Recently there has been a strong debate going on between Jon Stewart, of The Daily Show, and Fox News. His frustration can be summarized by quoting his own words:

Any editorial judgment in news, or schools, or movies, that doesn’t favor the conservative view, is elitism and is evidence of liberal bias. Whereas any editorial judgment that FAVORS the conservative view, is evidence of merely fairness and done to protect them from liberal bias … And, if you criticize Fox for this game, guess what that’s evidence of? How right they are about how persecuted they are. … They can’t lose. But you know what this whole ‘victim thing’ makes Fox? Well, perhaps this term a friend of mine used once to describe the current presidential administration is most apt: … the biggest bunch of crybabies I have dealt with in my 30 years in Washington.

Not surprisingly, there have been blogs and articles saying that it is Jon Stewart who is the crybaby. One newspaper editorial even said that he appeared to be on the edge of a nervous collapse. But, actually, Jon Stewart has pointed out something that has become a hallmark even in some Christian circles. The odd thing is that it used to be conservatives who would complain about a “culture of victimization” For instance, back in 1992, Charles J. Sykes wrote a book called, A Nation of Victims: The Decay of the American Character. In that book he looked at the future and commented:

Something extraordinary is happening in American society. Crisscrossed by invisible trip wires of emotional, racial, sexual, and psychological grievance, American life is increasingly characterized by the plaintive insistence, I am a victim,” …

We want to be a pain-free, no-fault, no-guilt society. Frankly I think a little more personal guilt wouldn’t hurt us at all, …

There are real victims and people who have suffered genuine misery. The problem is, they tend to get lost in the shuffle. …

Bogus victims drive out real victims. There are so many claims that are so shrill on the nation’s compassion that this generates overload leading to backlash and cynicism. …

There are short-term advantages to victim status, at least three of them. First, the victim is always innocent. Second, the victim has moral authority. Third, there are specific entitlements and benefits.

He was not the only one who warned of this increasing problem. Back in the same year, Walter Olson wrote a book called The Litigation Explosion. In it he warned:

You get to a list of grievances so long that you could redistribute the entire GNP without getting to the bottom of them. … Getting along with people, forgiving people, has been thought of over most of history as being a virtue, not as being a chump. We’ve gone down an odd path when to overlook the possible chance of suing is something you should apologize for.

Yes, it was conservatives who complained about a growing culture of victimization. But, during that same time, and silently, that same culture of victimization which conservatives supposedly saw liberals as encouraging began to be encouraged. Oddly enough, it was by some Christians. If you remember, there was a growing chorus in the Moral Majority that it was necessary for us Christians to take action because we were being persecuted and driven out by liberals. And so, a culture of victimization began to grow, first among Christians and then spreading over into conservatism.

Just like some on the left, many on the right have found out that playing the victim card incessantly is a great psychological defense against any criticisms that may be levied against you. The same people who jump on any African-Americans that they perceive as playing the Uncle Tom card against conservative African-Americans turn right around and publicly play the RINO (Republicans In Name Only) card against any Republican whom they do not view as conservative enough. The same people who see African-Americans as playing the “racist” card whenever an African-American is criticized quickly play the “liberal bias” card against any who dare criticize any part of their program. They have become every bit as immune to any critique as the very people whom they criticize for not accepting criticism. The same people who will quickly point out those who insult them as proof of a general bias are the same ones who will always claim that any insults hurled by any of their people are not from the group, but from lone individuals.

It does not matter whether the left or the right engages in victimization. Both sides are wrong when they engage in that type of behavior, and both sides have certainly been guilty of it and continue to be guilty of it. But, here is the problem for us Christians. When we engage in victimization, we simply anger people rather than helping to bring solutions to problems. When we claim that we are being persecuted, we draw attention away from those who are truly being persecuted and are truly suffering for their faith. When we claim bias every time someone critiques us, we are in danger of not hearing a grievance that we may need to hear. It does not matter whether we are liberal, moderate, or conservative. Engaging in victimization is a game that leads to social explosion not to social solutions.

