Month: September 2010

Fr. Peter: Well I for one would like to send a message to the radical Christians that we are not interested in you! You are what is wrong in this world and your kind are giving the rest of us right believing Christians a bad name. Maybe you should go your local Army Recruiting station and enlist in the military and go and fight for this nation rather than put her military in jeopardy.

Fr. Peter-Michael Preble

This past Sunday, while I was preaching on the love of Christ as found in the Gospel of St. Matthew, another Christian preacher was preaching hate at his Church in Florida.

Pastor Terry Jones feels that one way to mark the anniversary of September 11th is to burn the Quran. He feels that this will send a message to radical Islam that we are not interested in you. Well I for one would like to send a message to the radical Christians that we are not interested in you! You are what is wrong in this world and your kind are giving the rest of us right believing Christians a bad name. Maybe you should go your local Army Recruiting station and enlist in the military and go and fight for this nation rather than put her military in jeopardy.

Jesus Christ, well at least the Jesus Christ that I preach, preached love of neighbor as yourself. What this “pastor” is doing is preaching hate and as I said on Sunday, “hate has no place in the life of a Christian.” If God is love then He cannot be hate. So hate cannot only come from one other place and that is from the Devil. This “pastor” is no better then the radicals that flew their planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the field in Pennsylvania. If he wishes to commemorate the day then he should be praying for peace and understanding and causing a riot and fueling anti-Muslim hate.
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Note (from the release): “Metropolitan Hilarion affirmed the Russian Orthodox Church’s commitment to uphold its granting of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church in America in 1970,” said Father Alexander Garklavs after the meeting. My question: While I welcome the affirmation, does the Church that grants autocephaly actually have the power to rescind it? I wouldn’t think so. The granting of autocephaly is not conditional. If it were, autocephaly would be something other than independence.

HT: Byzantine TX

Metropolitan Hilarion

SYOSSET, NY (OCA) – On Tuesday, August 31, 2010, His Eminence, Metropolitan Hilarion [Alfeyev] of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church, and permanent member of the Holy Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate, concluded his three-day working visit to New York at the invitation of His Beatitude, Metropolitan Jonah of All America and Canada.

A member of the Board of Trustees of Saint Vladimir’s Seminary, Crestwood, NY, Metropolitan Hilarion was to have concelebrated the Divine Liturgy with Metropolitan Jonah at the school’s Three Hierarchs’ Chapel on Sunday, August 29, but was unable to do so due to illness. [Earlier reports that he was to have attended a meeting of the seminary trustees were incorrect.]

On Monday, August 30, Metropolitan Hilarion visited the Chancery of the Orthodox Church in America. Joining Metropolitan Jonah in welcoming him were His Grace, Bishop Tikhon of Philadelphia and Eastern Pennsylvania; His Grace, Bishop Michael of New York and New Jersey; Archpriest Alexander Garklavs, OCA Chancellor; and Archpriest Leonid Kishkovsky, OCA Director of External Affairs and Interchurch Relations. Also present were Archpriests John Behr and Chad Hatfield, Dean and Chancellor of Saint Vladimir’s Seminary respectively, and Priest Alexander Rentel, Secretary of the seminary’s Academic Council.

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