Elder Philotheos of Paros

Because I saw that it was necessary for me to answer you, I write you the following: Tell the couple about which you wrote, where the husband does not want children whereas the wife wants them, that God's will must be done and not the devil's. God allowed marriage for the birth of children and blessed it. Whereas the man-killing devil, when he is not able to murder, puts brother against brother and advises men to murder. He advises the parents to murder their children inside the womb. The husband who does not want children, who does not listen to God, but prefers to hear the devil and takes his wife and pays the doctors to do abortions, becomes a murderer, not of foreign people, but of his own children. The wife, when she is pregnant, must not listen to her husband and have an abortion and become a murderess, but if her husband forces her, she should protest, she should go to the priest, or to the Metropolitan and seek help, and if her husband insists she should divorce him.

There are two solutions for this matter. The one is that if they do not want children, not to have relations anymore, but to practice chastity and keep continence. This is done with the agreement of both spouses and by economy so that they not become murderers. If they do not like this solution, but prefer to listen to the devil and to murder their children they should prefer to separate. If they have faith in God, even if they obtain 20 or 50 children - God, Who gives and nourishes the birds of the sky, will provide for them! If the husband does not have faith then he will not be able to provide for his own self and he will be condemned to eternal hell... Let them be very careful and let them listen and do what I tell them so that they will have God's blessing and inherit the eternal kingdom of the Lord. If again they don't listen, they will receive a curse from God and will inherit, with the devil, eternal hell. I pray God enlightens them to accept my counsel, because obedience is life, while disobedience is death...

Elder Philotheos Zervakos Paternal Counsels Volume II, published (in English) by Orthodox Kypseli, Thessaloniki, Greece, 2005, pages 20-21.

The entire book, Paternal Counsels, is available in the english language online in pdf format at http://www.pigizois.net/agglika/pdf/PHILOTHEOS_ZERVAKOS_PATERNAL_COUNSELS.pdf

There is no worse crime than that which happens in Greece, for parents to kill 300,000 children each year before they are born. It exceeds even Communism, and all heresies and evils. Because if they had let their children be born, baptised them, and then killed them with a knife, the children would have gone as Christians and the responsibility of the parents would be less than now (in abortion) where they have also killed the child's soul. God, of course, will compensate because in the dwellings of the Heavenly Father there are many mansions. Parents, however, reveal their hatred for their children and I wonder why God has not thrown fire the way He did on Sodom and Gomorrah. The sodomites did other terrible things, but they did not reach this level. The parents that agree to abortion, in this way, supersede the evil of Sodom and Gomorrah. So, great wrath will come. Many things happen, especially to big evils.

Lewdness and the abortions that women do... such great evil in the world never happened in any age for mothers to kill 6 to 10 children and not feel any regret of conscience, who, if they had a little shade of repentance and feeling, would open tombs and enter into them to suffer, but they are unfeeling. They confess sometimes, but without repentance. This is one thing and the second is the nakedness of women. Now they walk around bare, and the men are bare also - they are not much better - but more so the women... and this is not possible for God to endure. He endured the sinners of Noah's time and of Sodom and Gomorrah, but they had not reached this level to walk around naked and to expose their filthy bodies before men, to attract and draw them into sin. God is long-suffering and fore-bearing, but his tolerance also has limits. It is never possible for God - who always punishes sin - to allow such evil to happen without punishment. We should only be ready.

Learn that it is a commandment of God for parents to have as many children as God would be willing to give them. It is also my order and advice. Couples who don't keep the Divine command - to have as many children as God would give them - will be punished. Also, whoever hinders them from keeping this Divine command will definitely be punished both in this life and also in the next.

-Elder Philotheos Zervakos

The Truth About Abortions, published (in Greek) by Orthodox Kypseli, Thessaloniki, Greece, 2011, page 90-91; translated by OrthodoxProLife