Well, it looks like the handwriting is on the wall: Archbishop Demetrius Trakatellis is standing precariously on the curb and there’s an oncoming bus. The question is now a matter of timing.
Snark aside, for those capable of reading the tea leaves, this started two months ago when Mark Arey, formerly a high-ranking priest in the GOA, wrote His Eminence a “Dear John” letter (of sorts), indicating why he should step down.
Last week, Michael Huffington, the largest single benefactor to the GOA (and noted homosexual activist) likewise wrote his own “Open Letter” describing with regret why His Eminence should step down. And now John Catsimatides, a well-known, wealthy and eminent Greek-American businessman has written his own Open Letter.
I won’t bore you with the details, you can read all three for yourself.
Truth be told, much of what they write is truthful –after a fashion. However they don’t tell the whole truth. And that is that thanks to the deconstruction of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America, the position of Archbishop is nothing but an impotent figurehead. In other words, it’s untenable. It doesn’t matter who is the Archbishop; because whoever it is, he’s been set up to fail.
In business terms, think of it as a poison pill, an anti-Iakovos Coucouzis poison pill. What the Ecumenical Patriarch did was make it impossible for a true archbishop to exist for the American eparchy (which is what the GOA essentially is). Now, every diocese –which was elevated to metropolis status–is an eparchy of Constantinople and its reigning bishop, an eparch of Constantinople.
Now, having said that, it’s not a bad thing in and of itself. After all, all bishops are equal. However, such an arrangement gives the lie that there really is a GOA. In reality, there are only archdioceses now, and all are directly under the omorphor of Constantinople. Under such circumstances, the Archbishop in New York City is merely a figurehead at best. At worst, he’s a fall guy.
The letters of Huffington and Catsimatides bespeak a way out of the morass that the GOA finds itself in. For once Demetrios is gone, money will suddenly “turn up” to finish the debacle that is the St Nicholas Shrine. And Demetrios will be made an example of for any of his successors.
The victory of course will be Pyrrhic. In replacing Demetrios with a more compliant (compromised?) individual at the helm, the problems will return with full force. And all that the GOA will have done is place a band-aid on a gaping wound.
And what are these problems? Well, evangelism was never the strong suit of the GOA for one thing. And since Huffington seems to be driving this agenda, we can assume that the GOA will be more “tolerant” and “inclusive” when it comes to the LGBTQWERTY agenda.
Don’t believe? Metropolitan Kallistos Ware of Diokleia and Oxford, perhaps the leading intellectual light in the See of Constantinople, has written a controversial essay in which he essentially throws in the towel on the issue of same-sex “marriage”. He wouldn’t have done his except for the fact that Constantinople is clearly aligning itself with this agenda.
More to follow. The handwriting is on the wall.
This Bp. Kallistos Ware article is one of the most discouraging disheartening things I have read in a long, long time.
For my 35 years in the Presbyterian Church as an ordained elder: national General Assembly every 2 years. Votes to allow gay clergy; each Assembly, more votes. After 35 years, a majority. The Holy Spirit at work, they cried. So also with the Methodists, the Episcopalians, the Lutherans; on and on., each in their own way.
Bp. Kallistos’ remarks are full of the disingenuous stuff: “orientation”, “peering through keyholes”, “modern psychology” etc. etc. The whole idea that homosexuality is entirely a question of uncontrolled “orientation”; an absurd notion to anybody who has been around the block twice with his eyes open, much less many more times than that, or that, in the end, it matters, whatever exactly it is supposed to mean, anyway.
Clergy, of whatever ilk and denomination, so often seem absolutely addled, really unhinged, on this subject. I do not mean clergy in general, but it proceeds first from the clergy and their “pastoral concerns.”
Here is the message of this world and the prince thereof: You must go through this narrow passage of the hourglass, and emerge on the other side in conformance with the world on the issue of “sexuality”. Otherwise, you will be destroyed. This is the threat, and I don’t doubt the attempts will eventually follow. Because this is now the one place that Christianity is absolutely opposed to the world as it has become.
This man was one who led me to the Church, as I expect is true of many. I read his essay in the Faber & Faber edition of the Triodion before Great Lent every year. What in the world is going on?
Ecumenism is what’s “going on” TimR. Or globalism. Take your pick.
The mask is finally coming off of the Phanar: during the Cold War it was a State Dept bulwark against the Warsaw Pact. The Warsaw Pact however is defunct and the former Soviet bloc is reclaiming its Christian roots. Meanwhile, the West is rapidly jettisoning their’s. Rather than make common cause with the Christianist/traditionalist/nationalist right of the Eastern European nations, our own moral fiber has been so hollowed out by feminism and faggotry that we still think that we’re the good guys. (Why, we can even bomb civilians to smithereens because of “muh democracy” and cause ancient Christian communities to be eradicated by Islamic terrorist groups [which we fund].)
It’s ironic, four years (or so) ago, the EP wrote a Christmas encyclical condemning homosexual “marriage”. I actually gave him a hearty “Axios!” at the time. Unfortunately, that was merely a tactic to quiet the traditionalists in the Orthodox churches (particularly in Estonia where it was given and he didn’t want to risk the further seepage of this “autocephalous church” back into the MP/Estonian church).
I imagine that this encyclical will never be resurrected again in any of the EP’s eparchies for the foreseeable future now that we in the West have “moved on”.
Maybe Ware is a homosexual? Oxford is filled with them. Didn’t he leave a wife to the convent life to put on a skirt and dunce cap and parade around as a revered holy man? No real man does that. It’s not pleasing to God to dump your wife.
Isn’t that what Peter did?
The race isn’t over until we cross the finish line.
Tim,
I am.an orthidox inquirer currently learning as nuch as I can abouy the faith through online resources. I listened to an interview Kevin Allen had with Kallistos Ware and frankly was underwhelmed. When Father Trenham or Whiteford speak you can hear the orthodoxy. Kallistos Ware sounded like Pope Francis or the Archbishop of Canterbury. Perhaps my three decades in fundamentalism have made my beam removal service too efficient and I need to spend the next thirty looking for my own splinters…but I was not surpriaed. A double minded man is unatable in all his ways.
Met Ware has seen better days.
George,
Doff your hat at Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, who has borne more fruit than we can begin to imagine, and dismiss what he has said. After all, he has lost his sanity, his intelligence, and his genius.
Nevertheless, the pain persists. Homosexual marriage will never happen in the Orthodox Church. If priests commune active homosexuals, it’s not according to Church teaching. It will never become a normal practice. Ain’t gonna happen.
Nevertheless, the pain persists. Metropolitan Kallistos was speaking to the PAIN. Why vilify him?
If you were a homosexual Orthodox Christian, what would you do?
If I were a homosexual Orthodox Christian in a civil marriage, and I could find no other way, I would talk with my spiritual father, participate in Church services, and worship God, and I would NOT TAKE Communion, and wish I could… What other option is there?
What about God in all this? If God is love, then God loves us. God is Personal! He knows our heart. He knows the deepest part of our being. We live by Grace. Taking the Eucharist into our mouths is a privilege. Holy Prophet Isaiah said, “I am a man of unclean lips.” What does the Lord require of us? He has show us. We are required to “do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.” (Micah 6:8).
I don’t vilify Met Ware. And yes, I don’t care about a person’s morals. I never have. Homosexuals (as well as heterosexuals) have a lot of pain in this life.
What I do care about is Ware’s sophistry in the issue of homosexual so-called marriage. While Ware can’t see it,and given his reasoning, there is no way that the Orthodox churches are going to avoid giving ecclesial sanction to these unions.
I know this sounds audacious but the battle ground is already being prepped as can be seen by this latest C-L, whereby a special session was held to discuss this topic.
Met. Kallistos Ware has been thinking out loud and in print, sort of challenging us to theologize our traditional positions in areas where coherent and consistent thought has so far been lacking.
could be wrong ( I WAS once, you know), but I suspect that Met. Kallistos’s most recent comments about homosexuality in The Church are on the same level as his earlier remarks about ordaining women to the priesthood, and that is merely that we have yet to articulate our theological position clearly.
This reasonable observation on his part should not be taken as any form of support for defying holy Tradition, but rather as a suggestion that newer, better, more refreshed theological minds ought to address these questions to everyone’s satisfaction, and reasonably validate what we have always known to be true.
I don’t think you understand Met. Kallistos’ “dilemma” at all if you are able to leap to a point where you see him advocating “ecclesial sanction” to same-sex unions in the Church. Unfortunately, “answers” that are epitomized in the words offered by the offensive GOA priest (“The Church’s position on homosexuality is not up for discussion. Have you heard of Divine Revelation? It’s something found in the Holy Scriptures. Please read it, and report back.”) and include words like “sophistry,” and “battlegrounds” are pretty much a guarantee that any discussion with the “lost children of the house of Israel” is gone. But worse, we somehow walk away convinced that we have been “merciful” and decisive. I would direct you to the discussion on Fr. Hans site, which is based on a response written by Dr. Kentigern Seiewers, whom some will remember as a frequent contributor to this site for a number of years, and is sorely missed, at least by me. It caused me to again re-think and reconsider comments I had made that are a few post below this one. That and a wonderful discussion I had with a priest who is struggling, as a pastor, to uphold the integrity of the Faith, yet always keeping available a path to repentance. And he reminded of the important Patristic principle: never assign a penance you are personally incapable or unwilling to follow yourself.
I believe that Met. Kallistos’ “dilemma,” as a man and as a hierarch, is to ask any of us, for example, does it seem reasonable to simply say to a 19-year old college kid who comes to his parish priest, struggling with SSA, you can never have sex, never be able to marry the one you love (because it’s not really love) , and perhaps be under suspicion as a pedophile (if you are stupid enough to tell anyone about your attraction) for the rest of your natural life. Why? Because it is your “cross to bear, ” your “podvig,” your “calling,” your “lot” in life. “Wait a second here!” says the kid, “What are telling me? I’m 19-years old? This can’t be right!” The Greek priest then delivers the brushback pitch, high and inside; “chin music,” they call it: “Get off the plate!” “The Church’s position on homosexuality is not up for discussion. Have you heard of Divine Revelation?” BANG. Inagine the 19-yr old is your son or your grandson, your daughter or your grand-daughter. It’s unimaginable. We have repeated this same dance for decades, with the identical outcome. Perhaps Met. Kallistos has the capacity to do something else with this discussion.
Dr S, there is no freewill when it comes to institutions. Or precious little freewill. The larger the institution, whether in population or geography, the less the freewill. It’s an inverse proportion if you will.
Why do I say this? Because once an institution entertains an option and it begins to take root, it invariably ends up being swallowed by that option. The fundamental premise is key. If you will, the late, great William F Buckley, Jr said it best (I paraphrase): “Any institution that is not intrinsically and resolutely conservative will become liberal over time”.
Or as the late Richard John Neuhaus said: “Once orthodoxy becomes optional, it becomes unnecessary”.
Hence, because of certain compromised hierarchs and a worldly laity, the GOA must sanction civil unions for homosexuals. There is no other way out.
Seriously, Mr. M., I mourn the amount of energy invested in this issue, or probably better to say the “forecasting” or the unacknowledged fears provoked by this issue.
I personally look around me and see generations of Orthodox Christians literally lost to petty rituals that have become more important that the Liturgy itself; languages that cannot not understood; in my case, a church “calendar,” that for all practical purposes, exists for one, single day, “Russian (Serbian, Bulgarian, etc.) Christmas” (though everyone celebrates Dec. 25 regardless); parish meetings that are nothing but screaming matches about money (and making it plain to the priest that he is an “employee” of the “corporation” (originally formed with the express purpose – as the Greek woman informed us last week – of preventing the Bishop from stealing “our property” – and you will recall my story of serving as a subdeacon for the ever-memorable Archbishop Dmitri, when he was Bishop of New England, with neither light nor heat, because the parish council determined the Liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified Gifts was a “Roman Catholic” service, having heard the commemoration of St. Gregory Theologos, “Pope of Rome”). We are of similar age and certainly of the same generation, what do people you grew up with who have left the church tell you influenced their decision? People tell me they were simply tired of what I have described, but more importantly, so many say they married outside the Orthodox Church, started to attend their spouse’s church, and there was no conflict – not much responsibility – but no conflict. And certainly it seemed a better atmosphere to raise their. No one has ever said to me, “It’s the homosexuals…” Whose observation did I read here that photos of the CL Conference were of “a lot of old people?”
I believe it a fair statement that the real camel – indifference and religious compartmentalization – already entered the tent, established a firm footing, and threatens to pull down the whole mess; while you are in a far corner, sword draw, waiting to slay a mouse. And even if you do, the decrepit institution you defend apparently no longer values champions nor experts. And why would it? On the internet, you can be both.
Finally, I pray to die never having surrendered to the urge to apply the cynical, defeated “theories” of this world regarding, for better or for worse, the “functioning” of the Church as other than “glorious,” and “not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish,” which Christ “loved” and “gave himself for it.” (Eph. 5:25ff) These discussions have become so trite and repetitive, and simply void of solutions that include our Lord who “rejoices more of that sheep [found after going astray], than of the ninety and nine which went not astray.” (Matt. 18:13),
Weren’t priests always saying something like that to confessing parishioners in regard to sexual morality matters of all kinds since the beginning?
What were they saying about “SSA” when it was accepted in the society at large in the early centuries, as it is now?
We no longer seem to believe in serious constraint in sexual matters. Here’s an anecdote; a true one. There was a highly-respected senior lawyer in town when I started practice. He was about a generation and a half older than me when I started, i.e. older than my senior partners, who were WWII men.
He was a very devout Roman Catholic. Anybody who can remember at least back to the early 60s has some idea what that once meant. My grandparents’ neighbor was a woman of real class who was likewise a devout Catholic. She was a widow. He was divorced. He could not marry while his wife was alive. They were a celibate couple for years because of this situation, which was generally known. They were very, very serious about such matters then, and no doubt at great personal cost to both of them. (They are decades dead.) Even Christian people now find it hard to accept this kind of thing. We’ve forgotten a lot.
George,
What is this business about a priest sharing his experience with his gay son at the Greek conference? I’ve grown so tired of “gay pride” and all the garbage that goes along with it. There are two ways about it: if a person is gay or lesbian, they are perverts. The church can never condone such immoral, indecent behavior. This sin cries out to heaven for judgment. I am so tired of giving these people special rights and privileges. Imagine having conjugal relations with the sewer system of the human body. If these people love sewers so much, they should bathe in them! Instead of having gerbils for pets, buy a dog and walk like a man.
Costa, it’s called the “camel’s nose under the tent”. I’m old enough to remember seeing this phenomenon take place in the Methodist, Presbyterian and Episcopal churches.
I pray you join us. We need as many like you in the Church as we can get.
BT, I’d join up as soon as possible. It took me over 30 years, which was a lot of time wasted.
Tim, my reaction is the same. How can this brilliant man be so stupid?
There was some discussion of the Bp. Kallistos article over on Rod Dreher’s blog on The American Conservative. Some thought that the bishop knows what he’s doing, that he’s being “wise as a serpent” while upholding the true faith. I’m not so sure.
I’m especially discouraged by the notion that the Church is “mean” to same-sex attracted folks, since not all those people might be “called to celibacy”. Oh for pity’s sake — our sexual longings are really a pale reflection of our longing for God, as our Bp. Anthony Michaels recently explained to us during a retreat. Everyone struggles with sexual attraction, including monastics. Plenty of opposite-sex attracted folks without a “calling for celibacy” never marry — or they may divorce — or they may be widowed. Plenty of married people go through long periods of celibacy for various reasons, whether they have a “call” to that celibacy or not. Bottom line — from an Orthodox standpoint, we are all in the same boat, and our sexuality is meant to be transformed in Christ. The radiant joy of the monastics and single Orthodox Christians who I am privileged to know is a constant reminder to me as a married Orthodox Christian that we are ALL on the same path. Yet I didn’t see that reflected in the article by Bp. Kallistos. Lord have mercy on us all.
Well said.
I believe it is essentially different, and more accurate, to say that we are all called to the same path, rather than we are all on the same path.
Secondly, you don’t seem to have much appreciation for the fact that we are speaking of the convergence of the most powerful emotions at force in a human being, many conscious, many not; the greatest of the passions of which we are afflicted; and as St. Paul describes: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” (Eph. 6:12) Patients have described this as “chaos,” even “uncontrollable war.” No matter how you look at, we are all products of the moral expectations of our Church, our parents & extended family, and for some of us, our ethnic tradition. as well. SSA violates these moral standard we have been taught, and this provokes one of the single most powerful emotions in our repertoire, shame; and shame does nothing but isolate and drive us into silence. To say, “But everyone struggles with sexual attraction” is to trivialize the complexity – and the intensity – of this internal war. And imagine arriving at the point where you say to yourself, “These urges are not going away, and now I must either face them or hide.”
I was having lunch with my brother at the beginning of the year, and he’s pretty much “holidays only” Orthodox, but he surprised me by asking the “Orthodox position” on homosexuality. We talked for a while, and then he said, “so to sum it all up, if you’re, say, 20-years old and gay in the Orthodox Church, the priest or bishop is going to tell you that you can never have an intimate relationship, never have sex, never get married, or never have a family?” Hmm. I didn’t use the word “celibacy,” I used the Patristic term “sophrosini” [σωφροσύνη] which means “purity, self-control, and oneness of mind” i.e. it “transcends” simply abstaining from sex. He said, “Right. What do you recommend he do if, say, he’s sick, it’s the middle of the night, and he just wants someone to hold him?” Even in your examples of “self-imposed” celibacy, you ignore the fact that someone who is heterosexual can “undo” their celibacy at a moment’s notice. And they know it. We are not all in the same boat.
I sincerely do not wish to offend you, MrsDK, but when I read, “I’m especially discouraged by the notion that the Church is “mean” to same-sex attracted folks, since not all those people might be “called to celibacy,” I thought is it possible she could be so naive? There are individuals who are posting with us now – name in the right-hand column – who have forcefully, belligerently, and stupidly insisted that homosexuality can be “transmitted” to another human being by anal intercourse, and that, since homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce within their own ranks, they rape children to extend their “ranks.” While this may seem over the top, I would be afraid of seeing the results of a survey of people on this site as to whether they would feel comfortable leaving their child or grandchild with an Orthodox Christian and fellow member of their parish, who is a repentant homosexual, on the narrow path to salvation to which we are all called. This is not mean, MrsDK, this is shameful.
It is wonderful to meditate on our sexuality being transformed in Christ, and celebrate the “radiant joy” of the monastics and those who are able to bear celibacy. He who has ears, let him hear. But what of those who cannot? Met. Anthony (Khraopvitsky), the first Hierarch of ROCOR, cautioned his priests in regard to confession & penance, “We are far removed from the Time of Grace,” and it certainly applies here. Young people have not been raise in a moral, spiritual, or Orthodox Christian “mileau” (thank you, Mr. Mortiss, for reminding me this is such a beautiful word). We refuse to even admit the level of fear, disgust, and outright hatred for homosexuals that exists here and in the church in America in general. For that reason, this fruitless, pointless “debate” goes nowhere.
Dr S, a lot of homosexuality happens because of recruitment. Yes that would include anal intercourse.
Recently, Milo Yiannopoulos got into a lot of trouble because he spoke positively about his own recruitment by an older man when he was only 14 years old. George Takei did so as well.
This makes it sound as if a boy’s experience with an adult male homosexual in anal intercourse was so wonderful that the lad can hardly wait to come back for more.
