Rss

  • youtube

How we choose to deal with our sin defines our destiny

Bishop Edward J. Slattery, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Tulsa, recently wrote of the confusion within the Catholic Church regarding its teaching on divorce, cohabitation, and people who experience same-sex attractions (“We are not defined by our sin”). He states that much of this confusion resulted from the Vatican’s October publication of a working paper (Relatio post Disceptationem) of the Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the Family whose purpose was to raise awareness of significant pastoral issues concerning divorce, cohabitation, and homosexuality. The document was designed “…to raise questions and indicate perspectives that will have to be matured.” [1] [emphasis added]

One of Bishop Slattery’s concerns is that much of the confusion results from contemporary commentators and even some in the church who use language that tends to diminish the human person through emphasis on their sinful activity. This is a legitimate concern, and as the bishop states, “…activity should never be confused with identity. The human person always remains greater than what he or she does or experiences.” [2] The Bishop is correct in that the importance of man’s identity is confirmed by the inestimable value God places on […] Continue Reading…



Progressive view of American history: The good old days were all bad.

There seems to be few things that are exempt from the battlefields of the culture wars. The latest casualty is history…you know, the stuff that is learned in high school or at least what people used to learn in high school. But the history lessons taught in American schools for 200 years following the founding has been dumped by the education establishment in recent years. American history is no longer the grand story of American culture since the arrival of the first Europeans but has become a tool to promote the liberal political/cultural agenda. The nation’s history recorded by each generation’s citizens and eye-witness historians is an accurate record of America’s story. But now we have the latest two or three generations which claim the five hundred years of American history recorded by thousands of historians over the period is distorted and not reflective of the real story. Therefore, it must be trashed and replaced by a revised interpretation of history consistent with the current enlightened understanding of what really happened.

This approach to history is not new for it has been around since the early 1800s. It is called the […] Continue Reading…



The synchronization of the American church?

“This court has no jurisdiction over me, I am a German,” insisted Herman Goring as he stood with other Nazi war criminals in 1946 before an international military tribunal in Nuremburg, Germany. But Robert Jackson, chief counsel for the United States, responded that “…there was a ‘law above the law’ that stood in judgment of all men in all countries and societies.”[1] These contrasting views of the source of laws by which men should be judged continue to be at the heart of the cultural conflict in America—is the ultimate source of law to be God or man? Modern America and the American church face the same dilemma as faced by Germany and the German church of the 1930s.

We have previously quoted Eric Metaxas with regard to the dramatic changes in German life following the democratic election of Adolf Hitler on January 30, 1933. In less than two months the democratically elected Reichstag (parliament) succumbed to pressure from the Nazi political machine and placed the whole power of the government under Hitler’s control. Thus began a series of radical changes to conform all of German life to Nazi rule. Metaxas’ eloquent […] Continue Reading…



Connecting the dots: The homosexual agenda

For many Americans who have been clueless about the homosexual agenda and its ultimate goal for American culture, the rapidity of recent events has caused their understanding to become clearer as the relevant features of the agenda reveal the big picture. Much like connecting the dots on a child’s line art puzzle, Americans are increasingly able to connect the dots of the homosexual agenda as each event/demand/right is connected with a preceding event/demand/right until what was once a jumble of seemingly unrelated and innocuous platitudes, occurrences, demands, and actions becomes a recognizable and frightening reality.

One of the major tools for winning concessions for the homosexual agenda is the plea/demand/right for tolerance and equality as defined by humanism. The humanists would force all to bend their knees at the altar of tolerance and equality, but that altar requires bowing to the god of humanism and embracing the consequent moral relativism which provides no means for finding truth or judging something based on the concept of right and wrong. For those that fail to bow, they become the objects of intolerant harassment through restrictions on free speech (speech codes), coercion, intimidation, and loss of religious freedom. […] Continue Reading…



Same-sex marriage will be a bust for civilization

Lisa Bracken believes that legalization of same-sex marriage would be good for Oklahoma’s economy (“Same-sex marriage can be boon for economy”[1]). She is wrong on two counts.

In the short-term, the supposed economic gains will be enormously offset by costs associated with societal dysfunction caused by same-sex marriage. Even though the legitimization of same-sex marriage is relatively new, its devastating effects are already being felt in those countries that have allowed it. Documenting 10 years of same-sex marriage and civil unions in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, Hoover Institution researcher Stanley Kurtz found that it has led to far fewer marriages and soaring illegitimacy in which “80 percent of firstborn children are born out of wedlock, and 60 percent of children born thereafter are born to unwed parents. This has a devastating impact on children since unmarried parents are much more likely to separate.” Kurtz wrote, “Marriage in Scandinavia is in deep decline, with children shouldering the burden of rising rates of family dissolution. And the mainspring of the decline—an increasingly sharp separation between marriage and parenthood—can be linked to gay marriage.”[2]

In the longer term, homosexuality and same-sex marriage undermines society. The central cultural […] Continue Reading…