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‘Fuels from Hell’

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Rev. Sally Bingham with Obi

Bruce Nolan, a reporter for the Times-Picayune in New Orleans, offers a preview of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew’s symposium at various locales on the Mississippi River next month. For the article, Nolan interviews Rev. Canon Sally Bingham of the Episcopal Church. She is also president of The Regeneration Project and the Interfaith Power and Light campaign. Nolan said that Rev. Bingham was helping with the planning for the symposium.

Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders often see environmental concern as a duty to honor God by protecting his creation, Bingham said. Buddhists have described it as a duty to maintain balance in the universe, she said.

“Religious leaders are used to saying our responsibility is saving souls. But many have come to realize that if we don’t protect our air, water and resources, there won’t be any souls to save.”

Bingham said Bartholomew “is one of the first leaders of a huge denomination to make this connection.”

Rev. Bingham serves as the Environmental Minister at Grace Episcopal Cathedral and chairs the Commission on the Environment for the Diocese of California where she was installed as Canon for Environmental Ministry. In a recent commentary, “The Resources from Heaven,” she wrote:

… I would describe those fossil fuels such as oil and coal as the fuels from hell—from the dark places of the earth. Besides providing those sources of energy, God provided energy from heaven—wind and sun. We have overused the resources from hell and we have barely explored the ones from heaven, which are clean, renewable and infinite.

[ … ]

I hope that Jesus, Ghandi and other heroic prophets with visions for a peaceful future will make space in heaven for Rep. Henry Waxman, a man who laid the foundation for a new world economy with his bill supporting a cap-and-trade market-based mechanism to reduce the world’s greenhouse gases. I say “the world” because without the U.S. making a strong commitment to reduce its own emissions, other countries such as China and India will not make the effort either. All eyes are on the U.S. right now. Instead of looking at the past to dictate the future, we need to be more visionary ourselves and create a new future that provides security and health and peace for all of God’s creation.

OCA: First, proclaim the Gospel

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From OCA News on Tuesday’s start of the fall sessions of the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Orthodox Church in America and the OCA’s Metropolitan Council:

Orthodox Church in America

In addressing the strategic plan, Metropolitan Council members entered into a long and passionate discussion about the mission and vision of the OCA. It was observed that in recent times the mission of the Church has become identified almost exclusively with the idea of a unified Church in North America. Members of the Council stated that, while Church unity is desirable and must be a goal in the life of the OCA, Church structures are far less important than the proclamation of the Gospel.

Evangelization must be the Church’s first priority, and this is work that is not dependent on, or has to wait for, a unfied Orthodox body in North America. It was also stressed that Evangelization must focus on the culture, or more accurately the cultures, within North America, in particular on those segments of society which are yet unchurched.

Full report here.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew: ‘Humans have lost their original humanity’

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His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

In an address Tuesday at the University of the Peloponnese in Tripolis, Greece, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew said that “a homogenization of humans and peoples is in progress” and underlined that the environmental threat points to “problematic anthropology.” He spoke of an “ecological crisis” and stressed that “the looting of the planet, the burning of the forests and the pollution of the air and water mean that humans have lost their original humanity. People never knew as much as they know today but never before were so catastrophic toward their fellow human beings and nature.”

The patriarch also said that the future cannot be entrusted to “extremist technocrats” who see humans as machines and underlined the need for the mobilization of the young generation.

He completed his visit to the region that was devastated by wildfires with a symbolic gesture by planting two trees, a sycamore and a fir, characterizing as “criminals targeting humanity” all those who deliberately set fires and destroy the “house of God, the natural environment which is our home.”

Archons: Concerning the Ranks of Churches

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Who’s on first? The Order of St. Andrew the Apostle has posted an article harshly critical of what it describes as the Moscow Patriarchate’s uncanonical move to assert its status as one of “the five most significant Churches” or the Pentarchy of the ancient patriarchates. The writer of the article, Fr. Makarios Griniezakis, a professor of theology and ethics at the Theological Academy of Heraklion in Crete, maintains that the “28th Canon of the Fourth Ecumenical Council grants only to the Church of Constantinople the jurisdictional oversight of the ‘barbaric lands.'” This position, he said, is also supported by Church history.

The extension of the Patriarch of Russia’s jurisdiction across lands outside its ecclesiastical borders is uncanonical and a violation of Church order. This is the case when other Primates act similarly. Local Churches would have been able to extend into lands beyond their established ecclesiastical border if the canon referred to ethnicities (“barbarians”) instead of geographical regions (“barbaric lands”). If this were the case we would have been able to say, for example, that the Romanian Patriarch is the spiritual leader of the Romanian people across the world, or that the Russian Patriarch is the leader of every Russian. However, the 28th Canon is unambiguous and mentions geographical jurisdictions and not ethnicities. Every Orthodox Church has a specific geographical border. Constantinople, however, maintains the license to extend throughout the Ecoumene, except, of course, into those areas under the canonical jurisdiction of other autocephalous or synodal Orthodox Churches.

Fr. Griniezakis said he was responding to an article published on the Web by the Moscow Patriarchate’s Archpriest Maxim Kozlov, but no link was provided. Still, Fr. Griniezakis reminded the Russians that “those who participate in the administration of the Church must consider that their role is not to compete on stage with Stalin and Hitler.” He also reminded the Russians that “Arius, Dioscorus, Nestorius, Apollinarius, and Marcion, were pious and religious; however, they also were men who had tremendous egos and lacked ecclesiastical ethos.”

