Year: 2014

Texas Orthodox Clergy Deliver Stinging Rebuke to Fr. Arida and Enablers

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Statement of the Brotherhood of the Orthodox Clergy Association of Houston and Southeast Texas on the Comments of Fr. Robert Arida on Homosexuality

Published on Monomakhos

Source: Orthodox Houston

In response to Fr. Robert Arida’s recent article, which was posted on the OCA’s Wonder blog, there have been many eloquent rebuttals. We do not wish to attempt to reproduce those critiques here, but we do wish to underscore some of the more important points that have been made, and to speak out publically on this controversy.

We find it unacceptable for Orthodox Clergy, who have been given the charge to instruct and guide the laity, to suggest that the moral Tradition of the Orthodox Church needs to change with the times or with the prevalent culture. St. Paul admonishes us to “be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God (Romans 12:2). And it should be noted that the word translated “world” is not “kosmos” (the material world, world order, or people of the world), but “tō aiōni” which refers to the age (or generation, or time) in which we live. And we have no better guide as to what the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God than we find in the Scriptures and Tradition of the Church.

It is also contrary to our Tradition to write about matters of faith or piety in ways that are intentionally ambiguous – this is rather the approach of liberal Protestantism. As Sergey Khudiev wrote, in response to a previous statement by Fr. Robert Arida, which was likewise replete with studied ambiguity, liberal Protestants have “a particularity which entails a tendency to explain themselves with rhetorical questions, vague allusions and highly mysterious phrases from which you can with more or less justification guess at their positions, but are unable to explain clearly.”1

We are all the more concerned that members of Fr. Robert Arida’s parish who identify themselves as homosexuals, report that though they make no secret of their ongoing homosexual relationships, they are freely communed. One such person, wrote, on an open Facebook group (named oxymoronically “Pro-Gay Orthodox Christians”):

I am gay… I was married to my husband in a civil ceremony in 2005. When I began attending Holy Trinity later that year I was completely up front with the priest. My husband, Martin, began attending liturgies regularly about two years ago. He was chrismated Holy Saturday earlier this year. Our relationship is not a secret; I have had no negative interactions with either clergy or laity in this parish. Martin and I are not the only gay people in the parish, though after Martin became Orthodox, we are the only Orthodox gay *couple* as far as I know. I don’t think this constitutes “don’t ask don’t tell.” More like “ask or tell whatever you like… we don’t care.” Just saying.2

Fr. Robert Arida’s recent and past statements on the issue of homosexuality are a scandal to the faithful. They also present those who are sincerely struggling against homosexual temptations with additional temptations, and misdirection. As a pan Orthodox organization, we are also concerned that such blatant disregard for the Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church present further obstacles to Orthodox unity in America. We can only unite around a common fidelity to the authentic faith and piety of our Tradition. If we are not united in that, then authentic unity is impossible.

This is not a matter that can be swept under the rug of “theologoumenon.” A theologoumenon is an opinion that may or may not be correct, but which is neither an authoritative teaching of the Church, nor is it outside of the bounds of acceptable Orthodox opinion. Suggesting that homosexual sex may not really be a sin is not within the bounds of acceptable Orthodox opinion, but on the contrary, the consistent teaching of the Scriptures, canons, and the fathers and saints of the Church that homosexual sex is inherently sinful is clear and unambiguous.

We recognize that those who are struggling against homosexual temptations should be treated with pastoral patience, mercy, and love… as should sinners of any kind that are repenting of their sin, and seeking spiritual healing. However, suggesting to any sinner that their sin is not really a sin, and that they need not repent of it in order to worthily receive the Mysteries of the Church is pastoral malpractice, and cannot be tolerated.

We pray that the Bishops of the OCA will deal with this matter with the seriousness and urgency that it warrants, and put an end to these abuses.

Notes:

1. Sergey Khudiev, “Let Your Yea Be Yea and Your Nay Be Nay”, July 5, 2011 < http://www.pravmir.com/let-your-yea-be-yea-and-your-nay-be-nay/>

2. October 19, 2014

Fr. Robert Arida: Why Don’t You Become Episcopalian?

