by Fr. Ioannes Apiarius –
Protodeacon Theodore Feldman (OCA) published a profane article that bears false witness against Scriptures and contradicts the Orthodox Church teaching with regards to multiple moral issues. He promotes the corrupt LGBTQ ideology regarding human identity and sexual activity. He insinuates that homosexuality is not a sin and it’s not condemned by the Scriptures. He insists that Jesus Christ “neither forbade nor saw fit even to mention homosexuality,” and only “condemned adultery.” He claims the Holy Tradition is silent regarding LGBTQ issues. He rejects the “opinions” of the Church Fathers regarding contemporary sexual behavior.
Pdn. Feldman serves in the (OCA) and is currently assigned to Holy Trinity Cathedral in Boston MA, where Fr. Robert Arida is rector and dean. The same Fr. Arida who also penned a chapter titled “Response to Myself. A Pastor’s Thoughts on Same-Sex Marriage” in the book “For I Am Wonderfully Made”: Texts on Eastern Orthodoxy and LGBT Inclusion that advances the LGBTQ secular narrative and conflicts with the Orthodox Church teaching regarding human sexuality, homosexual behaviour, and same-sex marriage, among other distortions.
a new pro-LGBTQ acolyte has surfaced in Fr. Arida’s own parish
Fr. Johannes Jacobse was one of the first Orthodox priests to publicly warn the Church about the unorthodox and distorted preaching of Fr. Robert Arida. “Contrary to Arida, the defense of the moral tradition is not an introduction of “new and alien spirits” and not the usurpation of the “voice of Christ” or the distortion of the “beauty of His face.” The opposite is true. Arida introduces the “new and alien spirit” because his attempt to legitimize homosexual pairings violates Orthodox self-understanding and practice,” wrote Fr. Johannes almost five years ago. Today, a new pro-LGBTQ acolyte has surfaced in Fr. Arida’s own parish who preaches remarkably similar false doctrines.
Protodeacon Theodore Feldman is yet another cleric in the OCA and the GOA who openly promotes the LGBTQ agenda that directly contradicts Scriptures, the Moral Tradition, and the right teaching of the Orthodox Church. He continues to serve at the altar and use the privileges of his churchly position to publicly distort and oppose the Orthodox Church teaching and practice, defy the authority of the Church, confuse the faithful, and lead them astray. He seems more comfortable reading and preaching from The Queen James Bible” (the pro-LGBTQ “bible” that’s “edited to prevent homophobic misinterpretation”), than the Orthodox Study Bible.
mounting obsession with all things LGBT
As Fr. Alexander Webster observed in his aptly named, Three Trojan Horses: Insider Attempts to Disorient the Orthodox essay, the “emergent Zeitgeist of sexual disorder, confusion, and libertinism that first appeared in America in the 1960s has become the dominant social ethical ideology. Who could have imagined that any Orthodox clergyman or theologian would enlist in such a movement? Alas, the ranks are growing, it seems, with each passing year.” Fr. Alexander warned of the “mounting obsession with all things LGBT” evident among several “prominent Orthodox clergy and theologians,” Professor Aristotle Papanikolaou (GOA), Fr. Alexis Vinogradov (OCA), and Archpriest Robert Arida (OCA) in particular. We can add Pdn. Theodore Feldman to that list now.
It is scandalous to see how brazen the LGBTQ propagandists have become. These wolves in sheep’s clothing yearn to make Church theology, sacraments, and practices subservient to LGBTQ ideology. They want to fly the LGBTQ flag from the Orthodox Church domes.
outright rebellion against God and nature
This is outright rebellion against God and nature, a betrayal of Christ, and open defiance of the authority and teaching of Scriptures and the Orthodox Church. One wonders if the bishops’ continued silence and refusal to publicly denounce, discipline, and/or depose these false prophets have emboldened these LGBTQ activists, enabled their revolt to grow inside the Orthodox Church, and encouraged them to spread their poison and deception to other Orthodox Christian countries and Churches via the Internet, academic conferences, and various LGBTQ venues, organizations, and events.
Here are the excerpts from Pdn. Feldman’s sacrilegious article titled “LGBTQ+ IN OUR CHURCHES by Protodeacon Theodore Feldman”. I have added headings that summarize the gist of his arguments in each paragraph.
Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 Don’t Make Sense in Our Present Culture
“Those who cite [Leviticus] 18:22 and 20:13 (do not “lie with a male as with a woman”) as prohibitions against homosexuality pluck them from a whole that we no longer countenance. In doing so—in selecting those commandments that they consider applicable to our culture—they confess to discerning how to apply Scripture to our lives. But then we may contest their discernment and counter that these verses, like the others, do not make sense in our culture.”
Impossible to Reliably Translate Leviticus Old Testament Writings
“We cannot anyway recover the intent of these two verses from Leviticus. The Hebrew words here that are often claimed as targeting homosexual behavior appear nowhere else in the Old Testament. And so they are impossible to translate reliably. We can recover neither their proper meaning, nor their intended target, nor their context in a society so far removed from our own as to make even ordinary daily activities incomprehensible.”
