Orthodox Editors

Anne Rice Loses Her Religion

9/26/2010 – Miguel A. Guanipa –
“I quit being a Christian.” “I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of … Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.”

In this Tweeter feed read around the world of pubescent vampire novel bookworms, author Anne Rice — who claims to have become a Christian a few years ago — resolved once and for all to forswear the faith. A rather momentous decision, betraying a crass impetuosity on her part, but also a welcomed vindication of G.K. Chesterton’s keen observation that many refuse to seriously engage Christianity not because it has been tried and found wanting, but because “it has been found difficult and left untried.” [Read more…]

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The Case for Marriage

9/25/2010 – National Review Editors –
If it is true, as we are constantly told, that American law will soon redefine marriage to accommodate same-sex partnerships, the proximate cause for this development will not be that public opinion favors it, although it appears to be moving in that direction. It will be that the most influential Americans, particularly those in law and the media, have been coming increasingly to regard opposition to same-sex marriage as irrational at best and bigoted at worst. They therefore dismiss expressions of that opposition, even when voiced by a majority in a progressive state, as illegitimate. Judges who believe that same-sex marriage is obviously just and right can easily find ways to read their views into constitutions, to the applause of the like-minded.

The emerging elite consensus in favor of same-sex marriage has an element of self-delusion about it. It denies that same-sex marriage would work a radical change in American law or society, insisting to the contrary that within a few years of its triumph everyone will wonder what all the fuss was about. [Read more…]

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The Ideology of Totalitarian Humanism

9/23/2010 – Keith Preston –
Many on the alternative Right are inclined to refer to PC as “cultural Marxism.” In some ways, this is an apt metaphor, as the PC ideology bears a resemblance to the reductionist concept of class antagonism that orthodox Marxism advances. If the dualistic class dichotomy of “proletarians and bourgeoisie” is replaced with a newer dichotomy pitting feminist women, minorities, gays, immigrants, the transgendered and others having been or believed to be oppressed against the “hegemony” of “straight, white, Christian, males,” then similarities between PC and Marxism do indeed emerge.

However, PC could in some ways be compared with totalitarianism from the other end of the political spectrum. If the duality of “Aryans” believed to be oppressed by and in mortal struggle with “the Jews” is replaced with the aforementioned dichotomy advanced by PC, a reductionism of comparable crudity likewise becomes apparent. Yet it would seem to me that such metaphors as “cultural Marxism” or “liberal Nazism” are not really the best characterizations of PC. [Read more…]

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Obamacare is Even Worse Than Critics Thought

Obamacare: A Nightmare for America
Obamacare: A Nightmare for America

9/22/2010 – Examiner Editorial –

Six months ago, President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rammed Obamacare down the throats of an unwilling American public. Half a year removed from the unprecedented legislative chicanery and backroom dealing that characterized the bill’s passage, we know much more about the bill than we did then. A few of the revelations:

» Obamacare won’t decrease health care costs for the government. According to Medicare’s actuary, it will increase costs. The same is likely to happen for privately funded health care.

» As written, Obamacare covers elective abortions, contrary to Obama’s promise that it wouldn’t. This means that tax dollars will be used to pay for a procedure millions of Americans across the political spectrum view as immoral. Supposedly, the Department of Health and Human Services will bar abortion coverage with new regulations but these will likely be tied up for years in litigation, and in the end may not survive the court challenge. [Read more…]

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Making the Creator in Our Image

Chuck Colson
Chuck Colson
9/22/2010 – Chuck Colson –

The debate about the origins of the universe just got a lot weirder. I can safely say, “Now I’ve heard it all.”

Yesterday on BreakPoint, I told you that Stephen Hawking, the great scientist, believes that the universe and life itself can be explained without referring to God; that God is, in Hawking’s words, “unnecessary.”

But there are some scientists who do believe there was a creator. The problem is that some of their ideas about the “creator” and his “creation” are straight out of a comic-book convention.