Even ignoring the ‘ick’ factor, I’m told that this is very painful for the passive partner, so I’m not inclined to believe this suggestion about ‘recruitment’, particularly since it affects only men. How do female homosexuals ‘recruit’ girls/women into their ranks?
Psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers and others in the ‘helping’ professions are all over the map in their various unsatisfactory theories of the etiology of homosexuality
On the other hand, in the first chapter of his Letter to the Romans, St Paul warns us that same-sex attraction is one of the troubles which afflict a society when people neglect God and basic morality. Given the widespread abandonment of religion by our contemporary culture and the concomitant hostility toward religion by most homosexuals, we can credit St Paul for a perceptive analysis of the issue.
This works for me, but I don’t blame or condemn people who suffer (or think that the suffer) from same-sex attraction. Rather, I encourage them to stay close to Christ and His Church, especially through frequent Confession and Communion, and with the help of a benevolent spiritual guide.
Not all initiation involves anal coition. In ancient Greece, anal sex was a total taboo. Any man who participated in it was subject to like long ridicule and forbidden from civic participation.
That’s as may be, dear George, but I wrote to dispute ‘recruiting’ in this way only as a response to your having written that ‘ a lot of homosexuality happens because of recruitment. Yes that would include anal intercourse’
Now you seem to have changed your mind. Good!
Milieu.
Mr. Michalopulos,
I have produced the same data on this site ten times, if I posted it once:
1) regarding the frequent “intimate” relationships in prison, that includes receptive anal intercourse that does not translate into homosexual relationships upon parole or release. In fact, research consistently finds these in-prison sexual relationships to be among the three most significant concerns of persons on the approved visitors lists for inmates.
2) I also mentioned the epidemiological work I did in NYC, interviewing married men who had tested positive for HIV, but denied the conventional methods of acquiring the virus. Many times, it simply was a matter of making it safe for them to “tell” me:
Dr S, these are apple and orange comparisons. Prisoners are grown men with their character firmly entrenched. Milo Yiannopoulos and George Takei were mere youths. Their character was still in flux.
Go be honest, had I received at that age similar stimuli from a caring, older man, I would probably be bisexual myself.
They say that one remembers his first lover most of all, or that she sets the tone for all future relationships. I know that’s anecdotal but I believe that.
“First lover?” Pardon me, but you are describing violent, vicious, self-serving predatory sexual attack. Are we clear about that? An act which is a criminal offense in all fifty states. You are suggesting that this act of rape – described as “murdering a child’s spirit while they still live” – is what the child then chooses to model their future sexual behaviour? And the most horrendous aspect of this felony crime is that the perpetrator is masterful at transferring the responsibility onto the child. This how we arrive at the designation victim as opposed to lover. Are we clear about this? Now, I ask you, Mr. Michalopulos, to exactly how many victims have you provided treatment, to fully appreciate why I have insisted that this is an horrendous crime that cries out heaven, and for which the angels weep? Not a one. And how many patients have I treated who have been victims of the predators as you describe having abused Yiannopoulos? Not a one. Now how can that be?
Continuing, I would further ask you to consider that we are of the “generation of love,” the “summer of love,” “the sexual revolution,” “free love,” readily available birth control, and access to legal abortion. While the sero-conversion making HIV detectable is rapid, for humans to become symptomatic, as we overwhelmingly discovered, can be years, if not a decade in emerging. If this “recruitment” by notoriously promiscuous older men was common, should we not have seen a corresponding epidemic of age-correlated individuals infected? I was a resident at St. Vincent’s Medical Downtown, which hosted the largest HIV/AIDS medical service in the US at the time, and then came to the west coast. Every imaginable question and angle was followed. Yours was not one of them.
The answer to why I never treated a child abused in the manner you described is that you simply did not read what is considered to be the best research available in regard to child sexual abuse, from the University of New Hampshire – that I have posted to this site on three separate occasions when this unsupported, unsupportable, and shameful “theory” of yours arose. What continues to disgust me is that no one on this site has ever offered anything other than Hollywood Tonight-quality proof that what you have presented is beyond the “gossip” that this is considered “recruitment.” I am disgusted because it draws all the rodents from their dens to “confirm” filth, while the reality is lost. For parents of daughters, this study found that by the age 17, 26.6% of adolescent girls reported some form of sexual abuse or assault. They found the rate in males to be 5.1%, and additionally, when abuse occured in males, the rate of penetration, any penetration, was so low as to statistically insignificant. Are we reading any of this here? Of course we not because it doesn’t serve the prurient interest of selling a parents worst nightmare: greazy old faggots touching your precious child. [And please, how can we not forget the “truth,” published here as well, that Hillary Clinton was kidnapping, grooming, and selling children at Comet Ping Pong Pizza Restaurant in DC]. I have not treated any victims such as you describe, because if they exist, the number is so minuscule as to insignificant.
I repeat myself, Mr. Michalopulos, that you are suggesting that I place Yiannopoulos, George Takei, and now yourself at the same level of authority, voracity, and reliability as the medical science I offer, and the same level as my experience treating victims – some as young as 5 – and my experience with nearly 400 perpetrators. I suggest you stick with something you actually know something about.
Have you treated every sexual abuse victim? Just because something is less common does not mean it doesn’t happen.
I don’t disagree Dr S, but let’s be honest, the normalization of homosexuality makes Takei/Yiannopoulos confessions the norm. We are on the brink of legalizing paedophilia after all. In most European countries the age of consent is 14 (the age in which the two named men were assaulted). In Mexico, the age of consent is twelve.
According to the Islamic hadiths, marriage with a girl can be consummated at age nine (the age of Aisha, Mohammed’s last wife) while in the Babylonian Talmud, a child as young as three years plus a day can be molested.
Do I agree with any of this? No, most assuredly not. However this is what awaits us at the end of the day given our increasingly pornified and homosexualized culture. All protestations of “rape” and “assault” notwithstanding.
there are still scads of scandalous child marriages annually in the us and you want to talk about hadiths
roy moore werent no gay or a muslim
DS, I don’t approve of child marriages. Last I looked they were not legal in America.
In time however, thanks to demographic changes (to say nothing about the normalization of homosexuality)…
look again because child marriages are still legal in some degree or another in a majority of american states.
the slow trend is to outlaw them not make it legal delaware became the first state to comprehensively prohibit em at the ancient date of … … this year
go federalism!
pushback to restricting child marriage is on religious liberty grounds for the most part and those people are thumping bibles not korans
so many deep dark secrets in the conservative christian patriarchy circles so many
you are so sweet thinking ‘demographic changes’ are going to bring about what has always existed bless your heart
Regardless the horror, shock, and awe of paedophilia, legal or not, Orthodoxy will really do nothing to stop it. I have more faith in the Roman Catholic Church, doing “anything of substance” than the majority of our powerless, and vainglorious bishops who are too busy beating each other on the crowns, than making a difference in the world. (I’m really beginning to believe everything begins and ends with our local priest and parish, but different topic, different day.)
Last I checked abortion is legal in all traditional Orthodox nations, even autocratic Russia. The last European nation to fall to legalized abortion was Ireland. Leaving only Malta. Both traditional Roman Catholic nations. Nearly all Latin American, Roman Catholic nations, have NOT legalized abortion, nor most Muslim nations, yet you bring them negative light because of age of consent? Leap frogging a bit are we not? Check that log, and squeeze that camel my brother. We’ve got blood on our hands.
The topic Dino was paedophilia, imprinting and the like. Not abortion.
Point being George just like abortion, Orthodox leaders will not do much to turn the tide on paedophilia and Roman Catholics will.
Dino, brother, we must put the blame where it lies. In the GOA, abortion is a non-topic. In my own town, I did everything but get on my knees to ask the local non-OCA priests to participate in our annual Marches for Life year in and year out and all I heard was crickets.
As for the “Orthodox” countries those were all under the jackboot of Lenin and their Christianity was actively almost completely stripped away from them. Now, Greece was spared this scourge and I am appalled by the lack of faith there but that is a story for another day.
However, I will agree with you overall: the broad swath of the non-Russian Orthodox episcopate leaves much to be desired.
Father Hans,
Yes the Roman Catholic culture is near extinct in Europe, with exception to The Vatican, which is a tourist trap, and a must for pilgrims of the faith.
Now say what you want about Mexico and all Latin American countries, south of Mexico, the faith and culture is strong, and abortion is illegal.(Mexico City allows some exclusions)Children in those counties are also sexually active at much younger ages. As such the Roman Catholics rather see future young parents married, and their babies saved from abortion. In this situation, what we consider paedophilia is justifiable.
Again say what you want about Latin and Roman Catholic culture, faith, and tradition, but Latin Americans in Mexico, Central, and South America still respect the role of traditional male and female roles, in regards to family structure. Mothers cherished, children loved, and fathers respected. Even when disfunction exist, such as when a father cheats, drinks, and gone at times with mistress, the family stays intact and the father usually in the long run returns, and supports wife and children. Prayers of mother hopefully brings back dad for good, when he awakens, and matures. Divorce avoided.
Compare that with Western and Eastern Europe, Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox. Most couples have one child, abortion is legal, churches are not part of the culture, and high divorce rates. Feminism has taken root, and only minorities flooding Europe are reproducing at high rates.
Paedophilia in most cases is horrid, in most cases abuse, simply sex with a minor, and usually within the sex trade prostitution rings, but in cultures like Latin America, and Islamic cultures it is also union of husband and wife, usually including religious ceremonies. While not our cup of tea( BTW age of consent in Utah is 15, with judge approval)these cultures have a lot more in common with our beliefs, than not.
Meanwhile in majority Orthodox countries like Greece and Russia marriage is delayed, and many marriages are now going civil, divorce rates high, baptisms numbers are lowering, religious and spiritual culture is more nationalistic and personal.
Ironically, Greece was spared the Iron Curtain and allowed the blessed Orthodox Church to be preserved, now Greece is run by a Communist Prime Minister, that will promote progressive leftist reforms. Autocratic, pro Orthodox granted by Putin Russia, a country which abandoned Communism nearly 30 years ago, still allows abortion. What is Putin scared of? Marriage and family culture, in Russia are nothing to brag about either.
So yeah paedophilia is abhorrent, but we Orthodox should look to put our own house in order before pointing fingers at the other cultures, which actually seem more like our cultures used to be like, not too long ago.
Notice in most churches the majority of attendees are 50 years old and older?
This is because those younger are having sex, instead of talking about it ALL the time.
Of course it is also so because the finish line is well in sight as well, for those long in the race.
Sad for some forgiveness is never given nor accepted, and the perversion wheel never stops playing in ones mind.
Patience brothers and sisters when the roller coaster ride ends you will get all your answers. Meanwhile focus on yourselves; repent, confess, accept and give forgiveness, then continue on and repeat as necessary.
This endless topic popping up every year or more, is our own perversion coming from lack of faith and never allowing ourselves true forgiveness.
The topic is unconquerable and will never be answered. Death was overcome for us, but not this sinful state we find ourselves in.
actually, Dino, the sexual revolution is petering out. Millennials are having less sex than the baby boomers.
A lot of it has to do with the catastrophic drop in testosterone levels in men. The so-called Soy-boy phenomenon. Nor did the Sexual revolution did not take into account the hypergamous nature of women. What we are left with is the “80/20 phenomenon”, where 20% of the men get 80% of the women.
This leads to the”incel” phenomenon (involuntary celibates). A lott of potential violence in that cohort.
Bottom line: the entire sexual revolution was misbegotten from the start.
And yes, I have no room to talk.
And then the women, realizing the biological clock is ticking, decide to settle down and find a “nice guy”—only to discover that no nice guy wants anything to do with damaged goods.
Has the increased social autonomy of women brought any positive results to society?
But apparently we are much more forgiving, much more slap-on the-back understand of “boys will be boys.” In other words, “Yeah, buddy” if you damage the goods – and you are my HERO bro’ if you got on the iPhone – but I’ll slut shame you across the internet the day after to the delight of my partners. Do I exaggerate? When the need arises, a colleague of mine join forces to run a therapy group for young women in the community college system. Seems young men always ask, ” How many guys have you been with,” not to determine “purity of life,” but obtain license to go further. You know that old blues song, “Before you accuse me, take a look at yourself?” Men are the biggest hypocritical beings going. Do you sense the intolerance in the air? Social autonomy didn’t bring it about. Hypocrisy and months of insistence on this very site that our God condones sexual relationship with slaves is within our tradition; that women are temples built over sewers; and that a good ass whoopin’ is justified if properly administered (what, leaving no marks?). Give it a rest. The male ego is too fragile to deal with this – and issues like sexuality – because it’s terrifying. For as much as courage is alluded to, it left the building.
Once again, it’s just my experience, but no man I know who wants a respectable and pure wife participates in the “yeah buddy” culture. I, for one, find slutty men just as disgusting as slutty women, and I’m not ashamed to say so to their faces.
Personally I have a hard time believing testosterone levels have dropped so quickly, most likely were stretch thin time wise.
Regardless not really my point. Point being those not having sex are usually the ones talking and lecturing about it the most. Perhaps a fear of death nearing for some, and talk of sex tricks our reality. Others, just envy , and jealousy not getting much or any at all. Nothing worse than a ex smoker witnessing another enjoy a long deep drag.
Seriously Dino, T-levels have fallen dramatically within 2 generations. I’m deadly serious about this. I’m in the process of preparing something about this. It’s stark.
Anecdotally, I can tell you that as a practicing retail pharmacist, testosterone products are flying like hotcakes off our shelves. And it’s widespread as I work in over fifteen pharmacies during any given two month period. I just turned 59, and I can tell you the number of 30-40 somethings is catching up to the older guys. I’d estimate that under 50 men are at least 1/3 of the market at this point. And that goes the same for Viagra, Levitra and Cialis as well.
George,
It is the same reason that wild animals seldom mate in captivity.
The culprit, as I have explained ad nauseum, is feminism. It is only in patriarchal cultures that men end up valuing family and behave in a prolific manner regarding reproduction. In feminist/matriarchal societies you get demographic winter. This can be easily shown from comparing birth rates in Islamic states and those of Western Europe. America is only an anomaly because of Hispanic immigration.
Here are the overall numbers from NPR, hardly a conservative source:
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/17/611898421/u-s-births-falls-to-30-year-low-sending-fertility-rate-to-a-record-low
We’re about at a 1.76 below replacement rate status at the present time. But that includes all American women, not just whites. For non-Hispanic whites, it is 1.72:
https://reason.com/blog/2018/05/17/hooray-us-fertility-rate-falls-to-40-yea
There are various takes, but none seem to be able to rationalize this as a good thing. Progressives were saying it was the economy, up until recently, yet with a good economy we’re seeing 30-40 year lows:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/03/heres-who-will-lament-and-celebrate-the-plummeting-u-s-birth-rate-babies-abortion-immigration-europe/
This, of course, is God’s vengeance on liberalism.
Glory to God for all things.
George, I get it, but there is more to it than T-levels. It is mental. Think about it. Those in their 30-40’s, and younger can be so exposed to porn that it distorts and deflates (pun intended) their image of their own masculinity.
For one, the average size of a man’s penis, is about twice as big on porn films. Second, men of porn are always erect for what seems like hours on end, and the women of porn so impressed and aroused by just the sight of the such large members, and then put into multi organismic states while usually screaming in delight about what a “great big c__k you have”. Finally all the women of porn are what society has painted as sexy, always hot and ready to go.
Porn I believe has destroyed masculinity, and women have a part in this as well, they too see images of men in porn, Hollywood chick flicks and have false impression what normal men, and sexuality should be. Think how much permanent mental damage a woman can inflict on a man, especially a young man if she laughed, or not impressed at the size of her boyfriend’s penis size, or that he cannot satisfy her.
Thus men flock for viagra and T-boosting vitamins and meds. Meanwhile girls continue to dress like hookers, and get medical attention themselves, in the form of breast, butt, and lip enlargements, and mean as hell because they are half starved, to fit the image, promoted by Hollywood, and the porn industry.
Dino, there’s a whole bunch of reasons millennial & GenX men are turning into soyboys. You’ve certainly hit on some of them.
More to follow in due time.
Scott,
In your extensive travels around the internet, as you identify the “culprit” ad nauseum be feminism, every hear of “evolutional genetics?” Hmm. I suspect this is what happens when you you google-scholar an already predetermined conclusion…
First, understand that the vast majority of the code of the human genome (some would say 98% or more is “trash”); simply a collection of the genome’s unsuccessful attempts to correct its own replication errors, unused or “deprecated” code, and so on (e.g. interestingly, when we are identified – or attempt to be exonerated with “DNA evidence” – in court for, say, paternity or evidence at the scene of a crime, they are looking for code that makes us “unique.” They sample our “trash” code to distinguish us ).
Secondly, the genome is “programmed” for survival, reproduction, continuation of the species, & progeny/legacy. Nevertheless, even though reproduction requires the contribution of both sexes for reproduction (and setting aside the recent discovery of limited “parthenogenesis” in certain amphibians), the dual sexual expressions aggressively war for survival & dominance. How does this play out practically? Perhaps you have heard of the “fecundity” studies as relates to male homosexuality? It goes like this: some research would suggest that certain families with a long generational history of producing consecutive brothers, suddenly begins, a few brothers into the line of brothers, consistently producing individuals at high risk for homosexuality [pay particular attention that I am not saying anyone is born indelibly homosexual]. At a later point, the pattern may change to include a second brother at high risk for homosexuality, and so on. This obviously indicates a familial/genetic association:
The “evolutional” argument reasonably concludes that this process serves the genetic process of… Feminism! Who’d of thought, Scott? “God’s vengence on liberalism?” “In feminist/matriarchal societies you get demographic winter.” Come on, Scott, you are pontificating from what amounts to “today’s trivia” from the internet, and suggesting God gloats over the fact that beta-boyz like yourself are being pantzed, not by them bitches who won’t walk five paces behind you or make you a sandwich, but by the superiority and stamina of their DNA.
Stankovich,
It is interesting that you offer an explanation of present phenomena devoid of any reference to theology.
Mishinka,
My brother, this response is a disingenuous response, and you know it. My first and last word, so endemic to this matter since I arrived here in 2011 – whether specifically verbalized or not – has been implicit: “symphonia” [συμφωνία]. By nature and intention, our God created us at His own Hand, in His own image and likeness, as a complex, intricate gathering of dynamics consisting of biology (which includes genetics/epigenetics – and what is the opening of the Gospel of Matthew but an astonishing genetic “pedigree” of “Jesus, who is called the Christ?”) – psychologicology – social (including all of our social, and family interactions and dependencies) – and spiritual (not necessarily “religious,” but moral, ethical, related to integrity, consistency, and sobriety). Like individual “voices,” they may be useful and of interest but their power and intention is “symphonic,” acting in concert. Divided and examined individually, even theoretically for “investigation,” greatly increases the chance of “error,” simply because their power is “symphonic.” But you knew that.
Finally, I bet you recall my telling of Fr. Alexander Schmemann’s trip to the Egyptian desert to visit the monastery of Pope & Patriarch Shenouda of the Coptic Church. Being an impatient New Yorker (and a frenetic Schmemann) he was a bit “on edge” at how long it took for His Holiness to respond to a question. During lunch, as the ate soup, Fr. Alexander asked His Holiness the role of theology in our lives. After a “painfully long silence” (which in reality was probably much shorter than we would imagine), Patriarch Shenouda looked at Fr. Shenouda looked at Fr. Alexander with a “small smile and said, “I believe we need theology to eat our soup, do we not, Fr. Alexander?” And there you have it.
