The following brief report appeared yesterday on the website of the Antiochian Archdiocese. For context see the Metropolitan Joseph: The Scandal section in our Archives 2020-22 linked at the top of this page.

The fact that Joseph Al-Zehlaoui was granted the appearance of an honourable “retirement” — fooling exactly no one (the scandal attracted over a half million views to Orthodoxy in Dialogue in a matter of weeks, a number that normally takes us two and a half years to achieve) — and that all messaging from Damascus and Englewood rings of “back to business as usual,” leaves the most critical questions to emerge from these past three months unanswered. The faithful who have been in touch with us from all over the world want to know: What sort of compensation, or at least public apology, will be offered to Al-Zehlaoui’s principal accuser? Why hasn’t Al-Zehlaoui been compelled to repent publicly of his very public sins, but allowed rather to use the Archdiocese website twice to spew his nonsensical and cynical self-hagiography? Why wasn’t he deposed? Most importantly, what steps will be taken immediately to formulate and implement policies and procedures for responding to allegations of sexual and other abuse at the hands of the Archdiocese’s hierarchs, clergy, monastics, and lay employees and volunteers? What assurances do the children, youth, women, and men of the Archdiocese have that their abuse will be handled more properly than this sad episode has exposed?

There can be no more business as usual. The Archdiocese must not squander this opportunity for sweeping reforms from top to bottom of its administration.

His Beatitude Patriarch John X of Antioch and All the East warmly welcomed a delegation from the Antiochian Archdiocese at the Saint John of Damascus Institute of Theology in Balamand, Lebanon from Nov. 9-10, 2022. Read More

“Autumn Love”

AI generated image by Jamie Arpin-Ricci*

Your Eminence, Metropolitan Antonios, Patriarchal Vicar for the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America,

In your recent essay entitled Holiness at a Time When Uncleanness is Made Legal, you wrote with harsh condemnation about a number of cultural currents in contemporary societies around the planet. Without minimizing the other concerns raised by your essay—human rights, women’s rights, feminism—our question focuses on the matter of sexual diversity in human nature, and especially of same-sex love.

Do we understand correctly that you consider the relationship portrayed in the illustration above to be satanic, pagan, mentally ill? Is it for such relationships that God obliterated Sodom and Gomorrah from the face of the earth? Is it about such a relationship that you wrote the following? Read More

The head of Cyprus’s dominant Orthodox Church, Archbishop Chrysostomos II, has died at the age of 81, according to his doctors.

A forceful character who faced down pro-Russian elements in one of the world’s oldest churches, Chrysostomos was among the Orthodox leaders who recognise the Ukrainian Church’s independence after it broke from Moscow in 2020. Read More

Ukraine 2022 (Upper), West Bank 2022 (Lower)

I’m a Jewish Christian who, after thirty years as a Protestant Evangelical in various denominations, was chrismated and received into the Orthodox Church in 1998. As a former Evangelical Jewish Christian, I find in Orthodox Christianity the fulfillment of everything I learned in Judaism and Protestant Evangelicalism. However, one thing I’ve found that is very frustrating to me is the tendency of some Russophiles in the Church to be very critical of Evangelical and Pentecostal Christian Zionists while they romanticize and idealize Imperial Russia and the Romanovs.

As a Jewish boy growing up in Brooklyn, New York, I observed the one-sided narrative of Israel as a heroic David fighting an evil Arabic Goliath. In my early 20s, disillusioned with the Vietnam War and the cultural polarization in the United States, I wanted to go on Aliyah (Immigration) to Israel and serve in the Israeli Army. However, I learned that I would not be eligible to receive Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return unless I claimed Judaism as my religion, which would have been a denial of my faith in Christ. This I could not do, and I spent three years trying to sort out this dilemma. I finally traveled to Israel from 1973-1974 and spent four months there. Read More