Chris Banescu

When Orthodox Bishops Spoke Boldly: Clear Teaching on Marriage and Family

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Source: The Voice Blog | Chris Banescu

The current societal moral collapse and the intensifying attacks on traditional marriage and the family were foreseen by previous generations of bishops of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). Approximately 40 years ago, the Holy Synod of the OCA issued an Encyclical Letter on Marriage warning their flocks of the dangers posed by an increasingly secularized world and re-affirming the traditional, biblical, and orthodox teaching on marriage. The clarity of their teaching, boldness of their condemnation, and prophetic dimensions of their preaching are undeniable.

These shepherds saw the “signs of the times.” They discerned the growing darkness and corruption all around them and the seriousness of the cultural battles to come. They forewarned the faithful that the “moral foundations of society are collapsing.” They understood the ultimate consequences of a society that abandons its moral principles, abuses its freedoms, embraces the evil of abortion, is indifferent to the murder of millions of unborn children, and glorifies corrupt sexual behaviors.

We find it imperative to address you on an issue of crucial importance for the Christian life. An increasingly secularized world tends more and more to neglect the traditional biblical understanding of marriage and family. Misunderstanding freedom and proclaiming the progress of a humanity supposedly too mature, sophisticated and scientific to follow Christ’s Gospel, many have abandoned its moral demands. The consequences are plain for all to see: the family is disintegrating, legalized abortion is killing millions of unborn children, corrupt sexual behavior is rampant. The moral foundations of society are collapsing.

These bishops showed no apathy, timidity, or confusion in speaking publicly on key moral issues. They were not silent or complacent in the face of danger. They denounced evil and challenged the growing corruption in the culture. They genuinely loved and cared not only for the welfare and salvation of their flocks, but of all men. They taught and preached about the importance of the family and the full meaning of marriage from an Orthodox Christian understanding. They bore witness to these timeless truths before the entire Church and the whole world.

We, the bishops of the Orthodox Church in America, therefore proclaim anew to you, the flock entrusted to our care, the great and holy vision of marriage that is gloriously preserved and manifested in the doctrine, liturgy and canonical tradition of the Church. We do not make this proclamation in the name of an outdated conservatism or because we consider our present society intrinsically more corrupt than the past generations.

We speak because we are concerned for the welfare and salvation both of you, the members of our flock, and of all men. We speak of “that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes … concerning the word of life” (John 1:1). We speak because we know the Truth of the Gospel of Christ to be the eternal Truth, the one needful thing, the good portion (Luke 10:42) for all men, in all times and places.

These Christian leaders encouraged others to also speak out, offer guidance, and help Orthodox Christians in “all matrimonial matters.”

[ . . .]

Read the rest of this essay on The Voice blog.

Obama’s Assault on Religious Liberty

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Source: The Voice Blog | Chris Banescu

– President Barack Obama, a life-long Champion for Abortion, is hell-bent on forcing religious institutions to pay for birth control and abortion drugs coverage for their employees. New regulations implemented by the Obama administration mandate that sterilization options, abortifacients (abortion drugs), and contraception services must be included in virtually all health plans, including those offered by Christian charities, church-based hospitals, Christian universities, and other faith-based social services agencies. Obama now demands that his anti-life and pro-abortion agenda must be supported not only by our tax dollars, but also by the donations of Christians who consider the destruction of human life morally abhorrent and an abomination. Abortion is held in such high regard by President Obama that he is willing to violate the First Amendment religious rights of millions of Americans in order to impose and fund his agenda.

On January 20, 2012, the Health and Human Services (HHS) department, under the direction and influence of the Obama administration, issued a final rule that requires health insurance plans, including those of religious institutions, “cover preventive services for women including recommended contraceptive services without charging a co-pay, co-insurance or a deductible.” HHS’ rule further states that plans must cover the “full range of the Institute of Medicine’s recommended preventive services, including all FDA – approved forms of contraception.” The FDA’s list of approved methods of contraception includes abortifacients, abortion drugs prescribed to kill life in the womb after conception.

Pro-Abortion Groups Cheer and Praise Obama

Confirmation of the wrongness and immorality of this mandate came directly from the head of NARAL, a militantly pro-abortion organization. Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL, praised the Obama administration for its courage and stead-fast support of this government policy. “The administration stood firm against intensive lobbying efforts from anti-birth-control organizations trying to expand the refusal option even further to allow organizations and corporations to deny their employees contraceptive coverage,” she said. “As a result, millions will get access to contraception—and they will not have to ask their bosses for permission,” she continued.

On its website, NARAL proudly touts its intense pro-abortion lobbying efforts. “NARAL Pro-Choice America activists sent 135,543 messages to the Obama administration calling on the White House to stand strong in support of no-cost coverage of contraception. This latest activism adds to the list of actions it has taken to make no-cost birth control a reality for all American women.” Clearly, Obama listened and agrees with their stance. As a result, his rules not only force faith-based organizations to cover these abortion services, they must also offer them for free, with support from donations and dues from their members whose religious beliefs and views emphatically oppose abortion.

