Source: AOI
By Fr. Johannes L. Jacobse
Selling the organs of aborted babies is big business and Planned Parenthood can deliver most organs intact chirped Dr. Deborah Nucatola between mouthfuls of food a few days ago. Nucatola, a high placed executive at Planned Parenthood, unwittingly exposed the grisly work of her organization in an undercover video released by the Center for Medical Progress, a pro-life group.
The video is disturbing. Nucatola’s demeanor, her perfunctory manner about manipulating an abortion to preserve the quality of particular body parts for resale, her eagerness to cultivate the client reveals no shred of conscience about trafficking in the harvested organs of unborn children. She talks like a salesman selling a cell phone upgrade.
Evil enters the world when a man puts his hands in service to a lie. Evil enters because the man has to restructure reality to conform to the lie, lest reality reveal that the lie is indeed a lie.
The lie operating in Nucatola’s glib descriptions about fetal parts is that the aborted baby is not a baby. It takes titanic self-deception to deny the humanity of a fetus (Latin for “little one”) but in the battle between avarice and charity many choose the cash. That’s one reason why they lie.
When the lie becomes more widely accepted the broader culture shifts. Those who believe the lie (who see the lie as true) marshal persuasion and intimidation to make others believe the lie and shift society even more.
Planned Parenthood, the behemoth of the abortion industry had this to say about the revelations:
- The video “falsely portrays Planned Parenthood’s participation in tissue donation programs that support lifesaving scientific research.”
- “Patients sometimes want to donate tissue to scientific research that can help lead to medical breakthroughs…”
- “There is no financial benefit for tissue donation for either the patient or for Planned Parenthood.”
It is clear these replies were crafted by a public relations flack. No time was wasted coming up with them and they studiously avoid any suggestion that the “tissue donations” were the intact organs of an aborted child.
The lie has become institutionalized. An industry has arisen around it. Planned Parenthood rakes in about $1.5 billion in revenues each year from operations. It routinely aborts around 150 unborn for every one adoption referral. Since Roe v Wade in 1973 over 57 million abortions have been performed, many of them by Planned Parenthood.
The lie is not new. Carrie Buck, the Tuskegee experiments, the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII and other sorrowful chapters of American history were predicated on the same lie: some people are less than human. Even today, Mother Jones magazine, the flagship of progressive ideals declares that the revelations are “…another right-wing nothingburger.”
Dr. Joseph Mengele — Exemplary Citizen
Through a lie German Nazis built gas chambers and Russian Communists the Gulags. Through a lie American Progressives launched their war of eugenics against Blacks, the poor and the infirm that continues today in the abortion industry.
Critics have been struggling to find the proper metaphor to define the outrage. Most draw on Dr. Hannibal Lecter, the gruesome cannibal from literature.
But evil is seldom sensationalist. It’s banal. It accomplishes its work over lunch and in private clinics by men like the mild and proper Dr. Joseph Mengele — Nucatola’s prototype and in whose steps she walks.
Soylent Green.
I guess for me the sale of human tissue is a highly ethical matter. And PP deserves criticism.
And comparing them to Mengele is too far for a credible criticism.
Remain credible.
Furthermore, I watched the video and it is pretty disgusting.
I’d say the right would be wise to demand her resignation.
As a liberal and a person that accepts the Roe decision, but rejects abortion personally, it seems like Nucatola clips can at least help with public persuasion.
But isn’t there at least a small portion of illegal here?
How is the comparison with Mengele even remotely unfair? Did you miss the news that PP literally murders children and harvests their organs for experiments? These priestesses of the devil have openly admitted it, albeit in their own dehumanizing verbiage.
The only difference is that Mengele hasn’t murdered tens of millions of children in the last 40 years. But I’m glad you support their right to the option of slaying children, that’s very liberal and trendy of you. How God must smile upon your nuance and open-mindedness.
If you want to make the directors of Planned Parenthood the sane ones in the room by calling them names, knock yourself out pal.
If your arguments can’t stand without comparisons to Mengele, so be it. Mengele performed on people against their will, abortion is performed at the will of the mother, but hmmm, those can be compared because you believe a blob of splitting cells has will? Genius…
If all you got is mud and sh.t, keep on slinging it.
In a discussion about ethics, bring in the devil and God; good luck.
Slam the people that agree with you on the heart of the matter, but not one of your arguments. That is wisdom, sure.
The right has found its place in society. Deferrment Don leads the way as the chief monkey sh.t thrower. Maybe if you throw enough sh.t, a few blobs will get on the dress. The sh.t you threw on me fell off…gotta go.
Did the infant (“blob of cells” my ***) volunteer to have its brains sucked out and organs harvested?
Disgusting.
RE: “a blob of splitting cells”
Mr. Fall, if that is the extent of your understanding of an unborn child harvested for its “usable” organs by monsters in medical scrubs, then I suggest, seriously, that you consult an Orthodox priest, learn the moral teaching of our Church concerning abortion, ask forgiveness for your woeful vincible ignorance (as well as your other sins), and think twice before posting anything on that subject here or anywhere.
Hey-you guys want to call a woman using an IUD an abortionist. This is why the right is nuts. Your own arguments anger you.
Nice straw man.
Mr Fall writes, “Hey-you guys want to call a woman using an IUD an abortionist. This is why the right is nuts.”
I have read this several times. Not only is it not an argument. It is not even a thought.
Mitchell and I went around a few times on this and the IUD is considered abortive because it does not allow a fertilized egg with some 20 divisions or so to adhere to the uterine wall. I might be off a bit on the count, but not far.
Then when I return to the subject, people got all excited about the blob of cells.
If the “prolife” folks had done any homework; they would have pushed the courts closer on the viability question which was the open door left with Roe.
But instead, they have decided to work the conception definition to the delight of their patrons.
Our Lord was once a blob of 20 cells. Your argument is invalid.
Questions of viability would not have changed Roe. The demons running wild in the Supreme Court that day would have accepted nothing less than what they got.
Daniel, not only are you confused about the humanity of the unborn child, you don’t know the legal history either. (What could it be other than human? -A kitten? -A smartphone?)
The question of viability was raised by a Supreme Court Justice herself — Sandra Day OConner — who argued in 1983 that Roe was on a “collision course with itself.” As medical procedures improved, the line of viability moved ever closer to conception.
But viability is a bogus construct — an arbitrary value pulled out of thin air. No organism is viable outside of its natural environment. If I shoot you into space without a suit you die. If I hold you under water for six minutes you die. If I rip you out of your mother’s womb, you die.
The womb is the natural environment of the unborn child and if left unmolested the child grows up to look just like you and me.
You seem to think that the Supremes would be persuaded by science. Only the dissenters were.
Father, from a moral, spiritual, and ontological standpoint, you are absolutely correct, as are the pro-life “absolutists.” I agree with you 100%.
But I have to say that it is extremely frustrating to watch how successful the socially progressive activists have been with incrementalist approaches. Just look at the recent gay marriage debacle. What started decades ago as a simple “we don’t want to be persecuted” passed through civil unions (themselves unthinkable not that long ago), and it ended up with “marriage equality” or nothing.
I’m not saying that all of those things were wrong to ask for. Certainly freedom from persecution and discrimination in the workplace are basic human dignities to be given to all. But the point is that these highly successful activists didn’t try to take the whole apple in a single bite, from the standpoint of political tactics.
I have always thought that the pro-life movement made a major tactical error by having so many of the activists insisting on an absolutist approach based on conception. That might come with time, but if one can win political battles to save a lot of unborn children by taking a compromise position, why on earth wouldn’t one do that? There is a ton of broad support for banning 2nd and 3rd trimester abortions, and even for banning surgical abortions entirely at all phases of pregnancy, as long as exceptions for life, health, and rape/incest are included. Morally, there is in one sense no difference between an IUD abortion and a late term head-crushing abortion (in the same way that a poisoning is no less murder than is a beheading — but look at which one gets the headlines). And morally, an exception for rape/incest makes no logical sense whatsoever. But politically, it is a no-brainer which arguments are likely to win in legislatures and at the ballot box.
If pro-life activists were more willing to forego political battles over the morning after pill and IUDs and the like, and had gone, from the beginning, and very aggressively, for the low-hanging fruit, it would have forced abortion proponents over all of these years to have to defend practices that are manifestly barbaric to any reasonable human being. And we might be a lot further down the road to a broad societal consensus on opposing all abortion. As it is, we don’t even have broad consensus among all self-described Christians, truth to be told.
Abortion defenders have delighted in the fact that they don’t have to argue over barbarities — they can just point derisively to pro-life concerns over a “blob of cells,” deflecting from the more obviously heinous things they support. I frankly find references to a human being in the early stages of development as a mere “blob of cells” repulsive — but all too many fellow Americans do not share your and my concerns for the fact that life begins at conception and should be treated accordingly. Morally absolute positions when teaching the faithful how to live life without committing grave sins? Absolutely. With the general public? This is politics, not church, and you need to win what you can, or lose everything. We have, repeatedly, chosen to lose everything rather than win something.
The public can be persuaded on obvious barbarities — and as we have discovered quite recently, the Supreme Court is indeed all too often swayed by public opinion, not by legal, scientific, or moral principles.
If you try to suggest the morality of using an IUD is the same as the morality of a late term abortion to women-good luck. If you sampled the population of child bearing women and asked them to describe an IUD in two words; I’d guess about 95% would say birth control, on the off chance 5% of them were ardent pro lifers and you got abortifacient.
But, to your point. I find it to be spot on.
It’d be nice to see progress in reducing abortions, but we won’t have that because of the all or nothing wishes and the just downright nastiness of those that say they are pro-life because anyone that has any opinion other than sperm meets egg shazaam new human, is evil.
Even a President can say we should reduce abortion and the pro life crowd will find a way to condemn it. NO! Eliminate! He didn’t say eliminate! He is certainly pure evil and you must respect my cogent opinion calling him evil, not human, blah, blah, blah. No, he is Hitler reincarnate.
But it is all about the unborn. Yeah, right. Okay then.
You nailed it Edward, but the like button only got two votes.
Hmmm.
Not really winning the poser title.
Daniel, speaking as someone who is in the trenches in the pro-life movement (having actually helped start up our local annual March-for-life) I can honestly tell you that NONE of the pro-lifers I know are absolutist. Far from it. We’ve tried over the last forty years to put in sensible restrictions which have majority appeal only to see them shot down by judicial fiat and/or executive motion.
The absolutists have always been on the other side. Every time we tried to engage them in doing something –anything–to reduce the number of abortions, they adamantly refused. It was only relatively late in the game (for me) that I realized that for the pro-abortion crowd, abortion is nothing less than a sacrament. And now, thanks to the videos, we know that it is a massive money-maker as well.
Easy, solution the state pays someone else to carry the fetus of women that don’t want to give birth. If someone did this, the left and right would not have anything to argued about. In fact prohibition of abortion doesn’t work either, in Texas women just go over to New Mexico to have an abortion.
Daniel E Fall (August 6, 2015 at 9:49 pm) says:
If you try to suggest the morality of using an IUD is the same as the morality of a late term abortion to women-good luck. If you sampled the population of child bearing women and asked them to describe an IUD in two words; I’d guess about 95% would say birth control, on the off chance 5% of them were ardent pro lifers and you got abortifacient. SNIP
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Daniel E. Fall has completely run off the rails here.
First, it is a mistake, a physical, biological mistake, to assert that human life begins at conception.
Human life does NOT begin at conception, but at fertilization.
Saying that ‘life begins at conception gives biological wiggle room to pro-abortion propaganda. This description of incipient human life is very wrong, and must be avoided altogether if we’re trying to make sense of this process in language which we can all understand.
To remediate this popular but false understanding of the point at which we human beings come into existence, we must insist that this happens at the moment when a human egg accepts a human seed. In other words, we must acknowledge that human life begins at fertilization, the joining of a male cell to a female cell, invisibly tiny yet complete in its genetic components.
IUDs make it impossible (or at least very unlikely) that this zygote, this human being in its first moments, will accomplish nidation (‘nesting’) in the endometrium of its mother’s womb, and so never be conceived — ‘conception’ being narrowly defined as the womb’s acceptance of the zygote as an organism to be nourished rather than expelled.
The use of IUDs to prevent conception is a form of abortion and cannot in any way be considered moral by Christians.
Lord, teach us Your statutes!
Mr. Fall,
As near as I can tell, the Lord is not directly giving out medical advice, and my opinion of Google scholars – particularly those bold enough and stupid enough to accuse you of murder out of hand – is well known. I would suggest that the answer relies on the type of IUD upon which one employs for contraception that is paramount.
The best-selling IUD’s in the US are Levonorgestrel-releasing intrauterine systems that contain the female hormone levonorgestrel. Why be concerned with levonorgestrel? The treatment of non-atypical hyperplasia. The treatreatment of heavy menstrual bleeding. The treatment of endometriosis. And other things such as breast cancer, and for the primary prevention of ovarian cancer.
But it is also marketed in a T-shaped IUD inserted into the uterus for up to three years (Liletta, or Skyla) or up to five years (Mirena) specifically for the prevention of pregnancy:
So, how, exactly, is this IUD preventing pregnancy? Levonorgestrel literally reduces ovulation by as much as 55% or more; it dramatically & exponentially reduces the ability of ova to be be fertilized over time; it thickens the mucus of the cervix to prevent sperm from entering the uterus; it literally reduces the survival rate/lifetime of sperm; and it exerts a potent contraceptive effect on the endometrium (the lining of the uterus). You will note that Levonorgestrel’s exception record of efficacy as a contraceptive is accomplished without fertilization, conception, nesting (Madonna Mia!), zygote, zumba, Ziggy Marley, or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
“The use of IUDs to prevent conception is a form of abortion and cannot in any way be considered moral by Christians.” Dude, you owe anyone who felt unnecessarily judged by your ignorance an apology.
You do not need religion to see that life starts at conception. If you are at all informed by science, you will concur that it is so. Any device that terminates that new life is an abortifacient. An IUD is such a device. The question has never been when life starts but when this new and unique person will be afforded the basic right not to be terminated. extinguished, killed. At various points in the development of this unique person, termination of his existence is called miscarriage, abortion or murder. Going back to your point, it may be unwise or even incorrect in a legal sense to call a woman using an IUD an abortionist. It is nonetheless true.
Yeah, but total bans on birth control make the situation worst. The women who have the most abortions are poor. In fact banning all birth control leads to more children born out of wedlock. Why not support a birth control device that almost all sides will agree is not abortion.
Because you are advocating population control in addition to the prevention of life. In the case of the poor its culling the herd so they never outnumber the wealthy thus preventing revolution and uprising. It’s immoral on several levels, thus I can never agree or abide by it.
Peter
No comment on birth control, but must note that the poor always outnumber the wealthy by a long shot and always will.
Prevention of revolution and uprising seems generally like a good idea to me.
Yes, and the rich and powerful always used them for labor, taxes, military fodder, etc. The wealthy always controlled their poor, their slaves for their benefit. Population control has always been coupled with drug use, to satiate their base needs and lusts, make them dependent. Under these conditions poor, peasant, slave revolts rarely occur. Rome was a master at this as most of the ancient world. Our global elites are no better except they have gotten alot better at controlling the poor and keeping them at controllable levels.
This is not just on an economic basis, but primarily on a demonic basis that there are some worthy to rule and govern, and the vast majority it not. Just plain fodder meeting the needs of the elites.
Truly evil and demonic. The Gospel elevates all to the same level of dignity and respect. This the global elite cannot tolerate. You see that intolerance to this day.
Peter
“When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?”
The real problem in all this is the total lack of moral compass. How about supporting abstinence? OOPS, there’s that word that I don’t think anyone has mentioned yet…
M. Stankovich August 8, 2015 at 1:51 am) says:
(
(SNIPPING LARGELY UNHELFUL CLICIAL DATA)
So, how, exactly, is this IUD preventing pregnancy? Levonorgestrel literally reduces ovulation by as much as 55% or more; it dramatically & exponentially reduces the ability of ova to be be fertilized over time; it thickens the mucus of the cervix to prevent sperm from entering the uterus; it literally reduces the survival rate/lifetime of sperm; and it exerts a potent contraceptive effect on the endometrium (the lining of the uterus). You will note that Levonorgestrel’s exception record of efficacy as a contraceptive is accomplished without fertilization, conception, nesting (Madonna Mia!), zygote, zumba, Ziggy Marley, or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
(THEN QUOTING ME)
“The use of IUDs to prevent conception is a form of abortion and cannot in any way be considered moral by Christians.”
(END QUOTE)
Dude, you owe anyone who felt unnecessarily judged by your ignorance an apology.
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That’s FATHER DUDE to you, Michael Stankovich! [[;-D33
The only apology owed here is one by MS to all of us for failing to make sense of the data from clinical trials which he adduces here, before suggesting that IUDs are not abortifacients.
MS really stepped in it here, since there at least three great moral objections arising just from the cited data.
First, contrary to expectations, nearly all the women in one study continued to ovulate. Those eggs still have a statistical probability of being fertilized, all things being equal.