This is sure to liven things at the next all-Orthodox pre-conciliar consultation. But how long will this new turf war go on before these clerics get back to solving the Diaspora problem for the barbarians in the United States and elsewhere?

Full text follows:

Concerning the Ranks of Churches
New York; 9/22/2009

Editor’s Note:

On August 4, 2009, a website posted an article presenting some of the recent developments taking place at the Moscow Patriarchate. Specifically, the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate of Moscow had begun reevaluating the ecclesiastical rank of the Orthodox Churches. According to Archpriest Maxim Kozlof, a member of the committee entrusted with this task, the Patriarchate of Moscow is considered a Church of the pentarchy, that is, of the five Churches of ancient Christendom. He also claims that by virtue of its magnitude, the Patriarchate of Moscow maintains such a status. He also declares that the Patriarchate of Moscow has extended its jurisdiction across numerous countries. After reading these comments, Fr. Makarios Griniezakis, a professor of theology and ethics at the Theological Academy of Heraklion in Crete, responded with a different perspective. In what follows, Fr. Makarios frames the claims made by Fr. Maxim in their proper historical, canonical, and ecclesiological setting.

Fr. Makarios Griniezakis is an Archimandrite of the Ecumenical Throne; he is also the official preacher of the Archdiocese of Crete, and the director of the Archdiocese’s radio station.

Concerning the Ranks of Churches

A few days ago your reputable website posted an article that discussed a series of efforts by the Holy Synod of the Church of Russia to formulate the Patriarchate of Moscow’s position relative to the ranks of the Orthodox Churches. In a recent interview, the Archpriest Maxim Kozlof, a member of this newly formed committee, provided the details of the committee’s work. With regard to these comments, but also in response to various ecclesiological and theological uncertainties often put forth by Russian clergymen and theologians, permit me the following thoughts: Continue reading →

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Archbishop Hilarion makes appeal for Christian unity

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From Interfax:

Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk

Moscow, September 21 — Head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk, who is visiting Rome, has celebrated the Divine Liturgy in Catacombs of St. Callixtus.

Speaking to believers after the service, the Archbishop urged to overcome a thousand-year-old dispute between Christians of East and West and reminded about heroism of first Christians who prayed in catacombs and preserved unity in spite of persecutions from outside.

“Denied by the world, far from human eyes, deep under ground in caves, first Roman Christians performed the feat of prayer. Their life brought fruit of holiness and martyr heroism. The Holy Church was built on their blood shed for Christ,” the DECR press service has cited Archbishop Hilarion as saying.

Then Church came out of the catacombs, but Christian unity was lost, the Archbishop further said. Today, when the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church don’t have Eucharist communication and many Protestants gave up fundamental Christian principles, “we should clearly understand, that division is sin, tearing apart body of Church and weakening the power of Christian witness in secular world,” Archbishop Hilarion stressed.

He reminded that human sin was the cause of all divisions, while Christian unity could be restored only in the way of sanctity.

“Each of us, conscientiously fulfilling a task the Church has given him or her, is called to personally contribute in treasury of Christian sanctity and work to achieve God-commanded Christian unity,” the Archbishop said in his sermon.

And he meets with Pope Benedict:

Archbishop Hilarion highlighted the importance of mutual testimony by Orthodox and Catholic believers of traditional Christian values before the secular world. He noted the identiсal views of the Orthodox and the Catholic Churches on such matters as family, maternity, demographic crisis, euthanasia and many other ethical problems.

Archbishop stated that there were certain significant differences on these matters between the Orthodox and the Catholics, on the one hand, as well as with different Protestant communities which had pursued the liberalization of the Christian teaching.

In this context, the cooperation between the Orthodox and the Catholic Churches to develop a mutual position on the above matters gains specific meaning, Archbishop Hilarion believes.

Also see “Archbishop Hilarion’s speech at Sant’Egidio” on the National Catholic Register blog. Edward Pentin has translated part of the the archbishop’s speech from the “flawless Italian.” Excerpt:

We live in a de-Christianized world, in a time that some define—mistakenly—as post-Christian. Contemporary society, with its practical materialism and moral relativism, is a challenge to us all. The future of humanity depends on our response, as Christians, to this challenge, and maybe even whether life continues on our planet. It is a common challenge and also our answer must be common. Only together can we put forward all the spiritual and moral value of the Christian faith; only together can we offer our Christian vision for the family, only together can we affirm our concept of social justice, of a more equal distribution of goods.

These moral values are traditional because they have been affirmed by Christians for 20 centuries and have formed our cultural and European civilization. They are, at the same time, very new and modern, because the Gospel of Jesus is eternally new and modern. With this common challenge, the contemporary world challenges us, and we Christians must be together. It’s time to pass from confrontation to solidarity, mutual respect, and esteem. I would say without hesitating that we must pass to mutual love, living out Jesus’s commandment to love one another. As Jesus said, all will know you are disciples of mine if you have love for the other. This is what our preaching demands and it can be effective, it can be convincing, also in our contemporary world, if we are able to live this mutual love among us as Christians.

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