Orthodox Editors

Spiritual Warfare: How to Wage that War in the Desert

Jesus Christ Desert Warfare Satan by Katie Peterson –
You will be engaged in spiritual warfare for the rest of your earthly life

Do you ever feel like you are in spiritual warfare? The devil doesn’t usually attack us in such blatant, physical ways as he did St. Anthony, but we must remember that he is always seeking to make war against us. So what are we to do? Arm ourselves, right? But with what? How do we anticipate the devil’s attacks against us, especially when they are so deviously subtle and often approach us in the disguise of seemingly ordinary life situations and decisions?

DENVER, CO (Catholic Online) – He sold everything he owned and he went into the desert to fight demons. He burned with a desire for God, and “the devil, an enemy of the word Christian, could not bear to see such outstanding virtues in a young man and so he attacked him” (from Early Christian Lives, the “Life of Antony by Athanasius”).

Spiritual warfare. We see it lived out to the extreme in the life of St. Anthony, early anchorite monk and fierce warrior of demons, all for the glory of God and the prayerful protection of men. Obviously, most of us are not called to rid ourselves of all our possessions and become hermits in a foreign desert (at least I’m not.), but we all experience spiritual warfare like St. Anthony, though often in different and subtler degrees. [Read more…]

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Canadian Judge: Infanticide Just a Late, Late Abortion?

The sliperry slope of liberal/progressive moral decay reaches rock bottom!

Jonathon Van Maren
Jonathon Van Maren
by Jonathon Van Maren –

On April 13, 2005, 19 year old Katrina Effert secretly gave birth to a baby boy in her parent’s home. She then strangled the child with her underwear, and tossed the corpse over the fence into the yard of one of the neighbours.

On September 9, 2011, CBC reported that Ms. Effert’s conviction for this murder had been ‘downgraded’ by an Edmonton Court of Queen’s Bench judge to infanticide, and in lieu of jail time she will merely serve a suspended sentence.

In her argument, the judge stated that “while many Canadians undoubtedly view abortion as a less than ideal solution to unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancy, they generally understand, accept, and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support.”

Translation? Katrina Effert simply engaged in a really, really late-term abortion. Given that we don’t, under Canadian law, value human life a few minutes before birth, why a few minutes after? [Read more…]

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Americans Understand Importance of Prayer on 9/11

Prayer 9/11 America by Jay Sekulow –

Prayer is powerful. Americans have traditionally turned to God in times of crisis and this was no more true than on 9/11. As we are just days away from the 10th anniversary of the devastating terrorist attacks of September 11th, the American people are taking a stand – sending a powerful message to Mayor Bloomberg that prayer should be included in the memorial service at Ground Zero.

Over 35,000 Americans have signed on to our letter urging New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to reverse his decision banning prayer and religious leaders from participating in the 10th anniversary remembrance at Ground Zero.

The decision by the Mayor to prohibit prayer at this most solemn occasion is offensive to millions of Americans and inconsistent with the nation’s long and cherished history of prayer. [Read more…]

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Whom Would Jesus Indebt?

Whom Would Jesus Indebtby Timothy Dalrymple –
One of the gravest dangers of the Budget Control Act passed yesterday is that it could provide Americans with a false sense of security. Washington has finally taken action. The crisis has passed. The sky is brightening, the trees are parting before us and — we’re out of the woods. Right?

