Moral issues

Fr. Jacobse: Christianity and Same-Sex Attraction

Fr. Johannes Jacobse
Fr. Johannes Jacobse
by Fr. Johannes Jacobse –
This past Sunday (May 20, 2012), Ancient Faith Todayinterviewed Dr. Philip Mamalakis and Andrew Williams who specialize in counseling people with same-sex attraction. It was hands down one of the most illuminating and informed presentations I have heard on this complex and often contentious topic in quite a while.

Without going into particulars (you can listen to the interview below), their grounding in Orthodox anthropology enabled them to avoid the common misconception that the object of a person’s sexual desire forms what I call a “foundational characteristic of personhood.” In practical terms this means that we error when we see a person first and foremost as either “straight” or “gay” believing that “sexual orientation” sums up much of who and what he is.

This way of understanding the human person is taken at face value in the larger culture, but in Orthodox self-understanding it misses the mark completely. We are not to conform our understanding of the human person to whether he prefers men or women because we don’t define a person in terms of his sexual desire. [Read more…]

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The Left’s Misplaced Concern

Dennis Prager
Dennis Prager
by Dennis Prager –
You cannot understand the left if you do not understand that Leftism is a religion. It is not God-based (some Left-wing Christians’ and Jews’ claims notwithstanding), but otherwise it has every characteristic of a religion. The most blatant of those characteristics is dogma. People who believe in Leftism have as many dogmas as the most fundamentalist Christian.

One of them is material equality as the preeminent moral goal. Another is the villainy of corporations. The bigger the corporation, the greater the villainy. Thus, instead of the devil, the left has Big Pharma, Big Tobacco, Big Oil, the “military-industrial complex,” and the like. Meanwhile, Big Labor, Big Trial Lawyers, and, of course, Big Government are leftwing angels.

And why is that? Why, to be specific, does the left fear big corporations but not big government? The answer is dogma — a belief system that transcends reason. No rational person can deny that big governments have caused almost all the great evils of the last century, arguably the bloodiest in history. [Read more…]

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Progressing toward Moral Darkness

Communism and Progressivism Moral Darkness by Gary Horne –
A fashionable name for the left these days is “progressive.” The use of this word hints that the progressive has already passed the rest of us and is moving on to some place where the normal rules of reality don’t apply. Is it the Garden of Eden? Atlantis? Oz?

What will life be like in this destination? Will the moral standards be compatible with the society we want? How do progressive values compare with the traditional American ethical standards from the founding of the United States and from the major religions?

From the Founding:
The moral underpinnings of the United States of America were beautifully and concisely expressed in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

[Read more…]

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Doing Good for Goodness Sake? An Atheist’s Game of Scrabble

God and Adam Creation by Andrew M. Greenwell, Esq. –
In the order of being, there can be no natural moral law without the existence of God. In the order of being, implicit in the belief of a natural moral law is the existence of God. A moral law makes no sense without a Divine Legislator.

In a comment to a recent article I wrote, the notion that God is necessary for a natural moral law to exist was challenged by reader who identified himself as an atheist. God was unnecessary for morality to exist, he argued. “I am an atheist,” he observed. “I do good for goodness’ sake,” as if Christians don’t.

There is no reason not to take him at his word. If we take him at his word, our atheist reader believes in the first self-evident principle of the natural moral law: do good and avoid evil, which is the same thing as “do good for goodness’ sake.” [Read more…]

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Same-Sex Marriage: How Did We Get Here? And Where Are We Going?

Fr. Lev Semenov
Fr. Lev Semenov
by Archpriest Lev Semenov –
President Barack Obama recently affirmed his personal support for the legalization of same-sex marriage. For a perspective from Russia on this momentous development, we offer the following commentary by Archpriest Lev Semenov, Dean of the Faculty of Further Education at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University and cleric of the Church of St. Nicholas in Kuznetskaya Sloboda, both in Moscow.

The political heavyweight of the Western world has taken a step towards the abyss. If we are to believe the news report broadcast on the radio, and later confirmed in the press, President Barack Obama has made his first public statement in support of the legalization of same-sex marriages.

One can only sympathize with the citizens of this country who hold the Christian faith, just imagining how they must have felt when they heard this statement from their head of state. [Read more…]

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Motherhood is a Life Given Up in Love

Motherhood Life Given Up in Love by Randy Sly –
Sacrifice is the great virtue of motherhood
Nothing speaks more highly to me of this self-sacrifice than the witness of a mother, who daily gives of herself for her own. Often depriving herself, she offers to others; often preferring others, she offers herself. Motherhood is a call to stay firm in the face of uncertainty, despair, sickness, poverty, and even danger, where her children are concerned. One could almost say that as the father is the sword, she is the shield. A mother lays down her life by taking it up on behalf of these precious ones entrusted to her care. …

Once upon a time there was a young woman who loved her Lord. There was nothing she withheld from Him. Her life was always “yes” to Him, the proverbial “fiat” – “let it be to me as you have said.” She fell in love and, hearing the “Divine Yes,” married the man whom she loved. They grew in Him as one in the sacramental mystery.

A child was born and she loved the child. The child brought something out of her that had always been a part of her yet never expressed. Like a hidden stream now discovered, rivers of love flowed out of the woman to her child. [Read more…]

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What the Bible Teaches About Capitalism

Bible Capitalism America Freedom by Rabbi Aryeh Spero –
Who would have expected that in a Republican primary campaign the single biggest complaint among candidates would be that the front-runner has taken capitalism too far? As if his success and achievement were evidence of something unethical and immoral? President Obama and other redistributionists must be rejoicing that their assumptions about rugged capitalism and the 1% have been given such legitimacy.

More than any other nation, the United States was founded on broad themes of morality rooted in a specific religious perspective. We call this the Judeo-Christian ethos, and within it resides a ringing endorsement of capitalism as a moral endeavor. [Read more…]

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Without Justice, What Else is the State But a Great Band of Robbers – St. Augustine

St. Augustine Without Justice State is a Great Band of Robbers by Andrew M. Greenwell, Esq. –
In his book City of God, St. Augustine famously said, “without justice, what else is the State but a great band of robbers?”  This statement seems to be a favorite of Pope Benedict XVI, and he has recruited it in warning lawmakers, particularly lawmakers in the Western nations with Christian heritage, of the way to which they are headed.

He referred to these words in his address to the German Parliament or Bundestag when he visited Germany.  Some years earlier, in his encyclical Deus caritas est, Pope Benedict XVI referred to those very same words.

It is useful from time to time to recall these words of St. Augustine and the deep truth that they convey. [Read more…]

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Eleventh Commandment: Thou Shall Support the Welfare State

Eleventh Commandment: Thou Shall Support the Welfare State by Larry Elder –
As a candidate for the presidency, George W. Bush took heat for supposedly saying something like, “God wanted me to become president.” He never said that. But no matter. Here comes another yet another Bible-banging religious conservative “taking his marching orders from God.” Apparently, if you feel God endorses a particular path, God wants you to keep the news to yourself.

Religion, to many liberals, is a sign of weakness, a demonstration of the inability to reason for oneself. With the Bible telling him what to do, how to think, what to believe — why, such a person is downright scary. Recall Obama explaining how small-town Midwesterners deal with difficult economic times: “They get bitter,” as the then-presidential candidate put it. “They cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them … as a way to explain their frustrations.” [Read more…]

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A Nation Addicted to Government – Getting Sober

Big Government addiction by Peg Luksik –
Anyone who has ever known a recovering alcoholic has probably heard the story of what finally caused that person to face his addiction and get sober. They also have probably heard that after the physical withdrawal symptoms have subsided, the emotional withdrawal process begins. Many recovering alcoholics find the emotional process much more arduous in the beginning, and much more freeing as they move further into sobriety.

They have to actually experience all the emotions and challenges they either deadened or escaped through the alcohol. They report that it’s almost a knee-jerk reaction to say, “I can’t do this!” and reach for the nearest bottle. It’s only when they begin to say, “With God’s help, I CAN and WILL do this!” that freedom from addiction begins.

Americans are now a nation of addicts. Only we are addicted to government. [Read more…]

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