http://www.oca.org/news/2014
 


 

Metropolitan Jonah, Fr. Chad Hatfield sign declaration concerning sanctity of
life, marriage, religious freedom
Posted 11/20
 
NEW YORK, NY [OCA Communications] -- His Beatitude, Metropolitan  Jonah,
Primate of the Orthodox Church in America, and the Very Rev. Chad Hatfield,
Chancellor of Saint Vladimir's Seminary, were among some 125 US religious
leaders who signed a 4,700-word declaration addressing the sanctity of life,
traditional marriage, and religious liberty here recently.
 
The statement, known as the "Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian
Conscience," issues “a clarion call” to Christians to adhere to their
convictions and informs civil authorities that the signers will not “under any
circumstance” abandon their Christian consciences.  The text of the
declaration, which already has generated considerable controversy, was released
on Friday, November 20, 2009.
 
"The Manhattan Declaration is the result of several months of dialogue among
Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christian leaders culminating in a gathering
of approximately 100 leaders in New York City on September 28, 2009," Catholic
News Agency [CNA] reports.  "Attendees considered an early draft... but the
document was entrusted  to a drafting committee."
 
"We are Christians who have joined together across historic lines of ecclesial
differences to affirm our right—and, more importantly, to embrace our
obligation—to speak and act in defense of these truths," the Declaration
reads. "We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on
earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or
acquiescence.
 
"We recognize the duty to comply with laws whether we happen to like them or
not, unless the laws are gravely unjust or require those subject to them to do
something unjust or otherwise immoral,” the signatories explain.
 
But, CNA reports, they also made clear that “we will not comply with any edict
that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions,
embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other
anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless
immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriage or the equivalent, or
refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality
and marriage and the family.”
 
The signatories explained that they speak now because in order "to defend
principles of justice and the common good that are now under assault."

 
 
 




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