Month: September 2012

AXIOS! Seminary Pro Life Group Gears Up for Busy Year

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AXIOS! AXIOS! AXIOS! The story about the St. Vladimir’s Seminary Pro Life Group (below) gives me hope. The OCA has always been clear about the intrinsic, God-given, value of unborn life much to their credit. So have the Antiochians, ROCOR and every other jurisdiction. The moral tradition is quite clear: all human life holds inestimable value and when we devalue the life of one, then we devalue the life of all. Yes, Christendom has not always be faithful to the precept, but there is a world of difference between hypocrisy and retooling the tradtion. Hypocrisy still tips the hat to virtue. Moral relativism however, erodes the authority of the tradition and blinds the mind to the sufferings that inevitably result when the tradition is weakened, or worse, abandoned.

This, perhaps, is why the Fathers were so strong (some would say strident) in the condemnation of abortion (see: The Fathers of the Orthodox Church on Abortion). Were they as condemnatory in their face to face dealings with people seeking healing from the trauma (and, yes, abortion is trauma)? Not likely. They were pastors after all. But sometimes pastoral responsibility requires drawing clear lines, and maybe then, as now, a blurring of the lines about the value of the defenseless portended a collapse of the safety and well-being of others who did not possess the wealth and standing of the privileged and strong.

Why the GOA, the only jurisdiction that refuses to take a clear stand on the sanctity of human life, can’t see this is cause for worry. Their reasoning is flaccid, rising no higher than the shibboleths of popular culture (see: A patriarch who ‘generally speaking, respects human life’). A particularly egregious quote:

Do not expect from a patriarch orders or prohibitions about how to love each other! As both Bartholomew and his predecessor, Athenagoras, have stated: if a man and a woman truly love one another, I have no business in their bedroom!

Someone needs to remind His Holiness that abortions don’t happen in bedrooms. They happen in abortuaries. He also needs to be reminded that by defending his position in the jargon of pro-abortion polemics, he increases the moral confusion within society and serves only the culture of death in the end.

How can this relativizing of the moral tradition be justified? It can’t. Moral relativism is corrosive and silence in one area will beget silence in the next. It’s like the man who hides sin. Keep it hidden long enough and after a while other sins don’t seem so sinful anymore. Stay there long enough and then only a catastrophic event can awaken the slumbering mind and compel the heart toward the repentance necessary for salvation and life.

Again, AXIOS! to the St. Vladimir’s Pro Life Group. Don’t be deterred by the critics, and be especially cautious of those who counsel such things as moderation, temperance, compassion and other powerful precepts drawn from the moral tradition. Weigh how those words are used very carefully. You will find that sometimes they are used not because your critic holds them as virtues, but because he is uncomfortable with your insistence that ideas that devalue persons must be challenged. He desires your silence because he values security over truth.

Source: St. Vladimir’s Seminary | HT: Byzantine, TX

The St. Vladimir’s Seminary Pro Life Group met on September 12, 2012, to elect officers and discuss plans for the 2012-2013 school year.

Hdn. Fr. Herman (Majkrzak), lecturer in Liturgical Music, warmly welcomed new and experienced students alike, noting that while the group is only in its second year, the Seminary has had a continual presence for many years at the March for Life. Held annually in Washington D.C. on the anniversary of Roe vs Wade, the March protests the Supreme Court decision which effectively legalized abortion in all fifty states. Father Herman noted that abortion is the single greatest genocide perpetrated in human history; the Alan Guttmacher Institute reported in 2008 that there were approximately 42 million abortions performed annually worldwide.

After electing new officers—Dn. Andre Paez for President, Fr. James Stevens as Treasurer, and Seminarian Steve Osburn as Student Liaison, the group laid out an ambitious agenda for the school year.

Plans include:

• Attendance at the March for Life, Friday. January 25, 2013;
• Sponsorship of a public lecture featuring distinguished bioethicist Dr. Tristram Engelhardt, tentatively scheduled for Sunday, January 20, 2013;
• Sponsorship of a Rachel’s Vineyard presentation and training on campus—the Vineyard facilitates post-abortion healing and help;
• Management of a booth at Orthodox Education Day, which will include information about SVOTS March for Life involvement, educational brochures and videos, and announcements about Dr. Engelhardt’s lecture.

