Papoulakis: Saint Joachim of Vatopaidi (1)

[I will be presenting a series that is found at http://vatopaidi.wordpress.com/ concerning one of the great Saints of our modern times, Saint Joachim of Vatopaidi who more popularly is known by the name "Papoulakis". This booklet was written by Elder Joseph of Vatopaidi of blessed memory who recently passed away and helped revive the awareness of this important modern ecclesiastical figure. It is my hope that this awareness of one of our great modern Fathers will extend throughout the West as well. - J.S.]

Papoulakis: Saint Joachim of Vatopaidi

by Elder Joseph οf Vatopaidi

HOLY GREAT MONASTERY OF VATOPAIDI MOUNT ATHOS 2005

Translated from the second Greek edition of the Holy Great Monastery of Vatopaidi, Mount Athos in 1998

PROLOGUE

While exploring the inexhaustible library of our Monastery, a book printed in 1902 fell quite unexpectedly into our hands. It bore the title The Life and Acts of our Blessed Father Joachim of Ithaki and was written by a physician from Ithaki named Panos D. Raftopoulos.

Looking over this book, we realized that it was about the life of a contemporary holy man - one unknown to us - who had reposed in 1868. But what is significant and deserving of our attention is that blessed Joachim was a brother of our Holy Monastery of Vatopaidi. The discovery of this spiritual treasure was a source of great joy and of spiritual exaltation for our entire brotherhood. Precisely during that period we had begun to examine in detail the Monastery’s archives in an attempt to discover all of the Vatopaidi saints and to publish, with God’s help, the Vatopaidi Meadow, presenting the spiritual blossoms of the Monastery. Thus far blessed Joachim is the forty-third Vatopaidi saint.

The inspiring life of Saint Joachim, “Papoulakis” — “Little Grandfather,” as he was called by the Ithacans — is a clear proof that, even in these difficult days of ours, holy Athos continues to give the world the “good witness of Jesus Christ” (see Rev. 20:4).

The Vatopaidi monk Joachim lived at the Monastery for about twenty years. Seeing the spiritual need of the Greek nation, and being convinced of Joachim’s holiness, the Monastery sent him out for the solidarity of the people of God, who were wearied and wounded by the Turkish domination. Blessed Joachim forsook his beloved monastery in an act of obedience and traveled about cities and villages as a true missionary — like a second Cosmas Aitolos — teaching and instructing the people.

From his biography, it appears that Saint Joachim was filled with grace while still in his mother’s womb. In this, and in all his life, one sees “wonders and signs” (Acts 2:43), just as we also encounter in all those who have been “pleasing to God throughout the ages” (from the Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom).

Not wanting the “lamp” to remain “under the bushel basket” (Mk. 4:21), we immediately met with the Very Reverend Metropolitan of Levkas and Ithaki, Bishop Nikiphoros, to discuss the subject. His Grace received us with genuine fatherly love and likewise showed a fitting interest in blessed Joachim, who had remained hidden until now.

Together with His Grace, we went over to Ithaki to draw near to and venerate the Saint’s tomb, which was located in the community of Stavros in Ithaki, behind the holy sanctuary of the church of Saint Barbara, which the Saint himself had built.

What was moving for us as we wandered about the island was to see that large photographic copies of the Saint’s image were found on almost all of the icon screens of the churches, as well as in many homes of the Ithacans, and that he was being honored as a saint. As we spoke with many Ithacans, we saw that even today blessed Joachim attends to and works with the yearnings of the faithful, interceding for all as a fit guardian angel, granting illumination, and speaking to simple hearts. Devout believers have testified that they feel his presence among them.

By all accounts it seems that blessed Joachim was a great hesychast, because, whenever he found the opportunity, he would withdraw “into the wilderness” (Lk. 5:16), where he would pray “without ceasing” (1 Thes. 5:17). The Saint, as a laborer who readily embraced hardship, “kept the difficult ways” (Ps. 16:4 LXX) as a means of ascetic struggle, walking in the “narrow and difficult way” (see Matt. 7:14). Many Ithacans saw him treat his body with severity and, many times, without apparent reason, load himself up with rocks, the sole purpose being to undergo hardship and asceticism. In this way, in conjunction with grace, he acquired the divine charismata [i.e., gifts] of wonderworking and of victory over the evil one. As we shall see, the Saint was especially blessed with the gifts of clairvoyance and prophecy. The pious Ithacans related innumerable accounts to us that clearly reveal these spiritual gifts of the Saint.

Our Holy Monastery considers it a special blessing that our venerable Elder, the monk Joseph, took on the writing of this book, because we know that a Saint’s grace-filled inner world, filled with the riches of the sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit, can only be understood by someone who has a “comparable life” and common life experiences. For exactly this reason, our venerable Elder, aware of the prerequisites for a person to undertake the writing of such a book, states in his epilogue that he “fears that perhaps what he has written has slighted such a hero of God’s love.”

In addition, the reader of this book should bear in mind that our Elder had never received even a rudimentary education. He attended only the first years of primary school. Consequently, this book has not been written according to literary rules of composition. In spite of these things, we are convinced that with his more than fifty years of monastic experience on the Holy Mountain, and especially with his many years as a disciple at the feet of his elder, Joseph the Hesychast, he has written about and commented on the amazing life of blessed Joachim of Vatopaidi, from Ithaki, in a completely patristic manner.

With all these things in mind, we feel the pressing need, as we proceed with this second edition, to make this Vatopaidi Saint all the more known as a contemporary manifestation of the Holy Spirit in today’s materialistically minded world, especially following his official enrollment by the Mother Church into the catalog of saints of the Orthodox Church. Thus, once again, we have clear proof that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8).

We owe a great debt of gratitude to the Very Reverend Metropolitan of Levkas and Ithaki, Bishop Nikiphoros, who demonstrated his concern for the Saint by making it possible for his relics to be exhumed in 1992. Consequently, our Church has been enriched by the presence of his divinely blessed relics.

We also owe thanks to all those who assisted in the gathering of material about the life and the miracles of the Saint, as well as to those who helped with the unearthing of his grace-flowing relics, especially to the reverend Father Theodosios Dendrinos and to the pious teacher, Mr. Konstantinos Kanellos.

The recent official enrollment of Saint Joachim into the Calendar of Saints of the Orthodox Church by the august Ecumenical Patriarchate — which we filially thank for its part in bringing us this great joy — has also contributed to the furthering of the awareness of his supernatural struggles.

We humbly pray that this second edition of Saint Joachim’s life will contribute to the rekindling of the devout readers’ yearning for God.

The Abbot of the Holy Great
Monastery of Vatopaidi

Arcimandrite Ephraim

To be continued…Part 2

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"Franks, Romans, Feudalism and Doctrine" Discussion - Part 3

Below is Part 3 divided in 3 sections of a video series being done by Greek Orthodox TV in which they discuss the illuminating book by Fr. John Romanides titled Franks, Romans, Feudalism and Doctrine. I highly recommend everyone to have a listen, as it serves as a pretty good introduction to the subject. If you have not listened to Part 1 yet, you should listen to that first here. Part 2 is here.

Franks, Romans, Feudalism, and Doctrine - PART 3A


Franks, Romans, Feudalism, and Doctrine - PART 3B


Franks, Romans, Feudalism, and Doctrine - PART 3C

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Orthodox Christian Churches in Cyprus in 'Great Peril'

St. Mamas Church in Morphou, Cyprus. It is the only active (semi-active) church in northern Cyprus.

[Since its 1974 invasion, Turkey has controlled northern Cyprus, which it calls the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.” No international nation has ever recognized this entity except for Turkey. The United States has only recognized the Republic of Cyprus.

In the span of three decades under Turkish control, more than 530 churches and monasteries have been pillaged, vandalized, or destroyed in the northern area of Cyprus, according to The Republic of Cyprus. As for who exactly is responsible for this destruction, the facts are unknown.

Starting in 2003, Greek-Cypriots again were allowed to cross the border between the Republic of Cyprus and the area under Turkish control. It was around this time that scholars and photographers were able to visit northern Cyprus to document the destruction of historic churches and artifacts.

St. Mamas Church in the northwest town of Morphou is the only notable church that is known to be semi-active in Turkey-controlled Cyprus, according to the New York-based Hellenic Times and the Embassy of The Republic of Cyprus in the United States. Turkish officials who rule the area reportedly give permission twice a year for remaining residents – who were there before Turkish occupation – to worship in the church.

