Very good and sadly accurate.

Cardinal Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna, evidently supported the event which occurred previous years despite protests to the Cardinal. Here is Gloria.TV’s coverage of the “mass” in A.D. 2010. From what I have been able to find online, the protests finally worked to get the mass cancelled last summer. One wonders, however, why such an abomination was ever considered or allowed.

Since liberalism contradicts the nature of reality, it must lead to the death of society if its principles are consistently followed. Therefore a liberal society, in order to continue functioning and surviving, must make lots of exceptions to liberal principles. But since liberal society prohibits all non-liberal principles, these exceptions, upon which the very existence of the society depends, have no principle to back them up. Thus the only way a member of liberal society can slow its march to destruction is through means that to him must seem unprincipled. Liberal society remains viable only insofar as unprincipled exceptions prevent it from consistently following its own principles; and it only seems viable to its members insofar as they employ unprincipled exceptions to disguise from themselves its true nature and inevitable end.

Auster has compiled a list of articles that deal with this issue, “The unprincipled exception: a key to understanding liberalism.”

I find it perplexing, though, that so few people wake from their contradictions. It is the same mystery as to why men remain in the cave in The Republic. Why did the Athenians allow Socrates to be sentenced to death? Why did the Jews choose Barabbas over Jesus? The stupidity, wickedness, and cowardice of the herd are evident in most places at most times. Such is the lot of fallen man. Happily, though, what I call existential logic sparks a discomfort in some people, which results in a journey that leads them out of darkness and into the light.

You may be surprised to learn that abortion was common in the ancient Roman Empire. The methods were more dangerous than today (I should say, more dangerous to the mother; every abortion is lethally dangerous to the child). But those methods were nevertheless used by women who wanted to conceal sexual activity, or who were forced to have abortions by their husbands and lovers.

The ancient, pagan world was a harsh one. Not only were children aborted before birth, but a newborn child was not officially received into a family until its father picked it up and held it. If the father didn’t want the child he simply refused to take it up, and the child was legally abandoned. This was called “exposing” an infant; it would be placed in some public place, and the social fiction was that someone else might pick it up and care for it. Sometimes people did take in these babies, and rear them to be sold as slaves or put on the street as prostitutes. But, often enough, no one took the child before it was found by dogs or other animals, or died of exposure and starvation.

And this was legal. It was a harsh world. Christians stood out as different, in that world. They were different in seeing every human being as worthy of dignity, whether free or slave, male or female, Jew or Gentile (as St. Paul said in Galatians 3:21). One of the big differences between Christians and pagans was that Christians did not have abortions. From the earliest years, the Church Fathers spoke against abortion. Let me read you some of their statements.

This is from the Didache, a work which was written about the same time as the Gospels: “You shall not murder a child by abortion.”

The Letter of Barnabas, written about the same time, repeats those words. “You shall love your neighbor more than your own life. You shall not murder a child by abortion.” Note the connection he makes there. This is not about sexual morality, it’s about loving your neighbor, who in this case is a helpless child.

The Letter to Diognetus, probably written around 125, describes to a nonbeliever what Christians are like. He writes, “They marry, as do all others; they beget children, but they do not abort fetuses.”

The Apocalypse of Peter says that, in heaven, aborted children are cared for by an angel named Temlakos. He writes, “The children shall be given over to the caretaking angel Temlakos, and those who slew the children will be punished forever, for this is God’s will.”

Matushka Frederica continues:

Yet, even though the early Christians refused to participate in abortion, a terrible rumor circulated about them in those days. You know that, in the centuries when Christianity was illegal, some parts of our faith were kept secret and not shared outside the community of believers. For example, the Holy Mystery of the Eucharist was something only baptized Christians knew about, and it was never spoken about to nonbelievers. We still say, in the pre-communion prayer of St. John Chrysostom, “I will not speak of your mystery to your enemies.”

Yet rumors started to circulate that Christians were cannibals. There was a story going around that in Christian worship a baby was put inside a sack of flour and beaten to death, and then eaten. Well, if you thought people in your neighborhood were doing that as part of a religious ritual, you’d want to see them executed too. And you can see how the rumor is a mixed-up version of our belief that Christ came to earth as a child, and that he gives us his Body and Blood in the Eucharist. So, many of the early Christians were martyred because they were thought to be child-killers and cannibals, and some early writers protest it’s a lie, Christians do no such thing, while it’s pagans who commit abortion and expose newborns.

