I’ve tried to keep out of the discussion on Orthodoxy in Dialogue the past week or two. Out of the Rod Dreher discussion [Rod Dreher’s Limited (and Theologically Meaningless) Vocabulary], out of the Father Aaron Warwick discussion [Pastoring LGBTQ Individuals in the Orthodox Church]. I am, after all, not homosexual and hardly qualified to comment.

What grew over the past weeks though, is a desire to share my perspective on this, and Father Seraphim Holland’s Open Letter to Father Aaron Warwick was, well, the last straw, if I can put it that way.

I was introduced to Christianity and theology through Evangelical schools of thought, so my exposure to any positive sounds regarding homosexuality was limited. I have known people who were and are homosexual since I was a child, people who were and are important to me in my life. Still, the movement—the “homosexualist (?!) rhetoric,” as Father Seraphim puts it—frequently made and still makes me raise my eyebrows. Read More

Father Seraphim Holland

I wrote this to Father Aaron:

You have a great opportunity to do some real good, Father Aaron. Don’t just lick your wounds and lie low. Admit why you wrote what you did, and dissect it line by line, according to the truth, and with no mercy to your pride.

I wrote something recently. I sympathize with you. You made a big mistake, and it hurts. I am sure there will be voices that are smoother than oil which will try to console you. This it not the intent of my words. My intent is that you fully restore yourself. My intent is that you wound the homosexualist agenda by full disclosure about why you were ensnared in it, and become an apologist for the truth. May God bless your ministry.

I will add you to my diptychs, not because I value my poor prayers, but because the prayers of a priest, even a sinful one, are heard when they are said before the altar.

I would appreciate it if you commemorated my son Daniel in all Liturgies, He died June 11, 2017, aged 20. Read More

Father John Whiteford pastoring LGBTQ people

Whenever Father John Whiteford weighs in on questions of sexuality and gender, he can reliably be counted on to repeat, like a cracker-craving parrot, an inflexibly doctrinaire, pseudo-theological, and pseudo-pastoral ideology grounded in precisely no actual knowledge of the matter at hand.

Sometimes Father Whiteford enlists the support of “experts” who have no more knowledge of the subject than he. We saw this recently in his laughably but also tragically uninformed rebuttal to Father Richard René’s Meeting Michelle: Pastoral and Theological Reflections on a Transgender Inmate. Father René’s thoughtful essay—based on a genuine encounter between two human persons beloved of God, one a humble priest who doesn’t presume that the Grace Divine of ordination (or his advanced theological education: he is currently a PhD student in theology) transformed him into Father Know-It-All, the other an incarcerated transwoman—was published as part of Public Orthodoxy’s Bridging Voices series. (Check Public Orthodoxy’s separate Bridging Voices archive for a complete list of titles published to date in this series.) Read More

Orthodoxy in Dialogue is often misrepresented—whether through wilful malice or a careless reading—as “pro-abortion” or “pro-choice.” Nothing could be further from the truth. We uphold the Orthodox Church’s traditional position from time immemorial that our loving God brings a new human person “from nonexistence into being” at the moment of the child’s conception—and this, admittedly beyond our ability to comprehend, no matter how sinful, tragic, violent, or even artificial the event which results in a child. Abortion always ends a child’s life.

This theological conviction nevertheless requires the Church’s utmost pastoral sensitivity when a woman is presently faced, or has been faced in the past, with a pregnancy which she considers or considered intolerable.  

At the same time, we recognize three realities of our fallen human condition: Read More