www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall America’s Chief Export: Immorality

I think this thread might get hot in a hurry. Redistribution of wealth is NOT in the same class as immorality. We are called as Christians to be generous and self-sacrificial with our wealth, not to impoverish our own selves, but Jesus never listed as one of the corporal works of mercy amassing a personal fortune worth millions or billions of dollars, especially when others can't even afford food or medicine.

I agree with most of the article.

I don't know that our leadership can change anything. President Bush was against most of the immorality issues the article cites, yet he was tarred and feathered, labeled 'evil', etc., I believe, because of *that*, and not the (admittedly disastrous) war which democrats were 100% behind.

Our lobbies are very strong here. Big business and special interest groups rule--our politicians simply do what is beneficial for them in going along with them. Blame cannot be put on only one person. Politicians are notorious for being opportunists.

Our country is spiritually sick. We only need to read the headlines daily to see yet another weekly school shooting to confirm this. Our families are broken and weak. Organized religion is scorned. God is mocked. Immoral entertainers are idolized. The sexually notorious are prized with millions in contracts for reality shows and playboy centerfolds.

Morality is gone and perversions of all ilks are de riguer. Our colleges are cesspools of spiritual sickness in the form of sexual encounters, binge drinking, and drugs....

Anyway, I am getting carried away. May the Lord have mercy.

I couldn't make my full feelings known this morning because I was rushing off to be with my wife for a surgical procedure. Now I have the time.

Western Center for Journalism is just another right wing, redneck blog on par with the bloviations of the pope-bashing of Rush Limbaugh. When they start moralizing, as if the right wing of our political party circus in the United States is somehow a Simon-pure representation of godliness and morality -- I have to swallow twice to keep my breakfast down. Utter hypocrisy masquerading as morality.


Excuuuuuuuuuuuse me????? Says who? Why don't you try running that nonsense past the people of South America, who's duly elected leaders have been constantly assassinated by covert ops of the C.I.A. working in conjunction with our military. Maybe the name Salvatore Allende will ring a bell. Yes, he was a Socialist, but he was elected by the people and was what they wanted.

One wonders how the good folks at WCFJ would react if leaders from other foreign countries sent covert ops into our country and knocked off our leaders because they didn't like who we elected?

Of course, this lack of morality in the U.S.A started many, many moons ago, as would say the various indian tribes in this country who were systematically slaughtered by the rapacious push westward for land and gold. I guess it never occurred to the settlers and the government supporting them to try to actually treat the red man like one for whom Christ died. Naaaaaaaa....lack of white skin precluded that, didn't it? Just like it precluded just and compassionate treatment for the black man...which eventually resulted in a war that cost our country 600,000 lives. Needless and stupid war, but one that was fought over the convenient charges of "racism." (Ignore, if you please, that the Yankees in the North were every bit as racist as the people in the South. They just lacked plantations.



Excuse me, this nation was NEVER Christian. NEVER! It was formed by Masons and Deists who persecuted the true Church of our Lord and its members, men who made public their utter disdain for the Bible and the Christian faith. This is the kind of hogwash of which I was fed a steady diet when in Fundamentalism -- we are America, holy, Christian, and good, and then there is Russia.

Russia = Communism. For years that was the equation. I never knew that Russia at one time as a nation was more filled with holy men, such as St. Seraphim of Sarov, than America ever dreamed of. No, Russia = Communism. That's all I ever heard.


I would also hope that fewer nations would buy the wars, lies, and weaponry that you so easily export for the continuation of the wealth of our military/industrial complex. Somehow, our Puritan/Protestant nation has developed this idea that war has a holiness about it, despite the title of our Lord, the Prince of Peace. A mere glance at the history of this nation for the last 60 years would make an alien think that we are a nation that reaches for the gun first and diplomacy be hanged. Eisenhower knew what he was doing when he warned us about the influence of the military/industrial complex. Even now, we are gearing up for more and more war, and when you suggest cutting back on the obscene amount of money spent every year on our overbloated military budget, Conservatives like these guys start to scream like you hit them right in the ompaloompahs.


If those values continue to be starting wars by bogus false flag operations, killing the leaders of other countries by covert ops agents, grinding the faces of the poor while feeding multimillionaire CEOS who run the armaments race, continuing to push for environment wrecking nuclear and carbon based energy over having stewardship of the earth God entrusted to us, and just generally being unlike Jesus

I think I'll pass. on those values.

Does this make me a Socialist or Socialist sympathizer.

NOT ON YOUR LIFE!! Socialism is the opposite side of the coin called Capitalism. Both systems promote values and ideas that I, as a follower of Christ, cannot accept and refuse say are good.


Okay. My rant is over. I'm calm now. I just hate the self-righteous nonsense that I see right wing Conservatives put out. It is hypocrisy of a high order. I would say that if we, as a country, had ever really lived the values that the Lord gave us in His faith, our country would not have had the problems we have had for two centuries.

Exactly why I hate politics. When you have two totally-hypocritical groups, each representing different ideologies and promoting themselves as embodying all goodness, while denouncing their opponents as evil--you know somthing's not right. A representative democracy can only work when enough of the population has sufficient God-given wisdom to see through this sort of thing.


One reason why the CIA operates in secret is that a great deal of what it does would horrify the American people if it were known--the only fault on the part of the American people, in this case, is that they trust their government too much (which is something our founding fathers warned against).


