2016

Love every person indiscriminately. Never mind if they’re weak and sinful. Don’t think about the sin, but about where the person comes from, which is the image of God Himself. Don’t let the weaknesses of others bother you – their badness, pride, envy, voracity or gluttony. You’re not short of problems yourself. Basically, as regards our relationship to sin, we’re all the same.

This change in basic ethical reasoning can be seen in the routine screening of older women by a procedure called amniocentisis. This is done in order to "identify" Down’s Syndrome and other afflicted children in utero so that they might be destroyed before birth (there is a popular misconception that older women are more likely to give birth to Down’s Syndrome children, however recent studies done have refuted that belief). Large numbers of tests are being developed to screen children in the womb, the sole object being a wholesale "search and destroy" mission against any unborn child who proves to be less than "perfect." What parents are not told is that, most of these tests increase the danger of spontaneous ...

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, during his opening address at the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, quoted the preacher with the golden mouth, St. John Chrysostom: “For the term ‘church’ is defined as a system and synod.” Both the term ‘church’ and the system of synod have generated a great deal of discussion recently and regrettably some division as well. Archbishop Anastasios of Albania remarked in his opening statement that the “Heresy of our time is egocentrism.” Following the Inaugural Session, I spoke with a well-known delegate about the Archbishop’s statement, and on the self-centredness of many monomaniacal critics of the Council. One of his comments was especially insightful. He compared them to the pope, and argued that unlike the Roman pontiff who ...