Other churches were not so fortunate.

About 133 churches, chapels and monasteries have been converted to military storage facilities, stables and night-clubs. Seventy-eight churches have been converted to mosques, and dozens more are used as military facilities, medical storage facilities, or stockyards or hay barns, according to statistics from The Republic of Cyprus.

Agia Anastasia Church in Lapithos was converted into a hotel and casino, while the Sourp Magar Armenian monastery – founded in the medieval period – was converted into a cafeteria.

A Neolithic settlement at the Cape of Apostolos Andreas-Kastros in the occupied area of Rizokapraso – a site declared an ancient monument by the Republic of Cyprus – was bulldozed by the Turkish Army in order to plant two of its flagpoles on top of the historic hill.

Furthermore, over 15,000 portable religious icons were stolen and auctioned off around the world.

Relics – which include fine icons, mosaics and frescoes from ancient Byzantine era – have turned up at auction houses around the world, including at the prestigious Sotheby’s in New York.

In January 2007, six icons were returned to the Church of Cyprus after being smuggled out of the country. They were to be put up for auction at Sotheby’s.

Also, back in 1988, four pieces of an invaluable work of art dating between 525 and 530 A.D. were recovered when a Turkish art dealer offered to sell it to an American antique dealer for $1 million. The American dealer contacted the Paul Getty Museum in Malibu to resell the mosaics for $20 million. The museum then informed the Cypriot Church about the art work.

In the end, U.S. courts ruled that the Cypriot Church was the legitimate owner of the pieces, and they are now shown in the Byzantine Museum of Nicosia.

It is estimated that more than 60,000 ancient artifacts have been illegally transferred to other countries, according to the Republic of Cyprus. Sadly, most of these artifacts were not recovered.

Cyprus has some of the finest collections of Byzantine art in the world, offering scholars and others the priceless study on the development of Byzantine wall-painting art from the 8th-9th century until the 18th century A.D.

The United States has recognized Cyprus’ endangered cultural heritage, and in 1999 and 2003 the U.S. Treasury Department issued emergency import restrictions on Byzantine Ecclesiastical and Ritual Ethnological Materials from Cyprus.

Then, in 2002, the United States and Cyprus signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) concerning the import restrictions on pre-classical and classical archeological objects from Cyprus. The MOU was amended and renewed in 2006 and 2007 to include additional artifacts.

Kakouris says that the Cyprus issue has been ignored for decades by the international community.

There were 20,000 Greek Cypriots in the Turkish-controlled area after 1974, but today there are about 450 Greek Cypriots remaining. Over 80 percent of the Republic of Cyprus population is Christian.

While the island population is only 800,000, it is a major tourist attraction, drawing over 2 million tourists each year.

Below is an article that appeared in The Washington Times a few days ago revealing some of the results of a 50-page document by the Helsinki Commission titled "Destruction of Cultural Property in the Northern Part of Cyprus and Violations of International Law." These results were presented in Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

To read the entire report of the Helsinki Commission, go here. - J.S.]

His Beatitude Chrysostomos I, center, Minister of Education Hadjinicolaou, and Michel and Frederique van Rijn view newly returned frescoes and mosaics (which were looted and put up for sale) at the Archiespiscopal Palace in Cyprus in December 1997.

Religious Artifacts in Cyprus in 'Great Peril'

The Washington Times
July 21, 2009
Julia Duin

Religious artifacts on the divided island of Cyprus are in "great peril," according to a U.S. Helsinki Commission document to be released Tuesday afternoon.

Thousands of Orthodox icons, manuscripts, frescoes and mosaics have been looted from churches, chapels and monasteries in northern Cyprus, ending up on international auction blocks, says the document, the result of a lengthy investigation by the Helsinki Commission and titled "Destruction of Cultural Property in the Northern Part of Cyprus and Violations of International Law."

A copy of the 50-page document was provided to The Washington Times in advance of a Tuesday press briefing and panel discussion on Capitol Hill.

The panelists will include Charalampos Chotzakoglou, professor of Byzantine art and archaeology at Hellenic Open University in Patras, Greece; German art historian Klaus Gallas, who is a specialist on the international smuggling of art artifacts; and Michael Jansen, author of "War and Cultural Heritage: Cyprus after the 1974 Turkish Invasion."

Most of the ruined property belongs to the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, one of the world's oldest national Orthodox churches, with the rest belonging to Catholic, Armenian Orthodox, Maronite and Jewish groups.

Thirty-five years of occupation of Northern Cyprus by Turkish forces have ruined "a plethora of archeological and religious sites," says the report, which adds that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has been documenting the destruction since 1984.

According to the report:

• 500 Orthodox churches or chapels have been pillaged, demolished or vandalized.

• 133 churches, chapels and monasteries have been desecrated.

• 15,000 paintings have disappeared.

• 77 churches have been turned into mosques, 28 are being used by the Turkish military as hospitals or camps, and 13 have been turned into barns.

A staff member for the Helsinki Commission said a copy of the report had been sent to the Turkish Embassy in Washington, but an embassy spokesman said it had not been received.

"It sounds like a one-sided presentation," said the embassy spokesman, who asked to remain unidentified because he was not authorized to comment on the record.

"There's no input from the Turkish side. There is no coincidence the report is coming out this week because it's the 35th anniversary of the intervention by Turkey. Turkey respects all cultural heritages," the spokesman said.

The Turkish Embassy spokesman pointed out a Nov. 28, 2001, letter from Tahsin Ertugruloglu, foreign affairs minister for the self-styled Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, that said Greek Cypriots destroyed Muslim shrines and mosques in 103villages between 1963 and 1974.

The report by the U.S. Helsinki Commission, which monitors compliance with agreements among members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, included this claim by Turkey. But the report also added that Cyprus, which exercises effective control over the southern two-thirds of the island, has spent about $600,000 since 2000 to renovate 17 historic mosques.

According to the report, the 77 churches converted into mosques have texts from the Koran inscribed where icons and paintings used to be; the St. Anastasia monastery is now a hotel with a swimming pool and casino; and the Byzantine-era monastery of Antiphonetes has had its icons and murals removed and sold to art dealers.

Jerome Bowers, a Northern Illinois University associate history professor who recently returned from studying in Cyprus, said in an e-mail that while Greek Orthodox artifacts in Northern Cyprus have been damaged, the stolen goods have been smuggled out of Cyprus mostly through the southern part of the island.

"There can be no denying the fact that the destruction of religious cultural artifacts in the south has also taken place," he wrote. "In Paphos, for example, the Camii Cedit was not only destroyed but replaced with a parking lot, and the square surrounding the location is now called March 9th Square, named for the date of the mosque's destruction."

The Christian church has ancient roots in Cyprus. Visited in A.D. 45 by the apostle Paul along with his co-workers Barnabas and Mark (as recorded in Acts 13:4-12), it was ruled by Byzantine emperors for hundreds of years. It was during this time that the vast majority of churches were built in the region and decorated with brightly colored frescoes and tiled mosaics.

In 1571, the island fell under the control of the Ottoman Turks, and in 1878, the British took over. The native Cypriots are divided into two camps: 80 percent Greek speakers and 18 percent ethnic Turks, with the remaining 2 percent divided among Armenians, Maronites and Latin-rite Catholics.

According to the report, the Greek government, with the help of Cypriot armed forces, forced out Archbishop Makarios, the first democratically elected president of the island, on July 15, 1974.

Turkey invaded five days later, taking over the northern 37 percent of Cyprus, ostensibly to protect Turkish-speaking inhabitants. Several years later, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was established, though no country in the world besides Turkey recognizes it. The Greek Cypriot-led Republic of Cyprus claims to be the sole legitimate government of the whole island, a claim every country in the world except Turkey accepts.

The report says there are 660,000 Greek Cypriots living on the island's southern part, 89,000 Turkish speakers in the north and 43,000 Turkish soldiers serving as an occupying force.

Hilmi Akil, the Washington representative for the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, dismissed the Helsinki Commission report as "a propaganda exercise," adding that Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot leaders recently agreed to set up a joint committee on cultural heritage matters.

"The theft of cultural artifacts takes place everywhere, including South Cyprus," he said. "What we're objecting to is destruction, which has happened on both sides of the island, is being portrayed as something that only Turkish Cypriots have done."

