Report: Phanar backtracks on crucifixion remark

From Today’s Zaman (Dec. 24). No statement yet on the Patriarchate’s site. The patriarchate’s statement said: “There are similar idioms in all languages, and they are not evaluated in their narrow meanings but in their broad sense in that language. While answering questions in that regard, the patriarch obviously did not intend to imply any [...]

Battle looming over icons and prayers in Greek schools

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MbEL-C7ypU[/youtube] The head of the Greek Orthodox Church has warned the country’s new socialist government that it faces a major battle over removing religious symbols from schools. The European Court in Strasbourg has ordered Italy to take down crucifixes from its classrooms, and Greece’s Justice Minister has acknowledged that it may have to follow suit. [...]

Editorial: Who will pay the taxes?

From the National Herald: Judging from the massive, angry reaction of our readers so far, it is obvious that we have hit a nerve with our editorial in last week’s edition entitled “Give Us Your Property”, rejecting Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew’s demand for “at least” a building from each one of our nine metropolises, in order, [...]

Church of Greece rallies opposition to crucifix ban

From Malcolm Brabant reporting for the BBC in Athens: The Greek Orthodox Church is urging Christians across Europe to unite in an appeal against a ban on crucifixes in classrooms in Italy. The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled last week that the presence of crucifixes violated a child’s right to freedom of [...]

Boldness or Irrelevance?

John Mark Reynolds at the Scriptorium: There is a boldness that should come with the a commitment to Christ. When the Green Patriarch (Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew) goes to a university ridden with the problems of our age and only tells them the parts of the Christian faith with which they are likely to agree, we [...]

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew: ‘Humans have lost their original humanity’

In an address Tuesday at the University of the Peloponnese in Tripolis, Greece, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew said that “a homogenization of humans and peoples is in progress” and underlined that the environmental threat points to “problematic anthropology.” He spoke of an “ecological crisis” and stressed that “the looting of the planet, the burning of the [...]

Metropolitan Gerasimos on Christian Unity

The Greek Orthodox Metropolis of San Francisco recently posted the keynote speech that Metropolitan Gerasimos delivered in April for the National Workshop on Christian Unity in Phoenix. It is a lengthy speech so we will post only a few excerpts here. Metropolitan Gerasimos: Our task as Christians is to keep the Body of Christ united [...]

Archbishop Demetrios to hold memorial service at Ground Zero

NEW YORK — His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios of America will hold a memorial service on Friday, September 11, at 2:30 p.m. at Ground Zero on the site of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, the only religious edifice destroyed in the 9/11 attacks. The location where the service will be held is near Gate 7, corner [...]

Metropolitan Methodios: Urgent Need for a Missionary Effort

Thoughts for the New Ecclesiastical Year By Metropolitan Methodios As we begin the new ecclesiastical year, I urge you to reflect upon the theme chosen for the last Clergy Laity Congress, “Gather My People to My Home.” It is critically important for us all — clergy and laity — to respond to the call of [...]

Chambesy statement posted on the GOARCH website

The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese has just posted the official English version of the Chambesy statement, the decision to form conciliar committees in the churches of the diaspora (.pdf file).

Orthodoxy and Obama’s conscience clause

A friend sent me an email earlier today. Search Google, he said, with the terms conscience rule obama catholic bishops and conscience rule obama orthodox bishops and then compare the two. Not very impressive. (Actually, the AOI blog article on Abp. Demetrios’ awkward praise of Pres. Obama ranks first in Google, but that’s beside the [...]

Bishop Savas Launching New Blog

Bishop Savas, head of the Greek Orthodox Office of Society and Culture, is starting a new blog called Living in the LOGOSphere (no posts yet). He told Greek News that the new blog “will have a different, less personal, less whimsical character” than the travel diary blog he authored last year. Readers of the AOI [...]

Greek clergy circulate document on ‘pan-heresy of ecumenism’

(Ecumenical News International) — A group of Orthodox clergy in Greece, led by three senior archbishops, have published a manifesto pledging to resist all ecumenical ties with Roman Catholics and Protestants. “The only way our communion with heretics can be restored is if they renounce their fallacy and repent,” the group said in a “Confession [...]

Quiet Flows the Mississippi into the Matrix of Mystery

So I’m reading an article in the Wall Street Journal this morning about the Religious Left mounting an “aggressive” ad campaign on environmental issues and come across these lines: The ads, funded by a left-leaning coalition, urge support for congressional legislation to curb greenhouse-gas emissions — by framing the issue as an urgent matter of [...]

