One year ends another one starts, second after second, since the beginning of the world, the clock is ticking. What is the significance of time? Why are we so obsessed with it and why we celebrate again and again the passing of another year with parties and fireworks?

One explanation may be that the New Year that comes brings with it a wind of hope, a belief that maybe we’ll do better than in the year past. Resolutions are a must at the bridge between years, but most of them are trivial things like loosing weight or stop smoking, nothing substantial. We see clearly however that after a certain age new year celebrations and particularly birthdays become a bitter-sweet event and the passing of years is not a celebration of entering into maturity, but the beginning of a downhill pathway.

The flow of years changes us, but God remains eternal, immovable, unchangeable, beyond time, “But thou art the same, And thy years shall have no end.” (Psa 102:27)

Time is different however for God and us, as the psalmist observes: “For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.” (Ps 90:4-6)

How much time we actually need in the world? King David says that “the days of our years [are] seventy; and if by reason of strength [they be] eighty, yet [is] their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” (Psa 90:10)

During this time we are afraid we won’t make the most of it; fear that we don’t have control over its implacable passing, fear that we won’t have enough time. But enough time for what? To spend it into trivial pleasures, to leave “something” behind, see the world? This could be in truth considered a “waste of time”.

We should look at time from a very different perspective. Time is not a rat race but a true gift from God. No matter how much we live an hour, 30 years, 100, we are given just enough time to reach salvation. A father said once that if a man wants to be saved, a day from sunrise till sunset is enough. We have the biblical example of the thief on the cross who “stole” paradise with a word.

But even though thinks like this can happen, they remain exceptions because we are not the masters of time, only God Himself knows the beginning and the end of the world and of each one of us. Then how are we supposed to know when to repent, how do we know when to put a stop of our perennial spiritual procrastination? Some tried to predict the end of the world but they were proven wrong.

There is however another way, instead of guessing we should try preparation, we should try to live everyday, as it will be the last. St. Basil the Great use to say that the greatest philosophy is the thought of death. Indeed with that perspective in mind one can realize that that best resolution of all is repentance, a paradigm shift from wasting time to redeeming time. As Christians we have to redeem the time that we were given by using it properly for our salvation and thus paradoxically gaining an eternity.

I have often seen people reacting strongly to a certain message delivered from the pulpit. Some identify themselves with the circumstances brought into discussion in the sermon and feel exposed, as if the priest purposely reveals their secret to the entire congregation. Others respond negatively to any message that is delivered in a more compelling and direct way, feeling personally attacked and hurt by the less subtle preacher.

This is not necessarily the fault of the priest nor of the people. We are the product of a society that lives and breathes political correctness, where all religious are considered equal and the truth is relative. A powerful message is perceived therefore as too strong because is often compared with the more common but more diluted message of the Gospel that concentrates on guaranteed salvation and tends to forget about the active participation and alignment that Christ requires of each one of us in order to obtain it.

Jesus Christ is considered by all Christians a messenger of love and peace, and this is absolutely true. Christ came to replace an eye for an eye with loving your enemy and turning the other cheek; He wants all men to become one, uniting them with God through His crucified body. But the same Jesus declares “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth. I did not come to send peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and the daughter against her mother. (Mat 10:33-35) This is to say that “harmony is not always a good thing”, as St. Theophylact of Bulgaria, observes, because there are situations that may hinder our faith and we should separate from them, rather than trying to cover them up with relativism or misplaced acceptance.

Christ never hesitated, when deemed necessary, to call the things as they were, by name, without clever subtleties or embellished rhetoric’s. The Scripture is full of such examples. The Sadducees and the Pharisees that were surrounding Him, waiting to find in Him a fault were admonished with blunt words “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! (Luke 11:44). He uncovered their two-facedness of justifying themselves behind their chosen status while dwelling in sin: “ Why do ye not understand my speech? Even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. (John 8:43-44) He called them “generation of vipers” (Mat 12:34-35), “a cup clean only on the outside” (Luke 11:49), “washed graves” (Luke 11:44) and so forth.

His disciples were not spared either. Peter was called Satan when he failed to understand the necessity of Christ’s suffering and death (Mar 8:33). Luke and Cleopas, who did not recognize Christ on the way to Emmaus, were named “ fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken” (Luke 24:25)

He warned everyone about the danger of sin and of spiritual procrastination: “Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire”. (Mat 7:19) He depicted with painful precision the punishment of the wicked: “The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth”. (Mat 13:41-42)

Jesus went even beyond words as in the case of the money changers from the temple: “And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting: And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables; And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise”. ( John 2:14-16)

No matter what the Lord said or did, He always had only one thing in mind: the care of His reason endowed sheep; He is the good Sheppard that gives His life for His flock.In a similar manner the priests are called to shepherd the flock that Christ has left in their care.

The mission of the shepherd can be difficult and painful at times. St. John Chrysostom, in his treaty about priesthood observes that a real shepherd has a very difficult task tending to his animals: Those shepherds with great authority compel the sheep to accept the remedy even if they do not willingly submit to it. It is easy to bind them when cautery or cutting is required. Sometimes caressing a sheep is not enough, one has to use a hot iron to cauterize a wound if wants to prevent an infection.

In priesthood the situation is more complicated because “here too, it is possible to bind and to restrain from food and to use cautery or the knife, but the decision to receive treatment depends on the will of the patient, and does no lie with the man who administers the medicine”. One may want or even try to apply the treatment, but if the man does not want to receive it, if his heart is made of rock, if his ways are set and does not see the treatment as necessary, the cure will fail, no matter how willing the shepherd is.

“It is proper therefore for the priest to leave none of these things unexamined, and after a thorough inquiry into all of them, he must apply such remedies as he has considered appropriate to each case lest his zeal prove to be in vain.” The priest has to become a good judge of character in order to be able to discern what treatment has to be applied to each end everyone in his flock. He has to remember above all that God does not desire “the death of the wicked” but that “he should turn from his ways and live.”(Eze 18:23) The priority is to gather, at any price, the body of Christ, to preserve the Church in unity, peace and love, to bring back home the prodigal sons. “One can see that he has much to do […] in the work of knitting together the severed members of the Church”.

But the priest cannot sit idle either, waiting for the sheep to ask for treatment, because the sheep may never realize it needs it; nor he should give a diluted medication when a stronger one is needed. He has to pro-actively address all the issues that endanger the life of the church by balancing all that God has left as tools, discerning what, when and how to apply in order to prevent schism, uproot heresy, keep the seal of the faith inviolate. This happens sometimes at the expense of his own suffering and pain, for his actions may be misunderstood at times, but the shepherd knows that this is nothing new, Christ has done it first for all.

On the fifth Thursday of Lent in the Orthodox Churches we chant the service of the Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete. It is a monumental work of hymnography with more than 250 odes, or verses, to which we also add the lengthy reading of the life of St Mary of Egypt. This makes it probably one of the longest services of Great Lent. If one also a counts the number of prostrations performed after each ode, it becomes also one of the most uncomfortable services for any casual observer.

But the length of the service and the physical discomfort of the standing and the prostrations is not the only thing that renders people to be uneasy with this service. The canon brings forth like in a truthful mirror the fallen and sinful nature of humankind by extensively referencing examples from the Old and New Testament and linking them back with our own shortcomings. We don’t appreciate this because we have grown accustomed to having a very good impression of ourselves; we were taught by the society to be proud of our achievements and develop a high sense of self-esteem. So even when we look in a mirror we always try to search for the good features, not the faults and when someone shows us that we are not as beautiful as we think we are, or as smart as we think we, or as pious as we thing we are, we take somewhat offense in it.

But the Great canon is not the only thing that is uncomfortable in the Orthodox Church; there are many things here that go against the grain off the secular world. Take for instance the iconography. Many times John the Baptist is depicted with a very stern figure, looking to us with fiery eyes that seem to say over the centuries “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” Many would like to replace this accusatory appearance that calls us to a heightened sense of Christian responsibility with one that would transmits warm and fuzzy feelings, even though this is not who St. John the Baptist was. This happened in the West where the thin body frame of the greatest ascetic that lived, was replaced with the rounded curves of a well fed body as in the depiction of Leonardo Da Vinci and others. Who cares about historical and theological accuracy when we can have our own happy version of the truth?

The traditional Byzantine music of the Orthodox Church also seems harsh at times to the Western trained ears that are more used with the even tempered intervals of the classical music. But the Byzantine music is not an independent musical system that just happens to be applied to the Church, like the Western one is, the Byzantine music has grown organically in the Church over centuries, in complete symbiosis with the poetry of the prayers and seeks, with its intricate and sometimes seemingly strange intervals of its eight modes, to adjust to the complexity of sentiments that are stirred in our hearts, not by the musical intervals alone, but by the very words of prayer.

We also do not praise gluttony and laziness but we practice fasting and constant work towards salvation. Many call this archaic, unnecessary, optional, old fashioned, fundamentalist and so on. But looking around in the icons of the Church we see no well fed and relaxed individuals but only ascetic figures, sharpened by the great works of fasting and spiritual struggle, martyrs that have greatly suffered for their faith, soldiers that have fought valiantly for the Truth. Isn’t it paradoxical that we want to be united with Christ as the saints are, yet we are not willing to follow in their footsteps? We ask their intercessions, yet we do not agree with their way of life simply because it interferes with our comfortable living?

The architecture of the Orthodox churches fosters on its turn a degree of discomfort in the congregation by setting its liturgical spaces in such a way that allows participation of the whole body in prayer by long-standings, prostrations, kneeling and so on. The West has limited this organic and holistic participation in the services, albeit at times seemingly disordered, by the introduction of well organized rows of fixed pews that add comfort but reduce greatly our involvement in the services.

We can continue all day long with the examples, but it is clear that the over emphasis on comfort and “feel-good” Christianity is a detriment to our spiritual life. Christ Himself, our archetypal Model, has not lived a comfortable life. He was not comfortable when He was unjustly accused, nor when He was hit, or when He was flagellated, or when He was nailed on the Cross. He accepted it all as necessary means for our salvation. He did not look for it, as He prayed for this burden to be lifted from Him in the Garden of Gethsemane, but yet He accepted the will of the Father and fulfilled His mission. Comfort and feel-good were not His priorities, but the salvation of the human race.

We are, of course, not responsible for the entire mankind, but yet we are responsible for ourselves on a very personal level. We should not necessarily go out and seek out suffering and discomfort, but when it is part of our spiritual training, we should embrace it and learn to use it to transform us, to grow stronger and more resilient in our faith. The Great Lent brings this to our attention better than anything.

The uncomfortable discipline of our Church does not allow us to forget that without Crucifixion there is no Resurrection and without death there is no life everlasting. This is who we are as Orthodox: followers of the Crucified One, taking upon our shoulders every day our own personal crosses, climbing step after step the difficult path that leads to our own resurrection.

Why do Orthodox Americans, French, Swedes, and those outside Russia need to revere the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia? It is clear what they did for Russia, but why are the Russian New Martyrs so significant for people in the West? Why should we pray to them? “PravMir” asked several people to respond to these questions.

Father Andrew Phillips, Rector of St. John the Wonderworker Orthodox Church in Colchester, England:

First of all, the New Martyrs and Confessors are multinational, not merely Russian, or even only East Slav, Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian. Like the Soviet Union, the Russian Empire was multinational. At once there comes to mind the heroic examples of the Royal Martyr Tsarina Alexandra and her sister the Grand Duchess Elizabeth who were Anglo-German by blood and upbringing. They represented the best of the West, but they were brought to Paradise by their faithfulness to Russian Orthodoxy. Then there were Nicholas (Johnson) (+ 1918), who was Anglo-Russian, or St John of Riga, who was Latvian. And there were many, many others of many nationalities, united by only one thing, the Russian Orthodox Faith.

Their witness is not political. They all witness to the Church; they are above party or partial politics of left or right. Christ and His Church are paramount for them and they were ready to die for Him. Yesterday, for instance, in Munich the New Martyr Alexander (Schmorell), a victim of Nazism, was canonized by the Church Outside of Russia with representatives from Russia and his name was added to the list of New Martyrs and Confessors. Their sacrifice is not political, it is spiritual – a witness to the values that are not of this world, a witness to the fact that our human destiny is not here, but on the other side, which all human beings are called to and for which we must prepare in the here and now.

Then there are the numbers involved. This is greater than the numbers who were martyred for Christ in the first three centuries. So far over 30,000 have been officially glorified by the Church, but there are many more. It has been noted that this number appears to be linked with the number of churches open in the Russian Orthodox Church. The consciousness of the New Martyrs and Confessors is what has changed Russia over the last 20 years and will change it further, if people continue to repent and be Churched, taking on the spiritual and so moral values of the Church. I believe that the Russian Orthodox are at the beginning of this process, that there is still far to go.

We recall the words of Tertullian, repeated by St Cyprian of Carthage: ‘The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church’. I have baptized many people from Russia because of the witness of the New Martyrs and Confessors. ‘It cannot be that all was in vain’, said one of them. ‘I cannot live and ignore their spiritual feat’. In Russia of course tens of millions have been baptized over the last 20 years. Although the West still has little idea of the New Martyrs and Confessors, but word is spreading.

In them there is an alternative to the empty consumerism and indebtedness to materialism of the West and the Western system which has spread worldwide. This system is based on individualism, the convenience and comfort of the ego bubble of self-absorption. Opposed to this is the spirit of sacrifice, to sacrifice us for a great and noble cause. The only alternative to the spiritual deprivation and poverty of Western materialism is the love of Orthodoxy of the Martyrs and Confessors, the New Saints. This is not of the political left or right, which simply argues about the details of distribution of material benefits. The Church offers another system, which says that justice and just societies are good, but that the salvation of our soul is more important. In fact there will only be just societies when the human souls which make them up are convinced that Christ and His Church, against which the gates of hell will not prevail, is at the aim and at the heart of our lives. Where is the proof of all this? It is in the New Martyrs and Confessors. If they were willing to die for Christ’s Church, then we must also be willing to do so. In this sense the example of the New Martyrs and Confessors is a warning to the West: Repent before it is too late.

Father Sergei Sveshnikov, Rector of the world’s first parish named in honor of the New Martyrs, in Mulino, Oregon:

I think that this question can have several different answers, perhaps even on an individual level, but I would like to focus our attention on two.

First of all, for Christians, saints are the standards of life in Christ. In canonizing a saint, the Church gives us a canon, a rule to follow. In this sense, Russian saints are important to the French in just the same way that French saints are important to the Russians – as examples and standards for anyone who wants to lead a Christian life. In Christ, there is neither Greek nor Jew; so, when we think of Saint Stephen, we do not often think of the fact that he was a Jew or understand what he did for Israel, but rather see him as an example of the kind of faith and boldness in Christ to which we all should aspire. In much the same way, Americans or Europeans or Asians or Africans who learn about the New Russian Martyrs will undoubtedly find them to be examples of faith and love that were shaken by “neither tribulation, prison, nor death.”[1]

But there is another aspect of the glorification of the New Martyrs which may be important to both Christians and non-Christians alike. The New Russian Martyrs are a constant reminder to all who are working to build heaven on earth without God. Nowadays, we think of the communists as some evil people who set out to torture and murder, yet this is simply not true. The communists believed that they were building the infamous “bright future” for everyone in the world – a future of freedom, equality, brotherhood, [2] and happiness for all. People in the Soviet Union did not think that they lived in an oppressive and totalitarian society. In fact, they were convinced that their country was the most democratic and free in the whole world. They earnestly believed that they were building a life which was “better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.”[3]

This almost sounds Christian. Doesn’t Christ want all to be happy? Didn’t He come to free us? Aren’t we brothers and sisters? And weren’t all men created equal? All this is true, but not quite. To give people freedom, equality, and brotherhood in the kingdom of God, Christ sacrificed Himself. To give people the same in the kingdom of communism, communists sacrificed the people. According to Feodor Dostoevsky’s horrifyingly accurate analysis, one hundred million people would die for the success of the revolution in Russia. [4] Not all of them were Christians, not all of them died for Christ, but Christ died for each and every one.

For three decades the Russian Orthodox Church has been lifting up the holy lives and deaths of the New Martyrs as an example for the faithful and a reminder to the whole world. It is a reminder that when people reject the “one thing needful,” [5] when they reject Christ, they follow a path of destruction—millions of human lives ground up to feed the communist beast, and no “bright future.” “By their fruits you will know them” [6]; and the fruits of godlessness are blood, death, devastation, and collapse. There is only one ending to the story of the Tower of Babel. And it would be a horrible mistake to think that communist ideals can be substituted with those of capitalism—the result will inevitably be the same. The only path which leads to the true bright future for mankind is Christ.[7] For as long as we chase after “the bright future,” the “American Dream,” or the same “rose” by any other name—humanity is destined to failure. It is only when we start seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness that all other things will take their rightful places in our lives.[8]

For Orthodox people in America or Europe, or in any place outside of Russia, the subject of the New Martyrs is of primary importance. Violence was done to members of the Body of Christ and it is this thinking that tells us that they are of us and we of them, even today. I do not speak Aramaic or Greek, or Latin for that matter, but we still honor and remember the martyrdom of those under tyrannous rulers. That is the key, to remember. The good thief cries, “Remember me!” To be remembered, kept alive in the mind, is part of the salvation process. Alive in Christ, whether here or on the other side, is to be thought of by God. Russia’s many martyrs are also an admonition to us that the seemingly friendly world around us of today can change into a ferocious and murderous abattoir tomorrow. Will we respond as they did? If we were thrown down a well, as were Grand Duchess St. Elizabeth and Nun Barbara, would we sing our hymns in the deep dark before grenades followed to silence us? No need to recall macabre deaths in the coliseums of the ancient world, we have had and have them still here in our century. The non-Christian world is silent about their lives, no movies, no documentaries, no journalistic investigations. But they live! And we witness to their witness before an idolatrous world that Christ lives.

[1] From the kontakion to the new Russian martyrs.
[2] Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité is the motto of France since the Third Republic. This also became a prominent motto of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union: “Peace, labor, freedom, equality, brotherhood, happiness for all people.”
[3] This happens to be John Truslow Adams’ definition of the American Dream (Epic of America).
[4] The Possessed, 1872. Later, Solzhenitsyn noted the exact correspondence to the number of victims of the revolution.
[5] Luke 10:42
[6] Matt. 7:16
[7] John 14:6
[8] Matt. 6:33

Read the entire article on the Pravmir.com website (new window will open).

The Byzantine Empire’s long run — 1,100 years — may seem remote from the 21st century, but a reading of its history offers at least three timeless lessons. Understanding some of the fatal weaknesses in the Eastern Roman Empire may help clarify the political and economic problems that America faces today and the choices we have in responding to them.

Founded in 330 by the emperor Constantine, the eastern half of the Roman Empire was centered in Constantinople, the New Rome. By the fourth century, the empire had endured more than a century of instability, internecine warfare, and economic decline. In that context Rome’s eastern lands, arcing around Asia Minor, the Levant, and northern Africa, were especially attractive, being richer and more settled than the comparatively backward parts of western Europe. It was in part to assure continued access to these sources of wealth that Constantine relocated his capital. By A.D. 476, Rome had been overrun by barbarian tribes, and before long only Constantinople in the East had a seat for the emperors.

The first lesson for America to take from the history of Byzantium is about individualism and freedom. While it was no democracy, nonetheless Byzantium flourished when it allowed its citizens, and particularly its soldiers, greater individual freedom and responsibility. Beginning in the early 7th century, Emperor Heraclius moved from the traditional reliance on the provinces and their civilian governors and instead established large military zones, or “themes,” in Asia Minor, which was now the backbone of the empire. Centralization was maintained through the appointment of a single official with both civil and military responsibilities, but the real innovation of the themes was how the land was settled by imperial troops.

In essence, the soldiers became permanent farmers who could be called on for military service yet would be self-sustaining. They relieved the empire of the necessity of recruiting and paying expensive and often unreliable foreign mercenaries. Moreover, while becoming the most effective frontier defense the state had ever known, as individual landholders they added enormously to the productive capacity and wealth of the empire by cultivating their tracts of farmland.

Byzantium’s strength was fatally undermined when the government lost control of the countryside and either acquiesced in or abetted the formation of private landed estates. The farmer-soldiers were steadily alienated from their land, often owing to exorbitant government taxes, and became instead tenant farmers under increasingly independent feudal chieftains. This destroyed the effectiveness of the Byzantine army and also led to a drop in productivity and in tax receipts to the central government. In crushing the entrepreneurial spirit and independence of the small farmers, Byzantium weakened its economy and hollowed out its military. Eventually, politics in the Byzantine state became a competition between what we would recognize as private-interest groups, aristocrats and feudal landlords, who reduced state policy to the padding of their pockets and the settling of personal disputes.

The second lesson from Byzantium is monetary. In addition to establishing his new capital, Constantine the Great created a currency of unparalleled stability. The gold solidus, or nomisma, maintained its value and was the primary international currency in Eurasia until the 11th century.

The strength of the nomisma contributed mightily to ensuring that Byzantium was the center of world trade for nearly a millennium. It promoted economic activity within the empire. As a currency of first and last resort, it globalized the medieval world economy. Even in times of economic weakness, the government strove to maintain the value of the nomisma, which redounded to Constantinople’s political influence in moments of crisis. However, as the great feudal lords began to deprive Constantinople of land, taxes, and citizens, the government’s finances began to collapse. By the 1040s, circumstances forced the empire to devalue the nomisma. Over succeeding decades, it increasingly added base metal.

The result was devastating to the economy. Byzantium’s currency quickly lost its value and international status. As inflation flared up throughout the empire, the government introduced new coins in an effort to stabilize the monetary system. Taxes steadily increased, in part to make up for the shortfall from reduced economic activity caused by the worthless money. Merchants and taxpayers alike were gradually impoverished. For the last several hundred years of its life, the Byzantine Empire lacked both a stable fisc and a growing trade sector, which in turn led to greater competition among its increasingly powerful interest groups.

These examples lead to a final political lesson for the United States. Despite the dismissive view of historians such as Edward Gibbon, Byzantine society remained vibrant and capable of reinvigorating itself even after centuries of disorder. What doomed it was decades of bad political decisions. Specific choices by emperors and feudal leaders weakened the economy, undercut the military, and sapped the empire’s cultural energy.

George Ostrogorsky in his magisterial History of the Byzantine State shows how the people of Byzantium rose time and again to create wealth, cultivate their intellectual capital, and achieve military success. Ultimately, though, they could not overcome the bad policy decisions that, made over the course of generations, ran counter to the proven path of political strength, cultural vigor, and economic growth. By the time Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the empire was but a shell of its former glory. For Orthodox Christians in Europe, it remained a symbol of the church, or religious commonwealth on earth, but the desolated city that greeted Sultan Mehmet II told a more sobering story of squandered wealth and misguided politics.

Michael Auslin is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

Read the entire article on the National Review Online website (new window will open).

Bartholomew I, Archbishop of Constantinople New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch, visited the Turkish Parliament the other day. This was a first, for His All Holiness had visited the Turkish Parliament only once before, and only to attend the funeral of the late President Turgut Özal. But this time, he was invited by the Parliament’s Constitution Conciliation Commission, in which deputies from all parties work together to draft a new charter for Turkey. 

After his meeting at the commission, where he expressed his expectations from the new constitution, His All Holiness said the following to journalists:

“It is the first official invitation to non-Muslim minorities in Republican history. We don’t want to be second-class citizens. Unfortunately there have been injustices in the past. These are all slowly being rectified. A new Turkey is being born. We are leaving the meeting with hope and are extremely grateful.”

What a great summary that was. It underlined the bitter fact that throughout the history of the “secular” Turkish Republic, non-Muslims were seen as second-class citizens, if not enemies within. It also heralded that “a new Turkey is being born,” in which the anti-non-Muslim prejudices of the past were being abandoned “slowly.” (I, too, wish the change were faster.) The Ecumenical Patriarch also noted that this current transformation in Turkey made him, and his fellow Christians, hopeful and grateful.

Now, if you are among those who believe that Turkey is being drawn away from its bright secular past to an Islamist “darkness,” you might find these hard to believe. But please do believe the Ecumenical Patriarch, and let me explain to you why he is right.

His All Holiness is right, because the main threat to Turkey’s Christians and Jews has not been Islam, but Turkish nationalism. In fact Islam respects the religious rights of “the people of the book” – Jews and Christians – and that is why non-Muslims had freedom of worship throughout the Ottoman centuries. In the mid-19th century, the Ottoman Empire also gave equal citizenship rights to non-Muslims, leading to the appearance of many Christians and Jews in the Ottoman bureaucracy and Parliament. 

In the 20th century, however, both the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the nation-state model imported from continental Europe led to the emergence of Turkish nationalism. This secular yet illiberal ideology had little respect for “the people of the book” and wanted to create a non-Muslim-free Turkey – not for its love of Muslimness, but Turkishness. Hence came the ethnic cleansing of the Armenians, Greeks or the Assyrians, or the “Wealth Tax” on all non-Muslims including the Jews. 

Kemalism, the official ideology of the Turkish Republic, was the embodiment of this nationalist paradigm. Clueless Westerners often praised Kemalism for its “secularism” and “modernism,” but little they noticed that the persecution of Turkey’s Christians (and Kurds, for that matter), from which they rightfully complained, was carried out by none other than the Kemalist Jacobins and their sans-culottes. (By the latter, I refer to the vulgar ultra-nationalists of Turkey, whose ideology is a crude but natural reflection of that of the more sophisticated Kemalist elite.)

That is why post-Kemalist Turkey, just like the pre-Kemalist (Ottoman) one, will be more amiable to non-Muslims. And we are seeing the evidence of that day by day. 

P.S.: You might have noted that I did not call the Ecumenical Patriarchate “Fener Rum Orthodox Patriarchate” as the Turkish state and mainstream media does. For I believe that every religious institution has a right to define itself, a right that should be respected by others.

Read the entire article on the Hurriyet Daily News website (new window will open).

Reading is a form of human adventure that removes us from our daily toil. Regardless of the objections of some misguided, malcontented souls who insist in ascribing an extrinsic, coerced purpose – often a social/political role to literature – the heart and soul, the raison d'être of literature continues to be a form of human amusement.

Man is a storyteller.

Ironically, because we are capable of telling stories, we frequently find ourselves doing so about situations that remove us from what is too often our top-heavy human predicament. This is a good thing.

A sincere, free-spirited search for understanding always culminates in the conviction that truth is a fundamental tool of human existence. Ortega y Gasset is correct in his assessment that knowledge is only one of many tools that we embrace in order to live and prosper in the world as dignified persons.

Consider William Wordsworth’s wisdom in his majestic poem “The World is Too Much with Us,” where he beckons the reader to divest our vital, mortal energy from the trappings of the world:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

Absent from these lines of poetry is that now pathological call to utility that is such a staple of our time. If we tally the many hours that we devote to menial tasks - concerns that the great world of social/political organization deems important - we might come to regret the number of frivolous hours that we waste away in our lifetime in the pursuit and management of pointless tasks. We ought not to forget that our time is limited.

Stated in simple terms, Wordsworth’s poem is a reflection on leisure, on the glory and curse that is the passage of time, and our handling of the latter. For, what joy is there in discovering the meaning and purpose of our lives when we are old? That belated realization seems a fool’s game. This is one sure road to regret. doesn’t it?

Literature satiates our mind and soul with everything from the ridiculous to the sublime. Literature also helps close the gap that informs these seemingly opposing poles. Isn’t this what we learn from Aesop’s Fables?

We should not be afraid to embrace the ridiculous from time to time. In doing so, we learn to laugh in the face of all those forces that we cannot comprehend or control. The road to humility is often paved with a discriminating hubris and cultivated with laughther.

I remember being struck by Cabrera-Infante’s notion that literature is the only thing that he consistently places faith in, in our troubled and confused world. The Cuban writer admitted that there was no greater pleasure for him than that which he got from literature. Sincerity still goes a long way regardless of our current penchant for pretense and phoniness.

Cabrera-Infante’s Delito por bailar el chachachá is a fine example of the heights that literature can achieve. Much has been written – by some seriously humor-depraved sourpusses – about the seriousness, often angst-ridden heaviness of literature. These are the same types who are intent on converting literature into social/political fodder.

It seems that twentieth century literature became drown by the excesses of this fashionable heaviness: Kafka, Brecht, Bernard Shaw and Pintor quickly come to mind as being kings of the very moral/spiritual sickness that affected many self-loathing intellectuals in that wretchedly violent chapter in human history.

Fortunately, for most writers, literature still remains a vocation with no face. The great hope of most sincere writers is to be heard without being seen. And, for those for whom this is not enough, there is the practice of veiling their identity with pseudo names, a nom de plume.

Cabrera-Infante’s Delito por bailar el chachachá is a raucous romp through some of the pretenses of intellectuals in the twentieth century. In fact, all his work achieves the end of being a spirited corrective to this totally corrosive disease of our age. The writer of this work takes the likes of Ludwig Feuerbach and Karl Mark, along with all the hacks who relish intellectual violence, and turns their fallacious logic on its head.

Cabrera-Infante unmasks the dreadful, bread and circus, pseudo science farce of the aforementioned intellectuals by introducing no other than Groucho Marx and his brothers to his discussion of literary and social/political pretense in mid-century. Cabrera-Infante’s narrative is moved along by whimsical laughter. This is literature in its purest, most spontaneous form. His readers are refreshed, as if reading a possessed, late twentieth century Aristophanes.

Cabrera-Infante reminds us that literature is created and enjoyed by free men and women. And, as for those who must ascribe a social/political purpose to it…such wretched souls…well, they are quickly sent packing.

We can think of literature as being another form of appropriating joy, for as Sinatra sings, “let us be happy while we can.”

How can one not take delight in Albert Camus’s sensuous description of sunlight? His inspired sentences have no difficulty in making the reader visualize "blue umbrella skies," as this is reflected in the chalky and dusty streets of Oran. This sensual exuberance is no less than a celebration of life.

As vast as the Algerian sky, is Georges Simenon’s focus in crafting criminal motivation in the roman policier. The conception and execution of his novels is vigilant of the psychological backbone of twentieth century crime. What Chesterton’s Father Brown finds to be a spiritual malaise, Simenon encounters as the moral excesses of an insipid age.

Literature needs not apologize for making us laugh, cry, and cleanse us of our maladroit stupidity. Hubris in literature is always less devastating and costly than in life.

I imagine Ian Fleming still laughing, rollicking, as his worldly character - the venerable agent 007 - inspires the chevalier fancy of his readers. In the late 1960s, Kingsley Amis, writing as Robert Markham, published a first-rate Bond novel entitled Colonel Sun.

The James Bond novels take us on such flights of fancy – remember we shouldn’t be afraid to embrace the fanciful – that in the 1980s Fleming’s literary executors invited the talented writer, John Gardner, to resurrect the dormant secret agent. Fourteen Bond novels and two film novelizations later, Gardner satiated his quest for creating popular literature like only a few writers will ever experience or enjoy.

With the proliferation of endless cheap thrills, limitless debauchery and an abundance of twenty-first century mindlessness, reading – literature – still seem a healthy way to embrace and celebrate life.

A year and a half ago, while searching for a recording of Bach’s Matthäus-Passion to share with a friend, I stumbled across a YouTube clip entitled simply: ”St Matthew Passion. No. 1.”

Filled with idle musical curiosity, I clicked away, and within moments, realized that I had discovered something extraordinary. This was breathtaking music; grandiose, yet restrained; a piece that spoke more eloquently of the sorrow and hope of Christ’s suffering than anything I’d experienced since hearing Bach’s own Matthäus-Passion for the first time. Yet despite the obvious influences of Leipzig’s Capellmeister, the piece’s sombre Russian sensibilities were equally unmistakable. Who was this composer? And why had it taken me so long to discover his work?

A bit of research revealed an answer as unexpected as was my initial (lucky) discovery: this astonishing work was written barely five years ago. And its creator, despite producing some of the most beautiful, traditionally-influenced sacred music I’ve had the pleasure to discover, isn’t even a “full-time composer.” He’s a bishop.

Meet Hilarion Alfeyev, Metropolitan of Volokolamsk, Vicar of the Moscow diocese, and chairman of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Department for External Church Relations.

Recently, the Metropolitan found some time in his (superhumanly busy) schedule to talk about his Passion and his musical influences, the unusual opportunity he has to be both composer and celebrant, and his hopes for future dialogue between the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches.

Crisis Magazine: Your Matthäuspassion was heavily influenced by J.S. Bach, whose music you call “ecumenical in the original sense of the word, for it belongs to the world as a whole and to each citizen separately.” What draws you to Bach’s music, and what characteristics of his compositional method — musical and spiritual alike — did you strive most to emulate in your own works?  

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev: I do not know anything in classical music more sublime, meaningful, profound and spiritual than Bach’s works. Bach is a colossus; his music contains a universal element that is all-embracing. As the poet Joseph Brodsky said, “In every piece of music there is Bach. In each of us there is God.”

Bach was a man who managed in his creative work to combine a magnificent and unsurpassed skill in composition, rare diversity, melodic beauty and very profound spirituality. His music, even his secular music, is permeated by a feeling of love of God, of standing in God’s presence, of awe before Him. One can say that music for him was the worship of God.

Bach was a true ‘Catholic,’ in the original understanding of the Greek word katholikos meaning ‘universal,’ ‘all-embracing,’ for he perceived the Church as a universal organism, as a common doxology directed towards God, and he believed his music to be but a single voice in the choir praising the glory of God.

Bach’s music is deeply mystical because it is based on an experience of prayer and ministry to God which transcends confessional boundaries and is the heritage of all humanity.

Bach’s music is deeply Christocentric. I believe that hidden in Bach/s music filled with spiritual symbolism and spiritual content is the secret of its relevance for people of all epochs. This is a music which does not become obsolete because it touches the central themes of human life. It is addressed in the main to that which people live for – to God.

You said that my St. Matthew Passion was heavily influenced by Bach. This is so and not so. Indeed, the idea came to me to compose this piece on 19 August 2006, the feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord and I first of all thought of Bach’s Passion. However, I wanted to fill Bach’s form with the Orthodox content. First and foremost I thought of conveying the atmosphere of the Orthodox divine services of Holy Week in my Oratorio which is not meant for church. May I draw your attention to the fact that, unlike Bach’s Passion, there is no libretto in my composition, but only the Gospel texts and texts from the divine services of Holy Week.

Crisis Magazine: Your “All-Night Vigil” and “Divine Liturgy” are evocative of the sacred works of other Russian greats: Tchaikovsky’s and Rachmaninov’s “Liturgies of St. John Chrysostom” come to mind, or Rachmaninov’s Vespers. How conscious was their influence on your work — or were the similarities more a result of the sacred texts for which you were composing, rather than an intentional homage to your predecessors? 

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev: Sergei Rachmaninov is one of my favourite composers. However, I think that his All-Night Vigil would be quite difficult to perform in church; it is more suited to a concert stage. At the same time it is such a profound work, imbued with a truly ecclesiastical spirit, that it opens up much to people, including those who are not part of the Church.

In approaching the composition of the Liturgy I primarily thought of how to write such music that would enable prayer. Today many hymns are performed by choirs either too loudly, so that the priest has to drown out the choir, or too quickly, so that the priest has no time to read the appropriate prayers. And at times, on the contrary, because the singing is too slow, the service is artificially stretched out. It happens that during the service the sanctuary has its life while the choir stall has another. In the sanctuary one sacred action is taking place, while in the choir stall something completely different is happening; it is more like a concert that divine worship.

The reason for this, I think, is that the majority of composers who write and have written church music are not priests and listen to the service ‘externally,’ not from within the sanctuary. By God’s grace I am able to hear it standing before the altar, and it is this experience which I wanted to convey in the Liturgy and All-Night Vigil. I would like to write music which would not distract me from performing the sacred actions and reading the appropriate prayers, nor distract the faithful from prayerful participation in the service. The melodies which comprise the Liturgy are simple and easy to remember, they are similar to the common chant. When the composition is performed in worship, the person praying in church ought to have the feeling that he is listening to familiar chants and his ear should not be distracted by the novelty or unusual nature of the music.

Crisis Magazine: In a lecture delivered at the Catholic University of America last year, you said that “at the dawn of the twenty-first century, the best representatives of the art of music” have brought their skill “back to God, praising Him ‘with strings and pipe.’” Who gives you the greatest hope amongst the composers of our modern age?

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev: As to the composers of our modern age who give me greatest hopes I would like to name the Estonian Arvo Pärt, the Pole Henryk Miko?aj Górecki, and the Briton John Tavener. Though there are differences in their work, much unites them not only on a musical but also on a spiritual plane. They have all experienced the profound influence of religion and are ‘practicing’ Christians: Pärt and Tavener are Orthodox, while Górecki is a Catholic. Their creative work is permeated with the theme of religion, replete with a deep spiritual content and is inextricably linked to the liturgical tradition.

Pärt’s creative life and destiny as a composer is typical of his time and is largely similar to these of Henryk Górecki. They both began in the 1960s as avant-garde composers of serialist works. Górecki moved away from his earlier modernism in the 1970s to study medieval music of the Catholic Church and composed the Third Symphony also known as Symphony of Sorrowful Songs in 1976. It became a worldwide success. Pärt withdrew from the composition to study early polyphony in search of his own style in the 1970s. The period of his voluntary silence and seclusion ended in 1976: he composed his first pieces in a new self-made technique, which he called ‘tintinnabulation’ (from the Latin tintinnabulum, a bell). The ‘tintinnabulation’ style is characterized by seeking maximum simplicity of the musical language. At the same time, this music exerts a strong impression on listeners, including even those unsophisticated in classical music. Once a hospice staff member told me that the dying people called Pärt’s Tabula Rasa an ‘angelic music’ and asked to let them hear it on their deathbed. It may be that simplicity, harmony and even a certain monotony of Pärt’s music correspond to the spiritual search of contemporary man.

After his emigration from the Soviet Union in 1980, Pärt composed only sacred music, which was meant, though, for concert performance. Between 1980 and 1990 he wrote many compositions on traditionally Catholic texts, including St. John’s Passion, Te Deum, Stabat Mater, Magnificat, Miserere, Berliner Messe, and The Beatitudes. The influence of the Catholic tradition is shown in using organ and orchestra along with the choir and the ensemble of the soloists. The influence of Orthodox church singing and Orthodox spiritual tradition has become appreciable in Pärt’s creative work since the early 1990s. He wrote many compositions on Orthodox texts, mostly for choir a capella, including Kanon Pokajanen (The Canon of Repentance) on the verses of St. Andrew of Crete, I am the True Vine and Triodion on the texts from the Lenten Triodion. His pieces for orchestra, such as  Silouan’s Song for string orchestra, are also marked by a profound influence of Orthodoxy.

Recently, I have discovered a very interesting composer, Karl Jenkins. He lives in Wales and writes beautiful music, which is bright, accessible, and simple. I regard his Requiem a real masterpiece of contemporary music.

Vladimir Martynov, under whom I studied in my youth, has composed a wonderful Requiem. It is a major requiem. Certain parts of it are an open pasticcio of Mozart or Schubert. This music is delightful, positive, light, and harmonious, which, I believe, contemporary man needs as he is tired of the negative, dissonance, and cacophony.

Crisis Magazine: The power of the Divine Liturgy is often lost upon “Western” Catholics like me who rarely have the opportunity to experience it. Your setting emphasizes a number of its more distinctive features: its reliance on the chanting of sacred texts, for example; its use of repetition; its emphasis on the mysterious, incomprehensible nature of what is taking place. What challenges do these pre-existing, unassailable characteristics present to a composer like yourself? And what are the advantages to composing for a liturgy with such a long and venerable musical tradition?

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev: I would like to quote one of the greatest of Russian saints who lived at the turn of the twentieth century, St. John of Kronstadt: ‘The church and worship are the embodiment and realization of all Christianity: here in words, in persons and actions is conveyed the entire economy of our salvation, all sacred and church history, all that is good, wise, eternal and immutable in God… his righteousness and holiness, his eternal power. Here we find a harmony that is wondrous in all things, an amazing logical connection in the whole and its parts: it is true divine wisdom accessible to simple, loving hearts.’

These words express the essence of Orthodox worship as a school for prayer, theology and discourse on the divine. All elements of worship, including the church’s décor, the exclamations of the priest and the singing of the choir are subordinated to a single aim – to direct the believer towards prayer, to enable his heart and mind to unite with the Lord.

Regarding the differences between Christian worship in the West and in the East, I think that all of us – both Orthodox and Catholics – ought to reflect deeply on the common roots of liturgy. Indeed, when we speak of the Latin Mass, we usually picture to ourselves either the short version which was adopted at the Second Vatican Council or, not so often, the Tridentine Mass which, we ought to recall, was composed relatively recently.

And of course the worship of the Russian Church – in particular the music which is performed at it – is far from ancient.

Yet if we turn to the sources of our liturgical traditions to Gregorian chant in the West and to Byzantine and Znamenny chants in the East – we see that we have more in common than what separates us.

From the 17^th century onwards Russian church music started to feel the influence of the West. On the one hand, this led to a rupture with its medieval traditions – in particular, unison singing almost completely fell into disuse. Yet on the other hand contemporary Russian liturgical music is more comprehensible to the Westerner, and when he enters a Russian church he does not feel any ‘culture shock.’

When I wrote liturgical music I tried to draw inspiration from the music traditions of Russian Orthodoxy in all their fullness. I mean by this that in following the canons no impediments are made in the creative process; just the opposite – it helps the composer, artist, and hymnographer.

Crisis Magazine: What would be the greatest benefit of an increased familiarity amongst Eastern and Western Catholics with their alternate liturgies — a more concerted effort to, in John Paul II’s words, “breathe with both lungs”? If you were asked to describe the most fundamental characteristic of the Orthodox Church and its followers to a “Westerner” like me, what would you say?

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev: A detailed answer to your question would take up much time. But if I am to be brief then I would say that Orthodox Christianity is a religion of beauty and freedom, a religion of love and light. Orthodoxy opens up a boundless expanse for spiritual creativity, for inner self-education and – what is most important – for an encounter with God. No one should feel that in Orthodoxy he is being constrained, deprived of air, or made to feel uncomfortable. There is a place in Orthodoxy for the scholar and the poet and the artist, for the rich and for the poor, for the gifted and for those not blessed with great talents, for the educated and the simple.

Crisis Magazine: In a recent interview following your visit with Pope Benedict XVI at Castle Gandolfo, you mentioned how encouraged you are by the pontiff’s attention to the dialogue between the Catholics and the Orthodox. What, to your mind, are the greatest theological and hierarchical hurdles that stand between our two churches? What role can we, as laypeople, play in the greatly-desired unification of the East and the West?

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev: In dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church we proceed from the fact that this is a Church which has preserved apostolic succession in its hierarchy as well as having a doctrine on the sacraments which is very similar to our doctrine. It is also very important that both Orthodox and Catholics have the same moral foundations and a very similar social doctrine.

The theological differences between Rome and the Orthodox East are well known. Apart from a number of aspects in the realm of dogmatic theology, these are the teaching on primacy in the Church and, more specifically, on the role of the bishop of Rome. This topic is discussed within the framework of the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue which has been taking place for several decades at sessions of a joint commission specially established for this purpose.

But today a different problem is acquiring primary importance – the problem of the unity of Orthodox and Catholics in the cause of defending traditional Christianity. To our great regret, a significant part of Protestant confessions by the beginning of the 21^st century has adopted the liberal values of the modern world and in essence has renounced fidelity to Biblical principles in the realm of morality. Today in the West, the Roman Catholic Church remains the main bulwark in the defence of traditional moral values – such, for example, as marital fidelity, the inadmissibility of artificially ending human life, the possibility of marital union as a union only between man and woman.

Therefore, when we speak of dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church, I believe that the priority in this dialogue today should not be the question of the filioque or the primacy of the Pope. We should learn to interact in that capacity that we find ourselves in today – in a state of division and absence of Eucharistic communion. We ought to learn how to perceive each other not as rivals but as allies by understanding that we have a common missionary field and encounter common challenges. We are faced with the common task of defending traditional Christian values, and joint efforts are essential today not out of certain theological considerations but primarily because we ought to help our nations to survive. These are the priorities which we espouse in this dialogue.

I am convinced that the laity – both Catholic and Orthodox – can play and is already playing a most important role in this cause, each in his own place, to where the Lord has called him, by bearing witness to the values of the Gospel which our Churches preserve.

Read the entire article on the Crisis Magazine website (new window will open).

Chaplain's Corner
Short essays written for the La Jolla Veteran's Hospital newsletter in La Jolla, California

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl (1975) puts forth the idea that religion can be defined "as man's search for ultimate meaning."  This implies a spiritual vision of the universe. A science without God would posit that the cosmos is nothing but something that exists in space or space-time. However, as Eastern Orthodox theologian Paul Evdokimov (2001) notes, such a position "offers no constructive explanation to deal with existence." To put it another way, it begins and ends with the question: Is this all there is?

Spiritual perception, however, would begin the search for meaning by looking at the universe and seeing that the meaning of life permeates, from within, the cosmos that we inhabit. In the words of the Psalmist: "The heavens shew forth the glory of God, and the firmament declareth the work of his hands." (Ps 18: 2). But there is another way of knowing God that is beyond any glory possible to be conceived by man, because God is so much greater than the limits of man's perception. The other path for intuiting God is the path of negation. Unknowingly, this is the path many who deny God have stumbled upon.

For those with spiritual perception, such knowledge could be described as a mystical path, an antinomy that is knowledge-beyond-knowledge. The Hebrews had a sense that no word can capture God. They referred to Him as Adonai (Lord) rather than a word they would not speak, YHWH (Yahweh). St. Gregory of Nyssa (1978), describing Moses, said that when "he grew in knowledge, he declared that he had seen God in the darkness, that is, . . . he had come to know that what is Divine is beyond all knowledge and comprehension." The Book of Exodus (20: 21) tells us, "But Moses went to the dark cloud wherein God was." And David the King and Prophet writes of God: "He made darkness His hiding place; as His canopy around Him." (Ps 17: 12).

Russian Orthodox Metropolitan [bishop] Hilarion Alfeyev (2002) tells how this knowledge of God is expressed linguistically: "Using the prefix 'not-', 'in-', or 'un-' (as in not - being ... invisible, incomprehensible...by use of terms 'supra-', meaning beyond ... such as supra existent, supra-good ... [by use of contrary terms] such as divine-darkness ... finally in phrases in which one word is opposed to another: 'to see the invisible', 'to comprehend the incomprehensible' ... or 'wordless hymn'."

Historically, it can be seen that pride has led mankind to serious misunderstanding of almost 'everything'. Up to the 15th Century AD, for example, the earth was seen as the center of the universe. This concept was shown wrong by a cleric and scientist, Nicolas Copernicus. To see God as the apex of life's meaning will take overcoming our prideful inclination to see ourselves as the center of all things. We must see our correct place in the cosmos and in our relationship to God. St. Isaac of Syria (Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 2011) tells us that "the man who has reached the knowledge of the extent of his weakness has reached perfect humility." The fruit of such knowing is beyond description. St. Isaac further tells us: " if [we] ask God with arduous prayer and patience, he will grant [us] His petition and open His door to [us], but chiefly for [our] humility's sake. For 'mysteries are revealed to the humble.'"

REFERENCES

Alfeyev, Bishop Hilarion, (2002). The Mystery of Faith. London, England: Darton, Longman and Todd.

Evdokimov, P. (2001). In the world of the Church: A Paul Evdokimov reader. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press.

Frankl, V.E. (1975). The unconscious God. NY: Simon and Schuster.

Holy Transfiguration Monastery. (ed., trans.).  (2011). The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian (revised, 2nd edition). Boston, MA: Holy Transfiguration Monastery.

St. Gregory of Nyssa (1978). The Life of Moses. NY: Paulist Press.

Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted. (Mt. 5:4)

In the first article I wrote (Morelli, 2012) on applying the Beatitudes to Orthodox Christian parenting I pointed out that it is also no accident that after Christ's time in the wilderness confronting and overcoming the temptations of Satan, the evil one, He was prepared for His public life of teaching. The first of Jesus’ teachings is the Sermon on the Mount, in which He gave us the well known Beatitudes (Mt 5: 1-12).ⁱ

Sermon on the Mount

Such a period of spiritual preparation for being aware of the enticements of the world, its adversities and how to confront them is not the usual practice of Eastern Christians awaiting Holy Matrimony. Rather, is not uncommon that in preparing for a holy and blessed marriage, the male and female shortly to become one flesh focus their attention on the worldly joy of marriage and relegate the spiritual factors to second place. An emphasis on the worldly aspects of marriage is certainly the main focus of secular society, in which a wedding is, for many, part of an elaborate booming and costly industry.ⁱⁱ Unfortunately, the focus is on merely worldly joy rather than spiritual joy In fact, however, there is an important aspect of spiritual joy that can and should be stressed in a true Orthodox Wedding. A passage in our Orthodox Marriage Service emphasizes such happiness. This is no better expressed than in the prayer sung by the choir after the sharing of The Common Cup:

O Isaiah, dance thy joy: for a virgin was with child and hath borne a son, Emmanuel, both God and man: and Orient is His name; whom magnifying we call the Virgin blessed.

What is seldom reflected on is a different and very necessary preparation for marriage and subsequent parenting. This is implied of the next verse of the prayer sung by the choir:

Ye holy martyrs, who fought the good fight and have received your crowns: entreat ye the Lord that He will have mercy on our souls.

What should be reflected on is the meaning of martyrdom in this prayer. The sense in the liturgy can be seen by the reference to having "fought the good fight." The meaning of this phrase comes right from St. Paul's Epistles to St. Timothy, which informs us what it takes to earn the crown of martyrdom. "But thou, O man of God, be fleeing these things; and be pursuing righteousness, piety, faith, love, patience, meekness. Keep on fighting the good . . . laying hold of eternal life, to which thou wast also called, and didst confess the good confession before many witnesses.” (1 Ti 6:11,12). In his second Epistle to St. Timothy St. Paul even makes it clear that any crown can only be worn after enduring adversity: “But thou, be watchful in all things, suffer hardship, ... I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course . . . Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness. . . ." [2 Ti 4:5, 7-8]

Certainly, not to disparage the joy of marriage, but unless the husband and wife, the leaders of the little Church in the home (Morelli, 2008), are spiritually prepared for confronting the evils in the world, in emulation of Christ who prepared for his public life by retiring into the desert, how are they going to understand themselves let alone convey to their children one of the most difficult to understand of Christ's Holy Beatitudes: Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Treasure And Our Attachment

Consider the words of Jesus Himself: "Cease treasuring up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust doth destroy, and where thieves dig through and steal; but be treasuring up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth spoil, and where thieves do not dig through nor steal. “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." (Mt 6:19-21)

Mourning Is Related To What Is Treasured

Worldly Mourning

St. Ephraim the Syrian

Consider that a synonym for mourning is grief. Mourning is usually understood as "the passionate and demonstrative activity of expressing grief."ⁱⁱⁱ Using the word grief, St. Ephraim the Syrian (1997) gives the most succinct understanding of 'worldly' in contrast to Godly 'mourning' that I have read: "If you want to overcoming inappropriate grief [worldly mourning] never grieve over anything that is transient. If people injure you with words or upset you or dishonor you do not grieve; but, on the contrary, rejoice."

Obviously St. Ephraim is indirectly referencing Christ making the distinction between earthly treasure versus heavenly treasure. It is the loss of heavenly treasure that we should mourn. This is made explicit by St. Paul who told the Corinthians: "For the sorrow in accordance with God worketh out repentance to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world worketh out death." (2Cor. 7:10).

That the mourning talked about by Christ in the Beatitudes was not a mourning about worldly things was made very clear by St. Gregory of Nyssa (1954), the Church Father who has written most extensively - eight Homilies - on the Beatitudes, for example:

If one looks at it from the point of view of the world, he will certainly say that the words are ridiculous. . . he would enumerate the various kinds of calamities. . . widowhood. . . sad conditions of orphans. . . financial losses. . . unjust judgments in lawsuits. . . illness. . . he will show in detail every kind of suffering. . . and thus he thinks he will have made ridiculous the saying that calls blessed those who mourn.

It should also be noted that some writers on the spiritual life equate the Beatitude of mourning with compassion. Forest (2002), for example, would have the reader answer questions such as: "Do I weep with those who weep?" and "Have I mourned those in my own family who have died?" As spiritually exalted as compassion is, and as essential that it should be interiorized and practiced, this is not the Patristic [the Church Father's] understanding of mourning. Mourning is sorrow regarding our separation from God due to our sinfulness.

Godly Mourning

This is made explicit by Nicolas Cabasilas (1974) in his description of the second Beatitude when he labels it "godly sorrow." He derives his understanding that we "mourn and weep" from meditating on the deeds that Christ did for mankind. When we turn away from all that Christ did for our salvation we grieve at the loss of that which is "most precious."

Blessed Theophylact

Blessed Theophylact (2006) would see that the indifference to what Christ has done for us is sin. Such sins are not limited to ourselves but "for those of our neighbor as well." We mourn for sins, not for things of this life." In a previous article (Morelli, 2012) discussing the first Beatitude, "Blessed are the poor in spirit," (Mt 5: 3) I presented Blessed Theophylact's understanding of being poor in spirit:

Blessed Theophylact

In his explanation of The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew, Blessed Theophylact (2006) tells us that being poor in spirit means that our pride is crushed and we are contrite in soul. Such virtue is based on a foundation of humility.

This shows that the second Beatitude is the logical consequence of eliminating pride and acquiring humility. The next step up the spiritual ladder, so to speak, is that now we focus on the sins we have committed due to our pride-fullness, our separation from God, and we mourn them. The saintly Theophylact tells us:

"Blessed are they that mourn" for their sins. . .Christ said, "they that mourn," that is, they that are mourning incessantly and not just one time; and not only for our sins, but for those of our neighbor. "They shall be comforted" both in this life. . . rejoices spiritually. . . and even more so in the next life.

St. John Of Kronstadt's Spiritual Meditation On Mourning

St. John of Kronstadt (2003) provides us with beautiful imagery on this Beatitude, based on the Psalm (136: 1): "Upon the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept: when we remembered Zion." Between the years c. 587-538 BC, the Hebrew people were made captive by the kings of Babylon most famous of which was Nebuchadnezzar and were exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon, that foreign land. Some of the most poignant books of Old Testament Scripture recount the exile and also provide accounts of the many saintly First Covenant precursors of Christ. These narratives may be found in the books of Daniel (1–6); Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, (Dn 13-14); the Three Holy Youths" (Dn 1-3), and the books of Tobit and Judith.

The Three Holy Youths as depicted in the Catacombs of Priscilla, Rome

St. John points out that Nebuchadnezzar can be likened to the evil one. The rivers of Babylon may help us to consider "our rapid rushing toward sin" or, alternatively, the "rivers of passion" coming forth from the evil one, the "jaws of Satan, the spiritual dragon" that we get caught up in. For the Israelites, Zion, the city Jerusalem, was the site of the 'holy of holies, the location of the Temple of Solomon, within which was Ark of the Covenant which contained the tablets of the Ten Commandments given to Moses by God Himself:

And the priests brought in the ark of the covenant of the Lord into its place, into the oracle of the temple, into the holy of holies under the wings of the Cherubim. For the Cherubim spread forth their wings over the place of the ark, and covered the art, and the staves thereof above. And whereas the staves stood out, the ends of them were seen without in the sanctuary before the oracle, but were not seen farther out, and there they have been unto this day. Now in the ark there was nothing else but the two tables of stone, which Moses put there at Horeb, when the Lord made a covenant with the children of Israel, when they came out of the land of Egypt. (1 Kg 8: 6-9)

The Jews wept because it was the temple of the one and true God they had lost. We Christians weep over the loss of our heavenly Zion. St. John of Kronstadt describes the meaning of Christ's Beatitude on mourning this way:

We must weep over our heavenly Zion, which is the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God, the true fatherland of Christians who have been distanced from it because of our sins.

St. John points out that for true [Apostolic] Christians there is also so much more to mourn: negligence in following God's commandments, as well as "indifference to the Body and Blood of the Lord—the heavenly manna."

St. John goes on to point out that "those who weep are really blessed." Why? Because by such mourning comes "consolation as a reward" - a Divine consolation. St. John tells us: "He [God] will send you the Comforting Spirit which will stop the attack of sin, extinguish the fire of passions and send down the dew of grace into your heart."

Mourning Is Blessed If Related To The Divine

In the spiritual perception of St. Gregory of Nyssa we can see the blessing of mourning in the context of divine thoughts "concerned with the sublime things of Heaven [rather than] that which is carnal and clings to the earth." Thus he considers mourning "a sorrowful disposition of the soul which arises from being deprived..."

St. Gregory of Nyssa on the Blessing of Mourning

St. Gregory points out, for example, that "a soul [that] bewails its wicked life. . . cannot be excluded from the sorrow that is called blessed." For him, lamenting the sins and their consequences we "would become blessed through the pain [we] would feel in [our] soul[s]." He compares this situation to illness because he indicates that its "remedy" [a word related to a medical cure] is repentance. In this regard he refers to St. Paul's letter to the Corinthians concerning those whose sin has been confronted: ^"so that, on the contrary, ye ought rather to graciously forgive and comfort him, lest such a one should be swallowed up by excessive grief. Wherefore I beseech you to confirm your love toward him."  (2 Cor. 2: 7-8). The patristic commentary  on this passage by St. John Chrysostom, as found in The Orthodox New Testament (2004), notes: “To graciously forgive” (carivsasqai), aorist middle infinitive of charizomai, meaning “to graciously bestow a favor”; it is also found in verse 10. “Graciously forgive and comfort him.” What he is saying is, ‘It is not because he is deserving, not because he has demonstrated sufficient penitence; but because he is weak, it is for this I request it... lest he should become desperate.’

The First Step In Spiritual Mourning: Knowing The True Good

The first step in true spiritual mourning is to know what is really good, without which any progress in holiness is impossible. St. Gregory of Nyssa tells us: "Therefore we must first know what is the true good. . .for only then can we attain to the mourning which is called blessed." The saint gives a very human example to aid in understanding this concept - a hypothetical situation in which two men are currently living in the dark. One of them, born blind, had never had sight, the other had been born with sight and had previously lived in a lighted area. St. Gregory points out that the "calamity" of their currently living in a dark place will have a different effect on each. The individual born blind does not, so to speak, know what he is missing. The man previously sighted "will think the loss of sight a grave matter."

With Holy Spirit-inspired insight St. Gregory tells us of the core of mourning:

Therefore I would say that the Word [Christ] does not call blessed the sorrow itself, but rather the realization of the good that produces this state of sorrow, which is due to the fact that the object of the desire [God] is absent from our life.

The Second Step In Spiritual Mourning

St. Gregory goes on to suggest what I will call the next step in spiritual mourning. He poses it as a question. "By what line of thought can this Divine goodness enter our consciousness, this goodness that can be contemplated but not seen?" This question is made more complex by considering the antinomy that is God Himself. The Saint points out that He gives being to all things, but He is Himself "ever-existing and has no need of becoming." This is as we pray in the Anaphora Prayer of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom: "for Thou art God ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible, ever existing and eternally the same." But out of this seeming contradiction comes the second step. This time let me use my own, very contemporary, example. How many times on Television game shows is some coveted prize hidden and set behind a closed screen of some type? The anticipation of winning often increases as the show contestant tries to do what it takes to "win" the prize. Often, engaged viewers develop heightened expectation as well. St. Gregory suggests a similar process can occur, but on a spiritual level:

. . .the nature of the transcendent good; for it is impossible that such a thing should come within the scope of our comprehension. We have, however, gained one advantage from our examination: we have succeeded in forming an idea of the greatness of what we have sought [our hidden spiritual prize, so to speak] by the very fact of having been unable to perceive it.

The sense of sorrow of not yet attaining the prize of great value, even doing things that have hindered accomplishment [sin] of obtaining the prize, both of which are the components of mourning can spiritually motivate us to follow the counsel of St. Paul that I quoted above: "Keep on fighting the good fight" (1Ti 6:12) so that we may be comforted in the hope of winning the prize and apply to ourselves St. Paul's other words: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course." (2 Tim. 4:7).

St. Gregory's Psycho-spiritual Caveat

St. Gregory's insightful psycho-spiritual warning is related to the distinction I previously made between worldly and Godly mourning. He tells us: "It follows from this that people who enjoy the present things do not look for better ones." This means that the virtue of hope must be cultivated in such a way that we look to and value that which is Godly over that which is worldly. This wisdom is also conveyed to us by St. Isaac of Syria (Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 2011) who tells us: "Let not your much wisdom become a stumbling-block to your soul and a snare before you; but [trust] in God." St Isaac tells us it is hope that has spiritual value in helping us to discern Godly versus worldly treasures: "Hold this unwaveringly in your mind, that hope for this present life may not hinder you from struggling and being victorious. For the hope in this worldly life enfeebles the thinking." Clearly, according to St. Isaac, it is hope in God that can and should guide our lives: ". . .let not your heart waver in its hope in the grace of God, lest your toil be profitless. . . ."

It would do well to reflect on the words of St. Maximus the Confessor: "Hope is the intellect's surest pledge of divine help and promises the destruction of hostile powers. Love makes it difficult or, rather, makes it utterly impossible for the intellect to estrange itself from the tender care of God; and when the intellect is under attack, love impels it to concentrate its whole natural power into longing for the divine" (Philokalia II).

Mourning Our Personal Spiritual Loss

To Teach Children, We Must First Mourn For Ourselves

Traditionally, such mourning would be called and 'examination of conscience.' Such examination would normally be done by Orthodox Christians at the end of the day, right before bedtime, certainly before the reception of The Holy Eucharist and imperatively as a preparation for participating in the Holy Mystery of Confession and receiving absolution. In fact, mourning, as I have discussed in this article, could be the ethos, that is to say, the distinctive spirit of our examination of conscience and confession. The reason that our focus is not on the prohibitions given to us by God in the ten commandments (c.f. Ex 20: 2-17),^iv but rather on the Beatitudes which show us how to attain salvation, theosis, that is becoming "partakers of the Divine Nature" (2Pt 1:4) and the sorrow, the tribulation of our minds and hearts so to speak, we need to have for having fallen short of our goal.

St. John of the Ladder

We can become enlivened by the words of St. Paul to the Corinthians that I quoted earlier in distinguishing worldly versus Godly mourning: "For the sorrow in accordance with God worketh out repentance to salvation. . . " (2 Cor. 7:10). In this we follow the counsel of St. John of the Ladder (1991). He begins Step 7 (entitled: On joy-making mourning) of The Ladder of Divine Ascent with these words:

Mourning according to God is sadness of soul and the disposition of a sorrowing heart, which ever madly seeks that for which it thirsts [theosis]; and when it fails in its quest, it painfully pursues it, and follows in its wake grievously lamenting. Or thus: mourning [strips the soul] of all attachment and all ties, fixed by holy sorrow to watch the heart.

A spiritual model for such a mournful confession can be found in the classic work The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way (c.f. Endnote v). Such an examination of conscience and confession captures the ethos of one of my pastoral articles (Morelli, 2011) - that it is the spirit that should be behind the letter of the Law.

Helping Children Understand Mourning

How Children Learn Best

Children learn best when something is presented to them in a concrete way; they discover the lesson, understand the meaning or make connections to what they already know themselves and then they come up with the way they can apply their understanding to their own lives. They learn best when using the Socratic Method,^vi that is to say, answering directed questions, the answers to which they have discovered for themselves. (Morelli, 2010b).

Linking Something Valued That Is Lost With Mourning

One approach to start might be for the parent, catechist or priest to ask children a simple question: "Think of something you really like or value, something really cherished?" Ask the children to share their answers. The answers will vary according to the age of the child, be they quite young up to adolescent age. Younger children are likely to say something like a "best-loved toy", somewhat older children may answer a "favorite video game," adolescents possibly might give an example of "cherished electronic music device." 

Then, ask them a question like: "How would you feel if [what they said they cared for] were broken?" They will answer: sadness, unhappiness, sorrow, upset" or some similar words.  The adult should positively reinforce such responses: "Good job!" or "Great answer!" or some such (Morelli, 2005, 2006a, 2006b).

Learning What Is The Highest Value

From that essential beginning step, the progression to discerning higher, and then highest values needs to be encouraged. From a purely cognitive-psychological perspective this step is the most difficult to master. God created mankind as sensory creatures.

Piaget's Epistemology

Our initial knowledge of the world is of a sensory nature. This was laid out for us in the seminal work of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1952). In fact, Piaget labeled the cognitive stage or period from birth to 18 months the “Sensorimotor Stage.” The importance of sensory aspect of the infants initial 'knowledge' of the world cannot be understated. Consider John Flavell's (1985) description:

[the infant] exhibits a wholly practical, perceiving-and-doing, action-bound kind of intellectual functioning [that] does not exhibit the more contemplative, reflective, symbol-manipulating kind we usually think of in connection with cognition. The infant "knows" in the sense of recognizing or anticipating familiar, recurring objects and happenings, and "thinks" in the sense of behaving toward them with mouth, hand, eye and other sensory-motor instruments in predictable, organized and often adaptive ways [furthermore] it is a kind of noncontemplative intelligence that your dog relies on to make its way around the world.

However, ’treasuring,' that is to say valuing the things of God and our theosis versus the things of mammon, will require advancing to higher stages of cognitive development and overcoming lower levels of cognitive processing. Piaget would call this the “Formal Operational Stage” in which the child can manipulate abstract principles, organize ideas as well as objects and is capable of perceiving beneficial as well as the punitive aspects of law. I will take up some specific ways to help this development in children after some after emphasizing some needed distinctions in how we may talk about God and Godly things.

God and Godly things

Nothing could be both more real, yet also, from a human perspective, more abstract than God Himself. St. Maximus the Confessor says of God that He is "beyond knowledge because He is infinitely beyond every intellect, whatever the knowledge it embraces." (Philokalia II). St. Maximus makes this clear when He writes of God that:

God is one, unoriginate, incomprehensible, possessing completely the total potentiality of being, altogether excluding notions of when and how, inaccessible to all, and not to be known through natural image by any creature. (Philokalia II)

St. Maximus the Confessor surrounded by his persecutors

An insight into the conundrum of God's unknowability is actually suggested by St. Maximus when he tells us:

We do not know God from His essence. We know Him rather from the grandeur of His creation and from His providential care for all creatures. For through these, as though they were mirrors, we may attain insight into His infinite goodness, wisdom and power. (Philokalia II)

We can begin to apprehend God by focusing on His qualities or attributes. Using the language of theology, this is made clear by St. Thalassios:

For example, being, divinity, goodness and whatever else we attribute to God in a positive manner, or cataphatically, are to be understood affirmatively. Unoriginateness, infinity, indefinableness and so on are to be understood in a negative manner, or apophatically. (Philokalia, II)

St. Peter of Damaskos

From a teaching standpoint we can learn from the writer of the Wisdom of Solomon who wrote: "With whose beauty, if they, being delighted, took them to be gods: let them know how much the Lord of them is more beautiful than they: for the first author of beauty made all those things." (Wis 13: 3). "For by the greatness of the beauty, and of the creature, the creator of them may be seen, so as to be known thereby." (Wis 13: 5). When using the attributes of God as a teaching tool we must keep in mind an important caveat given by St. Peter of Damaskos:

In our ignorance, however we should not identify God in Himself with His Divine attributes, such as His goodness, bountifulness, justice, holiness, light, fire, being, nature, power, wisdom. . . . (Philokalia III)

Attaining some level of spiritual knowledge of God will take a synergia, that is to say cooperation between mankind's natural cognitive-perceptual functions and God's grace, to allow us the spiritual perception of the knowledge of God (gnosis) and eventual union with God (theosis). The saints have shown us that it takes a life of great preparation incorporating discipline (ascesis) by training of the mind and body by fasting,  prayer, repentance, stillness (hesychia), watchfulness (nepsis) and partaking of the Holy Mysteries of the Church to advance to such a stage. The Church Spiritual Fathers whose writings are in The Philokalia quoted in this article and in many of my other writings are the quintessential spiritual guides of the Church. As a clinical psychologist and priest I strongly urge, as do the holy Fathers themselves, that the counsels and practices in The Philokalia be undertaken under the guidance of a true holy and experienced spiritual father or mother. I highly recommend the work of Fr. Dumitru Staniloae (2003) as an excellent secondary source describing Orthodox Spirituality. 

Abstract Terms Related To God

The Church Fathers teach that what can be known of God is that which can be known from His creation. In this they are following the inspired writers of Old Testament Sacred Scripture and the insight of St. Paul. King David wrote: "The heavens shew forth the glory of God, and the firmament declareth the work of his hands. Day to day uttereth speech, and night to night sheweth knowledge. There are no speeches nor languages, where their voices are not heard.” (Ps 18: 2-4). In the Wisdom of Solomon we read: "For the greatness of the beauty, and of the creature, the creator of them may be seen, so as to be known thereby." (Pr 13: 5). St. Paul's words to the Romans echo this same way of understanding God (1:19,20 ): ". . .because that which is known of God is manifest in them; for God manifested it to them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived by the things which are made, both His eternal power and divinity. . . ."

St. Gregory Palamas

In their description of God as He can be known, the Church Fathers employ abstract words. St. Gregory Palamas makes reference to God's "goodness, wisdom, power, divinity and majesty." (Philokalia IV).  He goes on to describe God as "the divine energy, intellected through created things, is both uncreated and yet not the essence." He then tells us St. Basil the Great's understanding of this from his treatise Against Eunomios: "....that created things manifest wisdom, art and power, but not essence.... Most eloquently does St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Basil’s bodily and spiritual brother, ....say.... "When we perceive the grandeur and beauty of the wonders of creation, and from these and similar things derive other intellections concerning the Divinity....”"

Helping Children To Understand God

The challenge to help children apprehend God in some way is to have them comprehend abstractions in a manner they are capable of. One way of doing this is to start with an abstract word they may frequently use and how they understand it. For example, the word beauty would be a good start. Most children develop some sense of this abstract concept rather early in age; their understanding is related to what they like and do not like, or what they find pleasant or unpleasant. For example, they may have a favorite item of clothing or they frequently hum a particular tune. Once again, reverting to the Socratic Method would aid the child discovering for themselves a deeper understanding of what they mean by beauty. Consider the following script:

"Ok, Jill, you said that you think this blouse is beautiful. Tell me, what could you or I do that would make it really ugly?"

"Jack, I hear you humming that tune; you must really like it. What could you do with the melody that you would hate it? You know, that it would sound really awful?"

If a child or adolescent is capable of giving examples of concrete things they find beautiful, good, true or wise and give the contrast, then this is a first step in cognitively processing abstract principles. Let me point out that my choice of these particular abstract terms was quite deliberate, as these are the attributes the writers of Sacred Scripture and Church Fathers have used in their understanding of God. (Morelli, 2010a)

God as the Source of Worldly Beauty, Goodness, Truth and Wisdom

The work of Albert Bandura (1986) is particularly helpful in explaining how to convey the concept that God the creator of what is valued is greater than the creation itself, and thus is of higher value. His work and that of his colleagues on modeling can be an aid in discriminating the true worth of what is valued. Citing an earlier study (Bandura, Ross and Ross, 1963) he points out: "children are much more likely to model the preferences and actions [of models] who control and dispense rewarding resources than preferences and actions of the recipients of the rewards." In the spirit of Bandura's work, children can be asked questions about the worldly objects they like or find pleasant. For example, they could be asked: Who created these objects? For the committed Christian, the answer is obviously 'God'. They then can be asked: Who has more value, (what Bandura would describe as 'efficacious rewarding power'), God who made this object or the object itself?

A Concrete Example From The Life Of A Contemporary Elder

An event in the life of Elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain (Ageloglou, 1998) shows how understanding of God and His goodness as an abstraction was efficaciously applied to his life. The elder recounts this incident:

Elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain

When I was a child. . .I loved Christ very much. I used to walk in the woods carrying a cross in my hands, chanting and praying. . .I met a fellow villager. When he saw me carrying the cross, he asked me: —What is this? —The Cross of our Christ, I replied. . . .Arsenios, [the elder's baptismal name] you are silly. You don't mean to say that you believe in God. He does not exist. These religious stories are made up by some priests. . . . His twisted thoughts filled my innocent soul with black heavy clouds. . .I began to think God does not exist . . .I asked Christ to give me an indication of His existence, so I could believe in Him. But He did not respond. Suddenly, a [favorable] thought. . .entered my innocent soul" —Hold on for a second! Wasn't Christ the kindest [good] man on earth. No one has ever found anything evil in Him. So, whether he is God or not, I don't care. Based on the fact that He is the kindest man on earth and I haven't known anyone better, I will try to become like Him and absolutely obey everything the Gospel says. I will even try to give my life for Him, if needed, since He is so kind.

The Loss of Beauty, Good, Truth or Wisdom

Now we can proceed to the next step. Once a child (or adult) has a sense of what these lofty abstract terms for God mean,  we can focus on understanding mourning, which is, itself, an abstract word. That is to say being sorrowful and grieving their loss of God and what we have done (sin) to have lost Him. "How would you feel if you lost God?" "How would you fee, if it were something you did that made you lose God? What we do to lose God is called sin? How should you feel about disobeying God, doing bad things, or not doing good things"?

"...for they shall be comforted." (Mt 5: 4)

Children (as well as their parents, in fact all Christians) may need help in making the connection between mourning and the eventual comfort they will receive as promised by Our Lord. Mourning is but the beginning step we have to take to reach the top step — the comfort that Christ told us we will receive. The comfort is the joy (beatitude) of reconciliation with God and all mankind.

The Prodigal Son

The penultimate example of what is required to be comforted is given to us by Christ Himself in the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15: 10-32. It assumes that the first step (sin) is not a wanted action but part of the brokenness of mankind. We should never want to sin, that is to say, voluntarily or involuntarily be separated from God or our neighbor. However, it is a consequence of our fallen state after the expulsion of our ancestral parents from Paradise (Morelli, 2006c; 2008), as we are reminded in our Trisagion Prayer for the Deceased: "for there is no man who liveth and sinneth not." Below I have highlighted in square brackets ([])some of the relevant  passages  which are the steps to reach Christ's promised comfort, what our response should be and the consequences:

Thus, I say to you, joy ariseth in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repenteth.... A certain man had two sons. And the younger of them said to the father, ‘Father, give to me the portion of the property which falleth to me.' And not many days after, the younger son, having gathered all together, went abroad into a distant land, [decision to separate from God] and there scattered his property, living profligately. [sin] But after he spent all, there arose a severe famine throughout that land, and he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself to one of the citizens of that land; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he was longing to fill his belly from the husks, which the swine were eating; and no one was giving to him. [sorrow-mourning-repentance] But having come to himself, [metanoia-a change of heart and mind] he said, ‘How many hired servants of my father abound in loaves, and I am perishing with hunger! [mourning-loss of God] I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no longer worthy to be called thy son; make me as one of thy hired servants.’ And he rose up and went to his father. But when he was yet far away, his father saw him and was moved with compassion, and ran, and fell upon his neck, and ardently kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no longer worthy to be called thy son.’ [confession-asking forgiveness]  But the father said to his slaves, ‘Bring forth the robe, the chief one, and clothe him, and provide a ring for his hand and sandals for the feet. And bring the calf, the fattened one, and slay it; and let us eat and be merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again; and he was lost and is found.’ [God's forgiviness] And they began to be merry. . . .to make merry and to rejoice was fitting, 'because this thy brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.’ [comfort] 

Parents, catechists and clergy (for themselves) and the children they are leading to Christ can discuss the meaning of this parable. The bracketed inserts above can serve as a guide to the application of the parable to ourselves and our children. The words of the psalmist can be meditated on: "The Lord hath heard, and hath had mercy on me: the Lord became my helper. Thou hast turned for me my mourning into joy" (Ps 29: 11-12).

Our Understanding Of Sin

All sin is a separation from God and our neighbor. St. Maximus the Confessor tells us sin is misuse of something good. He says " [We] misuse the gifts God has given us for our use. In all things misuse is a sin." (Philokalia II).  The word for sin in Greek hamartia is understood in English 'as missing the mark.' The Trisagion Prayers which start out so many prayers and services in the Eastern Church considers sin an illness to be cured.  In this prayer we cry out: "All-holy Trinity, have mercy on us. Lord cleanse us from our sins. Master, pardon our iniquities. Holy God visit and heal our infirmities for Thy Name’s sake."

The Church Our Heavenly Hospital

The Church in its wholeness and by the use of its Holy Mysteries is the place of healing. St. John Chrysostom states: "Did you commit sin? Enter the Church and repent for your sin; for here is the physician, not the judge; here one is not investigated, one receives remission of sins" (Morelli, 2008).

Bishop Alexander (Mileant)^vii reminds us that sins are "like that physical afflictions, [that] are distinguished by the magnitude of their evil and destructiveness." He makes the pastorally useful spiritual distinction between mortal sins, which break our union with God and the accumulations of daily sins that he likens to "rubbish."  He cautions, however, that the accumulation of these daily sins can eventually "become more damaging than a single mortal sin.^viii This certainly bespeaks the necessity of the use of all the healing Holy Mysteries given by Christ to His Church.

St. Isaac the Syrian with Contemporary Elders

The Godless secular world is relentless in enticing us by any means to value the things of mammon. The proliferation of high tech media, employing dazzling lights and booming sounds have brought hitherto distant lures to our fingertips. Many are mesmerized by and act as if addicted to the use of modern technology and its contents.

Now more than ever is the time to heed the counsel of The Church Fathers that has pointed out that mourning is a lifelong process. All the more reason to keep before us that it is God and our union with Him which is of the highest value and our separation from Him by sin is our greatest loss. Thus to keep in mind the words of St. Isaac the Syrian:

There is no limit to perfection, for even the perfection of the perfect is truly without completion. And for this reason repentance [mourning] is bounded neither by periods of time nor by works until a man's death.

Let all the earth fear the Lord, and let all the inhabitants of the world be in awe of him (Ps 32: 8).

Chaplain's Corner
Short essays written for the La Jolla Veteran's Hospital newsletter in La Jolla, California

In the mid 1960’s there was a popular folk song that played the airwaves: The Sounds of Silence. It was originally written in the wave of national grief that followed the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. However, this song actually reaches far beyond the historical event and touches a fountain of great spiritual depth. Consider a couple lines from the song: "Hello darkness, my old friend I've come to talk with you again . . .The words of the prophets are written. . .And whispered in the sounds of silence." A very appropriate reflection for the start of Spring comes from the saintly Mother Teresa of Calcutta:  “We need to find God, and He cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence. . . .We need silence to be able to touch souls.”

The value of silence cuts across so many religious traditions. The prophet Habakkuk (2: 20) instructed the Jews: "But the Lord is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him." Buddhists find in silence the meaning of the universe: "When a man knows the solitude of silence, and feels the joy of quietness, he is then free from fear and he feels the joy of the dharma [basic principles of the cosmos].ⁱ In the Islamic tradition Rumi notes: "I implored the sage in earnest last night to unveil the mysteries of the universe. He whispered softly in my ear, "Silence! It is something to perceive but never to say."ⁱⁱ

Spring appears this month. Nature comes leaping  into  life.  The question is: do we see it? Do we hear it? Do we appreciate it? The Psalmist (18:1) tells us: "The heavens shew forth the glory of God, and the firmament declareth the work of His hands." But are we silent enough to see God, or are we so caught up in the cacophony that makes up so much of the modern world that we are blinded to the beauty that is God's creation?

The worth of silence for the Eastern Church Fathers cannot be overestimated. St. Isaac of Syria tells us: "What watering is to plants is exactly the same as continual silence for the growth of spiritual knowledge." (Brock, 1997). Abba Poeman of the Desert taught his monks: "If you are silent, you will have peace wherever you live." (Ward, 1975). Finally consider the wisdom of Abba Pambo, who, when told to say something that would edify a visiting Archbishop, replied: "If he is not edified by my silence, he will not be edified by my speech. (Ward, 1975).

REFERENCES

Brock, S., trans. (1997). The Wisdom of Saint Isaac the Syrian. Fairacres Oxford, England: SLG Press, Convent of the Incarnation.

Ward, B. (1975). The Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Trappist, KY: Cistercian Publications.

ENDNOTES

i http://www.beliefnet.com/Quotes/Buddhist/General/B/Buddha/When-A-Man-Knows-The-Solitude-Of-Silence-And-Feel.aspx?q=silence#ixzz1kgr5ECC0

ii http://www.beliefnet.com/Quotes/Islam/Rumi/R/Rumi-The-Life-And-Thought-Of-Rumi/I-Implored-The-Sage-In-Earnest-Last-Nightto-Unve.aspx?q=silence#ixzz1kh8WDLy2

And whenever thou art praying, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites; for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, in order that they might be made manifest to men. Verily I say to you, they have received their reward.  But thou whenever thou art praying, enter into thy chamber, and after thou shuttest thy door, pray to thy Father Who is in secret; and thy Father Who seeth in secret, shall render what is due to thee openly. (Mt 6: 5-6)

From the times of my earliest memory these words of Christ were implanted on my mind.  A simple practical example of putting this into practice was the proper way of saying the Prayers at the Table,  popularly known as 'grace' before and after meals, while in public. It meant making a silent and mental Sign of the Cross and saying the appropriate prayer mentally as well.  Any public display of one's commitment to Christ, would, at that time and locale, have been considered hypocrisy.

