Fr. Hans

Mention God? Don’t you dare

Townhall.com Ben Shapiro June 21, 2006

Brittany McComb, valedictorian of Foothill High School in Clark County, Nevada, stood up at her graduation and began to speak. A few paragraphs into her speech, school administrators cut off McComb’s microphone. She didn’t tell a dirty joke. She didn’t curse. She didn’t insult her classmates or her teachers. Brittany McComb committed the egregious sin of attempting to thank God and Jesus. “I went through four years of school at Foothill and they taught me logic and they taught me freedom of speech,” McComb stated. “God’s the biggest part of my life. Just like other valedictorians thank their parents, I wanted to thank my lord and savior.”

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Many black Christians join move to Orthodox traditions

Gannett News Service June 24, 2006

After a lifetime in traditional black churches, Robert Aaron Mitchell discovered the sights, smells, sounds and ancient traditions of the Orthodox church.

“I discovered Orthodoxy while I was on the Internet one day back in 2001, and I was so drawn to it that I had to go attend a liturgy,” Mitchell says. “I had no frame of reference for these traditions, but suddenly, I felt like this void was filling in my life. I felt like I was finally coming home.”

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THE ICON OF THE THEOTOKOS OF VALAAM RETURNED TO HOME MONASTERY FROM SPACE

PRAVOSLAVIE.RU Saint-Petersburg, May 22, 2006

Valaam iconThe copy of the miracle working icon of Theotokos of Valaam returned to its home monastery at the Ladozhskoye lake. According to the press secretary of the Valaam monastery Mikhail Shishkov, the revered icon was met at the main cathedral on the island, where it would be kept from now on.

Oil-painted copy of the miracle working Valaam icon was delivered to the space station with the blessing of the great Northern monastery in September 2005. It was carried by a freight spaceship Progress M54, and, according to the astronauts, has purified the space station. Accompanying Sergey Krikalev and John Phillips it flew around the Earth more than a thousand times.

The original version of the Theotokos of Valaam was created at the end of the nineteenth century by the monk of the Valaam monastery Alipy (Konstantinov). The Mother of God is pictured full height, walking on clouds with Her Son in Her arms. The space station’s copy was painted by the brothers of the Valaam monastery. Visitors from the orbital space center arrived at the monastery last summer, and Bishop Pankraty (Zherdev) of Troitsk offered them the shrine to forward to the space station.

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New US church leader says homosexuality no sin

Ed. What happens when a man enters the world with the affections ordered toward, say, five different women or another woman and another man. Do those relationships qualify for marriage too? Following the thinking of the new Episcopal bishop, it should.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) Mon Jun 19, 2006

Newly elected leader of the U.S. Episcopal Church Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said on Monday she believed homosexuality was no sin and homosexuals were created by God to love people of the same gender.

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Scientists respond to Gore’s warnings of climate catastrophe

Canada Free Press Tom Harris June 12, 2006

“The Inconvenient Truth” is indeed inconvenient to alarmists

“Scientists have an independent obligation to respect and present the truth as they see it,” Al Gore sensibly asserts in his film “An Inconvenient Truth”, showing at Cumberland 4 Cinemas in Toronto since Jun 2. With that outlook in mind, what do world climate experts actually think about the science of his movie?

Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia gives what, for many Canadians, is a surprising assessment: “Gore’s circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention.”

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Holy Sepulcre!

Wall Street Opinion Journal Daniel Henninger May 19, 2006

“The Da Vinci Code” shows that conspiracy theories have no limits.

“The Da Vinci Code” would not be the subject of this column had it not sold 60.5 million copies, according to its publisher Doubleday. Of course this does not make it the best-selling book of all time. That title, as irony would have it, goes to the Bible, half of which one of Dan Brown’s characters dismisses as “false.”

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The California homosexual activists’ assault on schoolchildren

Townhall.com Ben Shapiro May 17, 2006

On May 11, the California State Senate passed Senate Bill 1437. The bill demands “no teacher shall give instruction nor shall a school district sponsor any activity that reflects adversely upon persons because of their … gender … sexual orientation.” Current California law already prohibits discrimination in teaching based on “sex, color, creed, national origin or ancestry.” The addition of “sexual orientation” means that condemnation of homosexuality by public school employees would now be punishable by law; the addition of “gender,” which substitutes for “sex,” is defined according to California law to include “perception of the victim’s identity, appearance or behavior, whether or not that identity, appearance or behavior is different from that traditionally associated with the victim’s sex at birth” — in other words, if a boy decides to come to school in a dress, teachers may not even request that he change clothes.

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How to identify American totalitarians

Townhall.com Dennis Prager May 2, 2006

In the Soviet Union, the future is known; it’s the past that is always changing.
— old Soviet dissident joke

As a graduate student in international affairs at Columbia University, I specialized in the study of totalitarianism, especially, though not only, the communist variety. I found the subject fascinating, but I never for a moment imagined that any expertise gained in this field would prove relevant to American life.

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