Second, it takes a certain amount of time for the hormones slowly released from IUDs to create an environment hostile to sperm. There’s a high probability of fertilization until those conditions are established.
Third — and worst of all — the T-shaped IUD which has already released/continues to release its hormones is left in place as a fail-safe measure just in case a fertilized egg (zygote/embryo) has managed to accomplish nidation (been conceived or implanted in the endometrium). The device then acts as a sort of curette, aborting the embryo.
All of these are abortion scenarios, and may not be considered morally acceptable by Christians.
A side effect of these hormones, though, remains to be mentioned, and that is the question: What happens to women who employ these devices over the long term? What effect does that have on their endocrine systems, or on their ability to become mothers in the future?
Simply not introducing such hormones directly into a woman’s blood stream does not confidently assure her that she will not absorb them in other ways, perhaps to her peril and to the peril of any children she might conceive later in her life.
‘Rescue us from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, God of our salvation!’ (Psalm 50)
Mr. Michalopulos,
Perhaps there is something I seriously do not understand about your policy of moderation. You have allowed this ridiculously unqualified, ridiculously ignorant man to post remarks regarding pharmaceutical products and the science of endocrinology that are absolutely untrue, yet are unquestioned and unchallenged without regard for who might read them and what impact they might have on uninformed readers. And the most disappointing aspect is it that you yourself are infinitely more qualified to argue with me if I have misled anyone as to the pharmacology, pharmacodynamics, or pharmacokinetics of these products. He determines, “(SNIPPING LARGELY UNHELFUL CLICIAL DATA)” because to him it is “unhelpful.” He is unqualified and ignorant. Period. I believe this is an ethical issue issue to leave his remarks uncorrected.
The murder of the unborn is in and of itself intrinsically evil. What Planned Parenthood did and continues to do is not just abortions, which are evil in and of themselves, but also the harvesting of human body parts and tissue and does so for money. 3 sins, 3 abominations all evil.
This has NOTHING to do with a Woman’s right to choose as this right cannot and does not exist and like Gay Marriage, was created by pure and simple Judicial fiat.
The Roe v. Wade decision was a constitutional disaster. Even progressive and far left constitutional Law Professors have acknowledged this. This is why the Casey decision placed a Woman’s Right to have an Abortion on the issue of ‘Vitality” and took it out of the Trimester and Penumbra of Privacy emanations BS structure of Roe. Bottom line IMHO Casey was a band-aid decision.
Morally and ethically Abortion must be outlawed by any stretch of the imagination and constitutionally it never had solid ground, just like the recent Gay marriage ruling has no solid constitutional ground. However, because Abortion and Tissue and Organ Harvesting are a huge economic, money making business this will NOT disappear or become illegal as it must.
The god of this nation is Money and it is in that God, not the God of the Bible, that we trust and hope in. A direct violation of the very First Commandment. So the place this right has found in our society is to make money off of death and murder. That’s not a society I want nor need. Nobody does.
Further, with everything I have now seen in regards to a very clear pattern as to how Contraception, Abortion, Euthanasia and Homosexuality have followed each other and forced on us as Americans and as a species globally I have come to the inescapable conclusion that all these Abominations that we rail against are nothing more than the Wealthy Global Elites way of Population Control. Get rid of the useless eaters and breeders. Keep the slave population down to acceptable levels that will prevent revolution and take over and throw in drugs and alcohol for an added measure of control and manipulation. Further segregate them into ghettos that we call “Hoods.”
Amazing propaganda, mind control and manipulations of the greater herd. Sin and self-interest what a combination that leads us all straight to Hell.
Peter A. Papoutsis
Yes. Precisely.
That is why in my original post I asked whether they would be violating law-not the video takers, but the solicitation of human parts by PP.
Peter,
You are spot on about the god of this nation being money.That’s why Orthodox Churches have turned a blind eye to the Masons. It also explains why the gay lobby has so much success. After all, when you have dual incomes,no kids,as with many of those couples, money is a factor. I should think mote black citizens should feel insulted when gays describe themselves as an oppressed minority sincemost of them would be at the opposite end of the scale economically.
Ah, the Masons. Every city in this land has a beautifully built Masonic temple which has been empty of Masons for generations. The one in Tacoma, my town, is typical: it is a splendid edifice which has 12 full, separate, grand ballrooms: a testament to the active public social life of an era that vanished well before WWII.
It has been nicely preserved, and is a great venue for every manner of wedding reception, anniversary, school reunion, fund-raiser dance, and, in this city with a large Army base, regimental and other unit balls and soiree’s.
Of course, a few Shriners do still exist, as do their (shudder) hospitals.
The Freemasons: the Catholic and Orthodox chimera….if the Orthodox turned their “blind eye” back to the Masons, well, they wouldn’t likely find any, at all.
Typical Masonic tactic: ‘Move along, nothing to see here…’
Where could I have learned these “tactics”? I’ve never been a Mason, none of my parents, grandparents, siblings, children, or other family members have ever been Masons. I don’t personally know any Masons, insofar as I am aware. I’ve never attended a Masonic-sponsored event (I have seen Shriners at community parades, but it’s been a long time since I’ve laid eyes on one).
But then, if I was a Mason, that’s what I’d say, right? Like if you asked me if I was in the CIA…..;-)
Ah, yes, the Chrism is hardly dry and already you are teaching the Orthodox their faith. Isn’t your priest a convert from Hinduism? If so, it would seem that he could set you straight. Now I’m not suggesting that you should accept everything your priest or any other priest says without question, as one priest here implied for prospective converts.
I don’t doubt that you are a sincere convert and certainly you can question what a priest says….but, there is the problem of people who pick and choose what teachings of the church to follow. And I’m not speaking of just converts, either. I remember some of my wife’s Carpatho Rusyn family members, just a few generations from St. Alexis Toth’s return to Orthodoxy which opened the floodgates for other Uniate Rusyns to do the same. Evidently, in reaction to the absolute authority of the Uniate Clergy, based on the Roman Catholic model, they went to the other extreme. Thus, they decided that the Church must be a democracy because, after all”, it’s a free country.”
Thus you have the attitude,” Who the hell is he(the priest) to tell me I can’t commune in cousin Wasyl’s Ukrainian Catholic Church?” And, yes, some Orthodox do commune in Catholic churches .I did so myself after I converted, but stopped when I found out it was wrong. The priest who converted me never taught me that.
So then, if priests aren’t teaching the faith, you do get two gays living together and communing in church, because their pastor says, “I don’t consider homosexuality a sin, because I don’t consider heterosexuality a virtue.”
Then you have the Greek gentleman, living in an open gay “marriage” who says he should commune in church, because” the (Ecumenical) Patriarch violates Canon Law by entering a synagogue to pray.” And you know that Greek man DOES have Canon Law on his side, why IS the Ecumenical entering a synagogue?
I realize bishops and priests don’t enforce Canon Law 100%, but when you have the attitude(not maybe you personally) that one can pick and choose what teachings of the church to obey, when there is a general falling away, when does the unraveling stop, if at all?
I haven’t any idea what occasions this outburst. The Masons? I never have been one, nobody in my family has been one; I don’t actually know anybody that is one, at least as far as I am aware.
I have never had any interest in being one.
I just have never been personally able to see the connection between an idea of conspiratorial, anti-Christian, European Freemasonry, that one reads about from time to time, and the local Shriners, who would play the carillon and scoot about in their fezzes at our Daffodil Parade. Just don’t get it. Especially since the organization as it once was is essentially long-defunct.
As to communion: what are you talking about? I would never, and have never, communed outside the Orthodox Church since my reception; the very idea is inadmissible. (Indeed, I stopped any attendance at non-Orthodox worship services immediately upon becoming a catechumen.)
Actually, I believe the only “canon law” questions I ever raised were that of praying with my non-Orthodox children and grandchildren, and attending non-Orthodox weddings and funerals.
Yes, my priest is a convert from Hinduism; a most devout man, whom I can scarcely hope to ever emulate enough in the time likely left to me.
Your post is wholly misdirected.
Tim,
I apologize for leading you or anyone else here into temptation by my post. I was uncharitable to you personally for which I am sorry.
The point I was trying to make, however badly I may have expressed it, is that there is a certain attitude among SOME believers that we can pick and choose what teachings of the church to follow. I think someone like Michael Bauman does a better job articulating the church’s teaching than I can.
Again, I apologize for being uncharitable to you and wish you the best in your life in the faith.
Thank you for these kind words, ES.
On a related note, I was thinking of the mental image that one might have of a convert from Hinduism…dressed in a dhoti and sandals, perhaps….
Fr. Seraphim Majmudar, born in the US of Hindu parents, fit more the image of the California-raised surfer: he was skateboarding past an Orthodox church (I’m thinking near Santa Cruz), when what he glimpsed through the windows and heard through the open doors interested him, and he entered therein…..
It is an interesting tale, to be sure!
Masons are modern gnostics. Like Mormons, the ones you meet might be nice, but they’re still heretics.
Heck, the overwhelming majority of folks one meets these days are heretics, or heterodox anyway. Lots of them are nice! Real nice!
As for Masons, one meets a lot more Mormons than them…..I suppose that shows the present state of Freemasonry.
But their old buildings are…..nice! They’re still old, though….
Tim, I’ve been reading your discussion over several threads.
There should be a distinction between attending a heterodox service for social or family reasons, like a wedding or a funeral, and attending heterodox services because one sees them as interchangeable with, or even preferable to Orthodox worship. I don’t think the canon was intended to be applied to the former, only the latter.
As for the Masons, there are plenty of organizations that provide for charitable work and brotherhood without the historical baggage and occult aspects of the Masons.
Helga:
There should be a distinction? Helga thinks the canon was intended one way and not another? How does Helga decide which canons can/should be ignored?
Estonian Slovak says, “And you know that Greek man DOES have Canon Law on his side, why IS the Ecumenical entering a synagogue?”
This comment fortifies my happiness at not knowing these canons.
There are few things more dear to me than going quietly into a synagogue and praying the Psalms in Hebrew.
Among the synagogues at which I have prayed in recent years are Damascus and Budapest.
I wonder how many other canons I routinely violate.
Why would you go into a pagan temple to pray?
Unless of course you have been deluded into thinking that Rabbinical Talmudism is the same as the religion of the OT.
Canons? He don’t have to obey no stinking canons.
Timor, I think that a great difficulty many who come to the Church as adults in our culture is realizing that being Orthodox is not a choice among other similar choices. Being Orthodox is learning how to receive the truth both conceptually and existententially–being transformed so obedience is both possible and normative. Obedience is not a state of slavery-just the opposite.
Generally it is not good for one’s soul to frequent the assemblies of the heterodox. It will be less and less good. Nor is it generally good for them. The canons are there to remind us neverless we are free but we still reap the consequences.
To “frequent the assemblies of the heterodox”….there’s a felicitous phrase! Luckily, weddings and funerals are relatively infrequent, by and large.
On the other hand, at my church, services are very frequent, several times per week, every week, in addition to Sunday divine liturgy, and so I have the freedom to attend, and do attend, far more services as an Orthodox than I ever did as a Protestant…. and I almost never missed Sundays then.
We are blessed with an extraordinarily active priest, it seems. At first, I thought this was the usual situation. Then, since my reception, when I travel on business and look up the local Orthodox churches to find weekday services, I find few to none who have any, besides Saturday Vespers, outside of Lent. But my sample isn’t large, only a few cities, so far.
Daniel,
I know you are opposed (at least personally) to abortion, so I won’t throw any…at you.
But the child in the womb does, in fact, have a will. It is the will to live according to its own human nature no different than your own. Albeit lacking an understanding of the method of the assault on its nature, he or she struggles against the forceps reaching to crush its skull in the same way you or I would were someone attempting to crush our head in vice.
The will of human beings (and indeed all creatures of God) to live according to their nature has nothing to do with mental capacity or understanding.
Daniel Fall writes:
Let me see if I understand this. According to Fall, Mengele’s actions were evil because they violated the will of those on whom he performed his macabre acts. Yet, the crushing and tearing apart of an unborn child limb by limb by Dr. Nucatola and other abortionists is not evil because the unborn child cannot object to his own extermination. Is that the reasoning?
And, if that is the reasoning, then how would he rationally object to abortion and the merchandising of human body parts? He can’t.
Welcome to the ideology of progressive secularism. The next step is to declare that the people with a lower IQ or any other arbitrary standard Fall seeks to apply are themselves not worthy of life.
At one time Blacks were subhuman. That’s how the Tuskegee experiments were justified. Carrie Buck was of lower intelligence. Her case reached the Supreme Court and the enlightened Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes fatuously declared “Three generations of imbeciles are enough!” and ordered her sterilization.
Beware of anyone excusing evil on utilitarian grounds. Be even more wary of anyone who does not see evil for what it is.
Fall, your reasoning falls squarely in line with the eugenicists of the last century. Margaret Sanger, hater of blacks, the poor and most anyone who did not fit her Randian criteria of the best and the brightest would find no problem with your assertion that when no will against the perpetrators of evil is expressed by the victims of their evil, their actions cannot be counted as evil.*
*[Sonograms of abortions show the unborn child trying to evade the scalpel. View Silent Scream, the video of the abortion of an 11 week old child.]
BTW, Mengele escaped to Argentina after WWII and also lived in Paraguay and Brazil. How did he make a living you might ask? He became an abortionist.
“Let me see if I understand this. According to Fall, Mengele’s actions were evil because they violated the will of those on whom he performed his macabre acts. Yet, the crushing and tearing apart of an unborn child limb by limb by Dr. Nucatola and other abortionists is not evil because the unborn child cannot object to his own extermination. Is that the reasoning?”
It is, and reveals the state of Mr. Fall’s understanding, humanity, and his soul (“modernist”, or as C.S. Lewis accurately describes “non-human”). Fr. Fall and those like him are not “bad men”, they are “men without chests” – that is to say, they are not men (i.e human beings) at all.
Unfortunately Fr. Hans, your humanity (and thus your reasoning – human reasoning) is wasted on him…
That is really quite enough meanness from all of you.
I said remain credible and found the comparison a stretch and gave some reasons.
Let their own words condemn them and their practice.
That is really quite enough meanness from all of you.
The sad thing is, you really believe that. You believe that a person calling you out – correctly identifying your un-humanity is “mean”. Hint: a creature can not be “mean” (this is a moral judgement) until that person is “human”. Since you are un-human, you simply do not know what is “mean” and what is “nice”. Thus your morality is really nothing but pleasure/pain seeking and avoidance.
It is not “mean” to call-out (call away from, lead in another direction) a person from a mere animal existence up, beyond, and to his full humanity. Quite the opposite, it is the “humane” thing to do…
Poser
All I said was the comparison was wrong and now Jacobse has me euthanizing the retarded and Webster thinks I agree with abortion. (In a world where the right can’t stand healthcare for the indigent or welfare for hungry children)
Good thing that didn’t happen in a bar.
Not a very pastoral approach. Is one of you a poser?
Sanger, like me, believed women should use contraception and that taking life by abortion was wrong. Funny you failed to mention that in your rant and preferred trumping up her ridiculous notions of eugenics (magically to me) over her sensibility at the very heart of the matter. Of course, that wouldn’t have gotten you any attaboys in poserville.
Do a personal intake Fr. Jacobse (you too Fr. Webster). Ask yourself this question. What was gained by our response to Mr. Fall? The answer is you used my fair criticism of Mengele references to the still ghastly Nucatola et al in order to impress your pals after I responded angrily to Ages really nasty poser comments to my sanguine comment. And that is what a poser does. That is not what someone does who wishes to help the unborn. Yes, I suggested the Nucatola story would be beneficial in public persuasion against abortion. Wasn’t enough for you guys. You had to get nasty when all I said was remain credible.
I have no friends here gentlemen. I am not the poser. Take a good look in the mirror. Don’t you understand-you are in it to impress your buddies, your patrons, your church members, your boss. You will never help the unborn or the homosexuals because you are just posers and you both proved it 100%.
Had you taken my words to heart; remain credible so you can win the argument for the unborn is precisely what was said. Of course, doesn’t do much in poserville now does it?
Priests?
You are on dangerous ground about Sanger. She was very much a racist and used said that in order to pursue PP’s mission of “more children from the fit, less from the unfit,” PP would have to use Negro ministers to get the message out to their congregation. Otherwise, blacks would be suspicious of white eugenecists peddling that message to them.
And yes, to her and to almost all Progressives of the time, blacks were definitely “less fit.”
I’m on dangerous ground? I never brought her up.
she is in your first sentence. . . . 12:26
No, Colette, the person that brought her up was Jacobse. If you sit around a table, and someone brings up a name-the onus is on them. If George doesn’t want her in the discussion, he would have said so to Jacobse.
So, no, it was not me that brought her up.
She was anti-abortion and believed women would be stronger if they could prevent pregnancy. Of course, this would be another debate and that might have been why George responded incorrectly to me.
ok Daniel, I didn’t read that far up . . .
Daniel, first you were confused about the humanity of the unborn child. Then you were mistaken about the history of the Supreme Court and viability. Now you display ignorance about Margaret Sanger and the Eugenics Movement.
