www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News ROC: Pro-gay churches prepare members to accept the Anti-Christ

Fair enough. But leaving communism out of this thread I would like to ask: Should the ROC have been just as quick to cut off dialogue with those churches if they had only accepted, let's say, fornication and adultery? (And I mean this seriously.)

Peter J:

Glory be to Jesus Christ!!

The whole Western movement to destroy the moral foundation laid by Christianity revolves around the many sexual sins that have been promoted as the new normal. Would your question have even been asked 40 or 50 years ago? I think not.

The Faith calls us to develop our self control, our mastery of the passions that are part of our fallen nature. How is this accomplished if we abuse our God-given sexuality--in any context--when it is meant to be used only within a marriage between one man and one woman, with God included, as they cooperate with Him in procreation. Marriage is also meant to be for the mutual sanctification of the spouses: their growth in holiness and in communion with God. How can this be accomplished when a Church (or ecclesial community, depending on one's vision of the group involved) teaches otherwise in complete opposition to the Faith handed down to us from Christ and His Apostles? How can Christ be involved with Baal, as the Scripture asks? I'd also like to note that not everything is allowed to the married that the world likes to include in its new sexual vision, enshrined in pornography. Anything that makes the other feel cheapened and degraded--that strikes at the foundation of the basic human dignity that the the Lord has given to each of us created in His image--is not something we ought to be doing.

The goal of ecumenical dialogue is to find a common language for the separated communities so that they can find a way to fulfill the Lord's prayer "that all may be one." How can that happen when, as one poster points out, we "talk past each other." How can we be Christ's followers if we stand for nothing that He has left us? How can we enter communion when that implies that we have a common mind, as Scripture has it.

There's been an argument that the Faith is time-fixed and is no longer relevant, thus requiring us to find a new language and adjust to the new reality of the world in which we live: to re-invent Chrisitianity. I wonder how many of the many martyrs over the centuries would agree with that.

It's true that the ROC is in a different environment in which she has the luxury of making bold moves and statements about this issue. But it's just the same with us in being able to look at and speak of things she cannot say. But in all things, charity is demanded of us all or we risk being unable to make any statements in any context. The ROC can witness to things we cannot; we can witness to things she cannot. And in all of it, the Lord's message is kept alive by the whole of us.

Bob

Exactly!

Although I didn't have this specifically in mind when I last posted, this quote from the article "The Gay Divorce`", about V. Gene Robinson and the TEC, says it pretty well:

Don't tell anyone that gay people go to both the UGCC parish and the ROC-MP parish here. Some of them might even stand in the back of church and say "God be merciful to me a sinner".

Quite frankly the things some gay people put up with to belong to a church they feel spiritually attuned to is a martyrdom in itself.

Among the intelligentsia, possibly. There was a definite change by the end of WW2. It does take a while for these grand ideas to filter down to us plebs.

Take a guess what the intelligentsia are talking about now; the answers may horrify. That's where we will be in another 40 years.

I'd say you have it backwards. Christianity as a public, political force, has largely reduced itself to protesting these sexual sins and in the process losing the general point of the Gospel. The secularists exploit these issues but it is our choice to paint ourselves into a corner. We have gone from proclaiming Christ crucified and resurrected to being those people who boycott fast food chains that endorse gay pride parades. Recently some American pastor called for a boycott of Wells Fargo because they had a poster featuring a lesbian couple, but apparently this same man had no issue with Wells Fargo's predatory lending practices which ruined lives all over the country. Christian morality only makes sense when there is also Christian love and Christian joy.

SwanOfEndlessTales


This thread isn't about Christianity as a public political force. It began with an article about the Russian Orthodox Church and ecumenical contacts, which are intended in the long term to lead to full communion of the groups participating in dialogue. The ROC has simply stated the obvious. One cannot enter into communion without being of a common mind in orthodox belief and orthodox practice stemming from that belief. The further idea that these two are "talking past each other" because of a lack of a common definition of what the Faith actually is underlies this decision.

Additionally, the ROC is on record as saying that Orthodox Christians cannot be in communion with those who promote other issues that are at odds with traditional teaching and traditional practice.


Actually, Christian morality only makes sense within the whole lived-out practice handed to us over 2000 years. It includes fasting, prayer, and ascetic struggle. Absent all these, one is hard pressed to find Christian morality at all. We're all called to wrestle with the things that pull us away from living as Christ would have us live. And we don't re-invent what it means to be a Christian just because the world around us has decided to abandon the foundation of the civilization we have inherited.

Bob