Skopje, North Macedonia, July 3, 2023
mpc-spe.mk
Thousands of Orthodox Christians and residents of North Macedonia gathered last week at the initiative of the Macedonian Orthodox Church-Ohrid Archbishopric in prayerful protest against attempts to bring harmful gender identity ideology into the country.
On Thursday, June 29, Vespers and a moleben to the Most Holy Theotokos were celebrated at St. Clement of Ohrid Cathedral in Skopje, after which a national assembly was held against two gender identity bills being considered by Parliament.
A group of religious leaders, including the primate of the MOC, His Eminence Archbishop Stefan of Ohrid, published an appeal in May, demanding the withdrawal of the bills, warning of their danger for society.
“We consider the legal recognition of ‘gender identity’ in these laws unacceptable, as well as the confusing distinction between sex, gender, and gender identity. Thanks to their adoption, instead of protection, it opens up the possibility of discrimination against the most vulnerable categories—women and children,” Abp. Stefan and the others wrote.
But unfortunately, the voice of the religious leaders, who represent 95% of the Macedonian population, was not heard, and the Parliament continued to move towards adopting the laws, which specifically call for the eradication of certain customs and traditions held by the Macedonian people.
Article 23, paragraph 5 of the bill states that the commission for gender equality “initiates and promotes activities for social and cultural change in order to eradicate prejudices, stereotypes, customs, traditions, and all other harmful practices in pursuit of gender equality.”
Thus, the MOC decided to hold the peaceful protest. Abp. Stefan addressed the crowd at the prayer assembly, explaining how the Church highly values women and children, and the family unit, while the proposed laws, in fact, put them in danger.
Beloved…
Here we are—the children of the Macedonian Orthodox Church, gathered together with representatives from all churches and religious communities, to say “yes” to life, to proclaim the sanctity of the family—formed by one man and one woman, to say that we will defend our loved ones—our children, from unacceptable new ideologies.
We are gathered to joyfully show in a dignified manner our embrace to the whole world as God’s creation and to say that the Church does not protest against any individual and does not reject anyone. Its very life and way of existence is a constant rebellion, but not a rebellion against mankind, but against evil, sin, and death, to which, unfortunately, the world is falling into before our eyes.
The sole purpose of the Church is to love and transform this world, without identifying with it. Therefore, we are not surprised when the world, on its part, does not accept the Church, but rejects it as something foreign. And not only are we not surprised, but we do not worry, knowing that Christ Himself said: If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you (Jn. 15:19).
Therefore, we should not be afraid of the storms when the sea of this world is agitated, but, on the contrary, it should only remind us that this world is not our ultimate goal, and it should encourage us to continue towards the secure harbor of God’s love. We should not believe in a better world if it has no place for Christ! And the new deceit of the original deception is that the Church should abandon its journey towards the eschaton and remain here—in time and history, because this world will become a paradise without God, and man—a god without God, and will be able to recreate the world and the ages according to the criteria of his fallen from God mind and contrary to the order built into nature by the Creator.
And when, with the best intentions and always with love and unobtrusiveness, we say something, they try to silence us by changing the theses about the secular, i.e., secular character of the state, always, as a rule, interpreting secularity contrary to the constitution of the state, which mentions the Church and other religious communities, giving them their place and guaranteed rights. After all, a secular society does not mean a godless society!
We have nothing against the secular mentality of any individual, and even of society itself, but we ask ourselves: Does that mean that the Church should be excluded from social life!? Specifically, we are aware of the plans, intentions, and desires of organizations and movements that have become so strong in our society that some of them have entered into state institutions and are writing laws for us! Laws, just like those two unfortunate laws on gender equality and civil registration, which forcibly and against our will not only aim to secularize the Church, but also to force it to speak and express itself in the language of some kind of secular order which is alien to the word and spirit of the Apostles, the Holy Fathers, and the Holy Gospel.
Because the Church itself is a mother who gives birth to its children in pain, not for death or for this world, but for eternal life and for the Kingdom of Heaven, we fully understand the concern and fear of everyone, especially parents, about the uncertain future for their children, for the children of our Macedonia, if these two laws or some similar laws become a binding reality.
Let me remind you: The Church lives in the Spirit and in Truth! In the same Spirit that descended upon it at Pentecost and will remain in it until the end of ages! It path, life, and truth are its very head—the God-man Christ! He said: Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free (Jn. 8:32). Throughout history, the Church has encountered and outlived many ideologies and false truths that promised liberation to humanity. The Church often testified to its truth with martyric blood, opposing the transient nature of the truths of this world. Today, the world is occupied and conquered by a new ideological propaganda, which we can see the true face of here, in our society. The term “gender” is imposed on us, a term consciously chosen, because in our language and understanding it has the most beautiful context, but in the intentions of gender theorists and ideologues, it does not bring anything good.
