Met. Jonah prescient on Don't Ask Don't Tell repeal
Two years ago Metropolitan Jonah, primate of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), wrote a letter to the Armed Forces Chaplains Board wherein he said (PDF available here):
The main way an Orthodox priest might minister to someone who embraces a "gay" identity and engages in homosexual activity is to call him or her to repent, to change his or her lifestyle, to renounce the "gay identity" and to embrace a Christian lifestyle of chastity. The call to repentance is a call to healing, to forgiveness and to transformation. It is the core teaching of the Church for anyone caught in sin.His words at the time were called inflammatory and reactionary by many Orthodox in America. At the time I commented that I thought his words pointed to a rather logical outcome of the reverse in the military's response to gays in the armed forces. In the below story and in other recent articles I've read the current vibe is "Get with the times or get out of the way."
If our chaplains were in any way forced to minister the sacraments to those involved
in such activity; or forced to teach that such behavior is either good or acceptable, or prohibited from denouncing such behavior as sinful and self-destructive, it would
create an impediment to their service in the military. If such an attitude were
regarded as "prejudice" or the denunciation of homosexuality as "hate language," or
the like, we would be forced to pull out our chaplains from military service...
WASHINGTON, D.C., June 20, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Although the U.S. Military fight and die to uphold freedom, high-level military chaplains report they are increasingly being denied freedom of conscience and freedom of speech. There is also alarm about the negative effects on troop morale over the undoing of the 237-years' practice of providing traditional religious support for U.S. soldiers.
"We were promised that we would see no change - very little change," says Col. Ron Crews, alluding to a two-star officer's assurance that the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal would not impede the ministry of military chaplains. That promise, he says, has not been kept.
Col. Crews, executive director of Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, was speaking at a panel along with military chaplains and religious freedom activists during the 2012 National Religious Freedom Conference in Washington D.C on May 24.
The panelists agreed that the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell and other policies have made it difficult, if not a punishable offense, for military chaplains to read passages of Leviticus, pray aloud in the name of God at a soldier's funeral, or preside over traditional services.
Col. Crews recounted an interchange in 2010 between Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a military chaplain. While Adm. Mullen was briefing the troops on what the repeal might look like, the chaplain asked if those with "biblical views that homosexuality is a sin [would] still be protected to express those views?"
Adm. Mullen reportedly responded, "Chaplain, if you can't get in line with this policy, resign your commission."