Minucius Felix wrote, around 200 AD, “I would like to meet the person who says …that we [Christians] are brought into the faith by means of the slaughter and blood of an infant. Do you think that it can be possible for such a tender little body to receive such fatal wounds? Is it possible for anyone to pour forth the new blood of a little child, scarcely come into existence? Nobody is capable of believing this—except the person who would do it. Yes, I see that you expose your newborn children to wild beasts and to birds, and at other times crush them to death. There are some women who drink medicines that extinguish the life of a child while it is still inside their body, and thus murder their own relative before they bring it forth.”

Tertulllian says that for Christians, “Since murder has been once and for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb. …To interfere with a birth is merely an earlier way of killing a person. It doesn’t matter whether you take away a life that has been born, or destroy one that is coming to birth.” (Apology 9:8) Elsewhere he wrote, “We hold that life begins with conception, and that the soul also begins at conception; life has its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does.” (Apology 27)

St. John Chrysostom wrote, “Do you condemn the gifts of God, and fight against His laws? Childlessness is seen as a curse, but you seek it as though it were a blessing. Do you make the chamber of birth a place of slaughter? Do you teach the woman who is formed to give life to perpetuate killing instead?” (Homilies on Romans 24)

St. Basil puts medicines that cause abortion in the same category as other kinds of killing. He writes, “The man or woman is a murderer who gives a potion, if the person that takes it dies from it. So also are they who uses a medicine to procure abortion; and so are those robbers who kill on the highway.”

Matushka further shows how our Orthodox appreciation for pre-natal life has scriptural and festal sources. She quotes the story of the Visitation in the Gospel of Luke, wherein Elizabeth exclaims at Mary’s visit,  “Why do I deserve such honor, that the mother of my Lord would come to me? For when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy.”

Moreover, we celebrate not only the birthdays of Mary, John, and Jesus—September 8, June 24, and December 25, respectively—but also their conceptions—December 9 (a day later than the December 8 celebration for the Latins), September 23, and March 25, respectively. Christians have always been a people of and for life . . . and life more abundant.

Father, if you have any influence on the group, could you please remind the banner carriers that they are always negligent of the crowd behind them? For years, I have thought about writing a letter, but I don’t know to whom I should send it. I have attended the march pretty much every year since I was a child, and I have marched with the Orthodox group most years over the past decade. However, for the past five years or so, the banner carriers—probably due to their being feisty seminarians—behave as though they are not leading a crowd of people through a gigantic mass of folks. They always leave most of the group behind, especially at the beginning. This year was no different, but thankfully they stopped at the corner on Constitution because they left the bishops! Maybe that was their plan for regrouping, but they need to wait every year for the group to collect.

I understand that they want to get to First Street to have time for the service, but there was plenty of time. Also, if they are worried of the Capitol Police kicking them off the corner as has happened before, why don’t they move to the plaza across from the Supreme Court? I know that we are there for a cause, but we are also quite a visible spectacle to thousands of positively disposed people who have only heard of Orthodoxy. Every year, I witness dozens of interested folks, mostly enthusiastic Latins, engage the group with questions and encouraging words. We would increase our visibility near the Supreme Court and allow for more onlookers to join us in prayer since it is the end of the marching route there.

This may not be able to be helped, but stationing the group far from the rally (like this year) keeps us from being able to hear the rally (and the Metropolitan’s prayer) and makes us largely invisible to the marchers and to the Orthodox in the crowd who are looking for us. I searched for the group for at least an hour in that muddy mess before I located them on Seventh Street far from the rally. On the way, I came across several disparate groups of Orthodox Christians, including nuns from All Saints Greek Orthodox Monastery on Long Island, who would have otherwise marched with us had the group been present and visible at the rally.

I know that organization is largely alien to our ethos, but we can do better. So, if you know how to rectify the situation, it would be highly appreciated.

Maybe, the deacon can forward such concerns to someone who can improve the group’s planning.

For the past four years, I have been able to play tour guide a bit for my brother’s high school group before and after the march. This year, the boys arrived in Washington a day early, which allowed them to see more of the city. If you take such a long bus trip, you ought to spend more time in the capital than simply the hours of the march. Plus, getting a decent rest in a bed makes the day of the march better in every way. I met the group at Union Station after the divine liturgy, which worked well since the group attended mass at the basilica in the morning. From there, I showed them some Capitol Hill sites on the way to the National Mall. We had the chance to visit many museums and monuments until I returned the very exhausted group to their hotel that night. Unfortunately, I only saw the group for a minute while they were passing the Orthodox memorial service at the end of the march, but I hope that their Monday went well.

