Friday, December 23, A.D. 2011

Nichols on the Orthodox

For Christians who follow the new calendar, I wish you a Merry Christmas this upcoming weekend. Enjoy the feast.

Last week, I came across a sixteen year old short article by Dominican scholar Aidan Nichols on the mutual need of the other by Rome and the Orthodox: “A Catholic View of Orthodoxy.” Having already read some of his works, I knew of and respected Fr. Aidan. He is my kind of papist, meaning that he has a firm grounding in Eastern patristic theology and appears to conceive of religion in ways that make sense to me. He is not the secularized, horizontal, politically focused Latin whom Ivan Fyodorovich’s Grand Inquisitor represents. Rather, the brilliant Dominican is a traditional Christian, though one with intellectual commitments to Rome’s unfortunate ways.

In the article, written shortly after the liberation of Orthodox Europe, Fr. Aidan lists various benefits that engagement and communion with the Orthodox would bring to Rome. He ends by mentioning how submission to the Roman papacy is necessary for the Orthodox. In this, he criticizes the cultural and national connections in Orthodox Christendom. I agree that Roman administrative order might be useful in some ways for the Orthodox. The lack of central direction has obvious disadvantages for resolving certain canonical issues. The decentralized episcopal authority of Orthodoxy, however, has concomitant advantages that can be seen in confederal secular arrangements. Local infections of disorder or confusion might take longer to heal, but they are less likely to spread in the current Orthodox model. In the absence of a supervening external power, provincial problems might linger, but their resolution is more likely to come about organically and slowly in the least disruptive way. Time and concession to facts, not meddlesome prelates from afar, arbitrate where curial bureaucrats are not to be found. Most importantly, convention, which in an ecclesial context is chiefly the apostolic and patristic tradition, rules when men have little authority over other men. The Athenian Stranger in the Laws argues that ancient law once governed the Athenians, but then those Greeks lusted after unbridled freedom and devolved into a society wherein the mob rules. Human will, often a beast of caprice, thus trumped the settled principles of the forefathers. Liberals discount such convention because they notice some aspects to be false or inadequate. What they fail to realize is that the fleeting whims of contemporary powers are much less stable and wise. With respect to the Church, convention is not simply the accumulated wisdom of past ages; rather it is the teaching of Christ, passed down through his apostles and the fathers. It is shameful hubris to trade such direction for the faddish yearnings of an immature and foolish generation that has drowned in the confusion of so many apostate teachers. The Latin response is that their magisterium is like the true philosopher who can see the really real; their pope is the philosopher king who stands above tradition with its necessarily inflexible limitations. I agree that it would be better to live in the Golden Age of the Republic, when men were ruled by gods, but such is not an option. The bishops might be vicars of Christ, but they are not infallible representatives. The Latins are simply wrong. Episcopal synods may err, and it is better to have a Christian people that is aware of such a possibility. It is also preferable that their errors and the subsequent madness that follows are limited in scope. A global episcopal monarchy, as has developed in the Roman Church, multiplies those dangers. We Orthodox are wise to reject the papal deal; the cost is too great for the benefits gained.

Furthermore, I disagree with Fr. Aidan’s criticism of the Orthodox tendency to identify culture and religion. Indeed, I do not understand the frequent complaints of Orthodox phyletism. Where are these heretical phyletists? The examples offered all seem proper to me. Fr. Aidan criticizes the Serbs for a movement that believes that Serbs have suffered collectively for providential reasons. Why may that not be so? Once, before modernism infected the Latins and fragmented their souls, the English believed that their land was a dowry for the Virgin Mother and the French believed that they were the Eldest Daughter of the Church. The Irish held that the Lord used them as a faithful remnant during the dark heathen times. Why are these claims wrong? A cursory reading of scripture or casual review of history shows that God employs men individually and collectively to advance the salvation of men. It is the modern Western soul, fraught with secularism, dualism, and individualism, that no longer understands the whole man and his place in a healthy community. Contemporary Latins often pay lip service to “inculturation,” “engaging the culture,” and “social solidarity,” and yet they criticize the Orthodox when we manifest those traits in unmodern ways that offend their perhaps unconscious “Enlightenment” liberal principles. Then, such Westerners turn from being open engagers of culture to latter day Tertullians who dismiss worldly wisdom and stress that Christians are to be a special people apart from the world.