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This essay responds to Fr. Robert Arida’s essay “~~Never Changing Gospel; Ever Changing Culture~~” NOTE: Due to an outpouring of criticism, the OCA was forced to retract Arida’s article. You can read it on the WayBack Machine (internet archives).

By Fr. Johannes L. Jacobse

A great many of those who ‘debunk’ traditional…values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process. C.S. Lewis, “The Abolition of Man”

Fr. Robert Arida

Whenever you hear generalized sentiments about how the dominant culture is changing and that “fundamentalism” prevents the Church from changing along with it, then you can be sure that competing values lurk close behind. Sooner or later those values appear. It’s as predictable as the beetle boring into dung.

Archpriest Robert M. Arida doesn’t disappoint. In his recent essay “Never Changing Gospel; Ever Changing Culture”* Arida concocts a brew of disconnected statements to conclude that:

If the never changing Gospel who is Jesus Christ is to have a credible presence and role in our culture, then the Church can no longer ignore or condemn questions and issues that are presumed to contradict or challenge its living Tradition. Among the most controversial of these issues are those related to human sexuality, the configuration of the family, the beginning and ending of human life, the economy and the care and utilization of the environment including the care, dignity and quality of all human life.

These words sound so smooth and so reasonable. No wonder. Sentimental thinking produces brews that are easy to swallow. But how reasonable are they?

Not long ago the Episcopalian Church faced the dilemma that Arida wants to introduce into the Orthodox Church: Should moral legitimacy be granted to homosexual pairings that was previously reserved only for heterosexual, monogamous marriage?

Episcopalians fought each other for several decades over the question and the traditionalists lost. But why did they lose? How could a position so clearly outlined in the Christian moral tradition be jettisoned so quickly? How could the language of the tradition be so successfully manipulated to overturn what that same tradition disallowed?

To understand how this occurred we have to understand something about the Episcopalian Church. Episcopalian society is a polite society. Polite societies are civil. Those who wanted moral parity for homosexual pairings argued under the rubric of basic human fairness and decency. All discussion was reduced to the personal and Episcopalian traditionalists found it hard to rebut the liberal ideas without violating the rules of polite discourse.

Liberalism and reductionism work hand in hand. The reasoning goes like this: When the personal becomes political the more difficult questions are left unasked because asking them is offensive to homosexuals. These questions reach deep into religious and cultural assumptions, some that reach back over two millennia.

The unasked questions include: How do we address the shift in human anthropology that is at the center of the homosexual question (“I am what I feel”), the cultural ramification of homosexual adoptions, the redefinition of marriage from family to romantic unit, the legal ramifications of sexual orientation as a protected right, and more.

Orthodox culture is different. Unlike the Episcopalians, Orthodox liberals prefer appearances of gravitas over politeness. When the liberals have a point to make, they draw out the big guns like theologian Fr. Georges Florovsky, offer allusions to recent thinkers like Fr. Alexander Schmemann, provide the obligatory criticism or two of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, cite a relevant quote from the Fathers — all the elements necessary to enforce civility through presumptions of authority and erudition.

Episcopalian liberals won the debates but they lost their church. In their rush to become relevant they became a byword for irrelevancy. The same will happen to the Orthodox Church if it trades the teachings of the moral tradition for acceptance by the dominant culture. Appearances of gravitas are just that – appearances. Esau lost the inheritance for a bowl of pottage. So can the Orthodox.

Sentimentalism never replaces clear thinking. It merely seeks to shut down debate. Arida reveals as much when he writes:

If the Church is to engage culture, if it is to contribute to the culture and if it is to synthesize what is good, true and beautiful coming from the culture to further the Gospel then it will have to expose and ultimately expel the “new and alien spirits” that have weakened its authentic voice. Among these spirits are Biblical fundamentalism and the inability to critique and build upon the writings and vision of the Fathers. A tragic consequence of these spirits is a Christianity of ethical systems that usurp the voice of Christ and distort the beauty of his face. It is the saving and transfiguring voice and presence of Christ that we are expected to offer the ever-changing culture.

