I haven’t listened to it yet but usually Steve the Builder has very good material.

In this podcast Steve references an article he wrote for AGAIN Magazine on the Orthodox Church and same sex attraction. In it he shares the results of several interviews with Orthodox men and women who shared their backgrounds and experiences as homosexuals before and after becoming Orthodox Christians.

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The gene pool is shrinking. HT: Mystagogy

His Emminence Abp. Demetrios blessing a congregation

According to the National Herald, the future leadership of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America rests on 32 qualified celibate priests out of the approximately 600 reported priests of the GOA. These numbers were issued out of the Ecumenical Patriarchate on 16 September 2009.

Out of the 32 celibate priests, 5 of them were previously married and have now risen to the rank of Archimandrite. However, 1 of these 5 is over 80 years old, and 2 are over 70.

The Archdiocese currently has 12 hierarchs not counting Archbishop Demetrios. 9 serve their respected Metropolis while 3 serve as titular Bishops. Of these there are 2 who are over 80 (Archbishop Demetrios and Iakovos of Chicago), 2 are over 70 (Maximus of Pittsburgh and Isaiah of Denver), and 3 are over 60 (Alexios of Atlanta, Methodios of Boston, and Gerasimos of San Francisco). Nicholas of Detroit is over 55 and Evangelos of New Jersey is near 50.

Full text in Greek below (use translator):
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ArmeniaNow.com

Patriarch Kirill and Catholicos Karekin II laying flowers at the Genocide Memorial.

Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill is completing today his three-day visit to Armenia during which he and his Armenian counterpart accentuated the strong bonds between the two churches and peoples.

As part of the visit staged at the invitation of the Catholicos of All Armenians, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church took part in several events, including a visit to Russian soldiers’ memorial, a meeting with Armenia’s Orthodox faithful and honoring the 1915 Armenian Genocide victims at Tsitsernakaberd.

His Holiness Karekin II, and Patriarch Kirill signed an agreement for relationship and cooperation between the two cities of Vagarshapat (Etchmiadzin), Armenia, and Sergiyev Posad, Russia. The cities have been declared sister cities under the two patriarchs’ auspices.

Speaking about the spirit of Christian brotherhood and cooperation present in relations between the two churches, Catholicos Karekin II stressed the warm feelings of gratitude of Armenians towards “the Russian Church, the great Russian people and the state of Russia that for centuries have given a warm welcome to and shown fraternal care for numerous sons of Armenia who settled down within the borders of the Russian Federation.”
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Fr. George Nicozisin was one of the most respected clergy in the Greek Orthodox Church of the last generation. Reading through this essay he wrote a while back (I could not find the date), you can see why. There were (and presumably still are) men who understood the evangelical mission of the Orthodox Church. Fr. George was such a man. Read through the essay and see how some leaders used to think, and ponder too how far the preoccupation with ethnicity has directed the Church away from its commission to preach and baptize to all nations. Where are men like him today?

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Greek Orthodox Diocese of America

Prologue

Thanks to Alex Haley we have come to appreciate the importance of “roots.” We, too, must take a look at our roots in order to comprehend, grasp and accept the mission of the parish here in America. However, before we address the current mission of the parish, we first need to turn to the lessons of the past and look at how church history in America affected the mission of the parish. This historical backdrop notwithstanding, we will see that the aims and purposes  in short  the mission of the parish remain the same. The parish was and continues to be the rallying point and force around which Orthodox Christians find both solace and strength. The Church began with humble beginnings and grew by leaps and bounds. During the Great Depression the Church was there to counsel and nurture. And even though many changes have occurred from the early years of this century through World War II and since, the mission of the Church and parish remain constant: to evangelize, to safeguard family values and to share the beauty and fullness of Orthodox Christianity with the rest of America. Join me in a historical jet trip through the past, to help us better understand today and the future.

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Romanian Orthodox for Enquiry in America

“The demands upon our Church’s life by an un-believing society do not allow for any further delay in this process.”
Ligonier: Statement on the Church in North America, 1994

I. Three Autocephalous North American Churches.

The Pan-Orthodox Pre-Council Commission determined that the Church on the North American Continent region would cover three sovereign nations: Canada, The Republic of Mexico and The United States. Although it seems that we are to accept this as a given, hierarchs, clergy and faithful of Canada, Mexico and The United States must reject this arbitrary determination.

