Quote for the Day

"Own only what you can carry with you; know language, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag."

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

Quote for the Day

"Do not pursue what is illusory - property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade and can be confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life - don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing."

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

Christian Reflections, Fourteen

Editor's note: This is longer than our usual "reflections." However, the article points out very apt points that despite theological wranglings, Reformed Protestants and Orthodox Catholics will most certainly agree upon. As indeed, each has faced the same compromisers, then immoral celebrants, intent upon removing all tenents of the Christian faith that might require adherents to die to self, and live to Christ. Fortunately, both groups have stood firm, although upon the fringes, the liberals have induced many to join and try to chip away at the Rock. They are breaking against the cliffs. But vigilance must be maintained.

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The difference between “anything goes” and Christian inclusiveness

By Father Thomas Williams
in National Review Online

To celebrate Holy Week and Easter, the United Church of Christ (UCC) produced an attention-grabbing television ad highlighting its inclusive policies. Viewers watch an “intolerant” church rejecting — or rather, literally ejecting — a black mother, a gay couple, an Arab, and a person using a walker. As each tries to sit in a church pew, he or she is sent flying by an ejector seat.




The ad contrasts the inclusive UCC with the ejecting church: “The United Church of Christ: no matter who you are, or where you are on life’s journey, you’re welcome here.”

This is, in many ways, a wonderful message. It strikes a chord with us Americans in our conviction that all should be welcome, none rejected. The inscription on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, penned by American poet Emma Lazarus in 1883, sums up American open-heartedness:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

More to the point, wasn’t it Christ himself who welcomed the “wretched refuse” of his time, associating with publicans and adulterers, lepers, prostitutes, and the whole offal of Palestine? He and his disciples were from the wrong side of the tracks, the Palestinian outback of Galilee — a powerful message for the rich and famous of his time and ours. He was fiercely criticized for fraternizing with outcasts, and disparagingly dubbed a “friend of tax collectors and sinners.” Isn’t this absolute inclusiveness essential to the Christian message?

Yet I suspect the UCC ad had a more specific criticism in mind. I am unaware of any church in America that turns away blacks, or that has a policy against Arabs or handicapped persons. There are, however, a number of Christian churches that consider homosexual behavior to be sinful. By sneaking the gay couple in between the African-American woman and the Arab-American, the UCC disingenuously equates racial discrimination with moral principle.

There is a difference between a church saying “We welcome all persons” and “We welcome all behavior.” After all, two things distinguish Christian belief: a body of doctrine and a moral code. Following Jesus entails both. Jesus welcomed prostitutes, but he never welcomed prostitution.

He was soft on adulterers, but unyielding on adultery. After forgiving the adulterous woman, in fact, he adds: “Go and sin no more.” And the tax collector Zacchaeus, on encountering Jesus, promises to pay back all those he has cheated — fourfold. Jesus never welcomed cheating, but he did welcome reformed cheaters. This is not just a matter of semantic hair-splitting. Jesus came to call sinners but to condemn sin, much as a doctor heals sick people but eradicates sickness.

There is a problem with identifying people with their choices. Thieves are welcome in the church not as thieves, but as human persons. When Jesus tells the chief priests and elders that “the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you” (Matthew 21:31), he is not winking at thievery and prostitution. He is responding, rather, to their willingness to acknowledge their errors and to change.

The Church is absolutely inclusive toward persons (all are invited to enter) but not toward ideas or behavior. If our “inclusiveness” means that we are no longer able or willing to distinguish between good and bad behavior and to make universal moral judgments like “wife beating is bad,” then we have effectively abandoned morality.

The UCC might respond that homosexuality is genetically determined. Science is ambivalent on the subject, and studies contradict one another. Yet, regardless of the biological component to homosexuality, the UCC would be missing the point. The fact of the matter is, we all are teeming with inclinations and tendencies — some good, some bad. The whole idea of self-mastery and virtue is to sort through those tendencies and to harness them for good. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fail, but it beats throwing in the towel.

People have always looked for scapegoats for their wrongdoing. Justifications and rationalizations are part and parcel of human conduct. The difference is, where people in the past often blamed others, or their upbringing, now they blame their genes. Few today would join comedian Flip Wilson in saying “the devil made me do it,” but plenty seem ready to say, “My DNA made me do it.” Such abdication of personal responsibility crushes the transcendence of the human person.

Christianity is essentially inclusive. Christians believe that Jesus came to call sinners — all sinners — and to die for us so that we might have life. All are invited, none excluded. Yet he also taught about right and wrong, and distinguished between good behavior and bad. No one is in a position to throw stones, but in good conscience we cannot turn the Gospel’s moral message on its head.

— Father Thomas D. Williams, LC, is dean of the theology school at Rome’s Regina Apostolorum University where he teaches Catholic Social Doctrine, and is a Vatican Analyst for NBC News and MSNBC.

Quote for the Day

As the astronauts soar into the vast eternities of space, on earth the garbage piles higher; as the groves of academe extend their domain, their alumni’s arms reach lower; as the phallic cult spreads, so does impotence. In great wealth, great poverty, in health, sickness, in numbers, deception. Gorging, left hungry, sedated, left restless; telling all, hiding all; in flesh united, forever separate. So we press on through the valley of abundance that leads to the wasteland of satiety, passing through the gardens of fantasy, seeking happiness ever more ardently, and finding despair ever more surely.

