Dr. Reno;
I take exception to your publication’s latest anti-Russian Orthodox article: “The Pan-Orthodox Council Must and Will Proceed“ by Deacon John Chryssavgis and Professor Paul L. Gavrilyuk: http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/06/the-pan-orthodox-council-must-and-will-proceed
It was bad enough that you declined to publish the “Open Letter” by Archpriest Victor Potapav, James J. Jatras, and yours truly intended as an initial rebuttal to your journal’s tiresome malicious mischaracterization of the Russian Orthodox Church, particularly concerning the religious and political crises in Ukraine. But now you and your colleagues at First Things have reached a new low by printing a surprisingly inaccurate, but not unexpectedly polemical, piece by two Orthodox scholars who seem to have a bee in their bonnets concerning their Russian Orthodox brothers and sisters in the faith.
Fr. Alexander Webster
I appeal to you to stop meddling in the internal affairs of the Orthodox Churches. With such uncharitable, unjustifiable hit-pieces as the current article, you are dishonoring the legacy of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus and serving well neither your journal’s reputation nor the Vatican’s ecumenical outreach to the Orthodox Churches beyond the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
Archpriest Alexander F. C. Webster, PhD
St. Herman of Alaska Russian Orthodox Church
Stafford, Virginia