Contrary to Arida, the defense of the moral tradition is not an introduction of “new and alien spirits” and not the usurpation of the “voice of Christ” or the distortion of the “beauty of His face.” The opposite is true. Arida introduces the “new and alien spirit” because his attempt to legitimize homosexual pairings violates Orthodox self-understanding and practice. The Orthodox Church has always been tolerant of sinners because Christ is merciful, but it has never been tolerant of sin or redefined sin as righteousness.

This point is not lost on Arida who blames resistance to his Episcopalian impulse on the “converts”:

First, there is among Orthodox Christians the idea that nothing changes in the Church. In fact, we know that many adult converts have been lured to Orthodoxy by this misconception (emphasis Arida).

But is this really true? No one really believes that nothing changes. Arida’s real complaint is that the converts don’t embrace the change that he thinks they should.

So what is the endgame? Should we work to find favor with the dominant culture? Should we subject the Orthodox Church to the same risk of collapse that all mainstream Protestant denominations experienced when they went sexually liberal? Do we strut our Orthodox gravitas to hide the fact that we employ the language of the moral tradition in order to subvert it?

And what should we do about Arida and his enablers? Here’s an idea. Why not let those who want to Episcopalianize the Orthodox Church become Episcopalian? That way the liberals remain happy and the Orthodox don’t have to fight the culture wars that the liberals want to drag into the Church.

“Never Changing Gospel; Ever Changing Culture” by Fr. Robert Arida, OCA Wonder (http://wonder.oca.org/2014/11/01/never-changing-gospel-ever-changing-culture/)

Ecumenical Patriarch: Cohabitation of Same-Sex Couples Contrary to Gospel

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Source: Greek Orthodox Archdiocese (via OCN.Net).

The following is an excerpt from the Message of His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to the 42nd Clergy-Laity Congress in Philadelphia, delivered July 7, 2014

Our Lord, through His first miracle in Canaan, Galilee, blessed the holy sacrament of marriage, in which two persons of different sexes come together to unite into one body: and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is a profound one and I’m saying that it refers to Christ and the Church (Eph. 5: 31-33).

Through this union of the two persons male and female in Christ the family becomes a dwelling of Christ, from Whom every family in heaven and on earth is named (Eph. 3: 15-16); every family, i.e. every genealogical origin and presence on earth of which the family is the cell from Adam and Eve, through which life goes on, the earth is inherited, and the heavenly kingdom granted to the man who has been created in the image and likeness of God.

Human life is certainly a serious matter, a spiritual battle and a course toward a goal that is heaven. Marriage is the most critical and most important vehicle of this course; the marriage in Christ and the marital bond, the undefiled marriage (Heb. 13, 4), the profound sacrament (Eph. 5, 32). It has also been shown that the success or failure, the progress or destruction in spiritual life begins with the marriage.

We all realize that in the society we live, the God-sanctified institution of the family suffers serious blows from the prevalent climate of contemporary blissfulness, which does not favor the total offering of one spouse to the other and of both to the children, but nurtures fleeting, personal relationships aiming at the release from the duties of the communion of the marriage and the egotistical self-gratification of man, rendering man essentially empty, miserable and isolated, deprived of the blessing of God.

The institution of Marriage and the Orthodox Christian family is foremost a course of love, secondly a course of common spirit and common exercise, thirdly a course of creativity, common creativity and continuation of life, and, fourthly a common course toward heaven, toward the heavenly kingdom. It is a calling of God, it is a joining of diversity that leads to perfection, and, therefore, the spouses become also joint heirs of the grace of life (1 Peter 3, 7).

