Category: Orthodox Christianity

It doesn’t matter what kind of site you’re making. Bad design is still bad design. I found an Orthodox Christian, now attending a Baptist church, who rants about icky religious websites and makes some good points about the Divine Liturgy and Greek Orthodoxy not being about Greek culture along the way. It’s not a one-time thing, either. Go see what he has to teach about how to Heal Your Church Web Site. He suggests that church and religious websites need to get on the ball and catch up with current technology. He says that the online Bible sites should have XML-RPC mechanisms in the works, if not already released. I’m definitely going to be spending some time reading this site.

The Holy Synod of Bishops of the Orthodox Church in America have elected His Eminence, Archbishop Herman of Philadelphia and Eastern Pennsylvania as the new Metropolitan of the Orthodox Church in America. God grant him many years! Metropolitan Herman succeeds His Beatitude, Metropolitan Theodosius, who is retiring after 25 years of service due to health concerns.

The patriarch of Antioch has granted autonomy to the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America (AOA). The news story notes that this comes on the eve of the key national congresses of both the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (GOA) and the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). There are many signs that the AOA and GOA are interested in working together with the OCA as an autocephalous church. (The OCA has been autocephalous for more than 30 years.) In a June 2001 interview, Metropolitan Philip of the AOA makes it clear that he has been thinking about autocephaly for a while. An autonomous AOA seems to be a step in the right direction.

The pope talks about the Internet as a new forum for proclaiming the gospel:

The Internet causes billions of images to appear on millions of computer monitors around the planet. From this galaxy of sight and sound will the face of Christ emerge and the voice of Christ be heard? For it is only when his face is seen and his voice heard that the world will know the glad tidings of our redemption. This is the purpose of evangelization. And this is what will make the Internet a genuinely human space, for if there is no room for Christ, there is no room for man.

I suspect the pope is speaking at least partially figuratively, but thankfully there are already many icons available that show the face of Christ.

The essence of the Internet in fact is that it provides an almost unending flood of information, much of which passes in a moment. In a culture which feeds on the ephemeral there can easily be a risk of believing that it is facts that matter, rather than values. The Internet offers extensive knowledge, but it does not teach values; and when values are disregarded, our very humanity is demeaned and man easily loses sight of his transcendent dignity.

There’s a certain irony to posting comments like this to a blog (and in quoting the pope in the Orthodox Christianity category for that matter).