Archbishop Demetrios’ Encyclical on the Fourth of July

July 4, 2009 Independence Day To the Most Reverend Hierarchs, the Reverend Priests and Deacons, the Monks and Nuns, the Presidents and Members of the Parish Councils of the Greek Orthodox Communities, the Distinguished Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Day, Afternoon, and Church Schools, the Philoptochos Sisterhoods, the Youth, the Hellenic Organizations, and the [...]

Ecumenical Patriarch releases agenda for Mississippi Symposium

The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese released the schedule for Ecumenical Patriarch Batholomew’s visit to the United States in October. Separately, a detailed agenda for his upcoming environmental symposium has been posted online. The patriarch’s “Symposium VIII — Restoring Balance: The Great Mississippi River” offers a rare opportunity to present Orthodoxy’s distinctive, sacramental understanding of the stewardship [...]

The Perplexing Problem of Obtaining an Accurate Census of Orthodox Faithful Living in America

Hartford Institute for Religion Research HT: Orthodox Christian Laity A Quick Question How many Eastern Orthodox are there in the USA? The quick answer: Far less than usually reported. The longer answer: According to a recent study of Orthodoxy in the United States, the real membership (number of adult adherents and their children) in all [...]

Our Freedom Never Fully Realized

In 1981, the Very Rev. Leonidas C. Contos delivered a lecture titled “2001: The Church in Crisis.” Fr. Contos said the title was chosen because the American Orthodox Church had been in a crisis “for a very long time” and he wanted to fix a reference point for speculations on what the Church’s situation might [...]

Pope and Patriarch meet in Jerusalem

Pope Benedict XVI paid a visit today to the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theophilus III. The pope, according to the Catholic News Agency, “spoke with the patriarch of his gratitude for efforts to achieve greater unity between their Churches and asked the Christians of Jerusalem to raise a generation dedicated to the faith.” Pope [...]

Metropolitan Alexios Prays for Unity at Roman Catholic Service

Alexios, Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Atlanta, joined Roman Catholic Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory on May 6 for an “Evening of Prayer and Unity” service at Atlanta’s Cathedral of Christ the King in honor of the Jubilee Year of St. Paul. Archbishop Gregory graciously welcomed Orthodox Christians to the service. “Our Orthodox brothers and sisters represent [...]

Fr. Jensen: Where is the leadership?

On his blog Koinonia, Fr. Gregory Jensen responds to the Holy Cross faculty letter which, he says, “reflects no serious criticism of the failures of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to provide effective leadership either in the United States much less world wide.” Excerpt: In my view, I think that the leadership of the Ecumenical Throne and [...]

Benedict XVI in the Holy Land

Pope Benedict’s trip is off to a good start and the intense media coverage (1,300 journalists covering the trip by one estimate) is already bringing much needed attention to the plight of Christians in the Middle East. The Bishop of Rome has a deep appreciation for Eastern Christianity, as did his predecessor John Paul II. [...]

Archbishop Demetrios Visits ROCOR

Greek Orthodox Archbishop Demetrios pays a visit to ROCOR’s Metropolitan Hilarion, the first visit of a Greek primate in four decades. The Metropolitan greeted the Archbishop as the “Chief Orthodox Archpastor of America and the Exarch of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.” [ROCOR release] Archbishop Demetrios, Head of the Greek Archdiocese in North America, Visits the Synod [...]

Met. Gerasimos blasts Met. Jonah for “persecuting” the Church of Constantinople

In what can only be described as a radical restructuring of an increasingly public discussion, Met. Gerasimos (GOA, San Francisco) blasts Met. Jonah (OCA) for his recent criticism of the address by Fr. Elpidophoros Lambriniadis at Holy Cross Seminary last month. In the address, Fr. Elpidophoros laid out the rationale for submission of all American [...]

Metropolitan Jonah apologizes for ‘uncharitable’ remarks directed at Ecumenical Patriarch

From the Orthodox Church in America Web site. Posted April 17: Metropolitan Jonah issues statement on recent sermon SYOSSET, NY [OCA Communications] — On Great, Holy and Good Friday, April 17, 2009, His Beatitude, Metropolitan Jonah, Primate of the Orthodox Church in America, issued the following statement in response to recent commentary on his April [...]

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