I have been silent on this issue this past week but if you have been following the news, not the mainstream news mind you, you would have read about the priest and three deacons killed last Sunday in Iraq. They had just finished the Liturgy and all four were dragged out of their car and killed and then left on the street. We should be outraged by this! Gerald Augustinius over at the Cafeteria is Closed bog has a post about this issue today. He makes the point that when there was an accusation of guards at the jail in Cuba flushing pages of the Koran down the toilet it made the front page, but not this issue. No we cannot speak of Christianity on the news unless it is some scandal.
When will all this end? There was another story on the blogs today (forgive me I can not find it now) about a bishop in Australia who made the statement that if the Catholic legislatures voted for an abortion bill they should not receive communion. Now they are investigating him for making threats to elected officials! When will this end!
When will Christians rise up and say enough is enough? We get laughed at in the mainstream media when we hold to our beliefs. Bishop are told to shut up by priests and lay people when they try and teach what the church believes. What are we to do?
UPDATE: Here is a link to the story.
Amen! Amen! Amen!
I don’t know what to do about this thought. What suggestions do you have?
This silencing has happened on an Orthodox discussion forum where a greatschema monk has been chastized and had his post pulled down for speaking against the heretical teachings of Buddhism and Sufiism, as well as pointing out that there is no crossing of them with Orthdoxy. He tried to speak the Truth of the church and was shut down.
Not to mention the outrageous disrespect shown to him by the person who made the original post in the first place. That same individual demonstrates time and again his disrespect for not only this holy monk but for the priests who are also on the discussion forum.
God save us!
this has been a problem for quite some time. has we have slowly allowed religion and prayer to be stopped in school we have slowly let the media tell us our values and made us embarassed to be religious. im sure it has always been very hard to stand up for religious reasons just look at what the early christians, the saints and maryters went through in their life times. it has never been easy to be christian.
its always easier to go along with the main stream.
lets face it you dont get ratings from some priest dying for a belief , you do get ratings for stories about priests molesting children.
i guess the devil is alive and does live among us.
I think for far too long we Christians have been silent on many issues. We let prayer be removed from school and we let same sex marriage happen in Massachusetts. We let these things happen because we say this is a Christian country and it will never happen here. Ask yourself this question. Do you vote? If not why?
We need to be activists and get the message out. We need to preach the truth regradless of the outcome. We need to write letters to the editors of the news papers and keep doing it. And most of all we need to pray! Pray for ourselves, for others, for those who love us and those who hate us. God will be faithful, all we need to be is faithful. But we need to have a voice. We cannot just sit in the corner and pray our Jesus Prayer we need to mobilize and make things happen.
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Anonymous,
Same-sex “marriage” undermines the family as God created it as the foundation of society. The Fathers, for all the power they may have attributed to the Jesus Prayer, would not have approved of homosexual unions. Same-sex “marriage” is a society calling normative what God has called unnatural. Same-sex “marriage” promotes behaviour which is inherently damaging to health, which raises medical and insurance costs for everyone. That’s off the top of my head.
Why doesn’t prayer belong in public schools? It belonged there until the 1960s. How does is now become self-evidently wrong?
You argument isn’t really supported by ad hominem that “Fundamentalists” hate mankind and operate from personal agendas because the just thrive on making other people miserable.
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what it all comes down to is its important to live your faith through example. if we has christians are not loving, charitable or an example of good behavior how can we expect people around us to desire our life style.
ghandhi said if christians lived their faith there would be no need for any other religion.
we should not be afraid to stand up for our faith and our brliefs as long as we remember to do it in a loving kind way. nothing turns people off more then self rightousness.we are all sinful in our own ways and we must always keep this in mind.
Thank you Father for this post. When I read Jesus talking about us being ‘salt’ and ‘light’ in the world, I think He is charging us with the call to proclaim the Gospel in word and deed in our communities, to our nation… to the world. In the US we have been blessed with so many ways of proclaiming that message- through many of the tools that you listed in one of your comments. I’m afraid of what Jesus might say to us on that day when we stand before Him as our Judge. Kyrie Eleison.
I also pray for the repose of those martyred in Iraq. May Light perpetual shine upon them.