India is not atheistic, but the Hindu religion does not improve the moral condition of the people. Bhandri notes, “Lacking virtues and spirituality, people visited temples to get material favors from their favorite deities.” A common misconception of atheists is that people created religions to establish codes of morality and to give them hope of an afterlife. That is not true, as most religions are far less concerned about those things than they are about gaining blessings in this world. In addition, atheists like to frame the essential argument as religion (in general) versus atheism. That is way too simplistic. The world around us makes clear that many religions produce absolutely awful cultures. All religions are not the same. All “gods” are not like the Christian God. All cultures are not like the West. https://orthodoxreflections.com/is-christian-morality-anything-special/

Mr. Gonzalez places the problem mainly in the economic sphere, but by his raising the issue of eudaimonia/happiness, he has shown that it is actually in the spiritual dimension where the problem mainly lies.

To give an adequate answer to the issues he raises, we must begin by trying to understand the world in which we live. We do not live in Paradise. We do not live in utopia. We do not live in fantasy fairie land. We do not live in the political philosophers’ state of nature. We do not live in a rationalistic, scientistic, non-theistic neutral ground called the saeculum (the secular).

We live in Babylon. https://orthodoxreflections.com/the-answer-to-the-riddle-of-modern-despair-we-live-in-babylon/

Ecumenism is not the only front on which attempts are being made to change Orthodoxy. There is a serious drive afoot to “revive” the office of Deaconess. The newly re-envisioned office of Deaconess is expected to have a liturgical role, unlike the historic office which most definitely did not. But a liturgical role for women brings up a problem. Orthodox Christians are not used to seeing women at the Altar. Suddenly putting women there would cause an uproar, and might even bring about a schism. It is necessary to go slowly in a way that gets the laity accustomed to seeing women functioning in liturgical roles. https://orthodoxreflections.com/for-orthodox-subversion-a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words/

The last few decades have seen a dramatic turn away from Christianity in the West. And yet Christlike figures (those who lay down their lives for others that they would not die; St John’s Gospel 10:11) continue to show up as heroes in the stories of her popular arts. There are three such productions in particular that we will look at below: the video games Chrono Trigger (1995) and Sea of Stars (2023) and the television show Travelers (2016-18). https://orthodoxreflections.com/the-persistence-of-christlike-figures-in-pop-culture/

Do we Orthodox really try to “earn our way” into Heaven via our own self-righteousness and “‘doing enough”?

Let’s look at how we might answer that. To prove that this is simply not the case, I’m going to use quotes from the Liturgy of St. Tikhon. I could use excerpts from any Orthodox Liturgy, but this one has good quotes for illustration purposes. Why am I using quotes from a liturgy as opposed to the Church Fathers, Church Councils, any number of writings from Orthodox Theologians, or an official catechism? Those are all good sources, but Protestants often accuse Orthodox of lying / misrepresenting our beliefs in discussions with them.

Liturgies are the prayers of the Church. Liturgies are not written for the benefit of outsiders, but for the edification of Orthodox Christians. The words of the Liturgies are what we tell ourselves, and God, about what we truly believe. If we actually believed in earning salvation through good works and our own righteousness, then we would say so in our liturgies. https://orthodoxreflections.com/does-orthodox-christianity-teach-works-based-salvation/

There is no hope for Haiti in either Roman Catholicism or Protestantism, with their materialistic, crusader-conqueror ethos driven by their beliefs in an angry, vengeful God, predestination, and infallibilities of various sorts (not that all Protestants and Roman Catholics are terrible people; but it is their erroneous beliefs and the general trajectory of those institutions that is problematic). Neither can voodoo lift her out of her hardships.

https://orthodoxreflections.com/the-best-help-for-haiti/

How can that be? – Such will probably be most folks’ reaction to the title of this essay. Aren’t they the States passing laws to ban transgender mutilations and abortions, to crack down on crime, to acknowledge God in some way in public schools, etc.? That is true, and for those good things they should be praised. But unfortunately that is not all they are doing.

They are also granting special privileges to the Jewish people, privileges that they would not consider giving to Christians, Hindus, Muslims, or any other religious group. South Dakota is the latest State to do this. Gov. Kristi Noem issued the following statement upon signing an antisemitism law https://orthodoxreflections.com/red-states-are-lurching-toward-antichrist/

What did the Greek Revolution of 1821 achieve? And why should it take the Greeks four centuries to free themselves from the Ottoman yoke? Well, it wasn’t for a lack of trying. One main reason why Greece’s many attempts to expel the Turks had failed, is that a free Greece (a return to the glory of Byzantium and the peak of civilization) was not in the best interests of the European powers of the time. England, France, Germany were afraid of losing control of the imperial and colonial system in the face of Greek progress. They knew what a free and idealistic Greece could achieve. They feared a glorious Greek Orthodox return to superpower status. As a result, when Greece was freed from Ottoman slavery in 1821, the Royal European powers of Germany, England, and France persecuted the heroes of the Greek revolution. https://orthodoxreflections.com/the-greek-revolution-of-1821-remains-incomplete/