First, if church administration is based on region, then each of these nations must be respected as a sovereign nation. Regionally speaking, two of them are each larger than all of Europe, let alone of “orthodox” nations, and Mexico is larger than many of the nations individually given as a region.

Second, each nation already has its own honorable church experience and history of evangelization and has a working relationship with its particular and unique government. There are three separate and unique forms of government in which each Church bears witness to the Orthodox Christian faith. It is understood that the Church in each sovereign region must respond to the acts of the government in which she lives and bear her unique witness to that particular society.

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Human exceptionalism advocate and author Wesley J. Smith speaks with host Kevin Allen about the animal rights-animal liberation movement and its insistence on the “moral equivalence” between animals and humans! How does this compare with Orthodox teachings about the “brotherhood” of humans, animals and inanimate nature (St Gregory Palamas)? Listen and find out !

Listen here:

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From The Corner on National Review Online.

Sitting in an airport, on his way home to Michigan, Rep. Bart Stupak, a pro-life Democrat, is chagrined. “They’re ignoring me,” he says, in a phone interview with National Review Online. “That’s their strategy now. The House Democratic leaders think they have the votes to pass the Senate’s health-care bill without us. At this point, there is no doubt that they’ve been able to peel off one or two of my twelve. And even if they don’t have the votes, it’s been made clear to us that they won’t insert our language on the abortion issue.”

According to Stupak, that group of twelve pro-life House Democrats — the “Stupak dozen” — has privately agreed for months to vote ‘no’ on the Senate’s health-care bill if federal funding for abortion is included in the final legislative language. Now, in the debate’s final hours, Stupak says the other eleven are coming under “enormous” political pressure from both the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). “I am a definite ‘no’ vote,” he says. “I didn’t cave. The others are having both of their arms twisted, and we’re all getting pounded by our traditional Democratic supporters, like unions.”

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ROCOR Metropolitan, bishops, and clergy visit St. Tikhon’s Monastery

Bp. Tikhon and Met. Hilarion

Accompanying Metropolitan Hilarion were His Grace, Bishop Jerome of Manhattan; His Grace, Bishop George of Mayfield; and a delegation of over seventy clergy from ROCOR’s Eastern American and New York Diocese.

Metropolitan Hilarion was welcomed to the monastery by the recently elected Abbot, Igumen Sergius, after which they toured the monastery grounds, church and chapels, icon repository, and museum.
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It’s really the second. The first was Ligonier.

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The 65 Orthodox Bishops in the Americas received their invitations to attend the first Episcopal Assembly to be held under the new Chambesy agreement last week. Writing to all as the representative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, Archbishop Demetrios stated:

“Therefore, in order to comment the process to which we have all been called within the designated region “North and Central America”, I invite you to participate at the first Episcopal Assembly of the region that will be convened in New York City on May 26 and 27, 2010. Preparations are under way in order to facilitate your participation. Ground transportation, lodging, all meals, and meeting facilities are currently being readied. It is requested that you arrive on Tuesday, May 25th in order to be present for the First Session of the Assembly the morning of Wednesday, May 26th. In order that we may two full days for the Assembly, please make your travel arrangements in order to leave on Friday, May 28th. All three nights in New York City will be provided to you…”

The new Assembly will replace SCOBA. One of the major differences between the new Episcopal Assembly and SCOBA is that all the bishops will be invited to attend, not just representatives; and that voting will be by local churches – not jurisdictions. Thus all the jurisdictions under one local Church (e.g. the Albanians, Ukrainians, Greeks and Carpatho-Russians, all under Constantinople) will cast one united ballot. For the purposes of the Assembly the OCA will be one of eight local Churches, rather than just another one of 23 jurisdictions.

Brilliant! Met. Hilarion’s warning deals with what Nietzsche called the “transvaluation of values” — what his dark prophesy warned would happen in the West because “God is Dead,” by which he meant that Western culture was entering into a period where it functioned within the cultural structures shaped by Christianity but without concrete, existential communion with the Savior — the kind of communion that would lead to martyrdom if required. Those structures would weaken as the historical memory of Christianity grew increasingly dim from one generation to the next.

That is the period we are in today, call it secularism, but understand that secularism is just a layover from one city to the next. We have left the City of God (recalling Augustine) for what — Islamic domination? Perhaps. Man cannot live by bread alone, and that includes the secularist as well as the believer.

