Orthodixie

In all honesty, especially since my mother sometimes reads this blog, I must admit: Most of the snarkier teachings (below) I actually learned from my father. This list comes courtesy of a FWD from my wife. Enjoy!

THINGS MY MOTHER TAUGHT ME …

1. TO APPRECIATE A JOB WELL DONE.
“If you’re going to kill each other, do it outside. I just finished cleaning.”

2. RELIGION.
“You better pray that will come out of the carpet.”

3. TIME TRAVEL.
“If you don’t straighten up, I’m going to knock you into the middle of next week!”

4. LOGIC.
” Because I said so, that’s why.”

5. MORE LOGIC.
“If you fall out of that swing and break your neck, you’re not going to the store with me.”

6. FORESIGHT.
“Make sure you wear clean underwear, in case you’re in an accident.”

7. IRONY.
“Keep crying, and I’ll give you something to cry about.”

8. OSMOSIS.
“Shut your mouth and eat your supper.”

9. CONTORTIONISM.
“Will you look at that dirt on the back of your neck!”

10. STAMINA.
“You’ll sit there until all that spinach is gone.”

11. WEATHER.
“This room of yours looks as if a tornado went through it.”

12. HYPOCRISY.
“If I told you once, I’ve told you a million times. Don’t exaggerate!”

13. CIRCLE OF LIFE.
“I brought you into this world, and I can take you out.”

14. BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION.
“Stop acting like your father!”

15. ENVY.
“There are millions of less fortunate children in this world who don’t have wonderful parents like you do.”

16. ANTICIPATION.
“Just wait until we get home.”

17. RECEIVING.
“You are going to get it when you get home!”

18. MEDICAL SCIENCE.
“If you don’t stop crossing your eyes, they are going to get stuck that way.”

19. ESP.
“Put your sweater on; don’t you think I know when you are cold?”

20. HUMOR.
“When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don’t come running to me.”

21. HOW TO BECOME AN ADULT.
“If you don’t eat your vegetables, you’ll never grow up.”

22. GENETICS.
“You’re just like your father.”

23. ROOTS.
“Shut that door behind you. Do you think you were born in a barn?”

24. WISDOM.
“When you get to be my age, you’ll understand.”

And …

My mother taught me about JUSTICE.
“One day you’ll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you !”

“I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s wrong to be queer, but that’s a long story. Oh, the reasons are comparatively simple. In the first place, all homosexual acts are acts of envy. In the second, the more you’re involved with someone, the more trouble arises, and affection shouldn’t result in that. It shows something’s wrong somewhere.”

More.

Oh, and about the picture on “HOMOPHOBIA” …?

Mollie explains it.

Peggy Noonan, after writing about President Bush’s failure and his use of the “S” word, ventures into the flopping of The Da Vinci Code …

Speaking of the detachment of the elites, the second big news of the week–in some ways it may be bigger–is the apparent critical failure of “The DaVinci Code.” After its first screening in Cannes, critics and observers called it tedious, painfully long, bloated, grim, so-so, a jumble, lifeless and talky.

There is a God. Or, as a sophisticated Christian pointed out yesterday, there is an Evil One, and this may be proof he was an uncredited co-producer. The devil loves the common, the stale. He can’t use beauty; it undermines him. “Banality is his calling card.”

I do not understand the thinking of a studio that would make, for the amusement of a nation 85% to 90% of whose people identify themselves as Christian, a major movie aimed at attacking the central tenets of that faith, and insulting as poor fools its gulled adherents. Why would Tom Hanks lend his prestige to such a film? Why would Ron Howard? They’re both already rich and relevant. A desire to seem fresh and in the middle of a big national conversation? But they don’t seem young, they seem immature and destructive. And ungracious. They’ve been given so much by their country and era, such rich rewards and adulation throughout their long careers. This was no way to say thanks.

Read it.

HT: News Forum

UPDATE: Reviews of The Da Vinci Code!

HT: Dawn

Asked whether his wife Rita Wilson, who comes from a Greek Orthodox background, had any qualms about a story that has been condemned from Greek churches, he said: “No, absolutely not. My heritage, and that of my wife, suggests that our sins have been taken away, not our brains.”

More.

Oh my! Please forgive me, but this is kinda cool …

‘I wish there were some way to get a bunch of like-minded people together [at the movie theater] and get them to mock the living daylights out of this: dress up for it, like albino monks and Spanish Inquisition cardinals; at every mention of the eeevil Vatican, cheer loudly and give them a chorus of God Bless Our Pope; loud booing when the heroes are mentioned; when the infamous flagellation scenes start, say loudly:

Call that a discipline?

This is a discipline!

… and wave a thumping great cat o nine tails in the air; to heighten tension and create the requisite dramatic mood, chant a few verses of the Dies Irae; you know, stuff like that.

Comment passed on from GetReligion.

Today marks the half way point on our journey from Pascha to Pentecost. So, let us cry:

Christ is Risen from the dead, trampling down death by Death … and upon those in the tombs bestowing Life!

Now, here’s the news …

KIEV (The Birthplace of Russian Orthodoxy) – As “Pastor Sunday” prepared to make a grand entrance, the choirgirls shook their pompoms, the disco lights started to flash and a fanfare sounded. The lights cut out, and Mr Adelaja emerged from a shroud of dry ice. Children holding flags of the world wafted round him and the choir bellowed “Sanctus!”

The congregation responded enthusiastically. Many danced in the aisles. With his eyes closed and brows furrowed in concentration, he raised his arms aloft. A hush fell over the audience.

“A man who is having problems functioning in his manly area, God is healing you,” he intoned. “Those who are having skin problems, God is healing you.”

On and on he droned, curing everything from buttock problems to bankruptcy. Some in the congregation wept, others bellowed hallelujahs. Ushers discreetly passed around collection boxes.

Read more at Directions to Orthodoxy.

Bill O’Reilly … on Judas?

Has someone ever stuck up for you, but that defense came up short or even raised its own problems?

That’s the case for Christians with Bill O’Reilly, the pugnacious, populist television talker on Fox News, who wrote a newspaper column recently addressing the much-hyped Gospel of Judas.

“My third-grade teacher at St. Brigid’s School, Sister Mary Lurana, would not be having any of this.” So far, so good. But then O’Reilly strays: “The good sister understood that the Gospels were teaching tools, not history…”

Read it all.

HT: Anglican TK

Exodus: Why Americans Are Fleeing Liberal Churches for Conservative Christianity
(A book by Dave Shiflett)

Imagine a 1950s American mother waking up in 2005 and turning on the television or the radio, or picking up a popular magazine. She would probably suffer a fainting spell, if not cardiac arrest, from the assault of deeply immoral attitudes toward marriage, family, and sexuality.

The reason this can happen in a nominally Christian country is that the definition of “Christianity” in America has changed, and this is the story that Shiflett’s book tells. The great culture clashes that divide our country presently are at their root theological: They pit those who acknowledge religious authority (either biblical or exercised by a divinely guided inspired church) against those who ground their principles on the unencumbered moral right of each person to create his own personal religion, regardless of objective morality and doctrinal belief.

SHIFLETT TURNS FIRST to the Episcopal Church, which was once the prototype for a traditional denomination. Many former Episcopalians have fled to more conservative Protestant denominations, or to the more liturgically minded and doctrinally based Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

Read the rest of C.J. McCloskey’s review H E R E.

Thanks to FWD from Fr Miguel Grave de Peralta.

Finally …

Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos on Frank Schaeffer on American Society.

HT: Ancient Church