Everyone is familiar with Spanish-to-English dictionaries or French-to-English dictionaries. The media, print and broadcast, are dominated by a language that is known as secular or liberal speak. They have their own vocabulary. I have devoted years of research to decipher it and offer herewith a small dictionary that will translate secular speak into normal English. This will enable you to understand what the secularists really mean whenever they speak.

Archconservative: Adjective applied to a judicial nominee for the Supreme Court who might actually base decisions on the Constitution instead of on a secularist agenda that finds its justification in the penumbra (shadow) of that document or on previous activist decisions with an equally shadowy rationale.

Assisted suicide: A way to get rid of wearisome old people and the handicapped that have the effrontery to keep living in spite of the bother and expense of their maintenance. See Autonomy.

Autonomy: The notion that ending one's life is the best proof that you are in control of it. It is the justification for assisted suicide whether an elderly or handicapped person asks for it or not. People who might become incapacitated sometimes appoint proxies to ask a doctor to kill them. Their death proves that they are again in control of their lives.

Choice: An option to kill an unborn human being inconveniently and inconsiderately present. Formerly limited to the preborn, it now applies increasingly to other irritating forms of human life like the aged and handicapped. It is impolite to reveal that the thing chosen is the killing of a human being.

Compassion: Sympathy for a mother who wants to abort. It is a mistake to extend it to the unwelcome fetus who is rightfully deprived of both life and compassion.

Consequentialism: A system of morality that judges the goodness or evil of an act according to whether or not its consequences bring an overall state of goodness or a better state of affairs. The principle was embraced by Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong and Saddam Hussein, all of whom enjoyed an enhanced state of affairs once they killed several millions of their citizens. That created a happier citizenry as measured by the decline in the number of citizen complaints.

Divisive issues: Initiatives outlawing abortion and same sex-marriage that conservatives use cynically to divide the American people. By contrast, liberal attempts to protect abortion rights and legalize same-sex marriage produce unity. Secularists eschew unity based on conservative issues like banning gay marriage, though typical voter support for the ban is four to one.

Euthanasia: A sort of retroactive abortion for the elderly and handicapped.

Extremist: A politician who would forbid the slicing, dismemberment, saline burning or brain extraction of a preborn human being. See Moderate.

Fetus: A Latin word for offspring. Sometimes incorrectly called a baby. The latter usage should be avoided because it is easier to kill a fetus than a baby and thus promote progress.

Free speech: Pornography, public nudity, and criticism of religion. It explicitly excludes public expressions of religion, which may disturb the delicate sensibilities of the irreligious. It also forbids politicking in churches – except in black churches.

Gay rights: The right to same-sex activity. It also includes the right of homosexuals to masquerade as married couples and to receive at taxpayer expense increasingly costly medical care for totally avoidable conditions like AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Hate speech: Any speech critical of the moral failings or immoral lifestyle of others such as preaching against homosexual behavior. Speech critical of Christians does not qualify as hate speech.

Homophobe: One who agrees with the Bible that same-sex activity and gay marriage are abominations and denies that AIDS is spread by lack of federal funding. See Hate speech.

Journalism: Liberal propagandizing. A venue where mentally disturbed cranks are cited as "unimpeachable sources." See Lying.

Lying: Deception in speech unless one lies about sex. Currently, there are three kinds of lies listed in order of increasing magnitude: ordinary lies, BS and CBS.

Mainline journalists: Members of an unlicensed 527 advocacy group pretending to be newspersons. Reporters who tout news favorable to secularism and ruthlessly suppress news favorable to traditional moral principles. They cite documents that may be fake but whose contents are nonetheless accurate and therefore require discussion. It is like acknowledging that the "Protocols of Zion" is fake but accurate, so it demands discussion of the Jewish desire to rule the world.

Moderate: A politician who permits the slicing, dismemberment, saline burning, or sucking out in the course of delivery the brains of a preborn human being. See Extremist.

Partisan political operative: A shadowy, dishonest person who belongs to a rival party and spreads information injurious to your own.

Progressive: One who believes that human progress consists in killing fetuses inconveniently present, killing human embryos for their stem cells, or helping the elderly, the insane or handicapped kill themselves. Logically, the more deaths, the greater the progress. Self-styled pro-lifers who want to preserve life are by definition anti-progressive.

Pro-lifer: An inappropriate name for one who is anti-choice or anti-abortion. The term is carefully screened from the pages or broadcasts of the leftist elite media that are bulletin boards for secular causes everywhere.

Proportionalism: A system of morality that allows one to perform any sort of villainy he likes if he can find a proportionately lofty sounding excuse for it, e.g., contracepting for the sake of marital peace or aborting to be able to finish college. Also known as the Caiphas principle as in Caiphas' pronouncement that it is better for one man to die than to have the whole nation perish. See Consequentialism.

Right-wing religious fanatic: (Alternate forms: Right-wing religious fanatic nut; Right-wing religious fanatic nut extremist.) A troglodyte who is opposed to abortion, human cloning, homosexuality, gay marriage, embryonic stem-cell research and sexual immorality and thinks that "under God" should be left in the Pledge of Allegiance. There is no such thing as a left-wing religious fanatic as there is insufficient religiosity among them to qualify for the category.

Theocracy: Inappropriate and unwelcome application to society of traditional moral principles that might inhibit the hedonistic lifestyle of progressives. Allowing religious influence on public morality is equivalent to establishing the Taliban in America.

Truth: A subjective judgment about reality such as in the expression, "My truth is that I a homosexual American" or "It depends on what the meaning of 'is' is." Your truth has no validity if it interferes with mine. Mere scientific proof that the fetus is an early stage of human life does not obligate me to give it the respect due to a human being if that contradicts my truth.

Vast right-wing conspiracy: A group that observes the immorality of progressives and is boorish enough to point it out. No one ever speaks of a vast left-wing conspiracy, although the mainline media qualify.

As you can see, secular speak is a way of making nasty things sound nice, rather like applying lipstick to a pig. After the application, the pig is still ugly and smells bad. So it is with secular principles supporting immorality and the culture of death.

Msgr. James C. Brunner is pastor of St. Mary's Church in Victoria, Texas.