The truth, beloved in the Lord, always liberates! It never subdues or threatens! The truth does not need to seize moral superiority, using women and children to be accepted, as some modern conventions, like the Istanbul Convention, do, which, under the guise of protecting women, try to impose something that will endanger and harm women, who are pillars of the family and therefore society. That is why we are gathered here today: to clearly and loudly speak the truth against professional experts who seek to change what the Church thinks about women, but without protecting women’s rights.
Throughout the ages, the Church has regarded women with reverent awe. The woman, in the teaching and life of the Church, is not only not weak, but on the contrary, it is she who, in her tender maternal hands, holds Him who sustains the entire universe—the Almighty God. Even angels and people tremble before that power! It is she who nourishes Him on her loving breast as a little child, the One Who gives food to all flesh (Ps. 135:25). It is the woman, especially the mother, who gives hope to the world—love. And love is always selfless, sacrificial, and precisely because of that, in our view, the woman is an icon of love. Therefore, let us not allow motherhood to be defiled by anyone’s newly coined terms. They say they will liberate women from the constraints of the Church and the shackles of patriarchy, but in reality, they reduce her to a subcategory, equating her with men, who will never be women in the true sense of the word, and thereby legitimizing violence against women.
Women in Macedonia, I believe, do not want such false equality and false rights, and they do not want to be liberated from the Church, because it is precisely in the Church that they live their true freedom. The Church is full of brave, independent, successful, and accomplished women, who come to the Church joyfully and freely, and in this time they look more and more to the Mother Church as a secure refuge from this infectious revolt against the order established by the Creator. In fact, here is a large part of you—women, who are here tonight, gathered from all parts of Macedonia, to testify that you do not want the slavery that someone calls freedom—neither for yourselves nor for your children. So, it is precisely in you, dear grandmothers, mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters, that we keep the hope for a better tomorrow, because whenever it is hardest, and that is when one needs to stand firmly under the cross, women have always stood and deserved their dignity in Christ’s Gospel, and in the history of our Macedonian people and among all God-fearing nations. Therefore, the news of the joy of the Resurrection is a gift for the whole human race, first transmitted precisely through women. Hence, in the consciousness of the Church, a woman is the Mother of God and an apostle of the Resurrection and the truth of Christ.
Beloved faithful people: The Lord Jesus Himself commands: Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto Me: for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven (Mt. 19:14). But undoubtedly, this ideology is one of the most totalitarian that humanity has seen so far, and almost like no other in history, it is directly aimed against this command of Christ and against children. So, if children are the future of the world, then who else wants mankind to have no future if not the one we know is an enemy from the beginning?
But, we have witnessed for several years now, the reforms that have been made or are being made in the educational system, which gallopingly pave the way for the so-called gender-sensitive education, which should culminate in comprehensive sexual education. In our schools, teaching materials that promote homosexuality and same-sex marriages are distributed without the consent of parents… We appeal for an end to the disfigurement of the educational system with gender ideology and with the sexualization of our youngest ones, for an end to the extremely unacceptable deprivation of parents of their parental rights and of children of their childhood. And finally, until when will our children learn from textbooks whose content is dictated by foreign countries and by foreign centers? And what can be said about religious studies in our education?! For twenty years, the subject, the teachers, and the Church with the religious communities and all of us have been underestimated. Only in Macedonia, unlike most countries in Europe, towards which we strive, as well as in all former Yugoslav republics, only in Macedonian education, with a few exceptions, is the Lord “expelled.” This is our attitude towards faith and towards God!
But, the greatest gift of God given to mankind is precisely freedom. In it, freely and voluntarily, we chose to love God and man, not excluding enemies, who, in fact, are our enemies because they consider us their enemies, and not because we consider them our enemies. We are now brought to a point where we have to fight for the right of thought, the right of speech, and the right to freely defend our faith. We know very well whose servants we are and who our Lord is. We cannot and will not become slaves of men, especially not when the path is being prepared for new “gods” and new “beliefs,” which in certain actions, as we see in many places in the world, behave in a totalitarian manner. The faith will endure until the end of the ages and the strong shall not overpower it, but we must remain faithful to the teachings passed down to us from our ancestors.
Therefore, beloved present children of the Macedonian Orthodox Church, of the Catholic Church, of Protestant churches, and of the Jewish community, I beg you and all people of good will to steadfastly endure in our righteous struggle to defend the family and to preserve the image of God in humanity. God grant us to endure, so that we may exist!
Through the prayers of the Mother of God—the Most Holy Theotokos, of St. Clement of Ohrid, and of all the saints—let it be so! Amen!
STEFAN, Archbishop of Ohrid and Macedonia
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