Patriarch Irenej of Serbia

Open Letter from Religious Security Centre, which Manages Internet Project Cerkvarium, to Patriarch Irinej and Council of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church

To Archbishop of Pech,
Metropolitan of Belgrade and Karlovac
Serbian Patriarch
Irinej
To the Holy Council of
Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church

Your Beatitude!

Your Eminences!

With deep chagrin and pain, Ukrainian believers perceive the negative position of the Holy Council of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church as a whole, and yours in particular, regarding the granting of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

For 27 years, Ukrainian Orthodoxy has been in a state of deepest crisis, being divided because of the selfish ambitions of the Russian Church, which seeks pan-Orthodox domination. And all these years, the Russian Church has not advanced a single step towards ending a mutual schism. Moreover, His Beatitude Patriarch Kirill stated that the borders of the Russian Church were inviolable, thus completely puzzling any attempts to resolve the Ukrainian canonical anomaly. Read More

This is the first article in our Anglican Church and Same-Sex Marriage series. See our Invitation to Dialogue if you would like to add your voice on this important topic which crosses ecclesial and denominational borders. You need not be Anglican to participate.

As became clear in the debates leading to and during the recent General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada’s (ACC) failed vote to amend the marriage canon, postmodern nomenclature concerning same-sex relations in particular and the queer experience of life in general is fraught with lexical ambiguity.

However, the real problem for the recent discussions of the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC) is the lack of engagement with the tradition of the Church. 

Brian Walsh, in his dismissal of the triad of the Anglican Church—Scripture, Reason, and Tradition—as insufficient, wishes to bring in the category of “experience”: LGBT+ Christians exist and want to be loved! Yet he forgets that marital love is not the only way to be loved. Read More

The Sermon on the Mount

I’ve been an Orthodox Christian my whole life. In spite of that, one of the problems I’ve had with religion is that it can—and sometimes does—lead to black and white ways of thinking which ignore the obvious moral complexities of the world, whether because one is unable or unwilling to deal with them. I’ve heard several theologians and philosophers talking about how it would have been sinful to lie to the Gestapo to protect a Jewish neighbor: because lying is wrong or a sin in certain circumstances, so it must be in every circumstance.

One cannot say that lying is wrong, and expect this to be true in every situation— regardless of one’s circumstances, state of mind, or motive—any more than one could say that because you might be justified in punishing your children when they misbehave, it would be fine to punish them when they do nothing. That kind of view of the world should be seen by any rational person as far too simplistic, and obviously wrong.

This, I believe, stems from a literalistic reading of Scripture and Tradition, one which sees these as some kind of universal rule book, rather than divine revelation inspired by the God who transcends time, but interpreted by fallible humans who view what they were given through their own cultural lens. Read More

In response to Orthodoxy in Dialogue’s LGBTQI Listening Tour: An Open Letter to Our Bishops in the USA and Canada of July 1, the following comments were sent to us as a private email from a bishop in one of the jurisdictions represented by the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America.

At our request and upon prayerful consideration, he has given his blessing for us to publish it anonymously.

Orthodoxy in Dialogue’s work is dedicated to the memory of gay Orthodox suicide victim Eric J. Iliff. May his memory be eternal.

What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.

Genesis 4:10

You need to take into account how frightened the bishops are of each other. Even if one of them agreed with Orthodoxy in Dialogue much of the time, they would still have to live in fear of what the other bishops might say.

What is really horrifying to me are those who know that you are right—and I have confronted a few of them directly, every time a young Orthodox Christian commits suicide, especially when they go almost directly from confession to suicide, and I mention how their blood will be on our hands for persecuting them because of an ideology, an ideology we know very well is wrong. Read More