http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/rss.xml English Orthodox Christianity en-gb Fri, 22 Aug 2008 16:50:00 GMT http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Copyright: (C) www.orthodoxengland.org.uk 60 http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/oerss.jpg http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/hp.htm The 2008 Bishops’ Council in Moscow has ended, as it began, with calls to Unity within the multinational and multilingual Russian Orthodox Church. This is especially relevant on the fringes of Russian Church territory, outside the political borders of the Russian Federation and its 104 nationalities. For Church Unity is under secular, political and nationalist threat in the Ukraine, in Estonia, in Moldova and elsewhere. However, other issues were also discussed by the bishops. ... http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/ninthoc.htm http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/ninthoc.htm Thu, 04 Jul 2008 09:00:00 GMT Already deeply divided on the issue of homosexuality, which it will have to face up to at the forthcoming Lambeth Council, the Church of England now faces division on the question of women bishops. The division takes the usual secular forms of liberalism and conservatism. ... http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/acrisis.htm http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/acrisis.htm Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:40:00 GMT The Patriarchate of Moscow considers that the present Russian government should condemn the old Communist regime, not only in words, but also in deeds. Just days before the Russian Orthodox world commemorates the ninetieth anniversary of the martyrdom of the Imperial Family on 17 July, this was the appeal made today, 9 July 2008, by Fr George Riabykh and reported in the Russian media. He spoke as Head of the Church and Society Secretariat of the Department of External Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church. Interviewed, he called for the condemnation of Communism, already begun in the 1990s, to be taken to its logical conclusion. http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/communism.htm http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/communism.htm Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:40:00 GMT Faced by spiralling food and fuel prices and a property crisis, in the last few months the mood of the Western world has turned sour. In heavily-indebted Western countries, especially in the USA and many countries in Western Europe, the property bubble, financed by huge debts, has, just as predicted, burst. Just as it has burst on all the other occasions in the recent and distant past, when the gullible public, manipulated by advertising and government irresponsibility (‘deregulation’) borrowed so much money from greedy and corrupt banks that it could never be paid back. The US economy is shuddering, as two of its largest mortgage corporations, which underpin five trillion dollars of home finance, face possible meltdown. http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/world_crisis.htm http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/world_crisis.htm Sun, 13 July 2008 18:10:00 GMT Tsar Nicholas II was a model for the politicians of his time, and in my view he can serve as a model for contemporary politicians. He had the desire to influence the world in such a way that there would be peace on earth and harmony, so that arms could be cut back to a reasonable level…Brought up in the Orthodox faith, his soul exemplified such moral values as conscientiousness, love for our neighbours and the desire to find agreement. He hoped that he could influence others to bring about the ideals of unity, brotherhood and mutual respect, including respect between politicians, between statesmen, between peoples and between states. When we study his activities as a ruler, we see him as a man who based his rule upon the Christian values that his parents had taught him. He tried to spread these values among all the heads of state with whom he associated. ... http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/1918.htm http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/1918.htm Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:40:00 GMT In His earthly life Christ was opposed by three groups among the Jews, the Saducees, the Scribes and the Pharisees. The Saducees were the Conformists, the elite, the aristocrats of the day, who were not too bothered what they believed, as long as they had their practical comforts and so were happy to co-operate with the Roman occupiers. The Scribes were the Intellectuals, the literate and educated class of the day, forever debating details, but always missing the main point. The Pharisees were the Sectarians, the superior and hypocritical ritualists, who separated themselves from ordinary believers, convinced that only they observed the true faith, which they reduced to the complex but external and ritual observations of the Jewish Law. ... http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/behindme.htm http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/behindme.htm Mon, 21 July 2008 11:00:00 GMT In the darkness of the early hours of Thursday 17 July some 35,000 people took part in a religious procession in Ekaterinburg. This was the 90th anniversary of the murder of the Imperial Family. According to the Diocese of Ekaterinburg, the procession was preceded by an all-night vigil at the Memorial Church