Metropolitan Joseph (Al-Zehlaoui)

ADDENDUM 8/24/22: See From the Public Record: Metropolitan Joseph Co-Owns Two Homes with His Victim.

ADDENDUM 8/23/22: See Metropolitan Joseph’s Affair: The Email.

Several insider sources in the offices of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese have confirmed a report of an email from a woman alleging a 16-year affair with Metropolitan Joseph (Al-Zehlaoui) during her marriage and his episcopal tenure. The affair is alleged to have resulted in the woman’s divorce. She is said to have sent her email to some sixty individuals in positions of power in the Archdiocese, including the members of the Board of Trustees.

We are told that a law firm has been engaged to conduct an independent investigation. The Patriarchate of Antioch is said to be following these developments closely. Read More

Josiah Trenham, Peter Heers, et alii need no introduction to Orthodoxy in Dialogue’s readers. Bishop Luke is a ROCOR hierarch and abbot of their monastery in Jordanville. Most of the others we have never heard of. The Davis presentation sounds like a classic case of conspiracy theories.

Buy your Orthodox books elsewhere. Read More

“The Angel Gabriel Reveals to the Prophet Muhammad the Eighth Sura of the Qur’an”

(16th-century illustration from the Ottoman Turkish epic “Siyer-i Nebi”)

In his 8th-century refutation of Islam, The Heresy of the Ishmaelites, St. John Damascene laid the foundation for future Eastern Orthodox polemics against Islam and its founder, the Prophet Muhammad. John criticizes Muhammad’s moral character, accusing him of devising the religion of Islam—a Christian heresy by the saint’s estimation—for his own personal gain. Throughout the following centuries, prominent Orthodox Christian writers, from St. Gregory Palamas to St. Justin Popović, continued to attack Muhammad’s moral character, frequently claiming that he had spread Islam by the sword and had commanded his followers to do likewise. Such a view was perhaps inevitable given that Arab and Turkish conquests of Byzantine lands were often portrayed by Muslims themselves as the realization of the Prophet’s military goals. Even the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 was interpreted as fulfilling one of Muhammad’s prophecies in the hadith. To this day, Muhammad is often looked upon by Orthodox Christians as someone who stood in total opposition to our faith. Read More

Matushka Anne “Anya” (Schmemann) Hopko, 78, for the last two decades of Ellwood City, PA, and previously, for many years, of Crestwood (Yonkers), NY, fell asleep in the Lord on Thursday afternoon, August 4, 2022, in Quebec, Canada, where she was vacationing with family.

At the time of her repose in the Lord, Matushka Anne was in palliative care in a hospital in L’Annonciation (Rivière-Rouge), Quebec. She had suffered, without warning, a sudden, massive stroke on Wednesday, August 3, while enjoying a late morning cup of tea with family members, together on summer holiday in Lac Labelle, Canada.

Anne Hopko was the wife of the late Protopresbyter Thomas Hopko (+2015). She was the oldest child of the late Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann (+1983) and his wife, the late Matushka Juliana (Ossorguine) Schmemann (+2017). Read More