We do not need to engage in victimization. There is no problem with Christians engaging in politics, nor with Christians engaging the culture. There is not even any problem with Christians fighting certain changes to the law and to culture. But, when that is done from a posture of victimization, it will have a long-term negative effect both on us and on the culture. Rather, for those who wish to engage in politics, do engage in it. But, do it from a posture of strength, not from a posture of victim. Argue for what you believe, but be willing to listen to other’s criticisms. Finally, do realize that sometimes a race card or a victim card is not being played. Sometimes there is real racism, sometimes people have really been victimized. Learn to tell the difference between playing a card and relating something that is true. And, if you really truly are a victim, then tell your story with gentleness, with love, and reasonably in order that people may understand your claim and perhaps change.

The quotes below come from a history story on the BBC. There is no particular Christian point to the story. Just read it and enjoy it. I recommend going to read the full story on the website.

In Northern Ireland in 1941, a routine Sunday afternoon sortie by a pilot flying one of Britain’s Spitfire fighters runs into difficulties. …

The pilot yells into his radio “I’m going over the side”, slides back the bubble canopy, releases his seat straps and launches himself into the air. …

It sounds like a typical wartime accident but it was anything but. It was the beginning of one of the strangest incidents of WWII.

The pilot was 23-year-old Roland “Bud” Wolfe, an RAF officer from 133 “Eagle” Squadron, a unit entirely composed of Americans.

Bud himself was from Nebraska, one of a number of Americans who had volunteered to take up Britain’s cause. Since the US was not yet at war with Germany when the men volunteered, the American government stripped Wolfe and others of their citizenship. These pilots were a mix of idealists and thrill seekers.

When Wolfe was found by the authorities he realised his, already unusual, situation was much more complicated than he had guessed. He had crashed over the border.

Since the South was neutral it had been decided that all servicemen of any belligerent nation that ended up on Irish soil through navigational error, shipwreck or other accident would be interned for the duration of the war. …

It was an odd existence. The guards had blank rounds in their rifles, visitors were permitted (one officer shipped his wife over), and the internees were allowed to come and go. Fishing excursions, fox hunting, golf and trips to the pub in the town of Naas helped pass the time.

But what was really odd was the proximity of the Germans.

It was not just the British and their allies who got lost above and around Ireland. German sailors from destroyed U-boats and Luftwaffe aircrew also found themselves interned. The juxtaposition of the two sides made for surreal drama. …

It may seem to us like a welcome chance to sit out the war with honour intact, plenty of distractions and no danger, but for Wolfe it was an unacceptable interruption to his flying activities.

On 13 December 1941 he walked straight out of camp and after a meal in a hotel, which he did not pay for, he headed into nearby Dublin and caught the train the next day to Belfast. Within hours he was back at RAF Eglinton where he had taken off two weeks earlier in his defective Spitfire.

He could not have expected what was to happen next. The British government decided that, in this dark hour, it would be unwise to upset a neutral nation.

The decision was made to send Wolfe back to The Curragh and internment. Back in the camp, Wolfe made the best of it, joining the fox-hunting with relish. …

 If you want to read all about what happened and get to know the ending to the story, why, you will just have to go and read the whole story on the BBC website.

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The daughter of friends of Father Orthoduck and his wife has a summer internship at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI), which is quite an honor. She returns to college this fall after a summer of experiencing the crazy world of political Washington, DC. AEI is one of the top five think tanks for conservative political thinkers. At their best, they provide some cogent economic and political analysis from a thinking conservative viewpoint. As with any politically affiliated think tank, … but that is not a subject for this posting.

The subject for Father Orthoduck’s posting is an article from their best side called Mindless Cuts Can Have Dangerous Results. There are several quotes from that article that particularly struck Father Orthoduck in light of the current impasse in the budget debate. Here are a few quotes from the article which you should read in its entirety:

Last week, at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget’s conference, my former colleague (and former Roll Call impresario) Jim Glassman complained that the focus of the conference, just like Congress, was on how to cut the budget and get past the debt ceiling and debt crisis, while ignoring a larger issue–how to grow the economy to create a better life for our children and grandchildren.

