We face some serious challenges, as Church:
- to promote, in practical ways, a culture of life when our culture has embraced choice;
- to practice repentance and self-control, at a time when indulgence is everywhere;
- to love and serve the poor from our own resources, when more than ever people will think "That's the government's job."
His election does represent a new step in making our culture color-blind, and that is good.
I hope he is less likely to want to meddle in other parts of the world (like Iraq and the Russia/Georgia conflict), and have a more balanced view of the Middle East; time will tell. God give him wisdom, and protect him, and save our nation.
We are moving ever more rapidly to the situation the Church faced before the edict of Milan. Now, on with the work of repentance...
3 comments:
President-Elect Obama makes it clear, in my opinion, that he de facto supports same-sex marriage provided the courts impose it so it lacks his fingerprints. (He's personally opposed on religious grounds, he says, but he opposes initiatives like Proposition 8 in California that might actually stop the courts from imposing it). The courts will probably oblige him during the next 8 years.
Then we'll face indoctrination of our children in public schools and, I fear, persecution as a Church if we don't take protective measures. May I suggest (1) Orthodox Christians need to be getting their children out of public schools and (2) the Church may need to consider refusing to serve as the state's agent in solemnizing the "civil side" of marriage. Let us join couples in Holy Matrimony and let them register their civil marriage, if they wish, at the courthouse.
We may be headed to a pre-Milanese era... but that may be due more to our lack of holiness in approaching these matters and in clarifying that we actually have hearts anyone wants to listen to. For the moment, as you point out, the State is assumed to have a heart... "as if".
I should think the Roman era type of persecution less likely... and more something along the lines Bonhoffer and the like experienced in Germany: quietly shunted off and assented to.
For Orthodox Christian laity who wish to support the Church's teachings in the public square might consider joining 'The American Union of Orthodox Christian Citizens" now forming.
http://auocc.wordpress.com/
Post a Comment