Remember

150 AD Didache
“The second commandment of the teaching: You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not seduce boys. You shall not commit fornication. You shall not steal. You shall not practice magic. You shall not use potions. You shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy a newborn child” (Didache 2:1)

250 AD Diognetus
(a likely reference to both exposure of infants to die and abortion): “(Christians) marry, like everyone else, and they beget children, but they do not cast out their offspring.” (Letter of Diognetus (late 2nd or 3rd century; ch.5, vs.6)

314 AD Council of Ancyra
“Concerning women who commit fornication, and destroy that which they have conceived, or who are employed in making drugs for abortion, a former decree excluded them until the hour of death, and to this some have assented. Nevertheless, being desirous to use somewhat greater lenity, we have ordained that they fulfill ten years [of penance], according to the prescribed degrees” (canon 21).

374 AD Basil the Great
“He that kills another with a sword, or hurls an axe at his own wife and kills her, is guilty of willful murder; not he who throws a stone at a dog, and unintentionally kills a man, or who corrects one with a rod, or scourge, in order to reform him, or who kills a man in his own defense, when he only designed to hurt him. But the man, or woman, is a murderer that gives a philtrum, if the man that takes it die upon it; so are they who take medicines to procure abortion; and so are they who kill on the highway, and rapparees” ((First Canonical Letter, canon 8).

374 AD Basil the Great
“Let her that procures abortion undergo ten years’ penance, whether the embryo were perfectly formed, or not” (First Canonical Letter, canon 2).

391 AD John Chrysostom
“Wherefore I beseech you, flee fornication . . . Why sow where the ground makes it its care to destroy the fruit?–where there are many efforts at abortion?--where there is murder before the birth? For even the harlot you do not let continue a mere harlot, but make her a murderess also. You see how drunkenness leads to prostitution, prostitution to adultery, adultery to murder; or rather to a something even worse than murder. For I have no name to give it, since it does not take off the thing born, but prevents its being born. Why then do thou abuse the gift of God, and fight with His laws, and follow after what is a curse as if a blessing, and make the chamber of procreation a chamber for murder, and arm the woman that was given for childbearing unto slaughter? For with a view to drawing more money by being agreeable and an object of longing to her lovers, even this she is not backward to do, so heaping upon thy head a great pile of fire. For even if the daring deed be hers, yet the causing of it is thine” (Homilies on Romans 24).

400 AD The Apostolic Constitutions
“Thou shalt not use magic. Thou shalt not use witchcraft; for He says, ‘You shall not suffer a witch to live’ [Ex. 22:18]. Thou shall not slay thy child by causing abortion, nor kill that which is begotten; for “everything that is shaped, and has received a soul from God, if it be slain, shall be avenged, as being unjustly destroyed.” (Apostolic Constitutions 7:3).

Let me tell you something. It’s hard to help an old church renew itself, harder then you can imagine.

Most of the older small churches in Orthodoxy are that way for a reason. Perhaps they had a small immigrant base upon which to build and demographics took their toll. Sometimes these churches were planted in places without the population to truly grow a sustainable church. There may also have been a good chance of pathology in their past, hurts, pains, struggles, and conflict that drove people away and diverted vital energy. Often, too, there was a simple lack of planning and proactive management in the development of churches, skills lost in the state church / persecuted church heritage of the Orthodox who came to this land.

Regardless there are any number of parishes out there, too small to be sustainable, too large or too stubborn to die, and a handful of folks trying to make a go of it. St. Elias is one of those churches and we’re fighting to save it. We have to deal with the reality of where we are, the work we must do, and the fact that there will be no help for us coming from anywhere. The money for missions is, sadly, pitiful, and big churches largely have no interest in helping the stragglers. The diocese sends a Priest and hopes something might happen. The bottom line is that we’re all alone.

Yet we’re slowly crawling out from under. Visitors are coming, a trickle now, but still some. The core is largely holding steady. We’re building and repairing, taking care of those things that couldn’t be done when there was a full time Priest with a salary. The kitchen is next to be fixed and my hope is that a winning attitude will come with the renewal of the building. Yes, we’ve got a ways to go. We need to relearn our faith, and learn how to evangelize. We still need to see ourselves as a people with a call from God on our lives and a vital mission in LaCrosse. The task list is long.

But the garage will be done by the end of the month and the kitchen hopefully by the end of the year and its a proud moment as we claw our way out into the sun. Pray for us.

We’ve been doing some construction around St. Elias building a garage for storage and work space and reconditioning the front steps with a special grit enhanced paint to prevent slips. Winter is coming and the clock is ticking!

The man who used to be my most outspoken atheist colleague (he is now retired) provides a good example of what I’m talking about. His decision to adopt atheism had nothing to do with honest intellectual reflection. He simply had a horrible relationship with his father and he took it out on God. The consequence of this was a level of emotional insecurity that made him simply impossibly to deal with. He was constantly plagued by indecisiveness and anxiety.