However, the world of my early years was spiritually and culturally very different from the world that has ushered us into the second decade of the 21st Century.  Practically everyone in my hometown was a practicing Christian. There was one devout Jewish family that had a small grocery store and a travel truck to service remote areas. On any  given Sunday morning most people went to the church of their choice.  It might be said that there was a shared culture of the value of religion in daily life. If someone ostentatiously displayed some overt religiosity, in all likelihood such a display would have been considered hypocritical.

In thinking about this today, I can see a parallel to religious life during Christ's time. Although surrounded by pagan Romans, the Jewish people shared a common commitment to their Abrahamic and Mosaic heritage. Thus, singling oneself out by ostentatious display of one's Jewishness would certainly cry out for considering such showy behavior hypocrisy. This would have been especially true when one's inner disposition, that is to say one's heart and mind, contained and was motivated by just the opposite. Jesus pointed out that it was not eating with "unwashed hands" that defiles us, but what comes out of our mouths, from the heart: evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies. (cf. Mt 15: 16-20). Jesus is unrelenting in His excoriation of hypocrisy:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye cleanse the outside of the cup and  the dish, but within  they are full of plunder and incontinence. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are like tombs, which have been whitewashed, which on one hand appear beautiful outwardly, but on the other hand are full of the bones of the dead and of all uncleanness within. Thus ye also on the one hand appear righteous to men outwardly, but on the other hand ye are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness within. (Mt 23: 25, 27-28)

In fact, in this regard the teaching of Christ is clear:

And when ye pray, you shall not be as the hypocrites, that love to stand and pray in the synagogues and corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men: Amen I say to you, they have received their reward.  But thou when thou shalt pray, enter into thy chamber, and having shut the door, pray to thy Father in secret: and thy Father who seeth in secret will repay thee. And when you are praying, speak not much, as the heathens. For they think that in their much speaking they may be heard.  Be not you therefore like to them, for your Father knoweth what is needful for you, before you ask him. (Mt 6: 5-8)

The Church in the Age of Persecution

The first three centuries of the Church have come to be  known as the Age of Persecution. Christ Himself foretold this would happen when He said to His Apostles: "Keep on remembering the word which I said to you, 'A slave is not greater than his lord,' If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. . . ." (Jn 16: 20). The Age of Persecution began in Rome in 64 AD with the arrests, torture and executions of Christians by the Emperor Nero, and ended in 313 AD when the soon to be sainted Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan. The type of persecution undergone by the Christians of the first few centuries has been described ,in a term used by Fr. Alexander Schmemann (1977), as permeated by The Blood of Martyrs. While similar bodily persecution is undergone by Christians todayⁱ in some places in the world, today in the West we are undergoing another type of persecution.

Cultural Persecution

Interestingly, Schmemann alludes to another type of persecution undergone by the early Christians. He termed as a type of persecution the “. . . contact with the ideas and beliefs of surrounding Hellenism," pointing out that even in St. Paul's (1Cor 1: 23) comment in this regard the full text reads: ". . .but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks." 

In the late 20th and early 21st Centuries Godless secularism has replaced Hellenism in the cultural and political persecution of Christians in the West.  Consider the New York Times account of a high school girl, Jessica Ahlquist, whom the newspaper described as an outspoken atheist, who won a lawsuit in early 2012 to get a prayer taken down that had hung from the wall of her high school auditorium for 49 years.ⁱⁱ It was originally written by a student in 1963 to serve as a moral guide to other students. A facsimile of the prayer, originally written on paper had been stenciled onto T Shirts:

The Swedish Example

A recent Zenit Catholic international news agency article,ⁱⁱⁱ considers what a society that pushes the envelope of atheistic secularism would be like. Sweden points the way. The article lists some disturbing consequences. Since 1975, for example, abortion has been free on demand. In 2009 it  had the highest rate of abortion in Europe for girls between the ages of 15 and 19 (22.5 per 1,000).

I want to reassert strongly, as I have written previously (Morelli, 2009), that I eschew politics. My only concern is the morality of any issue or policy. With this proviso, let me point out that Sweden has a policy regarding healthcare providers, that is totally immoral, very similar to the policy proposed by the Obama administration healthcare plan.^iv

It should be noted that some consider even the compromise that followed this plan to be immoral. The compromise exempts religious institutions from paying for, or providing, unconscionable healthcare procedures, but requires insurance companies to cover the cost of such procedures. The moral objection is that conscientious objectors are forced to become involved, albeit indirectly, by the payment of their insurance premiums.^v

In terms of abortion, for example, Swedish law does not allow for consideration of conscience informed by morality in the healing care given to their patients. What the Zenit article termed "Conscientious objection." In 2011, the Swedish parliament, with almost no opposition, issued a decree obligating the Swedish delegation to the Council of Europe “to fight against the rights of doctors to refuse to participate in abortion.” (c.f. Endnote iii)

I am not de facto against Sex Education in the schools as long as it is scientifically factual and age appropriate. I also have the expectation that a sex education instructor would point out that there are ethical factors to be considered and practiced in sex activity for humans. Furthermore, the students should discuss these moral issues with their parents. In this regard, my hope would be that in any discussion about sexual practice Christian parents would conform their minds to the Mind of Christ and His Church (Morelli, 2007). However, this is not the way it is done in Sweden. The Zenit articles states:  ". . .sex education is graphic and compulsory, and children are taught that whatever feels good sexually is OK. The age of consent is 15." I maintain that, in this case, the Swedish state has overstepped its moral bounds; actually, the statement indicates that the Swedish state has no moral bounds in this regard.

The personhood of mankind is based on being created in God's image

The Holy Spirit-inspired writer of the first book of the Old Testament gives us the foundation of the value of the personhood that constitutes the unique nature of Man.

 "And He [God] said: Let Us make man to Our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth. And God created man to His own image: to the image of God He created him: male and female He created them." (Gn 1: 26-27)

The understanding that God "breathed into his face the breath of life (Gn 2: 27) can be taken that it is by the action of the Holy Spirit that, right at the moment of creation, mankind partakes of the Divine Nature even though in limited form. This Divine  action makes mankind above all the materially created world. Mankind's obligation and responsibility to care for creation can be understood from God's instruction, described by the writer of Genesis: "And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth" (Gn 1: 28). There is a spiritual and psychological similarity but simultaneously a uniqueness in the make up mankind.

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev (2002) reflects on the alternate use of the singular and the plural in Sacred Scripture,^vi a seeming antinomy, in its referencing both God and mankind.

From two human beings the third, their child, is to be born: the fully realized family — husband, wife and child — which is a reflection of the Divine love of in three Hypostases [persons of the Holy Trinity]. . .This interchange emphasizes the unity of the nature of [mankind] even though each individual person is unique. 'God is a Nature and three Persons; man is a nature and "innumerable" persons; God is consubstantial and in three Hypostases, man is consubstantial [nature] and in innumerable hypostases [persons].

The Ultimate Goal of Personhood is Being "Like" God

The Holy Father St. John of Damaskos summarizes in very practical terms the meaning of personhood in mankind: a reflection of the Divine personhood:

First, every man is said to be made in the image of God as regards the dignity of his intellect and soul ... is immortal and endowed with free will, and in virtue of which he rules, begets and constructs. Second, every man is said to be made in the likeness of God as regards his possession of the principle of virtue and god-like actions... having deep sympathy for one's fellow men, in mercy, pity and love ... and in showing heartfelt concern and compassion. (Philokalia II).

St. John is emphatic in pointing out that because of our being made in God's image it is the likeness of God that we must attain. The image is but a stepping stone, so to say, to achieve our ultimate worth: being 'like God.'

But only a few — those who are virtuous and holy, and have imitated the goodness of God to the limit of human powers — possess that which is according to the likeness of God.

Furthermore, St. John distinguishes sin and its opposite virtue in terms of body and soul, with the soul being on a higher level than the body, as he says, more "excellent and precious." St. John notes that "this is especially true of those virtues which imitate God and bear His name." This leads him to the conclusion that "the vices of the soul are much worse than the passions of the body." His down-to-earth discourse on this distinction is very insightful both psychologically and spiritually:

I don't know why, but people overlook this fact. They treat drunkenness, unchastity, adultery, theft and all such vices with great concern, avoiding them or punishing them as something whose very appearance is loathsome to most men. But the passions of the soul are much worse and more serious then bodily passions [emphasis mine].  For they degrade men to the level of demons ... These passions of the soul are envy, rancour, malice, insensitivity, avarice — which according to the apostle [Paul] is the root of all evil. (cf. 1Tim 6: 10) — and all vices of a similar nature.

It is clear that St. John of Damascus is not downgrading the sins of the body, but rather astutely indicating that the sins of the soul are the source of these bodily sins and thus ultimately more primal. They indwell in the heart of the soul. As Christ Himself said "But the things which proceed out of the mouth, come forth from the heart, and those things defile a man. For from the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies. These are the things that defile a man." (Mt 15: 18-20)

The meaning of martyrdom

The word ‘martyr’ means witness.^vii  Martyrs are described by St. Diadochos of Photiki as those who "confess their faith despite all persecution." (Philokalia I, McGuckin, (2004) commenting on the "witness (martyria) or public confession" of Christ in the early Church, says that it was seen as inspired by the Holy Spirit. He notes the words of Jesus to His Apostles, Peter James John and Andrew: "And it is needful for the Gospel first to be proclaimed to all the nations. But whenever they lead you away and deliver you up, cease taking thought before what ye should say, neither be meditating. But whatsoever shall be given to you in that hour, be speaking this; for ye are not the ones who speak, but the Holy Spirit." (Mk. 13:10-11). As I pointed our previously in this article, early Christians were subjected to physical torture and death in mimesis of the passion and death of Christ Himself.

Spiritual Preparation for being a martyr-witness in the modern world

Martyrdom may be laudable, but there can be grievous spiritual danger for Christians in  public display of their commitment to Christ, as I noted in the introductory quote from St. Matthew (6: 5-6). It would do all of us well to reflect on Blessed Theophylact's (2006) commentary on Christ's teaching: "He also calls those men hypocrites who pretend they are looking to God when in fact they are only looking to men; and from men they have received the only reward they will receive." In contemporary terms we must be aware of cultivating 'purity of intention.' St. Simeon the New Theologian writes: "In brief, do everything as if you were in the presence of God, so that your conscience does not rebuke you." (Philokalia IV). We would want to purge ourselves of any witness that may be carnal, material-minded, profane or unspiritual. This would be the spiritual understanding of St. Paul's teaching to the Corinthians: "But a material-minded man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for it is foolishness to him, and he is not able to come to know it, because it is spiritually examined." (1 Cor. 2:14) In order to attain purity of heart or intention the virtue of humility must be cultivated. St. Isaac the Syrian (Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 2011) counsels:

All these good things are born to a man from the recognition of his own weakness. For out of his craving for God's help, he presses on toward God . . .  and to the extent that he draws near to God in his intention, God also draws near to him through His gifts. . . .

Cultivating a Heart Enlivened by Christ

When we think of sin we think that it springs from what is in our hearts and into our thoughts, words and deeds. “For out of the heart cometh forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies.”(Mt. 15:19). So, too, to witness Christ in the modern world we have to start with our hearts, that is to say our inner disposition, and be in conformity to the mind of Christ and his Church. (Morelli, 2010a) As I have previously written:

Secularism can be defined as the marginalization of God and the Church, and in place of God and His Church, a focus on "earthly things" (Php 3:19). That is to say, the values of contemporary western world, including: radical individualism; moral relativism; and religious and political correctness, which guide individual and social behavior and inform political/public policy. (Morelli, 2010b)

Thus we must start our witness of Christ, from the depths of our personhood, with our hearts focusing on 'Godly things.' St. Hesychios the Priest is clear what must be done to bring this about:

The heart which is constantly guarded, and is not allowed to receive the forms, images and fantasies of the dark and evil spirits [earthly things] ... We should wage this spiritual warfare with a precise sequence; first, with attentiveness; then, when we perceive hostile thought attacking [worldly values], we should strike at it angrily in the heart, cursing it as we do so; thirdly, we should direct our prayer against it, concentrating our the heart through the invocation of Jesus Christ . . ."^viii (Philokalia I)

So, then, what follows from our heart is either sinful or Godly. As St. Ilias the Presbyter succinctly put it: "The soul is liable to sin in three ways: in actions, in words, and in thoughts." This suggests that if our hearts are imbued with the spirit of Christ, so, too, then will be our actions, words and thoughts. With this "armor of God," we are now prepared to face our modern martyrdom, that is to say witnessing Christ. As St. Paul reminds the Ephesians (6: 11-13):

 "Put on the full armor of God, for you to be able to stand against the wiles of the devil; because for us the wrestling is not against blood and flesh, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the cosmic rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of evil on account of the heavenly things. For this cause take up the full armor of God, in order that ye might be able to withstand in the day, and having counteracted all things, to stand."

 An important caveat is to recall that sin is not only what we do; it is also what we fail to do. 

Witnessing in the Modern Secular World

Example One: A Simple Personal Example

For many years in the past, when dining outside of my home, say in a public eatery, in the spirit of Christ's instruction to pray in secret (cf. Mt 6: 6) I would make the Sign of the Cross and Grace before Meals mentally. In today's world, which marginalizes God, Christ and His Church any public display of commitment to Christ it is likely to be considered worthy of castigation and surely not given honor. Thus, all the more reason for Christians to say such prayers in public and not limit themselves to private times. I now make a public confession of my commitment to Christ in this manner and strongly urge others dedicated to Christ to do likewise.

Example Two: A Public Sports Figure

The sports news that captured the attention of the media in the United States in 2011, if not around the world, was the very public acknowledgement of God by National Football League (NFL) quarterback Jim Tebow. After making a favorable play, he would drop to his knee and bow his head. The act generated a new word in American English language; it came to be called "Tebowing."^ix

This act has been copied by others:

Can we not see this as drawing people to God and helping to re-establish the importance of God in society and our personal life? At a time in which Christ and his followers are being disparaged,  deprived of fundamental rights, ignored and sidelined from public life and political policy, this display is a welcome witness.  It should be noted that the witness that Tim Tebow gives is Christ-centered. While in college play he had the number  "Jn 3:16" on his sun protection eye black, a reference to the well-known Gospel verse: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that everyone who believeth in Him should not perish, but may have everlasting life.] The use of any number or text for under-eye sun protection is not allowed in the NFL. However Tebow's Christian orientation was made known. In fact, he commented that:  "It just goes to show you the influence and the platform that you have as a student-athlete and as a quarterback at Florida".^x May I comment on how much influence any of us could have who are true witnesses to Christ in our lives? Consider Christ's direction: “What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what ye hear in the ear, proclaim upon the housetops." (Mt 10:27) The eyes of the world are around us and upon us.

Example Three: Engaging Moral Issues

It goes without saying that if Christians are in political life or have societal leadership of any kind, they are to follow Christ’s moral teachings in what they legislate, propose, support, vote on, execute or adjudicate.  To name but a few contemporary political-social issues that have moral implications: abortion, same sex marriage, and torture, such as waterboarding. These activities are a grave illness, infirmity, missing of the mark, that is to say sin, and are thus antithetical to Christian moral teaching; not worthy of sincere Christians, and should be against the conscience of those who claim to be Christians.^xi

What about the rest of us, however, who are not politicians, business executives or who, like me, actually eschew politics?  Let us recall the ways of participating in sin. We are culpable by: counsel, command, consent, provocation, praise or flattery, concealment, partaking, silence or defense of the sin.^xii Permit me another personal example. I was recently exiting a market when I was approached by a young lady. She asked me: Do you support civil rights for gays, lesbians and bi-sexuals? Without hesitation, very directly and firmly, but in charity, I answered: "I certainly, do. . . equal pay for equal work, etc. . . . (by God's grace working on my intuition as she was asking the question, I discerned the motive behind her question and where it was leading, so I continued responding with no pause whatsoever). . . but not same-sex marriage, that is a moral issue, not one of civil rights; marriage can be only between a male and female, and blessed by God." Let me say, she was stopped in her tracks. I guess my Christ-centered response-witness was certainly unexpected. I had a genuine smile and said something like: "Take care and God bless!" Let us recall on the ways I have acted in a similar way when confronted by others supporting un-Christlike moral issues. Psychologically what I was doing was responding assertively. (Morelli, 2006). I might call such encounters 'assertiveness for Christ.'

A shame for Christians that many who deny Christ have no problem witnessing

It is well known that many who deny Christ as true God and true man have no problem publically witnessing their view. In Europe, this view of a young lady is a common sight:

Public Schools Toronto Canada allow formal prayer services for Moslem students during the day in the schools^xiii:

In fact, among Moslems it is a duty to perform public worship.^xiv

It is well known that in some Moslem countries any public display of commitment to Christ is prohibited and harshly dealt with.^xv I saw a video a couple of years ago of a world known Orthodox bishop who had to wear a sport shirt and pants while in Turkey, because his clerical garb was not permitted. Unless under Church obedience, I have no intention of ever visiting a country that will not permit me to wear my appropriate clerical garb and possess my Sacred Scripture, readings of the Church Fathers and service books. I pray that God would give me the strength that if ever I were somehow forced into being in such a location, I would be a witness-martyr in this regard even unto death.

Our Baptismal Vocation and Responsibility: Being a Martyr for Christ

The last words of Christ to His eleven Apostles as recorded by St. Matthew (Mt. 28:18-20) is this instruction: “All authority is given to Me in heaven and on earth. “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you; and behold, I am with you all the days until the completion of the age. Amen." All those baptized into Christ, as we chant in the Baptismal Hymn: "As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. Alleluia," means that now all the baptized are of the royal priesthood. They themselves are called to make those of all nations become committed, baptized followers of Christ. Writing to the persecuted Churches in Asia Minor St. Peter told them, "But ye are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for a possession,” that ye might “tell forth the virtues” of the One Who called you out of darkness into His wondrous light, who once were “not a people,” but now are “a people of God. . . .""  (1Pt 2:9-10)

Now, God has created us with different personalities and different gifts. As St. Paul told the people of Corinth: "Now there are distributions of gifts of grace, but the same Spirit, there are distributions of ministrations, and the same Lord. But to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given to the profit of all. . . ."  (1Cor. 12: 4,5,7) One gift that we all share is the gift to witness-to martyr Christ.  At the very least, we can all make the Sign of the Cross, say a prayer, and (with discernment) say that something we may encounter is contrary to the teaching of Christ. Let us remember Christ's words to St. Paul, and his response: "My grace is sufficient for thee; for My power is being made perfect in weakness.” Most gladly therefore will I rather boast in my weaknesses, that the power of the Christ might dwell upon me. Wherefore I am well pleased in weaknesses, in insults, in necessities, in persecutions, in straits, for Christ’s sake; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong." (2 Cor 12: 9-10)

Blessed are they who have been persecuted on account of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens.

Blessed are ye whenever they reproach you and persecute you, and say every evil word against you falsely on account of Me.

Be rejoicing and be exceedingly glad, for your reward is great in the heavens. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.  (Mt 5: 10-12)

Sometimes, matters of faith have a quiet yet powerful way of influencing history.

Take, for example, the behind-the-scenes story that preceded the entry of the first African-American player to major league baseball more than six decades ago.

That player, of course, was the legendary Jackie Robinson, who shattered the big-league color barrier when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947. The story of faith belongs to the baseball executive who signed Robinson, the equally legendary Branch Rickey, and to a New York minister who played a quiet role in a major decision.

And the telling of that story spans generations and families, from the minister’s wife, who wrote it down, to the couple’s granddaughter who uncovered it many years later among her late grandmother’s writings.

“I had no idea that I would find a story that linked my grandfather to a part of U.S. history,” the granddaughter, Donnali Fifield, told CNN. “But as soon as I read it, I knew it was historically significant.”

What Fifield read was an account by June Fifield of her husband, the Rev. Dr. L. Wendell Fifield, and his encounter with Rickey as history was about to be made.

[... More]

Read the entire article on the CNN website (new window will open).

On February 20, 2012, Metropolitan Hilarion, head of the DECR and rector of the Sts Cyril and Methodius Post-Graduate and Doctoral School, visited the Moscow theological schools to deliver the following lecture for the faculty and students:

Your Eminence,

Dear Members of the Faculty of the Moscow Theological Academy,

Brothers and Sisters:

The theme of my lecture is the situation of Christians in the countries in which they constitute a minority. Today this issue has become especially relevant and acute. Our era is rightly called an era of new martyrdom, for in a whole number of countries, Christians are subjected to mass persecution and discrimination.

From November 30 to December 1, 2011, a conference on Freedom of Faith: The Problem of Persecution and Discrimination Against Christians was held at the conference hall of the Danilovskaya Hotel. I made a report to that forum, citing numerous facts of discrimination committed against Christians in various countries.

Last week, Sedmitsa.ru launched a special new section on ‘Persecution of Christians’ ¹. ^. It is called to introduce readers online to the facts of violence against Christians in various parts of the world. I would like also to enumerate several English internet resources. These are mostly websites of human rights organizations specializing in monitoring the situation of Christians and providing materials and legal support to persecuted Christians.

1) Christian solidarity Worldwide, an international organization for protecting persecuted Christians (http://www.csw.org.uk). It gives statistics concerning the persecutions according to regions, analytical materials and numerous video clips. Based in Great Britain, this organization also provides legal support for Christians persecuted in countries in which the Christian confession is prohibited in this or that form.

2) International Christian Concern, a US human rights organization maintaining at http://www.persecution.org an internet resource called ‘Persecution’. It is an important resource which includes a detailed survey according to world regions and particular countries.

3) Barnabas Fund, an international organization (http://www.barnabasaid.org) which publishes the latest news about facts of the killing and persecution of Christians in the world. There is a solid bulk of related news concerning the latest events in Syria and Egypt. This organization is one of the few ones which organize continuous help to Christians in Syria whose situation is getting worse with every day because of the actions of militants.

4) Open Doors, an international organization (http://www.opendoorsuk.org) which places on its website detailed surveys according to countries and continents. Recently it has published an annual list of 50 countries in which Christians are subjected to the severe discrimination, the so-called ‘World Watch List’. Countries are divided into four groups according to the extent of pressure brought to bear on their Christian communities.

The Christian Church began to be persecuted since the very first years of its existence. The Church is a divine-human organism; it belongs at the same time to the upper and lower worlds. The Archenemy cannot reconcile himself to its nature being not of this world. The Lord Jesus Christ said on several occasions that Christians would be persecuted in the world: ‘If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also (Jn. 15:20).

The Lord predicted the persecution of Christians in the world: ‘They will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake…’ (Lk. 21:12).

In my report on the Persecution and Discrimination of Christians in Today’s World: Causes, Scale, Prognoses for the Future’ made at the above-mentioned conference on November 30, 2011, in Moscow, I cited many facts of the persecution of Christians. Therefore in this survey of the situation in the world I would like to make today, I will dwell mostly on the facts that have taken place since that time.

A matter of the greatest concern is the recent increase in anti-Christian actions in the two countries in which Christians comprise at least 10% of the population, namely, in Egypt and Syria.

According to the 2007 data, there were 107 million people in Egypt, most of them being Arabs – 91,9%. Almost all of them (90% of the population) confess Islam. Christians live mostly in Cairo, Alexandria and other major cities. They comprise about 10% of the population.

After the events of January-February 2011, a clear tendency has developed to make the sharia the only legal system in that country. It should be taken into account that those who demand the introduction of the sharia today are usually adherents of radical views whereby Christians are equated with pagans and should be converted therefore to Islam. I believe the sharia should be applied to Muslims alone; it by no means should be applied to Christians. It is my conviction that both Christians and Muslims should have the same rights and guarantees granted by the state.

Throughout 2011, Christians in Egypt continued to be objects of attacks. In my report I have cited many examples of this. The authorities of that country, instead of protecting Christians, have sometimes themselves become sources of violence towards them. On October 9, the Copts organized a demonstration in the Egyptian capital, but armed forces under the command of the Egyptian Military Council broke it up and as a result over 20 Christians were killed and over 200 injured. Christians were literarily crushed by military vehicles.

After the January parliamentary elections, which resulted in the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafites getting a majority of seats, the situation of Christians became even worse. The Freedom and Justice Party (?izb Al-?urriya wa Al-’Adala), the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, won 230 seats out of 498. The Salafite Nour (Light) Party occupied the second place, obtaining in total some 120 seats. It should be noted that the Muslim Brotherhood has recently adopted a policy of protecting the Copts. Thus, during Christmas and New Year celebrations this year, young members of the Muslim Brotherhood set up local committee for protecting Christian churches against the attacks of the Salafites who believe the Christmas and New Year celebrations to be anti-Islamic.

The same Salafites, addressing Christians, declared that, in accordance with the sharia, they were either to pay juzia (poll tax) as non-Muslims should, or leave the country. The Salafites destroyed churches and Christians’ houses and killed them. They established a Committee for Encouraging Virtue and Preventing Vice in Egypt, like the one acting in Saudi Arabia. In September 2011, the report of the Egyptian Union for Human Rights stated that in the period from January to September 2011, the harassment by the Salafites made 100 thousand Copts flee the country.

If before the above-mentioned elections there were numerous, though uncoordinated anti-Christian raids of radicals, after coming to power the radicals started the ‘cleansing’ of whole settlements from Christians. Here are some examples.

On January 27, the Copts in the al-Ameria district near Alexandria were attacked by some 3 thousand Muslims led by Salafi leaders who burnt down their houses and shops. On January 30, a crowd of Mulsims attacked the Sharbat village for the second time, setting to fire three Christian houses before the eyes of law-enforcement officers. After that Islamic representatives demanded that Luis Suleiman, a rich Coptic businessman, should be driven away from the village, accusing him and his sons of shooting in the air when their house was set on fire. Suleiman’s family denied that they used guns, the more so that nobody was injured. Nevertheless, the police drew on Suleiman’s sons an arrest warrant. On February 1, the Salafites demanded that several Coptic families should be driven away from al-Ameria and suggested that the property of the Suleiman family be sold out under supervision of the Salafite sheikh Sherif al-Havari. Otherwise, they threatened, the village would be immediately attacked once again and then all the Coptic houses would be burnt down.

In February, a crowd led by Salafite leaders set on fire the Coptic church and Christian houses in the Meet Bashar village north-east of Cairo.² Taking part in another act of violence against Christians were about 2 thousand Islamic extremists. As a result, the church of St. Mary at the Meet Bashar village in Zagazig, Sharkeya Province (some 50 km north-east of Cairo) was burnt down.

Muslims and Christians of various confessions – Orthodox, Roman and Syro Catholics, Maronites and Armenians – co-existed in Syria through centuries. Until recently Syria was a model of wellbeing as far as interreligious co-existence was concerned. There were no interreligious conflicts; Muslims and Christians lived side by side in mutual understanding; Christian holy places were open to pilgrims. Syria has accepted over 2 million refugees from Iraq, with several thousands of them being Christians. They hoped to escape there from persecution in their homeland.

Today Syria is going through a difficult time. External forces seek to enkindle a conflict between communities and religions. We are especially concerned for the fate of the religious minorities in Syria, especially Orthodox Christians who represent the oldest religious community among those existing in the Syrian land.

It is possible already now to speak of an external military interference in that country as thousands of extremist militants in the guise of opposition forces have unleashed a civil war in the country. Extremist groups, the so-called jamaates consisting of militant Wahhabites armed and trained at the expense of foreign powers are purposefully killing Christians.

On January 15, two Christians were killed in a breadline. A 40 year-old Christian was shot to death by three armed people when he was driving his two small sons. The Russian Church was deeply grieved by a report about the tragic death of Fr. Baselios Nassar of the Epiphania diocese of the Orthodox Church of Antioch on January 25 and the shelling of the ancient Saydnaya Monastery from a portable gun.

Last week at least 200 Christians including small children were killed in the city of Homs. The abduction of Christians and other non-Sunni people has acquired a major scale. Two Christians, 28 and 37, were kidnapped and later found dead. One was hanged, his body bearing numerous wounds, another was dismembers and thrown into the river. His pregnant wife survived him. Four more Christians were abducted and the perpetrators have threatened to kill him if a ransom was not paid in time.

These recent reports about anti-Christian violence very strongly remind me of those which became customary since US troops invaded Iraq in 2003. All this arouses serious fears for the future of Christians in Syria.

After the UN General Assembly adopted, despite Russia’s protests, a resolution directed against the Syrian government, an opportunity has been opened for foreign military forces to move in the country, as was the case with Libya. In this case, a large-scale civil war may begin to last many years with scores of innocent people killed. Many Muslims will associate the foreign invasion with interference by the Christian world, while local Christians, just as it was during the Crusades, would have to account for the aggressors’ actions, sometime by their own deaths. Christians will become hostages and the first victims of this military conflict.

Reports are coming that several thousands of Christian civilians have already become victims of armed extremists and the cases of the abduction of Christians for ransom have become more frequent. There is a threat that any further destabilization will dramatically affect the fate of religious minorities, especially Syrian Christians.

On November 12-12, 2011, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill made a visit to Syria. During his meetings with His Beatitude Patriarch Ignatios and the Supreme Mufti of Syria Ahmed Badr-ad-Din Hassoum and the Minister of Waqfs Abd-as-Sattar Said, he underscored that a solution of the present problems of the Syrian people is possible only through peace dialogue and that any manifestations of extremism and violence were inadmissible.

Let us address the situation in the countries in which the interreligious balance has been violated as a result of the interference of external forces. After Muammar Gaddafi’s regime was overthrown in Libya and the Transitional National Council took over, Libya has become a place from which Christians have been actively driven away. Before the foreign interference in this country, Christians – Copts, Orthodox Christians, Catholics, Anglicans and members of other Protestant denominations – comprised about 3% of the population. According to the Open Doors human rights organization, 75% of Christians in Libya, most of them being guest workers, left the country during the armed conflict.

Until 2003, in Iraq there were over one and a half million Christians. At present, almost nine-tenth of them have either fled or were killed while those who have remained live daily with a fear for their lives. Among Iraqi Christians there are members of the Assyrian Church of the East, Chaldean Catholics, Armenians, Syro Catholics and Orthodox Christians. As recently as ten years ago, Christians in Iraq could feel relatively safe. With the foreign military intervention, Islamic militants launched terror actions against Christians. The latter found themselves the most unprotected stratum of the population.

Hundreds of Christian families have fled to the northern Kurdish regions in Iraq or neighbouring countries. Recently I have met some leaders of Sadr the Second’s Movement, an Iraqi Shia religio-political movement. They assured me that Christians living in areas controlled by their movement, namely, southern parts of the country and some quarters in Baghdad were protected by this movement.

Last September, with my blessing, a DECR representative visited northern Iraq including the cities of Erbil, Duhok, Semel, El-Kush and others. Ethnically, the 6 million-strong North Iraq is populated mostly by Kurds and Ezides. The Christian population in this region is small but it has increased in recent years with the migration of Christians from the south and Arab regions. For instance, in Duhok the number of Christians – Assyrians and Chaldeans, is 30 000, that is, 10% of the city’s total population. The authorities in northern Iraq, which is de facto a self-governed region, seek to ensure the safety of Christians. Our representative met with Christian refugees from the south who told him how Islamists had broken in their houses and demanded from them large amounts of money so that they could buy weapons to fight American aggressors. They beat up their family members, killed or kidnapped some of them. The attackers concealed their faces under masks – an indication that they were neighbours or acquaintances. In recent years, abdications of Catholic clergy have become more frequent, with abductors demanding that the Vatican pay a ransom of as much as several hundred thousand dollars. The ransom for kidnapped ordinary people cost from 10 to 15 thousand dollars.

The wave of violence against Christians in Iraq, regrettably, has not abated in recent months. On December 5, 2011, after the sermon of a certain imam, some Islamists, excited by his words, destroyed scores of shops, houses and other facilities belonging to Christians in Zakho, a town with 200 000 inhabitants. After the pogroms against Christians in Zakho, violence spread to neighbouring towns.

In December 2011, in the Iraqi city of Mosul, one of the Christian minority centers in the country, members of an Islamist group shot to death a Christian married couple. A few days before that, a group of armed militants set on fire Christian shops in Zakho and Duhok. At least 30 people were injured. On January 11, a terror attack was carried out on the residence of the Chaldean Catholic archbishop in Kirkuk.

In Iran, there are at least half a million Christians, mostly Assyrians and Armenians. These Christians have their own churches there and an opportunity for confessing their faith. The government shows tolerance towards other religious minorities as well, for instance, Zoroastrians. An Orthodox church has been acting in Tehran for almost 70 years now. It belongs to the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church. However, cases of discrimination against Christians have happened there too. For instance, a public outcry was aroused by the decision of the court of the Islamic Republic of Iran made on September 22, 2010, sentencing 32 year-old evangelical pastor Yusef Nadarkhani to death for his conversion from Islam to Christianity. Nadarkhani was arrested in 2009. His arrest was preceded by his appeal to the authorities, disputing the law of the Gilyan Province whereby all schoolchildren, his son among them, were obliged to study the Qur’an. According to the investigation, the pastor conducted church services in his house, preached the gospel and baptized those who embraced Christianity. He directed the work of 400 home churches in Iran. In June 2011, the court ordered that the execution be postponed and his case be referred back to Gilyan for a review. It was repeatedly suggested to Pastor Nadarkhani that he should renounce the Christian faith so that he could escape execution but he refused to do it. At present Nadarkhani’s fate depends on the Supreme Leader of the country, Ayatollah Khamenei, who is to deliver an official final verdict.

Pakistan is an example of the full suppression of the Christian population. Out of approximately 162 million Pakistanis, Christians, half of them being Catholics, make up only 2,45% of the population. According to the Open Doors organization, there are 5,3 million Christians in the country. The data published by the Pakistani government this January shows that the number of Christians in the country is approximately 3,8 million. Their condition today can be described as catastrophic. In 1986, a law on blasphemy was adopted in Pakistan to become a tool for persecuting religious minorities. This law is often used to squaring personal accounts and to seize other people’s property. This law has become a tool for the tough persecution of religious minorities, especially Christians. Last year, at least 161 people were sentenced under the law of ‘blasphemy’ in Pakistan. Nine people accused of ‘blasphemy’ and ‘outrage against Islam’ were executed extrajudicially. Even Muslim legal scholars admit that 95% of all the accusations of ‘blasphemy’ are false.

Christians are deprived of their rights under this law because a Muslim can report an outrage against Islam without providing witnesses or proof. The law on ‘blasphemy’ demands that the accused should be immediately sentenced. Recently the death sentence for Asia Bibi – who, asked about her faith, replied that she was a Christian and was accused of ‘blasphemy’ – was reconfirmed. As of February 1, 2012, over 580 000 people in 100 countries signed an appeal to the Pakistani government to release Asia Bibi. At present, her health is in critical condition.

In 2011, Aslam Masikh, a 30 year-old Christian, died in a Pakistani prison. He too was arrested on the charge of ‘blasphemy’.  For several months he was denied medical aid because of ‘safety considerations’. Recently two more Christians became victims of false accusations – the Protestant bishop Joseph Pervez and Pastor George Baber. They were forced to escape the country after they were incriminated ‘blasphemy’ and threatened by extremists. Both Christians planned to found an organization for the protection of the Christian community in Pakistan.

Radical Muslims do not stop even at violence against children. In November 2011, they attacked a school in Peshawar. Two people were killed and 14 injured, including 7 children. In January 2012, the Pakistani authorities destroyed the church and charity building in Lahore, which belonged to a Catholic community with close ties to the Caritas.

Many Christian women in Pakistan are forcefully married off to Muslims and forced to change their faith. In 2011, the Asian Human Rights Commission reported that annually about 700 Christian young women in Pakistan are forced to embrace Islam due to pressure or unwanted pregnancy. More often than not, such crimes remain unpunished. After an 18 year-old Catholic girl was killed early this year for her refusal to adopt Islam, the General Vicar of Faisalabad, Fr. Khalid Rashid, stated in his interview to the Fides agency that ‘cases like this one happen in Punjab every day’. Thus recently, the European mass media wrote about Sonya Bibi, a 20 year-old Christian who was beat up and raped by a group of Muslims and about Rebecca Bibi, 12, who lost sight after she was beat up by her Muslim employer.

According to the Conference of Catholic Bishops in Pakistan, over 700 cases of forceful conversion to Islam are registered annually in Pakistan today. The report entitled‘ Monitoring Human Rights-2011’ records numerous cases of human rights violations and discrimination against Christians and other religious minorities in Pakistan. In January 2012, a Catholic priest who had served in the country for eight years was arrested in Pakistan ³.

According to Open Doors, about 10 thousand people confess Christianity out of 28,4 million inhabitants of Afghanistan. The last commonly accessible Christian church in Afghanistan was demolished in March 2010. Most of today’s Christians in the country are urban people who had been baptized before the US troops moved in the country, or young people who came to know the Christian teaching during their trips abroad or through their contacts with Christian visitors to Afghanistan. They have to conceal their beliefs and have no legal opportunity for opening churches, thus having to worship in private houses. Most of Christian Afghanis are Catholic or Protestant. Conversion from Islam to other faith is viewed as a grave crime, and Christians are often subjected to persecution by extremists.

In 2010, an Afghani Christian by name of Said Mousa, the father of a large family who worked at the Red Cross medical center in Kabul, was put on trial for participation in Christian rites. Said Mousa was not the first Christian to be put on public trial in recent years. Investigators succeeded in making him renounce his faith in public. It was shown on the national TV but recently his letter has fallen into the hands of human rights workers, from which it appears that he is still under arrest in one of the prisons in Kabul and is subjected to beating and sexual assaults by his cellmates. In his letter Said says that he deeply regrets his renunciation of Christ.

Let us address the situation in other countries in Africa.

In Algeria, for the last five years the authorities have not permitted to open Christian churches. Since recently, ‘a law on blasphemy’, similar to the Pakistani one, has been enforced there. According to official information, there are some 11 thousand Christians, most of them Catholics, live in the 36 million-strong Algiers. According to non-official information, the number of clandestine Christians is many times as many. A law adopted in 2006 forbids mission among Muslims. In 2011, the authorities of the Bedjaya Province closed 7 Christian churches. In recent months, there have been an increasing number of cases of religious intolerance towards Christians. In early February 2012, unknown people under the cover of night attacked an Evangelical church in the city of Ouargla 700 km away from the capital. The house-beakers penetrated into the church territory, destroyed the cast-iron crucifix on the terrace roof of the church and damaged the gates. In doing so, the pastor says, the attackers yelled threats ⁴.

In North Sudan, from which South Sudan separated in summer 2011, acts of violence against Christians continue unabated. The new authorities of the country have stated that ‘the Sharia and Islam will now become in Sudan the basis of a new constitution, with Islam as the official religion and Arabic as the official language’. Reports are coming from North Sudan about numerous purposeful attacks on Christians who have had to flee to South Sudan.

The authorities have failed to take measures for the protection of Christians. Almost a year ago, a 15 year-old Christian girl was kidnapped in North Sudan. Her mother said that she had repeatedly appealed to the police to open the case and to begin a search for her daughter. But as a reply she heard only demands that she should first embrace Islam and only after that seek help from the Islamic police. On June 8, 2011, armed extremists fired at a Catholic church during the mass.

Radicals are standing behind the persecution of Christians in another African country, 150 million-strong Nigeria. Today this most densely populated country in Africa is experiencing another bloody crisis. The country is actually divided into two halves – the Muslim North and the Christian South. In the North Nigeria, there are 27 million Christians out of the 70 million population and they are subjected to systematic elimination by radical groups.

Since the sharia was introduced in the 12 northern states in 2000, thousands of people have been killed in numerous clashes in recent years. In the captured areas, sharia courts are established and sharia ‘justice’ is administered. Militants of the local extremist organizations, the most notorious among them being the Boko Haram group, have regularly attacked Christian settlements. In summer 2011, radicals burnt to the ground Christian churches and houses and robbed Christian households. In August 2011, 24 Christians were killed in an attack of armed Islamists on Christian villages in the central part of the country. In early November 2011, over 150 people were killed in terror actions at the towns of Maiduguri and Damaturu. Almost all the Christians had to flee from these regions. During the Christmas night of December 25, 2011, another monstrous act of terror was committed. The number of Christians killed in Nigeria’s city of Jos exceeded 80. In addition, over 200 people were injured in 9 explosions that shook the city.

On January 22, bombs blasted again in two Christian churches in Nigeria. One of them is the Catholic parish in Bauchi state in northern Nigeria. An increasing number of Christians have to flee from North Nigeria to other parts of the country. About 35 000 Christians have fled from North Nigeria during the last weeks after Boko Haram issued an ultimatum demanding that Christians should leave the territories with the predominant Muslim population. In 2011, the Boko Haram militants killed at least 700 people in North Nigeria. In total, over 13 000 people, most of them Christians, have been killed in the last 10 years in interreligious clashes.

In Somalia, the number of Christians is estimated to make up 1% of the total population of approximately 5 thousand people. Most of these Christians were either Muslims in the past or their parents were. Therefore, the majority treats them as betrayers of their faith. There are no organized Christian communities, and Christians live in permanent fear and an atmosphere of terror. It is especially dangerous to raise one’s children in the Christian tradition. The radical group Ash-Shabaab controlling almost the entire territory of the country has openly stated its intention to eradicate Christianity in Somalia. The official government, while declaring the right to religious freedom, has done nothing to protect Christians. Many Christians were killed last year. In January 2012, a Christian woman was sentenced to 40 lashes. The corporal punishment was carried out before the eyes of thousands. She lost consciousness but survived and was handed over to her family ⁵. On February 10, extremists from Ash-Shabaab killed a 26 year-old Christian at a place near the capital city of Mogadishu ⁶.

In Somalia there lived one of the martyrs of our days, Mourta Farah. This 17 year-old girl was shot to death in November 2010 for her conversion to Christianity. It happened only 200 metres away from the house in which she stayed with her relatives. Mourta’s parents, in the attempt to make her renounce Christ, tied the girl to a tree at day-time and at night put her in a small dark room. But they tried in vain. Then her parents decided that she went mad and tried to ‘heal’ her by special medicines. But in May 2010 she managed to escape to her relatives and after that she was killed.

In the semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar, a part of Tanzania, Christians live under continuous pressure from the Islamic community. Many Christians are forcefully converted to Islam and they are refused employment. Early this year, a Christian in whose house a Bible was found was sentenced to 8-month imprisonment.

In the countries of the Arabian Peninsula, Christianity is under a ban everywhere. Guest workers are Christians, mostly from Philippines, who are at least a million and a half. They are subjected to persecution. There are also Christian converts from Islam who have to carefully conceal their faith. According to Open Doors, this country occupies the third place in the world in the level of Christian persecution. In 2011, there was a series of arrests of Christians for their joint prayers at private houses. In January 2011, the Christians Johan Nes and Vasantha Sehar Vara were arrested. The police cruelly beat them up and placed them in horrific conditions.

Thirty five Ethiopian Christians were arrested during a police raid in Djidda in December 2011, when Christians assembled for a common prayer. New agencies have reported that these Christians are still confined and forced to convert to Islam. Human Rights Watch has circulated reports that in prison they are abused by prison guards. The women were subjected to humiliating examination; the men were beat up. The fate of these Christians has not been decided as yet. In this connection, demonstrations have been conducted at the Saudi Arabia embassies throughout the world.

Let us address the situation in South and South-East Asia and the Far East. According to Open Doors, in North Korea about 70 thousand Christians are now serve sentences in 30 labour camps. Out of 24 million inhabitants of the country, some 400 thousands are Christians. State statistics points out that 4 thousands among them are Catholics. The rest are mostly Protestants of various denominations.

Religious freedom remains a taboo in the Maldives. The Sunnite form of Islam was declared the official religion in Maldive Islands by the 1997 Constitution. This provision was also reconfirmed by the 2008 Constitution. The proclamation of other religions except Islam is forbidden. One can be imprisoned for keeping a Bible. On the one hand, the island state positions itself as a center of world tourism and seeks to attract tourists from all over the world. On the other hand, it pursues the policy of intolerance and religious discrimination, arresting innocent people.

The situation in Bangladesh is a matter of great anxiety. The lands and property of Christians in the mountainous region of Rangamati and in the Gulishahali Region are taken away. According to Fides, most often these criminal actions have been committed by Muslims who predominate there and have not been punished. Neither the police nor the civil authorities guarantee the protection of the rights of ethnic and religious minorities.

Anti-Christian forces have become more active in Indonesia. At present this country is the most densely populated Muslim country.  Out of 228,5 million inhabitants of Indonesia 86% are Muslims, 6% are adherents of various trends of Protestantism, and 3% confess Catholicism. There are several scores of Orthodox parishes. Since 2006, 200 Christian churches were attacked in Indonesia, with 14 of them attacked only for the first five months of 2011. On February 24, 2011, the Orthodox church of St. Catherine was attacked by extremists at Bojolali in the Island of Java.

In Philippines, most people confess Catholicism. However, in the Islands of Jolo and Mindanao inhabited by Muslims, a movement called Abu Sayyaf appeared in the 1990s and established relations with Al-Qaeda. For the last 10 years 120 thousand people were killed in Mindanao as a result of the activity of terror groups, and 500 thousand people have become refugees.

About 70% of the people in Laos confess Buddhism, 30% are heathens and 1,5% are Christians. Christians are deprived of the right to occupy public posts and have little chance to enter a university. In 2009, the leader of Salawan Province gathered together all the rural dwellers and announced to them that ‘Christianity is forbidden’. He also said that ‘the worship of spirits’ was the only acceptable cult for them. At his instruction, cattle were confiscated from local Christians. Repressions continue to this day.

In one of the most densely populated country of the world, India, Christians suffer from radical Hindu organizations. India’s population total 1,1 billion. Over 2% of the people are Christians. In total in India there are 23-24 million Christians of various denominations. Some 70% of the Indian Christians come from the untouchables. In the state of Orissa where a great proportion of the untouchables live, the number of conversions to Christianity has considerably grown in the last decade. In some areas of the state, the proportion of Christians has doubled in this period. In 2008, the state became a place of mass killings of Christians and pogroms of Christian churches and houses which lasted for two months.

During the pogroms in 2008 in India, 500 Christians were killed. The opposition Hindu nationalist party ‘The Bharataya Janata Party’ (BJP), which actually controls several states, has waged an active war against Christianity. On February 20 and 21, 2011, a wave of clashes between extremists and the Christian minority swamped Batala in the state of Punjab. Members of Christian communities in India continue to be attacked by organized groups of radical Hindus.

In 2011 in India, there were 2141 registered cases of violence against Christians. According to the report presented by the Catholic Secular Forum, attacks on Christian by extremist Hindu groups are taking place at present in almost all the states of India. The authors of the report assume that the real number of cases of anti-Christian violence in India which took place last years must be three times as many. The statistics they presented is based on the information publicized by the mass media. In 2012, new cases of discrimination against Christians and attacks on Christian educational institutions were registered in India. Early in February, about 100 Hindu radicals attacked the campus of the Jesuit University of St. Joseph in Anekal near Bangalore, Karnataka state.

I should address the causes of the growing persecution of Christians in the recent years.

Since your schooldays you remember that the causes of the persecution of Christians in old times can be divided in the three groups: social, religious and political. To a considerable extent these causes have remained the same, with certain reservations.

We understand by social causes the poorly motivated hatred of the crowd. Heathen writers and Christian apologists unanimously testify that the emergence and spreading of Christianity was met by the population of the Roman Empire with unanimous hatred on the part of both the lower strata of the society and the educated class. ‘What damage do we do to you, Hellenes? Why do you hate us like the most out-and-out scoundrels who follow the word of God?’ Tertullian questioned. ‘How many times the mob hostile to us has attacked us, thrown stones and burnt our houses. They do not spare Christians, even dead ones, pulling out dead bodies from coffins to abuse them, to tear them to pieces’, cried out this Christian writer of the 3d century. The hatred of the throng towards Christians grew especially at times of social troubles. In some sense, the events repeat themselves since the psychology of the crowd, if this crows is consumed with hysteria, does not change whatever the religion those who make up the crowd may be. The crowd needs an enemy to take it out on him; the otherness of Christians excited and excites the hatred of ‘this world’.

Religious causes lied in that in antiquity the heathen society saw in Christianity an inadmissible religion whose followers were believed to challenge the predominant religious or quasi-religious ideology. Today, the most irreconcilable attitude to Christians is characteristic of the countries in which the Sharia laws are established. According to the American commission for religious freedom in the world, out of ten countries in which Christians live in the hardest situation, nine are Muslim ones.

The political causes of the aggravation of Christians’ situation are, in my view, the principal ones. In the early centuries of the life of the Church, Christians were persecuted because they were seen as enemies of the Caesar because they refused to worship him. The legal system of the Roman Empire made on confessors such demands that could not be accepted if they wished to remain Christian. The same demands unacceptable to Christians are made in some countries which adopted laws on ‘blasphemy’. Under this law, the very confession of Christ as God is declared a blasphemy, which puts Christians before the choice to remain Christian and suffer, may be even to death, or to renounce their faith.

Today Christians are becoming hostages to a big political game around the geo-strategic redivision of the Middle East and Africa. The richest countries of the Arabian Peninsula, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have invested millions of dollars in the destabilization of the situation in other countries of the region. The radical Islam of the Wahhabi school has been exported to the countries of which it has never been characteristic. Actually, Wahhabism is a political doctrine which makes use of religious vocabulary. It is political extremism and a hate ideology with religion as a cover.

There are a great deal of books and internet resources created by those who claim to be Muslims, who preach hatred and call to kill people of other religions, especially Christians. In spite of the Qur’an’s prohibition of violence towards Christians as ‘a people of the Book’, they have appropriated the authority and right to decide which followers of Christ deserve death. The ideologies of radical organizations call to the total elimination of all Christians. At best, Christians may be allowed to live as third-rate people provided they pay a special tax for the Muslims’ right to live on earth. It is indicative that these people victimize not only Christians but also Mulsims who, being adherents to the traditional schools of Islam, are declared ‘apostates’ or ‘hypocrites’.

The export of Salafism, a radical Islamic school, began in the 1970s. It came from the Arabian Peninsula to the neighbouring regions and later to more remote countries. By 2000, its adherents have spread throughout the world, and today Salafism has come to play an important role in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Sudan and Afghanistan. The supporters of this movement seek to achieve the political goal of building a universal Islamic state (caliphate) so that the life of the society could be built on the sharia postulates alone in its extreme form, the Hanbalist school. The distinctive features of the political doctrine of Salafism include implacable attitude to the secular civil society, desire to replace it by an Islamic one based of the sharia, inadmissibility of a separate existence of religion and state, the contrasting of the Islamic world to the rest civilization models, negation of all the non-Islamic laws and desire to eliminate Christianity which is equated with paganism. In the 1990s, Salafi grouping appeared en mass in almost all the areas where Islam is prevalent. At present there are at least half a thousand of such associations, the most well-known among them Al-Qaeda, Jihad in Egypt, Islamic Jihad in Palestine, Ansar al-Islam in Iraq, Jemaah Islamiya, which has been active in Malaisia, etc ⁸.

Today this religio-political ideology is propagated with the help of modern information technologies, such as social networks, etc. In my view, radicalism is generated by ignorance. When people have a poor knowledge of their faith and, even worse, the faith of their neighbours, their ignorance gives grounds for aggression against Christians. Human beings have a sinful nature; they are prone to the impact of the aggressive principle and religious motives are used to give vent to it.

Islamic societies with their low level of religious education have proved to be the most vulnerable to Wahhabism, another Islamic school. For its followers traditional Islam points to the need to overcome aggressive emotions. It is not accidental that A. Ignatentko, an authoritative Russian specialist in Islamic studies, describes Wahhabism as an ideology of hatred because it is built on the postulate that the faithful should cultivate hatred as prescribed from above.

Regrettably, the Islamic society has not yet found a way of effective struggle with the propagation of religious extremism. In some countries, when representatives of this school come to power, the persecution and even total extermination of religious minorities begin.

It would be wrong however to place responsibility for these developments only on ignorant extremist fanatics who act in a spontaneous and disorderly way, almost single-handed. More often than not, standing behind them are forces whose primary aim is to profit from the situation of chaos and confusion. The success of these people is paid by blood.

Another political factor aggravating the situation of Christians is Western interference in the affairs of the region. The systems which have restrained radicalism in the last decades have been destroyed by the military force of the USA and NATO as was the case in Iraq and Libya or by incited revolutions as was the case in Egypt and other Arab countries.

There are also other causes of the growing discrimination of Christians in recent years. It should be mentioned that among the reasons for the aggravation of relations between Christians and Muslims in several countries, especially in Africa, is the practice of aggressive mission used by evangelical churches whose preachers have carried out an active work among local Muslim populations with the purpose to convert them to Christianity. If the preaching allows of destruction of Islam, it adds more fuel to the fire. Besides, foreign missionaries, as we know from the experience of our country, can also pursue political aims.

Clearly, we should also take into account various incentives motivating the persecutors of Christians in each country. For instance, while in Egypt Christians are attacked and killed and their churches and houses are burnt down, in Iraq they are more often kidnapped, made to pay ransom or taken hostage, though reports are often coming about blasting Christians churches in this country too.

One of the indirect causes that have triggered the mass persecution of Christians is Europe’s renunciation of its own Christian identity. The process of secularization has led to the situation in which most Europeans have ceased to relate their life to the Gospel and begun to live up the secular standards of ‘consumer society’. In the eyes of traditional societies, such as Islamic peoples, this ‘post-Christian’ civilization is losing any meaning or value. Muslims have begun to attribute to Christians the blame that has nothing to do with them but either with the US policy in the Middle East countries or the pernicious influence of ‘consumer society’. I mean the intensified imposition of secular standards and norms of life on bearers of traditional cultures. The protest against this imposition has sometimes resulted in anti-Christian actions.

Another cause of anti-Christian moods is the fact that some Protestants in the West, especially charismatics, have committed a deep distortion of Christianity. Regrettably, Muslims have often identified their views with common Christian ones. We can see today how leaders of various charismatic sects who name themselves Christian churches provoke people to commit ill-considered actions for the sake of their own PR image. This leads to a distortion of the image of Christianity, just as actions of Islamic sects present Islam in a corrupted form.

In recent years, public and governmental organizations in Europe have given some attention to the problem of discrimination against Christians in the world, though it appears insufficient.

Last June, when in Budapest I met with a representative of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Prof. Massimo Introvigne from Italy, who has studied this issue for several years. Last autumn, we invited him to Moscow for a conference ‘Freedom of Faith: the Problem of Discrimination and Persecution against Christians’. Quite recently an Observatory for Religious Freedom has been established in Rome. This year it will conduct a conference devoted to the protection of religious minorities in various countries.

On January 20, 2011, the PACE adopted a Resolution on the Situation of Christians in the Context of Freedom of Religion, which condemns the killing and discrimination of Christian in various countries, in particular, Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and Philippines. The resolution addressed to the governments and parliaments in these countries was adopted by a majority of votes. Voting for it were representatives of all the political parties present in the European Parliament. The deputies agreed to set up a standing body at the European External Action Service to monitor the religious freedom situation in the world and to present annual reports to the EU and public at large concerning the cases of infringement on freedom of conscience by authorities or public forces in various countries.

This resolution of the European Parliament is important for several reasons. First, European politicians spoke out on the problem which had so far been voiced only on the periphery. Thus, the existence of persecution of Christians in the world was recognized by one of the major political bodies of the European Union. Secondly, for the first time a close attention was given to the work of those engaged in collecting objective information about the persecution of Christians in the world. Thirdly, in its resolution the European Parliament proposed specific ways of influencing the situation. Their principle is simple: money and business in exchange for compliance with human rights. Economic agreements between the European Union member states and countries with registered violations of the religious freedom of Christians and other religious minorities should be concluded only if they improve the situation of religious groups whose rights are infringed. Fourthly, the resolution gives much attention to the need to observe religious freedom as fixed in the fundamental international and European conventions and contains a proposal to establish mechanisms for monitoring religious freedom. At the same time, these important and timely calls will lead to desired results only if they are followed by the establishment of an effective and regular mechanism of dialogue between religious communities and national and international structures.

On September 22, 2011, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called to oppose the discrimination against Christians, underscoring that prejudice concerning particular persons based on religious identity is inadmissible. The Committee on Political Affairs of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly at its meeting on November 15, 2011, in Paris adopted a statement concerning the violent actions against Christians in Egypt. This statement was prompted by the events which took place on October 9, 2011, in Cairo: ‘This violence, which was duly condemned by the President of the Assembly, is of course unacceptable and the first declarations of the Egyptian authorities and their subsequent lack of action fail to convince that they are genuinely committed to dealing effectively with recurrent inter-religious violence’.

We are convinced that it is necessary to create, on the basis of international mechanisms of the protection of religious minorities, some standing effective centers for collecting and studying information about persecutions on religious grounds with the task to monitor the situation in this area and to prepare appropriate decisions for the executive bodies of international structures. The UN can and must see to it that the governments in some of its member states observe the commonly accepted norms of religious freedom. This should apply not only to Christians but also believers of any other religion whose freedom of conscience and faith needs to be secured legally and protected against encroachments by extremists.

It is not for the first time that our Church speaks of the persecution of Christians in the world. In May 2011, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church adopted a document in which our Church not only condemned the persecution of Christians but also called the world public to give close attention to this problem and to work out together common measures for the struggle with discrimination against Christians.

The Russian Orthodox Church spoke out and will continue speaking out against any form of xenophobia, religious intolerance and extremism. We understood the indignation of Muslims at the publication of caricatures of Mohammed in one of the Scandinavian magazines. We supported them after France adopted a law forbidding Muslim women to wear hijabs in public institutions. With sincere interest we are ready to discuss with our Muslim brothers the issues of public morality and to maintain cooperation with them in the most pressing areas, in a word, to develop an open and honest dialogue.

An intensive interreligious and intercultural dialogue is one of the ways of combatting the discrimination of Christians. It can play an important role in creating conditions necessary for normalizing interreligious relations in the troubled regions of the world.

A unique experience of peaceful coexistence of religions traditional for Russia has been accumulated in our country. And this experience can be useful for other countries and peoples as well.

Conducting dialogue with people of other religions, we work to overcome inter-ethnic, political and interreligious conflicts. This dialogue allows us to come to a better understanding of each other and to overcome false stereotypes which often generate hatred and aggression towards people of other faiths.

It is only through common efforts that it is possible to oppose the manifestation of extremism on religious grounds, which, among other things, generates confrontation and conflict between adherents to different religions. It must be taken into account that persecutions on religious grounds are committed not only against Christians but also people of other traditional religions – Muslims and Jews. Defending ones, we should not forget others wherever particular believers may need such protection.

We often hear today that it is necessary to create for persecuted Christians the conditions allowing them to freely emigrate to third countries. It is my conviction that such efforts will only profit their persecutors. Their aim is precisely to oust the Christian population, to force them to emigrate. On the contrary, all those who claim to be people of good will and peace should help Christians feel safe in the land of their forefathers and make their own contribution to the prosperity of their homeland. They should not feel themselves second-hand citizens or ‘the fifth column’ of the West. Christian youth in these countries should be given to understand that their future is linked with their homeland, that they do not live in it as undesired guests whose existence is merely tolerated by the majority but rather as equal sons and daughters.

It should be noted that the joint actions already undertaken by Churches and international and public organizations to improve the situation of Christians in countries where they constitute a minority have already brought their fruits. We are convinced that all the states are called to ensure to people a guaranteed opportunity for confessing their faith, raising their children in Christian faith and representing and defending their position in public, without being persecuted.

The Russian Church sincerely hopes that the governments of European countries, whose culture and traditions have been formed on the basis of Christian values, will demand that the states where Christians are persecuted follow the international principles of religious freedom and ensure it. Just as in European countries, the rights of religious minorities should be invariably protected by law.

We also appeal to the leaders of the countries belonging to the canonical jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church to consider the issue of discrimination against Christians in their relations with the countries where this discrimination takes place.

At the recent meeting of Prime Minister and presidential candidate V. Putin with leaders of the traditional confessions in Russia, I expressed the wish that the Russian foreign policy had as one of its directions the systematic protection of Christians living in countries where they are persecuted today. I told the prime minister that strong Russia is Russia that defends Christian minorities in these countries, demanding guarantees for the observance of their rights in exchange for political support or economic assistance. Responding to this statement, Mr. Putin said, ‘Do not doubt that it will be as you said. No doubt whatsoever’. And he called to further activization of interreligious dialogue.

I have told you all this, dear Brothers and Sisters, so that you could understand that the situation in today’s world is very difficult and that we in our country live in relatively peaceful conditions. But we should know what happens in other regions not only because it is necessary to know for our general development but also because we should understand that today’s world is a comprehensive whole. The globalization process has gone so far that the processes taking place in one region today are impossible to separate from those happening in other regions.

For us it is very important to export our own experience of interreligious cooperation, the experience our country has accumulated for centuries, to other countries. We can show to people that the existence of different confessions in one country does not mean her necessary susceptibility to conflicts. And we should understand that the struggle with extremism and radicalism has to be waged not only on the level of interreligious dialogue but within every religious confession. It is the task that faces us all.

Thank you for your attention

¹ [Go to original site]

² According to AsiaNews

³ http://www.sedmitza.ru/news/2759192.html

⁴ A report by Radio Vatican

⁵ According to International Christian Concern

⁶ According to Compass Direct News

⁷ Cit. in [Go to original site], 1991. ?. 87.

⁸See, [Go to original site]. 2003. ? 5 (14).

Read the entire article on the Department for External Church Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church website (new window will open).

“No single event since Eve took the apple has been as consequential for relations between the sexes as the arrival of modern contraception,” writes Mary Eberstadt in the introduction to her new book Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution (Ignatius). A research fellow at the Hoover Institution and consulting editor to Policy Review, Eberstadt’s writings have appeared in a variety of newspapers, magazines, and online journals, including First Things, the Weekly Standard, National Review, National Review Online, the Claremont Review of Books, and the Wall Street Journal. Her previous books include The Loser Letters: A Comic Tale of Life, Death, and Atheism (Ignatius). She recently spoke with CWR about her latest book, the far-reaching consequences of the sexual revolution, and what the Catholic Church has to offer in today’s debates over birth control and in the still-raging battle of the sexes.

Catholic World Report: In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, retired law professor Louise G. Trubek wrote, “Can we still be arguing about a woman’s ability to control her own fertility?” How is your book a response to that sort of attitude? Do we really need to being arguing over contraceptives? Isn't that a matter of private choice and personal preference?

Mary Eberstadt: It is indeed fascinating that America is arguing over contraceptives. But pace certain retired law professors, the deeper meaning of that argument is not what the fear-mongers say it is. Torquemada 2.0 is not about to go slinking into college dormitories, filching pills and condoms from cowering college students. That’s not what this argument is about.

The argument is instead over something much larger. In the short term, as many have pointed out, and in the specific matter of the HHS mandate, it is indeed an argument over religious freedom. Many capable people, starting with certain other law professors and including the US bishops, have explained the dispute over the HHS mandate clearly and well.

Beyond that, though, there is an even wider meaning to the manifest unease over these issues that everyone thought settled. That is the legacy of the sexual revolution, whose consequences in one realm after another are only beginning to be understood. As the founder of Harvard’s sociology department, Pitirim Sorokin, once observed, it is a revolution that in the long run may have more influence on the world than any other—and we’re only beginning to understand it.

In that sense—and in a way that the sexual liberationists and their allies really don’t get—it doesn’t matter where you stand on the matter of religion. You could be a Wiccan. You could be a Carmelite. You could be Lady Gaga’s biggest fan. No matter what, you are still affected by the sexual revolution in more ways than can be counted—economically, politically, personally, and otherwise, for reasons I try to explain in the book.

I’m just pointing out that to say the sexual revolution amounts to a “woman thing” is absurd. And this is true leaving aside the question of morality altogether. One way or another, regardless of where individuals stand, the Western world and the rest of the world will have to grapple with the legacy of the revolution—and not just now, but centuries from now. Reducing this enormous phenomenon to something personal, a mere matter of women’s prerogatives, is just that: indefensibly reductionist.

CWR: Why do so many people—especially (but not only) those secular elites who dress themselves in the cloaks of science and reason—either ignore or deny outright both the statistical and anecdotal evidence demonstrating the serious personal and social damage wrought by the sexual revolution?

Mary Eberstadt: The first thing we need in order to get some clarity on this issue is compassion—including for the fact that many people of good intentions initially thought that the sexual revolution would be a good thing. They couldn't have foreseen all the consequences that would flow from it.

The revolution is like a big party that a lot of people initially looked forward to, but that’s now gotten way out of control. So the people who had high hopes for the party, who have defended it against those who said it would go wrong sooner or later, are now in a difficult spot. Nobody wants to be the first to leave, and nobody wants to tattle on anyone else—but everybody knows that what’s happening isn’t good. The word we commonly use for that kind of resistance is denial. It's a good word, and everyone’s susceptible to it—intellectuals as well as everybody else.

CWR: How can the Catholic Church point the way through the current spiritual desert and social wasteland that so many people inhabit today?

Mary Eberstadt: It’s so hard to see the Church constantly take the rap for being “bad on women,” when the moral and empirical truth is completely the reverse. It’s also hard because the Church has so much wisdom, developed over many centuries, about relations between the sexes.

Which way of looking at the world holds men and women in higher esteem: one that assigns them the sort of human dignity that the Church does, or one that says—as the secular world seems to say—that we’re all just animals with iPads and opposable thumbs, nothing more? Which way of explaining human beings do you think resonates better with young people—or would, assuming they were exposed to it? Well, which would anybody rather be—elevated and cared-for and cherished, someone whose choices actually matter in the world, or the opposite?

People, especially young people, often don’t understand what Judeo-Christian teaching actually is—because many years of attacks have successfully misrepresented that teaching in the public square. I know I didn’t, until I made it my business to read up. But that doesn’t mean the misunderstanding is inevitable. Compassion and clarity are the keys.

CWR: The final chapter of your book is on Humanae Vitae. What is most striking to you when you consider Pope Paul VI's arguments and explanations?

Mary Eberstadt: I didn’t read Humanae Vitae itself until a few years ago, and when I did, I was amazed for the reasons described below. I wish every party to the debate over HHS would read that document too. There would be a lot more clarity in this discussion if people were even just a little more informed about what they think they know.

The single most striking thing about that document is this: its predictions about what the future would bring have been thoroughly vindicated—and I’m not talking about theology here, but about secular social science.

Humanae Vitae said that men would lose respect for women in a world where contraception was ubiquitous. At a time when illegitimacy rates approach the 50 percent mark around the Western world, and have passed it in some places (most recently, Great Britain), it’s hard to argue that Humanae Vitae got it wrong. After all, what’s a better measure of respect than sticking with the mother of your child—even if not for the child’s sake, but simply for hers?

But you don’t always need social science to get the point. If you read, say, contemporary women’s literature, fiction and non-fiction, you get a long litany of complaints about men—how hard it is to find a good one, how women need to strike out on their own, how they even need to have children on their own because men can’t be counted on, etc., etc., etc. I go through a lot of that kind of literature in the book, because it represents evidence of a different sort that something has really run amok between the sexes.

So if the Pill (metaphorically) has liberated everybody once and for all from the chains of human nature, as liberationists have always said it did, then why aren’t people happier? Why, to the contrary, does it seem as if modern Western women are less content than they used to be—as is also strongly suggested by a fascinating recent sociological study on “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” also discussed in the book?

Whether you look at popular culture or social science, the predictions of Humanae Vitae hold up better than almost anyone gives it credit for. And the fact that Humanae Vitae is nevertheless and simultaneously the most globally reviled document of our time means that we are looking at an enormous paradox here. That’s the central paradox of the book, and from it many others radiate outward.

Read the entire article on the Catholic World Report website (new window will open).

Man’s Disorder and God’s Design, published by Harper and Brothers in 1948, is a remarkable collection of essays prepared for the first assembly of the World Council of Churches at Amsterdam. The authors include some of the most respected theological voices of the 20th century: Karl Barth, H. Richard Niebuhr, George Florovsky, Gustaf Aulén, and Lesslie Newbigin. Sober reflection on what European churches learned from Nazi persecution and the war years is a dominant theme in the book.

A powerful section, “The Shame and the Glory of the Church,” provides one of the most moving accounts of Church life which I have ever read, written by Edmund Schlink, who was a professor of systematic theology at Heidelberg. This essay on the life of the Church under Hitler speaks, as the editors say, “for the Church upon whom fell the first and the hardest part of the struggle to manifest God’s glory amidst man’s disorder” (p. 77).

Schlink reminds us that at first the persecution of the Church was camouflaged as “positive Christianity,” which claimed through the use of quotations from the Bible to be fulfilling God’s commandments: “They thus built up an enormous propaganda-machine, which resulted in a general inflation of values, because it sanctified anything it wanted to, so that finally nothing remained sacred” (p. 98). Only then did the full persecution come. The Nazis shut down the Church’s influence on public life, banned the printing of Bibles and hymnbooks, prohibited large Church assemblies, and pressured men and young people to join the party. Theological faculties atrophied, hundreds of evangelical pastors and Roman Catholic priests were sent to the camps, some to suffer martyrdom, and “even the women and children who went to church were watched” (p. 98).

Schlink reports that there was a great falling-off among Christians. Many people became ashamed of the name of Christ and stopped attending church. Some preferred the neo-pagan ceremonies offered by the state to baptism and marriage in the Church. “Families were torn asunder: children denounced their parents, husbands opposed their wives, brothers and sisters took opposite sides in the cleavage between faith and error. Love grew cold in many hearts. Its place was taken by delusions and hardness of heart” (p. 98). The defections reached into the clergy: “Many became preachers of the anti-Christian myth and entered the service of the Nazis to replace the loyal pastors and church leaders that had been deprived of office. Many became false teachers and then persecutors of the Church” (p. 98).

For Schlink, even more stunning than the apostasy was “the way in which it was usually taken for granted with an easy conscience. When the Nazi philosophy began to influence Christians, many of them did not even notice that this Nazi talk about ‘the Almighty’ and His ‘providence’ had nothing to do with the Living God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, but that it was directly opposed to Him. … It became evident that people were not all that clear about Christian teaching. In many churches, even before the Nazi regime, preaching had become an arbitrary religious explanation of personal destiny and world events. Otherwise, when the crucial moment came, it would have been impossible for a man of our own time to gain such an ascendancy and for him, with his personal philosophy, to become the object of such widespread faith and hope” (p. 99).

The German Church’s accommodation of the Nazi regime reveals an appalling failure of basic Christian preaching and teaching. In Schlink’s understanding the failure of the churches was not so much caused by the persecution as revealed by it. “The forces outside the church showed up what was real in the life of these churches, and what was only an empty shell” (p. 100).

By God’s grace an astonishing renewal of the Church occurred as well. “The renewal began when the Church recognized the enemy’s attack as the hand of God … and when resistance to injustice became at the same time an act of repentance and of submission to the mighty hand of God” (p. 100). As the contrast with anti-Christian propaganda became more intense “the Church’s ears were re-opened to the Word of God. … But at the same time God’s Word challenged us, questioned the reality of our own religion, and forced us to recognize God simply and solely in His Word. Under the attack of neo-paganism, but especially through the power of God’s Word, its promises, and its demands, our usual attempts to see God’s revelation in other historical events and forms, ideas and words, save in the historic event of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ, completely broke down. … Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, was recognized and acclaimed afresh as the sole Word of God” (p. 100).

One consequence of this sifting was the emergence of a strong Bible movement in the German Church carrying through into the post-war years. There also emerged a new feeling for the sacraments of the Church. Before the war, Communion services were infrequent and the number of communicants small. “People gathered afresh around the sacraments. The number of communion services and communicants increased. In the midst of all the tribulation and distress there awakened a new longing for the concrete, personal experience of receiving the body and the blood of the Incarnate Son of God Who has given Himself for us. … These communion services echoed the joy of the early Christians, to whom the body and blood of Christ were objects of the greatest joy and praise” (p. 101).

There were other signs of renewal. Schlink reports that under the persecution there emerged a great sense that the Church was the fellowship of those who confess and bear witness to the lordship of Christ. The term brother came very naturally into common use again as Christians discovered their solidarity across denominational lines. The liturgy was reshaped so that common prayers for those exiled and imprisoned were a more prominent feature. There was greater attentiveness to saying the creeds and ancient prayers which expressed the identification of the people with the Church of the ages. “Through these prayers we realized that across all distances and even across the war-fronts, we were one people with the worshippers in all nations” (p. 102).

The clergy experienced renewal. There was a new focus on the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments as the chief work of the clergy, “which takes precedence over all other tasks. But it became especially clear that the Church cannot be led by anything but the voice of the Good Shepherd, as preached in the Word of God” (p. 102). There was a renewal in lay ministry. “Many elders then began to understand their task in a new way as that of watchmen. Many who had only listened to the Word before, now came forward to read to the congregation, or to give their own exposition of a passage of scripture. Many, who had never thought of doing so before, accompanied bereaved persons to the cemetery, so that the body should not be laid in the earth without a reading from scripture and a prayer. In addition to the old office of deacon, new duties were assumed; readers, catechists, both men and women, undertook the care of the poor and pastoral work, while young people taught the children” (p. 103). There was a new recognition that ordinary people in the daily work in factory, school and the military were presented with both the challenge and peril of Christian ministry and witness. “Hesitatingly, but with growing confidence, the Church in the Third Reich began to proclaim that in every sphere of life we owe obedience to God in Christ, proclaiming its message in the face of the world and helping the persecuted” (p. 104).

And then comes the stunning conclusion to Professor Schlink’s report. “All of this proved that the Church can only help, in the middle of the disorder of the world, by really being the Church. Its most important duty to the world consists in allowing itself to be re-made by the Word of God. When the Church derives its life solely from the Word of God made flesh, the witness of that word within the Church is bound to have effect in saving and bringing order into the world around. But if the Church bears witness to something other than this Lord, however well intentioned its advice, warning, help and sacrifice may be, it will only increase the disorder of the world” (p. 104).

In a time when the disorder of humankind asserts itself both in the Church and the world and the Church is again being sifted and sorted, albeit not as fiercely as under the Nazis, what can we say upon hearing this testimony of the German Church to us except amen and please God grant us their repentance and renewal.

The Rev. Leander S. Harding is dean of church relations and seminary advancement and associate professor of pastoral theology at Trinity School for Ministry.

Read the complete article at The Living Church website (new window will open)

President's Message for the St. John Chrysostom Society — Western Region, an ecumenical fellowship or Catholic and Orthodox Christians.

In past President's messages I have not focused on the non-Apostolic Churches and their ecumenical situation, as that might seem irrelevant to our SSJC-WR concerns. However, in my past President's messages I have talked about moral alliances that both Catholics and Orthodox can form. Such alliances have been proposed by Pope Benedict XVI and Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev for example.

Whether formally established, or just expressed informally, such alliances assume a set of common principles or moral viewpoint, easily possible between Catholics and Orthodox, but not necessarily between “Christian” groups. An example of this came to my attention recently in an Australian news source report on a disturbing statement issued by an Australian ecumenical council of churches: "The community needs to know that there is a range of views held on many topics in the Christian tradition. . . ."

The news report indicated that this statement was issued in opposition to the moral viewpoint and position of another mainly Protestant group that calls itself the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL). However, an overview of the stance on the moral issues of the day held by the ACL indicate they are in substantial agreement with the teachings of Christ that have been practiced continually in the holy tradition of the Apostolic Churches.

On the other hand, it would appear, we have little in common with the so called "Council of Churches" which aims to: "honor the diversity in our community." Interestingly, the Council cites same sex marriage as an example. In a shameful sellout to Godless secularism the council proudly announces: “We don’t have a position on the issue of same-sex marriage.”

Well, the Apostolic Churches, the Eastern and Western Catholic Churches, Orthodox Churches and Oriental Orthodox Churches certainly do have a position on the issue of same sex marriage, as well as on such issues as abortion, bioethics and family ethics, etc. The community, even the world, needs to know there is no range of views on such issues.

Except for their unfortunate rejection of the sacramental gifts given by Christ to the Apostolic Churches, sealed by the Holy Spirit, and held on to by our Churches to this day, e.g., Holy Chrismation, the Holy Priesthood (and male priesthood at that, as Christ Himself is male) and the Holy Eucharist (the true Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ Himself), some Protestant groups such as the ACL apparently remain faithful to many of the moral teachings of Christ and His Church. At the very least we can support their stand.

May our Society of St. John Chrysostom members pray for such courageous and morally clear-visioned communities. For these communities, and also for those whose understanding and teachings on Christian moral principles has become overtaken by secularist thinking, that all may be guided by the Holy Spirit to return to the Sacramental Church founded by Christ.

Fr. George Morelli is the President of the St. John Chrysostom Society — Western Region.

Read the entire article on the Light of the East website (new window will open).

When Christian Smith and his fellow researchers with the National Study of Youth and Religion at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill took a close look at the religious beliefs held by American teenagers, they found that the faith held and described by most adolescents came down to something the researchers identified as "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism."

As described by Smith and his team, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism consists of beliefs like these: 1. "A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth." 2. "God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions." 3. "The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself." 4. "God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem." 5. "Good people go to heaven when they die."

That, in sum, is the creed to which much adolescent faith can be reduced. After conducting more than 3,000 interviews with American adolescents, the researchers reported that, when it came to the most crucial questions of faith and beliefs, many adolescents responded with a shrug and "whatever."

As a matter of fact, the researchers, whose report is summarized in Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Eyes of American Teenagers by Christian Smith with Melinda Lundquist Denton, found that American teenagers are incredibly inarticulate about their religious beliefs, and most are virtually unable to offer any serious theological understanding. As Smith reports, "To the extent that the teens we interviewed did manage to articulate what they understood and believed religiously, it became clear that most religious teenagers either do not really comprehend what their own religious traditions say they are supposed to believe, or they do understand it and simply do not care to believe it. Either way, it is apparent that most religiously affiliated U.S. teens are not particularly interested in espousing and upholding the beliefs of their faith traditions, or that their communities of faith are failing in attempts to educate their youth, or both."

As the researchers explained, "For most teens, nobody has to do anything in life, including anything to do with religion. 'Whatever' is just fine, if that's what a person wants."

The casual "whatever" that marks so much of the American moral and theological landscapes—adolescent and otherwise—is a substitute for serious and responsible thinking. More importantly, it is a verbal cover for an embrace of relativism. Accordingly, "most religious teenager's opinions and views—one can hardly call them worldviews—are vague, limited, and often quite at variance with the actual teachings of their own religion."

The kind of responses found among many teenagers indicates a vast emptiness at the heart of their understanding. When a teenager says, "I believe there is a God and stuff," this hardly represents a profound theological commitment.

Amazingly, teenagers are not inarticulate in general. As the researchers found, "Many teenagers know abundant details about the lives of favorite musicians and television stars or about what it takes to get into a good college, but most are not very clear on who Moses and Jesus were." The obvious conclusion: "This suggests that a strong, visible, salient, or intentional faith is not operating in the foreground of most teenager's lives."

One other aspect of this study deserves attention at this point. The researchers, who conducted thousands of hours of interviews with a carefully identified spectrum of teenagers, discovered that for many of these teens, the interview itself was the first time they had ever discussed a theological question with an adult. What does this say about our churches? What does this say about this generation of parents?

In the end, this study indicates that American teenagers are heavily influenced by the ideology of individualism that has so profoundly shaped the larger culture. This bleeds over into a reflexive non-judgmentalism and a reluctance to suggest that anyone might actually be wrong in matters of faith and belief. Yet, these teenagers are unable to live with a full-blown relativism.

The researchers note that many responses fall along very moralistic lines—but they reserve their most non-judgmental attitudes for matters of theological conviction and belief. Some go so far as to suggest that there are no "right" answers in matters of doctrine and theological conviction.

The "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism" that these researchers identify as the most fundamental faith posture and belief system of American teenagers appears, in a larger sense, to reflect the culture as a whole. Clearly, this generalized conception of a belief system is what appears to characterize the beliefs of vast millions of Americans, both young and old.

This is an important missiological observation—a point of analysis that goes far beyond sociology. As Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton explained, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism "is about inculcating a moralistic approach to life. It teaches that central to living a good and happy life is being a good, moral person. That means being nice, kind, pleasant, respectful, responsible, at work on self-improvement, taking care of one's health, and doing one's best to be successful." In a very real sense, that appears to be true of the faith commitment, insofar as this can be described as a faith commitment, held by a large percentage of Americans. These individuals, whatever their age, believe that religion should be centered in being "nice"—a posture that many believe is directly violated by assertions of strong theological conviction.

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is also "about providing therapeutic benefits to its adherents." As the researchers explained, "This is not a religion of repentance from sin, of keeping the Sabbath, of living as a servant of sovereign divinity, of steadfastly saying one's prayers, of faithfully observing high holy days, of building character through suffering, of basking in God's love and grace, of spending oneself in gratitude and love for the cause of social justice, et cetera. Rather, what appears to be the actual dominant religion among U.S. teenagers is centrally about feeling good, happy, secure, at peace. It is about attaining subjective well-being, being able to resolve problems, and getting along amiably with other people."

In addition, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism presents a unique understanding of God. As Smith explains, this amorphous faith "is about belief in a particular kind of God: one who exists, created the world, and defines our general moral order, but not one who is particularly personally involved in one's affairs—especially affairs in which one would prefer not to have God involved. Most of the time, the God of this faith keeps a safe distance."