Antiochene Son,
First, my comment was not personal, only in as much as we are both men. I too was disgusted with the whole “hound” thing. There is a traditional “surfer” thing in CA about changing out of your wet suit in the winter by opening the car door, covering yourself with a towel, transitioning to a dry swim suit. You get the picture. My office at UCSD was off-campus, two blocks from the beach, all-glass on two sides; tinted so no could look in. One morning at the end of my time there, two interns came flying in, iPhones in “video” position, “You got to see this!” I turned for a second, two young women changing. I grabbed both by the front of there shirts & threw them out with a little prison “music.” This much I get. I have never done these sorts of things under the banner of Salt n’ Peppa: “He always got my back ’cause his momma taught him that (he’s a good man).
What I am ashamed of is that for a good portion of my life, I saw women being harassed, humiliated, degraded, embarrassed, and intimidated, and I said nothing. And you know exactly why I said nothing: bottom line, I feared experiencing the consequence of facing other men. Frontin’ up with another man/men is one thing, but what ego-compromised American male wants to hear, “You gay? Listen to this faggot hero here!” Cowardice is cowardice is complicity is responsibility.
The irony of this is that about 6-weeks ago, I went with the director of my program to a club (and I have not been in a bar or club in 20+ years) to hear a Filipino band that plays traditional blue grass – with covers of Led Zeppelin, Robert Palmer, etc. in between – and because it was small, there was a group of young, college age women dancing in front of us, as the Greek tragedy played out… Hound Town. One young lady in particular was CA blonde beautiful, but drinking beyond her limit. Several times she banged into out table and I heard her say she had walked to the club. At the end, one particularly greazy guy asked her to dance, got real crazy into in a fast song, fell, and took both of them to the floor. My boss and I decided it was time to go. I walked up to her said, “Would you like a safe ride home? No questions asked? The hounds seem to be circling you and I worried about you.” The greazyiest poked me in the back hard, “Hey, she’s with me,” turning on the full Dr. Starfish on AdSeg, “Sit your dumbass down” mode, and I turned around and said, “If you put your hands on me again, we’ll take your drunken ass to the floor and call 911. Do you understand me? Back away from me. Now.” He did. And she accepted. I’m not stupit, I pick my battles, and more often than not get assistance rather than provide it. But I will not be ashamed in silence.
Some time I will tell you about the ongoing therapy group I co-facilite(-ed) with the same colleague mentioned above, for young women attempting to leave the porn industry, or who have been harmed by participating. You may have a different perspective on “dressing like a slut,” more than you imagined…
Note: I am so shocked when I see some of my posts because they are so jumbled up grammatically, spelling, etc. And I’ve been writing them in another program before posting. This is a listen is serious dyslexia, because in my brain-to-paper, they “read” absolutely perfectly to me… until 12-hours, until 2-days later. Then I see missing words, phrases, etc. wow. As a child, I was called into the counselor’s office for “planning” for the transition from middle school to high school, and the counselor excused himself for a second, leaving my file open on his desk. There was a box on the cover for “IQ” and it said” “92.” I started to cry. “Why are you crying?” I said I just wanted to go back to class and walked out. In class, the assignment was to “interpret” colloquial expressions. Some kid was at the front board explaining, literally, why a “rolling stone gathers no moss,” and after crying, I started laughing. The teacher got mad and and said, “Well, if you’re so smart, get up here and you explain it.” And I did. And I stared at the teacher and said, “And my IQ is 92.”
Michael S. So much for the validity of IQ tests.
Michael Bauman,
Who knows? I am certainly not demanding a recount now! “The devil I know is always better…” and that whole deal being what it is…
Well, I’m 70 now, but I became regular churchgoer (not counting my youth) at about age 31.
In our parish, there are large numbers of every-Sunday regulars way younger than 50!
Great to hear Tim. Not my experience with my medium to large urban Greek Orthodox Parishes.
Ah, brother Michael S. If I may say the crux of it is indeed shame. That is what must be faced by each of us to be healed is it not? That is essentially what I heard from Nice. My sexual shame, disorder and even perversity entices me to judge and condemn others for what I perceive wrongly because I am unwilling to face my own shame.
But here is the rub, sin of all types is transmitted. Sexually transmitted disease/disorder is no different. I never entered into SSA but I actually considered it at various times. I even had opportunities to enter into that particular perversity, I was recruited but took up others instead. Each of us has a disorderd sexuality do we not?
So, I have absolutely no hatred of those who are same sex attracted nor those who are carnally active with members of their own sex.
And yes, those who are afflicted with same sex attraction will like experience loneliness in a manner most others do not. But all disordered sexuality causes a lack on intimacy. Maybe that is more acute with SSA people, that is possible. But should any such person ask, I would gladly hold them in my arms and give them my heart to the extent I am able–just not my body. I would be dubios about putting my child into anyone’s care and was.
I am sure I am not alone in this. Loneliness is ultimately an estrangement from God. So, we come back to shame- the primal shame of Adam and Eve
May God have mercy
So? I reject the idea of a “Time of Grace.” Grace is God and God is unchanging. There is no less grace on earth today than there was in St. Paul’s day. Where sin abounds, grace abounds more.
Yes, it’s called being part of a society. It’s the same reason excommunication exists: to discourage people from straying from the norm.
In referring to the “time of Grace,” Met. Anthony was referring to a time when there were still among us, some who literally learned at the feet of the Lord, and had heard His voice: “Truly I say to you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” He was not referring to the “Grace of God.”
Perhaps you might enlighten me, brother and/or sister [because, really, who the hell knows for sure] how I might go about excercizing my obligation to follow the directive of the Gospel and come to you directly when there is a conflict between us? I certainly know how to do it illegally, capturing IP addresses as they arrive here as a “man in the middle,” and then matching them against Mr. M.’s time stamps until I eliminate everyone but you. Excommunicate you? Not in my job description. But I can have a pizza delivered to your house every hour on the half hour for three days to make my point: We refuse to even admit the problem.
The West, at least, has made our sexuality the center of our being. God has said that the center of our being is our soul. A big difference. Of course if there is no God, then the soul is left rootless.
I didn’t expect to see the day when Met. Kallistos would start pandering to the gayplex. Sad!
Antiochean Son, it is sad, but quite predictable. He is an English academic after all. He is surrounded by those who despise, in an ever so proper way, the living truth. Many of them are probably homosexuals and his friends. How difficult is it to see people you care for and think highly of being impacted emotionally by a “belief” that is, for him, largely theoretical. To be critically questioned on such teachings with great frequency, in all likelihood.
Fr. Andrew Louth is in the same boat IMO. It would not surprise me to see him reinterpret the Patristic Fathers in light of modern knowledge and provide a “Patristic Apology” for homosexual eroticism not being a sin. Unfortunately Fr. Louth has a certain credibility.
…and Jane Rachel here is another clear cut example of the nihilist spirit of the age that places human will and desire above truth and ascetic struggle-the Transvaluation of All Values.
Well, there’s one Oxford academic who blew this whole lot out of the water– liberal theologians, modernists, apostate parsons and bishops– 70 years ago.
C. S. Lewis
Indeed. Will we ever see his like again?
Yes, too bad the modern bunch did not follow in his footsteps. Ideology overrules truth for this bunch
Do you people have any idea what you are doing, talking about these things on a public forum? You are creating a spirit of nihilism!
It is not us who are creating the spirit of nihilism, but our shepherds who think the wolves are not so bad.
Antiochene Son, where is Christ in the language being posted here? There are children in our midst!
Children are being exposed to wickedness in their earliest years. They need to know what sin is and that they can’t assume their clergy will uphold the Faith. It’s sad but it’s reality.
Jane, you should be concerned about what children are learning in public schools in the west – it’s abominable.
Jane, the spirit of nihilism would be to give Met. Kallilstos a great deal of praise.
Speaking the truth is never nihilist. Passively accepting lies against God makes one a member of the herd. Promoting lies against God means that one is trying for membership in the over lord club–those who can do what they will by their own will alone.
Remember the key Nietzchean idea is the Transvaluation of All Values. Clearly that is what is going on with the normalization of homosexual behavior and erotic expression. Making a sin into a virtue.
That spirit is active everywhere and it is critical to guard our heart against it. It is essentially the Satanic temptation in the Garden dressed up in new and improved ways–just buy it and you will live for ever, have control over yourself and the world, etc., etc., etc.
The Christian way is not nearly as marketable—want to have life abundantly? Embrace the Cross in repentance and thanksgiving. Love your enemies. Do good to those that curse you. Acquire the Christian virtues through prayer, fasting and almsgiving, i.e. asceticism and cry out to God for his mercy.
… and don’t use such explicit language as we’ve read here recently, on a public forum. Words used here to describe what people do to the little ones and to each other is beyond the pale (meaning “unacceptable” and “outside agreed standards of decency”) and not necessary at all. Ish.
Money talks, BS walks.
Below please find an article from yesterday on the Orthodox Christianity website.
METROPOLITAN ONUPHRY OF KIEV SPEAKS OUT AGAINST LGBT “MARCH FOR EQUALITY”
Kiev, June 15, 2018
http://orthochristian.com/113723.html
He also wants women deacons.
See video:
https://youtu.be/Mh_NIFmnFyI
I do agree with him that the role of the diaconate should be revived as a ministry to the people, as it was originally designed. Especially in large parishes, deacons should make home visitations and administer parish funds to help the poor. Not everything should fall to the priest.
I am speechless. I read the essay by Bishop Kallistos and was shocked by his capitulation to the gay agenda. I have read much of what he has written over the years and always found it interesting. I have seen him speak several times. I even assisted at the Divine Litugy with him once many years ago when he visited the church I attended. It’s a sad day for Orthodoxy.
Below please find an article from today in The National Herald. Unfortunately, the article is locked and doesn’t appear in its entirety. I will continue to be on the lookout for the article in its entirety and if found, I will post.
Demetrios Says There is No Problem at Hellenic College and Holy Cross
By Theodoros Kalmoukos – June 16, 2018
https://www.thenationalherald.com/204417/there-is-no-problem-at-hellenic-college-and-holy-cross/
Below please find the above article which as of this posting appears in its entirety.
Demetrios Says There is No Problem at Hellenic College and Holy Cross
By Theodoros Kalmoukos – June 18, 2018
https://www.thenationalherald.com/204417/there-is-no-problem-at-hellenic-college-and-holy-cross/
Below please find a “Letter to the Editor” from yesterday in The National Herald, by Jeanette Rigopoulos of La Mesa, CA.
Letter to the Editor: This is Our Church, Let Us Demand Transparency
June 15, 2018
https://www.thenationalherald.com/204431/letter-to-the-editor-this-is-our-church-let-us-demand-transparency/
Bp Kallistos Ware should be censured and deposed. But I am a realist…..and I know that he will be praised by the post-patristic modernists. The EP is in on a fast track to schism itself from the Holy Orthodoxy.
Now the problem of the Phanar’s apostasy has been long apparent. Met. Kallistos’ fidelity to Orthodoxy has also been in question for some time. Approving same sex unions is a repudiation of the Orthodox faith, in and of itself. It is a rejection of God since it is a rejection of Holy Tradition, the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church. And it is an explicit rejection of the authority of the Holy Scriptures, inspired by the Holy Spirit.
So both the Phanar and Met. Kallistos have, effectively and spiritually, already left the Church.
The real problem is that, due to continue intercommunion with these atheists, the entire Church is tainted by their views.
It’s time for contemporary Orthodoxy to grow up and face its responsibility for eucharistic discipline or go the way of Rome and the liberal Protestant confessions. It may already be too late. Perhaps ROCE and the Old Calendarist Greeks were right after all?
Learned does not always coincide with holy or wise. Great example that a Oxford man is not always wiser than high school educated saint.
Some might think the Old Calendarists are looking better and better these days.
Some might be right…
George,
I’ve never been totally convinced that the Old Calendarist Greeks aren’t actually correct about the seriousness of the deviance in “canonical Orthodoxy”. I hedged my bets in ROCOR. However, it is only a matter of time, if the “canonical” local churches do not separate themselves formally from the cancer that is the Phanar, before I will be forced to conclude that the “canonical” local churches are in fact uncanonical and the Vladimir Moss’s of the world were correct from the start.
It really is that bad a situation in canonical Orthodoxy.
Dear Misha,
You took the words right out of my mouth. I too, have hedged my bets in ROCOR.
I pray that the other jurisdictions have the clear sight to know that they must not stay in communion with a jurisdiction that has become an advocate for many abominations.
The Phanar has not had the Orthodox phronema for a very long time.
Please pray for those Greek Orthodox clergy who have maintained the Holy Orthodox faith and phronema…….despite the persecutions they have had to absorb from many of their hierarchs.
ROCOR lost a lot of credibility (some might say all credibility) when it signed the agreement with the MP. This never, ever, would have happened when Metropolitan Philaret and Archbishop John of San Francisco were alive.
Times change.
Times change but the “faith once delivered to the saints” has not changed. Those who choose to ignore this have done so at their peril and caused much of the mess we see around us. But, you know, we are so much more enlightened than all those saints of yesteryear, living as we do in such an advanced society, that we can ignore those few words……right?
I agree with you. What I meant to say is that the MP is no longer under the jackboot of the commies.
I’ve been to Russia. I’ve seen with my own eyes the flowering of Christianity.
I suggest to all that unless you yourself have been there, to withhold judgment.
Did you know Metropolitan Philaret and Archbishop John of San Francisco or are you just commenting off the cuff?
In Christ,
Matthew Panchisin
Very sympathetic to this line of thought. However the reason I have stayed in canonical Orthodoxy runs essentially the same line the other way – who is in communion with Mount Athos?
So there’s good news and bad news
The good news:
In response to this issue, the church is finally going to allow for married bishops again
The bad news:
Marriage will only be allowed for gay bishops
BJS, nice one — “Marriage will only be allowed for gay bishops.”
Seriously though, I think those of us who have seriously struggled with SSA in the past need to speak up more and more. Never once during my SSA struggles did I ever think that “God created me this way,” since I knew that Christ loved me and it would be a cruel joke (a heartless cruel joke) for God to admonish against SSA behavior throughout Judeo-Christian history and then to create some of His sons and daughters to have innate, immutable SSA that they couldn’t do anything about. Yes, that would be a cruel joke. I also knew it wasn’t a conscious choice as in whether choosing between vanilla or chocolate ice cream. It was a significant drive for affection, affirmation, and attention.
What I eventually realized (through a lot of counseling) is that while God loves me, I could not feel it. I had a wall against feeling love, affirmation, and affection. It all stemmed from child abuse. Show me a man who struggles with SSA who has a loving relationship with his own biological father or with the significant men in his life when he was a kid, and I will show you a liar. It is no mere accident that well more than 95% of men struggling with SSA self-admit to awful relationships with their own dads. Indeed, the fathers of men struggling with SSA in turn also generally have terrible relationships with their fathers.
Metropolitan Kallistos may have bought into the biggest lie being perpetuated in the West — that SSA is biological, innate, and immutable. There is zero conclusive scientific evidence for this, but due to widespread propaganda and LGBT money (from the likes of Michael Huffington — the GOA should be ashamed associating with him!!), this lie is accepted as “fact” by a large majority of our population and even by unwitting church leaders. Then, they try to “be nice” to those whom they assume were “born with immutable SSA,” rather than address the real cause and really help these men.
No, to unearth the real causes of SSA for many men means to come to terms with the fact that they were abused as children, often by those entrusted by God to care for them, and that hurts. It’s painful and beyond painful. Lots of therapy and tears and grief and pain and more tears and grief and pain. It involves feeling the pain, which frankly is too much for many to handle I think. They certainly can’t do it alone. So we/they numb it with sexual acting out, with porn, with drugs, you name it.
But if you have a good therapist or priest who wants to help you feel what you need to feel and to heal — you know what happens? The pain leads to grief which leads to understanding and healing. Christ heals. We know from Holy Week that He transforms sorrow into joy. Christ gives many who struggle with SSA — who are not afraid of going down into the depths of the pit to feel their pain and meet Him there — he gives us that affection and attention that we/they are craving. He is an endless fountain of affection, love, and joy for His children who seek Him with their whole heart. For a lot more detail on healing the deep, emotional causes of SSA, I highly recommend reading “Shame and Attachment Loss.”
You see, it’s all ultimately about Christ. The young guy who was sexually abused by his uncle who is acting out sexually as a young man — he is really searching for Christ and for himself, yet he doesn’t know it. He’s numbing his pain but really needs to feel the pain of being alone and abused and helpless as a child, and to give that child the love he needed.
Our Church is so afraid of touching this topic. And it shows. We have Metropolitan Kallistos furthering the gay propaganda rather than challenging men to feel their pain, to cry, to grieve, to let themselves hurt, and then to meet Christ and to heal. Having been doing this for a while, my honest opinion is that it is too damn hard for most people and it brings up too much pain for them and they need help working through that pain yet they have no one to go there with them.
In California, the state assembly is very, very close to making it ILLEGAL to proclaim that Christ can empower people not to engage in homosexual practice or not to identify as “gay” or “transgender” because such behaviors and self-identities are morally wrong, or if you offer to engage or actually engage in efforts to persuade people of Christ’s power to transform in this area. If any pastor does this, they will be in violation of California AB 2943, at least so long as your advertising or efforts involved in any way an exchange of money for goods or services.
Consequently, selling religious or secular books (pamphlets, videos, audios, etc.), holding conferences, teaching courses in a college or seminary where tuition is paid, giving a speech at a paid venue, counseling people for a fee, or perhaps even posting online articles in a site that requires a paid subscription, in which it is asserted (in whole or part) that it is morally wrong for people to engage in homosexual practice or identify as “gay” or “transgender,” all could be treated as a violation of California Assembly Bill 2943.
We have learned on LGBTQ matters that what is exempted is not exempted for long and what is not exempted has no exemption. If you haven’t figured this out by now, you haven’t been paying attention. Only Promoting LGBT Behavior Is Allowed.
Religious liberties lawyer David French has referred to this as “a bill that would actually — among other things — ban the sale of books expressing orthodox Christian beliefs about sexual morality.” Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Matt Sharp states: “It would be a violation if a pastor encourages a congregant to visit the church book store to purchase books that help people address sexual issues, perhaps including the Bible itself, which teaches about the importance of sexual purity within the confines of marriage between a man and a woman.”
Thus, this law is not viewpoint neutral and specifically targets psychotherapists, counselors, pastors, lay counselors, authors, speakers, and any other speakers from promoting a message of heterosexuality, and instead allows only a message affirming the LGBT viewpoint.
I don’t have much hope for Metropolitan Kallistos. He is living in a land where the “national church” is fully LGBT. It’s like trying to be a lamb in a den of wolves. His best hope is to flee to a monastery and govern his diocese from there. Living in the world as a bishop is playing with fire. Every Orthodox bishop should keep and maintain a living relationship with a solid Orthodox monastery.
Nice,
Thank you for sharing those heart-felt words.
Nice, when you said, “the real causes of SSA for many men means to come to terms with the fact that they were abused as children, often by those entrusted by God to care for them, and that hurts,” I thought of all those RC bishops in Chili and all the children who were hurt in a similar way. They were not only violated physically but spiritually, as well. Negative spiritual energy was forced upon their relatively innocent souls and they’ll spend a lifetime trying to cleanse themselves of it. I suspect God will be especially merciful to these children and not so much to the men who abused them. – I think you’re right, though. Those of you who have seriously struggled with SSA in the past need to speak up more. You certainly should. You’re a very articulate and persuasive writer. I am deeply sorry for your pain. I wish I could take my magic wand and erase it. Were it only that easy. . .