Posted by Joseph on Friday, December 23, A.D. 2011
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Monday, October 10, A.D. 2011

Another Example of How the West is West

Recently, there was an interesting comment thread about infant communion on Fr. John Zuhlsdorf’s post, “US Catholic gets nutty about Bp. Olmsted of Phoenix and Communion under both kinds.” Occasionally, WDTPRS readers indulge in Latin triumphalism when differences between the Roman Church and the Eastern Churches arise in discussions. More frequently, though, Fr. Z.‘s many righteous Extraordinary Form peeps simply exhibit a Western mindset that I find alien and troubling. This mindset predates contemporary ecumenical gatherings; it lies close to the Western religious soul. Accordingly, a commentator on the thread quoted the Council of Trent, and the selection exhibits nicely a point that I wish to make:

Chapter IV.

That Little Children Are Not Bound to Sacramental Communion.

Finally, this same Holy Synod teaches, that little children, who have not attained to the use of reason, are not by any necessity obliged to the Sacramental Communion of the Eucharist: forasmuch as, having been regenerated by the laver of Baptism, and being incorporated with Christ, they cannot, at that age, lose the grace which they have already acquired of being the sons of God. Not therefore, however, is antiquity to be condemned, if, in some places, it, at one time, observed that custom; for as those most Holy Fathers had a probable cause for what they did in respect of their times, so, assuredly, is it to be believed without controversy, that they did this without any necessity thereof unto salvation.

On Communion under Both Species, and on the Communion of Infants.

Canon I. If anyone saith, that, by the precept of God, or, by necessity of salvation, all and each of the faithful of Christ ought to receive both species of the Most Holy Sacrament not consecrating; let him be anathema.

Canon II. If anyone saith, that the Holy Catholic Church was not induced, by just causes and reasons, to communicate, under the species of bread only, laymen, and also clerics when not consecrating; let him be anathema.

Canon III. If anyone denieth, that Christ whole and entire – the Fountain and Author of all graces – is received under the one species of bread; because that – as some falsely assert – He is not received, according to the institution of Christ Himself, under both species; let him be anathema.

Canon IV. If anyone saith, that the Communion of the Eucharist is necessary for little children, before they have arrived at years of discretion; let him be anathema. As regards, however, those two articles, proposed on another occasion, but which have not as yet been discussed; to wit, whether the reasons by which the Holy Catholic Church was led to communicate, under the one species of bread only, laymen, and also priests when not celebrating, are in such wise to be adhered to, as that on no account is the use of the chalice to be allowed to anyone soever; and, whether, in case that, for reasons beseeming and consonant with Christian charity, it appears that the use of the chalice is to be granted to any nation or kingdom, it is to be conceded under certain conditions; and what are those conditions: this same Holy Synod reserves the same to another time, – for the earliest opportunity that shall present itself, – to be examined and defined.

The chapter concerns infant communion and the manner of partaking the Eucharist, which was the topic of the WDTPRS thread. The chapter notes that infants communed in antiquity—as they still do in the Orthodox Church—but it states that this is not necessary for them because they have not attained the age of reason and cannot bring sin upon themselves, their original sin having been cleaned through baptism. The implication is that Christians participate in the Eucharist as a means to acquire salvific grace that one only needs in response to one’s sins and shortcomings. I find such perverse. The Eucharist is the central act of the Christian life—why should children of the Church not participate? The decision basically states that we only commune because we sin.

We smell here that focus on atonement that pervades Western spirituality. According to this tendency, God does not really adopt us to share in his life; he simply throws us a life raft and rescues us from our own ill doing. Certainly, we are saved, and we know from what we are saved, but for what are we saved? The Roman Church has maintained the apostolic message, but large swaths of Western piety and theology appear remarkably unconcerned about the ultimate goal of man’s salvation.

