Abortion ~ An Orthodox View

Posted on by Fr. Peter
In the previous post I linked to an article on another blog on what to do to make your voice heard. It would appear that the House of Representatives will vote on their version of the Health Care Bill on Saturday. I guess they will try and sneak it past us. Well we need to make our voices heard so go to the previous post and make your voice heard. “Abortion is not Health Care because Killing is not Healing!”

At the Road to Unity Conference this past week, Metropolitan Jonah of the OCA spoke about some statistics that were shown during the conference. It appears that 60% of the Orthodox in the USA believe that abortion is okay. Well his Beatitude said that “If 60 percent of our people support abortion, then we have failed miserably in our teaching!” I agree.

Well I would say that the confusion on the topic perhaps come from the top of the pile. In 1990, then Metropolitan Bartholomew of Chalcedon was interviewed in a newspaper in San Francisco. This is what the now Patriarch of Constantinople and Spiritual Head of the Worlds Orthodox had to say:

Asked the Orthodox church’s position on abortion, Bartholomais described a stand more liberal than that of the Roman Catholic Church, which condemns abortion in all cases and whose clergy have, in some cities, excommunicated leading pro-choice Catholics.

Although the Orthodox church believes the soul enters the body at conception and, ”generally speaking, respects human life and the continuation of pregnancy,” Bartholomais said, the church also ”respects the liberty and freedom of all human persons and all Christian couples.”

”We are not allowed to enter the bedrooms of the Christian couples,” he said. ”We cannot generalize. There are many reasons for a couple to go toward abortion.”

I think His Beatitude needs to read Fr. Stanley Harakas’ Book, Contemporary Moral Issues Facing the Orthodox Christian.

“Since the earliest days of her existence, the Christian Church has consistently declared willful abortion of a human fetus to be equivalent to murder. St. Basil in the fourth century declared that. ‘Those who give potions for the destruction of the child conceived in the womb are murderers; as are they who take the poisons which kill the child (8th Canon of St. Basil)'”

Your Beatitude I do not think St. Basil would say “Generally Speaking” as you have.

Harakas continues:

“As Orthodox Christians, we profess that all life comes from God and that human life represents the most precious gift that our Creator has bestowed upon us. That God Himself places ultimate value on the sanctity of human life is evident by the fact that out of His great love for us, ‘He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.’ (John 3:16)”

There is an exception to this teaching and Fr. Harakas states that “When the life of the mother is in jeopardy due to her pregnancy, then an exception to the prohibition on abortion may be allowed. Such situations are always tragic… but here the, the particular circumstances of the situation must be taken into consideration, in a spirit of Christian love and sacrifice.”

If that in not enough for Your Beatitude let us turn now to the Sixth Ecumenical Council held in 691 and the 91st Canon: “As for women who furnish drugs for the purpose of procuring abortion and those who take fetus-killing poisons, they are made subject to the penalty prescribed for murderers.” Fr. Harakas continues, “For the Orthodox Christian Church, it is incomprehensible how a well-ordered state can permit, tolerate or encourage any form of murder. Rather it is the duty and responsibility of the state to protect the innocent and the weak. As members of the Orthodox Church, therefore we should consider it our duty to support proper political efforts aimed at prohibiting abortion, except in extreme circumstances. It is therefore obvious that the Orthodox Christian Church, whose position on this issue has stood the test of two thousand years of history, stands opposed today to all efforts to continue to make abortion the permitted practice of this nation!”

Okay I am not the brightest bulb on the tree but that sounds pretty clear to me. It sounds like we Orthodox have a moral imperative to do whatever we can to oppose abortion in all forms, except where an exception can be made! Now I know that English is not the first language of His Beatitude and perhaps this should be translated for him, but it sounds to me that by his words he has taken himself outside of the Church!

He claims to be the Green Patriarch, and his Exarch the Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, who was not present with the other Orthodox Bishops at last years March for Life by the way, stood in the same room with President Obama last year and compared him to Alexander the Great! Perhaps we should call him the Red Patriarch for all of the abortions that he feels, generally speaking are okay!

St. Columba of Iona Orthodox Monastery

Posted on by Fr. Peter
For the last few years I have had a vision to create a monastery here in the Central Massachusetts region. A few weeks back I was having lunch with my good friend Fr. Ken and I shared this vision with him. He shares my vision. This was not a surprise as Fr. Ken is a visionary person. During the discussion he shared with me that a certain large piece of land was becoming available not far from my church in Charlton, Massachusetts. This set the wheels in motion. Although we do not have possession of the land YET we have claimed this land for the purpose of establishing the St. Columba of Iona Orthodox Monastery.

We have begun to put some information together to include a website (look for that soon). We have created a foundation document with the vision and mission of the monastery. Here is what we have come up with thus far:

Vision:

To establish an authentic Pan-Orthodox Monastic Community (Eastern & Western Rite) in the heart of Central Massachusetts dedicated to a balanced life of prayer, worship, work and service in support of the broader Orthodox Church’s mission to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the un-changed and timeless Orthodox Christian Faith to America in the same spirit and missionary zeal as St. Columba of Iona.