According to a recent article written by a university astronomer in the U.K.’s Telegraph newspaper, it’s possible that the “universe around us was created by people very much like ourselves, using devices not too dissimilar to those available to scientists today.”[Read more…]

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Modest and Bold, On the Gospel and Political Upheavals

9/21/2010 – Fr. Patrick Reardon –
Our country appears to be, at this moment, on the verge of a very big political upheaval. One has the sense of hearing a distant trumpet. We will know more, surely, after the fall elections.

Even now, nonetheless, one would be deaf not to detect a growing dissatisfaction—louder each day—with the “progressive movement” that controls much of our culture, including education, social services, entertainment, politics, publishing, and religion. Especially controversial is the nation’s recent reorganization of health care, widely regarded as a significant step in the direction of socialism. [Read more…]

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The Curious Logic of Our Governing Elites

9/20/2010 – Randall Hoven –
George Orwell said, “There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.” What follows is my beginning of a list of ideas that some very intelligent people seem to believe.

The air should be taxed. More precisely, what every animal on earth exhales and what every plant on earth inhales can and should be taxed.

President Bush was bad for the economy because he spent too much. President Obama is helping the economy by spending a lot.

A jury is better informed if evidence is withheld from it. [Read more…]

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Evolution: Facts, Assertions, Theories and the Catholic Faith

Darwinism_fraud_01 9/12/2010 – F. K. Bartels –

Traditional textbook discussions of ancestral descent are ‘a festering mass of unsupported assertions’.

A recent study conducted by Ph.D student Sarda Sahney, et al., at the University of Bristol, published in Biology Letters, used fossil evidence as a basis for analyzing evolutionary patterns over 400 million years of history. Sarda Sahney and colleagues posit that the availability of “living space” rather than competition for survival — as Darwin proposed — is the governing factor behind the evolution of species. Their theory is based on the concept that the process of evolution in which an organism is involved is highly influenced by its “ecological niche,” which includes such factors as food resources and habitat conditions. According to the study, large evolutionary changes occur in animals as a result of their migration into living spaces which are unoccupied by other animals.

Former president of Gonzaga University and noted scholar Fr. Robert Spitzer confirmed that “Darwin assumed that competition was what was driving the development of human species and particularly the dominance of one species over another.” Fr. Spitzer pointed out that “there is no way of reaching back in time and finding empirical evidence of that fact.” [Read more…]

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Creating a God-Honoring Culture – Centurion Program

Chuck Colson
Chuck Colson
9/10/2010 – Chuck Colson –

I have a burning passion—it’s the first item on my prayer list every day— and that’s to see a movement of Christians raised up from the churches to defend truth in the marketplace of ideas and to live out the gospel. Nothing less than this kind of an awakening can possibly save our quickly deteriorating culture.

That’s why I’m now spending all of my time working at BreakPoint and the Colson Center. One of my major projects is developing Christian leaders who can understand and defend a biblical view of all of life.

We call this the Centurions program. For the past six years we have brought 100 of the best and brightest into this year-long teaching effort, to study under some of the best minds in the Christian world. It’s demanding; we read books together, view movies and critique them; do a lot of teaching on line; and have three residencies during the year in Lansdowne, Virginia near our offices. [Read more…]

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Russian Metropolitan Blasts Anglican Communion’s Sexual Innovations

Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk
Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk

9/13/2010 – David W. Virtue –
Our Church must sever its relations with those churches and communities that trample on the principles of Christian ethics and traditional morals. Here we uphold a firm stand based on Holy Scripture.

In a groundbreaking address at Lambeth Palace before the Nicean Club that included the Archbishop of Canterbury, Russian Metropolitan Hilarion blasted those parts of the Anglican Communion experimenting with sexual innovations saying they threatened continuing dialogue with the Orthodox Church.

In surprise remarks that observers say embarrassed Dr. Williams, Hilarion ripped Western Anglican liberals who have deviated from heterosexual marriage calling it “an abyss that divides traditional Christians from Christians of liberal trend.” [Read more…]

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