Among other observations, I must say that I prefer freezing temperatures to the rain. The rally was a mud pit, and umbrellas and crowds go poorly together. Still, I was surprised by the turnout. Every year, people say that the march is getting bigger, and that usually seems to be the case. I remember that the march in A.D. 2001 was particularly impressive, but I attribute that to the inauguration crowds’ participants’ double dipping. Moreover, folks back then anticipated some positive political change with Bush’s election, and such energy likely affected a numbers boost at the march. Nonetheless, recent years have seemed larger than before.

I was also pleased that the route was lengthened this year due to the Mall’s restoration project that forced the rally back to Ninth Street. The eastward creep of the march over the past decade has bothered me a lot, as I mentioned in recent years in “The March and the Media” and in “Thirty-eighth March.” I wish that they would return to the Ellipse.

Unlike the last few marches, I did manage to see a counter protester this year. After the march, as I walked to the Hyatt Regecy to see the exhibit hall, I passed one scruffy looking, thirty something man who was wearing two cardboard pieces like the Soldiers of Hearts in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. The boards stated something about voting for “choice.”

I noticed a few signs that made me smile, but I cannot recall them now. I should have taken pictures. I did see a group of children with stuffed minion dolls (from Despicable Me) on which they had written, “Minions for Life.” That was cute. I also noticed a large banner held by Anglican converts to Rome that stated, “Thank you, Holy Father, for Anglicanorum Coetibus!” When I saw the Yoopers for Life sign, I had to ask the group if they had brought pasties for everyone. Sadly, they said that they had run out.

As always, my fellow Ohioans made a strong showing. The young priest who accompanied my brother’s high school group said that the Archdiocese of Cincinnati had 1,700 student tickets, with additional staff, clergy, and chaperone tickets, of the 20,000 total tickets. If we add 150 more for staff, that makes 1,850 of 20,000, or 9.25%. That is amazing. If we added the tickets for other Ohio cities, it is possible that a fifth or even a quarter of the participants were Ohioans. Yet, it confirms the anecdotal evidence of seeing so many Ohio groups so well represented at every year’s march. Midwesterners, in general, have a strong showing, along with groups from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Maryland, and Virginia, as one would expect. Foreign delegations included Canadians, Germans, Italians, the French, Brazilians, Mexicans, and I believe Guyana, whose drum playing visitors I had never seen before.

In summary, the day went well despite the rain. I wish that every day in Sodom, there were so many righteous men in the city.

It is Saint Sergius in Stockholm, a parish of the Moscow Patriarchate in Sweden. Let us hope that more Russkies in the Motherland follow the same path and that the Swedes themselves wake from their nightmare and begin to replenish their nation, as well, instead of emasculating their men, destroying the souls of their voluntarily barren women, and importing the Third World to replace the indigenous population. A revival of Christianity would assure both desired outcomes; such is evident in the former but not in the latter. Let us remember to pray for the lost peoples of the West. In Washington, D.C., at least today, we shall stand against the “culture of death.”

This next video is of higher quality but lacks the tribal authenticity of the first one that really helped me to connect with Gaia:

“Herchurch” used to be Ebenezer Lutheran Church in San Francisco. At some point since Western society lost its mind, this E.L.C.A. congregation morphed into something resembling a neopaganized, leftist, Protestant lesbian’s personal fantasy. The congregation’s web site is really something to behold; it is endlessly quotable. For instance, it teaches us:

DEFINITION OF CRONE: Crone is…the power, passion, and purpose of ancient female wisdom…the crowning triple phase of the ancient Triple Goddess: Maiden/Mother/Crone. Joyous, outrageous, real, and at ease, living from the inside out. The Crone’s title was related to the word crown and she represented the power of the ancient tribal matriarch who made the moral and legal decisions for her subjects and descendants. It was the medieval metamorphosis of the wise woman into the witch that changed the word Crone from a compliment to an insult and established the stereotype of malevolent old womanhood that continues to haunt elder women today.—Barbara Walker, The Crone (Women of Age, Wisdom and Power)

Verily, every other word on the site makes the femoronic bullometer buzz wildly. I learnt a new word—thealogian! And you may even order a “goddess rosary” from the organization’s gift shop. Do not forget to look at the pictures from Megan Rohrer’s “ordination.”

