Terry Mattingly

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Mattingly: ‘Don’t ask’ policy puts chaplains in vise


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Terry Mattingly

Terry Mattingly

Source: The Republic

The setting: The office of a priest who serves as a military chaplain.

The time: This hypothetical encounter occurs soon after the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that forbids gays, lesbians and bisexuals to openly serve in America’s armed forces.

The scene: An officer requests counseling about tensions with her same-sex partner as they prepare for marriage. The priest says this would be inappropriate, since his church teaches that sex outside of marriage is sin and that the sacrament of marriage is reserved for unions of a man and a woman.

[…]

What happens next? That question is driving the tense church-state debates that continue behind the scenes of the political drama that surrounds “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

[…]

A letter from Metropolitan Jonah of the Orthodox Church in America to the chaplains board was even more blunt: “If our chaplains were in any way … prohibited from denouncing such behavior as sinful and self-destructive, it would create an impediment to their service in the military. If such an attitude were regarded as ‘prejudice’ or the denunciation of homosexuality as ‘hate language,’ or the like, we would be forced to pull out our chaplains from military service.”

Read the entire article on The Republic website.

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Mattingly: Shocking words to the Presbyterians


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Source: The Republic

Terry Mattingly

Terry Mattingly


Anyone who attends one of the national church assemblies that dot the calendar every summer knows that they are highly ritualized affairs.

Officers will be elected.

Political issues will be discussed. Lofty resolutions will be passed.

At least one long business session will include a proposal about clergy benefits and salaries.

[…]

But something unusual happened recently during the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). An official “ecumenical advisory delegate” — Father Siarhei Hardun of the Orthodox Church of Belarus — used his moment at the podium to deliver a message that was courteous and stunning at the same time, if not genuinely offensive to many in the audience.

Read the entire article on The Republic website.

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Mattingly on Fr. Siarhei Hardun, the Presbyterian Assembly, and the press


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Journalist Terry Mattingly edits the blog “Get Religion” which examines religion in the media. The blog is a great read and worth a (repeating) look. A few excepts from Mattingly’s commentary on Fr. Hardun’s recent comments at the Presbyterian assembly (see: MINNEAPOLIS: Presbyterian gay measures criticized by visiting (Orthodox) priest):

Terry Mattingly

Terry Mattingly


As you would expect, the only place one can find more extensive coverage of Father Siarhei’s remarks — which were spoken gently, but were extremely blunt — is in publications linked to the PCUSA conservatives, such as The Layman. For those who paid close attention to the doctrinal comments in his text, his words could only be called shockingly offensive.

(Fr. Hardun) is saying that the divisions inside the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) may be rooted in a clash between those who are heeding the God of the Bible and those who are hearing the voices of, literally, another god. He is asking if part of the assembly is, in a very real way, possessed by a false spirit.

Whether one agrees with him or not, that is a truly radical and offensive statement. It might even be newsworthy. You think?

Read Terry Mattingly’s entire commentary.

View Fr. Hardun’s greeting below (starts at about 0:58):

Mattingly: The Orthodox question for 2010


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By TERRY MATTINGLY – Scripps Howard News Service | tmatt.net

Terry Mattingly

Terry Mattingly

The first Orthodox missionaries to reach Alaska traveled with the early Russian explorers and, in 1794, a party of monks established the Orthodox Christian Mission to America.

[…]

“Before the 1920s, there was only one jurisdiction in North America — that of the Russian Orthodox Church, which, as we know, was open to … the widest variety of ethnic communities,” said Archbishop Justinian of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, during last week’s Episcopal Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Hierarchs in North and Central America.

“Much has changed since that time. The tumultuous events of the 20th century forced many citizens of traditionally Orthodox countries to leave their native homes and seek refuge in other countries, which led to the rise of large ethnic Orthodox communities beyond the boundaries of corresponding local churches.”

But the key to conditions today, he stressed, is the fact that an “increasing number of our faithful belong to the Orthodox Church not as the result of their ethnic background, but of a conscious choice in favor of Orthodoxy’s truth.”

[…]

Read the complete article on the Terry Mattingly website.

Terry Mattingly blogs at Get Religion.

Engelhardt on the Manhattan Declaration


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In a new column, published in the San Angelo (Texas) Standard-Times, Terry Mattingly talks to H. Tristram Engelhardt about the Manhattan Declaration. Englehardt is the author of “The Foundations of Bioethics” (M & M Scrivener Press, 2000).

H. Tristam Engelhardt

H. Tristam Engelhardt

While nothing in the Manhattan Declaration is truly new, arguments about its call for civil disobedience will help draw sharper lines between traditional believers and the powers that be in an increasingly diverse and secular America, said H. Tristram Engelhardt, senior editor of the Christian Bioethics journal at Oxford University.

“This document is the product of a political coalition, but it’s not political in the same sense that the tax code is political,” said Engelhardt, who is advising several Eastern Orthodox leaders who are studying the text. “This is political in the sense that these Christians are working together on certain issues that have moral and public implications.”

The reality is that its authors believe there are “certain God-ordained truths” that continue to have authority and weight in American life, he said. The big question: Are they right or wrong?

“You could make a case,” concluded Engelhardt, “that anyone who recites the Nicene Creed, or anyone who believes that God has established any requirements for how we are supposed to live our lives can now be called a fundamentalist in the context of this secular culture … That is what this debate is actually about.”

Read Manhattan Declaration: Is it noble or just reckless?


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