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Bradley Monton: Atheist Argues That Intelligent Design is a Serious Scientific Theory

Apparently, atheist Bradley Monton has just published a book with Broadview Press:

The doctrine of intelligent design is often the subject of acrimonious debate. Seeking God in Science cuts through the rhetoric that distorts the debates between religious and secular camps. Bradley Monton, a philosopher of science and an atheist, carefully considers the arguments for intelligent design and argues that intelligent design deserves serious consideration as a scientific theory.

Monton also gives a lucid account of the debate surrounding the inclusion of intelligent design in public schools and presents reason why students’ science education could benefit from a careful consideration of the arguments for and against it.

I sure hope Monton has tenure. Otherwise, he could end up driving truck for a living. Though he does note on his blog that many atheists are giving his book a positive review and are more and more convinced that ID should in fact be taken seriously as a scientific theory.

Bradley Monton is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

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Metropolitan Laurus and the Bells of San Francisco

Joy Of All Who Sorrow Cathedral in San Francisco, CA

Since today we celebrate the feast of the icon of the Mother of God "Joy of All Who Sorrow", I thought I would remind people of a miracle that occurred at the Holy Virgin Cathedral “Joy of all Who Sorrow” in San Francisco, CA on March 15, 2008. Below is the account of what happened on the day Metropolitan Laurus passed away.

It appears that two people contributed to the original post: David and his unnamed roommate. David, who was reading a book in the kitchen, wrote the first 5 paragraphs and his roommate, who was reading pre-communion canons in his bedroom, wrote the 6th paragraph. The first did not hear the bells while the latter did.

The following account, written by Mr David Jepson, Dean of the High School at St John's Orthodox Academy in San Francisco, was forwarded to me by email:

Metropolitan Laurus

On Saturday night (March 15, 2008) I got home from choir practice rather late, and stayed up much later than normal as I had a very late dinner. I had finished eating and was reading a book at about 11:30 p.m. when my roommate came in and asked if I knew why the Cathedral bells were ringing. He had been in his bedroom, which like mine faces the street and has a view of the Cathedral a block away. In the kitchen, a couple of rooms away, I couldn't hear the bells, but I agreed that it seemed strange for them to be ringing at that time of night. I went to bed about a half hour later and thought nothing more about it. At church on Sunday, we were all shocked to hear that Metropolitan Laurus, the leader of the Russian Church Outside Russia, had reposed. Our priest got a telephone call from a former parishioner just before the service started at 9.00 a.m.

We heard about the chronology of events later on Sunday from the matushka of one of the Cathedral priests, whose son is at the Seminary in NY. Sometime on Sunday morning, when Metropolitan Laurus was noticed to be absent, someone went to his house and discovered that he had reposed in his sleep. The police were called etc., and people there began notifying the rest of the world. No one here in SF knew about it until 8.00 or so on Sunday morning (11.00 a.m. New York time). As the day went on, word about his death continued to spread. People here were discussing going to the funeral in NY on Friday.

As we talked about these events, the issue of the bells came up. Others living near the Cathedral had heard the bells ringing late on Saturday night. When they came to the early service at the Cathedral (it starts at 7.30 a.m.), they found the bells tied up in the normal way, which seemed puzzling. Someone had to have gotten into the locked place where the bells are and untied them, rung them (very beautifully, my roommate said), and tied them back up, all in the darkness of near midnight. No one in the group I was talking to, which included the wives of both Cathedral priests, knew who could have done it. But then as we were talking, we also learned that the NY police estimated that Metropolitan Laurus had died between 2.00 and 3.00 a.m. That's between 11.00 p.m. and 12.00 midnight here. And then everything seemed obvious.

"I attest that I had just begun reading the pre-communion canons when I heard bells....Orthodox Bells...ringing with the melodies familiar to us at the Cathedral. I first thought it was my CD player...when I checked, I found that it was off. David was reading in the kitchen and I went and asked him if he was playing music. We weren't. Others in the vicinity heard the bells at the same time, roughly the time when Vladyka Metropolitan passed away."

(Note the bells are behind two locked security gates and everyone who has access and who knows how to properly ring the bells have all sworn that they did not ring them).

His Eminence Archbishop Kyrill told us that the bells had been rung by the angels.

Eternal Memory!

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Icons of the Mother of God "Joy of All Who Sorrow"

Readings from the Synaxarion:

The Icon of the Mother of God of Pochaev -

Metropolitan Neophytus, a bishop belonging to the see of Constantinople, was traveling through Volhynia in Ukraine where he was given hospitality by a pious woman, Anna Goyskaya. The bishop gave this woman an icon of the holy Theotokos, which began to work miracles, including the healing of her blind brother. In 1597 the icon was given to the monks residing in Pochaev near the border of Galicia, where the Mother of God had appeared in 1340, leaving an imprint of her footprint in the rock, from which a stream gushed forth. In 1675 when the Lavra of Pochaev was besieged by the Moslem Turks, it was saved by the miraculous intervention of the Mother of God through her wonderworking icon. Even though the Lavra of Pochaev came into Uniate hands for over a century, miracles continued to be worked through the holy icon. Since its return to the Orthodox Catholic Church in 1831, the icon has been a grace-bestowing support for Orthodox Christians, especially those in western Ukraine and the Carpathian region.

As with so many other icons of the Theotokos, wonderworking copies of this icon have been found throughout Orthodox Russia, each with its own history and moving collection of miracles. In this icon, the most holy Mother of God is depicted standing full stature sometimes with, sometimes without the Divine Child in her arms; she is surrounded by all manner of the sick and the suffering, to whom Angels of the Lord bear gifts of mercy, consolation, and suitable aid from the most holy Theotokos. The icon "Joy of All That Sorrow" was inspired by the hymn of the same name; see page 222 in Great Compline. Through one copy of this icon, the sister of Patriarch Joachim was healed at the end of the seventeenth century in Moscow, from which time the feast was established. Another copy of the icon was found in Saint Petersburg; on July 23, 1888, during the severe thunderstorm, lightning struck a chapel at a glass factory, burning the interior walls of the church, but leaving the icon unsinged. From the violent disturbance of the air, the icon was knocked to the floor, the poor-box broke open, and twelve copper coins adhered to the icon in various places; afterwards many miracles were worked by the grace of the holy icon.


Apolytikion in the Plagal of the First Tone
They that pray before thy holy icon, O sovereign Lady, are made worthy of healing, receive the gift of understanding of the true Faith, and repel the attacks of the Hagarenes; likewise for us who fall down before thee, do thou ask for forgiveness of our sins. Enlighten our hearts with devout purpose and raise thy prayer to thy Son for the salvation of our souls.

Kontakion in the First Tone
Thine icon of Pochaev, O Theotokos, hath been shown to be a source of healing and a confirmation of the Orthodox Faith. Therefore deliver us who flee to it from danger and temptation; preserve thy Lavra unharmed; strengthen Orthodoxy in the neighbouring lands; and loose thy suppliants from sins; for thou canst do whatsoever thou dost will.

Apolytikion in the Fourth Tone
To God's Birthgiver let us run now most earnestly, we sinners all and wretched ones, and fall prostrate in repentance, calling from the depths of our souls: Lady, come unto our aid, have compassion upon us; hasten thou, for we are lost in a throng of transgressions; turn not thy servants away with empty hands, for thee alone do we have as our only hope.

Kontakion in the Plagal of the Second Tone
We have no other help, we have no other hope, but thee, O sovereign Lady; do thou help us. In thee do we hope, and of thee do we boast, for we are thy servants. Let us not be put to shame.

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Ginsburg admits Margaret Sanger was a Eugenicist and Racist

Margaret Sanger

Ginsburg's Remark Stirs an Old Debate: Abortion, Eugenics and the Meaning of Margaret Sanger

June 22, 2009
FROM: Politics Daily
BY: Carl M. Cannon, Senior Washington Correspondent

There is a disquieting reason Ruth Bader Ginsburg's defenders have been denying, however implausibly, the clear meaning of the Supreme Court justice's recent remarks about the history of abortion law, and that reason is this: Historically, eugenics has always been a significant component of the intellectual underpinnings – and political impetus – of the movement to legalize abortion.

This legacy is glossed over by the rhetoric of today's "pro-choice" tacticians, who couch their arguments almost exclusively as a question of a woman's inalienable right to control her body and to make her own reproductive decisions. This reasoning carried the day, at least with the U.S. Supreme Court, which rendered it a constitutional right. But, from the early days of the national discourse on this topic, the idea of feminist empowerment was coupled with the less noble rationale of eugenics, that disturbing dogma that seeks to improve the human race through selective mating – and by controlling who has the opportunity to be born.