Here’s Sanger in her own words:
Planned Parenthood is the most recent manifestation of the Eugenics Movement although ironically, Sanger herself rejected abortion. She probably would not react well to the industrialization of abortion through companies like PP. For all her flaws (and there are many), that was one line Sanger would not cross.
I will reply here to Fr Hans since his pearly post is at the bottom of the max thread length.
Fr. Hans-you brought up Sanger. She was against abortion. I did not display ignorance about the totality of her ideas. I made a simple point that you missed. If we were at a bar and you spoke to me-you’d understand.. You are a man eager to point out my flaws to raise your platform. You need a quotient of wisdom. Priests enjoy hearing that huh?
In pointing out my flaws, you only serve yourself and your friends.
You are a poser. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you. Your continued reflection on Sanger just shows it more. I don’t give a hoot about Sanger-she is dead and was wrong a bunch.
What was gained by your response to my original post?
I simply said Mengele was worse. And you desperately tried to manifest your superiority and continue to do so. Give it a rest pal.
All you had to say was Nucatola was unethical, diabolical, disgusting-I would agree.
Instead you turned it into me being confused about humanity, viability, posers, etc
If I’m an idiot, you sir are a jerk (wordchoice idled down for moderator comfort).
Answer my question.
I know Sanger was against abortion. I never said she was for abortion. What I said was the Planned Parenthood continues the eugenics ideology championed by Sanger. Sanger was for such things as the mandatory sterilization of any one she deemed inferior (blacks, poor, ‘feeble minded’ — the markets where PP sets up their abortuaries). Her thinking justified things like the forced sterilization of Carrie Buck by Justice Holmes, the Tuskegee Experiments, and so forth.
It was a dark and shameful chapter in American history and continues to be. Read my review of “War Against the Weak.”
Mengele was “worse”? Better wait a bit. Word is the next video, when the injunction is lifted, shows a StemExpress executive admitting that intact unborn babies were delivered from PP to StemExpress. If so, they may have been born alive and killed later.
Check out this vid: http://www.snappytv.com/tc/722036.
Evil has a trajectory. If unborn children can be dismembered without any constraint of the conscience, you can be sure more is happening that you don’t see. It’s the way evil works.
But then I don’t really see dismembering unborn children as somehow better(?), less evil(?), than what Mengele did. Maybe you do.
I merely want to see a change Fr Hans.
So, let her own words condemn her. I find the comparison to Mengele a poor one and said so. You pursued an avenue of advantage[sic] and went way out of your way to label me with all sorts of garbage. Even your summary of late attempts to twist my sentiments rhetorically —finding dismembering dead fetuses less morbid than you and co.
You are a poser. Just keep doing what you do-your friends like it.
From the ripe age of twelve, abortion post viability to me is evil. You and your pals would rather jump all over me for what is not than see we agree.
No wonder nothing happens with abortion. It is the most self righteous subject available.
Daniel Fall writes:
The problem Daniel is that you don’t understand the elementary meaning of words.
No organism is viable outside of its natural environment. The womb is the natural environment of the unborn baby for nine months. After that it is ready to move out of the womb into its new environment.
Sometimes babies are born premature. Heroic efforts are made to save them, often successfully. Yet even when the normal nine month gestation takes place, the new born infant still requires critical care. It needs to be fed, changed, held, and so forth.
You are arguing what then? That aborting a child before the earliest known time that a preemie has survived is an act of moral indifference? Then tell me how does the child differ a day before this arbitrary line and a day after it? Why is it fine to abort the baby one day before viability but evil one day after that?
Arguing that abortion “post-viability” is “evil” presumes the unborn child has moral value. Arguing that an abortion ‘pre-viability’ is an act of moral indifference presumes that the unborn child has no moral value.
It’s the classic “pro-choice” position, the incoherence of which justifies Planned Parenthood to hold up what is obviously an arm, hand, head and everything else that constitutes a human body and label it “fetal tissue.” They dismember the unborn (and apparently manipulate abortions to deliver “intact specimens” as well) and sell the parts. It is barbarism.
You have yet to marshal a coherent argument against it.
Of course, I didn’t ‘marshal a coherent argument against’ the harvesting of human organs. That is because I am vehemently opposed to it. Of course you rhetorically framed something different that a few idiots won’t see past (14 so far). Try it in a bar.
I only marshaled a coherent argument against comparing PP to Mengele.
You are a poser Hans. The guy in the group that acts a certain way so all his buddies think he is cool. You are an attaboy seeker.
You suggest I don’t know words. That is like the nth time you’ve called me stupid by the way. Viability in the Roe decision was always scientific viability outside the womb. Currently around 22 weeks and sort of a limiting time at this point in the advancements of technology. Someday, it’ll be much lower. They say no, but give it a hundred years. O’Connor will be right. But then I never brought up the viability issue for the meat and potatoes of it now did I?
Answer my question. What did you gain by responding to me in the fashion so chosen? I gained an understanding about your modus operandi it seems.
Personal attacks?
Ha!
Hans-the viability subject was only brought up because I knew you’d use it for manifestation of supremacy.
The fact is you are a poser and the only possible thing gained by your behavior and responses to me was an elevation of your podium.
You have not reconciled the need to speak with me in the fashion so chosen.
If I compared Mengele and Sanger, where? I did not intend to..
The simple fact is I said Mengele was a comparison that would cost credibility. It was a kind and reasoned opinion. I suggest you reflect on Edward’s post a bit.
Daniel,
Your arguments about viability *are* ignorant. Let me give an example.
Above you write that “viability in the Roe decision was scientific viability.” The modifier “scientific” is not found in Roe for the simple reason that the distinction your remark introduces does not exist.
In other words, there is no such thing as “scientific viability” and run of the mill viability. Viability is viability and in every case the concept is incoherent.
Why? Because no organism is viable outside of its natural environment. If I hold you under water for four minutes, you die. Now let’s say by some odd chance you don’t die. Do I then decree you should be allowed to live? Are you worth not killing because after four minutes you proved your viability?
I have already explained the flaw in your reasoning. Viability is an arbitrary construct pulled out of thin air and used to justify abortion. It has *no* scientific grounding, a point Sandra Day O’Conner made early on. It does not exist along the continuum of fetal development.
You defend viability while dodging this question: Why is it alright to abort an unborn child the day before viability but not the day after? What about the child makes it any different from one day to the next?
You also dodge this deeper philosophical contradiction: How do you explain the unborn child having no moral value before the point of viability but the day it attains moral value and is worthy of protection?
No person is viable outside of their natural environment. The womb is the natural environment of the unborn child for the first nine months of its life. If left unmolested, the child will grow until it is ready to enter its new natural environment — life outside the womb.
So that’s the answer to your question. All your charges about “poser” and so forth are personal attacks and functionally irrelevant.
It’s good that you are against harvesting human organs, but your reasoning does not differ from Planned Parenthood’s justifications for doing it. In order to harvest the organs of unborn children you have to kill the child. In order to kill the child you first have to dehumanized it. Viability is the logical construct by which the dehumanization occurs.
You say you agree that dismembering the unborn in the womb or manipulating abortions to preserve “intact specimens” is clear evidence of evil and that you “abhor” it. Does your abhorrence apply to the “non-viable” unborn as well?
As for Mengele, I never compared Sanger to Mengele (you incorrectly asserted that in another post). I compared Planned Parenthood to Mengele. Sanger’s eugenic ideals are carried forward today in the abortion industry. Sanger wanted to use the machinery of government to implement her dangerous ideas but stopped short of abortion. Planned Parenthood takes those ideas to their next logical step.
Daniel, a little knowledge never hurts.
What is your point?
Right-I forgot to say my point . . you mentioned the blob of splitting cells-so I was showing the blob of splitting cells at 6 weeks-very early and yet look at what is there. Everything genetically-it’s a matter of growth. I found these videos showing the actual growth amazing.
You were rightly “amazed” because you are a Human, and you are thus able to recognize Humanity when you see it.
Mr. Fall however is not Human. Yes, he meets the materialist/ biological definition of Human, and we Humans do see the Imago Dei in him and everyone like him, but he is not Human in a very important sense: He is a “man without a Chest”. See:
http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/hopko/the_abolition_of_man
It is not a problem with your “data” (these amazing facts), it is that Mr. Fall does not “see” because he does not have Human eyes, Human understanding and reasoning. He simply is not even capable of “seeing” what you see, because one has to first be a Human to “see” a Human, Humanity, and God.
One of the great myths of the “modern/secular Un-Human” religion is that one can “reason” and “see” the world independently of Humanity – and so it is, as these Un-Human “men without Chests” walk around pointing to ” a blob of splitting cells” as if they have indicated something real. “a blob of splitting cells” is only real – that is it only indicates something with actual meaning in this Un-Human way. Is it evil? Of course. Is Mr. Fall a “bad man”. No, for he is not a Man at all. What can be done? As a Real Man once said: “…this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.”
You are terribly lost Christopher.
The blob of splitting cells reference is because folks here have called my wife an abortionist for using an IUD.
Now you call me less than human, not a man, evil, etc.
Just try it in a bar pal.
“Now you call me less than human”
Not really “less”, more like “other” – or more specifically “Un” as in “Un-human”. As Lewis rightly pointed out, this modernism (which is nominalistic, nihilistic, and all the usual diagnosis – but as he rightly pointed it is even more than that) is not even Human – it is the “Abolition”, which is to say the destruction of Man (Humanity) – not physically/materialistically, but Realistically (as in the REAL), ontologically (it makes Man into a different kind of being, a different kind of existence).
This is why it can not be said you (and everyone like you) are “bad” men. Morality as such is actually a very “surface” phenomena – it does not go very deep or reveal what Man/World/God is in any deep, serious way. Morality “rests” or “stands” on other, deeper and more important things, namely ontology (what is REAL). Thus, human morality does not apply to existence that is not Human in the first place.
The truly frighting (again, one has to be Human in order to be properly “frightened”) thing about Lewis’s insight that is lost on most Christians is that he was not saying that our modernist neighbors are “bad” or “erroneous”, or confused, or “unenlightened”, or ignorant, or anything of that sort (all of which applies to Humanity properly understood). No, he was saying that our modernist neighbors are not even Human (properly understood) in the first place.
This is very important, as it explains why they can not “see” or “understand” what Humanity is to even begin to make moral insights and judgments…
“Just try it in a bar pal.”
That’s the spirit!! Careful, a bit of humanity is beginning to break through. You should go with this – only a Man can be properly offended.
Seriously, if I thought it would help I would let you do your best (not that it would likely be enough – I am a “ringer” 😉 – it would be the least I could do!
Thanks goodness I continued to scroll downward. I had almost lost hope that arrogant self-righteousness can still be breathtaking.
If that’s what you believe a fetus is, just a blob of splitting cells, what explains your “personal” objection to abortion?
Sorry to jump in so tardily.
If you want to make your interlocutors the sane ones in the room by calling them names, Daniel Fall, knock yourself out.
It most certainly is credible to compare Planned Parenthood and Mengele.
Nucatola, representing PP, justifies their grisly business with the implicit if not explicit argument that having an abortion can become a positive good; a worthy contribution a woman can make to the advancement of society. It’s progressive, after all. A woman can tell herself for the rest of her life that in having her child killed and consenting to have its dismembered parts picked over and “used” for altruistic purposes (shudder), she has participated in the development of lifesaving cures for other families. (Never mind what happens to hers.)
The movement in German medicine toward social Darwinism got started during the 19th century, but by then Jews were already seen as “parasites” and “cholera germs” whom physicians should sterilize. By 1920 Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche had published “The Permission to Destroy Life Not Worth Living”, which charted the course for Germany’s national medical policy over the next quarter-century. In order to protect the health of larger society in Germany, it was accepted that the duty of doctors was to kill the mentally ill, the disabled, the deformed, the retarded, the chronically ill, or anyone who required care and wasn’t able to contribute to the good of the state.
This logic is the same that was used to make abortion legal, and continues to be the justification for it as well as for harvesting the organs of abortion victims.
Mengele’s procedures were performed on his victims without anesthesia, as are abortions. Of course the child doesn’t doesn’t receive anything to blunt the pain and trauma of being dismembered, but not even the mother is offered anything for what is, in fact, a surgical procedure — and she is presumably the one receiving “care”.
Mengele’s procedures were performed without the consent of the victim.
You make the distinction that abortion is performed “at the will of the mother…”
But there are two victims in an abortion, Daniel. And your suggestion that abortion is somehow less reprehensible or morally justifiable because the mother has arranged it is the logic that would justify hiring a hit man to kill your toddler — and then donating its organs.
Mengele inflicted his experiments on his victims with no regard for their health or safety.
Planned Parenthood doesn’t just destroy the health of their victims — although sometimes the mother suffers injuries that affect her physical health for the rest of her life and let’s not forget the fact that her psychological well-being is unavoidably affected. No, PP deprives their victims of their very lives by violating the sanctity of what is everyone’s very first home. (Did you remember to send yours a Mother’s Day card this year?)
One could argue that in fact Mengele was more humane than Planned Parenthood. After all, he didn’t slaughter his victims outright — nor did he charge his victims’ families for his diabolical work. He did it for free.
And according to Wikipedia, Mengele’s subjects were better fed and housed than other prisoners; at least temporarily safe from the gas chambers. He established a kindergarten for them, along with all Romani children under the age of six, where they received better food and living conditions, and he even included a playground for them. He visited them, too, calling himself “Uncle Mengele”, and was “kind” enough to give them sweet treats.
Although Planned Parenthood does describe their victims as parasites or “blobs of splitting cells”, at least they don’t stoop to describing them as “cholera germs”.
The only difference I can see between Mengele and Planned Parenthood is that PP’s victims are smaller, younger, and are transported to their killers not in cattle cars but in the sanctity of what should be the safest place on earth.
Since you don’t see it, though, Daniel, I’d love to hear an explanation. How is Planned Parenthood worlds apart from Josef Mengele?
Ms. Wintheiser,
Tardy indeed. Nearly sixty years, I would guess. This thread is about the intrinsic evil of “peddling the body parts of a fetus,” not about about abortion, per se. I personally think that attempting to make the link is purposeful misdirection, and the introduction of “Mengele” is a mirror adjunctive to the smoke.
As proof of concept to my post and the commentary by Thomas Barker, I do not see your statement of outrage that it is impossible to vaccinate your children against childhood diseases the CDC recommends and, for example, the state of California requires by law for admittance to public schools by next fall, that are not derived from a cell line derived from an aborted human fetus. Somewhat ironically, Daniel Fall was one of the few people who even seemed to notice. How is this silence possible? And what is the concept “proved?” “Outrage” is the new “March for Life,” a symbolic gesture that, in and of itself has value, but more often than not convinces individuals that they have contributed something “substantial” to addressing the moral dilemmas of the times, when they have not. And today, everyone’s two minutes of media fame begins with the three words, “I am outraged.”
I was stupid enough and inattentive enough to allow my formal credential in research design & administration to expire (which is essential for all FDA monitored studies), and after begging for as many waivers as possible, I have still been left with two semesters of time consuming, expensive continuing education. I just finished a course called “Human Subjects Protection and IRBs (Internal Review Boards)” in clinical trial of drugs and devices, and of interest here is the question of who owns the “material” collected when you have a biopsy, surgical procedure, amputation, and so on? Is it presumed you do not want it? Is it written in the consent for the procedure/surgery you sign when you are anxious and afraid (and perhaps “pre-medicated”) immediately before the suregery? Are you allowing its sale for purposes of research and designating the hospital, your physician, or his/her medical group to “broker” your tissue/cells/organs for their profit with any compensation to you forever? Consider Henrietta Lacks?
Planned Parenthood is a “broker,” like any other “broker,” of human cells, tissues, and body parts for medical research. If I were truly interested in “investigative journalism,” I would not be wasting my time attempting to expose them with carefully edited videos of the appearance of misconduct, I would want to know who is legitimately brokering with them, and who has historically brokered with them. And we’ll ask Mr. Michalopulos what it could mean if Planned Parenthood products were involved in the development of Humira, Abilify, Enbrel, Crestor, Lantus, Solostar, Sovaldi, Advair Diskus, Nexium, Januvia,or Lyrica, to the tune of $57 billion per year revenue in the US alone. But more importantly, how many would stop taking the top ten prescribed medications in the US; essential medications for themselves, their children, or their elderly parents if it is discovered that cellular or genetic materials derived from an aborted fetus were instrumental in a medication’s development, and nothing comparable, and certainly not better, or was covered by your health insurance, existed? If my reference to childhood vaccinations is any indication, indifference reigns.
The reference to Mengele was cheap and distracting. These decisions and ethical dilemmas demand the leadership of the clergy – the bishops and the priests with the direction of the Scripture, the Holy Fathers, and the Holy Tradition – as they certainly are not going to unravel themselves or become less complicated with time or Google.
Any reference to Hitler and company bears out a weak argument. Fr Webster, who Granted me great disservice for saying so recently reflected the problem with the Hitler et alls (sic) in a sad irony really.
