MARTINA BAGNOLI (Curator, Walters Art Museum): A relic is usually a remains of the body of a holy person, could also be something that this holy person had touched. The saints were not touched by sin, and therefore their remains were imbued with the grace and the power of God. Therefore if you prayed to a relic, that is a kind of way of channeling your prayer to heaven. You don’t worship the relics or the saint. You venerate them, and that distinction is precisely in order to avoid falling into idolatry.

From the beginning of Christianity, artists were enlisted to create precious containers that would speak of the spiritual power of the content. According to doctrine, Christ and Mary ascended bodily to heaven, so we do not have bodily relics of these two very important figures of Christianity. However, we have reliquaries of the hair of Mary or the milk of Mary. Mostly for Christ you would have relics of the True Cross or other instrument of his passions.

Read the full article.

Julia Duin writes an extensive story in the Washington Post on Metropolitan Jonah and the OCA:

They appeared at the edge of the crowd on the Mall, a group of men seemingly out of a distant century. Their heads were crowned with klobuks, the distinctive headgear of Orthodox clergy. Sporting black cassocks and untrimmed gray beards, with golden icons dangling from their necks on long chains, these visitors stood out among the crowd clad in jeans and winter coats. The man in their center carried a bejeweled walking stick.

Metropolitan Jonah, 51, leads the Orthodox Church in America, the second-largest Eastern Orthodox body in the United States. He was there to rally the huddled masses waiting in the freezing air to begin the March for Life, the annual demonstration protesting the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion nationwide. His aim was to boost Orthodox participation in political issues. But his efforts to change the OCA would spark a ferocious reaction from his own bishops one month later. At issue is the very nature of Orthodoxy in the New World.

The tensions began with Jonah’s surprise election as head (or “metropolitan”) of the OCA in late 2008. The new leader, who is the first native-born convert to head the church, wasted little time instituting change. He put word out to his bishops and seminarians that their presence was expected at the March for Life, held every January. It was time, he would later tell a reporter, for the Orthodox “to step out in the public square” on a number of social concerns, including abortion. To encourage such stepping out, Jonah also decided to move the offices of the OCA from its isolated Syosset, N.Y., chancery to St. Nicholas Cathedral in Northwest Washington.

On the morning of the march, Jonah preached an uncompromising Gospel at the cathedral. “We need to see and call things what they are and not in some disguised politically correct language,” he said, dressed in resplendent gold brocade vestments, his salt-and-pepper beard making him appear like an Old Testament prophet. “Abortion is the taking of human life.”

Read the full article on the Washington Post.

From February 22-24, 2011, the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Orthodox Church in America participated in a retreat in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His Beatitude, Metropolitan JONAH led the hierarchs in a review of matters affecting the life of the Orthodox Church in America, including the OCA strategic plan, preparations for the upcoming Assembly of Bishops and plans for the 16th All American Council in Seattle.

During their retreat, His Beatitude presented a request to the Holy Synod for a time of personal retreat and spiritual renewal. The Holy Synod granted His Beatitude’s request for a period of 60 days and appointed the senior Hierarch, His Eminence, Archbishop NATHANIEL, of Detroit and the Romanian Episcopate to assist in the temporary administration of the OCA during His Beatitude’s retreat.

As an additional means of assistance to His Beatitude, the Holy Synod relieved him from his responsibilities as Locum Tenens for the dioceses of the South and of the Midwest. The Holy Synod appointed Bishop NIKON as Locum Tenens of the Diocese of the South, with Bishop MARK of Baltimore continuing as Administrator. The Holy Synod also appointed Bishop TIKHON Locum Tenens of the Diocese of the Midwest with Bishop-elect Archimandrite MATTHIAS continuing as Administrator.

In other matters, the Holy Synod accepted the resignation of Archpriest Alexander Garklavs as Chancellor of the Orthodox Church in America and appointed His Grace, Bishop MELCHISEDEK of Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania as interim Chancellor.

At the conclusion of their retreat, the members of the Holy Synod of Bishops expressed their joy at the upcoming Bright Week consecration of Archimandrite MATTHIAS as Bishop of Chicago and the Midwest. The consecration will take place over the weekend of April 29 to May 1 and will be concelebrated by His Beatitude, Metropolitan JONAH, the hierarchs of the OCA and other guests.

The Holy Synod also bestowed it’s pastoral blessing on the clergy and faithful of the OCA and wished them a profitable season of prayer and repentance during the season of Great Lent.

Source: http://www.oca.org/news/2430

According to several reports (including here and here) Metropolitan Jonah is leaving his role as the First Hierarch of the OCA. Retired Bishop Tikhon of LA describes it as a “mandatory leave of absence.” Archbishop Nathaniel Popp is said to be named to temporarily fill the spot of First Hierarch.

A full report including background information on events leading up to the ouster, is here.

On February 14, 2011, St. Nicholas Church and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America filed a lawsuit against the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in order to foster the rebuilding at Ground Zero:

The Parish and the Archdiocese would have preferred to rebuild the Church without litigation.  However, they have been unable to do so since the Port Authority renounced a long-standing agreement with the Church to rebuild at Ground Zero, seized the Church’s land, barred the Church from access to it, and has refused to talk or meet with the Church or the Archdiocese. This legal action has been taken not only as a last resort to restore the property and rebuilding rights of St. Nicholas Church, but also to fulfill the common vision of civil and church authorities that the Church be rebuilt as a place of prayer and meditation at Ground Zero for all people.

