www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Dukakis and the Greek Orthodox Church

Dear Alice,

Thanks for your thoughtful posting. This Catholic does want to address the points you raise; as I hint in my previous posting focusing all the attention on the politicians does not solve the problem.



Yes, inadvertently keeping quiet about the anticulture of sex is a form of supporting abortion. John Paul II and Benedict XVI have both stressed the anticulture several times; many Catholics do not seem to have understood the message


You are correct. We have an overabundance of people who look for the quick fix and simply want the anti-abortion laws restored. I'm not opposed to restoring the laws, but it is far more important to change public opinion.


I couldn't agree more!


Amen and Amen! I am thoroughly sick of people belligerently threatening me because I do not share their politics. When I was still living in Canada someone asked me how I had voted in a recent election. I answered, truthfully, that I had voted for the New Democratic Party. My interlocutor then asked me why the NDP supports abortion. I said that I didn't know, but I would suspect that the noisy walkout of many pro-life people handed the victory to the "pro-choice" group on the proverbial silver platter.

By the way, I am myself 66 years of age. One need not be young to be annoyed by judgmentalism and intolerance!

No doubt this present posting will have various people throwing heavy objects at me, even though I am not the enemy. It's more than time that these people realized that their behaviour is often counterproductive.

Thank you again for your posting.

with every blessing for you and Penteli,

Fr. Serge

Amen Alice! The self righteousness with which some Catholics promote their rigid anti-contraception doctrine actually turns people off to the culture of life and the positive view of sexuality that is contained in Christianity.

Joe

I want to say that the labeling of all pro-choice people as pro-abortion is not helpful, nor is it necessarily accurate. Don't misunderstand me. I am 100% prolife and if it were up to me, I would ban all abortions except to save the life of the mother. However, I recognize that there is a difference between those pro-choice persons who see abortion as a tragedy and something they personally oppose and those pro-choice advocates who think that abortion is the greatest thing to happen to women.

I disagree with the viewpoint articulated by many politicians that they are personally opposed to abortion but they do not believe that they can make that decision for other women. Yes, I disagree with this view, but I do understand it and I see it more as a mistaken political view than a mistaken moral view.

Saying that a pro-choice person is pro-abortion is like saying that a person who believes in the decriminalization of drugs is pro-drugs or someone who opposed the criminalization of smoking is pro-smoking.

Joe

Dear Father Serge,

Thank you for your thoughtful post. I am glad that you understood what I was trying to say.

Respectfully,
Alice

Fr. Serge, God bless you and thank you for your post!

Joe

As someone who has actually worked in the pro-life movement I have to take some aim at what has been said. Pro-lifers for the most part are not just after new laws. We promote the total package. Prolifers run crisis pregnancy services, post-abortion counseling, maternity homes,medical care,baby care, adoption servies, families that adopt all kinds of children, and helping folks live chaste lives. Catholics have homes, the OCA has a home, and so do the Evangelicals.

Many of us in the movement has seen personally what the pro-abortion industry armed with the democratic party has done to them. Liberal judges and pro-abortion groups have gone after pro-lifers with a vengence. They have silenced free speech and sued prolifers into bankruptcy. They consistantly use the courts to do the dirty work. Every prolife worker can tell you stories. Look at the stats as to how much money the abortion industry gives to the DNC. That is why we get a little upset.

Every pro-life worker I know not only goes after abortion but goes after the smut that got us to this culture of death that we are in. It is hand in hand.

Bernard Nathensen who was once an abortionist and was part of NARAL (Group that helped get Roe vs Wade)He talks alot about it. He has since converted and Cardinal O'Conner of Blessed Memory baptized him into the Faith. Read his book and you can see much of the history of the abortion movement.

Of course we need to change hearts first. Why not do both? We can have no justice in the land until we protect our unborn. I don't know any prolifer who isn't working on changing the heart of some pro-choice friend or loved one. Many abortion workers have stopped doing this due to someone loving and praying them out of this horrible buisness. SO many people I know go to Masses, prayer servies, etc to end abortion. Little old ladies who can't walk with a sign but they do greater work by praying a rosary. All of it is vital work.

