Priest Pavel Florensky

January 22, 1882 – December 8, 1937

Memory Eternal ~ Вѣчная Память

“What none of them knew positively but many felt instinctively was that, precisely for the more educated and this politically undesirable prisoners, Solovki was now a death camp. An order…required that STON be decreased by 1,200 people, all to be properly bureaucratically processed and done away with extraterritorially, as though they were simply being moved elsewhere. In the meantime, they were expendable. [A] letter of 19 September 1937 records a desperate shortage of food and money for the prison shop.

At the end of October 1937, this twilight existence came to an end. There was a hurried evacuation of more than a thousand men to the mainland. A witness recalls seeing Florensky…among the lines of four who were marched out to the Bay of Content. Weighed down with cases and rucksacks, they could only nod as they passed. They were conveyed to the so-called Workers’ Island where Florensky, with 12 others, was brought up before a troika, accused of counter-revolutionary Trotskyite propaganda and condemned to be shot. Read More

The following report should be read in conjunction with our On “Orthodox” Wife-Beating / О «Православном» избиении жены.

The Russian Orthodox Church Now Formally Opposes New Legislation against Domestic Violence

Source: Patriarchal Commission on Family Issues

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow

The Russian Orthodox Church now formally opposes new draft legislation in Russia that would increase penalties on domestic violence. In an announcement by the Patriarchal Commission on Family Issues and the Protection of Motherhood and Childhood, the Church argues that the bill recently published by the Federation Council “contains a number of legal defects that make its adoption unacceptable.”

Specifically, the church commission says the legislation “disregards universally recognized legal principles of common sense, justice, and equality,” and warns that its implementation “can and will lead to grave and mass violations of the rights of individuals and families.”

The commission also says the bill has a “clear anti-family focus, diminishing the rights and freedoms of people who choose a family lifestyle, childbirth, and child-rearing that differ from others.” According to the Russian Orthodox Church, the legislation “effectively introduces special punishment for family life.” Read More

There are two things I must confess from the start:

1. I love Sir Terry Pratchett’s (1948-2015) books. If I were going to be sent to an uninhabited island and could pick only one series of books to bring, it would be his Discworld series.
2. I hate, overall, watching movies or TV series after I’ve already read the book. Lord of the Rings was one of the few exceptions. Good Omens is another.

So, why did I make another exception? I love the book, after all. Well, for one, Neil Gaiman, who wrote the script and was heavily involved in the production, co-wrote the book with Pratchett. Obviously the script was safe in his hands. The book is 30 years old, so there were bound to be some changes, but when the original author makes them, that’s okay. Second, the casting is amazing.

So, on I went to the Apocalypse.  That’s not a spoiler, by the way. It’s the premise. The angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley have been hanging out on earth since creation, and over time, being the only ones of their kind stationed here permanently, developing something of a friendship. And some business arrangements. (Since they cancel each other out anyway, it makes no sense whatsoever for them to go out and do their respective jobs in the same place. It’s much more convenient for one of them to go and just do both. As long as the proper paperwork is filled out, no one’s the wiser.) They rather enjoy the perks of living on earth—cars, Queen, quaint little bookshops, and crêpes. Read More

Christmas Eve will soon be here.

That afternoon, we hope to deliver $100 each to 50 homeless men and women—some of them having a dog or two with them—who spend our frigid Canadian nights out of doors and don’t know how they’re going to eat from day to day.

For reasons unknown to us and none of our business anyway, they don’t make it into the shelters or the soup kitchens.

It is especially disheartening to them to see the well-dressed and the well-fed hurrying by on their way to church, to a family dinner, to a pricey restaurant, to a party…while they go hungry on Christmas Eve.

Can you fit $5, $10, $50, $100, $500 to feed the hungry into your Christmas budget this year?

In past years, several thousands of readers have seen our Feed the Homeless on Christmas appeal over the course of the Nativity Fast, yet only three or four dozen responded. Can you help this year?

Please help us help.

