Martyred Priest Daniil is buried

MOSCOW, November 23 (Itar-Tass) - The Reverend Daniil Sysoyev murdered at the Church of St Thomas on November 19 has been buried at Moscow’s Kuntsevskoye cemetery.

Father Daniil was buried near the tombs of Prince Nikolai Obolensky and famous publisher Sergei Sabashnikov and next to the Holy Saviour Church.

The funeral service at the Church of Apostles Peter and Paul in Yasenevo was attended by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia.

The murder of the Reverend Daniil Sysoyev testifies to the grandeur and strength of the Orthodox idea for which he gave his life, he said.

“Very often violence is aimed against those who gives evidence of God and truth. When hatred blurs the eyes and there are no other arguments, they direct violence against those who speak of God and truth. Being unable to resist a priest’s word with their head and heart, they pour torrents of slander and spite upon the clergyman or even raise hand against him,” the patriarch said.

“Father Daniil did much to assert God’s truth. He participated in different discussions and disputes and defended God’s truth to the best of his ability and talent. But perhaps the strongest word he has ever uttered is the one we can all witness now,” His Holiness said.

In his opinion, “when a person is killed for God’s truth, this means that this truth hurts those who resist it and has a great force.”

Read the rest here.

Greek Orthodox Church sues Turkey

The Greek Orthodox church of Cyprus has sued Turkey in a European court for allegedly preventing worship at religious sites in the divided island's breakaway Turkish Cypriot north, a church lawyer said Monday.

The lawsuit with the European Court of Human Rights concerns 520 churches, monasteries, chapels and cemeteries the church lost when Turkey invaded in 1974, after a coup by supporters of union with Greece, said Simos Angelides, a lawyer representing the church.

The Orthodox Christian faithful cannot worship at these sites because they are either derelict or have been converted into mosques, army barracks, stables or nightclubs, Angelides said.

Turkish officials were not immediately available for comment.

Read the rest here.

The Revenge of the Gold Bugs

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Gold has long been favored by a fringe of the investment world, but this year some of the world's leading hedge-fund managers have loaded up on the precious metal amid concern government efforts to avoid another Great Depression that could undermine major currencies and fuel rampant inflation.

"I have never been a gold bug," Paul Tudor Jones, chairman of hedge-fund giant Tudor Investment Corp., wrote in an Oct. 15 letter to investors. "It is just an asset that, like everything else in life, has its time and place. And now is that time."

Tudor has been building positions in gold and other precious metals in recent months and they now represent the firm's largest commodities exposure, he noted.

John Paulson's Paulson & Co., one of the world's largest hedge fund firms that made billions betting against subprime mortgages, is launching a new gold fund Jan. 1 and became the largest holder of the SPDR Gold Shares exchange-traded fund /quotes/comstock/13*!gld/quotes/nls/gld (GLD 112.94, +0.64, +0.57%) this year.

Greenlight Capital, run by David Einhorn, reversed a long-time aversion to gold, while Kyle Bass's Hayman Advisors LP held more than 15% of its portfolio in gold and other precious metals earlier this year. Eton Park Capital, headed by former Goldman Sachs /quotes/comstock/13*!gs/quotes/nls/gs (GS 170.01, -2.82, -1.63%) trader Eric Mindich, has also got in on the act.

"I can't remember in 20 years so many respected investors focused on a single strategy," said Bradley Alford of Alpha Capital Management, which invests in hedge funds. "Some of these people are icons of the industry with at least 15-year track records. It's a losing proposition to bet against guys like that. They aren't billionaires because they make bad bets."

Read the rest here.

I strongly recommend a careful read of the above linked article in its entirety.

Caesar calling the tune

When you take Caesar's coin you dance to Caesar's tune. Churches will eventually learn the price of taking government money. But I fear the lesson will be a painful one.

Payback time is fast approaching

WASHINGTON — The United States government is financing its more than trillion-dollar-a-year borrowing with i.o.u.’s on terms that seem too good to be true.

