Unfortunately, seven days after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision regarding the Defense of Marriage Act in United States v. Windsor (handed down on July 26, 2013), the OCA Synod of Bishops released an “Affirmation on the Mystery of Marriage,” which urges the faithful merely to pray, continue to instill our moral and liturgical traditions among the faithful, not fear anything, and hunker down; there was no overture to the public or the wider society, much less a coherent advocacy of a proper public policy concerning marriage. Moreover, the silence of the AOB on the Windsor ruling was at once perplexing and disappointing.

I have wondered about this very thing. Could have Fr. Webster answered his own question a few lines before this when he said:

….But possibly unhappy results ought not to deter us from a persistent public moral witness.

OR, is there a certain resignation (something deeper than mere “unhappiness”)? The uniformity of the message coming from priests in the blogospere was striking to me – I can’t recall seeing anything quite like it.

Of course, the OCA synod does not really appear to be functioning on any important level to me, and has been non-functional (or is dysfunction closer to the truth?) for a while. OR, in the OCA and perhaps GOA cases, is it that some of the bishops do not really believe the Orthodox anthropological/theological answer to this question? I have to pose the question based on Met. Tikhons “response”, such as it was, to Fr. Robert’s Arida past (and worse, ongoing) explicit subversion of the Tradition (and of course other things as well).

I am not sure the Orthodox Church (all jurisdictions) really have the leadership (at least ecclesiastically) to consistently and coherently lead on this or any other issue that is of a “cultural” and complex nature.