Year: 2009

Orthodox Church of America at March for Life

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March for Life, 2008

SYOSSET, NY (OCA Communications) – On Thursday, January 22, 2009, His Beatitude, Metropolitan Jonah will join Orthodox Christian clergy and faithful from across America for the 36th annual March for Life in Washington, DC.

On the evening of Wednesday, January 21, 2008, Metropolitan Jonah will celebrate Vespers at St. Nicholas Cathedral, Washington, DC, at 7:00 PM. The following day, he will take part in the March and will be one of the first religious leaders to give a message at the rally on Capitol Hill. That evening, Metropolitan Jonah will give the invocation at the March for Life’s annual Rose Dinner at the Hyatt Regency Washington.

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Fr. Richard John Neuhaus — May his memory be eternal

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Fr. Richard John Neuhaus

Roman Catholic priest Fr. Richard John Neuhas died yesterday after a protracted battle with cancer. Anyone familiar with Christianity in the public square will recognize Fr. Neuhaus as one of the first to sound the alarm that a public square stripped of religious values would lead to a culture stripped of benevolent morality. In his seminal work “The Naked Public Square,” Fr. Neuhaus argued that “moral neutrality” was anything but neutral and would lead to a society in which moral universals would be overthrown in favor or utilitarian interests.

What did he mean by this? He meant that once religion has been relegated to a private interest (you believe what you want to believe, I will believe what I want to believe, it really doesn’t matter), the universals by which men govern themselves would erode, and society would becomes susceptible to, and finally shape itself around, an ethic drawn from the decisions of elites. The pressure on Christians to privatize their faith Neuhaus argued, was in fact an attempt to remove religion from cultural life altogether, and Christians needed to meet this challenge.

Fr. Neuhaus, like so many of his generation, came to the conclusion through a circuitous route. He was a Viet Nam protester when he was younger, but the suffering of the boat people after the US withdrawal made him rethink his position on many things. He took some personal responsibility for their suffering I remember reading, because he never fully comprehended how the unconditional withdrawal from Viet Nam would affect the people there. That was many years ago (although still fresh for many of his generation), and while it can be argued whether or not the United States should have ever entered that war (Eisenhower said no, Kennedy said yes), it is clear that it shaped Neuhaus and many of his generation.

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Reception of 30 converts from the Episcopalian Church into the Orthodox Church

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30 former Charismatic Episcopal Church members and others are received into the Orthodox Church on Holy Saturday (2008).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4_yEagBxGw[/youtube]

In addition you can see the new building and renovations that took place during Lent to accommodate the new members. St. John the Theologian Orthodox Church, San Juan Capistrano, California.

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Disarray, Disunity and the Metropolitans

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AOI has published an article by George C Michalopulos titled “The Role of Metropolitan and Its Relationship within the Episcopate: A Reappraisal.” This original work looks at the historical antecedents of the office of the Metropolitan from early Christianity to today. Along the way, we discover that although the office arose out of the episkopos (overseer) in the first centuries and lasted a millennium, the fall of Constantinople and the Ottoman oppression changed that early practice.

The Patriarch and his bishops, while still holding some authority over the Orthodox Christians under the Ottomans, lost their episcopal sees and the office took on bureaucratic functions along with the petty intrigues, corruptions, and loss of prestige that followed the historic catastrophe. We’ve inherited that model today, Michalopulos argues, and it explains in some measure why the American Orthodox are afflicted with jurisdictional confusion.

He also suggests how the episcopal hierarchy might be organized under a unified American Orthodox Church:

One idea is that the eight metropolitan districts set up by the Ecumenical Patriarch in 1998 could serve as ecclesiastical provinces of the American Orthodox Church (the archdiocese of Washington, DC could be a ninth ecclesiastical province). The districts could be subdivided into dioceses, where an existing bishop elected by diocesan clergy and laity heads each diocese. An archdiocesan council of clergy and laity would elect the metropolitans. We already have enough active bishops in the United States to make this happen.

For example the southern United States has three bishops: the Archbishop of Dallas, the Metropolitan of Atlanta, and the Bishop of Miami (OCA, GOAA, and AOAA respectively). Between them distinct geopolitical boundaries can be drawn …

Theophany of Our Lord

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The Theophany

From the OCA site:

Troparion – Tone 1

When You, O Lord were baptized in the Jordan
The worship of the Trinity was made manifest
For the voice of the Father bore witness to You
And called You His beloved Son.
And the Spirit, in the form of a dove,
Confirmed the truthfulness of His word.
O Christ, our God, You have revealed Yourself
And have enlightened the world, glory to You!

Kontakion – Tone 4

Today You have shown forth to the world, O Lord,
and the light of Your countenance has been marked on us.
Knowing You, we sing Your praises.
You have come and revealed Yourself,
O unapproachable Light.

Christmas Message of the Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad to the Archpastors, Pastors, Monastics and All Faithful Children of the Russian Orthodox Church:

Beloved in the Lord my brethren archpastors, honourable presbyters, pious deacons, God-loving monks and nuns and all faithful children of the Russian Orthodox Church. ‘Mercy unto you, and peace, and love, be multiplied’ (Jude 1:2).

It is in these days that we recall how the Son of God came down to men so that each of us may be united with him. Yet so that this opportunity may become a reality, there is required of each of us a response worthy of the divine love – our love, a love which is actual and sacrificial, a love which ‘vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil’ (1 Cor 13:4-5). Continue reading →

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