of the Saviour on the Blood, which is built on the precise spot where Tsar Nicholas II and his family were martyred. There was not enough room in the church for all of the worshippers, many knelt in the street and the area directly in front of the church was filled with a vast throng. ... http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/july17.htm http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/july17.htm Mon, 21 July 2008 11:00:00 GMT Russophobia used as a weapon against the Church has a long history. Notably, it has been used for centuries by the Vatican, for example in sending the Teutonic Knights to destroy the Orthodox Church or in founding the Uniat heresy in the late sixteenth century. In the nineteenth century Cardinal Sibour of Paris, launched the Crimean War against Russia as ‘a Crusade against the anti-filioquists’. At the end of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century the Austro-Hungarian Empire used it to invent the Galician nationalist myth of ‘the Ukraine’ in Little Russia and Carpatho-Russia. ... http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/rusphobe.htm http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/rusphobe.htm Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:57:00 GMT Russia today called to mind the events of 17 July 1918 - 90 years ago - when the last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, and their children were executed. The country still remains deeply divided about the Communist period. Will Lenin’s tomb be moved? ... http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/romanovs.htm http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/romanovs.htm Sat, 26 Jul 2008 22:10:00 GMT Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian writer, comparable only to Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, has passed on. ... http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/asmem.htm http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/asmem.htm Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:47:00 GMT It is now forty years since the Roman Catholic Encyclical ‘Humane Vitae’ condemned ‘artificial’ contraception (ignoring that all contraception is artificial). Although it is no bad thing to affirm the Christian ideal of not using contraception, it is curious that an elderly celibate cleric in Rome should have made the condemnation. Only a bishop without an understanding of married clergy could make such a statement. It is the perfect example of loveless legalism and clueless clericalism. ... http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/vitae.htm http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/vitae.htm Sun, 10 Aug 2008 22:00:00 GMT After the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the ensuing self-liberation of Stalin’s Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States of America came to dominate the world. US-led Capitalism, the ‘democratic freedom’ to be rich or poor, had triumphed over ‘the evil empire’. ‘The end of history’ had arrived and Mr Bush’s ‘new world order’, that is, the imperial diktat of the USA, was to be enforced globally. ... http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/hegemony.htm http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/hegemony.htm Thu, 14 Aug 2008 08:11:00 GMT The news that US nuclear missiles are to be sited in northern Poland, in effect on the Russian border, is profoundly disturbing. To the older generation it recalls the Cuban missile crisis of 46 years ago, but in reverse. This time, there is no Soviet atheist enemy and it is the US, not the SU, the white star not the red star, that is aggressively endangering world peace. Can we imagine the reaction if Russian missiles were to be sited on the Mexican border with Texas? We would probably already be facing a nuclear holocaust. Little wonder that there are those who have raised the question of President Bush’s mental stability. ... http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/missiles.htm http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/missiles.htm Sun, 16 Aug 2008 08:35:00 GMT My name is John Aleshin. I am a 1974 West Point graduate, a classmate of GEN Petreaus. I am a former US Army Special Forces major, and also a former army Foreign Area Officer, with expertise in Russia/FSU and Latin America. I speak fluent Russian and Spanish. I also served in Grenada in the 82d Abn Div (received a Bronze Star) and as a Trainer/Advisor in El Salvador. I have been a Reagan conservative Republican my entire adult life, and have unashamedly declared my firm belief in Our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ my entire life. ... http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/letter.htm http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/letter.htm Mon, 17 Aug 2008 08:40:00 GMT Brought up in a village, I have only ever lived in one European city. That was Paris, where I lived for fifteen years. Outside the well-known tourist areas, there were still secret places, little courtyards, where the medieval atmosphere was reminiscent of that in what is perhaps Zola’s only readable novel, ‘Le Rêve’. I remember one such courtyard where there lived artisans, among them a maker of liturgical untensils, who was able to reproduce in precious metals any ancient chalice from any museum catalogue. ... http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/oefranc4.htm http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/oefranc4.htm Fri, 22 Aug 2008 16:50:00 GMT