Catholic Organizations Condemn the Mandate

Reaction from the Catholic Church, its bishops, several Catholic universities, and many other Catholic leaders has been swift and categorical.

Cardinal-designate Timothy M. Dolan, archbishop of New York and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, sharply criticized the president’s decision and denounced the rule as unconscionable. “Never before has the federal government forced individuals and organizations to go out into the marketplace and buy a product that violates their conscience. This shouldn’t happen in a land where free exercise of religion ranks first in the Bill of Rights,” Cardinal-designate Dolan said. “The government should not force Americans to act as if pregnancy is a disease to be prevented at all costs,” the archbishop emphasized.

“This is nothing less than a direct attack on religion and First Amendment rights,” said Franciscan Sister Jane Marie Klein, chairperson of the board at Franciscan Alliance, Inc., a system of 13 Catholic hospitals. “I have hundreds of employees who will be upset and confused by this edict. I cannot understand it at all.”

Patrick J. Reilly, President of The Cardinal Newman Society, a Catholic university watchdog group, denounced the “cult of choice” agenda of the Obama administration. “The White House has sold the First Amendment for a few pennies of political support from the ACLU and the abortion lobby,” he said.

Despite the strong denouncements and intense opposition from Catholic groups, Obama only agreed to delay this mandate until 2013. This transparent “compromise” is obviously intended to help his re-election efforts and deflect the full effect of the controversy until after the November 2012 elections. Luckily, these political games have little traction with the Catholic Church. “In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences,” said Cardinal-designate Timothy M. Dolan. “The Obama administration has now drawn an unprecedented line in the sand,” he said. “The Catholic bishops are committed to working with our fellow Americans to reform the law and change this unjust regulation.”

Archbishop Dolan and the Catholic Church understand the seriousness and severity of this latest attack on all faith-based organizations. Obama’s mandate sets a dangerous precedent for our democracy and undermines our Constitution. It is a wholesale assault on the specific protections of religious liberties afforded to all Americans by the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” If this obamination is allowed to stand, then the religious liberties of all Americans will be endangered, not just Christians and Catholics. Such an unconstitutional and tyrannical policy must be opposed and defeated if liberty is to survive in the “land of the free and home of the brave.” Silence is not an option, now more than ever.

Chris Banescu, Bp. Savas and the Dust Up

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When ideas clash, they often clash hard. When Chris Banescu took Bp. Savas to task for a mistake he made in reporting the salary of an American CEO, his intention was not only to call Bp. Savas on the error, but to call attention to Bp. Savas’ economic assumptions.

The error was minor and we all make them. It was easily corrected. The assumptions rest deeper. Since Bp. Savas has entered the public square and unabashedly promotes the assumptions, challenging them is fair game. That is why I decided to publish Banescu’s piece.

Bp. Savas evaluates and prescribes economic policy exclusively through a Progressive political framework. His thinking differs little, if at all, from Jim Wallis, arguably the leader of what we can call “Christian-Progressivism.” Wallis has been a Progressive for as long back as anyone can remember, at least from the 1960s when he first became a political activist.

Progressivism has a storied history in American that we won’t enter into it here. In the last four decades however, it has grown increasingly statist. That means Progressives see the state as the source and enforcer of the policies that they think conform to the Christian moral imperative to love the neighbor.

In many ways the shift from early to contemporary Progressive ideology parallels the history of feminism (which today also falls under the Progressive umbrella). Early feminists were pro-life, modern feminists are the loudest voices for aborting the unborn. Clearly something changed from then to now.

Progressive ideology employs the language of the Christian moral vocabulary to justify its policy goals especially about helping the poor. This causes a considerable amount of confusion among the uninformed. It sounds like the Progressive policy goals and the Christian moral imperatives are one and the same.

The reality is entirely different. Progressive ideas have done more to harm the poor than help them. This first became apparent in Charles Murry’s ground-breaking work Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980 back in 1984 (read more here).

Murray’s book was a game-changer. His research showed that instead of helping the poor, the Progressive policies contributed to the break-down of poor families and created a cycle of dependency that institutionalized poverty. These policies were first formulated under the Johnson administration’s “Great Society” programs and were for all purposes well-intentioned. Their results however have been catastrophic.

For example, in Harlem (the first focus of the Great Society administrators), 70% of all children lived in intact two parent families and the trend was increasing. Thirty percent lived in a single parent household. Ten years after the onset of the Great Society, the numbers were reversed.

Further, the breakdown of the family has left many boys bereft of father figures leading to the increase of gangs as their primary unit of socialization. It is also the reason why young black men are over-represented in our prisons. In fact, single-motherhood has become the single most reliable determinate of poverty.