Moreover, there is a common and disquieting tendency in papism to treat the Christian life as necessary chores. One sees this with episcopal dispenations. Bishops excuse their flocks from aspects of Christian devotion or practices as if they were not intrisically valuable but only externally required as acts of obedience. Of course, some dispensations make sense because they allow for one good to trump another good, and pastorally minded shepherds look after the good of their rational sheep. Yet, most dispensations of Latin bishops seem to suggest that the liturgy, confession, and traditional piety are necessary unpleasantries that Christians must tolerate, as a patient must tolerate injections or nasty tasting medicine. We hear the same attitude when the Latins boast of thirty minute masses in the same way that a man might express relief that he only had to wait a short time at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Worshiping the King of all holds a similar place in one’s life as the burden of getting new license tags? Likewise, why should infants commune if they need not do so to avoid hell? We would not want them to experience any extra grace or closeness with the Lord that is not absolutely needful.

Western minimalism does not only spring from Luther and his rebels.

Posted by Joseph on Monday, October 10, A.D. 2011
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Thursday, August 11, A.D. 2011

Anti-Christian Bigotry

Yesterday, I commended the Israelis for performing Wagner in “Jews at Bayreuth.” Today, however, I have nothing but scorn for the Jerusalem Post‘s anti-Christian screed, “A Christian scholar on ‘why antisemitism, why the Holocaust?’” David Turner reviews William Nicholls’ Christian Antisemitism: A History of Hate as a pretext for attacking Christianity, proving once again that hate—a profound, blistering, ignorant hate—has a home in the hearts of many religions. Unfortunately, Turner cannot really be blamed for not knowing that the “Anglican” Nicholls, who serves as his glimpse into Christianity, hates the gospel as much as Turner. How perverse is it that Nicholl’s namesake was an Anglican divine who wrote—approvingly—of the Book of Common Prayer?

Turner’s-by-Nicholl’s major point is that Christianity is anti-Semitic because of an insecurity complex. That Jews persist strikes terror into Christians because their unbelief calls Jesus’ claims into question. The most frustrating aspects to interreligious dialogue are that people generally know very little about other people’s religions and that people generally do not even try to understand religions on their own terms. Such is obvious in this case for the Jew Turner and the heathen Nicholls, though one would think that a biblically literate Jew would know better. Was Abraham “insecure” when he noticed immoral paganism in his travels? Was Moses “insecure” when the pharaoh’s heart hardened? Were he and the judges “insecure” when the people continually rebelled? Were the Jews after the division of the kingdom “insecure” because many, perhaps most, of their brethren forsook the temple cult in Jerusalem? Were the prophets “insecure” because of idolatrous kings? I always thought that they preached God’s messages to errant and fallen people; I never considered that their prophesies resulted from “insecurity” about some of their listeners’ failing to heed God’s words.

The entire history of the Abrahamic tradition is about obedience and disobedience to God’s commands. From the garden on, we are shown again and again that some people follow God and others reject God. It is one of the most basic themes in the scriptures. Why, then, would Christians be especially “insecure” that some Jews rejected Christ? Indeed, this rejection of God’s dispensation has been the standard course in human history. Consider Noah’s project, or Job’s friends, or the Hebrews scores upon scores of times. There would have been no prophets if God’s revelations had not continuously been rejected. The new covenant of the gospel, like the previous covenants, was an occasion of disobedience for many men. It is surprising to me, even given ecumenical obstacles, that a rabbinical Jew would fail to notice this.

Curiously, Turner notes, “But Nicholls’ reserves his harshest criticism for Martin Luther, a father of his own reformed church.” From the outside, we might say that Luther was a father of the Anglican religion, but many Anglicans would reject this. It is not an important point, though it further shows Turner’s ignorance of Christian history. And that is a mighty ignorance, tracing, as it does, the holocaust to the gospel:

What is to be done? Even assuming that Christianity would want to repent its two thousand years of Jew-hatred resulting most recently in what is not likely to be the West’s final effort at a Final Solution to its Jewish Problem: Is reform even possible? According to Professor Nicholls the likelihood is negligible. On page 168 he writes, “Christian anti-Judaism is not a later distortion of an originally pure religion. It is embedded in the foundation documents of the faith.”

I deal with the history a bit in “Those Jews” and elsewhere, but no such reasoning can be done with a man whose bigotry refuses to see a religion as anything but a tribal enemy.

Turner also exhibits the revolting rabbinical tic of thinking that only the Jews are clean and that everyone else is an unclean savage:

What, for example, would the Matthew gospel be without its dramatic rendition of the trial of Jesus: of Pilate “washing his hands” (a typically Jewish, not Pagan, custom!); of the Jews self-condemned forever as deicides.

