Orthodox Church May Set Up Alliance with Catholics

Posted on: Monday, November 26, 2007 at OrthodoxEurope.org:

Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad: Orthodox Church May Set Up Alliance with Catholics

The Moscow Patriarchate has noticed the intensification of its contacts with the Catholics during Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificate and suggested that alliance between the two churches could theoretically be set up in the future.

“After Benedict XVI was elected pope and declared the development of dialogue with the Orthodox Church among the priorities of his pontificate, bilateral relations between our churches have noticeably enlivened,” Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, the head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations, said in a report he presented at an inter-religious conference in Naples.

Both the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Churches “understand more clearly today than they have ever done before the importance of their joint testimony to the secular world about Christian values, which this world is trying to marginalize,” Metropolitan Kirill said.

He noted that the proposal to set up a Catholic-Orthodox alliance produced mixed reaction in the Protestant world. However, he said, this proposal is based on the objective tendency towards deeper cooperation between Catholics and Orthodox and does not presuppose an alliance “against someone.” “As regards the so-called alliance, I do not think that we should talk about some inter-Christian organization today, although it would be wrong to absolutely rule out the establishment of such an organization,” Metropolitan Kirill said.

Under the word “alliance”, he specified, one may understand “the possibility of a more coordinated and structured interaction between the Churches, primarily in their relations with the secular world and non-Christian religions. For a successful dialogue with the others there should be from the very outset a higher level of agreement among Churches and Christian communities than the one that exists today in the framework of the ecumenical dialogue.” For example, according to Metropolitan Kirill, it is unlikely that the full-scale dialogue between Christians and Muslims which is so necessary today will be successful “while deep contradictions remain among Christians in the sphere of anthropology and ethics.”

The doors of such an alliance between the Orthodox and Catholic believers “cannot be categorically closed to our Protestant brothers,” Metropolitan Kirill said.

A New Site

An interesting new site out there: Early Church Texts. The site is well organized and is a growing collection of links to early Church texts both in the original languages and English translation. Well worth the look.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

hat tip: Mike Aquilina of The Way of the Fathers.

Orthodox Patriarch Accepts Papal Primacy?

While I need to find the rest of the story, or better the complete interview, the following report from Catholic World News is certainly interesting.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

29-November-2007 — Catholic World News Brief

Rome, Nov. 28, 2007 (CWNews.com) - Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople has said that he is prepared to recognize the primacy of the Pope–although he does not accept the Catholic position on the implications of that primacy.

In an interview with a Bulgarian television network, the Orthodox leader– who is himself recognized as the “first among equals” in the Orthodox world– indicated his support for a statement released by the joint Catholic-Orthodox theological commission at an October meeting in Ravenna, Italy. That statement had recalled that during the first Christian millennium, the Bishop of Rome was recognized as the foremost of the patriarchs.

Patriarch Bartholomew went on to say, however, that he does not believe the primacy enjoyed by the Pope in the early centuries of Christianity included authority over other patriarchs. The primacy of Rome, he explained, involved precedence of honor rather than disciplinary status over the world’s bishops.

The Occult and Demonic

You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it (Jn 8:44).

At their request, I am speaking this evening (29 November 2007) at St John the Baptist Orthodox Church (OCA) parish here in the Youngstown area. My topic, again by request, is the occult and the demonic. I would hardy call myself expert or even knowledgeable about such matters. Frankly, I’m not sure anyone is, because, given their nature, I don’t think anyone can be. After almost seven years in northern California, I am certainly acquainted with the topic however.

Some 75% of the adults in the part of California where we lived and served have no religious affiliation at all. While Roman Catholics are the largest single religious group, the vast majority of the population that identified themselves as Christians are Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, or some form of contemporary Evangelical Christianity. What unites all of these groups is an absolute absence of any commitment to even a vaguely recognizable adherence to the historical Christian understanding of baptism. In many cases, especially in the Jehovah Witness and Evangelical Christian communities, there is an explicit rejection of the sacramental character of baptism.

What this meant for me is that, for the first time in my life, I lived where almost no one I met was baptized. Quite literally, I served as a priest surrounded by a truly, pagan (and not simply, non-Christian) culture more widespread and deeply rooted than many other places in the world. In addition to the almost absolute absence of baptized Christians, many, many people engaged in some form of occult activity.