Read more here…

This article reflects what I’ve experienced in over two decades of ministry. At the heart of, much (but not all), atheism are painful experiences or painful emotions. One of the men I remember most was a gentleman who billed himself as the “resident atheist” at a nursing facility where I served as Chaplain. What most distinguished him was not the depth of his arguments or his winsome demeanor but the deep anger and pain that radiated from him. He disbelieved in God not on the facts but on a hurt that I could not reach even though we had a cordial relationship.

This speaks to us as Christians as well because this culture has many people who’ve been mistreated, even devastated, by people and structures in their church. I’m not talking about the faux outrage of the kind where people are angry the church won’t affirm their personal sexual proclivities. I’m talking about people who really have been hurt by others who are rude, arrogant, and just plain mean all within the walls of the church. There’s a lot of those folks around and their actions plant the seeds of future “atheists”.

By way of analogy, I don’t believe in unicorns, because there is no evidence for them, but I haven’t written any books called “The Unicorn Delusion” or “Unicorns are Not Great” or made any documentaries denouncing unicorns. Maher’s agnosticism is clearly a pose. Like Christopher Hitchens, he is an “anti-theist” who hates the Christian God. And the main reason seems to be, as Maher himself says at one point, that this God has rules that interfere with Maher’s sex life.

Read the rest of the article here.

There is a gift in the crazy sad sickness of the world in these days.

Contrasted against the background of a culture gone crazy through its self inflicted illnesses the light of Christ shines brighter still. If we, you, me, I, are going to make it through we’re going to need to see that light and head for it as best we can through the night.

We in the Orthodox Church have our work cut out for us. Perhaps after a century or so of dithering around now would be a good time to get our act, and our jurisdictions, together so we can try to help a world where a former night club singer turned religious leader can call a guy from Chicago the “Messiah” and have people actually believe it?

Or am I just engaged in wishful thinking?

I received my statement from Ameriprise yesterday. It looks like the one account I have with them lost over $4000 so far this year. It’s what happens when you’re still a younger worker and have a higher risk portfolio based on extra time to recoup losses and although I know this in my brain I still have a hard time looking at that piece of paper.

I had a hard time watching the debate yesterday as well. It seemed like it was about two millionaires talking about how much they cared for me in the hope that I’d give them the vote they need to have me pay for their food, utilities, medical care, and an airplane for the next four years. I wasn’t impressed.

Both candidates spoke about spending more money and neither really addressed the entitlement mentality that has gripped this country. Whether its folks on Wall Street playing games with the market to use ours to get theirs or folks on Main Street looking for the Feds to do something like that for them the mentality is the same. I want mine but I don’t want to work for it, save for it, be honest for it, or think about others in my plans to get it.

Here’s something I would have liked to have heard from either of the candidates but i won’t hold my breath. “My fellow Americans. Times are tough and the first thing I plan to do after taking office is refuse my salary as President. I’m already wealthy and can afford to live with my room and board at the White House. In addition I plan to ask Congress to take a pay cut and cut staff and privileges until this crisis is over…” Then I’d like to hear something about the Federal government getting out of the mortgage business, the earmark business, the arts business, anything that’s not specifically assigned to it in the Constitution. Finally I’d like to hear about how the financial services industries will be monitored to ensure that the hard lessons we learned from the Depression of the 30’s and crashes of recent decades won’t be repeated.

Last of all I would like to hear this from either candidate. “I have come to understand that at the core of our financial problems is a matter of attitude. We’ve lived as Americans with the idea that we are entitled to ever increasing levels of wealth and financial success, that we can expect prosperity without thrift, pay without work, and reward at the expense of others. Tonight this ends. Nothing we do as a government will matter if you and I do not fundamentally change our attitude about what we consider to be our birthright, the entitlement to ever increasing wealth. We learning some hard lessons in these days about the costs of living as if tomorrow and our neighbors don’t matter and nothing will change until we personally change.”

I’m not holding my breath…

You may be surprised at the answer…

Find more here...

Perhaps the most compelling explanation for the rising divorce rates, however, comes from religious quarters. According to this viewpoint, it is the increasing secularization of American society that accounts for so many divorces. The quest for personal satisfaction and gratification is no longer considered egocentric, and self-sacrifice is increasingly seen as an anachronism, along with the religious beliefs that once informed it. Countless studies show that religious practice strengthens marital stability, while others indicate that a loss of religious belief can weaken marriage beyond repair. Moreover, a team of sociologists at Nassau Community College found that children are more likely to lose their faith following a divorce than they were before, which means that divorce itself can be the cause of the unbelief that leads to further divorce.