My arguments were kind to the pro-life movement-wisdom will see it. I said let their own words condemn them. I found Nucatola to be very morbid. And still many were eager to see past my assessments to pile on for the don’t go Hitler bit.
And I would go a step further than Stankovich-the thread is about unwanted fetuses-fetuses destroyed by the mother. Now, that will make blood boil, but its fact. The real heart of the issue is some women don’t want to be mothers. And that is where Christians could shine by celebrating the Theotokos, instead of marking time with roe n windsor and enjoying the boiling blood.
But it appears there is an ulterior motive to being pro-life. And that is what I have learned through this thread.
My apologies for the overuse of preposition.
And yes, but no. 70 years late.
I asked Mrs. Klobuchar for an investigation into PPs alleged modification of procedures. How about you?
.
Count me among those who would quit taking them – or rather not take them in the first place.
But for some strange reason that I failed to understand, given your (quite correct) insistence on the importance of this issue, when I responded to this on another thread, I was regaled with a response about “the interest of the state” and the importance of herd immunity., subjects with which I am quite familiar.
Frankly (and sadly) it struck me as a purely utilitarian argument – essentially the same one put forth by the Roman Catholic Church. Perhaps you did not intend it as such, but I see no way of interpreting it otherwise. We take them because we (supposedly) must and because there is no alternative? And moreover because it is in the interest of the state? Really? This seems so unlike you. Are some things not worse than suffering or death? I certainly think so.
And by the way, alternatives for the vaccines in question are not not available, because they are not profitable. How can I say this? I am in the Rx/vaccines distribution business, and I can assure you that this is not the reason. The insurance reimbursement rates for all drugs and vaccines are essentially set by Medicare (the rate upon which all other insurers base their reimbursements), and Medicare reimbursement rates are based upon the average wholesale price (AWP). In other words, they get paid whatever they choose to charge. As their prices rise, so does the AWP. Pharmaceutical and Biologics manufacturers certainly have every incentive to make profits, but they have no incentive whatsoever to contain the cost of their products to consumers. They routinely raise prices as high as they choose (often as much a 30% or more per year), thus raising the AWP and the insurance reimbursement rates that follow it.
I more than agree with you that the entire iniquitous quandary in which we now find ourselves is due to our lack of vigilance, but I’m also quite certain that most people are/were simply unaware. Because although it can be found out, like all the works of darkness it was perpetrated in secret and foisted upon us in a deceptive manner. Shall we then simply accept the argument that it is now too late and we have “no choice” but to bow to the interest of the state and our own godless lust for a pain-free life? Lord have mercy on us!
Brian,
My point was only to clearly distinguish the “mission” of the state v the “mission” of the Church: the state’s mission is entirely epidemiological – protecting the health & welfare of its citizens – and in this case maintaining a level of vaccination necessary to prevent epidemics of disease (and in your link, I provide a citation to an article on the theory of “herd immunity” which is essential to the mission of the state). It makes no “moral” judgment as to where the vaccine is derived; it concerns itself only with the availability and distribution of the vaccine. It is the mission of the Church to monitor the bioethics of emerging technologies, and when the ethics of the Church are compromised, to make them know to the faithful and to challenge the manufacturers. The fact of the matter is this: until several years ago, alternatives were being manufactured and were available for purchase. Dr. Brian Jackson, who occasionally posts on this site, was able to purchase a case of the alternative product for use in his own family and donate the remainder. Perhaps he will again respond. It is not a matter of developing new technology, as the technology to produce the alternative product exists and was available until very recently. This leads me to question your conclusion that the decision to stop manufacturing the alternative was not driven by profits.
This the age of the internet & Twitter. It is difficult for me to imagine that if Christians demanded one major manufacturer again start producing the alternate product or suffer financial consequences, that it could not be accomplished. But “christians” do not agree on abortion, let alone seem enthused enough to put forth a quarter effort wasted on the dead-letter Manhattan Declaration. Thus, I conclude, indifference reigns.
Edward’s reflection on the lack of an incremental approach is accurate. It is easier to stand with your pals and take imaginary sides.
We can all be grateful that priest Jacobse over at the “American Orthodox Institute” once again has let us know how to think and feel about a current event. After all, on his website, he claims to be “an expert and recognized authority on the impact of ideology and narrative on culture.”
I’m glad we can count on you to stand on the wrong side of most questions, in this case, with satanists, who prey on women and destroy their children in their sacrament of blood.
Ages, please indicate where it is in my post that you find I “stand… with satanists.”
By opposing one who opposes them.
Forgive me, I should have more accurately levied that kind of charge at others in this thread.
Most of the time oom; you really bug me. But this time, the silence of the priests is the bigger bother.
When they like I guess.
“A current event?” I don’t think so. Christianity’s opposition to abortion has been well known for centuries, going back to the Apostolic Age.
It adds a new dynamic when we see that African-American babies are the overwhelming statistic in abortions.
From almost a non-issue in the up and coming elections it has been propelled back in the forefront – well- because the truth has come out.
Politicians with clout like Dr. Ben Carson, and Rand Paul who has pretty smartly been campaigning heavily in the African-American communities to open the GOP up to everyone must drive this issue home. And I mean the truth behind PPP.
And the rest of us need to review, again and again, http://www.maafa21.com/
Love in Christ
A second-hand description of the video just doesn’t do it justice. If you haven’t watched it yet, do so now.
The pro-life community has been presented with a priceless opportunity to de-fund and destroy Planned Parenthood and its cohort. As the MSM refuses to air this story nationally, we must publicize this video (and the second) far and wide. Even ardent pro-choice advocates find the commerce in dead babies loathsome.
To do:
1. Bombard Congress to de-fund Planned Parenthood.
2. Condemn PP for profiteering over the dead bodies of children it has freely obtained.
2. Identify, publicize and condemn the ‘research’ companies buying this tissue from PP.
3. Identify, publicize and condemn those medical organizations and doctors doing business with PP.
4. Identify, publicsize and condemn the politicians and congressmen promoting funds for, or receiving contributions from, PP.
5. Never forget to mention that the vast preponderance of these children are Black. Stop letting the left talk out of two sides of its mouth. Apparently, Black lives don’t matter.
The most effective argument against abortion to use with secularists is that it devalues all human life–not just the lives of those who are aborted; it renders every citizen’s life cheap. These videos are proof positive.
A spark has been lit. Let’s fan it into a flame.
40 Companies that Donate Directly to Planned Parenthood
Great article. Thanks for posting it. Here are some updates/additional information:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/congresswoman-introduces-defund-planned-parenthood-act_995705.html
http://dailysignal.com/2015/07/21/meet-the-41-companies-that-donate-directly-to-planned-parenthood/
http://dailysignal.com/2015/07/22/13-things-you-probably-dont-know-about-planned-parenthood-founder-margaret-sanger/
http://dailysignal.com/2015/07/22/the-relationship-between-planned-parenthood-and-redefining-marriage/
finally, the piece de resistance:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/07/21/antiabortion-group-releases-second-planned-parenthood-video/
America allows and promotes:
Contraception
Abortion
Euthanasia
Homosexuality
Drugs
Heterosexual promiscuity
Etc., Etc., Etc.,
Good bye U.S.A and welcome to Babylon! (Revelation 17:5)
Peter
Well, as for Contraception we live in the world we live in and some folks are poor parents but there should be a different approach to the abortion issue. The most radical is for the state to pay someone to have another persons child since maybe they was rape or some emotional problem or low income why the mother didn’t want to have the child.. Currently, a lot of poor women go and have an abortion in a different state. As for large families without birth control the Duggars have their own problems. Maybe a return to smaller houses and a rural culture with the modern 3-d printed business.
I think largely abortion is used for birth control among women in their 20 ‘s and 30’s. . . .
And 79% of the clinics are in the inner cities. Here’s a map that correlates the locations of such clinics with the black and Hispanic population.
http://www.protectingblacklife.org/pp_targets/
There was a time when our fathers among the saints destroyed pagan temples and felled the trees worshipped by the benighted people. What is the modern analogue to their holy work?
ISIS and the shrines of Shia and Sufi Islam is the first analogue that comes to mind. Should the Parthenon be dynamited?
Not the Parthenon.
A stucco box with a Planned Parenthood sign is hardly an architectural wonder.
Well, I think it is because conservative come across as reactionaries these days. They want to zone cities for large tract houses but don’t want any apartments built because the apartments might eventually go to section 8. They are trying to keep poor people out of their city. This happen in Huntington Beach and all the people opposed to the apartments being built were conservative and one was an evangelical it was in the Orange County Register which I read sometimes even though I don’t live there. This explains the Bernie Sanders movement on the left. Conservatives are thought as reactionary which causes people to moved into the left even though Mr. Sanders doesn’t address the high cost of housing but just upping wages though unions and minium wage hikes.
Good Marxist counter points/framing of the issue(s). You are obviously educated in Amerika…
These media exposures of Planned Parenthood and their practices don’t surprise me at all, but I’m glad for them to be out there.
What does surprise me, though, is that it took this long for those murderers to be turned out into the public eye for the venal profiteers they truly are.
Babies. Our babies. Human beings butchered, sold piecemeal — livers, lungs, hearts, brains — to interested (?!)parties.
Hasn’t anyone in America welcomed a baby into their homes? Don’t they want to admit how good that feels, or how awful it feels when a baby dies? I, at least, do.
How can we not be nauseated at this willful, profitable slaughter of such tender, vulnerable people? Why do we Americans we allow it?
What will we do about it?
Damn you, political correctness!
From the ages of approximately 11 to 55, most females of the human species are capable of giving birth to offspring. One would imagine, therefore, that being pregnant is a “normal” state for a human female since the great majority of her life is determined by the monthly cycle that permits her to become pregnant. However if you ask medical professionals you will find out that pregnancy is a “condition” (like hypertension or diabetes) to be treated. The medical profession as it currently exists is hostile to what is “natural.” Is it really any surprise how the war against the unborn has taken off?
RE: From the ages of approximately 11 to 55, most females of the human species are capable of giving birth to offspring. . . the great majority of her life. . . permits her to become pregnant.”
“All women begin to show a drop in their fertility beginning at the age of 35. While this drop begins as a gradual decline in fertility, it takes a sharp drop in the 40s. In fact, fertility in women approaches zero at the age of 45.”
Even if a woman had 6 kids, pregnancy would comprise only 4.5 years of her life. Women live to be about 85 so being pregnant is most definitely not the usual, average, or typical state or condition for a woman the “great majority of her life.” – It is a gift.
http://www.premierfertility.com/infertility_causes/female_age_infertility.asp
There is this notion that the abortion – I think it can safely be called infanticide now – movement is a failure or result of fallen feminism or a failure of women. To some degree yes.
However, I look at this evil phenomenon as a failure of men or masculinity. In most cases, and I state this pretty confidently, the woman would not have an abortion if the man (family) was there in support or told her not to. I know they glorify the notion of choice and convenience of the woman to find “equality” in society and the workplace. In essence, to have “sex without consequence” as they believe men have, which is a fallacy.
But in my heart of hearts, I believe this is a failure of men. Men actually believe that women have the right to terminate another life if they so choose. They have accepted it. They are too inoculated with popculture to move. But this notion goes against the very biology, ordination of the male as protector and provider. It goes against God’s order.
We were once a nation whose men volunteered their lives to rush across the Atlantic and Pacific to fight for and protect others. And then when they actually saw the results of holocaust, a greater determination was born. Since then we have failed 55 million unborn children. What happen to us? Where are we, men?
This is an issue that men have to take back.
No one seriously believed Japanese Americans were “less than human”. But a war was going on, and the country
feared espionage and sabotage. How could anyone really know what the feelings of those people were towards their ancestral homeland and if they would obey any of the Emperor Hirohito’s commands? To the Japanese, he
was a god, after all. The Germans and Italians did not think Hitler and Mussolini were gods.
Ever since the abortion debate began, we’ve heard that a woman has the “right to choose”, that it’s her body, etc. Actually, abortion does not “free” women whatsoever, it enslaves many of them to the guilt of having had one. Abortion frees MEN. Why? Because it allows them to abrogate their responsibilities as parents. I give you the sorry state of most single parent families as an example, where the biological fathers are nowhere to be found.
The unrelenting slaughter of innocents is the great evil of our age. Radical feminists, abortion rights advocates and the Supreme Court opened the gate to wickedness, and rank and file America flooded through. People have chosen evil and have become evil. As a consequence, any real solution must include sackcloth and ashes.
The left’s (liberals and progressives also) wholesale support and promotion of murder of the most innocent and defenseless in our society is an unimaginable evil that has darkened their mind and spirit. Their worship and wholesale embrace of such horrors point to the source of this darkness, the lengths to which those who reject the true GOD can go to sacrifice innocence on the altar of their ideology, and the great danger such individuals pose to any society that tolerates and enables (and even celebrates) them.
This is what should frighten all of us: If they can do this to unborn children with such ease and without any remorse, then our health, our faith, our churches, our lives, our property, our families, our liberties, etc… are mere “inconveniences” by comparison. They will exterminate our rights, property, families, and very lives without batting an eyelash.
Godless tyranny is here and growing. Arise oh Lord and judge the earth!
It isn’t a left vs right issue. Sorry. If it were; you’d present me with a statistic that women who term their pregnancies via the means you define as abortion are all liberals. If you guys got Roe overturned; the right politicians would lose the wedge. Why do you think they do nothing? You all need to stop drinking the koolaid for a few days. It works both ways-the left does it, too.
Let’s see it! Show me the
Well, yeah, the right enjoys its wedge, does nothing when it can, and suggests conservative women don’t have them.
Koolaid anyone?
The fact that politicians are hypocrites should not surprise you Mr. Fall. That abortion has become a political issue is part of the tragedy and shows the absolute poverty of our current political system.
The Church and her people have to go beyond all of that.
The earth will be judged/is being judged.
We must live holines, righteous and proclaim the human, the sacred in all we do.
There is no question that the holy Orthodox Church condemns abortion and that the Orthodox Christian can never undergo it or cooperate in it; however the war against abortion is not helped by the kind of unthinking rhetoric beclouds not only Mr Banescu’s vanity rant, but mxch of the other verbiage on this site. Why, for example, refer to ANY foetuses as “members of our society?’ Foetuses are indeed persons, but they are NOT MEMBERS, defenceless or not, of our society.
Let’s not forget, either, that the Orthodox are certainly NOT historically guiltless in this. There’s a reason the Orthodox had to be controlled by a special CANON, Thr Greeks, though baptized for centuries were notorious throughout thosee centuries for abandoning new-born girl babies on the mountainsides! This evil practice (which avoids abortion) continued even into the 20th century and may even be practiced today.
I repeat, unborn babies are NOT members of any society, and they become real complete human beings only through Baptism.. According to the teaching of THE ORTHODOX CHURCH.
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you;” (Jeremiah 1:5)
I would like to follow-up on the following statement:
“I repeat, unborn babies are NOT members of any society, and they become real complete human beings only through Baptism.. According to the teaching of THE ORTHODOX CHURCH.”
So might I ask….. 1)when do human rights begin?
And
2) Are people who are not baptized somehow less than real complete human beings who are not members of the human community.
Last time I checked the same person who is Bishop Tikhon today is the same human being who was once an embryo.
“ and they become real complete human beings only through Baptism.. According to the teaching of THE ORTHODOX CHURCH.”
This I admit I am confused about. I thought by your “non member” argument you were making a political point (which is true, unborn children in most western societies are not members – they have even less standing than slaves did in the past).
In the above quote, in what way are non Baptized babies not “real, complete human beings”. They are fully human even if they are not baptized no? Baptism in and of itself does not confer humanity as such – the Imago Dei – it confers rather the possibility (it is a necessary precondition) of our death and resurrection “in Christ”.
Perhaps I am missing the intent of what you are saying…
“…unborn babies are NOT members of any society…”
With all due disrespect: You’re a joke.
1. Unborn children are human beings, but they are not members of ANY society.
2. Some members of society DIE WITH CHRIST in BAPTISM and rise up to NEW life with HIM. That, LIFE WITH CHRIST is the only real life.
3. Those of you who deny this are not opposing me, but the TRUTH.
Of course anyone claiming his brother is a JOKE, and claims to be making that claim “with all due respect,” has a problem with the Gospel and honesty… Seventeen of the participants in this blog LIKE that kind of conduct,
Perhaps they love the unborn because they don’t have to associate with them?
I’m sorry, Your Grace, but your first assertion is contradictory. Unless one is a hermit one –and that person had to be raised to viable maturity by others–is by definition a member of a society (however you define it).
Unborn babies are just like hermits, George, except that hermits WERE at one time members of SOCIETY. I’m sorry your brain can’t wrap around that. Unborn babies, George, are members of the human race, but they are NOT members of human or any other SOCIETY. Five people don’t care WHAT you say as long as it looks like you’re opposing me SOMEHOW.
BGabies are involuntary hermits, George. Does that clear up any contradictions in your mind?
This is just flat out wrong. The unborn child is responsive to outside stimulation as it develops. It recognizes the voice of its mother and father after birth. It responds to music in utero, the caresses of the mother’s stomach, and more. It senses stress and tranquility in the outside environment.
The womb is not a cave impervious to the outside world.
Parents wait for the delivery of the child with great expectation. So do relatives. We all go see the new baby after it is born. This “society” — particularly the family (family is the primary subset of society) — is already in place and the baby is part of it even before it is born.
Flat out wrong? Well, if you want to call an unborn infant and his mother society, go ahead. Nobody else belongs to that two-person society. Give it a rest. An unborn human being is NOT A MEMBER OF HUMAN SOCIETY. Being BORN is becoming a member of society. Worship the unborn if you think this will stop abortions, but that doesn’t make any unborn baby a member of society. Tapeworms may SENSE the presence of a bowl of warm milk near one’s mouth and emerge–in other words they have SENSORY AWARENESS of the outside world, but that SENSORY AWARENESS does not make them part of the outside world or its society.
The father, the mother, the other siblings, the grandparents and great-grands, the other members of the community not to mention those passed on. It may not be a society but is certainly a community. You have a truncated and impoverished vision of life.
We are all part if each other whether we like it or not from the moment the sperm and egg join.
It is often helpful to go back and review what the original poster actually said. Chris Banescu never actually said what His Grace read him to say. His actual words were: “…murder of the most innocent and defenseless in our society…” (My emphasis). Nothing about “members of society.”
I would suggest that the unborn are innocent, defenseless, and in our society — as are other innocent and defenseless creatures, such as animals, who are in our society but probably not really members of it according to the definitions proffered here.
The unborn may also be “members of our society,” (we certainly should treat them no differently than those who are) but that isn’t what Mr. Banescu said, even though His Grace put that phrase in quotation marks as though he had. This may seem like a picky point, but since the discussion is a picky one to begin with, it should at least be over something that was actually said.
I would further suggest that a clue to the reason that His Grace jumped so vociferously all over a quotation that didn’t actually exist can be found in the opening phrase to Mr. Banescu’s post: “The left’s (liberals and progressives also) wholesale support and promotion of murder…”
Now, while it is true that a take-no-prisoner’s defense of legal abortion is overwhelmingly found on the left of America’s political spectrum, and not on the right, I can see why a pro-life self-identified man of the political left like His Grace would see red after reading those first few words. As a multi-generational Republican who is pretty politically conservative, I must admit that I tend to stop paying very close attention to anything written in a post that begins with some variant on the theme of “You ignorant, knuckle-dragging, wingnut Republicans all just want to…” Not exactly a way to inspire reasoned dialogue.
I know I’ve said this before, but I won’t stop saying it. One of the most dismaying things about the exchanges that I see on this site is the extent to which assaults on people’s political affiliations often seem to provoke more visceral reactions than do assaults on their religious beliefs. I see people take positions that I can’t imagine them otherwise taking, based on what one can tell of their Orthodox Christian beliefs, simply because they disagree with the secular political orientation of their opponent, or because their own secular political views were trashed. I don’t know about anyone else, but that really bothers me.
Bishop:
I think it’s high time you turn in your epitrachelion.
Your Grace, you said, “I repeat, unborn babies are NOT members of any society, and they become real complete human beings only through Baptism.. ” So are you saying, then, that people who postpone Baptism until adulthood (such as those who convert to Orthodoxy, for example) are not “real, complete human beings” until then? That’s preposterous. From a strictly spiritual standpoint, I can see your point, but certainly not from a physical one. What about those babies who are born alive but die before they have a chance to be baptized? They are not complete human beings? I sincerely doubt that a loving God would not take them into His bosom regardless of whether they were baptized or not, or aborted or not. They are innocent and never had the chance to sin. And what about when the fetus John the Baptist leaped in his mother Elizabeth’s womb at the arrival of the Theotokos? I would say that proves that the unborn are indeed complete human beings and part of society, wouldn’t you? If they are capable of discerning the grace of God while still in the womb, like Jeremiah and John, then doesn’t that invalidate your argument?
Every Orthodox priest I have ever asked has always told me that the baby would be innocent and would immediately return to God. I have a personal vested interest in this as my brother was stillborn and my priest growing up always told me my brother went straight to heaven.
That has always been the consistent Orthodox answer in my experience. I am sorry if you had an opposite experience.
Peter
I hate to nitpick, ReaderEmmanuel, but…
Life does not begin at conception. A sperm is living, as is an ovum.
Life began, as is described in Genesis, a long, long time ago.
Since then, it has simply been transmitted over and over again.
Using the word “life” to describe what is created at conception only serves to further dehumanise the unborn child, or at least separate us from the reality that what begins at conception is a completely unique human person.
Ronda Wintheiser August 15, 2015 at 11:31 am) says:
SNIP
Using the word “life” to describe what is created at conception only serves to further dehumanise the unborn child, or at least separate us from the reality that what begins at conception is a completely unique human person.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is not biologically or ethically true, since ‘a completely unique human person’ comes into existence at fertilization. That microscopically tiny zygote is a complete human being from that point on, several days (perhaps) before it is accepted by its mother’s endometrium, which is the definition of ‘conception’.
We must be more precise in our definitions so as not to create conceptual wiggle room for pro-abortion types to promote the destruction of an embryo prior to conception/nesting in the lining of the womb.
Monk James, you’re confused. When the baby implants in his or her mother’s uterus, that is called implantation, not conception. Conception and fertilization are synonyms that refer to the fusion of gametes.
Monk James, the word “conception” is not wrong, it is a non-medical term, and hence imprecise. It may refer either to fertilization or implantation.
Ask 100 laymen what conception means, however, and I’d be surprised to learn that even a half dozen would understand it to mean anything other than “sperm joins with egg.” Those who oppose all abortions have always opposed traditional IUDS and morning after pills for that reason. There is no danger that anyone will mistake our meaning or “life begins at conception” creates wiggle room.
And to talk about conception meaning implantation only serves to muddy the waters of common understanding, even if you are technically correct.
I think it is a tactical mistake, however, to oppose the legality of IUDS and morning after pills. Let’s successfully pick the low-hanging fruit first (late-term abortion). Secular law should be a matter of secondary importance. The finer points should be matters of internal education and pastoral guidance, helping the faithful to understand how to uphold a culture of life. Looking back, I am glad that my wife and I kept the “finer points” (we weren’t Orthodox initially). But the real joy was seeing our children grow in our home and in our church home. And the sadness was that we couldn’t have more children than we did.
The real tragedy is not that most Orthodox Christians aren’t educated on “the finer points” with regard to “pro-life” issues — the tragedy is when we in the Church fail, by our poor examples and lack of encouragement, to inspire our young people to want to marry each other and make lots of babies. The most pro-life thing we ever did was having as many children as God gave us — not our studying the inticacies of family planning methods (although it is perhaps inevitable that the two be associated with each other. )
Helga (August 17, 2015 at 2:37 pm) says:
Monk James, you’re confused. When the baby implants in his or her mother’s uterus, that is called implantation, not conception. Conception and fertilization are synonyms that refer to the fusion of gametes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No.
The synonyms here are conception, implantation, and nidation, each and all of which describe only the acceptance of the zygote (incipient embryo/fetus) by the endometrium (lining) of its mother’s uterus.
It might have been possible at one time to describe fertilization (gametic fusion) as ‘conception’, but those terms have been clarified and are now better understood thanks to modern advances in embryology.
Let’s remember that it used to be thought that the father’s semen occasionally (depending on HIS condition) conveyed *one* infinitely small but complete human being (greek anthropidion, latin homunculus) into the womb, where it was the mother’s responsibility to nourish it until birth. Mothers then were not thought to contribute anything to the life and form of the children they carried, and their receiving that tiniest of human beings was called ‘conception’ (greek syllepsis, latin conceptio). Now we know better than we did a thousand or more years ago, and even better than we did even a century ago.
Incidentally, it was that ancient model of pregnancy which caused women — without exception — to be blamed for ‘losing a child’. We now call an unintentional, accidental miscarriage just what it is, although it used to be called a ‘spontaneous abortion’. These days, ‘abortion’ is reserved only for the intentional interruption of a pregnancy by the killing of the unborn child.
Intentional abortion has always been considered a heinous crime in both medicine and religion, by the judeochristian tradition and by earliest prechristian european medicine, per Hippokrates.
Our Prayer Book (eukhologion) includes a prayer to be read by a priest over a woman who has suffered a miscarriage. This prayer needs a bit of revision, since it assumes that the mother who has come for this blessing is somehow culpable, which may not be the case at all. She’s suffering enough from this tragedy, and The Church must not ‘lay on her burdens too heavy for her to bear’, as Our Lord said,
(A seminary professor of my acquaintance used to threaten to throttle any of his students who would use that prayer unrevised.)
“Mothers then were not thought to contribute anything to the life and form of the children they carried, and their receiving that tiniest of human beings was called ‘conception’ (greek syllepsis, latin conceptio). Now we know better than we did a thousand or more years ago…”
This a rather remarkable statement considering that our Holy Fathers understood from the beginning that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, “took flesh” of the Theotokos.
And this statement…
…represents a complete and utter misunderstanding of these prayers – a false understanding nourished by the idea that sin is always a transgression for which we are culpable rather than a disease from which we suffer.
But we moderns are fond of judging our Fathers in the Faith and assuming we know better than they; aren’t we? We prefer to judge, rather than humbly follow, the wise prescriptions the Church sets forth for our healing. We in our own subtle, prideful ways have much in common with Fr. Arida when we dare make such foolish judgements.
My daughter-in-law who has intense personal experience of the healing power of these prayers would testify that your acquaintance’s seminary professor is an intellectual blow hard. She told my wife and me that these prayers spoke specifically to the unique maternal tragedy and pain she had experienced. She also said she would have never understood them had she not personally endured the miscarriage with all the physical, emotional, and spiritual brokenness it entails. Fortunately for her, a priest at St. Vlad’s seminary where she lived at the time had the good sense to submit himself to the wisdom of the Eukhologion rather than judge it.
Okay, I will coin in as unappreciated as it might be…
Monk James-you won a point with me this evening. Orthodoxy loses much of its appeal when it fails to change when it is patently obvious that it should. Oh, but the definition! Thank you for refreshing wisdom on that prayer. These things become headshakers for educated persons.
Edward-not keeping score, but I never considered an IUD abortion and never saw it discussed as such until Brian mentioned it to me here. I have made a very great social discovery. The abortion discussion is more about taking sides than making change.
And if you don’t agree, check out Hans’ post reflecting on my critique of using Mengele references.
Brian (August 19, 2015 at 9:21 pm) says:
(quoting me)
“Mothers then were not thought to contribute anything to the life and form of the children they carried, and their receiving that tiniest of human beings was called ‘conception’ (greek syllepsis, latin conceptio). Now we know better than we did a thousand or more years ago…”END QUOTE
This a rather remarkable statement considering that our Holy Fathers understood from the beginning that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, “took flesh” of the Theotokos.
SNIP
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The services and patristic commentaries on the scriptures repeatedly return to the mystery of the Incarnation of the divine and eternal Son of God as the human and temporal Son of the Virgin.
Not having our more advanced modern understanding of human embryology when they wrote implies nothing about the true amazement of the sacred authors as they contemplated the awesome condescension of God and His simultaneous exaltation of our humanity.
Consider the Ninth Heirmos of the Great Kanon, or the eight dogmatikons we sing by turns on Saturday evenings. We — with all our more accurate scientific information — are just as astounded by this unique miracle as were our ancient authors.
His Grace says a lot of preposterous things–some of which are not all that gracious. Are any of us fully human until we are glorified and conformed to the image of Christ? And yet are we not all created in His image and designed to grow into His likeness by His grace and cooperation with it? And when does this imprint and design occur if not at fertilization (commonly referred to as conception)? The soul (including the nous is the form of the body) and this little needs but the proper nourishment and environment to grow into the person he or she is destined by Go to be. The design and programming is already encoded and complete.
If these little ones who are in the process of growing into persons are not members of society–it is society’s fault not theirs.
Christ is in our midst, to Him be all glory now and ever and unto ages of ages.
lxc+
Yes, Mrs Ages! It is indeed bizarre to speak of the unborn as “members of society!” It completely makes those of us that oppose Abortion/Murder look like hysterics or powerless Quixotes! Human society is made up of those who have been born–who “traversed the birth canal or been cut out through surgery on the mother who kept the unborn SAFE FROM society. When they enter society, they are NAMED and/or circumcised.
I fail to see where murdering a born baby is not so bad as an abortion. ANYBODY? Why is ANY given murder worse than another one? The Ten Commandments make no such distinction.
Does this look like a hermit?
The Bishop declares, “Unborn babies are just like hermits, George, except that hermits WERE at one time members of SOCIETY.”
We must excuse the bishop. Those of us who have raised babies know better.
As long as melodramatic (albeit well-meaning) opponents of the evil of abortion resort to such howlers as UNBORN BABIES being “The most persecuted MEMBERS OF HUMAN SOCIETY” the proponents of abortion can sit back, confirmed in their conviction that opponents of abortion are not industrial strength thinkers—on the contrary: PUSHOVERS!
No doubt there’s a place for hyperbole, but the abortion mess is not it.
It’s as self-defeating as imagining that saying, “It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”‘ is a killer-punch!
I wonder when Boehner et al will propose that the bureau of the census record the unborn in their population statistics? After all, if they’re members of our society, they should be recorded as such—maybe even give the parents a pre-natal income tax exemption!
Oh, anybody concerned about starving infants here? WHERE’S THE NOISE?
Certainly more must be done for those who have successfully traversed the birth canal, but the murder of unborn children is even worse. It is the worst evil because it prevents a child from even having the chance to exist in the world.
And what is this hang-up about whether they are members of society? That makes no difference to the morality of abortion. It’s a bizarre thing to argue about.
Your Grace:
As Orthodox Christians, we believe that life begins at conception, do we not? I think you need to step back and think about exactly what that really means. If we believe that life begins at conception, then we HAVE to also believe that that life is FULLY HUMAN and fully part of society, and all that entails. If we do not believe that, then we are splitting hairs and playing right into the abortionist’s hands.
What, Your Grace, is the difference between your argument that the fetus is “not fully human until baptism” and “not a part of society” and the arguments that the abortionists make, that the developing fetus is just a glob of tissue? THERE IS NONE. You are splitting hairs here, and you can’t have it both ways! You can’t have one without the other!
Furthermore, what do we believe about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ? That He was both FULLY GOD and FULLY MAN from the moment of His Conception! “Fully man” means just that! There are no qualifying statements here. We also know that He went through the normal human gestation cycle and there was nothing out of the ordinary about His birth, except for the fact that the Theotokos bore Him without the pain of pregnancy and childbirth, as we chant in her Akathist.
So, then, if we say that Christ was FULLY HUMAN from the moment of His conception and was born in the norman human manner, then we have to be fully human AND fully a part of society from the moment we are conceived also. It cannot be any other way, or we begin heading down the same slippery slope that the abortionists are already at the bottom of.
IMHO, your Grace, you are treading on some very thin ice. To me, there is not a whole lot of difference in what you say and those who say that Christ did not become fully God until John the Forerunner baptized Him.
George, you should re-name this post:
“One-legged man enters ass-kicking contest.”
Priest Webster:
I’m not sure which Orthodox church priest Webster is referring to, but in the Eastern Orthodox church we acknowledge ONE baptism FOR THE REMISSION OF SINS.
OOM (July 31, 2015 at 10:01 pm, a bit disrespectfully) says:
I’m not sure which Orthodox church priest Webster is referring to, but in the Eastern Orthodox church we acknowledge ONE baptism FOR THE REMISSION OF SINS.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
OOM seems not to understand this statement of the Symbol of the Faith, first standardized in 325 AD at Nikaia during the first ecumenical synod
It was known from the beginning that we Christians would be forgiven all our sins by baptism.
But very early the question arose: What happens if we fall into sin after we are baptized?
Since we knew that our sins would be forgiven by our baptism following our conversion to Christ, it was almost natural for us to think that — God forbid! — we sinned again, that we should then be baptized again so as to be forgiven. But this was a serious error.
Just as our Lord Jesus Christ died once and once and for all restored our relationship with God by His resurrection, proving that He could raise us from death as He Himself was raised, we can be baptized only once into His death and resurrection, as St Paul so clearly teaches.
Sinful as we are, we needed some way to bring us back into communion with the Church, our Lord Jesus Christ’s own Body and Bride, when we inevitably fell into sin.
But this couldn’t be accomplished by baptism, since that was a unique event in the process of our salvation, and could not be repeated.
Relying especially on the instruction of St James, the Lord’s brother, we baptized Christians always confessed our sins to one another. After Christianity was decriminalized in the early fourth christian century, we sinners began to rely on our bishops to reinstate us to eucharistic communion after appropriate periods of public repentance. This was the beginning of our recognition of confession and absolution as one of the christian mysteries. It was always there — it just took a while for it to become formalized, and that is how we have inherited this blessed aspect of our Tradition.
