OrthodoxNet.com Blog

Baltimore (IOCC) A wave of caring is sweeping across the country in the form of Gift of the Heart health kits being assembled for victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami.

Orthodox Christians young and old are assembling the health kits for shipment to the tsunami-affected countries in response to an appeal by International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC). From national Church organizations to the smallest parish, thousands of kits are being made.

The Greek Orthodox Ladies Philoptochos Society, which has 27,000 members, and the young adult ministry of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America have both made the health kits a national project.

“Our calling as Christians is to love one another and assist those in need,” said Georgia Skeadas, national president of the Ladies Philoptochos Society. Assembling these health kits is one way to demonstrate Christ’s
love in a tangible way in the face of overwhelming need.

Young adult chapters throughout the U.S. will be assembling and collecting the health kits at various functions, social gatherings and parish events. Their goal is 5,000.

“knowing that so many neighbors from across the globe are extending their hands, has to provide hope and comfort to the victims,” said Fr. Mark A. Leondis, national director of Youth and Young Adult Ministries
for the Greek Archdiocese.

The health and school kits are being assembled by Orthodox Christians for the Gift of the Heart program of Church World Service, a longtime partner of IOCC. The kits are then sent to the Church of the Brethren Service Center Annex in New Windsor, Md., a warehouse facility where they are prepared for shipment overseas.

Loretta Wolf, director of Service Ministries for the Church of the Brethren General Board, said the number of IOCC-generated health kits arriving at the warehouse has increased considerably over the past few weeks.
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Rich Lowry writes about human trafficking.

Ambassador John Miller is head of the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. But he has a simpler word for what he is combating: “slavery.” Trafficking, or “modern-day slavery,” as Miller calls it, is fast becoming one of the early 21st century’s foremost human-rights issues.

The Wall Street Journal has an article that touches on the function of architecture in creating churches (worship-spaces?) written by an architectural critic.

What makes a church sacred? Until the Reformation, the standard answer was its consecration as a house of God. Since Vatican II and the cultural ferment of the 1960s, Catholic and Protestant reformers alike have subscribed to the notion that churches are merely functional settings, whether for celebrating liturgical rites or hearing the Word.

http://www.catholicexchange.com/vm/index.asp?vm_id=2&art_id=26177

Think of the times when doctors (or the courts) have been proven wrong:

• Patricia White Bull awoke from an “irreversible” coma after sixteen years.
• Terry Wallis awakened from another “irreversible” coma after nineteen years.
• Rus Cooper-Dowda could hear her husband and doctors discuss when to remove her ventilator and feeding tube, since she would “never” regain any meaningful function. Unbeknownst to these doctors, Rus was pregnant at the very moment they wanted to kill her. With the surreptitious help of a nurse, she was able to recover; her son will soon turn twenty.

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Terri Schiavo, who has been the center of a long right-to-live case, celebrated her 41st birthday on Friday.

After oxygen was deprived from her brain when she collapsed in her home in 1990, Schiavo suffered from brain damage and needed to receive nutrition from feeding tubes to survive.

Read the entire article on the Christian Post website.

For interested readers, I wrote some commentary supporting Terri Schiavo’s struggle: The Martyrdom of Terri Schiavo: Resisting the ministers of death.

Concern that religious tensions along the lines of those sparked in the Netherlands by the brutal killing of Islam-critical filmmaker Theo van Gogh could spill over into Germany has triggered a fresh debate among Germans about integrating the nation’s large foreign population. Leon Mangasarian reports.

Muslims comprise 4 percent of Germany’s population
While Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has stepped-up a campaign calling on the country’s big Muslim community to fit with the country’s laws and its democratic principles, leading political figures in the nation have claimed that multiculturalism has failed in Germany.

This comes in the wake of a mass demonstration of Muslims in Germany against terror and growing alarm in the country over the torching of mosques, churches and schools in the Netherlands following the van Gogh killing.

There have also been press reports of a link between the van Gogh murder and Germany, with claims that one of those involved in the killing in the Netherlands lived in neighbouring Germany.