He noted that there are many ideas out there to enhance economic growth, shared by both parties or offering opposing views. Those ideas might include (some of them on my list) a better tax code, lower marginal rates, even, a la Tim Pawlenty, slashing taxes by even more mind-boggling amounts; it might mean more spending on infrastructure, science and education.

Please notice that this is one of the increasing conservative voices saying that across the board cuts are not a good thing. Rather, he says that cuts have to be thought through and that, in fact, there may be some areas in which we need to spend more not less! He gives a very cogent example of what across the board cutting could mean for us.

This vacuum emerged again last week when House Republicans jammed through, on a partisan vote, an appropriations bill that slashed funding for food safety and barred the Food and Drug Administration from implementing the major food safety law enacted in the 111th Congress.

I wrote about this set of issues earlier this year, when the House plan to cut discretionary spending in the continuing resolution included an effective 22 percent cut for the remainder of the fiscal year for the meat-inspection service of the Department of Agriculture and an equivalent cut for food inspection from the FDA, along with a deep cut in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As I pointed out, using data from Scott Lilly, former staff director of the House Appropriations Committee, the cuts in meat inspection would mean serious furloughs among meat inspectors and their support staff, who account for more than 90 percent of the agency budget.

That in turn could be extrapolated to mean about a million pounds of tainted meat and poultry being put on the shelves in supermarkets and butcher shops and on the menu in restaurants.

Given the statistics we have on the number of foodborne illnesses that hit Americans each year–48 million–that result in 128,000 hospitalized and 3,000 killed, those cuts would surely mean more hospitalizations and more deaths.

Needless to say, the savings received by cutting the FDA are penny wise and pound foolish. For, the increased spending on health related costs would damage the economy more severely than even maintaining the current rate of funding at the FDA. Finally, he says from a conservative viewpoint what various moderates and liberals have been saying for months.

These kinds of cuts are seriously stupid and counterproductive, but the “debate” on the House floor brushed any concerns aside with the mantra of cutting deficits and the argument that our food supply is safe because the private sector wants it to be safe. …

Whether it is offshore drilling, building construction, airline travel or sausage production, stuff happens and corners are cut to reduce costs or make bigger profits. Independent inspections are mandatory. Regulators can be captured by interests, as happened for decades at the Interior Department when it comes to oil drilling, or can be slothful or inefficient. But they are necessary for both public safety and public confidence.

There are places to cut budgets, and there is a necessary role for Congress in overseeing regulators and inspectors, making sure they operate in a lean, mean and effective fashion.

But mindless cuts that are utterly penny-wise and pound-foolish, like these, show how distorted our deliberative process has become. In the headlong rush to provide a better fiscal future for our children, we should not be providing a less safe present for all of us.

For those of you who are in the cut everything camp, Father Orthoduck would suggest reading this article. For those of you in either the taxes must be cut no matter what camp, or in the everything except the military and defense must be cut camp, you need to seriously read this article and reconsider. What we need is a rationalized budget in which our spending priorities are carefully ranked, and the money necessary to fund those priorities is brought in, yes by taxes. As the article points out, starving the government in a way that sets us up for epidemics of tainted food or interstate roads that decay into collapse is utter foolishness. And, Father Orthoduck thinks that you will find that more and more serious writers from conservative, moderate, and liberal camps are beginning to say very similar things on this subject.

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Adventure, pioneering is held in high esteem–because, as a wise reformer on old Earth once said, it keeps the adventurers far away from home. — Elizabeth Moon. “New World Symphony,” Moon Flights. Ed. Marty Halpern. San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2009.

