This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

Orthodoxy Is Alive and Well: Or, What Happens When an Innovator Tries to Change the Doctrine and Practice of the Faith

Terry Mattingly, from the religion pages of the Evansville (IN) Courier & Press:

Few would fault the clarity of the Orthodox response to the September marriage of Denis Gogolyev and Mikhail Morozev in the Mother of God Chapel in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia.

The bishops defrocked the priest, bulldozed the church and burned the wreckage. "Father Vladimir Enert, who married the gay couple, committed a sin in doing so," a church spokesman told the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. "He desecrated the place. We therefore needed to destroy the chapel."

They call it the Orthodox Church for a reason. . . .

. . . This is why ecclesiastical politicos gasped when they read that an Orthodox bishop attended rites consecrating Bishop Gene Robinson as the Episcopal Church's first noncelibate, openly gay bishop. . . .

The 39-year-old bishop - a former lawyer, journalist, U.S. Senate aide and founder of ModerateRepublican.net - stressed that he acted on his own and that his church has not addressed Robinson's consecration.

Orthodox leaders also noted that Jesep serves a tiny splinter church that plays no role in the Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas. There are dozens of noncanonical "Orthodox" flocks.

Meanwhile, American bishops are standing their ground. The conference proclaimed: "The Orthodox Christian teaching on marriage and sexuality ... holds that marriage consists in the conjugal union of a man and a woman. ... Neither Scripture nor Holy Tradition blesses or sanctions such a union between persons of the same sex." . . .

And lest you thought Roman Catholics were vague about this matter:

Apparently, no Catholic clergy took part, although Jesep said several Catholic lay leaders joined the procession.

Pope John Paul II recently warned Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams that the ties that bind them are at the breaking point. "New and serious" obstacles block the path to unity. These difficulties are not all of a merely disciplinary nature," said the papal text. "Some extend to essential matters of faith and morals."

The worldwide Anglican, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches are united on this matter. Good enough for me. I'm sticking with the Tradition.

Now, if only we could deal with those two other irritations: Papal supremacy and the filioque.

Posted by Clifton at November 16, 2003 01:25 PM | TrackBack