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Photo courtesy of BBC.

In the past, I have made clear on these pages that I personally uphold the Orthodox Church’s traditional position on the beginning of human life. A new human person created in the image of God is brought from nonexistence into being as an act of divine love at the very moment of its conception. We must believe this to be true of every child conceived, even when impregnation occurs by means of the worst imaginable sexual brutality. We Orthodox do not have the theological, spiritual, and moral license to say that God creates and loves this child conceived in love, but that He somehow does not create and does not love that child conceived in violence. The evidence both explicit and implicit that this in fact constitutes Orthodox tradition can be ignored only through the most intransigently wilful blindness. I find it shocking to see how many Orthodox faithful, even some clergy, adopt an uncritical, unnuanced embrace of the shrill secular rhetoric and bumper sticker sloganeering of “choice” and “embryos” and “fetuses” and “products of conception” and “autonomy,” and the most absurd distortions of Scripture, to make their point that abortion is somehow a good thing blessed by God and fully compatible with the Gospel. Read More

Orthodoxy in Dialogue greets all of our LGBTQI+ brothers, sisters, siblings, and friends in Christ around the world with great joy.

May our Lord, God, and Saviour Jesus Christ enfold you in His loving embrace, this month and always.

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(Clockwise from left) Archbishop Kyrill (Dmitrieff), Archpriest Mark Hodges, Archpriest John Peck 

On January 10, 2021, Orthodoxy in Dialogue published Open Letter: OCA Priest Participates in Trump Riot, Reported to FBI, bringing Father Mark Hodges’ presence  at the January 6 riot to the attention of Archbishop Paul (Gassios) of thrice-blessed memory of the OCA Diocese of the Midwest. The letter unleashed a storm of articles worldwide on news sources great and small, and resulted in Hodges’ temporary suspension from the priesthood. As we subsequently reported here,  his suspension was lifted four months later after he issued an ‘apology’ — “in which it is clear,” we noted, “he feels he did nothing wrong in supporting, and continuing to support, the conspiracy theory of a stolen election that wreaks ongoing havoc on American national life and domestic security.”

A year after the Trump riot, as we reported in  ROCOR Picks Only the Best of March 12, 2022, the OCA released Hodges to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. We commented at the time, Read More