We DO ‘believe in ONE baptism for the forgiveness of sins’ as the Symbol says, but we also have confession and eucharistic reinstatement for us sinners who have already been baptized. Buddhists or Hindus or Muslims or Jews who come to Christ will be forgiven their sins by baptism.
After that, they just have to get on line for confession with the rest of us christian sinners, shameful as it is that we have betrayed our baptismal promises.
Saunca/Cheryl,
There are times in our lives, dear one, particularly in matters related to birth & death, when we are intimately in the presence of our God, and our hearts speak the truth and reality of our circumstance. In your case, you did not need “verification” of theological principle or the canons to explain to the mystery of a mother giving birth in the intimate presence of the Creator. Your heart instructed you in what was proper and appropriate for the circumstance. Period. And you are assured that the more tragic the circumstance, the closer our God drew near to you and your child. Your heart instructed you to both hold and name your child, and this was not under a “psychological” principle of grieving, but because it was pleasing to the Master with Whom you had nurtured this child, and into whose Hands you committed your child. And all the more important, beloved saunca, you are always a mother. I pray the Lord will comfort you until the day you will be re-united!
M. Stankovich says:
August 2, 2015 at 4:23 pm
Saunca/Cheryl,
There are times in our lives, dear one, particularly in matters related to birth & death, when we are intimately in the presence of our God, and our hearts speak the truth and reality of our circumstance. In your case, you did not need “verification” of theological principle or the canons to explain to the mystery of a mother giving birth in the intimate presence of the Creator. Your heart instructed you in what was proper and appropriate for the circumstance. Period. And you are assured that the more tragic the circumstance, the closer our God drew near to you and your child. Your heart instructed you to both hold and name your child, and this was not under a “psychological” principle of grieving, but because it was pleasing to the Master with Whom you had nurtured this child, and into whose Hands you committed your child. And all the more important, beloved saunca, you are always a mother. I pray the Lord will comfort you until the day you will be re-united!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There is nothing christian in this response, just twaddle in the guise of comfort, false comfort, psychological blather posing as religion.
Blessed are You, Lord! Teach me Your commandments.
Lord, keep us close to You and help us to accept Your will, as hard as it sometimes is for us to understand.
It is interesting that I shared with saunca the near identical words shared with me by Blessed Bishop Basil (Rodzianko) and Fr. John Breck, save the full theological explanations, when I shared with them my feelings of helplessness & despair during the original AIDS epidemic in NYC in the mid-1980’s. It was as if God was no where to be found amidst the sea of human suffering and death. I was as constantly afraid as I was helpless. And rather than hear, “twaddle in the guise of comfort, false comfort, psychological blather posing as religion,” I was comforted and energized, strengthened & motivated to move forward. And no, to this day I still do not “understand the will of God” in the whole matter, but neither did Job. Yet. he persevered.
That you do not posses the fundamental insight into the tragedy of human circumstances such as saunca experienced does not give you the right to judge, nor to project your shortcomings on to me. And in fact, shame on you for your own blindness of your limitations. Better you ask God to help to give you the wisdom to mind your own business.
Thank you, Cheryl, for a very personal, moving testimony. I would say that your intuitive understanding of Orthodox eschatology at the age of fourteen was, at least in the instance you cite, superior to that of the priest and deacon at the summer camp.
The false notion that unbaptized babies do not experience heaven or the Lord’s presence after death may be traced to St. Augustine’s woeful doctrine of “original sin” as a moral and juridical stain that all human beings “inherit” from Adam and Eve. Baptism, on that view, is a sacramental antidote to that inherited sin without which one may not be saved.
However, Fr. John Meyendorff of blessed memory argued conclusively in his great work Byzantine Theology that St. Augustine and other Latin fathers developed the false doctrine of “original sin” based on a mistranslation of Romans 5:12 in the Latin Vulgate Bible produced by St. Jerome. On the contrary, if babies die in utero or in infancy, they remain sinless and thus morally innocent. The Orthodox Church from the beginning has baptized infants and children not to “remove” an inherited original sin per se, but rather for the purely positive purpose of allowing them to experience the death and resurrection of our Lord mystically and to become new creatures in Christ, strengthened for the years to come.
Contrast that simple, elegant, and beautiful Orthodox holy mystery to the logical deduction in the medieval West leading to the absurd and revolting doctrine of “limbo” as deprivation of the “beatific vision” of God in an eternal twilight zone–albeit without physical pain–for unbaptized babies. Pope Innocent III in the thirteenth century gave that nonsense his imprimatur, but, fortunately for our Roman Catholic friends, the Vatican of Pope Benedict XVI in 2007 finally dismissed the concept as excessively rigorous.
In any case, many Orthodox priests, including yours truly, encourage women who miscarry or abort their unborn child or give birth to an infant who dies before baptism to name the child and continue to offer intercessory prayers for that child by name throughout their own lives until they meet again in the Kingdom. That practice is both therapeutic and good Orthodox theology.
From the time I first encountered Orthodoxy, I have never heard anything but that if a child dies before the age of ability to sin , that he goes to heaven, baptized or not. The Roman idea of unbaptized infants going to “limbo” is a reflection of that confession’s legalism and their belief that original sin involves original guilt.
Orthodoxy is careful not to make many pronouncements on who will not go to heaven, since we are incapable of knowing the mind and the of God and the extent of his mercy. But Orthodoxy does tell us of those paths which will reliably led to heaven. Since we know there is no such thing as original guilt, I cannot cannot imagine any other way to interpret Orthodox theology and anthropology regarding your children who died without being able to be baptized: they are of course in heaven with God.
OMG, saunca, I am so sorry for your losses. Whoever told you that was perpetuating a Roman Catholic misinterpretation as Archpriest Alexander said. Here’s an article that might be enlightening to you, that explains more of what the good Archpriest said above, and the teachings or St. John Chrysostom. May God grant you joy and peace, my sister in Christ. Do Infants Go to Hell If They Die Before Baptism? The Doctrine of Original Sin Re-examined.
Read carefully Fitz, he said “with all due DISrespect”. In any event, I am of the opinion that you are much more than a joke; you are in fact LEGION.
I, for one, wish to withdraw my thumbs up on that post which called His Grace Bishop Tikhon a joke. I may disagree with His Grace on any number of things, but I regret showing disrespect to a hierarch of the church. I am one of those anonymous cowards Dr. Stankovich speaks of, and His Grace posts under his own name, so I give him credit for that.
They may not be participants in social intercourse, but to say they are not members of society is a joke.
Besides, who cares? They are image-bearers of Christ and that alone makes them sacred.
Bishop Tikhon says, ” Foetuses are indeed persons, but they are NOT MEMBERS, defenceless or not, of our society.”
This is an ipse dixit if I ever saw one.
“I repeat, unborn babies are NOT members of any society, and they become real complete human beings only through Baptism.. According to the teaching of THE ORTHODOX CHURCH.”
Let’s see your fanboys…try and slap lipstick on that pig of a statement.
Your Grace, you wrote:
“I repeat, unborn babies are NOT members of any society, and they become real complete human beings only through Baptism.”
Since the Church does condemn abortion, what is an unborn child if not a member of society?
And surely you wouldn’t argue that Christ wasn’t a “real complete human being” until the moment of His baptism.
I think you’re trying to say something other than what it sounds like. You are trying to describe the process of salvation, not the nature of a human being, no?
Isn’t the Truth you are trumpeting that Christ was a real complete human being at His conception, like the rest of us? Isn’t that what the Incarnation means?
I raised this issue previously on this site, and bring my comment from Fr. Hans’ site:
On June 30, 2015, CA Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law the first ever mandatory child vaccination requirement:
Whatever you think of the “intrusion” of government into your parental right to choose the best course of action for child’s health (and if you do not immunize, you are both an irrational idiot and a threat to countless other children and the community as a whole), consider further, as an Orthodox Christian, that it is impossible to immunize your children with a vaccine that is not derived from the cell line of an aborted fetus. Importantly, this situation exists, not because major pharmaceutical manufacturers who supply the vaccine do not have other technology at their disposal (e.g. recombinant DNA) to avoid the aborted fetus cell lines, but it is simply less expensive and more expedient to continue as is.
American Roman Catholics pressed the Vatican for intervention, and were offered a moral “concession,” that until an alternative could be found, and in the greater interest of the health and welfare of their children and the community as a whole, Roman Catholic parents should vaccinate their children with the products available. From what I am reading, the groups who advocate for Vatican intervention with vaccine manufacturers accepted, but were not satisfied with this directive, and continue to ask for further assistance. I strongly suspect that the Orthodox, on the whole, are even aware of the reality of the problem.
See, this is where the right could take the Nucatola yuk. Even a live and let live guy like me is not pleased that this method is used.
Daniel,
To build upon my earlier post I do believe that there is a Mathusian Population Control system in place and has been in placed by the so-called powers that be, usually global wealthy elite, since at least the start of the Industrial Revolution and the wealthy elite have set up their political proxies.
The amount of propaganda on this issue, like I stated earlier is immense. It is well beyond so-called conspiracy theory to out right fact. The Global elites ten commandments are listed on the Georgia Guide Stones, which read:
1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
2. Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
3. Unite humanity with a living new language.
4. Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
8. Balance personal rights with social duties.
9. Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
10. Be not a cancer on the earth — Leave room for nature
Take these principles and read the United Nations 1992 report:
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
This stuff is not only scary, but evil. Very, very evil. All of this tells me that we are headed for a Noe-Feudalistic/Noe-Fascist World Government future. When issues like these are being raised and countered in the U.S. Senate Floor it tells me all this is real and that we have been asleep at the wheel for a very long time.
I hope I am wrong, but everything I and others have seen tells me that I am not. Being wrong on this would be great. I can deal with embarrassment. Being right is NOT something I want to be on this subject. Daniel, I will leave it up to you to decide.
Peter
George,
Can you fix my post. I am having problems with the link button.
Thanks.
Peter
Daniel,
Here is a Q and A in regards to Justice Ginsburg in which she states something very telling in regards to Abortion and population control. Here is the whole exchange so as to keep it in contect:
Q: Let me ask you about the fight you waged for the courts to understand that pregnancy discrimination is a form of sex discrimination.
JUSTICE GINSBURG: I wrote about it a number of times. I litigated Captain Struck’s case about reproductive choice. [In 1972, Ginsburg represented Capt. Susan Struck, who became pregnant during her service in the Air Force. At the time, the Air Force automatically discharged any woman who became pregnant and told Captain Struck that she should have an abortion if she wanted to keep her job. The government changed the regulation before the Supreme Court could decide the case.] If the court could have seen Susan Struck’s case — this was the U.S. government, a U.S. Air Force post, offering abortions, in 1971, two years before Roe.
Q: And suggesting an abortion as the solution to Struck’s problem.
JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes. Not only that, but it was available to her on the base.
Q: The case ties together themes of women’s equality and reproductive freedom. The court split those themes apart in Roe v. Wade. Do you see, as part of a future feminist legal wish list, repositioning Roe so that the right to abortion is rooted in the constitutional promise of sex equality?
JUSTICE GINSBURG: Oh, yes. I think it will be.
Q: If you were a lawyer again, what would you want to accomplish as a future feminist legal agenda?
JUSTICE GINSBURG: Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that had changed their abortion laws before Roe [to make abortion legal] are not going to change back. So we have a policy that affects only poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don’t know why this hasn’t been said more often.
Q: Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women?
JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae — in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.
(July 7, 2009 – New York Times Article. Full article can be accessed here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/magazine/12ginsburg-t.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all&😉
Take this rather warped mentality and outlook of Justice Ginsberg and place it in the overall anti-life context that I have been talking about and the picture that emerges is a very ugly and evil picture.
This is why, along with so much else that has transpired along these lines, that the Gospel of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ needs to be proclaimed by all of us and the Church needs to be very loud and direct in its prophetic voice against these sins and abominations.
PS. Just Google “Sustainable Development” which is all over the Global Climate Change literature and U.N. Policy papers to quickly discover that its just a Politically Correct word for “Population Control.” We are just another animal herd that needs culling, right?
Peter
OK, last thing on this for you Daniel that shows the truly diabolical nature of all this.
1. UK Television Presenter Sir David Attenborough: “We are a plague on the Earth. It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now”
2. Paul Ehrlich, a former science adviser to president George W. Bush and the author of “The Population Bomb”: “To our minds, the fundamental cure, reducing the scale of the human enterprise (including the size of the population) to keep its aggregate consumption within the carrying capacity of Earth is obvious but too much neglected or denied”
3. Paul Ehrlich again, this time on the size of families: “Nobody, in my view, has the right to have 12 children or even three unless the second pregnancy is twins”
4. Dave Foreman, the co-founder of Earth First: “We humans have become a disease, the Humanpox.”
5. CNN Founder Ted Turner: “A total world population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
6. Japan’s Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso about medical patients with serious illnesses: “You cannot sleep well when you think it’s all paid by the government. This won’t be solved unless you let them hurry up and die.”
7. David Rockefeller: “The negative impact of population growth on all of our planetary ecosystems is becoming appallingly evident.”
8. Environmental activist Roger Martin: “On a finite planet, the optimum population providing the best quality of life for all, is clearly much smaller than the maximum, permitting bare survival. The more we are, the less for each; fewer people mean better lives.”
9. HBO personality Bill Maher: “I’m pro-choice, I’m for assisted suicide, I’m for regular suicide, I’m for whatever gets the freeway moving – that’s what I’m for. It’s too crowded, the planet is too crowded and we need to promote death.”
10. MIT professor Penny Chisholm: “The real trick is, in terms of trying to level off at someplace lower than that 9 billion, is to get the birthrates in the developing countries to drop as fast as we can. And that will determine the level at which humans will level off on earth.”
11. Julia Whitty, a columnist for Mother Jones: “The only known solution to ecological overshoot is to decelerate our population growth faster than it’s decelerating now and eventually reverse it—at the same time we slow and eventually reverse the rate at which we consume the planet’s resources. Success in these twin endeavors will crack our most pressing global issues: climate change, food scarcity, water supplies, immigration, health care, biodiversity loss, even war. On one front, we’ve already made unprecedented strides, reducing global fertility from an average 4.92 children per woman in 1950 to 2.56 today—an accomplishment of trial and sometimes brutally coercive error, but also a result of one woman at a time making her individual choices. The speed of this childbearing revolution, swimming hard against biological programming, rates as perhaps our greatest collective feat to date.”
12. Colorado State University Professor Philip Cafaro in a paper entitled “Climate Ethics and Population Policy”: “Ending human population growth is almost certainly a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for preventing catastrophic global climate change. Indeed, significantly reducing current human numbers may be necessary in order to do so.“
13. Professor of Biology at the University of Texas at Austin Eric R. Pianka: “I do not bear any ill will toward people. However, I am convinced that the world, including all humanity, WOULD clearly be much better off without so many of us.”
14. Detroit News Columnist Nolan Finley: “Since the national attention is on birth control, here’s my idea: If we want to fight poverty, reduce violent crime and bring down our embarrassing drop-out rate, we should swap contraceptives for fluoride in Michigan’s drinking water.
We’ve got a baby problem in Michigan. Too many babies are born to immature parents who don’t have the skills to raise them, too many are delivered by poor women who can’t afford them, and too many are fathered by sorry layabouts who spread their seed like dandelions and then wander away from the consequences.”
15. John Guillebaud, professor of family planning at University College London: “The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights. An extra child is the equivalent of a lot of flights across the planet.”
16. Democrat strategist Steven Rattner: “WE need death panels. Well, maybe not death panels, exactly, but unless we start allocating health care resources more prudently — rationing, by its proper name — the exploding cost of Medicare will swamp the federal budget.”
17. Matthew Yglesias, a business and economics correspondent for Slate, in an article entitled “The Case for Death Panels, in One Chart”: “But not only is this health care spending on the elderly the key issue in the federal budget, our disproportionate allocation of health care dollars to old people surely accounts for the remarkable lack of apparent cost effectiveness of the American health care system. When the patient is already over 80, the simple fact of the matter is that no amount of treatment is going to work miracles in terms of life expectancy or quality of life.”
18. Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger: “All of our problems are the result of overbreeding among the working class”
19. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: “Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”
20. Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger: “The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”
21. Salon columnist Mary Elizabeth Williams in an article entitled “So What If Abortion Ends Life?”: “All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides.”
22. Alberto Giubilini of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia and Francesca Minerva of the University of Melbourne in a paper published in the Journal of Medical Ethics: “[W]hen circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible. … [W]e propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion’, rather than ‘infanticide,’ to emphasize that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus … rather than to that of a child. Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk.”
23. Nina Fedoroff, a key adviser to Hillary Clinton: “We need to continue to decrease the growth rate of the global population; the planet can’t support many more people.”
24. Barack Obama’s primary science adviser, John P. Holdren: “A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men.
The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.”
25. David Brower, the first Executive Director of the Sierra Club: “Childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license … All potential parents [should be] required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.”
