When Orthodoxy in Dialogue went to press in August we made a conscious decision to limit the number and frequency of articles on sexuality and gender. We never intended for these to be the main focus of this blog.

Yet, as things have turned out over our ten short weeks of publication, 12 (counting our two articles on abortion) of 48 articles and editorials—a full 25%—have touched on some aspect of sexuality and gender. These account for an overwhelmingly disproportionate 50% of total visits by our readers. Our top four articles by far have to do with sexuality and gender.

Hardly a week has gone by that many of our readers—whether publicly on Facebook, or in private emails and messages—have not reached out to express their appreciation not only for the content of these articles, but for their frequency. At least one supporter has noted approvingly the persistence with which we have called attention to the lived human realities of sexual desire, transgender identities and gender dysphoria, the wide range of intersex conditions, and the tragic conditions of fallen life that make the provision of legal, accessible, clinical abortion a pastoral necessity. Read More

See also the more recent A Priest Forever?

This may be the most painful thing I ever write for public consumption. I proceed with the consent and encouragment of my cherished co-editor, Andrea Jarmai.

Understandably I feel a combination of awkwardness in publishing this article on what is not my personal blog, and resentment that certain of my Fathers, brothers, and sisters in the Orthodox Church choose to make sport of sufferings that have nearly crushed me to death beneath their weight many times over. I am alive today only because God, His Mother, and all His saints and angels in heaven love me so much in my abject unworthiness—whether some of you do or not. As recently as this past May and June some of you on Facebook and in various other places on the Orthonet had me contemplating suicide once again, because your trash talk following the appearance of “Conjugal Friendship” sank to such astounding depths. You know who you are. You should be ashamed of yourselves. Read More

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St. John Cassian (Romanian icon)

The student of history is not often well-served by the reading of secondary sources. This is especially the case when those secondary sources are attempting to characterize a theologian and his theology. Columba Stewart’s 1999 study of St. John Cassian in Cassian the Monk is a happy exception to this rule. Stewart readily admits that, as a Benedictine monk, he feels a keen debt to the writings of Cassian for his own monastic formation.

From its opening pages to its afterword, it is clear that this book is a personal labor of love. Consequently, while Stewart tells us the book is written for two audiences—monastics and scholars—it is in some sense written for that one kind of attentive reader we call amator. To that attentive reader, Stewart (and perhaps also Cassian) suggests that the insights of love can speak directly to the challenges of our own day. Specifically, in Cassian’s premodern theology, we can find threads of wisdom that speak directly to the anxieties of Late Modernity.

Stewart begins his book with twenty-three pages on the life and times of Cassian the monk. While there is not as much known about Cassian as we interested readers would like, Stewart nevertheless highlights details of staggering significance.

For example, given Cassian’s fluency in both Latin and Greek, he was able to read widely in both Eastern and Western patristic traditions, and was able to translate between languages and traditions in service to orthodoxy to rebuff the heresies of Pelagius and Nestorius. Even more significantly in terms of lasting legacy, Cassian’s experience as a monk in Egypt and his service to St. John Chrysostom enabled him to bring the “light from the East” to the West. Specifically, Cassian’s writings directly influenced both St. Benedict and St. Gregory the Great, and thus all of Christian spirituality throughout the Middle Ages. Read More