Does he not realize that the idea of the sacred is universally connected with the idea of purity and that other people have been civilized and have believed in spiritual and bodily hygiene for ages? Christians and rabbinical Jews alike inherited this bizarre ignorance of pagans that, thousands of years later, they blithely maintain. Educated Christians seem to move past this idiocy, but rabbinical Jews with learning stubbornly seem to hold onto it. Their attachment to their chosen status is so strong, they appear to get “insecure” by the thought that other nations might wash themselves, cultivate virtue, and excel in intellectual pursuits. But then, what can be done? Hebrew chauvinism is not a later distortion of an originally pure religion. It is embedded in the foundation documents of the faith.

Turner claims that the gospel of John has Jesus refer to the Jews as Satanic:

The John gospel repeatedly describes the Jews as satanic: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do, (John 8:44).” From there it is a short step to characterizing the Jews as antichrists. John associates the Jews with Satan many more times than all three other canonical gospels combined.

Turner forgets, I suppose, that almost every agent in the gospels is Jewish, from the Theotokos to Caiaphas. Pick any prophet’s chastisements in the Hebrew scriptures, and one would interpret them as Jew hatred using the same hermeneutics.

The golden calf prize for asininity, one kil’ayim of a metaphor, goes to this statement:

And assuming a wave of remorse, a universal need to express penance, what then would remain of Christianity if indeed it did agree to do so? According to Nicholls, “Once all the anti-Jewish elements have been removed from Christianity, what is left turns out to be Judaism (p. 431).”

Turner cannot be blamed for Nicholl’s apostate remark, but he is a fool for using someone like him as his source for Christianity. I assume that his mistake was not done in bad faith. A sane man cannot be expected to understand the insanity that Nicholl’s represents. Turner then goes on to speak of Rome’s changes toward rabbinical Jews, about which I am ignorant. I would not be surprised if Rome had muddled its theological waters, but Christians must be clear that Jesus Christ is not the Lord of the goyim only but of all mankind, first to the Jew, and then to the Greek. Yet, it is this very univeralism that horrifies the rabbinical community, and they readily associate evangelism with the genocide of the holocaust. Even Christian Jews often have this mentality. Maybe, it’s that special status “insecurity.” We wouldn’t want the dogs to get any of God’s crumbs, would we?

Posted by Joseph on Thursday, August 11, A.D. 2011
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Thursday, June 2, A.D. 2011

The Watchtower on Ascension Day

Happy Feast of the Ascension!

On this holy day, I offer a delightful post from Perry Robinson on his Energetic Procession site: “The Open Door.” Robinson recounts a morning meeting with some visiting Jehovah’s Witnesses who had knocked on his door. The story is a fine example of grassroots apologetics.

Oddly enough, I owe some of my theological development to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. In my early teen years, I participated in local Baptist missionary efforts wherein I had the chance to see youth pastors and other “soul winners” engage all sorts of folks on religious matters. We sometimes happened upon Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the Russelites were surprisingly receptive to having a religious discussion with strangers in their living rooms. One evening, my youth pastor and I visited the home of a Jehovah’s Witness elder. The Baptist and the J.W. had a lengthy doctrinal debate, replete with scores of references to holy writ. It was evident to me that both men were extraordinarily familiar with their scriptures, but they continued to argue past each other because they interpreted the same texts so differently. It was on that rather chilly winter night that I realized how utterly indefensible sola scriptura really was. My proclivities for Protestantism waned quickly afterward.

It is funny how groups as disparate as the Jesuits, Reformed Jewish rabbis, and Jehovah’s Witnesses played important roles in my conversion to Orthodoxy. Providence uses all available tools.

Posted by Joseph on Thursday, June 2, A.D. 2011
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Monday, May 30, A.D. 2011

My Kind of Ecumenism

George Michalopulos commented on decision of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. to loosen sexual ethical restrictions on their clergy by posting a video of the P.C.U.S.A.‘s General Assembly last year. The video features Archpriest Siarhei Hardun of Belarus, who addressed the assembly as an “Ecumenical Advisory Delegate.” It is an example of how ecumenical engagement can be done without betraying the faith.

Even though Fr. Siarhei does not speak English eloquently, he testified nobly and in charity.