This phrase in a science fiction book set Father Orthoduck to thinking. It is not the first time Father Orthoduck has heard a thought of this type. Back in 1990, he had the opportunity in Cochabamba, Bolivia to hear of some sociological studies done by Jesuit scholars at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. They said that the discoveries of Cristoforo Colombo (Christopher Columbus) could not have come at a better time for the Spanish monarchy. The almost 800 years of war, known as La Reconquista (the Reconquest), between the Spanish and the Islamic invaders had come to an end. The final piece fell in place when the Emirate of Granada was reconquered by King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile. For those of you ardent femenists, the war was actually launched by Queen Isabella with the help of her husband in 1482. Spain was not fully united at that time, and though the two were indeed married, each was a Head of State in his/her own right.

The Treaty of Granada, the final surrender, happened in 1491. However, this placed the Kings and Queens of Spain and Portugal in a delicate situation. After a war of such length, you can imagine the large size of the armies and navies in those kingdoms. Many only knew how to be in the armed forces and would not have been fit for peaceful employment. The danger of rebellions when that many people are armed and know war is very high. At just this time is when Colombo comes asking for travel funds. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had money in the treasury which they were no longer forced to spend on war, and so they invested it with high hopes of commercial return. Instead, what they got was a new continent.

This provided a rather handy solution. What do you do with all those younger sons of nobles? What do you do with commoner soldiers who have no trade? Why, you ship them all off to this New World to conquer it in the name of the Kings and Queens. And so they did. Many younger sons who would not have inherited the estate upon their father’s death now ended up with estates far larger than anything which their father had owned in old Spain. Even commoner soldiers ended up with more property than they would have had in old Spain. On top of old that, money flowed back into Spain and made Spain, for a while, one of the richest countries on Earth.

A similar, but less violent process happened with England, and somewhat with France. England was still seething from the Reformation. The Elizabethean Settlement did not sit well with all English people. The struggle between the more Catholic party and the more Calvinist party kept tensions running high in old England. They, too, could have ended up in a continual semi-civil war. The Cromwell period showed just how bad it could get if the wrong party was able to assume power. And so, for the English as well, allowing their adventurers to freely leave to the New World was a winning situation. On the one hand, people like the Puritans and Roman Catholics could set up their own colonies, in New England and in Maryland. Quakers could be given yet another tract of land, Pennsylvania. And, excess unruly prisoners could be forcibly transported overseas, first to Georgia and then to Australia. Note that Georgia was not founded as a penal colony, per se, but it certainly benefitted from the “worthy poor” who were released from debtor’s prison to the transport ships, and, yes, to prisoners forcibly transported.

And so, England got rid of its extremists and became the profitable moderate country that it has remained to this day. The continuing opening to further adventures, as the British Empire advanced, kept the home country both stable and financially well-off.

It should be noted that France did not go that route and ended up with both the bloody killing of the Huguenots in the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre in 1572, and the bloody French Revolution. Though France held Quebec, it never held it tightly and never used its colony the way that both the Spanish and the British did their colonies, as a steam release valve for their countries. It was not until later, in its North African adventures, that France achieved something of that release valve. By 1831 they establish the French Foreign Legion which certainly allowed many men to recover from incredibly bad life decisions.

 But, it did set Father Orthoduck to thinking. Where are the relief valves for the adventurers today? He suspects that this is part of the reason for the growth of extreme sports in this country. But, he still wonders whether it would be good for our society to have such a valve. He wishes that the space program had panned out rather than turning into another inefficient bureocracy. And, having been a missionary, Father Orthoduck quite understands the pull to go out and take chances. Had the space program done what it should and expanded to the moon, why Father Orthoduck might have volunteered to be one of the moon chaplains. One never knows.

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Father Orthoduck saw this cartoon on another of his favorite bloggers, Orthodixie. He had quite a laugh over it. Then Father Orthoduck looked at it some more and realized that while the cartoon is funny, it actually is not fully truthful. Atheists have put out many pamphlets and even books. For instance, Bertrand Russell, a noted philosopher, delivered a lecture on 6 March 1927 to the National Secular Society, South London Branch, at Battersea Town Hall. It was called “Why I am not a Christian.” It became and extremely famous lecture and was published 30 years later in a collection of his essays that had that as the title. Father Orthoduck has read it, and it is a strong defense of atheism.