Christ Neither Forbade nor Saw Fit to Mention Homosexuality
“If we turn instead to Christ, we find that he neither forbade nor saw fit even to mention homosexuality—nor any other sexual activity that we class under LGBTQ+. Among all sexual behaviors, Christ condemned only adultery. For adultery is a betrayal of our partner and of God Himself, who fashions the bond that unites two persons in one flesh. And Christ further taught that divorce followed by remarriage is adultery (Mt 5:32, 19:9; Mk 10:11; etc.).”
Those Identifying as LGBTQ Must Receive Communion
“Yet we admit divorced and remarried communicants to our churches. How then can we raise barriers against LGBTQ+ communicants, when we accept those who, as Christ taught us, engage in the sin of adultery?”
We All Sin, Church Allows Divorce, Therefore LGBTQ Couples Ok in Church
“We hear calls for LGBTQ+ persons to remain celibate, lest they knowingly persist in sin. “Practicing” homosexuals, we are told, are “living in sin.” But couples who have divorced and remarried, according to Christ’s teaching, are likewise living in sin. Even more: Christ warned us that a married person who even looks at another person with desire commits adultery in his heart (Mt 5:28). Who among us has stopped looking with desire at other persons? We are all living in sin. This is a fundamental teaching of our faith.”
You’re a Pharisee if You Complain About LGBTQ Self-Identity Inside the Church
“Even adulterers, though, Christ accepted when they turned to Him. He foreknew the Samaritan woman for a serial adulterer, yet He broke every law in the book to bring her into communion with Himself—speaking to a Samaritan, speaking alone with a woman, sharing her drinking cup—because He foresaw that she would open her heart to Him. Indeed, she turned her entire community to Him (Jn 4). The sinful woman who washed His feet with her hair He likewise forgave because she approached Him with love in her heart (Lk 7). It was the Pharisees who muttered complaints against her and other sinners who turned to Him. How can we miss the parallel with those who are complaining today about LGBTQ+ persons who wish to draw near to Christ?”
Holy Tradition is Silent on Sexual Behaviors
“Both sides of the debate appeal to Tradition. But from Holy Tradition itself we hear only…silence. For Holy Tradition is rooted in the word and work of Christ. And here, as we have seen, we find nothing concerning LGBTQ+. So the opinions of the Church Fathers on sexual behavior (aside, always, from adultery) are just that: opinions, growing out of their own cultural context, but not out of Christ’s word.”
Leave the Church if You Object to Practicing LGBTQ Persons Receiving Communion
“Each of us confesses, as we approach the Chalice, that we are chief among sinners (1 Tim 1:15). Then by our own confession we are worse sinners than any sexual transgressor. If, then, we forbid “practicing” LGBTQ+ persons to approach the Chalice, we ourselves had better run out the exit door before we brazenly approach that same Chalice with judgment in our hearts.”
Source of “LGBTQ+ IN OUR CHURCHES by Protodeacon Theodore Feldman” article:
https://orthodoxyindialogue.com/2019/06/23/lgbtq-in-our-churches-by-protodeacon-theodore-feldman/
From the Comments of the Byzantine, TX blog:
https://byztex.blogspot.com/2019/06/protodeacon-theodore-feldman-boldly.html
“what of episcopal inaction when hierarchs know full well what their clergy are getting up to?…”
Do you Fr. Joseph or anyone else remember the response of Met. Tikhon when the rather strong clerical and lay response of Fr. Arida’s homosexualist essay (which is still on his cathedral’s website by the way) being posted on the OCA’s youth “Wonder” blog/ministry?
He did not get it. He went on about his relative’s (nephew if memory serves) life threatening surgery (which was occurring at the same time as the blowback) and then defended Fr. Arida, saying that Fr. Arida did not say what he said, that all the clergy/laypersons who responded were reading too much into it, and that we should listen to Fr. Arida’s point. Over the next few days this response was revised at least once (I think I noticed two revisions), and then eventually it and the whole essay/response was pulled from the Wonder site altogether.
There is your response Fr. Joseph. This is not “inaction”, it is rather action IN SUPPORT OF Arida’s and Feldman’s secularized anthropology and morality. Met. Tikhon, Archbishop Nikhon, and in all probability others in the OCA synod SUPPORT this view that the normative moral Tradition is too harsh, “science” (as if they understand what that actually is) has discovered a homosexualism of human nature and thus something “new” that the theology of the Tradition and Fathers simply did not know even existed and thus men like Arida are to be listened to. You see Fr. Joseph, you are a simple man and men like Met. Tikhon and Feldman are actually in tune with the Spirit…
You good clerics and lay folks in the OCA can ask for moral and anthropological clarity/truth until the cows come home but your not going to get it because your synod is not in communion with the truth.