Additionally, the group pledged to continue the diaper and bottle drives for the Good Counsel Homes, which offer a loving family environment in a safe and secure shelter for women in crisis pregnancies. The members also would like to create a SVOTS pro life Facebook page, and are exploring the possibility of hosting of a workshop about end of life issues.

Bishop to Critics: Shut Up!

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Bp. Demetrios of Mokissos

By John Couretas

I listened to “Interview with Bishop Demetrios of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America” posted on AFR on Sept. 10, in which he talks about the Assembly of Bishops.

If I had been assigned to write the headline for this podcast, it would have gone something like this: Bishop to Critics: Shut Up!

The Chicago bishop says that the chief obstacle to the work of the Assembly is the cynicism and negativity of critics here in the “diaspora.” Critics have not been privy to all of the great work already accomplished in committees, he says. How can folks be more helpful?

Listen here:

“The obstacle of cynicism needs to be removed,” he says. “And … if they’re not going to be part of the process and part of the solution I would ask them to please remain silent and prayerful and that would probably be the best thing that could happen for us so that we can remove that obstacle. Maybe we can enlighten them too.”

He later recommends that the faithful offer financial help to the Assembly, thereby rounding out the trifecta of “pray, pay and obey.”

Bishop Demetrios expresses his gratitude to the Mother Churches for “allowing” the American Orthodox to offer ideas for a Great Council which would sort out our messy jurisdictional problem. Then, towards the end of the interview, he changes gears and asserts that there is no disunity in American Orthodoxy. “”Its a unified whole” in America, he says.

What people don’t realize is that the Mother Churches operate according in both “chronos” and “kairos” time, he adds. The Mother Churches are now entering in their important work in a “serious and systematic manner” but should not be pushed.

“People who are cynical need to wake up from their dogmatic slumber to borrow a phrase from another famous philosopher and to realize that the Church is alive the Holy Spirit lives. Christ lives. And therefore if it takes us one, five, ten, 25 years … I don’t know how long it’s going to take … I certainly wouldn’t want to put a time limit on that and to rush and to produce something that’s inferior or something not even considered by the Mother Churches as something significant and something serious. The Mother Churches have been around for centuries and we need to respect that time in Orthodoxy as a different kind of reality. We have a kairos and a chronos, right?”

Ten Follow Up Questions for Bishop Demetrios:

1. Does the Assembly plan to translate the phrase “blessed omogeneia” into Serbian, Romanian, Russian, Carpatho-Russian, Arabic, etc.?

2. Have you like so many other bishops of the Ecumenical Throne applied for Turkish citizenship? If you have, does that not make you a member of two “diasporas”? Which one is more important? Will Greek parishes now be opening Turkish schools?

3. How do you know when you’re in “chronos” or in “kairos”? Is it OK if I offer my church stewardship payments in “kairos”?

4. Why doesn’t the Assembly webcast its proceedings so the laity can be “in the room” too? (tech tip: webcams only work in “chronos”)

5. The Church and Society Committee has done exactly nothing in three years. Is it having trouble identifying any social problems in America?

6. You mention nothing about a unified, autocephalous American church. Was this discussed at the most recent meeting of bishops? When will the Mother Churches allow clergy and lay people to talk about this?

7. You didn’t mention anything about an Orthodox bishops meeting in Ligonier, Pa., in 1994 where the concept of “diaspora” was denounced. Would the Assembly consider established an Archbishop Iakovos Award, to be given annually to the American Orthodox layperson or clergy member who has done outstanding work for the cause of unity?

8. The Phanar representative who lectured American Orthodox about their immaturity in 2009 has since been promoted to the rank of metropolitan and is now being talked about as the next patriarch. Does this bode well for the cause of American unity and independence?

9. Why does the Assembly ask for donations from lay people when most don’t even know it exists? Does the Assembly have a projected budget it is willing to share publicly? Income and expense statement?

10. Is there anything the Mother Churches can learn from their American provincials? (See: the Founders and the Constitution, religious liberty in a pluralistic society, freedom of speech and assembly, Orthodox immigrants getting wealthy via free enterprise and “the American Dream,” etc.)

