Orthodox Editors

The Left Learned Wrong Lessons from Nazism

Radical Liberals Leftistsby Dennis Prager –
The only way to understand what is happening to America in our time — and for that matter, in Europe since World War II — is to understand the left.

And one way to understand the left — and its enormous appeal to many decent people — is to understand what it learned from World War II and the Nazi experience. The lessons people draw from history go a long way toward explaining how they view the world and how they behave.

Unfortunately, virtually everything the left learned from the unique evil known as Nazism has been wrong.

The first lesson was that the right is evil, not merely wrong. Because Nazism has been successfully labelled “right-wing,” virtually every right-wing position and leader has been either cynically or sincerely characterized by the left as a danger to civilization. That is why the right is so often labelled fascist and compared to Nazis. Vast numbers of people in the West truly believe that if the right prevails, fascism will follow. [Read more…]

Fr. George Calciu: My Incorrupt Body a False Miracle, a Curse

Fr. George Calciu: My Incorrupt Body a False Miracle, a Curse
While some Orthodox in America and in Romania have already rushed to label the discovery of priest George Calciu’s incorrupt body as a miracle and declared him a saint, Fr. Calciu’s own premonitions and ominous warnings call for a more sober and discerning response. Not all ‘miracles’ come from God and not all incorrupt bodies are a sign of sanctity.

One month before his death, Fr. George Calciu (Fr. Gheorghe Calciu Dumitreasa), in a letter from his hospital bed written to another priest, Fr. Iustin Pârvu, warned that if his body would ever be dug up and found incorrupt, it would not be a miracle from God, but a deception from the devil. Fr. Calciu asked that Orthodox priests should then pray over his ‘relics’ for the undoing of this curse and to allow his body to return to the dust from which it was made. He further gave precise instructions that the priests who saw his body should never speak of this false miracle and bury him in another grave. [Read more…]

Motivated by Fear

Christ Fear Not Calm the Storm Tempestby Fr. Basil Zebrun –
Following His Resurrection Jesus said to the apostles, “peace be unto you” (John 20: 19,21,26). Furthermore, He distinguishes the peace He bestows from that which is given by the world (John 14: 27). St. Paul describes it as, “…the peace of God which passes all understanding” (Philippians 4:7). Christians experience this peace as not merely the absence of fear or strife, but the presence of Christ in the lives of the faithful.

Additionally, during a storm at sea Jesus offered His disciples these words of comfort, “fear not” (Matthew 14:27, Mark 6:50, John 6:20), and prior to raising Jairus’ daughter from the dead He said to the father, “Do not be afraid” (Mark 5:36). At the Annunciation and at the announcement of the Baptist’s conception, the angel also reassured both Mary and Zacharias that there was no need for trepidation (Luke 1).

The statements, “peace be unto you” and “fear not,” were meant to allay the personal anxieties of those whose lives were radically changed by divine grace, freely received. [Read more…]

The ‘New’ Tolerance Is Actually Intolerant

New Tolerance Is Actually Intolerantby Mark Driscoll –
The Old Tolerance vs. the New Tolerance 
The old view of tolerance assumed that (1) there is objective truth that can be known; (2) various people, groups and perspectives each think they know what that objective truth is and (3) as people/groups disagree, dialogue and debate their conflicting views of the truth, everyone involved will have an opportunity to learn, grow, change and possibly arrive together at the truth.

The new tolerance is different from the old tolerance. The new view of tolerance assumes that (1) there is no objective truth that can be known; (2) various people, groups and perspectives do not have the truth but only what they believe to be the truth and (3) various people, groups and perspectives should not argue and debate their disagreements because there is no truth to be discovered, and to assume otherwise only leads to needless conflicts and prejudices. [Read more…]

When Work Is Punished: Tragedy of America’s Welfare State

When Work Is Punished Welfare America by Tyler Durden –
A single mom in America today is better off earning gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income & benefits [welfare], than earning gross income of $69,000 with net income & benefits of only $57,045.

Exactly two years ago, some of the more politically biased progressive media outlets (who are quite adept at creating and taking down their own strawmen arguments, if not quite as adept at using an abacus, let alone a calculator) took offense at our article “In Entitlement America, The Head Of A Household Of Four Making Minimum Wage Has More Disposable Income Than A Family Making $60,000 A Year.” In it we merely explained the painful reality in America: it is now more lucrative – in the form of actual disposable income – to sit, do nothing, and collect various welfare entitlements, than to work.