Read the full article here, and a related NY article and video here.

WCVB TV in Boston writes:

A former pastor at a Worcester church has been accused of raping and assaulting a 43-year-old woman.

The Rev. Charles Michael Abdelahad, former pastor at St. George Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral, is accused of attacking the woman on different occasions dating back to 2007, according to the Telegram and Gazette.

Abdelahad is accused of biting the victim, pulling her hair and punching her in the head. Police also allege he hit her with a religious icon and bat and scratched her on the stomach with keys, the newspaper reported.

He will be arraigned Friday on a single charge of rape, four counts of assault and battery and five counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.

Parishioners said Abdelahad has been a priest for at least 20 years, and he left the parish last month. (Source)

Related articles are here.

Police intervened after a dispute arose at a meeting of Bishops at the St. Irene Chrysovalantou Monastery last Friday Jan. 21, 2011.  Several attorneys were present, presumably due to circumstances related to a pending lawsuit over claims of abuse by Bishop Paisos, former Abbott of the Monastery.  The National Herald writes:

An incident occurred at the meeting of the corporate officials of the St. Irene Chrysovalantou Patriarchal and Stavropegial Monastery that took place last Friday Jan. 21, 2010 at the monastery’s Astoria’s offices requiring police intervention. Bishop Vikentios of Apameia, who was invited to attend the meeting as the secretary of the corporation, did not participate in the meeting after all, because the monastery’s legal counselor did not allow the Bishop to bring along his attorney, George Razis. Bishop Vikentios was asked to sit down to the meeting alone, without his lawyer, but he refused. The police were immediately called to scene, and they took the reports of both sides, Bishop Vikentios and the other monastery officials. (source)

Read the full article here.

According to The Cyprus Mail, the famous pop icon Boy George has returned a Cypriot church icon that he bought in the eighties, after a Bishop saw it hanging on the singer’s wall on a TV show.

The discovery was made by the Cyprus Orthodox Church’s representative in Brussels, Bishop Porfyrios of Neapolis, while watching an interview with the former “Culture Club” and “Jesus Loves You” front man.

Porfyrios told the BBC’s PM show: “On the left side of the fireplace at his house during the interview we located in Boy George’s living room an icon of Jesus Christ Pantokrator.”

Suspecting the icon to be one of the many stolen and sold after the 1974 invasion, Porfyrios decided to delve deeper.

He said: “Afterwards we researched the story with expert accounts, and we found it stems from Cyprus, specifically from the Church of St Charalambos in the occupied village of New Chorio Kithrea.”

After verifying this with the priest from St Charalambos, he contacted the singer and told him about the icon’s provenance and he was happy to return it to its original owners without payment.

Read the full article here.

A monk and two accomplices were busted Sunday trying to board a plane in Athens with the skull and bones of a dead nun in their luggage.

When questioned about why he had a skull and skeletal remains wrapped in cloth in his suitcase, the 42-year-old monk, who is from Cyprus, told police that he was transferring the remains from Greece to a monastery in Cyprus because the nun was a saint.

The Cypriot Orthodox church, though, showed little faith in the monk’s story, saying the attempted smuggling was sacrilegious.

“It appears to be the work of charlatans with a financial interest, that is what I suspect,” Cyprus’ Archbishop Chrysostomos II told Reuters.
The trio, which included a man in his 50s and a woman in her 60s, were charged with theft and desecrating human remains.

The monk was also suspended from his monastery for three months, according to the Cyprus Mail.

The graverobbers allegedly stole the remains of the nun, Eleni Vathiadou, after a memorial service held by her family at a cemetery to mark the four-year anniversary of her death, the Cyprus Mail reported.

Vathiadou had once served as a nun in Cyprus but had been living in Greece when she died.

She was never officially declared a saint by the church.

Read more here.

The New York Times journalist Karen Crouse wrote an article entitled “A Defensive Anchor Walks a Spiritual Path.” An excerpt:

Steelers safety Troy Polamalu opened his red leather-bound playbook to a dog-eared page. “The life of a man hangs by a hair,” he began reading in a voice as soft as falling snow. “At every step our life hangs in the balance.”

It was three days before the Steelers’ A.F.C. divisional playoff game against the Baltimore Ravens, a matchup in which the Super Bowl aspirations of two worthy contenders hang in the balance, and Polamalu was getting himself centered.

“How many millions of people woke up in the morning, never to see the evening?” Polamalu read. And then: “The life of a man is a dream. In a dream, one sees things that do not exist; he might see that he is crowned a king, but when he wakes up, he sees that in reality he is just a pauper.”

The book in Polamalu’s hands, “Counsels From the Holy Mountain,” guides him in football and in life. It contains the letters and homilies of a Greek Orthodox monk, Elder Ephraim, whom Polamalu described as his spiritual doctor.

Polamalu, 29, sought out the octogenarian monk, who resides in a monastery in southern Arizona, a few years ago, a meeting that led Polamalu to the place he described as “heaven on earth.” It is a summit of sorts. But not the Super Bowl, though Polamalu won two championship rings in his first seven seasons with the Steelers. Neither of those journeys shaped him as profoundly as the pilgrimage he made to Mount Athos, a Greek Orthodox spiritual center in Greece.

Read the full article here.