Ginsburg rekindled this ancient memory, and not inadvertently, in an interview with journalist and lawyer Emily Bazelon that was published in The New York Times Sunday magazine on July 7. Bazelon's colleague, Hanna Rosin, touted the interview the day before, writing on her blog, "Our own Emily has a fantastic and revealing Q & A with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg." That word "revealing" proved to be quite an understatement.

In case you missed it, the relevant quote came while the two women were discussing the history of jurisprudence that came after Roe v. Wade. Despite some concern that poor women would be pressured into having abortions, the case law worked out the other way. In 1977, the Supreme Court ruled that states were under no obligation to fund abortions, and in a 5-4 1980 decision, Harris v. McRae, the high court upheld a congressional ban against using Medicaid funds for abortion.

"Yes, the ruling about that surprised me," Ginsburg told Bazelon. "Frankly, I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn't really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong."

Melinda Henneberger, my Politics Daily colleague, wrote about this interview on Friday, skeptically relaying Bazelon's claim that Justice Ginsburg didn't really mean the words "populations that we don't want to have too many of" -- or, rather, that the pronoun "we" meant other people, not Ginsburg herself. As you can see from her post, Bazelon's explanation struck Melinda as willfully obtuse. But this is hardly the first time prominent pro-choicers have had to engage in semantic gymnastics to obscure a longtime underlying rationale for their position that is neither politically nor morally correct.

In the early part of the 20th century, pioneers in the birth control movement routinely cited poverty, disease, physical disability, mental acuity, and even racial heritage as reasons to support their cause. In her 1922 book, "The Pivot of Civilization," Margaret Sanger, the founder of the American Birth Control League, an organization that would become Planned Parenthood, opens Chapter 4 with this salvo: "There is but one practical and feasible program in handling the great problem of the feeble-minded. That is, as the best authorities are agreed, to prevent the birth of those who would transmit imbecility to their descendants."

Chapter 4 of that manifesto is actually titled "The Fertility of the Feeble-Minded," and in it, Sanger goes on with some passion about the cascading societal problems caused by those with "feeble" minds, by which she seems to mean those with lower-than-average IQs, persons otherwise identified as "morons" "imbeciles" and "mental defectives."

"We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members." - Margaret Sanger

It appears on close reading that she isn't necessarily talking only about those with mental disabilities, but also about uneducated members of what sociologists today call the underclass. And who will identify such persons, and coerce them, presumably, to submit to forced sterilization? Well, Sanger quotes approvingly from a doctor of that era named Walter E. Fernald, who wrote:

"We now have state commissions for controlling the gipsy-moth and the boll weevil, the foot-and-mouth disease, and for protecting the shell-fish and wild game, but we have no commission which even attempts to modify or control the vast moral and economic forces represented by the feeble-minded persons at large in the community."

Race is inevitably entwined in such remarks, for Sanger goes on to regale her readers about a case study of a "feeble-minded girl, twenty years of age" who was the product of a teen mother and who lived in a "thickly populated Negro district" before being apprehended for solicitation of prostitution. The author dismisses as naïve "some of our doctors" who believe that "there is a place for the good feeble-minded," by which she seems to be saying those who are merely a little below average in intelligence – the kind of person whom she fears "may be encouraged by church and state to increase and multiply until he dominates and gives the prevailing 'color' – culturally speaking – to an entire community."

Now, Sanger herself was certainly not racist in her personal dealings with African-Americans, and she didn't countenance those who were. She counted as allies in her cause of making contraception available to Southern blacks many of the leading black intellectuals of her time. Yet many of the white elites who funded her cause were indeed racist, as well as proponents of a harsh version of eugenics when it came to the disabled, and she deftly played on these sentiments while building support for her cause.

In 1939, Sanger collaborated with two other women on a report called "Birth Control and the Negro," which asserted that "negroes present the great problem of the South." The paper sketched out the broad details of a birth control program aimed at a mostly illiterate population that "still breed carelessly and disastrously." To this day, Planned Parenthood officials will point out that this line was borrowed from a 1932 Birth Control Review article by black radical W.E.B. DuBois. But Sanger's apologists are harder-pressed to justify the wording of a letter she wrote in December of that year to Proctor & Gamble heir Clarence Gamble, proposing that money be allocated to train "an up and doing modern minister, colored, and an up and doing modern colored medical man" to tour the South preaching the need for birth control. "We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."

This passage is a favorite of modern Christian conservatives seeking to discredit Planned Parenthood, but in a previous time, it was employed to great effect by black activists. Radical professor Angela Davis quoted the provocative wording in her 1983 book, saying the Negro Project "confirmed the ideological victory of the racism associated with eugenic ideas." A decade earlier, a certain "up and doing" black preacher drew on the same material in rejecting legalized abortion as little more than "black genocide." His name was Jesse Louis Jackson.

Jackson's mother was undoubtedly the kind of woman Margaret Sanger had in mind when she proposed raising the quality of life for Southern blacks by aggressively pushing birth control in that part of the country. Sanger was hardly alone. In the 1970s, Jackson would often refer to the circumstances of his own birth: "I was born out of wedlock," he once wrote, "and against the advice that my mother received from her doctor, and therefore abortion is a personal issue for me."

In 1977, Jackson penned an essay for the National Right to Life News in which he called abortion The Question – the italics were his – of the 20th century. He meant ending abortion. "Human beings cannot give or create life by themselves, it is really a gift from God," Jackson wrote. "Therefore, one does not have the right to take away (through abortion) that which he does not have the ability to give."

In those days, Jackson sent an "Open Letter to Congress" in which he asserted flatly "as a matter of conscience I must oppose the use of federal funds for a policy of killing infants." He was a featured speaker at the 1977 March for Life, where he posed this searing question: "What happens . . . to the moral fabric of a nation that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby without a pang of conscience?"

It's a question those in the right-to-life movement are still asking, even if Jesse Jackson is not, as the exigencies of political ambition robbed the right-to-lifers of one of their most passionate and inspiring voices. By the mid-1980s, when Jackson was indulging himself with visions of a black politician from Chicago entering the White House – himself, not Barack Obama – he switched sides in this great debate. He said all the right things, this newly indoctrinated national Democrat, but it didn't sound quite as persuasive.

The new Jesse Jackson said that abortion is acceptable because "it is not right to impose private, religious and moral positions on public policy." The old Jesse Jackson maintained: "If one accepts the position that life is private, and therefore you have the right to do with it as you please, one must also accept the conclusion of that logic. That was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private."

This intellectual migration is apparently one that Democrats with dreams of national office must make. It's a journey taken by Dick Gephardt, Al Gore, and Bill Clinton as well. Occasionally, it happens the other way, too. George H.W. Bush was for abortion rights before he was against them. He seems to have changed position in a matter of hours, when Ronald Reagan offered him the vice presidency. (Previously, Bush and his wife had been contributors to Planned Parenthood; his father had served on its board.)

If politicians feel constrained from talking about this issue honestly, federal judges with their lifetime appointments need not. Thus, Ruth Ginsburg let her guard down apparently, resulting in her "Michael Kinsley moment" – committing a gaffe by speaking the truth. If her defenders want to brush away that truth, well, that's part of the famous Kinsley formulation, too. Yet, the underlying themes Ginsburg invoked are still present, and one doesn't have to go back to Margaret Sanger or 1939 to find them:

In 1991, the state of Maryland passed an abortion law billed as a safety net in case the Supreme Court overturned Roe. Seven months after President George H.W. Bush signed the American With Disabilities Act, this Maryland statute prohibited the state from interfering -- at any stage -- with a woman's decision to terminate a pregnancy if "the fetus is affected by genetic defect or serious deformity or abnormality." This is a pretty good working definition of eugenics. So, too, was the ugly talk directed in the last presidential campaign against the mother of a baby boy with Down syndrome, as are the statistics showing that blacks have hugely disproportionate numbers of abortions in this country year after year.

In other words, Ruth Ginsburg's fears that poor people cannot avail themselves of the rights conveyed by Roe appear to be unfounded. Could it be that Margaret Sanger's vision – the part we don't really want to think about – has come to pass?


