Politics

Peter and Helen Evans are posting interviews with signers of the Manhattan Declaration. The latest is Robert P. George. They have around 20 interviews including some Orthodox signers on their site www.peterandhelenevans.com.

We warned the Ecumenical Patriarch that endorsing the global warming agenda was reckless. Anyone with eyes to see clearly saw that global warming (since renamed “climate change” — a harbinger that the effort might freeze over) was a political, not scientific, enterprise designed to wrestle control of economies away from nation-states and hand it over to non-elected bureaucracies.

Now more evidence about the massive corruption surrounding global warming has emerged. The American Thinker ran a piece (see: Climategate: CRU Was But the Tip of the Iceberg) that alleges fraud from more research institutions that told us that global warming was a real threat including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). It will take time for the reports to filter into the mainstream, but once they do, you can bet this house will come crashing down like ice breaking from a glacier.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese press office remain uncharacteristically silent about the support the “Green Patriarch” gave global warming activists just a few short months ago. Yet “support” is too mild a term. Pat. Bartholomew in fact threw the full moral weight of his office behind specific policies like the Copenhagen Protocols that were built on the fraudulent science.

It was a huge blunder. It fosters the dry rot that destroys credibility. The eagerness to align the Ecumenical Patriarch with the Progressive wing of American politics reveals that his handlers have a poor understanding of the American political and moral culture. They blew it big time.

Don’t say he wasn’t warned.

Fr. Reardon is an advisor to AOI. H/T: Directions to Orthodoxy

Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon

I write only to satisfy my conscience that a grave moral duty has been met — to wit, the obligation to warn fellow Christians that they have embarked on a path that will lead only to scandal and disgrace to Holy Church. Indeed, this scandal is already in play.

The Very Reverend Patrick Henry Reardon
Archpriest and Pastor
January 17, 2010

The Most Blessed JONAH
The Orthodox Church in America
PO Box 675 Syosset, NY 11791-0675

Your Beatitude,

I beg your pastoral blessing, please. You receive this letter as President and Chairman of the Board of St. Vladimir’s Seminary, and I send it as a friend of the seminary.

I write to complain of the seminary’s decision to confer an honorary degree on Rowan Williams later this month.

Although the scholarly publications of Dr. Williams may be cited as adequate reason for his lecture at the seminary, news of the plan to honor him is already prompting a popular consternation and even scandal.

Outside of academic circles, this individual is chiefly known for his public support for sexual perversion within the Anglican Communion.

I write on behalf of two groups of people: First, I speak for the simple faithful who worship in our Orthodox parishes, those friends of the St. Vladimir’s who feel betrayed by the seminary’s decision with respect to Dr. Williams.

Second, I speak for thousands of loyal and believing Anglicans, in this country and around the world, for whom the public policies of Dr. Williams have been a source of pain and distress during the past seven years of his unfortunate tenure as Archbishop of Canterbury.

Some of these Anglicans, in fact, have been pursuing a path toward membership the Orthodox Church. The seminary’s resolve to honor Rowan Williams is causing them to reconsider their hope to join the Orthodox Church.

Continue reading →

Ed. The secularized west meets the Orthodox east. From the Russian Orthodox Church Department of External Church Relations website.

Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk

The interview is published in Der Spiegel’s issue No. 51, 2009.

How would you explain the difference between the Orthodox, the Catholic and the Protestant Churches?

The Orthodox and the Catholic Churches have only some differences in theology and models of church order. Thus, we do not recognize the supreme authority of the Pope of Rome over other Churches. However, the differences between Orthodoxy and Catholicism are not fundamental. We recognize the Sacraments of the Catholic Church. If a Catholic priest moves over to Orthodoxy we accept him as priest. As for Protestant churches, we do not recognize them as Churches, seeing in them only communities of Christians. We have fundamental differences in theology and ethics.

What are they exactly?

Many Protestant churches have liberalized their notions of ethics, giving a theological justification to homosexuality and blessing same-sex couples. Some refuse to consider abortion to be a sin. We do not share the understanding of the Church and church order, especially as the Protestants, unlike the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, ordain women. Continue reading →