Taking into account the Patristic saying according to which nothing holds together life as the love between man and woman, the living together of people of the same sex as couples is not an accepted practice within the bosom of our Orthodox Church, which preserves undefiled the wholesomeness of the evangelical truth. It is irreconcilable with the commandments of God and contrary to the spirit of the Gospel. As deacons of the Church and her salvific work, we ought to keep always a clear and unambiguous stance on this subject that resurfaces constantly, because only where there is husband and wife and children and concord and people connected by the bonds of virtue there, in their midst, is Christ, says St. John Chrysostom (On Genesis, Homily 6, P.G. 54, 616).

Mother Church who is always affectionate toward all her children accepts and calls everyone to salvation, the devout and the sinners, the healthy and the sick, the strong and the weak. Not only does she accept everyone but also gives everyone the opportunity at a moment of time to repent and be saved. The Church, regardless of the passing of so many centuries, condemns and reproaches sin and does not change her stance against it, as against something allegedly natural but only slightly different.

Sacrament, then of the Church and norm of the presence of God is the marriage at which man and woman come together and become one. If the two do not become one they cannot produce many … The child is a bridge (St. John Chrysostom, Memorandum to the Letter to the Colossians, Homily 12, P.G. 62, 386-387).

It is necessary, at all costs, the struggle for the preservation of the traditional Orthodox institution of family with the cultivation of marital fidelity, the treating of one spouse by the other as a person created in the image and likeness of God, the togetherness and the unity, the following of the same path by showing obedience preferably to the same spiritual father, and mostly the constant self-denial and sacrifice, without which sanctification and spiritual progress of the family will be unattainable.

We know, brothers, sisters and children, that you live in a materialistic society that is continually distancing itself from the Orthodox morals and traditions and not favoring the traditional life; a society where faith and devotion to the principles of our Orthodox tradition often seems or is deemed by some as something anachronistic and foreign to the demands of the modern social life. It is here where the responsibility of both the shepherd and the flock lies. You, our spiritual children in America, on free will and choice and after much toil you possess the treasure of the genuine apostolic faith and tradition, of the truth and genuineness in the Grace of the sacraments, the treasure of tradition and family, despite environmental and societal limitations, as pure as the Mother Church of Constantinople has preserved it throughout the centuries. Thus, by lifting the cross of life may you offer witness of the truth of Christ, from Whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.

We, therefore, urge all of you brotherly and paternally from the Mother Church: Continue, brothers, sisters and children, Orthodox faithful of the Holy Archdiocese of America, to always be sanctified and remain vigilant, as your tireless spiritual father, Archbishop Demetrios of America, does and teaches; the shepherds in their pastoral ministry to you, the priests in their priestly vocation, the preachers in the preaching of the divine words, the lay people in the diakonia, the spouses toward their families, the ladies of the Philoptochos Society in God-loving philanthropy, everyone where his calling is. Rest assured always that our Modesty, your Patriarch keeps you close to his heart and prays continuously for your illumination, well being, success and salvation, and also for the stability and progress of the Holy Archdiocese of America, for which we take pride in the Lord.

Met. Jonah at the Institute of Religion and Democracy: Secularism and Depersonalization [AUDIO]

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Source: Juicy Ecumenicism

Metropolitan Jonah recently spoke at the Institute on Religion and Democracy. He served as the head of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) from November 2008 until July 2012. He spoke about “Secularism and Depersonalization” and its impact on society and the church.

Listen here:

Fr. Josiah Trenham: Protecting Religious Freedom [AUDIO]

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Source: The Voice of Russia – American Edition | Andrew Hiller

WASHINGTON (VR)– Some might argue that the founding of the Americas and the keystones of the United States were largely based on three principles: fair taxation, freedom of religion, and property rights. Now, two of those seemingly are under attack in Kansas. This all centers on a bill that purports to defend the rights of business owners to refuse to serve a customer if they feel compelled by strong religious beliefs.

Radio VR’s Andrew Hiller spoke to Father Josiah Trenham of St. Andrews Orthodox Church in Riverside, CA about the necessity of protecting business owners, gay marriage, abortion, and the tug of war between Judeo-Christian principles and secular policy in America today.

–Listen here:

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