[ditty_news_ticker id="27897"] May, 2014 - Orthodox Christian Laity - Page 2
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Monthly Archives: May, 2014

Source: The Wall Street Journal Concerts to celebrate the most-performed classical-music composer alive By STUART ISACOFF You may not know the name, but you’ve heard his music. Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s alluring, hypnotic “tintinnabuli” (“bell-like”) style has resonated with listeners world-wide—the database Bachtrack reports that Mr. Pärt is now the most performed living classical composer. The haunting music in the trailer for the film “Gravity”—a perfect complement to the image of astronauts adrift, its piano pattern suggesting a cosmic clock as floating violin tones and spacious pauses convey a sense of human frailty—is his 1978 work, “Spiegel Im Spiegel” (Mirror…

Source: First Things – May 2014 by John P. Burgess On the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Orthodox Church had 50,000 parishes, a thousand men’s and women’s monasteries, and sixty theological schools. By 1941, Stalin had nearly succeeded in eliminating the Church as a public institution. Perhaps only a hundred and fifty to two hundred churches remained active in the whole country, and every monastery and seminary had been closed. Although Hitler’s invasion of Russia caused Stalin abruptly to change course—he turned to the Church to help him mobilize the population for war—the Church nevertheless labored under severe restrictions until…

Source: ABC News ISTANBUL May 9, 2014 (AP) By DESMOND BUTLER Associated Press Bartholomew I, spiritual leader of 250 million Orthodox Christians, says a meeting with Pope Francis in Jerusalem this month will help move the two churches closer to ending their nearly 1,000-year divide. In an interview with The Associated Press in his Istanbul office, Bartholomew also praised Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for improving rights for Christians but said pointedly, “it is not enough.” The meetings between the ecumenical patriarch and the leader of the world’s Roman Catholics on May 25-26 will commemorate the historic visit of…

Source: Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America His Eminence Metropolitan Silouan writes on May 7 (CLICK HERE for official letter): Very Esteemed Hierarchs, Reverend Clergy, And Beloved Faithful of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America Christ is risen! I would like to inform you that the Holy Synod of Antioch, after convening on April 29th, 2014, decided that the participation of the Antiochian Archdioceses around the world in the Assembly of Bishops be restored to its status prior to the decision taken by the same in its session held in October 2013. After receiving from the Secretariat…

Source: The Times of Israel Church representatives say Father Gabriel Naddaf has been dismissed from his Nazareth post The Greek Orthodox church in the Holy Land has dismissed an Israeli Arab priest who publicly supported Israeli army service for Christian Arabs, a church spokesman said Thursday. Spokesman Essa Musleh told AFP that ecclesiastical authorities decided Tuesday to fire Father Gabriel Naddaf from his post in Jesus’s traditional childhood town of Nazareth, but were only now making their decision public. “We warned him before to keep to his priestly duties and not to interfere in matters of the army,” Musleh said.…

Source: American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association WASHINGTON, DC –  Anthony Kouzounis, supreme president of the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association (AHEPA), the largest and oldest membership-based association for the nation’s millions of American citizens of Greek heritage and Philhellenes, issued the following statement on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom’s release of its 2014 Annual Report on April 30: “The return of Turkey’s designation to ‘Tier Two’ country status rectifies to some extent the Commission’s egregious and disappointing designation last year that significantly upgraded Turkey to a country that simply needed to be ‘monitored.’ “The Commission’s 2014 report properly documents many…

Source: BSANNA News Bucharest, May 7. /AGERPRES/. Fifteen years ago, Pope John Paul II conducted, between May 7-9, for the first time, a visit to Romania, a country predominantly Christian Orthodox in faith. It was the first visit of a Pope in Romania. ‘It is for the first time that Divine Providence offered me the possibility to make an apostolic journey to a country predominantly orthodox’, said Pope John Paul II, thanking Patriarch Teoctist of the Romanian Orthodox Church, as the latter greeted him on the airport. During his pontificate, Pope John Paul II conducted a great number of trips…

Source: Greek Reporter by Theodora Matsaidoni Elder Paisios the Athonite (1924-1994), one of the greatest and most revered Elders of the Orthodox Church of our time, is well-known for his spiritual teachings. His Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew announced that the Holy Mountain Elder will be formally canonized as a saint. Elder Amphilochios (Makris) of Patmos, Elder Sophrony (Sakharov) of Essex, Elder Ephraim of Katounakia and Elder Iakovos Tsalikis are anticipated to follow as well. “The Orthodox Church serves a higher Truth, which has nothing to do with myths and speculations,” said His All Holiness, Bartholomew I, Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome, and Ecumenical Patriarch, denying all…

Source: Assyrian International News Agency (AINA) By Nina Shea | Fox News On Wednesday, May 7, history is being made. On behalf of the suffering churches of Egypt, Iraq and Syria, a broad array of American Christians, with a degree of unity rarely seen since the Council of Nicaea in 325, have joined together in a “pledge of solidarity and call to action.” In the “We the People” tradition, the pledge is a grass roots effort, with input from many sources. It is being released publicly on Wednesday morning by Reps. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) and Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), but it does not…

Source: CatholicCulture.org Catholic World News – May 07, 2014 The head of the Coptic Orthodox Church has written to Pope Francis, proposing that Catholics and Orthodox agree on a date for the celebration of Easter, the Fides news service reports. Coptic Pope Tawadros II sent his message to Pope Francis on the anniversary of their first meeting in Rome. In return, the Roman Pontiff asked the Egyptian prelate to send a representative to attend the October meeting of the Synod of Bishops. A shared date for Easter celebrations would be a boon to Christians in the Middle East, where Catholic and…

Christ is Risen! With less than one month to go before our 2nd annual Pan Orthodox Fellowship weekend, I wanted to personally thank each and every one of you for your ongoing help in trying to make this event as successful as possible. The Pan Orthodox Fellowship Weekend is still a relatively new event and it would be nothing without all of your efforts. For those of you who do not know me, my name is Mark Bleahu. I worked on the event last year but will now be in charge of the day to day preparations leading up to…

Source: Interfax Moscow, May 7, Interfax – A senior bishop has appealed to the international community and the Ukrainian government to protect the Ukrainian Orthodox community that is part of the Russian Orthodox Church from violence. “Today the Orthodox Church, its clergy and its believers are targets of open provocations and threats. The mass media are disseminating untrue information about the Orthodox Church, sowing hostility toward it and hatred for it among the population,” the Moscow-run Orthodox Church’s Metropolitan Agafangel of Odessa and Izmail said in a letter to UN envoys to Ukraine, the mission in Odessa of the Organization…