of rankings for American undergraduate institutions. Forbes assures parents that “Every school with a Forbes grade meets a high standard.” U.S. News and World Reportassures its readers that they consider a wide variety of factors in measuring a college’s effectiveness. While American colleges were once great institutions of learning, those who know higher education today recognize that “high standards” of quality are casualties in the war against traditionalism and American values. Where religion and love of country and family were once revered, radical Leftist ideology now prevails. Traditional values have been replaced by moral relativism, anti-establishment teachings, and the breakdown of the family.

The radicalization of colleges did not happen overnight. What we have now is a product of past indifference and disinclination to do anything to reverse the spread of Leftist trends. [Read more…]

Conscience, Not Guns

January 3, 2013January 14, 2013 by Orthodox Editors

by Dennis Prager –
From the moment Americans learned of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre last Friday, the entire left — editorialists, columnists, broadcasters, politicians — used the occasion to promote one idea: gun control.

For the left, the primary reason for just about all American gun murders is the availability of guns.

I have no interest in debating gun control here. I only wish to ask the left one question: We have a massive system of drug control laws. Yet, the left is the first to argue that the war on drugs has been a failure. And whether or not one deems it a failure, the war on drugs surely hasn’t prevented tens of millions of Americans, including teenagers, from obtaining drugs illegally. Why, then, does the left believe that a war on guns would be any more effective than the war on drugs? [Read more…]

Christians Must Not Retreat from the Culture, We Must Work for its Conversion

December 31, 2012January 4, 2013 by Orthodox Editors

Christians Must Convert the Culture by Deacon Keith Fournier –
Two years before becoming Pope, Karol Cardinal Wotyla spoke to the U.S. Bishops. His observation was republished in the Wall Street Journal on November 9, 1978:

“We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel and the anti-Gospel. This confrontation lies within the plans of divine providence. It is a trial which the whole Church must take up.”

And take it up we have. However, there is much, much more to do. The ground has shifted and the struggle is intensifying. Our cultural mission lies at the heart of what it means for us as Christians to be leaven, light, salt and the soul of the world. This is no time to retreat from culture, we must work for its conversion. What is needed are men and women of Christian courage. [Read more…]

Sacrifice and Self-Interest

November 30, 2012December 7, 2012 by Orthodox Editors

Sacrifice and Self-Interest by Jordan Ballor –
One of the complaints often rendered against the market economy is that it encourages selfish behavior. This picture of the marketplace is that of a kind of war of all against all, with each participant out only to maximize his or her own individual benefit. As American social gospel advocate Walter Rauschenbusch contended in his Christianizing the Social Order, “The trader has always been the outstanding case of the man who plays his own hand and sacrifices social solidarity for private gain.” This characteristic, claimed Rauschenbusch, has been exaggerated in the modern era, such that “the trading class has become the ruling class, and consequently the selfishness of trade has been exalted to the dignity of an ethical principle. Every man is taught to seek his own advantage, and then we wonder that there is so little public spirit.” [Read more…]

Godly Character Is Formed in the Little Moments

November 28, 2012December 1, 2012 by Orthodox Editors

Godly Character Small Moments Prayer by Paul Tripp –
“But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord my refuge that I may tell of all your works” (Psalm 73:28).
It is a grace to get it right, because so often I get it wrong. No, I don’t mean that I fall into gross and willing sin, and I don’t mean that I am seduced by the old arguments of new atheism. No, I don’t mean that I occasionally question the tenets of my faith or question whether ministry is really worth it. No, getting it wrong is much more subtle. Getting it wrong is not about the big, dramatic, consequential moments of life. No, getting it wrong is much more about the little mundane moments of everyday life.

It’s easy to let up your guard and be all too relaxed in these moments precisely because they are little. It’s also tempting to minimize the wrong choices that you make in these little moments. But the opposite is true. The little moments of life are profoundly important because they are little. Little moments are the ones we live in every day. The character and course of a person’s life isn’t set in three or four grand, significant moments. No, the character of a person’s life is shaped in 10,000 little moments. You carry the character formed in the mundane into those rare consequential moments of life. [Read more…]

Election 2012: A Church Gone Astray

November 24, 2012December 1, 2012 by Orthodox Editors

A Church Gone Astray by Louie Verrecchio –
In the days following last week’s U.S. presidential election, a staggering amount of analysis has been focused on Republican messaging, demographics and core constituencies, but it misses the most fundamental point entirely.

