Month: May 2010

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Progressive Christianity’s habit of ‘Embracing the Tormenters’

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The Institute on Religion & Democracy’s Faith McDonnell:

Conducting “truth commissions” to denounce American armed forces and organizing divestment campaigns to cripple Israel are vital issues to some American church officials. Raising the banner of Intifada and expressing solidarity with Palestinians are also very important to this collection of liberal leaders. They “spiritualize” the Democratic immigration and health care reform agendas with pompous prayer, but their social justice-focused prophetic vision has strange blind spots. Leftist church leaders hardly ever see, let alone condemn, the imprisonment, enslavement, torture, and murder of Christians in the Islamic world, North Korea, and China.

Church officials and partner organizations such as the National Council of Churches (NCC) and the World Council of Churches (WCC) issue strident policy statements on such topics as “eco-justice,” broadband access for “economically depressed rural areas,” the Israeli “occupation,” and “unnecessary Department of Defense spending.” But one is hard-pressed to find these church leaders denouncing the recent appointment of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. One searches in vain for an expression of solidarity with the Christian community in Jos, Plateau State, in central Nigeria, where hundreds of Christians were slaughtered by Fulani jihadists during March and April of 2010. If there are any such statements, they address vaguely “ethnic conflict” and are masterpieces of moral equivalency.

Such reticence to speak about persecution is not new for liberal church leaders. Downplaying or denying the egregious human rights violations of the Soviet system was symptomatic of Leftist hatred of America and Western values. It was also considered essential to the type of appeasement of tyrants necessary to achieve the liberal Utopian dream of a peaceful, nuclear weapon-free world.

Read “Embracing the Tormenters” on IRD’s Web site.

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How about a good Catholic story?

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This post isn’t intended to cheer-lead the Catholic Church, but to show the kind of ministry we Orthodox could also be doing. We do some very good things (FOCUS, IOCC, etc.) but imagine what a clearer focusing of goals and resources could accomplish. Watch the interview and get inspired. Here the Catholics are a good example to us. (You will have to sit through a 20 second ad.)

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Norm of faith as norm of life

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This essay is outstanding. It represents the quality of thought that should be coming from all Orthodox Churches; the words that speak to the foundational questions of culture as I wrote yesterday. Frankly, the Orthodox in America are capable of contributions of this depth and importance. I have my doubts however, that Constantinople will ever achieve this level of creative engagement with the culture. I wish it were different but I have not seen any evidence that it is.

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by Kirill I, patriarch of Moscow and all Russia

Pat. Kirill

A religious way of life – in our case, a Christian-Orthodox way of life – is distinguished by its foundation in the tradition of the Church. Tradition presents itself to us as a collection of truths that by means of the witness of the holy apostles were accepted by the Church, are preserved by her, and are developed in relation to the challenged posed to the Church in the various historical periods. In short, tradition is the vital flow of the grace of faith in the life of the Church. Tradition is a normative phenomenon, it is nothing other than the norm of faith. […] Only a life that corresponds to tradition as norm of faith can be considered a truly Christian-Orthodox life. […]

Preserving this norm and affirming it in society as a fundamental ontological value is a task of every member of the Church. […] This norm is stable and fragile at the same time. The experience of contact with other cultural and social models tells us that from that contact, this norm can emerge damaged or even destroyed, or unharmed and even strengthened. […] When the models of life different from our own are also based on their respective traditions, then most of the time they do not constitute a threat to the values on which the Christian-Orthodox way of life is founded. Historically, the Orthodox have coexisted, coexist and interact in Russia with Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and other Christian confessions. They have always lived peacefully beside the members of other confessions and religions; except for the cases in which a faith or a way of life seen as foreign has been imposed on our people by force or by means of proselytism. Then the people have risen up in defense of their own faith and their own norm of life. As a rule, these are cases that have taken place following aggression on the part of foreign powers. […]
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A Holy Alliance between Rome and Moscow Is Born

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Again, almost incomprehensible just a few short years ago. Highlight: “The common objective: the “new evangelization” of Europe. A delegation of the Russian Orthodox Church visits the Vatican, which publishes an anthology of the patriarch’s writings. A meeting between Kirill and Benedict XVI keeps getting closer.”

by Sandro Magister Chiesa Espresso

ROME, May 24, 2010 – Benedict XVI will soon create a new “pontifical council” expressly dedicated to the “new evangelization.” Not for mission countries where the congregation “de propaganda fide” is already at work. But for the countries of ancient Christian tradition that are today in danger of losing the faith.

Pope Benedict meets Metropolitan Hilarion in Rome

Pope Joseph Ratzinger wants to link his pontificate to this initiative. And this was the main topic that he discussed one morning in the spring of 2009, at Castel Gandolfo, with four prominent cardinals he had called for consultation: Camillo Ruini, Angelo Bagnasco, Christoph Schönborn, and Angelo Scola, the last being the most resolute in promoting the institution of the new office.

Meanwhile, one great ally has already united with the pope from outside of the Catholic Church, in this enterprise of a new evangelization.

This great ally is the Russian Orthodox Church.
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Vatican Hosts Russian Concert

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Pope John-Paul II, long before the fall of Communism said that the spiritual renewal of Western Europe would come from Russia. These were prophetic words as it turns out, but at the time many culture watchers thought they were the idealistic ramblings of a dreamer. Who would have thought just a few short decades ago the brutal tyranny of Communism would fall, collapsing under its own soul-stultifying weight? Who would have thought that the Russian Orthodox Church would emerge not only as the preserver of the culture of Christendom but also its guarantor as increasingly seems to be the case? This history may emerge as all the great narratives of martyrdom do: The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church and, now, two thousand years later, the Church becomes the protector of humane culture.

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CNEWA (See Met. Hilarion’s comments.)

Pope Benedict XVI poses for a photo with Carlo Ponte after the Italian conductor led a concert for the pope at the Vatican May 20. Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow sponsored the concert as a gift to the pope. Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, the chief ecumenist of the Russian Orthodox Church, represented the Russian church at the concert.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The gentle notes of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Vocalise” wafted through the Vatican audience hall and carried with them hopes for improved relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church.

After years of tense relations and painstaking theological dialogue, the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox Church are hoping music and art can create an atmosphere more conducive to their efforts to promote Christian unity.

For leaders of both churches, the artistic compositions are not simply window dressing; they are evidence of how much Catholics and Orthodox share and are reminders of how Christianity has shaped European culture.
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