A blog that recently made front-page news in USA Today is the subject of a defamation lawsuit, claiming, among other things, that the blogger, Frank Vance, defamed both Tim Dick and Ligonier Ministries inc. by stating, "It would be one thing if Tim Dick were qualified for the position . . . it's self-evident that the man is as unfit to head Ligonier Ministries as is RC Sproul Jr to be a pastor."
Thus a civil judge is being asked to adjudicate the qualification of the litigant for Christian leadership--something we hope the judge has refused to do.
But such is not the case in a similar legal battle being waged out on a rocky peninsula on the Aegean where the one hundred monks of the Esphigmenou Monastery are being actively persecuted by the Greek government over an issue of who is fit to lead the Eastern Orthodox Church. Four monks have already died, and the rest are being starved into submission--or death.
It has been centuries since a secular European state was asked to penalize members of a church whose heirarchy had accused of heresy. The Inquisition, long thought to be dead in the West, has now reared its head in the East.
The monks' crime? They oppose the support of their Ecumenical Patriarch--a Turkish citizen--for unification with the Catholic Church and submission to the Pope.
Their leader, Methodios, wrote to his fellow abbotts:
"Keep in mind, what is now apparent, the official Union of the Churches, because the European Union is being rushed to complete a Unified Europe. "
Sign of the times?
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