Orthodixie

This is a Christmas tree.

Say it…Christmas, Christmas, Christmas

Taken from News Forum.

Friends, I confess, I’m already sick of the Merry Wars of Christmas … and I’ve got almost a month to go!

If people are going to be so wired up, how ’bout preaching this:

This is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, who came into the world to save sinners …

Oh, and by the way, please forgive me if I offended you (with the truth).

In the most ancient Christian traditions, this seasons is called Nativity Lent (or the “little Lent”) and it is supposed to be a time of fasting, prayer and almsgiving. After this lengthy quiet time, Christmas is celebrated as a 12-day festival. Today, we have turned the season upside down — with Christmas marked by the mall and the church staggering along trying to catch up. Most celebrations are pretty much over by Dec. 20 or so and it’s time to move on to returning gifts and the parade of bowl games and NFL rituals.

More at GetReligion

The “between me and God’ approach to religion is the best ploy yet attempted by the devil, since once a man has retreated into his own psyche, he abandons his best allies, the saints who otherwise stand as eloquent and stirring witnesses for all time of what is true, good, and noble. A man unaided by the whole Body of the Church through time is no match for the delights lyingly offered him by the devil.

The whole SCOOP.

JERUSALEM – The man enthroned last week as Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem signed a secret document obliging him to nullify the recent sale to Jewish groups of land comprising much of a key entrance to Jerusalem’s Old City, and has allegedly made statements against Jews living in certain parts of Jerusalem, WorldNetDaily has learned.

A tad more (slanted, it seems).

So what’s all this about CONFESSION anyway?

Today’s Severe Understatement Award goes to …

The first openly gay Episcopal bishop said Thursday that unity in the Anglican Communion was being challenged by those who oppose the ordainment of gays and lesbians.

Ya think?

Actually, Bishop Robinson, it is the militant, in your face, pro-homosexual agenda of the past 20 years that has destroyed what remained of Anglican sanity unity.

Lord have mercy.

Have pity on us right-wing neo-fundamentalist Opus Dei-style Catholics, the ones fully supportive of (to use a Mark Shea descriptor) Pope Monstro the Medieval One and the rush back to the Dark Ages. You see, Joe, many of us, whether we act out of fear or ignorance, animus or bigotry, would like to temper our aversion to “Gay Spirituality” (is it like Ignatian spirituality? Franciscan? Carmelite?), but we have had to face the fact that, alas, we have been born this way—born homophobes—and at any rate to ask us to be other than who we are and to suppress what gives our lives the most profound joy (i.e. promoting anti-gay policies, policies of hatred and exclusion) would be to limit our self-fulfillment in an intolerably intolerant manner. You seem to have attained a high degree of enlightenment, so I hope your spiritual universe is wide enough for more than one dogmatic position on the issue of homosexuality (i.e. that it’s swell, and all who disagree are WRONG!). All we ask is that you tolerate our diversity.

The above is a Comment in this discussion.

Let’s pray for Madonna and for Tony Ciccone. Let’s pray that one day she’ll find the approval in her father’s eyes…and in her Father’s eyes. If the Material Girl ever finds herself in the Father’s house, she’ll find the true virginity she’s mocked all along and she won’t mind a Papa who preaches.

From H E R E.

Truong said he has been at the church day and night, so emotional he can’t even work. He believes the tears are a sign.

“There’s a big event in the future – earthquake, flood, a disease,” Truong said. “We’re very sad.”

“I think that it’s incredible. It’s a miracle. Why is she doing it? Is it something bothering her?” asked Maria Vasquez, 35, who drove with her parents and three children from Stockton, about 50 miles south of Sacramento.

With the pic above & M O R E.
H/T News Forum

A GOVERNMENT agency is launching an inquiry into doctors’ reports that up to 50 babies a year are born alive after botched National Health Service abortions.

The investigation, by the Confidential Enquiry into Maternal and Child Health (CEMACH), comes amid growing unease among clinicians over a legal ambiguity that could see them being charged with infanticide.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which regulates methods of abortion, has also mounted its own investigation.

Its guidelines say that babies aborted after more than 21 weeks and six days of gestation should have their hearts stopped by an injection of potassium chloride before being delivered. In practice, few doctors are willing or able to perform the delicate procedure.

The S T O R Y.
H/T Drudge

On a much lighter note, here’s one you may have missed over the holiday weekend.

Former Canadian Minister Of Defence Asks Canadian Parliament To Hold Hearings On Relations With Alien “ET” Civilizations

On September 25, 2005, in a startling speech at the University of Toronto that caught the attention of mainstream newspapers and magazines, Paul Hellyer, Canada’s Defence Minister from 1963-67 under Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Prime Minister Lester Pearson, publicly stated: “UFOs, are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head.”

Hellyer warned, “The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning. He stated, “The Bush administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide.”

And, H E R E ’tis.

LAWRENCE, Kan. – Todd Brabender remembers the December nearly 20 years ago when he and some University of Kansas friends gathered around a Christmas tree hanging upside-down from a water pipe in his apartment. It seemed like such a crazy idea then. But not anymore.

The centerpiece of holiday decorating is more often being inverted – hung from the ceiling or mounted bottom-up on the wall – by those looking to save space, more prominently display pricey ornaments or simply distinguish their Christmas tree from so many millions of others.

Hmmmm.

H/T New Forum