Fr. Hans

Beijing’s Orthodox community has first Paschal divine service since 1957

English Translation by Nina Tkachuk Dimas

For the first time since 1957, the Chinese capital’s Orthodox community had a festive Paschal service today, reports “ITAR-TASS”. Albazinians – descendants of Russian cossacks from the Albazin fortress of the Amur — adhere to Orthodox traditions. At the end of the XVII century, the Albazinians served in the Manchurian imperial guards.

In the absence of an Orthodox priest who is Chinese, the service was lead by a layman in one of Beijing’s [Roman] Catholic temples.

“Today’s event needs to be considered as a sign of the Chinese authorities’ attention to this problem”, stated ROC/MP priest Dionisy Pozdnyaev, who arrived in Beijing from Xianggang/Hong Kong. Beijing’s Orthodox now have hope that the question of ordaining a priest will be resolved, especially since candidates are available.”

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Benedict XVI Looks Toward Unity With Orthodox

Zenit News

Continues a Tradition From the Window of Papal Apartment

VATICAN CITY, MAY 1, 2005 (ZENIT.org).- Benedict XVI extended Easter greetings to Orthodox Christians, who were celebrating the day, and indicated again he will pursue the goal of Catholic-Orthodox unity.

In his first Regina Caeli address from the window of his papal apartment, the Holy Father today said God is “asking us to travel decisively down the path toward full unity.”

Tens of thousands of people were gathered below in St. Peter’s Square to hear the Pontiff’s address, which continued a Sunday tradition of Pope John Paul II’s.
[Read more…]

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Sexual indoctrination of children

Boston Globe
Arrested father had point to make. Disputed school’s lesson on diversity

CONCORD — For David Parker, the first alarm went off in January, when his 5-year-old son came home from his kindergarten class at Lexington’s Joseph Estabrook School with a bag of books promoting diversity.

Inside were books about foreign cultures and traditions, along with food recipes. There was also a copy of ”Who’s In a Family?” by Robert Skutch, which depicts different kinds of families, including same-sex couples raising children.

The book’s contents concerned Parker and prompted him to begin a series of e-mail exchanges with school officials on the subject that culminated in a meeting Wednesday night with Estabrook’s principal and district director of instruction. The meeting ended with Parker’s arrest after he refused to leave the school, and the Lexington man spent the night in jail.

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Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation

Ed. These guys get it. Note Feder’s comment below.

Front Page Magazine
By Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation
Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation | April 27, 2005

The announcement of the formation of Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation (JAACD) came at a press conference yesterday (April 21st) at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Present were JAACD President Don Feder, and several members of the group’s Advisory Board — syndicated columnist Mona Charen, popular talk-show host Barry Farber, Rabbi Joshua Haberman, and Rabbi Yehuda Levin.
[Read more…]

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Book recommendation: The Cube and the Cathedral

I’m reading George Weigel’s The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God and want to recommend it to anyone trying to understand more deeply the religious underpinnings of culture.

Weigel posits WWI as the point where the cataclysmic dislocation from a Christian to secular atheist of European society occurred. Of course the ideas of secular atheism have antecedents in earlier epochs, but they emerged as part of Christian culture because of the great dislocation. Only when WWI ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, has it become clear how radical the secularist atheism really is.

I’m only about a third of the way through it but there are quite a few gems in the book. (Missourian, you would like the facts on the decline of European culture; one example: Sweden has a poverty class greater than the US.) One is this: the social structures of secular atheism always work towards the destruction of people. So true when you think of it: abortion, euthanasia, etc. It’s what we call the “culture of death.”

The “Cube” of the title (La Grande Arche de la Defense) serves as counterpoint to the “Cathedral” (Notre Dame) which reflect de-Christianized Europe against a formerly Christian Europe.

Take a loot at the book the next time you are at B&N. (Better yet, order it through the link above and send a couple of quarters my way to help pay for this site.) Many OT readers will like it.

