Month: July 2009

Bishop Savas, head of the Greek Orthodox Office of Society and Culture, is starting a new blog called Living in the LOGOSphere (no posts yet). He told Greek News that the new blog “will have a different, less personal, less whimsical character” than the travel diary blog he authored last year. Readers of the AOI Observer will recall that his blog greeting to the new president after last year’s election included this exclamation: This is the Day that the Lord has made!

The editorial focus on the new blog will range from “the political to the environmental, from bioethical issues to trends in popular culture,” the bishop says. A number of writers will be involved.

This is a positive development and welcomed here. Too much of what passes for “social witness” in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in recent years has been focused on the very mixed bag of “national issues” of the Greek state and constant collaboration with various and sundry Greek pols and bureaucrats. Defense of the Ecumenical Patriarchate against Turkish repression, certainly. Lobbying in Congress on the Macedonian “name issue,” ridiculous.

We hope that by citing “bioethical issues” the bishop intends for his new blog to offer a strong defense of the sanctity of life. But we know that might get him in “Church and State” problems with Greek Orthodox politicians who would rather defend a party platform than defend the unborn. We shall see.

Excerpt from Bishop Savas’ interview with Greek News:

Greek News: Please tell us something about your new office.

Bishop Savas: The Office of Church, Society and Culture is actually the revival and adaptation of the Department of Church and Society, which was an important part of the Archdiocese from the ‘60s through the 80’s. Archbishop Demetrios felt strongly about resurrecting that department to explore means of reaching out to the great numbers of Orthodox Christians who stand on the borders, as it were, of a full-blooded commitment to the Church.

You may recall that the theme of last year’s Clergy-Laity Congress in Washington, DC, was “Gather My People to My Home”. His Eminence and the Holy Eparchial Synod firmly believe that God has charged us to bring the world into the Church. To that end, my new directive is to promote a creative Orthodox Christian engagement with contemporary social and cultural realities. My office is charged with the task of developing and implementing programs and ministries that will assist those persons, and particularly young adults, who look to the Church for guidance in meeting the challenge of living lives that are both fully and authentically Greek Orthodox Christian and fully and authentically 21st-century American. Continue reading →

Quote from the story:

Bartholomeos warned that the failure of churches in Europe to match their statements about unity with specific actions calls into question their credibility.

The Charta Oecumenica (cited below) makes a case for Christian unity. Did its authors have the American Orthodox in mind, as well? Probably not. Sample:

Various forms of ecumenical co-operation have already proved themselves. Christ’s prayer is: “…that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:21). If we are to be faithful to this prayer, we cannot be content with the present situation. Instead, aware of our guilt and ready to repent, we must strive to overcome the divisions still existing among us, so that together we may credibly proclaim the message of the Gospel among all people.

Article follows:

Lyon, France (Ecumenical News International) — Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomeos I, a spiritual leader who represents Eastern Orthodox Christianity, has called for the creation of a churches’ umbrella body in Europe to include Roman Catholics alongside Anglicans, Orthodox and Protestants.

“It is only by engaging in dialogue and by closely cooperating that the churches will prove capable of proclaiming the Gospel of Christ to the world in a convincing and effective way,” the Orthodox leader said in a 19 July address in Lyon, France to mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Conference of European Churches.

CEC now has about 120 member churches, principally Anglican, Orthodox and Protestant, but Bartholomeos said that Europe needs a grouping that includes the Catholic Church.

This would help to promote unity between churches and enable them to act jointly on issues in Europe such as secularisation, human rights violations, racism, the economic crisis, and threats to the environment. Continue reading →

In the seventh podcast from the road trip to St. John’s monastery, after a long day Steve reflects on the meaning of work, family and death and their relationship to our salvation.

Listen here:

Ed. We tend to avoid speculation at AOI blog but this tidbit caught our eye. HT: Orthodox England.

As a result of a teleconference on 1 July, the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church in America has divided its Washington and New York Diocese into two. This means that it has changed the title of its head, Metropolitan Jonah. He is now to be known as ‘Archbishop of Washington and Metropolitan of all America and Canada’.

This change means that there is now no overlap between Metropolitan Jonah’s title and that of Metropolitan Hilarion, First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, Metropolitan of New York and Eastern America.

This appears to be the beginning of further profound transformations in the Orthodox Church landscape of North America and indeed worldwide. We remind readers that the former head of the parishes of the Moscow Patriarchate in North America, Archbishop Mercurius, was earlier this year removed to Moscow and has not been replaced.

The Economist surveys recent commentary by religious leaders on economics and the environment, focusing on Pope Benedict XVI’s recent encyclical Caritas in Veritate. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I gets a nod for his upcoming symposium on the Mississippi.

The Economist does a passable job of summing up these issues as viewed through the lens of faith, but does recoil a bit at more “purist” sentiments, such as when the pope invokes life issues.

A good line here: Globalization, technology and growth are in themselves neither positive or negative; they are whatever humanity makes of them. And to make them good and for the glory of God and his Creation, we need more “purist” notions like the Christian virtues.

Text follows:

New sins, new virtues
Jul 9th 2009 | ISTANBUL AND ROME

As the world heats up and economic dislocation ravages the poor, religious leaders offer up their diagnoses and prescriptions

Globalization, technology and growth are in themselves neither positive or negative; they are whatever humanity makes of them. Summed up like that, the central message of a keenly awaited papal pronouncement on the social and economic woes of the world may sound like a statement of the obvious.

But despite some lapses into trendy jargon, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), a 144-page encyclical issued by Pope Benedict XVI on July 7th, is certainly not a banal or trivial document. It will delight some people, enrage others and occupy a prominent place among religious leaders’ competing attempts to explain and address the problems of an overheated, overcrowded planet.

From Anglicans like Richard Chartres, the bishop of London, to the Dalai Lama, lots of prominent religious figures have been feeling the need to broaden their message. They are moving away from the old stress on individual failings (stealing, lying, cheating) and talking more about the fate of humanity as a whole. Continue reading →