Byzantine, Texas

One answer used by governments to not let things grow is to refuse licenses for building or occupancy. This is what they have been doing in Turkey and in Egypt for a number of years. ( Ahram Online ) - Egypt's Prime Minister Sherif Ismail issued on Monday a decision to form a committee to legalise the status of churches that were constructed without licenses, in accordance with the 2016 law regulating the construction and renovation of churches. The newly formed committee will include the ministers of defense, housing, urban development, justice, antiquities, parliamentary and legal affairs, in addition to representatives from the intelligence and security agencies, and representatives of different churches. The committee will be empowered to study and verify applications submitted by Christian congregations to legalise the status of churches and attached worshipping buildings. Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi ratified in September 2016 a law regulating the build...

( Christian Today ) - A rare 400-year-old Gospel has been found in a Bulgarian church, preserved in secret down the centuries and containing notes on major events in Bulgarian history. According to Archaeology in Bulgaria, the book, printed in 1644 in Bulgarian Cyrillic, was discovered on the death of Fr Penyu Tsvyatkov Penev, a priest at the church of St. Elijah the Prophet in the town of Voynezha. It is believed to have been passed down from priest to priest in the church for generations. It is now in the Sofia National Museum of History. A statement from the museum said: "The book...is richly decorated with dyes and ornate initials, the font is large and solemn, the pages are framed with decorative elements. Apparently, the book was actively used for religious services and reading: many of the pages have traces of candle wax, and the lower edges where the pages are turned are stained and worn out." As well as its decoration, however, the book is significant becau...

It was a joy to march with my fellow Orthodox Christians in DC this Friday. At the same time, I returned home to see some commentary that gave me pause. It's not new to me, but it strikes me with the same surprise one feels when the child in the movie, walking to school and so proud of his just completed science experiment, turns the corner and has it promptly destroyed by the neighborhood bully. Sometimes Internet commentary is the heel falling on the scale replica of Mount Vesuvius. Positive acts often occasion negative comments to detract from the value of the thing done. If someone comments about feeding homeless people another person might say, "Yay for you feeding the guy under the overpass, but it's one thing to feed someone and it's another thing to get them the REAL help they need. You didn't solve the problem. You just fed it." Similarly, the March for Life detractors (who aren't just ardent pro-choice people) will say, "You can't ...

( OCA-DEPA ) - On Wednesday evening, January 18th, the Annual Orthodox - Eastern Catholic clergy dinner was so graciously and warmly hosted by Roman Catholic Bishop of Scranton, Joseph Bambera. It was a wonderful time! His Eminence Archbishop Mark attended with 15 Orthodox clergy and as many Eastern Rite Catholic clergy as well as the priests on staff at the Roman Catholic Diocese of Scranton. Two retired Roman Catholic bishops, Timlan and Daugherty also attended. There was a very palpable spirit of camaraderie. Archbishop MARK emphasized the need for the clergy to be living examples of Faith in Jesus Christ by not just talking it but walking it. Bishop Bambera emphasized the need for us to work together on those issues we agree, i.e. respect for life and care for the poor and weak. There ARE so many things that we can do together so that the unbelieving world at least sees us working together for God's glory and the salvation of humanity.

From the blog " Orthodox Christian Meets the World ." If you didn’t already know, the Coptic Liturgical text today is filled with Greek. But how much of it is Greek? People have been giving and receiving all kinds of answers to that question, so I set out to get an actual answer. Here are the results, tips on telling the difference, and what the numbers may or may not tell us: I looked at a typical, “common day” Coptic liturgy, beginning from the Liturgy of the Word through the distribution hymn Psalm 150. I counted the number of words or combined words separated by spaces. Overall: 23% of the Coptic Liturgy is Greek. But when you look deeper into it, it turns out that the overwhelming majority of Coptic in the Liturgy is said by the priest, rather than the congregation (the people) or the deacons. Results by role: There are three main roles in the liturgy: Priest, People (or congregation), and Deacon. While overall 23% of the Coptic Liturgical Text is Greek, th...