26. Thomas Ferguson, former official in the U.S. State Department Office of Population Affairs: “There is a single theme behind all our work–we must reduce population levels. Either governments do it our way, through nice clean methods, or they will get the kinds of mess that we have in El Salvador, or in Iran or in Beirut. Population is a political problem. Once population is out of control, it requires authoritarian government, even fascism, to reduce it…”
27. Mikhail Gorbachev: “We must speak more clearly about sexuality, contraception, about abortion, about values that control population, because the ecological crisis, in short, is the population crisis. Cut the population by 90% and there aren’t enough people left to do a great deal of ecological damage.”
28. Jacques Costeau: “In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it is just as bad not to say it.”
29. Finnish environmentalist Pentti Linkola: “If there were a button I could press, I would sacrifice myself without hesitating if it meant millions of people would die”
30. Prince Phillip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II and co-founder of the World Wildlife Fund: “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.”
Now what is the Orthodox Christian position on this?
Genesis 1:27-31
[27] So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
[28] And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”
[29] And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.
[30] And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.
[31] And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.
God said that everything He had made, including us, was “very good.” Not a Plague, but very good. God said for us to “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.” God said “Multiply” not “Subtract.” Do you see what we are up against? What we have always been up against?
Just to make it eve clearer for you:
Ephesians 6:12
[12] For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Peter
M. Stankovich,
I am surprised that there has been such limited comment on your post regarding the use of fetal tissue from aborted babies in the production of vaccines. According to the website of “Children of God for Life,” a Roman Catholic group, the vaccines in common use to protect against several diseases (for example, Rubella – German Measles) were developed using the cells, propagated repeatedly, of aborted fetuses. Further, it is stated that the vaccines contain small amounts of proteins and DNA from aborted fetuses. These vaccines are injected into people’s bodies routinely. This became structurally embedded in our health care system on a massive scale. It is the most disturbing information that I have ever read. There is no waking up from this nightmare. And nobody but a handful of religiously conservative Catholics seem to be concerned. Has anyone seen an Orthodox commentary regarding the use of vaccines made from the cells of aborted babies? Lord have mercy.
For anyone interested, here is a link to the page that lists the Vatican’s 2005 detailed response to a Children of God for Life request for moral guidance, as well as a Question and Answer on the issue.
https://cogforlife.org/the-vatican-vaccines-from-abortion/
Mr. Barker,
You and me.
Thanks for posting a very important article from the Children of God for Life.
Most Orthodox seem incapable in developing and articulating a cultural vision of what it means to be Orthodox in an increasingly antagonistic society. We probably wouldn’t’t need to though if the life of Christian perfection and virtue were taught and practiced rather than the “go-along-to-get-along ” attitude.
I would remind readers that the Abortion Rights movement is currently preparing to expand the right of a mother to abort to the post-natal period and even to an age where the child is incapable of defending itself. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/…/Killing-babies-no-different-from-abortion-experts- say.html
More on post-partum abortion:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/post/after-birth-abortion-can-they-be-serious/2012/03/03/gIQADgiOsR_blog.html
http://conservativepost.com/liberals-debate-to-introduce-after-birth-abortions-as-newborns-are-not-persons/
Whatever happened to adoption? If a baby is going to put a family at risk, then put-it-up-for-adoption!
I Remember slapping Dr Boars up side the head in Forest Grove,Ore. We were sitting like Rosa Parks, in front of his clinic door. He decided to try and rip my head off, grabbing me by the hair. Got it on tape. I got in a lot of flack from my fellow pro-lifers ,because we were suppose to be non violent. I expect what I did , every baby she murders would do the same thing, if they were allowed to live. Then most of the pro-lifers just started laughing. Boars sent me a bill for his teeth, which I refused to pay, and the court fined me just 75 dollars. I slapped him to stop him from grabbing the 97Lb grandma sitting next to me. Good thing for this gal, I wasn’t there. I would have slapped her silly.
Brave New World
Transgender
Brave New World
https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/transgender-teen-18-undergoes-rare-surgery-so-he-125450018082.html
Michael Kinsey says, “I Remember slapping Dr Boars up side the head in Forest Grove,Ore”
Damn, some people get all the breaks!
If I ever get to shake your hand, Michael, I will not afterwards wash it.
Dear Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald)
For your records, an unborn human being is a member of a human society, it is a bloody human society. Nay?
Because of your pews, you really should stop posting and scandalizing Orthodox Christians for you speak in ways here that are very far removed traditional Orthodox Christian thought.
For your consideration, Saint Basil the Great mentions:
“The woman who purposely destroys her unborn child is guilty of murder. The hair-splitting difference between formed and unformed makes no difference to us.”
As such your public hair-splitting on the membership of many unborn children in human society makes a difference to us, namely we can see that your comments here are rather sad to read here.
God forgives.
In Christ,
Matthew Panchisin
Dear in Christ Cheryl,
The Orthodox tradition that we used to hear consistently conveyed is that your children are now beautiful
intercessors for your entire family before the throne of the Lord God Almighty who is the king of all, long suffering and of great goodness.
God is love and your children are beloved from the beginning, you love them and they love you always, abideth in love is what we can hear the good shepherd say.
That’s how I remember the bishops and Priests from a different generation speaking. Thanks be to God that tradition still remains as there are still Bishops and Priests that keep that part of the Orthodox faith.
In Christ,
Matthew Panchisin
Monk James:
Monk James:
Not according to priest Webster’s “purely positive theology.”
Monk James:
Priest Reardon, ROCOR generally, and others claiming to be Orthodox deny that baptism is a unique event, and ignore the canons, when they REBAPTIZE after trinitarian baptism.
Straw Man OOM. Both ROCOR and non-ROCOR Orthodox churches believe in the efficacy of ONE baptism. It’s just that the Old Calendarists don’t believe that the first (non) Orthodox baptism was valid.
The question here is not that of ONE baptism for the Orthodox, but if that people who come to orthodoxy from other christian denominations have truly been baptized in the first place.
This is a problem which must be addressed by the surest means and methods we have.
And — since we Orthodox are not responsible to anyone but Christ our Lord, and since we cannot possibly know what (if any — since that is dubious — sort of baptism) or other rites are effective apart from The Church, we must baptize all converts no matter whence they come.
At the same time, we must accept the authority of our bishops, who must answer to Christ for their stewardship, even if it turns out that they’re occasionally wrong. We have to help them with that.
So, If the bishop decides that a Roman Catholic or an Episcopalian should be received into The Church by Confession and Communion or by Anointing, then the Christian in question should relax and let the bishop take responsibility. He will answer to Christ, and converts should just go on about their blessed lives in The Church.
But — had they the option — ALL converts should ask to be baptized.
That would settle the matter forever, and no question of legitimacy could ever arise afterward.
We Orthodox cannot be held responsible for whatever happens/has happened outside The Church, or to have opinions about it. We can do only what we do within The Church.
Monk James:
I don’t know who the monk means by “we,” but the ancient practice of the Eastern Orthodox church – my church – is to receive those previously baptized in the names of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost by chrismation. This was decided at the second ecumenical council.
Obviously, the specific application of that canon to non-Orthodox other than the specific contemporary heretical bodies enumerated in that canon was most definitely not settled, since as the article by a Canon law expert posted elsewhere by M. Stankovich details, actual Orthodox practice has varied broadly in times both ancient and modern.
The reasons for this are obvious — the Canon nowhere says anything about the Trinity. In fact, the heretics being received by Chrismation specifically held heretical views of the Trinity or the members thereof. What is discussed is the number of immersions — not the words pronounced. And how many heterodox today have undergone any immersions? The problems begin to multiply.
The author also notes correctly that the theological explanation for why reception by Chrismation happens and for what happens in that chrismation has also varied widely. Even explanations of what economia is varies, let alone whether reception by Chrismation even is economia (which it seems you believe it is not).
You are being just as dogmatic as any Greek Old Calendarist on this issue — and just as their one size fits all approach doesn’t line up with the historical practice of the church, neither does yours. There is not room for disobeying a bishop’s instructions. There is, however, room for continued legitimate variation of allowed practice from bishop to bishop.
Edward:
Edward, rebaptism although practiced by some in modern times, was forbidden by the apostolic canons. The point of my reference to the canon of the Constantinople council, and the point of the canon itself, was to specify the manner of receiving the already baptized – by chrismation. That is what the canon established.
Edward:
‘Constantinople doesn’t mention the baptismal verbal formula because it was already established in the apostolic canons.
Edward:
I am not being dogmatic (I could care less, actually) just reporting the canonical tradition. By the way, the modern practice of the OCA, GOA, and Antiochians is to receive those already baptized with the proper verbal formula by chrismation. But I suppose they’re all wrong, huh?
Edward:
There is no room for disobeying the canons. Bishops who authorize rebaptism DEPOSE THEMSELVES.
Bishops who do a whole lotta other things here in America “depose themselves” as well.
Micalopulos:
And some fold like a cheap suit when their dinner soiree is interrupted and resign.
OOM, you truly are a jackass and one who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Metropolitan Jonah had been hounded into quitting from Day One (literally). He had refused every time to submit to insane demands as well as resignation. He watched his family being destroyed by Syosset. After years of being undermined in ways that you have no idea of, he resigned and accepted even further humiliation for almost three years.
By saying these words you are exposing your fundamental evilness in another way. You are engaging in misdirection. Rather than answer my point about bishops who “self-depose” themselves because they are sexual transgressors, simoniacs, and encourage others of the same bent to approach the Chalice you bring up an incident which is not germane to my original criticism. Resignation from a diocesan see is not cause for self-deposition. Indeed, it’s the least of the worries that an Orthodox bishop has to fear.
I am surprised that a man of your intelligence would make the claims that are making here. Once again, here is the record on promises that he has made.
First promise–Metropolitan Jonah’s ordination, November 2008: He promised to his fellow bishops and to God that he would not be forced to say or do anything.
Second promise–The Santa Fe Retreat, February 2011: +Jonah promised to attend evaluation and rehab if called for.
Third promise–The Seattle AAC, November 2011: +Jonah promised that he would attend evaluation/rehab after all.
Three promises made within three years. All broken.
Carl, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Those “unilateral” talking points were only trotted out because the overlords of Syosset didn’t like Jonah’s outreach to Moscow. As for “promising” to go to rehab, that’s insane. I’ll grant you that he should have said “Hell no!” when first importuned but he didn’t. Plus, he did wind up going (against all sound judgment). It’s just that you wanted him to be diagnosed as insane and he wasn’t.
My advise to you and other anti-Jonahites is to drop it. Eventually more facts will come out that will paint a fuller picture of the negativity and back-stabbing that came from Syosset. The Stokoevites have a lot to answer for and unless one wants to keep on carrying their water (I imagine unintentionally in your case), one should refrain from thinking that he knows all the facts.
Michakopulos, you are not quite the spinmeister you aspire to be. Rebaptizers are deposed by one of the apostolic canons – look it up. If you are cognizant of canonically forbidden behavior such as you CLAIM to be aware of, take it up with the responsible hierarchy. And spare us the histrionics about the supposed persecution of +Jonah. Nobody did more destruction than +J himself. In the history of Christianity, how many bishops have “resigned?” +J is the Richard Nixon of Orthodoxy.
You are right, like Nixon, Jonah was hounded out of his position. That’s probably one of the few correct statements you’ve made here, though no doubt you think they both had it coming. My leftist parents used to say that Tsar Martyr Nicholas II got what was coming to him. Perversely enough, they were right, he DID get what was coming to him, a Martyr’s Crown!
OOM (August 2, 2015 at 10:04 pm) says:
QUOTING ME: And — since we Orthodox are not responsible to anyone but Christ our Lord, and since we cannot possibly know what (if any — since that is dubious — sort of baptism) or other rites are effective apart from The Church, we must baptize all converts no matter whence they come. END QUOTE
I don’t know who the monk means by “we,” but the ancient practice of the Eastern Orthodox church – my church – is to receive those previously baptized in the names of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost by chrismation. This was decided at the second ecumenical council.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That was then, when certain clearly defined groups of heretics consistently followed at least their own rules and rituals in patterns which the orthodox could recognize as at least mechanically resembling our own and emplaced for the same reasons.
But this is now, and our analogies to orthodox tradition often fail in the face of around 30,000 forms of christian practice which diverge not only from orthodoxy but from each other, and not always in consistent or predictable ways. Each one of those myriads of protestant groups obviously thinks that its theories are right and that the remaining 29,999 others are wrong, sometimes in major areas of belief and sometimes in the most petty. So it’s likely to be the work of a lifetime to examine each of them and define just how they differ from orthodoxy. Someone else, somewhere else, can start that project. Here, I’ll look at just one of the largest heterodox groups.
Now, even if the Roman Catholics, e.g., (who were not considered heretical in the 4th christian century) baptize by triple immersion in the names of the Holy Trinity, we can’t be sure of exactly what they mean by their words and liturgical actions. Remember ‘Filioque’? There’s a substantial body of thought suggesting that the RC understanding of the Holy Trinity is not only different from ours, but that it is wrong and even heretical. It certainly defies the Gospel and the Symbol.
Then there was a situation in Boston a few years ago where some RC priests were baptizing in the politically correct names of the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sanctifier — no mention of the revealed names of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Of course, church authorities were apoplectic when they found out about this and tried to correct it as best they could. But, still….
Then there’s the serious conceptual problem in RC ecclesiology, which allows baptism to be administered by people who have not themselves been baptized. (See paragraph 1256 of The Catechism of the Catholic Church.)
Of course, it could be claimed that God wouldn’t allow such loose ends to frustrate people’s striving for salvation, and the principle of epikeia (favorable interpretation) could be invoked, and the Catholics do just that. We orthodox would probably be more likely to invoke oikonomia in an exceptional situation, but we can’t do that when an exception has become standard operating procedure or — as in the case of the CCC — a principle of church law. Besides, our bishops can apply oikonomia only within The Church; what goes on in catholic or protestant circumstances is beyond the competence of our orthodox authorities to address.
So, in order to put at rest the minds of converts and to ‘do all things decently and in order’ as we just read in St Paul. it would be better for us to baptize all comers, that principle of akribeia, relieving the bishops and the rest of us of any further responsibility in the matter.
I sincerely hope that no one reading these words of mine will be unsettled in the faith which they have embraced, whether they entered The Church by baptism or some other way. What’s done is done, and priests and people who were received by anointing or confession should just go on with ‘working out their salvation in fear and trembling’ within The Church, and have no further thought for their legitimacy as Christians.
We should just open-heartedly follow our bishops and hope to do better in the future. As the scriptures teach, the Lord desires obedience rather than sacrifice.
Monk James is correct on every point in this post. I have given other cogent reasons why the confession and chrismation guidelines are a holdover from the 19th century. Like dismissing catechumens, the practice was suited very well to the time in which it was developed, but it doesn’t suit the Wild West in which most of today’s heterodox live in this country. The irony to me is that the same people who insist on holding rigidly to 19th c. Russian guidelines (even in situations where it is a stretch to apply them) are often the same ones who seem to ignore, label as outdated, and even mock all sorts of other salutary moral, spiritual, liturgical, and ascetic practices that were laid down as normative in that same era.
I wonder — if some of the ethnic clergy who refuse to baptize converts had a child who drifted away from the faith and had a grandchild baptized by a holy roller at Uncle Bob’s Faith Harvest Full Gospel Prosperity chapel, only to have an attack of conscience hit them a little while later and come back begging Grandpa to please give his grandchild a real baptism — I wonder how many of them would go to the wall refusing to baptize their own grandchild with the same fervor with which they deny a full Orthodox baptism to the converts they receive. It is very easy to deny something to others that you yourself have no idea what it is like to be without.
I agree with Monk James that the responsibility is with the bishop, but what is being denied to converts who want a baptism is unquestioned legitimacy — that isn’t the word I would have chosen, but it conveys the idea well enough. When you go under the water (or watch it happen to your child), you know that whatever it is that happens in an Orthodox baptism just happened. When it is just a priest or bishop saying that their personal assurance that you dont need one is just as good as an Orthodox baptism, it just isn’t the same thing. I realize that we converts are too stupid and ignorant to know what is good for us, but some of us are funny that way — we actually think we know more about the former delusions in which we lived than do those who know nothing about them. Silly us.
My advice to prospective converts who want to be baptized: point out that you don’t have a baptismal certificate. You likely have no idea where it might be even if one ever existed. If something called a baptism did happen to you, you can’t swear to being personally 100% sure it was in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. All of those statements will be true for the vast majority of converts, so you won’t be lying. Most priests will say “fine, let’s baptize you.”
Some will pressure you to try to produce evidence of a baptism — just don’t do it. Others will say you don’t need evidence — definitely avoid that sort. If the priest still doesn’t want to baptize you or says his bishop won’t let him, find another priest or bishop, because it means some sort of abstract idea is more important to him than is the state of your soul. And it means that he doesn’t really believe that all of the things he does in an Orthodox baptism really mean or do anything. It means that he considers everything but the three-fold dunking in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — all of the prayers, anointing with oil, blessing the water first according to the formulary and driving the demons out of it — he considers all of that to be mere fluff and window dressing. In fact, it means he even considers the dunking itself to be a silly ritual — a drop of water on the forehead and the words would do just as well.
