Moral issues

Recognizing and Overcoming the Sin of Sloth

Sin of Sloth by Paul Kokoski –
“I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth” (Revelation 3:15-16).

Sloth, often called acedia, is described simply as the sin of laziness. However, while this is part of the manifestation of sloth, the central problem with sloth as a capital sin is spiritual laziness – which leads to lukewarmness.

Sloth is connected with sensuality. It proceeds from a love of pleasure, inasmuch as it inclines us to avoid effort and hardship. There is in all of us a tendency to follow the line of least resistance, which paralyses or lessens our activity.

Sloth is an inclination to idleness or at least to aimlessness, to apathy in action. At times this is a morbid disposition due to poor condition of health. More frequently it is a disease of the will, which fears effort and recoils from it. The slothful person wants to escape all exertion, whatever might interfere with their comfort or involve fatigue. Like the real parasite, they live on others to whatever extent they can, becoming gruff and ill-tempered when one tries to rouse them from their inaction. [Read more…]

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C.S. Lewis and Materialism

C.S. Lewis and Materialism by John G. West –
“You say the materialist universe is ‘ugly,’” wrote C. S. Lewis to a young skeptic in 1950. “…If you are really a product of the materialistic universe, how is it you don’t feel at home there?”

Nearly half-a-century later, Lewis’s question still resonates. Modern society continues to operate largely on the materialistic premises of such thinkers as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud. Yet few today feel at home in the materialist universe where God does not exist, where ideas do not matter, and where every human behavior is reduced to non-rational causes.

C. S. Lewis spent much of his life debunking the sterility of materialist thinking; and his insights are as relevant now as when they were first offered, because our culture remains dominated by four of materialism’s most deadly legacies.

(1) Rejection of Reason and Truth
Materialism’s first deadly legacy is the rejection of reason and objective truth. Nineteenth-century materialists depicted our thoughts as the irrational products of environment or heredity or brain chemistry. [Read more…]

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‘God,’ ‘Jerusalem,’ and the DNC

Dennis Prager
Dennis Prager
by Dennis Prager –
The most important event at either national convention was the “vote” taken by the Democratic delegates on a last-minute resolution to reinsert the words “God” and “Jerusalem” into the Democratic-party platform.

Regarding God: Since Karl Marx, the aim of the Left, everywhere on earth, has been a godless society. And the Democratic party has evolved over the last half century from a liberal party into a leftist one. So much so that it is now indistinguishable from any of the leftist parties in Western Europe.

Yes, Franklin D. Roosevelt was a left-wing president — as concerned the size of the state and its role in the economy. That is of great importance, of course. But an ever-expanding state is only half of the Left’s agenda. A thoroughly secular society is the other half. And in that regard, Franklin Roosevelt was no man of the Left. [Read more…]

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Marriage: The Greatest Weapon Against Child Poverty

Marriage is Greatest Weapon Against Child Povertyby Ken McIntyre –
The collapse of marriage, along with a dramatic rise in births to single women, is the most important cause of childhood poverty—but government policy doesn’t reflect that reality, according to a special report released today by The Heritage Foundation.

Nearly three out of four poor families with children in America are headed by single parents. When a child’s father is married to his mother, however, the probability of the child’s living in poverty drops by 82 percent.

Robert Rector, Heritage’s senior research fellow in domestic policy, provides a brief overview of each state with unique data and 14 charts per state, [Read more…]

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The Church and Secularism – part 1

Family Under Attack in Americaby Peter Kreft –
I’m told that in medical school they tell you that there are four indispensable steps to any medical analysis of a patient’s condition. And these four steps are the basic logic of all practical problem-solving in every field — medicine, business, detectives, whatever — because, there are two variables: there’s something good or desirable and something bad or undesirable. And then there’s the cause and the effect. So you can have the bad effect, the bad cause, the good effect, or the good cause. So the four steps of a medical analysis are first, an observation of the symptoms, which are the bad effects; then a diagnosis of the disease that is causing the symptoms — that’s the bad cause; then a prognosis of the hope for a healing, which is the good effect; and then a prescription for the treatment, which is the good cause. …

So I’d like to address the problem of the decline of Western Civilization in terms of (1) Symptoms, (2) Diagnosis, (3) Prognosis, and (4) Prescription. [Read more…]

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Government Entitlements Are Corrupting Us

Government Entitlements Are Corrupting Usby Nicholas Eberstadt –
The American republic has endured for well over two centuries, but over the past 50 years, the apparatus of American governance has undergone a radical transformation. In some basic respects—its scale, its preoccupations, even many of its purposes—the U.S. government today would be scarcely recognizable to Franklin D. Roosevelt, much less to Abraham Lincoln or Thomas Jefferson.

What is monumentally new about the American state today is the vast empire of entitlement payments that it protects, manages and finances. Within living memory, the federal government has become an entitlements machine. As a day-to-day operation, it devotes more attention and resources to the public transfer of money, goods and services to individual citizens than to any other objective, spending more than for all other ends combined. [Read more…]

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We Applaud the Republican Platform: No ‘Abortion Rights’, Only a Right to Life

GOP Republicans Pro-Lifeby Deacon Keith Fournier –
To the consternation of those who oppose the Right to Life the Republican Party passed a Pro-Life Plank in Tampa, Florida on Tuesday, August 21, 2012. The platform will come before the delegates next Monday for a vote. The platform committee is chaired by the Pro-Life Governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell.

The language of the Republican Platform is refreshingly clear: “Faithful to the ‘self-evident’ truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.”

Sadly, the opponents of the fundamental Human Right to Life of our youngest neighbors in the first home of the human race control much of the media. [Read more…]

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Liberals’ Illegitimate War on Women

War on Women Liberalsby Jeannie DeAngelis –
Willingness or unwillingness to prevent or terminate a pregnancy appears to be the sole criterion upon which liberal women judge how well they’re being treated.  It’s stunning that the left actually embraces the idea that taking a stand for life instantly translates into hostility toward, or contention with, the female gender.

The right to abort the unborn is so precious to left-leaning women that they are even willing to overlook the fact that 50% of the fetuses losing their lives in abortion clinics are of the gender they believe Republicans are currently waging war against.  The truth is that it’s pro-choice women who discriminate; they’re fine with liberal men being womanizers, perverts, and adulterers, and if women like Juanita Broderick consider what Bill Clinton did to her a “legitimate rape,” then the men they admire can even be alleged rapists. [Read more…]

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Will a Weakened American Character Defeat Paul Ryan?

Dennis Prager
Dennis Prager
by Dennis Prager –
The Republican vice-presidential candidate, Congressman Paul Ryan, is the Democrats’ political version of the Anti-Christ. He believes in self-reliance; the left believes in reliance on the state. His moral values are shaped by religion (Catholicism); the left is frightened by religious Christian politicians (and athletes, and members of the armed forces, and talk show hosts, and, for that matter, clergy). He believes in individualism; the left believes in collectivism. He believes in small government and powerful citizens; the left believes in large government and dependent citizens.

Nevertheless, the Democratic Party claims to be overjoyed at his selection as the Republican vice-presidential nominee. [Read more…]

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