<\/a>Source: Washington Post<\/a> | Julia Duin | HT: Byzantine, TX<\/a><\/p>\n To be on the Mall around noon Monday was to be confronted with a vast crowd of what appeared to be mostly Catholics assembled for the annual Right to Life March<\/a>. There were students wearing hats and scarves bearing the name of seemingly every Catholic academy on the Eastern seaboard; crowds of nuns clad in all manner of habits and scores of dark-suited priests and seminarians waving banners and signs.<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n Closer to the stage one could spot several Orthodox Jews and several who appeared to be evangelical Protestants. Then the crowd parted and up on the stage marched a phalanx of black-cassocked Eastern Orthodox clergy led by Metropolitan Jonah, leader of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). Carrying a bejeweled walking stick and wearing a white crown-shaped miter, the metropolitan and the five bishops lined up beside him provided quite a contrast to the informally dressed crowd.<\/p>\n Talking with these Orthodox afterward, I learned that Jonah had put out word that every bishop who could make it to Washington for the march was expected to be there, along with 80-plus seminarians from two Orthodox seminaries: Saint Tikhon’s<\/a> in Pennsylvania and Saint Vladimir’s<\/a> in New York. The seminarians and their friends stood in a large clump off to the side, waving a large Orthodox Christians for Life banner.<\/p>\n All of the bishops present belonged to the OCA, the second-largest of three major Orthodox bodies in the United States. I was told there was no official there from the much larger Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America nor from the third-largest body: the Antiochian Archdiocese of North America. <\/p>\n Unlike evangelical Protestants and Catholics, the Orthodox in this country haven’t been known for taking to the streets as antiabortion activists. What I did find on the official Greek Orthodox Web site<\/a> was a statement calling abortion “immoral” and “murder.” Likewise, the Antiochans condemn it in this statement<\/a> on their site, adding that church fathers from apostolic times opposed it as well. They also posted an encouragement<\/a> to take part in Monday’s march. Plus, Frederica Mathewes-Green, one of the best-known antiabortion activists<\/a> of any denomination, is married to an Antiochan Orthodox priest. <\/p>\n