What Religious Liberty?
The Incredible Ever-Expanding Dead End
Anti-Cure, Anti-Life
Whose Values in
Education?
Toppling
Dominos
Anti-Christians
don't have to be Hypocrites but Many Volunteer
Intolerant Tolerance
The Emperor's
Clothes or a Cheap Tuxedo
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part I
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part II
Embryonic
Stem Cell Research Again
The Madness of
Secularism
"Don't Impose Your
Religion on Me"
Dictatorship of Relativism
Two Babies at Christmas
Living Will or Death
Warrant?
Court Ordered
Slow Motion Torture-Death Sentence
Men in Black
A Lot of Hot Air
The Culture War
Battles
"Stay with us, Lord"
Secular-to-English Dictionary
Moral Guidance for
Catholics in this Election
Christians
Losing America
Stem Cell Wars
Catholic
Pro-Abortion Politicians and Communion
Useful Idiots
Who Killed Jesus?
A Primer on Gay
Marriage
Whose Side are You
on?
Vouchers Revisited
Real and Fake
Cloning Bans
Broken Compasses
No Room in the Inn
Killing Fields
Revisited
Gay but not Merry
Adam and Steve?
The Battle for the Court
Victimless Crimes
More Salt, Please
The Next Big Fight
When Religion
Becomes Evil
Virginity Making a Comeback?
You've Come a Long Way,
Baby
The Incarnational
Approach
The Many Meanings of ACLU
Things Your Media Never Told
You
A Nasty Little Secret
Two Points of View on the Birth of Jesus
You Gotta Kill Them. How Else
Are They Going To Learn?
Perplexing Christmas Questions
How Do You See Christ Today?
Now that there is Another Ewe, will there be
Another You?
What is Conscience Anyhow?
Divorce of Love and Life
What Counts as a Mass?
What is a Covenant?
I Wish I had Your Faith
Are there Too Many Decrees of
Nullity?
Dutch Treats
Ecumenism
Going from Baby Doe to Granny Doe
Comments of Evangelium Vitae
The Exception Corrupts the Rule
Good Morality or
Good Medicine
Generation-X'ers Smart in Every Way But
One
A Matter of Good Breeding
Herod and Pontius Pilate at the
Polls
Hitler's Pope or Righteous Gentile?
The Unknown God
What exactly is wrong with
homosexuality?
Ideology Trumps Science, Reality,
and Common Sense
What Exactly is an Indulgence?
Infallibility and Error in the Church
Pilate Asked, "What is Truth?"
The Truth about Families
New Killing Fields
Choice of Language and Language of
Choice
A Lexicon for Our Day
Why are there so many bodies?
Marijuana, Medicine or Menace?
Medical Research and Ethics
Meditation
"You Taught me well,
Mommie dearest"
Moral Fallout
Neutral on the Wrong
Side
"These are the
Nineties After All"
Many are Wed but Few
are Married
"...Prepare him for
additional obligations"
A Useful Lie
A Partridge in a
Pear Tree
Religious Persecution in
the U.S.?
What Makes a Person a
Person?
The Point of a Point of
View
Politically Correct,
Morally Depraved
Population
Controllers out of Control
Practical Dreamers
Social Progress
through Immorality
Shall we Do Evil for
Goodness Sake?
Reason and Faith
Resurrection Glory
Same Sex Marriages?
Pearl of Great Price
"I used to be
schizophrenic, but we're all right now"
Sexual Morality
Irrelevant in Judging Public Officials?
Undesirable Side Effects
Some News is Good News
SOSSLQ's, not POSSLQ's
Spoils of Splits
Why Attend Mass
Every Sunday?
Is it All Right to Pull
the Plug?
An Appeal for Intolerance
Topics Catechetical
A Voting Catechism
A Moral Guide to
Voting
Vouchers: Has Their Time Come?
What Child is This?
What did they die of?
You are the Man
You may be a liberal
if...
Get Rid of that Worthless
Relative
Planned Un-Parenthood
Weighing Pro-Life Issues
Prior to Voting
|
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by Monsignor James C. Brunner |
Faith Points |
Whose Side are you on?
One of the unpleasant surprises in the war on terrorism was to find an American citizen fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan. Americans wondered how this young man could betray his country and give aid and comfort to an enemy that had viciously and treacherously attacked us. It was clear to most Americans that he was guilty of being on the un-American side and physically assisting that side. They called him the American Taliban. He may have been misguided but most Americans were not in favor of letting him off free.
Now let us have a look at the sides in another war, the culture war between secularists and religionists. The two sides have directly opposite positions on important elements in our society. We give some examples below.
