On the end of gender and the evil shepherd
Patriarch Bartholomew and Joe Biden. Photo: UNIAN
If 100 years ago an American had been told that by 2025 a new president would issue such decrees, they would have twisted their finger at a temple. After all, it would be the same as saying: "The sun is hot, and water is wet." And what would they be wrong about?
Now, experts will pop up from every corner, claiming something like "we've always said" there are only two genders. No, only a few said so. Because in the "new democracy", making such statements could have landed you in jail.
And here’s the question – why were there Orthodox bishops among those who remained silent? The same Patriarch Bartholomew, with whom former President Joe Biden spent a lot of time, who he called his great friend and "Christ-like". Shouldn't a Christian stop a friend if he is going against God, show them the right path? Isn't this the case Christ was referring to when He said: "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone; if he listens to you, you have gained your brother; but if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses; if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector" (Matthew 18:15-17)?
Patriarch Bartholomew may well have told Biden in private that the LGBT and gender ideology is anti-Christian, as is the promotion of abortion. But we haven’t seen the consequences of that. Biden continued to promote this ideology just as before. And we have not heard a single public word about it from the head of the Phanar.
What’s the result of this silence? Biden, who is already 82 years old, believes that there’s nothing wrong with promoting gender and abortion – after all, his "Christ-like" friend didn’t say anything. In turn, millions of people around the world may have come to the same conclusion. After all, if the Ecumenical Patriarch is silent, then everything must be fine.
"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So, when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it" (John 10:11-12).
Read also
Advocatus diaboli: when falsehood becomes a virtue
Listening to the rhetoric of Shevchuk and his UCCRO colleagues, one cannot help but think of the famous film starring Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves – the one in which Reeves’s character discovers that he has been working as an attorney for the devil.
Authorities “open” the Far Caves – whatever they do, nothing works for them
The authorities and the OCU are straining every nerve to make everything look properly “churchlike” – every bit as respectable as under the “Moscow priests.” Yet all they ever produce is a parody with a distinctly Bolshevik stench.
Athonite monks at Dumenko’s Lavra “service”
OCU benefactors paid for the visit of a magnificent Byzantine choir led by the Archon Protopsaltis of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
When building a church is banned – is that “freedom of faith”?
In Nychehivka, the authorities unlawfully halted construction of a UOC church on private land.
Mobilizing UOC clergy: Are the authorities simply purging “Moscow priests”?
UOC clerics – unlike those of the OCU, UGCC, Jews, Muslims, and pagans – are granted no exemptions.
Will those who praised the Nazis be included in Ukraine's Pantheon of Heroes?
It may prove difficult to argue that people who sent greetings to Hitler and praised the Nazi army do not fall under Ukraine’s laws condemning Nazism.