I met Wiccans, self-professed vampires, and practitioners of the art of black magic. All of this was highly sexualized and often associated with drug and alcohol abuse. Very quickly I began to think of middle aged New Agers as quaint. Or at least they seemed so in comparison to many of those often (but not always) adolescents and young adults who came through the door of my church. Sadly, a significant number of those involved in the occult also professed to be Christians. Usually (though again not always) these people were in a charismatic or Pentecostal congregation. Sadder still in more than one or two cases, the person was an Orthodox Christian.

What I found most distressing though were not those who dabbled in the occult. Yes, certainly such activity is spiritually, psychologically, and spiritually dangerous. Typically an interest in the occult reflects more immaturity then it does a serious commitment. No, what I found frightening was the number of people whose interest in the occult led them deeper and deeper into demonic activity.

For most of us our view of the demonic is informed more by Hollywood and the popular media rather than the Scriptures, the witness of the Church or any firsthand experience. Looking back on my childhood and early teen years, I would certainly have to include myself in the former category. I grew up not only on the classic horror movies of the 30’s and 40’s, but also the schlock, and shock horror of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. Like many, I read horror novels (especially Stephen King) and comics, played with Ouija boards and read my daily horoscope in the newspaper. Thank God, by the time I got to college, I put all that behind me. Or so I thought.

When I moved to Shasta County I discovered all this again. This time though the occult was not frivolous entertainment, the chosen life commitment of men and women I met on a daily basis.

Jesus calls Satan the father of lies. When our Savior says this He isn’t simply saying that the devil says untrue things. Demonic lies are often mostly true. This is where they get their power to deceive. St Augustine says that evil is the absence of a good which should be present. Evil is also the presence of a good which should be absent. While not absolute, human beings tend toward the former, the demonic toward the latter. Satan brings disorder with him—the word diabolic (from Greek, “throw across,” from dia- “across, through” + ballein “to throw”) carries within itself the connotation of division, disorder, chaos. It is the opposition of symbolic, (from syn- “together” + stem of ballein “to throw”) or that which throws together, or brings about a union (since they unite us to Christ, the sacraments are “symbols” in the etymological sense of the word).

The devil’s lies are twisted. If he can through his lies he causes us to doubt or reject what we know to be good, and true, and beautiful, and just. The temptations of the devil, and I saw this again and again in California, is not so much that the devil tells us things which are untrue. It is rather more the case that he tells us the truth, untruly. Origen’s words about the devil are applicable to the whole of the demonic realm: “And the reason why truth is not in him is that he has been deceived and accepts lies, and he has himself been deceived by himself.” This is why, Origen concludes, the devil “is considered to be worse than the rest of these who are deceived, since they are deceived by him, but he creates his own deception himself.”

St Augustine reminds us that Christ does not say “‘The devil was naturally a stranger to the truth’ but that ‘The devil did not remain in the truth.’” The devil falls because “he refused to submit to his Creator and proudly exulted as if in a private lordship of his own. In this way he was deceived and deceiving.” To encounter the demonic is to encounter a twisted fabric of truth offered in the service of falsehoods; freedom in the service of slavery; life, happiness, faith, hope and love in the service of death, sorrow, doubt, despair and hatred. The devil is a unity that service chaos.

The Apostle Paul reminds us that “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12). St Jerome tells us in his commentary on Ephesians that

Satan has cleverly transformed himself into an angel of light. He is striving to persuade us to regard him as a messenger of goodness. This is how he throws his full weight into the struggle. He employs deceptive signs and lying omens. He sets before us every possible ruse of evil. Then, when he has so ensnared us that we trust him, he says to us, ‘Thus says the Lord.’ This is not flesh and blood deceiving us. It is not a typical human temptation. It is the work of principalities and powers, the rulers of darkness and spiritual wickedness.

There are two responses to this that we should avoid.

First, we might want to response with anxiety, or fear, or even terror and panic. While understandable, these are simply distractions. St Teresa of Ávila, the great reformer of monastic life in the West, says that we ought not to fear the devil because he is a poor and pitiful creature who does not even know how to love. Again, as Origen points out, the devil and the whole of the demonic order have first and foremost deceived themselves. There is no need for anxiety; much less is there any reason for fear, or terror, or panic.

The one thing I learned in my ministry with those who opened themselves to the occult and the demonic is that this whole darker realm is powerless against Christ and those who are in Christ. The demons, St Anthony the Great teaches, have only that power over us that God grants them. Any power they have beyond tempting us, they have because we have given it to them. Nothing the demons would tempt us with is true or will come true. If God gave them leave to do more than tempt us, then—greedy beings that they are—they would do that and leave behind in scorn even the possibility of doing us the lesser harm.