Smith and his colleagues recognize that the deity behind Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is very much like the deistic God of the 18th-century philosophers. This is not the God who thunders from the mountain, nor a God who will serve as judge. This undemanding deity is more interested in solving our problems and in making people happy. "In short, God is something like a combination Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist: he is always on call, takes care of any problems that arise, professionally helps his people to feel better about themselves, and does not become too personally involved in the process."

Obviously, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is not an organized faith. This belief system has no denominational headquarters and no mailing address. Nevertheless, it has millions and millions of devotees across the United States and other advanced cultures, where subtle cultural shifts have produced a context in which belief in such an undemanding deity makes sense. Furthermore, this deity does not challenge the most basic self-centered assumptions of our postmodern age. Particularly when it comes to so-called "lifestyle" issues, this God is exceedingly tolerant and this religion is radically undemanding.

As sociologists, Smith and his team suggest that this Moralistic Therapeutic Deism may now constitute something like a dominant civil religion that constitutes the belief system for the culture at large. Thus, this basic conception may be analogous to what other researchers have identified as "lived religion" as experienced by the mainstream culture.

Moving to even deeper issues, these researches claim that Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is "colonizing" Christianity itself, as this new civil religion seduces converts who never have to leave their congregations and Christian identification as they embrace this new faith and all of its undemanding dimensions.

Consider this remarkable assessment: "Other more accomplished scholars in these areas will have to examine and evaluate these possibilities in greater depth. But we can say here that we have come with some confidence to believe that a significant part of Christianity in the United States is actually [only] tenuously Christian in any sense that is seriously connected to the actual historical Christian tradition, but is rather substantially morphed into Christianity's misbegotten step-cousin, Christian Moralistic Therapeutic Deism."

They argue that this distortion of Christianity has taken root not only in the minds of individuals, but also "within the structures of at least some Christian organizations and institutions."

How can you tell? "The language, and therefore experience, of Trinity, holiness, sin, grace, justification, sanctification, church, . . . and heaven and hell appear, among most Christian teenagers in the United States at the very least, to be supplanted by the language of happiness, niceness, and an earned heavenly reward."

Does this mean that America is becoming more secularized? Not necessarily. These researchers assert that Christianity is either degenerating into a pathetic version of itself or, more significantly, Christianity is actively being colonized and displaced by a quite different religious faith.

This radical transformation of Christian theology and Christian belief replaces the sovereignty of God with the sovereignty of the self. In this therapeutic age, human problems are reduced to pathologies in need of a treatment plan. Sin is simply excluded from the picture, and doctrines as central as the wrath and justice of God are discarded as out of step with the times and unhelpful to the project of self-actualization.

All this means is that teenagers have been listening carefully. They have been observing their parents in the larger culture with diligence and insight. They understand just how little their parents really believe and just how much many of their churches and Christian institutions have accommodated themselves to the dominant culture. They sense the degree to which theological conviction has been sacrificed on the altar of individualism and a relativistic understanding of truth. They have learned from their elders that self-improvement is the one great moral imperative to which all are accountable, and they have observed the fact that the highest aspiration of those who shape this culture is to find happiness, security, and meaning in life.

This research project demands the attention of every thinking Christian. Those who are prone to dismiss sociological analysis as irrelevant will miss the point. We must now look at the United States of America as missiologists once viewed nations that had never heard the gospel. Indeed, our missiological challenge may be even greater than the confrontation with paganism, for we face a succession of generations who have transformed Christianity into something that bears no resemblance to the faith revealed in the Bible. The faith "once delivered to the saints" is no longer even known, not only by American teenagers, but by most of their parents. Millions of Americans believe they are Christians, simply because they have some historic tie to a Christian denomination or identity.

We now face the challenge of evangelizing a nation that largely considers itself Christian, overwhelmingly believes in some deity, considers itself fervently religious, but has virtually no connection to historic Christianity. Christian Smith and his colleagues have performed an enormous service for the church of the Lord Jesus Christ in identifying Moralistic Therapeutic Deism as the dominant religion of this American age. Our responsibility is to prepare the church to respond to this new religion, understanding that it represents the greatest competitor to biblical Christianity. More urgently, this study should warn us all that our failure to teach this generation of teenagers the realities and convictions of biblical Christianity will mean that their children will know even less and will be even more readily seduced by this new form of paganism. This study offers irrefutable evidence of the challenge we now face. As the motto reminds us, "Knowledge is power."

R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. For more articles and resources by Dr. Mohler, and for information on The Albert Mohler Program, a daily national radio program broadcast on the Salem Radio Network, go to www.albertmohler.com. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to www.sbts.edu. Send feedback to mail@albertmohler.com.

Read the entire article on The Christian Post website (new window will open).

People who argue against reducio ad Hitlerum, the tendency to reduce every political argument to a Hitler comparison, usually have a good point. Welfare reform was not the Third Reich. Neither is environmentalism.

Yet in rejecting Hitler argument, people have forgotten an important aspect of totalitarianism: its pettiness, and how that pettiness can morph into greater forms of repression.

Many totalitarian states don't start by shoving people into death camps. Most begin by micromanaging everyday life. This is why I fear liberalism so much.

For the past several decades the left hasn't resembled Stalin liquidating millions — although pro-life people could make that case — but rather the nitpicking, control-freak oppression of a low-level bureaucrat in a new totalitarian regime.

Speech codes. News organizations blackballing those with different opinions. Casual misogyny and ridicule of traditional morality.

But with the new forced-contraception Health and Human Services mandate, liberalism has crossed that small but vital line between normal lefty pettiness and a threat to freedom that truly does reflect National Socialism.

Currently some of the best commentary on the battle against the White House push to force all sentient beings to pay for contraception is coming from George Weigel. Weigel is a Catholic scholar and a writer of the first rank, and his most recent book, The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II — the Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy, is particularly insightful into the pettiness of totalitarianism.

Yes, there are horror stories of wars and mass Stalinist liquidations. But I was also struck by what Weigel calls the "quotidian offenses" — those little everyday BS maneuvers that tyrants use to slowly erode the will of free people and inject the state more and more into the zone of privacy.

In Poland after World War II, a man who saw this firsthand, aside from John Paul II, was Bishop Stepfan Wyszynski. Wyszynski had dealt with the Gestapo during World War II, and that prepared him for the communist who invaded Poland after World War II. In 1948 Pope Pius appointed Fr. Wyszynski, who was forty-seven at the time, as the archbishop of Gniezno and Warsaw and Primate of Poland. Weigel notes that the communist regime in Poland did the following:

Threatened parents with loss of employment if they didn't send their kids to communist schools and youth groups

Harassed Catholic publications with "paper shortages"

Secret police reports separated Catholic priests into three groups: enemies, neutrals, and "positives."

Arrested priests and bishops then staged phony "trials."

Weigel sums up the overall atmosphere: "Permissive abortion laws, communist youth camps that encouraged sexual experimentation, work schedules that separated husbands and wives, parents and children — all these were tools in the communist campaigns against traditional Polish culture and against the Church and its moral teaching."

Sound familiar? Currently, the Obama administration is in the midst of trying to destroy the Catholic Church by forcing it into a schism. Thus it uses Kathleen Sebelius and Sandra Fluke, good liberal Catholics, or "positives" in the language of the communists, to attack the Church itself.

This is the moment when petty, quotidian liberal tyrannies morph into totalitarianism.

In 2011 a documentary called A Film Unfinished was released. It documented the making of a Nazi propaganda film, Ghetto, in 1942. At first there was some concern that A Film Unfinished would soften the anguish of Holocaust victims and affect the historical memory of the event because it showed Jews in Germany going through everyday routines — shopping, eating, going to temple. But people soon realized that the evidence in the film actually made the Nazi crimes seem worse. One could fully witness the ridiculous pettiness of Nazi intrusions into everyday life — pettiness that permitted much greater crimes.

One of the most disturbing scenes in A Film Unfinished is a simple depiction of Jewish women bathing naked together. There is nothing violent in the scene, but it is chilling in it casual cruelty and violation of a private space. It is the state saying: we control what you eat, where you go, what you read — and watch you when you bathe. It's for the good of the state.

In communist Poland after World War II, Bishop Wyszynski finally had enough of totalitarian pettiness when it began pushing into the sacred realm. In what became a famous sermon he offered the following: "We teach that it is proper to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God that which is God's. But when Caesar sits himself on the altar, we respond curtly: he may not."

The Polish bishops followed this with a declaration that peace depended on "the government's forsaking its radical, destructive hatred towards Catholicism, and abandon its aim of subjugating the Church and turning it into an instrument of the State...We are not allowed to place the things of God on the altar of Caesar. No possumusw [We cannot!]"

The fake Polish government charged the cardinal with, yes, "violating the constitution." Wyszynski was arrested and served a three-year internment. We can only hope that Catholic leaders who refuse to obey Obama's mandates don't suffer the same fate.

Read the entire article on the Real Clear Religion website (new window will open).

ROME, MARCH 13, 2012 (Zenit.org).- The following is an English version of a presentation originally given in Italian, at a Feb. 29 event organized in Rome by the Tocqueville-Acton Institute, Fondazione Caelo et Terra, and Rubbettino Editore for Italian parliamentarians and the public.

I would like to thank everyone who helped organize this event. This is an important subject that is beginning to manifest itself in all developed countries, from the United States to Europe, Australia to Canada. I do not want to be melodramatic but I really think we're beginning to see the emergence of a different view not only of fundamental rights, but of the relationship between citizens and government, which is fundamentally altering notions of the rights of conscience and of conscience itself. This change is not inevitable. But it requires us all to recognize the problem and to do something — even if the hour is late.

I want to speak in particular, of course, about the current situation in the United States, which is to say, President Obama’s pressure on Catholic institutions, which is not really a question of rights of conscience, as I hope to explain. There is much confusion about what constitute conscience objections and that which is even more important, in my opinion, the most fundamental — religious freedom.

So, I have three main points: first, to show a true case of a conscience objection, in the proper sense of the term; then, to indicate a cultural problem that is preventing resolution of still other conscience problems; and finally, I would like to analyze a bit the well known controversy in the United States right now on "Obamacare" and religious freedom.

So, let me begin with an example of protection of conscience, correctly understood. In Washington State in the United States, a lawsuit was filed against several pharmacists who refuse to dispense Plan-B drugs and Ella, which are in some cases abortifacients, for reasons of conscience. A large majority in the association of pharmacists in Washington State agreed with them on matters of conscience. But the state, and in particular the Governor Chris Gregoire, a Catholic in theory, have tried to force all pharmacists to dispense all legal medications. The case went to court – a state court not federal. The court found that in the past, pharmacists have been granted exemptions to sell or not sell various types of drugs and devices for economic, business, and other reasons. Since the state found no reason to force pharmacists in these circumstances, then why would it force them when serious moral issues are involved? The pharmacists won the case in a very liberal state on the Pacific coast. But we know why the state has made this attempt: because it wants to eliminate all public resistance to the procedures that progressive leaders now see as the most fundamental rights, far more worthy of protection than those of conscience or religion.

In this case, the judge did the right thing. But how long will this sense of awareness persist among the cultural elite? Another case may provide an answer. And this is my second point. In America, as here in Europe, the movement to allow gay marriage is growing every day. There are many people – I am one of them – and there are also the churches, who believe in civil rights for gay people, as for all people, but consider marriage as something unique, an institution that exists prior to the state. But in the debate, gay marriage is presented as a “fundamental right,” even if that right appears in no part of American Constitution or any other controlling document. By contrast, the resistance to this unfounded new right is presented as something parallel to the denial of basic civil rights to African-Americans before 1960. (In fact, as we know, it’s presented as a psychological disease called homophobia.)

In other words, churches, synagogues, mosques, chapels, individuals, etc. who see marriage as only between a man and a woman are placed in the same moral standing as the Ku Klux Klan – an American racist group – during the struggle for civil rights.  And so the traditional faith and morals of the majority of citizens have become a crime against “fundamental rights.” And how long will it be before the state tries to put such believers and their institutions as much as possible outside the law, as it did with the Klan?  It may seem unlikely now, but the logic of calling such things as gay marriage a fundamental right or a matter of fundamental equality cannot help but lead in that direction.

And this leads us to the third point: the recent decision by Obama about requiring coverage, not just of contraception, but of abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization, in healthcare mandates. I must say I do not know exactly why he has caused this crisis. But you can see from the form of his "accommodation" that he hasn’t begun to understand the concerns not only of Catholics, but also Evangelicals, Orthodox Jews, Muslims, and others.  The Catholic bishops and other opponents of the new mandate have a sound legal foundation for their position. Religious freedom is a fundamental right guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. (Please understand, that the first ten amendments, what we call our Bill of Rights, are not changes to the original constitution, but an emphasis on the rights that our founders wanted to protect in particular by setting them down explicitly.  We Americans have long been proud of our First Amendment: we are a country that, in the words of George Washington to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, RI, gives "to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance."

By contrast, Obama opened his press conference announcing his “accommodation” with religious objectors with the observation that access to health care for women, including contraception and abortion, the morning-after pills, and sterilization, are a "fundamental right." Oh, and, among other things, women are entitled to all of them without cost.  All this seems to say that there is some right even earlier, as it were, more “first” than First Amendment protections freedom of religion in the Constitution. And somehow nobody seems to have noticed this even prior set of rights until a few weeks ago. In the past, those who have discovered new rights in the constitution – such as abortion – spoke of "emanations and penumbras" that justified their findings. In the new perspective, any institution or person, like the churches, that interferes with the new fundamental rights, is a sectarian on the margins of the American experiment.  Many secular commentators have said, long before this particular dispute, that Mr. Obama feels restricted in the management of a modern nation by an antiquated document from the eighteenth century. The New York Times said it again three or four days ago, and point out in particular that the Constitution is wanting because it does not guarantee expansive modern notions of “rights.”

Be that as it may, the Constitution is the document that a former professor of constitutional law swore to preserve, protect, and defend when he became president of the United States. What is the source from which he now receives the authority to deny the fundamental protections of the law to religious people? The whole point of a Constitution is that it establishes a government of laws, not of particular men.  In my opinion, we must recognize that there are two types of "rights." We use the same word for both right now because we do not have a moral language sufficient to distinguish between them.

The real fundamental rights, at least in the American system, are "life, liberty, and property." The government cannot take away life, liberty or property from any person without due process of law. These are rights in force at all times and places, the fundamental rights which are not a gift from the government, but in our system, which come from the Creator.  It does not matter if a president or a group does not like this way of understanding the fundamental rights. Or the foundation of our government. It does not allow conscience objections about these issues.

By contrast, there are other modern “rights” – to food, shelter, health care, work – that are really more desiderata. All decent people hope that everyone will be able to enjoy these basic human goods. For the most part, these are provided by civil society – the family, in particular – the original Department of Health and Human Services. Other institutions may need to intervene at need, including the state. But the state cannot guarantee that there will be resources and tools to provide these things. Just look at the case of Greece, and perhaps soon all of us even in developed nations. I do not see how you can claim a right to something that no one is able to provide.  It is really a question of fundamental rights, to say that churches, synagogues, mosques, etc. must provide desirable goods (to some) when there are other means, if that’s what you only have in mind?  And aside from conscientious objection, what must we think of the status, now, of the fundamental right of property? In the past, it would have been unthinkable that a U.S. president would have told private insurance companies to provide certain services, and to do so at no charge.

In addition, there was no need to create this conflict – except if you decided in advance that you wanted to force some institutions to do several things, despite their religious and moral convictions. It is not the case, for example, that it is hard to find the contraception, even free, in clinics and elsewhere, if you believe in the fundamental need for these things.  And it’s for this reason that religious institutions have not limited themselves to claim conscience objections in these matters. To do so would be to admit that the state has defined something fundamentally right and true, and that those who resist are merely offensive and sectarian.  No. The churches and other religious groups are claiming that the right and Constitutional order is the precise opposite – it’s not simply the case of conscience objection – to put the religious freedom first, its demonstrable place in our constitutional understanding of the American system.  And there's a fair chance that the Supreme Court will agree with them.

And this is not just a struggle by the Catholic bishops. A group of evangelical Christians and Jews have spoken out in favor of religious freedom. And there is a Joint Declaration of Catholics and Evangelicals. In addition, evangelicals and Jews have noted that they often have the kinds of religious institutions that do not correspond to strict definitions of churches or places of worship. So not only Catholic hospitals, universities, and emergency services are threatened. These are many other forms of religious activity in America in danger, which make up some of the rich diversity our society.  It 's encouraging that our Catholic hierarchy and other religious leaders now understand more deeply what is at stake in the health care fight. It is not just a matter of conscience objections, but of the first of rights: religious liberty. If this controversy – which is not going away – leads to better reflection not only on religious freedom but also on the size and scope of government, all the better for all friends of liberty, law, and conscience.

Robert Royal is the president of the Faith and Reason Institute of Washington.

Read the entire article on the Zenit News website (new window will open).

With all the bad news, there every now and then comes a good headline. Recently from the Associated Press came: “When it comes to saving lives, God trumps doctors for many Americans.” Basically this report said: that in a random survey of adult Americans 57% said God's intervention could save a family member even if physicians declared that treatment would be futile. And nearly three-quarters said patients have a right to demand that treatment continue.  They went on to say that, “When asked to imagine their own relatives being gravely ill or injured, nearly 20% of doctors and other medical workers said God could reverse a hopeless outcome.”

However, accompanying the good news in this headline was another report containing a subtle message of humans who think they know the will of God: A physician was quoted saying : “Miracles don't happen when medical evidence shows death is near.” This was said by Dr. Michael Sise, trauma medical director at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego, who called the study "a great contribution" to one of the most intense issues doctors face. This is the comment of a Catholic doctor working in a Catholic hospital, who said he was actually commenting on a recent study published in the Archives of General Medicine on end of life care.

The physician conducting this end of life study was Dr. Lenworth Jacobs, a University of Connecticut surgery professor and trauma chief at Hartford Hospital. It was pointed out that “trauma treatment advances have allowed patients who previously would have died at the scene to survive longer. That shift means hospital trauma specialists he said,"are much more heavily engaged in the death process." The physician went on to say he frequently meets people who think God will save their dying loved one and who want medical procedures to continue. The only bright light, at least partially godly, but also humanly sensitive was his response: "You can't say, 'That's nonsense.' You have to respect that and try to show them X-rays, CAT scans and other medical evidence indicating death is imminent.”

This leaves the question then when and under what circumstances can you ask God for help.  Let us reflect on the words of Elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain (Ageloglou. 1998) on this.  The holy elder tells us:

“If we suffer from a disease and we want to be cured, we should see a doctor. If the doctor is unable to cure us, then we should ask God to work a miracle. We should do whatever we can be humanly achieved; the rest which is beyond our power, must be left in God’s hands.”

Priestmonk Christodoulos Ageloglou, the biographer of the holy elder recounts this incident: A father of a young girl diagnosed terminally ill went to Mt. Athos to visit the Elder.

“Father, all the doctors have reached the conclusion that my daughter will never recover, and all we have t do is wait for her to pass away. What do you think, is there any hope, can God do something about it:

You must never ask again if God can do something about it; it is a blasphemy. God created man and he can even turn stones into human beings; and you are asking whether He can do something about your daughter? Nothing is impossible or difficult for God, for ‘everything is possible for Him.’ The difficult thing for us to do is to overcome our disbelief and believe in Him without any hesitations. Therefore, you should pray to Christ with faith, without any hesitation. Don’t lose hope in Him. God allows for us to feel despair in order to trust Him. Our trust and hope in God never betrays us.”

On this same subject St. John Chrysostom tells us: “For a man to have such faith appears simple, but it is, on the contrary, something very lofty, not easily attained by many. Such faith is born of boldness before God; but such boldness comes (only) from pleasing God. Beloved, great labour is needed to acquire, through pleasing God, such boldness before Him that one firmly believes that he will grant all that one asks; as it is written, Ask, and it shall be given to you.

REFERENCES

Ageloglou, Priestmonk Christodoulos. (1998). Elder Paisios of The Holy Mountain. Mt. Athos, Greece: Holy Mountain.

Lewis, C.S. (1961). The Screwtape Letters. NY Macmillan.

Morelli, G. (2005a, September, 22). What Do You Know: The Score Or The Saint? http://www.orthodoxytoday....

Morelli, G. (2005b, November, 13). The "Demon of Correctness": Religiously Correct Secularism. http://www.orthodoxytoday...

Morelli, G. (2006, September 05). Whose Church Do I Belong To: My Church or the Orthodox Church of Christ? http://www.orthodoxytoday....

Morelli, G. (2007a, February  04). The Spiritual Roots of Altruism: The Good Samaritan. http://www.orthodoxytoday....

Morelli, G. (2007b, December 17) Smart Parenting VIII: Fighting for Christ at Christmas — Combating Secularism. http://www.orthodoxytoday...

St. John Chrysostom, The Gospel Commentary, edited by Hieromonk German Ciuba, 2002.
4th Century

In August 2008, the California Supreme Court, doing the “work of the evil one” issued a ruling that physicians must artificially inseminate lesbian couples who request the procedure. Not to do so is discrimination. One justice Joyce L. Kennard wrote for the court: "The 1st Amendment's right to the free exercise of religion does not exempt defendant physicians here from conforming their conduct to the…antidiscrimination requirement." The California ruling went on explaining a physicians' constitutional rights to freedom of religion did not outdo the state antidiscrimination law because the state has a compelling interest in ensuring full and equal access to medical care. (See: http://www.courtinfo.ca.g....) This ruling occurred even though one of the defendant physicians Dr. Christine Brody said she would not perform the procedure on any unmarried woman, heterosexual or homosexual. (See: http://www.signonsandiego....)

My first response is: Where is the discrimination? However an even more important question: Where is the illness? It seems to me artificial insemination with donated sperm, is an elective procedure, similar to plastic surgery for “vanity reasons.” I term such procedures “vanity surgery.” I am not suggesting plastic surgery for valid medical or psychological purposes such as body reconstruction after physical trauma, or severe anxiety or depression over a seriously dysmorphic [that is deformed] body part significantly out of shape, should not be performed. In such cases it is for healing not vanity, and it is a blessing such procedures exist to heal the infirmity of the patient.

The evil one works through us

A reader may question:  “Come on, Fr. George, you are a priest but you are also a scientist: Do you really think these justices were under demonic influence?” My answer is to start by asking a question:  “Have you read the outstanding book The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis? This book is written as a fantasy storybook: An elder devil called Screwtape has the task to training a novice devil named Wormwood, who happens to be his nephew. Screwtape tells his novice: "the gentle, sliding slope of habitual small sins is better" than any grandiose sin (adultery, grand theft, murder, rape). The senior devil Screwtape is constantly writing to Wormwood that it is not the obvious, easy to detect, large sins that are most efficacious in sending people to Hell, but it is the subtle hard to detect small thoughts and actions which influence minds and gradually and almost unknowingly take them away from God. For Screwtape speaks to his student to use undulation, keep falling back to the same little viewpoint that they feel they have a right to have. So in this sense, the work of the evil one is accomplished by the failings of humans themselves. Let people themselves do the demon’s works. Under the guise of “human rights,” the right to follow and practice the teachings of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ is now abrogated. Religious freedom, guaranteed in the first amendment of the Constitution of the United States: “…religion …prohibiting the free exercise thereof," is taken away by the California Supreme Court from those who are medical practitioners.

The spirit of the Hippocratic Oath

The well known Hippocratic Oath has either been dropped from use in medical schools or has  been substantially modified within the modern day post-modern godless medical practice we find in society today. One change actually compatible, if used the original oath penned by Hippocrates had physicians, for example swearing  by the Greek gods: Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses. For most people including new physicians this oath would be   now considered a mere historical reference. However, I would maintain the spirit of the medical practice principles in the  oath should still be at the forefront of the spirit and practice of medicine. One principle in the oath is especially relevant to this commentary:

I will apply dietetic measures  [medicine] for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice.

I pray the reader has understood the point: The physician will act to cure the sick, In terms of the California Supreme Court ruling how is a Lesbian who wants artificial insemination sick? I maintain said this is a voluntary elective procedure. it has nothing to do with curing an illness.

I also do not see how any physician can be made to perform a procedure which is not geared to heal an illness or infirmity and against the fundamental teachings of his commitment especially as it is also against the teaching of our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ, —our true moral compass.

The Good Samaritan: guide as who is to be both patient and physician

The Parable of the Good Samaritan is so applicable here. The Samaritans as all know were the outcasts of the Hebrew people.  They had intermarried with Canaanite idol worshiping pagans they had a watered down belief in God. They did not worship in the Temple in Jerusalem –but it is just this outcast that Our Lord uses as an example who should be healed of disease and infirmity and who would show compassionate mercy. A traveler was beaten by robbers and left for dead.  It was the outcast, the Samaritan who came to his aid. So too in the case of real illness, if any person has an infirmity, is truly sick—be they Christian, or Jew, gay or straight: they should be given the best of medical science to heal their disease and the best of spiritual intervention, to pray they and all of us conform our lives to God’s will, and glorify Him.

I pray that the Christian physicians who specialize in fertility treatment stand for Christ and not only fight this all the way through our countries legal system, and if need by simply not perform such procedure no matter what the consequences. What is the government going to do? Arrest and imprison all? I do not want to get dramatic, but it is clear to all much medicine practiced by Nazi physicians during the 1930s and during World War II was unethical and immoral. Do we want American medical practice to emulate the Nazi era?  Now is the time for American physicians to take a moral stand. I pray all of us who call ourselves Christians stand up and support these doctors.

Although I take a stronger stand on the need for those ill to consult the most highly educated and skilled physicians in seeking treatment, let us reflect at least on the great spiritual wisdom of  Elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain (Ageloglou, 1998) in his counsel:

I always indicate to people, who suffer from physical illnesses and want to be cured, to go to Christian doctors. They are always enlightened by God since they trust everything in Him.  If they have good knowledge of their science, so much the better.

REFERENCES

Ageloglou, Priestmonk Christodoulos. (1998). Elder Paisios of The Holy Mountain. Mt. Athos, Greece: Holy Mountain.

Demakis, J. (2008). Personal communication.

Lewis, C.S. (1961). The Screwtape Letters. NY Macmillan.

Morelli, G. (2005a, September, 22). What Do You Know: The Score Or The Saint? http://www.orthodoxytoday....

Morelli, G. (2005b, November, 13). The "Demon of Correctness": Religiously Correct Secularism. http://www.orthodoxytoday...

Morelli, G. (2006, September 05). Whose Church Do I Belong To: My Church or the Orthodox Church of Christ? http://www.orthodoxytoday....

Morelli, G. (2007a, February  04). The Spiritual Roots of Altruism: The Good Samaritan. http://www.orthodoxytoday....

Morelli, G. (2007b, December 17) Smart Parenting VIII: Fighting for Christ at Christmas — Combating Secularism. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles7/MorelliSmartParentingVIII.php.

SURPASSING HUMAN JUSTICE: ENTHRONING DIVINE JUSTICE.

IN CHRISTIANITY, MERCY TRUMPS JUSTICE.

"Compassion and justice in one soul are as a man adoring God and idols in one house." -St. Isaac of Syriaⁱ

The cry for "justice" is heard around the world. But what "justice" is cried out for? A casual overview of the media clearly indicates that the cry for worldly justice is very often accompanied by cries for retaliation, retribution and vengeance. Such 'justice' is often attributed to third world nations or countries that have been in constant conflict. For example, a British newspaper article headline about a recent Libyan incident read, "The car was armoured like a tank. But that wasn't enough to save Gaddafi's son Khamis when the rebels took their vengeance."ⁱⁱ History books recount incidents of murderous atrocities against individuals, nations and entire peoples, committed in the name of revenge, since the dawn of recorded time.

Is retribution limited to third world countries? Roman Catholic Keith Cardinal O'Brien, Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, Scotland, would say of a modern Western, supposedly enlightened country:

In Scotland over many years we have cultivated through our justice system what I hope can be described as a 'culture of compassion', On the other hand, there still exists in many parts of the US, if not nationally, an attitude towards the concept of justice which can only be described as a 'culture of vengeance.'"ⁱⁱⁱ

The Church Fathers on Worldly Justice

St. Isaac of Syria was able to define worldly justice with precision. As quoted by Alfeyev (2000), St. Isaac tells us: "Justice is equality on the even scale, for it gives to each as he deserves. . . ." However, worldly or earthly justice enlivened by goodness beauty and goodness, devoid of retaliation, retribution and vengeance can attract mankind to the Divine. St. Maximus the Confessor tells us:

Earth in the world of the senses corresponds in the world of the mind to justice — a state that begets all the inner principles of created things according to their kind, that in spirit shares out the gifts of life to each thing in an equitable way, and that is by its own free choice rooted and established in beauty and goodness. (Philokalia II)

The Church Fathers knew that beauty and goodness could lead us to God. (Morelli, 2010b). St. Symeon the New Theologian, in his Hymn of Divine Love, (McGuckin, 2001) prays: "Master, how could I describe the vision of your face? How could I ever speak of the ineffable contemplation of your Beauty? How could mere words contain One whom the World could never contain?" Then Saint Symeon answers his questions as part of his prayer: ". . . suddenly You appeared from on high, shining greater than the Sun itself, shining brilliantly from the heavens down into my heart .. . . . What intoxication of the Light! What swirlings of fire!"

St. Maximus the Confessor makes clear that living a Christ-like life goes beyond the worldly meaning of justice:

He who is living the life in Christ has gone beyond the righteousness of both the Law and nature. This St. Paul indicated when he said, 'For in Christ Jesus there is neither circumcision nor uncircumcision (cf. Gal 5: 6). By circumcision he meant righteousness according to the Law; by uncircumcision he hinted at natural justice or equity. (Philokalia II)

Justice in Sacred Scripture: The Old Testament

At first glance it would appear that God Himself unites justice and vengeance. There is little doubt that, taken by itself, the God of the Old Testament appears to be a 'God of requital.'  Take, for example, Moses’ record of God's description of Himself:  "I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me. . . ." (Ex 20: 5). Among the ordinances God set before His people, as Moses tells us,  is that which has been called the famous law of retaliation (lex talionis): "If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.“(Ex 21: 23-25)  Moses himself says of God: "The Lord is slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but He will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of fathers upon children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation." (Nu 14: 18).   

Old Testament Scripture contains some of the most brutal descriptions of retaliatory justice. Among the psalms (136: 9), composed when the Jews were held captive (called the Babylonian Exile) by the Persians, we read: "Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!"  God even orders the annihilation of an entire nation. Samuel tells Saul of the Lord's command: "'.I will punish what Am'alek did to Israel in opposing them on the way, when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and smite Am'alek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.'" (1Kg 15: 2-3). 

How do we answer critics who claim God is a God of brutality and not mercy? The answer comes from the Old Testament Scriptures, but only  in part, and quite veiled, as told to us by King David: "Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness [justice] and peace will kiss each other." (Ps 84: 10).  The Church Fathers knew well that the Old Testament Scriptures cannot be understood without reference to the full revelation of God to mankind, given to us by the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, Our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ made incarnate.

Consider Christ's own words as told to us by St. Luke (24: 44-45): "Then he said to them, "These are my words which I spoke to you, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. . . ." St. Paul (1Cor 2: 14) comments on those who attempt to interpret Sacred Scripture apart from Christ and His Church: "The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned".

St. Nikitas Stithatos comments on Our Lord' words and St. Paul's understanding by consideration that those who lack compassion, that is to say mercy is a barrier to orthodox comprehension of Sacred Scripture:

. . . they exhibit no godly fruit - love for God and for their fellow-men - no joy in the midst of poverty and tribulation, no peace of soul, no deeply-rooted faith, no all-embracing self control. Neither do they experience compunction, tears, humility or compassion [emphasis mine], but they are filled altogether filled with conceit and arrogance. Hence they are totally incapable of plumbing the depth of the Spirit (c.f. Luke 24:45). . . . (Philokalia IV)

The mind of the Church is the mind of Christ. Without being spiritual by being  united to Christ and His Church, nothing truthful can be considered as veridical of the Holy Spirit (Morelli, 2010c). St. Nikitas points out:

Divine Scripture is to be interpreted spiritually and the treasures it contains are revealed only through the Holy Spirit to the spiritual. Hence the unspiritual man cannot receive the revelation of these treasures. [As previously quoted: "The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. "For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?" “But consider also this last following observation made by St. Paul that I now quote here:  "But we have the mind of Christ."  (1Cor 2: 14,16)]. . . .He possesses only the material spirit of this world, full of jealousy and envy, of strife and discord; and for this reason he thinks it foolish to enquire into the sense and meaning of the written word [as understood by Christ and His Church]. . .  Unable to understand that everything in Divine Scripture concerning things Divine and human is to be interpreted spiritually, he mocks those who do interpret in this way. . .he twists and distorts their words. (Philokalia IV )^iv

It is the New Testament that makes anything in the Old Testament comprehensible, in so far as the Divinity is concerned.  St. Peter of Damaskos tells us:

Just as the term 'amen', which St. Luke translates as 'truly' (c.f. Lk 9: 27 ["But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God."], is a stable and decisive word endorsing what comes before it, so moral judgment is a stable and decisive form of intellection enabling us to cleave to the truth. The word 'amen' affirms the permanence of the new grace conferred by Christ; hence it is not found in the New Testament at all, since the Old Testament is but a prefiguration. In the New Testament, however, it is used everywhere because this testament will endure for ever and through all the ages. (Philokalia III)

The words of Jesus provides understanding  of spiritual development

While not specifically talking about God's mercy, Jesus does provide an understanding of the different stage of spiritual development between the people of the Old Covenant and those who would be able to respond to His call to become His people of His New Covenant. Consider the verbal encounter with the Pharisees who questioned Jesus about divorce.

And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?" He answered, "Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, `For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder." They said to him, "Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?" He said to them, "For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. (Mt 19: 3-8)

Jesus’ statement that at the time of Moses His people were 'hard of heart' can be used  toward comprehending God seemingly encouraging the taking of human life. Taking a historical perspective shows that the value of life and standard of conduct regarding violence was very different in the ancient world than today. This is certainly not to say that there is not abhorrent violence in today's world. However, it could be maintained that in times past violence was much more the prevailing norm among all peoples than it is today.

Historical interpretation

My observation of history has not gone unnoticed by psychologists.^v Stephen Pinker (2007) recently pointed out:  "But, now that social scientists have started to count bodies in different historical periods, they have discovered that the romantic theory gets it backward: Far from causing us to become more violent, something in modernity and its cultural institutions has made us nobler." I will posit, even if some, like Pinker, would not endorse, and in fact entirely reject my position, that the greatest moral influence on contemporary culture, what Pinker terms "modernity," is the orthodox understanding of the teachings of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ. Pinker's (2011) sweeping generalizations of history and his lack of understanding of the true teachings of Christ versus the debasement of Christ's teachings by those who erroneously 'called themselves Christians' have  greatly  influenced the mistaken  interpretation of the true teachings of Christ and His true Orthodox-Catholic Church. Contributing to this was the  abasement of Christian practice and true comprehension of Christ's teachings, lamented  by none other than St. John Chrysostom himself in the 4th Century, by those who were forced to become Christian by the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine, and who thus became Christian in name only. (Morelli, 2009). Such degradation of comprehension and behavior on the part of those who labeled themselves Christian certainly influenced the historical record.  This historical-religious myopia, however,  prevents Pinker from understanding and interpreting Christ's true teaching and thus the  profound influence of Christianity on the moral development of society.^vi

The Decalogue, given to Moses by God Himself, includes the prohibition not to kill: "Thou shalt not kill." (Ex 20: 13).  But clearly this prohibition, and the value of life, was ill-understood by His "Chosen People." Unfortunately, this lack of understanding continues even to the present age and to far more peoples. The prevalence of abortion, capital punishment, executions, genocide, torture such as waterboarding and the like, reported daily by the media, attest to this. However, those who truly understand the "Mind of Christ and His Church" (Morelli, 2011) know the actuality of the value of all life. Of note is the recent call for a "moral alliance" among the Apostolic Churches, (Alfeyev, 2005) that is to say, the Churches that trace their teachings and their bishops and priests back to the Apostles. Morelli (2010c) writes: "In this spirit, courageous moral decisions by our bishops, priests and laity in the face of secularism, moral relativism and political and religious correctness, should be encouraged." 

God has revealed Himself to us in stages

An overview of the spiritual history of mankind indicates that God revealed Himself to mankind in stages. We certainly cannot think of the ancient Hebrew people themselves, with whom God made His First Covenant, as somehow more 'moral' than the other barbarian peoples that surrounded them. (Smith-Christopher, 2005).  It would appear that the only criteria God had for making His First Covenant with the Hebrew people was that Abram, the leader of his tribal group, acknowledged that the Godhead was One, singular and Supreme.  It was for their acknowledgement that God is "one," that Abraham and His descendents were Chosen. They were certainly not chosen for their morality, in which mayhem and killing were normative. 

The Wisdom of St. Isaac of Syria applied to God in the Old Testament.

There is another factor in the limited understanding of the true God by the writers of the Old Testament Scripture. It is that they would understand God and His message in the frame of reference, the cognitive set, shaped by the brutal culture in which they lived. As Pinker (2011) notes, "The Bible depicts a world that, seen through modern eyes, is staggering in its savagery. People enslave, rape and murder. . . warlords slaughter civilians indiscriminately, including the children. Woman are bought, sold and plundered like sex toys." Even when one of the writers conveyed the words of God, they did so only at the level of their own comprehension.

The Psychology of Personal Constructs

The seminal work of George Kelly (1955) provides insight into the cognitive processes that would underlie such an interpretation. Kelly states: "a person's processes are psychologically channelized by the ways in which he anticipates events." Kelly goes on to point out that the way events are anticipated by individuals is based on their experience; the commonalities in which they construe events are based on their shared experiences. He states that "to the extent that one person employs  a construction system similar to that employed by another, his psychological processes are similar to those of the other person." He goes on to say that such processes influence the social processes involving other individuals. The way we understand what others are doing is based on the common perception shared by all.

Jesus alone reveals God as He really is

The ethos, spirit, or  true meaning of God's words would not be revealed until the coming of Christ and the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit on His Church at Pentecost. To think that God condoned, much less commanded, murder and genocide is far afield from the truth. It is in this sense then, that we can comprehend the spiritual insight of St. Isaac of Syria. Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev (2000) informs us:

Thus Isaac claims, one should not interpret literally those Old Testament texts, where wrath, anger, hatred and other similar terms are applied to the Creator. When such anthropomorphic terms occur in Scripture, they are being used in a figurative sense, for God never does anything out of wrath, anger, or hatred: anything of that sort is far removed from His nature. We should not read everything literally, as it is written, but rather perceive within the Old Testament narratives the hidden providence and eternal knowledge of God.

As previously discussed, the writers of the Old Testament, in their literal presentation of God's actions or commands, were creating a God as they knew Him, from their own experience of His actions, and shaped by their times. It is the Scripture writers’ spiritual perception, not their literality, that is inspired by the Holy Spirit. Fr. John Breck (2001) points out that the Fathers of the Church understood the true meaning of Sacred Scripture more "holistically." Their understanding is based on theoria. Theoria "refers to an "inspired vision" of Divine Truth as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ and in the biblical witness to Him."

Thus ,the Old Testament writers did not describe God as He truly is spiritually, but wrote of Him as He appeared to them through their human, historical-cultural perception. It would take God, Himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, to lead His people to see the Divine, to a new level of spiritual development: that God's mercy exceeds what they conceived of as His justice. Alfeyev (2000) quotes St. Isaac:

Mercy is opposed to justice. Justice is equality on the even scale, for it gives to each as he deserves . . . . Mercy, on the other hand, is sorrow and pity stirred up by goodness. . . ; it does not requite a man who is deserving of evil, and to him who is deserving of good it gives a double portion. . . . it is evident that mercy belongs to the portion of righteousness [and] justice belongs to the portion of wickedness. . . . justice and mercy cannot abide in one soul....

Jesus tells His Apostles: "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to him who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away" (Matthew 13: 11-12).

Justice and Mercy: is all about love

St. Maximus the Confessor(Philokalia II) defines love in this way: “Love is a holy state of the soul, disposing it to value knowledge of God above all created things. We cannot attain lasting possession of such love while we are still attached to anything worldly.”

Love revisited

Philosophers (Lewis, 1960) distinguish four types of love: Storge: a fondness through familiarity, affection; philia: friendship, sharing a common bond; eros: a longing for an emotional connection (venus: the erotic aspect of eros); and agape: unconditional love, a caring for despite circumstance or situation. When St. John (1Jn 4:8) tells us "God is love," he is certainly not referring to fondness, friendship, or emotion , but unbounded, limitless, unconditional love: agape. The Anaphora Prayer from the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, summarized in human terms what this means: ". . .Thou art God ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible, ever existing and eternally the same, Thou and Thine Only-begotten Son and Thy Holy Spirit." The Anaphora Prayer continues with an existential description of the effects of agape-love:  "Thou it was who didst bring us from non existence into being, and when we had fallen away didst raise us up again, and didst not cease to do all things until Thou hadst brought us back to heaven. . . ."

Agape-love is Trinitarian. St. John starts his Gospel with the announcement:   "In the beginning was the Word [Logos], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God" (Jn1:1-2). Later St. John tells us more of God:   "God is true. For He whom God has sent utters the words of God, for it is not by measure that He gives the Spirit; the Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand.” (Jn 3: 33-35). And in the priestly prayer of Jesus at the Last Supper He makes explicit the implications of His agape-love: the sending of the Holy Spirit. "Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. . . .And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever,  even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; you know Him, for He dwells with you, and will be in you." (Jn 14: 13, 16-17).

God's mercy trumps His justice

No doubt our spiritual Church Father who was given the penultimate illumination into God's mercy was St. Isaac the Syrian. In the Dismissal Hymn for his feast we read:

O revealer of unfathomable mysteries; for having gone up in the mount of the vision of the Lord, thou wast shown the many mansions. Wherefore, O God-bearing Isaac, we entreat the Saviour for all praising thee. (Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 2011)

This divine vision is further referred to in the Megalynarion for his feast:

From the depth of wisdom and godliness, thou didst draw forth waters springing up to eternal life. Nurtured by this fountain found in thy sacred writings, O lofty-minded Isaac, we taste of Christ God's grace. (Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 2011)

The shortest summary of St. Isaac's spiritual perception is found in his Homily 51: "Have clemency, not zeal with respect to evil." (Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 2011)

Some sayings of the Church Fathers on mercy

However God's mercy was also perceived by other spiritual Fathers of the Church. St. Maximus the Confessor tells us:

Because He wishes to unite us in nature and will with one another and in His goodness urges all humanity towards this goal, God in His love entrusted His saving commandments to us, ordaining simply that we should show mercy and receive mercy (cf. Mt 5: 7). (Philokalia II)

After citing Christ's beatitude: "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy," (Mt 5: 7) St. Peter of Damaskos states:

The merciful person is he who gives to others what he has himself received from God. . . . At the same time he considers himself a debtor, since he has received more than he is asked to give. . . . Through his brother, it is God Himself who has need of him, and in this way God has become his debtor. . . .This is perfect mercy; for just as Christ endured death on our behalf, giving to all an example and a model, so we should die for one another, and not only for our friends, but for our enemies as well, should the occasion call for it. (Philokalia III)

St. Nikitas Stithatos gives instruction to those who understand the spiritual meaning of Christ's parable on what destroys the seed of His Word. St Mark (4: 19) recounts  Jesus warning: ". . .but the cares of the world, and the delight in riches, and the desire for other things, enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful." To St. Nikitas, to follow Christ's counsel requires mercy: “To master the [worldly] will of the fallen self you have to. . . .overcome avarice by embracing the law of righteousness, which consists in merciful compassion [emphasis mine] for one's fellow beings. . . .”(Philokalia IV)

This saint tells us how important mercy is for salvation, that is to say, eternal life in God. St. Nikitas tells us what we must do:

If it [the soul] concerns itself with things divine and tills the ground of humility, tears fall on it like rain from heaven and it cultivates love for God, faith and compassion [mercy] for others . . . . the soul is renewed in the beauty of Christ's image, it becomes a light to others; attracting their attention with the rays of its virtue, it inspires them to glorify God. (Philokalia IV)

It is because we are made in God's image that we are called to be like Him. to live a life 'in God.' Our intellect, as the spiritual Church Fathers teach, is that which is closest to God's image in us. They considered the intellect the highest part of man, by which we come to know God in our hearts. In this regard St. John of the Ladder (1991) refers to the psalmist’s prayer: "With my whole heart I cry; answer me, O Lord!" (Ps 118: 145). St. John understands "heart" to be the essence or totality of man, the whole person,  which he terms  "body, soul and spirit."  In this regard St. Nikitas tells us that that the intellect is "’true to itself’" when it loves to dwell among things proximate to God and seeks to unite itself with Him. . .and desires to imitate Him in His compassion [emphasis mine] and simplicity."

The Godly saint also informs us why mankind falls short and, thus devoid of virtue, becomes "impervious to the Divine and spiritual  realities:"  As I mentioned previously:

Void of the Holy Spirit, they have no share in His gifts. As a result they exhibit no Godly fruit -love for God and for their fellow-men-.... neither do they experience compunction, tears, humility or compassion [emphasis mine] but they are all together filled with conceit and arrogance. (Philokalia IV)

Based  on St. Paul's words to the Corinthians: “. . . all ate the same supernatural food and all drank the same supernatural drink. For they drank from the supernatural Rock which followed them, and the Rock was Christ. Nevertheless with most of them God was not pleased" (1Cor 10: 3-3), St. Nikitas explains in more detail:

All of us were baptized into Christ through water and the Holy Spirit, and we all [partake the] food and drink [which is] Christ Himself, . . .[yet]. . . God finds no delight in most of us. . . For. .  .[we] lack the compunction that comes from a contrite and virtuous state of mind, and the compassion [emphasis mine] that springs from love for [our] fellow beings . . .[we] have become bereft of the fullness of the Holy Spirit, remote from the spiritual knowledge of God. (Philokalia IV)

Spiritual Stages of Development

That human body and psychological development takes place in stages is well known in scientific psychological research. (Cole & Cole, 1996; Piaget, 1970) No one is born with the fullness of sensory-motor function or cognitive ability. Development occurs in the context of an interaction between neuro-anatomical growth and environmental challenges. Such development occurs within what is termed the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)^vii (Vygotsky, 1978). Vygotsky states that the ZPD is: "the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers." Two researchers (Tharp and Gilmore, 1988) have shown that this model can be extended to other spheres of competence and skills. Such particularized zones include cultural, individual  and skill-oriented developmental areas.

Most important for the purposes of this article  are the spiritual developmental stages discussed by our spiritual Church Fathers. Our inspired St. Nikitas delineates three major stages, summarized as follows:

Ministration and Performance of God's Commandments: We are reminded of Christ's injunction: "And he said to him, "Why do you ask me about what is good? One there is who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments." (Mt 19: 17) and St. Paul's commentary: “The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet," and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." (Rm 13: 9).

Compassion and Solidarity with Neighbor and discerning the Divine versus the world: This second stage is the major purpose of this article. That is to say, to discern what God expects of us in terms of acting in emulation of Him, toward our neighbors, both those with those who please us and with those who have gravely offended us.

Wisdom of the Logos: Our Goal: St. Nikitas considers attaining this stage as the fulfillment of completing the prior two stages. In a sense, this highlights the importance of exercising Divine Mercy and compassion in order to prepare ourselves to enter this stage.

Divine Forgiveness

Jesus' parable of the unforgiving servant (Mt 18: 23-35) can be considered a verbal icon of Divine Forgiveness.  The servant owed a large sum of money to his king. He could not pay the ten-thousand talents owed.  Initially the servant's lord "ordered him to be sold with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment had to be made.” (Mt 18: 25).  The servant did very little but simply fell on his knees and  implored his king for patience."  The parable continues with his master's unconditional response: "And out of pity for him the lord of that servant released him and forgave him his debt." (Mt 18: 27)

St. Paul sheds light on the meaning of such a Divinely forgiving act when writing to the Colossians (3:13): "[forbear] one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive." He informs the Ephesians (4: 31- 32) of this same command to forgive: "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." Lest it is thought that St. Paul thinks that Jesus imposed conditions on forgiveness, he tells the Romans (5: 6-8): "While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Why, one will hardly die for a righteous man — though perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." Christ's death on the cross for our sins was unconditional. As He Himself said from the Cross just before giving up His spirit: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." (Lk 23: 34)

Implication for mankind: unconditional forgiveness

The implications of Divine Forgiveness for mankind are made clear in the last part of the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant. The servant, when approached by someone owing him, throws the debtor into jail. The servant's king’s strident reply (Mt 18: 32-35): "Then his lord summoned him and said to him, 'You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you besought me; and should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?' And in anger his lord delivered him to the jailers, till he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart." 

This parable can be viewed in two ways. First  from the perspective of the individual who has been wronged, and second from the perspective of the wrongdoer. In emulation of God the person who has been mistreated has already pardoned and forgiven the miscreant even in the face of  intransigence on the part of the offender in not admitting wrongdoing or asking pardon. On the part of the reprobate, in order for reconciliation to be completed, the wrongdoer has to ask admit his wrong and want forgiveness.  

Forgiveness revisited

For mankind, forgiveness is an act of the will in emulation of the actions of God in terms of the persons of the Holy Trinity among themselves and in relation to us as His creatures. After a wrong has been committed, forgiveness desires and works toward bringing about good things for the perpetrator. Thus the act of forgiveness is an act of the will in which the victim is willing to create or re-create a relationship with the wrongdoer based on the charity that is Christ. At  the very least the victim of wrong ardently desires and fervently prays that the wrongdoer also be reconciled to God.

You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Mt 5: 48)

Several considerations may be help us in striving toward the perfect love of God and man which is agape. The first consideration is to realize that none of us is without sin. The second is that we have to examine our own sins and not those of others. The next thought to keep in mind is that we can we can judge acts (behaviors) but not the state of soul of the other. Only God knows what is in the heart of the other. As Jesus told the Pharisees: "God knows your hearts." (Lk 16: 15).

Jesus' instruction on condemning others

To those about to stone the woman caught in adultery Jesus said:  "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her." (Jn 8: 7). No one dared pick up any stone to throw at her. Is there anyone in the world today who is without sin and thus would be worthy to condemn her or anyone else for that matter? Only Jesus is the sinless one. As St. Paul instructs the Hebrews (4: 14-15): " Since then we have a great high priest. . . Jesus, the Son of God, . . .who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin."  Jesus’ emphasis is not on judgment and condemnation but on salvation and righteousness." If anyone had the "right” to condemn this woman, it would, therefore, be Jesus Himself. Thus, even more important are His last words to the woman: "Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin again." (Jn 8: 11)

Jesus' instruction on self judgment

St. Luke (6: 41-42) tells us Jesus’ words about the care we must take to know our own faults. The knowledge of our own sins, transgressions and failures should prevent us from carrying out any  conviction of anyone for what they may have done. Jesus said:  "Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, `Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,' when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother's eye." To use Jesus’ own words, anyone who judges others is a hypocrite. St. Isaac of Syria (Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 2011) put it this way: "A man who unleashes his tongue against other men, whether over good matters or evil, is unworthy of His grace."

Jesus on action to take when offenses occur

Once again Jesus is very explicit on what actions we are to take when conflict arises between individuals. Interestingly, St. Mathew (5: 23-24) does not  record Jesus considering who may have caused the initial conflict. Jesus is  referring to conflict irrespective of cause. He tells His listeners:  "So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift." These words of Jesus are precise and emphatic.

Reconciliation rejected

Now a question comes up. Suppose you go to the other person and they refuse reconciliation.  In my view, the fact that a person, irrespective of fault, has a metanoia, a change of heart, a transformation and a reorientation and desire for rapprochement with the other, is the very minimum required for fulfilling Christ's command. Such an attitude would  include an awareness that all are sinful and thus fall short. It also means making a good faith effort to bring reconciliation about. If such reconciliation is still rejected by the other, be they  the victim or the offender, either should be ever ready to embrace the other in terms of wanting their good and welfare — which would be reconciliation with all mankind and God Himself. In such a case they have fulfilled the spirit of Christ's imperative.

On judging actions, not persons

This does not mean that the actions of someone who is an offender are considered acceptable or worthy of approval. As Jesus told St. John the Evangelist using the voice of His angel: "Yet this you have, you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate." (Rev 2:6). Thus, the one offended against can still consider the actions of the perpetrator to be morally sinful and socially reprehensible. However, love requires we not judge others as persons. Important to consider here are the words of St. Dorotheos of Gaza on the refusal to judge our neighbor:

Suppose we were to take a compass and insert the point and draw an  outline of a circle. The centre of the point is the same distance from any point on the circumference. ... Let us suppose that this circle is the world and that God Himself is the centre; the straight lines drawn from the circumference to the center are lives of men . . .  in proportion to their progress in the things of the spirit, the in fact come close to God and their neighbor. The closer they come to God the closer they come to one another. . . now consider [separation] ... the more they stand away from God. . .become distant from God, the more they become distant from one another.. . . .this is the very nature of love. (Wheeler, 1977)

Followers of Christ are required to give unconditional forgiveness and love

Unconditional and unilateral forgiveness, that is to say, even when the perpetrator does not ask for forgiveness, is a human emulation of the unconditional love that is God Himself. As St. Maximus the Confessor tells us:

'But I say to you,' says the Lord, 'love your enemies. . . do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who mistreat you' (Mt 5: 44). Why did He command this? To free you from hatred, irritation, anger and rancour, and to make you worthy  of the supreme gift of perfect love. And you cannot attain such love if you do not imitate God and love all men equally. For God loves all men equally and wishes them to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth' (1 Tim 2:3).          'But I say to you, do not resist evil; but if someone hits you on the right cheek, turn to him the other cheek as well. . . . (Mt 5: 39-41). Why did He say this? Both to keep you free from anger and irritation, and to correct the other person by means of your forbearance, so that like a good Father He might bring the two of you under the yoke of love. (Philokalia II)

St Ilias the Presbyter, gives us a concrete example of mercy without conditions: "A truly merciful person is not one that deliberately gives away superfluous things, but one that forgives those who deprive of him of what he needs." (Philokalia III)

We are made in God's Image: the foundation of unconditional love

All mankind is made in God's image. Furthermore, all mankind is called to be like Him. Our holy Spiritual Church Father Nikitas Stithatos explains this in precise terms:

What I am is an image of God manifest in a spiritual, immortal and intelligent soul, having an intellect that is the father of my consciousness and that is consubstantial with the soul and inseparable from it. That which characterizes me, and is regal and sovereign, is the power of intelligence and free will. That which relates  to my situation is what I may choose in exercising my free will, such as whether to b a farmer, a merchant, a mathematician or a philosopher. That which is external to me is whatever relates to my ambitions in this present life, to my class status and worldly wealth, to glory, honour, prosperity and exalted rank, or to their opposites, poverty, ignominy, dishonour and misfortune. (Philokalia IV)

This means that the dignity and worth of all is the same whether they are the greatest of saints or heroes or the greatest of despots or serial killers; they are all made in God's image.

In his Homily 64 St. Isaac of Syria makes clear that mercy is without conditions:

. . .let a merciful heart preside over your entire discipline, and you will be at peace with God. ... and when it is in you power to deliver the iniquitous man from evil, do not neglect to do so. . . try with your whole soul to rescue him, even to the point of dying for his sake. . . .and be like Him [Christ] Who for the sake of sinners accepted death on the Cross.... It is not your business to look into the worthiness of his deeds. Let only good come upon him from your hands. (Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 2011)

In this same Homily St. Isaac goes on to give specific instructions as to our place and responsibility before others who have done wrong:

You however have not been appointed to decree vengeance on men's deeds and works, but rather to ask mercy for the world, to keep vigil for the salvation of all, and to partake in every man's suffering, both the just and sinners.... you should make supplication [prayer] that God's mercy come upon  him so that he may be changed and become conformed to God's will, and the he depart life in righteousness and not in retribution for iniquity. . . . Beseech God in behalf of sinners that they receive mercy. . . . Conquer evil men by your kind gentleness and make jealous men wonder at your goodness. Put the lover of justice to shame by your compassion. (Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 2011)

What Jesus tells us about mankind judging others

However, although Jesus speaks about God judging mankind, this could be considered that He would be simply delineating or listing the reality of our actions. In behavioral-psychological terms this is what is called behavioral pinpointing: that is to say, what we have said and done, when and where. However, this is only part of the picture of God's actions. His mercy must then be considered.  St James makes very clear in the second chapter of his Epistle the serious sins mankind commits: partiality, simply offending one point of the law, adultery, murder, being unmerciful. But then St. James (2:13) reminds us that even in the face of being 'judged' for such sins: "mercy triumphs over judgment."

Important Societal Consideration

The need to protect individuals in society is an important pragmatic consideration that must be considered in putting mercy into practice. Morelli (2011) notes: "In practical (legal and moral) terms there are some choices that are made by others that are so egregious (and illegal) that they cannot be tolerated. An example would be physical, sexual, emotional and/or neglectful abuse [and especially murder]. Another example would be unabated adultery, alcoholism and drug use.  Reporting abuse to the legal authorities is imperative, as is seeking spiritual and mental health counseling in such matters." Numerous research studies have indicated that there are some anti-social behaviors that cannot be "cured." Patrick (2006). Such individuals should be considered for lifetime imprisonment, without parole. However, such individuals should also be cared for spiritually to the greatest extent possible.

St. Isaac of Syria summarizing the place of Justice for Christians

St. Isaac (Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 2011) makes it very clear:

Justice does not belong to the Christian way of life, and there is no mention of it in Christ's teaching. Rejoice with them that rejoice, and weep with them that weep; for this is the sign of limpid purity. Suffer with the sick, and mourn with sinners; with those who repent, rejoice. . . . Be a partaker in the sufferings of all men, but keep your body distant from all. Rebuke no man, revile no man not even those who live wickedly.

It could be said that for Christianity justice is mercy.

"...you must love those who offend against you and pray for them until your soul is reconciled to them." St. Silouan the Athonite (Sophrony, 1999)

REFERENCES

Alfeyev, Bishop Hilarion (2000). The Spiritual World of St. Isaac the Syrian. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications.

Alfeyev, H. (2005, April 24). Toward a Catholic-Orthodox Alliance. http://en.hilarion.orthodoxia.org/7_2

Breck, J. (2001). Scripture in Tradition: The Bible and Its Interpretation in The Orthodox Church. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press.

Cole, M. & Cole, S.R. (1996). The Development of Children. (3rd ed.). NY: Freeman.

Holy Transfiguration Monastery. (ed., trans.).  (2011). The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian (revised, 2nd edition). Boston, MA: Holy Transfiguration Monastery.

Kelly, G.A. (1955). The Psychology Of Personal Constructs (Vols. 1 &2). NY: Norton

Lewis, C.S. (1960). The Four Loves. NY: Harcourt.

McGuckin, J.A. (2001). Standing in God's Holy Fire: The Byzantine Tradition. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Book

Morelli, G. (2009, September 26). Secularism and the Mind of Christ and the Church: Some Psycho-Spiritual Reflections.  www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/morelli-secularism-and-the-mind-of-christ-and-the-church-some-psycho-spirit.

Morelli, G. (2010a, April 30). Toward Healing Church Schism: Overview and Psycho-theological Reflection. www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/toward-healing-church-schism-overview-and-psycho-theological-reflection.

Morelli, G. (2010b, October 01). Beauty, The Divine Connection: Psychospiritual Reflections. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/morelli-beauty-the-divine-connection-psychospiritual-reflections

Morelli, G. (2010c, November 25). The Ethos of Orthodox Catechesis: The Mind of the Orthodox Church. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/view/morelli-the-ethos-of-orthodox-catechesis

Morelli, G. (2011, March 01). Out of the Fountain That is Christ: Free Will, Tolerance and Forgiveness. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/out-of-the-fountain-that-is-christ-free-will-tolerance-and-forgiveness

Palmer, G.E.H., Sherrard, P. & Ware, K. (Eds.). (1981). The Philokalia, Volume 2: The Complete Text; Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain & St. Makarios of Corinth.  London: Faber and Faber.

Palmer, G.E.H., Sherrard, P. & Ware, K. (Eds.). (1984). The Philokalia, Volume3: The Complete Text; Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain & St. Makarios of Corinth.  London: Faber and Faber.

Palmer, G.E.H., Sherrard, P. & Ware, K. (Eds.). (1995). The Philokalia, Volume 4: The Complete Text; Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain & St. Makarios of Corinth.  London: Faber and Faber.

Patrick, C.J. (Ed.) (2006) Handbook of Psychopathy. NY: Guilford

Piaget, J. (1970). Science of Education and the Psychology of the Child. NY: Orion.

Pinker, S. (2007). A History of Violence. The New Republic. March 19, 2007.

Pinker, S. (2011). The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. NY: Viking.

Smith-Christopher, D. (2005). The Old Testament. Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press.

Sophrony, Archimandrite. (1999). St. Silouan the Athonite. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press.

St. John Climacus (1991). The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Boston: Holy Transfiguration Monastery.

Tharp, R & Gallimore, R. (1988). Rousing Minds to Life. Cambridge University Press

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind and Society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wensinck, A. J. (ed., trans.) (1923). Mystic Treatises by Isaac of Nineveh. Amsterdam, Holland: Koninklijke Akademie Van Wetenschappen.

ENDNOTES

i Wensinck (1923)

ii http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2032801/Khamis-Gaddafi-killed-Rebels-took-vengeance-despite-car-armoured-like-tank.html#ixzz1bMV3cwiw

iii http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/aug/08/lockerbie-scottish-catholic-leader-attacks-us

iv Among those who apply the 'wisdom' of the world in criticizing the orthodox understanding of Scripture is Pinker (2011), referenced in this article. Among the most egregious and nefarious departures from the Holy Spirit inspired understanding of Christ's teaching by His Church is the work of Ehrman. Representative of such heresy is:  Ehrman, B.D. (2005). Misquoting Jesus: The story behind who changed the Bible and why. NY: Harper; Ehrman, B.D. (2008) God's problem: How the Bible fails to answer our most important question — why we suffer. NY: Harper; Ehrman, B.D. (2009). Jesus interrupted: Revealing the hidden contradictions in the Bible (and why we don't know about them. NY Harper. Of such St Peter (2Pt 2: 1,3) warned: "You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, beware lest you be carried away with the error of lawless men and lose your own stability. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words; from of old their condemnation has not been idle, and their destruction has not been asleep." And as St. John tells us in his Epistle: "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world." 1Jn 4:1).

v http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.html

vi Such myopia would could be compared to considering the betrayal of Judas (Mt 27: 3-5) or the denial of Peter (Mt 26: 75) to be  a reflection of Christ's teachings. 

vii 

Chaplain's Corner
Short essays written for the La Jolla Veteran's Hospital newsletter in La Jolla, California

One of the most revered contemporary Spiritual Fathers of the Eastern Church, Elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain (1924-1994), gives an insight that can be applied to a tragic event that is fresh in the minds of many around world today. The Elder counseled us to have well-disposed thinking toward those around us. He told his spiritual disciples to see the "good things" around them and not focus on the evil people do.

In the spirit of the counsel of Elder Paisios I want to focus on the report of the good done by one of the Chaplains on board the severely damaged cruise-liner that went aground and partially sank off the coast of Italian Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy in January 2012. The horror of the plight of those passengers who were trapped was well documented by the media in text and video. As the ship was sinking the Chaplain radioed his headquarters, the Apostleship of the Sea, whose function in part is “to promote the spiritual, moral and social development" to those at sea, that it was his intention to "stay close to the crew and the passengers to comfort them at this moment of great confusion." The Chaplain also shared his thoughts at the very beginning of the disaster "There were so many children, I took a little girl in my arms. I asked that she be sent first with her mother and her evacuation took precedence." [http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/chaplain-costa-concordia-crew-showed-personal-sacrifice/]

This brave Chaplain's action brings to mind the actions of another heroic figure in a tragic plane crash three years ago in the Hudson River. Writing then about that incident, I stressed the importance of cognitive-behavioral preparation, that is to say "thinking and ordering your own thinking and then practicing and regulating your behavior (or work)." [http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/double-your-worry-double-your-problem]. Such preparation was certainly demonstrated by by Captain 'Sully' Sullenberger's heroic and steadfast action. The hero Chaplain of the cruise ship likewise demonstrated his spiritual preparation to deal with this unexpected disaster. In his case, it called for making a moral decision to care for others at the risk of his own life. For him, the ship sinking was not only a physical disaster but a moral crisis as well. In addition he insistently defended the heroic work of the crew in the face of their vilification in the press.

There is a rich spiritual history for being spiritually prepared. We can think of the Exodus chronicle and Moses’ preparedness to lead the Hebrew people out of Egypt: "And a mixed multitude without number went up also with them, sheep and herds and beasts of divers kinds, exceeding many. And they baked the meal, which a little before they had brought out of Egypt, in dough: and they made earth cakes unleavened: for it could not be leavened, the Egyptians pressing them to depart." (Ex 12: 38-39) I am especially reminded of Christ's Parable of the wise - the prepared - bridesmaids who when the bridegroom came ". . . were ready, went in with him to the marriage, and the door was shut. But at last come also the other virgins, saying: Lord, Lord, open to us. But he answering said: Amen I say to you, I know you not. Watch ye therefore, because you know not the day nor the hour." (Mt 25: 10-13) The words of St. Paul to St Timothy (2Ti 2:15) echo this: "Give diligence to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who has no need to be ashamed. . . ."

The important lesson for us is that not only should we place our focus on the good that is being done around us, but also make sure we are spiritually prepared for the untoward events that may occur in our lives. And that when we face some inauspicious happening we can follow Elder Paisios' advice by seeing how we can transform even these into good. As the Psalmist (118: 71) tells us: "It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn thy statutes."

Chaplain's Corner
Short essays written for the La Jolla Veteran's Hospital newsletter in La Jolla, California

In mid-September 2011, various news outlets reported a ban on relatives and friends of wounded service personnel bringing bibles and other religious reading materials into Water Reed military hospital. The offensive statement reads: “No religious items (i.e. Bibles, reading material, and/or artifacts) are allowed to be given away or used during a visitⁱ.” Due to an outcry from various religious groups, this egregious policy was rescinded by December 2011. Thank God for that! But the fact that such a policy was even thought of, let alone promulgated, is an affront to God and Country.

Religious freedom is guaranteed and protected by the Constitution of the United States itself.  The first amendment of the Constitution reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

The operative term in the amendment regarding religion is making no law "prohibiting the free exercise thereof." In thinking up and initiating the now rescinded hospital policy, someone took it upon themselves to unilaterally interpret the words of the Constitution to impose on all 'freedom from religion' - which actually amounts to a prohibition of religion. An affront to our country and its religious tradition.

The fact that officials of a government hospital considered, and until protests mounted, implemented this policy, unfortunately, gives the appearance that God is unimportant in the hearts, minds and actions of these administrators. An affront to God Himself. Considering that we live in an age of increasing disregard for human life, economic decline, and military and political exploitation, if there was ever a time in our country that we need Godly moral guidance and leadership, it is in these troubled times.

A good model for the inclusion of freedom of religion in all of society is the service of Chaplains. The United States Military has understood the need for such moral leadership by having a strong Chaplain presence in all branches of the Armed Forces. Various civilian agencies also know the importance of chaplains who can provide guidance on moral and morale issues, and religious understanding, and who can perform religious services for those who want them and render counseling and emotional support to those who serve and to those whom they, in turn, serve. Chaplains now include those of all religious orientations: Buddhist, Christian, Hebrew, Islamic and many others.

For those of us who feel persecuted by individuals who want to remove God from society, we may take solace in the words of our Eastern Church Spiritual Father St. Philotheos of Sinai: "None of the things that happen to us every day will injure or distress us once we perceive and meditate on their purpose [God]."ⁱⁱ St. John (Rev 21: 5) tells us of God: "Behold, I make all things new." Let us work with God, especially in the face of persecution, to make sure we keep Him at the forefront of our lives, our nation and all the world.

ⁱ http://downloads.frc.org/EF/EF11L05.pdf

ⁱⁱ Palmer, G.E.H., Sherrard, P. & Ware, K. (Eds.). (1986). The Philokalia,: The Complete Text; Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain & St. Makarios of Corinth. (Vol. 3). London: Faber and Faber

Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Mathew 5:3).

INTRODUCTION

In previous articles on parenting I have emphasized the importance of making connections between Christ, His Church and the issues and problems that make up modern life (Morelli, 2010). Jesus entry into his public life is recorded by the Holy Apostle and Evangelist Matthew. It was at His baptism in the River Jordan by St. John who is called the Baptist. This event is called the Theophany in which Christ's Divinity was proclaimed by His Father as told to us by St. Matthew: "And when Jesus was baptized, he went up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on him; and lo, a voice from heaven, saying, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased." (Mt 3: 16-17) The spiritual-theological significance of the Theophany is noted in the beautiful Apolytikion of the Feast:

When Thou, O Lord, wast baptized in the Jordan, worship of the Trinity wast made manifest; for the voice of the Father bore witness to Thee, calling Thee His beloved Son. And the Spirit in the form of a dove confirmed the truth of His word. O Christ our God, Who hath appeared and enlightened the world, glory to Thee.

Jesus then prepared Himself for His public ministry by retiring to the desert for 40 days in which He resisted the temptations of the evil one, thus not only not to sin, but to be able to demonstrate His complete power over sin and death. As St. Matthew (4:10) tells us "Then Jesus said to him, "Begone, Satan! for it is written, `You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.'"

It is no accident that Jesus went into the desert to confront Satan and show that He had power over him. He was modeling the same preparation we must do to confront the evils we will encounter in life. We have to know the teachings of Christ and His Church and overcome as much evil as can be accomplished in our own lives. Parents in a holy and blessed marriage, as leaders of the domestic church, the little church in their homes (Morelli, 2009) must be especially prepared because they have to guide not only themselves but their children as well to Christ. They must instruct their children and model Christ so that they and their children are able to become "partakers in the Divine nature" (2Pt 1:4), that as a family they be able to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The Orthodox Marriage Service provides a special blessing and grace that the husband and wife be able to do this. (Morelli, 2009)

The Sermon on the Mount

The Sermon on the Mount

It is also no accident that after His preparation of overcoming the evil one the first of Jesus teachings is theSermon on the Mount. In fact St Matthew accords three full chapters (5-7) of his Gospel recounting this event. The familiar Beatitudes (Mt 5: 1-12)ⁱ are at the beginning of Christ's rather extensive discourse. Jim Forest (1999) provides an interesting understanding that both the geographical location of the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes contained within it are quite deliberate. He likens the 'mount" as an object that is high and points to heaven, as such purposely chosen by Christ. Forest writes: "Mountains are images of earth reaching toward heaven, thus places of encounter between Creator and creature." Forest notes that St. Matthew's recording that Jesus sat was also important because in the ancient world sitting while teaching was a symbol of one who has authority to teach.

Beatitudes as a Ladder

Forest goes on to point out that the Beatitudes themselves have the structure of a ladder with each successive step built on the foundation of the preceding step. The first step "blessed are the poor in spirit ..." is the subject of this article. The ladder as symbol of spiritual ascent to God was not unknown before Christ. A common view of the Jewish people links the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament as a ladder connecting God and His people.

Moses tells us of one such connecting ladder in Jacob's Dream (Gen 28: 11-19):

Jacob's Ladder

And [Jacob] came to a certain place, and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, "I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your descendants; and your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and by you and your descendants shall all the families of the earth bless themselves. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done that of which I have spoken to you." Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, "Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it." And he was afraid, and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." So Jacob rose early in the morning, and he took the stone which he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. He called the name of that place Bethel...

The Church Fathers' Understanding of the Ladder

St. John Chrysostom views the Ladder as a Godly means of our attaining salvation. In the last few lines of his Homily 85 on the Gospel of St. John, he writes:

Let us learn then, and having reckoned up our faults, let us accomplish their correction in time, and let us determine to correct one this month, another next month, and a third in that which follows. And so mounting as it were by steps, let us get to heaven by a Jacob’s ladder. For the ladder seems to me to signify in a riddle by that vision the gradual ascent by means of virtue, by which it is possible for us to ascend from earth to heaven, not using material steps, but improvement and correction of manners. Let us then lay hold on this means of departure and ascent, that having obtained heaven, we may also enjoy all the blessings there, through the grace and lovingkindness of our Lord Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.ⁱⁱ

St. Gregory of Nyssa tells us that in emulation of Moses our ascetic struggle results in union with the infinite God.

Activity directed toward virtue causes its capacity to grow through exertion; this kind of activity alone does not slacken its intensity by the effort, but increases it. For this reason we also may say that the great Moses, as he was becoming even greater, at no time stopped in his ascent ... once having set foot on the ladder which God set up (as Jacob says) he continually climbed to the step above and never ceased to rise higher, because he always found a step higher than the one he had attained. (St. Gregory of Nyssa, 1978)

The Ladder of Divine Ascent

The Ladder of Divine Ascent

St. John of the Ladder (1991) is the most detailed of the Spiritual Fathers of the Church in delineating the steps of the ladder in his book The Ladder of Divine Ascent. An overview of these stepsⁱⁱⁱ indicates the beginning of the journey to God is to first make oneself destitute and then gradually attain Him by being totally reliant on Him.

What is a Beatitude?

Wisely, Forest (1999) also discusses the question of the importance of understanding the meaning of the word beatitude. It is important to note that the original Gospels were all written in Greek. Thus understanding the meaning in Greek of various usages of the word "blessed" is significant in uncovering the spiritual perception of the Holy Spirit- inspired Church, the understanding of the writers of the Gospels and the continuing understanding of the Church.

Forest notes:

In those passages where "blessed" is a verb, the Greek is eulogeo ("to bless")-an action associated with praise, thanksgiving and consecration, and therefore used in liturgical contexts.

He then goes on to give an example from the Gospel account by St. Mark (14:22) of Christ's instituting the Eucharist: And as they were eating, he took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them, and said, "Take; this is my body."

However the word blessed is also used as an adjective. Forest notes "it is a translation of makarious." It is the adjective makarious which is translated as “blessed” throughout the Sermon on the Mount. The classical Greek meaning of the adjective is "being deathless, no longer associated with fate." Now the connection between being blessed and being united with the Divine can be seen. It is Christ, true God and true man who overcame sin and death for our salvation. That is to say that we too can become "partakers of the Divine Nature." (2Pt1:4). This is what really being "blessed" really means, that we become "like God" (1Pt 4:6). In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus lays out the path to take to achieve this state of theosis^iv and it all begins with being "poor in spirit."

Blessed are the Poor in Spirit for Theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven

Let us remind ourselves of the insight of St. John Chrysostom on the purpose of Christ's Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes it contains. St. John writes: "For though it was spoken unto them, it was written for the sake also of all men afterwards."^v St. John goes on to ask: "What is meant by “the poor in spirit?” He answers:

The humble and contrite in mind. For by “spirit” He hath here designated the soul, and the faculty of choice. That is, since many are humble not willingly, but compelled by stress of circumstances; letting these pass (for this were no matter of praise), He blesses them first, who by choice humble and contract themselves.

St. John in his Homily goes on to ask a deeper question. He asks why did Christ choose the word “poor” [in spirit] and not the word “humble”. St. John explains this by pointing out that the choice of the word "poor" emphasizes that the poor would be awestruck and tremble at "His [God's] words as Isaiah said (66: 2) St John goes on to distinguish two types of humility. One type he calls "one humble in his own measure" and "another with all excess of lowliness. It is clear that the second type is spiritual humility. St. John likens it with “contriteness of heart”, as David tells us: "sacrifice to God is a broken spirit; a broken and humbled heart God will not despise" (Ps 50: 19). St. John, the Golden-mouthed saint sees that pride is "the greatest of evils" the consequence of pride is that it has made "havoc on the whole world." In coming to this conclusion St. John cites Moses account in Gen 3: 22-24:

And he [God] said: Behold Adam is become as one of us, knowing good and evil: now, therefore, lest perhaps he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever. And the Lord God sent him out of the paradise of pleasure, to till the earth from which he was taken. And he cast out Adam; and placed before the paradise of pleasure Cherubims, and a flaming sword, turning every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

In his explanation of The Holy Gospel According to St. Matthew, Blessed Theophylact (2006) tells us that being poor in spirit means our pride is crushed and we are contrite in soul. Such virtue is based on a foundation of humility. The saint tells us: "Since Adam fell through pride, Christ raises us up by humility." We too have to not succumb to the vice of pride. This is especially relevant applying St. Paul's words originally directed to bishops, to the husband and wife, the parents as the leaders of their Domestic Church. As St. Paul tells St. Timothy (1Ti 3: 5-7):

But if a man [and woman-husband and wife] know not how to rule his [her] own house, how shall he [she] take care of the church of God? Not a neophyte: lest being puffed up with pride, he [she] fall into the judgment of the devil. Moreover he [she] must have a good testimony of them who are without: lest he [she] fall into reproach and the snare of the devil."

St. John sums this up this way: "for as pride is the fountain of all wickedness, so is humility the principle of all self-command."

Overcoming pride by a foundation based on humility can be tied into the first step of the Ladder of Divine Ascent. The first step in St. John of the Ladder's ascetical treatise is "On renunciation of the world." Implied in the title of this step is the question: as long as we are attached to the world how can we be attached to Christ? St. Isaac the Syrian (Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 2011) helps us understand humility by employing a very earthly example: "For the man who loves splendid apparel cannot acquire humble thoughts, since necessarily the heart within conforms to the attire without." St. Isaac speaks of humility more directly by associating it with knowledge of our weakness:

Blessed is the man who knows his own weakness, because this knowledge becomes to him the foundation, root and beginning of all goodness...comparing his own weakness with God's help, he will straightaway understand the greatness of the latter.

St. Isaac reminds us of King David's lament: "A heart that is broken and humbled, God will not despise" (Ps 50:17). In his Homily 48, St. Isaac goes on to say: "the man who has reached the knowledge of the extent of his weakness has reached perfect humility." In Homily 77 St. Isaac tells us of the connection of humility with Divinity:

For humility is the raiment of the Godhead. The Word Who became man clothed Himself in it, and therewith He spoke to us in our body. Every man who has been clothed with it has truly been made like unto Him Who came down from His own exaltedness and hid the splendor of His majesty, and concealed His glory with humility..."

Later in his writing St. John of the Ladder makes clear the criticality of humility in reaching the height of the ladder. He writes of the view of an un-named Spiritual Father: "It is the mind’s recognition of one's weakness and impotence."

This is to say that when we see our weaknesses, our helplessness, that we are destitute when we rely on ourselves and not God and when we see the valuelessness of the material world then we are poor in spirit and we see that only God can be our true treasure. As Jesus Himself instructs us: "Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth: where the rust, and moth consume, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up to yourselves treasures in heaven: where neither the rust nor moth doth consume, and where thieves do not break through, nor steal. For where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also.” (Mt 6: 19-21)

Educating Children to aim at Becoming Poor in Spirit

The task of aiding children to develop the virtue of becoming poor in spirit is very difficult in the modern world. The focus of our increasingly secular world on financial gains, materialism, personal power and gain, sensory stimulation and technological innovation blots out our sense of our need for God.

St. Dorotheos of Gaza

St. Dorotheos of Gaza gives us a starting point. (Wheeler, 1977) He relates an encounter he had with "one of the great lights of Gaza." They were discussing the topic of humility. St. Dorotheos was making the point that the closer we get to God, the more we see ourselves as sinners. Certainly this spiritual understanding is absolutely correct. But the encounter can also be interpreted in another way. As a psychologist, I can see the dialogue between St. Dorotheos and the named 'great light' to be a form of reality testing. The general definition of reality testing is that it involves the psychological practitioner asking questions that help the patient to objectively distinguish between their perceptions, cognitions and emotional reactions about themselves and the world about them versus what is real. This therapeutic technique has been readily embraced by cognitive-behavioral therapists (e.g. Overholser, 1993). In cognitive-behavior therapy a Socratic process called collaborative empiricism aids clinicians and patients to interact together to examine the reality of evidence supporting or refuting the patient's perceptual and/attitude system. Beck and Emery (1985) identified this as a principle technique in the healing process of Cognitive Therapy.

St. Dorotheos as a Cognitive-Behavior Therapist

The encounter described by St. Dorotheos beautifully matches the use of Socratic Questioning-Collaborative Empiricism as used in cognitive behavior therapy. Below are the words of St. Dorotheos recounting the dialogue on humility-the poor in spirit with the 'great light' of Gaza:

I said to him ‘Master of the First Rank, tell me, how do you regard yourself in respect to the other citizens here?'

And he said, 'I regard myself as great, and first among the citizens.'

I said then, 'If you went away to Caesarea, how would you regard yourself then?' 'I would regard myself somewhat less than the great folk there.'

So I said, 'If you went away to Antioch, what then?'

And he replied, 'I would regard myself as one of the common people.'

I said, 'And if you went from the city of Caesarea into the presence of the Emperor, what would you think of yourself then?'

He replied, 'I should think of myself as just one of the poor.'

Then I said to him, 'There you are! In the same way, the saints, the nearer they approach to God, the more they see themselves as sinners!' Abraham, when he saw himself 'dust and ashes.' And Isaiah, said, 'Unhappy am I, for my lips are unclean.'...do you see the humility of the saints and how their hearts were set on it.

We can see this dialogue is reality based. The great man of Gaza had responded truthfully, in this case in the reality of the way he thought of himself. Using this Socratic method of answering questions he thereby learned the lesson, St. Dorotheos was trying to have him learn.