Posted by Joseph on Monday, May 30, A.D. 2011
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Wednesday, May 25, A.D. 2011

Branch of the Harlot

In case you missed it while practicing your heathen ways during Bright Week (which itself obviously originates in pagan celebrations of devilish poetry in honor of the Norse god Bragi), Bible believing and soul saving site Galatians 4 posted an important entry warning everyone about Mystery Babylonianism: “The Orthodox Church: Branch of the Harlot.”

What I have always found interesting about the Orthodox church, is while Catholicism in America had to water itself down a bit to entice the Protestants into it’s doors and for the ecumenical movement especially post Vatican II, and while both have an endless array of pagan and occult traditions in the Orthodox churches they are quite more blatant, there you can see the Eastern paganism in all it’s shining non-stripped away false “glory”, the Alexandrian cult fully married to a veneer of Christianity.

Those damned Easterners just shamelessly like to throw their idol worshiping weirdness right in your face!

Sigh.

Among other things, the writer is upset at iconostases that separate the faithful from the altar, noting,

This is recreating the “temple”, ignoring the fact the Jesus Christ rent the veil from top to bottom, there was to be no more temples, inner courts or laity vs clergy set-ups anymore.

We do call our worship places temples, and we see them as a continuation of the Hebrews’ temple worship, though universalized through the Cross, spread by the Great Commission, and perfected in spirit and in truth.

Moreover, I suppose that the fellow does not know about the symbolism of the templon’s Beautiful Gate during the liturgy. For the holy doors open during the parts of the liturgy when God “reaches” out to man, as with scriptural revelation and, most importantly, the Eucharist. Once “Christ is in our midst,” the doors and the curtain remain ever open. The removal of the curtain right before Communion signifies the rending of the temple veil.

The rest of the entry is typical Protestant criticism. At least, the confused chap rightly rejects the World Council of Churches [sic].

Posted by Joseph on Wednesday, May 25, A.D. 2011
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Thursday, May 12, A.D. 2011

Pope Attacks Pathologies of Faith and Reason

Happy birthday to my brother, Aaron!

As Aarons labors in the papio-educational complex, it is fitting for today that I offer Fr. Z.‘s insightful comments on Samuel Gregg’s recent article about il papa, “Benedict XVI: In No One’s Shadow.” Gregg writes:

Christianity, Benedict argued at Regensburg, integrated Biblical faith, Greek philosophy, and Roman law, thereby creating the “foundation of what can rightly be called Europe.” This suggests that any weakening of this integration of faith and reason would mean the West would start losing its distinctive identity. In short, a West without a Christianity that integrates faith and reason is no longer the West.

Today, Benedict added, we see what happens when faith and reason are torn asunder. Reason is reduced to scientism and ideologies of progress, thereby rending reasoned discussion of anything beyond the empirical impossible. Faith dissolves into sentimental humanitarianism, an equally inadequate basis for rational reflection. Neither of these emaciated facsimiles of their originals can provide any coherent response to the great questions pondered by every human being: “Who am I?” “Where did I come from?” “Where am I going?”

So what’s the way back? To Benedict’s mind, it involves affirming that what he recently called creative reason lies at the origin of everything.

Fr. Z. notes [in bold]:

Of course none of this fits into sound-bites. “Pope Attacks Pathologies of Faith and Reason!” is unlikely to be a newspaper headline anytime soon. [But it has in the blogosphere.  Thanks, Mr. Gregg.] That, however, doesn’t nullify the accuracy of Benedict’s analysis. It just makes communicating it difficult in a world of diminished attention-spans and inclined to believe it has nothing to learn from history. [Again, as part of my own liturgical reflection, I note that we are dominated by distraction,and at the root of that distraction is timor mortis, which Augustine calls our hiems cotidiana. The focus on the Cross is what cracks that distraction and brings us into touch with the mystery which both terrifies and attracts. If liturgical worship doesn’t accomplish this over time, it has failed.]

Gregg’s article appears in The American Spectator—surprising material for a political rag.

Posted by Joseph on Thursday, May 12, A.D. 2011
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Friday, April 29, A.D. 2011

Hadley Arkes, Yet Another

Happy Bright Friday! Christ is risen!

