THE CORRECT UKRAINIAN FAMILY: 1 man + 1 woman

In June 2013, at the venerable old age of almost 58, I graduated from York University in Toronto with an Honours BA in Sexuality Studies. During my subsequent MA in Theology program at Regis College, University of Toronto, I was permitted to take for credit the graduate seminar at University College’s Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies. To my theological studies in sexuality and gender I bring a foundation in the insights of medicine, psychology, philosophy, and the social sciences as they have evolved over the past century and a half. I also bring the never finished task of a lifetime of working through these questions on a deeply personal level. 

From the outset of any sexuality studies program one is introduced to the inextricable link in the literature between sexuality and nationality, or more clearly, sexuality and citizenship. I greeted this notion with initial skepticism, but also with a determination to keep an open mind; and of course,  the connection between the two quickly became so obvious to me that I wonder how I ever doubted it.

In this light, and as the grandson of a Ukrainian priest and ardent nationalist (in the good sense of nationalism), I found the above graphic instantly fascinating—and terribly disheartening—when it passed through my Facebook news feed on March 30. On multiple subliminal levels it conveys a forceful, unmistakable message: Sexual minorities have no place in 21st-century Ukrainian nationhood and culture.

I offer the following deconstruction of this graphic:

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Today Ireland heads to the polls to decide whether to retain or repeal what are among the most restrictive abortion laws in the world. In an article by Harriet Sherwood, Emma Graham-Harrison, and Lisa O’Carroll earlier this morning, The Guardian reports:

As a result of the stringent controls on abortion, each year about 3,500 women travel abroad, mostly to the UK, to terminate their pregnancies – and an estimated 2,000 women illegally procure abortion pills online and self-administer them with no medical supervision.

These are the facts on the ground: abortion occurs—and has always occurred—regardless of its legal accessibility or inaccessibility, regardless of deeply ingrained social, cultural, and religious opprobrium.

The population of Ireland is 4.8 million, approximately 1/68th that of the United States. This means that Ireland would account for 374,000 abortions per year if it had the same population as the US—without providing legal access to it.

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I first became aware of abortion at age 16 or 17—in 1971 or 1972—in the lead-up to Roe vs. Wade. Raised Roman Catholic by a mother who had been raised Orthodox (my grandfather was an Orthodox priest), at no point in my life have I ever questioned the premise that human life begins at conception and that abortion terminates the life of a preborn child: to me this is no less self-evident scientifically than it is theologically. Even during my four years as an atheist recently, I remained unshakable in my belief that a new human person begins to exist at conception. Read More

Anca Manolache (1959)

With this article I introduce to the readers of Orthodoxy in Dialogue a Romanian Orthodox woman, Anca Lucia Manolache (1923-2013), a theologian who remained surprisingly active even through the communist years. Women had been allowed to study theology before the advent of communism in 1946 in order to teach religion in public schools. Due to the ban on this in communist regimes throughout the Soviet bloc, Romanian women who trained in theology before 1948 had to reorient themselves toward other teaching jobs. Beginning in 1991, two years after the fall of communism in Romania, the door was reopened for women to be trained as religion teachers.

During the communist period, laywomen were almost unheard of in the country’s two Orthodox theological institutes that remained open. Yet it was during communism that Manolache, who had prior degrees in law and philology, embarked on the study of theology. In 1959 she was arrested by the communist authorities for “omitting to denounce her friends.” When she eventually got out of prison she studied toward a doctorate in theology under another famous political prisoner who was also released from prison in 1964, Father Dumitru Stăniloae. In 1964 she was hired to work at the Romanian Orthodox publishing house, The Biblical and Missionary Institute, in Bucharest. Among other duties, she was the main editor of Stăniloae’s Romanian translation of the Philokalia (12 volumes in total), as well as the copy editor of his magnum opus, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology (known as The Experience of God in English). 

While leading a rather discreet life she began reflecting on the role of women in the Church. She was allowed to participate in some international forums dealing with this question, and even managed to publish her views in several articles beginning in the 1970s.  Read More

Orthodoxy in Dialogue is pleased to offer the first article in our new Faith & the Arts series. 

“…love is always free, and without freedom there is no love.”

Kallistos Ware, “The Human Person as an Icon of the Trinity,” Sorbornost 8:2, 1986

In 1999 the world was introduced to The Matrix. The premise of the movie suggests that we are living in a simulated computer program and the year is really 2199. The world lost the war against the AIs, and they are using humans as Energizer batteries so they can use the energy from our bodies to power themselves. Humans are slaves and are no longer born, but grown in pods.

However, there’s a group of humans who were able to escape the matrix by discerning what is real and what is not. These humans banded together to free humanity. In order for this group to truly succeed, they need to find the One who will “deliver” them from the matrix. Morpheus, their current leader, feels that Thomas Anderson is the One. By day he is Thomas Anderson, programmer, but at night he’s the hacker known as Neo. (Get it?  Neo is an anagram for the word “one.”)  Read More