My experience has been that most folks (even those who say they support abortion rights) are generally uncomfortable with the practice and are often simply misinformed about the nature of the procedures involved. The problem is that the only people bringing the issue to the fore are unfortunately those whose voices are often the most shrill and extremist in nature. The rest of us simply sit by the sidelines (and that includes much of the clergy who do not wish to tackle difficult social issues from the pulpit and exemplified by the fact that Catholic and Orthodox women account for a surprising percentage of the abortions done).

Interestingly enough, support for abortion has declined quite a bit among young adults (http://www.christianpost.com/news/poll-abortion-support-falling-among-young-adults-44267/).

It is true that in the US there is no national church, but there is certainly a vast Christian majority (mainly Catholic and Protestant) Why are we in this situation? Are the Orthodox alone to be blamed for it? Numerically-wise their influence is very small. The secular-humanist culture is dominant because it owns the mass media, the universities, and the great foundations.

Conservatives face daunting problems. We live in a country where the vast majority of Christians still put their children in atheistic public schools, thus helping our secular-humanist monster create more dumbed-down, brainless American adults. The result is that we have a culturally divided country: a dominant secular-humanist culture, which owns the mass media, the universities, and the great foundations, and a less influential Christian culture with its own publishing houses, bookstores, and schools. These two cultures exist in the same country but have radically different and opposing values. And the conflict between these two cultures can be seen in the abortion debate, the gay-marriage debate, the school-prayer debate, the textbook debate, the Ten Commandments debate, the popular entertainment debate, the dating debate, the tattoo and body piercing debate, the reading instruction debate, the abstinence debate, and so on. http://www.newswithviews.com/Blumenfeld/Samuel22.htm

John Panos, the Russian Orthodox Church might be putting its money where its mouth is. They are not letting non-married clergy get ordained before thirty years old and they can only be priests in monasteries, not parishes. It looks like they have a problem with gays too but they don’t seem to be putting them front and center as Bishops and Metropolitans like the Greeks do. I read it on this site. https://www.aoiusa.org/2011/02/roc-issues-stricter-rules-for-celibate-clergy/

Maybe all this argument about dyptichs is really about who gets to be Queen for a Day.

In the United States, we have no institution of moral adjudication (no national church, no monarcy, etc.) so cultural questions inevitably enter the political arena. Look at Proposition 8 in California for example.

If the culture if given over to, say, a cheapened view of human life that the policy of abortion on demand represents than no political action can change it. If, on the other hand, there are people who recognize the dangers of such a view and recognize that others with antithetical views seek to co-opt politics to make their view the law of the land, then the former must resist and challenge the latter.

Further your demand that no whiff of hypocrisy or nothing less than perfect virtue must be evident among those who hold a higher view isn’t reasonable. It merely cedes the ground to those who have no commitment to the virtue to begin with. If they did, they would not championing the destruction of human beings (abortion, infanticide, euthanasia) as enlightened social policy.

If you are arguing that passing a law prohibiting abortions will not change the mind or heart of the ardent pro-abortionist, I agree. But resistance can, and that resistance has to be expressed in all areas of the culture including politics. It must be informed, coherently expressed, and so forth which it often is. See for example: Why a Planned Parenthood executive became a pro-life evangelist.

And yes, hearts and minds in the Church need enlightenment as well. We have to clean up our own house too. That is why I posted the critique.

And you can be sure they won’t. I have a feeling the “Great and Holy Synod” will be neither great, nor holy, just organized. The proponents seem more interested in the EP’s authority in places where canonical Orthodox churches already exist that in combating sin and heresy. Looking at the roster of gay bishops in the Ecumenical Patriarchate, I’m quite sure no good will come of it UNLESS Russia puts its ponderous foot down and declares a real agenda.

Precisely which sins did you have in mind that can’t be legislated against? Abortion, murder, theft, adultery, etc? Which can be legislated, which cannot, and exactly why the distinction (based on Christian teaching, not on secular sensibilities)? Otherwise, this seems like advocacy of anarchy. It is most certainly true that only those who are kept from evil by choice are given the crown. But, of course, that is no reason whatsoever for the law not to restrain evil. The reason for that is that the evil harms victims as well as the victimizer. I would not construe St. John Chrysostom as being at odds with St. Paul’s remarks regarding the sword being given to the government by God to punish evil and establish order, or his remarks about the government being a terror to evildoers as opposed to those who do good. Otherwise, St. John Chrysostom’s remarks fly in the face of the practice of Christians from the time of Constantine forward.

“Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.
For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same.” Romans 13:2-3

For Christians above all men are forbidden to correct the stumblings of sinners by force … it is necessary to make a man better not by force but by persuasion. We neither have authority granted us by law to restrain sinners, nor, if it were, should we know how to use it, since God gives the crown to those who are kept from evil, not by force, but by choice. St. John the Chrysostom – Six Books on the Priesthood

“At that point, short of a remnant surving a generalized societal collapse in which all vestiges of industrialism wiped out, how can this regime be effected?”

George,

I honestly think that God will do it. He ordered the world in a certain way and when people deviate too far or for too long, He corrects them through the agency of the natural world He created (or by direct intervention).

For example, in 1917 a gang of criminals operating under a particularly noxious ideology succeeded in taking over Russia. At the core of their philosophy was state ownership of the means of production. That this turned out to be horribly inefficient was irrelevant to them. Also irrelevant was the fact that it is contrary to human nature to separate the intensity of work from the desire to personally benefit from it. The only farms that really worked economically were the ones where the peasants were given part of the land to produce their own needs and realize some profit.

This all led to a terrible economic situation and the saying, “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.” Seventy four years after its inception, it went bankrupt and the system changed.

Moral decadence will probably not be the thing that causes our system to collapse or morph into something less representative. Economic decadence is the more likely catalyst. Probably, we will soon face a situation where the demos will simply adopt an attitude of denial toward the reality of the need to make extensive cuts in our system of redistribution. In Europe, you saw riots. But the problem will be more serious, eventually, here. Imagine an IMF bailout of the U.S. Can’t? Who is the lender of last resort who would bail us out? Who has that kind of economic power? What you could see is a spiral of devaluation and lowering credit ratings, etc. This, of course, affects prices and lifestyles adversely.

Or, the people who got us into this mess – – the demos – – could wake up and smell the coffee and collectively right the ship of state. But that would be against their short term individual interests. My guess is that it will spiral out of control and at some point some person or group with the power to make it happen will realize that the form of government will have to change in order to save the country from self destruction. There could be a military component to this as well. A weakened bankrupt state that is far overextended, when it implodes, might make an attractive target for all its enemies who have the means to attack. A real national security crisis could be the immediate catalyst which alters our form of government.

Really, who can say? That’s what makes life exciting. I don’t really look forward to this type of excitement, but life has taught me that there really is no pendulum that swings back and forth. Decadence advances. It may take 3 steps forward and 2 steps back. For a short while it might take 2 steps forward and three steps back. But it does advance unless a firm hand is in charge to prevent it.

It is possible – – I don’t think likely, but possible – – that the numbers will become so bad that even liberal Democrats like Paul Krugman will have to admit, behind closed doors, that spending has to be dialed down and this means serious cuts and austerity. The politicians who run the country could decide, much like European politicians operate, that they simply need to do this and sell it to the people through the press. But if some critical mass of both parties doesn’t decide to go down that road, it will get ugly.

Michael,

Agreed in full. The thing is, so long as we practice Western democracy, the odds are very slim that we will make much headway against any of this. That is the profound irony of American Christianity, it is inherently, blindly self destructive (even in its Orthodox variety). Americans cling fiercely to a form of government profoundly hostile to Christianity itself. They even wish to spread it throughout the world as if it were self evidently good at the same time as it destroys any traditional form of their faith. Perhaps they don’t even remember what Christianity is anymore. It all goes under the catch all rationalization that, “Oh, well of course, we don’t do that anymore. Times have changed.”

I assume the economic decadence will change our form of government before revulsion at the moral decadence. De Tocqueville’s thesis (or whoever wrote that famous line about how democracies end) is being played out before our eyes.

Isaac, though what you say is true in the main, you are urging Christians to non-action based on the fallacy of “letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Such inertia is sustained by religious leaders who criticize ministries that are involved in society in order to excuse their own failures. This is exactly what’s at stake at present within the OCA, as the WaPo article so brilliantly attested to.

Scott, you’re definately on to something here. If nothing else, it’s solidifying a philosophical construct that’s long been inchoate in me, that religion drives culture and culture drives religion, or at least they reinforce each other.

