Pro-Life Resources

On this 38th anniversary of the tragic Roe v Wade decision, I offer a few of the many pro-life resources available on the web:

March for Life 2011, Washington DC
http://www.oca.org/news/2347
http://www.stjohnsnanticoke.org/m4lyfbus.html

Websites
http://maafa21.com/
http://fightpp.org/
http://www.prolifenews.net/
http://www.priestsforlife.org/
Orthodox Christians Are Pro-Life
Orthodox Christians for Life

Essays
Abortion: An Orthodox View
After The March for Life: What To Do Next?

Orthodox Chapel in Afghanistan

I had heard (and may have mentioned here) that there was one--and only one--freestanding Christian church of any kind in the country of Afghanistan and this is it.

It is an Orthodox chapel at Kandahar Air Base and was built by Romanian troops fairly recently (at least since I was there six years ago). Here is a link to a slideshow:

link

Church as Corporation; Pastor as CEO

Is this guy making disciples? This sort of thing is the exact opposite of what you find when you read the lives of the saints, which of course is something from which we all could benefit greatly.

Church removes cross

This is not as outrageous as the reporter seems to think it is. (But then, Fox News does tend to sensationalize a bit..."Is it diversity or perversity?")
In fact I agree with the second interviewee and applaud this "inclusive spiritual community" for their integrity. They are clearly not a church, and they no longer believe in or profess the Gospel, so why pretend? Why claim to be something they are not by displaying a cross?

I wish more "churches" would show the integrity that this one has and not only take down their crosses, but quit calling themselves churches and drop the whole "christian" charade altogether.





Here is their website.

Making God Seen

The following is from the Protestant Daily Devotions radio ministry:

Cults of personality expand the masks of celebrities into distortions of false perfection. We create demigods from the clay of human beings, and project upon them our own desires of virtue or corruption, imagining them to be impossibly perfect saints or sinners. One can never be wholly either. When the object of a personality cult wields power - political, ideological, or theological - through words, office, or action, then dangers of distortion appear. This is evident when our need for stability crosses paths with a preacher or politician's charisma, projecting to them holiness or perfection that belongs to only God.

We could take a cue from Orthodoxy, whose priests stand with their backs to their congregation, leading a liturgy that is neither clever nor impassioned, but simply beautiful, like stone smoothed by centuries of rhythmic tides. It's an austere ritual, in the sense of - there's nothing new here; it's sublime, in the sense of - creating a clearer view into Heaven. The priest can be any priest. Who he is, what he looks like, how he speaks, and what he thinks matter little. He hasn't written the service that he officiates. It isn't about him or his prowess. He's an interchangeable functionary draped in brocaded robes, obscured by incense, and, as such, never points to himself, a flawed human, pointing ever and only to the Perfection of the Mysterious Divine. That is the role of every priest or preacher - invisibility, while making God seen.

Easter in Syria

I knew that Middle Easterners just love to celebrate by firing their guns into the air, but for some reason I assumed it was just the Muslims that did that. I guess I was wrong.

(You know you've been to too many military firing ranges when you watch this and think "gosh, that's going to leave a lot of shell casings for someone to pick up.")

Where in the world?

This, again, has nothing to do with anything, but I thought it was interesting.
In the last seven days, people from the following countries have looked at this blog (in descending order of number of visits):

United States

Canada
United Kingdom
Australia
Spain
Germany
Japan
Italy
Hungary
France
Denmark
Ireland
Taiwan
Netherlands
Kuwait
Poland
Singapore
Thailand
South Korea
Finland
Colombia
Mongolia
Czech Republic
Portugal
Switzerland
Saudi Arabia
Greece
Ukraine
Brazil
Malaysia
Hong Kong
Peru
India

Soccer fans

Here is another item for the "Types of Things You will Never See in the United States" file.

This gives me chills. It is a video that was taken recently at a soccer stadium in Russia. One group of fans is shouting and another is responding. What are they saying?
"Tastes great!" "Less filling!" ???
"Let's go Red Wings!" ???

No, they're shouting "Christ is Risen?" "Truly, He is Risen!"

"Christos voskrese!" "Voistinu voskrese!"

Botafumeiro

Some of us were talking about this last weekend, so I thought I'd go ahead and post it. It's the famous incense pot called the "Botafumeiro," which, incidentally, is Spanish for "attractor of curious tourists." It is located in the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral in Spain (which, by the way, also houses the relics of some guy named St James.)