The careful reader will note what I am careful not to say — I am absolutely not saying that reception by confession and chrismation aren’t valid. That means of receptions is absolutely valid whenever a bishop lays down guidelines and when a priest follows those guidelines to the letter. If a bishop says to admit a convert directly to the chalice without either confession or chrismation, that is valid, too, and that person is just as Orthodox as anyone else.
I’m just pointing out that a longing to receive the Mysteries of the Holy Orthodox Church is perfectly healthy and normal and good. There is absolutely no reason to be denied them.
A most interesting discussion. In my own case, I only ever belonged to one church before, a local Presbyterian church in which I was baptized in 1948. I was brought up there, and eventually had my five children baptized there, in the 1970s. I was ordained a deacon and then an elder there, in the 1980s. All of our daughters were married there. In due course, my grandparents, and then my parents, had their memorial services preached there.
My wife and I were married at 19 in her Catholic church, which was two blocks away. We still live about 6 city blocks from both churches.
I knew, by family hearsay of course, that I had been baptized. I knew from personal experience with my own kids, long membership, etc., that the baptism was in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. (It is important to note that this can no longer be taken for granted in respect to any mainline Presbyterian church.)
Upon my decision to become an Orthodox catechumen, I checked with my old church office, and, of course, they could confirm from the records the date of my baptism in November 1948. (As an historical sidenote, they were baptizing several dozens of infants per year back then.) I did want this proof; once I had it I was satisfied, for myself, and have never been troubled on this score.
Edward, this is without a doubt one of the best comments I have ever read on Monomakhos. It is unarguable in every instance. Bravo.
Edward:
Well,there’s consistency for you!
Edward:
“.whatever it is that happens in an Orthodox baptism”??? If you don’t know what is is that happens, how do you know that it happens? This is why we Orthodox follow the canons. So nitwits like Edward don’t get caught up confusing baptism with magic and juju.
Edward:
Personally, I’m all for open communion. How very liberal of Edward.
If I were to read any of this reflected in the instructions or liturgical office (from the Trebnick) commissioned and prepared for us, in English, by the highest authority in this country, Archbishop Tikhon – shortly to become the long-suffering and sainted Metropolitan Tikhon of Moscow and all Russia, I would take no exception. But in fact, he specifically calls for the baptism of Jews, Muslims, and the heathen only. No where does he suggest, “Should you desire to feel more ‘wholesome,’ more ‘sanctified,’ or more ‘fulfilled,’ simply tell a ‘white lie’ that you cannot locate a baptismal certificate, etc. ” You have established no Patristic precedent nor, more importantly, a need, other than what appears to be a prideful, false “necessity” and denial that the Holy Spirit acts as He wishes. But on the other hand, “If a bishop says to admit a convert directly to the chalice without either confession or chrismation, that is valid, too, and that person is just as Orthodox as anyone else.” This is lunacy or it is Burger King. This is the third time I quote you the Apostle Paul: “Let all things be done decently and in order,” (1 Cor. 14:40), “For God is not a God of disorder but of peace–as in all the congregations of the Lord’s people.” (1 Cor 4:33) Not only do you promote indiscriminate chaos, but you now add the dimension of deception, and to what end? Because you deserve baptism? Because you are entitled to baptism? There is absolutely nothing that is “perfectly healthy and normal and good” with placing one’s own selfish desires ahead of the Patristic mind of those Holy Fathers before us, particularly for those who are yet “infants” in the Church. You say you’ve read Florovsky, then recall:
Yet you would abandon wisdom for manipulation, “separated from the life of faith… and its existential character.” (“St. Gregory the Theologian and the Tradition of the Fathers,” in Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View). We join the existential nature of our Patristic Tradition, or we allow the least competent to dictate the terms of their reception into the Church, all the while admitting, “half dozen of one…” This you can neither justify nor support but by conjecture or sentimentality.
Dr S, St Tikhon lived in a saner time. Protestant Christians were vehemently Trinitarian. Many if not most Evangelicals voted against Wm Howard Taft because he was a Unitarian, casting their votes for the Presbyterian Wilson. The first Senator from Utah had to wait four years before being allowed to take rightful seat in the Senate while various committees examined every punctilium of Mormon doctrine.
Being over 50 years old, I well remember the tremendous seriousness of low-church Protestants both in their orthodoxy and orthopraxis. (I can’t say the same for post-Vatican II American Catholicism, all I remember was the horror stories of a liturgy gone mad.)
With the creation of priestesses in ECUSA all bets were off. The mega-church phenomenon of the 80s, together with the horrible televangelist scandals created a whole new world out there. My limited involvement with mega-church services have left me wanting to writhe in agony (and not because I was “slain in the Spirit”). I’ve studied the theology of T D Jakes, Joel Osteen and others. There’s no there there. Mormonism is more coherent in comparison.
Commercials on TV for many of the mega-churches make you think that it’s all nothing but a feel-good gathering place for hep-cats with chin whiskers doing calisthenics.
All I’m saying is that if St Tikhon were Archbishop of America today, he probably wouldn’t write those directions to the clergy regarding the reception of converts from Protestantism (and I dare say some Catholic parishes). That’s all.
I agree with you, George and Edward. Most Protestant baptisms today–based on those I have observed whether in churches or youth camps–bear little resemblance to a an Orthodox baptism. The single immersion may be in the name of the Holy Trinity (not always) but it is virtually never proceeded by a rejection of Satan and an exorcism. It may be preceded by a single affirmation of Christ as Lord and Savior, but it is virtually never accompanied by a recitation of the Creed. It may be claimed as an assurance of the forgiveness of sins and of being saved from Hell; it is seldom clearly proclaimed as anything like a real death to self and rising to self-less life as a new creature in Christ and as a living member of His one Body, the one, holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. It is not seen as the preparation for Chrismation and a partaking of the Eucharistic Body and Blood of Christ as essential for the spiritual nourishment of the soul and the preservation of eternal life.
lxc
Can’t think of a non-Orthodox baptism that has all of those elements! If they did, I suppose they would be Orthodox…..
M. Stankovich, you twist my words, you avoid my substantive points, you read vile motivations into my intentions, and you mock my sincerity. And you are supposed to be the brilliant and educated one. You are supposed to be the one filled with depths of selfless compassion for your fellow man that the rest of us cannot begin to approach and before which we quotidian grubbers must merely stand in awe at the sight.
You, who have never been a convert, presume in your arrogance to dismiss the entire gut-wrenching experience of tearing oneself, out of conscience, from the faith of one’s upbringing — often resulting in permanent chasms left between us and those closest to us — as the puerile concerns of the “least competent,” as though we belong in a home for the mentally challenged.
You brush right by the fact that I am not a wet behind the ears convert, but someone who came to the faith nearly 30 years ago, someone who has had the benefit of nearly 30 years of living the full sacramental and ascetic life of the Church, 30 years to read, study, and reflect on what exactly I did all those years ago as a young man — not what was decided for me by someone else. I have lived the faith as best I can for nearly 30 years — day in, day out, in good times and bad (something that most “cradles” my age can’t claim).
You furthermore base your blithe dismissal of what I wrote by acting like a martinet, dogmatizing for all time some guidance given in a specific time by one specific saint. You give those guidelines a specific interpretation that St. Tikhon is not around to ask questions about. You assume an embrace of those guidelines by the universal church that quite simply does not exist — and you are being intellectually dishonest to act as though it does. You treat those guidelines as though they must be twisted to fit whatever situations it might ever encounter with converts who aren’t Jews, Saracens, and heathens. Gold star to the priest with the courage to read the word Saracen to a potential Muslim convert and to show the Mormon that he gets the “heathen” section — after all, these guidelines are Holy Writ, and can’t be adapted or changed.
And you refuse to admit to the possibility that perhaps it might be wise to change or clarify those guidelines — indeed, you resort to mockery, condescension, and verbal thuggery in an attempt to label the very discussion of such changes as inadmissible rebellion against good order in the Church. For at the heart of what I am suggesting, as you know full well, is my contention that changing those guidelines of order should be considered, for the reasons that George eloquently details, and that I have also discussed — and that you cannot be bothered to so much as acknowledge as existing — let alone respond intelligently and dispassionately to.
I can also tell you that what is by far the largest Orthodox body in the US — the GOA — is, in my not insignificant experience, filled with a lot of priests who prefer to receive by baptism, and do it in a heartbeat if a convert shows a willingness or interest. And my experience was mostly before the Ephraimites showed up, who feel even more strongly about it than do the rank and file priests (probably because they know how many monasteries on Mt. Athos won’t commune someone they know not to have received an Orthodox baptism).
I am not going to repeat all of my substantive points or attempt to untwist what you, in callous arrogance have twisted in my words. In your mouth, my deference to a bishop’s authority becomes “”Burger King, my pointing out the cold hard fact that most people in 2015 will not be able to produce documentation of a baptism (as required by the guidelines in the article you posted elsewhere) was twisted into my advocating lying, when I specifically said otherwise. Etc.
For the record, I wrote the above post because I felt I should — that someone might benefit from it. I appreciate George’s warm affirmation that I wasn’t completely crazy to do so. But I have to say that nonetheless I went back to try to delete it, missing the cut-off by a minute or two, knowing just what would be coming from you and one other, and just not wanting to deal with it. Clearly my instinct to delete it were the right one, even if they came to me too late. But I am done on this subject — you can have the last condescending (or saccharine, as the case may be) word if you want it.
Edward,
I am disappointed that you chose to take this “debate” to a personal level – as if I were some “Chauvin” of the religious variety, or have some particular vested interest. But the facts of the matter are quite simple: you have not demonstrated a Patristic precedent, and more importantly, a sufficient need for to be re-baptized. We believe that “where the Bishop is, there is the Church,”; in the “effectual operation of the Holy Spirit”; and that we are “drawn, one to another” in the Eucharist, or we do not. Likewise, the term “competency” was not intended as a legal affirmation of “fitness,” but referring to one’s maturity as an Orthodox Christian. That it was the specific instruction of St. Basil the Great to, “Baptism them Chrismate them, then make them Christians,” would seem to speak to this point directly.
If, by insisting that the formation of obedience and faithfulness to one’s Bishop in the initial act of being received into the Church is to humbly accept the manner by which this Bishop chooses to accomplish it, is somehow arrogant or insensitive on my part, you may trust that I can live with this criticism.
“M. Stankovich, you twist my words, you avoid my substantive points, you read vile motivations into my intentions, and you mock my sincerity. ”
Welcome to the club . . . . .
No, colette, Edward makes no pretension and is qualified to speak to the matters to which he addresses, and has earned my respect. We may disagree, and at times contentiously so, but he has earned my respect. You are an unlearned, unqualified, pointless Google scholar who makes every comment a purposeful effort to offend.
George–I could kiss you!! This is what I was trying to get at: I’ll grant you that he should have said “Hell no!” when first importuned but he didn’t.”
Carl, please enlighten a dumb hunky like myself, what you mean by the above? What WERE you trying to get at? Blagodaram.
Re: M Stankovich’s explanation of how a certain IUD works
At the very least the IUD makes a woman’s womb inhospitable to human life. That is a tragedy in and of itself.
That we invent such things out of a perceived necessity is an indication of how deeply depraved we are and how little we value the wondrous gifts of our creator.
It may not be murder but it is a barbarity that does great violence to our humanity.
Lord have mercy on us.
It seems that the few exchanges between me and Michael Stankovich on this serious matter of IUDs have disappeared.
How did this happen? What does it mean?
I’d be very grateful for an explanation from George Michalopulos, if he knows what happened to those posts.
They are still there. Here you go:
https://www.monomakhos.com/planned-parenthood-and-the-institutionalization-of-evil/#comment-93030
https://www.monomakhos.com/planned-parenthood-and-the-institutionalization-of-evil/#comment-93036
Many thanks to George Michalopulos for these links.– I honestly couldn’t find that material to see if anyone had added anything helpful.
Once again, let me please ask everyone’s prayers for the healing of my eyes, if that be God’s good will for me.
Anyone still want to dispute that comparing the Planned Parenthood abortionists to Josef Mengele is “unfortunate”?
Planned Parenthood Clinic Cut Through Dead Baby’s Face to Get His Intact Brain
Please, Fr. Hans, enough with the melodrama. Donate your body to the College of medicine at the University of Florida. How do you imagine they would get your brain out intact? They will take something similar to a circular saw from the Home Depot; make a cut around the perimeter of your skull; then take a hammer & chisel to brutally complete the job so as not to actually damage the structures beneath. When students arrive in the morning, they will have been spared the “indignity” of the late-night “head-bangers ball.” But to be honest, having witnessed a neurosurgical procedure live, it’s not a whole lot more pleasant. I didn’t suggest the association with Mengele was “unfortunate”; I said it was useless deception intended to provoke “outrage,” a form of psychic numbing. You are a false prophet.
Dr. S, your reply to Fr. Hans is at once baffling and disconcerting. Why would you scream “melodrama,” “useless deception,” “psychic numbing,” and, most egregious, “false prophet” to Fr. Hans, when he is simply calling our attention to the unspeakable, barbaric, monstrous evil that Planned Parenthood and its minions have visited, and continue to inflict, upon unborn children and even those born alive–with outrageous subsidies from American taxpayers? Are you so determined to strain at a gnat (the Mengele analogy), while swallowing the camel of the defenders, deflectors, hucksters, and unthinking customers of Planned Parenthood? I suggest that you stop majoring in the minors and turn your ire toward the truly deserving.
Fr. Alexander,
Read my full response – on his site – where again, again, again he claims not to get my point. Do you actually imagine I am defending Planned Parenthood, for heaven’s sake? Post after post ignores the simple fact that we have accommodated “medical miracles” built on the backs of human tissue derived from who knows where, and my contention is, we don’t want to know. How to stop Planned Parenthood? End the market for such products by “outing” the “legitimate” purchasers. But at what price? One antibiotic separates us from nothing but destruction. Will manufacturers keep searching out of a sense of “good will to humanity?” You tell me. I am infuriated by what I read on his site: encouragement not to repent and turn to the Holy Sripture, the Writings of the Holy Fathers, or our Holy Tradition (which you yourself called for as authority but only several posts pasts), but rather foolish socioeconomic theorists, and cultural interpretations of this and that, and who cares, Fr. Alexander! False prophecy. If Allen Bloom or Danel Patrick Moynihan could save us, put them on our iconostasis and I will no longer comment. It is psychic numbing, to borrow the phrase of the sociologist Chrtopher Lasch, the author of The Culture of Narcicissm and the illusion of action when our collective heads barely ride above the waters. If you believe this is the “minors,” we then part company in the matter of moral theology.
I have already responded to your point here. I still don’t see anything more than “other people use baby parts for products too” in it. It’s like saying that we should never have abolished slavery because other people bought and sold slaves.
At the Mayo Clinic Medical School, students hold a memorial service for the people who donated their bodies to science. Note that. It is respect for the person. The parts are reassembled and none are sold. The morality informing these actions is coherent and based on something other than utility and greed.
A surgeon uses a knife to cut the body. A killer uses a knife to kill someone. The abortionist might be a skilled surgeon but he is still a killer. He certainly is more efficient than the killer — he uses the same techniques as the surgeon who heals after all — but it makes no difference. He kills.
Moral relativism is still moral relativism no matter who applies — or defends — it. Reducing the question to merely a matter of technique muddies the question. It abstracts morality from the discussion, much like refusing water to a flower and then arguing that it makes no difference because the dehydrated flower and the hydrated one next to it are still both flowers.
Your gesticulations towards the Fathers, Bloom, Moynihan or Lasch make no difference either. In fact, Lasch may have labelled your justifications narcissistic, or at least blinded by the narcissism endemic to our culture.
Speaking of the Fathers and abortion, ever read them? They could clarify some things for you.
Fascinating counter-point, re-directing the discussion to my full argument. To each his own. As near as I can tell, “harvesting” the intact brain from an aborted fetus or your donated cadaver are equally post-mortem procedures. Again, spare me the the melodramatic distraction.
I would further suggest that all American medical schools practice some form of “tribute” to the donors of their bodies to medical science. The reality, however, is that, in the end, there is not much remaining (it’s disposed of as the dissection process progresses), and because of the “curing” and embalming process (ask any medical student about the pervasive smell that never dissipates for the length of the Human Anatomy course), nothing that remains is “saleable.” On occasion, morality is actuality spelled “utility.”
Anyone who reads your site with any frequency will now immediately know where this is headed, because I fundamentally never stray from the identical message I have delivered at your site since 2011: you somehow imagine the Holy Scripture, the writings of the Holy Fathers, and our Holy Tradition are insufficient to save us; that it is necessary to engage the culture, and the politic, and you are recognized as an authority blah. blah, blah. I say, “But seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you.” (Matt. 6:33) You are a distraction to the prophets, preventing the call to repentance.
If Mengele was the gnat, why did you priests respond to me in such fashion?
When it suits you.
Matthew 12:27
My citation of Scripture was intended as a reply to Hans. Not sure how it ended up stand alone- perhaps I erred.
A typo….12:37.
A bit of a laugh misquoting that,