Today there are several people who could best be described as attack atheists. That is, these are people who are no longer concerned about making the strong case for atheism, but rather are oriented toward savaging any who are not atheists. But, few of them truly think through the implications of what it means to be fully atheist. One of the few who did was Jean Paul Sartre. He said:

“The existentialist . . . finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no longer be any good a priori, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that “the good” exists, that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now upon the plane where there are only men. Dostoevsky once wrote: ‘If God did not exist, everything would be permitted’; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself. . . . Nor, on the other hand, if God does not exist, are we provided with any values or commands that could legitimise our behaviour. Thus we have neither behind us, nor before us in a luminous realm of values, any means of justification or excuse. – We are left alone, without excuse. That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free.”

Sartre’s compatriot, Albert Camus ends up writing the book called, “The Stranger,” in which he has his main character say near the end of his life:

“As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the benign indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.”

Few modern existentialists or absurdists (no Father Orthodox is not insulting them, look up absurdists on Google) or nihilists or atheists are as honest as Sartre and Camus. Most of them make the argument that it is religion which is the cause of all the ills in the world, and that the world would inevitably be a better place if only religion were wiped out. Yet, even if they have the honesty to admit that humans would no longer have any divine support for their ethics, they still somehow imagine a future world in which serendipitously the world would agree on a set of humanist ethics that would provide for maximum personal liberty with maximum community cohesion. Frankly, that takes more faith than some of the Christian beliefs.

You are probably expecting Father Orthoduck to make the argument now that a nation under Christianity would be much better. The answer is, “not necessarily.” If one reads any world history, then one knows that there have been periods in which particular expressions of Christianity have become quite toxic. But what Father Orthoduck will say is that a nation under Christianity is potentially a much better nation. Whether that goes from potential to actual depends ever so much on the actual holiness of its clergy and its government. And, what Father Orthoduck will also say is that a nation under even a mediocre Christianity will, in the long term, be better than a nation under atheism. He argues this out of his family’s (mother, grandmother, aunts, uncles, cousins) experience of life in a Communist country. It has been written that the reason Mahatma Ghandi was able to be successful against the British Empire was precisely because there was at least a mediocre Christianity present. There was a moral base which Ghandi could shame into change. The same was true of Martin Luther King and the old Jim Crow South. The marchers swept away by fire hoses and bitten by police dogs shamed the nation into change. Ultimately, Father Orthoduck will argue that even the Reformation was a massive reaction of shame to the excesses of Medieval Roman Catholicism and the Inquisition.

No, Father Orthoduck has no desire to live in an existentialist or atheist or humanist nation. No, give him a nation with a religious base, even if–like the USA–there are strong clauses preventing any one religion from dominating the political scene.

Yesterday, Father Ernesto continued his discussion on Kuhn and a changing paradigm shift. He will continue that tomorrow with a small discussion on post-modernism and how that has impacted our view of truth. However, he brought up an event from 1946 nicknamed the McMinn County War. There is no recent comparable event, but it is certainly true that there still continues to be a strong feeling in America about being against unfairness. A recent case is happening right now in the State of Arizona.

As you know, Arizona has passed some of the strictest laws regarding illegal immigration. The Supreme Court recently upheld part of their laws when they declared that it was perfectly proper for a state to insist that businesspeople check on the citizenship or visa status of all their employees under penalty of a severe fine. Other parts of the law, including allowing the police to request proof of citizenship either after an arrest or when there is “reasonable” suspicion are still held up, particularly the part that allows the check for almost any reason. The fear is that a climate is created that will be unfair to Latino citizens, who will be presumptively considered illegal and/or criminals while the likelihood of the same happening to non-Latinos is close to nil.