"Where did Stanislav go?" "No idea. It's so dark..." [The next day on the news] "Triumph turns to tragedy as a Russian congregation loses one of its own in a... this can't be right... they jumped into the ocean in the middle of the night?" [Cut to commercial] ( MOSPAT-USA ) - At midnight, January 19, the Great Feast of the Baptism of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Administrator of the Patriarchal Parishes in the USA led the Great Blessing of Water of the Atlantic Ocean. His Grace was co-served by clergy of St. Nicholas Cathedral in New York City. At the conclusion of the service, many braved the cold temperatures as well as the freezing ocean water and took part in the long-standing tradition of plunging into the sanctified waters.

( STS Press ) - Feb. 24–25, 2017 at St. Tikhon’s Monastery, South Canaan PA “Practical virtue is the steppingstone to contemplation. Labor to cultivate your soul by means of the body.” (St. Gregory the Theologian, Or. 20.12) The “Florovsky Symposium” is an annual tradition started by a scholarly society at Princeton University. Having chosen the theme of asceticism, the organizing committee is grateful to hold this year’s proceedings at St. Tikhon’s Monastery, the oldest Orthodox Christian monastery in America. Please join us for an evening and day of lectures, discussion, fellowship, and prayer. The Florovsky Symposium attracts scholars, clergy, and laity from around the world who are interested in combining serious scholarly inquiry with faithfulness to the Tradition of the Church. This Year’s Theme What part does the ascetical cultivation of body and soul play in theologizing rightly? What is the relationship between direct experience of God and the indirect knowledge ...

( OCA ) - Chancellors and treasurers representing the Orthodox Church in America’s dioceses held their annual gathering at the Chancery on Tuesday, January 24, 2017. His Beatitude, Metropolitan Tikhon opened the meeting by addressing the participants, who had earlier attended the Divine Liturgy, celebrated by Archpriest John Jillions, OCA Chancellor, in Saint Sergius of Radonezh Chapel. Father Jillions and Priest Nathan Preston, Administrator of the Department of Pastoral Life, led a discussion on Clergy Compensation Guidelines and the Clergy Peer Group project, being piloted in the Diocese of Philadelphia and Eastern Pennsylvania. Archpriest Eric G. Tosi, OCA Secretary, reviewed the new on-line 2017 diocesan form for statistical information and also updated the group on a variety of matters associated with the 19th All-American Council, slated to convene in Saint Louis, MO in July 2018.

See y'all at the March! ( Life News ) - Vice President Mike Pence will speak at the March for Life on Friday — making him the first vice president ever to address the pro-life event in person. That’s according to a report in the New York Times — though March for Life has yet to confirm Pence will indeed be on the roster of speakers. Pence is the former governor of Indiana who has a longtime pro-life position and a lengthy pro-life record putting pro-life legislation into law in that state and voting pro life as a member of Congress. “Let me be clear: People who know me well know I’m pro-life, and I don’t apologize for it,” he’s said previously. “I want to live to see the day that we put the sanctity of life back at the center of American law, and we send Roe v. Wade to the ash heap of history, where it belongs.” White House officials confirmed today that Vice President Pence would address the pro-life Marchers. As many as half a million or more pro-life people will ga...

How far afield have things gone if the person who opposes a Muslim girl chanting from the Koran that Jesus isn't divine during the Epiphany liturgy, is the one who has to step down? ( Breitbart ) - Less than a week after one of the Queen’s Chaplains spoke out against an Islamic Prayer denying the divinity of Jesus Christ being read out in a Scottish Cathedral, the senior churchman has tendered his resignation from that office. Former Chaplain to Her Majesty the Reverend Gavin Ashenden announced his resignation on his personal blog on Saturday night, anticipating that a BBC Radio 4 segment on him and the controversy surrounding the Quranic readings in a Scottish Cathedral to be broadcast on Sunday morning would reveal his resignation despite his requests to the contrary. Remarking that the decision to step down was “the most honourable course of action” and had come after years of “attempts to silence or defenestrate me”, Rev. Ashenden said he had spoken out in the past on ...