A Movement to Restore Met. Jonah [VIDEO]

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Apparently, a movement is gaining steam in the OCA to restore Metropolitan Jonah as evidenced by this video recently released on Youtube. To what position he should be restored isn’t made clear but presumably it is Metropolitan of the OCA. This is an internal matter to the OCA of course and you can read more details on the Monomakhos blog. As before, I will not discuss the details about the OCA imbroglio here apart from those that impact the larger American Orthodox Church.

My immediate concern is the public slander Met. Jonah has had to endure, as well the shortsightedness towards his many gifts, particularly his ability to present the Orthodox faith to a larger American audience. I outlined these points in an essay I wrote a few weeks back. Unfortunately, I have seen good men slandered before as a way to justify bad administrative decisions from higher-ups. I will not sit silent when that happens.

What I find encouraging about the video is that the laity is finding its voice. We have good priests and good bishops in the Orthodox Church. In theory bishops are accountable to each other, in practice sometimes this breaks down. In those cases the laity has to speak up.

Video removed. After numerous (and thoughtful) complaints and crticisms, I decided to close the thread and remove the video. I’m not in the OCA and don’t want to see the Observer become a forum for the internal OCA fight, and clearly I misjudged the meaning of the video.

Goes to show I guess that we should let our neighbors do their own laundry!

I’ll leave the thread up by way of explanation but discussion is closed.

The Assembly of Bishops and the Devil in the Details

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The Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops issued a statement on their recent meeting in Chicago (read it on OCA News). Of particular interest are three statements on social issues:

We recognize the tremendous social pressures to conform to secular standards, but we exhort you to stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught (2 Thess. 2.15) so that your light is not hidden under a bushel but placed on a stand (Matt. 5.15) in order for all to see. Let our Orthopraxy attend our Orthodoxy. In this respect:

We must safeguard the sacrament of marriage in accordance with God’s will for the sacred union between man and woman and the sanctity of family as the fundamental nucleus of a healthy society. In this regard, we emphasize regular family worship, particularly at Sunday liturgy.

We must strive to eliminate the violence proliferated against innocents of every kind, particularly of women and the unborn. We call for responsibility by individuals, institutions and governments to ensure the welfare of every citizen.

We must resist the wastefulness and greed that dominate our consumer society, confessing that our spiritual citizenship is in heaven (Phil. 3.20) in order that our witness be characterized by the compassion and mercy as well as the generosity and philanthropy that distinguishes our God who loves humankind.

How to say this respectfully…

Terms like “social pressure” or “secular standards” must be used with more precision. Secularism is a term with meaning and the question of the Church and believer in a secular society is an important one.

That said, how we should “safeguard the sacrament of marriage” needs much more clarification. Liberal Orthodox commentators have argued strongly that the Church has no business in the larger cultural debate about homosexual “marriage.” Some Bishops have spoken with deliberate ambiguity on the issue. On the other hand, since heterosexual monogamy “is the fundamental nucleus of a healthy society”, doesn’t this imply that the Church has an obligation to speak out and enter the larger cultural debate?

The abortion statement ties the defense of innocent life to a generalized notion of “welfare for every citizen.” This concept is a restatement of Roman Catholic Cardinal Bernadin’s “Seamless Garment” teaching and, while true on its face, is most often used to blunt criticism of the increasing ambivalence towards abortion in Greek Orthodox ranks (see: A patriarch who ‘generally speaking, respects human life’).

Abortion will be an issue for the Assembly down the road as long as the GOA ambivalence remains. The “Seamless Garment” critique correctly asserts that the Christian obligation to the neighbor extends from conception to death. The GOA abivalence erodes that obligation (even while it claims to defend it) because by relativizing the value of unborn life, the value of all human life is reduced. More broadly, ambivalence about the moral tradition towards the unborn fosters an ambivalence towards the moral tradition as a whole.

The statement about wastefulness and greed wont find any critics, but what does it really mean?

Most likely the statements were meant to speak to a growing chorus of criticism about the silence of some Orthodox prelates on vexing issues that the faithful deal with every day. This is good. But it is also clear that not enough thought went into them. The Assembly has a Church and Society Committee but my understanding is that they have never met. We really should expect better.

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