May I first say that I am absolutely sickened to see that The Wheel has seen fit to grant the voice of legitimacy to Peter San Filipo, and are stupid enough to play along with the charade of referring to him as Giacomo. A new “take” on one’s name cannot change the underlying man. Fr. Hans accused me of “google diagnosis” and likened himself a “champion” for censoring me, despite the fact that I appear to be only person commenting who actually knew him. It would seem that “illuminating” San Filipo for the creep that he is diminished Fr. Han’s “takedown” of a bad guy, but reality is reality. Apparently the classic notion of what it means to “providing a man voice” is lost. This to me is absolutely outrageous, and crosses a line that I would have never, ever imagined of a man I loved as my own brother for more than 40-years, Priest Robert Arida. Rather than revile him, I sincerely ask you to include him in your prayers. At his core, he truly one of the best men I have known.
Κύριε, ἐκέκραξα πρὸς σέ! If there is any reason I would feel compelled to slap Met. Kallistos, Priests Robert Arida, Alexis Viongradov, and John Jillions, and the new enlistee and self-appointed theologian David Dunn, et al. across the face like Arius, it would be for 1) again opening the door to pseudo-scientists with the definitive answer as to the etiology of homosexuality and who are also stupid enough to offer the solution. They simply cannot stop themselves – with all the Pharisaic gusto of judgment that characterizes the intolerance, fundamental lack of empathy, and absolute closed-mindedness of “It worked for me” – from going about their “mission” with the same outrageous, discredited “data” of the charlatans; and 2) attempting to make “Chicken Little” claims about the imminent entry of the state – or worse, civil rights lawyers – into the very sanctity of Christian Marriage. This, Met. Kallistos and assorted Frs, is the “dialog” about the “living tradition” you have been taunting us to engage in with you?
Mr. Mortiss, as an attorney, I would ask you to examine this relatively short piece of legislation, AB2943 that is entitled, “An act to amend Sections 1761 and 1770 of the Civil Code, relating to unlawful business practices.” I have read it several times, and I find the claims asserted above, as to its supposed consequences to the Church, preposterous. But I am not a lawyer.
I have written many times on this site, as a mental health practitioner in the State of CA, that the policy statements of organizations such as the APAs (psychology & psychiatry), and so on – that are contained on pages 2 – 6, line 26 of this legislation – are unsupported & unsupportable by research. Worse yet is the fact that these organizations have aligned together to share the opinion that, conducting research to examine even the most outrageous claims that, unchallenged, have become “truth” by repetition alone, is unethical. Understand the importance: they have literally excluded themselves from “the market,” so to speak, even voluntary subjects, knowing that legitimate researchers and sponsoring universities are highly unlikely to ever jeopardize their funding or professional licensing. This piece of legislation opens with the statement,
Since 2014, even if the contact is initiated by the child/adolescent because they wish to discuss the conflict they feel, for example, after “coming out,” I am forbidden by law to pursue any discussion other than, “sexual orientation-neutral interventions to prevent or address unlawful conduct or unsafe sexual practices or to otherwise promote healthy sexual and romantic relationships; and do not seek to change sexual orientation.” WAT! Who knows what that actually means in a court of law, but I do understand what losing a license means.
Nice, all I will say to you is that you are in a long of those who attempted to deliver the worst trash-as-science into the front yard.
Dude, 1) you can’t possibly appreciate the precedent such a statistic would set in human medicine. Show me one legitimate – and by that I mean from a contemporaneous, refereed, scientific journal – to support this breathtaking foolishness; 2) nor do you realize who simply this crap is refuted. And here’s a little hint about the law in CA: for the most part, it was initially enacted in reaction to charlatan creeps like James Nicolosi and NARTH who perpetrated such fraudulent data as the “distant, emotionally-detached father,” to promote their “reparative therapies” and its longitudinal “success,” that someone had to do something to stop them. Personally, many of us hold them personally responsible for the ban on research, for which reason we are unable to determine the legitimacy of any form of “reparative therapy.” No one, and I emphasize no one should have the audacity to imagine to possess the only answer. The point I’m making is so simple a child could understand it: No one – bro’, read it again, No one – knows why or how anyone becomes homosexual. The good news is that we have no evidence whatsoever to suggest that one’s relationship with one’s father – nor his relationship with his father predating – contributes to male homosexuality. Now, as I go to stick my head in the freezer, I invite you to look fondly at the smack down you delivered and not set about to school me in reply. Trust me.
May I add to all, I am absolutely sickened to see that The Wheel has seen fit to grant the voice of legitimacy to Peter San Filipo, and are stupid enough to play along with the charade or referring to him as Giacomo. This to me is absolutely outrageous to, and crosses a line that I would have never, ever imagined of a man I loved as my own brother for more than 40-years, Priest Robert Arida.
Since no one knows how or why anyone becomes homosexual, I’m going to offer a theory and I’d be curious to hear what you think about it, Michael. I suspect it may tie in with what Nice was saying, as well.
I have long suspected that sexual preference is imprinted. In other words, if a child’s first sexual yearnings are paired with a particular experience, a child might be primed to seek out similar experiences to induce the same sexual feelings. Eventually, this would lead to a specific orientation. If shaping works with other behaviors, why couldn’t it be a key factor in determining one’s sexual preferences?
I used to be a proctor of a rat lab, where rats were given water as a “reward” for doing certain behaviors. Some of the behaviors rats develop are called “superstitious behaviors.” Though they happen spontaneously, the rat believes the behavior is in some way connected to the reward and it becomes almost impossible to break. For example, my rat turned around in a full circle before turning on the light in her Skinner box. Though all she had to do to receive the reward was turn on the light, I could not stop her from doing the little twirl first even though the water was right in front of her. She associated the twirl with the pleasure of the water. To her, turning on the light was incidental.
I think something similar happens to a child who pairs sexual pleasure with an activity in a given context. It could be something harmless, like roughhousing with a same-gender cousin, but because the child feels a sexual stirring, the child associates the experience of with being with someone of the same gender as sexually “rewarding” and later develops an SSA. If this theory is plausible, it would make sense why a child who is seduced by an adult would associate the resulting sexual feelings with the gender of that adult. What Nice may have been alluding to when he said SSA goes hand and hand with being abused by a parent is that he was sexually abused by his father and therefore associated the experience of engaging sexually with a man as being pleasurable. This, in turn, could develop into SSA.
There are studies that show a correlation between siblings in the same household being gay. Perhaps if the older sibling introduces the younger sibling to sexually pleasurable experiences while engaging in homosexual behavior it would explain why a younger sibling might also turn out to be gay.
There are also studies that show that men who immerse themselves in pornography find it more difficult to find normal women sexually stimulating. Again, they have paired their sexual feelings with pornographic images so this would make sense.
Perhaps sexuality is nothing more than learned behavior shaped by life experiences, Michael. What do you think about this?
Gail, this my hypothesis of homosexual orientation as well. Birds and mammals have much less ‘hard wired’ behavior than insects and reptiles and much more learned and imprinted behavior. This allows for more adaption to changing environments and gaining survival advantage. Humans are very imprintable for language and facial type preference. I think children and younger adolescents are in a very vulnerable state of imprintability with regard to sexual experiences. An incident that strongly skews sexual identity or attraction may occur before the child has any awareness of its significance, thus to that person, later, it seems that they “were always that way.” Konrad Lorenz was an animal behaviorist in Germany in the last century and his book King Solomon’s Ring has an entertaining chapter on imprinting.
“Since no one knows how or why anyone becomes homosexual….”
I think this statement is not in accord with reality, Gail. Mostly, they’re just not saying.
Everybody lies about sex. That you can count on!
I too, very much believe in “imprinting”.
The “old” theory, still believed by many Orthodox psychiatrists in private, is that homosexuals seeks to replace a cruel same sex parent. Sluts, want to replace a cross sex parent. Drugs and alcohol are often exacerbating the abuse. This is largely due to the late Dr Socarides (therapeuticchoice.com formerly narth.org) For all the left condemning Socarides, look at how the wife of the NYC mayor used to be lesbian.
My initial reaction to this is to say what I have always insisted: anecdote, observation, “hunches” and the like never lead to anything except the foundation for research. So frequently, we can make “field observations” so profound and promising, even logical and reasonable, but when the theory is tested, so wrong. I don’t know if you recall the anti-inflamatory Vioxx, but but it was just “another” anti-inflamatory until it appeared to be a tool in preventing in preventing colon cancer. BANG! Sales went through the roof. Until patients began have strokes & similar events. While it was true it helped prevent colon cancer, you had a significant risk of not living long enough to benefit from the protection.
To your point, first, there simply is too much evidence that sexual orientation is mediated in humans by genetics and by a process of exposure to gonadal steroids, primarily [1,2-3H] testosterone and its metabolite [3H] dihydrotestosterone at observable points in fetal development. It is thought that in a cascade of [1,2-3H] testosterone, if the fetus “signals” female, no “androgenizing” (setting the groundwork of male chacteristics) occurs; otherwise development of the appropriate urogenital organs begin, as differentiation and assignment of orientation takes place. The is another, similar cascade of gonadal steroid later in development, and it is here that the theories related to “maternal fecundity,” birth order, and so on are thought to occur. Pursue them if you like.
Secondly, let me tell that that the genetic research data for human behaviour is “emergent.” This is a euphamism for “slim at best,” but slowly emerging. I head a Nobel-winning geneticist take a question on his opinion if he believed we will ever discover a gene for sexual “preference.” He said, “Some women prefer the “tall, dark, and handsome,” and here in CA, some prefer a “bushy, bushy blond hairdo.” Some men like women Anna Nicole Smith curvy, while others prefer Christina Aguilara, fit and petite.We will never, ever identify a single gene responsible for this multi-variate behaviour.” if you search the National Library of Medicine looking for “behavioural” correlations with homosexuality you will find anything and everything imaginable: homosexual father; homosexual siblings; homosexual step-father; homosexual-step-siblings; any living in the home; any living outside the home; using the attachment paradigm, not using the attachment paradigm; homosexual father alcoholic [addict]; homosexual father siblings alcoholic [addict]; any-left-handed; any-right-hand; any with “cowlick” swirl; any physically abusive; any sexually abusive. Name it and you will find a study, page after page after page. What you will not find, however, is a correlation with homosexuality, and certainly nothing that rises to the level of “causation.” It’s simply not there, however logical it may seem.
Let me conclude by saying this: I have insisted since 2011 that you tell me that you have been delivered from this struggle of homosexuality by the gift and intercession of our God, by whatever means this has occured, I am the first to celebrate with you and join you in giving thanks to Him who is the true Physician of our souls and bodies. And just in case I was misinterpreted in my response to Nice, I have treated men who were sexually abused as children and it breaks my heart each and every time I listen to the descriptions. I have absolutely no issue with appreciating that for him, he believes the resulting shame fueled his sexuality. In the end, I join him in thanking our God Who delivered him, and who would not? But when he writes that more than 95% of men are homosexual because of issues with their father, and this is probably generational, he crosses a line. This may be true for him, but it is certainly a dangerous and unpredictable path to send others down in a rash generalization that is unsupportable. I do not believe we need another theory of the etiology of homosexuality. We need, as a church, to lead back those who have fallen away, who are suffering, and who are searching for the path to which are all called.
What are you on about? All medical practice ultimately boils down to “it worked for me.”
Are you on a role tonight, bro’ or what? Take a few minutes to explore the concept of “evidence-based medicine” and what distinguishes it from “formulaic medicine.” Here’s a hint: to arbitrarily suggest “FYI, “It worked for me,” is one thing. To say “It worked for me, it will work for you,” or worse, “It worked for me, it is the only thing that will work” courts disaster. It begs disaster. All medical practice ultimately boils down to prudence: “The ability to discerne the most suitable, politic, or profitable course of action, especially as regards conduct; practical wisdom, and discretion. Wisdom, knowledge of, or skill in a matter.” I believe that you are batting 0-3. Decaf.
Nice, thank you
Truly profound post, Nice.
Why can such a man as Met. Kallistos not resist this? I doubt if there are many English-speaking Orthodox who have not read The Orthodox Church, which introduced the Church to the Anglo-American West in contemporary times. Certainly among converts, his work played a role in their coming to the Orthodox church. In other words, his example and stature make a difference.
Deeply disappointing. Doubly so because the influence should have gone in the opposite direction, especially in the “mileau” in which he is.
Read the first edition of The Orthodox Church and then the last edition and you can see that he started down this deeply disappointing and disturbing road a while ago.
Below please find an article from today on the Orthodox Christianity website.
METROPOLITAN KALLISTOS AND THE WHEEL
Fr. Lawrence Farley
http://orthochristian.com/113735.html
While Timothy Ware studied and translated the Philokalia he must not have learned or believed very much therein.
I think it’s best to just disregard his recently presented tale.
A good article. Pretty much says it all.
Celibate men may be leaning a certain way. If gay marriage was accepted by the Church the bishops might not be bishops… Ware may be wishing he could have gone another way and it had been ok by the Church.
Just speculation on my part.
Timothy Ware and the Oxbridge Orthodox are acolytes of Kim Philby. That is why you have had Putin, Demacopoulos, Zombillas and Djankov all proclaim communism is Orthodox. BBC Monitoring January 15, 2018 said Russian state TV channel Rossiya 1 has broadcast a film about the Valaam Monastery in Russia’s north that focused heavily on lengthy excerpts from interviews with Russian President Vladimir Putin [who said] . . . “In fact, the Communist ideology is actually akin to Christianity.” The Czars were always communist, forbidding land ownership because the Obsina mir belonged to Mokosh, and had free education and health care. Aristides Papadakis tries to make the early Christians into communist (David Bentley Hart NOV 4 2017 NY Times). Grystlestolm wrote wrote “The rich are in possession of the goods of the poor, even if they have acquired them honestly” (Lazarus 11). The Theodosian Code promoted confiscatory taxation and promoted Diocletian socialist feudalism (Rostovtzeff 1926, Gibbon ch. 13) that Toynbee (1939, IV p. 399) said caused Anatolia to apostase into Turkishness. Gun control hails back to Justinian’s Novella 85. See “Is Orthodox Christianity progressive?” By Michelle Boorstein Washington Post November 4, 2009.
What I find appaling is the fact His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios seems to simply refuse to admit there are problems.
Now, he states, there are no problems with Hellenic College and Holy Cross School of Theology. Why does he seem to not want to face reality?
We all know things in Brookline are and have been rather serious for quite some time. Might His Eminence be living in an alternate world?
The writing has been on the wall and instead of taking the appropriate steps to correct these problems, His Eminence seems to looking the other way.
How much longer can things go on this way? And yes, where are the metropolitans and the archdiocesan council? Is it not their responsibility to speak up in a respectful way? Who is looking out for the overall well being of the archdiocese? Shame on them all. I guess they are all looking out for themselves. What a surprise and how shocking. Not really!
Please excuse my French, but seems to me these people need to grow a pair. We are watching the demise of the archdiocese in front of our very own eyes and once again, we have no one else to blame but ourselves! How much emptier do our churches need to become before we decide to act? At this point, much more is needed than just a life saving ring or flotation device!
LORD HELP US!
The archbishop doesn’t want to admit there are problems because he, as chair of the trustees, has veto power over all decisions made about the school, so he knows whatever happens will be on him. The trustees have wanted to act and he has over ruled them. The majority want to replace the president. And the school’s by laws should be changed so the archbishop is not automatically chair of the board of trustees. There are several trustees who are more than capable of assuming the chairmanship and they would gladly step up. Look for trustee resignations if things don’t change. The metropolitans could care less, and all of them, with the exception of Alexios, are graduates of the school. Andonios and (the now disappeared) Demetrios are graduates as well. As long as the archdiocese keeps draining money from the parishes there will never be enough money on the local level to support extra priests in parishes, which would go a long way in helping to stop the exodus. And, of course, this allows the metropolitans to say there is a shortage of priests. On and on it goes……
Perhaps, just perhaps, the archdiocese should try doing something different. Because from what has been happening, things haven’t been working out too well, to say the least. Maybe trying to think out of the box may be a good starting point.
The archdiocese should also try to think forward to the younger and future generations they will be leaving the archdiocese to. So they will be left a religious institution that is built on a rock solid foundation, rather than on one built on sand. It is the responsibility of the present day hierarchs, along with their hierarchal lay appointees to keep this in mind.
Let us hope and pray there will in fact be an archdiocese left to our younger and future generations to come. At this point, it is anyone’s guess whether there will be one, and if so, in what shape it will be in.
He does not want to face reality because he is GREEK. Such folks have a peculiar delusion because they still think the Emperor will return to Constantinople. Kinda of like the Stewards of Gondor they sit in lonely madness.
And thus are willing to blame it all on Faramir and throw him under the bus?
There’s is something to this, a background supposition that Byzantium will somehow be vindicated. I think it’s more compelling to your typical Leadership 100 fellow than that other one about the nice guy who gets killed and yet rises from the dead. The former has something in it for the natural man.
Pere LaChaise
Indeed I believe you are right in how they think
It’s funny, the heir of Gondor was able to return to his kingdom and save it, right before being crowned
But for the Byzantines, Gondor doesn’t exist anymore
Saddam Hussein wanted to be the return of Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian Empire and Napoleon wanted to be Charlemagne and self crowned Emporer of a new Holy Roman Empire
You can save an empire, but you can’t recreate it once it is lost. You just got to start again
America needs redemption, not dismantling
Anyone who desires the collapse of our government is diluted and has probably never even been in a street fight
What’s redeemable about America? Americans!
Our system is only broken because our people are broken
Humility there is non in our bishops.
That is what you are looking for GS in our bishops.
Yes, and as I have stated many times before. Sadly, for the most part, it seems “humility” is no where to be found amongst the episcopacy of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America!
The Archdiocese reportedly racked up nearly $2 million in legal expenses!!
Take money from the people and give it to the creepy lawyers. Disgusting.
If this is true and the archdiocese has recently racked up nearly $2 million in legal expenses, where does it end? It’s one bottomless pit, that seems to get deeper by the day.
This is so sad, and to think, in a few weeks there will be a big shindig held in Boston, to celebrate all the great things that are happening with the archdiocese. No one attending should even think of asking any intelligent questions pertaining to all that has been happening. If so, be prepared to be escorted out of the room for being out of order. How dare someone wanting honest awswers to valid questions. It’s only your money, not theirs!
At this point, I think the situation is beyond any hope. It’s one big joke and the general laity seems to be the brunt of it ALL! Is this sick or what?
Wrong! It’s only THEIR money not YOURS, even if you own it temporarily.
Glad I’m not in the GAO.
Blubber Tubber not did not donate to the rebuilding of his childhood parish of Zoglo Pegles, let alone WTC. He is doing his radio program every Sunday at the time he should be in church. He does not do anything without Karloutsos permission. All the karlutzing arabators at the Harlonic Societies who defend him are oblivious to lent and only go to church for the coffee hours.
This is YUGE.
Half of all Greeks have left the church in the past two decades,
IN GREECE.
http://thegroundtruthproject.org/state-of-the-church/
http://religiongoingpublic.com/archive/2017/moving-from-traditional-religion-to-atheism-in-greek-society-like-a-ship-distancing-from-the-coast
https://youtu.be/OTiZkAHRs_M
Below please find a “Letter to the Editor” from today in The National Herald by Stelios M. Zervos
of West Jordan, UT.