Alas, but no.  Not only are we deep in the dark heart of the forest, but we’re still walking in the wrong direction.  The pace may have slowed, but the trajectory has not.  The immediate cash-flow crisis has passed, but the long-term solvency crisis remains.  We are still borrowing enormous amounts of money, still selling our children into debt slavery through our own spending insanity.  While the Budget Control Act (best summarized by Keith Hennessey) is intended to reduce the deficit (the difference between expected revenues and planned spending, or the amount we have to borrow in order to spend what we want to spend) in the years to come, it does not reduce the debt (the amount the federal government owes).  It slows — by a little — the rate at which the debt grows, but the debt is still astronomical and still swiftly growing. [Read more…]

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The Democrats’ Invincible Ignorance

Democrats Lemmings Ignorance by Paul Kengor –

I’ve only recently come to realize the nature of the hurdle this country faces in trying to turn around a stalled economy and horrendous deficit. Here it is: liberal Democrat politicians have completely convinced huge numbers of their followers that our economic/fiscal mess is the result of two principal demons: 1) “the rich,” and 2) the Tea Party. The former, of course, has been a longtime liberal scapegoat; the latter is a new one.

Note that I use the word “followers.” That’s because I’m hearing from a disturbingly high number of people who apparently buy the Democratic Party line with no question whatsoever. They exhibit a remarkable, frightful willingness to act against their own interests in blind service to partisanship and ideology. It’s like a mass self-flagellation. [Read more…]

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On Being Governed By Scientific Frauds

Al Gore Fraud and wrong by James Lewis –

The news leaked out a while ago that Al Gore scored a D in natural science at Harvard.  That would be the science introduction for Other Majors, not difficult chemistry or calculus.  So Nobel Laureate Al Gore got a D in Science for Dummies.

But don’t worry.  Anybody can blow a college course and still bounce back.  A lot of us get it wrong the first time.  Unfortunately, Al Gore didn’t fix his failure.  He made it much worse by peddling monstrous pseudo-science and getting even richer from it.  As well as repulsively fat — a walking metaphor for his politics.

The more I think about it, the more it looks like global warming is a deliberate attack by the postmodern (anti-science) left on science.  Global Frauding attacks all the core scientific values — of truth-telling, empirical discipline, and skepticism.  Our bulging Goracle gets a lifetime grade of F for setting real science back by decades. [Read more…]

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Obama and the Burden of Exceptionalism

Obama liberal failure
Illustration by Chad Crowe

by Shelby Steele –
If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a hundred times: President Obama is destroying the country. Some say this destructiveness is intended; most say it is inadvertent, an outgrowth of inexperience, ideological wrong-headedness and an oddly undefined character. Indeed, on the matter of Mr. Obama’s character, today’s left now sounds like the right of three years ago. They have begun to see through the man and are surprised at how little is there.

Yet there is something more than inexperience or lack of character that defines this presidency: Mr. Obama came of age in a bubble of post-’60s liberalism that conditioned him to be an adversary of American exceptionalism. In this liberalism America’s exceptional status in the world follows from a bargain with the devil—an indulgence in militarism, racism, sexism, corporate greed, and environmental disregard as the means to a broad economic, military, and even cultural supremacy in the world. And therefore America’s greatness is as much the fruit of evil as of a devotion to freedom. [Read more…]

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How to defend your children against pro-gay lessons in the classroom

How to Defend Children in Classroom against Gay Agenda by John-Henry Westen –
As young people across North America head back to school next week parents need to attend to more than just making sure the back-to-school clothes and utensils are in place. There is an unprecedented attack on morals coming from the school.

Particularly in the area of sexuality, so-called public morality has moved outside of the realm of life-and-family-affirming principles to such an extent that a veritable anti-morality is being fed to our children. And this year there is a concerted effort to restrict parents from countering the efforts of the school to promote this anti-morality.

Both in California and Ontario pro-homosexual curricula are to be introduced into public schools forbidding parents from opting their children out from such instruction.  Even where parent opt-outs are permitted, however, some schools have resorted to instructing students to keep secret from their parents sexuality discussions held in the school. [Read more…]

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The Man Class – FOCUS

“Progressive polices have done more to exacerbate poverty than to alleviate it. They tear apart families and create a generational cycle of dependency. They do not fulfill the Gospel imperative to care for the poor. We must do better.” – Fr. Johannes Jacobse

Here’s an Orthodox effort that is trying to heal the effects of that Progressive policies are largely responsible for:
[Read more…]

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