Patriarch Elijah Anthony Dohnal, Lvov (Ukraine) sent an open letter to the PCUSA on Tuesday, July 19. Here is his recommendation: “Dear members of the Presbyterian Church (USA), we hereby call upon you to separate from the shepherds who betrayed Christ. This is a necessary step on your part so that you may be saved from eternal damnation in hell.”

Dear Church representatives,

We have been informed that on May 10, you adopted constitutional amendments in your Church and thus enabled active homosexuals and lesbians to be ordained pastors, elders and deacons. This step of public apostasy was preceded by a discussion lasting 33 years.

The very discussion and voting as to whether homosexuality is a sin and an abomination or not is a betrayal of Christ and His Gospel. The position of God’s Word on this abomination is unequivocal, diametrically different from yours.

God punishes this sin by completely destroying the particular territory: “He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by reducing them to ashes as a warning to future sinners.” (2 Peter 2:6)

Through the Apostle Paul, God reveals that the root of homosexual perversion is a betrayal of the saving faith and idolatry: “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men …” (Romans 1:25-27)

“Homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 6:9)

“If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.” (Leviticus 20:13)

Pope St. Pius V issued a decree in the 16th century stating that in case a cleric (deacon, priest, bishop, cardinal) commits the sin of homosexual perversion, he must be immediately degraded from ecclesiastical dignity and brought to temporal courts. This meant the death penalty at the time. The Pope added: “This is the only way to stop and eradicate this epidemic of perversion.”

Dear representatives of the Presbyterian Church, you have betrayed the faith and God’s Commandments at the very foundation. You do not have the Spirit of Christ but the spirit of an impure perversion. How can you choose unrepentant public sinners as your shepherds? Such shepherds lead the sheep entrusted to them along the broad way of perversion into hell. Your pseudo-religious association is no longer the Church of Christ but the harlot of antichrist.

Dear members of the Presbyterian Church (USA), we hereby call upon you to separate from the shepherds who betrayed Christ. This is a necessary step on your part so that you may be saved from eternal damnation in hell.

Dear Church representatives, we hereby announce before God who shall judge the living and the dead, in the name of Christ crucified and risen, in the power of the Holy Spirit, that by reason of your proclamation of an anti-Gospel and receiving of the spirit of antichrist the Presbyterian Church in USA has fallen under God’s anathema (Galatians 1:8-9). “Unless you repent, you will all perish! (Luke 13:3)

On behalf of the Byzantine Catholic Patriarchate,
Patriarch Elijah Anthony Dohnal
Methodius OSBMr
Timothy OSBMr
Secretaries of the BCP
Lvov (Ukraine), 2 July 2011

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