This is graphically and painfully confirmed, in a chart from Gary Alexander, Secretary of Public Welfare, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As quantified and explained by Alexander,

“the single mom is better off earning gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income & benefits [welfare] than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income & benefits of $57,045.”

[Read more…]

Met. Methodios: Our Mission is to Lead Others to Jesus Christ

Metropolitan Methodios Orthodox Bishop
Metropolitan Methodios
by Terry Mattingly –
It happens all the time: Church leaders stand at podiums and urge members of their flocks to go and share their faith, striving to win new converts. These speeches rarely make news, because they are not unusual. But something very unusual happened earlier this month in Brookline, Mass.

“You will surely agree that our mission … is to lead our brothers and sisters — both inside and outside the church — to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” said the featured speaker.

“This is becoming more and more difficult because many hesitate to share their faith, fearing they will be considered quaint and bothersome. This is especially the case in America’s colleges and universities where atheism and indifference on matters of faith and religion reign supreme.”

This would be ordinary, if not tame language in a gathering held by Campus Crusade for Christ, the Southern Baptist Convention or any Bible Belt megachurch. But this speaker was Metropolitan Methodios, the white-haired leader of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Boston, addressing clergy and laity in a conference center dedicated to Greek culture. [Read more…]

Gratitude and Grace at Thanksgiving Time

Gratitude and Grace at Thanksgiving Time Thanks to Godby Glenn Fairman –
As another Thanksgiving has come full circle and we again come face to face with a bounty of foods set before us that in most ages would have been relegated to princes and rajahs, let us not forget that this day flows naturally from the wellspring of Gratitude and Grace — of humility and realization that we as a race are not sufficient — that we have never been islands unto ourselves.

And we should further acknowledge that although a great remnant of Americans have not bowed their heads to the false spirit of the collective, there still exists a legion of invisible shoulders that we now stand upon for which we are compelled, by what is best within us, to give humble thanks. [Read more…]

Thanksgiving: We Should Be Thankful for Private Property

Thanksgiving Thankful for Private Propertyby John Stossel –
Had today’s politicians and opinion-makers been in power four centuries ago, Americans might celebrate “Starvation Day” this week, not Thanksgiving..

The Pilgrims started out with communal property rules. When they first settled at Plymouth, they were told: “Share everything, share the work, and we’ll share the harvest.”

The colony’s contract said their new settlement was to be a “common.” Everyone was to receive necessities out of the common stock. There was to be little individual property.

That wasn’t the only thing about the Plymouth Colony that sounds like it was from Karl Marx: Its labor was to be organized according to the different capabilities of the settlers. People would produce according to their abilities and consume according to their needs. That sure sounds fair. [Read more…]

If You Like Your Tyranny, You Can Keep It

ObamaCare Tyranny Leftist Tyrannyby Daren Jonescu –
2013 has been a banner year for damning self-portraits of American progressivism. Just when you thought no one could top Hillary Clinton’s agonized “What difference, at this point, does it make?” — perhaps the most concise account of the leftist strategy of incremental subversion ever recorded — along comes President Obama’s revelatory time bomb, set ticking back in 2009 for detonation on October 1 of this year: “If you like your plan, you can keep it.”

With her “What difference” outburst, Clinton told the world what the progressive elite think of their subjects. They think you are stupid, morally shallow, and have the attention span of three year olds — exactly as progressive schooling and entertainment are designed to make you. Hence they need only wait you out, until the haze of time dulls your capacity for outrage about whether your leaders knowingly took the phone off the hook as your fellow citizens called for help with killers closing in on them. [Read more…]

Solzhenitsyn: The Courage to be Christian

Alexander Solzhenitsyn: The Courage to be Christianby Joseph Pearce –
“In these dark days in which the power of secular fundamentalism appears to be on the rise and in which religious freedom seems to be imperiled, it is easy for Christians to become despondent. The clouds of radical relativism seem to obscure the light of objective truth and it can be difficult to discern any silver lining to help us illumine the future with hope.”

In such gloomy times the example of the martyrs can be encouraging. Those who laid down their lives for Christ and His Church in worse times than ours are beacons of light, dispelling the darkness with their baptism of blood. “Upon such sacrifices,” King Lear tells his soon to be martyred daughter Cordelia, “The gods themselves throw incense.”

It is said that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church and, if this is so, more bloody seed has been sown in the past century than in any of the bloody centuries that preceded it. Tens of millions have been slaughtered on the blood-soaked altars of national and international socialism in Europe, China, Cambodia and elsewhere. [Read more…]