With 3.4 million Muslims comprising 4 percent of Germany’s population, the question was put this way by a banner headline in the conservative Bild newspaper: “Is the hate going to come here?” asked the biggest selling tabloid.

Read the entire article on the Expatica website.

I shamelessly lifted this from This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis.

Important Rules for Writing Good

1. Avoid alliteration. Always.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They’re old hat.)
4. Employ the vernacular.
5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
7. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
8. Contractions aren’t necessary.
9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
10. One should never generalize.
11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
12. Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
13. Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
14. Be more or less specific.
15. Understatement is always best.
16. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
17. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
19. The passive voice is to be avoided.
20. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
21. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
22. Who needs rhetorical questions?

GENEVA, November 9, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) concluded a review on Poland’s compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), demanding that the mostly-Catholic nation “liberalize” its abortion laws. The UN committee composed of 18 UN human rights “experts” from various countries met with Polish officials on October 27 and 28, making its observations and recommendations on November 4.

Thursday, November 4, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST Wall Street Journal

God bless our country.

Hello, old friends. Let us savor.

Let us get our heads around the size and scope of what happened Tuesday. George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States, became the first incumbent president to increase his majority in both the Senate and the House and to increase his own vote (by over 3.5 million) since Franklin D. Roosevelt, political genius of the 20th century, in 1936. This is huge.

George W. Bush is the first president to win more than 50% of the popular vote since 1988. (Bill Clinton failed to twice; Mr. Bush failed to last time and fell short of a plurality by half a million.) The president received more than 59 million votes, breaking Ronald Reagan’s old record of 54.5 million. Mr. Bush increased his personal percentages in almost every state in the union. He carried the Catholic vote and won 42% of the Hispanic vote and 24% of the Jewish vote (up from 19% in 2000.)

© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41097

According to two polls released over the week just passed, President Bush has picked up significant ground among black voters. A New York Times poll showed black support for the president at 17 percent. A poll of larger scope done by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, an organization specializing in studying black issues, showed 18 percent black support for Bush. Although black support at this level for Bush-Cheney is still low, it nevertheless represents a doubling of the 8 percent of the black vote that the Republican ticket received in 2000.
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By CHARLES J. CHAPUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/22/opinion/22chaput.html?ex=1099442009&ei=1&en=0626a7e7415fe210

Denver — The theologian Karl Barth once said, “To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.”

That saying comes to mind as the election approaches and I hear more lectures about how Roman Catholics must not “impose their beliefs on society” or warnings about the need for “the separation of church and state.” These are two of the emptiest slogans in current American politics, intended to discourage serious debate. No one in mainstream American politics wants a theocracy. Nor does anyone doubt the importance of morality in public life. Therefore, we should recognize these slogans for what they are: frequently dishonest and ultimately dangerous sound bites.

Lawmaking inevitably involves some group imposing its beliefs on the rest of us. That’s the nature of the democratic process. If we say that we “ought” to do something, we are making a moral judgment. When our legislators turn that judgment into law, somebody’s ought becomes a “must” for the whole of society. This is not inherently dangerous; it’s how pluralism works.
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The Rev. Dr. Louis R. Tarsitano, St. Andrew’s, Savannah
October 19, 2004

As our Anglican brethren around the world, and especially in the vital and faithful regions of Africa, contemplate the Windsor Report, it may be useful to outline a few relevant facts about the situation of faithful American Anglicans.

First and foremost, while the illegitimate consecration of the homosexual Gene Robinson to be a bishop in the Church of God has had a galvanizing effect on world-wide Anglicanism, this offense against the Holy Scriptures and the moral law of God is not the beginning of such offenses, but only the latest in a series of departures from Scripture and Anglican faith and practice, dating back to the 1970s. It is easy to forget, for example, that Mr. Robinson, despite his self-professed practice of homosexuality, was a functioning priest in the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA) before his election as bishop. Furthermore, there are self-professed homosexuals active in the ministry of ECUSA, even as seminary professors, in many other dioceses. Mr. Robinson’s consecration may have come as a shock to our foreign brethren, but for those of us living in the United States it was simply “business as usual.”
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Bishops Focusing Attention on a Critical Question
Date: 2004-10-15
http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=60461

NEW YORK, OCT. 15, 2004 (Zenit.org).- The U.S. presidential campaign is stirring intense comment in more than just the secular arena.

