Fr. Hans

Fr. Patrick Reardon: “Love your enemies” in scripture

It may be the case that we have heard the plainest words of Holy Scripture so often that we no longer really hear them. A long but shallow acquaintance with the Bible’s most obvious teachings may serve sometimes to deflect, if not actually to dull, even the keen double-edged sword of God’s Word. We assume that the point of the divine will has already pierced its way into our hearts, whereas in truth we may have spent much of our lives dodging and deftly parrying the thrust of the blade.

Take, for example, the simple mandate to love our enemies. The thing could hardly be plainer: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you . . . But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? . . . And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?” (Luke 6:27,32,33).
[Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Quote: John Adams on morality, religion, and the US

On October 11, 1798, President John Adams addressed the officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts in a letter:

“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

From: TheAmericanMinute

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Prophets of Baal

The American Academy of Religion slides toward decadence.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40819
The Gay Men’s Issues in Religion Group within the AAR has set for its theme for the program: “Power and Submission, Pain and Pleasure: The Religious Dynamics of Sadomasochism.” It also has another session on the program, half of which is devoted to transgenderism.

Last year, Gagnon says, the group featured a session on the topic: “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing: Varied Views on Polyamory.” (Don’t bother looking up that last word in the dictionary. It’s not there yet. It means having sexual relations with more than one partner at a time.)

About the “Power and Submission” topic, the program explains:

Sadomasochistic or bondage/dominance practice (sometimes also referred to as “leather sexuality”) … offers a particularly potent location for reflecting on gay men’s issues in religion.

One of the papers presented by Justin Tanis of the Metropolitan Community Church, a homosexual “denomination,” if you will, is titled “Ecstatic Communion: The Spiritual Dimensions of Leathersexuality.”

Read the entire article on the World Net Daily website.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

George Strickland comments on editorial by Dr. Bouteneff

I’m highlighting Mr. Strickland’s comments because ideas within it deserve consideration.

Dr. Bouteneff’s article has stirred a great deal of debate in these pages. My response is drawn from Bouteneff’s statement: “Neither is there any one system of governance, be it monarchy, democracy, plutocracy, or theocracy, which the Church would sanction as such to be the Christian way of estasblishing and maintaining a state…Christians are not ipso facto socialists, capitalists, or monarchists. And such as we Americans are accustomed to the logic of democracy, democracy is neither the way in which the Church is govers itself, nor is it the only or obvious Christian kind of state…Christians…have to decide in each particular case what best meets the criteria of Christian life.”

There are many ideas packed in this statement, and I am limited in time in commenting on them. I start with a question. Through her long experience in history, has the Church had a period (until the time of America’s great experiment in democracy) in which the state has not directly attempted to control ecclesiastical affairs? Emperors, Czars, and dictators have all had their hands inside the doors of the Church, attempting to muzzle the voice of the Gospel. As an Orthodox Christian, I cannot imagine wanting to live in a state governed by the whims, greed and power-madness of absolute rulers. Christians for Czarists? No thank you.
[Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Dennis Prager on religion, law, and the left

“The religious have a belief in God-based moral law, and the Left believes in man-made law as the moral law. [W]hereas they cannot change God’s laws, those on the Left can and do make many of society’s laws. In fact, the Left is intoxicated with law-making. It gives them the power to mold society just as Judeo-Christian values did in the past. Unless one understands that leftist ideals function as a religion, one cannot understand the Left. Laws are the Left’s vehicles to earthly salvation.” –Dennis Prager

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

MORE ON THE CONFUSION OF THE ORTHODOX

Fr. Patrick Reardon writes on the Touchstone Blog:

Two days ago James Kushiner included in this place his own criticism of the essay of Dr. Peter C. Bouteneff, “How Should Orthodox Christians Vote?” which was posted on Beliefnet. Boutneff’s very confused and confusing essay, we regret to say, has now been posted on the web page of The Orthodox Church in America. In response to it, other Orthodox Christians are weighing in. Yesterday Dr. Jonathan Chaves, professor of Chinese at The George Washington University, sent around to some friends the following sage comment, which he has given us permission to post here:

My take would be this: This essay is yet another example of the false “angelism” that afflicts so many of our contemporary intellectuals: “you can’t pin me down, I’m above the polarities of the moment.” But there is no “above;” at this point in history, the ideas that activate conservatives, certainly the traditionalist conservatives, are grounded ultimately in the great Christian heritage; contemporary liberalism is equally grounded in the Enlightenment and its essentially anti-Christian conception of human nature. A believing Christian today will have a very tough time accommodating to the current liberal doctrines, and will find that to do so will eventually necessitate relinquishing one Christian teaching after another.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Orthodox Christians and the Presidential Election

I think this commentary is weak but I’ll post it anyway. Fortunately (or maybe not depending on your point of view), I have an article that addresses the same issues appearing in Again which should be out this week. I can’t post it here however until October 5. I take a different approach than what Dr. Bouteneff offers.

http://www.oca.org/pages/news/news.asp?ID=660

Dr. Peter C. Bouteneff

Americans are approaching an important election this fall. All presidential elections are important, but few have been this close or this polarized. Those of us who seek to live and act in a way that is consistent with the life and theology of the Orthodox Church do well to reflect upon how we will act on November 2. Some Orthodox I know believe that the only way an Orthodox Christian could possibly vote is Republican/Conservative. Others whom I know have exactly the opposite impression. Where do we find ourselves in the political landscape today? There may not be a single answer for all Orthodox Christians, but we can at least clarify the questions.
[Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Fr. Patrick Reardon: Ponderings

September 26, 2004
Feast of St. John the Evangelist

For three and a half days the slain bodies of God’s two faithful witnesses will lie unburied, we are told, “in the street of the great city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified” (Revelation 11:8-9). The biblical prophets wrote of Sodom (Isaiah 1:10; 3:9) and Egypt (Ezekiel 23:3,8,19,27) as metaphors for rebellious societies, but it is the joining of these two images in Revelation that seems especially significant.
[Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail