Month: February 2010

Church of England to push ahead with plan for women bishops

97 Comments

Deprecated: trim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/plugins/sexybookmarks/public.php on line 388

Deprecated: trim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/plugins/sexybookmarks/public.php on line 394

Deprecated: trim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/plugins/sexybookmarks/public.php on line 400

The (liberal) Anglicans won’t quit until their Church becomes completely unrecognizable.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Undoing Henry VIII?

Women bishops could be in place by 2012

The Church of England is to go ahead with the plan to create women bishops without giving in to demands from traditionalists for a separate structure of bishops and archbishops untainted by the hands of a woman.

Traditionalists oppose women bishops because they argue that Jesus had no women disciples and that the apostolic succession of bishops, passed down by the laying of hands at ordination, should therefore be male.

Traditionalists warned last night that the decision, to be announced at the General Synod today, will trigger an exodus from the Church of England of many thousands of priests and lay people.

The Bishop of Manchester, the Right Rev Nigel McCulloch, will tell the synod at Church House, Westminster, London, that the revision process he is leading is not finished yet, and as a result the debate that was hoped for this month is delayed until July, when the synod meets in York.

Deprecated: str_replace(): Passing null to parameter #3 ($subject) of type array|string is deprecated in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/themes/genesis/lib/functions/image.php on line 116
class="post-5826 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-blog-archive tag-coptic-orthodox tag-nag-hammadi tag-news tag-orthodox-church tag-pope-shenouda tag-religious-freedom entry">

Pope Shenouda calls for freedom of worship

2 Comments

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.”

Continue reading →

Deprecated: str_replace(): Passing null to parameter #3 ($subject) of type array|string is deprecated in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/themes/genesis/lib/functions/image.php on line 116
class="post-5823 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-blog-archive tag-holy-synod-oca tag-human-rights tag-news tag-politics tag-us-congress entry">

A Thought Experiment

15 Comments

Let me offer you a thought experiment.

Yesterday on the Orthodox Church in America’s website there was an interesting press release recounting a “discussion between members of the Holy Synod of Bishops [of the OCA] and a number of congressmen during a late-January 2010 meeting in the US capital” (OCA Holy Synod members share human rights concerns with US congressmen).

The meeting addressed, again in the words of the press release, a

variety of issues affecting traditionally Orthodox Christian lands — among them, the situation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Turkey in light of His All Holiness, Patriarch Bartholomew’s widely acclaimed December 2009 interview on “60 Minutes”; the plight of Orthodox Christians in Kosovo and Coptic Christians in Egypt; human trafficking; and other human rights issues.

Let me first say, I think it is a good thing for the bishops to speak with representatives of the US government; it is a very patristic thing actually. It also speaks well of the Holy Synod that instead of bring their own, relative narrow concerns to Congress, they went not as advocates for Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Christians and for human rights more broadly. Generally and except for pro-life issues, Orthodox social witness has typically focused on matters of immediate interest to the Orthodox community. The Holy Synod speaking on behalf of human rights generally, and doing so in a face to face meeting with members of the US Congress, is in my view something we should welcome. Not only that, by our words and prayers we should encourage the bishops to build on this latest meeting.

For such a witness to be fruitful will mean that we must learn how to speak to a broader audience then those sympathetic to the Tradition of the Orthodox Church. Though not without there own challenges, speaking to traditional Anglicans or Evangelical Christians investigating Orthodoxy is not the same as making a case for human right before the US Congress. As I have argued here before, and as I will continue to argue, we cannot limit our witness merely to inviting Christians from other traditions to join the Orthodox Church. We must learn to speak more broadly. As part of this we must learn how to established collaborative working relationships with those who share our concerns but WHO ARE NOT INTERESTED in becoming Orthodox.

And now, the thought experiment.

Let me suggest that learning to work collaborative with those who are not interested in becoming Orthodox will, on balance, be a good thing for the internal life of the Church. The more skilled we become in establishing and maintaining collaborative relationships with those outside the Church, the more skilled we will become in establishing and maintaining similar relationships among ourselves.

It is to our benefit as a Church to learn how to make our case without having to depend on a shared tradition. While a good thing, at least in an American pastoral context our shared tradition has resulted in Orthodox Christians–where ever they are in the ecclesiastical hierarchy–making arguments from authority . To our determinate we are many of more inclined to coerce then persuade.

Absent a way of enforcing my authority such arguments are little better than the posturing of school yard bully. While my authority might secure your compliance in the short term, it comes at the cost of the long trust between us. The harm however does not end here.

Consistently arguing from authority–or what is just as bad, preaching to the choir–increasingly restricts my vision of the tradition. Whether we are talking about a person or a community, with restricted vision comes rigidity, fear, distrust and anger. All of these compromise not only our witness but our shared life.

To be effective, persuasion requires not simply that I constantly meditate on the tradition but that I also make the effort to know you evermore fully. Yes, I might be tempted to sophistry–but this is hardly an argument for coercion and besides arguing from authority is equally prone to sophistry.

Are there risks involved in the Church broadening her witness beyond the immediate concerns of Orthodox Christians? Will we be tempted to compromise the Gospel for political gain? Yes.

Riskier still, however, is to refuse to work together with others of good will–Christian or not–”in behalf of all and for all.”

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory
UN:F [1.8.1_1037]

Deprecated: str_replace(): Passing null to parameter #3 ($subject) of type array|string is deprecated in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/themes/genesis/lib/functions/image.php on line 116
class="post-5821 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-blog-archive tag-cyprus tag-religious-freedom tag-weekly-standard entry">

Bare Ruined Choirs

2 Comments

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

Russian church leaders defend marriage, speak out on family crisis

2 Comments

Russian Orthodox Church leaders called on Christians on Thursday to be firm in defending traditional marriage and lamented the family crisis in the country.

Pat. Kirill

According to some estimates, over half of the marriages in Russia end in divorce. Women in the 140-million-strong country undergo some 1.5 million abortions annually.

“We, Christians of different denominations, should profess the inviolability of the evangelic norms on the holy matrimony between man and woman,” Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia said in a welcome message to participants of an inter-Christian forum for former Soviet republics held in Moscow.

Christians, he said, should “openly testify that deviation from the God-given fundamentals of marriage cannot contribute to forming a healthy individual.”

Another top church official, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk who heads the Russian Orthodox Church’s external relations department, criticized today’s morality.

“Today the scale of priorities for many people looks totally different than what is in line with Christian tradition. Freedom, permissiveness, acquisitiveness, lust for success and career aspirations are in first place rather than traditional spiritual and moral values, family, marital fidelity or giving birth to children and raising them,” he said.

“Abandoned children, a huge number of divorces… a high number of suicides and abortions indicate a deep crisis for the family and social relations,” Hilarion said.

Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function nuthemes_content_nav() in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/themes/prose/archive.php:58 Stack trace: #0 /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-includes/template-loader.php(106): include() #1 /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-blog-header.php(19): require_once('/home/aoiusa/pu...') #2 /home/aoiusa/public_html/index.php(17): require('/home/aoiusa/pu...') #3 {main} thrown in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/themes/prose/archive.php on line 58