Paris, France, 9–12 January 2017 ( EP ) - “Take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16: 33) 1. At the invitation of His Eminence Cardinal André Vingt-Trois, Archbishop of Paris, the 5th European Catholic-Orthodox Forum was held from 9th to 12th January, 2017 at the headquarters of the Missions Etrangères of Paris, France. The Forum was co-chaired by Cardinal Peter Erdő, on behalf of the President of the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE) and Metropolitan Gennadios of Sassima of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Following the positive experiences of the first four meetings of the European Catholic-Orthodox Forum (Trent, Italy, 11–14 December 2008, Rhodes, Greece, 18–22 October 2010, Lisbon, Portugal, 5–8 June 2012, Minsk, Belarus, 2–6 June 2014), twelve delegates of the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE) with twelve representatives of the Orthodox Churches in Europe met in Paris to examine in depth the themes of the threat of fundamentalist terrorism, th...

"We want to put the concept of religious freedom (our Patriarch, Constantinople, the recognition of the struggle of the Orthodox Church) front and center in this White House." - Reince Priebus White House Chief of Staff Archon ( Greek Reporter ) - White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus on Thursday praised the Greek Orthodox community and promised that the issue of religious freedom in Turkey will be a concern of the new U.S. administration. Priebus spoke on the eve of the inauguration of the 45th U.S. president Donald Trump and accepted an award from the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese and Archbishop of America Demetrios for the recognition of his services, according to a Real.gr report. “The Greek community, the Orthodox community, starting with the Archdiocese, Father Alex, the Patriarchate Archons, my good friend, my uncle and second father John Catsimatides who put me under his wings and said “yes” every time I called him on the phone. This group of people in this ...

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( SOC-WAD ) - Rev. Fr. Vasileios Thermos, M.D., Ph.D. is a priest of the Church of Greece. Together with his priestly ministry in Athens, he is a practicing psychiatrist, and is Professor of Pastoral Theology and Psychology at the University Ecclesiastical Academy in Athens. The author of many books and articles, he has offers spiritually provocative and clinically informed programs and retreats in Greece, the United States, Albania, and Cyprus. His insights into the fields of theology and psychology are combined with a strong undercurrent in psychoanalytic thought. The Registration Fee & Course Costs are $200 ($25 Registration, $175 Course Materials). All Clergy of the Western American Diocese are required to attend all four days of the Orthodox Institute, as it encompasses the mandatory Annual Lenten Clergy Retreat. The option to register for one or all days of the event will be available during the registration process, but we encourage participants to attend the entire ev...

( ROCOR-Chicago ) - The annual St. Herman Youth Conference of the Diocese of Chicago and Mid-America began December 27th, 2016, at a lakeside retreat center just north of Kalmazoo, Michigan. More than forty teenagers, seven clergymen and six chaperones assembled from across the diocese and beyond – from Texas north to Minnesota and from Oklahoma east to Maryland. The conference set out to focus on “The Orthodox Witness in a Technological World” by examining this theme through a series of talks: Curating the Thoughts You Share (Mat. Ann Lardas), What is Friendship? (Fr. Michael Carney), Science and Orthodoxy (Fr. George Lardas), Cyber Bullying (Fr. Deacon Alexander Petrovsky) and On College, Keeping the Faith, and How I Almost Lost Mine (Misha Moibenko). Each speaker spoke with faith, passion and enthusiasm, along the way sharing a valuable pearl or two from their own experience with the audience. Engaging conversations followed both immediately after each talk and in m...

St. Petersburg, January 18 ( Interfax ) - The relics of new martyrs who died for faith after the revolution in Russia will be brought to the dioceses of the Moscow Patriarchate in a special arc. "The arc will be brought to all dioceses of the Russian Orthodox Church," Metropolitan Varsonofy of St. Petersburg and Ladoga was quoted as saying by the local metropolia. The arc is now being made, the metropolitan said. It will contain the relics of all new martyrs whose remains have been obtained. The event will be held to mark the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution. The names of several dozens of people who died for faith in the years after the revolution are now known, and over 1,000 of them have been called new martyrs. Among them are Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra Fyodorovna and their five children.

( ARCHONS ) - With the blessings of His Eminence Metropolitan Isaiah of Denver, a symposium is scheduled at the Assumption of the Theotokos Cathedral, Denver, CO, on Saturday, January 28, focusing on the historical, canonical and ecclesiastical significance of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, which concluded in June 2016, including a review of the previous seven Ecumenical Councils.

