When the Homily is about Immunology

Our wisdom gained from our experience

Seraphim from Ancient Church directed me to this pastoral letter from Metropolitan Nicholas of the Carpatho-Russian Archdiocese. It's very good, and I do not say that solely because of my own genetic connections.

Jim, of the people Nee, found the same point particularly engaging:

The Orthodox Church does not weigh human life by statistics. It does not consult actuarial tables to determine its morals. Neither does it survey the time and place to decide between right and wrong. The Church protests against the commodification of life that takes place in “quality of life” calculations. The Church knows, from centuries of witnessing first-hand the rise and fall of nations, that the destruction of human life cannot be confined to infanticide. It will spread inexorably from babies to those who cannot convince the world they are conscious enough.

The Church has been around for quite a long time, and since we DO give our fathers and mothers a vote in what we do today, we might perhaps have something more to add to the discussion than those groups whose wisdom might not extend quite so far. And sadly, I expect, the wisdom of the Metropolitan's letter will be ignored and labelled as just more of the same run-of-the-mill "anti-choice" rhetoric.

Does anyone else see some common ground between those making noise at WTO meetings and what the Metropolitan says here? I do...to some degree. Yet, never the two shall meet, because the vast majority of those at the WTO protests cannot see the connection and responding in kind, neither do we.