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Apologetics : the basic concern of every faithful

by fr. Anthony Alevizopoulos

  Source: Anti-heretical magazine "DIALOGOS" of the Church of Greece - Issue No.15

 

 

 

«...It is becoming increasingly more obvious that the spirit of the Church is being supplanted and replaced by the spirit of occultism and para-religion.....  Occultist groups already number in the hundreds; their spirit - which as a trend is widely known with the term "New Age" - influences basic sectors of most aspects of our lives.  Entangled in this trend are tens of thousands of sub-sectors and groups - exactly like the junctions in an immense network.... This network has been characterized by the "apostles" of this trend, as a "silken conspiracy"...

We are already living in an era like the one that the original Church was in, where everything around Her was determined by "another spirit".  As such, the Church is once again called upon today, to give Her apologetics ministry the place that this ministry held during the proto-Christian Church.

..In the proto-Christian Church, apologetics had a central place in ecclesiastic life.  It was a basic concern, not only of the major theologians and pastors of the Church, but also of every faithful.

It has already been underlined in the New Testament, that the duty of all the faithful is that they be "ready to answer to everyone who asks about the reason for the hope within us, with meekness and fear..."  (1 Peter 3:15)

Our apologetics ministry cannot possibly be conducted in a drastic manner and in accordance with the tradition of the Church, if it is not supported by an in-depth study and a proper understanding of every external provocation.  It is unfortunate, that there is no Research Centre that preoccupies itself with this matter."

 

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Biographical note:   fr. Anthony Alevizopoulos

Born in the town of Kazarma of Messinia (Peloponnese) in the year 1931. He was the 11th and last son of a family with many children, born among 9 sons and 2 daughters.  He received his basic education in Kazarma and his High School education in Kalamata. He graduated from the School of Theology of the Athens University in 1957 and acquired his PhD in Philosophy in Magentia.  He served as an assistant at the University of Muenster.  He acquired a PhD in Theology at the Athens University.

He was married to Antonia Lentz, with whom he had three sons.

Ordained a deacon and presbyter by the Archbishop of Thyateira and Great Britain Athenagoras in 1962 in Stuttgart and served as a parish priest in Hannover and Cologne.

He returned to Greece in 1968 and was assigned as parish priest of the Sacred Temple of the Holy Trinity in the Ambelokipi suburb of Athens (where he continued to serve, until his final rest).  He had also contemporarily served as Secretary to the Synodical Committee for Emigrant Hellenism and in 1980 as Secretary to the Synodical Committee on Heresies. He had organized the following sectors of activities: «Classes for Staff of Ecclesiastic Welfare» 1968, «School for Ministry  Volunteers» 1971, «Classes for Confronting Heresies» 1976 e.a.. 

Served as:

Director of the Bureau for Pastoral Confronting of Heresies at the Athens Archdiocese; Director of the Archdiocese's Information Service on Dialogue and Culture;  Chairman of the Spiritual Council of the "Pan-Hellenic Union of Parents for the Protection of the Greek Orthodox Civilization, Family and Individual";  the first Vice-Chairman of the "Orthodox Educational Centre for Information and Dialogue"; Chairman of the Spiritual Council of Saint Paraskeva; 

Vice Chairman Á´ of the «Interorthodox Union of Parental Initiatives». 

As Secretary of the Synodical Cmmittee he had organized a host of Clergy-Laity Synaxes, Conventions, Seminars, Meetings, Pan-Hellenic and Pan-Orthodox Conferences, the "Seminar of Faith", the "Seminar of Edification in Orthodoxy", the "Seminar of Orthodox Faith", the "Theological Seminar".

He authored 40 books of varying pastoral content, which covered the sectors of parishional activity, the demarcation of the Orthodox Faith and the pastoral strategy of the Church against the various heresies.

Together with associated he composed the Bulletins: «Witness», «Inform», «Information Bulletin», «Communication Bulletin».  Many of his articles were published in daily newspapers and periodicals.  He had two regular programs on the Radio Station of the Church of Greece.

He participated in numerous International Conventions on Parental Initiatives Abroad, in assemblies of the World Council of Churches and Conventions for Human Rights as well as conventions of anti-heresy content, in Russia, Bulgaria and Cyprus.

He departed for the Lord on the 2nd of May 1996, having dedicated his life to the Church and having offered immense services for the support of the Truth of the Faith and the Pastoral opus of the Church.

 

 

Translation:  K.N.

Article published in English on: 18-8-2010.

Last update: 18-8-2010.

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