Source: Orthodox Reality We are announcing a new website on Orthodox Church Life in America: https://orthodoxreality.org/ If you are interested in fact-based realities about Orthodox Church life in America, then visit and explore the website. Among the resources for free download you will find: · Atlas of American Orthodox Churches · Atlas of American Orthodox Christian Monasteries · Recently published volume Global Eastern Orthodoxy: Politics, Religion and Human Rights · Reports from studies conducted from 2006-2020 on various issues facing Orthodox Churches in the USA (including the most recent report on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on American Orthodox parishes) · Easy-to-read essays, “Fast…
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Source: Euro News By Cristian Gherasim Google in Romania has been fined €2,000 after an internet user tagged the country’s massive new Orthodox cathedral with an insulting post on Google Maps. Romania’s National Anti-discrimination Council (CNCD) imposed the fine on June 17 after the People’s Salvation Cathedral in Bucharest was given a new tag that renamed the unfinished €110 million mega-project “The Cathedral for making a fool of the Romanian nation”. The cathedral, which was inaugurated in 2018 but is not expected to be finished until at least 2024, has been controversial in Romania. Critics say the project, which will be…
Source: Orthodoxy in DialogueThe Venerable and Ancient Patriarchate of Alexandria and All Africa has surprised us with its courage and initiative in the past. We need only recall the appointment of deaconesses by His Beatitude, Pope and Patriarch Theodoros II. While there was debate whether it constituted a true “ordination” (cheirotonia), rather than a blessing (cheirothesia), the fact remains that the Patriarchate took an initiative in such matters.The same can be said regarding the establishment of St. Mark’s Academy, offering theological education through distance learning. Other such Academies exist, but St. Mark’s promises a quality, contemporary, and challenging curriculum. Situated…
Cleo Constantin shared the following message and letter from Sister Nektaria, a Greek Orthodox missionary nun in India: Dear friends, this is the news from Sister Nectaria as of about 20 minutes ago. It is unimaginable! I was gasping as I read it and then moved to tears. Her passport and visa expired during the extreme lockdown and, although she is required to return to Greece for new paperwork, she was not permitted to leave! What a situation. Then the worst cyclone in the history of India devastated the grounds and seriously damaged the buildings with 165 mile-an-hour winds. It is…
Source: Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Atlanta June 5, 2020 To all the faithful of the Metropolis of Atlanta: My beloved children in the Lord, I greet you with love in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Like so many of my fellow citizens, and indeed, others around the world, I also join them in expressing the extreme pain and outrage for the senseless death of George Floyd. In the week that has followed, our country has seen a time of great unrest, discussion, and serious contemplation about the future. I echo the words of our venerable Archbishop…
Source: Academia Creation as Sacrament: Reflections on Ecology and Spirituality by John Chryssavgis (London: T&T Clark, 2018), xi + 220 pp. When speaking once in a discussion on climate change about the sacramentality of creation, a priest of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America responded to me, “I know there are seven sacraments, but I’ve never heard of creation as a sacrament.” This is exactly the kind of attitude that has itself contributed to an exploitative relationship to the cosmos and which John Chryssavgis hopes to correct with his aptly-titled book, Creation as Sacrament: Reflections on Ecology and Spirituality.…
Source: OrthodoxReality.org Today we release the report, “The Pandemic and American Orthodox Parishes.” You can download it HERE. If you are one of the 250 priests who participated in this study, we express our deep gratitude to you for sharing your thoughts and your parish’s experience in dealing with the pandemic. Information provided by the study participants was amazingly frank, heartfelt, and insightful. Thanks to the input from parishes representing seven jurisdictions and all parts of the country, we were able to learn about the great variety of local circumstances and parishes’ responses to the pandemic. Some findings presented in the…
Source: The New York TImes Even as the monasteries of the Orthodox Church are besieged by the coronavirus, apocalyptic-minded priests balk at state restrictions on public worship. By Andrew Higgins MOSCOW — A physics student at Moscow State University, Dmitri Pelipenko turned away from science in 2018 to devote himself to God, enrolling as a novice monk at Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra, the spiritual center of the Russian Orthodox Church. His spiritual journey, derailed by the coronavirus, came to an abrupt and gruesome end shortly after the Orthodox Easter. Admitted to the hospital after testing positive for the illness, Mr. Pelipenko…
Source: Orthodox Christian Laity #GivingTuesdayNow emphasizes opportunities to give back to communities and causes in safe ways that allow for social connection and kindness even while practicing physical distancing. Please donate to OCL’s communication ministry that brings the understanding of unity to all Orthodox Christians. Unity in the new normal that follows this pandemic. Our OCL community will assist the Assembly of Bishops to continue to work together as it has during this experience of physical distancing. Live streaming of our liturgical life demonstrates our unity in our diversity and is a role model for others. During this special GivingTuesdayNow…
Source: Public Orthodoxy RELIGIOUS MATERIALITY IN POST-CHERNOBYL CONTAMINATION by Elena Romashko The publication of this essay coincides wit the anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, Saturday, April 26, 1986. In March 2020, we were asked to work from home because of the pandemic of coronavirus. We could not even imagine how quickly the situation would escalate to a global lockdown. Looking at the warm and beautiful weather my husband said, “It’s hard to believe that being outside can be dangerous—the world around looks exactly the same, like nothing has changed.” His words stung me with a flashback: Sonja, one of my informants…
Source: The Palm Beach Post Chaplain uses smartphone to connect dying with family members, often during last rites By Joe Capozzi The Palm Beach Post ATLANTIS — The priest’s cellphone buzzed again as he was visiting coronavirus patients. An hour earlier that day, April 1, he had given last rites to yet another COVID-19 patient at JFK Medical Center. But now he was needed again, in another room in the intensive care unit. So the Rev. Gabriel Ghanoum repeated his routine — solemn, courageous and tragically all too familiar — as a humble and technologically savvy hospital chaplain on the…
Source: TIME BY BILLY PERRIGO AND JOSEPH HINCKS This weekend’s Orthodox Easter celebrations in Greece were a low key affair for Michalis Stratakis and his wife Nancy. They still ate lamb, but the meat was oven-cooked instead of carved off a whole animal that had been spit-roasted for hours over charcoals. They painted eggs red according to Greek tradition and played games with family members in Athens, but over cell phone screens from their home on the Greek island of Crete on Sunday, rather than at the usual raucous feast of about 20 friends and relatives. “It was heartbreaking, to tell you the truth, because we didn’t…