Moral issues

Fr. Johannes: Philadelphia – The Cost of Equivocation

January 22, 2011April 13, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Fr. Johannes Jacobse –
Why such outrage over the Philadelphia abortionist? What moral difference is there between severing the spinal cord of a newborn with a pair of scissors and dismembering a baby with a scalpel a few moments before its birth? There isn’t any.

Yet the outcry over the brutality indicates that the fiction of viability may be lifting, and not a moment too soon. Viability, the idea that an unborn child has value only when it can live outside the womb, is a concept that the ignorant still believe has scientific credibility. It’s a rhetorical pretense that helps us avoid what we don’t want to see.

The cold hand of the malefactor reveals that the brutality outside the womb occurs inside it too. It’s not so easy to pretend anymore that a difference exists because we see one but not the other. Josef Mengele at least maintained the pretense that he was serving science. This butcher wouldn’t even do that. His staff kept their lunches in the same refrigerator where they stored left-over fetal parts.

Should we be shocked that the abortionist treated the newly born like a piece of pork? Why? How is it any different than how he treats the unborn? [Read more…]

“Now it is the Other Way Around” – The Moral Revolution in Full View

January 21, 2011January 21, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Albert Mohler –
The breathtaking pace of the moral revolution now transforming Western cultures staggers belief. In the course of a single generation, the sexual morality that has survived for thousands of years is giving way to a radically different moral understanding. Just consider the couple in the United Kingdom who were recently found guilty of discrimination because they allowed only married couples to share a bed at their small hotel.

Peter and Hazelmary Bull own a bed and breakfast hotel in Cornwall. In September of 2008, a homosexual couple requested a single bed and was denied that accommodation by the Bulls. The couple sued, and this week a judge found the Bulls guilty of discrimination under Britain’s Equality Act of 2007. [Read more…]

The Philadelphia Horror

January 21, 2011January 21, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

Kermit B. Gosnell, MD - the Philadelphia Abortionist

by Michelle Malkin –
Let’s give the “climate of hate” rhetoric a rest for a moment. It’s time to talk about the climate of death, in which the abortion industry thrives unchecked. Dehumanizing rhetoric, rationalizing language, and a callous disregard for life have numbed America to its monstrous consequences. Consider the Philadelphia Horror.

In the City of Brotherly Love, hundreds of babies were murdered by a scissors-wielding monster over four decades. Whistleblowers informed public officials at all levels of the wanton killings of innocent life. But a parade of government health bureaucrats and advocates protecting the abortion racket looked the other way — until, that is, a Philadelphia grand jury finally exposed the infanticide factory run by abortionist Kermit B. Gosnell, M.D., and a crew of unlicensed, untrained butchers masquerading as noble providers of women’s “choice.” Prosecutors charged Gosnell and his death squad with multiple counts of murder, infanticide, conspiracy, abuse of corpse, theft, and other offenses. [Read more…]

See No Evil

January 16, 2011November 2, 2015 by Orthodox Editors

by Robin of Berkeley –
One of the first books that made me thirst for God was, ironically, about His polar opposite. The book is Andrew Delbanco’s The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil.

The author describes the disastrous results of Americans rejecting the concept of evil. When Satan was alive and well, citizens practiced the Ten Commandments, atoned for their sins, and worried about eternal damnation. But today, inhabitants eschew the devil as an anachronism of days gone by.

And what has been the result of the death of Satan? More bloodshed than ever before in the history of humankind. In the 20^th century alone, hundreds of millions of people were murdered by genocidal regimes.

And yet, why would banishing Satan result in a less civilized society? Because without an understanding about how good and evil work, people are stripped of Divine intelligence. [Read more…]

Bill O’Reilly Needs No-Spin Truth: Child in the Womb is Fully Human!

January 14, 2011January 16, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Jennifer Hartline – The No-Spin Zone is once again in need of some actual truth. I tuned in on Friday night to hear Bill O’Reilly read a letter from a viewer in New York who asked him why he keeps referring to the fetus as a “potential human being.” This viewer reminded Bill that as a Roman Catholic, he should know better! How absolutely correct. O’Reilly, however, responded this way:

“I’m absolutely factually correct when I say a fetus is a potential human being and no one can deny that. I respect your opinion but until you become a Supreme Court Justice, it remains your opinion, your belief. I can’t run this program based upon my religious beliefs, so I try to put up arguments based on facts and I believe we are successful in doing that.”

