In May 2017, my 801-word Conjugal Friendship ignited a firestorm when it appeared on Public Orthodoxy. It has been read over 11,000 times and remains one of Public Orthodoxy’s most viewed articles ever. In June 2018, I published a much expanded version in The Wheel, where the late Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) made positive mention of it in his foreword. In November 2020, I posted my PhD thesis proposal on academia(.)edu, where it has been viewed 3500 times, fluctuating between the site’s top 2% and 4% of papers read. My several articles on Orthodoxy in Dialogue covering different aspects of my topic have been viewed tens of thousands of times.

At the present time, for reasons explained below, I have put the thesis on indefinite hold and begun writing a shorter, simplified book version. The director of one of the most prominent university presses in the US has expressed keen interest in what I’ve written so far, invited me to submit the book proposal to their religion editor when it’s ready, and thanked me for my LGBTQ advocacy in the Orthodox Church. Progress is moving along at a good clip. Please pray for me and for the success of this project.

Here I share the book’s foreword and introduction.

Giacomo Sanfilippo 

Faustum praelium. Бой счастливой. Happy battle.

Conjugal Friendship: The Sacrament of Love
Father Pavel Florensky’s Orthodox Theology of Same-Sex Love

AUTHOR’S FOREWORD

This brief study of Father Pavel Florensky’s theological response to homosexuality, published in Moscow in 1914 as the culminating chapter of The Pillar and Ground of the Truth, comprises a simplified version of what I had planned as my PhD thesis in Theological Studies at Trinity College in the University of Toronto. Halfway through year six of my program in December 2022, with little writing to show after my committee had approved my proposal two years before, I forced myself to say the unspeakable to my supervisor: I was dropping out. As I inched closer to my 70^th birthday, a series of escalating setbacks—medical, personal, a vortex of painful spiritual crises one after the other—had converged to create an impasse where it finally became impossible to imagine continuing in my doctoral program. Read More

The following report appeared earlier today on Euronews. We thank an attentive reader of Orthodoxy in Dialogue in France for bringing it to our attention.

Predictably, as reported below, the Church of Greece resorts to the same fearmongering and falsehoods that we have come to expect from Orthodox ecclesiastical authorities around the planet.

A plan to legalise same-sex civil marriage and adoption pushed by the centre-right Greek government is set to be approved by Parliament thanks to the backing of the left-wing opposition, despite backlash from the Orthodox Church.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s plans to legalise same-sex marriage in the country and allow adoption for LGBTQ+ couples obtained the crucial backing of the left-wing opposition on Thursday.

Stefanos Kasselakis, the openly gay ex banker leading the radical left party Syriza, said that he would instruct his 38 lawmakers to vote for the proposal, even though he criticised the measure for not going far enough on parenthood rights. Read More

Photo Credit: NBC News

When the secular media reports on issues Orthodox or Roman Catholic, we do well, as a matter of course, to check official ecclesiastical sources to get the true story and avoid hasty conclusions. Whether from geniune ignorance, or from an instinct always to sensationalize the news in bright colours where grey shades of nuance are needed, or from space and time constraints in written and televised reporting, or from a combination of the three, the media never gets it right. The matter being reported is never as rosy or as awful as we’re led to believe.

Since yesterday, social media has been alight with the report that Pope Francis has authorized the blessing of same-sex couples. LGBTQ Catholics and Orthodox and their allies have waxed euphoric over this “baby step” towards Rome’s full acceptance of same-sex marriage. A young Orthodox queer woman wrote to Orthodoxy in Dialogue this morning to proclaim, “Finally, a pope who is like Jesus: loving and kind, accepting, and healing. Love casts out fear. Of course, some hypocrites will rage and hate.” The well-known Jesuit advocate for LGBTQ Catholics, Father James Martin (whom I’ve interviewed twice for Orthodoxy in Dialogue), has joined in the jubilation, even while acknowledging (but almost dismissively) the severe limitations in the Vatican’s Declaration. Read More

The following update and appeal appears on the website of International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC). Note that IOCC provides assistance without taking sides in the conflicts that generate humanitarian crises around the planet. Note also that IOCC partners with the local Orthodox Church (i.e., the Patriarchate of Jerusalem) while providing care equally to Palestinian Muslims and Christians.

A Palestinian boy carrying a baby stands at a site of Israeli strikes in Rafah, southern Gaza, on December 4.

Mohammed Salem/Reuters

Photo Credit: CNN

UPDATE: CONFLICT IN GAZA

Responding to Urgent Needs

Since 1997, the largest, most impactful activities of IOCC’s programmatic footprint in the Holy Land have taken place in Gaza. Special focus has been on helping women-headed households improve their food-growing and income-earning abilities, and on connecting young adults with vocational training and job experience. Our long presence in Gaza has fostered deep relationships and effective humanitarian partnerships, so IOCC can deliver aid expediently when new needs arise. Read More