By the way, “Herchurch” is the embraced name of this particular community. It is not a slur by outsiders.

There is an endless stream of snarky commentary that one can make about these folks, but I wish to note only that narcissism, self absorption, self adulation, the obsession with the trivial—these must be natural vices for women. In sane societies, human beings recognize these shortcomings and seek to undermine such tendencies. In our culture, however, we encourage people to embrace the worst parts of their personalities and to celebrate them. And they do so, going so far as to fashion idols of their passions. There thereby worship themselves without realizing it as they dress up their demonic confusion with respectable words dignified by academic journals and conferences. It is nothing short of an abomination. What would Anne Bradstreet think of the lost souls at “Herchurch”?

The last day of the Christmas season is also the eve of Theophany. I hope that you had a lovely Yuletide, and I wish you a blessed Theophany.

Back in 1973, when I was a teenaged commie, I used to engage with my commie friends in political discussions that would go on for hours and hours. The only thing I remember from those discussions is a dictum that arose from within me one day, unbidden, yet fully formed, when we were talking about what it meant to be a radical: “To be a radical is to be forever unsatisfied with the content of history, yet reconciled to the process of history.” This attitude will be familiar to readers of VFR from the phenomenon here oft noted, of the fact that liberals understand there to be no limit, no stopping point, to the process of social reform. What has happened and is now happening, however many improvements there might have been, is totally unsatisfactory, and awaits the incipient onset of a gnostic New Age, in which every sordid thing that has come before will be repudiated and destroyed. Nevertheless, however, the ugly things that are happening now are the birth pangs of that New Age, and since birth is painful, it is to be expected that the process should make most of us quite uncomfortable (and even, many of us, dead); yet for the sake of that glorious New Age, we should not chafe at our discomforts of ugliness, but rather shoulder them cheerfully, happy with the way things are tending. That’s a radical: forever unhappy with things as they are, while delighted with the endless evolutionary/revolutionary process of history as it works its way toward a new utopian order.

It strikes me that this dictum is just as applicable to Traditionalist radicals as it is to those of the Left, albeit along a diametrically different vector; for the Traditionalist sees history as having Fallen from a Golden Age, and tending toward an ultimate, inescapable eschatological catastrophe, while the Leftist sees it as going the opposite direction. As pessimists about the prospects for a merely human project of saving the world, Traditionalists are more apt to respect and cherish the beauties it has so far produced, that are in the nature of things always eventually lost to the flux of time, and skeptical about their “new, improved” replacements. Until the Enlightenment, such was the prevalent attitude—the traditional attitude—in all cultures and throughout history. The hope added thereto by the Christian Gospel, of an ultimate, permanent, and total redemption of history at the eschaton, completed that vision, healing and correcting the despair that it had recommended to men, and nerving them to the creation of new and sublime creaturely beauties: cathedrals, songs, voyages, poems, discoveries, philosophies, enterprises of all kinds.

Our job then—indeed our duty—as Traditionalist radicals is, to name the uglinesses now pervading our world, not surrendering to despair thereat, but rather rejoicing nonetheless in the marvelous and orderly beauty that still, always, nevertheless surrounds us, and determined to enact such new beauties as may be within our poor powers. We are all of us engaged throughout our lives in a steady progress toward our own personal holocausts, in which every good thing we have loved will be immolated. Yet we may have confidence that, as all of history is an instrument and expression of Beauty Himself, so must that Beauty which is the source of all things eventually, utterly prevail in and through all things. We may therefore—indeed, we should—make our way toward our common doom, singing and rejoicing, if only to adorn this world’s everlasting resurrection. For, thanks to the Divine omniscience, no worldly good can fail of resurrection in the life to come.

And that, in the final analysis, is why we humans have children, and want to have children. It is why we want to preserve them, and to preserve our culture, and our lives. It is why we are ordered toward reproduction, survival, prosperity, enjoyment. Mere death makes all these things vain, empty, stupid. If death were the end of the story, none of these things would be worth doing, much; so that as our culture has come to believe in the ultimate finality of death, it has done less and less of them. But if death is not the end of the story, and the goods of this world are destined to permanent life in the world to come, then all these vital pleasures are objectively and immensely important—not all-important, to be sure, not first things, but important nonetheless.