Click here to contribute to Orthodoxy in Dialogue’s 3rd Annual Feed the Homeless on Christmas Campaign

Whatever Russia’s so-called “Union of Orthodox Journalists” (Союз Православных Журналистов) has on offer, it’s clearly not journalism.

Orthodoxy in Dialogue has followed UOJ’s “reporting” closely over the past two years. So far as we can tell, it serves as little more than one of the two arms of the Moscow Patriarchate’s disinformation apparatus—the other being the Department for External Church Relations under the chairmanship of Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) of Volokolamsk.

UOJ’s “reporting” on the Moscow Patriarchate is unfailingly glowing; on the Ecumenical Patriarchate, unfailingly disparaging—and often borderline mendacious; and on the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine, unfailingly as “heretics” and “schismatics.”  

This isn’t how journalism works. This is propaganda, plain and simple. Read More

NOVEMBER 2019

A Love Letter to Sergei

Holy Communion for Whoever Wants It

Quo Vadis, rue Daru?

Cinema and Homophobia: Georgia’s Far Right and the Orthodox Church Threaten to Disrupt the Release of a Movie about Gay Love

The Russian Orthodox Church’s Battle with Time: Reflections on the Patriarchate of Alexandria’s Recognition of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine

The Weaponization of Religion: How the Kremlin Is Using Christian Fundamentalism to Advance Moscow’s Agenda 

He Who Doesn’t Help Refugees and Migrants “Is Not a Christian”

Orthodoxy in Dialogue’s 3rd Annual Feed the Homeless on Christmas Campaign

A Byzantine Ancestor to Same-Sex Marriage?

Movie Review: Jojo Rabbit Read More

The following message from Metropolitan Emmanuel of France appeared earlier this month in the first edition of La Lettre du Vicariat. We regret that we do not have the time to translate the entire newsletter.

For many of Orthodoxy in Dialogue’s readers around the planet who have followed the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s sudden decision of November 2018 to dissolve the Archdiocese of Russian Orthodox Churches in Western Europe and its aftermath—see the preface to Alexandra de Moffarts’ Quo Vadis, rue Daru?—His Eminence’s message raises more questions than it answers:

How does a “vicariate” differ from an “exarchate?”

What happens to the parishes of the former Exarchate located outside of France?

How can the members of the new Vicariate trust that their status will not be dissolved in faraway Istanbul as abruptly and unilaterally as that of the Exarchate?

Whereas page 2 of the newsletter lists “Parishes and Communities Remaining Faithful to the Ecumenical Patriarchate,” what explanation has ever been proffered for the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s faithlessness to the former Exarchate?

Does the Ecumenical Patriarchate accept responsibility for pushing a significant segment of the former Exarchate with its bishop into the arms of the escalating Muscovite Schism?

What becomes of the legal status of the former Exarchate under French law, and what will be the legal status of the new Vicariate?  

Message from Metropolitan Emmanuel of France

Metropolitan Emmanuel (Adamakis)

Dear Fathers, brothers, and sisters, dear friends,

As you know, following the decision taken by the Holy Synod of our Patriarchate in November 2018, the proposal was made to the parishes of the old Exarchate to join the Metropolises of the countries in which they are located. In my letter of February 7, 2019 I renewed this proposal to all of you, confirming the possibility of receiving you within a vicariate operating under its own statutes and guaranteeing the preservation of your liturgical traditions, allowing you to pursue your work of Orthodox witness in France.

This is now an accomplished fact with the creation of a “Vicariate of Russian Tradition of the Metropolis of France,” placed under the protection of St. Maria of Paris and St. Alexis of Ugine. This Vicariate will have internal autonomy, with its own statutes. In the coming months, you will have to work toward organizing this group of parishes and communities in order to continue to ensure a faithful witness to the heritage common to the whole Orthodox Church. The convocation of the General Assembly on January 18, 2020 will constitute a first step, allowing us to clarify the complex situation in which we find ourselves. At the end of the first quarter of 2020, a clergy-laity assembly will also be called in order to accept the guiding principles of the operation of the Vicariate, confirming its future direction. Read More