Met. Hilarion calls for nothing less than the spiritual transformation of culture. His clarity comes from the cleansing of the persecution of the Orthodox Church by Communism, that ghastly and barbaric attempt to build a Tower of Babel on materialist principles — principles in which God, and thus any appeal to transcendent values that shape morality and meaning, were violently expunged. It unleashed a horrible evil, and that experience of suffering contributes today to the clarity of vision and great boldness we see in Met. Hilarion’s call for renewal and accountability.

Compare this to the impoverished thinking on human value coming out of Constantinople that we have been discussing on this blog the last few days. The reason Constantinople’s compromise with the dominant culture concerning abortion is dangerous is this: If the devaluation of the human person is justified by any hierarch, the moral tradition that he represents and that the West so desperately needs for cultural renewal, is presented as a perversion of itself. Abortion is always the way that social engineers begin their retooling of society. Once society accepts the devaluation of unborn life, it is much easier to devalue all other life.

Russia already went through it. We are next. Don’t believe me? Read Solzhenitsyn’s warning years ago.

Let the discussion begin. (Meanwhile, some of you might be interested in an article I wrote several years ago that shares some of the ideas Met. Hilarion spoke about: The Artist as Vandal: Culture and the desecration of religious symbols.)

9.03.2010 · Analitics, DECR Chairman Russian Orthodox Church – Department for External Church Relations

Metropolitan Hilarion

Speaking about the Patriarchal Council for Culture established by the Holy Synod on March 5, he said, ‘The point is not control or censure. The point is constructive cooperation between the Church and those representatives of the world of culture who wish this cooperation. The Church does not impose anything on anybody; she only offers her participation and assistance to those who wish it’.

The Church does not have ‘an ideology’ of her own, he said, unless it is viewed as ideology that she ‘is called to save people, to make their life better, purer and brighter. And this is unachievable without having a spiritual and moral pivot’.

According to him, culture is not neutral spiritually and morally as ‘it can carry both a positive and negative moral message and can equally create and destroy’.
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http://www.secretariat.orthodoxtheologicalinstitute.org/

After months of catechetical and pastoral follow-up, the Archiepiscopal Vicar, the Right Reverend Mitered Archimandrite Dr. Andrew (Vujisić), traveled to Guatemala in January 2010 and received Msgr. Andrés Girón and Msgr. Mihail Castellanos of the independent Iglesia Católica Ortodoxa de Guatemala (ICOG), into the Orthodox Church. At that time, guidelines were also established to facilitate the reception of the ICOG’s 527,000 members, which are overwhelmingly indigenous. The former ICOG has 334 churches in Guatemala and southern Mexico, 12 clergymen, 14 seminarians, 250 lay ministers, and 380 catechists. It also has an administrative office on 280 acres, a community college and 2 schools with 12 professors / teachers, and a monastery on 480 acres. Fourteen students from Guatemala are now enrolled in the St. Gregory Nazianzen Orthodox Theological Institute Licentiate degree program.

In February 2010, the Right Reverend Mitered Archimandrite Dr. Andrew (Vujisić) returned to Guatemala and met with clerics and others who assist in the Church’s pastoral work and outreach. He discussed mission and ministry priorities, and economic development with Msgr. Andrés Girón and Msgr. Mihail Castellanos. He met and encouraged the faithful who collaborate in the diverse ministries in Guatemala, visited schools and institutions, and spoke at length with seminarians regarding matters related to the Orthodox faith, especially the importance of the development of an Orthodox phronema, praxis, and liturgical life. His Right Reverence inspected places of worship, liturgical vessels, vestments, etc. in order to assess the needs of the Church in Guatemala. Twelve full sets of vestments for Priests were given to Msgr. Mihail Castellanos. Catechisms were distributed to the lay ministers and catechists.
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A summary of a recent speech from a Catholic Cardinal who argues that all ecumenical activity should lead to a reconciliation of all Churches with Rome. Read the full text of the speech. Orthodoxy is only mentioned in terms of the “Eastern Catholic” practices.

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St. Peter's Basilica

Tracing the history of Anglican-Catholic dialogue since the Second Vatican Council, Cardinal Levada noted that Anglican decisions to ordain women and countenance homosexual activity were not consistent with earlier statements agreed to by Anglican and Catholic theologians. “No wonder, then, that the ordination of a bishop in a homosexual partnership in New Hampshire, with subsequent approval by the General Convention of the Episcopal Church of the United States in 2003, and the authorization of rituals for the blessing of gay unions and marriages by the Anglican Church in Canada, have caused an enormous upheaval within the Anglican communion,” the cardinal observed.
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Theology is an unwelcome guest at international symposiums on environmental concerns which are largely occupied by data crunching in the service of politicians, international corporate interests, and environmental celebrities, says Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick, in Part 1 of his podcast This Holy Earth – Ecological Vision In The Cosmic Cathedral. But without a vision, the people perish, and data crunching cannot create vision. A technical “objectivized” approach to the environment where we understand creation as something detached from inner meaning and human participation — as something extrinsic to the human person — is impoverished Fr. Andrew argues. Sometimes the prescriptions are framed in a moral framework which gives the work an illusion of meaning, but fear is the engine that drives that machine.