Recently Tucson had an example of that. On 5 May, a Tucson SWAT team served a search warrant on the house of a person who was thought to be engaged in cross-border drug dealing. Because of that they went in with a SWAT team, according to the video clip released by the sheriff. When they entered, they saw a man with a rifle. The police state that 71 shots were fired, not one of them from the person holding the rifle. The person holding the rifle was hit by only 22 of the shots. That means that 49 of the shots went zipping around the house. At this point, two stories emerge. However, the key points are that the man killed was a Latino, was a Marine combat veteran of Iraq, NO drugs were found in the house, and there was a wife and a child inside. What has added fuel to the situation is that there are recorded 911 calls from the wife begging for medical attention for her husband. SWAT claims that medical personnel were not called in because there was a physician’s determination that a person was unlikely to survive those shots. What both sides agree on is that they let the man lie there and die with no attempt to give any medical aid. To say that the Tucson community is inflamed is an understatement. You can read part of the story from KGUN9, one of the local stations and also here. The story has now gone international as an example of how the USA is a Wild West country with police who are barely under control.

As with most stories of this type, there are two versions of what happened when the SWAT team went in. Everyone agrees that the man was holding a rifle. Everyone agrees that he did not fire it and the police now state that the safety was still on the rifle. In other words, the man reacted like a typical well trained Marine. You have protection in your hands, but you do not fire until you have correctly identified the threat and unless there really is a threat. The safety is kept on to ensure that there is no accidental misfire. Unfortunately, it appears that the Tucson police approach is somewhat different. What is interesting to Father Orthoduck are a couple of things.

First, the arguments have not broken into the typical conservative vs liberal arguments. In fact, Oath Keepers (an organization that is clearly not liberal) is planning a memorial protest march on Memorial Day for what they feel is tantamount to murder by police. This is a case in which gun-rights advocates are on the same side as civil rights advocates. Gun-rights advocates are very adamant that a person has the right to be armed inside his own home, even to rifles and bullet-resistant vests (which the man killed was NOT wearing) and to not take for granted that just because someone yells police that this means that they are police. They are also adamant that it is police responsibility to refrain from shooting a person, even if that person has a weapon in their hands. They must be given a clear opportunity to lay the weapon down as the person had the right to not trust until he had visual identification of the intruders. They call this a police over-reaction and a clear violation of Second Amendment rights. Civil rights advocates have questioned some police SWAT methods for a long time and clearly question the decisions to fire and to not give medical aid. They also state that this is precisely the danger of Arizona’s approach towards Latinos and an example of the racial bias that those laws breed. It is odd to find those two groups on the same side. But the reason that Oath Keepers is being cited is that all Oath Keepers must either be active-duty, veterans, or members (active or retired) of a police force. This is somewhat like the McMinn situation.

Second, follow the first link that Father Orthoduck gave you and read the comments, though some will be hard to read. One side is the side I cited above. The other side is basically the side that the police are rarely, if ever, wrong. Look carefully at the arguments, because they embody some of the effects on USA society of the publication of Kuhn’s paper and of post-modernist philosophy. Count up how many of the comments contain reasoned arguments and statements and how many of them simply say (on whichever side) that this is an example of the other side’s rampant hatred of … [fill in the blank]. That is, how many of the comments argue (without saying it this way) that the other person’s view of this incident is simply because they are a [fill in the blank: a liberal, a conservative, a police hater, an anti-gun advocate]? How many of the comments argue that the other person’s interpretation of the event is simply a reflection of their worldview and not the result of any reasoned analysis? This of course, implies that the writer of the comment is the reasonable and rational one.

You see, both “paradigm shift” and “worldview” came into the popular lingo of this culture and into the popular belief, and have deeply affected conversation in the USA since. In fact, it has almost done away with conversation and dialogue turning us into a nation that is at times almost schizophrenic.

Father Ernesto will resume his topic tomorrow.

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Besides being a priest, Father Orthoduck is a published medical professional. (No, he is not a physician.) So, he is quite aware of how often people do not pay attention to medical warnings or medical directions. For instance, there is a regular problem with people returning with an infection that has not been cured. Often, a physician will simply prescribe another antibiotic, and the infection will finally be cured. But, a smart physician will question the patient closely because many people do not follow the medication directions. Many of you are aware of antibiotics that would need to be taken twice a day for seven to ten days. You would be surprised at how often people would take them for five days, feel better, and then quit taking them. Needless to say, not only does the infection often return, but those bugs that had survived were the ones most resistant to that antibiotic. They would have died at the end of the full regimen, but they were able to resist just enough to make it to five days. Of course, the bugs that live to grow, give birth to a new generation of bugs that can now last five days. So, when the patient returns, not only is his/her infection back, but the infection now has stronger and more resistant bugs in place. And next thing you know, a zombie bug has developed.