But that happy situation, aided by ultralow interest rates, may not last much longer.

Treasury officials now face a trifecta of headaches: a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to climb back to normal as soon as the Federal Reserve decides that the emergency has passed.

Even as Treasury officials are racing to lock in today’s low rates by exchanging short-term borrowings for long-term bonds, the government faces a payment shock similar to those that sent legions of overstretched homeowners into default on their mortgages.

With the national debt now topping $12 trillion, the White House estimates that the government’s tab for servicing the debt will exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year, even if annual budget deficits shrink drastically. Other forecasters say the figure could be much higher.

In concrete terms, an additional $500 billion a year in interest expense would total more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Read the rest here.

Iran’s Death Penalty Is Seen as a Political Tactic

CAIRO — A flurry of executions and death sentences in Iran has raised concern that the government is using judicially sanctioned killing to intimidate the political opposition and quell pockets of ethnic unrest around the nation, human rights groups and Iran experts said.

In Iran, where there is precedent for executions to surge in the wake of a crisis, human rights groups said there was mounting evidence that the trend had emerged in response to the political tumult that followed the June presidential election. This month, a fifth person connected to the protests was sentenced to death.

In at least one instance, a Kurdish activist was hanged after the government added a new charge, raising concerns that cases with political overtones were drawing more serious penalties.

In the short period between the disputed June election and the inauguration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in August, 115 people were executed, according to statistics compiled by human rights groups and Iranian news agencies. Though the executions mostly involved violent criminals and drug dealers, the number and pace of the killings appeared to be sending a message to the opposition, said human rights groups and Iran experts.

“The regime never expected to see people demonstrate so openly since the elections,” said Hossein Askari, a professor of international affairs at George Washington University. “The executions are intended to frighten them. It is absolutely intended for that purpose.”

Read the rest here.

Florovsky on the boundaries of the Church

I draw the reader's attention to a recent post on Fr. George Florovsky's famous article on the limits of the Church over at Fr. Stephen Freeman's blog Glory to God for All Things (linked in the sidebar). In particular I commend a rather long comment posted in the ensuing discussion by deathbredon which discusses the history of the canonical practices with respect to the reception of converts by baptism or through other means (Confession and Chrismation). The entire thread is well worth a careful read.

Please leave comments on the original thread.

The Manhattan Declaration

The text of the document referred to in a previous post.

Preamble


Christians are heirs of a 2,000-year tradition of proclaiming God's word, seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering.

While fully acknowledging the imperfections and shortcomings of Christian institutions and communities in all ages, we claim the heritage of those Christians who defended innocent life by rescuing discarded babies from trash heaps in Roman cities and publicly denouncing the Empire's sanctioning of infanticide. We remember with reverence those believers who sacrificed their lives by remaining in Roman cities to tend the sick and dying during the plagues, and who died bravely in the coliseums rather than deny their Lord.

After the barbarian tribes overran Europe, Christian monasteries preserved not only the Bible but also the literature and art of Western culture. It was Christians who combated the evil of slavery: Papal edicts in the 16th and 17th centuries decried the practice of slavery and first excommunicated anyone involved in the slave trade; evangelical Christians in England, led by John Wesley and William Wilberforce, put an end to the slave trade in that country. Christians under Wilberforce's leadership also formed hundreds of societies for helping the poor, the imprisoned, and child laborers chained to machines.

In Europe, Christians challenged the divine claims of kings and successfully fought to establish the rule of law and balance of governmental powers, which made modern democracy possible. And in America, Christian women stood at the vanguard of the suffrage movement. The great civil rights crusades of the 1950s and 60s were led by Christians claiming the Scriptures and asserting the glory of the image of God in every human being regardless of race, religion, age or class.

This same devotion to human dignity has led Christians in the last decade to work to end the dehumanizing scourge of human trafficking and sexual slavery, bring compassionate care to AIDS sufferers in Africa, and assist in a myriad of other human rights causes - from providing clean water in developing nations to providing homes for tens of thousands of children orphaned by war, disease and gender discrimination.