Recall the root of the word education is the Latin word educare which means "to lead out." (Morelli, 2010) Part of the parental task, male-female, husband-wife joined together as one flesh ordained by their blessed marriage as shepherds so to speak of their domestic churches, their homes to lead themselves and their children to understand and implant poverty of spirit in their hearts so it also appears in their actions.

Modeling the First Tool in Education

Voluminous research on child development has suggested the essential role of modeling in influencing child behavior (Bandura, 1986; Morelli, 2005a,b, 2006). Unless parents themselves practice what they preach^vi that is to say teach, anything they say lacks authenticity and credibility for their children (Morelli, 2008). In previous articles I have shared the importance of parents being aware of the efficacy of the various models children are exposed to which significantly influence their behavior. In one article I wrote:

If a parent capitulates to the culture, then the culture will assume the teaching authority of the parent. Several decades ago research psychologists demonstrated that there was no real difference between real life and mediated models (cartoons, movies, books) in terms of their effect on a child's perceptions about sexuality and other important moral issue (Morelli, 2007).

This same behavioral research demonstrates that modeling has an important effect in shaping values and in this case leading ourselves and our children to grow poverty of spirit in our hearts. I cannot underestimate the importance of all who work with children to be aware that values and virtues (or unfortunately vices) can be produced or altered vicariously by the child observing favorable or unfavorable experiences of significant valued others (models) (Barnwell, 1966).

The Attitude of the Awesomeness of God

St. Peter of Damaskos

St. John Chrysostom

St. John Chrysostom

St. Peter of Damaskos, in his discourse “The Seven Commandments” (Philokalia III), correlates the Beatitudes with the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.^vii He informs us that the beginning of the spiritual life is fear, by which he means a sense of the awesomeness of God. He tells us: "Our Lord Himself began His teaching by speaking of fear [awesomeness]; for He says, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit (Mt 5:3), that is, those who quail with the fear of God and are inexpressibly contrite in soul." St. Peter goes to say how this is accomplished. "-we should meditate deeply upon the contingencies of life ....and upon God's measureless unfathomable blessings."

St. John Chrysostom has a much more pastoral focus in his understanding of the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes. St. John writes:

And He doth not introduce what He saith by way of advice or of commandments [emphasis mine], but by way of blessing [emphasis mine], so making His word less burthensome, and opening to all the course of His discipline. For He said not, “This or that person,” but “they who do so, are all of them blessed.” So that though thou be a slave, a beggar, in poverty, a stranger, unlearned, [?????.] there is nothing to hinder thee from being blessed, if thou emulate this virtue.^viii

Parents Modeling Awareness of the Awesomeness of God in their Domestic Church

In the Orthodox Wedding Ceremony, after praying that the servant and handmaiden be united by God, the priest continues: “Unite them in one mind and one flesh, and grant them fair children for education in Thy faith and fear," that is to say acknowledging the awesome, transcendent God. This requires that parents not only be hearers of the Word, but also doers of the Word. They must learn the way of God, particularly His design for marriage and family through study, prayer, being united to His Church through obedience, reception of its Holy Mysteries and practice of the spiritual life.

Ideally, a true Orthodox Christian domestic church in our day should look like (but is not limited to) something like this: Jesus Christ is at the center or hub. Husbands, and wives, as such, and as fathers and mothers, should be the leaders of the "church at home" in Christ's name. They should bless one another and their children, bless the food which is partaken, give thanksgiving for all that God has provided (house, furnishings, etc.), thank God for health and talents, and lead by the sanctity of their conduct as well as their words.

However, even in homes purportedly to be Orthodox-Catholic Christian how often are comments made about the occurrences or circumstances of life with no reference to God? Rather, succumbing to the secular godless culture, by their remarks parents attribute the cause of events merely to be of some good or bad fortune? Remarks like: "Boy! That was lucky!"; "Good luck today!" or "What terrible luck!" or ”it was fated to be”.

The first place parents can begin to model being "poor in spirit," is to point out that the occurrences of life are related to God's unfathomable will. In talking to adults and children as well I often put it this way: "That God sees the big picture, we see the little picture. We have to see that we are blessed by Him and without Him we can do nothing."

Understanding Being "Poor in Spirit" Starts with Reality, but Based on God

Our God Given Gifts and Talents

Following the Cognitive Therapy use of Socratic Reality Testing and the example of St. Dorotheos' reality dialogue with the monk, discussed above, parents may ask their children to list the 'gifts' God has given them. This may be the talents they have, the things they may be good at. This may even include some of the things they may not be good at and are struggling to succeed. Children in this case, considered as what psychology calls “coping models” could be told that others may learn from them by watching them persist in working on a task despite initial setbacks. Psychological research has shown that coping models are more efficacious than models that do something 'perfect' right off. Meichenbaum (1971) explains this by suggesting that coping models who initially had coping problems before mastering tasks "enhanced the perceived similarity between the observer and models who initially demonstrated coping behaviors," which accounts for their effectiveness.

Children can be reminded of the words of St. John the Baptist as recorded by the Holy Apostle and Evangelist John (3: 27): "A man is able to receive nothing unless it hath been given to him from the heavens." St. James (1:1) addressing his Epistle to the Jews abroad, as he tell us "to the twelve tribes which are in the diaspora," says "Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there can be no variation neither shadow of turning." (Ja 1: 17) Children can also be shown the connection (Morelli, 2010) between this beautiful passage of St. James and the ending prayer of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, The Prayer Behind the Ambon:

O Lord, who blessest those who bless Thee, and sanctifiest those who put their trust in Thee: save Thy people and preserve Thine inheritance ... forsake not those who hope on Thee ... for every good and perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from Thee, the Father of Lights, and unto Thee we ascribe, glory, thanksgiving and worship; to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit; now and ever, and unto ages of ages.

Children can come to learn that they are poor in spirit when they attribute their skills and talents as coming from God and giving Him thanks for them.

Thanksgiving to God for What Comes from Nature

St. Anthony the Great

St. Antony the Great also provides a beautiful lesson on poverty of spirit that parents can employ both for themselves and their children. He says:

Just as God has given us sight in order that we may recognize visible things - what is white, and what black - so, too, He has give us intelligence [a spiritual perception of what is Godly] in order that we may discern what benefits the soul. ... [helps us] attain union with God. What takes place according to nature is not sinful; sin always involves man's deliberate choice. It is not a sin to eat; it is a sin to eat without gratitude [to God] ... it is not a sin to use one's eyes with purity; it is a sin to look with envy; arrogance and insatiable desire [disrespecting others, who are made in God's image]. It is a sin to listen not peacefully, but angrily, it is a sin to guide the tongue, not towards thanksgiving and prayer, but towards backbiting; it is a sin to employ the hands, not for acts of compassion but for murders and robberies. And thus every part of the body sins when by man's own choice it performs not good but evil acts, contrary to God's will. (Philokalia I, p. 338)

Regarding what St. Antony has written, children can be guided through a series of questions to help them discern what is godly or good from what is evil:

• Is it a sin to eat without thanking God?
• Does God want us to be resentful or be angry with others for what they have?
• Is it a sin to use others for some personal gain without their consent or God's blessing?
• Does God tell us to say bad things instead of good things about others?
• Is it a sin to take from others what is theirs?
• Did Christ tell us to hurt others instead of helping them?

To be poor in spirit is to realize that all we do has to be done from God's perspective and our powerlessness to achieve true Godliness on our own. Even when we attribute some success to ourselves and forget God, it is still God that is source and dispenser of all gifts we have and all we do that is good. Consider the words of St. Mark the Ascetic: "There are acts [and statements] which appear to be good; and there are other acts which appear to be bad, while the motive of the doer is good. This discrepancy is due sometimes to inexperience or ignorance." (Philokalia I, p 112-3) That these words are meant for us to consider our true poverty and our ultimate need for God can be seen in the instruction St. Mark gives a few verses later: "God is the source of every virtue, as the sun is the source of daylight" (p. 113); and "Think of nothing and do nothing without a purpose directed to God. For to journey without direction is wasted effort" (p. 114). As Christ Himself has told us, "With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." (Mt 19: 26).

Finishing the Race

St. Paul did not hesitate to use the analogy of running and finishing a race to describe the path of his spiritual journey. "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith." (2Ti 4: 7). He tells the Corinthians (1Cor 9: 25) "Every athlete exercises self-control in all things." And he reminds St. Timothy again “An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.” (2Ti 2: 5) Such references of the spiritual life with sports should resonate well with children who are usually engaged in sport activities either in school or as an extra-curricular activity. It could be pointed out that no athlete can ever accomplish "winning" or playing to their 'personal best without a coach. Once again a series of questions can lead children in seeing this for themselves:

• How do you think that quarterback (football) was able to call that play that won the game? He followed the coach’s advice or the coach helped him.
• You see how complicated the figure skating performance (the Olympics) is. Who is always on the sidelines and is there to hear the score with the skaters? The skaters coach.
• If some of the best athletes in the world need coaches, what do you think we need to win the spiritual race? We need a coach. Yes we need a coach, that is God Himself, along with His saints and the spiritual fathers and mothers He has given us. We cannot go it alone. This is what Jesus said: we have to be "poor in spirit" to see we need Him, we cannot do it by ourselves.

In this regard another important connection to athletics can be pointed out. After games or performances, an intensive review, usually by going over videotapes of the sport events, takes place. The technical term for this is debriefing. The spiritual term is a detailed examination of conscience. This is what St. John Chrysostom had in mind when he considered being "poor in spirit" as "lowliness". Athletes have to be keenly aware of their errors and how to correct them. We who are put on earth to achieve sanctification can only do so by spiritual humility. To be contrite of heart, as St. John Chrysostom points out, we have to be keenly aware of the mistakes, shortcomings, missing the mark, our sins, and how they can be corrected.

If athletes use and need coaches, how much more should we need coaches to win the most important race of our lives: union with God. Here St. Paul's reminder to the Corinthians can be referenced: "They [athletes] do it to receive a perishable wreath [a trophy or medal], but we an imperishable [crown-the "Kingdom of Heaven"]. (1Cor 9: 25)

The Heavens Declare the Glory of God

We can look at the vastness of what we can see and realize this is finiteness, it is as nothing in contrast to the infinite eternal glory that is God.

Another way to spiritually perceive and understand being "poor in spirit" is to meditate on our finitude as creatures versus the magnitude of the cosmos God created. King David understood this spiritual perception when he wrote his Psalm 18: "The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament proclaim His handiwork." A visit to a planatarium can give us a visual picture of the microscopiality that is Earth, the planet God placed us, on versus the seemingly limitless vastness of the universe that we are aware of.

To look at the universe proclaims God involves developing and nurturing what could be called a feeling and intuitive cognitive style. We can thank Carl Jung, as a philosopher, hardly a scientist, nor a psychologist (Morelli, 2006) for this insight. Hall, Lindsey and Campbell (1998) write:

[Cognitive Style] may be clarified by the following example. Suppose that a person is standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. If the feeling function predominates, [he] will experience a senses of awe, grandeur and breath-taking beauty....if the intuitive function prevails, the spectator will tend to see the Grand Canyon as a mystery of nature possessing deep significance whose meaning is partially revealed or felt as a mystical experience.

The Grand Canyon

I can speak from personal experience. I visited the Grand Canyon some years ago. Words cannot encompass the sense of the beauty and awesomeness that is God in contrast to my own finiteness. I could not get out of my mind the overwhelming beauty, that no picture or words can capture, of the Canyon and how much greater must be He who created it. We know that beauty and goodness is of God (Morelli, 2010a,b). St. Maximus the Confessor (Philokalia II) tells us:

The beautiful is identical with the good ... Observe how the Divine force of love — the erotic [deep] power pre-existing in the good — has given birth to the same blessed force within us, through which we long for the beautiful and good in accordance with the words, 'I became a lover of her beauty' (Wisd. 8: 2) and 'Love her and she will sustain you; fortify her and she will exalt you' (Prov. 4.: 6,8).

This means purposefully exposing the child to what is beautiful. When I lived some years ago on the East Coast, I had a friend who was a teacher. I was asked to be 'a chaperone' for third grade field trip to the Hayden Planetarium. The sense of marvel and awe that I observed the young children had in viewing the cosmos was almost more wondrous than the presentation itself. How easy it would be for Orthodox Christian parents to help their children to discover that goodness and beauty connect with God.

• What do you think about the universe (cosmos)?
• How did it come about—Who made it?
• What is our place in this immense universe?
• If the universe is that vast and beautiful, how much more so is the God who made it?
• How do we compare with God who is indescribable and eternal?

It need not be a visit to a planetarium or the Grand Canyon, almost every major community has a museum in which objects of beauty are displayed. Similar questions can be asked about the exhibits. Here even is an opportunity for information technology, vivid computer screens, high definition TV's and the like to be able to be the source of introducing children to the wonders of God's creation and lead them (educare) to realize how more wondrous is the Creator and our paucity (poverty in spirit), in relation to Him.

Balancing the reality of death and the reality of hope^ix

Great care has to be taken by parents and anyone engaging children in the topic of death. A spiritual understanding of death is the apprehension of our being poor in spirit. Death should not be approached in such a way that discussion would induce psychological trauma. However a sense of the finiteness of life (death) and the hope of eternal life of God is essential for attaining salvation. St. Dorotheos of Gaza (Wheeler, 1977) writes: "The Fathers tell us that a man gains possession of the fear [awesomeness] of God by keeping the thought of death before his mind..."

The Idiomela of St. John of Damascus, sung at the Orthodox Funeral service, are especially graphic in the depiction of our finiteness of our bodies and the reality of death:

All mortal things are vanity and exist not after death. Riches endure not, neither doth glory ... all these things vanish utterly. .... Where are the gold and the silver ... All are dust, all are ashes, all are shadows ... I looked into the graves and beheld thee bones laid bare, and I said: Who then is the king or the warrior, the rich man or the needy...

Christ the Resurrector

In my pastoral experience I have never encountered a child of any age traumatized by the funeral service. I pray it is because it is balanced by the hope and trust in God, that He will bring us all into the paradise of His Kingdom. St. Ephraim the Syrian put it this way:

Christ the Resurrector will appear in the heights with glory. He will bring the dead to life and raise those in the graves. The children of Adam, who was made of earth, will all arise together and give praise to the Resurrector of the dead...Let not your souls be sorrowful, ye who were redeemed by the cross and called into the Kingdom.

St. Isaac of Syria (Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 2011) approaches death and eternal life from a theological perspective:

Sin, Gehenna, and death do not exist at all with God, for they are effects, not substances. Sin is the fruit of the will; there was a time when sin did not exist, and there will be a time when it will not exist. Gehenna is the fruit of sin; at some point in time it received a beginning, but its end is not know. Death, however is a dispensation of the wisdom of the Creator; it will have power over nature only for a time; then it will be totally abolished.

If a child does exhibit psychological anxiety-fear^x of their own death, then care must be taken to emphasize the healing of Christ- His triumph over sin and death. In fact St. Isaac of Syria gives the straightforward spiritual treatment for such fear: "Divine hope uplifts the heart..."

Nurturing the Virtue of Humility to Attain Becoming Poor in Spirit

St. Isaac of Syria

I end by returning to the question St. John Chrysostom asks in Homily XV on Mt 5 that I discussed earlier in this article. Why does Jesus use the term poor in spirit instead of humility? I believe the answer is that being truly poor in spirit means having attained the summit of humility. For most of us attaining the summit begins with the first step. St. John the Baptist informs us that the first step in humility is actually a step backwards. He models humility for us by describing his own life: "It is needful for that One [Jesus] to go in increasing, but for me to go on decreasing." (Jn 3: 30)

St. Isaac of Syria (Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 2011) informs us of what we must take on our journey:

If you love gentleness, be peaceful. If you are deemed worthy of peace, you will rejoice at all times. Seek [spiritual] understanding, not gold. Clothe yourself with humility, not fine linen. Gain peace, not a [worldly] kingdom. No man has understanding if he is not humble, and he who lacks humility is devoid of understanding. No man is humble if he is not peaceful, and he who is not peaceful is not humble. And no man is peaceful without rejoicing.

"Take up my yoke upon you, and learn of me, because I am meek, and humble of heart: and you shall find rest to your souls." (Mt 11:29)

Sermon delivered at the Festival of Young Preachers, January, 2012.

Oh Heavenly King, the comforter, the spirit of Truth, who art everywhere and fillest all things. Treasury of blessings, and giver of life; come and abide in us, cleanse us of every impurity and save our souls, oh Good One. Glory to God in the Highest, and on Earth, peace, goodwill towards men. Oh Lord, open Thou my lips that my mouth may show forth Thy praise.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Glory to Jesus Christ.

My brothers, my sisters... my fellow sinners. It is important to note just that; we are all sinners. Sinners among brothers and as such we are called to do but one thing to one another; forgive. The Lord God said "If you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins," in Matthew 6:15. To forgive is an act of love, a loving act of forgiveness is an act of meekness, and as we know from the Sermon on the Mount to be meek is to inherit the Earth. But what do we really know about being meek?  To be meek is to not respond harshly, in anger, agitation, irritant or even in sarcasm to those around us. It is to be utterly calm, peaceful; loving to one another. I tell you now when I was in High School I made the conscious effort that I was going to go an entire day of being meek, I wanted to try it and see if I could achieve such love. Do you know happened? Not even three hours into that day, and I failed out of habit. Habit struck me down and caused me to respond harshly and sarcastically to someone I barely even knew. Isn't that sad? So sad is it our society has so much habit on not loving. I couldn't even make it three hours being loving and calm, let alone an entire day.

Love and forgiveness are two of the hardest things we will ever accomplish and be called to do as men and women of God. I find this humorous because when our friends struggle offenses made against them, we say to them "is it really so hard to forgive and forget?" And that's a really stupid question, we know darn well how hard it is to move on and forgive, because it is so much easier and justifiable to our society to stew in our hatred, boil our rage and let our grudges bubble and brew. The other amusing thing is when we say to one another "loving is easy! It's not so hard to love," which is also not true. Love is patient, love is sometimes kind, but it sure as heck isn't easy! It's easy to love those who love you back; your mother, father, brother, sister, dog, cat, goldfish, turtle they all return the love you give them. But Christ said in Matthew 5:43-47 ~ “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?" How often do we follow this command? How often do we truly love our enemies, do we even think about it?

Let me give you some examples, brethren; the terrorists from 9/11, we're supposed to love and pray for them. If a man murders his wife, his children, his friend, your friend or my friend; we have to love, forgive and pray for him. That awkward relative nobody wants to admit they have, we have to love and pray for them. Do not mistake me, brothers and sisters we are not called to love them for what they've done, we are called to love them because, like us, they are children of God. You may or may not be fathers or mothers, and I certainly am not, but I know that when I am a father, despite what sins my child may commit, despite what atrocities they may do, even if I am the victim of their crimes I will still love them. They are my children; a father can't not love his child, and just as I cannot unlove my children, God does not stop loving his children. Christ said "Forgive them, Father; they know not what they do." And these fellow children who have fallen from God's grace know not what they do.

God's grace is given unto us freely, but our forgiveness, our penance is conditional. We are not saved the moment we believe, we do not get a meal ticket to Heaven. A few months ago I met a man who said "I am righteous, I have been baptised since I was nine and now I cannot sin." I asked him if he meant that if he sins he'll go to Hell, he responded "no I literally cannot sin. Nothing I do is sinful. I am saved, I am righteous." I couldn't help but laugh at such ignorance, such arrogance, such harmful pride. Righteousness is something we all strive, thirst and starve for, but it is not so easily attained. Believe me! I wish that when I was baptized at the age of three nothing I did since then was a sin. Lying to my parents about cleaning my room, fighting both physically and verbally with my brothers, and if you have siblings you know what I mean. Or, as an adolescent teenager, looking at someone in a way I knew I shouldn't have been looking. It'd be nice if none of those, or anything else I'd done, wasn't a sin; that'd just be swell. But the problem is it doesn't work like that, I still sin when I don't love.

Loving is difficult, it takes practice and perseverance to love everyone around us, especially our enemies. It is even harder nowadays, considering that the world hates us. The world wants us to go away, wants to ignore us, it wants to pretend we never existed in the first place, in fact it makes consistent efforts to ignore us and cover us up. On December 22nd a Ugandan Bishop had acid thrown on his face and poured down his back, just for preaching love and forgiveness. There was no news coverage, save a small news website. CNN didn't touch it, Fox didn't touch it, they ignored it, they tried to ignore us. December 25th, there were three bombings in Nigeria, on Catholic churches during their Christmas mass, for honor kills. No news coverage, no story. No care.

And yet we must find a way to forgive them for these atrocities, and so if nothing else baptism raises the bar for us and calls us to be that much stronger, do that much more in our daily lives and make our lives that much harder because we know the reward that awaits us in Heaven. I do not condone the actions of those terrorists but let me assure you every man, woman and child who died is sitting on a throne in Heaven at the foot of God because they died in prayer, and they died in faith. This is important to note, my friends, that when we get into the enemy's head with our talk of love and compassion, when they know we're right and the only response they can think of is to kill us off, we've won. This is our victory! The world doesn't like being confronted, it doesn't like it when we win. They don't like it when we won't go away.

St. Maximus the Confessor, when arguing with fellow Christians, would not stop preaching the Gospel, preaching the Orthodox Church, and beating them in theological discussions, they cut out his tongue and cut off his right hand. This way he could not longer write or speak the word of the Gospel. Thats good preaching! St. John the Baptist, they had enough! They were tired of hearing about the Messiah, about the Christ, about God so they cut off his head. Good preaching! My patron saint, St. Benjamin the Deacon, in 424 A.D. was martyred. They initially captured and tortured him for preaching the Gospel. They later released him saying "Don't do that anymore!" So what did he do? He preached louder, he preached harder, he preached more until they captured him again, stuck barbed wire under his toenails and finger nails, and left him to bleed to death. I have a lot to live up to, and I certainly hope that is never my fate, but you know what? That is great preaching!

It gives me no pleasure to say this, brothers and sisters, but the day is coming, possibly even in our lifetimes, where Christianity is openly persecuted in America. Let me assure you, this is a victory, for the Lord our God says "Blessed are you when men shall revile and persecute you for my sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad; for great is your reward in Heaven!" And blessed will we be. On that day it will be our duty as Christians, as soldiers of God's mercy, to stand with stalwart hearts and unflinching convictions even as the faithless come to hunt and attempt to remove us, but we must stand our ground.

So when the heretics come to make that list, brethren; speak my name.

Benjamin T. Peck is a freshman at Holy Cross College in Boston, Massachusetts.

In 369 AD St. Basil the great was a newly ordained priest ministering in and around the area of Constantinople. That year a drought hit followed by famine as the crops had all dried up. He delivered four homilies that have been complied in the book “On Social Justice” that spoke to the heart of how people act in these times of dire physical suffering. Many of the themes from these homilies are repeating themselves today as they have throughout history.

St. Basil had a vision of a new social order based upon simplicity of life and sharing rather than competition and private ownership. He had a vision for what would be called “the new city.”

Part of this new city would be an engaged monasticism, a monastic vision that was more urban than rural, a monasticism, which has at its very heart, service to the poor. He had a vision for what would be called the Basiliad, a complex of buildings where the poor and needy would come and find support and rest. Medical care would be provided by skilled physicians and food and clothing would be provided. But it was also to be a worship center with church services and a chapel. A place to truly live out the gospel message of “love of neighbor.”

The monks would practice the practical trades like carpentry and blacksmithing and the money generated from those trades would be used to support the work of the Basiliad. In his sermon, "In Time of Famine and Drought” (in: On Social Justice" title="On Social Justice">On Social Justice) he speaks of this new community not as a new kind of charitable institution but a place where a new set of relationships would be formed. A new social order that would both anticipate and participate in the creation of “a new heaven and a new earth where justice dwells.” St. Basil used his vision of the first church at Jerusalem as an example, “Let us zealously imitate the early Christian community, where everything was held in common – life, soul, concord, a common table, individual kinship – while unfeigned love constituted many bodies as one and joined by many souls into a single harmonious whole.”

Fast forward to the 20th century and we find the writings of St. Mother Maria of Paris. I don’t think there is a saint that has influenced my thoughts on monasticism more than she has. Mother Maria saw the need for monasticism in the Orthodox Church, and as I have often said the church is at her best when monasticism is present in the Church, but as we have had to adapt the church to the new world monasticism needs to be adapted to the new world. Mother Maria, and I for that matter, does not believe that traditional monasticism can work in America, well not all aspects of it anyway.

Mother Maria wrote an essay that she called “Toward a New Monasticism” it was written at a time where refugees had swarmed into Paris during the Second World War. She had a house that she called the “Open Door” where she ministered to the refugees mostly on her own. In this essay she has this to say about monasticism and her view of a new monasticism:

“…monasticism in general is needed, but it is needed mainly on the roads of life, in the very thick of it. Today there is only one monastery for a monk – the whole world. This he must inevitably understand very soon, and in this lies the force of his innovation. Here many must become innovators against their will. This is the meaning, the cause, and the justification of the new monasticism. The new here is not characterized mainly by its newness, but by its being inevitable. There is no need to seek in these statements for any non-recognition of the old form of monasticism on principle. But, needed as it is, it does not exhaust what the churchly word now has the right to expect from monasticism. It may be only a part… of contemporary monasticism.”

We have other examples of the “New Monasticism” the most notable is St. Herman of Alaska. St. Herman came to the new world to minister not only to the Russians in Alaska but also to the native population. He was a monastic and came with other monastics, but did not live what one thinks of as a traditional monastic life.

We also have examples of engaged monasticism in the Church in North American now. St. Tikhon in South Canaan, Pennsylvania runs a seminary and prepares men for service in the church, they are engaged in the process and what is needed is more of this type of work.

What I am suggesting is not radical but a return to a vision of monasticism put forth in the 4th century by St. Basil. My belief is this is the style of monasticism that is needed in North America, we need balance in monasticism and this is an area that is lacking.

Delivered at The Pontifical Gregorian University on 12th December 2011.

As the political leaders of Europe come together to try to save the euro, and with it the very project of European Union, I believe the time has come for religious leaders to do likewise, and I want to explain why.

What I hope to show in this lecture, is first, the religious roots of the market economy and of democratic capitalism. They were produced by a culture saturated in the values of the Judaeo-Christian heritage, and market economics was originally intended to advance those values.

Second, the market never reaches stable equilibrium. Instead the market itself tends to undermine the very values that gave rise to it in the first place through the process of “creative destruction.”

Third, the future health of Europe, politically, economically and culturally, has a spiritual dimension. Lose that and we will lose much else besides. To paraphrase a famous Christian text: what will it profit Europe if it gains the whole world yet loses its soul? Europe is in danger of losing its soul.

I want to preface my remarks by thanking His Eminence Cardinal Koch for not only inviting me to deliver this lecture, but being so graciously helpful throughout my trip and private audience with His Holiness.

I want to thank Father Francois-Xavier Dumortier, Rector of the Gregorian University for his kind words of introduction as well as Father Philipp Renczes of the Cardinal Bea Centre for Judaic Studies and Dr. Ed Kessler of the Woolf Institute in Cambridge for hosting this lecture and for all their support in arranging this visit. These two institutions represent the best of European thought, wisdom and spirituality. Through collaborative work, my hope is that these two institutions will help build a European platform to showcase and apply the resources that this continent with its rich heritage has to offer to build a better future for the world.

I am also honoured to see a number of Ambassadors and many other distinguished guests join us here this evening; I thank you all very much for coming.

I want to begin by saying a word about the relationship between the Vatican and the Jewish people.

The history of the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Jews was not always a happy or an easy one. Too often it was written in tears. Yet something extraordinary happened just over half a century ago, when on 13 June 1960 the French Jewish historian Jules Isaac had an audience with Pope John XXIII and presented him with a dossier of materials he had been gathering on the history of Christian antisemitism. That set in motion the long journey to Vatican II and Nostra Aetate, as a result of which, today, Jews and Catholics meet not as enemies, nor as strangers, but as cherished and respected friends.

That is one of the most dramatic transformations in the religious history of humankind and lit a beacon of hope, not just for us but for the world. It was a victory for the God of love and forgiveness, who created us in love and forgiveness, asking us to love and forgive others.

I hope that this visit, this morning's audience with His Holiness, and this lecture might in some small way mark the beginning of a new chapter in our relationship. For half a century Jews and Christians have focused on the way of dialogue that I call face-to-face. The time has come to move on to a new phase, the way of partnership that I call side-by-side.

For the task ahead of us is not between Jews and Catholics, or even Jews and Christians in general, but between Jews and Christians on the one hand, and the increasingly, even aggressively secularising forces at work in Europe today on the other, challenging and even ridiculing our faith.

If Europe loses the Judaeo-Christian heritage that gave it its historic identity and its greatest achievements in literature, art, music, education, politics, and as we will see, economics, it will lose its identity and its greatness, not immediately, but before this century reaches its end.

When a civilisation loses its faith, it loses its future. When it recovers its faith, it recovers its future. For the sake of our children, and their children not yet born, we – Jews and Christians, side-by-side – must renew our faith and its prophetic voice. We must help Europe recover its soul.

***

That is by way of introduction. Let me begin with a striking passage from Niall Ferguson's recent book, Civilisation. In it he tells of how the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences was given the task of discovering how the West, having lagged behind China for centuries, eventually overtook it and established itself in a position of world pre-eminence. At first, said the scholar, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we concluded it was because you had the best political system. Then we realised it was your economic system. "But in the past 20 years, we have realised that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West has been so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don't have any doubt about this.”

The Chinese scholar was right. The same line of reasoning was followed by the Harvard economic historian, David Landes, in his magisterial The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. He too pointed out that China was technologically far in advance of the West until the 15th century. The Chinese had invented the wheelbarrow, the compass, paper, printing, gunpowder, porcelain, spinning machines for weaving textiles and blast furnaces for producing iron. Yet they never developed a market economy, the rise of science, an industrial revolution or sustained economic growth. Landes too concludes that it was the Judeo-Christian heritage that the West had and China lacked.

Admittedly the phrase “Judeo-Christian tradition” is a recent coinage and one that elides significant differences between the two religions and the various strands within each. Different scholars have taken diverse tracks in tracing the economic history of the West. Max Weber famously spoke about The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, with special emphasis on Calvinism. Michael Novak has written eloquently about the Catholic ethic. Rodney Stark has pointed out how the financial instruments that made capitalism possible were developed in the fourteenth century banks in pre-Reformation Florence, Pisa, Genoa and Venice.

Those who emphasised the Jewish contribution, from Karl Marx to Werner Sombart, tended to do so in a spirit of criticism. Nonetheless it cannot be pure coincidence that Jews, numbering less than a fifth of a per cent of the population of the world, have won more than 30 per cent of Nobel Prizes in economics and include such contributions as John von Neumann’s invention of Games Theory, Milton Friedman’s monetary economics, Joseph Stiglitz’ development economics, and Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s behavioural economics and the less-than-fully-rational way in which we make market choices. The biblical Joseph may have been the world’s first economist, having discovered the theory of trade cycles – seven years of plenty followed by seven lean years. The financial state of Europe would be better today if people knew their Bible.

There is, though, enough common ground to speak, at least here, of shared values. First there is the deep biblical respect for the dignity of the human individual, regardless of colour, creed or class, created in the image and likeness of God. The market gives more freedom and dignity to human choice than any other economic system.

Second is the biblical respect for property rights, as against the idea prevalent in the ancient world that rulers were entitled to treat property of the tribe or nation as their own. By contrast, when Moses finds his leadership challenged by the Israelites during the Korach rebellion, he says about his relation to the people, “I have not taken one ass from them nor have I wronged any one of them.” The great assault of slavery against human dignity is that it deprives me of the ownership of the wealth I create.

Then there is the biblical respect for labour. God tells Noah that he will be saved from the flood, but it is Noah who has to build the ark. The verse “Six days shall you labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God” means that we serve God through work as well as rest.

Job creation, in Judaism, is the highest form of charity because it gives people the dignity of not depending on charity. “Flay carcasses in the market-place,” said the third century teacher Rav, “and do not say: I am a priest and a great man and it is beneath my dignity”.

Equally important is Judaism’s positive attitude to the creation of wealth. The world is God’s creation; therefore it is good, and prosperity is a sign of God’s blessing. Asceticism and self-denial have little place in Jewish spirituality. By our labour and inventiveness we become, in the rabbinic phrase, “partners with God in the work of creation”.

Above all, from a Jewish perspective, the most important thing about the market economy is that it allows us to alleviate poverty. Judaism refused to romanticize poverty. It is not, in Judaism, a blessed condition. It is, the rabbis said, “a kind of death” and “worse than fifty plagues”. At the other end of the spectrum they believed that with wealth comes responsibility. Richesse oblige. Successful businessmen (and women) were expected to set an example of philanthropy and to take on positions of communal leadership. Conspicuous consumption was frowned upon, and periodically banned through local “sumptuary laws”. Wealth is a Divine blessing, and therefore it carries with it an obligation to use it for the benefit of the community as a whole.

The rabbis favoured markets and competition because they generate wealth, lower prices, increase choice, reduced absolute levels of poverty, and extend humanity’s control over the environment, narrowing the extent to which we are the passive victims of circumstance and fate. Competition releases energy and creativity and serves the general good.

***

So the market economy and modern capitalism emerged in Judeo-Christian Europe and not in other cultures like China that were more advanced in other ways. The religious ethic was one of the driving forces of this once new form of wealth creation.

Equally however, this same ethic taught the limits of capitalism. It might be the best means we know of for generating wealth, but it is not a perfect system for distributing wealth. Some gain far more than others, and with wealth comes power over others. Unequal distribution means that some are condemned to poverty. And poverty is not just a physical disaster for those without the means to sustain themselves. It is a psychological disaster. Poverty humiliates. It can also force the poor into a cycle of dependence. They may be forced to borrow. They might in biblical times be forced to sell themselves into slavery.

The Hebrew Bible refuses to see as an inexorable law of nature, a Darwinian struggle in which, in Thucydides’ words, “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” That is the ethics of ancient Greece not the ethics of ancient Israel.

And so we find in the bible an entire structure of welfare legislation: the corner of the field, the forgotten sheaves, and other parts of the harvest, left for the poor, together with the tithe on certain years; the sabbatical year in which all produce is available for everyone, debts cancelled and slaves set free; and the jubilee year in which ancestral land returned to its original owners.

This is a highly sophisticated system, aimed at two things: first that the poor should have means of a livelihood, and second that there should be, every seven and fifty years, periodic redistributions to correct the inequalities of the market and establish a level playing field. And what was done in biblical times in a largely agricultural economy was done in post-biblical times through a vast extension of the tzedakah, the word we usually translate as charity, though it also means justice.

Every Jewish community in the Middle Ages had an elaborate system of tzedakah that amounted to nothing less than a mini-welfare state. There was a chevra, a fellowship, gathering and distributing funds for every conceivable purpose: for poor brides, for the sick, for education, for burial, so that no one was deprived of the means of a dignified existence. What made this structure remarkable, indeed unique, was not only that it was the first of its kind, the precursor of the modern welfare state, but also that it was entirely voluntary, the collective decision of a community with no governmental power and often no legal rights.

In a recent and impressive study Harvard political philosopher Eric Nelson has shown that it was the Hebrew Bible, as read by the Christian Hebraists in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, that was the source of the idea that today we take for granted that it is part of the business of a society to engage in the redistribution of wealth through taxation to ensure the welfare of the poor. Such an idea could not be found in the Greek or Roman classics that inspired the Renaissance. The concept of welfare – distributive justice as opposed to legal or retributive justice – is Judaic in origin and flows ultimately from the same generative principle as the free market itself, the idea that every individual has dignity in the image of God and that it is our task to develop social structures that honour and enhance that dignity.

So not only is the market the outcome of a Judeo-Christian ethic. So too is a keen sense of the limits of the market and the need to supplement it with a system of welfare itself funded by the market.

***

However as the critics of capitalism pointed out, the market does not create a stable equilibrium. It engages in creative destruction, or as Daniel Bell put it, capitalism contains cultural contradictions. It tends to erode the moral foundations on which it was built. Specifically, as is manifest clear in contemporary Europe, it erodes the Judeo- Christian ethic that gave birth to it in the first place.

Instead of seeing the system as Adam Smith did, as a means of directing self- interest to the common good, it can become a means of empowering self-interest to the detriment of the common good. Instead of the market being framed by moral principles, it comes to substitute for moral principle. If you can buy it, negotiate it, earn it and afford it, then you are entitled to it – as the advertisers say – because you’re worth it. The market ceases to be merely a system and becomes an ideology in its own right.

The market gives us choices; so morality itself becomes just a set of choices in which right or wrong have no meaning beyond the satisfaction or frustration of desire. The phenomenon that uniquely characterises the human person, the capacity to make second-order evaluations, not just to feel desire but also to ask whether this desire should be satisfied, becomes redundant. We find it increasingly hard to understand why there might be things we want to do, can afford to do and have a legal right to do, that none the less we should not do because they are unjust, or dishonourable, or disloyal, or demeaning. When Homo economicus displaces Homo sapiens, market fundamentalism rules.

There is a wise American saying: Never waste a crisis. And the current financial and economic crisis affords us a rare opportunity to pause and reflect on where we have been going and where it leads.

***

Let’s begin with the current crisis and what led to it. First the sheer complexity of the financial instruments involved in subprime mortgages and the securitization of risk, was so great that for many years their true nature eluded the regulatory authorities, who continued to give the firms involved Triple A ratings, despite the fact that as early as 2002 Warren Buffett described them as weapons of mass financial destruction. Governments, and sometimes even the bankers themselves, did not fully understand the risks involved nor the way in which failure in any part of the banking system could cause the entire system to collapse.

This was in clear contravention of the principles of transparency and accountability. The book of Exodus devotes astonishing space to a detailed set of accounts as to how every item donated to the building of the Tabernacle was spent, to establish the principle that those in charge of public funds must be transparently above suspicion.

Second, many people, especially in America but also in Europe, were encouraged to take out mortgages, often with low initial repayment rates, that they could not repay, and that those encouraging them should have known they could not repay except under the most optimistic and unlikely scenarios of continued low interest rates and continually rising house prices. This is forbidden in Jewish law under the biblical prohibition: “You shall not place a stumbling block before the blind.”

Third, the bankers themselves not only awarded themselves disproportionately high salaries but also, by providing themselves with “golden parachutes”, insulated themselves from the very risks to which they were exposing both their customers and their shareholders. Almost two thousand years ago the rabbis established a series of enactments precisely to avoid the possibility that someone could benefit from failure or dereliction of duty.

Fourth, no one who reads the Bible with its provisions for the remission of debts every seventh year could fail to understand how morally concerned it is to prevent the build up of indebtedness, of mortgaging freedom tomorrow for the sake of liberty today. The unprecedented levels of private and public debt in the West should have sent warning signals long ago that such a state of affairs was unsustainable in the long run. The Victorians knew what we have forgotten, that spending beyond your means is morally hazardous, however attractive it may be, and the system should not encourage it.

There are larger issues. There is the fundamental question of who can control the modern international corporation and to whom is it accountable. In medieval times, however much the owners of land abused those who worked for them, there was an organic connection between them. The landowner had some interest in the welfare of those who worked for him, for if they were well and reasonably happy, they worked reasonably well. Likewise in the nineteenth century, industrialists may have created appalling working conditions, but at least some enlightened employers, like Robert Owen or the Cadburys and Rowntrees, knew that satisfied employees produced good work. Their example, together with the great nineteenth century social reformers, eventually led to more humane working conditions.

To whom is an international corporation answerable? Often they do not employ workers. They outsource manufacturing to places far away. If wages rise in one place, they can, almost instantly, transfer production to somewhere else. If a tax regime in one country becomes burdensome, they can relocate to another. To whom, then, are they accountable? By whom are they controllable? For whom are they responsible? To which group of people other than shareholders do they owe loyalty? The extreme mobility, not only of capital but also of manufacturing and servicing, is in danger of creating institutions that have power without responsibility, as well as a social class, the global elite, that has no organic connection with any group except itself. As for moral responsibility, it seems that that too can be outsourced. It is someone else’s problem, not mine.

This has profound moral consequences. George Soros writes of how in his early years as an investment manager he had to spend immense time and energy proving his credentials, his character and integrity, before people would do business with him. Nowadays, he says, deals are transactional rather than personal. Instead of placing your faith in a person, you get lawyers to write safeguards into the contract. This is an historic shift from a trust economy to a risk economy. But trust is not a dispensable luxury. It is the very basis of our social life. Many scholars believe that capitalism had religious roots because people could trust other people who, feeling that they were answerable to God, could be relied on to be honest in business. A world without trust is a lonely and dangerous place.

It was precisely the breakdown of trust that caused the banking crisis in the first place. We sometimes make the mistake of thinking that the market is a shrine to materialism, forgetting that its keywords are deeply spiritual. “Credit” comes from the Latin “credo” meaning “I believe.” “Confidence” comes from the Latin meaning “shared faith.” “Trust” is a word that has deeply religious resonance. Try running a bank, a business or an economy in the absence of confidence and trust and you will know it can’t be done. In the end we do not put our faith in systems but in the people responsible for those systems, and without morality, responsibility, transparency, accountability, honesty and integrity, the system will fail. And as it happens, the system did fail.

With this we come to perhaps the most profound truth of the Judeo-Christian ethic. That ethic, based on justice, compassion and respect for human dignity, took moral restraint from “out there” to “in here.” Good conduct was not dependent on governments, laws, police, inspectorates, regulatory bodies, civil courts and legal penalties. It was dependent on the still, small voice of God within the human heart. It became part of character, virtue and an internalised sense of obligation. Jews and Christians devoted immense energies to training the young in the ways of goodness and righteousness. A moral vision, a clear sense of right and wrong, was present in the stories they told, the texts they read, the rituals they performed, the prayers they said and the standards the community expected of its members.

If you were Jewish, you knew what it felt like to be a slave in Egypt, eating the bread of affliction and the bitter herbs of slavery. You knew what it felt like to be homeless for forty years as you wandered through the desert. You knew the call of Isaiah, “Learn to do good, seek justice, rebuke the oppressor, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.” You had social justice engraved in your neural pathways. When I asked the developmental economist Jeffrey Sachs what motivated him in his work, he replied immediately, tikkun olam, the Jewish imperative to heal a fractured world. Christians did likewise. They did not need regulatory bodies to ensure that they worked for the common good. They knew they were morally responsible, even if they were not legally liable, for the consequences of their decisions for the lives of others.

Economists call this social capital, but it is not a given of the human condition. Societies where self-interest trumps the common good eventually disintegrate. That is why societies at the peak of affluence have usually already begun on the downward slope to decline. The fourteenth century Islamic thinker Ibn Khaldun argued that when a civilization becomes great, its elites get used to luxury and comfort, and the people as a whole lose their asabiyah, their social solidarity. Giambattista Vico described a similar cycle: “People first sense what is necessary, then consider what is useful, next attend to comfort, later delight in pleasures, soon grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad squandering their estates.”

This was said first and most powerfully by Moses long ago. The theme of his great speeches in the book of Deuteronomy is that it is not hardship that is the real trial, but affluence. Affluence makes you complacent. You no longer have the moral and mental energy to make the sacrifices necessary for the defence of freedom. Inequalities grow. The rich become self-indulgent. The poor feel excluded. There are social divisions, resentments, injustices. Society no longer coheres. People do not feel bound to one another by a bond of collective responsibility. Individualism prevails. Trust declines. Social capital wanes. When that happens, you will be defeated.

Those who believe that liberal democracy and the free market can be defended by the force of law and regulation alone, without an internalised sense of duty and morality, are tragically mistaken.

***

At the most basic level, the consumer society is sapping our moral strength. It has produced a society obsessed with money: salaries, bonuses, the cost of houses, and expensive luxuries we could live without. When money rules, we remember the price of things and forget the value of things, and that is dangerous.

The financial crisis was caused, at least in part, by banks and mortgage brokers lending people so much money at such low interest rates to buy houses, that house prices rose rapidly until investing in a house seemed the best you could make. More people borrowed more money and house prices rose yet higher, until everyone felt that they were richer. But in real terms we weren't. Ignoring values and concentrating on price, we mortgaged our future to feed a fantasy. Like other historic bubbles, it was a moment of collective madness, of the essentially magical belief that there can be gains without losses; forgetting that the larger the gain, the bigger the risk, and that the price is often paid by those who can least afford it.

In general, the build-up of personal debt happened because the consumer society encouraged people to borrow money they didn’t have, to buy things they didn’t need, to achieve a happiness that wouldn’t last. The sages of the ancient world said: Who is rich? One who rejoices in what he has. The consumer society says the opposite. Who is rich? One who can buy what he does not yet have. Relentlessly focussing on what we lack and what others have, it encourages feelings of inadequacy that we assuage by buying a product to make us happy, which it does until the day after, when the next best thing comes along and makes us feel inadequate all over again.

It is no accident that despite the fact that until recently we were affluent beyond the dreams of previous generations, we were not measurably happier. We turned children into mini-consumers, giving them mobile phones instead of our time. The result, in Britain, is a generation of children more unhappy, more prone to depression, stress, eating disorders, and drug and alcohol abuse than they were fifty years ago. The consumer society turns out to be a highly efficient system for the creation and distribution of unhappiness.

It goes deeper still. We know – it has been measured in many experiments – that children with strong impulse control grow to be better adjusted, more dependable, achieve higher grades in school and college and have more success in their careers than others. Success depends on the ability to delay gratification, which is precisely what a consumerist culture undermines. At every stage, the emphasis is on the instant gratification of instinct. In the words of the pop group Queen, “I want it all and I want it now.” A whole culture is being infantilised.

My late father, coming to Britain at the age of six fleeing persecution in Poland, knew poverty and lived it. But he and his contemporaries had a rich cultural, communal and spiritual life. He enjoyed classical music and the great painters. He loved synagogue and his faith as a Jew. The Jewish communities of the East End, like some Asian sub-communities today, had strong families, supportive networks, and high aspirations, if not for themselves then for their children. Of the gifts of the spirit they had an embarrass de richesse. Can we really say that the world of brands and status symbols, of what you own rather than what you are, is better? What of the future if we really are fated to years of recession? What will that mean for a culture where happiness is defined by material possessions? It will mean the maximum of disappointment with the minimum of consolation. Whether our social structures are strong enough to survive this is wholly open to doubt.

***

A good society has its own ecology which depends on multiple sources of meaning, each with its own integrity. I want to draw attention briefly to five features of Judaism, largely shared by Christianity, whose role over the centuries has been to preserve a space uninvaded by the market ethic.

The first is the Sabbath, the boundary Judaism draws around economic activity. The Sabbath is the day we focus on the things that have value but not a price, when we neither work nor employ others to do our work, when we neither buy nor sell, in which all manipulation of nature for creative ends is forbidden and all hierarchies of power or wealth are suspended.

It is the still point in the turning world, when we renew our attachment to family and community, living the truth that the world is not wholly ours to bend to our will but something given to us in trust to conserve for future generations, and in which the inequalities of a market economy are counterbalanced by a world in which money does not count, in which we are all equal citizens. The Jewish writer Achad Ha-am said that more than the Jews have kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept the Jews. It is the one day in seven when we stop making a living and instead simply live.

The second: marriage and the family. Judaism is one of the great familial traditions. Many of its supreme religious moments take place in the home between husband and wife, parents and children. Marriage is where love and loyalty combine to bring new life into the world. If Jews have survived tragedy, found happiness, and contributed more than their share to the human heritage, I suspect it is because of the sanctity with which they endowed marriage and the way they regarded parenthood as their most sacred task.

Third: education. Since the days of Moses Jews have predicated their very survival on education. They were the first civilization to construct, two thousand years ago, a universal compulsory education, communally funded, to ensure that everyone had access to knowledge. They even said that study is holier than prayer. Jews are the people whose heroes are teachers, whose citadels are schools and whose passion is the life of the mind. Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, once said that he came from one of those Russian-Jewish families where they expected even the plumber to have a Ph. D. Jews did not leave education to the vagaries of the market. They made the market serve the cause of education.

Fourth: the concept of property itself. Deeply embedded in the Jewish mind is the idea that we do not ultimately own what we possess. Everything belongs to God, and what we have, we hold in trust. There are conditions to that trust. As the great Victorian philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore put it, “We are worth what we are willing to share with others”. Hence the long tradition of Jewish philanthropy that explains how Judaism encouraged the creation of wealth without giving rise to class resentments.

Finally, there is the Jewish tradition of law itself. It was William Rees-Mogg who first drew attention to a connection between Jewish law and economics I had never thought of before. In a book he wrote about inflation, The Reigning Error, he said that inflation – like high levels of debt – is a disease of inordinacy. It happens because of a failure to understand that energy, to be channelled, needs restraints. It was the constant discipline of law, he says, that provided the boundaries within which Jewish creativity could flow. It taught Jews self-restraint, and it is the failure of societies to practice self-restraint that leads to inflation or unsustainable debt.

So the Sabbath, the family, the educational system, the concept of ownership as trusteeship, and the discipline of religious law, were not constructed on the basis of economic calculation. To the contrary, they were ways in which Judaism in effect said to the market: thus far and no further. There are realms in which you may not intrude.

The concept of the holy is precisely the domain in which the worth of things is not judged by their market price or economic value. This fundamental insight of Judaism and Christianity is all the more striking given their respect for the market. Their strength is that they resisted the temptation to believe that the market governs the totality of our lives, when it fact it governs only a limited part of it, that which concerns goods subject to production and exchange. There are things fundamental to being human that we do not produce; instead we receive from those who came before us and from God Himself. And there are things which we may not exchange, however high the price.

When everything that matters can be bought and sold, when commitments can be broken because they are no longer to our advantage, when shopping becomes salvation and advertising slogans our litany, when our worth is measured by how much we earn and spend, then the market is destroying the very virtues on which in the long run it depends. That is the danger that advanced economies now face. At such times the voice of our great religious traditions needs to be heard, warning us of the gods that devour their own children, and of the ruins of once-great buildings that stand today as relics of civilisations that once seemed invincible.

***

I have argued that the market economy originated in Europe in the fertile environment of Judeo-Christian values sympathetic to hard work, industry, frugality, diligence, patience, discipline, and a sense of duty and obligation. Capitalism was seen by its early proponents as a profoundly moral enterprise. It generated wealth, softened manners, tamed unruly passions, and diminished the threat of war. Two adjacent nations could either fight or trade. From fight both lost. From trade both gained.

The market’s “invisible hand” turned the pursuit of self interest into the wealth of nations, and intellectual property fuelled the fires of invention. Capitalism has enhanced human dignity, leaving us with more choices and a longer-life expectancy than any generation of those who came before us.

But there is no such thing as a stable equilibrium in human affairs. There is a natural tendency for institutions in the ascendancy to invade territories not rightly or fully their own, with disastrous consequences. In religious ages, the culprit was usually religion. At times it sought political power and became an enemy of liberty. At other times it sought to control the dissemination of ideas and thus became an enemy of the unfettered collaborative pursuit of truth.

Today, in a Europe more secular than it has been since the last days of pre-Christian Rome, the culprits are an aggressive scientific atheism tone deaf to the music of faith; a reductive materialism blind to the power of the human spirit; global corporations uncontrollable by and sometimes more powerful than national governments; forms of finance so complex as to surpass the understanding of bodies charged with their regulation; a consumer-driven economy that is shrivelling the imaginative horizons of our children; and a fraying of all the social bonds, from family to community, that once brought comfort and a redemption of solitude, to be replaced by virtual networks mediated by smartphone, whose result is to leave us “alone together.”

What can we do, we who, because we have faith in God, have faith in God’s faith in humankind? There is a significant phrase that Pope Benedict XVI has often used: creative minority. If there is one thing Jews know how to be it is a creative minority. So my proposal is that Jews and Catholics should seek to be creative minorities together. A duet is more powerful than a solo. Renouncing any aspiration for power, we should seek to encourage the single most neglected source of energy in a consumer-driven, profit-maximising society, namely the power of altruism.

We should enlist business leaders to help us teach that markets need morals; that without a strong ethic, there may be short term success but no long term viability; and that conscience is not for wimps, it is the basis of trust and confidence on which business, financial institutions and the economy as a whole depend.

We should use this moment of recession to restore to their rightful place in society the things that have value but not a price: marriage, the family, home, dedicated time between parents and children, the face-to-face friendships that make up community, the celebration of what we have not the restless pursuit of what we don’t, a sense of gratitude and thanksgiving, and a willingness to share some of God’s blessings with those who have less. These are the true sources of lasting happiness and have been empirically proved to be so.

We should seek to recover the alternative world created by the Sabbath, one day in seven in which we set limits to the power of the market to enslave us with its siren song, and instead give our relationships the chance to mature and our souls the pure air they need to breathe. We should challenge the relativism that tells us there is no right or wrong, when every instinct of our mind knows it is not so, and is a mere excuse to allow us to indulge in what we believe we can get away with. A world without values quickly becomes a world without value.

Economic superpowers have a short shelf-life: Spain in the fifteenth century, Venice in the sixteenth, Holland in the seventeenth, France in the eighteenth, Britain in the nineteenth, America in the twentieth. Meanwhile Christianity has survived for two thousand years, and Judaism for twice as long as that. The Judeo-Christian heritage is the only system known to me capable of defeating the law of entropy that says all systems lose energy over time.

Stabilising the Euro is one thing, healing the culture that surrounds it is another. A world in which material values are everything and spiritual values nothing is neither a stable state nor a good society. The time has come for us to recover the Judeo-Christian ethic of human dignity in the image of God. When Europe recovers its soul, it will recover its wealth-creating energies. But first it must remember: humanity was not created to serve markets. Markets were created to serve humankind.

Read the entire article on the Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks website (new window will open).

This Christmas let us spare a thought and say a prayer for countless Christian victims of Muslim brutality, over the centuries and in our own time.

An explosion ripped through a Catholic church during Christmas Mass near Nigeria’s capital Abuja on Sunday morning, killing at least 25 people. A radical Muslim group, Boko Haram, claimed responsibility for the attack and another bombing in the city of Jos, as explosions also struck the nation’s predominantly Muslim northeast. The Christmas Day attacks show the growing national ambition of Boko Haram, was responsible for some 500 murders this year alone. The assaults come a year after a series of Christmas Eve bombings in Jos claimed by the militants left at least 32 dead and 74 wounded.

Egypt’s dwindling Copts have seen their position deteriorate over the past year from precarious to perilous. Already facing discrimination and harassment from Mubarak’s secular regime, they now see that things could get a lot worse under the Islamists who are poised to take power. Their annus horribilis started on New Year’s Day 2011, when a powerful car bomb targeted a Coptic church in Alexandria, killing 25 parishioners and wounding nearly 100 just as they were finishing midnight Mass. The next turning point was the Maspero massacre on October 9, when 27 unarmed Christian protesters were killed and hundreds more injured, not by some shadowy Islamic extremists but by the military.  An official commission—established by the Army—has unsurprisingly absolved the Army of all responsibility for the killings.

The country’s eventual transition to what passes for democracy in the Muslim world is going to make matters far worse for the Copts, who are fearful the army and courts will no longer be able to shield them from ever-greater discrimination and harassment. The writing is on the wall. The Freedom and Justice Party, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Muslim Brotherhood, won the second round of the three-stage parliamentary elections last Wednesday and Thursday, taking 38 of the 59 seats contested; an even more radical group, the Salafist Nour Party, won 13 seats. The adherents of political Islam, in other words, have captured 86 percent of all seats contested. Their spiritual leader is Sheikh Ali Gomaa, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, who in a recent video reminded the faithful that Christians are kuffar, or infidels. After quoting Quran 5:17 (“Infidels are those who declare God is Jesus, son of Mary”) he went on to declare that any association between a human and God (shirk) is the greatest sin: “Whoever thinks Christ is God, or the Son of God, not symbolically—for we are all sons of God—but attributively, has rejected the faith which God requires for salvation.”

The Sheikh’s position is eminently mainstream in the Muslim world, which may explain the fact that he is still hailed in the West as a moderate. Three years ago, in a U.S. News article titled “Finding the Voices of Moderate Islam,” Lawrence Wright described him as “a highly promoted champion of moderate Islam”: “He is the kind of cleric the West longs for, because of his assurances that there is no conflict with democratic rule and no need for theocracy.” His assurances, indeed… On this form watch out for the Coptic Exodus of 2012, on par with that of the Christians in Iraq since the “liberation” of 2003.

Iraq's dwindling Christian population marked Christmas on Sunday with religious leaders calling for peace, days after attacks across Baghdad killed dozens. A week after US forces completed their withdrawal from the country, a senior bishop noted that little was being done to prevent a continuing Christian exodus from Iraq. As worshippers gathered for Sunday morning Christmas services, their churches were guarded by armored security vehicles, heavily-armed soldiers and policemen patrolling the surrounding streets and guarding rooftops. “Our faithful are like everyone in Iraq—they have fear,” Chaldean Bishop Shlemon Warduni told AFP. “They feel there is no peace, no security, so they go where they can live in peace. We don't agree, we don't want them (to go), but they say, 'If we don't go, can you ensure my life, can you ensure my job, can you ensure the future?' … The government cannot ensure their lives, how can we ensure their lives?”

The Christian community in Iraq was some two million strong before the US-led invasion of 2003. Up to four-fifths are estimated to have left the country in recent years following a series of attacks by Muslim extremists. On October 31, 2010, an Al-Qaeda assault on a Baghdad church left 44 worshippers, two priests and seven security force members dead. “We have concerns about the US withdrawal, despite the security forces saying it will be safe,” says Louis Sako, Chaldean archbishop of Kirkuk. “There has been a failure to ensure the safety of Christians—the security forces are not sufficiently prepared to ensure the protection of Christians. Even though we have repeatedly asked to raise the level of security, the results are not encouraging.” According to Sako, 57 churches and houses of worship in Iraq have been attacked since the invasion, with more than 900 Christians killed and more than 6 000 wounded.

Syria has the largest Christian community in the region, some 2.5 million strong. Most of them are supporting President Bashar Al Assad amidst ongoing protests in the country. A Syrian Christian explained that they prefer “a brutal dictator who guarantees the rights of religious minorities to the uncertain future that Assad’s departure might bring.” It is not to be doubted that if the Obama Administration is successful in its stated objective of bringing Assad down, the Christians in Syria will follow their Iraqi brethren into exile.

Two thousand miles further east, Asia Bibi, a mother of five children, is one of a dozen Christians in the province of Punjab currently awaiting appeal or execution under Pakistan’s scandalous blasphemy laws. On Christmas Day, after a year in jail, she will not be able to say prayers or to see her children and husband. She is being held in isolation, has not been allowed to bathe for over two months, and cannot stand unsupported. It is worthy of note that Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer was assassinated last January and Federal Minorities Minister Shahbaz_Bhatti was killed in March for defending Asia Bibi and criticizing Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.

Pakistan has a constitution that guarantees religious freedom, but murders, discrimination, and violent harassment of its small Christian minority are persistent. Any dispute with a Muslim—most commonly over land—can become a religious confrontation. Christians are routinely accused of “blasphemy against Islam,” an offense that carries the death penalty. Charges of blasphemy can be made on the flimsiest of evidence—one man’s word against another, and since it is invariably a Muslim’s word against that of a Christian, the outcome is preordained. The ease with which blasphemy charges can be made to stick has led to a spate of malicious complaints motivated by personal enmity and greed, especially for the Christians’ land. On many occasions Christians charged with blasphemy have been murdered before their cases reached the courts.

The scene is the same in Alexandria, Aceh, Istanbul, Prishtina, Karachi, Nazareth... Heavily armed police guard churches as hostile crowds look on. Wherever Muslim numbers dominate, Christians have reason to fear for their safety.  The majority know Sheikh Ali Goma is right. The refusal of the People of the Book to acknowledge him, Muhammad, as the messenger of God doomed them to unbelief and eternal suffering after death (Kuran 5:72-73). Christians are mortal sinners and their condemnation is irrevocable: “God will forbid him the garden and the fire will be his abode… They blaspheme who say: Allah is one of three in a trinity; for there is no god except One Allah. Christ the son of Mary was no more than an apostle; many were the apostles that passed away before him.” (5:75)

As he progressed from a moral teacher to the secular ruler of Medina and master of people’s destinies, Muhammad made the final break with the Jews and Christians, who are fiercely denounced. The Muslims must be merciless to the unbelievers but kind to each other. (48:29) “Whoso of you makes them his friends is one of them.” (5:55) The punishment for resistance is execution or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides. (5:33) Muhammad was no longer trying to convert; Allah is a repetitive polemicist rejoicing in infidel suffering.

Thirteen centuries of Islam have effectively eliminated Christianity from the land of its birth. The terminal decline of the Christian remnant in the Middle East has been accompanied by the indifference of the post-Christian West to its impending demise. Once-thriving Christian communities are now tiny minorities, and in most countries of the region their percentages have been reduced to single digits. Whether they disappear will partly depend on Western leaders belatedly expressing their outrage at Christian persecution. According to David Parsons, media director for the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, there is clear historic precedent for such outside intervention in the Arab/Muslim world to protect Christian communities:

As Ottoman rule over the Middle East began to wane, the Great Powers moved into the region, each concluding deals with the Sultanate in Istanbul to provide protection to various imperiled Christian denominations. British envoys arrived to safeguard Protestant interests, France the Lebanese Christians, Russia the Orthodox folds. The Vatican also stepped in to aid certain sects… These Western interlocutors all brought with them schools, hospitals and other modern institutions, thus vastly improving the education, health and job opportunities of the local Christians. With this benevolent influx also came advances for all peoples of the region. Some locals are sure to object to any renewed Western intervention on behalf of Middle East Christians as a form of neo-colonialism. But no one has territorial designs here anymore.

It is just a matter of plain human decency, Parsons concludes: “No coddling of Islamist regimes! Sanctions if necessary! Someone has to do something to help stop the endless bleeding of Eastern Christianity.”

It is a near-certainty, however, that that “someone” will not be the U.S. Administration of President Barack Obama.

If the Jewish or Muslim population of America or Western Europe were to start declining at the rate at which Christian communities are disappearing in the Middle East, there would be an outcry from their coreligionists all over the world. There would be government-funded programs to establish the causes and provide remedies. The endangered minority would be awarded instant victim status and would be celebrated as such by the media and the academy. By contrast, when the President of the United States visited Jerusalem in October 1994, he was steps away from the most sacred Christian shrines but did not visit any of them. He did not meet a single representative of the Christian community, which remained invisible to him. A decade later, as busloads of American evangelicals stare at the Western Wall dreaming of a rebuilt temple that will provide an eschatological shortcut through history, the remnant of that community is on the verge of extinction—unseen and unlamented.

The one crucial difference between the Gospels and the Kuran is God’s love and His desire to redeem sinners by way of sacrifice. Without sacrifice there is no forgiveness, no atonement and no reconciliation that gives meaning to life and creation. Without it there is no salvation, which is why no true Muslim can ever be saved.

Read the entire article on the Chronicles of Culture website (new window will open). Reprinted with permission.

First published October 1, 2007.

Phillip Johnson is known as the father of intelligent design. The idea in its current form appeared in the 1980s, and Johnson adopted and developed it after Darwinian evolution came up short, in his view, in explaining how all organisms, including humans, came into being. Johnson taught law for over 30 years at the University of California at Berkeley and is the author of the book Darwin on Trial, in which he argues that empirical evidence in support of Darwin's theory is lacking. In this interview, hear why he feels that such evidence is "somewhere between weak and nonexistent," why he feels intelligent design is a testable science, and why he thought the Dover trial was a train wreck waiting to happen.

NOVA: What is intelligent design?

Phillip Johnson: I would like to put a basic explanation of the intelligent-design concept as I understand it this way. There are two hypotheses to consider scientifically. One is you need a creative intelligence to do all the creating that has been done in the history of life; the other is you don't, because we can show that unintelligent, purposeless, natural processes are capable of doing and actually did do the whole job. Now, that is what is taught as fact in our textbooks. And to me it's a hypothesis, which needs to be tested by evidence and experiment. If it can't be confirmed by experiment, then you're left with the same two possibilities, and neither one should be said to be something like a scientific fact.

Why do you think some people do not accept evolution?

I think they see a problem. I don't think it's that they're ignorant. I think that they see that what's being given to them as evolution is less than science in that it hasn't really been proved, and yet it's presented as if it were proved. And on the other hand, it's more than science, in that it contains the whole philosophy behind it, metaphysics as it were.

As I understand it from reading your books and critiques, you see "materialism" as a very destructive thing in society. Can you tell me about this?

Well, by materialism I don't mean consumerism. I'm not talking about people who are greedy for material things. I'm talking about a philosophical system that explains what is real and what is not. A philosophical materialist believes that everything is, at the bottom, material composition. You start with the fundamental particles that compose matter and energy.

Another word for essentially the same thing is naturalism. It's stated a little bit differently. Naturalism says nature is all there is, and nature is made of those particles. (Don't let the distinction between matter and energy confuse you on this, because energy, like matter, is composed of particles according to the naturalistic viewpoint.)

Now, naturalism was most flamboyantly stated in the Cosmos series by Carl Sagan, which I remember watching many years ago. Sagan began that series with the pronouncement that the cosmos is all there ever was and all there ever will be. Nature is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be, with nature being these substances that make up the stars and the particles that make up the different kinds of radiation that come from them. But that's all that there is.

A philosophy of naturalism or materialism is what generates the Darwinian theory. It's what generates the certainty that only unintelligent natural forces were involved in evolution, which is to say in the creative process that brought our kind into existence as well as all the animals and all the plants. That is all a non-negotiable claim on their part. And why is it a non-negotiable claim? Because if the naturalistic starting point isn't valid—if it isn't completely correct—then something else must have happened. What is that something else? It's something that they don't like that might get a foothold in science itself.

Are there social consequences to this philosophy of naturalism or materialism that you describe?

Yes, absolutely. Now, these consequences may be good or they may be bad. And they are attractive to some people and unattractive to others. For example, the naturalistic viewpoint is praised by those who like it for its tendency to liberate us from religious authority.

But what's the negative side? My understanding is you see not the positive side of materialism but the negative side.

I'm happy to concede that there is a positive way of looking at something and a negative way of looking at something. The negative side is that the naturalistic viewpoint leaves the way open for a kind of freedom from divine authority, a kind of moral anarchy.

Is this a motivation for what you do?

It is a motivation, and I don't think that there's anything wrong with that. I was an agnostic from the time I was a junior high school student up until my very late 30s. I had the kind of upbringing that is most likely to produce agnostics, a conventional kind of church-going requirement that never became real to me. I went to Sunday School because in those days mothers thought that was a good thing for their children on Sunday morning, and [on the way my mother] dropped my father off at the golf course. I grew up from that learning that when you got old enough so that your mother couldn't tell you what to do anymore, what you did was you played golf on Sunday morning.

So I was an agnostic, and then when I went away to Harvard as a college student, that tendency was very much encouraged. I grew up thinking that to be intelligent or well-educated was to be agnostic and to be liberal in politics. I went through various things in life and found that the agnostic pattern in which I had become socialized was not adequate for me. I became a Christian, and I found a kind of structure for my life that seemed to be a very good thing and to this day has enabled me to get through crises like two strokes.

And how did you come to view evolution?

One thing that fascinated me about the study of evolution was that it seemed to me to give a window into a very fundamental question that was bothering me: Is God real or imaginary?

As I read all of the evolutionary literature written for the general public, I saw that some of the proponents of Darwinian evolution were hard-core atheists like Richard Dawkins, and others were not. Some of them took a view that religion or belief in God is alright if you want that sort of a thing, but they assumed that it was an imaginary thing. I could see that this is why there was so much insistence upon the Darwinian story.

Believing in Darwinian evolution doesn't prove that there's no God. What it proves is that there's no need for God's participation to get all the creating done. Now, is that true? I was fascinated with that question of what's fundamentally true. If this Darwinian story is true, then nature does have all the creative power it needs to produce plants and animals and people. But if the story isn't true, if it doesn't fit the evidence, then maybe the creator is something more than an imaginary projection of people's minds. Maybe a creator is a necessary part of reality.

That to me was a fascinating issue. It certainly motivated me to think that this was an important subject, not just for biologists or even scientists but for people at large. So it was legitimate for a law professor to address it and for the public to make up their own minds about it rather than to take the word of the experts. That's what makes it important.

As we've gone about making this documentary, we've met professors in the natural sciences who'll say, "Let me just show you this mountain of evidence," and they show us fossil after fossil. Are these things not evidence of evolution?

They all exist. The question is what are they evidence of? Are they evidence of a mindless and purposeless evolutionary process? It may be that there was a slow development of one kind of thing into something else. But the important question to me is: Could this all occur solely by unintelligent, purposeless, material processes? Can we say that that has been confirmed? The theory of evolution may be true in a sense, but it may require the participation of an intelligent cause. That is the basic intelligent-design proposition—that unintelligent causes by themselves can't do the whole job. That doesn't say that everything was created all at once.

So what does intelligent design say about how life was created and how we ended up with the diversity of life we see today?

Well, the alternative is not well developed, so I would prefer to say that, as far as I'm concerned, the alternative is we don't really know what happened. But if non-intelligence couldn't do the whole job, then intelligence had to be involved in some way. Then it's a big research job to figure out the consequences of that starting point.

How would you go about testing for the existence of a designer? What is the research program?

I'd like to start with the first question. It is sometimes said that the hypothesis that there is a designer is untestable. This is false. It is testable, and the test is Darwinian evolution. The claim of the evolutionary biologists is that unintelligent causes did the whole job. If they can prove it, then the counter-hypothesis that you need intelligence has been tested, and it has been shown to be false.

But what I concluded after reading the literature was that the claim that unintelligent processes have been shown to be capable of doing all the work of creation, from the simplest creatures to the more complex ones, is unsupported. The evidence for it lies somewhere between very weak and nonexistent. When you try to get proof, you get stories about microevolution.

But they're not talking about great transformations taking place all at once. They're talking about something happening very gradually over a huge amount of time. Why couldn't that be the case?

Well, why couldn't it? Often when one asks for a demonstration of the evolutionary changes that Darwinians claim, the answer that they always give is, "Well, it's done very gradually" and "This takes an enormous amount of time, millions of years, whereas we only live to be 100 if we're very long-lived, so it is quite impossible for the evolutionary change to occur in our time limits. That's why we don't see it."

My logical reaction to that is that's perfectly accurate if you assume that the evolutionary change of this enormous amount actually occurs. Then you can give a satisfactory explanation for why we don't see it. But there is another possible explanation for why we don't see it. The other possibility is that it doesn't happen. I think maybe that's what the truth is.

If it doesn't happen, then where do you go from there?

Well, if it doesn't happen, something else must have happened. The problem became clear to me as I read further and further that the one thing that evolutionary biologists are absolutely determined to support is their starting premise that all of the changes that brought about all of the different species and kinds of life on Earth happened by purely natural causes like random mutation and natural selection. So while there can be arguments over the details, there can be no argument or discussion over the fundamental principle that only natural—which is to say unintelligent—causes were involved.

The reason why that premise of natural causes has to be so inviolate and so ferociously defended is that what if something other than purely natural causes was involved? What would it be? Well, the most obvious answer to that question is it would be God. And they regard this possibility with horror, because it seems to unseat all of their science. It seems to take them back to the beginning or to the Dark Ages, as they would tend to say. You get God in there and that's the end of science, they think, so that can't be. But I wondered, maybe it could be.

I viewed myself as much more unprejudiced in that matter. I was willing to believe in a biological creation by Darwinian mechanism if it could actually be proved. But if it couldn't be proved, I thought it was quite legitimate to think of something else.

Do they really regard it with horror, or are they just saying, "This is something that is beyond what science can address?"

At that point I would say if we can't consider the other possibility then let's not consider it. That's alright with me. But that doesn't mean that we know what did happen. This whole Darwinian story, it seems to me, has been very much oversold. And everybody is told that it's absolutely certain and certainly true, and because it's called science it has been proved again and again by absolutely unquestionable procedures. But this is not true. It is an imaginative story that has been spun on the basis of very little evidence.

Many scientists ask, "How do I go about testing intelligent design?" And if I understand correctly, you were saying that the test of intelligent design is whether something can be explained by evolutionary theory. But scientists say that's just a negative argument. That doesn't prove anything about intelligent design. How would you respond?

My business was actually making negative arguments. I looked at the grand story of evolution, the story that is important, the one that catches the imagination of the world and stirs controversy. This is the story that there's no need for a creator or a designer because the whole job can be done by unintelligent material processes. We know that that's absolutely true, such that any dissent from it should be treated as akin to madness. That's what I was looking at.

Now, at this point the absolute certainty, the dogmatic insistence with which the Darwinists told their story, began to have a boomerang effect. Because it alerted me to the possibility that something is wrong here. If these folks can't even recognize that this isn't that convincing a story, then there's something wrong with their thinking. That was the starting point for my book Darwin on Trial. I thought, This is not something we should trust as a creation story for all of life, because instead of getting evidence of a creation story, what we're getting is evidence of temporary variation in the size of finch beaks or the color of peppered moths in a species. This is a totally different story. It's quite inadequate for the purpose, I thought. And I think the world should understand this.

How do you explain our genetic relatedness with chimpanzees?

There is a relatedness. But what does it mean? Say we have almost 99 percent of our genes in common with chimpanzees. We also have at least 25 percent of our genes in common with bananas. There are these commonalities that exist throughout life. Do they point to a common evolutionary process or a common creator? That is the question for interpretation.

The genes are going to win when people ask me about that great degree of similarity between human genes and chimpanzee genes. I answer that genes must not be anywhere near as important as we have been led to believe. If there were that great a commonality between chimps and humans, it ought to be relatively easy to breed chimps and come up with a human being, or by genetic engineering to change a chimp into a human. We ought to see humans occasionally being born to chimps or perhaps chimps born into human families.

So the real question to me that needs to be explained is the enormous difference between chimps and human beings. That's what evolutionary science needs to explain and can't explain.

Isn't the most likely explanation that there is common ancestry?

It might be because of common ancestry. That is definitely a possibility to be considered. I'm just not insistent that common ancestry is true. It's a possibility.

Is there some other explanation for genetic relatedness besides common ancestry?

That's a possibility that has to be considered also, that there's a commonality not only between chimps and humans, but among all life. It's a common biochemistry. And thus this might be pointing to a single evolutionary process, or it might be pointing to the responsibility of a single creator.

What is the evidence for intelligent design?

What if the Darwinian mechanism doesn't have the creative power claimed for it? Then something else has to be true. It's two sides of the same coin as I look at it, and that's why I've always devoted my energies to making the skeptical case about Darwinism. Others have evidence of a positive nature—irreducible complexity and complex specified information are part of that.

To understand the positive evidence I think we have to realize that Darwin was writing a long time ago. He didn't understand anything about complex specified information or the irreducible complexity of the cell. In Darwin's day it was thought that cells were simply globs of a kind of jelly-like substance, a protoplasm. So it didn't seem to be very difficult to imagine how you could get a blob of some substance like mud at the bottom of a prehistoric pond, lake, or ocean. But since Darwin's day an enormous amount has been learned about the cell.

This is why my colleague Michael Behe's famous book is titled Darwin's Black Box. The point there is that to Darwin the cell was a black box. It did something, but you didn't know how it did it. So the cell was a black box in Darwin's day, and now it's been opened. Thanks to the work of biochemists and molecular biologists since that time, we know that the cell is so enormously complex that it makes a spaceship or a supercomputer look rather low-tech in comparison. So I think the cell is perhaps the biggest hurdle of all for the Darwinists to get over. How do you get the first cell?

It's not just that if they get the cell then everything else will be easy. But it was thought in Darwin's day that the cell was no problem at all. The only problems came after that. How do you get from cells to complex animals and then to apes, and from apes to human beings? That's the story that he told. Now, I don't think that story will hold water when you look for proof rather than just accept it as an inevitable, logical consequence of a naturalistic philosophy that you're starting out with.

Is intelligent design a science?

I think so. To answer that question I need to go back to the point that I see the scientific question as one of choosing between two hypotheses. One is that you needed intelligence to do the creating that had to be done in the history of life, and the other is that you didn't need it. Then the scientific approach is to decide between these two hypotheses on the basis of evidence and logic. That's what I want to see done. That's why it is a scientific question. If evolution by natural selection is a scientific doctrine, then the critique of that doctrine, and even of the fundamental assumption on which it's based, is a legitimate part of science as well.

Isn't intelligent design just a newer version of creationism?

When people ask me whether this is creationism relabeled, one thing that always occurs to me is that the real creationist organizations are highly critical of intelligent design, because they say it doesn't do the job that is the very essence of creationism. It doesn't defend the Bible from the very first verse. It doesn't defend the Bible at all, and it doesn't even defend Christianity.

It's saying that there's an intelligence, but the intelligence could be natural as well as supernatural. And that if you assume it's supernatural, what the God is—well, we have nothing to say about what kind of God it is. It isn't limited to one particular kind of religion, to Christianity or to a particular kind of Christianity. If you want, it can be the Muslim god.

But if it's a supernatural cause, isn't that outside the realm of science?

It's true that supernatural causes are a subject outside of science. But intelligent versus unintelligent causes is a subject very much within science. For example, forensic scientists and pathologists regularly determine whether a death was due to natural causes or intelligent causes. If somebody dies of a purported heart failure, and then they do an autopsy on the body and find signs of arsenic poisoning, they say this was not a death by natural causes; it was a poisoning. That is perfectly legitimate as a scientific inquiry.

Now, if the intelligent cause turns out to be supernatural, that's a determination that is outside of science. But that you need intelligence is not a determination that's outside of science. It's the regular business of science, like deciding whether a drawing on a cave wall is a painting by prehistoric cavemen or a product of natural erosion and chemistry in the wall.

Are evolution and religious beliefs compatible?

Well, to a large extent it depends on what you mean by evolution. When I speak to audiences about this, I like to say that even the Darwinian theory of evolution is valid up to a point. The problem with the theory of evolution is not that it's altogether wrong, but that it's correct only in a very limited and relatively trivial sphere rather than as the grand creation story that it is made out to be. It's a good theory for how finch beaks vary in size or how disease-causing microorganisms become resistant to antibiotic medicines.

So it's valid within that limited sphere, and that may be important. That's interesting in itself. Scientists are largely interested in details, whereas I'm a different kind of person. I'm interested in the big picture. As a big-picture story, the theory of evolution that we have today is invalid, although some kind of a theory might be valid.

It also depends on what you mean by religious belief. Most of the evolutionary scientists will say, "We're not opposed to religious belief so long as you understand that that's what it is—it's religious belief. When you talk about God, for example, that's something that exists in the human imagination. It's something we study in the department of anthropology or psychology, where we talk about the beliefs that various kinds of people hold. Religious belief is one of those kinds of beliefs. In the university, we don't talk about it in the departments where we are considering what really happened. The beliefs may be important; they may even be beneficial. It's just that they don't reflect reality. They only reflect what's going on in people's heads."

That's the metaphysics of religion and science that is taken for granted in the universities. This is something that may change. One of the things that's so controversial and so hated about the concept of intelligent causes in biology is that it threatens this division of things into naturalism, which deals with how things really are and is called science, and religious belief, which [in their view] is about make-believe in people's heads out of fairy tales and the like.

What would it take to convince you of the theory of evolution by natural selection? That the theory that is out there today is actually true?

I would want to see evidence that the mechanism of random mutation and differential reproduction—that some organisms do more reproducing than others—that this had real creative power. It seems to me that besides the lack of physical or experimental evidence, just logically one would expect that random mutations would never build up biological information. They would tend to tear it down, even if it was already in existence.

Random changes scramble information. They don't increase it or produce it. If you have a word on the Scrabble board, and you take the letters and scramble them, you don't get a better word. You get no word at all; you get nonsense. I see every reason to think that that's what happens with mutations in the cellular machinery.

Is evolution a theory in crisis, as some people say?

I think it is a theory in crisis, but that requires some explanation. The authorities of the evolutionary scientific community would say, "We're not in crisis because we're as determined as ever. We still have a solid phalanx of belief. Yes, we get individual dissenters, but they are quickly closed off and marginalized. They tend to lose their research funds, be considered no longer real scientists anymore." So the community maintains its authority.

The crisis that they have to recognize is that they have failed to convince the public. They assumed that by this time they would have marginalized all the opposition and the public would be convinced. After all, they now had virtual control of the educational machinery from primary school on up through the Ph.D. level to do that. Plus all those documentaries on television and in the movies where the orthodoxy is put forward.

It's understood that if you want to be about science, you have to be supportive of this theory. So that's been going on all these years, and yet the people are not convinced. Why is this? The mandarins of science, the high priests at the university level, will tell you it's because the people are ignorant and prejudiced.

Is that so? That's one of the questions I examined when I first took up the story. Are the people ignorant and prejudiced, or are they seeing something that the experts might have missed? See, it's a wonderful thing being an expert. As an expert, you know a lot that other people don't know. But also in the course of all your expert training, you pick up a worldview and a set of prejudices that you then become completely dependent on in order to continue to be an expert.

I decided that what is happening here is that the public has seen something that the experts don't understand. The public has seen that what they are getting from the evolutionary biologists is, on the one hand, less than science. It is over-enthusiastic claims of great accomplishments that are not supported by real, observational, and experimental evidence. In that sense, it's less than science.

On the other hand, it's much more than science, because it's a cultural philosophy, a worldview that probably belongs in a philosophy course rather than in a science course. I foresee the day when Darwinian evolution will be taught at universities in courses on British intellectual history, and biology will have moved on.

