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 |
Anti-Christians don’t have to be Hypocrites but Many Volunteer
If there is one quality that characterizes anti-Christians it is the use of a double standard. Examples abound and the ones listed below represent only a tiny sample.
The violent Muslim reaction to some Danish cartoons of Mohammed is a case in point. Not much is needed to turn a member of the “religion of peace” into a terrorist. Apart from the barbarism and immorality it is stupid to slaughter people who had nothing to do with the cartoons. It is hypocritical to applaud kidnappings, cartoons of 9-11, beheadings of innocent persons on television, but to make drawing a cartoon poking fun at Islam a crime punishable by death. One could muster more sympathy for religious disrespect of Islam if their government-controlled media were not replete with cartoons depicting Jews as pigs and monkeys while accusing them of mythical crimes such as using the blood of boys to make their matzos. This is a calumny not limited to their lunatic fringe but one perpetuated by their college professors as in Egypt. Muslims may freely establish mosques and promote their religion in our country but no churches are allowed in Saudi Arabia and in most Islamic states Christian churches are either persecuted or operate under severe restrictions. Islam has two standards—it demands tolerance but gives none.
The Danish cartoons have also revealed a double standard in our largely secularist mainstream media. When museums displayed Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ,” a work of “art” that had a crucifix in a container of the artist’s urine and Chris Ofili’s, “The Holy Virgin Mary” adorned with elephant dung and cut-outs of female genitalia, our media were champions of the blasphemy. The New York Times defended the right of the artists to “challenge” the public. Frank Rich of the NYT compared Mayor Giuliani’s threat to cut off tax funds for the museum to the Nazi condemnation of “degenerate art.” As for the Danish cartoons most of the media declined to print them out of “respect” for Muslims. The artists and critics were brave and bold when they knew that they had nothing to fear from offended Christians, but they were converted to newfound respect for a religion that might incite bombers to come to their homes. The NYT should adopt a new motto: “All the blasphemy that’s safe to print.” The editors of the Times are tone deaf when it comes to insults of Christians, but have high-gain antennas when it comes to slights against other groups.
In days past the Ku Klux Klan warned of a takeover of America by the Vatican if the Catholic candidate Al Smith were elected to the presidency. The libel of bigots in bed sheets was repeated by bigots in Gucci shoes at MoveOn.org which warned about a takeover of the judiciary by the Vatican if Bush’s judicial nominees were approved. Senators charged with the responsibility of approving nominees to the federal bench often mutter about “deeply held beliefs” of some of them. That is a code word for traditional Catholic beliefs particularly as they relate to abortion and homosexuality. Of course Justices who support unfettered abortion and homosexual marriages are devoid of “deeply held beliefs.” An unconstitutional religious litmus test has been added to the approval process. Here is a penumbra or emanation that contradicts the express wording of the “living” Constitution.
Christmas has been a national holiday since 1870 but secularists want all public Christmas displays banned, they demand that Christmas holidays be renamed winter holidays, and forbid singing of Christmas carols in public schools. There are efforts to ban Christmas crèches even on private property through zoning and signage laws. Secularists want to ban Christmas programs because they make others feel marginalized, but they would never think of forbidding Black History Month because whites feel left out.
A complaint was filed with the Village of Wellington, Florida to make invocations at meetings more inclusive and therefore eliminate the name “Jesus.” The Anti Defamation League claims that such prayers are not inclusive of people and their differences. According to their reasoning if you say “Jesus” in public you get a state church. Apparently the Constitution holds that everyone has to be included in every invocation. There is no inclusiveness clause in the Constitution but there may be one in a penumbra or an emanation that only liberal Justices can detect and which spawns new rulings at will. Perhaps the secularists will soon sue to stop the President from taking his oath of office on the Bible so that there will be no establishment of a Christian church to the exclusion of Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Wiccans, and atheists.
Secularists give kudos and Academy Award nominations to motion pictures that glorify homosexuality but go ballistic in response to motion pictures like The Passion of the Christ and Chronicles of Narnia. Cultural expressions of religion used to be considered quaint and gauche but now they are branded as bigoted and hateful. Christians are excoriated for exploiting films with a religious message or motif but films like Philadelphia which gives a sympathetic portrayal of a homosexual dying of AIDS and Brokeback Mountain, an affirmation of homosexual love, are praised.
A double standard is operating in New York City public schools where the Jewish menorah during Hanukkah and the Muslim star and crescent during Ramadan are allowed to be displayed but not Christmas crèches during the Christmas season. The first two are merely secular symbols said the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan whereas the crèche is wholly religious. The dissenting Judge Chester J. Straub declared that the decision sends a message “that Judaism and Islam are favored and that Christianity is disfavored.”
According to secularists only religious intransigence stands in the way of great breakthroughs in embryonic stem cell research, the true-blue stem-cell research. Never mind that adult stem cell research has already produced 65 therapies while embryonic stem cells have produced none at all. Indeed embryonic stem cells have caused tumors in animals injected with them. Currently they cannot be safely injected into human beings while adult stem cells are altogether safe. Secularists are so ideologically committed to stem cell research that requires destruction of nascent human life that they will not consider adult stem cell therapies even though they already ameliorate some conditions from which they personally suffer. Secularists accuse President Bush of deciding scientific questions on the basis of religious ideology. It is actually they whose ideology makes them incapable of seeing the obvious promise of adult stem cells that offer therapies here and now. Whatever disadvantages religious ideology may have it is not so blind that it refuses to see what works.
Many more items could be added to the list but these few samples should serve to prove that anti-Christians operate under double standards and that there is a concerted movement to banish religion from the public sphere if not criminalize the religion of the Founding Fathers. All the more reason to elect representatives and appoint judges who respect the principles of our Founders. Historically Christians have promoted freedom and tolerance in allowing secularists to present their point of view. Secularists who prattle mightily about liberty are the ones who curtail freedom and limit expression of Christian values.
(Printed March, 2006)
St. Mary's Church Pastor & Vicar
