Orthodox Editors

Morality and the Economy, No Separating the Two

Chuck Colson
Chuck Colson
by Chuck Colson –
The next election should be all about the economy, right? Wrong in spades!

During the seemingly endless build-up to the Iowa caucuses, there was one consistent refrain repeated over and over. It’s like the big lie — the more you keep repeating it, the more people are going to believe it, but it remains a lie.

The lie was simply this: that the political parties have to choose between social issues and economic issues. This year, the media and the party machines are telling us ad nauseam that the only issue that matters is the economy.

So any candidate who wants to win the White House should just shut up about things like marriage, the sanctity of life, religious liberty, and those other annoying issues that distract us from focusing on jobs and the economy.

But that’s crazy! Doesn’t anybody get the connection between the social issues and economics issues [Read more…]

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The Left’s Heart of Darkness

The Left Heart of Darknessby Bruce Walker –

On January 2, Alan Colmes on Fox News mocked presidential hopeful Rick Santorum and Santorum’s wife for bringing their critically ill newborn son, Gabriel, into the world and then bringing him home.  Gabriel died 16 years ago, and Karen Santorum wrote a heartrending book, Letters to Gabriel, which describes how the couple dealt with the grief of his death.  Mother Teresa wrote the foreword for the book.

Although Colmes has quickly retreated from his remarks, his crudeness shows how the left really thinks.  When Sarah Palin brings Trig, a child with Down Syndrome, into the world, and he is cherished and loved, the left spins its head — why not just waste the kid before he was born?  This mockery did not end with the 2008 campaign: Family Guy in 2010 made fun of Trig, and in April, another leftist goon mocked the young child on his third birthday.  The left’s heart of darkness is so dreadful that appalling bile seems normal to its minions until normal, moral people object. [Read more…]

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Hunter-Gatherer Nut Cases

Hunter-Gatherer Nut Cases by Tom Gilson –
Let’s Just Reduce Our Altruism, Morals & Love to Brain Waves

I opened up “The End of Morality,” Discover magazine’s latest article on ethics and the brain (July/August 2011), and I wondered, “Will this be any different from the others?” Articles on this topic seem to follow a consistent pattern: (1) Researchers can pinpoint physical events taking place in people’s brains when they make ethical decisions. (2) Thus, science is discovering, finally, what ethics is all about: it’s chemistry and electricity doing their chemical and electrical thing inside your skull. And that’s it.

It’s an approach many thinkers call reductionist. Reductionism in this context means that crucial aspects of human experience, like consciousness, love, ethical decisions, the ability to make choices (free will), and so on are best understood as biological processes, which in turn are best understood in terms of chemistry and physics. It’s a matter of bringing down—reducing—these things to the lowest level of physical explanation.

According to reductionism, in fact, the only real thing going on is what happens at the level of chemistry and physics. [Read more…]

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Fr. Bakas: Jesus and the Geese at Christmas

Jesus Christ Saves Humanity, Geese Parable by Fr. John S. Bakas –
I teach one class per semester at the Loyola Marymount University School of Theology. In the fall I teach a course on Orthodox Christian Spirituality. I start and end my class with prayer since prayer is the essence of Orthodox spirituality.

I don’t insist that anyone pray along with me, but I do insist that all stand as a sign of respect. I have professed atheists in class as well as Christians of various denominations, Jews and Moslems. Moslems in particular have difficulty understanding not only the Holy Trinity, but the idea of Jesus Christ as the eternal uncreated Incarnate Son of God and the second person of the Holy Trinity. Jesus Christ came into the world as God-Man (Theantropos) to save humanity from death by He Himself suffering death and being resurrected from the dead. Because He became one of us, we too may conquer death through Him and be reconciled to God the Father. Jesus Christ, I tell them, assumed the whole of man; for what is not assumed cannot be saved, whereas what is united with God is saved. [Read more…]

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Steve Jobs’ Last Words: “Oh WOW, Oh WOW, Oh WOW”

Steve Jobs Last Words Oh WOW by Peggy Noonan –
The great words of the year? “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.”

They are the last words of Steve Jobs, reported by his sister, the novelist Mona Simpson, who was at his bedside. In her eulogy, a version of which was published in the New York Times, she spoke of how he looked at his children “as if he couldn’t unlock his gaze.” He’d said goodbye to her, told her of his sorrow that they wouldn’t be able to be old together, “that he was going to a better place.” In his final hours his breathing was deep, uneven, as if he were climbing.

“Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them. Steve’s final words were: ‘OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.'” [Read more…]

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America: The Living Portrait of Dorian Gray

America Freedom Creed Truths - God Bless America by John Jalsevac –
The song “God Bless the USA” is often still sung at commemorative events surrounding national days of remembrance, like the Fourth of July or Veterans’ Day.  But, like with “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the true meaning behind the vaunted words of this American doxology has been lost.  More importantly, the claims made in Lee Greenwood’s timeless anthem are no longer accurate.

Public religious expression has been squelched in the last century, violating “free exercise” of faith in the deepest sense and ending America’s status as a nation that unreservedly recognizes freedom of religion.  In one recent exhibition of this new anti-religious zealotry, the Department of Defense (DoD) ordered that Bibles no longer be available to injured personnel at Walter Reed Medical Center.

Priceless civil liberties like “privacy” have been abolished via anti-terrorism measures that neither sought amendment nor claimed constitutional legitimacy.  New legislation promises to permit “indefinite detention” of American citizens, effectively abolishing the right to trial and ending habeas corpus rights.  The legislation classifies America as a “battlefield” in the apparently limitless and never-ending “War on Terror.” [Read more…]

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This Christmas, Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There

Christmas Nativity of Christ by John Jalsevac –
Christmas isn’t quite what it used to be, is it? And I’m not referring the usual laundry list of grievances that makes us religious fundamentalist extremists (i.e. Christians) seriously ponder setting up a utopian commune on a deserted Mediterranean island: the war on Christmas, the kitschy music, the consumerist madness, the widespread ignorance about even the most basic facts behind the feast.

Forget about all that for now. All I mean is, if you’re old enough to be reading this, somehow Christmas has lost much of the effortless magic with which it was surrounded years ago…in your childhood.

You know what I mean. As a child, it seemed so easy to get swept up into the rich mystery of Christmas: the presents, the smells, the music, the lights glistening on the snow, the tinsel on the tree, the strange guests, the parties, the good food. All these things spoke to you, and without thinking about it you gave yourself into the power of their enchantment. [Read more…]

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Contemplating Christmas

Merry Christmas, Peace on Earth by Rev. Robert A. Sirico –
In a Christmas season filled with noble sentiments such as “peace on earth and goodwill to men,” the remembrance of the joys and sanctity of the family, and the deep human desire for tranquility of heart, how is it that this is arguably the period of deepest tension, family strife and exhaustion?

Although I don’t have hard data to prove it, from both personal and pastoral experience I can safely assert that from roughly the last week of November to the first week of January we experience more stress, arguments within families, and grief, than at any other time of the year.

Much of this is no doubt of our own doing: the expectations we have of ourselves to write every card and attend every party and prepare every dish possible. We go too soon from the joyful welcoming of the “meaning of the season’ into crushing obligations the meaning of which we find ourselves simply too tired to contemplate. [Read more…]

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The War on Christmas

War on Christmas by Mark D. Tooley –
The multiculturalist Left wants to dilute Christmas into a vacuous, stern celebration of Winter, divorced from culture and religion. Not content with banning crèches, trees and carols, anti-Christmas zealots are often even threatened by Santa Claus. The transcendent authority behind Christmas, even in its commercialized form, is an unwanted challenge to the Left’s preference for all authority vested in the state and its secular clerisy.

Fox News has delighted in lampooning the ongoing absurdities of the “War on Christmas,” which sometimes even include banning green and red from classrooms. The American Family Association, a para-church group, has also challenged the anti-Christmas campaign by affirming companies that affirm Christmas.

Naturally the Religious Left is troubled by this defense of Christmas, especially by Fox News or conservative Christians, both of whom it despises. So the Religious Left has decided that the cultural defenders of Christmas are instead betraying Christmas by actually promoting commercialism. [Read more…]

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Let’s Keep Christmas Commercialized

Merry Christmas Defend Christ in Christmas by David Chilton –
Every year about this time, there rises a hue and cry about the “commercialization” of Christmas, accompanied by impassioned pleas to get back to the “real meaning” of the celebration. Too much time and money, we hear, are spent on the public side of the holiday — the hustle and bustle of shopping, the lavish decorations, and the often insincere displays of seasonal piety. Meanwhile, the true spirit of Christmas gets left behind. Some even argue that all public displays of Christmas are inappropriate.

Every Christmas season seems to spawn a new series of lawsuits charging that the First Amendment is imperiled by the appearance of manger scenes on civic property, or by the singing of carols by the local high school choir. I recall hearing a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union claim that the very message of Christmas itself was being violated by any public recognition of its existence. What we need, he said, is to remove Christmas from public life completely, and allow it to become once again a private, personal expression of religious sentiment and family values. [Read more…]

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