I see it as something like alchemy. It's a precursor to real science. The alchemists must have squealed like crazy when people said you can't really change lead into gold. But it was true that you can't transform lead into gold by a chemical means. So when the alchemic ambitions were given up, then alchemy was able to change into the real science of chemistry. I see that happening as well. I think that biological science will change. It won't vanish. It will just be based on reality and on genuine scientific testing. That's what I see in the future. That's the crisis.

What did you think about the Dover case?

The Dover case, unfortunately, was a train wreck waiting to happen. The problem was basically that we got too much publicity, and people pick that up. You get these people out in the country who are disturbed that something is being presented and taught dogmatically to their children as true. They think that a much more balanced approach should be taken, and they're frustrated that they can't get these schools to do that. They naively believe that their school board has the authority to do what they think ought to be done. So they go to the school board to present something and in fact give the votes to put it over.

What they don't understand is that they are moving into a legal minefield. The theory of evolution is ferociously protected by secularist organizations, with some backing from the courts. So the worst possible construction is going to be put on whatever they do. Very capable lawyers are going to come in to try to make fools out of them and to put every obstacle in the way of changing the dogmatic way in which evolution is presented in some of these schools.

So then they hear this term intelligent design and they say, "Well, okay. If we pick up that language and do it that way, then maybe we can do this. Our school board will do that, and we can accomplish what we want to accomplish." They know then they're going to get sued, that they're a threat. So they get a lawyer.

Unfortunately, the lawyer is not giving them good counsel. He's egging them on, saying, "We'll have a great battle here and we'll win." It's sort of like the dream that people had in the North in the Civil War in the early stages. If we could just have a big battle, then we'd win it and this war would be over, and that's all that we need to do. Just get into one big battle and win it all at once. That's what the lawyer is telling them. So they go ahead, thinking that they're riding a winner, and they create a train wreck. That's what happened there.

As for the judge and the opinion, the problem is that the judge didn't just decide the local case in front of him. He decided that he wanted to become a national figure by deciding the whole question of evolution and creation for the country in one opinion. So he wrote an opinion as big and broad as a starry sky, saying that the notion of intelligence, that one of these two hypotheses, was not eligible for consideration because it was religion and hence by definition not science. So any attempt in that direction was unconstitutional. He is being rewarded for that opinion with all the accolades that the mandarins of science have at their disposal.

Let's turn to your other work. Can you tell me what the "wedge strategy" is?

I'm glad for an opportunity to explain the wedge strategy, because I conceived it. I know it can be made to sound like something sinister and conspiratorial. But the wedge strategy as I have explained it is quite simple and innocent. We need somebody who can get a debate started, and then we need people who have the expertise to answer the questions that come up as the debate gets started. When you use a wedge to split a log, you start with the sharp edge of the wedge and then you gradually push that in until you get the thicker edge to go in, and that's what's actually splits the log.

I thought of it this way with Darwinism. I thought my job is to be the sharp edge, to use my academic credentials and legal abilities to get some hearing for the proposition that there really is something fundamentally wrong with the Darwinian story. It's not just a problem of detail, but rather a fundamental problem that the mechanism has no creative power.

But I can't answer all the questions that arise. So we need other people to form the thick edge of the wedge to take on the questions that do require a scientific expertise. Like a professor of biochemistry, Michael Behe, and a mathematician and philosopher of science, William Demsky. They have to take up other questions that arise and do some of the job that I'm not well-equipped to do after I've got things going with my arguments from logic and evidence. That's what the wedge is.

Is the Wedge Document your work? Did you write it?

I did not, but I did write a book called The Wedge of Truth. And so in that sense, just as I'm in a sense the father of the intelligent-design movement, I'm the father of the wedge concept. In the sense in which I have explained it, that it is a matter of my particular kind of logical arguing expertise at the beginning, to be supplemented and eventually replaced by [the expertise of] people with greater scientific knowledge and competence.

What's the strategy from here? Where does the wedge go from here?

At my rather advanced age I don't claim to take the leadership position in the same sense that I did years ago. It's largely going to depend on other people. In fact, what I am largely doing now is making contacts with people in the educational world. I hope we don't ever get another public schools case here for a very long time. If one comes up, I want to stay away from it.

But I think that the place where the kind of controversies I'm addressing belong is in the universities. That's where I want to take them. And they are being taken there. The professors are finding that these issues come up in their classes, and students think highly of the positions that I've been arguing, or many of them do.

I am in touch constantly with young scholars, including people in Ph.D. programs in biology, who see that there is something wrong with the Darwinian theory and would like to do something about it when they can. They like to talk with me because they don't want to get involved in the traditional creationist movement. They see that as going too far away from the current scientific orthodoxy.

I think they want to do what I set out to do when I first crafted the intelligent-design movement—to come out with a position that was not so enormously different from current orthodoxy that it couldn't be discussed but was different enough that it was really upsetting. In the end, I think I came up with something that was even more upsetting than I thought it was going to be.

People will be the professors of biology in the next generation, the opinion writers, the producers of television programs, and the editorial writers at newspapers. I have a commission to deal in education and not in litigation. We have a group that we call informally the "second wedge," which consists of literary people and writers and artists who discuss the issues of design, of intelligent causes in the history of life, and whether the naturalistic orthodoxy is as solidly based in evidence as it claims to be.

This, I think, may bear great fruit in the future in our culture. The Darwinists may have the federal district judges, or some of them, on their side. But the people are skeptical of what they hear from authority figures, including judges, anyway. I think the goal in the future is to change the intellectual face of the culture so that it isn't the way it was when I first went to college, when we were all taught that to be intelligent implies that you're agnostic.

Now, the universities are still that way by and large. But they aren't that way at the undergraduate level or even the graduate student level. Much is changing, and I'm trying to be a part of that.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

I could go back to the question of the definition of science. That is perhaps more crucial than anything else. I have a view of science that is now disputed by secularist organizations and also by the most powerful organizations of science. I don't think they speak for science. I think they speak for an ideology that is widely held among contemporary scientists. This is the ideology of naturalism. And that is basically a religious position: The cosmos is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be.

That isn't something that is established by data or tested by experiment. It's a fundamentally religious position or an ideology that has grown into science. The opinion of powerful people associated with scientific organizations has become central to its definition. And so they see the whole edifice as being threatened if that definition is called into question.

But I would call it into question. I would say that the proper definition of science is that it is a question of what follows from data and experimental testing. If you cannot test by experiment the claim that natural selection has the kind of immense creative power necessary to produce human beings or even biological cells, then to say that this mechanism can do these wonders is an unscientific statement. It's a statement of personal belief, a statement of philosophy, not a statement of science.

What is at stake?

Well, prestige is not for me. I'm going to be 67 this year, and by the time further developments happen, I expect to have passed on from this world. Things that excited me years ago will no longer be of any concern to me. So that's not it. I think that the world will change, and I think that in these open debates, the truth will eventually win out.

This is more than anything my faith: that given an even chance, the truth will win. If the evolutionary story is the truth, it will eventually win out as its partisans have been predicting that it would all along. It will hold not merely the societies of experts, but it will convince the public. I think that the reason it hasn't been able to convince the public is that it's not the truth. The public will gradually come to understand things better and better. The educational process will get better. We'll start with the truth, and the truth will prevail, whatever it is.

And what is your view of the truth?

My view of the truth is that there is a creator. I don't know how long the creator took, but I think there was a process of creation, and the evolution that has occurred has occurred within the boundaries originally set. That would be my belief as of now. I tend to think that that will prevail, because I think it's the truth. But if it's not the truth, it won't prevail, and it shouldn't.

Interview conducted on April 6, 2007 by Joe McMaster, producer of "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial," and edited by Lauren Aguirre and Peter Tyson, executive editor and editor in chief of NOVA online.

Read the entire article on the NOVA website (new window will open).

Sermon delivered, January 1, 20012.

Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Luke 2:20-23, 40-51; Colossians 2:8-12

Today's Gospel reading from our Sacred Scripture, born out of the Sacred Tradition of the Church as inspired by the Hoy Spirit, comes from St. Luke's 2nd Chapter. [NOTE: I prefer to call Old and New Testaments: Sacred Scripture -meaning writings that are 'sacred'; rather than the word bible which implies Sacred Scripture is 'authoritative in and of itself'- a Protestant notion. In the Orthodoxy we know authority is given to the Church by Christ's sending the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and out of which over centuries some traditions were written and canonized by the Churchⁱ — by the power of the Holy Spirit.]

The reading today tells of two separate historically different incidents detached by 19 verses in St. Luke's Chapter, but however the incidents are spiritually connected. The first incident refers to Christ's circumcision eight days after His Nativity. The second incident discusses an event 12 or so years later when the Holy Family journeyed to the Temple in Jerusalem to observe the Passover Feast (which they did each year as St. Luke informs us).

The spiritual connection between these two historical events St. Theophylact tells us is that God's Commandments to His people in the first Covenant were "given in the law and anyone who transgressed this law, and anyone who transgressed those commandments was under condemnation."ⁱⁱ Jesus was circumcised so that He could show He "fulfilled the law" and remove "condemnation from us". Likewise St. Luke's choice of words to describe the action of Jesus 12 years later: what Jesus did was not opposed to God, at the end of the Passover Feast " when the feast was ended" are the operative words.(Lk 2:43).

Even though Christ's public life, to begin when He reached 30 years of age, had not yet begun, He began to teach those in the Temple. Jesus teaching was authentic, because He was not opposed to the law, but fulfilled the law, and now He could teach all the true meaning of the law.ⁱⁱⁱ The Hebrew torah^iv contains many laws, which Jesus tells us were performed for the sake of the law itself and not in terms of the spirit of how the law should be understood.^v That is to say love of God and neighbor.

To the Galatians (2:19) St. Paul writes: "For I through the law I died to the law, that I might live to God." He tells the Romans (13: 8,10): "Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." What is the authenticity of our lives? Do we fulfill love of God and our neighbor? Do we fulfill the law as given to us by Christ? How many times have we preached from this pulpit, love of God, means being attached to Him in the very depths of our hearts.

What are the works that we must do that follow from Christ's teachings? Such works at the minimum include attending Divine Liturgy each Sunday and Feast-day; not merely confession of sins, but repentance of sins-a metanoia, a change of mind, heart and action not to sin again; frequent daily prayer-the lifting of our minds and hearts to God; a constant remembrance and love of God, and a deep love of neighbor.

Love of neighbor begins at the very least as given in a short summary by St. Paul to the Galatians: "gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law. (5: 23). "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ" (6: 2). This especially means forgiveness of our enemies, starting at the minimum by praying and desiring their salvation.

Keep in mind too Jesus' admonition: "And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return." (Lk 6: 33,35). This is a start to give us the authority to call ourselves true followers of Christ —true Orthodox Christians, God's favor will be upon us. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.

ENDNOTES

ⁱThe Orthodox Church uses the  Septuagint Version of Sacred Scripture the Greek Version used by Jesus in His Temple preaching (i.e. Mk 14: 29: "Daily I was with you in the temple teaching..", contains several books not found in the modern Protestant texts: (1-2 Esdras, Judith, Tobit, 1-4 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch).

ⁱⁱThe Explanation by Blessed Theophylact of the Holy Gospel According to St. Luke. (2004) Chrysostom Press

ⁱⁱⁱThe many Gospel references where Jesus teaches as in Mt 12: 1-8): "At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath; his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, "Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath." He said to them, "Have you not read what David did, when he was hungry, and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are guiltless?" I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, `I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of man is lord of the Sabbath." As Jesus told the Rabbis the true meaning of the law. To their question: "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets." (Mt 22: 36-40)

^ivA List of the 613 Mitzvot (Commandments) www.jewfaq.org/613.htm

^vSt. Mark (7: 7-13) tells us Jesus words:

And in vain they revere Me teaching as precepts the commandments of men.' "For having left the commandment of God, ye keep on holding the tradition of men—dippings of pitchers and cups and many other such like things ye do." And He was saying to them "Ye set at naught altogether the commandment of God, that ye might keep your own tradition. For Moses said , 'Be honoring thy father and thy mother'; and, 'The one who speaketh evil of father or mother, let him come to an end by death.' "But ye say, 'If a man should say to his father or his mother, "Whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me is Corban" ' (that is, a votive gift); "then ye no longer permit him to do anything for his father or for his mother, "because ye invalidated the world of God by your tradition which ye delivered; and many such like things ye do."

Chaplain's Corner
Short essays written for the La Jolla Veteran's Hospital newsletter in La Jolla, California

My January Chaplain's Corner article last year called New Year resolutions a “useless waste of mental and spiritual energy." More than ever, I want to make the same point. However, I want to substitute a more functional alternative: making a commitment. The word ‘commitment’ brings up notions such as a ‘binding’ course of action, allegiance, dedication and loyalty. What better way to start the new year than by re-committing ourselves to respecting the personhood of others by overcoming any ways we have slipped into unthinking habits of rudeness. The word respect derives from the Latin word respicere, which means, “to look back, pay attention to.” In this case, to pay attention in a Godly way to the person with whom you are interacting.

The highest value of what it means to be a person is told to us in Sacred Scripture in the Book of Genesis (1: 26), a book that is sacred to Christians, Hebrews and Moslems alike. We read, "Then God said, "Let us make man according to our image and according to our likeness." The person, therefore, is an icon of God, a consequence of His creative act in making us a finite mirror of His Divinity. Our Eastern Church Fathers would consider the meaning of personhood to be in our relationship with both God and mankind. To make this practical, the more we become committed to respecting others, to really paying attention to them as persons, the more we become like God.

Many in today's secular world have lost the concept of the value of personhood. Abortion, corporate, political and religious institutional corruption, exploitive commercialism, sexploitation abound everywhere. As individuals, we may lack the resources to straightway turn around society and make it more Godly. But all of us, in our personal world, can begin to be more "like" God ourselves. We can immediately begin by being respectful of the person or persons who are around us. A mere first step is overcoming rudeness. That is to say, we can commit and begin relating to others by being kindly and mannerly, by acting “nicely” and “politely.”

By such actions, our souls would start to reflect God's lucent beauty. St. Isaac of Syria tells us: "The following shall serve for you as a luminous sign of your soul's serenity: when, on examining yourself you find yourself filled with compassion for all mankind, and your heart is smitten with pity, and burns as if with fire, on behalf of everyone without distinction." (Brock, 1997). May all have a holy, blessed and Godly New Year.

REFERENCES

Brock, S. (1997). The Wisdom of St. Isaac the Syrian. Fairacres, Oxford, England: SLG Press.

The presentation below was given to the Clergy Retreat of the Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of America, November 08-11, 2011, in Scottsdale, AZ. An in depth discussion of many of the Retreat topics can be found in the articles I have written, which are posted on: Orthodoxy Today [www.orthodoxytoday.org/archive/morelli] and the Antiochian Archdiocese [www.antiochian.org/author/morelli] website.

The high technology, secularist society we live in today poses many challenges to living Christ's teachings, being committed to His Church, and living a Christ-like life family life. Even greater challenges are faced by the successors of the Apostles, the bishops and priests who are called to shepherd Christ’s Church in the modern world. By the grace of the Holy Spirit, may this resource be of some assistance to all called to minister to our communities in Christ.

Date posted: January 1, 2012

Philosophy and Contentment in the Age of Radical Skepticism

Date posted: December 31, 2011

Beware the ‘Rights of Nature’

Date posted: December 31, 2011

What Brings a World Into Being?

Date posted: December 31, 2011

Evolution and the Illusion of Randomness

Date posted: December 28, 2011

Political Discourse and Impugning Motives

Date posted: December 28, 2011

An Upside-Down Family Tree

Date posted: December 26, 2011

The Limits of Secularism

Date posted: December 24, 2011

Christmas Too Commercialized? Bah! Humbug!

Date posted: December 24, 2011

Good Marriage XXIV. Trust: A Cornerstone of a Godly Marriage

"Moreover it is required of stewards that they be foundtrustworthy." (1Cor 4: 2)

"The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain." (Pv 31: 11)

Developmental psychologist Eric Erickson (1964a) conjectures that during infancy the continuity of comforting sensory experiences with adults promotes a sense of trust that serves as  a root for the resolution of the successive challenges the individual will confront over a lifespan. Erickson goes on to suggest that the appropriate proportion of trust over mistrust produces hope. He states, "Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensible virtue inherent in the state of being alive." (Erickson, 1964b).

Erickson's understanding is also very descriptive of a functional marriage. Beck (1988), for example, considers trust one of the three major components of a functional relationship - commitment and loyalty being the others. Beck considers them "a force for stability" that, once developed, "protect[s] the closeness, intimacy, and security of the loving bond."

Beck (1988) goes on to give examples of attitudes or beliefs that indicate basic trust:

• "I can depend on my spouse to guard my best interests."
• "I know that my spouse would not intentionally hurt me."
• "I know that I can depend on my spouse for help in ordinary situations or in an emergency."
• "I know my spouse will be available when I need him or her."
• I can assume good will on the part of my spouse."

COMMITMENT AND LOYALTY: THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF TRUST

I would like to somewhat modify Beck's (1988) model. I suggest that commitment and loyalty, certainly as Beck suggests, are foundational to a good marriage. But they are actually more than that. They themselves are the building blocks, the foundation upon which trust itself is engendered and constructed and, if necessary, re-established. Trust is the cornerstone of this foundation.

If a betrayal has occurred, the couple will eventually have to reassess the reliability of trustworthiness being re-established. Gottman (2011) suggests five criteria that can be used in making this evaluation. I will discuss these criteria later in this article.

The Witness of God's Covenant with His People: The Spiritual Foundation

God's First Great Commitment: The First Covenant

Consider God's commitment to Abram. ". . . I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse; and by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves." (Gen 13: 2-4) Following this commitment by God to Abram and his people, Abram departed to the land of Canaan as God had instructed. When Abram and his family reached Canaan, God made another commitment to Abram:

Then the Lord appeared to Abram, and said, "To your descendants I will give this land." So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. Thence he removed to the mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord. (Gen 18: 7-8)

Later, God made an overwhelming commitment to Abram and the Hebrew people:

When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, "I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly."

Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him, "Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come forth from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you. (Gen 17: 1-7)

Loyalty

God's loyalty to His word can be seen in His interaction with Noah, which preceded even His encounter with Abraham. Because God "saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth." (Gen 6:5) He planned a great flood to destroy all on earth: "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the ground, man and beast and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them." (Gen 6:5) However, God saw that Noah and his family were righteous. God saved them and, true to His word, God told Noah:

"Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark.

"I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth."

And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations:

"I set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds,

"I will remember my covenant which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will look upon it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth." (Gen 9: 9-16)

Many other exchanges and events occurred between God and his people as recorded by Moses in the Book of Genesis. But God's loyalty was attested to by a Philistine, the traditional enemy of the Hebrew people: "Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his army said to Abraham, 'God is with you in all that you do; now therefore swear to me here by God that you will not deal falsely with me or with my offspring or with my posterity, but as I have dealt loyally with you, you will deal with me and with the land where you have sojourned.' And Abraham said, 'I will swear.' (Gen 21: 21-24). God's commitment and loyalty to His people would lead to one of the most dramatic examples of trust in the history of mankind.

Trust

Consider a man and his wife who are 100 years of age, well beyond childbearing age; God tells them they will have a son. The man, Abraham, named his son Isaac. Although he had a previous son by his slave, he truly loved the son, Isaac, born to him by his wife Sarah. Some years later “. . . God tested Abraham, and said to him, 'Abraham!' And he said, 'Here am I.' He said, 'Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.' (Gen 22: 1-2) How much trust in God must Abraham have had to obey His command! As the writer of Genesis tells us: "When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. Then Abraham put forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son." (Gen 22: 9-10) Abraham has proved his trust in God, under almost unimaginable circumstances: willingness to obey God and sacrifice his beloved son. God being the good God, however, speaking to Abraham through an angel, intervened at the last moment:  "'Do not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.'" (Gen 22: 12)

God's Second Great Commitment: The New Covenant

The Prophet Isaiah tells us of God's commitment to His people of a new covenant:

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. He shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good.

For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. . . .(Is 7: 14-16)

. . . .For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder, and his name will be called "Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David, and over his kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and for evermore. (Is 9: 6-7)

Morelli (2010) summarizes what other Old Testament Holy Spirit inspired writers told us about the God's commitment to send the Messiah:ⁱ

The righteous prophets of the Old Covenant tell us that the Messiah will come from the house of David. Ezekiel, during the days of the fall of Jerusalem, spoke of the abiding presence of God. He tells of the coming of the Messiah to protect His people for all ages: "And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them; I, the Lord, have spoken." (Ez 34: 23-24) Ezekiel (37: 24) goes on to say: "My servant David shall be king over them; and they shall all have one shepherd. They shall follow my ordinances and be careful to observe my statutes." Several hundred years later Ezra prophesizes: "this is the Messiah whom the Most High has kept until the end of days, who will arise from the posterity of David, and will come and speak to them; he will denounce them for their ungodliness and for their wickedness, and will cast up before them their contemptuous dealings." (4 Ezra 12: 32)

God's loyalty

God's loyalty in sending His Son, Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ, the Messiah, precisely as prophesied by Isaiah, quoted above, was attested to by St. Matthew:

Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. . . . "you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: "Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel" (which means, God with us). (Mt 1: 18 21-23)

Of which the angels sang: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased!" (Lk 2: 14) God was not only true to his commitment, that is to say loyal, He also confirmed the great gift of Divinity that He was giving to mankind.

God testifies by His own Word

St. Luke tells us of the Theophany, the first manifestation of the Divinity of the Messiah, the God-Man: ". . . when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form, as a dove, and a voice came from heaven, 'Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased.'" (2: 21-22) God's loyalty is so beautifully expressed liturgically by the Apolytikion of the Feast of the Theophany:

When Thou, O Lord, wast baptized in the Jordan, worship of the Trinity wast made manifest; for the voice of the Father bore witness to Thee, calling Thee His beloved Son. And the Spirit in the form of a dove confirmed the truth of His word. O Christ our God, Who hath appeared and enlightened the world, glory to Thee.

Jesus proclaims who He truly is

However, Jesus Himself proclaims that He is the promised and expected savior of the Hebrew people. It was to the Samaritan woman, the traditional enemy of the Jews,ⁱⁱ that Jesus, Himself, revealed Himself as the expected Messiah.

But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him.

God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."

The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ); when he comes, he will show us all things." Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am he." (Jn 4: 23-26)

The Apostles attest to God's loyalty

That God was true to his Word and sent His Son was attested to by Simon-Peter and the Apostles:

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do men say that the Son of man is?" He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter replied, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven." (Mt 16: 13, 15-17)

The implications of God's loyalty

The depth of Christ’s loyalty to His people is a model for the backbone of an Orthodox Christian Marriage. In this regard we can consider the words of St. Paul.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth. . . . (Phil 2: 5-10)

Christ’s emptying Himself of His Divinity for our salvation is described in the imagery used by St. John the Baptist as that of the bridegroom and his bride: "He who has the bride is the bridegroom; the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice; therefore this joy of mine is now full." (Jn 3: 29)

It can easily be seen that God Himself, as even His people of both the Old and New Covenants, esteemed very highly that commitment and loyalty which engender trust.

Marital Infidelity: the greatest threat to Loyalty, Commitment and Trust

Infidelity-adultery is the greatest threat to the relationship between husband and wife in the blessed marriage by the Holy Mystery of Matrimony in the Orthodox Church. It undermines the very foundation of marriage itself, the loyalty and commitment of the spouses to each other, in emulation of God's action with His people, as well as the ensuing trust that must emerge between them. Beck (1988) points out that, psychologically, "infidelity is a direct attack on the relationship itself and a mockery of the supposed marital commitment." It should be noted that infidelity-adultery need not be limited to a sexual liaison. Many couples perceive a close personal relationship between their spouse and a member of the opposite sex to be 'adulterous.' However, even infidelity need not be a marriage breaker if trust can be cultivated and reestablished (Snyder, Baucom & Gordon, 2008). As Gottman (2011) points out, trust allows a marital relationship to be safe and thereby fosters "mutual nurturance and moral responsibility for building a life together." This might be phrased as fostering mutual interdependence.

Psychological Interventions for Trust Building

Emotional Attunement

Cognitive psychologists have emphasized the importance of interpretation and perception of events in activating our emotional reactions to them, such as anger, anxiety, depression or happiness (Morelli, 2006a). In an interpersonal relationship such as marriage, correct interpretation of the motives, thinking and feelings of one's spouse is critical. Frequently, however, our own cognitive distortions, that is to say thinking errors prevent accuracy. An outline of these cognitive distortions includes (Beck, 1995):

• Selective Abstraction is focusing on one event while excluding others. "Jack," an engineer, selectively focuses on a reprimand he just received from his wife, while ignoring the praise he received the previous week from a project he did that she appreciated as "Well done." This irrational perception led him to an angry response.
• Arbitrary Inference is drawing a conclusion unwarranted by the facts in an ambiguous situation. Jack, the same patient mentioned above, concludes that his wife will consider his next endeavor to be unsatisfactory. This leads him to depression.
• Personalization is blaming yourself for an event you are not responsible for, or concluding that it is directed to you personally. Another patient, "Linda," became depressed when, during a family discussion, one of her children said: "Well, one of my parents hates me." She immediately "personalized" the statement with no evidence that her child was directing it at her, nor did she inquire about the events that invited the child's comments.
• Polarization is perceiving or interpreting events in all-or-nothing terms. "Cynthia," another patient of mine, was told by her daughter, "You don't know how to treat children." She "polarized" events into two categories, good mother/bad mother. Her child's statement fell into the bad-mother pole. She failed to see that all events can be graded on a continuum between two poles. Just because she did not fulfill her child's request surely does not make her a "bad' mother.
• Generalization is the tendency to see things in always-or-never categories. "Mary" became depressed during marital therapy when she irrationally concluded that her husband will "never" change and will "always" be the same. Her dysphoria led to a self-defeating pattern of behavior which further distanced her and her husband and set her up for the very thing she did not want: a poorer marriage.
• Demanding Expectations are beliefs that there are laws or rules that have to be obeyed. "Kim" came into treatment because she was depressed over her husband disagreeing with her. She irrationally believed that there is a "law in the universe" that says that husbands should always go along with what their wives suggest and, if not, she has the right to get upset. She did not see that God "asks" us to obey Him. He gave us free will. Christ Himself respected the free will of the creatures He created, as shown by the gentleness of His admonitions. Like Christ, spouses should prefer and constructively work toward reasonable understanding of each other’s motives. Preferences should be substituted for demands.
• Catastrophizing is the perception that something is more than 100% bad, terrible or awful. "Kim" erroneously believes her husband's disagreeing with her is the "end of the world." With cognitive intervention she would discover that on a scale of problems she might have with her husband, differing viewpoints would be evaluated as decidedly low, surely not a catastrophe.
• Emotional Reasoning is the judgment that one's feelings are facts. Sandy has a "feeling" that his wife is having an affair. When asked how he knows this, he responds that his "feelings are always right." He fails to distinguish a feeling as real, which it is, versus a feeling proving something, which is impossible. For example, I tell patients, "No matter how strongly some people 'felt' during the time of Christopher Columbus that the world was flat, it did not make it so."

The benefit of the ability to challenge and replace cognitive distortions is that it allows marital relationships to move on to build what Gottman (1999) calls "The Sound Relationship House." However, in a later book (Gottman, 2011) he is very emphatic that an element is missing from the original Sound Relationship House Theory. That element is trust. He points out that ". . . knowing about the processes that control trust and betrayal therefore deepens the levels of the Sound Relationship House Theory."

Attunement Building

Gottman (2011) points out that the big trust question is "Are you there for me." According to this model, the processes to attain trust include being emotionally aware, being able to turn toward the emotion, being tolerant of emotional experience, understanding the emotion, non-defensive listening to the emotion and the thinking processes accompanying the emotion, and empathy.

Awareness involves acceptance of emotions without blame or accusation, both for oneself and one's spouse, and adapting to the emotion. Gottman gives the example of a spouse who, being aware of their partner’s emotional sensitivity to criticism, would adjust by "softening the way they raised an issue."

Turning toward emotion involves focusing on the needs of one's spouse and not what they do not need. A 'speaking spouse' may convey to their wife or husband what they are feeling and in behavioral terms what they would like: "I would really like it if we could spend Saturday afternoons doing something together."

Tolerance involves acceptance of thinking-perception and feeling differences between spouses. This factor is related to the cognitive distortion of personalization mentioned above: concluding that an event is directed to one personally (Morelli, 2005b). Cultivating tolerance means challenging and restructuring personalization cognitions and substituting a rational cognition: "Just because we disagree does not mean either of our viewpoints do not have value."

Non-defensive listening involves letting one's spouse uninterruptedly tell their feelings and viewpoints before communicating ones’ own feelings and viewpoints. Doing this communicates respect for one's spouse and is likely to facilitate reciprocal listening and tolerance of each other’s differences.

Empathy involves thinking and feeling the way one's spouse is thinking and feeling. Being aware of one's spouse’s distress, stressors and physical and/or emotional pains fosters understanding and ameliorates anger, and thus promotes fruitful communication.

"...be wise asserpents."(Mt 10: 16)

Intention vs. action

Who has not heard the proverb: The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Actually this adage is thought to have originated with Saint Bernard of Clairvaux who framed it as: "Hell is full of good wishes and desires." (Ammer, 1997) The meaning is clear. At times people have good intentions, but these are never carried out. It has been discussed above how commitment and loyalty are the building blocks of trust. It is one thing to say one is committed and loyal to one's spouse; it is another thing to actually be committed and loyal in heart, mind and behavior.

In my pastoral and clinical experience I have encountered many 'good intentioned' individuals who did not have a metanoia of heart, mind and behavior. Many an adulterer, alcoholic, drug addict, and fornicator have promised, with sincerity (or insincerity) to change their ways, from the "bottom of their hearts," but have unintentionally or intentionally failed at the task. The most egregious example of an intentionally failed marital commitment and loyalty is one I encountered in a clinical-pastoral setting some years ago. A young man came for counseling for a marital problem. He said his wife had discovered he was having an affair and he agreed he would attend counseling. I asked him his psychotherapy goals and objectives. He responded, "As long as I am in 'treatment' my wife will be happy and I can continue to have a girlfriend too." I queried, "You mean you don't want to end the infidelity?" "No," (he answered) "I want to stay married and have my girlfriend."

When trust between spouses cannot be established, a condition of abuse is established. This abuse is a betrayal of the marital promise of commitment, loyalty and fidelity. Abuse categories include withdrawal of affection, displaying disrespect, deception, and sexual infidelity, and can escalate into the psychological (e.g. belittling, name calling, threats of beating), and even, in extreme cases, the actual carrying out of physical violence.ⁱⁱⁱ (c.f. Morelli, 2005c)

The ideals and measure of trust

What is trustworthy behavior? How can trustworthy behavior be described? Gottman (2011) provides a list for evaluating the trustworthiness of one's spouse as I mentioned above. However, I want to point out that these criteria are more than just measures of trust, they can also serve as goals to guide the interpersonal interaction between spouses:

• Honesty – The spouses do not engage in deceptive behavior, do not lead separate lives. Lies are not told.
• Transparency - The everyday life of the husband and wife is an "open book" to each other. They do not hold secrets from each other. They know or know about each other's family, friends, acquaintances and co-workers. The couple shares their feelings and needs, especially problems they are confronting and their life-goals. They are spontaneous and forthcoming in answering each other’s questions.
• Accountability - The spouses do all they can to keep the promises they have made to one another. They give their spouse relevant and accurate information regarding important interpersonal and/or financial actions. Vague answers invite suspicion. Behavioral pinpointing (Morelli, 2005a) should guide accountability responses: e.g., what was said, done, when and where.
• Ethics - Each of the marital couple have witnessed displays of good ethical behavior by their spouse. That is to say, they have witnessed fair, just and even generous actions by their spouse in terms of dealing with others and/or business transactions.
• Alliance - Each spouse knows the other is on their side, even under social pressure from others. Is not focused on 'self-interest' or pleasing others. and has their interest at heart.

Some behavioral indices of untrustworthiness and trustworthiness.

Tabares (2006) provides some possible behavioral characteristics of those spouses who are trustworthy or untrustworthy. It should be kept in mind, however, that some of these behaviors may occasionally be associated with other factors, such as being distracted, or feeling ill, being momentarily occupied in an important task, rather than being signs of being untrustworthy or trustworthy. In order to avoid making the cognitive distortion of arbitrary inference (also called mind-reading) that I discussed above, the spouse should consider their initial interpretation to be a hypothesis, or guess, that has to be investigated. He or she may ask a question of their partner, such as: "Jack, are you listening to me, my concern is important?" "Jill, my concern is not a laughing matter; it is important to me; please tell me why you are mocking me?" If these patterns continue, however, especially when talking over the ideals and measures of trust (as I discussed above), professional counseling from a licensed scientifically trained mental health practitioner should be sought. Ideally, the practitioner should be a committed, devout Orthodox-Catholic Christian. At the very least, the practitioner should respect the values and use the spouses’ commitment to Christ in the therapeutic process.(Morelli, 2006a)

Behaviors that may be associated with untrustworthiness in the listening spouse include: lack of eye contact, lack of humor and appropriate laughter, no indication of attending by absence of acknowledgement phonemes such as "hmm," or non-verbal response such as nodding one's head. Behaviors that may be associated with untrustworthiness in the communicating spouse include: speaking while teasing or engaging in mocking humor or sarcasm,' accusing in generalizations (also a cognitive distortion I discussed previously in this paper,) such as using phrases as "you always" or "you will never."

Behaviors that may be associated with trustworthiness on the part of the listener are: maintaining eye contact, using favorable humor, verbal and nonverbal response, being affectionate, animated and energetic.

Speakers’ behavior that may be associated with trustworthiness include: being favorable and affectionate in tone and content in speech, couching complaints in a respectful and "softened" tone, using behavioral pinpointing in describing their spouse’s favorable characteristics.

The virtue of hope

All Orthodox Christians, by their Holy Baptism, are made members of the Royal Priesthood of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ. As St. Peter (1Pt 2: 9-10) tells us:

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were no people but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy.

As God's people we are all to develop virtue. For those crowned in glory and honor in the Orthodox Marriage Service the virtue of hope is especially applicable. Consider the words of St. Maximus the Confessor (Philokalia II):

Faith is the foundation of what comes after it, namely hope and love, since it provides a firm basis for truth. Hope is the strength of the two pre-eminent gifts of love and faith, since hope gives us glimpses both of that in which we believe and of that for which we long, and teaches us to make our way towards our goal.

The married are not wrong to hope for the fulfillment of the ideals of Godly marriage. (Morelli, 2008). During the Marriage Service the priest prays:

. . . remember O Lord our God, thy servants. . .and bless them. Grant them fair children and concord of soul and body; exalt them like the cedars of Lebanon, like a luxuriant vine, that, having sufficiency in all things they may abound in every work that is good and acceptable unto thee.

The virtue of hope can arouse the married couple to actions both psychological and spiritual that will motivate them toward working at fulfilling their marital commitment, being loyal to one another, growing in trust and eventually attaining eternal life in God. The words of St. Peter of Damaskos on the virtue of hope can readily be applied to a couple in a Godly marriage (Philokalia III):

They [both] look forward with hope, laboring with joy. Outwardly they sacrifice immediate advantages, but in reality, even if they forfeit what they sacrifice, through their patient endurance they gain what is of far greater value.

The operative word in St. Peter's teaching is laboring. A Godly marriage, maintaining and if necessary repairing marital commitment and loyalty which is the foundation of trust, requires hard work (labor), prayer, and being united to Christ through sincere, total dedication and participation in His Church. In the popular adage: “Work as if all depends on you, pray as if all depends on God.” How important it is for all in Christ to reflect on the words of St. James, the true origin of this proverb:

What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he hasfaith but has not works? Can hisfaith save him? Sofaithby itself, if it has no works, is dead. But some one will say, "You havefaithand I have works." Show me yourfaithapart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith." (Jas 2: 14,17-18)

REFERENCES

Ammer, C. (1997). The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Beck, A.T. (1988). Love is Never Enough. NY: Harper and Rowe.

Erickson, E.H. (1964a). Childhood and Society. NY: Norton.

Erickson, E.H. 1964b). Insight and Responsibility. NY: Norton.

Gottman, J.M. (1999). The Marriage Clinic. NY: Norton.

Gottman, J.M. (2011). The Science of Trust. NY: Norton.

Morelli, G. (2005a, September 17). Smart Parenting Part 1. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles5/MorelliParenting.php

Morelli, G. (2005b, October 14). The Beast of Anger. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles5/MorelliAnger.php.

Morelli, G. (2005c December 04) Abuse: Some Pastoral And Clinical Considerations. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/abuse-some-pastoral-and-clinical-considerations

Morelli, G. (2006a, March 6). Asceticism and Psychology in the Modern World. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles6/MorelliMonasticism.php.

Morelli, G (2006b, May 08). Orthodoxy And The Science Of Psychology. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles6/MorelliOrthodoxPsychology.php.

Morelli, G. (2008, July, 8). Good Marriage XIII: The Theology of Marriage and Sexuality. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles8/Morelli-Smart%20Marriage-XIII-The-Theology-of-Marriage-and-Sexuality.php.

Morelli, G. (2010, November 25). The Ethos of Orthodox Catechesis.  www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/morelli-the-ethos-of-orthodox-catechesis.

Palmer, G.E.H., Sherrard, P. & Ware, K. (1981). The Philokalia, Volume 2: The Complete Text; Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain & St. Makarios of Corinth. London: Faber and Faber.

Palmer, G.E.H., Sherrard, P. & Ware, K. (Eds.). (1986). The Philokalia, Volume 3: The Complete Text; Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain & St. Makarios of Corinth. London: Faber and Faber.

Snyder, D.K., Baucom, D.H. & Gordon, K.C. (2008). An integrative approach to treating infidelity. The Family Journal, 16, 300-3007.

Tabares, A. (2006). Praise and Complain Coding System. Seattle, WA: University of Washington and the Relationship Research Institute.

ENDNOTES

i For a more complete review of the connection between God's commitment and loyalty to His people of the Old and New Covenant see: Morelli, G. (2010, November 25). The Ethos of Orthodox Catechesis. www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/morelli-the-ethos-of-orthodox-catechesis.

ii The Samaritans were a mix of some ancient Hebrew tribes and pagan peoples. The fact that Jesus revealed Himself as the Messiah to a Samaritan is considered to be His proclaiming that His Messiah-ship, His New and eternal Covenant, is for all mankind, not just the Hebrew people.

iii Abuse falls into four categories:

• Physical, (hitting, battering, etc.);
• Sexual, (forcible intercourse, inappropriate touching, glancing, language, etc.);
• Psychological (calling someone by demeaning terms: "You idiot; loser" [these are actually mild; often it’s far worse];
• Neglect (legally denying, food, shelter, education, and necessary care.

Spiritually, each of these categories is different in terms of sin, of how they "miss the mark" or of how they indicate an "illness of the soul." Both perpetrator and victim should seek counseling from their parish priest or spiritual father or mother.

Morally, referral to appropriate psychological care is the very least that should be done by all Christians. In the most serious cases, such as a credible death threat, an immediate call to police and/or emergency services would be warranted. Those who are mandated reporters under law, such as physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, marriage and family therapists and others, must follow their state or other governmental laws and report the abuse to the designated authorities (and, under certain circumstances, to the potential victim).

Date posted: December 4, 2011

Remembrance of God

Date posted: December 5, 2011

A European Victory for Ethical Stem Cell Research

Date posted: November 9, 2011

Christ: Our Model for Forgiveness

Ahe presentation below was given to the Orthodox Peace Fellowship [an endorsed organization  of the Assembly of Canonical  Orthodox Bishops of America] Annual Meeting, held in Madison, Wisconsin on September 16-18 2011. I have consistently written on forgiveness as central to the teachings and practice of Christ Himself and the necessity  of our emulation of this forgiveness to bring peace to those around us and achieve our own sanctification.

These articles supply the substantive content  and background to accompany this presentation. Parish priests catechists, and all of the Royal Priesthood of Christ by their Holy Baptism may find this PowerPoint presentation with the relevant articles useful in giving workshops or leading discussion groups on this critical issue that confronts committed Orthodox Christians in  today's non-Christian violent vengeance and retribution centered world.

Christ: Our Model for Forgiveness

View more presentations from AntiochianArchdiocese.

Date posted: November 5, 2011

Overcoming Bitterness

As we go on in life unfortunate things happen to us. Psychologist Albert Ellis (1962) described our reaction to such events this way: "we think. . . it is awful and catastrophic when things are not the way one would very much like them to be." Frequently individuals blame themselves for these damaging setbacks and outcomes of life and they become bitter in the process.

When untoward events occur, when individuals have done something that has produced an adverse effect, we should first determine if the circumstance can or cannot be changed. If it can be changed, then we can strive to improve, change or eradicate it. If it cannot be changed ,one should, in Ellis's terms, "philosophically accept or resign himself to their existence." Individuals suffering from bitterness could also focus on aspirations and goals that are attainable, and that would provide greater chance of success.

However, in dealing with the trials and tribulations of life and the ensuing bitterness, I strongly suggest a leap beyond Ellis; we should spiritualize our encounter with such happenings and, if relevant, the people who caused the adverse events to happen. Solomon, the writer of the Book of Proverbs, understood this: "The way of remembering wrongs is unto death". (Pv 12: 31). Spiritualizing these encounters requires patient re-framing of their meaning in our lives. "A longsuffering [patient] man is patient in endurance. But the fainthearted man is strongly without endurance." (Pv 14: 30).

The effects of the spiritual healing of the bitterness that results from encountering life's difficulties are described by our Eastern Church Father St. Isaac of Syria: "A time of trial is beneficial to everyone. . .the lax so they may be preserved from harm; those spiritually asleep, so that they may prepare themselves for watchfulness, those far from God, so that they may approach Him. . . ." As St. Paul told the Hebrews in his Epistle (12: 15), "See to it that no one fail to obtain the grace of God; that no "root of bitterness" spring up and cause trouble, and by it the many become defiled. . . ."

For many, the next couple of months are a time filled with the hustle and flurry of commercial, social and family events. Let us also set aside some time for spiritual reflection - focusing on our blessings rather than on the catastrophes that may have beset us. Overcoming our own bitterness can be a first step in bringing peace on earth to men of good will. 

REFERENCES

Ellis, A. (1962). Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy : A Comprehensive Method of Treating Human Disturbances : Revised and Updated. Secaucus NJ: Lyle Stuart.

Date posted: November 5, 2011

The Missing Link: The Coessential Nature of Science and Faith

The relationship between science and religion has been debated for centuries and it's not going to end anytime soon. But what could possibly be left to say about it? As a beginning scientist and Orthodox Christian, I think the debate continues because science is related to religion – especially Christianity — a lot more than we think. We need to study that relationship not only to understand science better but also religion. It will also reveal the paradoxical nature of Orthodox Christianity.

At the outset, an important distinction needs to be drawn: science in this essay refers to the pure sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, and physics) that deal with empirical explanations of natural phenomena. This is different than the applied sciences (e.g., engineering, medicine, and pharmacology) which seek to provide models for natural phenomena for the creation of new technologies. More simply, in this context science refers to technical fields that ask the question of why. The ethics surrounding new applications of scientific technology (e.g., regenerative medicine, embryonic stem cells, or organ transplants) will not be addressed.

In popular discourse three camps on the relationship between science and Christianity have emerged: 1) atheists who argue science is as far removed from religion as the east is from the west; 2) liberal Christian apologists who attempt to show through simplistic reductions of fundamental theology the two are easily reconciled; 3) hard-line evangelicals who assert that science refutes Christian beliefs and should be discouraged.

On the surface all three stances appear unrelated. On closer inspection we see that they all share this assumption in common: that science and religion are discrete entities without shared origin or inherent connection. It creates a kind of Mexican stand-off where each camp has their guns drawn in a conflict where they are actually united in mutually reinforcing ideas.

But is their shared assumption correct? Is science as unrelated to religion (and religion to science) as the atheist or skeptical Christian apologists believe? I would disagree.

From Genesis we learn that God in His infinite wisdom and love for us His lowly creatures gave us the gift of free will. This ability to choose is extraordinarily powerful and is chief among our traits which delineates us from all other animal life. Furthermore, this free will gives rise to the idea that as humans we have the ability to selectively modulate physical objects and to observe some subsequent effect.

This is the basis of empirical science: manipulation of some independent variable and measurement of some response in a dependent variable. We are also able to create mathematical equations of the relationship between these two variables, giving us some ability to describe a phenomenon. With this logic it is reasonable to say that the gift of free will gives rise to the fundamental principle of empiricism. This is the link between the two entities which are commonly discretized. In practice, many Christian (Orthodox and not) scientists will testify that an intensive study of the sciences within the context of theology can be a source of inspiration and insight. However, these testimonials are often trivial examples of God’s fingerprint. Beyond this, there are examples of phenomena which do more than simply prove the existence of a divine creative force, rather they serve as powerful illustrations of Christian theology. We will examine two such instances (a third examples follows at the end of this essay). In each case, we will avoid an exhaustive analysis of scientific theory, but present only core ideas.

Cellular Genetics Facilitates the Understanding of Christ’s Relationship with the Church

The first illustration is drawn from the field of cell biology. Orthodoxy teaches that all the members of the temporally and spatially universal Church compose the body of the Church with Christ as the figurative head. Moreover we believe that every local church and its members compose and are they themselves composed of the Church. That is to say that every parish in the world is in full participation with the saints, the persons of the Trinity, and every other Orthodox church and its local members. This statement presents a logical Möbius strip. How can something both contain the whole and compose the whole, especially when each component carries out a unique function?

Through examining the underlying genetics of the human body one can gain a better appreciation for this paradox. Our human bodies in their most reduced sense can be understood as a collection of trillions of cells. Each of these cells carries out a unique function, and among cell types there can be a great variation in structure. Together these cells compose the whole of the body. Classical biology teaches that each cell also contains a nucleus which dictates cellular structure and function. Each nucleus not only contains the genetic information necessary to carry out unique processes, but it also possesses all of the genetic information necessary to create a whole human body. No matter what type of cell or its function, every cell contains the information to create the body which it composes. Individually each cell contains the whole.

What a great and marvelous mystery! The body of Christ is composed of units which contain that which they compose as do our physical bodies made in Christ’s image and likeness. Without studying science and its discoveries a deeper understanding of this revelation is lost to mankind.

Wave-Particle Duality Illuminates the Nature of Christ

One of the fundamental teachings of the Orthodox Church that has been challenged even since the early days of the faith, is that of Christ’s nature. As Orthodox we believe that the person of Christ is fully God and fully man. This is quite a confusing principle of our faith as it presents a paradox which is difficult for our feeble minds to reconcile. It is in fact so confusing that people like Nestor, Arius, and the Monophysites ventured into heresy trying to explain how such a contradiction can exist. How is it that Christ can be fully God and fully man?

In the world of science there was a similar paradox that was debated for centuries, the nature of light. Some argued that light was composed of particles (Newton) while others asserted that light was composed of waves (Huygens). In the early 20th century experiments by Maxwell, Planck, and Einstein showed that in fact light behaves both as a particle and a wave. We cannot say that is partially one or the other, it is in fact fully a particle and fully a wave. This fundamental paradox in science has yet to be explained.

In John Christ says, “I am the light of the world.” How extraordinary that both theologically and physically light has a paradoxical dual nature! This key concept of quantum physics helps us understand a key concept in Christology.

In conclusion, empiricism and science are gifts from God by way of our free will. The two fields are linked and help to support one another. By studying the natural sciences one can gain a deeper appreciation of complex Christian theology. Orthodox persons should be encouraged to learn more about science and to pursue scientific careers. Through science we gain a new appreciation of our faith but we can also develop important critical thinking skills that allow us to ask deeper questions about the mysteries of Orthodoxy.

A Third Example

Let us turn to the field of mathematics for another illustration. Orthodox theology teaches us that God and His Kingdom exist outside of our concept of time and space. In God’s Kingdom there is no beginning or end, infinity is occurring in an infinitely small period of time, for all infinity¹. However, we also see in the texts of Orthodox services and in the teachings of the Fathers that through the Divine Liturgy we can experience God’s Kingdom now. But how is it possible that we can participate in something beyond our physical comprehension of space-time?

In mathematics the concept of n-dimensional hypercubes exists. We are familiar with n-dimensional hypercubes for n = 0, 1, 2, 3. They are the point, line, square, and cube, respectively. However, there also exist hypercubes of higher dimensions for which we have no physical corollary₂. Each increasing dimension leads to a new object with a new name (n=4 is termed a tesseract³), but each higher dimensional object is itself composed of objects from lower dimensions. For example, a 3-D cube is composed of 8 points (n = 0), 12 lines (n = 1), and 6 squares (n = 3).

Let us suppose that God’s Kingdom exists as a hypercube of infinite dimensions. We cannot describe it, quantify it, or measure it, yet even an infinite dimension object must itself also contain objects of lower dimensions. As humans we exist in a 3 dimensional world and can interact with other 3 dimensional objects. Therefore we participate in God’s Kingdom through our everyday existence since an infinite dimensional hypercube must contain within it an infinite number of objects from lesser dimensions. Beyond this we can understand contemporaneous participation in God’s Kingdom (as achieved by various holy persons) as the ability of our soul, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, to participate in the infinite dimensions of God. Through this better understanding of mathematics we arrive at a useful illustration for understanding our created relationship with God.

ENDNOTES

1. The fact that as humans we can conceptualize and name infinity yet never comprehend it is itself an illustration of our relationship with God.
2. The proponents of string theory and other untenable theories try to assign these higher dimensions physical corollaries in an attempt to remove the need for God in the creation of the universe. This venal understanding of higher dimensions should not be inferred.
3. Time is frequently attributed to be the 4th dimension, however this is purely arbitrary. Readers of Madelaine L’Engle will appreciate the term tesseract and its connection to a real mathematical concept.

Nicholas Metrakos graduated from the University of South Carolina Honors College with a degree in Biomedical Engineering. He will begin his PhD in Bioengineering in the fall. He works as a public relations specialist and research assistant at USC. His research interests include microfluidics and lab-on-a-chip design.

Date posted: October 17, 2011

Free Market Sweden, Social Democratic America

"Sweden" isn't the first word that normally crosses our minds when we hear the expression "free market." But if President Obama, Paul Krugman, Warren Buffett, and other progressives want to find ways out of America's seemingly-intractable economic crisis, they might consider looking to the country once viewed as the very model of a modern Social Democracy.

They're likely to be surprised — and probably appalled — by what they discover. For while America has opted for more deficit-spending, bailouts, socialized medicine, easy money, failed state-subsidized Solyndra-like green businesses, "job-plans," and thus-far unsuccessful efforts to raise taxes, Sweden has been quietly turning social democracy into a museum-piece.

No one will be surprised to learn that Sweden was among the first European countries to create a modern welfare state. Between 1911 and 1914, Karl Staaff's Liberal government introduced some of Europe's first national pension and insurance schemes. Over time, additional programs were added.

But two things distinguished Sweden's welfare state from the very beginning. First, Sweden's progressives cleverly marketed their ideas as a way of realizing what they called a folkhemmet (people's home). The emphasis was upon realizing a once-overwhelmingly peasant society's traditional values in a context of industrialization. This helped the Social Democrat governments that ruled Sweden between 1932 and 1976 avoid being labeled as soft-Marxists in a country deeply wary of an expansionist Soviet Union.

The second distinguishing feature was Sweden's vision of state-provided social protection as a right. This led to successive governments insisting upon universal coverage and the costs being covered by general taxation.

It took several decades, but the relentless logic of these commitments eventually eroded the Swedish economy's competitiveness. The situation was worsened by the decision of governments in the 1970s to hasten Sweden's long march towards the Social Democratic nirvana. This included expanding welfare programs, nationalizing many industries, expanding and deepening regulation, and — of course — increasing taxation to punitive levels to pay for it all.

Over the next twenty years, the Swedish dream turned decidedly nightmarish. The Swedish parliamentarian Johnny Munkhammar points out that "In 1970, Sweden had the world's fourth-highest GDP per capita. By 1990, it had fallen 13 positions. In those 20 years, real wages in Sweden increased by only one percentage point." So much for helping "the workers."

Facing severe economic stagnation, Sweden began implementing several rather un-social democratic measures in the early 1990s. This included curtaining its public sector deficit and reducing marginal tax-rates and levels of state ownership. Another change involved allowing private retirement schemes, a development that was accompanied by the state contributing less to pensions.

These reforms, however, proved insufficient. In the early 2000s, according to James Bartholomew, author of the best-selling The Welfare State We're In (2006), more than one in five Swedes of working-age was receiving some type of benefit. Over 20 percent of the same demographic of Swedes was effectively working "off-the-books" or less than they preferred. Sweden's tax structure even made it financially advantageous for many to stay on the dole instead of getting a job.

But with a non-Social Democrat coalition government's election in 2006, Sweden's reform agenda resumed. On the revenue side, property taxes were scaled back. Income-tax credits allowing larger numbers of middle and lower-income people to keep more of their incomes were introduced.

To be fair, the path to tax reform was paved here by the Social Democrats. In 2005, they simply abolished — yes, that's right, abolished — inheritance taxes.

But liberalization wasn't limited to taxation. Sweden's new government accelerated privatizations of once-state owned businesses. It also permitted private providers to enter the healthcare market, thereby introducing competition into what had been one of the world's most socialized medical systems. Industries such as taxis and trains were deregulated. State education and electricity monopolies were ended by the introduction of private competition. Even Swedish agricultural prices are now determined by the market. Finally, unemployment benefits were reformed so that the longer most people stayed on benefits, the less they received.

So what were the effects of all these changes? The story is to be found in the numbers. Unemployment levels fell dramatically from the 10 percent figure of the mid-1990s. Budget-wise, Sweden started running surpluses instead of deficits. The country's gross public debt declined from a 1994 figure of 78 percent to 35 percent in 2010. Sweden also weathered the Great Recession far better than most other EU states. Sweden's 2010 growth-rate was 5.5 percent. By comparison, America's was 2.7 percent.

Of course Sweden's story is far from perfect. Approximately, one-third of working Swedes today are civil servants. Some of the benefits of tax reform have been blunted by Sweden's embrace of carbon taxes since the early 1990s. That partly reflects the extent to which many Swedes are in thrall to contemporary Western Europe's fastest growing religion — environmentalism.

High unemployment also persists among immigrants and young Swedes (25.9 percent amongst 15-25 year olds). This owes much, Bartholomew observes, to "the high minimum wage imposed on the various industries by the still-powerful unions. Those who cannot command a good wage are not allowed to work for a lower one." On the income side, average Swedish wage-earners in 2009 still took home less than 50 percent of what they cost their employer. The equivalent figure for Britain was 67 percent.

It hardly need be said that the differences between Sweden and the United States are enormous. An economy of 310 million people is a very different affair to one with just over 9 million inhabitants. Moreover, small ships are easier to turn around than ocean-liners. Nonetheless, it's surely paradoxical — and tragic — that a small Nordic country which remains a byword for its (at times obsessive) commitment to egalitarianism has proved far more willing than America to give economic liberty a chance.

Read the entire article on the Acton Institute website (new window will open). Reprinted with permission.

Date posted: October 13, 2011

Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein, the New World Order, and Our longing for Dystopia

For what men say is that, if I am really just and am
not also thought just, profit there is none, but the pain
and loss on the other hand are unmistakable.
But if, though unjust, I acquire the reputation of justice,
a heavenly life is promised to me. Since then, as philosophers
prove, appearance tyrannizes over truth and is lord of happiness,
to appearance I must devote myself.
- Plato - The Republic

It is an interesting curiosity that this day and age, which has discarded the mere epistemological possibility of monsters, should have free reign to create an abundance of aberrant metaphysical monstrosities.

It is not necessary to split hairs concerning the nature of monsters and monstrosities in our time, for they feed off each other. They do so right under our noses. To miss the lasting significance of the latter would be naïve on our part.

It is also ironic that, in an age that is incapable of fostering respect for the sublime, mythology or religious faith; the healthy status quo of the monstrosities that we nourish speaks for itself. In short, we take tremendous pride in the moral, spiritual, cultural and economic monstrosities that we live by today. Such monstrosities have sealed the fate of our time for future generations. Ortega y Gasset wrote in The Revolt of the Masses, in 1930 no less, that ours is a demoralized age. He goes on to say that we not only learn to live with demoralization, but that we actually come to cherish it.

Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein series, which is comprised of five novels, chronicles the exploits of Dr. Victor Frankenstein, the seemingly mad scientist of Mary Shelley’s creation.

However, Deucalion, Dr. Frankenstein’s brainchild in Koontz’s Frankenstein novels, is not the result of innocent experimentation by a deranged scientist, but rather an end-all attempt to create manufactured human perfection. While Shelley’s novel can be classified as the first work of science fiction, that work is essentially a study in dystopia. Dr. Frankenstein’s failure has become symbolic of the horrors of scientific excess.

Koontz’s Frankenstein is a perceptive and insightful look at the variety of monsters and monstrosities that make the twenty first century home. The author reminds us of the essence of dystopia.

In the twentieth century alone, the list of literary dystopias that have taught us something constructive of human nature is rather extensive. Some of the more memorable works include We, Insatiability, Darkness at Noon, Brave New World, Animal Farm and 1984.

The good doctor in Koontz’s five novels is intent on socially engineering humanoid entities – not quite human beings – whose function and purpose is take over human beings. These entities can be conceived as clones, doubles or replicants. However, these are all monsters that take over the human world, whatever names we give them.

The eerie thing about any attempt at social engineering, Koontz seems to suggest, is that Western culture is very much willing to continue to “experiment” with new – alternative, some will undoubtedly argue – forms of human life. And, why not? Frankenstein’s socially engineered entities are so much efficient and easier to rule over. Of course, these entities lack free will. This makes them soulless. Yet in the eyes of their maker, they are totally free from the hassles of living as autonomous persons.

The great temptation and tragedy of contemporary society is our desire for happiness at all cost, and our goal of making the objective demands and contingencies of everyday life all but vanish. Following the trajectory of our most cherished monstrosities, and what is written and “debated” about them, one gets the impression that we have grown bored – dangerously fed up – with humanity, human beings and the pursuit of autonomous existence.

Is this why it takes us so long in real life, and in Koontz’s novels, to recognize the monsters and monstrosities that we create?

Victor Frankenstein, a.k.a Victor Helios, has been around for over two hundred years. In that time he has ingratiated himself with some of the most efficient tyrants that humanity has had to endure.

As a philanthropist, Victor Helios has placed himself at the mercy of man’s timeliest and seemingly greatest popular causes. This has made him many friends and much wealth. At this point, It is perhaps appropriate to mention C.S. Lewis’ understanding that the worst tyrants are those who oppress us in order to make us better, happier people. The easy seduction of embracing appearance over truth has always been man’s downfall.

Stanislaw Witkiewicz’s marvelous 1930 novel, Insatiability, chronicles the invasion of Poland by the National Socialists and then by the communists. As a partial response to totalitarianism, a mind control drug referred to as the “murti-bing” pill is created in order to make people happy. The creation of such a pill foreshadowed the explosion of mind-altering drugs and the fashion for therapy that would transform the West in the decades to come.

The Frankenstein series takes place in a world where mankind is essentially morally/spiritually numb. As a result of this, evil makes tremendous inroads in all things noble and good. Victor Helios knows that he can throw his charm and money around and have his way. The problem is that “his way” is that of decadence, thus creating what the Spanish philosopher, Julian Marias, refers to as a crisis of expectations.

Consider how bored contemporary humanity appears to be with the many goods, services, morals, values, free market economy and technology that we have at our disposition. Extrapolate this to the near and far future. The outcome, if this pans out to be as daunting as our present-day monstrosities indicate, should definitely not take us by surprise.

The problem with the present is that we are too utterly immersed in it to fully realize just what is actually taking place. To understand the extent of our present moral/spiritual malaise – and incidentally, let us not fool ourselves, this is what determines our collective wellbeing – requires more perspicuity than most people are willing to practice. Perspicuity requires great focus and follow-through. Unfortunately, these are some of the values that we find antiquated and boring today. The practice of diligence and temperance is definitely deemed not cool in our time.

Of course, if perspicuity is what we truly desire, then, this is where the truth and value of the tried-and-failed comes into play. Ideas lead to action, and actions always have consequences. This is the realm of higher and lower values. There is no way around this basic fact of human agglomeration.

Deucalion tracks Victor down in order to free the world of its greatest nemesis. What Deucalion comes to understand about the human condition has taken him over two-hundred years to learn. This is a great amount of time for the ex-monster, who has now come to embrace the realm of those who possess a soul. Remember, Deucalion is the son of Prometheus in Greek mythology. Deucalion realizes that human history is the only laboratory man needs in order to comprehend the truths and values that keep us from becoming monsters.

Date posted: October 11, 2011

American Challenges: The Blue Model Breaks Down

Here in the quiet precincts of the stately Mead manor in exclusive Queens, as the dew gently falls over the mist-shrouded lawns and the pigeons coo soothingly from the historic-landmarked eaves, it is sometimes hard to believe, but out there in the workaday world the long and graceful decay of the American social model is accelerating into a more rapid and dangerous decline. The core institutions, ideas and expectations that shaped American life for the sixty years after the New Deal don’t work anymore, and the gaps between the social system we’ve inherited and the system we need today are becoming so wide that we can no longer paper them over or ignore them.

In the old system, both blue collar and white collar workers hold stable jobs, a professional career civil service administers a growing state, with living standards for all social classes steadily rising while the gaps between the classes remain fairly stable, and with an increasing ‘social dividend’ being paid out in various forms: longer vacations, more and cheaper state-supported education, earlier retirement, shorter work weeks and so on. Graduate from high school and you were pretty much guaranteed lifetime employment in a job that gave you a comfortable lower middle class lifestyle; graduate from college and you would be better paid and equally secure.

Life would just go on getting better. From generation to generation we would live a life of incremental improvements — the details of life would keep getting better but the broad outlines of our society would stay the same. The advanced industrial democracies of had in fact reached the ‘end of history’: this is what ‘developed’ human society looked like and there would be no more radical changes because the picture had fully developed.

Call this the blue model, and the chief division in American politics today is between those who think the blue model is the only possible or at least the best feasible way to organize a modern society and want to shore it up and defend it, and those who think the blue model, whatever benefits it had in the past, is no longer sustainable.

That division is going to begin to erode in the next few years because the blue model is breaking down so fast and so far that not even its supporters can ignore the disintegration and disaster that it entails.

[...]

Read the entire article on The American Interest website (new window will open).

Date posted: October 11, 2011

New Blue Nightmare: Clarence Thomas and the Amendment of Doom

Lord of the Rings aficionados know that the evil lord Sauron paid little attention to the danger posed by two hobbits slowly struggling across the mountains and deserts of Mordor until he suddenly realized that the ring on which all his power depended was about to be hurled into the pits of Mount Doom. All at once the enemy plan became clear; what looked like stupidity was revealed as genius, and Sauron understood everything just when it was too late to act. Jeffrey Toobin’s gripping, must-read profile of Clarence and Virginia Thomas in the New Yorker gives readers new insight into what Sauron must have felt: Toobin argues that the only Black man in public life that liberals could safely mock and despise may be on the point of bringing the Blue Empire down.

In fact, Toobin suggests, Clarence Thomas may be the Frodo Baggins of the right; his lonely and obscure struggle has led him to the point from which he may be able to overthrow the entire edifice of the modern progressive state.

Writes Toobin:

In several of the most important areas of constitutional law, Thomas has emerged as an intellectual leader of the Supreme Court. Since the arrival of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., in 2005, and Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., in 2006, the Court has moved to the right when it comes to the free-speech rights of corporations, the rights of gun owners, and, potentially, the powers of the federal government; in each of these areas, the majority has followed where Thomas has been leading for a decade or more. Rarely has a Supreme Court Justice enjoyed such broad or significant vindication. This is one of the most startling reappraisals to appear in The New Yorker for many years. It is hard to think of other revisions as radical as the declownification of Clarence Thomas: Herbert Hoover as the First Keynesian? Henry Kissinger as the Great Humanitarian? Richard Nixon, the most liberal president ever (that one might even be true)?

There are few articles of faith as firmly fixed in the liberal canon as the belief that Clarence Thomas is, to put it as bluntly as many liberals do, a dunce and a worm. Twenty years of married life have not erased the conventional liberal view of his character etched by Anita Hill’s testimony at his confirmation hearings. Not only does the liberal mind perceive him as a disgusting lump of ungoverned sexual impulse; he is seen as an intellectual cipher. Thomas’ silence during oral argument before the Supreme Court is taken as obvious evidence that he has nothing to say and is perhaps a bit intimidated by the verbal fireworks exchanged by the high profile lawyers and his more, ahem, ‘qualified’ colleagues. At most liberals have long seen Thomas as the Sancho Panza to Justice Antonin Scalia’s Don Quixote, Tonto to his Lone Ranger. No, says Toobin: the intellectual influence runs the other way. Thomas is the consistently clear and purposeful theorist that history will remember as an intellectual pioneer; Scalia the less clear-minded colleague who is gradually following in Thomas’ tracks.

If Toobin’s revionist take is correct, (and I defer to his knowledge of the direction of modern constitutional thought) it means that liberal America has spent a generation mocking a Black man as an ignorant fool, even as constitutional scholars stand in growing amazement at the intellectual audacity, philosophical coherence and historical reflection embedded in his judicial work.

Toobin is less interested in exploring why liberal America has been so blind for so long to the force of Clarence Thomas’ intellect than in understanding just what Thomas has achieved in his lonely trek across the wastes of Mordor. And what he finds is that Thomas has been pioneering the techniques and the ideas that could not only lead to the court rejecting all or part of President Obama’s health legislation; the ideas and strategies Thomas has developed could conceivably topple the constitutionality of the post New Deal state.

[...]

Read the entire article on The American Interest (new window will open).

Date posted: October 11, 2011

When Christ rose again the third day according to the Scriptures

Father Pat's Pastoral Ponderings
Apostle James, son of Alpheus
October 9, 2011

When St. Paul declared that Christ "rose again the third day according to the Scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:4), he had certain particular biblical texts in mind. These are the Old Testament texts that inform his argument through the rest of 1 Corinthians 15-chiefly from the Book of Psalms. He begins with the opening line of Psalm 110 (LXX 109), a verse cited by Jesus himself (Matthew 22:44) and quoted from the very beginning of Christian reflection on the Resurrection (Acts 2:32-36).

Paul begins his exposition: As Christ conquered sin by his death, so he overcame death by his Resurrection. This victory, however, remains to be completed in the final destiny of the Church and of each believer. Although Christ has already delivered the deathblow to death, contaminated human history continues; human beings go on dying. Death was the first thing to invade human history, and it will be the last to leave.

For this reason, Paul calls death "the final enemy." Of Christ he says, "For he must reign, until he has put all enemies under his feet. The final enemy [eschatos echthros] will be disposed of — death" (1 Corinthians 15:25-26).

The present reign of Christ is described as forward -looking; there is an "until": "He must reign until He has put all enemies under his feet." The final defeat of death lies in the future.

This reign of Christ until the subjection of his enemies is the thesis that comes to St. Paul from the first line of Psalm 110: "Sit at My right hand until I subject your enemies as a footstool under your feet."

A close comparison of the psalm verse with Paul's actual citation of it, however, reveals a subtle but significant difference; namely, Paul's insertion of the adjective "all": "For he must reign until He has subjected all [pantas] enemies under his feet."

In fact, the Apostle has more than one psalm in mind here. In accordance with an exegetical principle the Rabbis called gezarah shavah (similarity of expressions), St. Paul's citation of Psalm 110 contains an allusion to Psalms 8:6 (LXX 8:7): "You have set him over the works of Your hands, having subjected all things [panta] under his feet."

In joining these two psalms in the same citation, Paul united two Messianic themes. Whereas Psalm 110 refers to David/the Messiah, Psalm 8 is a reference to Adam, to whom God subjected all the other objects of His Creation (Genesis 1:28).

Adam's reign over the rest of Creation, however, was seriously impaired by the Fall inasmuch as this introduced into human experience an alien component-death! -over which man had no authority at all: "Cursed is the ground for your sake; / In toil you shall eat of it / All the days of your life. / Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, / And you shall eat the herb of the field. / In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread / Till you return to the ground" (Genesis 3:17-19).

What, then, does Paul assert by this allusion to Adam in reference to the Resurrection from the dead? He is declaring that Christ's fulfillment of the prophecy in Psalms 110 — "Sit at My right hand until I subject your enemies as a footstool under your feet" — also will restore the primordial state of human sovereignty over the created order. When death will be completely conquered in the final Resurrection, the crowned Messiah will, as the Second Adam, thereby vindicate human history.

In doing so, he will likewise restore the proper structure of Creation. The final "subjection" of all things to God, which is integral to the Resurrection, means the complete restoration of the created order, inasmuch as man's bondage to death and corruption subverted that order.

All Creation, therefore, looks forward until this will be accomplished. A couple of years later, Paul elaborated this theme, when he wrote: "For the earnest expectation of Creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the Creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because Creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Romans 8:19-21).

Date posted: October 8, 2011

San Jose Articles Challenge UN Position on a Universal Right to Abortion

Download the San Jose articles (.pdf).

This relates to a press conference yesterday. At the end you will find a link for the San Jose Articles. It is a strong and impressive statement of principle, with impressive signatories.

PRESS ADVISORY, October 5, 2011

UN Officials Wrong. No Right to Abortion.
New Expert Document Issued at United Nations 

Where: UN Press Briefing Room, Dag Hammaskjold Auditorium

When: October 6, 2011, 11 a.m.

What: Launch of the San Jose Articles

Tomorrow morning [Oct. 6] at the UN press briefing room, internationally recognized scholar Professor Robert George of Princeton and former US Ambassador Grover Joseph Rees will challenge claims made by UN personnel and others that there exists an international right to abortion in international law.

As recently as a few weeks ago the UN Special Rapporteur on Health, the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Secretary General have all said such a right exists.  And, according to Human Rights Watch the CEDAW Committee has directed 93 countries to change their laws on abortion.

Professor George, Ambassador Rees and 30 other international experts are releasing the San Jose Articles to refute these claims and to assert the rights of the unborn child in international law.

Other signatories to the Articles include Professor John Finnis of Oxford, Professor John Haldane of the University of St. Andrews, Francisco Tatad, the former majority leader of the Philippine Senate, Javier Borrego, former Judge of the European Court of Human Rights, and Professor Carter Snead of UNESCO’s international committee on bioethics.

“The San Jose Articles were drafted by a large group of experts in law, medicine, and public policy. The Articles will support and assist those around the world who are coming under pressure from UN personnel and others who say falsely that governments are required by international law to repeal domestic laws protecting human beings in the embryonic and fetal stages of development against the violence of abortion.” said Professor George

Ambassador Grover Joseph Rees, former US Ambassador to East Timor, said, “When I was in Timor I witnessed first-hand a sustained effort by some international civil servants and representatives of foreign NGOs to bully a small developing country into repealing its pro-life laws. The problem is that people on the ground, even government officials, have little with which to refute the extravagant claim that abortion is an internationally recognized human right. The San Jose Articles are intended to help them fight back.”

To schedule an interview with Dr. George, Ambassador Rees or any of the San Jose Signatories, contact Austin Ruse, 202-393-7002, 202-531-3770 (cell).

The Articles and support material may be viewed at www.sanjosearticles.org

Signatories

Source: San Jose Articles

Lord David Alton, House of Lords, Great Britain
Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight, Knights of Columbus
Guiseppe Benagiano, Professor of Gynecology, Perinatology and Childcare – Università “la Sapienza”, Rome, former Secretary General – International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO)
Hon. Javier Borrego, former Judge, European Court of Human Rights
Christine Boutin, former Cabinet Minister – Government of France, current president Christian Democratic Party
Benjamin Bull, Chief Counsel, Alliance Defense Fund
Hon. Martha De Casco, Member of Parliament, Honduras
Jakob Cornides, human rights lawyer
Professor John Finnis, Oxford University, University of Notre Dame
Professor Robert George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University, former member of the President’s Council on Bioethics
Professor John Haldane, Professor of Philosophy, University of St. Andrews
Patrick Kelly, Vice President for Public Policy, Knights of Columbus
Professor Elard Koch, Faculty of Medicine, University of Chile
Professor Santiago Legarre, Professor of Law, Pontificia Universidad Catolica Argentina
Leonard Leo, Former Delegate to the UN Human Rights Commission
Yuri Mantilla, Director, International Government Affairs, Focus on the Family
Cristobal Orrego, Professor of Jurisprudence, University of the Andes (Chile)
Gregor Puppinck, Executive Director, European Center for Law and Justice
Ambassador Grover Joseph Rees, former US Ambassador to East Timor, Special US Representative to the UN on social issues
Austin Ruse, President, C-FAM
William Saunders, Human Right Lawyer, Senior Vice President, Americans United for Life, former delegate to the UN General Assembly
Alan Sears, President, CEO and General Counsel, Alliance Defense Fund
Marie Smith, President, Parliamentary Network for Critical Issues
Professor Carter Snead, Member, International Bioethics Committee, UNESCO and former U.S. Permanent Observer to the Council of Europe’s Steering Committee on Bioethics, University of Notre Dame School of Law
Douglas Sylva, Delegate to the UN General Assembly
Hon. Francisco Tatad, former Majority Leader, Philippine Senate
Hon. Luca Volonte, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, President of the European People’s Party (PACE)
Lord Nicholas Windsor, Member of the Royal Family of the United Kingdom
Susan Yoshihara, Director, International Organizations Research Group
Anna Zaborska, Member of the European Parliament, former Chair, Women’s Committee of the European Parliament

Touchstone Magazine has published a number of articles on the global push to use international treaties and regulations to force governments to go beyond their own national laws, or in some case overturn their own laws, among them:

Austin Ruse on Rulers Without Borders (a signatory)
Stephen Baskerville on Family Takeover
Allan Carlson on The UN: From Friend to Foe

Read the entire article on the Touchstone - Mere Comments website (new window will open).

Date posted: October 8, 2011

Obama Court Case Could Force Christian Schools, Churches to Employ HIV-Positive, Transgender Teacher

I wrote recently of the Obama administration’s Supreme Court challenge to the “ministerial exception.” If successful, the government will allow Christian schoolteachers and church employees who are considered “ministers” to sue their churches for violating anti-discrimination laws. There is a deeper, more disturbing aspect to the EEOC’s advocacy in this case. As this administration enforces those laws, it could require a Christian school to employ a transgender, HIV-positive homosexual as an elementary teacher. The government may allow impose Affirmative Action upon churches, as well.

The “ministerial exception” has been enforced by lower courts for decades, but the Supreme Court has never defined its parameters. Courts have ruled, essentially, that churches have the right to define their own criteria for who can serve as a minister. The Supreme Court began hearing arguments this week in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which would allow Cheryl Perich, a Christian schoolteacher and “commissioned-minister,”  to sue her Lutheran school for discrimination against the disabled. (She has been diagnosed with narcolepsy.)

The act Perich invoked, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), defines those who are HIV-positive as “disabled.” The website of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division specifically states:

Q: Are people with HIV or AIDS protected by the ADA?

A: Yes. An individual is considered to have a “disability” if he or she has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, has a record of such an impairment, or is regarded as having such an impairment. Persons with HIV disease, both symptomatic and asymptomatic, have physical impairments that substantially limit one or more major life activities and are, therefore, protected by the law.

Thus, if the Obama administration succeeds, no Christian school could fire a teacher infected with the AIDS virus without the threat of a federal lawsuit.

The DOJ’s website also notes the “Equal Employment Opportunity Commission offers technical assistance on the ADA provisions applying to employment.”

The EEOC’s website offers a hypothetical violation of the ADA: if an employee who is not HIV-positive is fired for consorting with those who have AIDS, in their example as a volunteer at a shelter or community center, that too could trigger litigation under the ADA. This would be impermissible, the EEOC states, “even if the employee is only minimally acquainted with [people] who have HIV/AIDS.” Since virtually every homosexual professes to know someone who is HIV-positive, any LGBT employee fired for any reason could sue in accordance with this provision, alleging an act of disability discrimination.

The administration would also like to subject churches and religious institutions to Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination against employees on the basis of an “individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” Both it and the ADA allow religious institutions to prefer “individuals of a particular religion” in employment. That is, the Southern Baptist Convention may require its employees to be Southern Baptists and so on. Beyond that, there is no quarter offered to religious institutions.

This opens the possibility of Affirmative Action in church hiring. (Some churches already employ such practices.) The Harvard Law Review stated in a 2008 article on the ministerial exception, “under Title VII’s plain text, religious denominations theoretically could face sex discrimination liability for refusing to ordain women.” Douglas Laycock, the Lutheran school’s key lawyer in the Hosana case, notes in his reply brief that some of those on the other side “do not deny that they would open the door to class actions alleging disparate impact and statistical underrepresentation.” Perhaps it is no coincidence the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, one of the nation’s leading advocates of reverse discrimination, has filed an amicus curiae brief in the Hosana case.

Most controversially, the Obama administration has already begun enforcing civil rights laws that do not cover homosexuals as though they did. The White House website makes clear that Obama supports the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and he reiterated his position in a speech to the 15th annual dinner of the Human Rights Campaign on October 1. This president has a peculiar penchant for enforcing unpassed bills by executive fiat. Indeed, he literally redefined the family the federal regulation, and his implementation of the transgendered agenda by fiat has been nothing short of historic.

The Obama administration has openly stated it will use any pretext to prosecute discrimination against homosexuals. The homosexual Keen News Service reported that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced last July that while federal law “does not specifically cover sexual orientation- or gender identity-based discrimination, it may still cover them in other ways. For example, gender-identity discrimination may be seen as sex discrimination.”

The HUD website explains although anti-discrimination laws do not currently cover “lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT)” people, there’s good news — you may already be a victim! The website states:

[A]  person’s experience with sexual orientation or gender identity housing discrimination may still be covered by the Fair Housing Act.

For Example:

• A gay man is evicted because his landlord believes he will infect other tenants with HIV/AIDS. That situation may constitute illegal disability discrimination under the Fair Housing Act because the man is perceived to have a disability, HIV/AIDS.
• A property manager refuses to rent an apartment to a prospective tenant who is transgender. If the housing denial is because of the prospective tenant’s non-conformity with gender stereotypes, it may constitute illegal discrimination on the basis of sex under the Fair Housing Act.

If you believe you have experienced (or are about to experience) housing discrimination, you should contact HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity for help at (800) 669-9777. (Emphases added.)

That is, the Obama administration is willing to sue those who “discriminate” against a male cross-dresser on the grounds that the accused hates women. Will the Obama administration apply these same criteria to Christian school teachers? Will an HIV-positive male teacher who wears a dress be legally guaranteed a job teaching Christian doctrine as long as “she” professes to be a member of the school’s sponsoring denomination?

The threat of litigation is more than an academic concern on both fronts. Last October, the EEOC sued the entire Maverik [sic.] Country Store convenience store chain, because one of its Wyoming locations fired Randy Ramos, an HIV-positive baker. (EEOC Phoenix Regional Attorney Mary Jo O’Neill, who prosecuted the case, said, “One would expect that employers in this day and age would be sensitive to that and agree to work with an HIV-positive employee, not fire him.”)

A 39-year-old HIV-positive man, “Richard Roe,” has hauled the Atlanta Police Department before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, insisting the department denied him a job because he has AIDS.  Scott Schoettes of the homosexual lawfare society Lambda Legal admitted the group’s motivation. “We want to change the city of Atlanta’s way of thinking,” he said, and “bring them into the current millennium. We want to make it clear the city cannot discriminate and act on it.” Besides, Gregory Nevins of Lambda Legal has averred anti-AIDS discrimination must end, because “HIV is no longer inevitably resulting in death.”

They would undoubtedly like to do the same for the Christian religion and its consistent, 2,000 year teaching against homosexuality.

Nor is this an isolated event. The ACLU sued the Alabama Department of Corrections in March for isolating AIDS-infected prisoners from the general prison population. One might think, with the high incidence of prison rape, this was a public health service. Not the Left. Margaret Winter, Associate Director of the ACLU National Prison Project, said the Communist-founded organization filed suit to secure the criminal element’s “right to be free from disability-based discrimination.” The suit specifically invoked the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Such lawsuits represent a boon for trial lawyers and a windfall for those who file suit. Dr. Kathryn Moss of the Cecil B. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina has found HIV-positive litigants are 28 percent more likely to prevail in ADA administrative complaints, and their median cash award is one-third higher than those “with other disabilities.”

Lambda Legal has pending litigation against the state of Georgia for firing Vandy Beth Glenn, a transgendered state employee who decided to come to work as a woman.

The issue of “discrimination” against homosexuals has crept into the Hosana case’s documents, as well. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) specifically noted in its amicus curiae brief, “Female or gay high school teachers, secretaries, university professors, organists, and choir directors, among others, have had their discrimination lawsuits dismissed because of the churches’ religious freedom to hire as they wish without court interference.” The ADL considers this a very bad thing.

No actual litigation need follow. The average church has 75 regular participants on a Sunday morning, so the threat of a lawsuit alone is often sufficient to cause a lukewarm Christian to back down.

Some may argue the Americans with Disabilities Act states, “a religious organization may require that all applicants and employees conform to the religious tenets of such organization.” But Title VII offers no such protection. Moreover, even the ADA’s language could be interpreted to mean an employee simply has to believe the dogmas and doctrines of the denomination, not that (s)he must live up to or exemplify them.

