Orthodox Editors

Bishop Matthias Reaffirms Orthodox Teaching on Homosexuality

Bishop Matthias
Bishop Matthias
Beloved Clergy and Faithful of the Diocese of the Midwest,
Christ is in our midst!

Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise, also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.” (Romans 1:24-27)

In light of the ongoing discussions and debates about “same sex marriage”, I felt the need to address our faithful concerning this issue. Although it would appear to me that the Church doctrine and Scripture has been clear about this issue, there are those who “twist” the Scriptures and the Canons of the Church to fit their own needs. We have always believed that the interpretation of Scripture lies within the framework of “Holy Tradition” and the experience and interpretation of the Holy Fathers before us. Who are we to interpret the Scripture outside of this Sacred Tradition? Only those, who do not have the light of Christ, will interpret Scripture to their own ends.

In the above passage from Romans, St. Paul writes that because of the “lusts of their hearts,” they exchanged the truth of God for the lie. [Read more…]

Obama’s Failed Presidency

Obama is a Failure by Steve McCann –
There comes a time and a point in history which indelibly define a President. Oftentimes the event may not be of major import in the greater scheme of things but the management of it is of such prominence that the success or failure in the handling of the issue is permanently attached to the individual. Such a moment has happened to Barack Obama. His incompetence, inability to lead, prevarications, petulance and immaturity in the debt ceiling crisis have indelibly created an image of abject failure in the minds of a critical mass of people in the United States and around the globe. He will never be able to overcome the portrait that has been etched in too many minds.

Barack Obama’s only interest in the debt ceiling debate was to raise the borrowing limit sufficiently to get by the next election, and as a cudgel to denigrate the Republicans. His concern was not for the American people and the impact of overwhelming national debt, nor an impending and inevitable credit downgrade. Rather, he was determined that raising the debt ceiling would not become an issue during the presidential campaign. Thus, spending cuts created out of whole cloth, combined with tax increases aimed at stoking the embers of class envy, were bandied about by his party in order to justify an increase in the debt ceiling of $2.4 Trillion. [Read more…]

Why It’s Time to Speak about God Again

God Trinity Light of Worldby Jay Haug –
America is living under an illusion: the idea that we can expunge God (broadly understood) from our national and public belief system and still operate a moral and accountable government.

C.S. Lewis summed up the problem in The Abolition of Man. “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and then bid the geldings to be fruitful.” John Adams asserted, “Our Constitution was made for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Our founding fathers laid down a system that demanded conscientious, self-restrained implementation — a government dependent on the character of the people. Ben Franklin, perhaps the most deistic of the founding fathers, famously assured one curious bystander that the Constitutional Conventions had engendered “a Republic, if you can keep it.” How many people today truly understand that America’s health depends on the moral character of its citizens, of their personal “keeping” of our nation? [Read more…]

Extremism and the Democratic Party

Democrats Extreme Communists Radicals by James M. Thunder –
Democratic leaders and liberal commentators declaim against the Tea Party members of the Republican House and Grover Norquist​ for the no-new-taxes pledge to which many Republican Senators and House members have subscribed and have promised their constituents in return for their vote. They are lambasted for their “extremism” in the debt ceiling debate. How convenient for the Democrats to be able to point to specific targets of their wrath.

Would that conservatives and Republicans could point to a particular group of Democrats or a particular pledge Democrats take as evidence of their extremism. The reason conservatives and Republicans cannot point to such a group or pledge is because extremism on the Left infects the entire Democratic Party. [Read more…]

On Redistributing Wealth

Christ in the House of Simon Poor Redistribute Wealthby James V. Schall, S.J. –
Greed, some say, is the main reason the poor are poor. It isn’t. We rarely take a close look at envy. Because someone is rich, it does not follow that he is therefore greedy. A poor man is free to be both greedy and envious. Envy is as much a generator of extra work as want, perhaps more so.

Mandeville’s famous notion, that our vices not our virtues cause prosperity, has a point. Usable wealth must first be produced and made available. The primary causes of wealth production are brains, effort, and virtue. The world was given to us in a raw state to see what we would do with it, yes, for one another.