Like those who have gone before us in the faith, Christians today are called to proclaim the Gospel of costly grace, to protect the intrinsic dignity of the human person and to stand for the common good. In being true to its own calling, the call to discipleship, the church through service to others can make a profound contribution to the public good.

Read the rest here here.

Those inclined to add their signatures to The Manhattan Declaration may do so here.

For the record I have signed this document. The increasing willingness of the liberal elements in society to use the power of the state to punish or coerce those religious groups who do not conform to their post-modern "morality" should be a source of grave concern to all. Very often these are the same people who rail against the co called "religious right" for legislating religious morality (and as a libertarian leaning monarchist, I would agree with those concerns as well). Matters of religious conscience should never be the subject of coercive legislation.

Quote of the day...

“A political system based on force, oppression, changing people’s votes, killing, closure, arresting and using Stalinist and medieval torture, creating repression, censorship of newspapers, interruption of the means of mass communications, jailing the enlightened and the elite of society for false reasons, and forcing them to make false confessions in jail, is condemned and illegitimate,”

-Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri in recent comments condemning the Iranian police state.

Source

The Vatican and the Lefebvrists: Not a Negotiation

Noted Roman Catholic author George Weigel writes...

Prior to the opening of formal conversations between officials of the Holy See and leaders of the Lefebvrist Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), which began on Oct. 26, the mainstream media frequently misrepresented these discussions as a negotiation aimed at achieving a compromise that both sides can live with. That was to be expected from reporters and commentators for whom everything is politics and everything is thus negotiable. Alas, similar misrepresentations came from “Vatican insiders” who suggested that the teaching of the Second Vatican Council was under joint review by the Holy See and the SSPX, which only made matters worse.

Here is what’s going on here, and what isn’t.

1. The conversations between leaders of the SSPX and the Holy See are just that: conversations. These are not negotiations, for there is nothing to be negotiated; nor is this a dialogue between equal partners. On the one hand, we have the bishop of Rome and those curial officials whose work is an extension of his papal office; on the other hand, we have a society of clergy who have been living in disobedience to the Roman pontiff for decades, and their lay followers, many of whom are more confused than willfully schismatic. The purpose of these conversations is to make clear what the Second Vatican Council taught (especially about the nature of the Church), to listen politely to what the SSPX has to say, and to invite the SSPX back into the full communion of the Catholic Church, which the SSPX broke in 1988 when Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre committed the schismatic act of illicitly ordaining bishops without the authorization of the Roman pontiff (and against the direct, personal pleas of Pope John Paul II).

Read the rest here.

Russian Priest Killed in Church

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A masked gunman entered a church and murdered a Russian Orthodox priest who had received death threats for converting Muslims to Christianity and criticizing Islam, prosecutors and church officials said Friday.

The killing could threaten delicate relations between the powerful majority Russian Orthodox Church, which has close ties to the Kremlin, and the country's growing Muslim minority of about 20 million.

The gunman approached priest Daniil Sysoyev, 34, in St Thomas Church in southern Moscow Thursday night, checked his name and then opened fire with a pistol, a spokesman for the investigating committee of the Prosecutor-General's office said.

"The main theory is that religious motives are behind the crime," spokesman Anatoly Bagmet said.

Sysoyev died on the way to hospital. His choirmaster was injured in the attack, Bagmet said, and is in hospital under armed guard.

Read the rest here.

May the memory of Fr. Daniil be eternal.

National Geographic article on Mt. Athos

There is an excellent article on Mt. Athos with some great pictures. You can find it here.

Hat tip The Crescat

Religious leaders vow to resist laws that violate religious conscience

Citing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s call to civil disobedience, 145 evangelical, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian leaders have signed a declaration saying they will not cooperate with laws that they say could be used to compel their institutions to participate in abortions, or to bless or in any way recognize same-sex couples.