The government’s lack of interest in Christan teaching could hardly be more palatable. Assistant to the U.S. Solicitor General Leondra R. Kruger has said during oral arguments before the court Wednesday, “A particular religious doctrine is simply irrelevant.”

All of this is not merely likely but was clearly foreseeable. In a 2001 interview on public radio, Obama called for an “activist” executive branch to enforce the Left’s cultural agenda, observing that “without an activist Attorney General’s office and Justice Department that is able to come in and provide just the sheer resources that are required, many of these changes just don’t take place.” Messrs. Obama and Holder have proven they are more than willing to provide the Left ample federal resources.

In fact, no less a Christian figure than Martin Luther foresaw this day coming.  He once preached, “I greatly fear the high schools are nothing but great gates of Hell unless they diligently study the Holy Scriptures and teach them to the young people.”

Apparently that day has come.

Read the article on the Right's Writer website (new window will open).

Date posted: October 7, 2011

On the Fall of Man

The world was created good and called to the joy of life in union with the Source and Creator of life, the Lord God.

The first to sin and to be torn from this union were angels. The angelic realm was split: some remained with God; others, in their pride, desired to live their own life, independent of God. The angelic world was split and sin was born there, but the earthly world remained good.

And then the devil, which means “the one cast down from heaven,” began to strive to join the earthly realm to himself. The highest creation on earth, man, had been given a commandment by God not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Why was the commandment given? This tree was just like all the others, and in itself it had no outstanding characteristics. No, the knowledge of good and evil was not in the tree itself, and not for this reason was the commandment given. The Lord gave it because man was created free, and the Lord desires of man a freely-willed striving and longing for union with God. The commandment was given because only through its fulfillment could man express his freely-willed striving toward God and love for Him. And blessedness consists simply of communication with God through love of Him.

The devil is burdened by his separation; he is perpetually in a state of wrath and vengeance, and it comforts him to attract others. The devil never appears as his true self, but takes on various appearances. Then in paradise he took on the appearance of a serpent, and gave man the idea that the commandment had not been given for the expression of man’s love of God, but so that man would not become like God. The devil planted the thought that the command was issued, not out of God’s love, so that man would dwell in God’s love, but because God desires to dominate, and to prevent man from being as God, and coming to know the endless and limitless joy of being.

When man came to believe this diabolical idea, he was instantly separated from God. Everything changed, and man could no longer enjoy life in God and speak with God freely and straightforwardly as children speak. There was no peace, no joy, and man began to hide from God. Everything changed, the link between God and man was destroyed and nature ceased to heed man. Weeping entered the world, and the soul became burdened.

Read this article on the Orthodox Christian Faith website (new window will open).

Date posted: October 6, 2011

Why Pastors Must Be Free To Preach On Politics

On Sunday, October 2, hundreds of pastors all over the country did something an astonishingly large number of their fellow Americans had forgotten they had the God-given right to do: namely, address political issues and candidates during a worship service.

Across the nearly 60 years since then U.S. Senator Lyndon Johnson pushed through an amendment to the IRS code threatening any church or pastor who gets involved in politics with IRS reprisals – specifically, the loss of the church’s tax-exempt status – conventional wisdom has congealed around the idea that pastors must stay out of politics. As extraordinary as that assertion is to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of our nation’s history, it’s a theme that’s been hammered home unrelentingly for decades by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

As a result, pastors have been tacitly forbidden from saying in their pulpit what they’d be perfectly within their rights to say 50 feet away, in a church aisle or out on the sidewalk. What’s worse, they’ve been banned from expressing their opinion specifically because they are pastors.

Consider what happens when an issue such as, say, abortion, comes up for community debate, as the voting public considers a bill or assesses a candidate whose feelings on the subject are well known. Doctors will address their local medical gatherings, lawyers will argue at their bar associations, social workers will write op-eds, politicians will give speeches, and the news media will interview representatives of each of those professions, since some aspect of the abortion question impacts each of those professional areas.

In each case, the qualified professional is legally allowed, and even publicly encouraged, to address specifics of the issue, urge his peers to share his point of view, and advocate for or against a given candidate and his views.

And yet, while no sane person could suggest that abortion is an issue without a profound spiritual dimension, any effort by a local pastor to shine a biblical or theological spotlight on the issue in his professional setting, before an audience interested in that specific dimension, is met with outrage, tax threats, and the assertion that the Constitution forbids preachers from talking “politics.”

The same Constitution, mind you, whose First Amendment states that:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press …”

You’ll note the Founders did not bar Congress from “prohibiting the free exercise thereof (except in churches),” or “abridging the freedom of speech (except in the case of pastors),” or “of the press (unless it’s a printing or mailout distributed to church members to help them analyze candidates and issues).”

No one would be more astonished to hear the Constitution used as a legal muzzle to silence pastors on political issues than the men who wrote the Constitution. Most of them understood implicitly that the primary raison d’etre for settling this continent was to secure religious freedom, and that no group was more responsible for inspiring the colonists to join a revolution in defense of that liberty than pastors who addressed from their pulpits our “political issues” with England.

Nor would the Founding Fathers have stood for the notion that a church could be threatened with taxes. Tax exemption is not a privilege our government extends to cooperative congregations and ministries; it is the fundamental right of those churches, before God and the Constitution. What would be a more effective prohibition on the free exercise of religion than taxation? If the party in power holds the financial life of a church in its hands, how can that church ever stand against the party on a moral issue?

And make no mistake: every political question is, at root, a moral issue.

That, of course, is the underlying reason for every legal effort to silence and sabotage the participation of churches and pastors in the political process – the recognition that, on moral issues, those who take their faith seriously, and commit themselves as groups and individuals to the truth of Scripture, inevitably carry a different and often more substantial moral authority than the government and its elected leaders. And thank heaven they do. The moral admonitions of outspoken pastors have played a critical role at every critical juncture in our history – spearheading among other things the abolition of slavery and the Civil Rights movement.

If, to assert that moral authority, pastors must make a united stand through events like last Sunday’s “Pulpit Freedom Sunday,” they’re doing nothing more than what their own forefathers did 200-plus years ago. They’re throwing off not only the illegitimate legal shackles that would chain them to an unreasonable and ungodly silence, but the popular misconceptions that have for too long intimidated Christian leaders from sharing the enduring wisdom of a thoughtful, biblical perspective on the issues that most impact us as a nation.

Whatever your religious beliefs and convictions – or even your views about pastors talking politics – I hope you stood with the pastors of your community who dared to make bold and constructive use of our richest, and most endangered freedom: the right to hear and speak the truth.

Date posted: October 6, 2011

Smart Parenting XXIII. Coping with Bullying

(B)ut as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: through... kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love.... (2 Cor 6:4,6).

In a recent Smart Parenting essay on the spiritual and practical aspects of love (Morelli, 2011), I start out simply with St. John's most profound yet un-complex understanding of God: "God is love" (1 Jn 4:16). This love is shown in the relation of the persons of the Holy Trinity amongst themselves, God's creation and continuing care for His people, and the self-emptying (kenotic) love Christ has for us by His incarnation, passion, death and resurrection for our salvation. I then go on to point out that we must understand the meaning and application of Divine Love in our families and to the world. We have to emulate in our own lives this same love and model this to our children and others by our behaviors, which should be:

a set of actions that are aimed at the good and welfare of the other. Love means having truly beneficent care for the welfare of others in thought word and deed.

In a follow-up essay, (Morelli, 2011b) I point out that if love is understood in this way, we would be given one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, peace. And in turn, children disposed to peace in working through their relationships with others.

However, some blatantly uncharitable behavioral patterns are so widespread and commonplace in society that we fail to view them as being associated with a lack of "beneficent care for the welfare of others." This is especially true if such anti-social, unloving behavior is socially sanctioned by a peer group and if a child-adolescent is susceptible to peer pressure and wants to gain increasing power and acceptance by their peer group. According to the personality theory developed by Henry Murray (1938) and further developed by David McClelland (1985), these motives could be described as a need for affiliation (n aff) and power (n pow). These needs are developed over the experiences of one's lifetime (O'Connor and Rosenblood, 1996).

These motives seem apparent in recent widespread news media reports of childhood-adolescent bullying. Certainly bullying is not new. The proliferation of information technology, smart phones with video capability, the internet and social media have certainly made bullying and its consequences more well-known. What is new is that such information technology can now itself be a vehicle for bullying behavior.

Defining Bullying

Bullying is inappropriate behavior that entails purposive hurting and/or frightening of others. It is intentional and repetitive. Bullies use their social status or position, for example 'being in the in-group,' to legitimize their hurtful treatment of others. Such hurt can entail verbal-psychological abuse such as belittling, labeling, lying, name-calling, rumor mongering and teasing. Bullying can also entail physical abuse such as hitting, poking, punching. An extreme form of bullying, 'sexual bullying, is actually a form of sexual abuse, such as 'rape by blackmail.' Furthermore, bullying is not something that is outgrown.

Consequences of Bullying

Information I have gathered from research reported by the National Institute of Health (NIH)ⁱ points out the serious psycho-social effects of bullying for both victims and for perpetrators.

Victim Effects

Bullying has serious and lasting effects, effects persisting at times into adulthood. Victims of bullying have higher risk for depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation and suicide attempts. They report increased sadness, lack of interest in activities and loneliness. They tend to blame themselves for being deficient or for 'lacking something' in some way (or they would not be bullied the way they are). They also display changes in eating and sleep patterns, complaints about health and greater incidence of actual illness.

As noted by decreased Grade Point Average (GPA) and various standardized academic measures, bullied children and adolescents show a significant decline in school performance. This is accompanied by an increase in school truancy and dropping out.

When retaliation is considered a viable option, violent measures are apt to be chosen. NIH reports that 12 out of 15 school shootings in the 1990's were done by those who were themselves victims of bullying.

Perpetrator characteristics

The characteristics of the perpetrators of bullying are equally disturbing. They have a higher risk of alcohol and drug abuse in adolescence and adulthood. They display an earlier and more frequent degree of sexual activity. They also display a higher likelihood of engaging in fighting behavior and vandalism. NIH statistics show that 60% of male bullies in middle school were convicted of crimes by age 24. Bullies also have a significantly higher rate of dropping out of school. As adults, bullies also are more likely to engage in abuse toward their romantic partners or spouses, as well as their own children.

Exposure to Bullying

Those children who merely witness or are exposed to bullying are also not immune from the effects of bullying. NIH data indicate that in comparison with a normative group they have an increased use of tobacco, alcohol and other drugs, report a higher incidence of mental health difficulties, including anxiety and depression. They, too, are likely to miss, skip and drop out of school.

VICTIM INTERVENTION

The Response: Assertiveness

Standing up to the bully is one of the major NIH recommendations for those being bullied. In fact, this practice is the psychological response technique of assertiveness. In a previous paper (Morelli, 2006c) I defined assertiveness as:

Assertiveness is a skill that can be acquired to communicate a necessary view or feeling in order to bring about a favorable psychological or spiritual result. This definition has two qualifications: 1) The assertive utterance should be socially acceptable; and 2) only when a minimal response fails to bring about the desired result should an escalation of words and communication pragmatics occur. For the Christian, a third corollary applies: All assertive pragmatics must be done in the love of Christ which includes patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control - what is known in scriptural terminology as the "fruit of the Spirit" (Galatians 5: 22-23).

I also pointed out that assertive practices were described in Holy Scripture:

Implicit in the instruction of Moses is the divine imperative that views must be communicated. We see it revealed between God and the prophets. Ezekiel recorded one example of this divine imperative, "So you, son of man, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me" (Ezekiel 33:7)

We see it revealed in the relationship between Christ and His disciples as well. Our Lord Jesus Christ counseled His disciples not to be passive, but to take measured action steps when confronting people committing sinful acts. Jesus said, "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector" (Matthew 18: 15-17).

An example from the NIH guidelines is to shout out loud: "Stop it." This draws attention to the bullying act and at the same time makes it a more public event, while simultaneously communicating to all within hearing that the position of the person being bullied is that "I will not take it anymore."

A follow-up action is to walk away in such a way as to give the impression you don't even care. This may be far from the emotional truth, the child bullied is very much hurt. But the feedback to the bully that they have the power to hurt others is very reinforcing (providing pleasant feelings and satisfaction to the bully). Therefore, it is important to keep up the behavioral lifestyle you feel comfortable with. If you like reading books, working on the computer, enjoy studying, like the clothes you wear, do not change anything on account of the bully. If you change your behavior so the bully thinks he or she has won, this reinforces the bully. The bullying behavior will more likely occur in the future. (Morelli, 2006b) On the other hand, walking away from the bully acts as a negative punishment technique, which, if carried out consistently and effectively, will aid toward reducing bullying behavior in the future. (Morelli, 2008).

Healthy Self-Esteem.

Developing a sense of healthy self-esteem is critical in standing up to bullying. Morelli 2006, 2009 distinguishes between good and bad self-esteem. Bad self-esteem is a type of narcissism (or self-worship). As St. Paul told the Philippians: "Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others" (Phil 2:3-4). The Church Fathers warn against inappropriate, un-Godly self-esteem by using the Greek term kenodoxia, where keno means esteem that is empty, vain, hollow, groundless, deluded, and doxa means glory, praise.

Appropriate, or Godly, self-esteem is grounded in truth. In this sense, "self-esteem" means a true and honest appraisal of both one's strengths and weaknesses. Children and adolescents who are bullied can be helped to see that the standards that bullies apply for being in the esteemed "in-group" are often superficial and un-Godly and that many other worthy characteristics exist.

At times, children and adolescents can be given (age-appropriate) self-esteem exercises to help them make these distinctions.

Example One

Varsity Joe is big man on campus, the idol of all the girls. He seems to notice only the most 'attractive' girls. Although these girls are potentially jealous of one another, they know who would not even be 'considered' attractive enough to be eligible to be a Varsity Joe 'groupie.' They tease, make fun of and mock the dress, life-style and friends of any girl not eligible to be a 'groupie' girl. It just so happens that Varsity Joe is not interested in a real girlfriend at all. Someone whom he could care about and become committed to. He is interested in 'hook-ups, one night stands.' He brags to his buddies about his conquests and even gives intimate details of his encounters.

'Left-out Suzi' is devastated. Not only don't the boys pay attention to her, but she is constantly the brunt and victim of brutal teasing by the 'groupie girls.' They call her names, like 'nerd' and 'four eyes.' They 'accidently' bump into her and knock her books and notes out of her arms so they fall all over the school floor. They make fun of her clothes: "Where did you get that blouse? At the local thrift shop?" They even tease her about her private parts: "You have nothing Joe would want anyhow."

I have had adolescents in counseling who have been the victim of such bullying. As I pointed out in Morelli 2008b, I usually approach such problems using a Socratic method, asking questions, and having the counselee state, and thus discover, the facts and outcomes for themselves.ⁱⁱ One of the first things I do is to commend Suzi for talking to me about the problem. I suggest that we can see if we can make some sense of what is happening. Let us develop a rough 'character scale.' I first start out by asking, her what she thinks makes for "good personal character in others?" The answers I am looking for are qualities like loyalty, dependability, caring, sensitivity, trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, good citizenship and spirituality. I then ask her what she thinks are some poor personality characteristics others may have? Of course, I am looking for characteristics opposite of the good qualities listed above. Then I go through some of the bullying girls one by one, asking Suzi to 'rate' them on this crude character scale, so to speak. I also would ask Suzi to rate 'Varsity Joe." Then I ask a critical question: "What does this say about them?" The answer usually automatically pops out (facts speak for themselves): "They are not very nice people;" or "They don't treat people nicely." Then I ask a series of transition questions: "So, you are judging yourself on the basis of people who have poor character?" "Would you really want people of poor character to be your friends?" "Does their opinion of people with bad character really matter?” "What type of friends would you want to have?" "Would you value their opinion?" If I thought Suzi harbored some inner unexpressed feelings for Varsity Joe. I would go through these same Socratic questionings.

Example Two: An extreme example of a Varsity Joe

First, let me point out that, as in all my examples, this is based on a real case. It happened right after I received my Master's degree, while continuing study for my Ph.D. I was a medical center intern and this case was referred to me by the intake staff. This took place years prior to the Child Abuse Reporting Laws for various professions, including mental health practitioners. I was also not ordained a priest. Today, I would have to immediately report this next case to the appropriate authorities.

A 14-year-old girl was referred to me for Oppositional Defiant Disorder and a pre-adult form of Dependent Personality Disorder. All aspects of the case are not relevant to this essay. Obviously she was angry, annoying, argumentative, refused to comply with rules at home and in school. The major threat to her physical, psychological (and spiritual) well-being, however, was the vicious beatings she would receive from her "boyfriend." As usual, I did not directly attempt to change her lifestyle. I told her we could talk about whatever she felt comfortable talking to me about. I would not tell her what to do. I did ask her if was Ok for me to simply ask one question. “Yes,” she agreed. Now I am talking to a girl just about 10 years younger than myself, with bruises and contusions all over her face, neck and arms. I asked her "Why do you think your boyfriend beats you the way he does?" Her straightforward answer: "To show me he loves me." I now had something to work with, but not at that time. Her parents and school authorities were always telling her what to do and especially to break up with this 'boyfriend.' The more they pushed, the closer she held on to the relationship. I knew I would have to have much patience. I should point out that "Varsity Joe" is really not a good descriptor of her boyfriend. Although, to my knowledge, neither she nor her boyfriend were gang members, the medical center was right in the middle of an East Coast 'inner city' blighted urban area.

My initial psychological intervention was to develop a trusting rapport with her. I would ask her what she did during the week, especially the things she did with her 'boyfriend.' It appeared to me I was the only person in her life that cared for what she and her boyfriend did, without ever suggesting or telling them to "break up." After a couple of months, she would spontaneously start our session with telling me something they did together. I would always be enthusiastic about what she told me. After several months, I thought she was ready for the critical question. Once again I asked her permission to ask her. I asked her: "Dolores, what is love; how do you know someone really loves you?" Thinking she spotted a trick question, she immediately responded, "[Love] is the way my boyfriend treats me, keeping me in line, making sure I know he really cares for me." "Ok!" I responded, "Thanks for the answer." Dolores was obviously not ready to move on to the next question. But little did I know; I had planted a seed. Several weeks later, looking like she was at the losing end of a really vicious prizefight, she said to me,” You know the question you asked a few weeks ago about love?" "Yes." I responded. She began to break down, sobbing and crying. She managed to say something like: "He really doesn't love me. If he did, how could he keep beating me like this?" In subsequent sessions we went on to discuss what "real-genuine" love was; what she was worth; and what she wanted out of life. It was the beginning of a favorable psycho-social shift. Although we did not use the term bullying at that time, it was the beginning of her standing up to "Varsity Joe."

Other anti-bullying practices

The NIH information on bullying points out that the child who is being bullied should not keep to themselves that they are victims of bullying. Bullying victims who suppress that they are being bullied and keep it to themselves are susceptible to selective abstraction, or a narrowing of cognitive focus. Their options are narrowed. It is thought that suicide and violence seem like more viable options under such conditions in dealing with the harassment. Sharing that one has been bullied, however, especially with a trusted adult, such as a counselor, teacher, or parent, allows the child to feel less isolated and trapped and to consider other alternatives in coping with bullying. Sometimes a child may be embarrassed to tell an adult face to face. A note would be an initial first step Also recommended is to travel with a trusted group. A single child is less likely to be accosted when in a group.

PERPETRATOR INTERVENTIONⁱⁱⁱ

The Parable of the Good Samaritan

The Parable of the Good Samaritan can be an excellent medium to reach out to those who bully. St. Luke (10: 30-37) recounts Our Lord's parable:

 "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion, and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; then he set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, `Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.' Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?" He said, "The one who showed mercy on him." And Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."

What is well known, but must be especially pointed out to children, is that the Jews and Samaritans were mortal enemies. Each considered the other to be the out-group to be disparaged by the other. The characters in the parable can be made to simulate those of the in-group and out-group that are relevant to the real bullies in their lives. We really don't know the identity of the man who "fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him," but certainly a similarity to a child who is bullied can be readily made. The Levite and priest can be seen as those who side with the bullies who beat the victim. One character, the one with moral courage, the Samaritan, irrespective of being potentially vilified by others, stands up for what is virtuous. The children can be helped to see the application of Godly love, not only as told to us in the parable, but in the application of the parable to their personal lives.

Commenting on this parable, St. Gregory the Dialogist said, "Godly love cannot be perfect unless a man love his neighbor also. Under which name must be included not only those who are connected with us by friendship or neighborhood, but absolutely all men with whom we have a common nature, whether they be foes or allies, slaves or free."^iv Children, especially those who are bullies, must be taught they are to be Good Samaritans to all.

Empathy and Compassion

The psycho-spiritual foundation to adopting the role of the Good Samaritan and overcoming being a bully is empathy and compassion.

In terms of human development, empathy is the foundation of pro-social behaviors such as caring and altruism. (Lewis and Haviland, 1993) Compassion is a precursor of love (agape). Love is what we do for the good and welfare of others. How can we love, how can we work for the good and welfare of others, if we are not aware of their suffering nor have a desire to relieve it? We love others only if we can first sense their feelings and needs.

Empathy is thinking and feeling the way the other is thinking and feeling. Eisenberg and Fabes (1990) define empathy more formally: "An affective response that stems from the apprehension or comprehension of another's emotional state or condition, and that is similar to what the other person is feeling or would be expected to feel." Using the Parable of the Good Samaritan and its application to real life situations in which bullies find themselves, bullies can be given tasks to engage in focused reflection on the thinking and feelings of the bullied victims. To do such an exercise in a group session may be most helpful.

Parent Pointers

Parents can play a key role if their children are the victims of bullies or are the bullies themselves. In fact, this could be considered a specific duty requirement of an Orthodox marriage. In a blessed marriage in the Orthodox Church, the husband and wife are ordained as the leaders of their domestic church, crowned to be the king and queen of their domicile and granted grace for the "fair education of children" as the Orthodox wedding service proclaims. (Morelli, 2011)

However, unfortunately, parents seldom bring up the topic of bullying with their children. They should be able to talk to their children about what bullying is. Parents should attend to emotional changes on the part of their children. They should especially be aware of the victim effects discussed above, and be ready to talk to their children about them. Likewise, parents of children who bully should look for changes in their child’s behavior that indicates a greater degree of aggression or hanging out with a 'tough crowd.' Parents should encourage their child to be proactive about bullying, stand up to the bully^v and report bullying to the school authorities. Unfortunately, some parents may model aggression themselves, using hostility and power in their own conflict resolution issues, inadvertently teaching and giving their child permission to do likewise.

It is especially important for parents to support the likes and dislikes of their child. Not all children will excel in sports, for example. Some children may have artistic and or musical talents and such preferences should be lauded and encouraged.

Parents should also become active in school parent activities. They should make sure they get a copy of the school newspaper, talk to other parents, join groups such as the PTA, even walk around the school to see any graffiti or observe any bullying behavior.^vi

Police Involvement

If the bullying behavior has escalated to serious maltreatment, especially physical or sexual abuse involving weapons, extortion or bodily harm, the local police agency should be informed and work with school authorities to overcome the problem.

The Charity of Christ

Parents can explain to their children what bullying is and how it is contrary to the teachings of Christ. Specific incidents from the Gospels or lives of the Saints can be used by parents to convey Christ-like behavior to their children. Jesus’ special love of children, the same love children should have towards each other, can be conveyed by parents talking to their children about St Matthew's (19: 13-15) account of Jesus' encounter with the children:

Then children were brought to him that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked the people; but Jesus said, "Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven." And he laid his hands on them and went away.

Children can be shown to embrace each other in love in imitation of Jesus. In this we can recall the words of St. John (1Jn3: 18): "Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth." In some school systems a system of students helping students (peer tutoring) has been established. A general summary of the findings (Kamps, Barbetta, Leonard, & Joseph, 1994) indicate that such programs could be  effective and efficient strategy for increasing the pro-social interactions of students. Obviously, quite the opposite behavior pattern than bullying. Rather, an example of love that children and adolescents can do, as Jesus counsels "in deed and in truth."

Responsibility for guarding children

The primary responsibility not only for establishing a domestic church - a Christ-like home - but also for leading their children to Christ is entrusted to those 'ordained’ to this vocation. The blessed husband and wife, the leaders of the domestic church, the parents are those with this ordination. So, the recommendations discussed above, teaching children about bullying, how to deal with bullying, involving school and other resources as necessary, are their sacred duty and obligation. In this regard, the blessed mother and father are another alter Christi (other Christ) in their children's lives, both to guard their children and become children themselves. Is it that the parents are to become “as children” in accepting Christ's teachings, being obedient to the Father in innocence and purity of heart as Christ taught His followers. Thus becoming Christ-like models for their children.

The exaltedness of this calling is told to us by St. Isaac of Syria (Wensinck. 1923):

For the Lord guards the child. Thou must not only apply this and believe it in the case of children, but also in the case of those who, being wise in the world, leave their knowledge, and relying upon that wisdom which is all sufficient become children by their own will.

REFERENCES
Beck, J.S. (1995). Cognitive Therapy: Basics and Beyond. The Guilford Press: New York.
Eisenberg, N., & Fabes, R.A. (1990). Empathy: conceptualization, measurement, and relation to prosocial behavior. Motivation and Emotion, 14, 131-149.
Kamps, D., Barbetta,P., Leonard, B.R. & Joseph, J. (1994). Classwide peer tutoring: An integration strategy to improve reading skills and promote peer interaction among students with autism and general education peers. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis' 94, 27, 49-61.
Lewis, M. & Haviland, J.M. (Eds.) (1993). Handbook of Emotions. NY: Guilford Press.
McClelland, D.C. (1985). Human motivation. NY: Cambridge University Press.
Morelli, G. (2006, January 06). Self Esteem: From, Through, and Toward Christ. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles6/MorelliSelfEsteem.php.
Morelli, G. (2006b, February 04). Smart Parenting Part II.  http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles6/MorelliParenting2.php.
Morelli, G. (2006bc, July 02). Assertiveness and Christian Charity. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles6/MorelliAssertiveness.php.
Morelli, G. (2008, June 10). Smart Parenting XIII: Tools for Smart Punishing. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/smart-parenting-xiii-tools-for-smart-punishing.
Morelli, G. (2008b, September 19), Smart Marriage XIV: Talking to Your Children About Same Sex “Marriage.” www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles8/Morelli-Smart-Parenting-XIV-Talking-To-Children-About-Same-Sex-Marriage.php.
Morelli, G. (2011, 01 May). Smart Parenting XX: The theology and practice of love made simple.  http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/smart-parenting-xx.-the-theology-and-practice-of-love-made-simple.
Morelli, G. (2011b, 01 July). Smart Parenting XXII: Raising Children Disposed to Peace. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/smart-parenting-xxii.-raising-children-disposed-to-peace
Murray, H.A. (1938). Explorations in Personality. NY: Oxford University Press.
O’Connor, S. C., & Rosenblood, L.K. (1996). Affiliation motivation in everyday experience: A theoretical comparison. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 513-522.
Wensinck, A. J. (ed., trans.) (1923). Mystic Treatises by Isaac of Nineveh. Amsterdam, Holland: Koninklijke Akademie Van Wetenschappen.

ENDNOTES

ⁱ http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/bullying.html
ⁱⁱ Use of Questions: The Socratic Method
Use of questions is actually related to a cognitive-educational model called the Socratic Method (Beck, 1995). Using this technique, an instructor or mentor does not give data, knowledge or wisdom directly. Instead, the student discovers it as a result of answering a series of questions posed by the teacher. When a child discovers something for himself, or makes appropriate connections between things, it is far more meaningful than referencing authority. When a parent asks questions like "What do you think?" or, "How is this related to what we leaned in…(scripture, reading the Church Fathers, a homily or church school etc.)," chances are much greater that the child will grasp and retain important points. Be ready to outline some of the theological principles given above. Don't preach. Keep it simple. Use clear, focused, examples.
ⁱⁱⁱ I want to note that these Perpetrator Interventions are geared to the child or adolescent bully that does not have a diagnosable Mental Disorder. Those with Conduct Disorders (and subsequent Personality Disorders, such as Anti-social Personality Disorder, or Narcissist Personality Disorder. should be evaluated for possible brain anomalies and treatment. C.f.  Tunstall, N., Fahy, T. and McGuire, P (2003). A guide to neuroimaging in Psychiatry. London: Martin Dunitz; Decety, J., Michalska, K.J., Akitsuki, Y., & Lahey, B. (2008). "Atypical empathic responses in adolescents with aggressive conduct disorder: a functional MRI investigation". Biological psychology 80 2, 203–11.
^iv http://www.bulletin.goarch.org/quotes/index.asp.
^v Making sure the child can perform the assertiveness skills previously discussed, possibly by enlisting a behavioral psychologist to aid the child in acquiring assertiveness.
^vi Other online resources:

• http://www.njea.org/issues-and-political-action/anti-bullying

I wish to thank my editor, Anne Petach for suggesting these parental resources:

• http://www.bullies2buddies.com/what-we-do/school-and-district-training/265-victim-proof-your-school-training
• http://www.bullybeware.com/ http://www.nobully.com/ ; http://antibullyingprograms.org/
• http://www.cfchildren.org/programs/str/overview/
• http://www.safechild.org/bullies.htm

Date posted: October 3, 2011

Compassion: The Forgotten Virtue

Chaplain's Corner
Short essays written for the La Jolla Veteran's Hospital newsletter in La Jolla, California

Even a casual look at the world today would reveal an abundance of self-centeredness and fixation on ideologies. Compassion is well hidden. This despite many of the world religions and the findings of psychologists teaching that mercy and compassion lead to favorable personal and social outcomes. The Hebrew prophet Ezra tells us,” For if you return to the Lord, your brethren and your children will find compassion with their captors, and return to this land. For the Lord your God is gracious and merciful, and will not turn away his face from you, if you return to him." (2Chr 30: 9).  Buddha taught that, "Compassion is that which makes the heart of the good move at the pain of others. It crushes and destroys the pain of others; thus, it is called compassion. It is called compassion because it shelters and embraces the distressed." [http://www.compassion.ancientfountainofyouth.com/about.html].

Our Eastern Church Father St. Isaac of Syria links compassion to an essential characteristic of God Himself: "God's holy nature is so good and compassionate that it is always seeking to find some small means of setting us right." St. Isaac also points out that, "Among all God's actions there is none which is not entirely a matter of mercy, love and compassion: this constitutes the beginning and end of His dealing with us." (Brock, 1997).

Research psychologists have suggested that compassion is a skill that can be developed by practice. [http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2011/healthy-minds/]. This is certainly not inconsistent with what the Eastern Church Fathers teach about acquiring virtues such as compassion. For example, as St. Maximus the Confessor (Philokalia I)  tells us: "The principle of active accomplishment [practice] signifies the natural capacity for actualizing the virtues."

How can we know if we are compassionate? Some statements from a personal 'compassion assessment'  can help, such as: I reach out  to people that I see are sad; I am deeply concerned with the well-being of mankind; It is easy to feel others’ pain and joy; I would help a stranger in need; I have compassionate love for people despite nationality, political belief, race, religion or sex; I would sacrifice to help the less fortunate; helping others helps make life meaningful; even if they do wrong, I am willing to aid others in need. [adapted from: http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/questionnaires.aspx]  If you answered affirmatively to most or all of these statements, thank God! You would be high in compassion.

The way in which compassion is exercised, both personally and societally, and the means used to do so, also need attention.  St. Isaac of Syria (Wensinck, 1923) points out that, “The merciful [compassionate] if he be not just, is blind, in so far as he provides others from wealth which has [not] been gathered with justice and by his own labors, ... [but] ... from [the] acquirements of falsehood, oppression, iniquity and cunning." I wonder if the economy and politics of our beloved United States of America, as well as those of other world nations, would be in such decline if St. Isaac's wisdom was heeded? 

REFERENCES

Palmer, G.E.H., Sherrard, P. & Ware, K. (1981). The Philokalia, Volume 2: The Complete Text; Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain & St. Makarios of Corinth. London: Faber and Faber

Wensinck, A. J. (ed., trans.) (1923). Mystic Treatises by Isaac of Nineveh. Amsterdam, Holland: Koninklijke Akademie Van Wetenschappen.

Date posted: October 3, 2011

Working Together in Charity

In my past President's messages I have emphasized the importance of responding to Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev's calls for the Apostolic Churches of Christ:  the Roman Church, Eastern Catholic Churches, Oriental Orthodox Churches and Orthodox Churches to form a moral alliance to fend off the marginalization of God and the values of Christ in our society.(Alfeyev, 2005; Morelli, 2010) More and more I am faced with the subtly of the media in our secular society that endorses lifestyles and practices that are un-Godly.  For example, recently I saw a primetime television program that portrayed a same-sex couple who according to secular law were 'married.'  Their lifestyle was considered normative and reflective of the modern society and perfectly acceptable. Of course, for those committed to Christ, such a lifestyle is unacceptable.

While standing fast to following the teachings of Christ and upholding His moral teachings, I want to remind all that any interaction we have with others, especially those who may differ with us should be based on the utmost charity that Christ showed Himself. Arrogance, harshness and anger incite adverse consequences in others. We as Christians  lose all credibility and are subject to being accused of being hypocrites. Observing Christian figures displaying aggressive words and deeds literally destroys Christ's message.

A personal suggestion: I have found a simple statement of one's commitment to Christ is a good initial first step. If someone wants to follow-up on a discussion on some moral issue, I usually ask: What is your value system? If their answer conforms to secularist morality, then I usually simply respond, in charity: "Well, you are being true to your values." Many times such an answer, however, sparks some interest and the discussion goes further. At some point the question comes up as to what the "Mind of Christ and His Church” is. Then, without further ado, I simply state if one wants to follow Christ then this is what one has to do. [Basing my particular answer on what the person has specifically stated is their moral belief]. My response is based on Jesus’ own almost downplayed reply  to the Rich Young Man who asked Him what he had to do to be perfect. Respecting the young man's free will, Jesus said:   "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." (Mt 19: 21). In emulation of Jesus Himself: we witness, but do not coerce.

REFERENCES

Alfeyev, H. (2005, April 24). Toward a Catholic-Orthodox Alliance. http://en.hilarion.orthodoxia.org/7_2

Morelli, G. (2006, March 10). Sinners in the Hands of an Angry or Gentle God? http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles6/MorelliHumility.php.

Morelli, G. (2010, April 30). Toward healing Church schism: Overview and psycho-theological reflection. www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/toward-healing-church-schism-overview-and-psycho-theological-reflection.

Date posted: September 12, 2011

Anger - The Boomerang Emotion

Chaplain's Corner Short essays written for the La Jolla Veteran's Hospital newsletter in La Jolla, California

he display of anger is so common that it frequently goes unnoticed. Rather, it has become the expected response to any slight, no matter how trivial or harsh, given to someone by someone else in society. Some "getting back at" or "vengeance" is the norm. No one is exempt, parents, coaches, athletes, referees, police officers, teachers or those acquitted of a criminal offense.

Interestingly, a recent news report noted that displaying anger at subordinates, especially combined with the use of scatological words, has also become the required norm to be an effective leader. [http://www.blogging4jobs.com/business/swearing-makes-you-a-better-leader]

Psychologically, anger occurs because we perceive ourselves to be "intruded on" to the extent that it justifies aggression, vengeance, and retaliation. To display this level of anger we have to have to see ourselves as very 'important.'

St. Basil tells us "Anger nurses a grievance. The soul, itching for vengeance, constantly tempts us to repay those who have offended" [St Basil the Great, Homily 10]. I am so important, so above others that I have the "right" to act uncharitably toward others. Note that I am making an important distinction between annoyance, which in fact could motivate a useful adaptive response such as being more focused or trying harder, with real anger.

There may be some who would perceive angry individuals as effective leaders, but, in general, psychologists have found damaging boomerang effects for anger displays: relationships are fermented, people will tend to retaliate; it cognitively distracts from solving problems, and even if what I am angry about has some truth to it, my over-reaction lessens my credibility.

This boomerang effect was not lost by ancient religious leaders. Buddha points out “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” The Hebrew writer Sirach (27: 30) writes: "Anger and wrath, these also are abominations, and the sinful man will possess them." Gandhi clearly saw: “anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.” [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anger].

The spiritual root of anger cannot be made more clear than in the Eastern Christian tradition. Thinking we have the right to be angry is really the vice of pride. St. John of the Ladder (1982) has told us: "Pride is a denial of God, an invention of the devil, contempt for men. ... the source of anger, the gateway of hypocrisy." St John Cassian calls the demon of pride " ... most sinister, fiercest of all ... " (Philokalia I).

To help us to be motivated to overcome anger the spiritual perception of St. Isaac of Syria is unequaled (Brock, 1997): "Just because the terms 'wrath', 'anger', 'hatred' and the rest are used of the Creator in the Bible, we should not imagine that He actually does anything in anger, hatred or zeal.

Many figurative terms are used of God in the Scriptures, terms which are far removed from His true nature. Among all God's actions there is none which is not entirely a matter of mercy, love and compassion: this constitutes the beginning and end of His dealing with us." May I add that this should be the beginning and end of our relationships with all mankind in which we are all made in God's image.

REFERENCES

Brock, S. (1997). The Wisdom of St. Isaac the Syrian. Fairacres Oxford, England: SLG Press.

Palmer, G.E.H., Sherrard, P. & Ware, K. (Eds). (1979). The Philokalia, Volume 1: The Complete Text; Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain & St. Makarios of Corinth . London: Faber and Faber.

St. John of the Ladder. (1982), John Climacus: The Ladder of Divine Ascent. NY: Paulist Press.

Date posted: September 1, 2011

Revisiting that Kindness and Forgiveness Are Next to Godliness: Even in Church

The Lord is just in all his ways, and kind in all his doings (Ps 144: 17)

Even a casual reader of the articles I write cannot help but notice the spiritual emphasis, based on the example of Christ Himself, that I place on kindliness, forgiveness and Godliness. (Morelli, 2006b, 2007a, 2007b) Therefore, it should come as no surprise how spiritually upsetting a recent opinion piece by a Russian journalist which was forwarded to me:  

One value that the . . . Orthodox Church does not have enough of is kindness and compassion. The upholding of ritual and rules often supplants genuine feeling and compassion. Among Orthodox priests there are many who would sternly tell a woman, “cover your head” in church, oblivious to the fact that the woman is trying to calm down her crying child and has no time to find or readjust her headscarf. A sad young woman who comes to a church to seek solace may hear: “You can’t wear trousers here.” I have witnessed such scenes myself and I can imagine how many souls have been turned away by such uncharitable severity. As long as the . . . Orthodox priest does not become a shepherd first and an administrator second, the faith of many . . . will remain a dream and not a source of spiritual fortitude.ⁱ

What a sad account about some who are supposed to pastor the people of God! Now I would like to dismiss such stories as isolated incidents or mere accidents. Unfortunately, I myself have been subjected to similar treatment by hierarchs and priests, and I have witnessed laity being similarly treated. Regrettably, I have also heard numerous complaints from pious individuals visiting parishes and monasteries describing very similar situations.

Psychological consequences of anger and harshness

I have written (Morelli, 2006a) about the deleterious effects of anger in family settings. However, such consequences are applicable to persons of all ages and situations as well. Harshness and lack of emotional control incite untoward consequences in others. Observing authority figures displaying aggressive words and deeds promotes learning and performing of similar inappropriate behavior under the incentive of suitable conditions. (Bandura, 1986, Morelli, 2009). Abrasive correction may also lead individuals to focus on the harshness of the individual doing the correcting rather than their own behavior, thus cutting off the opportunity to learn from their mistakes. 

Two spiritual outcomes of severity:

Spiritual Growth

Certainly we can apply two of the Beatitudes to being treated harshly by others:

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. (Mt 5: 10-11)

However vilifying someone to encourage spiritual growth is very problematical. It may produce spiritual fruit or spiritual disaster. In this regard, Hausherr (1990) cites the apophthegm of a certain monk, Isaiah: "Nothing is as useful to a beginner as an insult. The beginner who bears insults is like a tree which is watered every day." But this favorable consequence is not always the outcome. Hausherr goes on to describe a spiritually horrific consequence that could result from "systematic coldness." He describes the action of ailing Abba Ammonas who was taken care of by Young John the Theban for twelve years, but the Abba "never said a kind or gentle word to him." Hausherr relates further that in the Lives of the Saints examples of intentional severity abound.

However, such harshness should not be considered the norm for the treatment of others, especially by those who are the arch-pastors and pastors of the people of God, the royal priesthood of the baptized who make up our local Churches. First, consider that such harsh treatment, as described by Hausherr above, was reserved for those who already had left the world, lived in a monastic setting and voluntarily put themselves under the direction of a spiritual father. Even then, such treatment was not meant for all monastics. Furthermore, such harshness could only be done with great spiritual discernment and discretion. Consider Hausherr's understanding:

In order for such treatment to be possible without committing a breach of discretion, it was necessary for several persons to be present: a master who wanted nothing but his disciple's spiritual good, and a disciple who had perfect faith in his spiritual father, which presupposed an uncommon strength of soul [emphasis mine] in the one and the other. The great art consisted above all in judging the trials against everyone's endurance; the great charity, in using every means gradually to develop such endurance.

I have not observed any harsh treatment dispensed by the bishops and priests of the Church on those around them that meets this very strong condition and requirement. The perspicacious Fr. Irénée Hausherr sums up the norm for spiritual direction this way:

The doctrine of the eastern ascetics on this obedience is characterized by absolutism - which does not mean despotism, although in certain cases this deviation must have occurred. The distance between tyrannical authoritarianism and unconditional obedience is great. The latter must come entirely through the disciple. . . .

The "uncharitable severity" referenced in the news report cited at the beginning of this essay is certainly within the bounds of "tyrannical authoritarianism."

Discernment of level of spiritual development

Even the Spiritual Fathers of the Church know great care must be taken to discern the level of the spiritual development of their novices in applying correction. Failure to take into account the level of spiritual development of a disciple (parishioner) can have dire consequences. Consider this account given to us by St. John Cassian:

. . . a brother greatly troubled . . .went to a certain father and confessed . . .but being inexperienced [the father] became angry when he heard [the confession] and told the brother that he was contemptible and unworthy of the monastic life . . . When the brother heard this, he lost heart, left his cell and set off back to the world. (Philokalia I p. 105)

St. John continues describing the event, which did have a Godly outcome. An experienced elder, Abba Apollos, came to "comfort and encourage" the brother. As a result, he returned to his monastic cell. Later, wise and Godly Abba Apollos told the uncompassionate elder who had given such a harsh correction to the younger brother:

. . . .when you received a younger brother who was being attacked by our common enemy, you drove him to despair instead of preparing him for battle. You did not recall the wise precept: 'Deliver them that are being led away to death; and redeem them that are appointed to be slain' (Pv 24 :11 LXX). You did not even remember the parable of our Savior which teaches us not to break a bruised reed or quench smoking flax (cf. Mt. 12: 20). (p. 106)

How correction should be made

Fr. Irénée Hausherr (1990) sees St. Antony the Great as the penultimate model of true Christ-like spiritual fatherhood. He cites from the life of St. Antony:

And it was as if a physician had been given by God to Egypt. For who in grief met Antony and did not return rejoicing? Who came mourning for his dead and did not forthwith put off his sorrow? Who came in anger and was not converted to friendship? What poor and low-spirited man met him who, hearing him and looking upon him, did not despise wealth and console himself in his poverty? What monk, having being neglectful, came to him and became not all the stronger? What young man having come to the mountain and seen Antony, did not forthwith deny himself pleasure and love temperance? Who when tempted by a demon, came to him and did not find rest? And who came troubled with doubts and did not get quietness of mind?

Another example, of a remarkable insight into how spiritual correction should be given to others if from the writings of St. John the Elder, one of the two old men of Gaza. His spiritual direction, along with that of another elder, Barsanuphius, "shared the same way of life and supported one another's ministry," was accomplished as letters written to those who asked them questions. In the letter below, St. John calls for giving correction "with compassion," even the tone of his response cries out for giving correction with Godly kindness. In fact, Chryssavgis (2003) entitles this question "Discipline with compassion."

Question: When my servant makes a mistake and I want to discipline him, with what purpose should I to this?

Response by John: With the purpose of love, that is according to God, so that by being corrected through your discipline, he may cease to sin and so that this may occur for the salvation of his soul. Yet, you should not do this with anger [emphasis mine]; for, nothing good comes out of evil. Therefore, if your thought is troubled, wait until it calms down. And, in this way, you will discipline him with compassion [emphasis mine, surely implying kindness] in Godly fear.

In another letter, St. John enumerates what the spiritual father should do when the correction is not heeded:

. . . seeing that the brother was not taking to correction, he left the matter to the judgment of God saying 'God knows what is beneficial; for my brother is much better than I.' This is what the perfect used to do; for they did not dare to judge anyone, putting to shame those who are nothing and yet still judge everyone.

Hausherr summarizes succinctly the ethos of correction. He states: "Charity and discernment are pre-eminent qualities of a spiritual father."

He who pursues righteousness and kindness will find life and honor. (Pv 21:21)

He who has ears to hear, let him hear."(Lk 8:)

REFERENCES

Bandura, A. (1986). Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Chryssavgis, J. (2003). (trans.). Letters from the Desert: Barsanuphius and John: A selection of questions and responses. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press.

Hausherr, I. (1990). Spiritual Direction in The Early Christian East. Spencer, MA: Cistercian Publications, St. Joseph's Abbey.

Morelli, G. (2006, February 04). Smart Parenting Part II.  http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles6/MorelliParenting2.php.

Morelli, G. (2006b, March 10). Sinners in the Hands of an Angry or Gentle God? http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles6/MorelliHumility.php.

Morelli, G. (2007a, April 03). The Psycho-Spirituality of Forgiving People and Nations. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles7/MorelliForgiveness.php.

Morelli, G. (2007b, December 02). Forgiveness is Healing.  http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles7/MorelliForgiveness2.php.

Morelli, G. (2009, October 24).  Overcoming Anxiety: Christ, The Church Fathers and Cognitive Scientific Psychology.  http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/morelli-overcoming-anxiety-christ-the-church-fathers-and-cognitive-scientif.

Morelli, G. (2010, April 09). Recalling Lent: Christ is Our Model For Forgiveness. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/morelli-recalling-lent-christ-is-our-model-for-forgiveness

Morelli, G. (2011, March 01). Out of the Fountain that is Christ: Free Will, Tolerance and Forgiveness.  http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/out-of-the-fountain-that-is-christ-free-will-tolerance-and-forgiveness

Palmer, G.E.H., Sherrard, P. & Ware, K. (Eds). (1979). The Philokalia, The Complete Text; compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain & St. Makarios of Corinth (Vol 1). London: Faber and Faber.

ENDNOTES

ⁱ http://rbth.ru/articles/2011/05/25/church_and_values_12916.html

Date posted: September 1, 2011

Patriots for Christ

Below is a purely fictitious account of two people talking about a matter of faith.

A Christian news magazine editor and his top reporter were having lunch together where Jim, the reporter, was telling his boss, Mike, how he felt about various issues, particularly one that Jim had wrestled with for many years. Mike sat there listening intently and finally asked, “So why the change of heart? Twenty years ago you were pretty close to what I would call a fundamentalist for your denomination arguing vehemently against ecumenism.” The editor wanted to know if there was something in Jim’s statements that he was missing.

“Remember Mohandas Gandhi?” Jim asked.

“Of course,” Mike answered.

“He was asked a similar question about changing his mind on a particular matter over a period of only one day, I think. His answer was, ‘Today I am a little wiser than I was yesterday.’ I hope that I’m a little wiser too and see things more clearly,” Jim closed.

“Okay, now let’s get to the meat of what you’re saying,” Mike said pursuing the matter.

“You and I both see certain realities regarding matters of faith, in the Western World in general and in America particularly,” Jim began. “We’ve discussed them often enough. The Christian faith is taking off in Asia and doing very well, while we in the West are in full retreat.”

Mike nodded his head in agreement. “Yes, the Chinese especially are accepting the faith in large numbers.”

Jim continued. “Here, Christianity is fighting a losing war against atheism, agnosticism, secular humanism, whatever you want to call it, and other worldly philosophies. While we’ve gone from modernism to postmodernism, nothing’s really changed. At least I don’t see it. The opposition to Christianity is well-financed, well prepared strategically, and relentless in their attacks on our beliefs in our Lord God and Christ. Even some of the Christian denominations themselves have joined in citing political correctness as their reason. You will notice that the opposition rarely if ever attacks Buddhism, Islam, or any other religion of the East. Their focus is entirely on Jesus. They have singled out the Christian faith and will stop at nothing to defeat it, to prevent the Western World from accepting the Gospel.”

“Are you saying this is one massive conspiracy?” Mike asked.

“There may be different armies, but the devil uses them all and very well, I might add, and we need to recognize it for what it is,” Jim responded. “Look at the massive advertising campaigns that absorb the hearts and minds of our young people; all forms of illicit entertainment on TV and the internet that hook in people of all ages via sex, violence, and even drugs; our whole educational system from elementary school to post-graduate studies are all geared against matters of Christian faith, morals and ethics, and we have seen well over a whole generation of our population go through the system, and today they’re governing the country. This is nothing less than a spiritual crisis that demands a spiritual solution, not a political one, not an economic one. Should we even be wondering why America and the Western World are in the shape they’re in? All of this and what is the church’s response?”

“You have my attention,” Mike answered.

“I see very little on the part of a universal church system that can respond effectively against the attacks from all sides by all of these forces. There are about 50 mainline denominations and as many as 30,000 different religious groupings overall in America alone, and so what? Many if not most denominations are becoming so small that they have nothing left to work with. Thousands of individual churches are shutting down each year. We see each one of them trying to work things out by themselves while spending more time claiming to have the perfect truth in Gospel interpretation always arguing that all the others are wrong, this rather than planning a thorough strategy to counter the enemies of God’s Church throughout the country. In small towns, we see very little here and there where two or three churches get together to make something happen. Beyond that, nothing! As a result, depending on the statistics we read, we have anywhere from 70 – 85% of Americans who are unchurched, and I will argue that this has nothing to do with political persuasions either – it makes no difference whether you are a conservative or a liberal, left vs. right. Except for the Christian Right, it’s pretty much the same across the board.

“Mike, the nation needs a massive Christian revival, but we have no properly laid-out plan of action at all among the myriads of religious groupings, nor can we expect one while all of them work individually more against each other than they do against the real opposition, the real heresy which is atheism. And even if they weren’t fighting against each other, they would still be unable to fight this war individually.”

“Well, what are you proposing, Jim, this ecumenicity you were speaking about? You know they’re all different.”

“You’re exactly right, they are different, and theologically they will remain so and never be fully united as one church. But that shouldn’t prevent us from developing alliances. We have to lay aside all of our theological differences and develop a coalition of one strategic body to fight this war. Only then will we be able to work closely together drawing up a complete strategic plan of action for a counterattack against all of these forces that have been eating away at the very spiritual, social, and moral fabric of the country and the West. This is a multicultural society, and this alone dictates that we cannot live in a vacuum. We need a fully coordinated, fully multicultural, fully multi-religious well-planned and coordinated response to address the woes that beset Christ’s Church or system of churches in America. We have to fight back with the same dedication and intensity that they’ve been fighting us with. The solution to all of America’s problems, and I might say, the whole Western World, is not a political one; it never has been; it is a spiritual one, one where the Gospel must be at the center of our thrust.”

“What of the current ecumenical movement?” Mike asked.

“The ecumenical movement that we already have is all dialogue, big speeches and no substance, all public relations, all photo-ops, and op-ed, nothing else. Ask yourself what impact have they had on America. And they were the ones I primarily wrote about 20 years ago, and I still stand by my comments where they’re concerned. They’ve had very little influence on faith matters.”

Jim was primarily finished. Now it was Mike’s turn. “If we begin a series of articles, there are several responses that I would expect. The opposition might think we’re running scared, but so what. What can they possibly say that they haven’t said already? The mainline groups simply won’t want to be part of it; they’re the accommodating kind and/or they don’t trust one another.”

“Or they’re just too bureaucratic,” Jim interrupted.

“That too, and then finally there may be quite a number of those smaller groups who do indeed agree with us in that we certainly should develop a coalition. Should make interesting reading. Let’s go with it. There’s nothing to lose.”

Chris Andreas spent a quarter century in the corporate world working primarliy for IBM Corp. before moving on to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in New York where he worked in the Department of Stewardship Ministry for 17 1/2 years. Having now retired he is a freelance researcher and writer.

 

Date posted: August 3, 2011

The Indoctrination of Children: Murray v. Curlett Revisited

The year 1963 was very significant for America in many ways. It was the year that the Negro American, the term used back then, revolted openly but in non-violent fashion against a discriminatory system found especially in the south; it was the year that John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, was assassinated; and it was the year that the new President, Lyndon B. Johnson, confirmed America’s continued economic and military support of South Viet Nam. It was also the year, however, that a less remembered court decision took place that had far reaching effects on American cultural history; it was the year of Murray v. Curlett where the United States Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling that ended government-sponsored prayer in American public schools. This was the case that catapulted Madalyn Murray (O'Hare) into both national prominence and notoriety.

While many of the more conservative elements of America, including myself, have disagreed with that decision and have seen the debilitating results from this and other government policies regarding public education, the ruling itself may not have been that bad had the Supreme Court guaranteed that government, all of its agencies, and all political action groups stay completely out of any influential roles within public education. Allow me to explain.

Since the decision was handed down in 1963, the State, that is government, has used public education as a tool of various political action groups to attack all that is decent, and attempted to replace it with all that many of us find to be absolutely repugnant. Parents no longer seem to have guaranteed rights over their own children’s upbringing; the public school setting teaches dogmas that are directly contrary to what parents may wish to teach their children at home; academic failings at the national levels are at the center of constant debate; and the results of corrupting influences are seen everywhere within society, particularly at corporate and government levels.

One would be hard-pressed to find a single decent outcome as a result of the 1963 ruling. One of the reasons is that Separation of Church and State is too limited a concept for such a decision that was handed down. While we may all believe to some extent in Separation of Church and State, this should never have been interpreted as allowing the State to teach its own doctrines to children, especially those contrary to belief structures found within the privacy of family life, whether it be religious, political or merely philosophical. And this in itself is still insufficient as criticism of the limitations of the decision. It must be taken much further.

The crux of my argument is this: While “Separationists” always point to the “Establishment” clause of the First Amendment, they remain completely silent about the “Free Exercise” clause that guarantees our freedoms in religion. If the Supreme Court decision is to be considered a correct one, and to a degree it was, then I submit that the State should never have been allowed to dogmatically indoctrinate children on any issue whatsoever whether it be political, social or moral, from the excessive theocratic state to extreme outright atheism, from the point of view of intense Right-Wing conservatism to that of ultra Left-Wing liberalism, that it is extremely dangerous for any State to be allowed to do so.

This premise has strong historical backing as those States which take it upon themselves to indoctrinate children have a strong propensity toward totalitarianism. If you control the children doctrinally through continuous propaganda, you control the national direction more fully in a dictatorial manner. From Otto Von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor, to Adolf Hitler, Germany constantly led its people to war for world domination. To paraphrase Hitler, “Give me your children for one generation, and I will rule the world.” Lenin the Bolshevik indoctrinated Soviet children, Stalin and his successors did it, Mao Tse Tung did it in Red China, and Fidel Castro himself has been doing it for over 50 years in Cuba.

The whole history of Fascism and Communism and all dictatorships has been fraught with such a policy. This is the real threat that faces America. It was never religion or any matters of faith that threatened our society. Though our nation did have a history of discrimination, we were yet the freest people on earth with a strong democratic structure.

The problem with the Murray v. Curlett decision wasn’t our not being permitted to pray in school, but the fact that it was improperly implemented in that it opened the door to direct and outright opposition against all those who held to different beliefs even within their own homes. And our children, always the most innocent within any society, are the main targets. They are the most threatened and the ones we must protect the most.

There is yet one more tragedy in all of this. In being allowed to dogmatically indoctrinate children, society’s most innocent are taught not to think for themselves. This leads to unquestioning loyalty to whatever system or philosophy is placed before them. Thus, the premise that we can think, that we can question, that we can challenge whatever it is that we may disagree with will one day disappear altogether from the American landscape. Things need to change and change immediately for time is short. Another generation of this, and it will indeed be too late.

Chris Andreas spent a quarter century in the corporate world working primarliy for IBM Corp. before moving on to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in New York where he worked in the Department of Stewardship Ministry for 17 1/2 years. Having now retired he is a freelance researcher and writer.

 

Date posted: August 3, 2011

Making Our Future

Chaplain's Corner
Short essays written for the La Jolla Veteran's Hospital newsletter in La Jolla, California

Years ago there was a song, first broadcast and published in 1956 and subsequently republished by different artists right up to the present time. The song title was: "Que Sera, Sera." The second stanza gives the message of the songwriter:

"Que Sera, Sera,

Whatever will be, will be.

The future's not ours to see,

Que Sera, Sera,

What will be, will be."

Unfortunately, the message underlying this song is not at all consistent with the spiritual message underlying the teachings of Christ. Nor with many of the other world religions.

Blessed Augustine writes: “Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.”ⁱ Some see a hypocritical contradiction in the adage. If we really had trust in God, we would sit back and let God do all.

Conversely, if we see ourselves as masters of our own ships, so to speak, we would just do all we can and attribute any accomplishment to our own efforts. However, mankind does not work in either/or dimensions. Some years ago, psychologist Hannah Levenson (1981) found our actions are simultaneously influenced by what she termed "multidimensional factors:" a generalized expectancy to perceive outcomes dependent on one's own behavior, along with the influence of chance, fate and powerful others [God-my emphasis].

The synergy between trust in God, but taking responsibility for right action, is well illustrated by King Solomon when he writes "He who trusts in his own mind is a fool; but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered." (Pv. 28: 26). Likewise an encounter with Mohammed and a Bedouin. Mohamed observed a Bedouin walking away from his camel without tying it down. The Bedouin answered Mohamed's inquiry to explain his action by saying he put his trust in Allah. Mohammad pointedly answered: "Tie your camel and place your trust in Allah."ⁱⁱ

There is another way our actions or lack of actions influence our future. Our Eastern Church Father, Evagrius the Solitary tells us: "Provide yourself with such work for your hands a can be done ...so that you are not a burden to anyone, and indeed can give to others, as St. Paul the Apostle advises. (cf. 1Th 2:9; Eph 4: 28).

In this manner you will ...drive away all the desires suggested by the enemy [Satan]." But the advice is even much stronger than this. Isaiah (50: 10) lays down the foundation for trust in God "...tell us Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the voice of his servant, who walks in darkness and has no light, yet trusts in the name of the Lord and relies upon his God?"

But St. Paul in no unclear terms tells us what activates, such trust: "If any one will not work, let him not eat." (2 Th 3: 10). St. Isaac the Syrian brings this all together. "[A man may say] I trust in God, He will deliver me [from folly], and although he has never thought of God before, he says now: I trust in God, He will deliver me. Err not, thou fool.

Trust in God has to be preceded by works for the sake of God and by the sweat of his service....confidence in Him requires the testimony of the heart which is born of toils (for the sake) of excellence." (Wensinck, 1923).

REFERENCES

Levenson, H. (1981). Differentiating among internality, powerful others, and chance. In Lefcourt H. (Ed.),Research with the Locus of Control Construct (Vol. 1), NY: Academic Press.

Wensinck, A. J. (ed., trans.) (1923). Mystic Treatises by Isaac of Nineveh. Amsterdam, Holland: Koninklijke Akademie Van Wetenschappen.

ENDNOTES

ⁱ www.catholictherapists.com/relationships-marriage-family/pray-as-though-everything-depended-on-god-work-as-though-everything-depended-on-you.html

ⁱⁱ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helps_those_who_help_themselves" title="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helps_those_who_help_themselves

Date posted: August 1, 2011

Smart Parenting XXII. Witnessing Loyalty, Dedication and Dependability

Beloved, it is a loyal thing you do when you render any service to the brethren, especially to strangers, who have testified to your love before the church. (3 John 1: 5-6)

Dedication, loyalty and dependability are important values to impart to children. Our Lord, Himself, speaking through the angel, told the people of Laodicea: "So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth." (Rev 3:16). The inhabitants of Laodicea lacked fervent commitment. Our Lord counsels them to be "zealous." (Rev 3: 19). Not only are dedication, loyalty and dependability spiritual virtues but they are regarded as essential in social and occupational functioning in everyday life as well.

For example, a well known youth program stated goal of, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), is to put youth "on a path toward a more conscientious, responsible, and productive society." ⁱ It should be noted that the first two Scouting laws are directly related to this goal as well as to the topic of this Parenting essay: dedication, loyalty and dependability:

• A Scout is Trustworthy. A Scout tells the truth. He is honest, and he keeps his promises. People can depend on him.
• A Scout is Loyal. A Scout is true to his family, friends, Scout leaders, school, and nation.ⁱⁱ

Modeling: Children Learn by Watching.

Children are especially susceptible to being influenced by modeling (also known as observational learning) although the effects of modeling occur at all ages. Psychological research has found substantial support for the influence of modeling in children's learning and resultant performance (Bandura, 1977, 1986) The work of Gerald Patterson (Patterson, DeBarsyshe & Ramsey, 1989) suggests that prosocial as well as deviant social behavior is heavily influenced by observing the social exchanges in the family, as well as the child's temperament, parental discipline style and personality, and the social context of the family.

Bandura points out the four conditions that must be present for effective observational learning to take place:

• Attention to the model. The amount and quality of attention to characteristics of the model such as: salience (e.g., attractiveness, competence; prestige, similarity to the observer); the affective valence of the model, that is to say whether strong or weak emotions are aroused by it; its functional value and prevalence as well as the attention characteristics of the observer: e.g. their perceptual cognitive capability, cognitive set (thought patterns) and arousal level at the time.
• Retention processes. The encoding processes of the observer: their level of or capacity for verbal or imagery, cognitive organization, their rehearsal and memory skills.
• Motor reproduction processes. The observer’s ability to replicate the model’s behavior: through physical capability and component sub-skills and observation of feedback. A child in a wheelchair will not be able to reproduce the behavior of a high-jumper.
• Motivational processes. The external, internal, hedonistic, social, moral, or religious incentives, or compelling reasons, that motivate the observer to perform (or avoid) the model’s behavior. A little girl can imagine herself being applauded if she sings like her favorite pop star.

A child who observes a parent behaving in a dependable way will be learning dependability themselves. In a previous paper (Morelli, 2005) I noted the importance of behavioral pinpointing. Behavioral pinpointing has to be done both in informing the child what appropriate behaviors are expected and also in reinforcing appropriate behavior and helping the child to cognitively understand the specific appropriate behaviors to be performed:

While appearing easy the next step: "pinpointing" behavior is usually the most difficult for parents to learn. The definition is easy: what is the child doing or saying, when, and where. It is the opposite of general descriptions. For example, describing a toddler's eating as "good" is totally useless. Telling a child "You were bad today" is equally meaningless. Words like "good, bad, hostile, considerate . . . , etc." are all abstract words, meaningless for behavioral management. If a teacher reports back to you that your son was hostile today. What does this mean? It could mean anything from the child using some rude word to a classmate, to picking up a baseball bat and hitting someone.

Merely telling a child (or anyone, for that matter) to be more dedicated, loyal and or dependable is ineffective in communicating and facilitating behavior change. It is to fall into the "abstraction trap." (Morelli, 2005) One aid would be for parents to start out pinpointing their own dependable behavior. If a parent takes a child to an afterschool activity, instead of merely saying for example, "I'll take you to baseball practice this afternoon after school," they may highlight the consistency and dependability of their action when they fulfill it: "Johnny, you know when Mommy says she will be there at 3:30 to pick you up, she means it, you know she is true to her word; when she says something it can be counted on. That is the way all of us should try to be."

Pinpoint Loyalty, Dedication, Dependable Behavior

In aiding the child to learn loyalty, dedication and responsibility the child should be informed in behaviorally pinpointed terms exactly what is expected from him or her. (This is also true for adult interaction as well. Poor spouses, managers etc. ask others to "try harder" or be "more detailed" or "care more;" not realizing these terms are abstractions, having many different possible interpretations, and are quite ineffective in communicating and facilitating behavior change). Certainly, children will have a difficult time knowing what a parent means if abstract instructions are given, for example, if the child is told to simply be "more dedicated." A pinpointed instruction delineating the specific "dedication" behavior should be given. For example: "Johnny, you said you wanted to take up martial arts, Mom and I are willing to buy your uniform and will commit ourselves to take you to all the practices and events. But your responsibility is to be dedicated and responsible to attend all these practices and to do the homework assignments given.” This example actually comes from a family I treated in counseling several years ago. It was so effective the child would often come into the family therapy session in his 'uniform' and demonstrate his martial arts movements for me. I was happy to point out how pleased I was with his dedication and success.

Reinforcing the Pinpointed Behavior

Once again, in a previous paper (MorelIi, 2006b) I pointed out that when rewarding (or punishing) a child one should specify the pinpointed behavior and not use abstract, ambiguous statements. For example, it is so tempting to praise a child by saying "Johnny, you were a good boy today;" or, "Sally, Dad and Mom think you’re wonderful." An effective everyday life example I gave was:

All behaviors - good and bad - will increase if followed by a reward. For example, if a child places their dirty dishes in a sink (a good behavior) and the parent responds with "Mary, I am proud of you for putting dishes in the sink," the behavior is reinforced and will increase.

Notice in this example that the behavior of putting the dishes in the sink is specified. So too, if a child performs a dependable behavior the behavior performed should be specified in the social reinforcement given by the parent. For example: "Johnny, you said you would take out the garbage cans immediately after you came home from school;you did, great dependable work;" "Mary, you told your new friend Sally, you would stick up for her when someone teased her at school; I saw you do this; that is very loyal of you;" "Sammy, at the beginning of this school year you said if we got you a saxophone you would attend and perform all the assigned practices. Mom and dad are proud of you for keeping your word and dedication."

A couple of Personal Examples

When I was growing up I lived in the last house on the edge of a very rural upstate New York village. When I entered high school, I was asked to take care of an elderly neighbor’s horse. This meant getting up in the morning way before school, biking to the farm, then giving the horse fresh water, hay and oats. Many mornings were very cold and it was even more difficult on snowy days. I had to repeat this in the afternoon after school as well. Once a week I had to clean the barn and groom the horse. I knew a commitment was a commitment. I gave my word. I did get a small 'salary,' but even at that time the 'pay' was not close to the value of the chore I committed to.

My last two years in high school were dedicated to my village church. I was 'blessed' to be chief altar boy as well as sacristan. My daily and weekly duties entailed setting out the appropriate vestments for the priest to robe, as well as the required sacred vessels and altar fixings. I was expected to be available for all church services to fill in if one of the other altar boys was missing. (Recall, I lived in a very small, isolated village. The parish church was just down the block). I had a key to the Church building and was expected to make sure it was locked in the evening. When I think back, quite a responsibility for a teenager. After being graduated from high school, I went off to the scholasticate (seminary) for a life of further dedication to Christ and His Church.

Developmental Assets

Certain external and internal assets facilitate interiorizing loyalty, dependability and dedication.ⁱⁱⁱ Among the major external factors are: a strong family support and communication system whereby youngsters are willing and open to listen to parental advice; a caring neighborhood, school and church support system encouraging and valuing youth involvement; good parental, adult and peer models. Internal factors include encouraging achievement, a milieu of pro-social values [and for the Orthodox Christian family, that would mean values that are centered on Christ and His teachings, Morelli, 2009], cognitive and social competency and healthy identity and self-esteem (c.f. Morelli, 2006)].

Jesus’ Teaching: The Parable of the Sower

The importance of steadfastness, the spiritual term that incorporates loyalty, dependability and dedication, symbolized by the seed that takes root and comes to fruition, was told to us by Jesus Himself, in the Parable of the Sower:

A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they had not much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched; and since they had no root they withered away. Other seeds fell upon thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear (Mt 13: 3-9).

Steadfast loyalty and dedication to a task, especially spiritual tasks, are succinctly summarized by Jesus as recorded by St. Luke (9: 62): "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God." In this regard, it should be noted that many commitments that are made involve giving our 'word' to others about something about some service we will perform. In a recent paper (Morelli, 2011) I point out that agape comes under the guise of service to others.

Service to others is one way to begin a life of love. Serving those who are in real need of help is a way of loving them (Morelli, 2009); it is an act of love. Did not Jesus tell us: "But not so with you; rather let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves (Lk 22: 26)."

Love as agape is that it is an attitude, a heartfelt intention and a set of actions that are aimed at the good and welfare of the other in emulation of the selfless, self-emptying (kenotic) love Christ Himself had for us. Love means having truly beneficent care for the welfare of others in thought word and deed. Steadfastness, that is to say dependability, is acquiring the spiritual virtue of carrying out this love to its completion.

Fortitude, one of the Cardinal Virtues

We remember well St. Paul's reflection on his own life: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. (2Tm 4:7).” Our holy Spiritual Father St. Barsanuphius (2003) informs us how a life of prayer is so necessary to accomplish this end:

Therefore just as gold is fired in a furnace and held by means of tongs, being beaten into shape by the hammer and thereby being tested and proving acceptable for a royal diadem, so also a person who is supported by the prayers of the saints, which is able to and indeed accomplish a great deal...

Parents and their offspring must add their prayers to the prayers of the whole church so that all members of the domestic church can give witness of loyalty to Christ and of dependability and dedication in all their actions.

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. (1Cor 15: 58)

REFERENCES

Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Bandura, A. (1986).Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Morelli, G. (2005, September 17). Smart Parenting Part 1. http://www.orthodoxytoday....

Morelli, G. (2006, January 14). Self Esteem: From, Through and Toward Christ. http://www.orthodoxytoday...

Morelli, G. (2006b, February 04). Smart Parenting Part II. http://www.orthodoxytoday....

Morelli, G. (2009, February 08). Good Marriage XV. Ensnared By Mindless Helping. www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT....

Morelli, G. (2009b, July 15). Smart Parenting XVII: Love and Worship in the Domestic Church- Of God or Idols. http://www.orthodoxytoday...

Patterson, G.R., DeBarsyshe, B.D., & Ramsey, E. (1989). A developmental perspective on antisocial behavior. American Psychologist, 44, 329-335.

Sts. Barsanuphius & John. (2003) Letters from the Desert. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.

ENDNOTES

ⁱ www.scouting.org/Visitor.aspx" title="http://www.scouting.org/Visitor.aspx

ⁱⁱ www.macscouter.com/usscouts/advance/boyscout/bslaw.asp" title="http://www.macscouter.com/usscouts/advance/boyscout/bslaw.asp

ⁱⁱⁱ www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/40_Developmental_Assets_Search_Institute.pdf" title="http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/40_Developmental_Assets_Search_Institute.pdf (pdf).

Date posted: August 1, 2011

Why the Arabic World Turned Away from Science

Contemporary Islam is not known for its engagement in the modern scientific project. But it is heir to a legendary “Golden Age” of Arabic science frequently invoked by commentators hoping to make Muslims and Westerners more respectful and understanding of each other. President Obama, for instance, in his June 4, 2009 speech in Cairo, praised Muslims for their historical scientific and intellectual contributions to civilization:

It was Islam that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed.

Such tributes to the Arab world’s era of scientific achievement are generally made in service of a broader political point, as they usually precede discussion of the region’s contemporary problems. They serve as an implicit exhortation: the great age of Arab science demonstrates that there is no categorical or congenital barrier to tolerance, cosmopolitanism, and advancement in the Islamic Middle East.

To anyone familiar with this Golden Age, roughly spanning the eighth through the thirteenth centuries a.d., the disparity between the intellectual achievements of the Middle East then and now — particularly relative to the rest of the world — is staggering indeed. In his 2002 book What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East, historian Bernard Lewis notes that “for many centuries the world of Islam was in the forefront of human civilization and achievement.” “Nothing in Europe,” notes Jamil Ragep, a professor of the history of science at the University of Oklahoma, “could hold a candle to what was going on in the Islamic world until about 1600.” Algebra, algorithm, alchemy, alcohol, alkali, nadir, zenith, coffee, and lemon: these words all derive from Arabic, reflecting Islam’s contribution to the West.

Today, however, the spirit of science in the Muslim world is as dry as the desert. Pakistani physicist Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy laid out the grim statistics in a 2007 Physics Today article: Muslim countries have nine scientists, engineers, and technicians per thousand people, compared with a world average of forty-one. In these nations, there are approximately 1,800 universities, but only 312 of those universities have scholars who have published journal articles. Of the fifty most-published of these universities, twenty-six are in Turkey, nine are in Iran, three each are in Malaysia and Egypt, Pakistan has two, and Uganda, the U.A.E., Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Kuwait, Jordan, and Azerbaijan each have one.

[...]

Read the entire article on the New Atlantis website (new window will open).

Date posted: July 8, 2011

Divine Justice vs. Human Justice

Chaplain's Corner
Short essays written for the La Jolla Veteran's Hospital newsletter in La Jolla, California

A news-media organization recently reported that a man labeling himself as a Christian said that praying for Osama bin Laden, after his death, was "unconscionable" and "sacrilegious." The account goes on to quote him as saying: “Let’s pray for our soldiers that are over there, not for somebody that caused our soldiers to go over there.” Actually, according to Christian teaching, our soldiers should be prayed for. But what is actually unconscionable and sacrilegious is not praying for such as Osama bin Laden. It is easy to pray for those we love; it is so much harder to pray for those who have done us wrong.

St. Matthew (5:44) records the words of Jesus: "But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. . . ." While on the cross and looking down on those who crucified Him, Jesus said: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." (Lk 23: 34). Thus , not praying for our enemy - yes, this includes Osama bin Laden - clearly contravenes Christ's words. While Christianity certainly emphasizes prayer for enemies, such prayer is not unknown in other traditions, for example, in Hebrew teaching. One Jewish scholar commenting on halachah (Torah law) says "one should not pray for others to be punished, rather we should pray that they repent and do teshuvah."

Our contemporary Eastern Church Father Elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain (Mt. Athos, Greece), who just died in 1994, tells us of a very important distinction understood by the Spiritual Fathers of the Eastern Church, which explains why some people call for vengeance and/or retribution and refuse to pray for their enemies. They are following Human Justice rather than Divine Justice. The Elder states: "that is why, many times, we go to court to find human justice."

He then uses a simple example, two people dividing ten peaches. Human Justice would divide the peaches equally five and five to each. The Elder goes on: "However, if he understands that his friend likes peaches very much [he can pretend that he is not very fond of them and eat only one, and] says to him: 'Please eat the rest of the peaches, . . . this person has divine justice; he prefers to be unfair to himself by human standards and be rewarded for his sacrifice by God's grace, which he will abundantly receive . . . Human justice is zero compared to divine justice'" (Ageloglou, [1998] Elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain, Mt. Athos, Greece, Holy Mountain Press).

Sometimes the title of a chapter or a book can be a nutshell of its entire theme. Such is the title of Chapter VI in St. Dorotheos of Gaza's Discourses and Sayings (Wheeler, 1977, Cistercian Publications.): On Refusal to Judge Our Neighbor. St. Dorotheos considers judging our neighbor the 'gravest' of wrongs. We can judge his actions or works but must pray for God's mercy for him as an individual created in God's image.

One of the most powerful understandings of this difficult teaching comes from the spiritual insight of St. Silouan the Athonite. ( St. Silouan the Athonite. Sophrony 1999, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press). St. Silouan tells us: "God is love, absolute love embracing every living thing in abundance. God is present in hell, too, as love." A hermit once visited the saint and "declared with evident satisfaction that 'God will punish all atheists. They will burn in everlasting fire.'" Obviously upset, the Saint said, "Tell me, supposing you went to paradise, and there you looked down and saw someone burning in hell-fire - would you feel happy?" "It can't be helped. It would be their own fault," said the hermit. The holy staretz answered him with a sorrowful countenance. "Love could not bear that," he said. "We must pray for all."

Date posted: July 1, 2011

Smart Parenting XXI. Raising Children Disposed to Peace

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. (Jn 14:27)

Even a casual acquaintance with news reports demonstrate the ubiquitous use of violence to solve problems on a worldwide level. Violence, the opposite of peace, has reached down to our children, who post beatings of their peers on social networking sites. They boast and gloat over the ferocity and fierceness of their behavior.The prophet Isaiah (32: 17) foretold: "And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever." To underscore the importance of peace, Isaiah tells us that it will be ushered in by the one to come: "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder, and his name will be called "Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." (Is 9: 6). This Prince of Peace is Our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ.

Peace was not meant to be given only to Himself. It was meant to be able to be shared by all mankind. The peace given to the Apostles and subsequently to all the Church by Jesus during the Last Supper is one of the most important gifts He has given us. In fact as St. Paul tells us it is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness..." (Gal 5: 22). St. Basil (2001) tells us what this means:

Through the Holy Spirit comes our restoration to Paradise, our ascension to the Kingdom of Heaven, our adoption as God's sons, our freedom to call God our own Father, our becoming partakers of the grace of Christ , being called children of light, sharing in eternal glory and, in a word, our inheritance of the fullness of blessings, both in this world and the world to come.

The introductory blessing of the Divine Liturgy -"Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, always now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen,"- announces tht we ere in the Kingdom of God. It seems then no accident that the first petition of the deacon or priest on behalf of the assembly is "In peace let us pray to the Lord."

Be in the world but not of it

Let us meditate on the words of St. Paul to the Corinthians: "For though we live in the world we are not carrying on a worldly war, for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds." (2Cor 10: 3-4). The weapon of our worldly warfare should be sought in peaceful resolution of conflict.

The spiritual root of violence

The spiritual root of violence is the passion of pride. (Morelli, 2011) St. Hesychios the Priest writes on what engenders the world's evils: ". . . the crown of all these, pride." (Philokalia I). St. John Cassian (Philokalia I) suggests the reason. He says “. . . it acts like some harsh tyrant who has gained control of a great city [and] . . . . as a result regard[s] himself as equal to God." Such people, says the prophet Isaiah (14: 14), say to themselves "I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will make myself like the Most High." St. Maximus the Confessor makes specific the contrast between the peace of Christ versus the passion of pride which leads to destruction. St. Maximus understands it as the afflicted person has the right to have exert control over others to obtain worldly objects.

...Christ, [is] the conqueror of the world of the passions and the source of all peace. He who has not severed his attachment to material things will always experience affliction, since his state of mind depends on things that are naturally changeable, so it alters when they do [which leads to what is] corrupting and destructive. (Philokalia II p. 162).

Cognitive-Behavioral root of violence

In a previous paper (Morelli, 2005) I wrote about the cognitive-behavioral cause of violence, that is to say: anger, calling it a "beast."

Contemporary research psychology has helped in specifying the cognitive structure activating and supporting anger. Besides aiding in helping to unravel the cognitive antecedents of anger comes about, this research also helps us to employ psychological techniques that can aid in overcoming and preventing anger and its behavioral consequence: violence. The cognitive-behavioral model of emotional dysfunction (Beck, Shaw & Emery, 1979; Ellis, 1962) has been shown to be effective in this regard. In Morelli 2005b I wrote:

Beck points out the theme of anger is "significant intrusion." We feel some one has intruded on us or on someone or something we love and possesses that we consider to be an extension of ourselves. According to this model, emotions such as anger are produced by distorted or irrational beliefs, attitudes and cognitions. Situations (something that someone has said or done or events that have happened) do not produce or cause our upset.

We upset ourselves over people and events, by our "interpretations" of them, thereby making ourselves dysfunctionally angry, anxious or depressed or simply functionally annoyed, concerned and disappointed. If our thinking is clear, rational and non-distorted we have normal feelings like: bearable nuisances, caring and livable let downs. If our "interpretations" are irrational or distorted we get enraged, intensely worried and despondent. Ellis has long pointed out that emotions such as anger add to our problems like in a 'domino effect.' Originally we have a problem, the "Activating Event." Our angry emotional response is a new problem added to the original, which in turn is linked to other dysfunctional outcomes, etc.

A list of the cognitive distortions provoking the dysfunctional emotion of anger and it's often violent behavioral effects is discussed in Morelli, 2005. These irrational beliefs can be summarized by two cognitive errors:

Demanding Expectations, the belief that others must or should be what they want them to be. For example, a child may have a belief that other children should do what they say. They may also believe they have the "right" to have first dibs on all toys that are being played with.

Over-evaluation, the perception that something is more than 100% bad, terrible or awful. In the example above, the child may think it is the 'end of the world' if they do not 'get their way".

Cognitive-Behavioral Intervention

In intervention the child's level of cognitive development must be considered (Morelli, 2011b, Piaget 1970). Piaget has provided a working model of the stages of development.

Sensory-motor stage: ages birth to about 18-24 months. Functions and interacts with stimuli in the immediate present; has no plans or intention or internal (imagery-symbolic) representation of reality.

Preoperational stage: ages 2-7. Internal representation (imagery-symbols) begins; pretend play predominates; Motor skills continue development; Egocentrism begins (the child assumes others sees the world the way they do) Children cannot conserve ⁱ or use logical thinking.

Concrete operational stage: from ages 7 to 12 children begin to think logically but are very concrete in their thinking. Children can now conserve and think logically but only with practical aids. They are no longer egocentric, they begin being able to see the world the way others perceive it.

Formal operational stage: age 12 onwards (development of abstract reasoning). Children develop abstract thought and can easily conserve and think.