So, over the years, better methods of convincing people to follow medical advice have developed. For instance, now many antibiotics are available in one pill a day doses that you take for only five days. Or, they “load you up” with antibiotic by having you take three pills on the first day, two on the second, and one on the third through fifth day, or some such combination, in order to kill what is eating you before your patience gives out, or you turn into a zombie. Public Service Announcements (PSA’s) have also become more creative in trying to communicate data in ways that will entice you to listen, understand, and act before a zombie apocalypse gets you.

So now you are asking, “Wait, WHAT ZOMBIES?” Heh heh, Father Orthoduck got your attention, did he not?

In one of the most creative Public Service Announcement campaigns that Father Orthoduck has seen, the CDC (The Centers for Disease Control) is now publishing advice on how to survive a zombie apocalypse. If you click on the underlined phrase, you will be taken to their website. The campaign has so far been so successful that their server has been unavailable, and nearly crashed, several times since that PSA was released. It turns out that surviving a zombie apocalypse requires some of the same foresight and planning as surviving a hurricane or a pandemic. What should you do? Well, you need to have an emergency kit and an emergency plan. Please do go over to their website and read the full article. Those of us in Alabama can certainly tell you that emergencies can strike suddenly and unexpectedly. So, what kit should you have?

• Water (1 gallon per person per day)
• Food (stock up on non-perishable items that you eat regularly)
• Medications (this includes prescription and non-prescription meds)
• Tools and Supplies (utility knife, duct tape, battery powered radio, etc.)
• Sanitation and Hygiene (household bleach, soap, towels, etc.)
• Clothing and Bedding (a change of clothes for each family member and blankets)
• Important documents (copies of your driver’s license, passport, and birth certificate to name a few)
• First Aid supplies (although you’re a goner if a zombie bites you, you can use these supplies to treat basic cuts and lacerations that you might get during a tornado or hurricane)

Some people may wish to add additional items. But, remember, the kit needs to be mostly prepared and portable. Assume the worst, it happened in Alabama, and have stuff ready that you can grab in order to leave your house within a very few minutes. But, please do go over to the CDC page to read the full article. You will enjoy their creativity and ability to finally get a massive amount of people to actually read their disaster advice. Congratulations CDC!

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Father Orthoduck read an odd news story today. As many of you know, one group of Evangelicals is forecasting that the Rapture will happen this Saturday, 21 May. The forecast is being strong pushed by Family Radio, which is on radio stations in every state in the Union, as well as having a presence in Canada and in other countries.

But, what surprised Father Orthoduck was to find out that there are some self-acknowledged atheists making money from this forecast. They have begun to offer services for picking up your pets after the Rapture and caring for them in a loving manner. Another service offers a message delivery service to your loved ones so that they may know that you loved them and that there is still time to repent.

What makes it interesting is that these services guarantee performance based on their being staffed by guaranteed non-Christians. They, of course, are betting the odds that nothing will happen and they will have gotten something for nothing. But, what troubles Father Orthoduck is the Christian ethic behind using such services. That is, the Christian who uses such services is counting that none of the people involved will become Christians in an untimely way and be unable to complete the service. More than that, this means that the incentive is for the Christian to fail to witness to the people who own these businesses lest they be unable to carry out their duties! Rather than hoping that no one should perish, it almost seems as though Christians who sign up for these Rapture services are OK with the idea that these people will perish. It seems to be rather odd thinking for a Christian.