Letter to the Editor: Implement These Solutions Regarding Church in America
June 18, 2018
https://www.thenationalherald.com/204721/letter-to-the-editor-implement-these-solutions-regarding-church-in-america/
In addition to the wonderful critique written by Fr Lawrence Farley found here:
http://orthochristian.com/113735.html
Prof Edith M. Humphrey also wrote a most insightful article. It is entitled:
Ambiguity Serves No One. It can be found here:
https://orthodoxlife.org/contemporary-issues/kallistos-ware-homosexuality-humphrey/
Also Prof. David Ford’s terrific article written before the Metropolitan’s article directly relates. It can be found here:
http://orthochristian.com/113695.html
With regard to having clear MORAL boundaries in the Church, my Ancient Faith booklet “Communion a Family Affair: Why the Orthodox Church Practices Closed Communion” serves as a reminder that good order and discipline in the Church matters. We CLERGY are responsible before God to guard the eucharist. And to view the eucharist not only as providing healing but also as providing judgement to those who receive – knowing that they should not. It is NOT loving or healing to give communion to one who should not be receiving. It is in fact – hateful – damaging.
This our private prayers said before communion make – perfectly clear !
My booklet can be found here:
http://store.ancientfaith.com/communion-a-family-affair/
May we survive spiritually intact until our last breath during these most trying times, by God’s Grace ! Lord have mercy!
Father James, I have a query: How does the Father Confessor know who should and who should not be receiving Communion?
Jane, I like most of your posts. I am a bit concerned about this one. The Exomologetarion of St. Nicodemos is a more comprehensive manual for the guidance of the priest. The Trebnik gives basic guidelines. There are others, but what are you getting at? I am a truly, full, and unapologetic son of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. I also hold fast the full and complete ethical code of Orthodoxy without reservation. I also happen to teach dogmatics and canon law in an Orthodox seminary. I recognize that you asked this of Fr. James (and he may have replied already but it is just not posted yet), but I wonder sometimes.
Father Harry, Thank you for your reply! I am asking only because the question came to mind as I thought about it. How does the priest know what is in the heart of the confessor? Only God knows. If the priest – a sinner – grants absolution, it is after that up to the confessor to live his or her life in Christ, or to “go and sin no more.”
Father James stated this: “It is NOT loving or healing to give communion to one who should not be receiving.” I believe it was the word “should” that captured my attention. How does the priest KNOW whether the person making his or her confession SHOULD receive communion? The priest can’t know what is in the mind of the person confessing. That was my question.
The priest can only do his best to bring to mind the sins of the confessor, hear the confession, ask if the person has repented, grant the absolution, and pray for the person. He cannot judge what is in the heart. Even the person confessing cannot guarantee whether he will be able to keep the commandments of God; he can only pray for grace to help in time of need, and keep trying. We are all unworthy and God makes us worthy to partake of the Divine Mysteries.
God knows what is in the hearts of men. If the priest allows someone to take communion even though the confessor lied and is not worthy because of some unconfessed sin, it’s not in the priest’s best interests to be judged for that. He simply did his job according to Church teachings. In other words, the priest is only a listening vessel called to be wise enough to discern; but he cannot fully “guard” the Eucharist or decide if a person “should” or “should not” take Communion. Does this make sense? I’m asking.
Jane, you ask:
No, not a whit.
As a person who was under a ban from the cup for awhile as part of a restoration program, I was simple told by my bishop not to come to the cup. My bishop also told my priest.
In Slavic jurisdictions it is required to go to confession in the week before the Divine Liturgy or not be eligible to receive communion.
When I am traveling, I make a point of contacting the priest of any parish I will be visiting and informing them of who I am and what parish I attend and who my bishop is. I even inform my own brother about the last time I went to confession before I go to his parish.
It is simple.
I am the very model of a modern major general
There are 4 more articles (by three Orthodox priests and an Orthodox academic) that address Met. Kallistos Ware’s heretical writing in The Wheel:
The Church and Homosexuality: A Meditation
Fr. Herman (Majkrzak)
https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/orthodoxyandheterodoxy/2018/06/13/the-church-and-homosexuality-a-meditation/
Met. Kallistos Clearly Implies that the Church Should Bless Committed Same-Sex Relationships
Fr. Juvenaly Repass
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/blog/2018/06/met-kallistos-clearly-implies-that-the-church-should-bless-committed-same-sex-relationships/
Anatomy of a Foreword: Metr. Kallistos on Sexual Morality
Fr. John Cox
https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/orthodoxyandheterodoxy/2018/06/16/anatomy-of-a-foreword-metr-kallistos-on-sexual-morality/
The Unbearable Essentializing of Being: Metropolitan Kallistos Ware’s Sorrowful Joy of Sex
Dr. Alfred Kentigern Siewers
http://www.aoiusa.org/the-unbearable-essentializing-of-being-metropolitan-kallistos-wares-sorrowful-joy-of-sex/
The older Bishops, Priests and monks would say that none of us are to serve the demons of sexual perversion, period.
Once again it’s best to disregard the babbling of the converts, I don’t mean that in offensive way, I suspect the Metropolitan isn’t lacking in that regard, he wasn’t created yesterday.
In Christ,
Matthew Panchisin
If we avoid the “babbling of converts” here, Monomakhos is going to shrink quite a bit, indeed.
If we avoided the babbling of converts at the GOA church I attend, the congregation is going to shrink a lot, too, starting with the priest.
Dear Tim,
I sure hope your Priest isn’t babbling like Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, there is a distinction, Monomakhos is different.
There are very few posts these days on the site monachos.net site Bishop Irenei established, so everything is fine there now. We don’t see heresies being concocted there etc. The irony is that Bishop Irenei (he really did convert from Protestantism) is beloved by many Orthodox Christians for his theological coherency, a converted student of Met. Ware.
In Christ,
Ma
Indeed he is not, yet he is a convert. From Hinduism no less.
Everyone is a convert. No one comes out of the womb Orthodox. Christ said to make converts.
Everyone is a convert to Christianity. There must come a time in ones life that a conscious decision is made to embrace Christ, a time of repentance. St Chrysostom stated, “let no one say he is a Christian because he is baptized” and then followed by saying,
“repentance is the fulfillment of baptism.”
True of Fredericka Matthews Greene as well. Or at least that was where she started before being “knocked off her horse” in an Irish church on her honeymoon…
Below please find a press release from yesterday on the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America website.
Archdiocese Statement in Defense of Children and Families
Stavros Papagermanos, Press Office pressoffice@goarch.org
June 18, 2018
https://www.goarch.org/-/archdiocese-statement-in-defense-of-children-and-families
Where were these Orthodox hierarchs when Bush and Obama were doing the same thing?
/news/2018-06-19/flashback-both-hillary-and-obama-advocated-separating-migrant-families
That link is a masterclass in how to lie by drawing false equivalences. But then I expect nothing less coming from George Michalopulos.
Great question … where were they?
George sadly I don’t think there is a single GOA bishop who has the brain power to understand what the issue really is. All they know are mindless platitudes that their public relations teams write for them.
In America we are a compassionate nation and we don’t incarcerate children. The only change President Trump has made is to say we will start incarcerating illegals crossing over who represent a potential danger to the American people instead of “catch and release” or turning them loose into America pending a hearing they will likely never appear for. Because we don’t incarcerate children they of necessity must be separated from their now incarcerated parents.
Given the danger of turning unvetted illegals loose in the country this policy is more humane for US citizens for a change. Let’s stand up for our own country and the rule of law and secure borders for a change.
I am frustrated that our hierarchs today speak so freely in tacit support of leftist issues, seemingly based purely on media reports, without even thinking. Are they just trying to score brownie points with the zeitgeist?
I would ask the GOARCH Press Office:
1. Are you aware that families are only split up if the parents claim asylum? Federal law requires that illegal alien children be released after 20 days, but asylum cases take much longer to adjudicate.
2. Can you prove that the children who are accompanying adult illegal aliens are indeed their children? If they are not, they have no right to stay together in any case.
3. Would you rather have ICE house all illegal immigrants together? Shall an MS-13 gang member sleep in a cot beside a young girl?
4. Is the standard of law enforcement not whether a law was broken, but whether a criminal has children? American children are separated from their criminal parents every day; why do illegal aliens get to play by special rules?
Thank you AS for pointing these things out. One reason for this law is that many of these “parents” are not their biological parents at all but sex-traffickers. The law is set up to remove children from these would-be predators. Of course, the various Orthodox chanceries are operating with limited resources so they immediately believe Katie Couric.
I share your concern, Antiochene Son.
The GOA is very fast to put out a strong statement to support the new leftist talking points regarding the so-called separation of children from their parents. I have never seen a strong statement from the GOA in regards to same sex marriage, or transgenderism, or gender fluidity, or the horrors of abortion.
Are you listening Metropolitan Nathaniel?
I wonder if the sympathy of certain Church hierarchs for same sex marriage has anything to do with their own unsatisfactorily resolved sexual tension, which then would be a symptom of society’s in general.
Needless to say, our time places more importance on sexuality than any other, and with this comes the expectation that a person will definitely engage in some kind of sexual activity: feeling ‘toey’? Go to a bar and meet someone for the night; feeling ‘toey’ and bored or lonely? Just find a ‘mate’ for a while; can’t get into any of these? Go to the brothel down the road; don’t have the money or whatever to do this this? No worries, there’s plenty of free porn on the net; and this says nothing about the more indirect influences and behaviours available to us.
In a society like this, it becomes unthinkable that too many would, could or should abstain; and so when it comes to the issue of homosexual sin, those in the Church who are softening towards it, may likewise see the demand for abstinence as something which is really, really strange.
But this kind of thing would have been much harder to fall under in times gone by. When people were generally poorer, not as ‘educated’, struggled under physical labour, had less leisure time, weren’t as exposed to the media, and (can I say it?) bathed considerably less, sex just couldn’t have taken the pride of position that it in enjoys today. As such, the practice of a life-long, heterosexual marriage (and only this) would, to the majority of Orthodox leaders, not only have been a commandment of God’s, but a sober reflection of normality: not married? Not heterosexual? Not too big a worry; just avoid it like an angry man avoids his anger.
This, of course, doesn’t mean that the sexual urge hasn’t always been strong, or incapable of somewhat transcending the ‘obstacles’ mentioned above; what it does say, however, is that the current climate has blown it out of all proportion, and I wonder whether this is affecting people’s judgement on homosexual sin. Certainly, the justification of their position always takes on a more humane appearance, but then it might just be a cover for their embarrassment: ‘wow! Sex really is that important’.
Who knows?
Who knew that George Michalopoulos considers Bush and Obama to be moral standards?
I don’t, Your Grace. However they were duly elected civil magistrates. St Paul told us to “pray for the Emperor”, that “he did not carry the sword in vain”. For whatever reason, the Lord sent us Obama to rule over us. His chastisements therefore were just.
Mr. Michalopulos,
Far too often, your immediate response is to say, “But what about when [enter the name of anyone/anything you oppose] did the exact same thing?” Here’s the thing about morality and ethics: if an act is immoral or unethical by virtue of natural law or by the Word of God at whose Hand the natural was given, it is was always immoral and unethical, and it will always be immoral and unethical. I strongly suspect that as many “duly elected civil magistrates” acted out of simple stupidity, disorganization, misunderstanding, or embarrassment as did those whose motivation was divisive and manipulative. Personally, I fail to see how adding this, “Oh yeah, well what about…” dynamic to the debate does anything helpful when we already know the action is immoral or unethical. Unless, of course, the goal is obfuscation.
Sorry George. This is not true. There is no credible evidence to support such a statement that either one had it as policy or actually said such a thing. While it is true children were separated from their parents during the Obama administration (which, by the way, deported over 1 million illegal immigrants) it was not the rule of thumb. It was not policy. Some children were separated because there was a suspicion the adults were not their parents and it was child trafficking but once the relationship was verified the children and parents were re-united. There is no credible evidence that separation of parents and their children was a policy of the Obama administration. All living first ladies have condemned the policy, Hillary included. Please give specific references to support your statement that President Obama and Hillary Clinton advocated such separations. And, just for the heck of it, please give specific references on the subject concerening the Bush administration.
Alitheia, the law is the law. Bush signed this law and Obama intermittently enforced it. Those are facts. If this is an unjust law (arguable, I’d say it’s not), then repeal it. That’s what we have a Congress for. If they can’t (or won’t) make laws, then let’s tear up the Constitution and go to Czarism.
The fact is that the argument that existing laws mandate forced separation of children from parents is simply not true and saying ‘it’s just the law’ is fundamentally dishonest.
And there we have it: if there actually were a law mandating child separation George Michalopulos wouldn’t think it unjust.
This of course is utterly unsurprising as concentration camps for brown kids is part of why George Michalopulos voted for Trump in the first place. Which is why now that they are ramping up he has to defend them.
And to defend and spin for what invariably comes next.
Don’t think George Michalopulos years-long campaign to push dehumanizing language and brand migrants and asylum seekers as subhuman doesn’t serve a purpose in this sequence of events.
Keep digging.
Nate: Is it inherently unjust to separate a child from the adults he/she is accompanying?
Where is the president granted discretion to execute only the laws that he likes?
George, again, CITE THE SPECIFIC LAW that mandates children be separated from their parents. What is this law passed by Congress during the Bush administration? The immigration law passed in 1996 does no such thing. Families were kept together. Illegal entry as a first offense was a misdemeanor while now it is a felony. The separation of children and parents is the result of a policy conceived of by John Kelly and Stephen Miller, approved by the president and made policy by the attorney general on 4-6-18. We need to know what this law is that the administration’s present policy is based on. What Congress should do, supported by both Republicans and Democrats, is pass a law which specifically prohibits immigrant children being separated from their parents. And, given that I am a licensed mental health professional with 40 years of experience, I tend to lend great credence to the opinion of the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Dr. Colleen Kraft, who said two days ago that the policy of separating children from their parents amounts to child abuse. If this happened in the state I live in I, as a mandated reporter, would consider myself legally bound to report this as possible child abuse. That would make it interesting. Maybe this will happen in Texas. It is indeed unfortunate that the president of the United States can stand before the American people and, by expressing a clear lie concerning what a supposed law supposedly said, appeal by fear mongering to the darker instincts of the citizens of this country. (PS…for the record, I am not a Hillary supporter. I believe the choice we had in 2016 amounted to the worst we have been presented with in recent memory and my memory of presidential politics dates to Eisenhower/Stevenson I)
What mental trauma does it cause a child to drag him through 1500 miles of desert and drug cartel territory, and then enter a foreign country illegally?
How do you prove the adults are the parents and not child-traffickers? Why do US taxpayers have to foisted with the expense of performing investigations and trials for people who should not even be in the country?
And what do you do with the kids? Put them in jail with the parents? This is a backdoor attempt to reinstate Obama’s catch-and-release policy. So far, Trump isn’t having it.
At this point, I am not only in favor of a border wall, but of militarizing the border. We need to create such a huge disincentive to attempt crossing the border that no one will attempt it. If these parents don’t CHOOSE to break the law and send their kids across the border, we won’t have this problem.
Bunch of fake news so sad the GOA stepped in it. This is a political spin on something that has been going on since GW Bush if not Clinton. Where was the GOA back then? Here is an article with photos from the Obama years. http://dailycaller.com/2018/06/19/photos-obama-immigration-detention-facilities
I wonder if things haven’t been twisted a little here to make a case against George’s comment.
Firstly, if someone responds by saying, ‘yeah but what about the things you do’, this isn’t necessarily useless. To start with, it’s one of the best means available for highlighting the hypocritical, self-righteous agenda of an accuser, which can then lead to recognising the culpability of both sides. Mutual self-accusation can be a very fertile field.
Secondly, if we agree that separating children from parents is wrong, especially in the context of the case against George, then we have to ask ourselves whether child separation under policy is really that much worse than if it were not under policy at all. As I see it, it makes no difference, apart from the fact that those who make it law are perhaps being more honest about it.
If all of this is now tied back to the GOA condemning Trump’s policy, while tacitly supporting the Left’s non-policy, we see that George has brought up an inconsistency within the organisation. That this inconsistency unavoidably and undeniably speaks not of said organisation’s charity, but its blind allegiance to the Church haters on the Left, is something that is worth bringing up.
Whether or not this was exactly George’s intention is immaterial enough, given that the comment of his, which started all of this, provides for nothing but the analysis given above.
Understanding, then, that the GOA said nothing against the wrongs of the Left, but are up in arms about those same wrongs on the Right, I wonder what it is people think of this. Is it because the GOA sees in the Left, as a whole, and despite certain unhappy similarities with the Right, a framework more compatible with Orthodox Tradition?
Some would say this was a highly suspect position, yet a discussion along the lines of mutual self-accusation could yield some interesting results
Stefan,
I appreciate you are attempting to be reasonable here, but I believe there is a point you and many others are missing: however these children got here, regardless of the circumstances under which they arrived, or the legality of the means of their arrival, they are children. They are not “chits,” “pawns” or otherwise a “negotiation piece.” These are innocent children. To those who are all the more fortified to argue that it was wrong of the parent to send the child, that they ignored the possible danger to their child to achieve an ulterior motive: So What! You would place the onus of responsibility on an innocent child? You would judge an innocent child’s instinct to want their parent? You obviously have never sat in a room with an abused or traumatized child, or an adult who has lived with the memory of childhood trauma. And Madonna Mia! The question even has to be verbalized: “And what do you do with the kids?”
I sincerely beg to differ with you, Stefan. We most certainly do not need a “discussion along the lines of mutual self-accusation,” we need Orthodox Christians who answer that question “And what do you do with the kids?” with their heart, not continuously repeat the mindless, heartless banter of talk radio and Fox News. Cynical? Damn right I am. If you can be pissed off at an innocent child – and I don’t care if Hitler himself sneaked the kid across the border – and have no sense of compassion, we are lost.
I received a “friend” request on Facebook yesterday. Bizarre isn’t it? https://www.facebook.com/antony.gabriel.1656854?fref=jewel
For you inquiring minds, I had to sell my family’s home a couple of months ago; the one I watched being built when I was 8-years-old. It was the only thing of my family’s that I had left. The vandalism was overwhelming. $4,300 of damage. I lost a 60-year-old magnolia tree which would have broken my mother’s heart. But then there was a bullet hole in the master bedroom window and later, the “takedown of all takedowns” in the history of Tucson Country Club Estates. It took 12 police officers to wrestle one of my young neighbors to the ground. He said he was shooting at a man with a gun in the back of my house. The police thought he was crazy and hauled him away. I felt like an idiot calling them up the following morning and saying, “You know that kid you think is crazy for shooting up the neighborhood behind my fence . . . well, have I got a story for you.” I’m sure I sounded crazier than he did.
Well, Gail, he has a YouTube Channel, “Gabriel Speaks,” and I listened to his short talk, “The Role of Women in the Orthodox Church.” At first I thought, “WAT! Is this off the hook or what?” He says,
But you know what? When I listened here and there, and especially read the comments, this is apparently a simple Orthodox priest “in whom there is no guile.” He is older, simple, gentle, warm, kind, and is faithful to the mission to which he has dedicated himself. He never asks for money or donations; his followers post family pictures of themselves, old and young; and he’s got Byzantine chant (presumably himself) and plenty of smiling Orthodox Christians. A serious change of pace and oddly refreshing. I would friend him, Gail, no hesitation.