Second, and this for many years was my shortcoming more than the first, we ought not to dismiss St Paul’s observation that we fight against evil spiritual beings. We ought not to doubt that there is evil. But this evil is not in the world, it comes from outside the world. Everything good in our life comes to us by God’s grace, that is from outside of us. In a similar fashion everything wicked and evil comes from outside of us, that is, from the devil. In neither case are we without freedom or responsibility. Rather, in both cases we are called to exercise our true freedom and responsibility. Our freedom is the freedom to respond—to say “Amen!” or “No!” since in the face of divine grace and demonic temptations, both words are possibilities for us.

Curiously the more I realize that sin is first and foremost the human ratification of demonic deceptions, the easier it is for me to be both compassionate with others in their weakness, but also firmer in my unwillingness to collude with their sin.

Who among us has not been deceived? If even the devil has been deceived by the devil, who among us can truthfully say that he or she is free from deception? We must understand that we have all been deceived, and, in our own way, been the deceivers of self and others. This must be grasped if we are to have any compassion for each. At the same time we need to grasp our own sinfulness so that we do not, by our very compassion for one another, ratify and collude with evil. To paraphrase St John Chrysostom’s words about the priest, more of us have fallen from compassion then lust.

Understanding and compassion are not meant to rob human beings of our freedom and responsibility—after all we are not simply victims, but also all of us victimizers. A true compassion and understanding will always see human freedom and responsibility within a wider context. Too often, and in an ironic imitation of the devil, we imagine that we human beings have “a private lordship,” that somehow our rule of ourselves is absolute. It isn’t. To quote Bob Dylan,

You may be an ambassador to England or France,
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance,
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world,
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls.

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

“The battle is not against flesh and blood or ordinary temptations,” St Jerome observes. “The scene is the war of flesh against spirit. We are being incited to become entrapped in the works of the flesh.” And what are these works?

Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God (Gal 5:19-21).

Compare the works of the flesh to the works of those who say “Amen!” to Christ: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law” (vv. 22-23).

In the end, the only real temptation I’ve ever encountered in my experiences with those who associate with the occult and the demonic is to forsake the “fruit of the Spirit.” Lose that, and you cannot stand against the powers of darkness. As St Augustine says, “These spiritual fruits reign in one in whom sins does not reign. These good things reign if they are so delightful that they themselves uphold the mind in its trails from falling into consent to sin. For whatever gives us delight, this we necessarily perform.”

The whole of the Church’s sacramental and ascetical life has as a primary goal the fostering in us a delight in virtue and in the fruit of the Spirit—and in the face of this delight the occult and the demonic are revealed as they truly are, impotent.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

My Superpower

Your Superpower Should Be Manipulating Electricity

You’re highly reactive, energetic, and super charged. If the occasion calls for it, you can go from 0 to 60 in a split second. But you don’t harness your energy unless you truly need to. And because of this, people are often surprised by what you are capable of. Why you would be a good superhero: You have the stamina to fight enemies for days Your biggest problem as a superhero: As with your normal life, people would continue to underestimate you

What Should Your Superpower Be?

A Man of Sorrows

In a comment on a recent post that examined the relationship between the life of the Church and the American character, Magdalena (a regular commentator on this blog) asks:

What interpersonal and social skills do you feel a priest should be required to master?

As I thought about the question, I looked to my own experience and to the fathers of the Church.

In a sermon on Matthew’s Gospel, St John Chrysostom says that:

The person characterized by humility, gentleness, mercy and righteousness does not build a fence around good deeds. Rather, that one ensures that these good fountains overflow for the benefit of others. One who is pure of heart and a peacemaker, even when persecuted for the sake of the truth, orders his way of life for the common good.

Of all the things I think a priest needs, the ability to keep his attention focused on “the common good” of the community he serves is most important.

Contrary to what we often assume (and how some priests behave) the priest does not serve the common good because he has some privileged knowledge about God’s will for the community. This is far from the case in fact.

Often the priest has less knowledge about what is going on in the parish then anyone. As a priest, I have come to know some communities and some parishioners very well. I have to admit that there are other communities and parishioners, I hardly knew at all. Sometimes this reflected indifference on either my part or theirs, but more often it simply reflected the inherent limitations of being human.