“We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence,” it says.

The manifesto, to be released on Friday at the National Press Club in Washington, is an effort to rejuvenate the political alliance of conservative Catholics and evangelicals that dominated the religious debate during the administration of President George W. Bush. The signers include nine Roman Catholic archbishops and the primate of the Orthodox Church in America.

Read the rest here.
Hat tip to Brian

Rowan Williams fires a shot across Rome's bow

The Archbishop of Canterbury has effectively told Pope Benedict XVI where to put his proposed Anglican Ordinariate. In a speech in Rome the ABC told those assembled that there was no turning back on women's ordination and he challenged the Roman Catholic (and implicitly the Orthodox) doctrine excluding women from Holy Orders. In an uncharacteristically frank address Rowan Williams threw down the gauntlet and even briefly hinted at the question of whether there was any real point to continued dialogue between Rome and the Anglican Communion if there is no hope of bridging their differences.

Overall he attempted to assert that female ordination aside there were few points of significant doctrinal differences between the his communion and the Roman Church that should impede sacramental communion and reunion.

The British press is all over the story. However a few links are below (courtesy of Dr. Tighe).

The Times of London
The Guardian
The Daily Telegraph

I am going to take an educated guess that this is not going to go over well in the Vatican. Oh to be a fly on the wall when he meets the Pope in private.

Many Years!

To the little boy pictured with his great granduncle who tomorrow celebrates his 97th birthday...

Archduke Franz Joseph Otto Robert Maria Anton Karl Max Heinrich Sixtus Xavier Felix Renatus Ludwig Gaetan Pius Ignatius of Austria; better known to the world as Prince Otto von Hapsburg.

H.I.H is the last living member of any of the royal houses of Europe who was alive at the time of the First World War. Prince Otto has lived a truly remarkable life. Born into the Imperial House of Hapsburg and heir to the thrones of both Austria and Hungry after the repose of his sainted father Emperor Karl, he was an active player in the history of most of the last century including being a hunted fugitive from the Nazis and serving for many years in the European Parliament. In 2007 he relinquished his position as head of the Imperial House of Hapsburg in favor of his son Archduke Karl. Today he lives in quiet retirement with his wife in his native Austria.

May God grant Prince Otto many (more) years!

Prayer Requests

I refer the reader to some urgent prayer requests from Fr. Oliver Herbal (OCA) which may be read at The Ochlophobist. In your charity I also implore your continued prayers for the RightWingProf, a fellow Orthodox blogger, who is facing the end of a difficult battle with cancer.

Israeli expansionism continues

JERUSALEM — Dov Hikind, a member of the New York State Assembly, was in this disputed city on Wednesday looking for property to buy. He said he was most excited about a new apartment complex overlooking the Old City called Nof Zion.

At noon, Mr. Hikind led a group of about 50 American Jews in laying a cornerstone for the next phase of Nof Zion, with construction scheduled to start next spring. “I want to buy here,” Mr. Hikind said. “I might make a deal while I am here this time.”

More than a real estate deal, though, it would be a statement: Nof Zion, a private Jewish project, is in Jebel Mukaber, a Palestinian Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem, in territory Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 war. Israel claims sovereignty over all Jerusalem; the Palestinians demand the eastern part as the capital of a future state.

Even within Israel, the idea of Jews moving into predominantly Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem stirs heated debate. Two well-known Israeli families refused City Hall’s offer to name the street leading to Nof Zion for their deceased relatives, according to the local Jerusalem press.

But illustrating the complexity of the Jerusalem conundrum, others argue that Jews, Christians and Muslims should be able to live wherever they like. Not allowing Jews to live in certain neighborhoods of the city “is segregation,” said Mr. Hikind, a Democrat who represents several heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn.

Read the rest here.

Israeli concerns about 'segregation" would perhaps not be quite so laughable if they were not actively and aggressively segregating the Palestinians. Palestinians in Israel are at best second class citizens who face constant harassment and discrimination. We will not even discuss Israel's treatment of those living outside of its (claimed) borders.