Michael,
I don’t doubt his YouTube clips are innocuous.
I first became aware of this man during the Metropolitan Philip scandal. He is best known for his wife’s letter regarding forgeries concerning the demotion of our bishops. http://www.ocanews.org/news/ScandalOverDocuments6.29.09.html
My relationship with him became more “up front and personal” when I moved to Tucson.
Gail, I sorry you are going through all this. Sorry for my ignorance, but who do you believe is doing this? A blogger, parish members, priest….? I know in the past it has been those in your parish, but now Facebook friend request suggest a blogger?
I need to explain and George is going to help me with that. Thanks for caring, Dino.
Gail, I don’t know that I can do much for you, except prayer, of course. I can reach out to you , if you wish, George can put me in contact with you.
Thank you, Father.
I feel like the embarrassed “monkey-in-the-middle.” Obviously, I knew he was an Antiochian priest – he’d show up at SVS with Bp. Antoun before he was a bishop, blah, blah, blah. I never would have known about the “sinister” aspects, and frankly, I’m not interested. Perhaps you shouldn’t ask for an interpretation – “Isn’t is bizarre?” – that apparently is only understood “in context,” and not provide the context.
Dr Stankovich
I wasn’t supporting the mistreatment of children. Heaven forbid!
I was merely highlighting the real point of George’s specific comment, which in turn highlighted the genuine hypocrisy of the GOA and the Leftist’s in question.
If the GOA wishes to play politics and pick sides, then it would want to be more discerning before it does so. For it to simply say (even if only implicitly) that Trump’s mistreatment of children is no good because it’s now policy and because it’s all over the news, is an act of laziness. The responsibility it has would require the effort needed to look at whether the Left has also done the same thing in the past and then reason that, although it wasn’t the Left’s policy and although it wasn’t as conspicuous in the media, it was still the wrong thing to do. If, after having done the necessary groundwork, the GOA still believes that the Left, on the whole, is the right party for them, it would still need to answer to everything else the Left stands for, which clearly contradicts Orthodoxy.
This, my good man, is what I got out of George’s comment , and what I was trying to say.
Stefan,
I’m trying my level best to understand how to consider your response anything but an insult to my intelligence. What could I possibly care about the GOA or a briefcase of jingoistic political crap I would suggest is best described by American author Thorton Wilder as the “hobgoblin of little minds.” And that, after all, was exactly my point: the ability to rationalize that it is innocent children who are being victimized occurs in the mind, not in the heart. Props and my respect to Alitheia1875 for 40 years of what is a most worthy ministry, often unappreciated and unacknowledged, except to our God. Whose hand has guided you.
And as for this response, Dr Stankovic, the mistreatment of children is one thing, and matters around the mistreatment of them is another
Stefan,
Let’s lay this to rest, shall we? 1) I said to you very specifically that I appreciated your very reasoned approach to “defending” Mr. Michalopulos. Nevertheless, I disagreed with him, so it would stand to reason that I would disagree with you. 2) Not every comment within my comment(s) was intended for you (hint: I quoted other posters verbatim); the forum isn’t conducive to “dialog” in that you never know where and in which order your comment may land. 3) Body Armour. Small “All Types” Extinguisher (Bear in mind, the only thing that catches fire here is people’s pants. Oorah). 4) As Mayor of the Munchkin City, in the County of the Land of Oz, you are welcome to call me Michael. And finally, 5) Remember Hamlet, “Words, words, words… and the rest is silence.”
Michael S,
It seems true to me also that this particular discussion has run out puff. Let’s put it bed, indeed
Below please find a comment from George D. Karcazes in response to John Catsimatidis request for His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios to resign on the OCL website.
* * * * * * * * * * *
GEORGE D. KARCAZES on JUNE 20, 2018 – 8:24 PM
Removing the Archbishop and replacing him with another figure-head to preside over a colonial Synod sitting in NY, appointed by the “mother” Synod in Istanbul solves nothing. The new appointee will have no more authority than our current Archbishop has had. While I agree that the Archbishop probably should have retired gracefully some years ago his removal will not solve the systemic and notional problems of the GOA.
Systemic: Substantive changes need to be made to both the UPR and the Charter to restore the voice of the laity in the administration of the Archdiocese. [Note: If the EP doesn’t approve the Charter changes needed to allow the Church in the US to manage its own affairs, everyone should heed the recent call of Mr. Valiotis for Autocephaly]
Notional: The lay leadership of the Archdiocese must understand that they have fiduciary responsibilities to all of the faithful stewards of the Church in the US for the administration of the Archdiocese.
The Archdiocesan Council (AC) has the power to make all of the changes needed to insure that the administration of the Archdiocese is “transparent and accountable.” The AC is the “highest legislative body of the Archdiocese between Clergy-Laity Congresses”. Even before the Congress convenes in Boston next month the AC can amend the UPR and offer changes to the Charter for approval by Istanbul that actually fulfills the FIDUCIARY DUTY that the members of the AC actual have. If they don’t act now, and present the changes to the C-L Congress, there will be nothing on the agenda to insure changes. There will only be “discussions” and some venting of frustrations on the part of delegates.
I applaud the millionaires and billionaires who have bailed out the Archdiocese over the years, and who according to Mr. Catsimatidis, are prepared to come up with $10-20 million more to complete the St. Nicholas Shrine at Ground Zero, but only after the Archbishop resigns.
I’m sure they are well meaning. I assume that most, if not all of them are members of the AC. Most are probably Archons of the Patriarchate in Istanbul. Most are members of L100. A few are also members of FAITH. Some have probably been awarded the Medal of St. Paul. Some have no doubt received honorary degrees from HC/HC.
Many have probably attended countless meetings of the AC, some even the Executive Committee of the AC. Many have sat at the head tables at banquets and black-tie dinners at C-L Congresses.
What the current financial and mismanagement crisis should have brought into sharp focus to all of them is that serving on the AC imposes fiduciary duties on them. Writing big checks to finish the St. Nicholas Shrine will not stop the decline in the membership of parishes across the country. There are many reasons for the decline. If confidence in the administration of the Archdiocese is not restored very, very soon.. none of the other problems we face can be addressed. The Archdiocese can be kept on “life-support” for a while by large gifts from wealthy donors, but that will not insure the survival, let alone growth of Orthodoxy in America.
The first order of business is to change the UPR and Charter to insure that the administration of the GOA is truly transparent and accountable. Then the 14 “ethnic” jurisdictions in the US must be united under a single Synod that elects it own presiding bishop. A single, united, Autocephalous Orthodox Church in the US can grow and support all of the “mother” Churches in the Old World. Individual parishes can retain their unique customs, languages and traditions as long as they are needed to serve the people in the pews.
OCL has been an educational lay effort [with clergy and hierarchical advisory members] advocating this position for more than 30 years. If the AC and others in leadership positions do not act not, it may be too late.
I’m glad to see that some in the OCL have woken up to the realization that our only way out is autocephaly.
“Then the 14 “ethnic” jurisdictions in the US must be united under a single Synod that elects it own presiding bishop. A single, united, Autocephalous Orthodox Church in the US can grow and support all of the “mother” Churches in the Old World.“
Though I am no longer a member of the OCA, I do know that the OCA has been saying similar things for at least 50 years. Fr Alexander Schmemann in the ‘60s was wont to say, “autocephaly is the only way.”
For those pushing autocephaly in the GOA, I’m curious as to what they have to say about the OCA’s experience. Why do they seem to completely ignore the fact that the OCA has “been there, done that” and already has ethnic dioceses within the framework as envisioned by St Tikhon more than 100 years ago.
Is it an ethnic pride thing – as in the Greeks think they can do autocephaly better? I’m the first to say that the OCA is far from perfect, though God’s grace is definitely there and one can certainly grow in Christ in the OCA.
Why don’t the Greeks who are floating the idea of autocephaly state that they would “work to merge with the already autocephalous OCA?” It seems like they rather would plan to start from scratch. Would we then have potentially two jurisdictions in America claiming autocephaly? Lord, help us!
These are the issues – including the divisive calendar issue – that should have been first on the docket to discuss in Crete in 2016. That the calendar problem and the jurisdictional problems weren’t even up for discussion shows that the Crete shin-dig was a sham and a nothing-burger from the beginning. Kudos to Patriarch Kyrill for sitting it out.
Mr. Karcazes is a serious and faithful person, whom I have had the pleasure to meet on numerous occasions. Unfortunately, leaving the “fix” to the Archdiocesan Council is really a non-starter. Whatever power they have is mostly of the purse, and they don’t seem to have been very good at that. The truth is that until Demetrios goes, there will be no progress. He has been the chairman of the Assembly of Bishops for eight years and has accomplished so little it is laughable. If autocephaly for the USA is the way forward, then that Assembly has to become serious and Demetrios clearly has no interest in that.
Early-life and pubertal stress differentially modulate grey matter development in human adolescents
Tyborowska, A, Volm. I , Niermann, HCM, Pouw, JL, Smeekens, S, Cillessen, AHN,Toni, I, & Roelofs, K. “Early-life and pubertal stress differentially modulate grey matter development in human adolescents.” Scientific Reports, (2018) 8:9201 | DOI:10.1038/s41598-018-27439-5.
Animal and human studies have shown that both early-life traumatic events and ongoing stress episodes affect neurodevelopment, however, it remains unclear whether and how they modulate normative adolescent neuro-maturational trajectories. We characterized effects of early-life (age 0–5) and ongoing stressors (age 14–17) on longitudinal changes (age 14 to17) in grey matter volume (GMV) of healthy adolescents (n = 37). Timing and stressor type were related to differential GMV changes. More personal early-life stressful events were associated with larger developmental reductions in GMV over anterior prefrontal cortex, amygdala and other subcortical regions; whereas ongoing stress from the adolescents’ social environment was related to smaller reductions over the orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortex. These findings suggest that early-life stress accelerates pubertal development, whereas an adverse adolescent social environment disturbs brain maturation with potential mental health implications: delayed anterior cingulate maturation was associated with more antisocial traits – a juvenile precursor of psychopathy.
These observations provide the first empirical evidence that, in typically developing children, even moderate early-life stress can incubate long-lasting effects, leading to increased neural pruning during puberty. The effects of early-life stress are functionally and spatially distinct from current social stress, which modulates neurodevelopmental trajectories in the opposite direction, and over different neural structures. This study also suggests that the neurodevelopmental effects of ongoing social stress may be related to adolescents’ behavioral traits. These findings qualify how pubertal neural plasticity depends on a combination of type and timing of the stressors experienced by a child.
This study shows that negative personal early-life events are associated with larger reductions in subcortical and prefrontal GMV, in line with findings from sub-clinical cohorts of adolescents dealing with severe traumatic events. Elaborating on previous evidence indicating how childhood maltreatment flattens the growth of the amygdala between early to mid-adolescence 10 , here we show that the trajectory of amygdala development continues to be impacted by early-life stress during the second half of puberty. Namely, even moderate negative personal events occurring early in life, such as illness, bias pubertal neurodevelopmental patterns. This bias consists of an increased reduction of grey matter volume, within a prefrontal-amygdala circuit known to control emotional reactivity. The direction and location of these findings fit with the notion that early-life stress leads to faster pubertal brain maturation possibly as a consequence of accelerated synaptic pruning. Rodent models have shown that early-life stressors alter the regulation of glucocorticoids and hypothalamic corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF), leading to long-term hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis disturbances 40 . Early-life stress may also prematurely activate structures of the emotion regulation circuit, fixating the brain into an adult-like configuration with precocious myelination of amygdala axons and earlier emergence of adult-like long term potentiation (LTP).
Released on-line 06.21.18. Full text available here
Below please find an article from yesterday on the Byzantine, Texas website.
Thursday, June 21, 2018
“21st century theology” topic of recent conference
http://byztex.blogspot.com/2018/06/21st-century-theology-topic-of-recent.html?m=1
Dr Stankovic
I have read your response
Below please find an article from today on the Fox News website.
I’m a pastor and I want you to quit church. Now!
By Chris Sonksen | Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/06/23/im-pastor-and-want-to-quit-church-now.html
Below please find an article by Mr. Peter S. Makrias of Estiator Magazine, which was posted yesterday the OCL website.
On the Issue of an Autocephalous Orthodox Church
Source: Estiator Magazine
By Peter S. Makrias
BY WEBMASTER ON JUNE 22, 2018
GOVERNANCE & UNITY ESSAYS,
GOVERNANCE & UNITY NEWS
http://ocl.org/on-the-issue-of-an-autocephalous-orthodox-church/
Below please find an article by Mr. Peter S. Makrias of Estiator Magazine, which was posted yesterday on the OCL website.
On the Issue of an Autocephalous Orthodox Church
Source: Estiator Magazine
By Peter S. Makrias
BY WEBMASTER ON JUNE 22, 2018
GOVERNANCE & UNITY ESSAYS,
GOVERNANCE & UNITY NEWS
http://ocl.org/on-the-issue-of-an-autocephalous-orthodox-church/
Below please find an article from yesterday on the Byzantine, Texas website.
Saturday, June 23, 2018
Heads of Oriental Orthodox Churches meet in Lebanon
http://byztex.blogspot.com/2018/06/heads-of-oriental-orthodox-churches.html?m=1
I am, as I think many Orthodox are, interested in the Oriental Orthodox. I went to an Armenian service a year or two back, something I’d always wanted to do, but outside of California not so easy! Anyway, it was St. Vartan’s in Oakland. In a really small nutshell I found the Armenian church and liturgy to be like an austere Roman Catholic one. That is to say, the Armenian church building has the “feel” of an RC church, including the altar, but it has no statuary and little iconography.
The service itself feels Eastern in that it is mostly sung, and the congregation is standing. The only word of the whole thing I understood was “proskomen”, evidently a borrowing by the Armenians. Of course, the Armenians are really impenetrable to outsiders because of the language, which seems to be regarded as central.
The you-tube clips of Coptic services are very interesting indeed. They seem very Orthodox but more musical and lively.
Anyhow, how are the Oriental Orthodox doing with the secular assaults so troubling the rest of us? Most curious about that.
Oddly enough, when I first arrived at SVS in the 70’s the Armenian “seminary” was a single room at SVS that constituted their chapel/classroom for “Armenian” studies. Otherwise, they were taught by Frs. Schmemann, Meyendorff, Hopko, et al. Like everyone else. I was told that they served in the altar in the general student rotation for matins & vespers until the unfortunate event where an Armenian student was on a ladder in the altar – cleaning or something – fell and crushed the altar table. They stopped serving. But for years they attended most of the chapel services with us. The only time I ever attended a service was at their NYC St. Vartan’s Cathedral on 2nd Avenue, not far from the United Nations. The Center astonishingly takes up the entire square block of midtown Manhattan property, the value is which is beyond estimation. The interior and the service were as you describe, but it was great Lent, meaning a massive floor-to-ceiling curtain divided the altar area from the rest of the church, making it all the more in penetrable. And it was my impression, as you say, that they were completely uninterested in translating anything from the Armenian. I had an Armenian roommate and I asked how this affected potential converts, and I must say I never got the impression this was much of a concern. Times may have changed…
The Copts, on the other hand, in my limited experience were among some of the most genuinely faithful, genuinely welcoming Christians I have ever met. I attended a Liturgy in Cleveland with an OCA, ROCOR, and an Antiochian priest who were all friends through the Clergy Association. We were given the wrong time and arrived very late – like two hours late – and there was two hours of Liturgy yet to come! And there would be an adult Bible study to follow. This is in line with what Fr. Alexander described seeing in Cairo at the cathedral of Pope and Pariarch Shenouda: every Friday night, the cathedral would fill with young people who wrote questions on slips of papers they placed in a bowl being passed around. Patriarch Shenouda would from the altar and sit on a simple chair placed in the center of the church, be given a microphone attached to a small amplifier, and answer their questions for hours. In Cleveland, the church was a decent sized building filled with adults teens, children, and babies for a four hour Liturgy on a week night. And it ended when they brought out a large icon of the Theotokos, finger symbols & drums, sang their hearts out in praise to the Mother of God, the refrain of which everyone of every age sang out enthusiastically. So, to answer your questionas to how they are holding up to the common assaults we face, while I cannot say for certain, I would suspect, from what I witnessed, I would suspect a bit better than most. But obviously, take it for what it’s worth.
The Coptic services seem very joyful and I hope to have the opportunity to attend one sometime.
I understand the various historical reasons, but the utter difference between the liturgies of the Armenians and Copts is especially fascinating given their intercommunion.
The Armenian rite descends from the ancient Latin rite, and their bishops’ mitres put the RC ones in the shade!
As for the Copts, the Jacobites and the rest, I have always admired that distinctive round hat. But then, that pointed rig on Armenian robe headgear is pretty impressive, too.
When the Copts began singing and playing the finger-cymbals & drums, I immediately thought of the scene in 2 Samuel 6:14ff, “David, wearing a linen garment, danced with all his might before the Lord, while he and all the house of Israel brought up the Ark of the Lord with shouts and the sounds of the trumpets.” These are very ancient, very viseral expressions of the joy at the presence of God among His people. Juxtapose this onto the orderly view of the rows of pews in our churches… And even without them, I remember a man who would, at the singing of “let the lifting up of my hands be an evening sacrifice,” raise his hands – nothing dramatic, waist high – but the reaction was as if he were – I don’t know what – sacrificing doves! How are we affected by losing these practices? All I can say is wear comfortable shoes and bring a service book because there was no English (which may not be true everywhere).
Dance for joy Of Isaiah… I have not yet actually broken out in dance yet, but I may some day. I lift up my hands though as a evening sacrifice. Chest shoulder high. I do a lot of stuff like that. No one has ever said a thing to me.
The other interesting I noticed was that, like even the modern day Jews at the Wailing Wall of what remains of the Temple in Jerusalem, as they pray they rock on their heels forward-to-back. I long ago noticed this in patients with major psychiatric disorders – primarily psychotic disrders – and also in autistic children. It seemed what was common to all was that the more uncontrollable, stressed, stressful the environment/situation (e.g. uncertain, frightening/scary, threatening, new/unpredictable) became, the more the individual would rock, and generally always forward-to-back. There is some nerulogical research that. “rocking” can produce a calming effect (we do, after all, rock babies to sleep). I gave me a whole new perspective into self-soothing.
Below please find an article from Saturday, June 16th, in the New York Post.
Catsimatidis slams Greek Archbishop over church scandal
By Melissa Klein
June 16, 2018 | 8:20pm
https://nypost.com/2018/06/16/catsimatidis-slams-greek-archbishop-over-church-scandal/
You know, I’ve always respected Cat but this piling on (the archbishop) is no good. He’s a good man. And any way, who you gonna replace him with? It’s not the man, it’s the institution that’s rotten.
So sad. so true and it seems, rotten to the core!
Dear Greatly Saddened,
Here I’m sure that you are quite mistaken, there are far too many kind hearted Bishops, Priests, Deacons and lay members within Greek Orthodoxy that are very good Christians indeed.
You could never convince many of us otherwise.
In Christ,
Matthew Panchisin
Dear Matthew Panchisin,
My response was in reference to GM’s post above, referring to the archdiocese as an institution. Consisting of the hierarchs and their hierarchal lay appointees of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. I did not mean everyone. Like everything else, there are certainly exceptions. Nor did I mean the priests or deacons. On the contrary, I support both. They are the ones who make all the difference in the world and are on the front lines. They most definitely deserve our full support!
Below please find an article from today in The National Herald.