Touchstone Magazine posted an interesting interview of Hadley Arkes by Marcia Segelstein: “Courage & Conversion.” In the interview, the professor talks about natural law, the wayward tendencies of man, and his teacher, Leo Strauss. Unlike many of Strauss’ disciples, Arkes has chosen a more religious form of return, and he answers Segelstein’s questions about his conversion to Christianity:

MS: In the column you wrote the day after you were received into the Catholic Church, you talked about courage. As a Jew, did it take a unique kind of courage to become a Christian?

HA: I went on to explain in those comments that I did not see myself as abandoning the Jewish people.

MS: But as a Jew, was it harder?

HA: Theologically I don’t think it was. As Michael Novak [his sponsor] said, “When you’re Catholic, you’re at least Jewish.” Everything in the New Testament is predicated on the Old. As part of the Creed, we accept the prophets: “God spoke through the prophets.” It is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I asked my wife how many people sitting in a synagogue in Amherst believe that God made a covenant with Abraham. And she said, “Actually believe it? Probably a third.” And I said that every serious Catholic I know does. So on one level it may not be as difficult as people suppose.

But on the level of family, it is quite difficult. I know that my parents could not have understood this. I loved my grandparents very much and I have a sense that a decision like this would have been very hurtful to them, maybe because they wouldn’t have understood it. For the most part, my family around me has been understanding and sympathetic.

Certain members of the family see it as a defection. And this is really very strange because some scoff at religion and profess to be atheists. How is it that a Jewish atheist is not thought to have left the Jewish people, but the Jewish Catholic has? Here I am affirming the God of Israel and his laws. The Jewish atheist rejects them. So which one of us is leaving the Jewish people? I’m certainly not defecting from the Jewish people and I’m certainly not even defecting from Judaism because I think Judaism is carried over into the Church. I haven’t felt less Jewish being in the Church. I think I learn more about the Jewish traditions every day at Mass.

Religious rabbinical Judaism is not dead in America, but it is ailing. It is not therefore surprising that so many of that community’s pious and wise are converting to Christianity. Not since the first century of the Great Commission have Christians been so positively focused on the rabbinical community, and their recent openness, interest, and charitable disposition toward the children of Jacob have likely made the journey easier. I suspect that most rabbinical Jews still consider Christianity through tribal lenses rather than theological ones. Such explains the reactions of Arkes’ family members and much else. Alexandrine Judaism, with its philosophical and theological emphases, readily accepted the Gospel. The rabbinical tradition, reactive against the Greco-Roman world, refused the universal messianic message as part and parcel of filthy goy corruption. Secular atheists of Hebraic lineage may appear far removed from the spirit of Jabneh, but they retain that ancient mindset, though ridiculously inconsistently. Men are always somewhat arbitrary and moved by matters of convenience when they apply their principles, especially when justifying their stance toward allies and enemies.

Posted by Joseph on Friday, April 29, A.D. 2011
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Monday, April 25, A.D. 2011

Centre Orthodoxe Russe

Happy Bright Monday! Christ is risen!

Last month, the planning commission for a new Russian Orthodox Center in Paris announced the winning design by the Arch Moscow Group. You may read about the project in Le Parisien, “Centre orthodoxe russe à Paris : voici le projet retenu” or on Muuuze, “Centre orthodoxe par SADE – Arch Group.” The Moscow based model workshop ABTB also has several models of the complex.

When Fr. Hans posted the story on the A.O.I. Observer, my interest in matters French and Russian compelled me to write: “Highly Visible Russian Church to be Built in Paris.” Here is an edited version of my comments, which allowed me to indulge the white person pleasure of mentioning one’s time abroad:

When I read about this yesterday, I had mixed emotions. It somewhat reminds me of Wright’s Greek Orthodox Church. For a contemporary structure, it is not terrible, but why do architects feel the need to dare something unprecedented? It’s a symptom of modern artistic narcissism. The temple itself actually looks normal, though covered with a lace structure. I suppose that it is a compromise, which allows the builders to justify traditional architecture. The lace structure might have solar panels; if so, it is the least ugly and obtrusive way of having such panels that I have seen. Moreover, the cover might be useful for processions on rainy days. The gardens look nice. Modern design can look less sterile and offensive when it incorporates gardens, and Paris excels at this combination, as you can see in the new parks from the last few decades.

