November 14, 2014 (Source: http://wonder.oca.org)
The notoriously heretic modernist and ecumenist OCA has recently been embroiled in a controversy over OCA Priest, Fr. Robert Arida, who stated in his article, “Never Changing Gospel, Ever Changing Culture“:
“Among the most controversial of these issues are those related to human sexuality, the configuration of the family, the beginning and ending of human life, the economy and the care and utilization of the environment including the care, dignity and quality of all human life. If the unchanging Gospel is to be offered to the culture then the Church, in and through the Holy Spirit will have to expand the understanding of itself and the world it is called to save.”
The article was originally published on the Wonder Blog, a publication of the Department of Youth, Young Adults and Campus Ministries of the OCA. Though, after some outcry, the article was seemingly taken down from the “Wonder Blog” site, but still be found on the website of the OCA Holy Trinity Cathedral, in Boston, Ma. The Cathedral is the seat of Abp. Nikon of the OCA, which has Fr. Robert Arida, who supported the changing of moral teaching, as his second. Antiochian priest Fr. Johannes L. Jacobse responded. The issue of a prominent OCA Archpriest promoting the changing of moral teaching from an official OCA venue generated so much controversy that Met. Tikhon of the OCA felt bound to even respond.
Jurisdictions in World Orthodoxy, such as the OCA, Antiochians, ROCOR-MP, are increasingly finding more and more ‘liberals’ in their clergy and laity. When one considers the previous years of controversy with the OCA hierarchs and their lifestyles (including two past First Hierarchs), the noted pro-abortion policy of the Ecumenical Patriarch, the belief of Phanar bishops that practicing homosexuals can take communion, the open union of the Antiochian and Alexandrian Patriarchates with anathematized and condemned Monophysite heretics, widespread joint services and prayers with Papist, Protestant, and other heretics; Sergianism, the promotion of Novus Ordo Style versus populum Liturgies (under the guise of a modernist attempt to re-interpret the Liturgy of St. James) with communion in the hand and an Holy Table on the solea in front of (as opposed to behind) the Iconostas, World Orthodox gathering to have women’s ordination conferences, etc, can Fr. Robert’s words really be considered that surprising for the World Orthodox?
The few conservative members of World Orthodoxy will soon find themselves in the same battle that other heretodox groups have, like the Anglicans or the Roman Catholics. In the case of the Papists, you have an ‘official’ teaching which a large segment doesn’t even believe. It is very well the same case with World Orthodoxy.