Using these stages I have shaped specific techniques teaching a child cooperative behavior. For children in the late Sensory-motor and early Preoperational stages I have found a 'I give you-give back to me game' quite useful. The game is simple. We give different toys back and forth to one other. Children appear to learn that if they give something away, they will get it back again. We repeat this game during these years with different toys. They do not develop a sense of permanent loss of the object (toys). My appraisal suggests they are developing a sense of rudimentary trust on an emotional level. This is a specific way of peacefully interacting with others in game play.

As the child enters the Concrete operational stage, and certainly the Formal operational stage, the parent can verbalize the value and goal of sharing and cooperation and its relation to peaceful resolution. Children can be prompted to make up sharing agreements for toys, games, and video play. Role modeling scripts can be practiced. Initially, the parent may have to model such cooperative dialogue with the child. "Ok, lets take turns, you choose the first game and I'll choose the second game." etc. I have found it imperative that this technique be incorporated with behavioral consequences. (Morelli, 2005, 2006). If the children cannot find a peaceful resolution, by cooperative agreement, they are told that everyone involved will loose the use of the activity until the next day (a negative punishment technique for inappropriate behavior). The next day they will have an opportunity to work out a plan to peacefully 'share' what they were doing without fighting.

As children grow into the late Concrete operational stage and onward, parents can link the concepts of cooperation and peace to specific situations that exist in the child's life outside the home, such as problems at school, extra-curricular activities as well as helping the child to relate such solutions to local, national and world events. Links to Christ's teachings should be prompted in this endeavor. For example, a child might be asked how a 'belligerent' response to disagreement or conflict squares with Jesus actions during His arrest in the garden of Gethsemane:

While he was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve, and with him a great crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the elders of the people. And behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword, and struck the slave of the high priest, and cut off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, "Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. At that hour Jesus said to the crowds, "Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs to capture me? Day after day I sat in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me.”…And those that had laid hold of Jesus led Him away… (Mt 26: 47-56)

The spiritual dimension of peace and personal behavior can be expanded with late pre-teens and adolescents. Dealing with disagreements can be discussed in terms of St. Paul's instruction to the Ephesians (4:31):

Get rid of all bitterness, all passion and anger, harsh words, slander and malice of every kind. In place of these, be kind to one another, compassionate, and mutually forgiving, just as God as forgiven you in Christ.

Discussion then can be extended to all being made in God's image and baptized into Christ's body, the Church. To actualize the image of God in us we have to respond to God's grace to be like Him; to find in ourselves those imperfections that are barriers preventing us from being "like God"; that prevent us from peacefully relating to one another. In keeping with St. Paul's words, our emotions, such as anger and fighting, are just such an imperfection or barrier.

The Domestic Church: a haven of peace

It is critical that peaceful resolution of disagreement and conflict be modeled by the parents, the leaders of the 'little church in the home' themselves. The home can come to be seen as a 'haven of peace,' so to speak. Parents can help the child to cognitively encode the conflict resolution script by pointing out to the child that the parents follow the same process in peacefully resolving disagreements with each other.

"You know Johnny, Mom and Dad don't always agree. Do you remember how we both wanted to go to two different places for vacation last year?" How did we decide where to go?” Hopefully the child will recall the peaceful compromise: one year one place, the next year another alternatively splitting the vacation in two...etc. I always point out that acquiring the spirit of peace is more important than any material object or activity. This should be the Christ value system. Peace should describe the domestic church and all who make it up.

Acquire the spirit of peace and a thousand souls will be saved around you. St. Maximus the Confessor

REFERENCES

St. Basil the Great. (2001). On the Holy Spirit. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press.

Morelli, G. (2005, September 17). Smart Parenting Part I. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles5/MorelliParenting.

Morelli, G. (2005, October 14). The Beast of Anger. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles5/MorelliAnger.php.

Morelli, G. (2006, February 04). Smart Parenting Part II. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles6/MorelliParenting2.php.

Morelli, G. (2011, April 08). Pride is the root of all vice. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/pride-the-source-of-all-evil.

Morelli, G. (2011b, May 01). Smart Parenting XX: The theology and practice of love made simple. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/smart-parenting-xx.-the-theology-and-practice-of-love-made-simple

Palmer, G.E.H., Sherrard, P. & Ware, K. (Eds). (1979). The Philokalia, Volume 1: The Complete Text; Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain & St. Makarios of Corinth. London: Faber and Faber.

Palmer, G.E.H., Sherrard, P. & Ware, K. (eds.) (1981). The Philokalia: The Complete Text; Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth (Vol. 2). London: Faber and Faber.

Piaget, J. (1970). Science of Education and the Psychology of the Child. NY: Orion.

NOTES

The mental construct that objects remain the same in fundamental ways, such as form, number and weight, even though there are external change in shape or arrangement

Date posted: July 1, 2011

Intellectuals as True Believers

Communism defined the twentieth century. It is estimated that Joseph Stalin murdered over 1, 500 Soviet writers using the resources, first of the Cheka (Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolutions and Sabotage) and later that of the GPU (State Political Administration), which was formed in 1922. These figures are based on recently declassified KGB archives that are readily accessible for dissemination by inquiring minds and free thinkers. But this is only a very rough estimate, for communist regimes customarily vanish the reality of the world-at-large for its citizens, as readily as they disappear their most vocal dissidents.

Purges in the Soviet Union were conceived because of the fear that Stalin's tyrannous regime had of writers and thinkers. Remember, the Cheka was designed to identify and punish those rational/critical entities who - in good conscience - could not embrace the official, Communist Party version of human reality. This left ample opportunities for the intricate mechanism of state terror to execute writers, thinkers and artists.

We must also keep in mind that given their Marxist theoretical underpinning, the logical outcome of Communist societies must create sweeping suspicion that affects all members of those societies. This is best known as Communist double-morality.

But if Communist regimes systematically imprison, torture and execute autonomous-minded intellectuals, why is it that so many Western intellectuals enthusiastically support these regimes?

That question is the great skeleton in the closest that twentieth-century ideological intellectuals have yet to face. Ironically, the very inability to come to terms with crimes against humanity in Communist regimes is not only a glaring example of bad will, but also the very embodiment of Marxist false consciousness. This is also a clear case of blatant intellectual dishonesty.

Regrettably, in the twentieth century, the history of ideas took a detour through radical ideology. This established the poisoned and savage preconditions, whereby what matters most to the work of many intellectuals is not a sincere commitment to truth-seeking, but rather allegiance to murderous ideology.

Beginning in the twentieth-century, political expedience and theatrical hyperbole in Marxism has shamelessly demonstrated the importance of execution as a way to safeguard the legitimacy of Communist regimes. This rationalization on the part of Communists is a necessary step in attaining universal suffrage. We are reminded of this by the likes of Jean Paul Sartre among other elite, committed intellectuals.

Those who attempt to block the development of universal suffrage must indeed be made to suffer, for such entities are definitely no friends of humanity. This theoretical dog and pony show continues today. It does so because this murderous, carefully choreographed rhetoric is an essential and thus necessary component of Marxist power grab.

The claim of Stalinism and its many varied offshoots, of course, was and still is that genuine and hence committed intellectuals must devote all their energy to the service of the state. This ought to be, after all, man’s loftiest and definite act of selflessness, we are constantly reminded. Thus, anyone outside of this utopian boundary must be branded a reactionary - an intransigent parasite at best - and thus cannot be working toward the utopian cohesion of the common good.

The twentieth-century was the first time in history when intellect was used as a tool to rationalize systematic and state-institutionalized murder. Many intellectuals still fail to recognize that Marxism is veiled intellectual thievery.

Marxism is a hopelessly contradictory, yet virulent social-political theory that promises people who have nothing that they are entitled to even less. Of course, many people have much to gain by setting up such power structures. The twentieth-century is a testament to this historical fact.

Shamefully, the origin, perfection and upkeep of state-sanctioned terror, continues to be the creation and responsibility of Marxist intellectuals. It is they who first implemented and perfected state-sponsored terror. But let us not be surprised by this. The devil’s work has always been executed by an aberrant use of malignant and pinpoint precision intelligence.

Marx’s thought offers the theoretical framework that has permitted over two hundred million people to die for what Marxists consider to be the greater good. This also proves how easy it is to prostitute and subvert reason to the many causes of barbarity. Those who run Communist regimes have proven to be no more than crafty criminals who lack good will. To fail to understand this historical fact is to be made a fool of the greatest hoax in human history.

Those who - in 2011 - still defend crimes committed by Communist regimes as excusable by alleging ignorance of the true goals of Communism, are now totally discredited given the immense number of declassified documents that we possess today.

From the outset of the Great Socialist October Revolution of 1917, the Bolshevik program for Russia was marked by a stringent hate for ideas, that is, genuine thought, which as such, is always apolitical.

Consider the case of John Reed, a radical American from Oregon best known for his book about the Bolshevik takeover of Russia titled, Ten Days that Shook the World. Reed was a wealthy and obstreperous Greenwich Village wealthy malcontent. Mr. Reed detested American democracy. In 1919 he founded the American Communist Movement. For his loyalty to Communism, Reed was eventually rewarded by being buried in the Kremlin Wall. A similar honor was extended to the infamous member of the “Cambridge cell,” British spy, Kim Philby.

In 1913 Reed wrote for a radical magazine, Masses, which was at the time edited by Max Eastman. About his preference for literature and literary criticism, Reed had the following vision: “To set up new ones in their places…bound by no creed or theory of social reform, we will express them all, providing they be radical.”

The egregious trouble with this provision is that it has nothing to do with literature as such and everything to do with radical ideology. William Barrett, who has painted an in-depth and telling picture of the hypocritical, double standard of twentieth century ideologue intellectuals, explains the problem as such: “If his thinking deliberately operates outside the paths of our common life, he complains that he has been alienated.” Intellectuals began to exert unprecedented influence on all aspects of human affairs in the twentieth century.

Barrett, a longtime Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, writes this from a first-hand account as former editor of Partisan Review. His is an intimate portrayal of the post WWII ideological mindset of some of the leading New York intellectuals, many whom he knew well: Delmore Schwartz, Mary McCarthy, Edmund Wilson, Lionel Trilling and Philip Rahv.

Barrett points out that his indictment of Marxist ideology rests on the ground that the perceived legitimacy of Communism depended on the support of Western intellectuals. This is consistent with the self conscious stock that Communism places on perception at the expense of reality. Barrett explains that ideologue intellectuals substitute the life of individuals with unrecognizable and vulgar abstractions: “As soon as you have replaced this concrete plurality by the abstraction of The People, you have homogenized it into the Mass – a plastic and passive dough to be kneaded at will by the will of the dictator. You have taken the first step toward Gulag.”

The utility of intellectuals to Communist regimes is valued as being engineers of man’s soul. In Communist countries, these social engineers of the soul are fabricated, much as the central-government apparatchiks created steel beams or fashioned the need for internal enemies of the state. The intelligentsia in such countries is burdened with the monumental task of creating the "new Soviet man."

Committed intellectuals are invaluable to Communist regimes. These are societies that are forged through force and violence, thus they must rely on perception to establish their hegemony and legitimacy in the eyes of the international community. Especially true of Communist countries, is the establishment of state-terror as its major weapon of mass control. And, to disguise this terror from its citizens and abroad, a grandiose mechanism of lies, the re-writing of history, and brainwashing must quickly be enacted.

There can be no place for sincerity and spontaneity in Communist societies. This is why the use of rhetoric and dialectical materialism on the part of committed intellectuals is indispensable to the survival of such regimes.

Playing the part of useful intellectual may seem like a pact with the devil. On the other hand, in the Soviet Union and other Communist nations the list of honest intellectuals, those who criticized the regime and were persecuted for it, is quite extensive. Those thinkers, writers and artists paid such a high prize, that most Western intellectuals can only imagine the crude reality of their personal fate. From being ostracized by family members and shunted in their workplace, to imprisonment, torture and execution, these are individuals that died while their committed counterparts enjoyed the rewards offered by the state to collaborators.

In Communist regimes, political prisoners are those who oppose the Communist Party. It is that simple. People are signaled out as political prisoners not for delinquent activities, but precisely because in Communist countries no aspect of human life can be allowed to remain un-political. Again, spontaneity is a major offense in Communist societies.

The horrors brought about by the total politicization of life in Communist regimes escapes the imagination of the vast majority of people in democratic societies to this day.

However, we must face the shilling and timely fact that this is an aspect of radical ideology that was first introduced to open societies on a massive scale, beginning in the 1960s: Political Correctness. Having gathered tremendous strength in the last four decades, today this politicization of all aspects of life in open societies is the foremost threat to liberty in Western democracies.

With its sinister re-education component and aggressive censorship for political opponents, political correctness has converted the liberties enjoyed in open societies into the spiteful double-morality practiced in Communist societies. Of course, such coercion, rather than forging community only creates a legacy of distrust and debilitating cynicism.

Date posted: June 24, 2011

The Shaky Foundation Of Keynesian Economics

The “new economics” of John Maynard Keynes and his legions of academic acolytes was sold to the world on the basis of being a scientific advance over the outmoded dogma of classical economics. Keynes even titled his magnum opus The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money in order to be reminiscent of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.

John Maynard Keynes

As Forbes columnist Paul Johnson points out in the beginning of Modern Times, Einstein’s scientific discoveries were widely popular and various ideological movements attempted to tap into that popularity, portraying themselves as being like Einstein, heroically following the empirical evidence into the future, leaving superstition and primitive theory behind.

The problem, as Johnson also points out, is that the new ideologies were nothing like Einstein’s theory: They were based on pseudo-science; they ignored, or even suppressed, contrary empirical evidence; and Einstein’s well-grounded theory that space was relative in no way vindicated fads that said truth, reason, foundational principles or morality were likewise negative.

The great ideologues of the Victorian era, Marx and Freud, saw all human action as either disguised economic self-interest (Marx) or sublimated incestuous sexual desire (Freud and…ick!). Keynes chose Freud, mostly, and saw economies as essentially being driven by unconscious, pre-human impulses (animal spirits).

None of the three men, however, were what they represented themselves as being: scientists ignoring outdated modes of philosophical reasoning, following the evidence wherever it might lead. Keynes, as Marx before him, chose his foundational worldview. He didn’t induce it from the data, nor deduce according to the laws of logic, he adduced it. He chose the worldview which allowed him to be the kind of man he wanted to be.

Much has been made about Keynes’ homosexuality by both admirers and detractors. The admirers held that his androgynous complexity allowed him to tap into a masculine rationality and simultaneously a feminine creativity. Some of his detractors, for example on the religious right, used his lifestyle as a kind of ad hominum attack, arguing thus:

Gay is bad (which doesn’t have quite as much traction as it did in the 1980s)

Keynes was gay

Keynes is bad

Therefore Keynesian economics is bad.

The fallacies in this reasoning are obvious.

A more nuanced version of this argument has been made by other critics — for example the supply-side pioneer Lewis Lehrman, who said, “I have five children. I have a vision of the future. Keynes had no children and no interest in getting involved in any relationship which might make possible their procreation. He was inherently short-run in his viewpoint.” Some Austrian economists have made the same argument.

But I think that there is a bigger issue here than guilt-by-sexual-association or even the ways in which marriage and family connect us with the future. Keynes’ sexual ethic was just a small part of an overall life orientation.

He and his fellow members of the Cambridge Apostles were firmly committed to an agenda of overthrowing every element of the Victorian society from which they had sprung. The rejection of thrift, or of any economic principles at all were of a piece with the rejection of any system of objective truth, any objective moral code, any form of theism and old-fashioned notions about standing up to the Germans, whether under the Kaiser or later under the Führer. In other words, the whole societal order was to be overturned.

G.E. Moore attacked traditional philosophy and theology, Lyton Strachey’s job was to use literature to debunk Victorian principles of self-restraint, and Keynes was to demolish classical economics, sound money and the virtue of thrift. The sex was only a part of it, and probably a subordinate part of it as well.

The apostles were committed to an ideology of the superiority of male intimacy over male/female intimacy not because they were born gay (many of them lapsed into heterosexuality once they were away from the club, some members having feigned homosexuality in order to be included in the group,) but because they saw all of Victorian society, which they hated, as a coherent whole. The salient point here is that they were not men who spent their professional lives following the evidence wherever it led: They had decided where it was all going to lead by their sophomore year of college! They chose the men they would be early in life and went about justifying that decision for the rest of their lives.

Read the entire article on the >Forbes website (new window will open). Reprinted with permission of the author.

Date posted: June 24, 2011

Jesus as the ‘Perfection’ of Faith

Father Pat's Pastoral Ponderings
All Saints' Sunday
June 19, 2011

fter his long panegyric on the heroes of faith, the author of the Epistle makes reference to Jesus as "the leader and perfecter of faith" (12:2). This expression requires closer inspection, if we want to understand Jesus' relationship to faith.

First, we should clear up the misunderstanding created by the incorrect insertion of "our" with respect to faith. There is no manuscript support for this insertion, and it fits ill with the large historical sweep of the author's view of faith. Hebrews is concerned about faith, or perhaps the faith, and not just our faith. Faith permeates the whole of salvation history. It does this as a principle of continuity, because "without faith it is impossible to please" God (Hebrews 11:6).

Second, we observe that Hebrews juxtaposes the two nouns — "leader and perfecter" — to form a polarity implied in their roots: Archegos ("leader") is based on the root arche, which means "beginning," and teleotes ("perfecter") is derived from telos, which means "end." "Beginning" and "end" are syntactical poles. Thus, as the two nouns are employed in this text — covered by a single article in Greek — they convey the tension of contrast.

This combination — "leader and perfecter" — is similar to Jesus' self-identifications in the Book of Revelation. For example, "I am the Alpha and Omega" (1:8) and "I am the first and the last" — ego eimi ho protos kai ho eschatos (1:17; cf. 2:8). Indeed, at the end of Revelation all these terms are combined into a triple polarity: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the protos and the eschatos, the arche and the telos" (22:13).

Third, in what sense does Hebrews call Jesus the "leader" of faith? As we observed above, "leader" translates the noun archegos, which conveys the sense, not of a manager or director, but of someone who actually "begins" something. In classical Greek it often conveys the sense of a "founder" or "originator."

Such a meaning of the noun is consistent with the other place where Hebrews uses it in reference to Jesus: "For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make perfect [teleiosai], through sufferings, the archegos of their salvation" (2:10).

The image of Jesus as archegos is apparently derived from the traditional apostolic preaching. St. Peter used the word twice in reference to Jesus, calling him the "leader of life" — archegos tes zoes — and declaring, "God exalted him to His right hand as archegos and Savior (soter)" (Acts 3:15; 5:31).

As Jesus inaugurates both "life" and "salvation," he also inaugurates faith. In the context of Hebrews, he does this by going out ahead of believers as the leader who shows them where and how to run: "With endurance let us run the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus." He modeled this faith chiefly in his Passion, inasmuch as he "endured the cross, despising the shame" (12:1-2).

Fourth, Jesus is the "perfecter of faith" in the sense that he brought to its proper completion the faith earlier exemplified in the lives of those champions of faith celebrated in the previous chapter of Hebrews. He brings to perfection those who preceded him.

It seems probable that the author of Hebrews coined the noun he uses here — teleotes, "perfecter" — inasmuch as the expression is otherwise unknown in either the Greek Bible or other literature of the time. This suggestion is consistent with the emphasis on "perfection" all through Hebrews (cf. 2:10; 5:7-9; 7:28; 9:14; 10:5-10,14). Jesus is the "perfecter" of all the faith that preceded his coming, during the course of salvation history.

The Old Testament saints had faith, of course, but it was not perfect, "God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us" (Hebrews 11:40).

The "perfection" accomplished by Jesus was not simply a supplement — a "more" — added to the faith of the ancients. After all, the relationship between "perfect" and "less than perfect" is not just quantitative. The perfect is qualitatively different from the "less than perfect." It is of a different order. Indeed, the Epistle to the Hebrews began with that qualitative distinction: The God who earlier spoke through the prophets has now spoken through a Son (1:1-2; cf. 3:5-6).

Date posted: June 24, 2011

Address to European Council of Religious Leaders on Religious Persecution

Distinguished participants in the 8^th Meeting of the European Council of Religious Leaders,

Allow me to welcome you to the cathedral Church of Christ the Saviour, which is a symbol of the revival of the Russian Orthodox Church. Over one thousand years ago, our people were enlightened with the light of Orthodoxy which entered every sphere of social life. Throughout centuries, our ancestors, going through sometimes severe trials, learnt to live in friendly relations with people of other faiths, first of all, with Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists. Russia has accumulated a unique experience of peaceful co-existence of religions which were to become traditional for our country, an experience of interreligious dialogue and cooperation for the benefit of the whole society. This indisputable richness may also be of benefit for other countries and peoples. I hope that the historical journey of the Russian Church and other religions in our country, which passed through a crucible of hardships in the 20^th century, will become for this gathering a vivid example of the power of the human spirit inspired by faith and unsubdued by the theomachist state machine. And today’s meeting of religious leaders from European countries is a testimony to the fact that the spiritual dimension is needed by society and that traditional religions are ready to meet together the challenges of time including those coming from aggressive secularism.

May I remind you that the Russian Orthodox Church in the person of Metropolitan Kirill, now His Holiness the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, was one of the architects of the European Council of Religious Leaders. In the early 2002, Metropolitan Kirill, together with other authoritative religious leaders in Europe, joined in a newly-established executive committee of the ECRL during the meeting of Religions for Peace in Paris. Some of those who made up this organization at that time are its members to this day and are present here. I would like to extend special greetings to them. They are Bishop Gunnar Stälsett and Jehangir Sarosh. In November 2002, the first summit of the ECRL took place in Oslo to be held annually since that time. The proposal to make the capital of Russia the place for another annual summit was made several years ago, and now eventually we have the joy to host the ECRL members and guests in Moscow.

In the final document of the ECRL meeting in 2004 in Brussels, it was stated that our Council was established to offer ‘an open, clear and regular dialogue’ to European international institutions. The history of our organization has shown that the united voice of the leaders of historical religions in Europe is heard in the Council of Europe and in the European Union bodies. We should continue addressing those who belong to the leading structures of European institutions with regard to the problems of concern for us. It is especially true for human rights and freedoms, that is, the themes to which the present meeting is devoted.

His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia has spoken today about the indisputable ties between human rights and freedoms and the notion of dignity and responsibility. In my turn, I would like to dwell on one right which is very important for the human personality – the right to freedom of conscience and religion. This fundamental right is recognized by all the traditional religions. We invariably come out against any form of violence, persecution and discrimination on religious grounds.

Europe has Christian roots and the based on them tradition of ensuring and defending human rights and freedoms, this being a key notion of European civilization. At our earlier meetings, we have talked about the inadmissibility of persecution and infringement of human rights on religious grounds: anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and Christianophobia. I would like to dwell on this theme in detail.

Christians Most Often the Victims of Persecution

As analytical studies have shown, it is Christians who most often have become victims of religious persecution in today’s world. According to the recently published data, at least one hundred million Christians are subjected to persecution and discrimination in the world, with at least one million of them being children. At present we are experiencing an era of large-scale persecution against Christians. Not many people in problem-free countries in Europe are aware of that, and if they are, they prefer not to react. International European institutions as well as public and human rights organizations are trying to draw the public attention to this tragedy. We are grateful to them for their not indifferent position.

Thus, the European Parliament adopted on January 20^th 2011 a resolution On the Situation of Christians in the Context of Religious Freedom, in which European politicians call ‘to develop as a matter of urgency an EU strategy on the enforcement of the human right to freedom of religion including a list of measures against states who knowingly fail to protect religious denominations’. A little later a similar resolution was adopted by the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly. The resolution calls ‘to raise awareness about the need to combat all forms of religious fundamentalism and the manipulation of religious beliefs for political reasons, which are so often the cause of present day terrorism’ and recommends ‘to develop a Council of Europe strategy to ensure respect for freedom of religion as a human right.’

Our Church expressed her concern over the growing persecution of Christians in the world in a special statement of the Holy Synod on May 30^th, 2011, which is available in English to every participant in our summit. It states in particular, ‘Christians are subjected to persecution and become victims of intolerance and discrimination in various forms. The recent tragic events on May 7 and 8 in Egypt’s Giza, when Christian churches were set on fire during mass disturbances and parishioners of the Coptic Church were killed, are only one link in the chain of such developments. Our brothers and sisters are killed, driven away from their homes, separated from their families and friends, deprived of the right to confess their religious beliefs and to bring up their children in accordance with their faith. Regrettably, manifestations of Christianophobia can no longer be treated as individual incidents as they have become a stable tendency in some parts of the world.  The events in Egypt referred to in the Holy Synod’s statement are only a part of a more global process which affects the life of Christians in a number of countries, for instance, in such countries as Iraq and Pakistan.

I would like to underscore that extremism committed under Islamic banners by no means should be identified with Islam which confesses tolerance between people of different religions. I had an additional occasion to see it a week ago during my meeting with the president, professors and students of Al-Azhar, the world largest Islamic university. This Egyptian university set itself as one of its tasks to educate young Muslims in the spirit of tolerance. I was also deeply moved by a letter the chairman of the Muftiate’s Council of Ulemas in Russia, Farid Salman, sent to the president of Al-Azhar expressing sincere concern over the forced exodus of Christians from Muslim lands.

We should also reflect on the ways in which a system of protecting Christians against persecution can be created. The creation of this system could involve political leaders of the European Union as well as heads of states in Europe, Russia and other CIS countries, Christian confessions and representatives of other religions, especially Muslims. It is only through joint efforts that we can stop the wave of extremism which has engulfed the Middle East, threatening the very survival of Christianity in some countries of that region. I would like to have this theme reflected in the final document of the Moscow meeting.

Warning Against Aggressive Secularism

Another problem which becomes increasingly topical today is aggressive secularism. People of this worldview believe that religion should be fully separated not only from the state but also from society. They believe it should not influence pubic processes or be involved in social and educational processes.

In Europe there are hundreds of millions of believers. Official information shows that most of the population in the European continent belongs to Christian faith. The second largest religion in Europe is Islam and the number of its followers is steadily growing. Non-religious people, atheists and agnostics, comprise a minority in every country in Europe. This information refutes the persistently propagated myth that the European society is secular in nature and that most people on our continent are not interested in religion. However, for all that, many politicians deny to religion the right to public self-expression. Religion is seen as a private affair of individuals which has nothing to do with the public domain. They seek to drive religion in a ghetto and to reduce it to ‘private devotion’ alone regulated by non-religious authorities.

From the point of view of proponents of secularism, interreligious dialogue should be conducted under the patronage of secular institutions for the reason that religious leaders are allegedly incapable of coming to an agreement with each other. The unique nature of our Council lies in the fact that it was and, I hope, will remain an association independent of any secular structure and uniting authoritative representatives of traditional religions in Europe. And at the same time, for the sake of the common good, we are always open to an equal, honest and open dialogue both with governmental institutions and all the healthy forces in society.

In conclusion I would like to express hope that our Council, entering the second decade of its existence, will preserve and multiply the very useful experience it has accumulated in the past years. In my view, our principal task is to bear witness to the importance of faith for the destiny of Europe, to her positive and peacemaking potential capable of making people’s life safe and spiritually rich.

Read the entire article on the >Russian Orthodox Church Department of External Relations website (new window will open).

Date posted: June 23, 2011

America Becoming ‘Much Less Friendly’ to Religious Freedom

Although written for a Catholic audience, the ideas expressed by Archbishop Chaput apply to Christians across the board. Take special care reading the section "A Less Friendly America" where Abp. Chaput warns us the coming hostility towards relgion and how anti-religionists will use the power of the state to diminish the cultural influence of Christianity.

The following is Archbishop Chaput’s June 21 address to the Catholic Social Workers Association.

We’re here today — or anyway, we should be here today — because we believe in Jesus Christ. Everything in Catholic social ministry begins and ends with Jesus Christ. If it doesn’t, it isn’t Catholic. And if our social work isn’t deeply, confidently and explicitly Catholic in its identity, then we should stop using the word “Catholic.” It’s that simple.

Faith in Jesus Christ — not as the world likes to imagine him, but the true Son of God as the Catholic Church knows and preaches him — is the only enduring basis for human hope. Real hope has nothing to do with empty political slogans. It has nothing to do with our American addictions to progress or optimism or positive thinking.

The Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of faith as “the assurance of things hoped for; the conviction of things not seen” (11:1). Faith alone makes real hope possible. Georges Bernanos described the virtue of hope as “despair overcome.” It’s the ability to see clearly the suffering and the injustice in the world, and yet to trust in the goodness of God. It’s the capacity to see human weakness and evil at their worst, and yet to trust in the dignity of the human person because we believe in a loving Father; a Father who created and sustains us, and who redeems us with the blood of his own Son.

Because we believe, we can trust; and because we can trust in God’s love, we can take the risk of loving and giving ourselves to others. This trinity of faith, hope and love echoes the nature of God himself. It’s the economy of all Christian social action. And remembering this simple fact — our basic identity — is a good way to begin our conversation.

I want to focus my remarks today on the “Catholic” identity of Catholic Charities and, by extension, the identity of all Catholic social work. I’d like to offer three quick points at the outset.

Here’s my first point: What we do becomes who we are. This is pretty obvious when we speak about individuals. A man who does good usually becomes good — or at least becomes better than he was. A man who struggles with his fear and overcomes it and shows courage gradually becomes brave. And a man who steals from his friends or cheats his company, even in little things, eventually becomes a thief. He may start as a good man with some unhappy appetites and alibis. But unless he repents and changes, the sins become the man. The habit of stealing or lying or cowardice or adultery reshapes him into a different creature.

We need to realize that what applies to individuals can apply just as easily to institutions and organizations. The more that Catholic universities or hospitals mute their religious identity, the more that Catholic social ministries weaken their religious character, the less “Catholic” they are, and the less useful to the Gospel they become.

Here’s my second point: The individual is sacred but not sovereign. For Catholics, every human person — no matter how disabled, poor or flawed — has a unique, inviolable dignity. That “sanctity of life” and the basic rights that go with it begin at conception and continue through natural death.

But civil society consists not just of autonomous individuals. It also consists of communities. Those communities also have rights. Catholic institutions are extensions of the Catholic community and Catholic belief. The state has no right to interfere with their legitimate work, even when it claims to act in the name of individuals unhappy with Catholic teaching. The individual’s right to resent the Church or reject her beliefs does not trump the rights of the Catholic community to believe and live according to its faith.

To put it another way, Catholic ministries have the duty to faithfully embody Catholic beliefs on marriage, the family, social justice, sexuality, abortion and other important issues. And if the state refuses to allow those Catholic ministries to be faithful in their services through legal or financial bullying, then as a matter of integrity, they should end their services.

A Less Friendly America

That brings me to my third point, and it gives context to the other two: A new kind of America is emerging in the early 21st century, and it’s likely to be much less friendly to religious faith than anything in the nation’s past. And that has implications for every aspect of Catholic social ministry. G.K. Chesterton once described the United States as “a nation with the soul of a Church.” Another British Catholic, the historian Paul Johnson, noted that America was “born Protestant,” but it was never a Christian confessional state. America was something unique in modern history. It was a moral society without an established Church.

America could afford to be “secular” in the best sense precisely because its people were overwhelmingly religious. The Founders saw religious faith as something separate from government but vital to the nation’s survival. In the eyes of Adams, Washington and most of the other Founders, religion created virtuous citizens. And only virtuous citizens could sustain a country as delicately balanced in its institutions, moral instincts and laws as the United States.

As a result, for nearly two centuries, Christian thought, vocabulary and practice were the unofficial but implicit soul to every aspect of American life — including the public square. The great Jesuit scholar Father John Courtney Murray put it this way: “The American Bill of Rights is not a piece of 18th-century rationalist theory; it is far more the product of Christian history. Behind it one can see not the philosophy of the Enlightenment, but the older philosophy that had been the matrix of the common law. The ‘man’ whose rights are guaranteed in the face of law and government is, whether he knows it or not, the Christian man, who had learned to know his own dignity in the school of Christian faith.”

The trouble is that America’s religious soul — its Christian subtext — has been weakening for decades. The reasons for that erosion would need another day and another talk. But I do think we’re watching the end of a very old social compact in American life: the mutual respect of civil and sacred authority and the mutual autonomy of religion and state. That’s dangerous, and here’s why.

American life has always had a deep streak of unhealthy individualism, rooted not just in the Enlightenment, but also in Reformation theology. In practice, religion has always moderated that individualism. It has given the country a social conscience and a common moral compass. Religion has also played another key role. Individuals, on their own, have very little power in dealing with the state. But communities, and especially religious communities, have a great deal of power in shaping attitudes and behavior. Churches are one of those “mediating institutions,” along with voluntary associations, fraternal organizations and especially the family, that stand between the power of the state and the weakness of individuals. They’re crucial to the “ecology” of American life as we traditionally understand it.

And that’s why, if you dislike religion or resent the Catholic Church, or just want to reshape American life into some new kind of experiment, you need to use the state to break the influence of the Church and her ministries.

In the years ahead, we’re going to see more and more attempts by civil authority to interfere in the life of believing communities. We’ll also see less and less unchallenged space for religious institutions to carry out their work in the public square. It’s already happening with Catholic hospitals and adoption agencies, and even in the hiring practices of organizations like Catholic Charities. One thing this now requires is that no one in Catholic social work can afford to be lukewarm about his faith or naive about the environment we now face — at least if we want Catholic social work to remain Catholic.

The Catholic Nature of Charity

Having said all this as a kind of preface, I want to return to the particular focus of my remarks: What exactly does it mean when we say that a social ministry is “Catholic”? Dr. Jonathan Reyes, the CEO of our Catholic Charities here in Denver, gave me the following answer, and it’s a good one. A social agency is “Catholic” in two main ways. Structurally, it’s an arm of the local Church and organic to her mission. And evangelically, it’s a witness to the commandment given to us by Jesus Christ to love God first and above all and then to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

Being faithful to Catholic teaching isn’t something optional for a Catholic social worker. It’s basic to his or her identity. We need to remember that Catholic belief is much more than a list of dos and don’ts. It involves much more than simply obeying a Catholic moral code — although it certainly includes that. Catholic teaching is part of a much larger view of the human person, human dignity and our eternal destiny. The content of this teaching comes from God through his son, Jesus Christ. It’s defined by the universal Church and then preached, taught and applied by the local bishop. The faith of the Church is constitutive of Catholic social ministry. It’s not a kind of humanitarian modeling clay we can shape to our personal preferences; and the power and consistency of Catholic social witness collapse when we try to do that.

The basis of Catholic social doctrine is really quite straightforward. Speaking to Caritas International earlier this year, Father Raneiro Cantalamessa, OFM Cap., the Pope’s personal preacher, said that “Christianity doesn’t begin by telling people what they must do, but what God has done for them. Gift comes before duty.” In other words, our love for God and our love for neighbor begin as responses to love we’ve already received.

As our celebration of Trinity Sunday teaches us, Christian charity flows from having first experienced the love of God ourselves. For Christians, the ultimate purpose of every human being is fulfilled by knowing God’s love and being with God for eternity. All Christian charity is practiced with this goal in mind. Therefore, to be authentic, Christian charity must be free and must be motivated to share God’s love with others, in addition to offering material aid. Christian charity is always both a material and a religious act.

What that means for the charitable worker is this: As Benedict XVI says in Deus Caritas Est: To fully share the love of God with others, a person must herself “be moved by Christ’s love [and be] guided by faith, which works through love.” To put it another way, we can’t give what we don’t have. We also need to realize that every act of Christian charity is a spiritual enrichment for the helper as well as the receiver of material aid. Grace flows both to the receiver and the giver, including those outside the organization who support the work of charity through prayer and almsgiving.

Does a person need to be Christian to work for Catholic Charities? No. Many aspects of Catholic social work can be shared by all people of good will, and cooperating with others in this work is a very good thing — so long as the Catholic heart of the ministry remains zealous and true. Christian charity doesn’t require that we proselytize, that we speak out loud about our love for Jesus Christ and his love for us, in every circumstance. Sometimes, for prudential reasons, this is unwise. And Christian truth, even when openly professed, should never be offered in a coercive way. But where possible and fruitful, acts of Christian charity should clearly witness our Catholic faith and our love for Jesus Christ.

Is there a specifically Christian method to Christian charity? Again, no. For example, the social sciences give us some very good tools for helping people to deal with anger or to parent more effectively. As useful tools, these practical techniques greatly help the work of Christian charity. And it makes obvious sense for Christian charity to use the best means available from whatever source, so long as they respect Catholic teaching.

Ideals for Social Ministry

To sum up, all acts of Christian charity should be offered as a means of communicating to other people the highest form of charity — the knowledge of Jesus Christ and his love for them. From this basic understanding we can draw some important ideals for Catholic social ministry in general and Catholic Charities organizations in particular. These are not exhaustive, and I look forward to hearing your own thoughts as well.

First, every act of Catholic social work should function faithfully within the mission and structures of the local diocese, with special respect for the role of the bishop. All such social work should be true to Scripture, Church teaching and the Code of Canon Law.

Second, every Catholic social ministry, along with providing material aid, should allow for the possibility of verbally professing the Gospel, as prudence permits.

Third — and this should be obvious — no Catholic charitable worker should ever engage in coercive proselytization. He or she should always embody respect for an individual’s freedom and be governed by humility and common sense.

Fourth, every Catholic social ministry should insist on the best professional skills from its staff and should use the best professional means at its disposal in serving others — so long as those skills and means reflect the truth of Catholic moral teaching.

Fifth, Catholic Charities and similar Catholic organizations should always provide opportunities for prayer for their employees and volunteers. Prayer is integral to Christian charity, both as the means of experiencing the love of God ourselves and of seeking God’s help — without which none of our works can prosper.

Sixth, every Catholic social ministry — guided by charity and prudence, but also by courage — should bear witness to the truth of Jesus Christ to the wider community. This includes giving a public voice to the rights of the poor, the homeless, the disabled, the immigrant and the unborn child, consistent with the particular nature of its work.

Seventh, every Catholic Charities organization, both through action and instruction, should seek to deepen an awareness of Catholic social teaching within the Christian community.

Eighth, Catholic social work always should involve both an effective outreach to individuals struggling with poverty and a frank critique of the structural causes of poverty through the lens of Catholic social teaching.

Ninth and finally, Catholic social ministries should welcome opportunities to work with other individuals, groups and social agencies in ways that are compatible with Catholic teaching. But we need to stay alert to the fact that cooperation can easily turn Catholic organizations into sub-contractors of large donors — donors with a very different anthropology and thus very different notions of authentic human development. And that can undermine the very purpose of Catholic social work.

Given the state of Catholic charitable organizations, pursuing these ideals will involve serious cultural change within many Catholic agencies. That will take time. It will also demand people who, first, believe in real human development, as understood in the light of Jesus Christ and the Catholic faith; and, second, who have the courage to speak the truth and act on it confidently, despite the “humanism without God” that shapes so much modern social-service thinking. There is no such thing as “humanism without God.” It never endures, and it ends by debasing the humanity it claims to serve. The record of the last century proves it again and again in bitterly painful ways.

In the end, the kind of people we hire and the training we provide will determine whether the ideals I’ve just listed have any effect. With this in mind, Catholic social ministries should always use their training and hiring processes to advance a faithful understanding of Catholic social teaching within their institutional culture — and especially among their employees. Again, we can’t give what we don’t have. Christian charity is not generic “do-goodism.” Catholic social work exists to serve others — but it’s very specifically an expression of our love for Jesus Christ, Christ’s love for us, and our fidelity to the Church that Jesus founded. If we don’t have these things in our hearts, we have very little worthwhile to share.

A few minutes ago I painted a pretty stark picture of the America we may face in the next few decades. I think it’s accurate. But we shouldn’t lose heart, even for a minute. We can’t change the direction of the world by ourselves or on our own, but that’s not our job. Our job is to let God change us, and then to help God, through our actions, to change the lives of others. That’s what we’ll be held accountable for, and it’s very much within our ability — if we remain faithful to who we are as believers.

Speaking to bishops from Mexico several years ago, Benedict XVI offered the following words, and they’re worth remembering:

“Confronted by today’s changing and complex panorama, the virtue of hope is subject to harsh trials in the community of believers. For this very reason, we must be apostles who are filled with hope and joyful trust in God’s promises. God never abandons his people; indeed, he invites them to conversion so that his Kingdom may become a reality. The Kingdom of God does not only mean that God exists, that he is alive, but also that he is present and active in the world.”

I’ll close with one of my favorite stories. It involves the novelist Flannery O’Connor. She once found herself at a dinner with Mary McCarthy, another very well-known writer. McCarthy had left the Church, but she still had a kind of nostalgia for things Catholic, and especially the Eucharist as a symbol. O’Connor, who was very much a Catholic herself, listened for a while and then said, “Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.”

We might fault O’Connor for her language, but not for her courage or candor — or her confidence in the Church or her impatience with the empty conceit of people who want the comfort of faith but not the cost of actually believing and living it.

Each of you here today has kept the faith. Your witness makes a difference. I’m here today to thank you for that. And may God grant that your witness will lead many others to live with the same Catholic integrity and the courage to renew the heart of Catholic social ministry.

Read the entire article on the National Catholic Register website (new window will open).

Date posted: June 23, 2011

When the Church Bows to the State: Gay Bishops in the Church of England

As if the Church of England does not have enough troubles, word is leaking out of Lambeth Palace that the church is about to allow the appointment of openly gay bishops, so long as those bishops remain celibate.

The news has emerged in the form of a leaked internal memorandum prepared for the Archbishop of Canterbury by the church’s highest legal adviser. The legal guidelines are intended to bring the church into compliance with Britain’s Equality Act of 2010, even as the church is considering new criteria for the appointment of bishops. That law prohibits discrimination on the basis of several characteristics, including sexual orientation. The Equality Act has already been used to force some British churches to hire youth ministers and other workers who are openly homosexual.

Back in May, Andrew Brown of The Guardian [London] described the church’s predicament this way:

The leadership of the established church remains tied in knots over how far it can comply with the Equality Act in its treatment of gay people. Church lawyers have told the bishops that while they cannot take into account that someone is homosexual in considering them for preferment, they also cannot put forward clergy in active same-sex relationships and, even if they are celibate, must consider whether they can ‘act as a focus for unity’ to their flocks if appointed to a diocese.

Now, in light of that challenge, the church’s legal authority has suggested guidelines that would call for the appointment of openly gay bishops, but would require them to be celibate. The logic of the legal guidelines draws a distinction that would allow the church to claim compliance with the Equality Act and also act in accord with the deeply held beliefs of many of its members.

The crucial part of the guidelines states the matter like this:

It is not open to a crown nominations committee or a bishop making a suffragan appointment to propose someone who is in a sexually active same-sex relationship; it is not open to them to take into account the mere fact that someone is gay by sexual orientation.

So the “mere fact that someone is gay by sexual orientation” cannot be taken into account. But, of course, sexual orientation is not a “mere” matter in any Christian consideration. It is a matter of tremendous moral, spiritual, and theological significance. Our churches are filled with highly gifted persons who are struggling with their own sexual orientation, and many of these believers are living lives of faithful obedience to Christ.

But it is one thing to acknowledge and confess that one is struggling with same-sex attraction; it is yet another to announce and claim homosexuality as one’s personal identity.

Consider this section from the proposed guidelines:

A person’s sexual orientation is, in itself, irrelevant to their suitability for episcopal office or indeed ordained ministry more generally. It would, therefore, be wrong if [during the selection process] account were taken of the fact that a candidate had identified himself as of gay sexual orientation.

This is a very dangerous statement, for it declares something as important as sexual orientation to be “irrelevant” to qualifications for ministerial office. It would be “wrong,” the guidelines state, for sexual orientation to be taken into account.

At this point, the guidelines lose touch with theological sanity. Christians must acknowledge that, in a fallen world, people struggle with sexual impulses and attractions that fall short of the glory of God. That is not a new acknowledgment for the church. In some sense, this includes every human being since Adam. It also includes many whose particular struggle is with same-sex attraction. The Bible makes clear that even this attraction is demonstrable proof of human sinfulness. [See Romans 1: 18-32] The Gospel is our only rescue from sin, and this certainly includes the sin of homosexuality and the problem of same-sex attraction.

Thus, a believer confessing a struggle with same-sex attraction should not be condemned by the church, but brought under its care, discipline, ministry, and protection. In this sense, biblical Christians can understand sexual “orientation” to be a legitimate category that identifies a particular struggle with sin.

But the concept of sexual orientation that underlies the proposed guidelines for the Church of England is very different. In the context of Britain’s Equality Act of 2010, a same-sex sexual orientation is something to be put on an equal status with heterosexuality, as if there were nothing wrong with such an orientation.

This is the fatal inconsistency of the Church of England’s proposed guidelines. If a same-sex sexual orientation is not itself a problem, how can the church insist that homosexual acts are sinful? Again, these guidelines do not presume an individual who is just struggling with same-sex attraction, but one who claims a public homosexual identity. Understandably, the proposed guidelines are unlikely to withstand close scrutiny or to please either liberals or conservatives in the church.

Finally, a truly ominous issue is the Church of England’s subservience to the state on the matter of the Equality Act. As an established state church, the Church of England is hardly in a position to reject the government’s laws or to claim the high ground of religious liberty. Thus, it is in a trap from which it seems incapable or unwilling of extricating itself.

American churches and denominations had better take note. When a church or Christian institution bows to the authority of the state on a matter of such direct biblical importance, it is destined to lose biblical fidelity. The proposed guidelines for the Church of England should serve as an alarm to all churches concerning this real and present danger.

Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., serves as president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary — the flagship school of the Southern Baptist Convention and one of the largest seminaries in the world.

Read the entire article on the Albert Mohler website (new window will open).

Date posted: June 23, 2011

Shades of Grey: The Record of Archbishop Stepinac

As a long-time upholder of friendship and alliance between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditionalists, I am disheartened by Pope Benedict XVI’s uncritical portrayal of Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac (1898-1960) as a saintly figure during his visit to Croatia earlier this week.

In a homily at the Zagreb Cathedral the Pontiff called Stepinac “a fearless pastor and an example of apostolic zeal and Christian fortitude, whose heroic life continues today to illuminate the faithful of the Dioceses of Croatia, sustaining the faith and life of the Church in this land”:

The merits of this unforgettable bishop are derived essentially from his faith: in his life, he always had his gaze fixed on Jesus, to whom he was always conformed, to the point of becoming a living image of Christ, and of Christ suffering. Precisely because of his strong Christian conscience, he knew how to resist every form of totalitarianism, becoming, in a time of Nazi and Fascist dictatorship, a defender of the Jews, the Orthodox, and of all the persecuted, and then, in the age of communism, an advocate for his own faithful, especially for the many persecuted and murdered priests.

The historical record presents a more nuanced and ambivalent picture of Stepinac. The leading American historian of the Balkans, H. James Burgwyn, notes that, as “a vocal nationalist Croat,” Stepinac “conferred respectability on the Ustaša regime by his immediate approval of the new government… Without the urging of prelates and priests, many Croats, who otherwise would have turned their backs on the Ustaša atrocities, allowed themselves to be co-opted by Pavelic'’s regime” (H. James Burgwyn. Empire on the Adriatic: Mussolini’s Conquest of Yugoslavia, 1941-1943. New York: Enigma Books, 2005, pp. 52-53).

Specifically, on April 28, 1941, Archbishop Stepinac issued a pastoral letter in which he called on the clergy to take part in the “exalted work of defending and improving the Independent State of Croatia,” the birth of which “fulfilled the long-dreamed-of and desired ideal of our people” (Katolic(ki List, April 28, 1941).  The pastoral letter was read in every Croatian parish and over the radio.

The clergy hardly needed the Archbishop’s encouragement, however. This phenomenon was soon noted by various Axis officials in the field. The German Security Service (SD) expert for the Southeast, Dr. Wilhelm Hoettl, noted that forced conversions from Orthodoxy to figured prominently in the clerical agenda from the outset: “Since being Croat was equivalent to confessing to the Catholic faith, and being Serb followed the profession of Orthodoxy, they now began to convert the Orthodox to Roman Catholicism under duress. Forced conversions were actually a method of Croatization” (Walter Hagen. The Secret Front: the Story of Nazi Political Espionage. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1953, p. 238. ‘Hagen’ was Hoettl.).

A devout and austere man, distressed by the deportations and mass killing around him, “Stepinac was no admirer of the Nazi and Fascist creeds beyond their authoritarian ideas and anti-Communism,” Burgwyn notes, but for over two years “he refrained from open criticism of Pavelic'’s blood-soaked rule and kept silent over the Ustaša murders of the Orthodox” (Burgwyn, op. cit. p. 53).

In what is cited by his apologists as a bold move, Stepinac once declared from pulpit that “all men and races are children of God,” specifically mentioning “Gypsies, Black, European, or Aryan”—but no Serbs. He did not mention the main victims of the regime by name—not once—for the rest of the war. After more than two years of Ustaša rule, on October 31, 1943, Stepinac stated in a sermon that “there are people who accuse us of not having taken action against the crimes committed in different regions of our country. Our reply is… we cannot sound the alarm, for every man is endowed with his own free will and alone is responsible for his acts. It is for this reason that we cannot be held responsible for some in the ecclesiastical ranks.” Under the circumstances this view amounted to an abdication of moral responsibility.

No less contentiously, Stepinac stated at the Council of Croatian Bishops that a “psychological basis should be created among the Orthodox followers” for the conversions: “They should be guaranteed, upon conversion, not only life and civil rights, but in particular the right of personal freedom and also the right to hold property.” He did not say, or appear to think, that those rights were due to the unconverted Serbs. (Over a year before Yugoslavia’s collapse, on January 17, 1940, Stepinac wrote in his diary: “The most ideal thing would be if the Orthodox Serbs were… to bend their heads before Christ’s Vicar, our Holy Father [the Pope].”)

Stepinac’s failing was primarily in his timid and reluctant attitude to those members of the Croatian clergy who openly identified with the Ustaša regime, or even became supporters of and participants in the genocide.

When the anti-Serb and anti-Jewish racial laws of April and May 1941 were enacted, the Catholic press welcomed them as vital for “the survival and development of the Croatian nation” (Hrvatska Straža, May 11, 1941)—yet Stepinac did not intervene. On the subject of those laws, the Archbishop of Sarajevo Ivan Šaric' declared that “there exist limits to love” and declared it “stupid and unworthy of Christ’s disciples to think that the struggle against evil could be waged in a noble way and with gloves on.” Stepinac did not reprimand him. Those were the early days of the Ustaša regime, however, before the slaughter started in earnest. Later, “when the Ustaša launched their massacres, the Holy See took no overt measures to bring them to a halt” (Bergwyn, op. cit. p. 54).

This need not have been so:

Because Pavelic' so eagerly sought Vatican diplomatic recognition and led a movement of zealous Catholics, Pius had the leverage to force Pavelic' and the Ustaša to stop murdering Serbs and Jews.  [Pavelic' requested recognition immediately after arriving in Zagreb: “I fervently ask Your Holiness with Your highest apostolic authority to recognize our state, and deign as soon as possible to send Your representative, who will help me with Your fatherly advice . . . "]  The Vatican never attempted to use this leverage to prevent this genocide. Pius XII never condemned the destruction of the Serbian and Jewish population in Croatia, even though he held great sway over Pavelic' and his followers [Robert McCormick: Pius XII, in History in Dispute, Volume 11: The Holocaust, 1933-1945. St. James Press, 2003, p. 193].

By the summer of 1941 some priests abandoned all pretense of restraint. Fr. Dragutin Kamber, SJ, as the Ustaša trustee in the city of Doboj, in central Bosnia, personally ordered the execution of hundreds of Serbs. Fr. Peric' of the Gorica monastery instigated and participated in the massacre of over 5,000 Serbs in Livno and the surrounding villages. He encouraged the local Ustaša bands to start the slaughter with his own sister who was married to a Serb. The Catholic Weekly, the official journal of the Archdiocese headed by Stepinac, warned what was in store for the “schismatics” and enemies of the New Order: “When in the past God spoke through papal encyclicals, they closed their ears. Now God has decided to use other means… The sermons will be echoed by cannon, tanks and bombers” (Katolic(ki tjednik, Zagreb, 31 August 1941).

Particularly controversial was the role of Stepinac in a belated attempt to save the Ustaša state from collapse. In March 1945, he presided over a commemorative assembly in Zagreb devoted to “Catholic priests killed by the hand of the enemy” (Katolic(ki list, Zagreb 1945, No. 12-13, 29 March 1945, pp. 99-100).

At the ensuing Easter student assembly Stepinac stated, “If all nations have the right to secure their life and independence, then it is impossible to impose a solution contrary to the popular will of the Croat people either” (ibid. pp. 95-97).

In the message to the faithful signed by Stepinac and the Catholic episcopate on 24 March 1945, the bishops made a ringing assertion that “during the Second World War the will of the Croat people was expressed and realized in our own State” and that “nobody has the right to accuse any citizen of the State of Croatia because they respect this immutable will of the Croat People, to which it has the right both by God’s laws and those of men” (ibid. pp. 93-95).

The moral consequences of such posture are illustrated by Dr. Vladko Maček’s personal encounter with a mass murderer. The leader of the Croatian Peasant Party, interned at the Jasenovac camp headquarters in 1941-42, recalled hearing from the other side of the barbed wire “the screams and wails of despair and extreme suffering, the tortured outcries of the victims, broken by intermittent shooting.” They “accompanied all my waking hours and followed me into sleep at night.” He noticed that one of the guards assigned to watch him crossed himself each night before going to bed. Maček asked the guard whether he was not afraid of the punishment of God. “Don’t talk to me about that,” the guard replied, “for I am perfectly aware what is in store for me. For my past present and future deeds I shall burn in hell, but at least I shall burn for Croatia” (Vlatko Maček, In the Struggle for Freedom, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania University Press, 1957, p. 234).

As this episode illustrates, the Ustaša criminality is measured not only by the numbers of dead Serbs, Jews and Gypsies, but also by the impact of their crimes on the society at large. That impact remains enormous, seven decades after the deed. Pope Benedict’s uncritical praise of Stepinac does not help heal the wounds and build the bridges.

Five years ago, in an address to the Norbertine Fathers of St. Michael’s Abbey in Silverado, California, I noted that to regain the war-ravaged remnants of Christendom “it should be admitted by every Christian that others—people outside his particular tradition—may share Christian virtues and lead good lives… They need to hang together, in these trying times, or else they will most assuredly hang separately.” Of this need I remain equally convinced today, which is why I find Pope Benedict’s rhetoric in Zagreb so disheartening and regrettable.

Read the entire article on the Chronicles of Culture website (new window will open). Reprinted with permission of the author.

Date posted: June 09, 2011

Will the World Really End on December 21, 2012?

Remember back fifteen years ago and how the Y2K scare was supposed to throw your world into chaos? The calendar would turn into the new century and computers would break down. Planes were supposed to fall out of the sky, dams would break, and many would die. It didn’t happen.

Go back even further and we discover doomsday predictions have a rich legacy. Remember Nostradamus? He’s trotted out whenever a modern prophecy needs some instant credibility. Most people don’t even know that he wrote under the Julian calendar which shifts his predictions to four years earlier anyway. Even then, he thought the world would still be kicking well in the 38th century. It looks like we have some time left!

Next up is the date December 21, 2012. While it’s true that many of us maintain some foreboding concerning next year with all of the world’s economic and political woes, much of this concern has been reinforced by the calendar of the long gone Mayan Indian culture of Central America.  Their calendar, in looking toward the future, ended on the above date with no explanation. Yet, this hasn’t quelled our doomsday thought processes. Thus, once again we face disaster: the world will be struck by an asteroid or comet bringing most if not all of life to an abrupt end; missiles with atomic warheads will be launched during a Third World War; celestial alignments, black holes, magnetic pole shifts, solar storms, apocalyptic events of biblical proportions, alien invasions – well, you get the point.  We are all doomed, say the soothsayers.  Hollywood is at it again having already made a blockbuster sci-fi film with the name – you guessed it – “2012.” Once again, there are books being sold by the millions, and the internet is swamped with websites, all talking about the subject.  New survival kits are just around the corner!

But getting back to the ancient Mayans, certainly they were a brilliant people who had delved into mathematics, astronomy, engineering and architecture.  They built great cities from 200 AD on, and had developed into the greatest civilization of the New World well before the Conquistadors finally arrived in the 16th century.  Their greatness, however, didn’t prevent them from committing some egregious errors in their belief systems nor temper their horrific dark side within their character.  For instance, while the accuracy of their calendar remains beyond question, they also believed that the world was created on what we would calculate to be August 13, 3114 BC!  We know that too didn’t happen.  And any possible prophecies that would have come from the Mayans would have come from a pagan people who practiced human sacrifice, even that of children! 

Yet, we of the western world, the world of Christendom, seem to be more willing to accept what the Mayans had to say – or didn’t actually say – than what our own Holy Scriptures have, through the ages, transmitted to us especially from among the Prophetic books of both Testaments, Old and New.  I strongly suggest that we cease worrying about what the Mayans and Nostradamus had to say – or didn’t say – and to begin once again to focus our attention on the “Good Book” that came from the Lord Himself to all people of all epoch periods, a book that is 110% accurate in all its Prophecies.  We should ask ourselves who we would rather trust, pagans and astrologers who are wrong more often than right, or the Lord Jesus Christ Himself before Whom we should be bending our knees. The answer should be clear to all of us!

Chris Andreas spent a quarter century in the corporate world working primarliy for IBM Corp. before moving on to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in New York where he worked in the Department of Stewardship Ministry for 17 1/2 years. Having now retired he is a freelance researcher and writer.

 

Date posted: June 6, 2012

Finding Meaning in Suffering

Chaplain's Corner
Short essays written for the La Jolla Veteran's Hospital newsletter in La Jolla, California

Many people hold the common belief held that life should not include hardship and suffering and that events that occur, and the way people act should be the way we want them to be. Psychologists have picked up on this attitude system as a major source of emotional disorders. Karen Horney (1950) called it the “tyranny of the shoulds.” Albert Ellis (1962), talked about - demanding expectations - that people and events should always follow our preconceived ideas. Psychologists have attempted to find the meaning of illness, suffering, and death. Just the titles of some books by one well-known psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl, illustrate such attempts: Man's Search for Meaning (1959); The Will to Meaning (1969); The Unheard Cry for Meaning (1978).

Different religious traditions have attempted to understand suffering. Hindu tradition considers suffering a consequence of inappropriate living. Buddhism considers suffering a form of craving, not dissimilar to the shoulds and demanding expectations discussed by Horney and Ellis. Buddha teaches: "No sufferings befall the man who is not attached to name and form, and who calls nothing his own." (Dhammapada 17: 221). The Koran, in Islamic tradition, points out: "If ye are suffering hardships ... but ye have Hope from God, while they have none. And God is full of knowledge and wisdom. [4:104]. In Judeo-Christian Sacred Scripture, the Book of Job presents the quintessential spiritual perception. From a human perspective, although Job's sufferings are unjust and inexplicable, nevertheless, he retains his commitment and trust in God.

Our Eastern Church Father, St. Maximus the Confessor, (Philokalia II), expands on this theme but also provides insight into other possible motivations individuals may have: "A man endures suffering either for the love of God, or for hope of reward, or for fear of punishment, or for fear of men, or because of his nature, or for pleasure, or for gain, or out of self-esteem, or from necessity."

Finally, to find meaning in suffering we could apply the teaching of St. Isaac of Syria: "A time of trial is beneficial to everyone: the diligent are tried so that their wealth may increase; the lax, so that they may be preserved from harm; those spiritually asleep, so that they may prepare themselves for watchfulness; those who are far from God, so that they approach Him; those who are God's close associates, so that they may come closer to Him in freedom of speech." (Brock, 1997).

REFERENCES

Brock, S. (1997). The Wisdom of St. Isaac the Syrian. Fairacres Oxford, England: SLG Press.

Ellis, A. (1962). Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy. Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart.

Frankl, V. (1959). Man's Search for Meaning. NY: Simon & Schuster.

Frankl, V. (1969). The Will to Meaning. NY: New American Library.

Frankl, V. (1978). The Unheard Cry for Meaning. NY Simon & Schuster.

Horney, K. (1950 Neurosis and Human Growth. NY: Norton.

Palmer, G.E.H., Sherrard, P. Ware, K. (trans.) (1981). The Philokalia, Volume 2:; Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain & St. Makarios of Corinth. London: Faber and Faber.

Date posted: June 5, 2001

Healing Apostolic Church Disunity: Zeal - Among the first of virtues required by Holy Baptism

It may not have occurred to some Orthodox Christians that incorporation into the royal priesthood of Christ by the Holy Mystery of Baptism requires us to work toward converting Christians who make up the Apostolic Churches - the Latin and Eastern Catholic, the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox - to the complete fulfillment of the priestly prayer that Christ gave to His Apostles at the Last Supper: "Holy Father, keep them in thy name, which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are one" (Jn 17: 11). Our Holy Spiritual Father St. Theophylact understands this prayer of Christ to mean that His true followers be of "unanimity of thought and will among themselves." St. Theophylact goes on to explain: "Thus Jesus wards off the scandal of division among disciples. If they were to lack unity and oneness of mind, how would their preaching be credible to anyone?" Unfortunately, this scandal is everywhere present in today's world (Morelli, 2010).

Unity among the Apostolic Churches

Those whom we who are convinced of the need for a unity of Christian witness have to missionize are all those who make up these Churches: the Royal Priesthood of the baptized. That is to say, we must reach out to the monastics, the deacons, the priests, the bishops and even the Patriarchs of our Apostolic Churches. The epitome of this oneness will be evident when all can share in Christ's Body and Blood together.

The virtue of zeal

To be effective missionaries we have to cultivate, in cooperation with the grace of the Holy Spirit, the virtue of zeal, that is to say, intensely passionate spiritual fervor for our apostolate.

Let us examine how St. Paul’s instructions to the Romans (12: 9-12) can be a model for our own zealous commitment to Church reunion: "Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with brotherly affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Never flag in zeal, be aglow with the Spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.” Indeed, we must have “a zeal for God” (Rm 10: 2).

Indeed, as part of this we must have a zeal for full re-union of the Apostolic Churches that is so strong that we are motivated to do all we can to make known that disunion is a grievous sin and scandal and a fervent desire, actually as fervent as a demand, for reunion of our Churches, even to the highest levels of our various hierarchies. St. Isaac of Syria (Wensinck, 1923) tells us the outcome when zeal lags. St. Isaac considers zeal a weapon that guides action. "[When someone] casts away the weapon of zeal and becomes as a house without a guardian.... the serene flame of holy knowledge in the soul becomes dark."

A glimmer of hope

There are currently some groups of Apostolic Christians who are working zealously to heal the illness and infirmity of disunion. These groups do not take the place of any of the official national and international dialogues of the various Apostolic Churches. Rather, such efforts are an attempt on the part of all who comprise the 'Body of Christ' to inflame all the Churches to attain a metanoia, a change of mind heart and deed, to re-unite the Churches.  One example in the United States is the Society of St. John Chrysostom.ⁱ (www.lightoftheeast.org). Global efforts also are being made.  Asia Newsⁱⁱ recently reported on the healing work toward this end of international organizations and individuals in Russia and overseas, such as 'Aid to the Church in Need', 'Christian Russia' and 'Lights on the East.' All must be enlivened by Christ's words: "No one after lighting a lamp covers it with a vessel, or puts it under a bed, but puts it on a stand, that those who enter may see the light" (Lk 8:16).

In the spirit of Christ's words to His Apostles (Mt 28: 19) let us zealously go forth "....and make disciples" - for church unity - "of all nations...." St. Luke (Acts 18: 24-26) tells us about Apollos' fervent and zealous love for Christ. "He began to speak boldly in the synagogue....” Can we do otherwise?

Unity with the Church of Christ

It must also not be forgotten that healing the sin of disunion must go beyond the unity of the Apostolic Churches. Christians of the true Churches of Christ, that is to say, the Churches in unbroken succession from the Apostles, do not form ecclesial communities founded on the teachings of men, but rather on the teachings of Christ Himself, which were inflamed in the hearts of the Apostles by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. St. Paul's injunction to the Ephesians (4:4-5) must be taken seriously: "There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism...." Christ, right before His Ascension, actually commissioned His followers to extend His teachings to all the world and, by implication, invited all to become members of His Body, His one true  Church:  "But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth" (Acts 1:8). A start on such witness can be commenced right now, as suggested by Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev.ⁱⁱⁱ The agreement of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches on Sacred Tradition (and Scripture in Tradition), apostolic succession, and the recognition of the Holy-Mysteries provides the  common foundation witnessing the major points of moral teaching, including questions of family ethics, human sexuality, bioethics. (Morelli, 2009)  In the world today, this means giving testimony by word and deed to agnostics, atheists, humanists, Jews, Moslems, non-Apostolic Christians, pagans, secularists and the un-churched.

What I tell you in the dark, utter in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim upon the housetops. (Mt 10: 27)

REFERENCES

Blessed Theophylact. (2007). The Explanation of the Holy Gospel According to St. John. (Vol. 4). House Spring, MO: Chrysostom Press

Morelli, G. (2009, November 17). The Power of the Name: Implications for Orthodox Psycho-Theology.www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/morelli-the-power-of-the-name-implications-for-orthodox-psycho-theology.

Morelli, G. (2010, April 30). Toward healing Church schism: Overview and psycho-theological reflection. www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/toward-healing-church-schism-overview-and-psycho-theological-reflection.

Wensinck, A. J. (ed., trans.) (1923). Mystic Treatises by Isaac of Nineveh. Amsterdam, Holland: Koninklijke Akademie Van Wetenschappen.

ENDNOTES

ⁱ The Society of St. John Chrysostom is an ecumenical group of clergy and lay people which promotes Eastern Christianity and Ecumenical Dialogue between the Eastern and Western Churches. It sponsors the Eastern Churches Journal and the annual Orientale Lumen Conference. It has been in existence since 1997 in the United States and for over 70 years in England.

The goals of the Society are to:

• Make known the history, worship, spirituality, discipline and theology of Eastern Christendom.
• Work and pray that all Christians, particularly the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, will attain the fullness of unity which Jesus Christ desires.
• Develop educational programs which present information about the Eastern Churches.
• Organize and conduct pilgrimages and conferences that encourage ecumenical dialogue.
• Contribute to fund-raising activities which support Eastern Christian communities and other programs in need of financial aid.
• Publish books, brochures, and other information which help explain Eastern Christianity.
• Encourage and support the study of the writings and liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom.
• Promote scholarships for the study of Eastern Churches in Catholic and Orthodox seminaries.

ⁱⁱ http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Secularism-imposes-a-new-alliance-between-Catholics-and-Orthodox-Like-back-in-the-days-of-the-21490.html

ⁱⁱⁱ http://en.hilarion.orthodoxia.org/print/6-22

Read the entire article on the website (new window will open).

Date posted: June 5, 2011

Zeal: Among the First of Virtues of our Missionary Apostolate

It may not have occurred to some SSJC members and supporters that our association is actually a missionary society. Our apostolate is to convert the Christians who make up the Apostolic Churches -the Latin and Eastern Catholic, the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox -to the complete fulfillment of the priestly prayer that Christ gave to His Apostles at the Last Supper: "Holy Father, keep them in thy name, which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as weare one" (Jn 17: 11). Those we have to missionize are all those whomake up these Churches: the Royal Priesthood of the baptized, the monastics, the deacons, the priests, the bishops and even the Patriarchs. The epitome of this oneness will be evident when all can share in Christ's Body and Blood together.

To be effective missionaries we have to cultivate, in cooperation with the grace of the Holy Spirit, the virtue of zeal, that is to say, intensely passionate spiritual fervor for our apostolate. Let us examine how St. Paul’s instructions to the Romans (12: 9-12) can be a model for our own zealous commitment to Church reunion:

“Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with brotherly affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Never flag in zeal, be aglow with the Spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.”

Indeed, we must have “a zeal for God.” (Rm 10: 2). Indeed, as part of this we must have a zeal for full re-union of the Apostolic Churches that is so strong that we are motivated to do all we can to make known the sin of disunion and our fervent desire for reunion of our Churches, even to the highest levels of our various hierarchies. St. Isaac of Syria1 tells us the outcome when zeal lags. St. Isaac considers zeal a weapon that guides action. "[When someone] casts away the weapon of zeal and becomes as a house without a guardian ... the serene flame of holy knowledge in the soul becomes dark."

In the spirit of Christ's words to His Apostles (Mt 28: 19) let us zealously go forth ". . .and make disciples" - for church unity - "of all nations. . . ." St. Luke (Acts 18: 24-26) tells us about Apollos' fervent and zealous love for Christ. "He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. . . .” Can we do otherwise?

REFERENCES

Wensinck, A. J. (ed., trans.) (1923). Mystic Treatises by Isaac of Nineveh. Amsterdam, Holland: Koninklijke Akademie Van Wetenschappen.

Date posted: May 17, 2011

Economics 101

It’s really very simple. One does not need to take a graduate course in Economics to figure out why a productive society prospers and how it can be destroyed. As Tim Harford explains in The Undercover Economist, “Economics is partly about modeling, about articulating basic principles and patterns that operate behind seemingly complex subjects.” The key word is “seemingly.” The other part of Economics is plain common sense—the part which all too many economists refuse to practice since it deprives them of shamanistic status as delvers into realms of mystical complexity. Paul Krugman comes immediately to mind. “[I]ncreased government spending,” pontificates The New York Times guru, “is just what the doctor ordered, and concerns about the budget deficit should be put on hold.” One may be pardoned for thinking that it is Krugman who should be put on hold.

There are, it’s only fair to note, a handful of practitioners who command respect for the combination of wit, learning, insight, humility and levelheadedness they bring to the discipline. Milton Friedman provides an excellent example of this rare breed of thinker, a man who could turn pertinent aphorisms on a lathe and who was no stranger to prudence and good sense—what Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics called phronesis. But the Friedmans among the economist caste, the exemplars of phronesis, are a small minority. As for the current political class in the U.S., Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan are conspicuous for economic reasonableness and practical acumen that coincides with what everybody knows—or would know—if they thought about it.

For the basic issues are by no means complex. We recall that the word “economy” comes from the Greek oekonomia, namely, household affairs, domestic management, as Aristotle lays it out in the Politics. High finance and market speculation, for all their daunting ramifications, are only an esoteric derivative of straightforward economics. Of course, managing a nation involves many more factors and “parameters” than attending to the family budget. But the underlying structure is the same. As every responsible householder is aware, there are, in effect, four basic principles that must be taken into account to ensure economic viability.

1. You must earn and produce.
2. You must try to spend less than you earn.
3. The remainder should be saved or carefully invested in case of emergency and for the future.
4. And if you borrow beyond your present means, for reasons that are deemed necessary (e.g., mortgages, auto purchases, domestic appliances, education, etc.), there must be an empirical presumption of feasible repayment that does not lead to destitution.

Complications will naturally arise in a world prone to sudden disruptions—nothing in life is absolutely secure. And admittedly, on the scale of macroeconomics, which deals with interest rates, inflation, unemployment, trade imbalances, bond markets, monetary policy, resource procurement and so on, contingencies will be introduced that demand a higher degree of economic savvy than that required by the everyday householder. Moreover, fiscal dispensations are often tied up with political objectives and calculations, which tend to generate intricacies and convolutions not easy to disentangle. There are electoral constituencies that need to be satisfied if a political party is to cling to power, an exigency that muddles economic rationality—although this is also true, mutatis mutandis, with respect to clamoring family members in the interests of domestic peace. Nevertheless, these four principles represent the bedrock of economic management at any level of organization, whether that of the individual family or of the nation considered as an organic whole.

Economics is often defined as “the science of scarcity” and the study of how to make the best of diminishing returns. Regrettably, the current economic climate in the U.S. is characterized by the scarcity of intelligence and the study of how to make, not the best, but the worst of returns that continue to diminish. As Steve Forbes says, “People know that something is wrong with the dollar…You cannot trash your money without repercussions.” Clearly, the four principles of solvency have been systematically violated. Production is down. We spend more than we earn—as well as spend what we haven’t earned. Surpluses are non-existent. And borrowing is out of control, with no pragmatic arrangement or prospect of repayment. The result is a weakened currency and a nation in disarray.

Friedman presciently warned in Money Mischief that “The fate of a country is inseparable from the fate of its currency.” This dictum and its elaboration in his work serve as a necessary corrective to the influential monetary theories of John Maynard Keynes who, in the succinct summation of Time magazine, advocated “the radical idea that governments should spend more money than they have.” The point was to trigger what Keynes, in The Means to Prosperity, called a “multiplier effect” in the creation of jobs and the stimulation of consumer spending. But as Friedman argued in a seminal paper, “The Role of Monetary Policy,” the Keynesian agenda didn’t work, leading instead to stagflation, that is, high unemployment and inflation operating in tandem.

To put it in moderately technical terms—as a sop to “professionals”—Keynesian policy embraced the famous Phillips curve model that posits an inverse relation between unemployment and inflation, on the strange assumption that a high rate of inflation causes lower unemployment and in consequence greater consumer spending. Friedman (and others) showed that the Phillips curve was inoperative over the long term. The corollary of this refutation was that government, with its control of the Federal Reserve and central banking functions, should not interfere in the running of the economy, particularly in setting employment targets and engaging in deficit spending to boost the economy, since its efforts are more than likely to be futile. Metaphorically speaking, the economy resembles a beast that must be allowed to roam freely in its natural habitat and that will not be tamed by non-nutritious fodder. The purpose of government is merely to ensure the habitat remains stable.

Part of the malaise from which we suffer today is that our fiscal authorities, like Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner, follow the prescriptions of Keynes and his disciple Krugman and not of Aristotle and Friedman. Facing a mounting wall of debt and entitlement disbursements, the solution they adopt is to increase the money supply without limit, aka “quantitative easing,” that is, maxing out the credit card. And when the credit card is no longer accepted, they merely acquire another with which to pay off the original, which is called “raising the debt ceiling.”

When a householder acts in this way, he must eventually declare personal bankruptcy and go on the dole. When a nation acts in this way, it must inevitably default on its fiscal obligations and/or devalue the currency—but there is no dole to fall back upon. The consequence is economic, political and social devastation. In the words of Walter E. Williams, author, syndicated columnist and an economist at George Mason University, “If debt continues to grow the way it has been growing for the last decade…we’re just going to collapse.” Williams predicts that America is about “to go the way of other great nations historically…And that is down the tubes.”

True, there are all too many householders who have succumbed to the consumption-and-spending mania rife in the U.S., having forgotten the maxims of resourceful management, or phronesis. But hardworking families, the very backbone of the nation, are generally aware of the constraints they must deal with. The problem rests mainly with government profligacy. If the plunge toward economic ruin is not checked, privation and forfeiture will be the dismal fate of the country. Slight upturns are illusory. The dead cat may bounce, but that doesn’t make it any less dead.

The situation has become increasingly dire under the programmatic mismanagement of the president of the country and his delegates. Indeed, if Obama handled his household the way in which he governs his nation, he would shortly be on the street jingling a tin cup. But, of course, he is a multi-millionaire who knows very well how to manage his personal finances. He is brilliantly adept at microeconomics. However, when it comes to the macro plane of economic oversight, he is either a complete incompetent or a very clever student of the neo-Marxist Cloward/Piven doctrine of orchestrated crisis that envisages social upheaval via uncontrolled expenditure.

The slightest acquaintance with Economics 101 makes it abundantly clear that, on the national level, the four fundamental pillars of economic health are routinely disregarded or deliberately contravened. Whether through ignorance or intent on the part of our leaders and their appointed experts, these four load-bearing beams are now beginning to crack and the house is perilously close to toppling on its foundations.

Read the entire article on the Front Page Magazine website (new window will open). Reprinted with permission.

Date posted: May 17, 2011

Mortality Tales

British composer John Tavener at home in Dorset

It’s an unseasonably hot spring day and John Tavener’s Dorset farmhouse is surrounded by signs of new life: flower beds are brimming with bluebells, young goats bleat from a nearby pen, chickens occupy a scruffy patch of lawn and the composer’s four-year-old son Orlando is charging from room to room with excited shrieks. So it seems strange to kick-start our conversation with a discussion of mortality but that’s where I begin.

Death is, after all, one of the enduring themes of Tavener’s work and he admits it has been a preoccupation and source of inspiration throughout his life. “Ever since the age of about four, I connected the spiritual with the musical,” he says, “and quite early on in my life, death as well.”

At the age of 15, Tavener began what would become his first major work, Three Holy Sonnets of John Donne, a grave triptych on the themes of sin, death and corruption; since then he has written three requiems and numerous pieces in memoriam, and his place in the popular psyche was secured when his short choral work, Song for Athene, was sung at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales. Since being diagnosed with Marfan syndrome in the early 1990s, Tavener’s interest has sharpened. This genetic condition affecting the body’s connective tissues has led to serious heart problems in recent years, an experience that is linked, albeit obliquely, to his most recent large-scale work, Towards Silence, which will be performed at the Salisbury International Arts Festival this month.

[...]

Read the entire article on the Financial Times website (new window will open).

Date posted: May 15, 2001

Osama is Dead. Now What Should I Feel?

Last night, like most of the world, I was captivated by the announcement that the President of the United States would be making a statement at 10:30 p.m. As I Tweeted this information, I added the line that this could not be good. Presidents do not often come on at 10:30 on a Sunday night to announce good news. So, like the rest of the world, I waited and watched the social media to try and find out what was going on. I will add a side note here that I almost went to bed!

News started to be leaked and then confirmed that the USA had killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan and that they were working on identification. This was a military operation and no U.S. military personnel were harmed in this operation. I will admit, I, like many others in the U.S. and around the world, rejoiced at this news. Rejoiced at the news that bin Laden was dead and the news that no Americans were hurt or killed in the operation.

I watched as Twitter and Facebook lit up with news and reactions. (The interesting thing is everything went quiet as POTUS began speaking.) People were thanking God and military that justice had been served. But what are we Christians to make of all of this? How are we supposed to react and feel about all of this? Some of the folks I follow on Twitter started sending out Tweets that made it sound like them came from Fortune Cookies. (I have never liked using one passage of Scripture to try and prove a point.) But it did get me thinking, and thinking. I went to bed and listened to the news coverage on the BBC World Service and eventually drifted off to sleep.

So in the light of day I had to ask myself this question: How do we, as Christians, balance our relief that the mastermind behind so much killing is dead and the fact that a human life, created in the image and likeness of God, has perished? My Orthodox Christianity teaches that God does not rejoice when one of His children is lost. One of the folks on Twitter said that we Christians should feel sorrow that we did not do enough to convert him to Christianity. Well, I will not go that far but I do understand the sentiment. I also had to remind myself that it is not our job to judge — that is and should be left to God. Again, my Orthodox faith teaches that we are all sinners and we will all be judged for our actions.

I have said this before: Each and every human has been created in the image and likeness of God. Because of our creation in that image and likeness, we are not born evil. Evil is something we learn and is a byproduct of the fallen nature of humanity. Our actions are sinful and evil but humanity is not evil. As an Orthodox Christian I also believe in the power of confession and reconciliation. One of the hardest concepts for some people to come to terms with is the fact that if we are truly sorry and repentant; God will forgive all of our sins no matter how horrible. What an amazing and loving God we have!

The difficulty is in rejoicing over the situation at hand. Are we rejoicing because a man is dead or are we rejoicing because justice has been accomplished? I will say that if we are rejoicing because a man is dead then our rejoicing is misplaced. As Christians we should never rejoice at someone's death, especially a death of one who is lost. Justice being served, however, is a different story.

We can rejoice that justice has been served for the thousands of people who were murdered because of the actions of this one man. I remember the anger I felt watching the events of Sept. 11 and how I wanted revenge, how I wanted those responsible to pay. It was a very dark day spiritually for many, many people, including myself. I will also confess that I am not sure how I felt last night when I heard the news, but it felt wrong that I was happy. A man was dead and I was happy. This was not right! If we give in to this kind of retribution then we are no better than those who committed the act. If we rejoice because this man is dead, then spiritually a small part of us has died as well.

During the Divine Liturgy we pray for those who love us and those who hate us. Praying for people who love us is easy, praying for those who hate us is difficult, if not downright impossible, but we have to do it. We are called to pray for every person not just the ones we like.

This past week we remembered the events leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. One of the most remarkable events took place whilst Jesus was on the Cross. He asked His Father to forgive those who had done this to Him! Think about it: Hanging on the Cross, Jesus asked God to forgive those who killed him. What an example He leaves for us. "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."

I am reminded of a Scripture passage from the Gospel of St. Matthew, "You have heard that it was said, 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, do not resist one who is evil ... love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matthew 5:38-39, 44). Hard words to hear but it is good for us to be reminded of them from time to time.

So what is a Christian to do? How are we to respond to this? Well, first, as with anything, we need to pray. We need to pray for all those who have lost their lives the last few days and we need to pray for those who put their lives on the line. The killing of this man will not be welcome news to many people and our troops are in harm's way. We need to keep all of this in the proper perspective, be happy that justice has been done but we cannot and should not rejoice in the death of anyone. If we truly respect human life, then all life is sacred, not just the ones we like. We also need to pray that we can make some sense of all of this.

So is it possible to be happy and sad at the same time? I believe it is. The very human emotion I was feeling last night was joy that he was dead. The very Christian emotion I am feeling today in the light of day is one of sadness that a life is lost and a feeling of relief that the one who brought terror to so many has been brought to justice. The rest of what I am feeling will just have to work itself out.