My own Metropolitan came home form the Crete synaxis approving of the ordination of women (which the Pat. of Alexandria subsequently did…sort of…), so don’t think the OCA is special or anything…
Father Joseph Birthisel in his post at Byzantine, TX blog regarding the unopposed rebellion and public heresy of deacons and priests inside the OCA:
http://byztex.blogspot.com/2019/06/protodeacon-theodore-feldman-boldly.html
“The clergy of the OCA have asked in the past (in motions at All American Councils, in letters, and online), and I join them today in asking, when will the Holy Synod act on these public proclamations so opposed to the Faith? When will it respond so that there is no question that a clergyman cannot use his great influence on the people and lead them astray in this way? If millstones around the neck are the lot of such authors, what of episcopal inaction when hierarchs know full well what their clergy are getting up to?”
The rebellion against the Church and multiplying heretical comments by priests and deacons highlight a key principle:
When bishops are AWOL the heretics will play!
It was only to be expected that ‘enlightened clergymen’ will join the movement to discredit and destroy the true Christian Orthodox Church, under the guise of being so forgiving and compassionate. U.S. ambassadors abroad are in the process of bullying countries into allowing ‘pride parades’ even when the majority of their population are so much against this that these governments must spend millions to protect the ‘pride paraders.’
Does anyone remember the 23 Orthodox priests who issued a public statement in November 2014 warning the Church and the OCA bishops about the unorthodox practices of Fr. Robert Arida?
Official statement made and signed by the Brotherhood of the Orthodox Clergy Association of Houston and Southeast Texas, concerning an article by a prominent clergyman of the autocephalous Orthodox Church in America (OCA).
“We find it unacceptable for Orthodox Clergy, who have been given the charge to instruct and guide the laity, to suggest that the moral Tradition of the Orthodox Church needs to change with the times or with the prevalent culture. St. Paul admonishes us to be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God (Rom. 12:2). And it should be noted that the word translated from the Greek as “world” is not “kosmos” (the material world, world order, or people of the world), but “tō aiōni” which refers to the age (or generation, or time) in which we live. And we have no better guide as to what the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God is than we find in the Scriptures and Tradition of the Church.
It is also contrary to our Tradition to write about matters of faith or piety in ways that are intentionally ambiguous—this is rather the approach of liberal Protestantism. As the Orthodox polemicist Sergey Khudiev wrote in response to a previous statement by Fr. Robert Arida, which was likewise replete with studied ambiguity, liberal Protestants have “a particularity which entails a tendency to explain themselves with rhetorical questions, vague allusions and highly mysterious phrases from which you can with more or less justification guess at their positions, but are unable to explain them clearly.”1
We are all the more concerned that members of Fr. Robert Arida’s parish who identify themselves as homosexuals report that though they make no secret of their ongoing homosexual relationships, they are freely communed.
One such person wrote on an open Facebook group (named oxymoronically “Pro-Gay Orthodox Christians”): “I am gay… I was married to my husband in a civil ceremony in 2005. When I began attending Holy Trinity later that year I was completely up front with the priest. My husband, Martin, began attending liturgies regularly about two years ago. He was chrismated Holy Saturday earlier this year. Our relationship is not a secret; I have had no negative interactions with either clergy or laity in this parish. Martin and I are not the only gay people in the parish, though after Martin became Orthodox, we are the only Orthodox gay couple as far as I know. I don’t think this constitutes ‘don’t ask don’t tell’. More like ‘ask or tell whatever you like… we don’t care’. Just saying.”
Fr. Robert Arida’s recent and past statements on the issue of homosexuality are a scandal to the faithful. They also present those who are sincerely struggling against homosexual temptations with additional temptations, and misdirection. As a pan-Orthodox organization, we are also concerned that such blatant disregard for the Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church present further obstacles to Orthodox unity in America. We can only unite around a common fidelity to the authentic faith and piety of our Tradition. If we are not united in that, then authentic unity is impossible.
This is not a matter that can be swept under the rug of “theologoumenon.” A theologoumenon is an opinion that may or may not be correct, but which is neither an authoritative teaching of the Church, nor is it outside of the bounds of acceptable Orthodox opinion. Suggesting that homosexual sex may not really be a sin is not within the bounds of acceptable Orthodox opinion, but on the contrary, the consistent teaching of the Scriptures, canons, and the fathers and saints of the Church that homosexual sex is inherently sinful is clear and unambiguous.
We recognize that those who are struggling against homosexual temptations should be treated with pastoral patience, mercy, and love… as should sinners of any kind that are repenting of their sin, and seeking spiritual healing. However, suggesting to any sinner that their sin is not really a sin, and that they need not repent of it in order to worthily receive the Mysteries of the Church is pastoral malpractice, and cannot be tolerated.
We pray that the Bishops of the OCA will deal with this matter with the seriousness and urgency that it warrants, and put an end to these abuses.”
http://orthochristian.com/75272.html
I pray that the deacon and pastor understands the error of taking this stance.