To a large extent, it really didn't! This was all part of the movement that took place between the 15th and 19th Centuries, in which European nations--"the white race"--colonized practically the entire rest of the world. In this case, the attitude of "white" American people towards other races was scarcely different from that of their European counterparts.


FWIW, the Civil War was not fought over "racism"--a term that didn't exist before 1933, and didn't come into common usage till ~1970. The question was simply "slavery," and the warmongers in the North knew that the high level of Abolitionist sentiment among the northern population was probably sufficient motivation for them to go to war.


As far as the Masonic order goes, I don't pretend to know much about it, but one thing I agree with them about, as do most Americans, is that they strongly reject the notion that Christianity = Monarchism.

As for all our Founding Fathers being "Masons and Deists," how about John Adams? Also, let us not forget that it was Benjamin Franklin who called the Constitutional Convention to prayer when its members were about to give up.


No argument here; amazing how the writer can get away with calling Putin "the leader of an atheist government."


Pardon me if I think these words sound every bit as tendentious as the article you're criticizing. The problem of "non-pacifist Christianity" can be traced at least as far back as the Teutonic kings, who never seemed to embrace "that part" of the Gospel message.


Here's where we get back to my first comment. "Conservatives" tend to use the term morality as referring exclusively to sexual matters, and any statement that war itself is immoral just sounds like a "bunch of liberal propaganda" to them.


Come on--you know that's not what the author is talking about! (Anyway, the USA hardly has a monopoly on these things!)


No, we wouldn't--but I still don't see your point. The USA is what it is, and the values of her people can hardly be conflated with the sordid designs of a few powerful individuals.


Peace,
Deacon Richard

Dear Deacon --

I'm sorry. My point was simply this (I am a writer and I tend to be zealous with words!) that the right wing has no monopoly on morality, even though they act as if they do.

As a Catholic, my morality comes from the teachings of Christ as properly defined by the Church, not from the Left or the Right. This makes me an odd beast in the American political system because I agree with parts of both sides and disagree with parts of both sides. I am sold out to neither.

I just get tired of the moral chest thumping of the Right and when I see it, I just can't help myself, I have to respond.

I get tired of it, too!

People who complain the United States of America is a cesspit of immorality usually have never lived anywhere else, so have no basis for comparison. Or, to paraphrase Kipling,

"What know they of America, who only America know?"

hahaha...oh dear Stuart--if you are referring to me, I have lived in two other countries.

However, one not need to ever live in any other country to know that the statements Ihave made about sexual immorality in the United States of the present day are true..and that we have exported that immorality and norm through Hollywood to much of the rest of the world. (This is not to be confused with one saying that deviance and immorality never existed elsewhere; it is the standard we have set of all this being 'normal and acceptable' which is unprecedented.)

It was not always so. Binge drinking, drugs and numerous casual sexual encounters were not the norm in American colleges in universities years ago, as I am sure you know. My mother went to college in Virginia and not only were there NOT co-ed dorms and bathrooms then, but there were curfews and chaperones.

I don't know about you, but in the best interest of young people and future generations, I would MUCH RATHER have my big bucks pay for a college like that than one that will destroy their souls and bodies.

This is to laugh.

Oh dear Stuart, you shouldn't laugh at Hollywood's immorality...you know it influences people..

When movies show individual's sleeping with others without the benefit of commitment, engagement or marriage, you KNOW that it defines society's mores! I KNOW that you are not an idiot or ignorant. (though you love to call others such epithets! )

If you like sexual immorality, that is your choice. I will respect it, as I respect all person's opinions.

I went to college between 1972 and 1976, and believe me, you are soooo wrong--and today's students had nothing on our generation when it comes to drinking, drugging, and sleeping around. And this was at Georgetown University, too. But what I saw of other schools, Catholic and secular alike, weren't any better. It was a decade without quality control, you know.

As for Europe, let me enlighten you: Amsterdam, Hamburg, Paris, Marseilles, London and a dozen other cities in Europe (not excluding Athens, by the way) had notorious reputations decades before the United States even deigned to notice Europe's existence. I think you tend to see what you want to see, when it comes to foreign countries vs. your own.

I totally DISAGREE WITH YOU about Athens. I know what the social mores were for women there some decades ago. PLEASE>>>>>>>

I am not going to continue with this.

Good night.

I think that when it comes to any one of the 48 countries I have been to, there are few exceptions that rank as exceptional. Sure Singapore was clean, but I could buy a child sex slave for around 25 dollars. Same as in Bahrain, sex was everywhere. Have any of you been to the soft underside of Thailand? How about Prague where the drugs run rampant. Or Kiev where again, the child sex trade, and violence are routine. Have you ever seen dog fights on one side and bare knuckle boxing on the other side?

As for Athens, I will let you keep your dream. As for me, I will forever have a rather different image.

I will say that Dutch porn and prostitution has nothing on the USA.....our porn businesses are global and proficient.

Other countries have their share of decadence, but they aren't masters of exporting them like the United Sexpots of America.

Do you read facebook post of individuals in other countries? They are insulted by the arrogant decadence of this government. and how it blackmails and bullies other nations and spreads its filth and perversity.

There was a time not that long ago when our State Dept respected the sovereignty of other nations. This Administration has no such respect, nor does it respect its own citizens unless they are administration allies.

But then again, no one ever stated that this Administration practices diplomacy.