For further reading:

http://margaretsanger.blogspot.com/2007/09/if-margaret-sanger-and-adolph-hitler.html

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Elder Porphyrios and Apollo 13

In honor of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing a few days ago, I thought I would offer a brief translation of a lecture circulating in Greek about the Elder Porphyrios and how he helped to save the crew from the Apollo 13 lunar mission. It is not a word for word translation, just a basic one. Unfortunately many details are left out, but the spiritual child of the Elder passed on this information because he believed it to be a miracle of God through the Elder.

The Metropolitan of Limassol Athanasios speaks here about an interesting relationship between what happened to the Apollo 13 lunar mission and Elder Porphyrios of Athens. Apparently when disaster struck mid-mission due to a technical malfunction and the mission had to be aborted and the crew safely returned back to earth, there was a meeting held with some top astronomers and scientists on how to save the crew, among whom was a spiritual child of the Elder. Before he left he went to get the Elder's blessing and explained to him what happened and how he had to travel to the United States to help take care of the problem. The Elder told him that when he got to the United States he should allow all the other scientists to speak first to give their opinions to resolve this issue, though their opinions would be wrong. Then the Elder told his spiritual child to speak last and told him exactly what to say in order to save the crew. Believing he had to be obedient to the Elder, he did as was told. The NASA scientists listened to his advice and the crew was saved.

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On Positive Thinking

[In todays society to think positive means more often than not to be self-affirmative. Self-affirmation however, while it can be a means towards success in a capitalist system which aims towards the acquisition of wealth, is a selfish attitude that builds self-esteem in a negative way and causes more psychological damage than healing. The study below seems to affirm this truth.

I spent four years working as a salesman. My managers would encourage us to listen to CD's about self-affirmation and how attitude affects the wealth you make and the overall success you have in life. During sales meetings we would sometimes study such capitalist-friendly Bibles as Dale Carnagie's How To Win Friends and Influence People or Norman Vincent Peale's Think and Grow Rich. On my blackberry I would get quotes from these authors as well as the "great" men and women of history about the methods they learned that helped them reach "success" in life and avoid "failure".

Does this stuff work to make people materially successful? Yes, I believe they do help. But these same people are also the most aggressive, pushy and lying salesmen I knew. They became so convinced in their heads that they were absolutely entitled to success, that they would do just about anything to acquire it. The self-affirmation they learned made them nothing but self-absorbed, self-seeking and all around selfish at the expense of others. Don't get me wrong, they were all very nice and friendly when not in sales mode and I enjoyed their company, but get them in front of a customer and they transformed into some of the most desperate and greedy people I knew. And if I also didn't live up to that standard as a salesman, then I couldn't expect to maintain my quotas and thus eventually my job. As a result, over a period of four years I worked four different sales jobs that eventually I was either layed off from or I walked out of. When you sell something people don't need and have to convince them that they do need it, then ethics is usually thrown out the door - no matter how much that sales person thinks they are doing something positive for others. In the end, the only one being benefitted is themselves and this is justified by supposedly helping others.

There is another form of positive thinking that is healthy however. As Christians we are encouraged to have a positive and optimistic outlook on life, to see the good in others rather than the bad or negative, and to glorify and thank God for all things whether they be positive or negative in our lives. Such positive thinking discourages the arrogance of self-affirmation and cultivates within us humility, compassion, love and other such virtues. While self-affimation serves the god mammon, humility and love serve the true God.

It is for this reason that Elder Paisios always taught the necessity for christians to be positive thinkers - to only see the good things in life and be blind to every evil. He would teach: "We must have positive thoughts, otherwise none of the spiritual fathers - not even the Saints - can help us." I encourage everyone to read his biographies and writings to see the many illustrations by which he did this. "This is our aim," he would say, "to totally submit our mind to the grace of God. The only thing Christ is asking from us is our humility. The rest is taken care of by His grace." The consequences of not having positive thoughts, taught the Elder, is psychological problems. He says: "When our soul lives carelessly without watching over its thoughts, it will consequently fill up with dirty and sly thoughts. As a result, people start developing psychological problems which gradually pile up."

Ultimately we are to get rid of our thoughts altogether, whether they be positive or negative. Elder Paisios elaborated on this, saying:

"Almost all of us consider our thoughts to be simple and natural, therefore, we spontaneously rely on them. On the contrary, we should neither trust nor accept them. We must not have any thoughts in our mind or heart, neither positive ones, nor negative ones, for this space inside us belongs to the grace of God. We are obliged to keep it clean, not only of our various thoughts but also of the slightest and most elusive slip of the mind. We can only achieve this, if we fervently love Christ and unhesitatingly trust Him. As a result, we humble ourselves, and divine grace, naturally, will be revived inside us, for it is only granted to the humble ones; 'God opposes the proud, but give Grace to the humble'" (1 Pet. 5:5). -J.S.]


Positive Thinking Can Make Things Worse, Study Finds

Article from: Agence France-Presse
July 03, 2009

REPEATING positive statements such as "I am a lovable person" or "I will succeed" makes some people feel worse instead of raising self-esteem, a study says.

"From at least as far back as Norman Vincent Peale's (1952) The Power of Positive Thinking, the media have advocated saying favourable things to oneself," said the study by Canadian psychologists, which was published in Psychological Science today.

It cites a popular self-help magazine that advises its readers to: "Try chanting: I'm powerful, I'm strong, and nothing in this world can stop me," but says the practice doesn't work for everyone.

Positive self-statements make people who are already down on themselves feel worse rather than better, according to the study conducted by psychologists Joanne Wood and John Lee of the University of Waterloo and Elaine Perunovic of the University of New Brunswick.

For the study, the psychologists asked people with low self-esteem and people with high self-esteem to repeat the phrase: "I am a lovable person," and then measured participants' moods and feelings about themselves.

What they found is that individuals who started out with low self-esteem felt worse after repeating the positive self-statement.

"I think that what happens is that when a low self-esteem person repeats positive thoughts, they probably have contradictory thoughts," Dr Wood told AFP.

"So, if they're saying 'I'm a lovable person,' they might be thinking, 'Well, I'm not always lovable' or 'I'm not lovable in this way,' and these contradictory thoughts may overwhelm the positive thoughts."

Although positive thinking does appear to be effective when it's part of a broader program of therapy, on its own it tends to have the reverse effect of what it is supposed to do, said Dr Wood, urging self-help books, magazines and TV shows to stop sending a message that just chanting a positive mantra will raise self-esteem.

"It's frustrating to people when they try it and it doesn't work for them," she said.

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The End of Evolutionary Psychology Draws Near

Sharon Begley’s critical look at evolutionary psychology in a recent edition of Newsweek is a must-read for anyone interested in the field. She is hardly the first, but the first to have so wide a non-professional audience for a rational, science-based evaluation of the topic.

The basic problem is determining what is actually adaptive behaviour. For example, was rape really adaptive in prehistoric times? The theory is yes, because the guy could spread his selfish genes more often. However, in a tight-knit community, it might be an easy way to get killed.

Begley observes that one hindrance to a scientific assessment of evolutionary psychology has been the moral outrage it provoked. Moral outrage enables the purveyor of silly or pernicious ideas to don the mantle of science, invoke Galileo, and delay the day of reckoning (to distinguish truth from fiction).

Is it true that men are genetically adapted to prefer women with a waist to hip ratio of 0.7? That depends on what other qualities are important. Could Barbie work 10 hours a day under a hot sun?

Are men programmed to neglect or kill their stepchildren? Many such claims relied on social work data gathered for other purposes, and often poorly or prejudicially gathered.

The brave warrior gets the girls? Not necessarily. An analysis of the family histories of 95 Amazon warriors showed that women avoid the "badass" guy, who is typically a disaster as a husband, and may trigger a counterraid that gets his family killed.

Begley notes that a growing new approach, behavioral ecology, makes much more sense than evolutionary psychology (BE). BE posits that evolution created the core of human nature as variability and flexibility - the ability to adapt behavior to the environment quickly - and that there is no universal human nature.

Begley points out that behavioral ecology is beginning to spark much more interest. Behavioral ecology includes the recognition that no one level of adaptiveness exists for a behaviour pattern. For example, is it really true that men are primed by evolution to be big spenders? In many cultures today, that’s the mark of a fool. Do we really know how it was in prehistoric times? Was it the same for all groups? To determine adaptiveness of a behaviour, one must look carefully at a specific environment, not make up stories about how a behaviour might have been adaptive.

I have qualms with this approach, because I think that some features of human nature are universal, other things being equal. The desire for approval comes readily to mind. What there isn't are modules in the brain, created by selfish genes, that can be accounted for by the ways in which the behaviour was adaptive in the Pleistocene era.

