Month: January 2010

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A Blessed Nativity to our Orthodox brethren celebrating tomorrow

Russian Orthodox Church opens seminary in France

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H/T: Byzantine, TX

The Russian Orthodox Church has opened its first seminary outside the former Soviet Union – in a small French town outside Paris. The institution is starting modestly but has big ambitions: to serve Russia’s growing diaspora and foster closer ties between Eastern and Western Christian churches.

It is a bitterly cold afternoon, but the large stone building in the heart of Epinay-Sous-Senart is warm and welcoming, with smells of cooking and a Christmas tree in the front hall. Upstairs, half a dozen black-robed students are studying theology.

The building is an old convent. But the nuns are gone and their Roman Catholic crosses have been traded for Russian icons and incense. The students are on the front lines of a bold experiment launched by the Russian Orthodox church, the first pupils of the church’s first seminary in the West.

“The Russian Orthodox church needs more than ever good specialists who know not only the life of Christian churches in western Europe, and in the West generally, but also who know the theology, the history of the Catholic Church and the other Orthodox Churches and specialists who know foreign languages and are able to study the experience that Christians in Europe encounter with secularization,” Siniakov said.

Alexander Siniakov, the seminary's director sits to the left of Abp. Hilarion

The seminary was officially inaugurated in November and it is starting modestly with about a dozen students enrolled in its five-year program. Most are from Russia and former Soviet republics, but there are plans to diversify and grow the student body to 40 over the next few years, with the seminarians also earning master’s degrees in theology from the Sorbonne University in Paris.

Read the entire article on the Byzantine, TX website.

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Calls to “Resist Europe’s secularization” made at Taizé youth meeting

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The Presbyterian Outlook

(ENI) — Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomeos I, a spiritual leader who represents Eastern Orthodox Christianity, has urged young Christians to resist secularization in Europe in a message to an ecumenical meeting that was greeted by global and regional leaders.

“After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe no longer recognizes the place for Christianity that history dedicated to it — it is as if Christianity were being expelled from the history of Europe,” said Bartholomeos I, the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

The patriarch made his appeal in a message sent to a five-day European Youth Meeting, organized by France’s ecumenical Taizé Community in Poznan, Poland.

“We wish to recall here that the identity of Europe is primarily Christian and cannot be considered without this legacy,” he said in his message to the

December 29 – January 2 gathering. “The secularization of Europe here takes the form of a rejection of the God of history. Nonetheless, the mobilization of Christians throughout Europe is an important initiative recalling the Christian roots of this continent, its identity and its values.” Continue reading →

Former Archbishop Spyridon Breaks A Long Silence

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by Theodore Kalmoukos, The National Herald H/T Orthodox News

BOSTON – In his first interview with The National Herald since his resignation ten years ago, former Archbishop Spyridon of America said he believes that “the creation of metropolises inevitably diminishes the Archbishop’s role and by definition undermines the necessary unity of the homogeneous body of Greek Americans.”

The former prelate reveals that he did not seek on his own to become Archbishop of America but he was actually drafted. He said that, “I personally did not seek such election and that I was indeed directed to accept the appointment. The way I assess things today is that my ministry was meant to be temporary and served the ulterior design of those in charge at the Phanar.”

The former Archbishop has not visited the Ecumenical Patriarchate since his departure from the Archiepiscopal throne of America and he does not intend to do so.

He came to Boston and officiated at the funeral service of his dear friend Leo Condakes, as the Herald reported in its last edition.

The entire interview with former Archbishop Spyridon is presented as follows:
Continue reading →

Lithuania defies EU to promote family values

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Some European nations are resisting the secularist and statist over-reaching of the EU bureaucracy. The article mentions the Russian Orthodox Church’s criticisms of EU cultural aggression and its overtures to the Roman Catholic Church in resisting it. Article from Mecator.net.

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Sidestepping critics, Baltic nation strengthens family-friendly law on public information.

Lithuanian Parliament

Lithuania lawmakers ended their year by amending a law on the protection of minors that had been condemned as “homophobic” by the European Parliament and other international bodies. But they did so in a way that strengthens and clarifies legal restrictions on public information which is out of synch with human dignity and family values. The small Baltic nation thus once again stands out for boldness among European states, such as Ireland and Italy, which are resisting the imposition of secularist policies by European Union bodies.

The new legislation, adopted by the parliament in Vilnius on December 22, eliminates a clause banning the promotion among minors of “homosexual, bisexual, and polygamous relations”, replacing it with a ban on public information “that encourages [any type of] sexual relations among minors that denigrates family values or that promotes any concept of marriage and the family other than that defined in the Lithuanian Constitution and Code of Civil Law” (which states that marriage is between a man and a woman). The amendments also make clear that the legal restrictions apply to education, the media, advertising and all other types of public information.

“Lithuania is a European state that holds to traditional ethical values which it has no intention of abandoning.” Irena Degutiene, chair of Lithuanian parliament

The law, first adopted in July, limits a wide range of public information considered harmful to young people, including graphic violence, instructions on how to make explosives, presentation of drug use in a positive light, pornography, ridiculing and discriminating against people or groups on the basis of their race, religion, social status or sexual orientation, and “the encouragement of behavior that degrades human dignity”.

Continue reading →

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