DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF ST. JOHN OF SAN FRANCISCO

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August 21/September 3, 2000
ELEVENTH SUNDAY OF ST. MATTHEW
Vol. XXXIII, No. 25 (1498)
Epistle: First Corinthians  9:2-12.  Gospel: Matthew 18: 23-35.

Afterfeast of the Dormition. Archbishop Thaddeus of the Seventy; Martyr Bassa of Edessa and her sons Theogonius, Agapias and Pistus; St. Abramius, archimandrite, Wonderworker of Smolensk, and his disciple St. Ephraim; St. Abramius the Lover-of-Labor of the Kiev Caves; St. Theocleta the Wonderworker of Asia Minor; St. Cornelius, abbot of Paleostrov, and his disciple St. Abramius; St. Isaiah of  Mt. Athos; St. Hardulph of Breedon; St. Avitus, bishop of Clermont (B549).

TO OUR READERS: We apologize for the  recent delays in publishing . This issue, dated August 21/September 3, actually was produced and distributed in December. We hope to  be caught up soon. Pray for us..

     In his famous essay "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell analyzed the corrupting influence of dishonest politics on the way we speak and think. There is no better example than the effect abortion has had on our language.

    Though abortion - including the killing of viable infants at the verge of birth - is now a sacrament of the Democratic Party, nobody admits to being "pro-abortion"; they are "pro-choice."  This is an obvious lie. The right to choose anything presupposes the right to live. The child, fetus, embryo, or whatever you want to call the entity growing within its mother's womb has no "choice" about being killed. It will never have a choice about anything.

    The pro-abortion side is pro-abortion in the same way that advocates of slavery were pro-slavery. "Oh," they protest, "but we don't insist that everyone get an abortion; we only want people" - that is, mothers - "to have a choice!" Then nobody was pro-slavery either, since nobody insisted that every white man own a slave; they were "pro-choice." They wanted each white man to be "free" to decide whether to buy slaves; or they wanted every state to decide whether to permit slavery. Of course they overlooked the obvious fact that the slaves themselves had no choice; in their minds this was irrelevant.

     The bad conscience of the pro-aborters shows in their studious avoidance of the word kill to describe what abortion is. Why be coy about it? We don't mind speaking of "killing" when we kill lower life forms. Lawn products kill weeds; mouthwashes kill germs; insecticides kill bugs; mousetraps kill mice. If the human fetus is an insignificant little thing, why shrink from saying an abortion kills it? But the pro-abortion side prefers the evasive euphemism that abortion "terminates a pregnancy."

    As Orwell noted, dishonest people instinctively prefer the abstract to the concrete. Abstract language avoids creating unpleasant mental images that might cause horror and shame; concrete language may remind us of what we are really doing. This is why military jargon dehumanizes the targets of bombs and artillery: so that soldiers and pilots won't vividly imagine the men, women, and children they are killing. Part of the job of military leadership is to anesthetize the consciences of fighting men. And political leaders (who usually start the wars in the first place) do their part by describing the bombing of cities as "defending freedom."

     In the modern world people are trained to avoid looking directly at the effects of violence they commit or sanction. If possible, the killing is delegated to specialists, who themselves are increasingly remote from their victims - as in recent U.S. bombings of Iraq and Yugoslavia, where American casualties were nearly zero. Most of us don't mind if our military kills people on the other side of the world; we feel no pain, even vicariously. We may even buy the official explanation that our bombs are "preventing another Holocaust." It may seem otherwise to the Iraqis and Slavs on whose homes those bombs are falling.

    But just as the news media refrain from showing us what those bombs actually do, they never show us what an abortion looks like. They even refuse to carry ads by abortion opponents, on grounds that pictures of slaughtered fetuses are in "bad taste." They certainly are in bad taste; all atrocities are. But the media are willing to show some atrocities, as in the killing fields of Rwanda a few years ago. Since we're forever debating abortion, why not let us see one? Why the blackout?

    The answer, of course, is that the news media themselves are pro-abortion. They adopt the dishonest language of the pro-abortion side: pro-choice, fetus, terminate, and - my favorite - abortion provider (to make the abortionist sound like a humanitarian).

    A few years ago NBC produced a sympathetic movie about a woman seeking an abortion - Norma McCorvey, the "Roe" of Roe v. Wade. But when Mrs. McCorvey later changed her mind and became an active opponent of abortion, did NBC do a sequel? Unimaginable.

    We have to keep our guard up at all times against political language, especially in seemingly bland journalism, that is subtly infected with propagandistic purposes.

    Peace be with you, dear fathers and brethren!

    Christ is risen!