What then ought we to do about the death of our culture? Do what is good, and beautiful, and virtuous. Nothing will be wasted, no good thing forever lost; everything will be remembered, and accounted for. From the good and virtuous things that we engender—children, mostly, but also our work, our charity, our thought, our art—something appropriate will arise. We may trust in that.

Kristor beautifully reminds us of the Christian hope and offers sage advice on how we may act as instruments through which the Lord transfigures the world into his perfected creation. Moreover, I found it more than a little ironic that Kristor begins his comment, “Back in 1973, when I was a teenaged commie,” in a thread about the hellish trajectory of the modern West. If a Communist can become what Kristor is now, then anything is possible! But, of course, we have always known this. The hagiographies of the saints remind us over and over of the power of repentance and of the transformation that God affects upon men and women who allow him to do so. Mary of Egypt and Moses the Black come to mind.

I had a friend in college who was raised in an extraordinarily pious Roman Catholic family. His mother appeared to me as the very incarnation of the traditional Catholic maternal presence. His parents and siblings would continually pray together; road trips would be opportunities to say the rosary as a family. Very Catholic! Then, one day, my friend told me about his parents’ youth. His mother was a radical feminist in college, rebellious against traditional society and the Church. The Lord works many wonders, and the human mind may be surprisingly resilient in struggling for truth in the midst of lies. Given such examples, it is reasonable to hope for the salvation of our civilization in time and not only in the eschaton.

Here are the troparion and some other hymns specific to the feast by an unknown choir:

Monachos has the texts for various hymns.

Troparion of the Nativity:

Thy Nativity, O Christ our God,
Hath shone upon the world the light of knowledge;
For thereby, they that worshipped the stars
Were taught by a star
To worship Thee, the Sun of Righteousness,
And to know Thee, the Dayspring from on high.
O Lord, glory be to Thee!

Kontakion of the Nativity:

Today the Virgin giveth birth
To Him who is above all being,
And the earth offereth a cave
To Him whom no man can approach.
Angels with shepherds give glory,
And magi journey with a star.
For our sake is born a young Child,
The Pre-eternal God!

“[George] welcomed visitors with large-print messages on the walls. ‘Be not inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise,’ was one, quoting Yeats.”

Yeats!? Did you catch that? I choked on my toast. Did the Times actually just say that “Be not inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise” was from Yeats? Unless I had fallen down a rabbit hole, that quote was from the Bible. It’s from Hebrews 13:2 and it’s quite famous. If you didn’t catch it, don’t feel too badly, because you are probably not The New York Times. You are probably not America’s “paper of record”, proud owner of 106 Pulitzer Prizes in Journalism—more than any other newspaper. You probably don’t have squadrons of fact-checkers on your payroll.

I still couldn’t believe what I’d just read, so I kept reading, looking for some explanation. There was none. I then shook the paper to make sure I was reading an actual newspaper, and not, say, an email forward from an aged friend. Nope. This really was the New York Times, the Old Grey Lady, whose motto was “All the News that’s Fit to Print.” And let’s face it, if W.B. Yeats was the real author of the Bible’s “Book of Hebrews,” that really would be big news!

I often express to family and friends how surprised I am by widespread scriptural ignorance, especially in the young. Even Protestant youngsters are clueless. It is no wonder that apostasy is so rampant. Christian parents are failing miserably to raise their children in the faith.

The world is going to hell in a handbasket, but let me rescue this post from too much despair—or at least philistine despair. To tie together the feasts celebrated today, East and West, with the hallowed inspiration of the Irish Bard, here is “The Magi”:

Now as at all times I can see in the mind’s eye,
In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones
Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky
With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,
And all their helms of silver hovering side by side,
And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
Being by Calvary’s turbulence unsatisfied,
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

To mix further the sacred and the profane, I wonder if Yeats’ poem was one of the inspirations for U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.”

In any case, merry Christmas! Christ is born!

They are beautiful creatures.

Update: If you share my brother’s love for Ailurus fulgens, you may be interested in the Red Panda Network.

I was aghast when I saw the cathedral’s interior. Then, I discovered that it is the Roman cathedral in Liverpool, which was built in the lamentable years of the Sixties. Its design reminds me of something that one would find on Coruscant. Did the post-conciliar architects consult Ralph McQuarrie before building their temples? At least, Liverpool’s cathedral looks better than Los Angeles’ monstrosity.