FOCUS North America

From http://www.focusnorthamerica.org/

Debate

I generally see very little evangelistic value in theological debates. Seldom do they change minds or soften hearts, and it seems to me that the outcome of a debate has more to do with the strength of the debator's skills than with the truth of his position.

If people come to the Orthodox Faith, it will not be because someone debated them into it. It will be because the Holy Spirit led them. One cannot be argued into the body of Christ. We would do better praying for those outside of the Faith rather than arguing with them. That's because the Christian Faith is not merely a collection of theological propositions. It is an actual partaking of the Divine Nature. 

Yesterday, we remembered the great saint Gregory Palamas who defended the belief that our Faith is not only a mental exercise, but is experiential. That is, it is not something merely to be contemplated, analyzed, debated; it is to be lived.

That is why one doesn't generally see many Orthodox apologists and debaters, which is something that came as a bit of a surprise to me after having looked closely at the Roman Catholic Church, in which apologists abound. It is also--I suspect--why the Orthodox Church hasn't come up with an official "catechism" the way the Roman Catholic Church has: for fear of giving people the incorrect idea that our Faith can be reduced to words on a page.

That is also why infants are permitted to participate in the sacraments without being required to "understand" or articulate what is going on. In the Orthodox Church, it's often about doing first and then understanding: "A good understanding have all they that do his commandments."

Debates, I think, tend to support the "western" notion that understanding should come first.

But, darn it, they are entertaining!

Around the middle of October, I started following a debate between two bloggers, one Protestant, one Orthodox, on the issue of Sola Scriptura. The Protestant, Rhology from the Rhoblogy blog, naturally took the pro-Sola Scriptura position, while David, the Orthodox proprietor of the blog Pious Fabrications, took the opposite position. I have provided links below to all of the debate entries. Both debaters made some good, interesting points, but, in the end, I am still not persuaded that Sola Scriptura is a valid doctrine.
Sorry Rhology.

1a) Rhology's opening and position statement
1b) David's opening and position statement

2a) Rhology's 1st rebuttal
2b) David's 1st rebuttal

3a) Rhology's 2nd rebuttal
3b) David's 2nd rebuttal

Cross-Examination
4a) Rhology's question for David
4b) David's answer

5a) David's question for Rhology
5b) Rhology's answer

6a) Rhology's second question for David
6b) David's answer

7a) David's second question for Rhology
7b) Rhology's answer

8a) Rhology's third question for David
8b) David's answer

9a) David's third question for Rhology
9b) Rhology's answer

Closing Statements
10a) Rhology's
10b) David's
 
Here is a link to comment section.

Washington

I recently read a vicious and quite uninformed criticism of this image. It's difficult to see, but it is a Renaissance painting depicting the coronation of the Virgin Mary in heaven as described in Revelation 12.

I found this criticism on an anti-Catholic website that was so ugly, uncharitable and filled with falsehoods and misrepresentations of Roman Catholic and Orthodox beliefs and practices, that I have chosen not even to provide a link. It's simply not worth directing people there.

The website uses words like "blasphemous" and "abominable," to describe images of Mary. It is sad, really, that people see an image of someone we love and admire, and whose example we strive to emulate, and they immediately charge blasphemy and idolatry.

So, with that in mind, I would like to remember the the 278th anniversary of the birth of our first president by posting some pictures not entirely unlike the one above. In fact, if one were to superimpose the Virgin Mary's face over that of Mr Washington, one might elicit charges of idolatry.

I invite my readers to consider whether the image above is really any more objectionable than those that follow:











This last image appears in the eye of the Capitol rotunda in Washington D.C. It is called "The Apotheosis of Washington." Apotheosis literally means "deification."

Wife of televangelist Benny Hinn files for divorce

The news here, in my opinion, isn't that she has filed for divorce, but that she managed to stay married to this nut for thirty years!!!

From the LA Times:

The wife of faith healer and televangelist Benny Hinn has filed for divorce in Orange County Superior Court.

The couple married in 1979 and have three daughters and a son, according to a biography on posted on the website for Benny Hinn Ministries.

The silver-haired Hinn is one of the world's most financially successful faith healers.

He lives in a multimillon-dollar home near Salt Creek Beach Park in Dana Point. And he has flown around the world in a leased Gulfstream jet to lead his "Miracle Crusades," during which tens of thousands of followers have packed stadiums and auditoriums to hear Hinn preach about the Gospel and God's healing powers.

Read the rest here.

