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Photo: Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I embrace.
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CWN - The recent Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church did not achieve its original goal of unifying the discipline of the Sacrament of Marriage among the 14 Orthodox churches, according to a L’Osservatore Romano report.
On June 23 and 24, participants discussed the council’s fifth document, “The Sacrament of Marriage and its Impediments”-- a topic first placed on the conciliar agenda in 1961.
After discussing the Sacrament of Marriage, the final document stated that “a civil marriage between a man and a woman registered in accordance with the law lacks sacramental character since it is a simple legalized cohabitation recognized by the State, different from a marriage blessed by God and the Church. The members of the Church who contract a civil marriage ought to be regarded with pastoral responsibility, which is necessary to help them understand the value of the sacrament of marriage and the blessings connected with it.”
“The Church does not allow for her members to contract same-sex unions or any other form of cohabitation apart from marriage,” the council fathers continued, as they lamented “the frightening increase in the number of divorces, abortions, and other problems of family life.”
Turning to impediments to marriage, the document confirmed the Orthodox practice of tolerating a second or third marriage following annulment or dissolution-- leading Chania Hyacinthe Destivelle, the author of the L’Osservatore Romano article, to state that it would have been “interesting” if the council fathers had explained how a union earlier defined as “indissoluble” could be dissolved.
The document also stated that “marriage between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Christians is forbidden.” Nonetheless, “with the salvation of man as the goal, the possibility of the exercise of ecclesiastical oikonomia [economy] in relation to impediments to marriage must be considered by the Holy Synod of each autocephalous Orthodox Church according to the principles of the holy canons and in a spirit of pastoral discernment.”
This final text represents a change from the draft text, which did not leave matters to the discretion of each Orthodox church. The draft also stated that marriages between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Christians “can be blessed out of indulgence and love of man if the children from this marriage are to be baptized and raised in the Orthodox Church”-- a phrase omitted in the final document.
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CWN - The apostolic nuncio to Turkey, the apostolic vicar of Anatolia, and a representative of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch gathered at the Church of St. Peter in Antakya (Antioch) on June 29 to commemorate the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul.
The cave church, whose walls date from the fourth and fifth centuries, is believed by some to be on a site where the earliest Christians worshipped. The parish priest told the Fides news agency that the number of pilgrims has fallen from more than 80,000 in 2011 to fewer than 10,000 in 2015.
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CWN - A Coptic Orthodox priest and two security officials were shot and killed, apparently by Islamic State gunmen, in Arish, Egypt.
Father Rapheal Moussa died instantly after being shot in the head as he left church after the divine liturgy, a spokesman for the Coptic church reported. The killing occured on the Sinai peninsula, where the Christian minority has been a target of Islamic extremists.
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CWN - Maronite Catholic Patriarch Bechara Rai has suggested that a long-term answer to the crisis of refugees in the Middle East should be helping them return to their native countries.
"We must find a just, global, and lasting peace for refugees, repatriate them, and help them rebuild their lives and businesses," the Lebanese prelate told an audience in New York. He observed that the refugee crisis cannot be addressed adequately until warfare is curbed in the region.
Speaking at the headquarters of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association, Cardinal Rai reminded his audience that about half of the the people living in Lebanon today are refugees. The presence of so many people from other countries compromises the identity of Lebanon, he said. Moreover, the refugee camps have been fertile fields for recruiting by terrorist groups.
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CWN - Pope Francis received a delegation from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople on June 28, the day before the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, and called upon Catholics and Orthodox to abandon “sentiments and attitudes of rivalry, mistrust, and rancor” and to undertake “every form of cooperation” in “concrete undertakings in service to suffering humanity.”
“In celebrating the Solemnity of the Apostles, we recall to mind the experience of forgiveness and grace uniting all those who believe in Christ,” Pope Francis said. “From the earliest centuries, there have been many differences between the Church of Rome and the Church of Constantinople, in the liturgical sphere, in ecclesiastical discipline and also in the manner of formulating the one revealed truth.”
“However, beyond the concrete shapes that our Churches have taken on over time, there has always been the same experience of God’s infinite love for our smallness and frailty, and the same calling to bear witness to this love before the world,” he added. “Acknowledging that the experience of God’s mercy is the bond uniting us means that we must increasingly make mercy the criterion and measure of our relationship.”
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CWN - The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople has sent his best wishes to Pope Francis for the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, the patrons of Rome.
Thanking Pope Francis for joining him on the Greek island of Lesbos to draw attention to the plight of refugees, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew said that “the contemporary crisis of refugees and migrants has demonstrated the need for European nations to address this problem on the basis of the ancient Christian principles of fraternity and social justice.”
“We recognize that the European civilization cannot be understood without reference to its Christian roots and that its future cannot be as a society entirely secularized or subjected to economism and various forms of fundamentalism,” he continued. “The ‘culture of solidarity’ nurtured by Christianity is not preserved through the progress of standards of living, the Internet and globalization.”
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew also thanked Pope Francis for his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’ and added:
"No one honors mankind created in the image and likeness of God as much as the Church of Christ, who was revealed as God 'with us' (Matt. 1.23) and as God 'for us' (Rom. 8.32). This is why the word of the Church is and shall remain to the ages an intervention for the sake of humanity and its divinely-granted freedom. Life in the Church incorporates, along with the Holy Eucharist, the splendid worship and life of prayer, the ascetic and internal struggle against the passions, as well as the resistance against social evil and the struggle for the prevailing of justice and peace."
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