Murray’s initial research has been confirmed time and again, enough so that even the Democrats who first championed the Great Society ideals had to admit its failures. President Bill Clinton, to his credit, was the fist to roll back the reach of the Progressive welfare state when he ended “welfare as we know it.” You can find the research justifying the change and examining the results by searching the indexes of the Manhattan Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

Thankfully there are other Orthodox Christians who recognize the harm that the Progressive ideas have fostered. The Fellowship of Christians United to Serve (FOCUS, an Orthodox organization) has launched a program to teach men how to become men and reverse the soul-denying patronization that they’ve suffered:

The Man Class

The Progressive economic assumptions have risen into view because the debt crisis threatens their dismantling. This was the reason why Jim Wallis organized the public signing of the document “The Circle of Protection” at the White House several months ago and why President Obama received them. (Full disclosure: I had a part in organizing CASE – Christians for a Sustainable Economy in response to Wallis’ efforts.)

These assumptions ride on the back of the Progressive social agenda. I mentioned above that Progressives borrow the Christian moral lexicon to justify their policy goals. This borrowing confuses many people because they assume Progressive ideas are the way that we fulfill our Christian obligation to care for the poor. It sounds like Progressive ideas and the Christian obligation are one and the same.

Ideas have consequences, and Progressive ideas have been catastrophic. Yet to many the catastrophe remains hidden because when Progressive ideas are challenged, they are met with more moral exhortations. These kind of responses never add any clarity to the discussion. They are meant to impugn the motives of the questioner and close discussion.

Our job is to think clearly. That means we should not take the Progressive borrowing of the Christian moral lexicon at face value. Just because a policy or idea sounds Christian does not mean that it is. Nor does it mean that when the Progressive impugns the critic’s motives in his response, that the response is authoritative. Most often it is not. Instead, call the response what it is: a deliberate misapplication of the Christian moral lexicon to avoid answering the criticism in any meaningful way.

Chris Banescu: America Slouching Towards Fiscal Armageddon

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Chris Banescu

Chris Banescu, a frequent contributor to the Observer and noted blogmeister in the Orthodox world (who irritates the liberals to no end), has a new article published on American Thinker today. Good work Chris!

Source: American Thinker and ChrisBanescu.com

America is in grave danger. Our government’s out-of-control spending and our politicians’ refusal to implement meaningful budget reforms are leading us towards a fiscal crisis that can undermine our very way of life. We are spending ourselves into oblivion. With each passing day, we are $5 billion in deficit spending closer to the edge of an abyss that can cripple our economy, destroy America’s wealth, and lead to catastrophic social consequences for all current and future generations. Yet our leaders in Washington refuse to face reality and continue to play political games while the country’s budget crisis deepens and the threat grows exponentially.

In February of this year the US federal budget deficit grew by a record $224 billion; the biggest one-month increase in history. Worse still, the 2011 US budget deficit is forecast to reach $1.5 Trillion. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) this annual deficit represents the largest budget gap in our country’s history, equivalent to approximately 10% of America’s total economic output. This follows the enormous $1.3 Trillion deficit racked up for 2010 and will be superseded by an equally disturbing $1.65 Trillion deficit forecast for 2012.

In just three short years, Obama and the Democrats have racked up a whopping $4.5 Trillion in debt. That is more than double the $2.1 Trillion in debt added during the entire eight years of the Bush administration. It’s an astronomical increase in deficit spending of roughly 571%; that’s nearly six (6) times faster than previous administrations.

With Congress unwilling to address the runaway spending, roughly half the money the federal government now spends it has to borrow. Approximately 40 cents out of every dollar in spending is financed by mortgaging our future to foreign investors, primarily China. For 2012, the deficit spending will increase to 45 cents per dollar. Each day America will add another $4.5 billion to the $14.3 Trillion total National Debt. Sometime between now and 2012 the US debt will equal the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the total market value of all the goods and services in our economy for an entire year.

This year the US will spend $200 billion in interest payments on the debt. Thanks to historically low interest rates this figure is lower than normal. Once interest rates start to rise — and rise they will as inflation is quickly spreading throughout our economy and the world — we will face an extra $100 billion in interest payments per year for every one (1) percent increase in interest rates. The Wall Street Journal predicts that without any changes, the interest on the nation’s debt will reach $900 billion annually in another 10 years. According to their forecast, those yearly interest payments will be 17% greater than our annual Medicare costs and 82% larger than "the cost of all non-security discretionary spending programs combined."