We see this in the current debate on my blog about the Lavender Mafia. A certain priest gave a highly nuanced and sophisticated condemnation of “homophobia” based on his understanding that heterosexual sin is no better than homosexual sin (and I quote: “homosexuality is no sin because heterosexuality is no virtue”). Upon the re-reading of his thoughtful analysis, I did see that there was some point about sinfulness in general. However, since that time more astute intellects than mine brought out this point: that even though heterosexuality can be distorted (pornography, prostitution, promiscuity, etc.) it is still the normal reality of nature as God intended it. If nothing else, heterosexuality can find its sanctifying expression in matrimony, whereas homosexuality can never find a sanctifying outlet.

Where am I going with this? Only that culture, nature, evolution even, point to the naturalness of heterosexuality. As does the Church. Working hard and saving money are societal goods; the Church condemns sloth. Eating and drinking are necessary to maintain a healthy life; the Church upholds them in the Eucharist. Etc.

So going to your point about women in the pre-industrial age viewing their “primary role as wife and mother,” is IMHO, spot-on. At that point, short of a remnant surving a generalized societal collapse in which all vestiges of industrialism wiped out, how can this regime be effected? Perhaps those who are faithful to the teachings of the Church can actualize this in their lives but then again, the culture fights against them at every turn.

True, in the sense that Christians avoiding abortion and divorce will then become the majority as those who see no value in procreation will doom their lineage to extinction. We see this very phenomena happening in the pro-life marches. Many young people come to the these marches because they themselves are products of families who value life and pass those values on.

But I see nothing wrong with Christians who want to take on the culture of death.
Lila Rose and others of like mind all came from large Christian families. She took on Planned Barrenhood and exposed them for what they are:
http://liveaction.org/lila-rose
May God watch over her and those who work with her.

Meanwhile, the feminists from the 1960s are all aging rapidly, and thank goodness many of them did not reproduce. May their own culture of death bring about the end of their evil philosophy. If feminists ever really cared for women they would be the first to cry out at the beheading of a New York Muslim woman or the honor murder of two Texas girls by Muslims. But they remain silent for fear offending the radical left. Feminism was never about helping women. Radical feminism was only about shackling women to promiscuity, abortion and death.

Scott: The battle is bitter… Some of us are hoping for the revival of traditional Christian values in the West, while secularists have launched massive attacks on the formerly Communist counties, and ultimately on Orthodox Christianity. They are fighting hard to implement humanist liberalism with its political correctness, ‘human rights’, and individual ‘freedom’ ideas.

THE THOUSAND YEARS OF WESTERN REVOLUTION AND THE GATHERING RUSSIAN ORTHODOX COUNTER-REVOLUTION

The battle is bitter, as the secularists, with the full support of the Western media, launch massive hate-attacks on the Russian national idea – ultimately, Orthodox Christianity. Using as a shield Western humanist liberalism with its political correctness and ‘human rights’, the secularists, who so dominate Russian television in particular and its policy of zombyization, are bent on promoting individual ‘freedom’. This, of course, is not freedom in the Christian sense, freedom from passion, but enslavement to sin, the freedom to be enslaved to passion, to the mental and physical illnesses caused by narcotics, alcohol and tobacco, to venereal disease and sexual perversion, to abortion and the refusal to have children, resulting in a dramatically falling population. And although abortion in Moscow, for example, has decreased fourfold in the last few years, nevertheless the secularists appear to be winning in many domains, as ever dividing and ruling.

This is the struggle which is going on in Russia today. Will Russia return to its own, historic path and destiny of Orthodox Christian values, becoming the spiritual leader of the rest of the Orthodox Christian world, or will it become just another Westernized secular and spiritually insignificant State? Will the Orthodox Russia that has been through Golgotha and seen the Resurrection be able to inculcate its values to the whole of Russian society and indeed witness to them before the atheist West that lost its Orthodox roots a thousand years ago, or will it wither beneath the onslaught of Western secularism? Will the demons of secularism occupy the vacuum in so many Russian souls, or will those souls be filled by the love of Christ and His Church? Will, in other words, the Apocalypse, that has now been brought so near by the Western Revolution that goes back to 1054, be postponed by the Russian Orthodox Counter-Revolution of Faith and the restoration there of Orthodox Monarchy, or will the end come within a relatively short space of time?