This year’s closely contested race between President George Bush and Senator John Kerry has prompted a wave of efforts within the Church to raise awareness about Catholics’ duties in forming their conscience before voting Nov. 2.

At one level in the Church’s contribution to the political arena is a range of documents being published to help inform the faithful.

A key document from the U.S. bishops’ conference was “Faithful Citizenship: A Catholic Call to Political Responsibility,” published last March. On Tuesday, the bishops of Pennsylvania announced the publication of “Catholic Conscience and Public Policy.”
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From the article:

We have limited resources and face many challenges. Here’s a simple truth: The money spent to combat climate change is not available to eradicate malaria, killer of 2 million people each year, 90 percent of whom are children under 5. And it takes money to increase female literacy in poor nations — perhaps the key investment for social progress.

Those who believe climate change trumps all else ignore the reality that we must trade off among competing values. Those who deny this hold a religious position that is not open to reason.

Read the entire article on A Better Earth website.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ftp/graphics/AT09/refresh/AL0904W5+GIF/061453W5.gif

37th Biennial Clergy-Laity Congress
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese
07/26/04

1. Introduction

I greet you with the opening thankfulness lines of St. Paul’s Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, from which also the Biblical slogan for our Clergy-Laity Congress has been taken:

We are bound to give thanks to God always for you, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing. Therefore, we ourselves boast of you in the Churches of God…
(2 Thessalonians 1: 3-4).

Thanks for your faith and love; thanks for keeping the Gospel present and alive among us, bearing fruit and continuously growing.
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John Nixon writes in his newletter:

Despite a clear statement that

Marriage is only conducted and recognized in the Orthodox Church as taking place between a man and a woman. Same-sex marriages are a contradiction in terms. The Orthodox Church does not allow for same-sex marriages (http://www.goarch.org/en/ourfaith/articles/article8083.asp),

Greek Orthodox Senators Olympia Snowe and Paul Sarbanes (the latter having been named a “Model Greek Orthodox Christian” by H.A.H.E.P. Bartholomew I) have voted today against the constitutional amendment to define marriage as being between a man and a woman.

One wonders who is giving them pastoral guidance on how their faith should impact their public service. Click here for the roll call vote in the Senate.

Prior to the Civil War there were two major political parties in the United States: the Democrats, who believed Americans should have the freedom of choice to own slaves; and the Whigs, who wanted to be the big tent party embracing free and slave states.

The Whigs diminished in power and in Ripon, Wisconsin, an anti-slavery group met in February of 1854 to discuss a new party.
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VICTOR L. SIMPSON
Associated Press Writer
June 29, 2004

Sitting side by side, Pope John Paul II and the spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians made passionate appeals Tuesday for unity among their faithful, while acknowledging serious obstacles remain.

With Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople saying the joy of the occasion was clouded by “disappointment” over lack of unity, the pope assured him that Roman Catholics are irrevocably committed to mending the historic rupture between the Eastern and Western branches of Christianity.

These efforts “cannot be abandoned,” said the pope, urging all Christians to intensify them.
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Remarks of President Ronald Reagan at 1985 Conference on Religious Liberty
June 9, 2004
http://www.ird-renew.org/Home/Home.cfm?ID=906&c=28

The following speech was given by President Ronald Reagan at an April 1985 conference that was co-sponsored by the State Department and the Institute on Religion & Democracy, the National Association of Evangelicals, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, and the Jacque Maritain Center at Notre Dame. In his address, the President addressed the importance of international religious freedom. Even after the fall of communism, his remarks on religious liberty continue to be relevant. Continue Reading »