The bill for same-sex marriage and the adoption dominated the extraordinary double Holy Synod at Mount Athos which took place yesterday, Thursday, February 8, in Karyes.

THE meeting took place in the presence of 40 Professors and Representatives of the Holy Monasteries of Mount Athos.

In the relevant announcement, the opposition to the bill on the marriage and procreation of same-sex couples is emphasized. “It is a big crime. They attack human nature, because in essence they stop the normal development and unrecognizably, they destroy the person”, the announcement states.

The announcement in detail:

On the occasion of the filing of the bill “Equality in civil marriage. Amendment of the Civil Code and other provisions” for a vote by the Hellenic Parliament, met in Karyes, today 8.2.2024, the 40 Professors and Representatives of the Holy Monasteries of the Holy Land and due to the great and particular seriousness of the matter decided to address the present sa announcement to every well-intentioned person and to support the struggle and the struggle of the Church for the protection of the core of human life.

The legislation, as provided for in the draft law, while it wants to ensure the principle of equality through the conclusion of “marriage” for persons of the same sex and even protection against discrimination, circumvents fundamental principles of human existence and kills the possibility of life and normal child’s development.

It is not the human family that is being dissolved, but the entire human existence.

How does life really work? Each one of us comes from one mother and one father, according to Christ’s response: “Do you not know that He who made from the beginning male and female made them?” (Matthew 9, 4).

The institutionalization of “marriage” between persons of the same sex is a reversal of Christian marriage and the institution of the family and has been rejected by the entire church tradition and is dealt with by repentance, which is a change of lifestyle.

Also, the fetus is gestated for nine months and is born. The human newborn is the sickest newborn in creation. He can’t do anything.

If his mother does not take care of him, does not nurse him, he dies… God gives the responsibility to the parents to cooperate in his formation and thus become co-creators of God.

If by chance the newborn looks at the mother and wants to breastfeed, and there is someone else in her place, it confuses the information, it is distorted, it is dishonored.

The debt of respect to a new creature requires sacrifice so that it can develop normally, enjoy its life. There is no other way of uniting and developing man.

After nine months, he is born in a wider womb, which is the family environment, and begins another creation of the human being, the child, within the family.

He knows the mother as the woman who nurses him and feeds him with her milk and takes care of him.

He knows the father as the man who loves him and takes care of him in his own way. He gets spiritual and physical strength from the mutual respect of his father and mother in order to move on to the second phase which passes into childhood, enters adolescence, moves freely within society and accepts the guidance of his culture and place.

God makes man to live, not to die; neither to die in his mother’s womb, nor in the womb of childhood, nor in the womb of history.

He participates in the miracle of life, in order to live and ascend to eternal life.

And this, with the grace of the Spirit, is done by the Church, through whom “compassion is renewed and established”.

And this is the final matrix, which shapes the human being and prepares him to be born in the space of the new state, in the “stages” of the beloved and desired freedom of the future age.

This is the purpose and reason for which God created the world and man.

Those who were freed and born beyond the womb of history, i.e. in the grace of eternal life, exist, pray and hold us all in life, and are the pole star where humanity is directed.

The attempted blasphemy, in the original meaning of the word, is a denial of the existence of man, a destruction of the foundations of the edifice of humanity.

Not only the gospel and the Greek society are affected. The universe is being deconstructed.

Whether you are a believer or an unbeliever, you will be born the same way. When you change these, in essence you decide on a slow but sure death of humanity.

When a man and a woman get married in the church, they receive the blessing of the Church and wishes for many children and art.

The true character of marriage is clearly revealed by the presence of Christ at the wedding of Cana, because “this great mystery is in Christ and in the Church” according to the apostle Paul.

This “marriage”, which is promoted today, leads to a dead end.

Injured, disabled creatures are being prepared. Respect human nature.

He who was born from his mother’s womb, regardless of race, language and faith, needs to be nursed by his mother.

These thoughts are not a figment of imagination, but are based on the Bible and the Apostles, on Tradition and the decisions of the Fathers, who established terms for the Orthodox faith and sacred rules, which determine the limits within which all its members must move .

In particular, the apostle Paul is clear, when he emphasizes emphatically: “Have you not seen that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? do not be deceived: neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor lewds nor men who sleep with men nor stealers nor greedy persons nor drunkards, nor revelers, nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God” (I Cor. 6, 9-10).

At the same time, the Church continues its mission, shepherds and heals, so that all the faithful live in communion with Christ and their brothers, to be distinguished by selfless love and philanthropy.

God loves all of us, righteous and unrighteous, saints and sinners. This is what the Church does, without excluding anyone, as this is evident throughout the history of church life and human weaknesses.

Love reigns. It is a shame for those who make these bills and consider this evolution to be natural.

We encourage and praise those who prefer the voice of conscience against the haphazard party discipline and we are fellow travelers in their struggle.

However, there is the health of the life of the human body that repels all these elements that try to alter the true existence of man.

There is One who directs everything. He who made the world and man, to live in eternity and to exist, He exists and protects us, is presented as weak and non-existent.

All those who want to change their lives will bump into Him.

Perhaps they do not realize that all this haste and insistence on passing the bill shows weakness and is at the expense of the people they are supposed to want to protect.

Only out of respect for these people do we emphatically express and emphasize the principles of life.

It is a big crime. They attack human nature, because in essence they stop the normal development and unrecognized, they destroy the person.

But there is the One who created everything out of love and wisdom and bypasses our weaknesses and leads everything to a good end.

Respondents in the Extraordinary Double Holy Assembly Representatives and Leaders
of the twenty Holy and Blessed Monasteries of the Holy Land of Athos.