Month: July 2009

It is now a police matter.

David Yonke, religion editor at the Toledo Blade, has a very thorough report on the unjust and spectacularly un-Christian treatment Antiochian Orthodox Bishop Mark of Toledo has received at the hands of Walid Khalife, of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., who sent threatening emails to the bishop and other clergy.

As if that weren’t enough, Yonke adds this:

Meanwhile, some Antiochian Orthodox parishioners are voicing concerns over the change in status of Bishop Demetri, the disgraced former bishop of Toledo. He was arrested in July, 2003, after grabbing a woman’s breast in a casino near Traverse City, Mich., and later was convicted on a felony charge of criminal sexual conduct. Metropolitan Philip ordered Bishop Demetri to undergo therapy for alcoholism, and the bishop later retired with restrictions barring him from ministry. The 60-year-old bishop, who is a registered sex offender in Florida, was listed in December as an auxiliary bishop under Metropolitan Don Antonio Chedraoui of Mexico. More recently, a financial report to be presented at the Palm Desert convention includes Bishop Demetri’s name with the six archdiocesan bishops in a list of “officers and trustees.”

Yonke’s article also goes into the continuing dispute over the status of Antiochian bishops in light of Metropolitan Philip’s sending of a letter earlier this year “to clergy and board members stating that the Holy Synod in Damascus had ruled that all bishops in North America were now auxiliary bishops.” Yonke quotes “insiders” who fear that the upcoming national convention in Palm Desert, Calif., will turn into “Palm Desert Storm.”

The Ocholophobist has been on the story. See the post, “meet walid khalife, the metropolitan’s heavy.”

Full text of Yonke’s article follows:

Turmoil envelops Antiochian church
Toledo Bishop stands ground in Orthodox controversy
By David Yonke
Toledo Blade Religion Editor (July 13)

When Bishop Mark Maymon of Toledo attended a recent regional conference in Cincinnati for the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church, local police were on guard because of threats made by a member of the denomination’s board of trustees.

The threats by e-mail from Walid Khalife of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., accused the bishop of being a “traitor,” a “liar,” and a “dictator,” and said the bishop needed to be “taught a lesson.”

Mr. Khalife also threatened and insulted other Antiochian clergy via e-mail, and Sgt. Keith Schoonover of the Sharonville, Ohio, Police Department, which provided the security at the conference July 1-5 in Cincinnati, said “the suspect has been contacted” by police in his hometown. Continue reading →

Fr. Dositheos Anagnostopoulos, spokesman for the Ecumenical Patriarchate, says the issue concerning the reopening of the Halki Seminary has been resolved:

In an interview published yesterday in the Taraf daily, … Anagnostopoulos said: “Erdoğan will certainly etch his name in history. He is the first politician to directly address issues, avoiding euphemisms when referring to them. He has talked about the “Kurdish question”, he has said that our status as an ecumenical church concerns the church only and later he said Turkey had made fascistic moves in the past. He is very open and courageous. That’s how he’ll be etched in history. We need people like this. Would this solve problems? Not right away, but the prime minister has started this. I think the Heybeliada problem has been solved.”

From Today’s Zaman.

President Obama and Pope Benedict met in Rome today. As reported by Reuters:

Obama and Benedict held private talks for about 40 minutes in the pope’s frescoed study in the Vatican’s apostolic palace and the Vatican said bioethics and life issues were a central part of the discussion.

In a surprise move, the pontiff gave Obama a booklet explaining Vatican opposition to practices such as abortion and embryonic stem cell research, which Obama supports.

The booklet was Dignitas Personae, described by the news service as the document that “defends life from conception to natural death.” And a Vatican statement issued after the meeting said the topics discussed included “the defense and promotion of life and the right to abide by one’s conscience.”

Here’s what the president will find in the opening sentences of the document:

The dignity of a person must be recognized in every human being from conception to natural death. This fundamental principle expresses a great “yes” to human life and must be at the center of ethical reflection on biomedical research, which has an ever greater importance in today’s world. The Church’s Magisterium has frequently intervened to clarify and resolve moral questions in this area. The Instruction Donum vitae was particularly significant. And now, twenty years after its publication, it is appropriate to bring it up to date.

The teaching of Donum vitae remains completely valid, both with regard to the principles on which it is based and the moral evaluations which it expresses. However, new biomedical technologies which have been introduced in the critical area of human life and the family have given rise to further questions, in particular in the field of research on human embryos, the use of stem cells for therapeutic purposes, as well as in other areas of experimental medicine. These new questions require answers. The pace of scientific developments in this area and the publicity they have received have raised expectations and concerns in large sectors of public opinion. Legislative assemblies have been asked to make decisions on these questions in order to regulate them by law; at times, wider popular consultation has also taken place.

No reason to pussyfoot around it, the Vatican said:

The pope’s private secretary told reporters after the meeting: “This reading can help the president better understand the Church’s position on these issues.”

“We know that this (abortion) is a crucial theme for the pope. There is no need to hide it. It (giving him the booklet) was an attempt to be clear, it was not polemical,” Lombardi said.

No reports that the pope compared Obama to Alexander the Great.

An interesting post on First Things by Michael Novak, “ Caritas and Economics.” Novak discusses the different understandings embodied in the six different Latin words for love.

In anticipation of some of my own work looking at private property in light of the tradition of the Orthodox Church, my attention was drawn to Novak’s definition of capitalism. I think he is correct in his assertion that, “ Especially in Europe, capitalism is a term supposed to be spoken with faint—or not so faint—moral disapproval.’ He continues that, at least among those who are self-appointed and anointed right thinker, “It is what all are supposed to be opposed to, not only by Marxists, who spent more than a century vilifying (and misdefining) the term, but also by humanists, poets, playwrights, churchmen, journalists, and all sensitive spirits.” The key to his criticism of the critics is, I think, the charge that most of those who reject it do not understand capitalism. While he doesn’t say this, in my own experience I have found that many opponents (and not a few proponents) of capitalism base their views on a straw man. So, let me turn the stage over to Novak and his answer to his own question “What do I mean by capitalism?”

It is not a term accurately defined by (a) private property, (b) market exchange, and (c) private accumulation or profits. That is the way Marx defined it, and that definition applies to virtually every economic system in history, even in biblical times. It is not sufficient to distinguish capitalism from the pre-capitalist systems that prevailed everywhere until the end of the eighteenth century and still prevail in most of what is called “the third world.” Max Weber, R.H. Tawney, and many others noted that something new entered the economic world some time after the Protestant Reformation. ( Post hoc, of course, is not propter hoc.)

Continue reading →