Prime Minister Tsipras Wants Church and State Separation
By TNH Staff – June 25, 2018
https://www.thenationalherald.com/205548/squeezing-new-democracy-tsipras-wants-church-state-separation/
Below please find a press release from today on the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America website.
Archdiocese Mourns the passing of Bishop Iacovos of Catania
Stavros Papagermanos/Press Office,
pressofice@goarch.org
June 25, 2018
https://www.goarch.org/-/archdiocese-mourns-the-passing-of-bishop-iacovos-of-catania
Below please find an article from today on the Byzantine, Texas website.
Monday, June 25, 2018
The Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal and the Magic Eraser
http://byztex.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-laura-ingalls-wilder-medal-and.html?m=1
Below please find an article from today in The National Herald. Unfortunately, the article is locked and doesn’t appear in its entirety. I will continue to be on the lookout for the article in its entirety and if found, I will post.
Demetrios Instigates Insurgency against Patriarchate
By Theodore Kalmoukos – June 26, 2018
https://www.thenationalherald.com/205751/demetrios-instigates-insurgency-against-patriarchate/
Below please find an article from Sunday on the Greek News website.
An interview with the Vice Chairman of the Archdiocesan Council George Tsandikos,on the 44th Clergy Laity Congress
New York – By Apostolos Zoupaniotis
JUNE 24TH, 2018
COMMUNITY, ECONOMY, FEATURED, GREECE
http://www.greeknewsonline.com/an-interview-with-the-vice-chairman-of-the-archdiocesan-council-george-tsandikoson-the-44th-clergy-laity-congress/
Below please find an article from today in The National Herald.
Archbishop Demetrios Reacts to TNH’S Article
By TNH Staff – June 26, 2018
https://www.thenationalherald.com/205754/archbishop-demetrios-reacts-to-tnhs-article/
Below please find an article from yesterday in The National Herald.
Archbishop Demetrios Reacts to TNH’S Article
By TNH Staff – June 26, 2018
https://www.thenationalherald.com/205754/archbishop-demetrios-reacts-to-tnhs-article/
Below please find a Letter to the Editor from yesterday in The National Herald, by John Papas CPA of Dumont, NJ.
Letter to the Editor: In Response to Huffington’s Open Letter
June 26, 2018
https://www.thenationalherald.com/205652/letter-to-the-editor-in-response-to-huffingtons-open-letter/
Below please find an article from today in The National Herald. Unfortunately, the article is locked and doesn’t appear in its entirety. I will continue to be on the lookout for the article in its entirety and if found, I will post.
It is Time to Act
By Theodore Kalmoukos – June 27, 2018
https://www.thenationalherald.com/205891/it-is-time-to-act/
Below please find a press release from yesterday on the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America website.
Strong Protest against False Allegations of Greek American Newspaper
Stavros Papagermanos/Press Office
pressoffice@goarch.org
June 26, 2018
https://www.goarch.org/-/strong-protest-against-false-allegations-of-greek-american-newspaper
Below please find a posting from Monday on the Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary website.
Seminary begins academic collaboration with theological school in Romania
25 June 2018 • Sibiu, Romania
https://www.svots.edu/headlines/seminary-begins-academic-collaboration-theological-school-romania
Below please find a posting from May 14th on the Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary website.
The clergy shortage and the future of SVOTS
14 May 2018 • Houston, TX
https://www.svots.edu/headlines/clergy-shortage-and-future-svots
Below please find an article from today on the Orthodox Albania website.
Celebration on the Occasion of the 26th Anniversary of the Canonical Revival of the Church on June 24
Category: News Published: Wednesday,
June 27 2018 07:57
http://orthodoxalbania.org/alb/index.php/en-us/lajme-3/blog/4762-celebration-on-the-occasion-of-the-26th-anniversary-of-the-canonical-revival-of-the-church-on-june-24
Below please find an article from yesterday on the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty website.
MOLDOVA
‘Outrageous Sins’: Moldovan Church Sidelines Priest In Spat Over LGBT Support
June 26, 2018 15:27 GMT
Alan Crosby
https://www.rferl.org/a/moldovan-church-priest-melinti-lgbt-suspended/29321830.html
Below please find an article from today in The National Herald. Unfortunately, the article is locked and doesn’t appear in its entirety. I will continue to be on the lookout for the article in its entirety and if found, I will post.
The Truth According to Archbishop Demetrios
By Antonis H. Diamataris – June 28, 2018
https://www.thenationalherald.com/205897/the-truth-according-to-archbishop-demetrios/
Below please find an article from yesterday on The National Herald, which has been posted in its entirety on the OCL website.
Fr. Eugen Pentiuc Appointed Archbishop Demetrios Chair of Biblical Studies at Holy Cross
Source: The National Herald
By Theodore Kalmoukos
BY WEBMASTER ON JUNE 27, 2018
ORTHODOX NEWS, ORTHODOX NEWS TOP STORIES
http://ocl.org/fr-eugen-pentiuc-appointed-archbishop-demetrios-chair-of-biblical-studies-at-holy-cross/
Below please find an article from yesterday on the Ekathimerini website.
How to revitalize the Greek Orthodox Church in the 21st century
27.06.2018 : 09:01
BY VAN COUFOUDAKIS
* Van Coufoudakis is Dean Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Indiana University-Purdue University
http://www.ekathimerini.com/230083/opinion/ekathimerini/comment/how-to-revitalize-the-greek-orthodox-church-in-the-21st-century
Below please find an article from Monday on the Washington Post website.
Climate change is a top spiritual priority for these religious leaders
By Juliet Eilperin – June 26
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/climate-change-is-a-top-spiritual-priority-for-these-religious-leaders/2018/06/26/d5e06fd2-749e-11e8-9780-b1dd6a09b549_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.57b964ba6004
Below please find an article from today on the Orthodox Christianity website.
SCHISMATIC “PATRIARCH” PHILARET APPEALS TO CONSTANTINOPLE TO LIFT RUSSIAN CHURCH’S ANATHEMA AGAINST HIM
Kiev, June 29, 2018
http://orthochristian.com/114062.html
If the schismatic Denisenko tries to deliver on his threat to take the ancient cave monasteries from the true Orthodox faithful he will be giving President Putin more than enough reason to invade Ukraine and take everything from Kiev to the east back for Mother Russia. The Ukies threatened to take the Russian Navy base at Sevastopol and lost Crimea. This latest threat may cause them to lose the eastern half of their country and capital to boot.
Sign me up!
Below please find an article from today on The National Herald website.
Archdiocese Takes $7.5 Million Bank Loan
By Theodore Kalmoukos – June 29, 2018
https://www.thenationalherald.com/206105/archdiocese-takes-7-5-million-bank-loan/
Below please find a press release from yesterday on the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America website.
Archdiocese Completes Financial Transaction with Alma Bank
Stavros Papagermanos/Press Office,
pressoffice@goarch.org
June 29, 2018
https://www.goarch.org/-/archdiocese-completes-financial-transaction-with-alma-bank
Below please find an article from yesterday on the Interfax Religion website.
News
29 June 2018, 13:16
Delegation of the Constantinople Patriarchate will come to Moscow on July 9 for discussing the topic of Ukrainian autocephaly
http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=14354
The 44th Biennial Clergy-Laity Congress of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America opens tomorrow. Let us hope and pray, that this one can perhaps become the starting point in a new direction. One with open and honest dialogue, full accountability and full transparency from this institution. One that truly embraces the laity and considers them an equal part of this Archdiocese.
If not, we can expect a lot of the same as in past years. A typical “dog and pony” or “smoke and mirrors” show and business as usual.
Lord have mercy on us and may God help us!
Below please find an article from today on The National Herald website. Unfortunately, the article is locked and doesn’t appear in its entirety. I will continue to be on the lookout for the article in its entirety and if found, I will post.
Jerry Dimitriou breaks his silence about the Clergy Laity Congress
By Theodore Kalmoukos – June 30, 2018
https://www.thenationalherald.com/206108/jerry-dimitriou-breaks-his-silence-about-the-clergy-laity-congress/
Below please find an article from Wednesday on the Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary website.
Seminarians’ Council of Crete appeal delivered to Ecumenical Patriarch
27 June 2018 • Constantinople
https://www.svots.edu/headlines/seminarians%E2%80%99-council-crete-appeal-delivered-ecumenical-patriarch
Below please find an article from today in The National Herald.
The 44th Clergy Laity Congress in Boston
By Theodore Kalmoukos – July 1, 2018
https://www.thenationalherald.com/206189/the-44th-clergy-laity-congress-in-boston/
Below please find a press release on the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America website.
The 44th Biennial Clergy-Laity Congress begins in Boston with Divine Liturgy
Stavros Papagermanos/Press Office pressoffice@goarch.org
https://www.goarch.org/-/the-44th-biennial-clergy-laity-congress-begins-in-boston-with-divine-liturgy
Below please find an article from today in The National Herald.
Archbishop Demetrios’ Message at the 44th Clergy-Laity Congress in Boston
By TNH Staff – July 2, 2018
https://www.thenationalherald.com/206367/keynote-address-of-archbishop-demetrios-at-the-44th-clergy-laity-congress/
Below please find an article from Saturday in The National Herald which was locked. As of my posting today, it is now in its entirety.
Jerry Dimitriou Breaks His Silence about the Clergy Laity Congress
By Theodore Kalmoukos – July 2, 2018
https://www.thenationalherald.com/206108/jerry-dimitriou-breaks-his-silence-about-the-clergy-laity-congress/
Below please find a news release from today on the Ecumenical Patriarchate website.
News Release from the Press Office of the Ecumenical Patriarchate
7/2/18
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew: “As the Mother Church, it is reasonable to desire the restoration of unity for the divided ecclesiastical body in Ukraine”
https://www.patriarchate.org/-/oikoumenikos-patriarches-einai-logikon-na-epithymomen-os-meter-ekklesia-ten-apokatastasin-tes-enotetos-tou-en-oukrania-dieremenou-ekklesiastikou-somat
Below please find an article from today in The National Herald.
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew’s Message at the Opening of the 44th Clergy-Laity Congress
By TNH Staff – July 3, 2018
https://www.thenationalherald.com/206407/ecumenical-patriarch-bartholomews-message-at-the-opening-of-the-44th-clergy-laity-congress/
“Exarch of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans”; now there’s a fine title I hadn’t heard before.
It’s a matter of incorporation and atmospheric conditions.
It has been given to the GOA archbishop since the founding of the GOA.
Pardon the ignorance here, is it within his fimi so the context then remains the same?
It is.
Fellow of the Institute of Military Intelligence? Federation of Indian Mineral Industries?
Search engine wasn’t much help on that one….
Below please find an article from today on the Orthodox Christianity website.
ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH: “CONSTANTINOPLE NEVER CEDED THE TERRITORY OF UKRAINE TO ANYONE”
Constantinople, July 3, 2018
http://orthochristian.com/114119.html
This is so sad. Typically Byzantine: talking out of both sides of the mouth. This will not end well.
Dear George,
It is exceedingly sad here.
The root of the problem seems to be that the E.P.’s response(s) to the temptations from the politicians in Ukraine ignores the words of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” The precipice of division and real division is therein depending on which way any human being chooses to walk or run.
Hopefully things will work out to the glory of God.
In Christ,
Matthew Panchisin
Buy that so-called logic and even the Pope could lay claim to canonical jurisdiction in Ukraine, that’s how you end up with mass messes.
Below please find an article from today on the Orthodox Christianity website.
ELDER EPHRAIM OF PHILOTHEOU, ARIZONA TURNS 91 (+ VIDEO)
Florence, Arizona, July 3, 2018
http://orthochristian.com/114115.html
Below please find a press release from Monday on the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America website.
A Positive First Day: The 44th Clergy Laity Congress Off to a good start
Stavros Papagermanos – Press Office,
pressoffice@goarch.org
July 2, 2018
https://www.goarch.org/-/a-positive-first-day-the-44th-clergy-laity-congress-off-to-a-good-start
Happy talk.
Below please find a press release from Tuesday on the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America website.
Welcome Address of His Eminence Metropolitan Methodios of Boston to the Opening Session of the 44th Clergy Laity Congress
7/3/18
https://www.goarch.org/-/welcome-address-of-his-eminence-metropolitan-methodios-of-boston-to-the-opening-session-of-the-44th-clergy-laity-congress
I read this strange article.
Are they proposing that Metropolitan Elpidophoros replace Archbishop Demetrius here in America? Or are they proposing him for Sainthood?
I’d say that the fix is in. I shudder whenever I hear the word “progressive”. I imagine the GOA will become more “inclusive” and “tolerant” under his watch. And that Michael Huffington will open the money spigots to finish St Nicholas Shrine.
It will be great. Abp Demetrius has at least kept the peace with other jurisdictions. This guy would blow the lid off. I hope they send him here. Better to get on with the break.
Below please find an article from today in The National Herald.
Archon Mike Psaros Report to the 44 Clergy Laity Congress
By Theodore Kalmoukos – July 5, 2018
https://www.thenationalherald.com/206615/archon-mike-psaros-report-to-the-44-clergy-laity-congress/
I find the talk about “mixed marriages” in Archbishop Demetrios’ speech to the GOA conference to be intensely nauseating.
If the spouse is or becomes Orthodox, what is “mixed” about it? This kind of language has such strong connotations to racism in our culture. Are those who advise the Archbishop tone deaf as to not realize that?
If I was not an Orthodox Christian but was potentially marrying a spouse who was Orthodox, and if I heard talk about “mixed marriages” coming from my prospective spouse’s Church, I would heavily consider running the other way.
What would the GOA leadership prefer: a Greek or Greek-American spouse who is atheist or has nothing to do with the Church (yes, the data suggest there are plenty of those), or a non-Greek spouse who becomes Orthodox (the oh-so-feared “mixed marriage”)?
It’s not PC to say it, but ethnically mixed marriages do have extra challenges, as do the children produced from it. That’s not to say a marriage centered on Christ can’t overcome this or any other challenge, but it’s there.
The more socially and culturally alike spouses are, all else being equal, the easier time they will have in uniting.
Why is it racist for a Greek to say this, but when a Jew says the same thing it is alright? He doesn’t want the Greek race to die out; neither do I.
A marriage centered on Christ is the most important factor. Not preserving “ethnic purity.”
I also believe it is short-sighted for Jewish people to say similar things. So I don’t think it’s ok for them but not for the Greek-Americans.
However, there’s a significant difference between Orthodox Christians and Jews, aside from the obvious: Our faith is a missionary faith. Judaism is not. The only two faiths in the world where followers are commanded to spread the faith are Christianity and Islam.
I do believe that the #1 priority of all of our Orthodox churches in America should be to spread the gospel to our countrymen. However, I’m not naïve enough to think that many have conflicting priorities, such as maintaining ethnic purity. But that’s not for me. I lived in that kind of environment for a long time and experienced how shallow it can be. I believe that Christ demands something more of us.
Actually, there was and maybe still is an office at the GOA called the Inter-Faith Marriage Ministry. Demetrius didn’t even use the official language of the GOA. Spyridon, in a public interview referred to the “problem of mixed marriages.” The reality is most marriages in the GOA are inter-faith and until the GOA accepts this fact and views it as opportunity the GOA will continue in its terminal death mode.
YOu missed this one:
http://www.greeknewsonline.com/metropolitan-of-derkoi-apostolos-has-the-last-word-on-the-hellenic-college-graduation-incident-what-he-said-at-the-archons-reception/
http://www.greeknewsonline.com/approval-of-additional-funding-for-the-clergy-pension-fund-endangers-efforts-to-clean-up-goas-finances-bishop-andonios-said-if-this-budget-will-be-approved-he-will-resign/
http://www.greeknewsonline.com/archdiocese-concluded-loan-from-alma-bank-to-restore-st-nicholas-funds/
So, bottom line is, someone had to authorize and perform the actual transfer of said funds at the archdiocese. Who is/are the person/s responsible in authorizing the transfer of said funds, along with, who is/are the person/s responsible for completing the actual transfer of said funds?These are two very basic questions which the general laity is owed answers to. These funds just didn’t transfer themselves on their own. And this does not count as an “act of God” either!
Accountability is paramount. In all fairness and for full transparency, the name/s of the personnel should be released and if actionable, criminal proceedings should be in order. No more sweeping it under the carpet.
Hopefully and good Lord willing, after the New York Attorney General’s investigation, more may finally come to light.
Below please find a news release from yesterday on the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America website.
Doxology Service for the 4th of July – Hellenic College Holy Cross Orientation Educational Day
Stavros Papagermanos – Press Office, pressoffice@goarch.org
July 4, 2018
https://www.goarch.org/-/doxology-service-for-the-4th-of-july-hellenic-college-holy-cross-orientation-educational-day
I would love to See Metropolitan Elipidophoros sent to America as our Archbishop because his idea of leadership and Church Administration would convert many bishops who reject autocephaly today to embrace it for reasons of mere survival.
“Chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try again. The fall breaks them. And some, are given a chance to climb. They refuse, they cling to the realm or the gods or love. Illusions. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is.”
Below please find an article from today in The National Herald. Unfortunately, the article is locked and doesn’t appear in its entirety. I will continue to be on the lookout for the article in its entirety and if found, I will post.
Michael Psaros Resigned as Archdiocese Treasurer
By Theodore Kalmoukos – July 6, 2018
https://www.thenationalherald.com/206700/mike-psaros-resigned-as-archdiocese-treasurer/
Below please find an article from yesterday on the Greek News website.
Plenary at the 44th Clergy Laity Congress approves a budget with $1 ml deficit – Priests has chosen their benefits over Archdiocese’s financial recovery and stability – Michael Psaros announced his resignation
JULY 5TH, 2018 COMMUNITY, CYPRUS, FEATURED, GREECE
http://www.greeknewsonline.com/plenary-at-the-44th-clergy-laity-congress-approves-a-budget-with-1-ml-deficit-priests-has-chosen-their-benefits-over-archdioceses-financial-recovery-and-stability-michael/
Below please find an article from Tuesday on the Greek News website.
44th Clergy Laity in Boston: Lessons of Compassion, Forgiveness, Commitment, Decisiveness and Unity
JULY 3RD, 2018 COMMUNITY, ECONOMY, GREECE, TOP STORY
http://www.greeknewsonline.com/44th-clergy-laity-in-boston-lessons-of-compassion-forgiveness-commitment-decisiveness-and-unity/
Below please find an article from today on the Orthodox Christianity website.
ANTIOCHIAN HOUSE OF STUDIES AWARDED PRELIMINARY ACCREDITATION
La Verne, California, July 6, 2018
http://orthochristian.com/114212.html
Below please find an article from Tuesday on the Orthodoxie website.
Patriarch Irinej of Serbia: “I remain on my position, the time has not come for the visit of the Pope to Serbia”
By Emma Cazabonne
3 July 2018
https://orthodoxie.com/en/patriarch-irinej-of-serbia-i-remain-on-my-position-the-time-has-not-come-for-the-visit-of-the-pope-to-serbia/
In case people don’t bother to follow the link to the article on what is going on in Kosovo right now, here is a longer excerpt:
Friday, May 25 – The Monastery of Visoki Dečani is deliberately jeopardized
In the construction plan of new roads in Decani, a national road to will pass very close to the monastery, even though it is located in a protected area. The local religious authorities consider this route as a deliberate way of jeopardizing the monastery, which has already been the target of numerous attacks in the past.