Bill, in that one small paragraph you have gone so very, very wrong in so many ways.

It is not “factually correct” to say that a fetus is a “potential human being.” For starters, it isn’t scientifically correct. The fetus is an unrepeatable, unique human child, created from the joining of a woman’s egg and a man’s sperm, possessing a brand new DNA never before seen in the world. [Read more…]

For the Left, There Are No Sacred Texts

January 12, 2011January 16, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Dennis Prager – A number of well-known spokesmen on the left have voiced reservations not only about the Republican decision to have members of Congress — both Republicans and Democrats — read the Constitution aloud at the opening of the latest session of Congress. They have also voiced reservations about the American veneration of the Constitution.

Three examples:

In a recent appearance on MSNBC, Washington Post staff writer Ezra Klein said: “The issue with the Constitution is that the text is confusing because it was written more than a hundred years ago and what people believe it says differs from person to person.”

Joy Behar asked her guests on CNN’s Headline News, “Do you think this Constitution-loving is getting out of hand?”

Congressman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., complained that “They are reading it (the Constitution) like a sacred text.” [Read more…]

Civic Courage Then and Now, Bonhoeffer and Barmen

January 8, 2011January 16, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Chuck Colson – July 27, 1945. London is still slowly recovering from six years of war with Germany. Hundreds of thousands of British soldiers are dead. British cities are in ruins. As newsreels expose fresh horrors from the Nazi death camps, the British people wonder, “Is there no end to German atrocities?”

Thus, it was not surprising that many Brits recoiled when they heard about a memorial service at London’s Holy Trinity Church—not for England’s war dead, but for a German. The service would be broadcast on the BBC. Many wondered: Could there be such a thing as a good German, worthy of such an honor?

The answer was emphatically yes. The service was for Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, executed by the Nazis three weeks before the war’s end. Bonhoeffer is often remembered for his resistance to Hitler, in fact taking part in the plot to kill him. But Bonhoeffer is also celebrated for his role in a significant event in the life of the Church—the drafting of the Barmen Declaration. [Read more…]

We Must Embrace Conflict

December 23, 2010 by Orthodox Editors

12/23/2010 – Steve Jalsevac –
Christ lived and taught and was Love, but that love and teaching were never politically correct. They often involved the saying of hard truths that many did not want to hear.

Christ’s birth was the ultimate sign of God’s love for the human race. And yet He was hated and there were those who wanted to kill Him, even as an infant and later as He healed thousands of diseases and even raised some from the dead. In the end, He was cruelly murdered.

One of the lessons of His life was that true love does not avoid conflict, and true love is often obliged to say things that are not welcomed or that disturb people, although the intent is never to disturb or to hurt. True love involves sticking one’s neck out where others refuse to do so for fear of personal discomfort, loss of worldly respect, or other less-than-admirable reasons. [Read more…]

Abortion Greater Threat to Europe than Islamic Terrorism

December 20, 2010December 21, 2010 by Orthodox Editors

12/20/2010 – Hilary White –
Legal abortion is “the single most grievous moral deficit in contemporary life” and its proliferation will exact an as-yet unknown social price for the countries that have adopted it, said Lord Nicholas Windsor, the son of the Duke and Duchess of Kent, this month.

“The granting to ourselves of the right wantonly to kill, each year, millions of our offspring at the beginning of their lives: This is the question of questions for Europe,” he said.

“The practice of abortion is a mortal wound in Europe’s heart, in the center of Hellenic and Judeo-Christian culture.” [Read more…]

Democrat Mythology, Part III: Helping The Poor

December 16, 2010December 16, 2010 by Orthodox Editors

12/15/2010 – John Hayward –
Socialist politics are based around the need to provide for the less fortunate, whose misfortune is entirely beyond their control. They’re either victims of a merciless system that won’t let them get ahead, or the hapless prey of the Evil Rich. Part of this mindset involves an essential disdain for the capabilities of lower-class individuals. The idea of elevating them by providing opportunity is dismissed as a smokescreen deployed by greedy fat-cats and their paid minions. The poor must be guided and cared for.

Since the poor cannot take care of their own needs, and the benevolence of greedy citizens is unreliable, the power of the State must be deployed on their behalf. Initially, this takes the form of relatively modest welfare programs, but it soon expands into the system of tax-and-spend liberalism we recognize today. The State appropriates huge sums of money from the upper and middle class, to fund various programs for selected constituencies, who reward the socialist with their loyal votes. [Read more…]