There is a lot to listen to in this podcast and Fr. Andrew has obviously has given this question a lot of thought. The ideas he weaves together (solid and coherent, btw) need to be expanded, amplified, and put into a book.

Listen here:

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Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias and Abp. Demetrios (GOA). Who is looking over their shoulder?

Needless to say, the Greek lobby is ecstatic, “His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios of America recognized the extraordinary public service of two of the Greek-American community’s brightest young stars at a reception in Washington, D.C. on the occasion of the Inauguration of the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama” (from 2008).

I don’t know the details of the conflict mentioned in the release below and don’t need to know. What is notable is the apology of a chief hierarch of the Church. Please, don’t post the details of the conflict. They will be deleted. Instead, be encouraged by Metropolitan Jonah’s frank apology. This is good leadership.

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Orthodox Church in America

HT: Isa Almisry

Another:

Also:
Are you listening The New York Times?

From Pat Buchanan’s colum “Pitching for America.” We are lurching into crisis.

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Congress this year will spend $1.6 trillion more than it collects in revenue, with the largest outlays in that FY 2010 budget for defense at $719 billion and Social Security at $721 billion.

Thus, if the U.S. Government on Oct. 1, 2008, had shut down the Pentagon and furloughed every soldier and civilian here and around the world, and announced that it would not send out a Social Security check for a full year to any of the 50 million retired and elderly, we would still be $160 billion short of balancing the budget. If you zeroed out federal benefits to veterans for a full year, that, added in, would bring us close.

Such is the magnitude of the fiscal crisis facing the country.

To balance the budget this year would require a 43 percent across-the-board cut in every category of federal spending — defense, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Homeland Security, highways, etc. — or, if one used taxes alone, a 72-percent increase in federal tax revenues.

Budget cuts of that magnitude are impossible. They would cause a revolution. And any attempt at tax hikes of that magnitude would drain off all available consumer capital and hurl the economy into another Depression.
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As I mentioned last week, I recently became a columnist for Catholic Online. They just posted my latest piece. (They are fast. I submitted it just this afternoon.)

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Pat. Bartholomew and Pope Benedict in Rome

Here’s the background. The Orthodox Church is emerging out of a period of active persecution that lasted centuries for the Greeks and a generation for the Russians and other Eastern Europeans. Orthodoxy still flourishes in the Middle East although under considerable Muslim pressure. It is growing in Africa, Indonesia (where an indigenous Orthodox Church was started by several Moslem converts), America, Western Europe, and elsewhere in the world.

Two patriarchies dominate Orthodox affairs worldwide: Constantinople (Istanbul) and Moscow. Of the two patriarchies, Moscow is emerging as the leader. Constantinople on the other hand, still labors under the Islamic yoke. Muslim extremists have attacked the Patriarchate and the Turkish government has confiscated property and other resources.

With that history in mind, what is the reason for last Sunday’s encyclical?
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Fr. George Morelli

This article is based on the President’s Message column featured in the Society of St. John Chrysostom- Western Region (SSJC-WR) Newsletter: The Light of the East, Spring, 2010.

One of the major developments in the modern age is the marginalization and indifference toward Christianity in society.  (Jacobse, 2010; Morelli, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010). The disunion among Christian communities has not been a beneficent witness to the unity prayed for by Christ Himself “that they may be one” (Jn 17:11). Secular and politically correct values have shaped doctrinal and moral teaching and practice among some groups calling themselves Christian: abortion, euthanasia, female ordination, same sex marriage, are but a few examples that are obvious departures from the teaching of Christ. Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyevⁱ, Chairman of the Department of External Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow, has suggested an alliance between Catholics and Orthodox be advanced because these apostolic churches have held fast to the essentials of Christ’s teachings. This suggestion certainly conforms to the goals of the Society of St. John Chrysostom which has as one of its goals: to make known the history, worship, spirituality, discipline and theology of Eastern Christendom.ⁱⁱ