I lived in Paris, and I know that it would have been nice to have a Russian parish on the Left Bank. Alexander Nevsky and Saint Sergius are charming but not terribly convenient for folks south of the Seine. As rue Daru continues to be under the Ecumenical Patriarch, I wonder if this new center is Moscow’s way of reasserting authority over the Russo-French community. Speaking of which, are there any plans to “reabsorb” the Russian Orthodox in Western Europe? Or is the Exarchate happy to stay under the E.P.?

[In the post, Fr. Hans shared his aversion to the Centre Pompidou.] By the way, Father, I think that most Parisians like the Centre Pompidou. It usually has a lot going on that’s free, and the fountains are interesting. It always reminded me of a hamster habitrail for people. I did have a prof that frequently complained about it, as she liked the old Beaubourg houses. What the older Parisians really hate is the destruction of Les Halles–the market that they miss much.

As I was reading various articles on the web about the new Russian Center, I was shocked at how many Frenchies were complaining in the comment sections about the “double standard” that they see where mosques are socially condemned and discouraged but this Russian Center is being celebrated. I never would have thought of that. Of course, there is no demographic threat from Russian immigrants; Eastern European hordes are not radically changing French cities. Moreover, France and Russia have had a special relationship for centuries, and aside from a few spats here and there (Shorty’s invasion of the Motherland, for example), their history has been amicable. Consider the temples that the Romanovs financed as well as the splendid Pont Alexandre III. Orthodox Russia is closer to Roman Catholic France than the alien people, religion, and ways of the Maghreb. Moreover, Russkies have not repeatedly bombed Parisian metro stations and set fire to the suburbs, and that might make people besides the Front National a bit apprehensive. Regardless, the French Left does not like to discriminate, and so they issue charges of hypocrisy.

I encountered the wonderful consequences of France’s vibrant diversity when Algerians bombed the Port Royal RER station just as I was dining with some friends at a student restaurant that overlooked the station. I also witnessed the benefits of such diversity when thugs des banlieues would occasionally assault my French copains, who would return home bruised and bloodied, though the police were not that interested once they discovered what the perpetrators were. I personally never had trouble with the Algerians in Paris as I frequently visited Arab neighborhoods to eat the best couscous dishes that I have ever tasted for drastically less money than standard Parisian restaurants. I spent dozens of evenings in the tea room of the Grande Mosquée de Paris while chatting with friends and enjoying cheap delicious pastries. I also occasionally visited l’Institut du monde arabe. Overall, I had a rather positive experience of the Franco-Arab scene. My negative incident with the Mohammedans occurred in the slums of Brussels, but that is another story.

On a lighter note, for more S.W.P.L. laughs regarding white people’s overseas adventures, read “Travelling”and “Japan.” As always, Christian Lander delivers perspicacious humor.

Posted by Joseph on Monday, April 25, A.D. 2011
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Tuesday, March 29, A.D. 2011

Orthodox Catholic Idolatry

For some tragic comic relief, I share “Orthodox Catholic Idolatry,” along with the other pages of the deranged, sacrilegious site. It is as if Jack Chick gave up his cartoon shtick and decided to become a peculiar photographic propagandist.

I would like to believe that this form of Protestantism—let’s call it anoetic confessionalism—is rare. I know from familiar experience that it is not. Like Southern Baptists’ proudly imagining themselves heirs to Sabellians and Cathars or Seventh Day Adventists’ thinking that Constantine invented the Roman papacy, these folks dig their dogma from the sludge of stupidity. Among the sad but devilishly entertaining claims of the site, we see repeated and emphasized references to the Satanic “skull and bones” on Orthodox crosses, which connects us to Yale, the Illuminati, the Bush family, and the University of Texas. Were it ironic, the site would be riotously funny. Alas, I fear that the page administrator is quite sincere.

Of course, the skull and bones at the foot of the cross in traditional iconography represents Christ’s triumph over death through the cross. This is not an arcane doctrine; it is transparently obvious to believers and to the vast majority of onlookers with a shred of common sense and fairness. The lies, delusion, and ill will involved in these Wormwoodian mockeries of apologetics suffice to anger me, but the idiocy of it all makes it a bit hard to take seriously. If only it were a sick joke . . .

Posted by Joseph on Tuesday, March 29, A.D. 2011
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