PRESENTATIONS AND PUBLICATIONS

Over the past 25 years, Dr. Thaddaeus has written over 400 articles on various topics, made over 300 public speaking presentations, and authored numerous newspaper articles on religious history. His master’s degree thesis in theology and community studies, ‘The Parish As Community’, is available on Amazon.

Several of Father Thaddaeus’ presentations are available on Rumble and Youtube.

Presentation topics include:

            • Suicide: Thoughts & Temptations

            • Personal Identity

            • Prayer, Fasting, & Good Works

            • Monasticism & the Parish

            • Estate Planning

            • Abortion: Psychological & Spiritual Effects

            • Predestination and ‘Once Saved Always Saved’

            • Addiction as Idolatry

            • The Family as the Domestic Church

            • The Proskomedia Service

SPIRITUAL BACKGROUND

Dr. Thaddaeus is the son of a former Protestant pastor who, with 2000 other pastors and laity, converted to Orthodox Christianity in 1987 as documented in the book ‘Becoming Orthodox’ by Peter Gilquist. Having become Orthodox at the age of 19, he studied Orthodox theology and church history immediately after high school at the St. Athanasius Orthodox Theological Academy; a one-year, residential program.

As a young man and new Orthodox Christian, Dr. Thaddaeus traveled to Russia in 1988 to see an Orthodox culture firsthand. He married in 1993 and he and his wife, Presbytera Xenia, returned to Russia as a couple for the same reasons in 1994, spending the majority of their pilgrimage at the Old Valaam monastery on the islands of Lake Ladoga. In 1998, Dr. Thaddaeus travel to England to support Anglicans who were converting to Orthodox Christianity. As a layman, Dr. Thaddaeus visited Elder Ephraim at St. Anthony’s monastery (Florence, AZ) beginning immediately after the arrival of the Elder, when the monks were still living in mobile trailers. And one of his childhood friends has been a monk at St. Anthony’s for over 25 years.

In 2000, Dr. Thaddaeus was ordained a deacon in the Tomb of the Theotokos, and three days later, to the priesthood in the Holy Sepulcher of Christ, Jerusalem. In 2002, Father and Presbytera made pilgrimage to Greece for a month, focusing their time there on the spiritual lineage of Elder Amilianos, the women’s monastery of the Annunciation (Ormylia), Mount Athos, and Saint Nektarios of Aegina. In 2005, Dr. Thaddaeus returned to the Holy Land for the ordination of his brother-in-law.

Being acquainted with the spiritual legacy of Father Seraphim Rose, and Saint Herman’s Monastery (Platina, CA), Dr. Thaddaeus and Presbytera Xenia were blessed with having Father Alexey Young as their spiritual father for a decade. When Father Alexey (Father Ambrose in monastic tonsure) began suffering from physical decline, Father and Presbytera were blessed to begin receiving spiritual guidance from Father Michael Rome, chaplain to the Theotokos of the Living Spring women’s monastery (Dunlap, CA). Father Thaddaeus and his family are also close with the Saint Nikodemos monastery, Goumenissa, Greece, where a childhood friend has been a monk for almost 30 years. Father and Presbytera also have monastic friends at the St. John’s women’s monastery, Goldendale, Washington.

In 2017, Dr. Thaddaeus and Presbytera return to Russia for the 25th anniversary of their pilgrimage to Old Valaam. In 1994, they took 52 Americans to help in the restoration of the monastic buildings on Holy Island. In 2017, the returned with some of the same fellow travelers along with two dozen college aged youth visiting Russia for the first time. In 2019, they returned to Greece with the two oldest of their four children. This pilgrimage focused on introducing their children to the great saints of Athens (St. Paul, Acropolis, Mars Hill, Hieromartyr Gregory V, St. Philothea, etc.), Thessoloniki (St. Demetrios, St. Gregory Palamas, St. Theodora, etc.), Ormylia, and Mount Athos.

Being from a convert family received into the Antiochian Archdiocese, ordained in Jerusalem, having traveled to Orthodox Europe, Russia, and Greece, serving for a decade premaritally with Palestinians and Jordanians, then a decade on loan to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, with many friends in ROCOR, hosting a Romanian hieromonk and spiritual son of Elder Justin Parvu in his home for a year, and having spiritual children who are American, Hispanic, Russian, Greek, Ukrainian, Romanian, German, Arabic, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Danish, and Finns, Dr. Thaddaeus is grateful to be a very well-rounded Orthodox Christian priest with a multi-faceted cultural perspective.