What a great story. ( The Star ) - A language that hasn’t been spoken for more than 1,000 years is being taught this semester at the University of Toronto, a step perhaps towards decoding rarely understood excerpts of history. The ancient Ethiopic language of Ge’ez is written in a script that’s read left to right and has 26 letters. Letters have variations for the vowels that go with them, meaning students have to learn 26 characters in seven different ways. The goal of the class, which meets twice a week, is to get students on their way to reading. Milen Melles, a history major who said her parents immigrated to Canada from Eritrea — which became independent from Ethiopia in the early 1990s after three decades of war — is taking the class as an opportunity to connect with her roots. She one day hopes to study texts from the region at a graduate level. “This is a huge step for western academia to be exploring African languages, ancient languages, because they usually only...

I found this article, entitled " Modern Assyrian Hymns: The Introduction of the Vernacular in the Liturgical Services of the Church of the East ," to be quite intriguing. The music and poetry of the Church is built in such a way that it fits hand-in-glove with the language it's written in. Playing on words, matching musical notation to phrases, etc. is hard to translate into another language. Every jurisdiction has its beloved music and some clunkers in English. Phrases in English get squished into the musical notation written for another language, things get moved around and don't make as much sense, and all other sorts of problems doggedly follow the musical translator. What's more, the first or second attempt which tried to make the transition gets seen to be the way to sing the song in English so that later improvements are maligned as playing with a sacred and time-honored bit of hymnography. No Church is immune and no two jurisdictions handle it the same wa...

Baghdad ( AsiaNews ) – The Chaldean (Catholic) Patriarchate, at the initiative of the Primate Mar Raphael Louis Sako, has launched a formal proposal to Iraq’s Christian Churches to set up an ‘Iraq Council of Churches’. The proposal was made public today in an official statement released on the Patriarchate’s website and sent to AsiaNews. “The Council,” the statement says, “is a religious body including Church families of Catholics, Assyrians, Orthodox and Evangelicals in Iraq,” to be headquartered in Baghdad. The Iraq Council of Churches would “promote the spirit of unity among the different Churches in Iraq, to coordinate the educational and social activities”. The press release goes on to say that the Council would also “organize prayers meetings, unify the position and its discourse toward national issues, such as social justice, equality and the rights of Christians”. It would also “activate the dialogue with the Muslim and other religions in order to promote a culture...

Whippany, NJ ( SCOOCH ) – For nearly a decade, H.E. Mor Titus Yeldho of the Malankara Archdiocese of the Syriac Orthodox Church in North America has been working tirelessly to establish a seminary on the premises of the Archdiocesan Headquarters for the education of his clergy and faithful. In the meantime, since 2010, the Archdiocese has convened an annual week-long Deacon’s Camp for the purpose of inculcating the ideals of Christian fraternity and fidelity to the Orthodox Faith and Orthodox practice among the young men who serve on the altars of its churches across the continent, from New York to California and from Saskatchewan to Texas. In keeping with the vision of the Standing Conference of Oriental Orthodox Churches that each of the member jurisdictions participate regularly in one another’s ecclesiastical life, H.E. Mor Titus and the organizers of this year’s Deacons Camp – which ran from January 1 through January 7 – invited several speakers from the Coptic Orthodox Church...

A sad state of affairs. The below is the reposted text from the parish's Facebook page (with some small editorializations). Cummings, GA ( Joy of All Who Sorrow ) - Our church has been under fire again. The pictures shows bullet holes found on our church sign. The first time the holes were discovered on December 12, 2016. New ones were found today January 11, 2017. Since this is (at least) the second shooting at the parish, I am sure it is not a random incident, and if not stopped, perpetrator(s) will repeat shooting. The police have been informed. We'll have to see if they do anything to find the criminal(s) responsible.

( TFP Student Action ) - Catholic Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. is allowing a radical pro-abortion club to operate on campus: Medical Students for Choice. Its mission: To train "tomorrow's abortion providers..." Every pro-lifer should urge the university to close the club. For the record, this is how Medical Students for Choice describe their activities: "Many MSFC [Medical Students for Choice] chapters host a 'Papaya Workshop', a hands-on training session using fruit to simulate a uterus, to teach students the basic concepts of Manual Vacuum Aspiration." "Learn to perform an abortion using this quiet, portable technology," continues the Medical Students for Choice Facebook page. "At the end, Dr. Costescu-Green will give a special demo of a 2nd trimester abortion using dilation and evacuation simulators. This is a great session to bring back to your campus." In other words -- the Medical Students for Choice ...