    My name is S.C.. I am an Orthodox Christian from the Russian city of Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. I have been in the Faith for five years and have a great interest in Orthodoxy on the North American continent (as well as in the whole world). Unfortunately, the modern-day state of Orthodoxy seems to me to be rather poor due to various reasons (the so-called Revised Julian Calendar) the majority of the local Orthodox Churches have adopted and the participation of the Orthodox in the pan-heresy of our time—the Ecumenical Movement. All this has brought the secular spirit into the church life and brought about a disunity among the Orthodox. Truly, it is such an awful sight to see an Orthodox bishop reading the Nicene Creed or the Lord’s Prayer in one voice with the heretics of all kinds, or a Patriarch embraced by the Pope at the Ecumenical Assemblies as if they were of the same faith. It seems to me that the hierarchs who pray together with the heterodox at those ungodly assemblies represent not the Church, that is, the people of God, but only themselves (for I know that among the Church people practically nobody approves of such contacts with the heterodox). And yet it is very harmful for the Church. The Orthodox must not take part in Ecumenism! We must call on all the heretics to repent and get back to the Faith of the Apostles, the Holy Orthodoxy.

    The same thing is with the New Calendar. What was the point of adopting the so-called Revised Julian Calendar if not the desire of some to please the world which, according to the words of Our Saviour, “lieth in evil”. And the result of this devil’s work is the broken unity among the local Orthodox Churches.
Several months ago I read a book, The Struggle Against Ecumenism, published by your Church, from which I knew [learned] a lot of things about what was what and who was who in the present-day Orthodoxy. Thank you very much for the book! . . .

    May Christ our true God through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and all Saints grant His love, peace, unity, stability and salvation unto all His North American Orthodox flock inasmuch as He is gracious and loveth mankind.

    I also ask your holy prayers and With love in Christ Jesus
blessing  S.C.

    Peace be with you, dear brethren,

    Christ is in our midst!

. . I am interested in life and activities of the Holy Orthodox Church in North America. Several months ago you kindly sent me a book Struggle Against Ecumenism, which I read with great interest. In my opinion (and, certainly, not only mine), ecumenism is a very serious temptation which the  Orthodoxy faced in the XXth century. The wrongly taken idea of unification of all religions of the world has confused a lot of minds even within Orthodoxy. A couple of weeks ago I watched a TV interview of a Moscow Patriarchate high-standing Archpriest. He was one of the representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church at an ecumenical  meeting in the USA where the Buddhists, and Protestants, the Muslims, the Roman Catholics, the Jews, the Shintoists and whatnot prayed together with the Orthodox for mutual peace and so on. In his interview the priest said something like “We have gathered here to search for the truth!” “Strange,” thought I, “haven’t you found the Truth in Orthodoxy, Father?” I guess it would never occur to such holy men of God as St. Maximos the Confessor or St. Athanasius the Great to go searching for the truth along with heretics of all kinds. They had the Truth. They were in the Truth and. the Truth was with them. But what else truth do the modern-day Orthodox ecumenists search for? Your firm stand in Orthodoxy arouses a great interest to your Church and its activities. As far as I know your Monastery has translated into English a good deal of liturgical services and published many good books about Orthodoxy. I hear a lot about the values of translation of the Orthodox Psalter according to the Seventy in English made by Holy Transfiguration Monastery in the 1970’s. I read the Psalms in Slavonic and since I can speak English I would also be very happy to read them in the language of your country.

    May Christ our true God grant you His peace, love, help and salvation in the age to come!

    With love in Christ Jesus,

    S.C.
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    The secretary general of the National Council of Churches, a mainline Protestant and Orthodox [emphasis added] group, is warning against using a manifesto supporting marriage issued this week as a weapon to attack gays and lesbians or as a statement against same-sex unions.

    Bob Edgar leads the NCC, which comprises 36 mainline Protestant and Orthodox denominations.
He expressed his concerns in a letter to the organization's General Assembly, meeting this week in Atlanta.
"A Christian Declaration on Marriage," released Tuesday in Washington, was signed by an unusually broad-based coalition of Christian groups, including the U.S. Catholic Bishops, the Southern Baptist Convention, the National Association of Evangelicals and the NCC.

    It called for a recommitment by churches to marriage and decried the high rates of divorce, cohabitation and children born to unwed mothers.

    But the document also defines marriage as "a holy union of one man and one woman."

    At a news conference, Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, said, "By their very nature, broken marriages and counterfeit alternative relationships such as cohabitation and same-sex unions fail to impact and benefit society in the manifold ways that society is blessed by intact, committed heterosexual marriages."

    And the NAE posted a companion document on its Web site, not endorsed by the other groups, that listed the biblical citations prohibiting homosexuality, while saying that churches should respond to gays and lesbians with compassion.

    In his letter, Edgar of the NCC said churches must do all they can to support marriages. But he noted that there is disagreement among the NCC's members on marriage and sexuality issues.Several denominations are in discussions about same-sex unions and  the NCC has long advocated full civil rights for gays, lesbians, and bisexual and transgender individuals, he said. "In our dangerously fragmented society, I regret and will  resist any attempt to interpret support for one beleaguered segment of  society as an attack on another," he said.