Nonetheless, it heartens me that Albion’s Roman communities are keeping alive its choral traditions.

The Jews are so dominant, I had to scour the trades to come up with six Gentiles in high positions at entertainment companies. When I called them to talk about their incredible advancement, five of them refused to talk to me, apparently out of fear of insulting Jews. The sixth, AMC President Charlie Collier, turned out to be Jewish.

As a proud Jew, I want America to know about our accomplishment. Yes, we control Hollywood. Without us, you’d be flipping between “The 700 Club” and “Davey and Goliath” on TV all day.

So I’ve taken it upon myself to re-convince America that Jews run Hollywood by launching a public relations campaign, because that’s what we do best. I’m weighing several slogans, including: “Hollywood: More Jewish than ever!”; “Hollywood: From the people who brought you the Bible”; and “Hollywood: If you enjoy TV and movies, then you probably like Jews after all.”

Stein even has a delightful time gently mocking the appalling Abe Foxman, who deserved much more robust derision:

I called ADL Chairman Abe Foxman, who was in Santiago, Chile, where, he told me to my dismay, he was not hunting Nazis. He dismissed my whole proposition, saying that the number of people who think Jews run Hollywood is still too high. The ADL poll, he pointed out, showed that 59% of Americans think Hollywood execs “do not share the religious and moral values of most Americans,” and 43% think the entertainment industry is waging an organized campaign to “weaken the influence of religious values in this country.”

That’s a sinister canard, Foxman said. “It means they think Jews meet at Canter’s Deli on Friday mornings to decide what’s best for the Jews.” Foxman’s argument made me rethink: I have to eat at Canter’s more often.

“That’s a very dangerous phrase, ‘Jews control Hollywood.’ What is true is that there are a lot of Jews in Hollywood,” he said. Instead of “control,” Foxman would prefer people say that many executives in the industry “happen to be Jewish,” as in “all eight major film studios are run by men who happen to be Jewish.”

Stein gets in trouble from time to time for writing as if Americans still valued witty but sincere, reasonable commentary about issues that the estrogenized masses find “sensitive.” His “Warriors and Wusses” in the Los Angeles Times criticizes pacifists who claim to support the troops, and “My Own Private India” in Time expresses dismay that his New Jersey hometown has been invaded and transformed beyond recognition by foreigners. Sadly, Stein bows before the mighty gods of leftist dogma. He is surely a fellow believer in the reigning Zeitgeist, but his lack of ardent faith, accompanied by moments of humorous dissent, cannot be tolerated. So, he recants. He is not a “Great Writer” but rather a talented fellow with an interest in popular culture who has made a corner for himself in the media—a sort of leftwing Mark Steyn who has settled to write for America’s worst opinion magazine. Yet, he has a family and needs to make a buck. The Jews may control Hollywood, but leftist idealogues run most everything else in America. Even a Jewish Democrat must fear their ire.

Any work that shows the wicked sans-culottes as the scum that they really were is worthwhile to me. The film is due to be released in January in the year of our Lord 2012.

Moreover, you may wish to read Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s words delivered at the dedication of the memorial to the Vendée:

Mr. President of the General Council of the Vendée, Respected Vendéans:

Two thirds of a century ago, while still a boy, I read with admiration about the courageous and desperate uprising of the Vendée. But never could I have dreamed that in my later years I would have the honor of dedicating a memorial to the heroes and victims of that uprising.

Twenty decades have now passed, and throughout that period the Vendée uprising and its bloody suppression have been viewed in ever new ways, in France and elsewhere. Indeed, historical events are never fully understood in the heat of their own time, but only at a great distance, after a cooling of passions. For all too long, we did not want to hear or admit what cried out with the voices of those who perished, or were burned alive: that the peasants of a hard-working region, driven to the extremes of oppression and humiliation by a revolution supposedly carried out for their sake—that these peasants had risen up against the revolution!

That revolution brings out instincts of primordial barbarism, the sinister forces of envy, greed and hatred—this even its contemporaries could see all too well. They paid a terrible enough price for the mass psychosis of the day, when merely moderate behavior, or even the perception of such, already appeared to be a crime. But the twentieth century has done especially much to tarnish the romantic luster of revolution which still prevailed in the eighteenth century. As half-centuries and centuries have passed, people have learned from their own misfortunes that revolutions demolish the organic structures of society, disrupt the natural flow of life, destroy the best elements of the population and give free rein to the worst; that a revolution never brings prosperity to a nation, but benefits only a few shameless opportunists, while to the country as a whole it heralds countless deaths, widespread impoverishment, and, in the gravest cases, a long-lasting degeneration of the people.

