The Christian Vanguard

Dennis Prager has this video up on the meaning between the difference of saying "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Holidays". While I agreed with much, if not most, of what he said, I do think he made a critical error that could undermine his entire case.  How can Prager say that Christmas is his Holiday, but not his Holy-Day? They're the same thing. To separate the meaning of Holiness from Holiday, Prager is doing exactly what he is trying to fight against, Secularization. You can't secularize Holiness but then fight against the secularization of Christmas.

A good faithful Catholic sent me this link by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops regarding the death penalty. They are various quotations about the death penalty taken mostly from their pamphlet A Culture of Life and the Penalty of Death , and the idea is that they want the faithful lay to be against the death penalty. I want to examine each of the bullet points and this, by extension, should suffice as a response to the longer pamphlet. 

When faced with passages like John 6 in regards to the Real Presence of the Eucharist, many Protestants I know will say something like, "Yeah, but Jesus obviously spoke in parables and metaphors. So this has to be another." This begs the question, but more fundamentally, it isn't an answer.  True, Jesus has spoken before in parables, analogies, metaphors, and all the rest. But how does it follow from Jesus it doing it before that he is actually doing it here? To make that leap, you would have to infer that everything Jesus says is not literal. But obviously that's absurd, because Jesus does refer to things literally, including his resurrection. The inverse can also show how this really isn't an answer. Suppose I said, "Well, Jesus obviously spoke literally and particularly elsewhere. So this is another example." That wouldn't work. 

The death penalty is up for vote here in CA. I've seen some otherwise solid Catholics in favor of abolishing it. I am for maintaining. I recently came across this article from a friend on my Facebook newsfeed, and I suppose I can respond to it here.