Mission:

St. Columba of Iona Monastery exists to make visible the Kingdom of God to the world; is dedicated to a life of prayer, worship, work and service of others; committed to support local Orthodox Parishes in their evangelistic and missionary outreach to the broader community; is set apart as a place of prayer, contemplation, spiritual direction, formation and renewal; a holy place firmly rooted in the sacramental life of the Church.

This is just the start of the process so stay tuned for more.

If you would like to know how you can be involved in support or to test your monastic vocation leave me some feedback or email me from the link on the side of the page.

Post Rank

Posted on by Fr. Peter
Every now and again I like to look at the blog stats to see where you all are coming from and what brings you to the blog. I noticed a large number of coming from a website called Post Rank. It would appear that these pages rank #20 this week (up from #25 last week)

Thanks to all of you for reading my words here on this page. I never would have dreamed it would actually be ranked let alone ranked #20.

God Bless you all!

The Road to Unity ~ The Recordings

Posted on by Fr. Peter
The great folks at Ancient Faith Radio were present at the conference this past week and they had their recording gear all set up. Well now the recordings are available online. I would suggest that if you are interested in the topic of Orthodox Unity you take a listen to the panel discussions. Special thanks to John and Tonya Maddex for taking the time to come and record all of the sessions and then spend the time editing them. They are doing great work for the Orthodox Church.

The Road to Unity

Sermon 22nd Sunday After Pentecost

Posted on by Fr. Peter
Sermon Audio

I had the blessing this past week to attend an important conference in the life of our Orthodox Church. The conference was entitled “The Road to Unity ~ From Vision to Action.” I can tell you we are standing in the door of some exciting things that are going to happen in Orthodoxy in America.I know many of you have heard all of this before but I believe that this time we are closest we have ever been and the talk at the conference was that we are not going to let it slip through our fingers this time. What will this new church in America look like? Only God knows, but we need to pray for unity in this country of the Orthodox for divided we can do nothing but together we can do great things.

On the first night of the conference, Metropolitan Jonah of the OCA addressed those in attendance about the church of the future. He told a story about his recent visit to the Republic of Georgia and the infant church there. He paid a visit to one diocese in the south of country where 10 years ago there were only 2 churches and 80,000 Muslims. The bishop decided that was not good enough and he set out on a program to in his words baptize the culture for the Orthodox faith. Now 10 years latter he has more than 200 churches and has baptized more than 80% of the diocese into the Orthodox Church.

There is another story of a group of mayn Indians and Aztec people in south America who have approached there church here in the US to bring them into the fullness of Orthodoxy. It is a long story of who they got to where they are today but their bishop is 70 years old and dying and wants to make sure his people are cared for. They have 250 churches with 70,000 people that will be welcomed into the Orthodox Church, please God, sometime over the next year. Praise God the church is on the cusp of an explosion.

In his great work, the Brothers Karamazoff Dostoyevsky tells a story called the old woman and the onion. It seems a wealthy woman awakes from her sleep and finds herself in the middle of a lake of fire. On the shore of the lake is her guardian angel. She calls out to him and tells him there must be some mistake as she is a good, well known person and should not be here in this lake of fire. The angel asks her if she ever did anything for anyone else. She thinks for a moment and remembers a time when she was gardening and an old poor woman came by begging. She told the angel, I gave her an onion and sent her on her way. The angel replied that he had the onion right here in his pocket and produced the onion. He reaches out with the onion and the old woman grabbed on and the angel started to lift her out of the lake of fire. The others in the lake with her saw what was happening and grabbed on to her and started to be lifted out with her. When the woman realized this she started to thrash about and kick the others and said let go this is MY onion, and at that the onion broke and they all fell back into the lake of fire!

Metr Jonah told us Thursday night that the greatest sin the Orthodox in America has committed is taking care of our own. He went on to say that we do need to take care of our own but not at the expense of others. He asked us, where are our schools, our hospitals, out soup kitchens. A recent study showed that among all religious people in America the Orthodox are the wealthiest, but we give the least amount. Where are our school, our soup kitchens, and our hospitals?
I have been having conversations with some of you over the past month about evangelism and how the orthodox evangelize. We could do what some do and go downtown on Saturday morning and set up a sound system and scream “The End is Near” “Repent” “You are all Sinners” Okay not my style and not the Orthodox Style. The Georgian Bishop did not have to run ads in the paper nor did he have to scream from the roof tops. No he engaged the culture and baptized the culture and changed the culture and the church exploded.

We say in the divine liturgy every Sunday, we have found the true faith… But no one knows we have it! We need to engage the community and show them by our actions what it means to be orthodox. Orthodoxy is not a religion it is a lifestyle.

I have said before if we are faithful to what God wants of us and if we are faithful to the Church of God, God will be faithful to us. Friday night, by all accounts we had the most successful Turkey Party we have ever had. I say this is for many reasons not the least of which was the hard work of Tommy Andrea and his team. But I say the reason is because we have been faithful this past year to the church and what God wants of us.

