Orthodox Christianity

Terry Mattingly email newsletter

Summer is the season for church conventions that talk about hot issues.

Last week’s 47th convention of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America passed a resolution that addressed both sexuality and the Iraqi war. But this time the lofty words led to an historic change.

The assembly voted to oppose “divisive and dangerous” positions taken by “left-wing” and “right-wing” groups. To be specific, it rejected “support for same-sex marriage, support for abortion, support for ordination of women to Holy Orders, support for the concept of war that is ‘pre-emptive’ or ‘justifiable’ and the labeling of other faiths and their leaders with hateful terminology.”

The archdiocese — a blend of Arab-Americans and many converts — vowed to avoid groups that “promulgate these extreme positions” and renewed its commitment to seek Orthodox unity in North America.

Then the delegates cheered as Metropolitan Philip Saliba announced his decision to withdraw from the National Council of Churches USA.
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Institute for Religion and Democracy Steve Rempe

The one million-member Orthodox Church in America (OCA) is examining a proposal to remove itself from both the World Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches. The proposal will be reviewed by the OCA All-American Council, which meets in Toronto July 17-22.

According to the position paper Orthodox Relations, “The most advisable course for the Orthodox Church in America would be to eventually withdraw from the NCC and the WCC.” Any withdrawal would be done in consultation with those Orthodox churches that remain members of the councils.

Among the reasons cited in the report for withdrawing from the church councils are the increasingly political agendas that they pursue. “The very politically-oriented theologies of many Protestant denominations have often threatened to derail the agenda of councils away from dialogue and unity, and towards political advocacy and activism,” says the report. “. . . [T]he ecumenical organizations in which we participate, in their theological and social views, are oriented towards policies which are not in harmony with Orthodox views.”
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BreakPoint Albert Mohler June 14, 2005

“We have figured out your problem. You’re the only one here who believes in God.” That statement, addressed to a young seminarian, introduces Dave Shiflett’s new book, Exodus: Why Americans are Fleeing Liberal Churches for Conservative Christianity. The book is an important contribution, and Shiflett offers compelling evidence that liberal Christianity is fast imploding upon itself.

Shiflett’s instincts as a reporter led him to see a big story behind the membership decline in liberal denominations. At the same time, Shiflett detected the bigger picture–the decline of liberal churches as compared to growth among the conservatives. Like any good reporter, he knew he was onto a big story.

“Americans are vacating progressive pews and flocking to churches that offer more traditional versions of Christianity,” Shiflett asserts. This author is not subtle, and he gets right to the point: “Most people go to church to get something they cannot get elsewhere. This consuming public–people who already believe, or who are attempting to believe, who want their children to believe–go to church to learn about the mysterious Truth on which the Christian religion is built. They want the Good News, not the minister’s political views or intellectual coaching. The latter creates sprawling vacancies in the pews. Indeed, those empty pews can be considered the earthly reward for abandoning heaven, traditionally understood.”

The Acton Blog has a comment on the OCA paper recommending a pull-out from the NCC.

Should the Orthodox church be in dialogue with the Roman Catholic one? Yes. Will we reunite? It would take a miracle.

By Fr. Patrick Reardon

Were I to list the thousand reasons why Rome is my favorite place in all the world, most of them would have to do the Eternal City’s long association with Christian history. On those all too rare occasions when I am able to get back to Rome, most of my time is spent visiting the catacombs, the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul, the Circus Maximus, the Colosseum, and other sites precious to Christian memory. My personal sentiments about Rome were well summarized by St. Abercius, the second-century Bishop of Hierapolis in Asia Minor, who had made a pilgrimage to the Eternal City. Later, in the inscription that he crafted for his own tomb, he referred to the church at Rome as “the queen with the golden robe and golden shoes.” Starting with the blood of the Neronic martyrs, there is no city on earth, I think, more deeply saturated in Christian memory.
Surely, then, any Orthodox heart must be saddened when remembering the long and deep estrangement between ourselves and that venerable institution described by St. Irenaeus of Lyons as “the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul.”
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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.”

The word “Lent,” now associated exclusively with the observance of the liturgical year, originally meant “spring” and had no directly religious significance. In English usage, however, its reference was gradually limited to the season of preparation for Pascha, a season that does, in fact, coincide with spring.

In languages dependent on Latin, the word for Lent is some variant of “forty,” derived from the Latin *quadragesima*. This is a period of forty days of fasting in imitation of the Lord himself, who observed exactly that length of time in fasting prior to the beginning of his earthly ministry. Lent is also associated with the forty day fasts of Moses, on Mount Sinai, and of Elijah, as he journeyed to that same mountain. Doubtless it was this combination of Jesus, Moses, and Elijah together on the mountain of Transfiguration that prompted many believers to read that Gospel story near the beginning of Lent.
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From: 30 Days

The Catholic Church this year celebrates the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. How does the Eastern Christian and Byzantine Tradition celebrate the Conception of Mary and her full and immaculate holiness?

Bartholomew I: The Catholic Church found that it needed to institute a new dogma for Christendom about one thousand and eight hundred years after the appearance of the Christianity, because it had accepted a perception of original sin – a mistaken one for us Orthodox – according to which original sin passes on a moral stain or a legal responsibility to the descendants of Adam, instead of that recognized as correct by the Orthodox faith – according to which the sin transmitted through inheritance the corruption, caused by the separation of mankind from the uncreated grace of God, which makes him live spiritually and in the flesh. Mankind shaped in the image of God, with the possibility and destiny of being like to God, by freely choosing love towards Him and obedience to his commandments, can even after the fall of Adam and Eve become friend of God according to intention; then God sanctifies them, as he sanctified many of the progenitors before Christ, even if the accomplishment of their ransom from corruption, that is their salvation, was achieved after the incarnation of Christ and through Him.
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