harsh and blunt language<\/a> against abortion. Defending one innocent life defends all life. Justifying the murder of one, justifies the murder of all. <\/p>\nThere is a pastoral requirment to the abortion crisis in America. Many people are confused and make the wrong decisions. The woman who had an abortion often recognizes the consequences of her decision after it is too late. Anyone dealing with a person involved with abortion must exercise exceptional sensitivity and understanding so that the forgiveness and healing of Christ can be experienced. The Fathers teach us this too, mostly by their example.<\/p>\n
But this requirement must not be used to blunt the clear teaching that abortion is a grave moral offense; a very serious danger to both mother and child, and to the moral health of the larger culture. Let no Orthodox leader abuse his pastoral responsibility by drowning the gravity of the offense in a rhetorical sea of exaggerated compassion. That man fears the disapproval of his peers. The Fathers were men of courage. <\/p>\n
For this reason any equivocation by Orthodox leaders must be met with the strongest objection. The moral tradition is clear. In the defense of life, one who stands on the side of the tradition stands on the side of the Fathers; one who stands on the side of the Fathers stands on the side of Christ. <\/p>\n
Do you wonder how people become animals? It starts by treating the weaker people that way. Do not accept equivocation. The cost is too high. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Why such outrage over the Philadelphia abortionist? What moral difference is there between severing the spinal cord of a newborn with a pair of scissors and dismembering a baby with a scalpel a few moments before its birth? There isn’t any. Yet the outcry over the brutality indicates that the fiction of viability may be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8852,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1784],"tags":[82,296,8],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8881"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8881"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8916,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8881\/revisions\/8916"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}