I think one can be sympathetic to Israel's right to exist and to the challenges they have had to face from terrorists and Arab military attacks while at the same time recognizing that they have a clearly expansionist foreign policy. You can only steal someone else's land and bulldoze their homes for so long before they will pick up a rock, a knife, or a gun.

Arab terrorism can not justify Israeli imperialism. And I would argue that Israel is the author of a great deal of their own problems. The United States should tell the Israelis to knock it off or we are going to take a knife of our own... to the military aid we send them every year. We have enough problems in this country right now. We don't have the money to be supporting the neo-colonialism of other nations.

Why the Filioque must go

Periodically one hears Roman Catholics explain the filioque using their concept of Doctrinal Development. The current position of the Roman Church they argue is that when they say "from" they really mean "through." To which my response has always been that it is a nice distinction but irrelevant since filioque in Latin means "from" and that is certainly the wording employed in the English translation of the Creed of the Council of Lyons.

Lex Orandi Lex Credendi

The wording affirms a double procession irrespective of current "understanding." Said double procession is heretical. It's a non-negotiable point from an Orthodox perspective. We can not recite a heretical creed or be in communion with those reciting one.

But just as important, perhaps even more so, is the point I have repeatedly attempted to make to Catholics. What well versed theologians in their ivory towers understand is a whole different world from what the layman in the pews understands. He reads "from" and not being in possession of advanced degrees in theology he takes the wording at face value. Ergo "from" means "from."

Clearly large numbers of Catholics have not gotten the memo that the double procession has been developed away. For some evidence I would refer the reader to a recent post over at the Traditional Catholic blog Rorate Caeli. The post expressly defends the filioque and a casual glance at the comments suggests that the double procession remains a point of carved in stone dogma for these Catholic traditionalists.

I believe the aforementioned blog post is the best refutation I have read in a long time of the many Catholics (and some Orthodox) who periodically spout off about how the filioque doesn't matter and Rome has "fixed" its interpretation to make it Orthodox. No they haven't. And clearly to the extent that there has been some movement on their part no one in the pews seems to have gotten the word.

The filioque is patently heretical and it must go.

HAEC LEO POSUI AMORE ET CAUTELA ORTHODOXAE FIDE
-Inscription of Pope Leo III on a pair of silver tablest with the Creed (sans Filioque) placed in St Peter's Basilica in repudiation of the alteration to the Symbol of Faith.

Memory Eternal!

Today, on November 15, 2009, at 10.45 at the Military Medical Academy in Belgrade, after receiving the Sacrament, Archbishop of Pec, Metropolitan of Belgrade and Karlovac , Patriarch Pavle of Serbia reposed in the Lord.
May his memory be eternal!

From a Serbian website. There is some video and a number of other pictures there. (Hat tip Again & Again)

Ready or not here they come

Women bishops in the CofE with no provision of any kind for traditionalist Anglicans who are opposed to W/O. Perhaps they could at least shine a light on the exits.

Read the story here.
Hat tip to T-19

For those who have had enough it's fast becoming decision time. Can you or can you not remain in an overtly heretical body? If not then the question is not whether to leave but rather where to go? If one is of a Protestant disposition and simply looking for a church, there are many. Pick one.

If one is of a catholic mindset, by which we mean you are seeking The Church, not a church, then logically your choices boil down to Rome or Orthodoxy. The ACNA is not a safe harbor. They ordain women and will one day consecrate female bishops. The rest of the so called Continuum is so fragmented into tiny sects that are mostly not even in communion with one another that they can not make any plausible claim to being a part of the church catholic.

This returns us to Rome or Orthodoxy. I can respect either decision provided it's made with an appropriate degree of discernment including prayer and study of the major differences. But again the clock has run down on the Anglican Communion. As one of its own bishops said recently "the Anglican experiment is over."