Note: Update on January 12th. You won't be surprised to see that the below video was pulled down. I can't imagine the uproar pointed towards that diocese. ( Christian Today ) - Christians are familiar with the Bible texts that detail the conception and birth of Jesus to His mother, the Virgin Mary. But they are not so used to hearing the Muslim version of the story read out in church. And especially not on Epiphany, which celebrates the incarnation of God as His son Jesus - a doctrine denied by Muslims. Michael Nazir-Ali, a leading evangelical Christian in Britain, has now condemned the reading on a service at the Scottish Episcopal Church's Glasgow Cathedral last Friday. The congregation at St Mary's cathedral heard the Muslim version of the Virgin Mary's conception of Jesus, from the Koran's Sura 19, sung by Madinah Javed. The passage explains how Mary gave birth after an angel told her God would give her a child. Muslims believe Jesus was a prophe...

Two quotes come to mind. One for the imagery and one for the common sense of it. For as the churning of milk produces butter, and wringing the nose produces blood, so the forcing of wrath produces strife. - Proverbs 30:33 So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God. - James 1:19-20

( CNA ) - With a recent gift of more than 600 handmade leather manuscripts, the Catholic University of America is now home to one of the most important collections of Ethiopian religious manuscripts in the United States. The collection includes Christian, Islamic, and “magic” texts. It is the largest collection of Ethiopian Islamic manuscripts outside of Ethiopia. Dr. Aaron M. Butts, a Professor of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literature at Catholic University, said in a statement that the manuscript collection “provides unparalleled primary sources for the study of Eastern Christianity” and reaffirms the school’s standing as one of the leading places to study Near Eastern Christian language, literature, and history. The manuscripts are handmade of goat, sheep, or calf hides, and most of them date to the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries. In total, the collection includes 125 Christian manuscripts, such as psalters, liturgical books, and hagiographies. Within the 215 Is...

On this day the Virgin gives birth to the Super-essential. To the Unapproachable, earth is providing the grotto. Angels sing and with the shepherds offer up glory. Following a star the Magi are still proceeding. He was born for our salvation, a newborn Child, the pre-eternal God.

( Antiochan.org ) - The sixth biennial Climacus Conference, a pan-Orthodox spiritual/academic event, is scheduled for February 24–25, 2017 and will be hosted by an Antiochian parish, St. Michael Orthodox Church, in Louisville, KY. The 2017 theme has been chosen to remind us that our reason for existence and our purpose as human beings is to encounter (and experience) God. The conference will give primacy to Theology; moreover, it will explore ways to encounter God through patristics, philosophy, beauty, liturgical arts, saints and miracles, poetry, et al. The conference will feature more priests speaking, along with more spiritually-focused speakers. After all, the website says, we are all going to die soon, and there we will encounter God. Imagine such an encounter after having actively sought Him in this life. Perhaps such encounters here are already encounters there? Perhaps these encounters prepare us for that encounter? Perhaps they influence or shape the Great Encounter? Wi...

( OCP ) - On the 5th of January Mother Vasilissa, hegumeness of the St. Xenia of Petersburg convent (Belarus), was stabbed to death in her monastery. The tragedy is being inquired by the Belarusian Investigative Committee. It is reported that the hegumeness was stabbed by a 29-year-old woman who had been sheltered in the monastery in order to get help in her personal problems. The inmates of the convent noticed her peculiar behavior which was a result of mental instability. This is believed to have caused the tragedy. On the 6th of January, a memorial litia was served at the monastery for the soul of the recently deceased hegumeness Vasilissa. After the litia, Bishop Veniamin of Borisov and Maryna Gorka asked the congregation to engage in fervent prayers for mother Vasilissa. He noted that the most important thing for the community is to understand the spiritual sense of the tragedy because this is how the ‘devil tries to make us feel confused, create sorrow and anxiety’ (on th...

For all of you like me in an area full of churches closed due to inclement weather, I ask you what good are all these roads if we can't get to church with them? The below was made popular by the Georgian movie Repentence (მონანიება) with this exchange: Old Woman: Excuse me, does this street lead to a church? I want to know whether this street leads to a church. Ketevan Barateli: No, this is Varlam Street, and it doesn't lead to a church. Old Woman: Then what do you need it for? Why have a road that doesn't lead to a church?

