Whatever arguments a person may marshal for “an ‘inclusive’ Church” which welcomes everyone unconditionally, and for Holy Communion offered unconditionally to “whoever wants it,” historical and canonical precedent isn’t one of them. It’s sheer fantasy to imagine that such a church and such a practice ever existed from New Testament times to the present.

I write as one who was subjected to an unjust and uncanonically protracted suspension from priestly ministry from 1995 to 2002, a complete farce of a spiritual trial in 2001, an unjust and still largely unexplained deposal from holy orders in 2002 (all of the foregoing in the OCA), and—in a fit of hysteria on the part of two priests and their bishop—an unjust excommunication from the local ROCOR parish in Toronto and the diocese to which it belongs in 2016 after they had read the title and a few lines from A Bed Undefiled.  Read More

Sergei Semionovich Troitsky

August 8, 1881 ~ November 2, 1910

Memory Eternal ~ Вѣчная Память

Friend and Intended Life-Companion (Спутник Жизни, “Husband”) of Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky

My meek one, my radiant one! Our vaulted room greeted me with coldness, sadness, and loneliness when I opened its door for the first time after my trip. But, alas, I entered it alone, without you. But you are not with me, and the whole world seems deserted. I am alone, absolutely alone in the whole world. 

Мой кроткïй, мой ясный! Холодомъ, грустью и одиночествомъ дохнула на меня наша сводчатая комната, когда я въ первый разъ послѣ поѣздки открылъ дверь въ нее. Теперь,—увы!—, я вошелъ въ нее уже одинъ, безъ тебя. Но нѣтъ тебя со мною, и весь мïръ кажется запустѣлымъ. Я одинокъ, абсолютно одинокъ въ цѣломъ свѣтѣ. Read More

OCTOBER 2019

An Alternative to Drag Queens, Vampires, Provocateurs, Desecrated Icons, Blasphemy, and Priests-I’d-Like-to-F*ck Porn

Message from Orthodox Youth to the Church: Stop. Hurting. Us.

Is Ecumenism Orthodox?

Taken from Us Too Soon: Eric Would Be 38 Today

Bridging Voices: Call for Responses

Movie Review: Joker

Does the Church Really Need More Priests with a He-Man Complex?

Review: The New Atheism, Myth, and History: The Black Legends of Contemporary Anti-Religion

Getting Your Papers Read on Academia.edu via Orthodoxy in Dialogue

Orthodox Christians Helping Children and Families in Syria Read More

This brief report appeared in English translation yesterday on the Panorthodox Synod website. To what extent can we agree or disagree with the Patriarch’s comments? Is it proper to characterize Orthodox Christianity as “a religion,” or does the Incarnation essentially put an end to religion? Does Orthodoxy share a “common belief in God” with non-Christian faiths? What can it mean that “the Church has the same interests as society?” In the Orthodox Church’s relations with society, other faith communities, and persons of no religious faith, what do love and dialogue require and not require of us?

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople (centre)

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