On March 12th the Texas Monthly published a hit piece titled “Inspired by the Confederacy and Czarist Russia, “Ortho Bros” Are on the Rise.” This “article” was primarily an attack on my father-in-law, Fr. John Whiteford, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR), and the notion of Southern Orthodoxy. This article was authored by a recent convert named Meagan Saliashvili, a graduate of Harvard Divinity who posts many things which may lead one to believe she is an advocate of pro-LGBTQP church policy, abortion rights, and a female diaconate/priesthood (she has denied this – though not publicly – and I will take her at her word. continued in note1). https://orthodoxreflections.com/the-lefts-subversion-of-american-orthodoxy/

And I think that there is also something epigenetic. The Western mass is inside of us. It sank into our ancestors’ hearts, and they passed that onto us. We often talk about blood as though it is something from those of previous generations. Part of this inheritance of blood is how we worship God, because it is in worship that we most engage the soul. And so, while we do not want to say that Western Rite is for Anglo-Saxon converts and that Greek liturgics is for Greeks, there is in a very real way something about the Western mass that we Anglos yearn for in a way we were unaware of. We never knew we were looking for it until we found it.

https://orthodoxreflections.com/why-western-rite/

Under the guise of protecting the West from the “Russian threat”, the National Security State can exercise extreme censorship, buy journalistic access, spy on anyone, publish blatant lies, manipulate elections, set up blackmail schemes, and then just cover it all up. Politicians, of course, get in on the act. Lost an election? Must be Russian interference. Incriminating evidence found? Must be a Russian intelligence operation. As long as there is a veneer of “democracy” behind which to hide, who is ever going to be the wiser?

Even when people are exposed to the truth, they often dismiss what is happening directly before their eyes. How could any of this be true? How could “they” get away with all this?

Money. Great big, huge piles of filthy money. The US National Security State is so lavishly funded that it has swallowed up almost all of society (media, Pharma, manufacturing, technology, NGOs, foundations, education, research, development, religious organizations, non-profits, think tanks). Many analysts openly refer to this interlocking system of control as the blob. https://orthodoxreflections.com/why-the-us-national-security-states-orthodox-christian-obsession/

Of course, given what we know now, it is actually a wonder that so many of our bishops and clergy either refused to encourage the jabs, or even stood in active opposition to them. The full power of the government was deployed during the Pandemic to convince Christian leaders to promote the jabs. The US Government went so far as to lie to faith leaders about the safety and efficacy of the jabs, while couching everything in faith-based language, and even offering bribes. https://orthodoxreflections.com/orthodoxy-looking-back-on-covid-and-ahead-to-disease-x/

One of the topics Nicholas and Michael discussed was the incessant “labeling” that goes on so in our society. Orthodox Reflections asks everyone to take that part quite seriously. Based on research, here are some labels that the 3 letter agencies (NSA, FBI, CIA, etc.) look for in assessing who could be a “potential terrorist” (which makes you worthy of surveillance, questioning, and perhaps detention) https://orthodoxreflections.com/the-michael-sisco-show-the-regimes-obsession-with-russia-orthodoxy-explained/

All these various “churches”, including my own, were just making all this up as they went along. I was a natural born conservative. Even as a child, I had been drawn to history and tradition. Most of the Evangelicals around me also thought of themselves as “conservatives”, which is self-delusion on an epic scale. Evangelicalism is the most radical “Christian” version available. Evangelicalism preserves almost no tradition, other than some “traditional” interpretations of scripture (many of which are of quite recent vintage). Evangelicalism is the ultimate experiment in “do-your-own-thing” religiosity. Its rootless nature means Evangelicalism is constantly morphing, lurching from one “next big thing” to another. Don’t like how “church” is being done, or how the pastor interprets certain scriptures? Stick around a bit, it’ll change. What you get on any given Sunday, or any given Easter, is totally at the whim of the senior paster and/or the minister of music. https://orthodoxreflections.com/growing-up-disappointed-in-easter/

Recently Aristotle Papanikolaou, of Fordham University, had a Twitter interchange with Fr Whiteford, in which he derided Fr Whiteford’s alleged “Yosemite-Sam Orthodoxy: gun-loving, Confederate-sympathizing, pro-death-penalty, Trump-MAGA-supporting, pro-brutal-dictators, etc.” https://orthodoxreflections.com/yosemite-sam-orthodoxy/