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‘Good sex for teens’: The war against abstinence

TownHall.com Robert Rector

Each year, more than 3 million teenagers contract a sexually transmitted disease. In addition to the threat of disease and pregnancy, sexually active teens are three times more likely than teens who aren’t sexually active to become depressed and to attempt suicide.

Clearly, it’s in society’s interest to discourage teen sex. Teens themselves realize this: According to a Zogby poll, more than 90 percent of them say that society should teach kids to abstain from sex until they have, at least, finished high school. Parents want a stronger message: Almost nine in 10 want schools to teach youth to abstain from sex until they’re married or in an adult relationship that is close to marriage.

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The end of self-reliance?

Townhall.com George Will

WASHINGTON — It hurt her feelings, says Jane Fonda, sharing her feelings, that one of her husbands liked them to have sexual threesomes. `”It reinforced my feeling I wasn’t good enough.'”

In the Scottsdale, Ariz., Unified School District office, the receptionist used to be called a receptionist. Now she is “director of first impressions.” The happy director says, “Everyone wants to be important.”

Manufacturers of pens and markers report a surge in teachers’ demands for purple ink pens. When marked in red, corrections of students’ tests seem so awfully judgmental.

Fonda’s confession, Scottsdale’s tweaking of terminology and the recoil from red markings are manifestations of today’s therapeutic culture. The nature and menace of “therapism” is the subject of a new book, “One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture Is Eroding Self-Reliance” by Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel, M.D., resident scholars at the American Enterprise Institute.

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Maureen Dowd: “The Cafeteria is closed”

From the Touchstone Blog:

Maureen Dowd from her column in today’s editions of The New York Times on the election of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI:

“For American Catholics – especially women and Democratic pro-choice Catholic pols – the cafeteria is officially closed.”

While good Christians will disagree with Ms. Dowd about the exclusion of “women” during the new papacy (do any of the women in this AP photo‹nuns, teenagers, mothers, etc.‹seem left out to you?), so far as the closing of the American Catholic Cafeteria, pan-orthodox Christians (whether Protestant, Orthodox or Catholic) can respond with a hearty “Amen.” We never liked the food from that joint anyway.

“The Cafeteria is Closed” might serve as the new motto for the Ratzinger Fan Club.

–Kenneth Tanner

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College taught her not to be a heterosexual

Townhall.com Dennis Prager April 19, 2005

Perhaps the most important argument against same-sex marriage is that once society honors same-sex sex as it does man-woman sex, there will inevitably be a major increase in same-sex sex. People do sexually (as in other areas) what society allows and especially what it honors.

One excellent example illustrating this is an article recently written in the McGill University newspaper by McGill student Anna Montrose. In it, she wrote:

It’s hard to go through four years of a Humanities B.A. reading Foucault and Butler and watching ‘The L Word’ and keep your rigid heterosexuality intact. I don’t know when it happened exactly, but it seems I no longer have the easy certainty of pinning my sexual desire to one gender and never the other.

(Michel Foucault is a major French “postmodern” philosopher; Judith Butler is a prominent “gender theorist” at UC Berkeley; and “The L-Word” is a popular TV drama about glamorous lesbians.)

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6 Episcopal priests warned of ouster

The purge of the traditonalists begins.
Boston Globe April 10, 2005

HARTFORD — Connecticut’s Episcopal bishop has warned six priests in the state who opposed the election of the first openly gay bishop that they could be removed as rectors of their parishes by Friday.

Bishop Andrew D. Smith said in letters sent to the priests that they had ”abandoned the communion of the church,” which would mean the priests would no longer lead their parishes. The priests could later be defrocked.

According to Smith’s letter, the dispute between the bishop and the rectors was put before the Standing Committee of the Episcopal Diocese, which comprises clergy and lay leaders. The group concluded on March 29 that the six rectors were not in accordance with church canons and were out of communion, The Hartford Courant reported yesterday.

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