religious freedom

Papal Environmentalism: Pro-Life and Pro-Marriage

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Ethics and Public Policy Center | George Weigel

In his January 11 address to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See, Pope Benedict XVI continued to carve out an interesting Catholic position on ecology. The Pope insists that care for creation is a moral obligation that falls on both individuals and governments. His very invocation of “creation,” however, challenges the secular shibboleths that underwrite a lot of contemporary environmental activism.

Here is the money paragraph in the papal address to the diplomats assembled in the Sala Regia of the Apostolic Palace:

“Twenty years ago, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the materialistic and atheistic regimes which had for several decades dominated a part of this continent, it was easy to assess the great harm which an economic system lacking any reference to the truth about man had done not only to the dignity and freedom of individuals and peoples, but to nature itself, by polluting soil, water, and air. The denial of God distorts the freedom of the human person, yet it also devastates creation. It follows that the protection of creation is not principally a response to an aesthetic need, but much more to a moral need, in as much as nature expresses a plan of love and truth which is prior to us and comes from God.”
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Fr. Chad Hatfield: The Manhattan Declaration

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Ancient Faith Radio

Fr. Chad Hatfield, discusses The Manhattan Declaration, “a call of Christian conscience” that he helped produce, and defends Orthodox participation in such cultural manifestos.

Listen here:

Patriarch Kirill & Pope Benedict: A Tale of Two Leaders for a new Missionary Age

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I’ve been asked to become an Orthodox columnist on Catholic.org and accepted. Below is my first essay. Regular readers will notice ideas we discussed on the AOI Observer.

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Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

Pope Benedict and Patriarch Kirill know that virtue is the only bulwark against oppression. That’s why they exhort their flocks to moral virtue in almost identical language.

NAPLES, FL. (Catholic Online) – Over four decades ago Pope John Paul II said that the restoration of the Russian Orthodox Church was necessary for the cultural restoration of Western Europe. At the time his words seemed audacious. Russia was still under the Communist yoke, the winds in Poland were just starting to blow, and the Berlin wall loomed invincible.

Culture watchers dismissed the statement as the wistful longing of a faithful man. Yet John Paul, with his gift of seeing through the clutter of immediate events into the deeper and far-reaching ways of God, knew better. He believed that the fall of Communism would unleash a transformation that could only come from those who suffered.

His words are proving true. The Orthodox Church in Russia, after 80 years of brutal persecution, is emerging not only as a religious force in Europe, but also as the new leader in worldwide Orthodox Christianity. More Christians have been killed for their faith in the last century than all other centuries combined. Many of them were the Orthodox Christians of Eastern Europe.

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Pope Shenouda calls for freedom of worship

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H/T: St. Andrew House Discussion Forum

“And they cried with a loud voice, saying,
How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”
Rev. 6:10
“And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” Rev. 7:17

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

Christ the Teacher (Coptic icon)

St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church of Cleveland, Ohio, USA calls on all Coptic Orthodox Churches, sister churches, ecumenical friends and people of goodwill to designate Sunday, February 14, 2010 as a Day of Prayer and Remembrance for the Coptic Martyrs of Nag Hammadi. This is the closest Sunday to the traditional 40 day memorial following the brutal and tragic murders of the six young men who were killed leaving their church on Christmas Eve.

Addressing his flock at his weekly meeting at the Grand Cathedral of St. Mark in Cairo this week, His Holiness Pope Shenouda III, Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of St. Mark told the people of Nag Hammadi and the world that the news of these shootings made him feel as if each bullet was shooting him, that the pain and mourning of the families was his pain and mourning. His Holiness described the young victims as true martyrs who having participated in the Holy Eucharist were killed for no other reason than being Christians. He said their blood sanctified the ground they fell to, and that Nag Hammadi has entered history as a city of martyrdom. He called the freedoms of life and worship basic and fundamental human rights. His Holiness emotionally referred to the killing of the righteous Abel and quoted Genesis 4:10: “And He said, “What have you done? The Voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground.”

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Bare Ruined Choirs

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Soon after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, the roof of St. Andronikos church in Kythrea caved in and fell into its sanctuary. No one came by to clear the rubble, so there’s a heap of ruins on the ground covered with tangled greenery. From where I stand, on top of that heap, I can see that the walls, once known for their frescoes, have been stripped white and are now marked with black and neon graffiti. In some places there remain a few painted figures, including ones of Saints Peter and Paul, but their faces are chiseled out and their bodies have been pockmarked by bullets. Cars roll by every so often, but the one persistent sound is the hum of bees coming from a smashed clerestory window.

I came across this church off a road near the Agios Dimitrios crossing point on the Green Line, the boundary running through the island of Cyprus and keeping it cloven in two radically disparate parts: the free, government-controlled area of Cyprus, and the upper third of the sovereign territory of the Republic that Turkey seized in 1974. Turkey has since held that part under illegal military occupation, and turned it into a rogue breakaway “state” called the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), recognized by Turkey only.

Dilapidated churches like St. Andronikos are a common sight here. As the journalist Michael Jansen observes, the north, full of 12,000 years of history at a key crossroads in the Mediterranean, now looks like a “cultural wasteland.”

Read the rest here Bare Ruined Choirs

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