NYT on Fr. Moses Berry

Father Moses Berry is the paster of an Old Calendar OCA parish in Missouri. I first became aware of Fr Moses and his museum via an Illumined Heart podcast last year. His story is an interesting one and I recommend listening to the podcast and reading the article of which I have attached an excerpt below.

[As I was clicking through his church's website just now I came across something remarkable. Fr Moses's parish hosted an American Heritage Music Festival last year and the year before. Until now, the only festivals I have known Orthodox parishes to host have been those for the purpose of celebrating some Eastern ethnic heritage: Serbian, Greek, Russian, etc. The ones that I have attended I have enjoyed--and i LOVE the food--but I have difficulty with the notion that it is among the Church's purposes to preserve/celebrate, etc ethnic pride or nationalism. But as long as we're celebrating heritages...why not celebrate American heritage? We are Americans after all, are we not? I didn't become Greek when I became Orthodox.]

ASH GROVE, Mo. — When he moved back home here 12 years ago, the Rev. Moses Berry wanted to settle down to small-town life with his wife and two children. He did not intend to become a one-man racial reconciliation committee.

But some residents of this nearly all-white, rural town of 1,400 people 15 miles west of Springfield say that he has done just that.

By founding a black history museum here, cleaning up his family’s cemetery and telling his family’s sometimes controversial story, beginning with its roots in slavery, Father Moses, as everyone calls him — an African-American, Orthodox Christian priest in a flowing black cassock — has tried to remind people of a part of the region’s often-forgotten past, and to open up hearts and minds along the way.

Read the rest here.

Ozarks Afro-American Heritage Museum website
Theotokos "Unexpected Joy" Orthodox Church

Why we need beautiful churches

In the Orthodox Church, the house of worship is more than merely a structure in which the faithful gather on weekends. Like everything else in Orthodox worship, the very design of the building is intended to point us toward Christ. It is yet another thread in the vast seamless tapestry that is Orthodox Christian worship.

The following is from an interview of Andrew Gould of New World Byzantine architects.

Q: Would you mind telling us a little bit of your philosophy on why we need beautiful churches?

A: The question of ‘why this sort of architecture?’ really brings me back to why I started becoming interested in Orthodoxy. I had previously been Anglican and I was interested in designing Anglican churches in gothic style; when I was in college, I studied gothic architecture quite intensively. But as I started to learn about Orthodoxy and Byzantine churches, I was really impressed by the degree to which architecture, iconography, music and liturgy are integrated in Orthodoxy, as one common vision. The way the liturgical movements connect to the different spaces of the building, and then the way the liturgical movements address the different icons, the way in which the icons are painted on the particular surfaces of the buildings in the proper order where they go, and then the way the hymnography refers to all of these saints and to liturgical actions. All of these things work together as an icon of the Kingdom of God in its entirety. Panel icons of saints are not the whole story. They represent the saints, the angels, Christ—but the Kingdom of God is a lot more than that.

If you read the end of the Book of Revelation it describes the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is the City of New Jerusalem: it has foundations made of precious stones; it has columns and arches and beautiful pavements; it has domes—all of this is described. And it has ever been the practice of the Orthodox Church to understand church architecture as iconographic. That it, along with the icons and saints, makes for the full representation of the Kingdom of God, and then that must be filled with liturgy, music, incense, to represent we who make up the Kingdom of God along with the saints and angels worshipping God therein. So if you don’t have that, if you have a room like this {indicates a nave in a temporary office-space – ed.} with icons hanging on the wall, you’ve only got half of the picture. To me, honestly, seeing this situation of a mission church without a church, looks like the Kingdom of God in exile. We have worship, and we have music, we have saints, but where is New Jerusalem? Where is the City?

That’s why you need beautiful architecture. And that’s why the architecture needs to be honest, and solid and sincere. We don’t want to have a stage set, we don’t want to have a building that superficially looks like an Orthodox church, because that’s a stage set, that’s sort of what Baroque architecture is. That’s sort of trying to use plaster and ornament to give a theatrical impression of the Beatific Vision. But Orthodoxy’s not about that, Orthodoxy’s about building something absolutely solid, and permanent and honest that conveys the real ethos of the eternal Kingdom of God.

St. George Orthodox Military Association (SGOMA)

You will notice that I have just made an addition to my link list. It is for a new organization that I just became aware of through a certain blog to which I am a somewhat frequent visitor.

