Moral issues

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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The Rich Don’t Make Us Poor

Christians in Post-Welfare World by Charles Kaupke –
We’ve been hearing a lot lately about the need for the wealthy to “pay their fair share” so that the federal government can pay down its debts and continue to fund programs to provide basic human necessities for the poor, such as food, shelter, and prophylactics. Their argument is that the greedy rich have been stealing increasingly large percentages of the nation’s GDP, and have been hoarding their riches, rather than generously giving them to the federal government to be used for the common good. The only solution is to increase taxes on the rich, so that instead of letting billionaires covetously hold onto (and thus waste) their excess wealth, which they don’t really need, the government can take that cash and use it much more effectively, to give the rest of us free stuff. After all, it just isn’t fair that some Americans control billions of dollars’ worth of wealth, while others struggle to make ends meet.

Sounds plausible, right? Of course it does. Unfortunately for those who make a living out of inciting class warfare, it’s not true. [Read more…]

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Cultivate That Quiet Light, Find Strength in God

Cultivate That Quiet Light, Find Strength in God by Protodeacon Leonid Mickle –
We are all given talents to be used to the glory of God throughout our journey toward salvation. If we exercise them to the best of our ability and to the glory of God, they become part of that light which enlightens the world. The enemy is tireless in his attempts to keep us from performing them. If he cannot sway us from performing the obviously important tasks, he works on the little things, the mundane, seemingly insignificant details of daily life. …

Many are perishing
I have often heard advice similar to that given by St. Seraphim of Sarov: Cultivate the quiet light of Christ within you, and with it you will enlighten those around you. At times, when contemplating the zeal which so many apostles demonstrated in their confession of the Faith before the world, I have wondered about that advice. We know that many are perishing, that many have either never even heard of the Orthodox Church, or are not aware that the Church is not an ethnic clubhouse, but a source of Living Water for all. Why are we not told to advertise, to go out with trumpets, drums, loudspeakers, bright lights, to make the Church more visible? God sometimes provides us with wonderful answers in unexpected settings. [Read more…]

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Liar-in-Chief Obama Tells Preposterous Lies

Liar-in-Chief Obama by Jack Kelly –
Our first president was so revered for his integrity that most believed that even as a child, George Washington could not tell a lie.

Can our current president tell the truth? Former Amb. Fred Eckert has filled a 188-page book, “That’s a Crock, Barack,” with “untrue, duplicitous, arrogant and delusional” things Barack Obama has said.

Constant practice has not made Mr. Obama a good liar. A good liar tells plausible lies, lies only when the truth could do him substantial harm.

President Obama tells preposterous lies. He lies so often and so obviously about so many things it is doubtful lying for him is merely a tactic. It’s an integral part of his character — or lack of it.

A few caveats. Often when we say something that isn’t true, we aren’t lying, because we think it is true. We are ignorant or careless or both, but we aren’t trying to deceive. [Read more…]

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The Precipitous Decline Of Christian England

Church Decline in England Crumbling by Michael Brown –
A British hotel replaces the in-room Gideon Bibles with copies of Fifty Shades of Grey (aka Mommy porn). A Christian organization is banned by the Advertising Standards Authority from announcing that God can heal sickness today. And a recent poll indicates that only 37% of people in England say they have always believed in God, as opposed to 81% of Americans. Christian England, what has become of you?

The hotel in question was the Damson Dene Hotel in Cumbria, Northwest England, and the idea to replace the Bibles with the racy novel came earlier this month from Wayne Bartholomew, general manager of the hotel and “reportedly a choir member at his local church.” (One wonders what kind of church Mr. Bartholomew attends.) [Read more…]

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Chick-fil-A’s Defense of True Marriage Stirs Controversy

Chick-fil-A Defense of True Marriage by Catholic Online –
Fast food chain Chick-fil-A takes pride in espousing Christian values, closing all of its 1,600 restaurants every Sunday. The chain also handed out fliers in protest of the controversial Bible epic “The Last Temptation of Christ” in 1988. Now, Chick-fil-A’s President Dan Cathy’s recent comments on defending true marriage have stirred controversy – on online communities and elsewhere. …

“Guilty as charged,” Cathy said when asked by the Baptist Press about his company’s support of the traditional — as opposed to gay marriage.

“We are very much supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that,” Cathy said.

Response to Cathy’s comments has been vituperative online. The comments have made Chick-fil-A the top Google trend as the company’s Facebook and Twitter pages were burning up with arguments. [Read more…]

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