Posted on 11/15/2004 6:31:46 AM PST by Theodore R.
How goes the culture war?
Posted: November 15, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Evangelical Christians and traditional Catholics who trooped to the polls in 11 states to reject the legalization of marriage between homosexuals are celebrating a great victory in America's culture war. And understandably so.
With "moral values" the surprise issue in campaign 2004, the Red States and George Bush prevailed by 3.5 million votes. Onward Christian soldiers.
Yet, within the West, in the ancient struggle for moral supremacy between secularism and Christianity, Christianity remains in retreat. Consider the moral condition of the cradle of the faith, Europe.
The very week gay marriage was being rejected here, Rocco Buttiglione, a devout Italian Catholic, was forced to withdraw his nomination as justice minister for Europe. Buttiglione's offense? He told the European Parliament that while he would enforce its laws against discrimination, he still believes homosexuality is a "sin."
Buttiglione added that single motherhood was an inferior way to raise children, that children needed both a mother and father.
Not long ago, such comments by a European politician would have been unexceptional – indeed, expected. But, across Europe, a firestorm erupted at Buttiglione's restatement of his Catholic beliefs. Greens, communists, socialists and liberals in the parliament warned commission president Jose Manuel Barroso that his entire slate would be rejected, were Buttiglione not removed.
The Economist explained the conflict thus: "A gulf has opened between mainstream European thought on a range of social issues and the unyielding Catholicism of Pope John Paul."
But the teaching of the Catholic Church on the immorality of homosexual acts is not an invention of John Paul II. This has been taught as Catholic doctrine for 2,000 years and held by all Christians to be moral truth until the late 20th century. The pope could not change this article of faith if he wished. His duty is to defend it.
Now, either Christianity has been teaching bigotry for 2,000 years or "mainstream European thought" is the pagan immorality of the old Roman Empire, all dressed up in lipstick and rouge.
Indeed, Europe has turned its face against its Christian past. In the new constitution of the European Union, just signed in Rome, all mention of Europe's debt to Christianity has been blotted out, just as out-of-favor Bolsheviks were erased from photos of Lenin and Stalin. As in Orwell's Ministry of Truth, the true heritage of Europe is being put down the memory hole.
In 1996, a proposed celebration of the 1,500th anniversary of the conversion of Clovis and the Franks to Christianity was canceled at the insistence of communists and socialists.
Europe is a continent where the churches are emptying out and the mosques filling up, a land of aging and shrinking populations and immigrant invasions. The Mother Continent is now being invaded and converted by the once-colonized.
Europe today has little in common with Red State America. For, even as Americans were rejecting gay marriage, Spain followed Holland and Belgium in granting homosexuals the right to marry, divorce and adopt.
But how far are we behind Europe in entering this brave new world?
Since World War II, divorce has become routine in the United States. Cohabitation among unmarried couples increased tenfold in the last 30 years. Abortion and sodomy are now constitutional rights.
Gay marriage has become the civil-rights cause of the college campuses. California has voted to fund embryonic stem-cell research. Assisted suicide has been voted into law in Oregon. De-Christianization of our public schools and institutions, begun half a century ago, proceeds apace, sanctioned and ordered by our federal courts.
Prime-time television has become a cultural sewer, but a swimming pool compared to cable and the Internet.
We live in a different country than the one some of us grew up in.
As Bob Dylan wrote, "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." The moral and social revolution of the '60s has set down permanent roots in our culture and claims as converts our elites from Hollywood to Harvard Yard.
What is happening is the ascendancy of the values of the French Revolution over the American, of the French Enlightenment over the church it set out to destroy, of the values of secular humanism over the values of family and faith.
Today, the Episcopal Church accepts homosexual marriage even in its hierarchy. The Catholic Church is largely silent on a Catholic candidate's embrace of abortion on demand. A Republican president declares himself in support of civil unions. His first lady opposes the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Traditionalists won a battle on Nov. 2, not a w
Mr. Buchanan is correct as usual, however most here won't care since they will get a tax cut.
This is the one area where Buchanan makes a lot of sense. Europe is dying, and at least we here in the US are trying to put up a fight.
What about the unyielding Islam of 1.2 billion Muslims, so many of whom live in Europe?
What about the unyielding Islam of 1.2 billion Muslims, so many of whom live in Europe?
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they will manage to get themselves expelled from europe.
the chief concern of the US in this regard is to insure that they return to their home countries--rather than come to the US where they would have only the power to destroy
I just wish Pat would stick to issues like this where he makes sense and stay away from foreign policy.
Makes me wonder if Pat wrote Teresa's "Laura never had a real job" line.
The trouble with Arab immigrants - they bring their hatreds with them that the left wingers describe as "their culture."
Children taught to hate Christians will continue to hate Christians when they grow up and teach their children to hate.
In the Balkans the hatreds continue on and on despite "free elections" and NATO still tries to keep the peace.
Our efforts to bring democracy to the Middle East will be a process that will last 3 or 4 generations and even then, I have my doubts that democracy will flourish.
Very true. Great article really. The war is far from over and it looks really bad from here. My only comfort is in the fact that I know who wins in the very very end.
In the Gulag nobody gets to go to the zoo any day.
If PETA and the Animal Liberation Front get their way, nobody will go to the zoo in the future.
ping
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