The very word “revolution” (from the Latin revolvo) means “to roll back”, “to go back”, “to experience anew”, “to re-ignite”, or at best “to turn over”—hardly a promising list. Today, if the attribute “great” is ever attached to a revolution, this is done very cautiously, and not infrequently with much bitterness.

It is now better and better understood that the social improvements which we all so passionately desire can be achieved through normal evolutionary development—with immeasurably fewer losses and without all-encompassing decay. We must be able to improve, patiently, that which we have in any given “today.”

It would be vain to hope that revolution can improve human nature, yet your revolution, and especially our Russian Revolution, hoped for this very effect. The French Revolution unfolded under the banner of a self-contradictory and unrealizable slogan, “liberty, equality, fraternity.” But in the life of society, liberty, and equality are mutually exclusive, even hostile concepts. Liberty, by its very nature, undermines social equality, and equality suppresses liberty—for how else could it be attained? Fraternity, meanwhile, is of entirely different stock; in this instance it is merely a catchy addition to the slogan. True fraternity is achieved by means not social but spiritual. Furthermore, the ominous words “or death!” were added to the threefold slogan, effectively destroying its meaning.

I would not wish a “great revolution” upon any nation. Only the arrival of Thermidor prevented the eighteenth-century revolution from destroying France. But the revolution in Russia was not restrained by any Thermidor as it drove our people on the straight path to a bitter end, to an abyss, to the depths of ruin.

It is a pity that there is no one here today who could speak of the sufferings endured in the depths of China, Cambodia, or Vietnam, and could describe the price they had to pay for revolution.

One might have thought that the experience of the French revolution would have provided enough of a lesson for the rationalist builders of “the people’s happiness” in Russia. But no, the events in Russia were grimmer yet, and incomparably more enormous in scale. Lenin’s Communism and International Socialists studiously reenacted on the body of Russia many of the French revolution’s cruelest methods—only they possessed a much greater a more systematic level of organizational control than the Jacobins.

We had no Thermidor, but to our spiritual credit we did have our Vendée, in fact more than one. These were the large peasant uprisings: Tambov (1920-21), western Siberia (1921). We know of the following episode: Crowds of peasants in handmade shoes, armed with clubs and pitchforks, converged on Tambov, summoned by church bells in the surrounding villages—and were cut down by machine-gun fire. For eleven months the Tambov uprising held out, despite the Communists’ effort to crush it with armored trucks, armored trains, and airplanes, as well as by taking families of the rebels hostage. They were even preparing to use poison gas. The Cossacks, too—from the Ural, the Don, the Kuban, the Terek—met Bolshevism with intransigent resistance that finally drowned in the blood of genocide.

And so, in dedicating this memorial to your heroic Vendée, I see double in my mind’s eye—for I can also visualize the memorials which will one day rise in Russia, monuments to our Russian resistance against the onslaught of Communism and its atrocities.

We have all lived through the twentieth century, a century of terror, the chilling culmination of that Progress about which so many dreamed in the eighteenth century. And now, I think, more and more citizens of France, with increasing understanding and pride, will remember and value the resistance and the sacrifice of the Vendee.

Memory eternal, Alexander Isaevich! Memory eternal, Vendéen martyrs!

ROCOR remains committed to its conservative, traditional positions, and so does the Moscow Patriarchate. Therefore we are not compromising any principles by normalizing relations with the rest of the Orthodox Church.

The Church Abroad was formed for the purpose of uniting the Russian communities outside of Russia, who desired to remain faithful members of the Orthodox Church of Russia, awaiting its revival, and from the beginning also carried on the missionary function of spreading the Orthodox faith among non-Russians, wherever possible. These roles remain unchanged.

I am heartened that the Synod cares enough about its cautious flock to reassure them with such statements. Count me among the wary sheep. However, I am also pleased that our bishops are showing support for the O.C.A. primate in his efforts to maintain orthodoxy and orthopraxis in his jurisdiction, especially when he appears to get so little encouragement from his own synod. What should we expect from an atmosphere where, just years ago, the faithful of the Russian Church Abroad were customarily villified as backward sectarians and schismatics? Verily, verily, we are building bridges and moving on in Christian charity, though I am reminded of Basil Fawlty’s commentary from “The Germans”: “Yes, well, forgive and forget, Major . . . God knows how—the bastards!” Trust will take much time.