Nicholas, chief editor of Orthodox Reflections, joined Buck Johnson on his Counterflow Podcast to discuss Red States passing laws outlawing “antisemitism”. The discussion was based on this article, “Red States Are Lurching Toward Antichrist” by Walt Garlington. The discussion touched on the threat this trend poses to Freedom of Speech, how it can affect the Orthodox Church in the future, and why all of this is happening. Ironically, the show dropped the day before the US Congress passed the “Antisemitism Awareness Act”, which threatens to extend censorship of “antisemitism” to the entire US – not just selected Red States with high concentrations of Christian Zionists. https://orthodoxreflections.com/counterflow-podcast-red-states-are-lurching-toward-antichrist-with-nicholas-from-orthodox-reflections/

However, not only do we have the unseemly picture of US Christians ignoring Christian persecution around the world, but we also have added to this their grotesque support of the brutal Israeli war in Gaza that has killed tens of thousands (many of them innocent women and children) and destroyed homes, churches, and critical infrastructure. Here, for instance, is US Sen. Mitch McConnell justifying the continued supply of US arms for Israel’s war on the Gazans https://orthodoxreflections.com/are-the-united-states-christian-or-jewish/

The more cautious and sober Latin theologians have often been uneasy with the excesses of their contemporaries, but on many occasions the weight of popular enthusiasm has proved too strong for sound theology to prevail. Louie-Marie Grignion de Montfort (d. 1716)—a master of Marian excess—closely connected the Virgin to eschatology. With the Second Coming she must be revealed by the Holy Spirit so that Christ may be made known, and she must shine forth in power against the enemies of God, since in some way the devil fears her more than God Himself. The idea of the Virgin as always being the one who prepares the way for the coming of Christ—not only His first physical coming at the Incarnation, but of His coming into the souls of men, and of His Second Coming, has continued into modern times. “As there would have been no advent of Christ in the flesh in His first coming without Mary, so there can be no coming of Christ in spirit … without Mary again preparing the way.” “As she prepared His body, so now she prepares souls for His coming” (Archbishop Fulton Sheen). At Zeitoun, “one can perceive the salvific role of the Blessed Virgin in evidence, as it was at Fatima in 1917. This role is essentially that of preparing the way for her Divine Son, by opening the souls of mankind to His redeeming grace.” “…[H]aving prepared His way 2,000 years ago among His own people” she “now prepares His way into the souls of millions of Gentiles of all faiths and none with a new and greater Visitation” (Francis Johnston: When Millions Saw Mary). One wonders if there is anything left for the Holy Spirit to do. https://orthodoxreflections.com/fatima-tradition-and-politics/

Taking all the information above into account, we can clearly see how historically unique the “ordination” in Africa really was. Deaconesses did not serve at the altar in the Divine Liturgy. Angelic is younger than allowed for in the relevant canons for a deaconess, and is also married when she should be single. But the truth is, Angelic was not actually “ordained” as a deaconess. The use of that term is a bait and switch. Angelic was ordained as a female Orthodox deacon. Which is why, after her “ordination”, she wore male vestments and performed the same liturgical duties as any male deacon.

This “ordination” is not a “revival” of an ancient ministry. Rather, this “ordination” is a full-blown modernist, ecclesiastical revolution conducted in plain sight. Every honest observer, whether for or against female ordination, acknowledges this fact.

If Alexandria is allowed to remain an Orthodox Church in good standing, then observers can plausibly argue that the Orthodox Church now ordains women to major orders of the priesthood. The post below is from Aristomenis Papadimitriou, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese Director of Archives & Research who also lists “Scholarship & Teaching at Fordham University” in his X bio. He is a big supporter of what happened, and is very honest in recognizing its importance. https://orthodoxreflections.com/the-way-to-schism-part-1-ordination-of-a-female-orthodox-deacon/

Be especially careful when vaccinating male children. It is noteworthy that girls are usually damaged to a much lesser extent by vaccines than boys. It has been hypothesized by some doctors, that this might stem from the use of cells grown from a female child in vaccine production and testing. The baby girl was gruesomely killed in 1973 after having been born alive, and her cells have since been cultivated for medical use. The use of this fetal cell line is usually hidden under the acronym HEK 293. Prior to the COVID jabs, Pharma had gone to great lengths to make it not immediately clear what that signified on an insert or other drug information. Some doctors believe that trace female DNA contained in vaccines can mix with the male DNA of vaccinated male children, causing adverse results. These doctors have hinted very gently, for fear of the Jews, that this may be why some boys appear to be insecure about their gender. A very recently conducted (on a private initiative of course) research concluded that 80% of the cases of those suffering from gender confusion are due to vaccinations! https://orthodoxreflections.com/the-dangers-of-vaccines-and-some-pieces-of-practical-advice/

Tattoos Increase Cancer Risk by 21 Percent while causing real spiritual harm. Don't be deceived by a trend that an estimated 32 percent of Americans have joined.
https://orthodoxreflections.com/the-sin-of-tatoos-and-body-modifications/