Tag Archives: morality

Crimethink?

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A couple weeks ago I heard about 11 Christians who were arrested while peacefully
protesting Outfest in Philadelphia. I waited for a few MSM outlets to report it,
but they didn’t. Here are two WorldNetDaily articles about it. I wish I had some
less obviously conservative sources. Any suggestions?

11 Christians arrested at homosexual event
Demonstrators spend 21 hours in jail, charged with felonies

Homosexuals planned Christian harassment
‘OutFest’ organizers announced efforts to block protesters now facing prison

More about crimethink:

Criminalized thoughts?
By Amy Doolittle, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Jokes about political correctness have been around for more than a decade, and many Americans now take for granted conflicts over manger scenes on public property and Christmas carols in public schools. Hostility toward religious expression is no joke, however, to advocates concerned that “hate crimes” laws could be used to rob Americans of religious freedom, which they say is already the case in some parts of Europe.

Sins of the Fathers

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There’s been a lot of buzz in the Catholic blogosphere (blogohemisphere? hemiblogosphere?) about a homosexual couple who enrolled their adopted sons into kindergarten at a Costa Mesa Catholic school. Apparently, parents of some of the other students are having a conniption over this and demanding that only Catholics in good standing be allowed to enroll children in St. John the Baptist School.

Not all of the parents oppose the enrollments and one of them, John Stephens, says most of what I’m thinking.

"As for a moral covenant solution, I just think that most parents in school, if not all of them, are sinners in a lot of ways. I certainly don’t want my kids’ admission into the school to be based on my morality."

"These kids are baptized Catholics, so they’re entitled, therefore, to be members of our parish, which includes going to our school. No one suggested the kids did anything wrong, so I don’t see how anyone could exclude them from the school. Even if you took the position that homosexuality is a bad thing, logically you would want the kids to get a good Catholic education so they could eventually get exposure to the faith on the issue of homosexuality."

Let us suppose that the punishment for the sins of the father should be visited upon the son. Is homosexuality more wrong than adultery? Than contraception? Than abortion? Than taking the Eucharist in a state of mortal sin? Homosexual acts are but one small part of the sin of lust. What of the other six capital sins? Surely nearly every parent of a child at that school is guilty of one or more of them. Should their kids be kicked out? Heaven forbid!

However, the truth is that everyone is responsible for his/her own sins. This was established before Jesus came and pointed out the message of love the Jews had been blind to.

"Yet you say, ‘Why should not the son suffer for the iniquity of the father?’ When the son has done what is lawful and right, and has been careful to observe all my statutes, he shall surely live. The soul that sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself." – Ezekiel 18:19-20

These children have a decent chance of learning the teachings of the Church through their Catholic education, perhaps even witnessing to their parents against homosexuality.

Or at least they had a decent chance until their story made news. Heaven only knows how this will scar them. How many reporters will harass them? How many classmates will torment them? How many parents will look down at them? How many lawsuits might they have to endure? May the Lord bless them and keep them.

Values

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A post-election poll conducted by Zogby International confirmed that American voters have a far broader definition of “moral values” than the far-right would like us to believe. When asked which “moral issue most influenced your vote”, 42% of respondents chose the war in Iraq, while only 13% said abortion and 9% said same-sex marriage.

This is the same Zogby that’s trying desparately to save face after totally blowing the election prediction. Signers of this petition may have been duped.

Right now, neither party gets the values question right. The Democrats seem uncomfortable with the language of faith and values, preferring in recent decades the secular approach of restricting such matters to the private sphere. But where would we be if Martin Luther King Jr. had kept his faith to himself? The separation of church and state does not require the segregation of moral language and values from public life. The Republicans are comfortable with the language of religion and values. But the GOP wants to narrow the focus to hot-button social issues it then uses as wedges in political campaigns, while ignoring or obstructing the application of such values where they would threaten its agenda.

I like the way Jim Wallis thinks. I don’t agree with all of his points in “Neither Democrats nor Republicans have a clue“, but it’s nice to hear another voice in the desert of the center.

Pencils Down

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This one one irks me. An
archbishop in Brisbane, Australian has spoken out against what he calls “spying
in church”. He wants people to stop taking notes of liturgical abuses.
To a certain extent, I understand where he’s coming from. Sacrifice and worship
should be the focus of the mass, not keeping track of every little thing done not
quite right. However, I can’t agree with his insistence that all note-taking stop.
If their weren’t abuses to report, people wouldn’t need to take notes. If nobody
takes notes, abuses go unreported. If abuses go unreported, the Eucharist may continue
to be desecrated and the Church disobeyed.

It’s ironic that this archbishop would squelch note-taking in order to restore focus
to the Eucharist, but that very squelching could lead to the improper handling of
that same Eucharistic worship. Redemptionis Sacramentum was written for a
reason – there were abuses to be corrected. I’ve witnessed first-hand the apparent
ignorance of, or perhaps apathy towards, that document in parishes. In those places,
it’s up to the faithful remnant of the laity to report abuses to the Church. How
else will they be corrected?

The Sin of Nice

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Recently, the proprietor of this blogspace, Mr. Funky Dung, commented
about the "nice things" I say here from time to time. Though I am reasonably
certain that Mr. Dung intended it as a compliment, perhaps in the vein of "nice
arse kicking" or "nice proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem," part
of me was quite taken aback [I meant it in the sense of "nice reasoning"
or "well thought out response" or "good points". – Funky]
You see, "nice" has been registered as a complaint leveled against
Evangelicaldom in recent years. And as one of the token Evangelicals in these blogparts,
I must confess that I take the criticism to be all too often valid. I am therefore
probably more sensitive to occurrences of this word that most folks, not having
been accused of the sin of nice, use in a completely innocent, even complimentary,
way. Let me ‘splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up…

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