So if the priest doesn’t “know better” or “know more” about what God wants from the parish, how does he serve the common good? What I’ve learned as priest is that I serve the common good first and foremost by my willingness to abide with people when they suffer. Let me explain.

Someone once asking me: “What do you like best about being a priest?”

I answered hearing confessions, sick calls and funerals. This surprised the person and they asked why I thought these were the best part of the priesthood. I told the person that everyone gets to go to weddings and baptisms, but the priest is the only one who is invited into those moments when a person stands vulnerable and ashamed before God. At that moment the priest is called to be a witness to God’s mercy, love and forgiveness. It is nprecisely those moments in our life when we feel most estranged from God that the priest realizes most fully his office. As a result it is only through his willingness to abide with others in their suffering that the priest can hope to serve the common good of the parish.

Thinking about this I am reminded of the words of the prophet Isaiah. He says about the Messiah:

He is despised and rejected by men,/A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief./And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;/He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.//Surely He has borne our griefs/ And carried our sorrows;/Yet we esteemed Him stricken,/Smitten by God, and afflicted.//But He was wounded for our transgressions,/He was bruised for our iniquities;/ The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,/ And by His stripes we are healed.//All we like sheep have gone astray;/ We have turned, every one, to his own way;/ And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.//He was oppressed and He was afflicted,/Yet He opened not His mouth;/ He was led as a lamb to the slaughter,/ And as a sheep before its shearers is silent,/ So He opened not His mouth (53.3-7).

Taking Isaiah at his word, and Christ as our model, the priest is despised, rejected, stricken, smitten, afflicted, wounded, bruised, chastised, oppressed, slaughtered, and silent. In a phrase, the priest is a man of sorrows.

This understanding is different than the image often presented to young men considering the priesthood. The vision of the priesthood is often glorious and noble, but just as often divorced from the witness of the Suffering Servant so beloved by Isaiah.

And Isaiah offers us a view of the priesthood than that which is typically expected by the parish and the bishop. Not unreasonably, we want priest to be well-educated, knowledgeable men who can preach, teach, and counsel.

While these are important, they aer all at the primary task of the priest: To bear with people in their suffering. The priest is a man of sorrows because he is called by Christ to suffer alongside people and bear witness to the mercy, love and forgiveness of God. And this he does especially in those moments when people are most in need of God and least likely to reach out to Him.

And this witness is always personal, it always points to human weakness and suffering. Suffering especially has a way of binding us together and it will bind the priest and the person together. Ideally this bond is a shared (if imperfect) openness to God’s grace. If it isn’t then, then human weakness and suffering come to dominate every thought, gesture, word and meeting. In the latter case, the priest soon discovers that even those who bear the Name of Christ will turn away from, and even turn against, him. And so, in his willingness to bear loneliness and even isolation and exile in the midst of the community, the priest is again a man of sorrows.

Again, because the witness is always personal, the priest’s witness to the redeeming presence of God requires from him a willingness not to ignore, minimize or exploit the weakness of others. From my own experience I have discovered that this requires not only that I root out sin from my life (a never ending task to be sure), but that I also root out the myriad socially sanctioned lapses that allow me to overlook, and at time even exploit, other people.

The priest is called to suffer for his people, by suffering with his people. This suffering doesn’t mean that the priest allows himself to be beat up—this serve no good purpose for the parishioner and only drains the priest of the strength he needs to care for others. The real suffering of the priest, the one “skill” he needs I think above all, is the ability to stand with people, often silently, and remind them that their suffering, their failure, and even their sinfulness, does not exhaust the meaning of their life.

And more importantly, he must bear witness to the great, redemptive truth that human physical and moral weakness does not negate the mercy, love and forgiveness of God.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

10,000 Hits!

Hurray! and Glory to God For All Things!

This site broke 10,000 hits today!

If it weren’t the Christmas Fast, I’d say ice cream for everyone!

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Because It Is Always Good To Laugh: Two Cats Talking

With a hat tip to Clement Ferguson!