At first sight, the oft-repeated lament that the world’s goods need to be “redistributed” for the benefit of the poor seems logical. Usually behind this apparently innocent approach is the idea of the limitation of the world’s “goods.” If the world’s resources are “limited,” then we need to establish a system of control of human behavior, of our “desires.” [Read more…]

Met. Jonah: On Marriage, Family, Sexuality, and Moral Living

Metropolitan Jonah
Metropolitan Jonah
Beloved Fathers, brothers and sisters in Christ,

If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:6-10)

In our own lifetimes we were blessed by an act of prophetic witness in July 1992, when the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Orthodox Church in America issued the magnificent “Affirmations on Marriage, Family, Sexuality, and the Sanctity of Life.” Two decades later we Orthodox who live in the diocese that includes our nation’s capital city need to be reminded of some of the moral verities contained in the Affirmations. It should be obvious to any attentive observer that those verities are under increasing assault by the intellectual, social, and cultural elites in this country—and even by many of our public officials, particularly in the federal government headquartered here in Washington, DC. More alarming is the erosion of those moral verities within some of our Orthodox congregations. [Read more…]

America: Time to Start Over

Liberty Crying America Crumblingby Matt Patterson –
This must have been what it was like living in the 1930s: politicians running around, fingers in their ears, unwilling or unable to confront a rising conflagration that they helped to light.

Back then, the threat came from a revivified and revanchist Germany. Western leaders stood by while the Germans rearmed, then looked the other way as ever larger chunks of the Continent fell to the blitzkrieg. When the enervated Western elites finally took a stand over Poland, it was too late — the fire was so large that, by the time it was finally quenched, the world lay in smoldering ruin.

Today we face a different, though no less mortal, sort of threat: the wealth of the West has been revealed to be largely illusory, built on the foolish foundations of credit that shift and scatter like sands in the wind. [Read more…]

New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism

NASA Data No Global Warmingby James Taylor –
NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth’s atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

Study co-author Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite, reports that real-world data from NASA’s Terra satellite contradict multiple assumptions fed into alarmist computer models. [Read more…]

Food Totalitarians on Parade

Food Totalitarians Food Policeby Chuck Roger –
Within the last few years, we have been treated to attempts by government to control our food intake with regulatory “nudges” and legislative edicts. Sugar, salt, trans-fats, fats in general, fast foods, and school lunches are just a few ingredients and food types which have come under assault by sanctimonious busybodies seeking to dictate “healthy” eating to everyone.

New York Times food writer Mark Bittman provides the latest in we-know-what’s-best-for-you babble. In a Times op-ed, Bittman complains, “WHAT will it take to get Americans to change our eating habits?”

The question itself makes a fundamentally flawed assumption and exhibits arrogance. Why is it anyone’s job to “get Americans to change [their] eating habits?” By posing the question in the first place, Bittman implicitly considers himself to be among a select minority tasked with providing guidance to the majority. [Read more…]

Beyond the Dictatorship of Relativism

Pope Benedict Moral Relativismby Robert Royal –
Almost everyone who pays attention to religion and public affairs knows of Joseph Ratzinger’s famous homily shortly before he was elected pope denouncing the modern “dictatorship of relativism.” The future Benedict XVI rightly drew the connection between, on the one hand, the alleged tolerance and openness professed by many people opposed to the old faith and morals, and, on the other hand, the highhanded public means by which they now force their views on everyone else.

All quite true and profound. But it’s become quite clear that what now most threatens traditional religious belief and behavior is not exactly relativism. Or openness. Or tolerance. Not by a long shot. It’s a substantial set of alternative beliefs and teachings. And claiming that this new faith is fairness or neutrality simply won’t survive a moment’s thought.

Take the gay marriage measures passed in New York State. The ground had been prepared for this and a whole host of other public policy shifts by claiming, for instance, that for all of us sexuality is fluid and “socially constructed.” A kind of relativism, if you will. [Read more…]