Sunday, May 27 – Criminal fire and desecration of tombs
In Cernica, the farm building of the Mitrovic family was burned down. During the same evening, several crosses of the Christian cemetery of Orahovac were broken, and the tombstones of deceased buried last March were desecrated.
Monday, May 28 – Obstruction of religious freedom
In the village of Petric, near Klina, Serbs wanted to gather on the ruins of their church which had been demolished in 1999 by Albanian militias. The pilgrims were violently attacked by Albanian residents, denying them access to the Christian site. Later in the evening, the Serbian medical clinic in Suvi Do was vandalized and looted.
Wednesday, May 30 – A priest and his family were violently assaulted
While attempting to reach his parish by car, the priest of Osojane and his family were attacked by local Muslim extremists in the village of Zac. Armed with Kalashnikovs, ten individuals blocked their way and tried to break into the vehicle. The priest managed to extricate himself from the ambush, by driving a few yards with the aggressors clinging to the roof of the car that they were trying to smash.
A baby wounded with tear gas
On the same day, in the village of Staro Gacko, a group of local Albanians assaulted a mother and her children, one of them in a wheelchair. Serb neighbors who tried to protect the victims were also assaulted. During this brutal aggression, tear gas was sprayed on a six-month-old baby.
Greatly Saddened,
Thank you for the link. The United States created an International Civilian Office (ICO) in Kosovo, in order to “supervise” the Government of Kosovo as it transitioned to an independent nation. In other words, “decentralization” in order to integrate the Serbian minority “into Kosovo structures.” I know because my friend is part of the foreign service and lived in Kosovo as a Foreign Service Officer with the Department of State.
It seems this article you provide, along with links provided in the article, speaks to what happened when the United States government got involved in “helping” Kosovo transition, and to what the United States is up to in other parts of the world, of which most Americans know nothing. We are too busy concentrating on what WE want.
Orthodox Patriarchs – at least those with godly intent – are vital to keeping the globalist agenda at bay. Here is Patriarch Irinej of Serbia stating in no uncertain terms that the Pope will not be allowed to visit Serbia, and he states why: “Earlier this year, the primate of the Serbian Orthodox Church had said that the time had not come for Pope Francis’ visit to Serbia: “because of what happened in the past [reference to the genocide of Serbs in the “Independent State of Croatia”] and of the large number of [current] refugees from Croatia, a large part of the people are opposed to it “.
During his recent meeting with Cardinal Parolini however, the Patriarch thanked him “for the official position of the Vatican which gives priority to the dialogue between Belgrade and Priština rather than the unilateral recognition of the independence of the southern province of Kosovo and Metohija.”
Linking to an article on what is happening in Kosovo today, we find persecution of Serbian Christians is happening right now. “Kosovo Serbs are in turmoil as they see an increase in attacks against them. In less than a week, numerous attacks on the Christian community resulted in several injuries. More than 30 religious and civilians were assaulted, including a six-month-old baby. Here is a summary of a dark week, with serious acts of violence against Serbs in the region.”
https://orthodoxie.com/en/kosovo-more-and-more-attacks-against-serbs/
We need to care. And we need to continue to support our bishops everywhere, rather than doing our best to tear them down.
Jane, thank you for these updates.
Gladly, George. I’m learning, too. One of my favorite analysts, Andrew Korybko, has recently written an article entitled, “PM Abiy’s Opposition Outreaches Will Assist Ethiopia’s Peaceful Revolution” speaks to the situation in Ethiopia, where there are at least 50 MILLION Coptic Orthodox Christians. There was a recent assassination attempt on the new Ethiopian PM’s life. Mr. Korybko wrote, ““Whether in Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, or even the US, visionary leaders appear to be under attack by their ‘deep state’ foes, with the prevalence of high-level but largely unseen intra-state conflicts forming an inextricable part of the New Cold War.”
The good news is that, according to Korybko, “Prime Minister Abiy’s decision to take three main “armed opposition” groups off of his country’s terrorist list and to travel to America to meet with some of their leaders is an unprecedentedly positive outreach that will greatly assist Ethiopia’s peaceful ‘revolution’ by giving these forces a chance to participate in the inclusive political framework that he’s spearheading. ”
https://www.eurasiafuture.com/2018/07/05/pm-abiys-opposition-outreaches-will-assist-ethiopias-peaceful-revolution/
Again, we, the Body of Christ, rely on HH Pope Tawadros II to lead the Coptic Christians, and to meet with world leaders for the sake of peace. Here is a photo of Pope Tawadros meeting with Taye Atske, the Ambassador of Ethiopia to Egypt.
https://twitter.com/TayeAtske/status/884418990981992448/photo/1
One more addition to this post on Serbia is a link to the “Message of the Holy Assembly of Bishops on Kosovo and Metohija” on May 13, 2018:
http://spc.rs/eng/message_holy_assembly_bishops_kosovo_and_metohija
“Kosovo Albanian institutions, since the end of the war in 1999, and especially since the declaration of so-called independence in 2008, have shown, clearly and openly, that they desire to create an ethnically clean Albanian state in this area, one in which there is no place for Serbs, or for other non-Albanians. The obvious violation of the human rights of Serbs and the massive expulsions following the end of the war; stopping the process of returning expelled Serbs; preventing the return of usurped property; and disregarding the rights of the Serbian Orthodox Church, does not give hope that the position of the Church and the people could be improved in some “independent Kosovo”. This, regardless of whatever or whosoever guarantees the same, as the current Kosovo authorities do not respect even their own laws. The most poignant example of violating the rights of our people and the Church is seen in preventing the establishment of functional community of Serbian municipalities and disregarding the decision of the Constitutional Court of Kosovo regarding the property of Visoki Dechani Monastery, recognized by key international actors in Kosovo and Metohija, by blocking the regulation on the legal position of the Serbian Orthodox Church and Serbian cultural heritage. The recent decision by the so-called Kosovo government to build a main road next to Visoki Dechani Monastery is in direct violation of elementary legal norms. Although EU and OSCE offices, as leading Western missions in Kosovo and Metohija, clearly pointed out such a road is illegal. Kosovo’s “government”, however, does not desist from the planned road, which would, in the long run, endanger Dechani Monastery, the most important UNESCO monument in Metohija. These are just initial hints of how the “independent state of Kosovo” would behave towards our Church and its faithful people.
“The Assembly of Bishops specifically demands the inviolability of the religious rights and freedoms of the Serbian people and of other peoples in Kosovo and Metohija. These rights and freedoms are inseparably related to the position and status of our sacred sites – monasteries, churches, cemeteries, and cultural monuments. Serbia has done everything – and will do so in the future – to protect, renovate, restore and preserve these sacred sites and, sacral and cultural heritage monuments. And, in this endeavor, Serbia has the undivided support of relevant international institutions, primarily UNESCO. The highest representatives of our Church are constantly and tirelessly advocating for them, as this is not an everyday political issue, but an essential historical reality and an identifying value of the Serbian people. We cannot be passive and keep silent, given the fact that a significant part of this church/spiritual and cultural heritage has already been destroyed before the eyes of the entire world, and that the remaining heritage is now threatened with the same destiny. Relative to this, we wonder and ask how they, who initiated their rebellion by burning the nuns’ sleeping quarters of the Pech Patriarchate (1981), will protect it and other Serbian sacred sites and cultural monuments in the future?”
Kosovo has one of the largest US Military installations (Camp Bondsteel) in the Balkans. Korybko mentions Camp Bondsteel here:
http://www.minareport.com/2017/05/22/korybko-us-plan-is-to-erase-macedonia-off-the-map-and-gruevski-and-ivanov-helped/
“The US’ position smack dab in the center of this transnational region-wide conflict cauldron empowers the Pentagon to fan the flames of destabilization in the direction of its grand strategic interests, which can be summed up as the destruction of Serbia. Not only does ‘Greater Albania’ already pose a threat to other Serbian regions beyond the Province of Kosovo (specifically the Presevo Valley and Raska) which would become all the more dangerously pressing if this geopolitical beast devours Macedonia, but the breakup of Bosnia could lead to the third ethnic cleansing of Serbs since the end of the Cold War.”
Okay, one more post, to emphasize, again, how serious this is.
Macedonia, where reside more than 2 million Orthodox Christians, and all the Balkans, where reside countless more Orthodox Christians, are “in jeopardy.” From analyst Andrew Korybko:
“The US didn’t resolve Macedonia’s crisis, it made it much worse, and the fate of the Balkans is now in jeopardy because of the latest American-brokered ‘deal’… As historically traumatizing as it is for patriotic Macedonians to countenance this nightmare scenario, it’s frighteningly plausible due to the dynamics that would be unleashed with their country’s ‘federalization,’ which in and of itself is a geostrategic power play by the US and its unipolar allies in order to obtain controlling influence over Russia and China’s Balkan megaprojects which are expected to transit through the landlocked country. The US could then either prevent the Balkan Stream gas pipeline and Balkan Silk Road high-speed railway from being built in Macedonia, or passively permit them to be constructed but then retain blackmailing influence over their operations.”
It matters.
Indeed it does. We Americans should weep bitter tears because of what Woodrow Wilson unleashed upon the world back in 1917. I shudder to think of God’s wrath upon us because of of all the wars that were unleashed because of “muh democracy”.
Below please find a news release from today on the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America website.
44th Biennial Clergy Laity Congress Concludes with Grand Banquet and Plenary Session
Stavros Papagermanos – Press Office, pressoffice@goarch.org
July 6, 2018
https://www.goarch.org/-/44th-biennial-clergy-laity-congress-concludes-with-grand-banquet-and-plenary-session
A grand banquet? I believe that under the circumstances it might have been more appropriate to order the food from the dollar menu at McDonald’s.
LOL!
Seriously though, wouldn’t it have been better if all the assembled had skipped the meal altogether, put on work clothes and went to the various soup kitchens in Boston and worked there? I mean the bishops as well as everybody else. The money spent on the banquet could have been given to homeless shelter.
GM … what a wonderful thought. That really would have been awesome! Why can’t this institution think of these things?
Are they so disassociated with the real world? Is it really all just a “dog and pony” or a “smoke and mirrors” show? Meaning … all pomp and circumstance only? Truly, how sad!
Below please find an article from today on the Fox News website.
Pope and Orthodox patriarchs pray for Mideast Christians
BY TRISHA THOMAS and NICOLE WINFIELD | Associated Press
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/07/07/pope-and-orthodox-patriarchs-pray-for-mideast-christians.html
Below please find an article from today in The National Herald.
Patriarch Bartholomew, Pope Francis at the Prayer for the Middle East in Bari (Pics)
By ANA – July 8, 2018
https://www.thenationalherald.com/206867/patriarch-bartholomew-pope-francis-at-the-prayer-for-the-middle-east-in-bari-pics/
This was far more than a meeting between the EP and Pope Francis. This was an historic, July 7 meeting of the heads of churches of the Middle East. We need to understand that by our self-adoring armchair criticism of what we think we know, and by always having to be right no matter what, and by our small-mindedness and criticism, we are putting innocent lives in danger every day.
http://syriacpatriarchate.org/2018/07/meeting-of-heads-of-churches-of-the-middle-east-with-pope-francis-bari/
“After the Prayer Meeting in Bari, His Holiness Patriarch Mor Ignatius Aphrem II, as well as all their Holinesses and Beatitudes, moved back to the Basilica of St. Nicholas, where they held a closed meeting concerning the situations in the Middle East.
During their meeting, their Holinesses and Beatitudes discussed ways and means to ensure safe stay for Christians in the Middle East, and emphasized the importance of reaching peaceful solutions for the different crises in the region and all over the world.
In his word, His Holiness Patriarch Mor Ignatius Aphrem II noted that he fails to understand the position of the west in general, but also many churches in the west, concerning the presence and suffering of Christians in the Middle East. He assured that the church is not with or against governments, but is always with the country and the people, and works for justice. His Holiness considered that actions should be taken towards raising the sanctions that are imposed on Syria, because they are not against the government but against people who are suffering in their movement, food and medicine, etc. Moreover, He wished that Christian solidarity will be realized actually, and that support and help for Christians will be provided equally to all Christians without discrimination based on denomination.”
Pope Tawadros II interview:
https://www.agensir.it/chiesa/2018/07/04/meeting-in-bari-tawadros-ii-please-dont-interfere-with-the-home-affairs-of-our-country/
Awesome photos, videos and posts can be found on the Universal Syriac Orthodox Church Facebook page about the Prayer Meeting for Peace in the Middle East held at Bari, Italy on July 7th 2018.
https://www.facebook.com/SyriacOrthodoxChurch/
“His Holiness Patriarch Moran Mor Ignatius Aphrem II recited in Syriac and English the following prayer at the Prayer Meeting for Peace in the Middle East held at Bari, Italy on July 7th 2018:
“Blessed be Jesus Christ, our Lord, the Only–Begotten of the Father, announced by the prophets as Prince of Peace, born of a woman in Bethlehem of Judea: by his blood he reconciled Abel and Cain, he knocked down the dividing wall and he made the two peoples one; risen from the dead, as his first gift to his disciples, he gave peace. The same peace we ask for his two servants the kidnapped archbishops of Aleppo Boulos Yaziji and Mor Gregorius Youhanna Ibrahim together with the kidnapped priests that they may return to us safe.”
Below please find an article from yesterday on the Orthodox Christianity website.
PATRIARCH KIRILL MEETS WITH DELEGATION FROM CONSTANTINOPLE TO DISCUSS UKRAINE
Moscow, July 9, 2018
http://orthochristian.com/114285.html
Below please find an article from Sunday on the Tass website.
Russian Orthodox Church, Vatican team up to rebuild Christian sites in Syria
Society & Culture
July 08, 0:41
http://tass.com/society/1012320
Thanks for the link. I hope Father George Washburn is allowed to post what he has been talking about posting here, in writing, and not as an interview. “Antioch Orthodox Church. ” Sounds a lot like “Antiochian Orthodox Church.”
BARI /Italy/, July 8. /TASS/. The Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches have begun implementing a plan aimed at reconstruction of Christian churches and monasteries destroyed during the years of Syrian war, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, the chairman of the Department of External Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church, told TASS on Saturday.
“We have taken on reconstruction, and some churches and monasteries are being rebuilt now. In particular, restoration work is nearing an end in Maaloula. It is one of the major holy sites in the Antioch Orthodox Church, a nunnery built in the location where the Aramaic language was spoken not long ago,” the bishop said. “The nuns were forced to leave the place, but we are hoping now they will be able to return.”
Below please find an article from today on the Orthodox Christianity website.
MET. AMBROSE OF KALAVRYTA: CRETE COUNCIL CAUSED DAMAGE TO ORTHODOXY
Kalavryta, Greece, July 10, 2018
http://orthochristian.com/114305.html
Below please find an article from yesterday on the Serbian Orthodox Church website.
A Group of Albanians tried to stop Metropolitan Amfilohije to officiate Liturgy at Svach near Ulcinj
9. July 2018 – 12:21
http://www.spc.rs/eng/group_albanians_tried_stop_metropolitan_amfilohije_officiate_liturgy_svach_near_ulcinj
Below please find an article from today on the Orthodoxy Cognate Page website.
International Community Ignores Genocide of Christians in Nigeria
by ORTHODOXY COGNATE PAGE on JULY 10, 2018
in FEATURED, FEATURED NEWS, NEWS
Gatestone Institute – Raymond Ibrahim – 10/7/18
http://theorthodoxchurch.info/blog/news/international-community-ignores-genocide-of-christians-in-nigeria/
Hello,
Readers need to realize that with this article posted above, we have another example of biased news reporting in order to manipulate the narrative. Gatestone Institute is notoriously biased and right wing (easy to confirm this fact). The globalist objective is to keep Africa destabilized. The reason they want it, and they are clear about it, is that it makes it easier to take their mineral wealth. Muslims are not slaughtering Christians and committing genocide in Nigeria. The plan by the globalists is to manipulate upcoming elections.
When I saw this article was from Gatestone Institute, I knew it would be extremely biased against Muslims. The objective is to make us believe that those “bad” Muslims are slaughtering “good” Christians. The more we hate and fear Muslims, the better it is for the globalists. The point is to keep Americas from caring, to keep us hating Muslims, and to keep us from helping with aid to these countries. The same thing happened with the biased reporting against President Assad and Syria. It is mind-boggling to realize the damage and death caused by the false reporting, and by those who believe that false reporting, and even after having been presented with the truth, continue to refuse to see the truth.
“https://www.today.ng/news/nigeria/killings-presidency-warns-fake-news-inflammatory-statements-131031”
“The Federal Government has appealed to all its citizens as well as members of the international community to refrain from spreading false stories and inflammatory statements concerning the recent herder-farmer clashes.”
https://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/10/fake-news-misinformation-biggest-obstacles-2019-election/”
“Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information and Culture has said that the use of fake news and misinformation as weapons by the members of the opposition will be a major obstacle to the 2019 general elections. Speaking at the Nigeria Governors Forum for media handlers of state governors media conference he said: “Never before have this evil twins of misinformation and fake news permeated the public space as they have now. And, make no mistake about it, they have become potent weapons in the hands of the opposition,” the minister said.”
Googling the Orthodox Church in Nigeria, I came across this blog. What a great way to read up on what’s going on with Orthodoxy in Nigeria! Boy oh boy… (reading through info given here, I’m feeling mighty small as I try to grok how big Orthodoxy really is!)
http://grforafrica.blogspot.com/
Glory to God for everything!
Below please find an article from today on the Orthodox Christianity website.
ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE ELECTS METROPOLITAN OF ANCYRA FOR FIRST TIME SINCE 1922
Halki, Turkey, July 11, 2018
http://orthochristian.com/114321.html
Below please find an article from yesterday on the Basilica website.
CROCEU Members on the Istanbul Convention: The sanctity of the institution of the family must be promoted for the future of Europe
Published by Gheorghe Anghel 10.07.2018
http://basilica.ro/en/croceu-members-on-the-istanbul-convention-the-sanctity-of-the-institution-of-the-family-must-be-promoted-for-the-future-of-europe/
Below please find an article from today on the Orthodox Christianity website.
FIRE BREAKS OUT AT RESIDENCE OF FORMER PATRIARCH OF JERUSALEM
Jerusalem, July 11, 2018
http://orthochristian.com/114331.html
Below please find an article from yesterday on the Byzantine Texas website.
Wednesday, July 11, 2018
EP opens new Synodal Hall at Halki Monastery
http://byztex.blogspot.com/2018/07/ep-opens-new-synodal-hall-at-halki.html?m=1
Below please find a news release from Tuesday on the Orthodox Church in America website.
July 10, 2018
OCA represented at anniversary celebration in Prague
PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC [OCA]
https://oca.org/news/headline-news/oca-represented-at-anniversary-celebration-in-prague
Below please find an article from today on the Orthodox Christianity website.
FORMER UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT YUSHCHENKO PROMISES TO HELP CREATE LOCAL UKRAINIAN CHURCH
Kiev, July 13, 2018
http://orthochristian.com/114364.html
Below please find an article from today on the Orthodox Christianity website.
GRAND DUCHESS MARIA VLADIMIROVNA ROMANOVA TO TAKE PART IN ROYAL MARTYRS’ CENTENARY CELEBRATIONS
Ekaterinburg, July 13, 2018
http://orthochristian.com/114365.html
Below please find an article from yesterday on the Greek Reporter website.
Thousands Queue to Worship at Tomb of Greek Saint (video)
By Philip Chrysopoulos – July 12, 2018
http://greece.greekreporter.com/2018/07/12/thousands-queue-to-worship-at-tomb-of-greek-saint-video/