Update: The Synod’s site now features a proper news article about the concelebration, which includes many other photographs: “The Primates and Synod Members of the Russian Church Abroad and the Orthodox Church in America Concelebrate for the First Time.”

Hatikva is not as sublime as the Czech masterpiece, but it makes for a worthy anthem. You may read the poem’s words on Wikipedia.

On the long flight to Tel Aviv, I repeatedly transitioned between states of sleep and consciousness while catching glimpses of other people on the plane, hearing random conversations, and watching film sequences on personal entertainment monitors. I was particularly intrigued and confused by scenes from the neighboring monitor’s display of The Tree of Life. Then, I caught the faint sound of Smetana’s “Moldau,” and I quickly grabbed an earphone set to listen to the movie’s soundtrack. Imagine the joy of a man in a desert who happens upon a spring, and you have some idea of my psychic state at that moment.

When we speak of knowing something, we may mean either that we apprehend, or that we comprehend. To apprehend is, literally, to “grasp at or toward.” To comprehend is to “grasp together.” Apprehension happens when we know of something, but do not understand it; we can touch it, but it escapes our grasp. Comprehension happens when we know of something and have some understanding of it; when we are able to wrap our minds around it.

So, then: we can apprehend that there is—that there must logically be—something outside our world, and greater, for only thus could there be a context, a way, a receptacle in which the world could come to be. We may come to understand certain things about that transcendent reality. But only a few things, and them but dimly. We cannot ever understand it in its fullness, or even come close. There is no way to grasp him, who has our whole world in his grasp.

The only sorts of things it is possible for us to comprehend are those that are lesser than we. These we may encompass. Part of the reason we have theories about the world is that the theories are small and intellectually manageable, as compared with the complex concrete realities to which they refer. The theories are smaller than we are. The realities to which they refer never, ever are.

To apprehend something without understanding it, is to be confronted with mystery. Sometimes we can dispel the mystery a bit by our own efforts. Our understanding may even be good enough to give us great power. But no matter how deeply we plumb a phenomenon, howsoever humble, we can never find its bottom. Take a pebble. What is it? What is its complete, exhaustive description? The answer cannot be completed, even in an infinite span of time. Nicholas Rescher points out that the number of true statements that can be made about anything is infinite; and Gödel proved that no self-consistent answer to any question can ever be completed. Thus the more one learns about something—about anything—the more one learns that there is more to learn about it. Think of something homely and familiar—say, knitting, or model railroading. One could never get to the bottom of them, never finish them, never express all their beauties. Every concrete actuality is infinitely deep.

And the reason this must be so is not far to seek; for every instance of definite being must necessarily arise in the context of, and as a derivate of, the limitless indefinite. Being as such is the necessary prerequisite and source of every particular being. Reality is infinitely deep, because its depths are in the fathomless abyss of God. So, a pebble is as rooted in God, and as full of his presence and expressive of his glory, as the highest seraph. One of the reasons scientists—even the atheists among them—do science is that, in delving into the depths of the real, they apprehend that glory, wonder and power at the root of all things. Depth calls to depth.

No matter what it grasps at, knowledge never suffices to its object. Only being suffices; for a being can suffice to itself, indeed must do so if it is actually to be. The only way to comprehend a thing fully, then, is to open oneself to it and make oneself a part of it, to partake in it. Comprehension is trans-rational, trans-cognitive. It happens when we allow ourselves to be comprehended by something larger than we are.

Such is worship. It is effected by sacrifice.

Curiously, as mystics all tell us, in the utter turn of the soul to God is delivered a full comprehension of all lesser things.

It seems to follow, then, that progress toward knowledge is an infinite activity wherein we come to know more and more what we apprehend. We never exhaustively comprehend eternal truths, but we conform our minds to being as we continue to understand it better. Only God comprehends completely.

Depictions of broken, perverted people should not be humorous; my soul must be irremediably damaged.

Being a greenhorn, I have never actually seen cattle herding in action. I wonder what sort of cattle behavior the fellow who made this video was exploiting or how he habituated the cattle to respond to the toy.