The Seven Sacraments of Secularism

New Advent Bishop Thomas Doran August 17, 2006

I want to touch on this matter before we get too close to the November madness. As human beings, as citizens of a “first world country,” as Americans, and as Catholics, most importantly, we have to take count of the circumstances in which we live. We know that the only creatures of God that outlast time are those created having intellect and will. All other things, with the passage of time, break up or break down.

Many of the issues that confront us are serious, and we know by now that the political parties in our country are at loggerheads as to how to solve them. We know, for instance, that adherents of one political party would place us squarely on the road to suicide as a people.

The seven “sacraments” of their secular culture are abortion, buggery, contraception, divorce, euthanasia, feminism of the radical type, and genetic experimentation and mutilation. These things they unabashedly espouse, profess and promote. Their continuance in public office is a clear and present danger to our survival as a nation.
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Why Liberals Refuse to Admit the Reality of Islamic Fascism

Human Events Online Rabbi Aryeh Spero August 16, 2006

Blind animus for President Bush is insufficient to explain liberals’ refusal to acknowledge the reality of a cruel and imperialistic jihadist push worldwide. Nor is it simply liberals’ unwillingness to work with Republicans and conservatives that render them incapable of serious and active participation in the War on Terror. It is that by so doing, liberals would be forced to upend the world view and social philosophies that have animated them since the early ’60s.

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Going Beyond Same-Sex Marriage

Ed. Speaking of the moral decline of our culture…

American Spectator Mark Tooley August 15, 2006

WASHINGTON — Advocates of same-sex unions of course argue that they only want equality for homosexual persons. Conservative skeptics surmise that the campaign to redefine marriage is about considerably more than simply legal recognition for same-sex couples. In fact, they suspect, the ultimate goal is to set aside marriage altogether as a repressive and patriarchal anachronism. In its absence, all consensual sexual arrangements will be legitimate.

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Gore isn’t quite as green as he’s led the world to believe

USA Today Rusty Kennedy August 10, 2006

Al Gore has spoken: The world must embrace a “carbon-neutral lifestyle.” To do otherwise, he says, will result in a cataclysmic catastrophe. “Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb,” warns the website for his film, An Inconvenient Truth. “We have just 10 years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tailspin.”

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Mass Murder Foiled

Wall Street Opinion Journal August 11, 2006

A terror plot is exposed by the policies many American liberals oppose.

Friday, 12:01 a.m. EDT

Americans went to work yesterday to news of another astonishing terror plot against U.S. airlines, only this time the response was grateful relief. British authorities had busted the “very sophisticated” plan “to commit mass murder” and arrested 20-plus British-Pakistani suspects. As we approach the fifth anniversary of 9/11 without another major attack on U.S. soil, now is the right moment to consider the policies that have protected us–and those in public life who have fought those policies nearly every step of the way.

It’s not as if the “Islamic fascists”–to borrow President Bush’s description yesterday–haven’t been trying to hit us. They took more than 50 lives last year in London with the “7/7” subway bombings. There was the catastrophic attack in Madrid the year before

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Soaking the Rich: Guess who is paying more in taxes now?

Wall Street Opinion Journal July 12, 2006

Yesterday’s political flurry over the falling budget deficit shows that even Washington can’t avoid the obvious forever: to wit, the gusher of revenues flowing into the Treasury in the wake of the 2003 tax cuts. The trend has been obvious for more than a year (see our May 23, 2005, editorial, “Revenues Rising”), but now it’s so large that Republicans are trying to take credit while Democrats explain it away.

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Liberal Christianity is paying for its sins

Los Angeles Times Charlotte Allen July 9, 2006

Out-of-the-mainstream beliefs about gay marriage and supposedly sexist doctrines are gutting old-line faiths.

The accelerating fragmentation of the strife-torn Episcopal Church USA, in which several parishes and even a few dioceses are opting out of the church, isn’t simply about gay bishops, the blessing of same-sex unions or the election of a woman as presiding bishop. It also is about the meltdown of liberal Christianity.

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The American Biblical Tradition: The King James Version used to be our common text

Wall Street Opinion Journal Mark A Knoll Friday, July 7, 2006

In 1911 the English-speaking world paused to mark the 300th anniversary of the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible, with American political leaders foremost in the chorus of exaltation. To former president Theodore Roosevelt, this Bible translation was “the Magna Carta of the poor and the oppressed . . . the most democratic book in the world.” Soon-to-be president Woodrow Wilson said much the same thing: “The Bible (with its individual value of the human soul) is undoubtedly the book that has made democracy and been the source of all progress.”

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Desert Prayer With Egyptian Roots

Los Angeles Times David Kelly July 3, 2006

Life at North America’s only Coptic Orthodox monastery is rigorous and strictly for worship. It draws those who seek a deeper insight into Christianity.

NEWBERRY SPRINGS, Calif. — Down an unpaved road, past brooding icons and swaying stands of mesquite, lies St. Antony’s Monastery, a place of scorching winds and emptiness that perhaps only a holy man could love.

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Docs: Comatose Man’s Brain Rewired Itself

Ed. This is the reason why we have to keep the euthansia crowd away from the infirm. They would argue that Terry Wallis should be dead. Note too how quickly the reporter points out the same cannot be hoped for someone like Terri Schaivo; clearly an implicit defense of her killing given how early it appears in the piece.

Brietbart.com Marilynn Marchione July 3, 2006

Man wakes from coma after 20 years.Doctors have their first proof that a man who was barely conscious for nearly 20 years regained speech and movement because his brain spontaneously rewired itself by growing tiny new nerve connections to replace the ones sheared apart in a car crash.

Terry Wallis, 42, is one of the few people known to have recovered so dramatically so long after a serious brain injury. He still needs help eating and cannot walk, but his speech continues to improve and he can count to 25 without interruption.

Wallis’ sudden recovery happened three years ago at a rehabilitation center in Mountain View, Ark., but doctors said the same cannot be hoped for people in a persistent vegetative state, such as Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman who died last year after a fierce right-to- die court battle. Nor do they know how to make others with less serious damage, like Wallis, recover.

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