Today’s quote is from Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, head of the Department of External Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church, Moscow Patriarchate, in an address at a conference in London, on February 21, 2014.
The entire address can be read HERE.
The address was posted on the website, Inside The Vatican, by Dr. Robert Moynihan. The following is from that post.
...and what Alfeyev sees is a process of "de-Christianization”, of the removal of Christian symbols and Christian teachings in the public and private life of the West, and of the world, which proceeds apace, year after year, decade after decade. "And today," he said, "we can hear of how in democratic Europe an airline employee was forced to remove her cross, supposedly in the name of tolerance, peace and harmony in society."
In the clearest example of the error in the currently predominate secular notions of free choice, Metropolitan Alfeyev uses the story from scripture of the woman about to be stoned for adultery.
Here’s the quote:
When the woman caught in adultery was brought to Christ he said to those who demanded that she be stoned to death: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." He not only did not condemn the woman but saved her from death. And yet he said to her: "Go, and sin no more" (Jn. 8: 2-11). If we are to follow the secular notions of free choice and human dignity, then the Saviour of the world ought not to have said these words but recognize her behaviour to be normal and say: "Go and continue to do the same."