But qualms aside, it is nice to see the subject finally leave the realm of mythology and back into the lab.

I encourage you to read the article here.

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Why We Need Earthquakes

Why We Need Earthquakes
Without them, the planet couldn't support creatures like us.

Christianity Today
Dinesh D'Souza
4/28/2009

The problem of theodicy—why bad things happen to good people—predates Christianity. Writing around 300 b.c., the Greek philosopher Epicurus framed the problem this way: God is believed by most people to be infinite in his power and also in his goodness and compassion. Now evil exists in the world and seems always to have existed. If God is unable to remove evil, he lacks omnipotence. If God is able to remove evil but doesn't, he lacks goodness and compassion. So clearly the all-powerful, compassionate God that most people pray to does not exist.

This old critique has been revived by Bart Ehrman in God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer. Theologians over the centuries have responded to questions about the existence of evil by pointing out that man, not God, is the author of moral evil. Evil in this view refers to the bad things that people do to each other. Moral evil is the necessary price that God pays for granting humans moral autonomy.

Yet while human freedom may account for moral evil, it cannot account for natural evil, or more accurately, natural suffering. Ehrman's book is full of examples, to which we can add recent tragedies such as the earthquake in China last spring and the 2004 tsunami that killed tens of thousands in Southeast Asia.

Christian apologists such as C. S. Lewis have attempted to account for natural disasters by showing how they draw people together, or how they provide moral instruction to the survivors, or how they turn our eyes to God. Ehrman asks, but couldn't God have found better ways to achieve these worthy objectives? Rejecting as implausible and offensive the usual responses to innocent suffering, Ehrman has stopped calling himself a Christian.

A fresh way of looking at the problem of natural evil and suffering comes from Rare Earth, a 2003 book by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee that traces the myriad conditions required for life to exist on any planet. In a sense, the authors—an eminent paleontologist and an astronomer at the University of Washington in Seattle—are discussing the "anthropic principle," which specifies the degree to which our planet appears fine-tuned for complex life. The concept is often used in Christian apologetics to show that our intelligently designed universe seems to point to an intelligent designer.

Ward and Brownlee ask: Why do natural disasters such as earthquakes, seaquakes, and tsunamis occur? All three are the consequence of plate tectonics, the giant plates that move under the surface of the earth and the ocean floor. Apparently our planet is unique in having plate tectonics. Ward and Brownlee show that without this geological feature, there would be no large mountain ranges or continents.

While natural disasters occasionally wreak havoc, our planet needs plate tectonics to produce the biodiversity that enables complex life to flourish on earth. Without plate tectonics, earth's land would be submerged to a depth of several thousand feet. Fish might survive in such an environment, but not humans.

Plate tectonics also help regulate the earth's climate, preventing the onset of scorching or freezing temperatures that would make mammalian life impossible. In sum, plate tectonics are a necessary prerequisite to human survival on the only planet known to sustain life.

Ehrman and others may not find this convincing. They might ask, "Why didn't God devise a world that didn't require plate tectonics and consequently one that wouldn't have to put up with earthquakes?" In other words, surely God could have made a universe that operated according to a different set of laws.

Ward and Brownlee's answer to this is as simple as it is devastating. Such a world could have produced life, but it surely could not have produced creatures like us. Science tells us that our world has all the necessary conditions for species like Homo sapiens to survive and endure.

Our planet requires oxygen and a warming sun and water in order for us to live here, and we appreciate this, even though we recognize that people can get sunstroke and drown in the ocean. So, too, it seems that plate tectonics are, as Ward and Brownlee put it, a "central requirement for life" as we know it.

This is not to suggest, as the scientist and philosopher Leibniz once argued, that ours is the best of all possible worlds. But ours may be the best of all feasible worlds, at least as viewed from a human perspective. This recognition will not stop people from bemoaning the next earthquake, but it should at least stop us from blithely assuming that the Creator could have done a much better job.

Dinesh D'Souza, a former policy analyst in the Reagan White House, is author of What's So Great About Christianity and other books.

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"Franks, Romans, Feudalism and Doctrine" Discussion - Part 2

Below is Part 2 divided in 3 sections of a video series being done by Greek Orthodox TV in which they discuss the illuminating book by Fr. John Romanides titled Franks, Romans, Feudalism and Doctrine. I highly recommend everyone to have a listen, as it serves as a pretty good introduction to the subject. If you have not listened to Part 1 yet, you should listen to that first here. Part 3 is here.

Franks, Romans, Feudalism, and Doctrine - PART 2A


Franks, Romans, Feudalism, and Doctrine - PART 2B


Franks, Romans, Feudalism, and Doctrine - PART 2C

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Information on American Orthodox History

[I wanted to make people aware of an interesting website by The Society for Orthodox Christian History in the Americas (SOCHA) that will seek to present American Orthodox history without jurisdictional biases. More information about this Society is below and you can take a look at their website here. This site will hopefully uncover much about the Orthodox presence in the New World that has not been compiled before.

I would further encourage those interested in the history of Orthodoxy in America to listen to a podcast by Matthew Namee on this issue here. - J.S.]

The Society for Orthodox Christian History in the Americas

Anyone who has made a comparative study of the history of Orthodox Christianity in North America has probably quickly surmised that there is something of a historiograpical problem. That is, the writing of the history of Orthodox Christianity in America has been plagued with jurisdictional squabbles, claims to primacy and other agendas, often with little attention to what primary sources actually yield up as the story contained within them. Myths and ideology have often dominated these histories, rather than a close reading of historical documents.

With the formation of the Society for Orthodox Christian History in the Americas (SOCHA), the membership desires to begin to shift the approach to studying and writing the history of Orthodoxy in the Americas (and elsewhere, of course, should members desire it) to reflect an earnest engagement with primary sources. There is no jurisdictional agenda attached to SOCHA, and there is no specific ideology or philosophy which members are required to share, excepting only the basic integrity crucial to historical study and the honesty required to have one's premises challenged and revised should the evidence warrant it.

This site hosts essays, links to podcasts, book reviews, tidbits discovered in the course of research, photographs, and more. Stay tuned.

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Russian Pupils to Have Choice of Religion, Ethics

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev

[From the last post we read how the Russian Prime Minister Putin is a bit elusive in speaking openly about his faith, presumably for political reasons since he is often accused of trying to work with the Russian hierarchy to establish his supposed Tsarist rule on Russian society. Now Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announces that students of Russian schools will be required to take religious classes from their choice of religion listed below or even a secular ethics class. The purpose is to give students a sense of morality following Soviet atheistic rule which made morals and ethics to have no foundation. In the recent past it was discussed that there would only be a choice between Russian Orthodox classes or no classes for the students to decide, now some sort of ethical foundation of any tradition or philosophy listed below is required. This is to be looked upon as a positive since many students are not properly knowledgeable of their religious tradition and will give them an opportunity to become acquinted with their tradition as well as open society in the future to inquiries and debates on these topics. - J.S.]

Russian Pupils to Have Choice of Religion, Ethics

AP
July 21, 2009

Barvikha, Russia - Russia's president has announced a pilot project in which schoolchildren will have to take classes in religion or secular ethics.

Tuesday's proposal is part of a Kremlin effort to teach young Russians morals in the wake of a turbulent period of uncertainty following the collapse of the officially atheist Soviet Union.

President Dmitry Medvedev said preteen students at about 12,000 schools nationwide would take the classes. They will be offered the choice of studying the dominant Russian Orthodox religion, Islam, Buddhism or Judaism; or an overview covering various faiths; or secular ethics.

The offer of a choice appeared aimed to ease concerns that Russian Orthodoxy will be forced on schoolchildren as the church gains influence and tightens ties with the state.

Russian president supports religion education in schools

BARVIKHA, July 21 (RIA Novosti) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday expressed his support for a proposal to teach religious education in Russian state schools.

He also backed the suggestion that chaplains should be employed in Russia's armed forces.

"I decided to support both proposals," the president said at a special meeting on the subject. The proposals had been made by religious leaders from Russia's main faiths.

The president said a pilot project would be launched in 18 Russian regions until 2012, and later across the whole of Russia. The first lessons, to involve 256,000 children and 44,000 teachers, could begin next spring.

"It could be the basics of Orthodox or Islamic culture, as well as Judaism and Buddhism. Students and their parents should make this choice for themselves," he said.