Hold the cotton pickin phone one second, Joe. Before there is a pile-on in semantics against Serge, it is worth considering something.

Namely, Serge is Orthodox.

He is not a member of the Catholic Church. It is worth remembering - before a pile on - that some folks in the Orthodox Churches do still hold on to the same teaching the +KALISTOS wrote about in his 1963 edition of the now revised The Orthodox Church. Namely:

I made the distinction between not being played politically and not caring or being simply wrong on abortion.

I stand by what I wrote.

Church membership is nothing to do with it. Online I don't represent any jurisdiction.

Speaking as someone who is Orthodox, I think the Catholics have been consistent in their positions. Consistent not only in actively supporting pro life movements, but in opposition to the overall negative aspects of our society that all play in to abortion. In other words the culture of death. I think this is why they are so often the targets of attack, and why Archbishop Chaput was shunned by the DNC. Personally as I said, I would wear that as a badge of honor.

To me, the choice is stark. Here in the Philadelphia area the Obama campaign is saying in constantly repeating radio ads that if McCain is elected legal abortion will immediately disappear (a ludicrous claim in and of itself, even if McCain wished it so). It is obvious what voting for Obama means and who supports him - the militant secular segment of our society, planned parenthood, etc.

I think it's a shame that examples like what this thread exemplify exist. It is of course not only an Orthodox problem, but the silence of the bishops to me says a lot; and speaking at the DNC to me is simply inexcusable given what they advocate. It would not be surprising to me then that by not actively and publicly opposing abortion, that it in fact does not get much play in private catechesis. I don't know if the Pew stats I posted on page 1 give light to that, but to me they aren't encouraging.

Dear Simple Sinner,

This forum has a rule of charity.

Terms such as 'cotton pickin' are highly offensive to Black Americans.

Referring to a priest of the Greek-CATHOLIC Church as 'Serge' and claiming that he is Orthodox and not Catholic is also offensive in its intent and presumption.

We have all had our say. Unfortunately, it always boils down to anger, and that is where, IMHO, the evil one claims victory.

Dear Andrew,

I have much respect for the Catholic church's social concern about the horror of abortion.

I think that they are courageous in their stand, and I know that they have also tried to work on the culture, but not as vocally, successfully and tirelessly as they have on overturning Roe vs. Wade. When they take on Hollywood with the same veracity, perhaps teens will stop having sex as much as they are, and they won't find themselves in the difficult position of being pregnant in a society which will frown upon them for being so, and a society where marriage to the equally young father is almost always not going to happen.(As I said before, the reactions to Sarah Palin's daughter speak volumes.)

Please remember that the innate difference between the Catholic church and the Orthodox is that the Catholic church, to its great honour, since the days of St. Benedict, has taken part in the social aspect of Christian care for the poor, the ill, the victim. Western society has been greatly blessed by this service.

The Orthodox church, though deficient in this regard, serves a complimentary purpose to Christianity...by nature, Orthodoxy has always been and always will be a monastic religion. The purpose of monasticism is personal deprivation to achieve theosis and pray for the world. With their holy prayers, Western society has been greatly blessed, and without them, may not have even existed any longer.

Do not think, for one moment, that Orthodox priests are not privately ministering and catechising about abortion. I have been in enough Orthodox classes to know this, and have also heard priests talk about the ministering and pastoral healing they are doing in confessions to also know that this is true.

Words are not enough. Popular culture is becoming stronger and stronger, and the most dedicated youth leaders in the Orthodox church and the Catholic church are losing ground. (Even when they are successful in the high school agers, they lose when those high school students go off to colleges because dorming away at college is 'the thing to do'...and parents are paying ridiculously exurbetant amounts of money (Europeans are aghast at the cost of our colleges and universities) to send their children there to be baptized by the fire of 'immoral' behaviour.)