If the Second Coming of Obama is evidence of anything it is the godlessness of a nation, the majority of whose citizens worship an idol who not only grants free license to practically every immoral impulse that one can imagine, but who also evidently demands human sacrifice to the tune of more than a million innocent souls each year.

This culture of depravity is the result of an underlying spiritual malady that has been allowed to fester and spread over the last five decades virtually unopposed by the only force capable of overtaking it.

The United States — a land wherein class-envy passes for compassion, same-sex “marriage” is accepted as fairness, and contraception is considered a matter of healthcare — is about to reap the just rewards, not so much of a nation that has abandoned the principles of its Founding Fathers, but of a Church that has abandoned its Founder and the mission He has given her. [Read more…]

Thanksgiving with Winston Churchill

November 22, 2012 by Orthodox Editors

Thanksgiving Defend Liberty Oppose Tyranny by Jeffrey Folks –
In an appearance at Royal Albert Hall on November 23, 1944, Winston Churchill spoke in honor of the American holiday of Thanksgiving. On that day, just as Hitler was about to unleash the desperate counterattack that became known as the Battle of the Bulge, Churchill declared that there had never before “been more justification, and more compulsive need” for a day of thanksgiving.

As the enormous global struggle approached its climax, clearly there was “need” for thanksgiving. With an estimated 100 million human beings already lost in the years between 1935 and 1945, there was need for resolve if the war was to be carried through to its conclusion. Offering thanks for the allied successes to date might aid in that resolve.

Certainly there was need, but precisely why was there “justification” for a day of thanksgiving? On this point Churchill was equally articulate. The free world had reason to be thankful that America, a nation of “peaceful, peace-loving people,” had at the critical juncture awakened from its slumber and transformed itself into the pre-eminent military power in the world. [Read more…]

America Voted for Mammon and Rejected God

November 11, 2012November 17, 2012 by Orthodox Editors

God or Mammon America Chose by Fr. G. Peter Irving III –
Jesus tells us: “No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” …

Whom will you serve? Which will you choose? God or mammon? The things of God or the things of this world? The Lord or the devil? This is the choice that is ever before us in a myriad of ways both large and small. And there is no sitting on the fence. If we hate one, we will love the other.

On Tuesday, November 6, 2012 we faced as a nation a “God or mammon” choice of mammoth proportions. In the most consequential election of our history, the majority of Americans voted for mammon and rejected God. Some did so knowing full well what they were doing (e.g., the Planned Parenthood and the LGBT crowd). Others did so unaware of the dire and far reaching ramifications of their vote. [Read more…]

Obama: A Man Without a Conscience

November 10, 2012December 18, 2020 by Orthodox Editors

Obama: A Man Without a Conscience by Daren Jonescu –
For a long time, intrepid critics of Barack Obama have described him, accurately, as a pathological liar. The Benghazi affair must force even the most circumspect among us to recognize that the problem is even more serious: the president of the United States has no conscience.

Most men do bad things during their lives. But most men know when they are doing a bad thing, and, more importantly, they feel bad about it. This is why, for most of us, bad behavior has its limits. There is a point beyond which we simply will not go, even for a greatly desired advantage. Our minds will not let us do it. We say things like “I couldn’t live with myself if I did that.” [Read more…]

Hope in God, Do Not Despair

November 9, 2012November 14, 2018 by Orthodox Editors

St. Cyprian of Carthage by Fr. Brian Mullady, OP –
There are those who despair and have no hope when things do not go their way in the political order. This cannot be a Christian attitude.
“The world itself now bears witness to its approaching end by its fading powers. […] The peasant is failing and disappearing from the fields, the sailor at sea, the soldier in the camp, uprightness in the forum, justice in the court, concord in friendships, skill in the arts, discipline in morals.”

Someone might think these words were written today in response to a decline in American society witnessed by the attempt to so centralize the government that the freedom of the Church is threatened. Yet these words were written by St. Cyprian, an early Church Father, around the year 250.

At the time, the Christians thought that the world was coming to an end as they knew it. Yet St. Cyprian, as all good Christians, was not moved to despair. [Read more…]