A course on Russia's four largest religions, as well a course on secular ethics will also be available as an option, Medvedev added.

Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia Kirill expressed his support for the idea, but stressed that the course should be optional.

"Experience shows that only a voluntary insight into such ideas, namely religious ideas, is beneficial," he said.

Religious education took place in Russian schools up until the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the establishment of the officially atheist Soviet system.

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Vladimir Putin and his Miracle Cross

[Americans know very little about Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's Orthodox Christian beliefs. Here is a fascinating interview of Vladimir Putin by Larry King. Vladimir Putin talks about his Miracle Cross. Here is the original CNN transcript.- J.S.]

Vladimir Putin and his Miracle Cross - Calls it a Revelation

July 20, 2009

ministryvalues.com

KING: There is much talk about Vladimir Putin and religious faith. I'm told that you wear a cross. Is that true? Are you religious? What are your feelings in this area?

PUTIN (through translator): I prefer -- I would prefer not to develop on that subject in detail. I think such things are sacred for everybody. Everybody's belief is not to be shown off, it's inside a man's heart. As regards to wearing cross, earlier I never had it -- once my mother gave it to me when I visited Israel. I was there two times. First on an official invitation of the minister of foreign affairs of that country. The second time, I liked the country, and I traveled there with my family as a tourist.

So my mother gave it to me to have a blessing there at the Tomb of the Lord. I did so and now it's with me always.

Incidentally enough, there was a story about this cross and since then I have always decided to have it on my body, now in the Dacha close to St. Petersburg, there was fire on the Dacha, it happened because of the fact that something went wrong with sauna.

Prior to entering sauna, I took off the cross before entering the sauna, and then with my friend we jumped out naked, since it was so unexpected. And I cherish that cross very much, it was my mother's cross, and the fire was really in earnest at the time. So I was thinking about whether perhaps it could get even remnants of it, it was an aluminum-made cross, a very simple thing.

I was surprised completely when one of the workers, just muddling through those ashes of the remnants, found that cross intact. And the house fell, that was a surprise, a revelation, and therefore I always now keep it with me.

KING: Do you believe there is a higher power?

PUTIN (through translator): I believe in human beings. I believe in his good intentions. I believe in the fact that all of us have come to this world to do good. And if we do so, and if we do so together, then a reward is awaiting for us. And both with regards to our relations as people to people, or inter-state relations. And most important, we will achieve the ultimate goal, comfort in our own heart.

KING: Thank you Mr. President.

PUTIN (through translator): Thank you.

KING: Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, thanks for joining us.

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Bishop Savas of Troas & the Office of Church, Society and Culture

[Bishop Savas is a very close personal friend of mine and he, of all the bishops and priests I know, is most qualified for the position in directing the revived Office of Church, Society and Culture. Below is a very good interview with His Grace describing this important new ministry for the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. And keep an eye out for his new blog coming soon called Living in the Logosphere.

I also kindly request that when you read this article that you go to the link here and give the best positive review for it. This Greek News website has been overly critical of the Greek Archdiocese in the past and they need to know that we appreciate a positive article that enhances the ministry of the Greek Archdiocese rather than cause divisions and slanders. Thank you in advance! - J.S.]

Bishop Savas & the Office of Church and Society

Monday, July 20, 2009
Greek News
New York

By Vicki James Yiannias

In February, 2009, His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios of America named His Grace Bishop Savas of Troas as Director of the Office of Church and Society. Bishop Savas, who has been a Bishop for seven years and has served as Chancellor of the Archdiocese for the past nine years, is also overseeing the Archdiocesan Advisory Committee on Science and Technology (AACST) and working closely with the Archdiocesan Youth Department.

Bishop Savasʼs charge is to develop programs and ministries that promote a creative Orthodox Christian engagement with the societal and cultural realities that affect the very fabric of the Orthodox community today. He will be addressing matters of current relevance such as the effects of online social networking, the popularity of so-called “reality” television and video games, and the resurgence of atheism.

Archbishop Demetrios cited Bishop Savasʼs “extensive education, mature grasp of current issues, deep appreciation of, and engagement with contemporary culture, and above all great love for Christ and His Holy Church” as exceptional qualifications for his new position and expressed confidence that Bishop Savasʼs appointment will be fruitful, especially for the young, “who look to the Church for assistance in meeting the challenge of living lives that are both fully and authentically Greek Orthodox and fully and authentically, twenty-first-century American.”

Bishop Savas shared his thoughts about his new position, his new blog titled “Living in the Logosphere”, pop culture, and the Internet with the GreekNews.

GN: Your Grace, In February, Archbishop Demetrios relieved you of your responsibility as Chancellor of the Archdiocese and assigned you to direct the Office of Church, Society and Culture. Some would say that was a demotion. What are your feelings about your appointment?

BS: I served as Chancellor of the Archdiocese for nine years, from December 1999 until the end of 2008. The late Fr George Bacapoulos was the only person who held that position longer than I in the 90-year history of our Archdiocese! As you can imagine, itʼs a very difficult position, involving priests and parishes in need and/or conflict, investigations, lawsuits. I used to describe my office as “The Complaint Department”. Itʼs not the sort of thing one wants to do forever. Iʼm deeply honored that His Eminence entrusted such a sensitive and vital ministry to me for so long a time, and I am profoundly grateful that he has now provided for me an opportunity to serve the Church in a more creative capacity.

GN: Please tell us something about your new office.

BS: The Office of Church, Society and Culture is actually the revival and adaptation of the Department of Church and Society, which was an important part of the Archdiocese from the ʽ60s through the 80ʼs. Archbishop Demetrios felt strongly about resurrecting that department to explore means of reaching out to the great numbers of Orthodox Christians who stand on the borders, as it were, of a full-blooded commitment to the Church.

You may recall that the theme of last yearʼs Clergy-Laity Congress in Washington, DC, was “Gather My People to My Home”. His Eminence and the Holy Eparchial Synod firmly believe that God has charged us to bring the world into the Church. To that end, my new directive is to promote a creative Orthodox Christian engagement with contemporary social and cultural realities. My office is charged with the task of developing and implementing programs and ministries that will assist those persons, and particularly young adults, who look to the Church for guidance in meeting the challenge of living lives that are both fully and authentically Greek Orthodox Christian and fully and authentically 21st-century American.

GN: I understand that one of the initiatives of your office is an upcoming blog.

BS: Yes. The word “blog”, of course, is a neologism, short for “weblog.” Itʼs a type of website with regular entries and that exists in a variety of types. I kept a personal, travel-diary-type blog when I spent two months in Florence, Italy, late last year, as a way of sharing my thoughts and experiences with friends and family. The blog I am preparing to launch for the Office of Church, Society and Culture will have a different, less personal, less whimsical character. It will provide commentary on a variety of topics that have an impact on our lives as contemporary Orthodox Christians in America, ranging from the political to the environmental, from bioethical issues to trends in popular culture. One of the things that sets a blog apart from say, a newsletter, is that it provides readers the opportunity to leave comments, to interact with the content. And I say “content” because it wonʼt be just text; it will include videos and podcasts as well.

GN: Whatʼs the difference between this sort of engagement—on-line, with possibly controversial questions—and other forms of religious education or pastoral guidance offered by the church? What do you see as the advantages and risks of using blogs and social networking technologies to take our faith into the marketplace of ideas?

BS: Blogs and social network technologies are the new marketplace of ideas and we ignore them at our own risk. They are where people go, especially young people, to find out about their world. On the other hand, there are significant risks involved in engaging people on line. Itʼs no secret that a cultural war is raging all around us. We have become a very polarized society, and weʼve taken to shouting our differences at each other over the airwaves. Cybershouting is made easier by the fact that people can hide behind avatars or pseudonyms in cyberspace. In other words, they can snipe at others anonymously. So thereʼs a scary dimension to expressing yourself on the Internet because people don't necessarily have to account for their behavior.

GN: How will you deal with the problem of masked identity on your blog?

BS: People will have to register with their real names. This might cramp some people's style, but those are the people that we wouldn't want to appear on the blog anyway. Iʼll be the blogʼs gatekeeper, as it were, giving thumbs up or thumbs down on whether a comment appears or not, so it's not going to be a free-for-all.

GN: When will the blog be up and running? How can we find it?

BS: Thereʼll be an announcement on the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese website (www.goarch.org) in the coming days, that will provide people with a link to the address.

GN: What is the name of the blog?