Secularists believe that the rights of minorities trump the majority in public expressions of religion. If a minority group takes offense at the name of Jesus, or of images of the Ten Commandments, of Christmas displays, and of the mention of God on our money and the Pledge of Allegiance, then they must be eliminated. Religionists believe that driving religion from the public sphere interferes with our constitutional right to religious expression. They also believe that, unless the position is immoral, the rule of the majority should hold sway. Secularists want to eliminate God and Christianity from our universities and deny the influence of Christianity on the development of this nation’s principles and laws. Religionists believe that sound morality is at the basis of our liberty and that it will erode to the degree that sound morality no longer governs our institutions. Secularists believe that public prayers should be banned but nude dancing is a protected form of free expression. For secularists consensual sodomy is a sacred right but protesting at abortion clinics is not free speech.
Secularists believe that free speech must be untrammeled, unless it is religious speech or speech that would dissuade one from seeking an abortion, and laws that protect children from internet pornography set us on the slippery slope of restricting freedom of the press. Religionists believe that immoral discourse should be restricted for the good of children and adults.
Secularists think that crime is the result of bad environment while religionists insist it is the result of immoral decisions. Secularists think that marriage should not be confined to a man and a woman but should include all sorts of groupings such as men with men, women with women, or even combinations of men and women. Religionists maintain that marriage is limited to a man and a woman and that has been found empirically to be best for children and society. Secularists believe that the child is the creature of the State and that parents should have no rights in the choice of schools for their children or the choice of values imparted to them. Religionists hold that children belong primarily to their parents who have the fundamental right and obligation to direct their upbringing.
Secularists believe that women have a right to abortion during all stages of pregnancy and, in the case of partial-birth abortion, in the act of delivery itself. Religionists believe that all human life is sacred and should be protected from conception. Secularists believe that it should be permissible to end the lives of those who are no longer productive or economically useful. Religionists believe that life must be respected until natural death and that allowing deviations from this will lead to abuses of human beings by those who desire the death of others for other than altruistic reasons. Secularists believe in the legalization of most drugs. Religionists think that abuse of drugs that debilitate reason and enslave with their addictiveness should be outlawed.
Secularists believe that sex among juveniles is natural and so youths should be taught “safe” sex. Religionists are opposed to the use of sex outside marriage and deplore the results of so-called safe sex such as sexually transmitted diseases, teen-age pregnancies, abortions, and single parent families that research shows to be less than ideal for children.
Secularists are directly opposed to nearly everything that religionists believe or say they believe. Why then do religionists support secularism with their votes? Christians in general and Catholics in particular vote in large numbers for candidates who advocate suppression of religion in public, who promote abortion with their votes, and who in general are part of the secularist movement. This is as puzzling to me as that an American citizen would aid the Taliban enemies of the United States. Even more bewildering is the spectacle of seeing so-called Catholic politicians who are a disgrace to the Church in the forefront of promoting such secularist positions as abortion on demand.
Why do people vote against their avowed religious principles? One answer may be ignorance of the effect of their vote. In this case we have a new and poignant verification of the waggish definition of democracy—one idiot, one vote. Such persons are “useful idiots” and dupes who assist secularists in imposing their immoral values on the rest of society. Perhaps one’s party affiliation is inherited and one identifies himself and his culture in terms of a political party. If that is what leads people to vote for persons who support abortion and elimination of religion from the public arena, have they considered that their vote is a direct contradiction of their religious heritage and value system? Do people vote for promoters of secularist values because one party is perceived as being better on benefits or entitlements that they wish to receive? If that is so, have they considered that the desired benefit, should it be bestowed, comes at the expense of more than a million deaths unborn human beings annually and the restriction of their own religious expression?
Homosexual activists are about 2% of the population and only 11% identify themselves as atheists and agnostics. Yet these groups are succeeding in imposing their value system of death and immorality on the rest of the population with the support of Catholics and other religions. If Catholics voted their alleged convictions most candidates supporting abortion could not be elected. Their vote which enables the continuation of abortion and other assaults on morality makes them complicit in the shedding of innocent blood and the increase of immorality.
In the 1830s the prevailing immorality was slavery. Abolitionists discovered that appeals to Christianity and humanity failed to end the practice. Instead, slave owners were outraged that their practice was criticized. It was not until abolitionists joined forces with the newly formed Republican Party that slavery was outlawed. In our day we must also become involved in politics to outlaw the immorality of abortion and the diminution of our rights to articulate our religious beliefs in public.
So, whose side are you on? There is a simple test to determine that. I will tell you what side you are on. Just tell me for whom you voted. If you voted for supporters of secularist positions whether out of ignorance, habit, malice or for personal advantage, you are a secularist by your own choice and a religious equivalent of the American Taliban.
(Printed February, 2004)
St. Mary's Church Pastor & Vicar