First, watch the video:

Then watch the translation here: Cat Talking, Translation.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Our ‘Post-ecclesiological’ Age

At the web site of the Exarchate of Parishes of Russian Tradition in Western Europe (Ecumenical Patriarchate), there is a very interesting article “Our ‘Post-ecclesiological’ Age” by Archimandrite Grigorios (Papathomas). Archimandrite Grigorios is Professor of Canon Law and Dean of the St Sergius Theological Institute in Paris. According to the summary provided on the web site, Papathomas “argues that we live in a post-ecclesiological age due to our loss of sense of the local church belonging in a particular place. He also analyses the ways in which overlapping ‘co-territorial’ Churches define themselves by use of particular rites (Catholic), by confession (Protestant), or, in the case of the Orthodox, by ethnic origin.” The article is on the longish side (22 pages) but well worth the effort to read. To give you a sense of his argument, let me offer you his conclusion. He writes that

In our multicultural societies today cultural demands are more comprehensible than the feeble ontological answers provided by the Churches. The Churches will have to choose whether to preserve the Pauline ecclesiology of the New Testament that guided them for fifteen centuries, or to give in to the confessional, ritualist, cultural or nationalist demands of this post-ecclesiological age. These demands have unquestionably determined the established ecclesiology of this present age – and by the look of things - of the future as well. In the latter case, the Church of Christ will be the fifth wheel of the wagon, tragically trailing behind the worldly progress of the nations rather than leading them along the path to the eschaton already traced out by the Resurrection (Rev 22:20). The fault will lie with the Churches themselves.

I would encourage you to download and read the entire article. One of the great challenges facing the Orthodox Church, especially in the United States and Western Europe, is the multiplication of ethnic jurisdictions.

Papathomas’s analysis is spot I think. The reality we face is that Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant Christians have all embraced a radically unbiblical ecclesiology. Fr Grigorios’s theme is also addressed in a less historical, more systematic fashion by Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) in his work Being as Communion, and earlier (from a more liturgical viewpoint) throughout the work of the late Fr Alexander Schmemann. All three argue that the Church of Jesus Christ is always the Church of a particular place and that the celebration of the Eucharist—whatever the liturgical rite used—is a gathering of the Body in that locale.

The historical, canonical, liturgical and dogmatic implications of this view of ecclesiology are beyond me I’m afraid. My own interests are more pastoral and applicative. As we discuss in these pages the life of the parish in the tradition of the Orthodox Church, I cannot help wondering: How well do we express even the “limited” fullness of even those who are gathered for a parochial celebration of the Eucharist? Do we make room for the diverse gifts, spiritual as well as cultural, that are present in a given parish?

Often it seems to me, we try to limit the gifts to those that fit our preconception of the parish. Usually this means keeping the parish’s Greek, or Russian, or Serbian flavor. But, and just as often, it can mean keeping the American flavor by excluding, or at least limiting, all things Greek, or Russian, or Serbian. My concern here is not ethnic or linguistic per se. Rather I offer these examples because they highlight what I would call (for lack of a better term) a pastoral myopia. We can see what is close to us, what we recognize essential like “us.” But what is different, what requires from me that I stretch myself that I transcend my own understanding of the Church—that I can’t see so well.

In the Parable of the Sower, Jesus talks about the word of God being scattered like seed. Different areas bring different harvests—but the seed that fell “good ground and yielded a crop that sprang up, increased and produced: some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred” (Mark 4.8). In His explanation of the parable Jesus tells us explicitly that the seed “sown on good ground, [represent] those who hear the word, accept it, and bear fruit: some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred” (v. 20).

When we exclude the spiritual or culture gifts of others, we not only dishonor them, we rebel against Christ and condemn ourselves since it is Christ Who gave those gifts through the Holy Spirit. One of the first steps I think to bring our ecclesiological practice in line with the biblical witness and the canonical tradition is learning, on the parish level, to make room for each other and the different gifts we bring. This means more than simply passive acceptance or non-interference; there are no roommates in the House of God. We need to actively seek out and cultivate our personal gifts and the gifts given to the other members of our parish. And given that multicultural reality of modern society is increasingly fragmented, this means finding a way in our parishes to be together from our different cultural backgrounds without falling not tribalism or covert hostility is a necessary part of our evangelistic mission.

As always, your questions, thoughts and comments are not only welcome, but actively sought.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Which Father Am I?

You’re Origen! Check out Origen, Prayer, Exhortation to Martyrdom for more information on Origen. http://tinyurl.com/2nkwwo You do nothing by half-measures. If you’re going to read the Bible, you want to read it in the original languages. If you’re going to teach, you’re going to reach as many souls as possible, through a proliferation of lectures and books. If you’re a guy and you’re going to fight for purity … well, you’d better hide the kitchen shears. Find out which Church Father you are at The Way of the Fathers!