The St. George Orthodox Military Association began last October and their mission is to "find new opportunities to support and assist our Orthodox Military Members serving in the US Armed Forces Stateside and around the World, because the spiritual wellness of our Orthodox Troops matter."


Grammatical concerns aside, it looks like a good organization and is certainly a worthy cause.

Archpastoral Message of his Beatitude Metropolitan Jonah for Sanctity of Life Sunday 2010

January 24, 2010
Sanctity of Life Sunday

To the Venerable Hierarchs, Clergy, Monastics and Faithful of the Orthodox Church in America

Dearly Beloved in Christ:

As Orthodox Christians, we strongly affirm the value and sanctity of all human life, from the moment of conception to the final breath one takes. This affirmation is theologically based, in that each person bears within him or her self the image of God, and has the potential to fulfill that image by likening him/herself to God. To artificially terminate life is to transgress on that which is holy; it is unthinkable, a grave sin.

Every one of our churches and our homes bear the image of the infant Christ cradled in the arms of His Mother, an image that is supremely human, and supremely divine. It is the image of divine Motherhood, that the Son of God was conceived, borne and nurtured by His Most Pure Mother. God is thus revealed in the Motherhood of the Virgin; bearing us in Her holy embrace of love. This image also reveals God's love for us, that he became like us in every way--a fetus in His Mother's womb, an infant in Her arms, a little child. God has sanctified every aspect of human life, becoming what we are that He might make us like Himself.

As Orthodox, every aspect of our lives is iconic. Every child is an image of the Christ Child, every person an image of God. Each bears infinite potential to attain to the Likeness, to sainthood, to holiness. Marriage also is an icon, as the union of man and woman in the flesh blessed by God, and bringing forth the fruit of children, is an image of our union with one another in Christ in the Kingdom.

Christian marriage and family are the sacred context not only for the rearing of children, but as the basic core of our identity and reference point of stability. The family is the place where we are nurtured and accepted, find solace and consolation, and thus the faithful family becomes the place where these very human emotions and feelings are filled with grace and sanctified. Whether we are very young or very old, the family is the context of our life, in which we work out our salvation. We experience God's Fatherhood, and divine Motherhood; we experience the nurturing love which becomes a participation in divine communion. And as we breathe our last, should we not remember the image of the crucified Christ, carried in the arms of his mother, in her grief, the grief of every mother for her child?

We affirm the sanctity of life, made holy by the incarnation of the Christ. We affirm that every stage of our life has been sanctified. We affirm marriage of one man and one woman as the foundation of the family, the image of our union with God, and the means of sanctifying the lives of all members of that family by the grace of love and divine communion.

These are desperate times. Our society is in despair. It is a despair that manifests itself in the breakdown of essential relationships, of marriage and family. Continued unemployment leads to hopelessness, and the breakdown of trust that one is able to provide; this leads to the breakdown of marriages, and the bitterness that goes with it. Returning soldiers, with posttraumatic stress just below the surface, enter into relationships that often turn brutal and abusive. Marriage, and the very family itself are in question, with the issue of homosexual unions. The majority of marriages end in divorce, and the majority of children grow up without fathers or mothers; and how many pregnancies end in abortion? Despair is the primary context which could make it even possible for a mother to destroy her unborn child.

We offer, always, the way to healing and reconciliation for those who have fallen short and fallen into sin, in an embrace of love. We offer hope to those who have lost hope through the guilt of sin. We offer consolation to those in sorrow. We offer support and guidance to build families that work out their salvation together, and become the rock and foundation of our culture. Through these things, re-incarnating Christ's love and redemption in hearts, in real faces, in institutions of concrete service and healing, we offer hope to our people, our culture, our society, and through that hope, joy as we see God reborn in our lives and in those of all around us.

Yours in Christ,

+JONAH
Archbishop of Washington
Metropolitan of All America and Canada


SANCTITY OF LIFE PETITIONS AND PRAYERS

These petitions are to be inserted into the Litany of Fervent Supplication as part of the annual commemoration of Sanctity of Life Sunday.

--Again we pray that You will grant to the people of this nation the will to do good, to flee from evil, and to practice all righteousness, making us respectful of life and sharers of Your blessings, caring for one another in mercy and truth.

--Again we pray that You will banish all evil from our hearts and wickedness from our laws, enabling us to be servants of Your holy will and performers of Your love.

--Again we pray that You will kindle in our hearts the will to care for the needy, to show kindness to the poor, to aid the homeless and help the helpless.

The following prayer is to be read after the singing of "Blessed be the Name of the Lord" for the second time.

Let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have mercy.

O Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son, Who are in the bosom of the Father, True God, source of life and immortality, Light of Light, Who came into the world to enlighten it: You were pleased to be conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary for the salvation of our souls by the power of Your All-Holy Spirit. O Master, Who came that we might have life more abundantly, we ask You to enlighten the minds and hearts of those blinded to the truth that life begins at conception and that the unborn in the womb are already adorned with Your image and likeness; enable us to guard, cherish, and protect the lives of all those who are unable to care for themselves. For You are the Giver of Life, bringing each person from non-being into being, sealing each person with divine and infinite love. Be merciful, O Lord, to those who, through ignorance or willfulness, affront Your divine goodness and providence through the evil act of abortion. May they, and all of us, come to the life of Your Truth and glorify You, the Giver of Life, together with Your Father, and Your All-Holy and Life-giving Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

"Blessed be the Name of the Lord" is then sung for the third time, followed by the usual dismissal.

From oca.org

The Blessing of the Electronics

Ummm...okay, why not?

From TimesOnline:
Great efforts have been made to modernise the Church of England, but its liturgy dates from before the arrival of the Nokia 6310, and until yesterday, none had been brave enough to adapt its ceremonies to address the modern mysteries of 3G network coverage, iPhone apps and variable battery life.

But if anyone can, [Rev Canon David Parrott] can.

Yesterday, in the church of the City of London Corporation, he presented an updated version of Plow Monday, an observance that dates from medieval times. On this day, the first Monday after Twelfth Night, farm labourers would bring a plough to the door of the church to be blessed.

Men and women coming to his church no longer used ploughs; their tools were their laptops, their iPhones and their BlackBerries.

...the congregation held their phones in the air, and Canon Parrott addressed the Almighty. “By your blessing, may these phones and computers, symbols of all the technology and communication in our daily lives, be a reminder to us that you are a God who communicates with us and who speaks by your Word. Amen.”

Read the rest here

Chaplain article

The following is an article I found in the Joint Task Force newsletter called The Wire:

I assemble the chalice like I used to assemble my M-16 when I was enlisted. Piece by piece clicks into place and I extract an altar’s worth of furnishings from a couple of green weatherproof cases. My vestments are lightweight, small enough to be folded into a tight package. I’ve got my censer, and I’ve tucked incense and charcoal away in medicine bottles and metal cases. My gospel book is smaller than my appointment book. You could say that I haul all the altars of ancient Christendom on my back.

That’s what it’s like being an Orthodox Christian chaplain. You carry your religion with you, all 2,000 years of it. In a religion where an element of tradition that’s only 800 or 900 years old is still considered “new,” the events that played out in history books are as vital to you as things that happened to you yesterday. There are a lot of labels that we attach to our names – Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Serbian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Coptic, Ethiopian, etc. – but they all boil down to the same traditional approach to Christianity.

Coming to GTMO, even on a short-term basis, has been a wonderful experience so far. One of the challenges for any smaller religious community is that you may only get your services a few times a year. That’s why priests like me, who are currently assigned to other installations, make a point of visiting the more isolated American service members, flung out into the world at bases and posts that cling to the edges of countries everywhere on the globe. It may be someone else’s country, but we carry our nation in our heart. For small religious communities, worship is a part of your identity that links you to God, your family and your past. It is my honor and privilege to be able to feed that hunger for God through the ministry and the military allows me to do this for the sake of religious freedom.

I get surprised, too. Somebody I’d never met before hugged me yesterday. That’s what ministry boils down to – that bit of human contact that reminds us that we love each other. We’re often tired and miss family and can begin to view the day as a list of things to “get over” or “get through” but a community of strength and love surrounds us that we often forget about. I bring that care and concern in a chalice, in sermons or in counseling sessions. Other people bring it in a hug. How do you bring it?

As an Orthodox priest, I’ve served communities of countless ethnicities. The thing that binds us all is our common faith, a thing that cuts through time and circumstance to unite us. Through it all, our common dedication to justice, freedom and, most of all, love for one another, unite us as a nation.

The author of the article, Fr Matthew Streett, is the former assistant priest at Annunciation Cathedral in Baltimore. He is now an Air Force chaplain and will be visiting our base here in Baghdad and serving the Divine Liturgy on the feast of Theophany (new calendar) on Wednesday.

St Maximos Orthodox Church, Owego, NY

This is one of the coolest things I've seen online in a long time.