From the Prologue of Ohrid From St. Nikolai Velimirovich of Ohrid's Prologue : St. Clement of Alexandria tells of a horrible custom among the barbarians. He says that when they capture their enemy, they tie him alive to the corpse of a dead man and leave them bound together so that the living and dead rot together. If only it could be said: "Thank God that this barbarian custom is past!" In essence it has not passed, but reigns today in full force. Everyone who ties their living spirit to flesh deadened by barbarian passions is the same as the one who ties a living man to a corpse and leaves them both to decay. Προτρεπτικὸς πρὸς Ἕλληνας Here's the direct quote from Clement's Exortation to the Greeks/Heathens : For that wicked reptile monster, by his enchantments, enslaves and plagues men even till now; inflicting, as seems to me, such barbarous vengeance on them as those who are said to bind the captives to corpses till they rot together. This wicked t...

Let me state my bias first. I am not a fan of the New Calendar and not because it is of papal origins or secularizing influence or anything else. It breaks things (see here for more on that) and until we move fully back to the Old or fully into something New, it won't be rectified. This bit didn't make it into the below article by Fr. Lawrence Farley, but a lot else did. Enjoy. ( OCA ) - Christmas Day and the post-Christmas season usually bring with them a number of things not overwhelming helpful—Boxing Day stampedes, post-Christmas let-down, unwelcome news when stepping on the bathroom scale, and polemical digs about those benighted people using the “papal calendar” instead of “the Church’s Traditional Calendar”—i.e. the Julian calendar. It can be rather confusing to those outside of Orthodoxy, especially when they have been told that Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on January 7, thirteen days later than Christians of the West. When I tell them that many Orthodox c...

DEARBORN, MI ( Babylon Bee ) — In an attempt to corner the market on families that choose to homeschool their children, Ford Motor Company announced Monday its new upcoming line of 40-passenger vans. Christened “The Homeschooler,” the flagship model seats 40 passengers and a driver, and includes fun entertainment for the kids, like Latin workbooks and classical Greek epic poems tucked right into the backs of the seats. “We found that many homeschooling families were taking two or three of our twelve- or fifteen-passenger models to church,” a Ford representative said Monday. “This new model will allow the whole family to make the trip to homeschool co-op meetings, AWANA nights, and Sunday services all together in one vehicle.” Options for the line of vans will include a pre-installed Chronicles of Narnia DVD playing on a continuous loop, a real-time ClearPlay system that replaces any foul language with a suitable alternative, and an in-floor storage system designed to stow up ...

From the Holy Monastery of Pantokrator, a post entitled "Must we obey when our spiritual father does not uphold the orthodox way of life?" What does our ecclesiastical past teach us on the matter of obedience to our spiritual Father when dealing with a matter of Faith, whether of a dogmatic nature or related to the holy Canons? Do we owe our spiritual Father indiscriminate obedience when he opposes the Tradition of the Church or do we not? Do we carry the stigma of "disobedience" before God, or are we ‘covered', by remaining obedient to Christ in accordance with the infallible Tradition of the Church? It is these questions that we shall attempt to answer in this article... Complete article here .

( Mospat.ru ) - At its December 27 meeting in Danilov Monastery, under the chairmanship of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church approved the text of a prayer service for forgiveness for the sin of abortion, reports life.ru. The “Moleben of Repentance for Forgivenes for the Sin of Killing a Child in the Womb” has been sent to the Moscow Patriarchate’s publishing house for inclusion in prayer books. The new service is “very important,” in the words of Vladimir Legoida, the head of the Patriarchate’s Department for Relations Between Church and Society and the Media. Abortion is unequivocally a sin in the eyes of the Orthodox Church. Although post-Soviet numbers have dropped considerably, Russia still has an alarmingly high number of abortions every year. Hierarchs, clergy, and activists routinely speak out against abortion and organize petitions and demonstrations against this terrible sin and its current legal status. In November Patriarch Ki...

I'm sure you can catch up if you start this week, follow this link (PDF) provided by St. Philip's Orthodox Church in Souderton, PA.