BS: “Living in the Logosphere”. Iʼve decided to call it that because I want to set this blog apart from the rough-and-tumble of the blogosphere, that virtual space where hundreds of millions of people are posting their opinions and reacting, often heatedly, to the opinions of others. I want the Logosphere to be a kind of metaphor for the Church. Itʼs where the Logos, the Word of God, the reason for everything, the Life of the world, reigns over all. Itʼs another way of saying “The Kingdom of God.”

GN: You mentioned that the blog will provide commentary on a wide range of topics, from politics to pop culture. Will you be addressing all of the topics personally?

BS: Mine wonʼt be the only voice you hear in “The Logosphere”. I'm the contributing editor, but there will be far better qualified voices than mine addressing topics like Church-State relations, bioethics, and green issues. My own expertise, such as it is, is on culture: film, literature, music, and thatʼs where I'll largely be focusing my energies, evaluating what passes for entertainment today and helping people discern what is of lasting value or where dangers might lie. I am not a mindless kind of celebrant of whatever pop culture puts out there but neither am I a reflexive critic in the sense of being a denouncer who says “no good can come of this”, because I've experienced a lot of good from pop culture. I think that both ends of the spectrum are extreme and untenable positions; we have to have a more nuanced stand toward popular culture.

GN: You have taught a course titled “Looking for God in Popular Culture” at St Vladimirʼs Orthodox School of Theology recently.

BS: Yes, it was a seminar that I taught with my koumbaro, Dr. Peter Bouteneff, with whom I studied at Oxford. We argued the case that Godʼs voice, His presence, His will, can be discerned even in the unlikely world of popular culture: in popular movies, television shows, novels, music, trends – you name it.

GN: Thatʼs not a case you often hear Orthodox theologians make. Theyʼre generally more critical of popular culture, arenʼt they?

BS: Itʼs true that some people think of the world of pop culture as a wasteland, but I take it as a teaching of the Church that God is “everywhere present and fills all things.” Itʼs not as if the people who create pop culture have never heard of the Gospel; some of them take it very seriously and have responded to it very deeply and authentically, and have expressed that belief in their work in powerful and inspiring and surprising ways. I also contend that some artists are communicating the Truth in spite of themselves, without realizing that theyʼre doing it. People might think of pop culture only as a form of distraction, an unhealthy temptation analogous to eating junk food. Iʼm not saying that pop culture should be our only sustenance. Of course youʼve got to eat some real food, but if you know where to look for it some genuine nourishment can be found in pop culture. Some may say that the effort isnʼt worth it, that weʼre looking for diamonds in the dung heap, but a diamond is a diamond, wherever you find it. Itʼs also my firm belief that God is sending us there, to that “wasteland,” to “the highways and the by-ways,” as Jesus Himself put it in the parable of the wedding feast, to find people to gather into His home.

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The Plague of Locusts on the Day Turkey Invaded Cyprus

I wasn't alive at the time the Turks invaded Cyprus 35 years ago today, but my mother and two sisters were in the city of Patras, Greece on that day and my mother informed of an event that happened that I have not seen reported elsewhere. She informs me that as my two sisters were playing outside my grandmother's house in Patras, suddenly a plague of locusts came rolling in to the point where the streets were completely covered with them. My mom rushed outside to grab my sisters as did the other parents in the neighborhood, and the locusts moved through. She said that after this happened everybody believed some tragedy was coming to Greece. A few hours later the Turks invaded Cyprus.

Coincidence or not?

Maybe, but I have not seen this reported anywhere else and was curious for more information on it. If anyone has any information, please let me know.

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My Top Ten Movies of 2009...So Far...

The year is coming towards its half way mark and in imitation of one of my favorite TV shows, At The Movies, I decided to give my list of top ten movies for 2009...so far. I've judged my top ten based on entertainment value, story line, artistry, acting, originality, and the fulfillment of original intent. I expect this year to be like 2008 in which some of its best movies will be released towards the end of the year for Oscar impressions, which is why this list was difficult to come up with and why I also include some honorable mentions. Keep in mind that I have not seen every movie that has received high critical reviews, but I've seen enough to make a list of my recommendations. I've seen a few clunkers to, so I will also mention what I consider to be the worst movie of the year that you should by all means avoid.

Top Ten Movies of 2009

10. Public Enemies - The only negative about this movie is that it does not give enough background information to fulfill its ultimate purpose of making John Dillinger a sympathetic figure and instead does it through a few historical inaccuracies. It gets its high mark for filming in many of the actual historical locations. It also has three of my favorite actors in film today whose abilities highly elevate this film - Johnny Depp, Christian Bale and Marion Cotillard.

9. X-Men Origins: Wolverine - As much as I love the X-Men series, I will have to give this latest installment the highest praise. A very entertaining film with a surprisingly tight story and lots of action.

8. Coraline - A beautifully done 3-D animation sci-fi/fantasy film with a gothic edge. Dakota Fanning does a masterful job in bringing out the troubled emotions of Coraline.

7. I Love You, Man - Paul Rudd and Jason Segel are very funny in this movie and make for a classic comedy duo. I laughed throughout the movie and it was intelligently well made.

6. Hangover - This is a rare film that mixes raunchiness with intelligence to make it the funniest movie of the year. It is perfectly cast to give a unique chemistry between the four main characters, and the outrageousness of the story is mixed with a reality that makes it plausible and believable.

5. Star Trek - A highly anticipated film by Star Trek fans of the original series, as I am, that does not disappoint. Perfectly cast and great story with effects, it takes the Star Trek franchise to another level.

4. Drag Me To Hell - The best horror movie of the year so far and a film that stars the director above everybody else. Only Sam Raimi could make such a great horror film in the spirit of Evil Dead 2 that has just as many laughs as it does scares. An excellent story line and production that is well acted and contemporary while remaining nostalgic of the great horror films of the 1970's.

3. Up - For this computer animated film to be on my list of top 3 films is a big deal since I hardly ever see animated films in theatres, but I find it hard to resist a good 3-D film. This is not just good however, but excellent. It contains one of the best opening montages in movie history and beautifully crosses the generations to make this movie as entertaining and lovable for adults of all ages as it is for children. And I highly commend this film for making an old man the hero of this children's story.

2. The Hurt Locker - An intense war film set in Iraq that is not to be missed. The realism and authenticity of the film is so staggering, you are left wondering if this movie was actually filmed in Iraq (it was filmed in Jordan 3 miles from Iraq). The authenticity of the film is accentuated by the fact that they used actual Iraqi displaced war refugees to play the Iraqi's.

1. Sin Nombre - This gets a 10 on all my categories above and in my opinion is the Slumdog Millionaire of 2009. This is a true classic masterpiece yet beautifully simple.

Honorable Mentions For Top Ten Movies of 2009

- Bruno - Though many hated this film and were offended by it, I cannot deny the extreme hilarity of the film. From beginning to end the film is funny and I found it to be an excellent commentary on the prejudices of society and the narcissism involved in trying to be famous. What I find a lot of people denying in reviewing this film is the reality it depicts and the fact that reality is much much worse than anything depicted in this film. Shocking, but great!

- Notorious - A surprisingly amazing film about famed rapper Notorious B.I.G. that is well acted and draws you in.

- Taken - A great over the top action film that also depicts the harsh realities of human sex trafficking.

- Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - I'm a big fan of the Harry Potter series and this does an excellent job in the evolution of this story line. It does an excellent job showing the children going through puberty and maturing. There is no climactic ending, but fulfills its purpose in building anticipation for the next film and conclusion.

Worst Movie of 2009

1. My Life In Ruins - This movie is horrible to say the least. It is a comedy that is not humorous at all. As a Greek, in many ways I found it offensively bad and does a terrible job in describing the authenticity of the Greek people. And the only time it mentions an Orthodox Church is when they visit one on their tour and all they do is make fun of everything in there. It shows kefi (a hard to translate word that expresses passionate enthusiasm and a party spirit) to be the soul of the Greek people, which I would disagree with, but in the end this kefi is taught by an overweight American tourist who plays a sort of guru figure throughout the film. He teaches this by having sex with a younger woman inspiring everyone else to have sex as well. Bruno has more class than this film. The only positive in this film is the scenery.

Runner Up For Worst Movie of 2009

- He's Just Not That Into You - I expected something good from this romantic comedy that had some great actors, but in the end it does not deliver and there is not a shred of intelligence or humor in it. The script does great injustice to an excellent cast.

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