The $1.65 Trillion deficit for 2012 will make the debt grow to 105% of the nation’s GDP, a perilous milestone. If the structural budget gaps are not effectively dealt with, the CBO predicts that an additional $7.1 Trillion in debt will be racked up in the next 10 years, increasing our total National Debt to $21.4 Trillion by 2021. But it gets worse. The current unfunded liabilities total (social programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security which the US government has promised to pay to its citizens) is rapidly approaching $113 Trillion, about $1 million per taxpayer. That will grow to a disastrous $144 Trillion by 2015 if nothing changes.

Last month, members of the National Association for Business Economics provided yet another ominous warning. These economists identified the US budget deficit as the "gravest threat facing the economy, topping high unemployment and the risk of inflation or deflation."

We are on an unsustainable path of uncontrolled and wasteful spending that can devastate the United States. And what is Congress actually doing to effectively deal with this looming catastrophe?

The delusional Democrats have proposed a microscopic $4.7 billion cut for the 2012 budget. That’s a ridiculous 0.1% of the total budget for 2012. It represents exactly 25 hours of spending by the government. Multiply that by 100 and it still falls short of the proverbial drop in the bucket. Clearly Democrats are not interested in helping this country avoid fiscal calamity. They’re more concerned with demonizing conservatives and maintaining power, instead of governing responsibility and rationally for the welfare and safety of all Americans.

President Obama’s phony budget, submitted last month, insanely claims about $1.1 Trillion in "cuts" over the next decade. These fictional cuts happen courtesy of an additional $2 Trillion in new taxes proposed by his administration over that same period. Even taking Obama’s fraudulent budget proposal seriously, the US debt will still grow from $7.2 Trillion to as high $9 Trillion over 10 years. This is worse than doing nothing.

The supposedly fiscally conservative Republicans in the House originally proposed a small $100 billion cut in spending. That amount was subsequently reduced during House negotiations to a measly $61 billion, representing just 1.6% of the $3.73 Trillion budget for 2012. Even that minor reduction was mischaracterized as "draconian" and soundly rejected by the Democrats in control of the Senate. Obama has twice threatened to veto the measure if it passed the Senate by some miracle. There is little hope for mature engagement and sane debates with the current majority of leftists in power. They are not interested in cutting spending or negotiating reasonably to implement authentic budget reductions.

A devastating debt crisis is coming; simple mathematics predict it. It is no longer a matter of if, but when. The time for hysterics, hyperbole, and finger-pointing is over. The time for political games, grand-standing, and partisan shenanigans is long past. This is no longer about Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, or progressive issues. This affects all of us. The looming danger crosses all party and ideological lines and jeopardizes all Americans, present and future generations. We’re staring down a massive debt tsunami that threatens the US with a fiscal Armageddon the likes of which we’ve never seen.

Since Democrats and the White House are obviously unwilling to face reality and completely AWOL on this crisis, here’s a call to action to the conservatives and the Tea Party lawmakers in Washington, our only remaining hope.

Republicans, it’s all hands on deck. Convince weak-kneed and waffling colleagues to find their backbone and stand firm. Since you’re going to be demonized and vilified anyway, regardless of what you do, make a stand and demand meaningful reductions in government spending. Ask for at least $500 billion in budget cuts, slowly negotiate down to a more comprehensive $400 billion number, and only settle for a final compromise of $370 billion in cuts (still just 10% of the 2012 budget, but better than the original 1.6%). Stop worrying about "bi-partisanship", "reaching across the aisle", and all that other nonsense. It’s evident that most Democrats and Obama are not interested in any of it. To them it’s all about consolidating and maintaining their own power at all costs, damn the consequences. They would rather shove the country into bankruptcy and fiscal collapse than act responsibly and sensibly. Didn’t the ObamaCare battles and the last few decades of disastrous compromises with liberals and progressives teach you anything?

Conservatives, act like leaders and worthy stewards of this great nation. Trust that God will be with you if you remain faithful to Him, speak truthfully, and act honorably. Be true public servants and courageous representatives of the people who elected you. Demand real action and sweeping reforms. Do not back down and compromise just to get along. It doesn’t work! Be ready to shut down the government if you have to. Force Congress to do its job to protect the lives, freedoms, and interests of all American citizens, not just the unions, the lobbyists, and other political operatives and supporters. Show the rest of country that you’re willing to do the heavy lifting and take the hits. Make the hard choices and stand behind your principles. That is real leadership!

Republicans, in November 2010 we elected you to represent our voices and bring the right kind of hope and change America desperately needs. We’re counting on you now to act decisively! Don’t disappoint us, the clock is quickly counting down to the fiscal catastrophe awaiting all of us. We’re almost out of time.

Chris Banescu is an attorney, entrepreneur, and university professor. He regularly blogs at www.chrisbanescu.com

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Chris Banescu on American Thinker

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Chris Banescu, occasional contributor to AOI Observer and webmaster of Orthodoxnet.com has an essay published on American Thinker today: How to Cripple the Free Economy. Congratulations Chris!

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