I have seen this reality in Orthodox churches and in Catholic high schools. Infact, my daughter went to a private RC academy, and there was much going on there in the sexual realm. Fortunately, the headmistress, a nun, was not in denial, and brought in the best female Catholic motivational speakers on morality for three day retreats. The approach of this speaker was not judgemental, but realistic. She was impressive. This is what we need more of to stop the murders of the preborn. While the pro-lifers are marching, young teenaged RC (and others) men and women are doing exactly that which will bring them to the point of abortion.

There is a whole segment of unknown young men and women who need this approach more than being yelled at by some with intolerant tones and judgemental words. Those very tones are heard on this board. They do not work. They have only created the opposite effect. Your children are young. When they get older and will hopefully feel free enough to discuss with you all that is going on with their peers, in their schools, in their college dorms, etc., you may see that, as conservative Christians, we need to take a different approach to this great moral crisis which we find ourselves in this 21st century.

Also, let's not steer the conversation into the world of politics, because although I generally vote Republican, I am sad to say that I think that politics cannot change the prevailing morality of the nation...I was hoping that it could, but the polarization of Americans and the blurring of morality has become and is increasingly becoming too extreme in this country, and the reactions of those persons with liberal moral thought have become too strong and misguided for any common ground...I don't know what will work, and I am not saying that we shouldn't keep on trying to make abortion illegal, or atleast to have more severe restrictions, but what I do know is that it is time for Americans to stop being judgemental and to open their eyes to what is being fed to and imposed on the young generations, and what kind of universe of thought and behaviour those young people are living in. I also think that equating birth control with abortion is also alienating young and older people alike, and is actually turning off many people to joining the forces of the pro-life movement.

As far as being realistic to what is going on with our youth, nfact, the only well known Christian leader of any denomination which I have ever heard actually face up to and speak about that alternate 'universe' was not RC, or Orthodox, but was actually the Evangelical preacher, Pat Robertson!

Alice, Moderator

All: I advise everyone to continue their discussions charitably and calmly or I will ask the Administrators to consider closing this thread.

My appreciative thanks to Alice and to Joe for their gracious reception of my post. I really was expecting an avalanche of brickbats (I'm sensitized - a priest friend of mine back in 2,000 was threatened with instant physical violence because he was supporting Al Gore - the would-be assailant had only recently become Catholic).

But I was shocked to read this from our Simple Sinner:


I am not offended by being called "Orthodox", rather the contrary. But I would honestly have thought that almost anyone on the Forum would be aware that I am a Greek-Catholic priest, in perfectly good standing, serving the Greek-Catholic community in Dublin (and by extension in the rest of Ireland, since there are faithful all over the country and I am the only priest). My profile lists my religious affiliation as "Greek-Catholic".

Nevertheless I trust that this was simply a misunderstanding, rather than an attempt to throw me out of the Church!

I have preached against abortion, and urged a pastoral letter on the matter from Patriarch Lubomyr (such a letter has not yet appeared, but the Patriarch is elderly, nearly blind, and has an overwhelming list of problems demanding his attention).

fraternally in Christ,

Fr. Serge

Alice - allow me to correct you.

the reference to Serge was meaning the poster known as the young fogey NOT Fr Serge.

Fr Serge - you can breathe again

Politically abortion isn't a factor in how I vote (or this year not vote) - I know the pols really don't care/won't change anything. I appreciate the 'other issues override this' argument, and people voting for Gore for example often have the best intentions.

ASimpleSinner wasn't being rude to Fr Serge - he was referring to me as I used to go by Serge online and, not that it matters because as I said I don't represent any jurisdiction, became Orthodox 13 years ago.

But as he said, until the mid-20th century (as reflected in the first edition of Met. Kallistos' book) the Orthodox and all other Christians agreed with Rome on contraception.

Alice to claim that a Church should not be involved in the question of Abortion because it does not want to get involved in politics is absurd.
It is a moral issue and the Church must take a stand, remembering the words of her savior; "either you are for me or against me" you cannot sit on the fence.
Stephanos I

Glad to know that the reference to "Serge" was not intended for me. The lesson here is that simple first names are apt to belong to more than one person, which makes it helpful to indicate somehow to whom one is referring.

I remain thankful for the absence of the avalanche of brickbats!

Fr. Serge (the Irish priest, in case anyone is still wondering)