Read the entire article on the Huffington Post website (new window will open). Reprinted with permission.

Date posted: May 2, 2011

Smart Parenting XX. The Theology and Practice of Love Made Simple

So we know and believe the love God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him (1 John 4: 16).

I presume that the passage "God is love," is known by each and all who call themselves Christian and, of course, this especially includes Christian parents. The question then becomes not the definition of God, but making sure that the meaning of St. John's words are understood and able to be practiced, by the parents themselves Morelli. 2010b), of course, but also in a manner that their children can comprehend and carry out as well.The single English word ‘love’ usually has three distinct meanings that can be better understood in the Greek words: philia, eros and agape.

Philia is a favorable feeling or liking of someone or something, exemplified in ‘philanthropy.’ Eros is an intense sexual desire for someone, and agape is self-emptying, selfless concern for someone. The secular world, and even committed adult Christians, often confuse the three meanings. Thus, children and adolescents will certainly have difficulty in making the distinction. The focus of the world is on eros, the lustful erotic. Sex is used for, and by, power and self-gain.

The epitome of agape is summarized in the Anaphora Prayer in the Liturgy of St. Basil: that God ordered all things for us; fashioned us from dust in His image; put us in Paradise; promising us life eternal; and after the transgression of our ancestral parents, did diverse things: He sent Prophets, Saints, Angels, most of all His Son, Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ who, emptying Himself in form of a servant; [making] us a royal priesthood, a holy nation; giving us His very Body and Blood and undergoing the passion, crucifixion and death on the cross - triumphing over sin and death by His Resurrection.

The basic understanding of Love as agape is that it is an attitude, a heartfelt intention and a set of actions that are aimed at the good and welfare of the other. Love means having truly beneficent care for the welfare of others in thought word and deed. St. Maximus the Confessor tells us: "The Divine erotic force also produces ecstasy, compelling those who love to belong not to themselves but to those whom they love . . . .through their care . . . " (Philokalia II). By calling love a "Divine erotic force" St. Maximus is not referring to the lust-filled love associated with the world, but the passion, zeal and fervor we are capable of, similar to the courageous manner in which St. John the Baptist called for repentance. Morelli, 2010). As St. Matthew (3:1-5) recounts:

In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." Now John wore a garment of camel's hair, and a leather girdle around his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then went out to him Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan...

Love as Agape is Concrete

St. Isaac of Syria (Wensinck, 1923) makes very concrete both the actions of love and who we should love by caring for them

…Our Lord shared His table with publicans and harlots without making any distinction between those who were worthy and those who were not, seeking to spur them on thereby into the fear of God and to bring them, through communion in the fear of God and to bring them, through communion in bodily things, into spiritual communion. Therefore deem all people worthy of bounty and honour, be they Jews or miscreants or murderers.

The Greatest Good and Welfare

St. Isaac tells us what this is: "spiritual communion with Him.” The Eastern Church Fathers have called this theosis. St. Gregory of Palamas informs us that it is the Will of the Father that "creation will be deified." (Philokalia IV). In this regard we understand the priestly prayer of Christ when, at the institution of the Eucharist at His Last Supper, He prayed for His Apostles: "that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one . . . .” (Jn 17: 21-22) The words heard at every Anaphora of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom confirm this liturgically by recounting the purpose and principal events of Christ's mission on earth:

Take eat this is my Body….Drink ye all of this; this is my Blood. . . .shed for. . . . the remission of sins. . . .Having in remembrance . . .this saving commandment. . .the Cross, the Grave, the Resurrection on the third day, the Ascension into heaven, the Session at the right hand and the second and glorious Advent…

As St. Paul wrote to the Galatians (2:20): "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. . . ." St. Maximus the Confessor also understands that the abundance and fullness of love is the conveying of His Divinity to us. In his Epistle To Thalassius St. Maximus (Meyendorf. 1974) writes: "Divine grace alone possesses of itself the faculty of communicating deification to beings in a manor analogous to them; then nature shines forth with a supernatural light and is transported above its own limits by a superabundance of glory."

God's Love of Us Individualized

Let us recall the words of Christ to His Apostles: "Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” (Jn 14: 1-3).

We should keep in mind the words of St. Isaac the Syrian (Alfeyev, 2000): "Everyone has a single place in [God's] purpose in the ranking of love, corresponding to the form He beheld in them before He created them … that is, at the time before the eternal purpose for the delineation of the world was put into effect….He has a single ranking and impassible love towards everyone…"

The Good and Welfare is for all People Unconditionally

Our love for others has to emulate the unconditional love God has for us. Once again, as St. Isaac the Syrian (Alfeyev, 2000) informs us, "Knowing them and all their conduct [all mankind], the flow of His [God's] grace did not dry up from them: not even after they started living amid many evil deeds did He withhold His care for them, even for a moment."

Application to Family Life

One way to begin a life of love is to serve others. Serving those who are in real need of help is a way of loving them (Morelli, 2009); it is an act of love. Did not Jesus tell us: "But not so with you; rather let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves (Lk 22: 26)."

Preschoolers

A life of serving can start with family members serving, that is to say, helping one another. What a child sees a parent doing or saying is critical in their own learning and performance. When a discrepancy exists between what a parent says and does and what they tell their children to say and do, the parental instruction immediately looses credibility. Children are outstanding hypocrisy detectors. Ideally service can be modeled by parents and can be part of the family ethos right from the beginning of family life. For very young children age appropriate tasks can be assigned. An average toddler or preschooler, for example, can be asked to fetch an item that will be used in making a dinner. They may also be given instructions and help in setting the dinner table. Helping to unpack and put away groceries is also a task they would have the developmental motor and cognitive skill to accomplish.

It can be noted that a temptation especially for very busy working parents is that it is so much easier to "do it the adult way" and get it over with than to take the time to instruct the child that involves their own level of understanding and skill. Rogoff (1990) described a process called guided participation whereby parents influence young children’s behavior by collaboration based on shared understanding of a routine process. Rogoff gives a personal example involving her 3 1/2 year old daughter:

I was getting ready to leave my house, and I noticed that a run had started in the foot of my stocking. My daughter volunteered to help sew the run, but I was in a hurry and tried to hurry to avoid her involvement by explaining that I did not want the needle to jab my foot. I began to sew, but could hardly see where I was sewing because my daughter's head was in the way, peering at the sewing. Soon she suggested that I could put the needle in the stocking and she would pull it through, thus avoiding sticking my foot. I agreed, and we followed this division of labor for a number of stitches.

Children, as they progress into later stages of early childhood, about 6-7 years of age can be given 'helping' tasks that are more self-regulated and require less parental instruction.

Middle Childhood

The period of middle childhood will allow the child to display increasingly independent acts of behavior. Barker and Wright (1951) suggest that one way to determine the lifestyle of children in middle childhood is to observe the activities and locations in which children spend their time. They found that there was a significant increase of time spent away from adult supervision. Parents and parish youth leaders can prompt their children of middle childhood to be engaged in behaviors that are service-oriented and motivated by love and caring. Such service can never be forced, but such behavior is more likely to occur when accompanied by parents and peers. For example, helping younger brothers and sisters with simple tasks such as cutting food and pouring drinks, aiding and helping classmates with school projects, reading a story with younger siblings, encouraging involvement with parish service activities could be among recommended tasks. Children of this age can also be introduced into basic Scouting programs. Campfire Girls accepts girls starting at age 6, the entry age for boy's Cub Scouts is 7 years of age. Programs such as these have a significant service component, and many can be hosted or sponsored by churches.

Adolescents

Adolescents can move on to a higher degree of service-love, to involvement in such service in more of a communal manner involving peers, as well as to a fuller understanding of the spiritual implications of their actions. Adolescents are capable of choosing friends and engaging in activities with those who share their attitudes, beliefs, interests and values. Psychological researchers, Youniss & Smollar, 1985, suggest one reason for this is that friends are likely to be supportive and understanding. Not incidentally, this is one reason why participation by adolescents in Orthodox Youth groups, such as SOYO (Antiochian Archdiocese) and GOYO (Greek Archdiocese) is so important. Very often, Orthodox Youth groups are involved in social service projects. One caveat. Such projects must conform to the Mind of Christ and the Church. Some modern Christian communities have developed a 'social-Christianity,' wherein social service is an end in itself. This is contrary to the ethos of the Eastern Church tradition. The Eastern Tradition considers mankind as a composite of body, mind and spirit. A person's total needs are to be addressed as much as possible. Ultimately, any act of service-love must be enlivened by Christ. Consider Christ's admonition to Martha when He came to the home of Martha and Mary:

Now as they went on their way, he entered a village; and a woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving; and she went to him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me." But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her." (Lk 10:38-42)

St. Luke (9:1-2,6) also records the action of Jesus when sending his Apostles to serve others:

And he called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal. And they departed and went through the villages, preaching the gospel and healing everywhere.

Ministry and service of any kind cannot be separated from the essential core meaning of Christ's teaching that all is love. "If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words. . . ." St. John (14:23-24). Christ's teaching on love is beautifully elaborated by St. Paul:

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once regarded Christ from a human point of view, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Cor 5:16-21)

Practically speaking, this means the Spiritual Acts of Mercy must at the very least always accompany the Corporal Acts of Mercy in any true service of love.**i** This is to say that, love in the form of 'Divine Agape' must imbue the Acts of Mercy.

By the teen years cognitive functioning has developed in adolescents to the extent that they can understand the relationship of parts to a whole. (Morelli, 2011; Piaget, 1972). Thus, they will be able to understand a single act of caring service that they may perform for someone in need as being oriented to a generalized concern for the good and welfare of others and also as a reflection of God's love for us. Such concern can now become the core of their psychological and spiritual value system. This development also involves the ability to understand love as an abstract principle interiorizing Christ's love in us. Adolescents, especially guided by those who are truly spiritually oriented themselves – and thus true spiritual teachers - parents, clergy, church school teachers and youth leaders, are likely to be able to discriminate effectively between the "letter of the law," which Christ eschewed, and the "spirit of the law" which Christ consistently taught during His public life. (Morelli, 2011).

Adolescents can now be encouraged to join in love-action that embraces all mankind. An appreciation of the plight of peoples geographically separated from us can be grasped. A sense that all mankind are sons of God, made in His image and called to be like Him, and that a wound to one is a wound to all. For example, the recent devastating 9.0 earthquake in Japan is a disaster not only to those directly impacted, but to all because, as St. Paul (Eph 2) informs us:

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end.

St. Peter of Damaskos expands and explains further St. Paul's words:

To bear with one's neighbor; not to distress him when he wrongs us but to help him to be at peace when he is troubled. . . sharing his burden and praying for him, full of longings that he may be saved and may enjoy every other blessing of body and soul — this is true forbearance; and it purifies the soul and leads it towards God. ….to endure injustice with joy, patiently to do good to one’s enemies, to lay down one’s life for one’s neighbour, and so on, are gifts from God, bestowed on those who are resolved to receive them from Him through their solicitude in cultivating and protecting what has been entrusted to them. (Philokalia III).

The Domestic Church puts Love into Practice as a Family

Previously in this essay I referred to the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy. ⁱ The "Little Church in the Home" can think of creative ways of performing such works as a family. A special family prayer group for a special intention can be formed. Going over how the spiritual works of mercy can be applied can be encouraged and discussed during Family Time, for example, how to instruct the ignorant, counsel the doubtful or forgive injuries. (Morelli, 2007,2008, 2009b)

Likewise, family-group-service can be advocated. I once had a family in counseling that spent their holydays and holidays doing volunteer service in a local hospital, preparing and serving dinner for the patients. Throughout North America the Focus North America program ⁱⁱ is an excellent way for families to love and serve others as a group.

As Our Lord told us:

I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.' (Mt 25:40)

REFERENCES

Alfeyev, Bishop Hilarion. (2000). The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications.

Meyendorff, J. (1974). St. Gregory Palamas and Orthodox Spirituality. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press.

Morelli, G. (2007, August 28). Smart Parenting VI: Talking to Your Children About Sex. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles7/MorelliSmartParentingVI.php.

Morelli, G. (2008c, September 19), Smart Marriage XIV: Talking to Your Children About Same Sex “Marriage.” www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles8/Morelli-Smart-Parenting-XIV-Talking-To-Children-About-Same-Sex-Marriage.php.

Morelli, G. (2009a, February 08). Good Marriage XV. Ensnared By Mindless Helping. www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/good-marriage-xv-ensnared-by-mindless-helping.

Morelli, G. (2009b, August 15). A spiritual child is a happy child. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/morelli-smart-parenting-xviii-a-spiritual-child-as-a-happy-child

Morelli, G. (2010, April 30) Toward Healing Church Schism: Overview and Psycho-theological Reflection. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/toward-healing-church-schism-overview-and-psycho-theological-reflection

Morelli, G. (2010b, November 25). The Ethos of Orthodox Catechesis: The Mind of the Orthodox Church. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/view/morelli-the-ethos-of-orthodox-catechesis

Morelli, G. (2011 February 01). Pastoral Pointer: It's the Spirit Behind the Letter. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/pastoral-pointer-its-the-spirit-behind-the-letter

Palmer, G.E.H., Sherrard, P. & Ware, K. (Eds). (1979). The Philokalia, Volume II: The Complete Text; Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain & St. Makarios of Corinth. London: Faber and Faber.

Palmer, G.E.H., Sherrard, P. & Ware, K. (Eds). (1979). The Philokalia, Volume III: The Complete Text; Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain & St. Makarios of Corinth. London: Faber and Faber.

Palmer, G.E.H., Sherrard, P. & Ware, K. (Eds). (1979). The Philokalia, Volume IV: The Complete Text; Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain & St. Makarios of Corinth. London: Faber and Faber.

Piaget, J. (1972). Intellectual evolution from adolescence to adulthood. Human Development., 15, 1-15.

Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Youniss, J., & Smollar, J. (1985). Adolescent relations with mothers, fathers, and friends. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

Wensinck, A. J. (ed., trans.) (1923). Mystic Treatises by Isaac of Nineveh. Amsterdam, Holland: Koninklijke Akademie Van Wetenschappen.

ENDNOTES

i

The Chief Spiritual Works of Mercy

• To admonish sinners
• To instruct the ignorant
• To counsel the doubtful
• To comfort the sorrowful
• To suffer wrongs patiently
• To forgive injuries
• To pray for the living and the dead.

The Chief Corporal Works of Mercy

• To feed the hungry
• To give drink to the thirsty.
• To clothe the naked.
• To ransom the captives
• To shelter the homeless.
• To visit the sick.
• To bury the dead.

(From A Pocket Prayer Book for Orthodox Christians (Antiochian Archdiocese, popularly known as "The Little Red Prayerbook")

ii http://www.focusnorthamer...

God calls us to share in His love, a love which expresses itself in acts of compassion for all who are broken-hearted and in need. In doing this, we become God’s own hands. Such practical service changes lives and transforms our world, one person at a time.

Participation in God’s compassion is more than a human rights issue. In taking up this task we work out our own salvation and affirm the “very good” that God has already spoken over each human being.

This awareness resulted in the founding in 2009 of a new Orthodox organization intended to help parishes better express Christ’s love for the hungry, thirsty, lonely, naked, sick and imprisoned. Called FOCUS (Fellowship of Orthodox Christians United to Serve), we link like-minded Christians who are working out their salvation by sharing with others, just as Christ shared of Himself without holding back “for the life of the world,” becoming poor to make the poor rich. [from the FOCUS web page]

Date posted: May 1, 2011

The Hidden Devastation of Greed

Chaplain's Corner
Short essays written for the La Jolla Veteran's Hospital newsletter in La Jolla, California

wonder how many in our country, as well as around the world, make the connection between one of the seven capital passions or sins, greed, also known as avarice, and many of the economic and social problems we see around us? As I mentioned in last month's column, there is a vice that precedes and nourishes greed. Spiritually, it is called pride; psychologically, it may be identified as narcissism, which is inordinate self-love. One of the first and major effects of pride is greed, or avarice. Some may consider themselves so important that they can entertain an unreasonable and unfair desire to acquire or possess more money or material goods than they need. Unfortunately, the consequences of such an attitude can be devastating to those around them.

In March of this year, a popular Sunday evening news program profiled the economic state of families in which the former breadwinner was unemployed. Many had had their homes foreclosed despite great motivation and desire on the part of the breadwinner to work, but who now had no prospect of finding gainful employment. The real tragedy was brought home by scenes of a school bus dropping off children at a sleazy motel wherein whole families slept in one room. One would have to have almost frozen blood in their veins not to weep for the children of these unfortunate families who desperately want just a chance to provide and care for themselves.

Yet, this is not how it is supposed to be. Moses tells us "And if your brother becomes poor, and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall maintain him . . . ." (Lev 25: 35). Moses’ words continue: "If there is among you a poor man, one of your brethren, in any of your towns within your land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall open your hand to him..." (Dt 15: 7-8). St. Paul (Col 3:5), summarizing Christ's teaching, likens greed to idol worship: "Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: . . .covetousness, [greed, avarice] which is idolatry." He states this because Jesus taught that what we value the most, what we truly worship, springs from the depth of our hearts. Jesus’ teaching is, "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." (Mt. 6: 21).

As I have noted in previous articles, care for those who cannot help themselves is not just a Judeo-Christian teaching. The Bhagavad-Gita notes: “Hell has three gates: lust, anger, and greed.” This echoes Buddha's saying: “There is no fire like passion, there is no shark like hatred, there is no snare like folly, there is no torrent like greed.”

Our Eastern Church Spiritual Father Evagrios the Solitary warns us of the complexity of this passion. For example, it is possible that someone " pretends to be steward and a lover of the poor," but in their heart entertains "avaricious thoughts" and inflated "self-esteem." (Philokalia I). This spiritual perception underscores the need for all to be aware of the deep motives of their actions, even of those that appear to be under the guise of the virtue of generosity. As St. Isaac the Syrian (Wensinck, 1923) informs us, "...without the prudence of the heart...the godly man cannot refrain from showing his love, in the performance of manifest deeds."

REFERENCES

Palmer, G.E.H., Sherrard, P. & Ware, K. (Eds). (1979). The Philokalia, Volume 1: The Complete Text; Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain & St. Makarios of Corinth. London: Faber and Faber.

Wensinck, A. J. (ed., trans.) (1923). Mystic Treatises by Isaac of Nineveh. Amsterdam, Holland: Koninklijke Akademie Van Wetenschappen.

Date posted: May 1, 2011

The Seminary Bubble: The Great Relearning

Imagine an institution that requires its leaders to attend not only college, but graduate school. Imagine that the graduate school in question is constitutionally forbidden from receiving any form of government aid, that it typically requires three years of full-time schooling for the diploma, that the nature of the schooling bears almost no resemblance to the job in question, and that the pay for graduates is far lower than other professions. You have just imagined the relationship between the Christian Church and her seminaries.

Mainline churches are nearly universal in their requirement that their Priests/Pastors/Ministers/Reverends be seminary graduates, and since seminary is a graduate school, this means the students must first be successful undergraduates. So take all of the arguments about a college bubble and add at least three years of tuition cost and forgone income.

But you’re not quite done: My friend Father Jay Geisler counsels seminary students. He tells me that in his experience roughly half of matriculated  students do not graduate within three years. In addition, he tells me that the living costs tend to be higher for seminary students than for undergrads because undergrads are almost never married with children, but seminary students often are. As such,  dorm room type accommodations for grads  will not do.

In addition, incomes for late 20- and early 30-somethings with wife and child tend to be higher than the traditional undergraduate-age student, so the opportunity costs — meaning  the lost earnings — are considerably higher. Father Geisler tells me that he commonly sees young men graduate from seminary $60,000 or $70,000 in debt with few employment options other than very low-pay youth minister positions. It’s often even worse for women in conservative denominational traditions in which female ordination is still controversial.

And the prospects are worse clergy than for other forms of professional education, because there is no legal seminary requirement which stifles professional competition. If you go to medical school, you know you’ll have challenges in the job market, but at least you know you won’t be competing with non-medical school graduate physicians. Ditto for law school; it’s illegal to practice law or medicine without the requisite graduate schooling. Other professions, such as CPA and engineer, require at least the four-year diploma.

If you graduate from seminary and become an Episcopal priest, the church almost certainly required that you get the degree, but there’s no guarantee that increasingly indifferent churchgoers won’t, at the drop of a hat, leave your church and  move a few blocks down the street to attend a Pentecostal, charismatic or fundamentalist church led by a high school dropout with generous dollops of the gift of gab, no school loans and probably less overhead. Interestingly enough, statistics indicate that these less “professional” churches are growing and the top-heavy cousins are rapidly shrinking.

Historian and sociologist Rodney Stark finds that the historical pattern fits the current one. Decentralized church systems with a history of less formal schooling historically outperform top-heavy ones with heavy academic requirements.

Part of this is politics. Mainline churches have largely become local versions of the Green Party at prayer. Leftie fads long ago captured the commanding heights of the established denominations. In fact, they did it through the seminaries. So, clergy moved left, members moved out, and mainline churches became mixtures of union halls, encounter groups and mausoleums.

Non-’professional’ church traditions didn’t have the luxury of indulging in ideological tourism. The ministers there live by the weekly collection plate.

Those who rise to the top are those who actually have a talent for preaching. Those who don’t, don’t last. After all, what matters more to the customer, the member: the ability to discuss the relationship between Paul Tillich’s theory of ultimate concern and Karl Barth’s version of neo-orthodoxy in light of the demythologizing textual hermeneutic of Bultman, or the ability to keep the congregation/audience’s attention for twenty minutes with a relevant sermon about family life? Seminary tends to give you loads of the former and little of the latter.

Seminary training has almost nothing to do with the talent for public speaking, and often leaves any evaluation of that talent later in the student’s training. For example, I know a man who went to a Bible College, worked hard, got good grades, got into a prestigious seminary, got good grades in seminary and shortly before graduation was invited, for the first time, into the pulpit. He found that he was paralyzed with fear and realized that he would be unable to be a preacher. He never became a pastor and has spent his life drifting from low wage job to low wage job and in recent years is chronically unemployed. Eight years of hard work and expensive tuition, wasted.

I’ve known scores of seminary students. Many have the natural leadership gifts to be pastors, but many do not. I’ve seen the ones who do not jumping through the bureaucratic hoops with a wife and children in tether, sacrifices made, poverty borne with grace, and then heartbreak. No pulpit, no job, except maybe a church planting opportunity with no start-up grant. The wives seem to suffer the most in these cases.

There must be a better way, and in fact there is a better way – the original one. Technology is the pin which is beginning to burst the seminary bubble. More on that next week.

Read the entire article on the Forbes Magazine website (new window will open).

Date posted: April 27, 2011

A Catholic Hermit’s Path to Orthodoxy

Fr. Gabriel (Bunge)

An interview with Father Gabriel (Bunge), by Konstantin Matsan.

A well-known theologian, hieromonk Gabriel (Bunge) rarely gives interviews. He leads a hermit’s life in a small skete in Switzerland, never uses the Internet, and the only means of communication with him is the telephone. The latter works as the answering machine in a distant room. If you want to talk with him, you have to leave a message with the time when you are going to phone again, and if Father Gabriel is ready to talk, he will be near the telephone at the time you specified. We were lucky not to go through this complex operation because we met Father Gabriel in Moscow. On August 27, he converted to Orthodoxy from Catholicism.

In our conversation, Father Gabriel told us about the motives for his decision, about the main differences between Valaam and Switzerland, and about many other things.

“We Are Like Weirdos”

Mastan: If someone comes from one Christian tradition to another, it must mean that they feel they lack something vital in their spiritual life…

Fr. Gabriel: Yes. And if this person is seventy years old, like me, this step cannot be called a hasty one, can it?

Mastan: No, it can’t. But what did you lack, being a monk with such a great spiritual experience?

Fr. Gabriel: I have to speak not of one decision, but of the whole life journey with its inner logic: at one point an event happens which was being prepared by one’s whole life.

Like all young people, I was searching for my way in life, so to speak. I entered the University in Bonn and started studying philosophy and comparative theology. Not long before that, I had visited Greece and spent two months on the island of Lesbos. It was there that I saw a real Orthodox monastic elder for the first time. At that time, I was already inwardly being drawn to monasticism and had read some Orthodox literature, including Russian sources. That elder amazed me.  He became the incarnation of the monastic that I had come across only in books before. Suddenly, in front of me, I saw a monastic life which from the very beginning seemed to be authentic, true, the closest to the first Christian monks’ practice. Afterwords, I was in touch with that elder my whole life. So I got an ideal of monastic life.

When I came back to Germany, I joined the Order of Saint Benedict – it seemed to be the closest to my aspirations. The structure of the Order itself resembles one of the early Christian Church. In the Order, there is no vertical system of subordination, each community exists on its own. What guarantees the unity of these communities is the tradition and the Church Typicon. That is, not the juridical order but the spiritual ideal. By the way, in this sense I think that it is the Benedictines, of all Western believers, who are ready to understand the Orthodox believers most keenly. But still my spiritual Father and I saw very soon that with my fancy for Eastern monasticism and the love of Eastern Christianity on the whole, I was not in my proper place in this Order. So the abbot, an elderly and experienced man I still honor, decided to transfer me to a small monastery in Belgium, and not without regret. I spent 18 years there, acquired great experience, and from there, with a blessing, I went to the skete in Switzerland. All those transfers were caused by one reason: the attempt to progress to authentic monastic life, as it was with early Christians. Like the one I saw with Eastern Christians.The most recent step on this way was the conversion to Orthodoxy.

Mastan: Why did you decide to adopt it? One can love Orthodoxy with all one’s heart and stay within the traditional Catholicism. There are many such examples in the West.

Fr. Gabriel: Yes, many people who are drawn to Orthodoxy stay within the Catholic Church. And this is normal. In the majority of Western cathedrals there are Orthodox icons. In Italy, there are professional schools of icon painting taught by Russian specialists and others. More and more believers in Europe are interested today in Byzantine hymns. Even the traditionalists of the Catholic Church have been discovering Byzantine singing. Of course they do not use them during the divine service in the church, but outside of the church, for example, at concerts. Orthodox literature gets translated into all European languages, and the books are published in the major Catholic publishing houses. In short, in the West they really have not lost the taste for all authentic, Christian, that the Eastern tradition has preserved. But, alas, it changes nothing in real life of people and society on the whole. The interest in Orthodoxy is more cultural. And those wretched people like me who have a spiritual interest in Orthodoxy, are left in the minority. We are like weirdos; we are seldom understood.

“Simply to Know Where Everything Comes From”

Mastan: As a theologian, you have often spoken on the problem of West and East’s separation. Can we say that your conversion to Orthodoxy is the result of your meditation on this topic?

Fr. Gabriel: When I was in Greece and started turning towards Eastern Christianity, I began to perceive the schism between the East and the West very painfully. It stopped being an abstract theory or a plot in a Church history book, but rather something that was directly affecting my spiritual life. This is why the conversion to Orthodoxy started looking like a very logical step. In youth, I sincerely hoped that the union of the Western and the Eastern Christianity was possible. I was waiting for it to happen with all my heart. And I had some reasons to believe in it. At the Second Vatican Council, there were observers from the Russian Orthodox Church, including the current Metropolitan of Saint Petersburg and Ladoga Vladimir (Kotlyarov). At that time Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov) was very active in international affairs. And many people thought that the two Churches were moving towards each other and would eventually meet at one point. It was my dream that was becoming more and more real. But as I was growing older and learning some things deeper, I stopped believing in the possibility of the reconciliation of two Churches in terms of the divine services and institutional unity. What was I to do? I could only go on searching for this unity on my own, individually, restoring it in one separate soul, mine. I could not do more. I just followed my conscience, and came to Orthodoxy.

Mastan: Isn’t it too radical an opinion?

Fr. Gabriel: While still in Greece, being a Catholic, I realized that it was the West that separated from the East, not vice versa. At that moment, it was unthinkable for me. I needed time to understand and accept this. I cannot blame anyone, of course I can’t! We are talking about a whole big historic process, and we cannot say that this or that person is to blame for this. But facts remain facts: what we call Western Christianity today was born as a chain of ruptures with the East. These ruptures were the Gregorian reform, followed by the separation of the churches in the XI century, then the Reformation in the XV century, and finally the Second Vatican Council in the XX century. This is, surely, a very rough scheme, but I think it is correct on the whole.

Mastan: However, there is an opinion that the chain of these ruptures is a normal historic process because any phenomenon (and Christian Church is no exception) goes through its stages of development. What’s the tragedy in that?

Fr. Gabriel: The tragedy is in the people. In a situation of radical, revolutionary events there always appear people who start to divide life into ‘before’ and ‘after.’ They want to start counting only from this new point as if everything that happened before had no meaning. When the future Protestants proclaimed the Reformation, I do not think they knew it would lead to the separation of the Western Church into two big camps. They did not realize it, they just acted. And they began to divide those around them into the healthy ones – those who accepted the Reformation – and the unhealthy, sick ones – the followers of Pope.

Moreover, history repeats itself: the same is happening now around the Second Vatican Council within the Roman Catholic Church. There are people who did not accept its decisions and people who consider it to be some kind of a starting point. And everybody reasons along those lines. A simple example: if in a conversation, someone mentions ‘the council’ without any additional details, everybody automatically assumes that they are talking about the Second Vatican Council.

Mastan: What’s your opinion on the modern liberal moods among Catholics?

Fr. Gabriel: I am very glad to have the opportunity to address myself to the Russian audience and say that you should not reduce all Catholics to one level. Among them are such who would like to be more secular, more liberal. It does not mean they are criminals, it’s just their point of view on life. There are others, those who are fully dedicated to tradition. I would not call them traditionalists, because tradition itself is not so important to them. This is not an ancient folklore that one must nourish artificially and keep aswim. No! Tradition to them is what in every epoch ensured and still ensures live personal contact with Christ, everyday living in God’s hands. As John the Theologian said, “That which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3). I am sure that the position “there is God and there is me” is for heretics. For Christians, it is “God, me and everyone else.” Everyone else is other believers, and those who for many centuries have preserved the faith for us. If people had not listened to other people so devotedly, if they had not written it down and had not passed it on, there would have been no New Testament. It means there would have been nothing…

Mastan: And what, in this case, should our attitude be to those who are not very dedicated to tradition?

Fr. Gabriel: We should not beat them in the face and of course we should not chase them out of the Church. Any person deserves Christian mercy. If I, being an Orthodox, saw a Catholic in an Orthodox church, I would like to approach him and tell him openly, softly, and confidentially, “Listen, brother, you might be interested to know that in the beginning we all crossed ourselves in this way: from right to left. Now everything has changed. No, I am not calling you to reconsider all your life and rush to the Orthodox Church. I just want you to know where things came from.”

Valaam

Mastan: And why did you choose the Russian Orthodox Church?

Fr. Gabriel: I think the key factor in such decisions is the people who surround you. When my acquaintances, Russian bishops from Saint Petersburg, learned I was adopting Orthodoxy, they said, “We are not in the least surprised! You’ve always been with us. But now we are going to have closer communion, a sacred one – at one Chalice.”

I’ve known Metropolitan Hilarion, the current head of the Department for external church relations of Moscow Patriarchate, for a long time. We first met in 1994 when he was a hieromonk. I consider him to be my good friend and I cherish this friendship.

Hierarch Hilarion, if you will, is one of the most competent and knowledgeable people I’ve ever met. He actually became for me the only person I could turn to with my request, who knew me, my beliefs and my situation. And who, as I was sure, was ready to respond. And that’s what happened.

Mastan: How will it help you in reaching your ideal of spiritual life?

Fr. Gabriel: You want prophecy from me, but I am no prophet. I do not know specifically what will happen next. We shall simply live. Even now I have already found in Russia many things that keep me interested.

For example, I visited Valaam. You know, in the West if a believer is drawn to a life utmost monastic seclusion, he actually has nowhere to go.

Hermitages, such as they are in Russia, do not exist in the West. This form of life seems to be outdated already. As a monk I am constantly in search for the utmost seclusion, even loneliness. In Valaam, I felt all of it was there.

Mastan: Isn’t there enough loneliness in your skete in Switzerland? Valaam is also a crowded place, pilgrims come there regularly.

Fr. Gabriel: Switzerland is a small and densely populated country. The skete is surrounded by a forest, but in a 15 minutes walk there is a village with approximately a hundred people living there. In Valaam it is much more quiet. Yes, of course, there are many people there. But the place itself, as I felt, is isolated from the rest of the world. Maybe it is so because it is an island, or maybe it is due to other, non-geographic reasons.

It seems to me that all this can give rise to this desirable state of seclusion in the heart of everyone who comes there.

Mastan: Is it more difficult in Europe?

Fr. Gabriel: To put it roughly, we can say this does not exist in the West altogether. The authentic monastic tradition in the West was practically stamped out in the course of the French bourgeois revolution in 1789. I have a firm belief that the consequences of this revolution for Europe were no less heavy than the consequences of the 1917 revolution and the 70 years of atheist power for Russia. In France after those bloody events monasticism had to be restored almost from scratch. Common priests, not monks, were to perform this. There was no one else. In Russia monasticism survived in-spite of all the shocks and horrors. Yes, it happened at the level of particular individuals, namely, elders. But they existed! And they kept the spiritual tradition and authentic monastic life. It seems to me that in everything that concerns monastic life, Russia did not have to start from scratch. This is why I am sorry to hear Russians say sometimes “we had it all destroyed, the Church was stamped out, etc.”

I always want to respond, “In my opinion, you have it all, new martyrs and confessors, monastic elders.” And they are all near, just stretch out your arm. Only you have to stretch it out, take this wealth and use it in practice, so to speak, in your life. I often get the impression that the majority of people in Russia do not value this. Or they just do not understand that this is valuable.

Mastan: Why, in your opinion, does it happen so?

Fr. Gabriel: Speaking of problems, people concentrate on material, at times external difficulties that monasteries and the Church face nowadays. Yes, there is much to reconstruct. But this is only the technical part, so to speak, only the walls and the roofs. It goes without saying, people complain: roofs and walls cost money, and where can one find money… But if we mentally go above the roof – let it be with holes – we shall see that the walls is not the main thing, it’s more important with what kind of heart one enters the walls. The Russian saying goes, “The church is not in the logs but in the ribs.”

And this is the most important thing, this spiritual tradition, that is still within Russians. Monastic elders and new martyrs preserved all of this for us. Sometimes people argue, “But there are so few elders now, most of them died already. There is no one to teach us.”

I always respond, “If you have no living elder to teach you, turn to the deceased one. You have his hagiography, his texts, his teachings. Read them, and correlate with your life.”

I don’t mean to say that I have never met people in Russia who know, value, and cherish this knowledge. There are many, many people who do and my visit to Valaam proved it.

Jump into the Water

Mastan: What must change now in your daily life after the conversion?

Fr. Gabriel: Of course, there are things that cannot but change. Having become a member of the Russian Orthodox Church but still living in Switzerland, I submit to Archbishop Innokenty of Korsun. My relations with the Catholic Church cannot, naturally, remain the same.

Mastan: What reaction do you expect from your spiritual children? They must be all Catholics…

Fr. Gabriel: Firstly, I fortunately deal with good understanding people, and I am sure they will respect my decision. And secondly, I have never kept my opinions and beliefs in secret. All my spiritual children have known that my ideal of Christianity is in the East. I do not think they will be that surprised. I had not said anything to them beforehand to avoid unnecessary discussions. But I do not think anything extraordinary will happen. I believe that the tradition of spiritual talks my children used to come for will remain, I have no reason to stop it. Finally, people I communicate with regularly share my spiritual ideal more or less; otherwise, they would not be coming.

Mastan: What about divine services?

Fr. Gabriel: Of course, from now on I won’t be able to administer communion to Catholics. But even before I used to do it very seldom: the skete is away from the big world, the territory is kept locked, the services are also private, the chapel is small – for ten people at the most. Only at Christmas and Easter we open the doors for everyone who wants to join us.

Mastan: If you could and wanted to give contemporaries a very short piece of advice about organizing their praying life, what would you say?

Fr. Gabriel: If you want to learn to swim, jump into the water. Only that way you can learn. Only the one who prays will feel the meaning, the taste and the joy of prayer. You can’t learn to pray sitting in a big warm armchair. If you are ready to kneel, to repent sincerely, to raise your eyes and hands to Heaven, then many things will be revealed to you. Of course you can read many books, listen to lectures, talk to people – these are also important and help to understand more. But what is the value of all these things if we don’t take any real steps afterwards? If we don’t start praying? I think you must understand this, too. Obviously, you are asking this question from the position of one who does not believe…

Mastan: Exactly. Our magazine is for those who doubt.

Fr. Gabriel: There is nothing wrong with doubts, they are even useful. One should not search for them, however. But if they do appear, one must simply recall that we all have a chance to hear, “Reach your finger, and behold My hands; and reach your hand, and put it into my side: and do not be unbelieving, but believing” (John 20: 27).

Originally in the October 2010 issue of Foma. Translated by Olga Lissenkova. Edited by Yana Samuel and Isaac (Gerald) Herrin for Orthodoxy and the World Read the entire article on the Silouan website (new window will open).

Date posted: April 26, 2011

Arousing Ourselves to Death

The couple will typically tell me first about how stressful their lives are. Maybe he’s lost his job. Perhaps she’s working two. Maybe their children are rowdy or the house is chaotic. But usually, if we talk long enough about their fracturing marriage, there is a sense that something else is afoot. The couple will tell me about how their sex life is near extinction. The man, she’ll tell me, is an emotional wraith, dead to intimacy with his wife. The woman will be frustrated, with what seems to him to be a wild mixture of rage and humiliation. They just don’t know what’s wrong, but they know a Christian marriage isn’t supposed to feel like this.

It’s at this point that I interrupt the discussion, look at the man, and ask, “So how long has the porn been going on?” The couple will look at each other, and then look at me, with a kind of fearful incredulity that communicates the question, “How do you know?” For a few minutes, they seek to reorient themselves to this exposure, wondering, I suppose, if I’m an Old Testament prophet or a New Age psychic. But I’m not either. One doesn’t have to be to sense the spirit of this age. In our time, pornography is the destroying angel of (especially male) Eros, and it’s time the Church faced the horror of this truth.

A Perversion of the Good

In one sense, the issue of pornography is not new at all. Human lust for covenant-breaking sexuality is rooted, Jesus tells us, not in anything external to us but in our fallen passions (Matt. 5:27–28). Every generation of Christians has faced the pornography question, whether with Dionysian pagan art, or with Jazz Age fan-dancers, or with airbrushed centerfolds.

But the situation is unique now. Pornography is not now simply available. With the advent of Internet technology, with its near universal reach and its promise of secrecy, pornography has been weaponized. In some sectors, especially of our young male populations, it is nearly universal. This universality is not, contrary to the propaganda of the pornographers themselves, a sign of its innocence but of its power.

Like all sin, pornography is by definition a perversion of the good, in this case of the mystery of the male and female together in a one-flesh union. The urge toward this is strong indeed, precisely because our Creator, in manifold wisdom, decided that human creatures would not subdivide like amoeba, but that the male would need the female, and the female the male, for the race to survive.

Beyond that is an even greater mystery still. The Apostle Paul tells us that human sexuality is not arbitrary, nor is it merely natural. It is, he reveals, itself an icon of God’s ultimate purpose in the gospel. The one-flesh union is a sign of the union between Christ and his Church (Eph. 5:22–33). If human sexuality is patterned after the very Alpha and Omega of the cosmos, no wonder it is so difficult to restrain. No wonder it seems so wild.

[...]

Read the entire article on the Touchstone Magazine website (new window will open).

Date posted: April 26, 2011

Fr. George Calciu: First Century Christian in the Twentieth Century

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

I had no idea. To be more precise, before I converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, I knew that the Orthodox Church had been harshly suppressed by the communists, but I had no idea that the cruelty of persecution often equaled that inflicted on the early church.

Father George Calciu (1925–2006) was one such sufferer for Christ. A Romanian by birth, an Orthodox Christian by upbringing, and a priest by vocation, Calciu spent a total of twenty-one brutal years in prison—tortured and subjected to brainwashing—for his outspoken evangelism and criticism of communist materialism.

Fr. George’s remarkable story of faith and courage is vividly told in the exemplary book, Father George Calciu: Interviews, Homilies, and Talks. The book is primarily a first person biography taken from several interviews with Fr. George. But it also contains many of his sermons, most notably the famous, “Seven Homilies to the Youth,” a series of Lenten evangelical and anti-communist sermons Fr. George presented in defiance of the Romanian tyranny in 1978.

George Calciu was the youngest of eleven children, raised by devout parents as a faithful Orthodox Christian. Romania became communist in 1944, and the government soon began to crack down on the Church. Calciu was a medical student at the time, and his open faith made him suspect. He was imprisoned in 1948, where he was subjected to 1984-style mind control experiments—tortured until he denied Christ, and then forced to torture others toward the same end. “They wanted our souls,” he recalled, “not our bodies.”

Anguished over his “weakness,” Calciu vowed to become a priest if he survived. Released in 1964, he married, had a son, and obtained a doctorate in French. But the call remained, and when he took an ostensible French professorship at a theological seminary, he was secretly studying for the priesthood. He was ordained in 1973.

Fr. George and his family lived quietly until the communist government renewed its assault on faith. Heeding what he considered a divine call to speak out sacrificially, he offered seven homilies to young Romanians, one homily building on the next during each Wednesday of Lent. It was a rare moment of courage for 1978 Romania: When the church was closed to him by his terrified Patriarch, he preached from its steps. When the gates were locked, the growing audience of youth defiantly climbed the fence to hear him.

In his first homily, “The Call,” Fr. George urged the youth to hear “the voice of Jesus!” issuing a boldly subversive (to communism) call to faith:

What do you know of Christ, young man? If all you know is what they have taught you in atheism classes, you have been deprived, in bad faith, of a truth—the only truth which can set you free? . . . Who has pulled the veil over your eyes so that you would not see the most wonderful light of love proclaimed and lived by Jesus until the final end?

The answer was obvious: The government, the communists, and the educators they controlled. Fr. George offered a clarion invitation:

Come to the Church of Christ—to learn what innocence and purity are, what meekness is and what love is. You will find your place in life and the purpose of your existence. To your astonishment, you will discover that our life does not end in death, but in resurrection; that our existence centers on Christ, and that this world is not a mere empty moment in which nonbeing prevails. . . . Jesus is seeking you; Jesus has found you!

Week after week, Fr. George’s passionate homilies methodically built its evangelical message. In the second, he urged, “Let us Build Churches!” In the third, he described “Heaven and Earth,” the fourth, “Faith and Friendship.” In the fifth, perhaps knowing what was coming, Fr. George described the “Priesthood and Suffering:”

In the sixth homily, he presented the theology of “Death and Resurrection,” and then, just before Pascha (Easter), he concluded on a loving note, assuring his audience of God’s “Forgiveness.” He closed his last sermon with an excerpt from St. John Chrysostom’s famous Paschal homily read each Easter in every Orthodox Church in the world:

If any have labored from the first hour, let him receive today his rightful due. If any have arrived at the sixth hour, let him in no wise be in doubt, for in no wise shall he suffer loss. If any be delayed to even the ninth hour, let him draw near. . . . If any have tarried even until the eleventh hour, let him not be fearful on account of his lateness, for the Master, Who is jealous of His honor, receiving the last even as the first . . . Wherefore then, enter ye all into the joy of our Lord; both the first and last. . . . “Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice! Christ is risen, and life flourisheth! Christ is risen, and there is none dead in the tombs!”

At the end of Lent, Fr. George knew what to expect, and after months of physical intimidation and death threats, it came. Ceauescu ordered the Securitate (Romania’s secret police) to make Calciu disappear.

Fr. George’s faith was more mature and well formed than during his first imprisonment, and this time, despite beatings, torture, and deprivation, he did not break. At one point, he was so exhausted from unremitting interrogation that he could not even recall the Lord’s Prayer. “Then I remembered that there is a prayer to Jesus Christ: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.’ . . . I was no longer scared . . . and I was able to resist.”

He spent years in solitary. He knew nothing of his family, and they, nothing of him. One night, Fr. George heard the joyful peal of many church bells: It was Easter. Early the next morning, the worst guard in the prison—who delighted in torture—entered the priest’s cell. He should have turned his face to the wall. Instead, Fr. George looked his tormenter boldly in the eye and proclaimed, “Christ is risen!” Rather than delivering a blow, the guard paused, and blurted out, “In Truth He is Risen!” and nervously backed out of the cell.

That was when Fr. George experienced a vision of what Orthodox theology calls the Uncreated Light:

He shut the door and I was petrified, because of what he had said. And little by little, I saw myself full of Light. The board against the wall was shining like the sun; everything in my cell was full of light. I cannot explain in words the happiness that invaded me then. I can explain nothing. It simply happened. I have no merit.

When Fr. George was put in a cell with two criminals ordered to murder him, he instead converted them to Christ. By this time, Ceauescu was under pressure from Western leaders to not harm the dissenting priest. As a consequence, he was released to house arrest in 1984, and the next year exiled to America where he spent the rest of his life in freedom.

Fr. Calciu lived what he preached. He did not hate his persecutors. Rather, he prayed for them daily and trusted in God’s mercy for their salvation. He also found joy. In her introduction to the book, Frederica Mathewes-Green, one of Calciu’s spiritual children writes of Fr. Calciu, “He had a beaming smile. He was often amused by life, and ready to laugh. . . . Fr. George was joyful. . . . He was naturally affectionate, and would hold my hand or anyone’s . . . just beaming with a radiant smile.”

Fr. George Calciu lived the kind of life many Christians pray to receive—but to which most hope never to be actually called. But Fr. Calciu’s witness is clear: Persecution and martyrdom—as hard as they are—redound to increased faith and ultimate victory. As we Orthodox say when remembering the righteous departed: Fr. George of blessed memory, pray for us sinners.

Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism. His blog Secondhand Smoke is hosted by First Things.

Date posted: April 23, 2011

The Miracle of the Holy Fire in Jerusalem

On Holy Saturday believers gather in great crowds in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. For on this day fire comes down from Heaven and puts fire on lamps in the Church.

"The Miracle of the Holy Fire" by Christians from the Orthodox Churches is known as "The greatest of all Christian miracles". It takes place every single year, on the same time, in the same manner, and on the same spot. No other miracle is known to occur so regularly and for such an extensive period of time; one can read about it in sources as old as from the eighth Century AD. The miracle happens in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, to millions of believers the holiest place on earth. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre itself is an enigmatic place. Theologians, historians and archaeologists consider the church to contain both Golgatha, the little hill on which Jesus Christ was crucified, as well as the "new tomb" close to Golgatha that received his dead body, as one reads in the Gospels. It is on this same spot that Christians believe he rose from the dead.

 

One can trace the miracle throughout the centuries in the many itineraries to the Holy Land. The Russian abbot Daniel, in his itinerary, written in the years 1106-07, in very detailed manners presents the "Miracle of the Holy Light" and the ceremonies that frame it. He recalls how the Patriarch goes into the Sepulchre-chapel (the Anastasis) with two closed candles. The Patriarch kneels in front of the stone on which Christ was laid after his death and says certain prayers, upon which the miracle occurs. Light proceeds from the core of the stone — a blue, indefinable light which after some time kindles closed oil lamps as well as the two candles of the Patriarch. This light is "The Holy Fire", and it spreads to all people present in the Church. The ceremony surrounding "The Miracle of the Holy Fire" may be the oldest unbroken Christian ceremony in the world. From the fourth century AD all the way up to our own time, sources recall the awe-awakening potent. From these sources it becomes clear that the miracle has been celebrated on the same spot, on the same feast day, and in the same liturgical frames throughout all these centuries. One can ask, if it would happen also in the year 1998.

 

 

In order to find out, I travelled to Jerusalem to be present at the ceremony in which the Miracle of the Holy Fire occurs, and I can testify that it did not only happen in the ancient Church and throughout the Middle Ages but also on the 18th of April, 1998. The Greek-Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Diodorus I, is the man who every year enters the tomb to receive the Holy Fire. He has been the Patriarch of Jerusalem since 1982 and thereby is the key-witness to the miracle. Prior to the ceremony of this year the Patriarch received us in private audience, where I had the opportunity to speak with him about the miracle in order to know exactly what happens in the tomb and what the miracle means for him personally in his spiritual life. Furthermore I was through his intervention admitted to the balconies in the dome of the Holy Sepulchre Church, from where I had a fine view over the masses that had gathered around the tomb in anticipation of the "Great Miracle of the Holy Fire".

But what exactly happens in the Holy Sepulchre Church on Easter Saturday? Why does it have such an impact on the Orthodox Tradition? Why does it seem as if nobody has heard anything about the miracle in the Protestant and Catholic countries?

One of the Most Famous Ceremonies in the Orthodox Church

The miracle occurs every year on the Orthodox Easter Saturday. There are many types of Orthodox Christians: Syrian, Armenian, Russian and Greek Orthodox as well as Copts. In the Holy Sepulchre Church alone there are 7 different Christian Denominations. The Orthodox Easter-date is fixed according to the Julian Calendar, and not the usual Western European Gregorian calendar, which means that their Easter normally falls on a different date than the Protestant and Catholic Easter.

Since Constantine the Great built The Holy Sepulchre Church in the middle of the fourth century it has been destroyed many times. The Crusaders constructed the Church that we see today. Around Jesus tomb was erected a little chapel with two rooms, one little room in front of the tomb and the tomb itself, which holds no more than five people. This chapel is the centre of the miraculous events, and being present at the celebration fully justifies the term "event" for on no other day of the year is the Holy Sepulchre Church so packed than on Easter Saturday. If one wishes to enter it, one has to reckon with six hours of cueing. Each year hundreds of people are not able to enter due to the crowds. Pilgrims come from all over the world, the majority from Greece but in recent years increasing numbers from Russia and the former Eastern European Countries.

In order to be as close to the tomb as possible, pilgrims camp around the tomb-chapel, waiting from Holy Friday afternoon in anticipation of the wonder on Holy Saturday. The miracle happens at 2:00 PM, but already around 11:00 AM the Church is a boiling pot.

Festival

From around 11:00 AM till 1:00 PM the Christian Arabs sing traditional songs with loud voices. These songs date back to the Turkish occupation of Jerusalem in the 13th Century, a period in which the Christians were not allowed to sing their songs anywhere but in the Churches. "We are the Christians, this we have been for centuries and this we shall be for ever and ever. Amen!" they sing at the top of their voices accompanied by the sound of drums. The drum-players sit on the shoulders of others who ferociously dance around the Sepulchre Chapel. But at 1:00 PM the songs fade out and after there is silence, a tense and loaded silence electrified by the anticipation of the great manifestation of the Power of God that all are about to witness.

At 1:00 PM a delegation of the local authorities elbows through the crowds. Even though these officials are not Christian, they are part of the ceremonies. In the times of the Turkish occupation of Palestine they were Moslem Turks; today they are Israelis. For centuries the presence of these officials has been an integrated part of the ceremony. Their function is to represent the Romans in the time of Jesus. The Gospels speak of Romans that went to seal the tomb of Jesus, so his disciples would not steal his body and claim he had risen. In the same way the Israeli authorities on this Easter Saturday come and seal the tomb with wax. Before they seal the door it is customary that they enter the tomb to check for any hidden source of fire, which could produce the miracle through fraud. Just as the Romans were to guarantee that there was no manipulation after the death of Jesus, likewise the Israeli Local Authorities are to guarantee that there be no trickery in 1998.

The Testimony of the Patriarch

When the tomb has been checked and sealed, the whole Church chants the Kyrie Eleison (Lord have mercy). At 1:45 PM the Patriarch enters the scene. In the wake of a large procession he encircles the Tomb three times, whereupon he is stripped of his royal liturgical vestments, carrying only his white alba, a sign of humility in front of the great potent of God, to which he is about to be the key witness. All the oil lamps have been blown out the preceding night, and now all remains of artificial light are extinguished, so that most of the Church is enveloped in darkness. With two big candles the patriarch enters the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre — first into the small room in front of the tomb and from there into the tomb itself.

It is not possible to follow the events inside the tomb, so I asked the patriarch of Jerusalem, Diodorus, about the center of the events.

"Your Beatitude, what happens when you enter the Holy Sepulchre?"

"I enter the tomb and kneel in holy fear in front of the place where Christ lay after his death and where he rose again from the dead. Praying in the Holy Sepulchre in itself is for me always a very holy moment in a very holy place. It is from here that he rose again in glory, and it is from there that he spread his light to the world. John the Evangelist writes in the first chapter of his gospel that Jesus is the light of the World. Kneeling in front of the place where he rose from the dead, we are brought within the immediate closeness of his glorious resurrection. Catholics and Protestants call this Church "The Church of the Holy Sepulchre". We call it "The Church of the Resurrection". The Resurrection of Christ for us Orthodox is the center of our faith. In his resurrection Christ has gained the final victory over death, not just his own death but the death of all those who will stay close to him.

"I believe it to be no coincidence that the Holy Fire comes on exactly this spot. In Matthew 28:3, it says that when Christ rose from the dead, an angel came, dressed all in a fearful light. I believe that the striking light that enveloped the angel at the Lord's resurrection is the same light that appears miraculously every Easter Saturday. Christ wants to remind us that his resurrection is a reality and not just a myth; he really came to the world in order to give the necessary sacrifice through his death and resurrection so that man could be re-united with his creator.

Blue Light

"I find my way through the darkness towards the inner chamber in which I fall on my knees. Here I say certain prayers that have been handed down to us through the centuries and, having said them, I wait. Sometimes I may wait a few minutes, but normally the miracle happens immediately after I have said the prayers. From the core of the very stone on which Jesus lay an indefinable light pours forth. It usually has a blue tint, but the color may change and take many different hues. It cannot be described in human terms. The light rises out of the stone as mist may rise out of a lake — it almost looks as if the stone is covered by a moist cloud, but it is light. This light each year behaves differently. Sometimes it covers just the stone, while other times it gives light to the whole sepulchre, so that people who stand outside the tomb and look into it will see it filled with light. The light does not burn — I have never had my beard burnt in all the sixteen years I have been Patriarch in Jerusalem and have received the Holy Fire. The light is of a different consistency than normal fire that burns in an oil lamp.

"At a certain point the light rises and forms a column in which the fire is of a different nature, so that I am able to light my candles from it. When I thus have received the flame on my candles, I go out and give the fire first to the Armenian Patriarch and then to the Coptic. Hereafter I give the flame to all people present in the Church."

The Symbolic Meaning of the Miracle

"How do you yourself experience the miracle and what does it mean to your spiritual life?"

"The miracle touches me just as deeply every single year. Every time it is another step towards conversion for me. For me personally it is of great comfort to consider Christ's faithfulness towards us, which he displays by giving us the holy flame every year in spite of our human frailties and failures. We experience many wonders in our Churches, and miracles are nothing strange to us. It happens often that icons cry, when Heaven wants to display its closeness to us; also we have saints, to whom God gives many spiritual gifts. But none of these miracles have such a penetrating and symbolic meaning for us as the miracle of the Holy Fire. The miracle is almost like a sacrament. It makes the resurrection of Christ present to us as if he had died only a few years ago."

While the patriarch is inside the chapel kneeling in front of the stone, there is darkness but far from silence outside. One hears a rather loud mumbling, and the atmosphere is very tense. When the Patriarch comes out with the two candles lit and shinning brightly in the darkness, a roar of jubilee resounds in the Church, comparable only to a goal at a soccer-match.

The Miracle Leads to Faith

The miracle is not confined to what actually happens inside the little tomb, where the Patriarch prays. What may be even more significant, is that the blue light is reported to appear and be active outside the tomb. Every year many believers claim that this miraculous light ignites candles, which they hold in their hands, of its own initiative. All in the church wait with candles in the hope that they may ignite spontaneously. Often closed oil lamps take fire by themselves before the eyes of the pilgrims. The blue flame is seen to move in different places in the Church. A number of signed testimonies by pilgrims, whose candles lit spontaneously, attest to the validity of these ignitions. The person who experiences the miracle from a close distance by having the fire on the candle or seeing the blue light usually leaves Jerusalem changed, and for everyone having attended the ceremony, there is always a "before and after" the Miracle of the Holy Fire in Jerusalem.

Unknown in the West

One can ask the question why the Miracle of the Holy Fire is hardly known in Western Europe. In the Protestant areas it may to a certain extent be explained by the fact that there is no real tradition for miracles; people don't really know in which box to place the miracles, and they don't take up much space in newspapers. But in the Catholic tradition there is vast interest for miracles. Thus, why is it not more known? For this it only one explanation suffices: Church politics. Only the Orthodox Churches attend the ceremony framing the miracle. It only occurs on the orthodox Easter date and without the presence of any Catholic authorities. By certain Orthodox this evidence proves the notion that the Orthodox Church is the only legitimate Church of Christ in the world, and this assertion obviously may cause certain apprehensions in Catholic circles.

The Question of the Authenticity of the Miracle

As with any other miracle there are people who believe it is fraud and nothing but a masterpiece of Orthodox propaganda. They believe the Patriarch has a lighter inside of the tomb. These critics, however, are confronted with a number of problems. Matches and other means of ignition are recent inventions. Only a few hundred years ago lighting a fire was an undertaking that lasted much longer than the few minutes during which the Patriarch is inside the tomb. One then could perhaps say, he had an oil lamp burning inside, from which he kindled the candles, but the local authorities confirm to have checked the tomb and found no light inside it.

The biggest arguments against a fraud, however, are not the testimonies of the shifting patriarchs. The biggest challenges confronting the critics are the thousands of independent testimonies by pilgrims whose candles were lit spontaneously in front of their eyes without any possible explanation. According to our investigations, it has never been possible to film any of the candles or oillamps igniting by themselves. However, I am in the possession of a video filmed by a young engineer from Bethlehem, Souhel Nabdiel. Mr. Nabdiel has been present at the ceremony of the Holy Fire since his early childhood. In 1996 he was asked to film the ceremony from the balcony of the dome of the Church. Present with him on the balcony were a nun and four other believers. The nun stood at the right hand of Nabdiel. On the video one can see how he films down on the crowds. At a certain point all lights are turned off — it is time for the Patriarch to enter the tomb and take the Holy Fire. While he is still inside the tomb one suddenly hears a scream of surprise and wonder originating from the nun standing next to Nabdiel. The camera begins to shake, as one hears the excited voices of the other people present on the balcony. The camera now turns to the right, whereby it is possible to contemplate the cause of the emotion. A big candle, held in the hand of the Russian nun, takes fire in front of all people present before the patriarch comes out of the tomb. With shaking hands she holds the candle while over and over making the sign of the Cross in awe of the potent she has witnessed. This video appears to be the closest one gets to an actual filming of the miracle.

Miracles cannot be proved

The miracle is, as most miracles are, surrounded by unexplainable factors. As Archbishop of Tiberias Alexios said when I met him in Jerusalem:

"The miracle has never been filmed and most probably never will be. Miracles cannot be proved. Faith is required for a miracle to bear fruit in the life of a person and without this act of faith there is no miracle in the strict sense. The true miracle in the Christian tradition has only one purpose: to extend the Grace of God in creation, and God cannot extend his Grace without the faith on behalf of his creatures. Therefore there can be no miracle without faith."

SOURCES

Meinardus, Otto. The Ceremony of the Holy Fire in the Middle Ages and today. Bulletin de la Société d'Archéologie Copte, 16, 1961-2. 242-253
Klameth, Dr. Gustav. Das Karsamstagsfeuerwunder der heiligen Grabeskirche. Wien, 1913.

Date posted: April 21, 2011

Climate Scientists: Our Modern Day Prophets?

Climate scientists are the “modern day prophets” of the Christian faith, according to mainline church leaders at an environmental conference held early April.

Three weeks before Earth Day, United Methodists gathered at Lake Junaluska to listen as speakers expounded the dangers of projected climate change, and the U.S.’s role in its acceleration. But more than that, conference speakers encouraged participants to find their spiritual center in environmental activism.

Rev. Sally Bingham speaks to the crowd at Lake Junaluska.

“This is a chance to redefine the human purpose: Why did God put us here in the first place, and what is our purpose?” asked Rev. Sally Bingham, an environmentalist at the Episcopal Diocese of California and director of Interfaith Power and Light. “Might we consider coming together with the purpose of healing the earth, so that we and the next generations may live in good health and safety?  Might that be our shared purpose?”

Bingham’s address hinged on what she considers to be “overwhelming” evidence of human-driven climate change and environmental destruction, set in motion by activities such as coal mining, deep sea oil-drilling and use of nuclear power. In each case she cited recent catastrophes such as last year’s Gulf Coast oil spill and the recent Japanese nuclear power plant radiation leak. Coal strip mining in particular she condemned as a “sin against creation and an insult to God.”

Bingham was especially critical of what she sees as a lack of American leadership on climate-related policy initiatives. 

International agreements arranged to reduce industrialized countries’ greenhouse gas emissions ,“at least as far as the United States is concerned… have been a failure,” said Bingham, although the U.S. has volunteered, along with other developed nations, to cut its emissions by 17 percent in the coming decade. She expressed some hope in the 2009 Copenhagen Accord’s promise to eventually provide developing countries with billions in funding to help reduce their own carbon emissions.

Bingham gushed over China and India as examples of countries that are surpassing the United States in enacting climate-related initiatives. “The world is looking to the United States for leadership, but we are quickly falling behind,” she warned. “China is making major strides in developing a low-carbon economy, and has become already the world’s leader in clean, green technology.” It was not mentioned that China still retains its position as the world’s largest emitter of global emissions and according to many estimates looks to remain so as its population and economy continues to grow exponentially.

Skeptics and Deniers

Bingham has frequently billed her advocacy as non-partisan, while often couching environmental language in religious, rather than political, terms by relating humanity’s relationship with creation as a mirror image of its relationship to God. In a 2003 Earth Sunday sermon in San Francisco, she appealed to Earth’s life-giving powers on the same level as God’s: “Life is religious and one’s spiritual life is dependent upon a relationship with the Creator and the Creation,” she said. “Without them we have no life.” 

“If you don’t want to be called an environmentalist because it sounds liberal, democratic and political then call it something else,” she said in the same San Franciscan address. “Call it stewardship of Creation, call it concern for the legacy we leave for future generations, call it being ‘mindful of your behavior’.”

In both sermons, Bingham urged religious communities to incorporate environmentalism into their “working theology”: the “place where we center (ourselves) on God.” Among other suggestions, Bingham advocated the development of liturgies with environmental overtones to “change both [the] hearts and minds” of congregants.

In her address to the Episcopal Urban Caucus in 2008, Bingham went further in her personification of the Earth as a life-giving being by reciting a prayer, attributed to the Native American Ute tribe, which begins each line with the mantra “Earth, teach me.”

But politics were not far beneath the surface.  Bingham couldn’t help dividing those involved in the climate debate into “believers” and “deniers” – deniers invariably being either surreptitiously paid advocates of the fossil fuel industry or reactionary Republicans rigidly adhering to party lines.

“This is what we’re up against: they [lawmakers] have rejected climate science, calling global warming a hoax – and stood behind a well-funded misinformation campaign that is paid for by the oil, coal, and gas industry,” she alleged.

“I think that these legislators are committing crime against humanity,” she declared.

Bingham expressed frustration with voters in largely “very red” states, who she says are being controlled by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and “politicians who are heavily funded by the oil and gas industry.”  She continued, berating what she called “skeptics and deniers” and “many evangelicals… [and] Bible literalists who are somewhat afraid of science.”

Bingham juxtaposed “deniers” with those who faithfully embrace the reality of climate change, imbuing proponents with near-prophetic authority. 

“I’ve sat down at the table with a great many climate scientists and I believe that they are our modern day prophets,” she said. Bingham was quick to single out climate scientists for that honor rather than “biologists or physicists.”

“We’ll vote for politicians who will represent and work for the best interest of our country, over and above politics and party lines,” she said, without specifying her choices. “For people of faith, this challenge is probably our greatest one. It’s a moral challenge that will decide our relationship with God, and with each other, and the natural world.”

But there is hope, she said, expressed in the faith that “the human race is evolving – that our collective consciousness is evolving, and that we are, and we will continue to, develop a shared purpose and a common goal: that people all over the world will come to a Great Awakening.” Acknowledging the truth of humanity’s shared purpose will accelerate our “path to regeneration” – but above all, she concluded, hope for humanity comes from people of faith who “believe in the power of the human spirit.”

Read the entire article on the Institute for Religion and Democracy website (new window will open).

Date posted: April 23, 2011

Torture, Terrorists and Just War

Warrior Monk: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel is Ray Keating's first novel and a tale about a former CIA agent who became a Lutheran pastor. A shooting at his church and an assignment to help protect the Pope mean that Grant’s former and current lives collide. The following excerpt – a discussion about terrorists, torture and “just war” – occurs during a dinner party.

The entrée came. It was grilled tuna – caught off Montauk Point, according to the servers – resting on a bed of endive and topped with herb butter. Grant took the first bite, closed his eyes, and chewed slowly. It was easy to overdo tuna, allowing it to become dry, but this tuna was grilled to perfection.
It had been quite some time since his palate was treated this well. It would be easy to get used to this again.
But after a few more bites, Stephen was pulled away from his gastronomic splendor.
Joan Kraus was the guilty party. She said, “Pastor actually held a fascinating Bible study on this topic a couple of years ago.”
Congressman Ted Brees said, “Really? I assume the Bible doesn’t look kindly on torture.”
Joan responded, “Of course not. Well, not exactly.”
“Not exactly! What do you mean by that?” asked Meri.
Joan looked to Grant for help. “Pastor can explain better than me.”
Brees shifted his eyes to Stephen. “OK. Pastor Grant, you certainly are a man of surprises. Are you now going to become the first member of the clergy that I have ever heard of who defends government torturing prisoners?”
“That would be newsworthy,” added Meri.
This could be fun … or maybe not.
“Well, before diving further into this heated topic, I just want to say thank you to Jennifer and Ted for this wonderful meal. It’s exquisite.”
Jennifer responded, “You’re quite welcome. I’m just so pleased all of you could come.”
Grant noted Jennifer’s genuineness, and how much of a contrast that was to her husband. Strange how some people wind up together.
“Yes, you’re welcome,” added Ted. “But you’re not going to divert us from hearing about torture and the Bible.”
“To some, perhaps the Bible itself is a bit torturous,” said Shane with an expectant smile that quickly faded when no one laughed.
“Yes, well, where to begin so that this dinner party does not turn into a sermon that bores everyone to tears?” reflected Stephen.
“I can’t imagine that, but we’ll interrupt if it gets deadly dull,” volunteered Ted.
“The entire issue actually goes back to St. Augustine in the early fifth century. He gets credit for the Just War Theory,” Stephen began.
“Can any war really be just?” asked Kerri Bratton.
Grant was a bit surprised by Bratton’s question, as he did not expect her to even be listening. “That was the question many early Christians had. Could they in good conscience serve in the military?
After all, Christians are supposed to turn the other cheek, and even pray for our enemies.”
“That’s tough. But I remember hearing that in church. What about that?” said Jimmy Gianelli.
Grant chewed and swallowed another piece of tuna, and then took a sip of wine. Ironic. I’m getting more questions here than during Bible study at church. He continued, “Augustine wanted to make clear that Christians did not have to be pacifists, that as citizens they could serve in the military. Over the centuries, Christians have used the Just War criteria, rooted in Holy Scripture, to gauge the moral legitimacy – or illegitimacy, as the case may be – of war.”
“Like a checklist to determine if a war is right or wrong?” asked George Kraus.
“Well, it’s not exactly that simple. There’s plenty of room for debate. Some have interpreted the Bible and Augustine narrowly, and others more broadly. Just look at the deep disagreements among Christians over the Iraq War. But in a sense, you could look at it that way, as a checklist.”
George persisted, “So, what’s on this checklist?”
Stephen answered, “First, the Bible affirms the state’s right to wage war when necessary. St. Paul, for example, warns in Romans 13 that if you do wrong, the state bears the sword. The Just War Theory dictates that war should be in self-defense, to secure peace, to establish justice, to protect the innocent, etc. And it should be a last resort, with a formal declaration.”
“All that is based on the Bible?” asked Arnie Hackling in a skeptical tone.
“Actually, yes. I can e-mail you the exact verses, and a couple of articles that explain matters in detail, if you like?”
“No, that’s OK. Thanks anyway.”
Congressman Brees said, “Based on what you’ve laid out, Pastor Grant, all of us here can probably agree that the war on terror fits as a just war.”
Grant noticed that Meri looked like she wanted to disagree, but restrained the impulse to speak out.
Brees continued, “But that doesn’t mean it’s okay to torture terrorists.”
“Ted, you bring us to part two. The Just War Theory also governs how war is waged. There are two principles at work here. First is proportionality.”
Brittney chipped in: “Proportiona-what?” Her face was contorted in over-the-top fashion, as a child might when completely confused by what an adult just said.
“Proportionality,” Stephen responded gently. “War should be the lesser of two evils. It also means that the force being used should be appropriate to deal with the evil at hand. It should be what’s needed to establish peace and hopefully improve things, but not more than that.”
“And the second principle?” asked Ted.
“That would be discrimination.”
Brittney again emerged ever so briefly from what clearly had become a stupor. She said, “Oh, discrimination. That’s not good.”
“In this case,” Stephen said, “discrimination is good. Here it means that war should only be waged against enemy combatants and military targets. Civilians are supposed to be protected.”
Grant paused. He could tell that other than the Krauses and Jennifer, this was completely new ground for the rest of the dinner party. Stephen reflected that this was particularly disappointing, but not surprising, when it came to a member of Congress. Since he had been doing most of the talking, Grant was the last to finish his tuna.
As plates were cleared and the servers asked whether each diner wanted coffee or tea with dessert – and offered various flavors of each to pick from – the conversation continued.
Shane asked, “Now, Pastor, how could torture possibly fit into this theory?”
“Obviously, it generally doesn’t.”
“But Joan indicated that it could based on one of your Bible studies,” Ted pointed out.
“You asked earlier, Congressman …”
Ted held up a finger and shook his head at Stephen.
“Right, I’m sorry,” said Grant. “You wondered before, Ted, if I was the only member of the clergy who could justify torturing a terrorist. I don’t know if I’m the only one. But I’d go farther and assert that in the rarest of circumstances, it actually could be a moral imperative to, for lack of a better word, torture a terrorist.”
This generated a bit of buzz around the table just as fresh berry Napoleons were being served. Strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries were layered with crème anglaise, and sprinkled with dark chocolate.
Grant knew that the banter among the others wouldn’t last. He soon would be thrust back into the middle of the fray to explain his seemingly outrageous declaration. Therefore, he took the first opportunity to grab a forkful of the Napoleon. Again, it was delightful.
He managed two more mouthfuls before Meri demanded, “Reverend Grant, please explain yourself.”
Well, “Reverend.”
Stephen said, “Let’s delve into a little Ethics 101. Consider the very rare cases of extracting information from the ticking time bomb or a terrorist leader who has information about various campaigns. The case can be made that in limited, grave circumstances where mass murder looms, aggressive interrogation tactics – yes, some kind of torture – is proportional in terms of being the lesser of two evils, in terms of the evil at hand, and as the way of furthering peace. Also, it is specifically directed against an enemy combatant. And since it’s the job of terrorists to murder noncombatants, the purpose is to protect civilians.”
“That’s a little too neat and tidy. It’s rarely that simple,” said Meri.
“Indeed, I should say not,” added Shane.
“I would agree,” said Stephen. “And that’s why I’m talking about very unique circumstances. But there are such circumstances. What do you do when a nuclear, chemical or biological weapon attack is imminent, and the authorities have captured a terrorist who quite likely has information regarding the attack, but he isn’t talking? Is some kind of coercion, even torture, justified to get that information and save dozens, hundreds, or perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent lives? Wouldn’t such action be morally justified? Some say no. In fact, many, perhaps most, Christian clergy would say no. I disagree. In fact, I would argue that the clergy, in this specific case, offer an answer that is reprehensible under any moral calculus, including the Just War Theory.”
It was Jennifer’s turn to ask a question. “I don’t necessarily disagree with you, Pastor, but how would you respond to those who say that human life is sacred, and that by sanctioning torture, we would be telling the world something quite different?”
Stephen replied, “Good thought. No doubt, this is dicey stuff. And in most instances, I would agree with that assessment. But it also is not a moral absolute. Again, I believe there are very grim instances when torture actually can become a moral imperative for a government. Remember, we are still talking about the state here. And with innocent lives on the line and the opportunity existing to extract information to stop some kind of WMD attack, then refraining from the use of torture in that unique circumstance would tell the world and one’s own people that human lives are not sacred.”
Other than Brittney, who was concentrating very hard on trying to get berries from her Napoleon onto a fork and then into her mouth, everyone else around the table was silent.
Finally, Joan Kraus said, “See, I told you he would do a better job explaining it than I ever could.”

Warrior Monk: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel is Ray Keating’s first novel. Keating is a weekly columnist for Dolan Media Company (with his column appearing in newspapers such as Long Island Business News and Colorado Springs Business Journal), and an economist. Warrior Monk can be purchased at Amazon.com.

Date posted: April 19, 2011

Christians in a Post-Welfare State World

As the debt-crisis continues to shake America's and Europe's economies, Christians of all confessions find themselves in the unaccustomed position of debating the morality and economics of deficits and how to overcome them.

At present, these are important discussions. But frankly they're nothing compared to the debate that has yet to come. And the question is this: How should Christians realize their obligations to the poor in a post-welfare state world?

However the debt-crisis unfolds, the Social Democratic/progressive dream of a welfare state that would substantially resolve questions of poverty has clearly run its course. It will end in a fiscal Armageddon when the bills can't be paid, or (and miracles have been known to happen) when political leaders begin dismantling the Leviathans of state-welfare to avert financial disaster.

Either way, the welfare state's impending demise is going to force Christians to seriously rethink how they help the least among us.

Why? Because for the past 80 years, many Christians have simply assumed they should support large welfare states. In Europe, Christian Democrats played a significant role in designing the social security systems that have helped bankrupt countries like Portugal and Greece. Some Christians have also proved remarkably unwilling to acknowledge welfarism's well-documented social and economic dysfunctionalities.

As America's welfare programs are slowly wound back, those Christian charities who have been heavily reliant upon government contracts will need to look more to the generosity of churchgoers — many of whom are disturbed by the very secular character assumed by many religious charities so as to enhance their chances of landing government contracts.

Another group requiring attitude-adjustment will be those liberal Christians for whom the essence of the Gospel has steadily collapsed over the past 40 years into schemes for state-driven wealth redistributions and promoting politically-correct causes.

The welfare state's gradual collapse presents them with somewhat of an existential dilemma. The entire activity of lobbying for yet another welfare program will increasingly become a superfluous exercise — but this has been central to their way of promoting the poor's needs for years.

More-pragmatic liberal Christians will no doubt adjust. Others, however, will simply deny fiscal reality and frantically lobby for on-going redistributions of an ever-shrinking pool of funds.

But even those Christians who have long moved past the heady-days of the '60s and '70s — or who never actually drank the kool-aid — will have their own challenges in a post-welfare state era.

One will be financial. Will Christians be willing to reach even further into their pockets to help fill the monetary gaps caused by on-going reductions in government welfare-spending?

For American Christians, this will be less of a struggle. They're already among the world's most generous givers. For European Christians, however, it will require a revolution in giving-habits. Many of them have long assumed that paying the taxes that fund welfare programs somehow fulfilled their obligations to their neighbor.

But the more important, long-term challenge posed by significant welfare state reductions will be less about money and more about how Christians will take concrete personal responsibility for those in need.

Here Catholics, Orthodox, and the many Protestant confessions will find helpful guidance in Benedict XVI's 2005 encyclical Deus Caritas Est.

Among other things, this text reminds Christians that poverty is more than a material phenomenon. It also has moral and spiritual dimensions: i.e., precisely those areas of human life that welfare states have never been good at — or interested in — addressing.

For Christians, humans are more than mere mouths. They know moral and spiritual poverty can be as devastating as material deprivation. This expansive understanding of poverty has enormous potential to help Christians correct materialist assumptions about human needs.

Another source of inspiration — especially for Americans — may be Alexis de Tocqueville's great book, Democracy in America . Among other things, this nineteenth-century text illustrates how American churches played the predominant role in helping those in need in an America in which government was the means of last resort when it came to poverty.

Lastly, there is the example of the ancient church. The early Christians didn't imagine that lobbying Roman senators to implement welfare programs was the way to love their neighbor. Instead, to the pagan world's amazement, the early Christians — bishops, priests and laity — helped anyone in need in very direct, practical ways.

As anyone who has read the Church Fathers knows, the early Christians went out of their way to personally care for the poor, the incurably-sick, and the disabled — the very groups who were non-persons to the pagan mind.

Moreover, the Christians undertook such activities at their own expense, and often put their own lives at risk. When plagues came and everyone else fled, Christians generally stayed behind, refusing to abandon those in distress, regardless of their religion.

In crisis, the cliché goes, we find opportunity. Instead of engaging in politically exciting but ultimately futile rearguard-actions to defend welfare-states crumbling under the weight of decades of irresponsible spending, the coming post-welfare state age could be a chance for a Renaissance in Christian thought about the whys and hows of loving those to whom Christ Himself devoted special attention.

Yes, that means abandoning much of the framework that dominated 20th-century Christian reflection upon these questions. But anyone interested in serving the poor rather than their own ego or career-advancement shouldn't hesitate to take such risks.

The poor's spiritual and material well-being demands nothing less.

Samuel Gregg is Research Director at the Acton Institute. He has authored several books including On Ordered Liberty: A Treatise on the Free Society, his prize-winning The Commercial Society: Foundations and Challenges in a Global Age, and Wilhelm Ropke's Political Economy.

Read the entire article on the American Spectator website (new window will open). Reprinted with permission.

Date posted: April 18, 2011

IVF: Enough Will Never Be Enough

United Kingdom scientists announced that they will ask the rarely-says-no UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) for permission to implant an IVF embryo that is biologically related to three parents (two women and one man). The genetically modified embryo will be created by taking the mitochondrial DNA from a second (destroyed) embryo and replacing it for that of the first. The purpose is to prevent maternally passed genetic diseases. But health is always the justification for opening doors best kept closed. If it succeeds, the technology will not long remain limited to the few and far between. These things rarely do.

The three-parent child would not be possible without in vitro fertilization (IVF). IVF has unquestionably helped bring great joy to the barren and brought precious children into the world who otherwise would not exist. But that is far from the whole story. It has also unleashed a terrible hubris around human reproduction, mutating it into a form of manufacture, including such staples of industrialization as special orders for style, warehousing, quality control, harvesting natural resources to support the industry, and independent service contractors who facilitate productivity and efficiency.

The baby manufacturing industry also has an aggressive political lobbying arm, ever on the ready to castigate those who question the wisdom of the current laissez faire system as being cruelly insensitive to the pain of barren families. No wonder cowardly American politicians have yet to muster the true grit to enact even modest regulations.

Supporters of unregulated IVF promised us that the technology would be limited to married couples who could not otherwise have children. Those who raised concerns about the consequences and potential societal costs of removing reproduction from intimacy and placing it literally into the hands of laboratory technicians were castigated as alarmists—people whose fears were disproportionate to the very limited changes in reproduction that IVF would bring. The syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman put it this way in a column called "Making Babies," published in the Austin American Statesman on January 17, 1980:

A fear of many protesting the opening of this [the first IVF] clinic is that doctors there will fertilize myriad eggs and discard the "extras" and the abnormal, as if they were no more meaningful than a dish of caviar. But this fear seems largely unwarranted.

Goodman then engaged in intentional reductionism of the question at hand, noting that an ethics committee gathered by the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University viewed IVF as "entirely a pro life activity." Still, Goodman noted, the committee had concerns:

Should we, they ask, respond like a consumer society to the demands of the buyer? If we don’t stop here, where do we stop? The questions are cosmic. But the issue in front of us at this moment is quote specific: one clinic.

That was like saying the specific question at the start of an invasion is the presence of the first tank that crosses the border. Goodman then advocated the very public policy approach toward IVF that allowed the sector to become a free-for-all:

I think we should neither fund such a clinic at this time, nor prohibit it. We should, rather, monitor it, debate it, control it. We have put researchers on notice that we no longer accept every breakthrough and every advance as an unqualified good. Now we have to watch the development of this technology—willing to see it grow in the right direction and ready to say no.

It has been 31 years since Goodman wrote those words and we haven’t said no yet. To the contrary, the IVF industry has become an aggressive promoter of a virtually anything goes, procreative license. Consider:

• The human egg has become, pound for pound, the most valuable commodity on the face of the earth, with eugenically desirable (beautiful, brilliant) women paid tens of thousands of dollars for twenty microscopic eggs. The health consequences to these women are potentially very serious, as vividly exposed in the award winning CBC documentary, Eggsploitation.
• Embryos are indeed discarded as medical waste, in Goodman’s words, as if they are "no more meaningful than a dish of caviar."
• Embryos are eugenically selected for implantation or discarding, with embryos not only selected out for health reasons, but also for superficial cosmetic purposes such as eye and hair color.
• Bioethicists and futurists look to the technology as a method to eventually "seize control of our own evolution" by genetically engineering our progeny, say, for greater intelligence.
• Hundreds of thousands of embryos have been stored and are now, with the advent of embryonic stem cell research, seen by biotechnological researchers as mere natural resources ripe for the harvest.
• Concomitantly, to further the objectification of human life, many bioethics and scientific groups have engaged in post-modern biological redefinitionism, for example, claiming that embryos only become real embryos after implantation. