In a final, urgent plea to prevent the passage of the current form of the Senate health care bill, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) on Saturday evening sent a letter to Congressmen asking them to vote “no.”
“For decades,” the letter says, “the United States Catholic bishops have supported universal health care. The Catholic Church teaches that health care is a basic human right, essential for human life and dignity.”
“Our community of faith,” the bishops continue, “provides health care to millions, purchases health care for tens of thousands and addresses the failings of our health care system in our parishes, emergency rooms and shelters. This is why we as bishops continue to insist that health care reform which truly protects the life, dignity, consciences and health of all is a moral imperative and an urgent national priority.” more »
“And He said to them, ‘This kind can come forth by nothing, except by prayer and fasting.’” (Mark 9:29)
Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ said those words to His disciples, when they asked Him why they were unable to expel the demonic spirit from the man’s son. I firmly believe that we have a similar situation today in our Nation. It is the goal of the party in power to have signed into law by March 22, 2010 a national health care bill, which would permit the use of taxpayers’ dollars to fund abortion on demand. While there are many other things in this health care bill that should cause us much concern (in addition to the fact that the majority of the people in Congress have not even fully read the bill!), the ‘keystone’ of this Bill’s foundation is to – in essence – make the killing of pre-born children a part of the very fabric of our Society. As one person stated, if this becomes law, then the pro-abortion movement, will have finally acquired its “Holy Grail”: using tax dollars to pay for abortions.
As a Greek Orthodox priest, I am compelled – in the Holy Name of our Lord Jesus – to rebuke and renounce this Bill as being demonic. Although there might be some good things within the Bill, they are totally negated by the presence of this ungodly attempt to make every working American culpable to the blood of these precious little ones, who are being slaughtered by the thousands – for PROFIT – everyday of the year! more »
The United States of America is great for a number of reasons. Its commitment to liberty, dedication to charity, defense of its friends and freedom around the globe, historical reliance on the individual and on free markets, and in my opinion, national reverence for the Almighty, are among those things that make our nation the greatest the world has ever known.
But perhaps second only to our collective Faith in God – our commitment to the rule of law sets us apart and serves as the foundation for our strength and prosperity. One need not look any farther than our southern neighbors in Mexico to see what the world looks like when the rule of law is abandoned. more »
American Thinker | by Janice Shaw Crouse | 3/18/2010
What we’re seeing in Washington, D.C. is not “politics as usual” with the arm twisting and “horse trading” that is typical in getting a bill passed; instead, it is ideological warfare. What Obama, Reid and Pelosi are doing is not legislating; it is an act of tyranny — overturning all the rules and principles of government in a representative democracy. Attempting to pass the Senate version of ObamaCare in the House under the ironically named “Slaughter Rule” (to circumvent the objections of the Stupak coalition to taxpayer funding of abortion) is an exercise in raw power akin to the many acts of judicial tyranny the American public has endured over the last 40 years from judges who have little regard for the Constitution.
Apparently Obama, Reid and Pelosi aren’t worried about losing control of Congress in 2010 or even the presidency in 2012, because their higher goal is to irrevocably institutionalize their leftist ideology. more »
As an individual citizen, is it more American to believe that you have a personal responsibility to be personally accountable for your actions, and those of your family? Or is it more American to believe that you should wait for the giant collective to take care of you?
This did not use to be a controversial concept. Until liberals decided that power is more highly coveted than freedom. Once they did, they started systematically enslaving people to the collective. more »
In the USSR, economic equality was achieved by redistributing wealth, ensuring that everyone remained poor, with the exception of those doing the redistributing. Only the ruling class of communist leaders had access to special stores, medicine and accommodations that could compare to those in the West. [...]
In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, I was taught to believe individual pursuits are selfish and sacrificing for the collective good is noble. In kindergarten we sang songs about Lenin, the leader of the Socialist Revolution. In school we learned about the beautiful socialist system, where everybody is equal and everything is fair; about ugly capitalism, where people are exploited and treat each other like wolves in the wilderness.
Life in the USSR modeled the socialist ideal. God-based religion was suppressed and replaced with cultlike adoration for political figures. more »
Among the things left and right, religious and secular, agree on is that one of the few real needs human beings have is to be needed. When we are not needed, life feels pointless.
The need to be needed is universal. Men need it; women need it. The sexes may feel needed in different ways, but the depth of the need is the same. Many women feel particularly alive when needed by their young children; many men feel worthy when needed by their family and/or their work. That is why most women navigate difficult emotional straits when their adult children leave home and assume independent lives, and why most men find it so crushing to lose their job — not necessarily because of loss of income, but because of the loss of meaning that comes from no longer being needed. more »
The final outcome of the health care reform debate is uncertain — who can predict where a writhing eel will land? — but we have learned a few things already.
First, we know that President Obama and the Democratic congressional leadership could not persuade a majority of Americans of the wisdom of their plan — and have largely ceased to try. more »
As a system, absolutely not, as for the term itself though, perhaps we should.
In an article in the Telegraph on Thursday 3.04.10, the Chairman of Marks & Spencer, the leading department store in London, made some interesting remarks about capitalism. He spoke mostly about the perception of capitalism and the free market system, in the eyes of people around the world, and the fact that the term itself has begun to become so negative, that they forget the fact that capitalism is the only system which has ever worked, and that every time it was tried, communism led to misery, oppression, and the murder of millions. He even suggested that we find another name for it. Why not ? The progressives found another name for communism, didn’t they? more »
When human life is measured only by its cost, then you know there are wider and very concerning implications about what such people believe and will do.
We are seeing the Obama Democrats come out these past few days revealing, more explicitly than ever before, their true nature of being political thugs.
All stops are being pulled to ram their health care legislation through – no matter how much the American public opposes it, no matter how much they have to lie and trash the constitution and legislative traditions, and no matter how much they have to bribe or threaten fellow Democrats who won’t go along with their corrupt program. more »
The official title is the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” popularly known as “Obamacare,” passed by the Senate in the wee-hours of Christmas Eve. This 2400-page monstrosity does what no enemy of America has ever been able to do: transform the land of the free into the home of the enslaved.
For the first time in the history of the nation, the federal government will force its citizens to purchase a product.
If Americans – through their elected officials – accept this principle, there is nothing to prevent the federal government from forcing its citizens to purchase any other product that the government decides its citizens should have. more »
Metropolitan Hilarion’s warning deals with what Nietzsche called the “transvaluation of values” — what his dark prophesy warned would happen in the West because “God is Dead,” by which he meant that Western culture was entering into a period where it functioned within the cultural structures shaped by Christianity but without concrete, existential communion with the Savior — the kind of communion that would lead to martyrdom if required. Those structures would weaken as the historical memory of Christianity grew increasingly dim from one generation to the next.
That is the period we are in today, call it secularism, but understand that secularism is just a layover from one city to the next. We have left the City of God (recalling Augustine) for what — Islamic domination? Perhaps. Man cannot live by bread alone, and that includes the secularist as well as the believer. more »
Sister Hatunes, an Orthodox Christian nun, is working to help some very unfortunate Christian souls who have been abused and terrorized by Islamic radicals. May God bless her and the girls and families she is helping. more »
March 9, 2010, is the first day that same-sex couples in District of Columbia (D.C.) will be able to have legal marriage ceremonies. More than 100 couples — some coming from nearby states — have licenses for ceremonies. So-called same-sex “marriages” are legal in five other states — Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont — where the words “bride and groom” are replaced with the names of the individuals, who are each called “spouse” or “Person A” and “Person B.”
Those who oppose same-sex “marriage” are called by derogatory labels: bigot, narrow-minded, hate-filled among the nicest. Such name-calling obscures the very real problems associated with watering down and denigrating traditional marriage. more »
Communist Holocaust: 100+ million dead, hundreds of millions more tortured, imprisoned, and enslaved
Compiled by Chris Banescu (contributors: Scott Manning, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation)
In October 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution gave birth to the deadliest ideology in human history – Communism. In less than 100 years, Communism has claimed more than 100 million lives. Today, it continues to enslave one-fifth of the world’s people.
A free people cannot afford to forget the evils of Communism. We cannot allow the atrocities of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, and Castro to fade into the background of history. We must not forget the trail of blood and tears this utopian deception has left behind.
It is a great moral failing that so many do not know the extent of Communism’s atrocities. While the horrors of Nazism are well known, who knows that the Soviet Union murdered 20 million people? Who knows that China’s dictators have slaughtered as many as 60 million? Who knows that the Communist holocaust has exacted a death toll surpassing that of all of the wars of the 20th century combined? (Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation) more »
Sociologist Christian Smith began his ambitious, multivolume effort to plumb the religious lives of Americans across the life course in his 2005 with Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. In that book—aimed at an audience that the author hoped would include general readers as well as clergy and scholars—Smith painted an incisive portrait of religion among America’s adolescents. Especially insightful was the way Smith explained why the more sectarian religious traditions in the United States, such as evangelical Protestantism and Mormonism, were achieving greater success than more churchly traditions such as mainline Protestantism and Roman Catholicism in transmitting their faiths to the next generation. Also notable was the way Smith explained how the guiding religious ethos of American teenagers—what he aptly termed “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”—seemed so suited for our culture. more »
Arrogance is an occupational hazard in politics, one that is often fatal, and the Democrats show every sign of having succumbed. You would think someone in the party would sound the alarm. But, so far, Democrats seem willing to follow their leaders off the cliff. The president, House speaker and Senate majority leader appear ready to defy the American public and ram a disastrous and unpopular overturn of health care down our throats, regardless of the consequences to the country or their own political futures. There is something deeply disturbing about this turn of events — and undemocratic. more »
WorldNetDaily | by Joseph Farah | 3/3/2010 Al Gore is nothing but a two-bit charlatan, but he is treated by the press establishment like a prophet, a courageous leader, a selfless crusader, a man of vision and ideals.
Which are you going to believe: Al Gore or your own eyes?
Forget what we in the United States and many around the world have experienced this winter, he writes in a New York Times op-ed. It may seem colder, but this is exactly what should be expected in a global-warming scenario, he claims. Just as a snowless winter in Washington a few years ago was also exactly what we should expect.
If it’s hot, blame global warming. If it’s cold, blame climate change.
Al Gore is not a serious person. He’s a get-rich-quick artist who is peddling the biggest con game in the history of man. more »
Today’s global warming hysteria is the hoax of the 21st century. H.L. Mencken had it right: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” more »
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