St. Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch. Menologion of Basil II. Circa AD 1000.

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There is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Gal 3:28

Much has been made of the timing of the publication by the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education of their document, “Male and Female He Created Them: Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in Education” [full text at Zenit], during LGBT Pride Month. Yet little attention has been given to the date the document was actually promulgated: the Feast of the Presentation [“the Meeting” in Orthodox parlance]. If one assumed a pedagogical intent from the Congregation for Catholic Education, the selected date celebrates a cast of seeming sexual misfits announcing the dawn of a new age for human sexuality.

Present at the Temple are Joseph, who has specifically not fathered the Child; Simeon, who announces that he is now ready for death upon seeing the infant Messiah; Anna, an 84-year old prophetess who has spent the majority of her life as a widow; and the Virgin Mary. The irony inherent in the biblical account is that Mary and Jesus are there for “their purification according to the law of Moses” (Lk 2:22), as if the birth of the Messiah had actually rendered Mary ritually unclean (Lev 12:1-4). Both Simeon and Anna prophetically upend messianic expectations, announcing to all a newborn Child-Messiah. The feast day upon which the document is promulgated is a celebration of transcended genders, explicitly because in the Incarnation human sexuality is divinized. The Roman liturgy’s responsory for the day reflects this transformation of gender: Zion, let your wedding chamber be prepared to receive Christ your King. The Virgin conceived and gave birth to a Son, yet she remained a virgin forever. Read More

This is the ninth instalment in Orthodoxy in Dialogue’s Fifty Years after Stonewall: A Virtual Listening Tour. We urge our readers to forward the articles in this series to their diocesan bishops and parish priests. We beg our hierarchy and clergy to listen, attentively, reflectively, and prayerfully.

We ensure complete anonymity if you wish to write for this series between now and the end of June.

This is editor Giacomo Sanfilippo. I want to share my brief memories of an Orthodox boy of 15 whom I met online in 2005 or 2006. Back in the days when Yahoo! Groups was the main way to communicate with large numbers of people, I started a group called Orthodoxy and Homosexuality, later renamed Christianity and Homosexuality. Our readers will recall that it was through this group that Eric Iliff of blessed memory came into my life.

This was also how I met Justin. He must be in his late 20s by now. He found his way to the group through an online search, introduced himself to the members, and shortly afterward began to email me privately for emotional and spiritual support. The photo he sent me showed an all-American boy with silky blond hair hanging over his blue eyes, the kind of son any parents would love to call their own. He was Orthodox. He loved attending the divine services, loved God, and loved and trusted his parish priest. The priest loved him. Read More

This is the eighth instalment in Orthodoxy in Dialogue’s Fifty Years after Stonewall: A Virtual Listening Tour. We urge our readers to forward the articles in this series to their diocesan bishops and parish priests. We beg our hierarchy and clergy to listen, attentively, reflectively, and prayerfully.

We ensure complete anonymity if you wish to write for this series between now and the end of June.

I write these notes “from the road,” so to speak. As a bisexual Orthodox Christian convert, my life of faith has not been an easy journey. As someone who inhabits all these experiences and feels a call to ministry, it has recently become even more challenging. Finishing my first year of seminary, I am only now beginning to realize the many obstacles our Church has placed before my desire to serve God’s people.

I speak to our bishops as one with a deep love for our faith, and I carry a sorrow that the fulness of this faith has been denied to my LGBT brothers and sisters, many of whom have been excommunicated from the Church. I cannot imagine the heartache that cradle Orthodox Christians must feel when their loves are demonized and they lose their place in the Church that has been a home for them for their entire lives. But as a convert, I do know what it means to feel like a stranger in one’s own country, and it is my continual desire to welcome all people into the family of God as surely as I have been welcomed. Read More

This article by Henry Bodkin makes the seventh instalment in Orthodoxy in Dialogue’s Fifty Years after Stonewall: A Virtual Listening Tour. It appeared originally at The Telegraph on May 22, 2018 as “Transgender Brain Scans Promised as Study Shows Structural Differences in People with Gender Dysphoria.” It serves to highlight all the more the urgent need for science to have a voice in our theological and pastoral discussions of sexual and gender diversity in human nature.

We urge our readers to forward the articles in this series to their diocesan bishops and parish priests. We beg our hierarchy and clergy to listen, attentively, reflectively, and prayerfully.

We ensure complete anonymity if you wish to write for this series between now and the end of June.

People questioning their gender identity could be offered brain scans to determine whether they are transgender, according to a new study.

Breakthrough research has revealed for the first time evidence that the brain activity of people who feel they inhabit the wrong body closely resembles that of the gender they want to embrace. Read More