In our own small way we have been engaging the community for Christ. We began to be stewards of the church and not just members. We have given to the church out of love and not just out of obligation. We have begun to meet a need in the community through out community meal once a month. We have invested in the community and the community is investing in us. Just look at our picnic and all the new faces that came to the church, and the Turkey party. We need to continue to engage the community and invite them not only to our events but to our church. It is great that we can fill every seat in the hall and have to set up more tables and chairs, but just imagine how great it would be if we could fill every seat in the church and we had to set up chairs for the over flow!

Our Orthodox Church in America is on the cusp of greatness. We are engaging the community at every level. We have grabbed the great commission to go into all the world and we are not going to let go.

In the bible is the story of the fig tree. We all know this story. Jesus is hungry and he spies a fig tree. But when he finds that it does not bear any fruit he curses it and it dries up. The church is the same way. If we do not bear fruit we will dry up and die but if we bear fruit, and our branches are starting to bud, we will be blessed and we will have more fruit then we know what to do with.

Are you ready to take the next step? Are you ready to do the work that needs to be done to engage the culture and to change it and baptize it for Holy Orthodoxy?We have found the true faith! Don’t keep it a secret!

The Countdown

Posted on by Fr. Peter
The clock is now running toward the first Episcopal Assembly of the American Orthodox Church. Read the press release on the American Orthodox Institute Blog here.

Remember

Posted on by Fr. Peter
I am participating again in the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival this time hosted by Peter Pollack and the word this time is Remember.

It is funny that this is the word this time. This past week I attended a conference about future Orthodox unity in the Americas. Speaker after speaker talked about the future and then one speaker mentioned we need to honor and preserve the past as we move forward.

I think too many times in our lives we think the old is not any good and we need to throw it off to make room for the new. I find that a preposterous idea. As a student of history I have learned that we need to learn from the past so we do not make the same mistakes. We need to honor the memory of those who came before us.

My church, the Orthodox Church, is a church that is deeply rooted in tradition. Tradition is one of the major hallmarks if you will of the church and we claim and unbroken line back to the Apostolic ministry of the 1st century church. Talk about remembering!

This year my parish will celebrate 85 years of ministry here in our little Town. I was thinking as I prepare for all of the activities of the weekend the number of people that have crossed to door step of our church. Right outside my office door hangs a picture of the faces of the founding members of this parish. Some of their families are still here today and some have moved on. I often look at those faces and think of the stories that each one has. What brought them here from the land of their birth and what was the reason they stayed here. Each line in each face tells a story.

I will go to the cemetery sometime during the weekend to visit the grave of the first priest here at St. Michael. I try and visit his grave each time I happen to be at the cemetery but this weekend I will make a pilgrimage if you will. He was the found priest and I like to ask him to pray for me in my ministry and help me with wisdom in this position. It makes me feel good to know that the first person to serve this church is praying for the current minister.

We must remember and never forget the past. We need to honor those who have come before us and learn from their wisdom and counsel. Sit with someone and talk about the past and learn from it. If we do not remember who will?

The Road to Unity ~ A Reflection

Posted on by Fr. Peter
On the long drive home from the conference I had a little chance to reflect on the the happenings of the conference. I still need to process much of what I heard as well as read some of the essays that were passed out.

The first point, and I said this in my sermon yesterday, the American Orthodox Church is on the cusp of greatness. I think we are standing in the door way of a new something (I can’t seem to find the right word) generation maybe, era perhaps, explosion… Not really sure. I say this because we have some great young leaders emerging in the church. People like Metropolitan Jonah, Fr. Justin Matthew’s of FOCUS North America and others are injecting new excitement and energy into the American Church. We are at the threshold of becoming a truly American Church and not just a small immigrant community. I am reminded of the history of the Roman Catholic Church in Boston. The signs used to read “Irish Need Not Apply” Then the church came into her own. The Roman Church under the leadership of visionaries like Richard Cushing of Boston. Cardinal Cushing had a vision for the American Church and built many of the School and Hospitals that the Church in Boston still uses to this day. Cushing was 44 years old when created bishop and was 49 when he became the 3rd Archbishop of Boston. He served the church in that roll for 26 years until his death in 1970. He had a vision to move the church for it’s immigrant roots to a major religious force in America.

I believe that Metr Jonah of the OCA is our Cardinal Richard Cushing. He has the vision to move this church from it’s Greek, Romanian, Bulgarian, Serbian, insert ethnicity here, local church to a power house for good in America. A house divided cannot stand scripture tells us. Our church is of one true faith but we are fractured. Imagine the good we could do if we had one department of evangelism and mission rather than 12! The Orthodox Christian Mission Center began as a department of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese. Now part of the entire church of America we have missionaries serving around the world and more in training. We can do amazing things together. IOCC, OCF, etc all done together!

So where do we go from here? We need patience and we need to be willing to sacrifice and let go of some things that maybe we hold dear. We cannot be afraid of moving in together so to speak and we need to make sure all of our bishops stay at the table and make this work. We need to avoid schism at all costs. As Metr Jonah said communion with the entire Orthodox Church is the most important thing. Nothing is more important that that!

More thoughts in another post.

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