Malcom Muggeridge, “The Great Liberal Death Wish”

Spucatum tauri: Accesorize Your Wardrobe with Totalitarian Symbols

From Andrew Stuttaford, National Review Online:

"Yes, this is an old topic, but it’s still a point worth making: Via the Media Research Center: 'On Monday, for the second straight weekday, Access Hollywood's New York correspondent, Tim Vincent… sported a hammer and sickle T-shirt as he introduced a story.'
Now, this doesn’t make Tim Vincent Joe Stalin, and nor does it mean that NBC is run by Bolsheviks, but it’s yet another reminder of the way that the atrocities of Communism somehow seem to count for less than those of other mass-murderers.
Put it another way: would Tim Vincent have appeared on Access Hollywood sporting a swastika?"

Editor's note: Additional options include the Chinese flag, Che Guevara, Zapatista Revolution, and anything Pro-Palestine (pro terror) or anti-Zionist (Jew/Israel). In fact, your choices also include anything anti-American or the very fashionable, anti-Bush. This last choice has demonstrated amazing staying power, remaining in vogue for six years straight.

From our research though, a few symbolic icons are not appropriate. As mentioned above, avoid the swastika. (We heartily agree, by the way, we just don't understand how a regime that kills under 10 million is worse than those that kill close to 100 million)
Others to avoid (and we heartily dissent) - the Israeli flag, certainly the American flag, any non-cute, non-ironic, non-sarcastic shows of support for our fighting men and women. And anything with a real sensible message (pro-life, pro-gun, pro-intelligence).

Quote for the Day

"Hollywood - A place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss, and fifty cents for your soul."

-Marilyn Monroe

Chronicle of the Damned, part 10 (revisited)

PETA Earns Its Thirty Pieces Of Silver

taken from the above linked article

April 17, 2006

While hundreds of millions of families prepared to celebrate Easter this weekend, the fanatics at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) took advantage of the occasion to spread some disturbing holiday "cheer."

In Austria, PETA mock-crucified activists wearing masks of pigs and other animals on Good Friday -- right outside St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, where Catholics were celebrating the holiday. Apparently the pig-man died for our "sins of nourishment." (We're pretty sure that even plants die when we eat them.) The Archdiocese of Vienna called the protest "a completely unacceptable falsification of the religious dimension of Good Friday."

Meanwhile, in Australia, PETA was denied a similarly offensive and ridiculous display when billboard owners in Sydney refused to put up an Easter message featuring a bloody, crucified lamb.

Especially laughable was PETA's misappropriation of the Bible in its grotesque Austrian protest. Many of the activists carried signs reading "Du sollst nicht töten," German for "Thou shalt not kill." We're not Bible experts, but considering that the Ten Commandments appear in a book that explicitly condones the eating of meat, we're pretty confident that it's not exactly an animal-rights tract.

PETA has a long and tawdry history of distorting religious traditions to advance its own agenda. Download a copy of our report, "Holy Cows: How PETA twists religion to push animal 'rights'" and learn more about how far they'll go.

Editor's Note: see our earlier Chronicle of the Damned, part 10, for more details on PETA's destination (hint: it is deep in the bowels of the inferno)

Quote for the Day

"What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue."

Edmund Burke

Easter Sunday: The Day of Resurrection!

Editor's note: We celebrate, with thankful hearts, a debt that was paid twenty centuries ago.

The Day of Resurrection!

John Neale de­scribed how ear­ly Greek Christ­ians sang this hymn:
As mid­night ap­proached, the arch­bi­shop, with his priests, ac­com­pa­nied by the king and queen, left the church and sta­tioned them­selves on the plat­form, which was raised con­sid­er­a­bly from the ground, so that they were dis­tinct­ly seen by the peo­ple. Ev­er­y­one now re­mained in breath­less ex­pec­ta­tion, hold­ing an un­light­ed ta­per in rea­di­ness when the glad mo­ment should ar­rive, while the priests still con­tin­ued mur­mur­ing their mel­an­cho­ly chant in a low half whis­per. Sud­den­ly a single re­port of a can­non an­nounced that twelve o’clock had struck and that Eas­ter Day had be­gun; then the old arch­bi­shop, ele­vat­ing the cross, ex­claimed in a loud, ex­ult­ing tone, “Christ­os anes­te!” “Christ is ris­en!” and in­stant­ly ev­ery sin­gle in­di­vid­u­al of all that host took up the cry…At that same mo­ment the op­press­ive dark­ness was suc­ceed­ed by a blaze of light from thou­sands of tap­ers which…seemed to send streams of fire in all di­rect­ions.

The Day of Resurrection

by John of Damascus, Sixth Century

The day of resurrection! Earth, tell it out abroad;

The Passover of gladness, the Passover of God.

From death to life eternal, from earth unto the sky,

Our Christ hath brought us over, with hymns of victory.

Our hearts be pure from evil, that we may see aright

The Lord in rays eternal of resurrection light;

And listening to His accents, may hear, so calm and plain,

His own “All hail!” and, hearing, may raise the victor strain.

Now let the heavens be joyful! Let earth the song begin!

Let the round world keep triumph, and all that is therein!

Let all things seen and unseen their notes in gladness blend,

For Christ the Lord hath risen, our joy that hath no end.