Will the Rapture come in four days? Well, no, not the Rapture. The Orthodox do not look at the end times like those who follow a dispensationalist theology. Perhaps a better way to ask it is, “Will Our Lord Jesus Christ’s Second Coming be this Saturday?” The correct answer is that no person knows the day nor the hour, save Our Father in heaven. Therefore, it is entire possible that Our Lord will return this Saturday, and it is entirely possible that Our Lord will not return this Saturday. Nevertheless, St. Andrew of Caesarea did write a strong commentary on the Book of the Revelation around the year 611 AD. If he is correct, then it is highly probable that this Saturday will not be the day. St. Andrew wrote to calm apocalyptic fears back in those times. Perhaps we should read him again today!

Most of us are not aware that groups such as the Chinese, the Arabs, the Mayans, the Aztecs, and the Incas knew significantly more about astronomy long before the Europeans. During the European Dark Ages, the Chinese, the Koreans, the Japanese, the Anasazi (American southwest tribal people) and the Arabs record a new star appearing in the skies. It was so bright that it could even be seen during daylight for nearly a month. The Europeans finally “discovered” the Crab Nebula in 1731.

Chinese and Arab astronomers began to cooperate with each other by the late 1100′s to early 1200′s. It is recorded that Genghis Khan had some astronomers who traveled with him to Persia precisely in order to study the Arabic astronomical system and calendar to see whether it could be of use to China. Kublai Khan invited Arab astronomers to China to help them with their star maps. Meantime, Arab astronomers benefitted from the star maps that China had already produced.

But, let Father Orthoduck get back to the “new star.” The new star was a supernova. In fact, the Crab Nebula is actually the remnant of a supernova. At the center of the nebula there is a pulsar called the Crab Pulsar, which is a neutron star. So, why does Father Orthoduck bring this all up? Well, the stars are often seen as being portents in the heavens. For instance, it was a bright star that led the Magi to Our Lord Jesus Christ. And, the Book of the Revelation talks about signs in the heavens.

So, Father Orthoduck found it quite humorous to see the date on which light from the explosion of the supernova reached the Earth. You see, the Chinese have kept extremely accurate calendar dates for over a millenia. In fact, their calendar dates are so accurate that we can convert their dates to our dates. So, when was the year in which the light of the supernova arrived here? The year was 1054, the year in which the Church began to blow itself apart in the Great Schism. The Schism begins a month and a half after the light from the supernova arrived here on Earth. But, the full date on which the Chinese first record the nova is quite interesting. It was on July 4, 1054.

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Father Orthoduck is rather upset today. Why is he rather upset? Well, please go to the website of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. While there go to the “Trademarks” column and click on option 2, “Search Marks.” On the webpage that comes up, look at, “Select a Search Option,” and click on “Basic Word Mark Search.” Input the phrase “seal team six.” Four sets of numbers will come up, three of them marked “live.” Click on any of the live ones. The first live one shows the entry below.

Word Mark	SEAL TEAM 6
Goods and Services	IC 041. US 100 101 107. G & S: Entertainment and education services
Standard Characters Claimed
Mark Drawing Code	(4) STANDARD CHARACTER MARK
Serial Number	85310970
Filing Date	May 3, 2011
Current Filing Basis	1B
Original Filing Basis	1B
Owner	(APPLICANT) Disney Enterprises, Inc. CORPORATION DELAWARE 500 South Buena Vista Street Burbank CALIFORNIA 91521
Attorney of Record	Charles Steinberg
Type of Mark	SERVICE MARK
Register	PRINCIPAL
Live/Dead Indicator	LIVE

Yes, it is true. Two days after the announcement of the death of Osama bin Laden, Disney Enterprises filed with the USA government an application to trademark the term “seal team 6.” For what are those words being trademarked in the three applications marked live? ”Disney’s trademark applications for ‘Seal Team 6′ cover clothing, footwear, headwear, toys, games and ‘entertainment and education services,’ among other things.” Yes, just think, within a month or two (or maybe less), Disney plans on making available to you clothing, footwear, headwear, toys, games, etc., all bearing the words “seal team 6.” Just think of how honoring it would be to go to events honoring our servicemen while you wear your Disney emblazoned seal team 6 headwear.

Father Orthoduck is not amused.

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