It should be noted that the Byzantine Liturgy is an outstanding missionary out-reach to fulfill Christ’s command to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations. . . .” (Mt 28: 19) and stands as a witness to the fullness of the truth of Christ’s teaching. The Liturgy could stand as a model for the suggested Catholic-Orthodox alliance. Archbishop Hilarion points out that the Byzantine Liturgy contains “psalms, litanies, hymns, prayers and the celebrating priest’s invocations follow one another in a continuous stream. The entire service is conducted as if in one breath, in one rhythm, like an ever unfolding mystery in which nothing distracts one from prayer. Byzantine liturgical texts [are] filled with profound theological and mystical content….” The Liturgy has doctrinal authority: “as solemn entries and exits, prostrations and censing, are not intended to distract the faithful from prayer but, on the contrary, to put them in a prayerful disposition and draw them into the theourgia in which, according to the teaching of the Fathers, not only the Church on earth, but also the heavenly Church, including the angels and the saints, participates.” ⁱⁱⁱ

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Looks like religion may have led to civilization. HT: Mystagogy

From Newsweek Magazine:

History in the Remaking

A temple complex in Turkey that predates even the pyramids is rewriting the story of human evolution.

A pillar at the Gobekli Tepe temple near Sanliurfa, Turkey, the oldest known temple in the world

Standing on the hill at dawn, overseeing a team of 40 Kurdish diggers, the German-born archeologist waves a hand over his discovery here, a revolution in the story of human origins. Schmidt has uncovered a vast and beautiful temple complex, a structure so ancient that it may be the very first thing human beings ever built. The site isn’t just old, it redefines old: the temple was built 11,500 years ago—a staggering 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid, and more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge first took shape. The ruins are so early that they predate villages, pottery, domesticated animals, and even agriculture—the first embers of civilization. In fact, Schmidt thinks the temple itself, built after the end of the last Ice Age by hunter-gatherers, became that ember—the spark that launched mankind toward farming, urban life, and all that followed.
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February 26, 2010

To the Servants of God who attend the Orthodox Christian Church in the Americas.

Prayer for the Episcopal Assembly

At its February meeting, the Board members of Orthodox Christian Laity unanimously concurred that the most effective support Orthodox Christians in North and Central America – Hierarchs, Clergy and Laity, can provide to the more than 60 bishops who shepherd this land mass, as they move forward to develop a plan for manifesting the unity of the Orthodox Christian Church of the Americas, is to fervently pray every day for the successful convening and conclusion of the first Episcopal Assembly. This Assembly will take place in the week following the feast of Pentecost. Therefore, during this period of the Great and Holy Fast and the season of the Resurrection and Pentecost which follows, let us pray:
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From the podcast: “We are called to be pilgrims in this world. But if you have ever gone on a pilgrimage, you know the experience is dominated by place — whether it’s the destination, or the journey to it. One cannot be a pilgrim and be nowhere. The pilgrim is where he is. He is changed by the place where he is, and his presence changes it. ”

Good stuff and worth a listen. Visit Fr. Andrew’s blog Roads from Emmaus.

Listen here:

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One article is even from the Huffington Post, which (almost) invariably confuses moral posturing with clear thinking.

Send money to Greece? Have you lost your marbles? Sidney Morning Herald

Cleaning up Greece’s Augean Stable Huffington Post. Note the fourth to last paragraph about potential cooperation between Russia and Greece.

Man who broke the Bank of England, George Soros, ‘at centre of hedge funds plot to cash in on fall of the euro’ London Daily Mail.

BTW, did you know more Americans read the online versions of English newspapers than the English?

FOCUS North America Board Member, Theodora Polamalu, and her husband Troy, two-time Super Bowl Champion, have partnered with FOCUS North America on the “Tackle Poverty with the Polamalu Family” campaign.

Troy and Theodora realize the great need in North America and are dedicated to doing something about it. Recognizing that the poor, needy and suffering are living icons, they choose to venerate them with love and compassion by living out the gospel as related in Matthew 25 to the fullest extent.

Theodora said, “What inspired us to become involved with FOCUS is the commitment to the poor domestically, from an Orthodox perspective.” She further says that, “FOCUS implements unconditional love and a genuine interest in each individual that is served so that by God’s mercy, people are being exposed to Christ’s Church, Christ’s Holy Apostolic Church, every time they are received by FOCUS.”
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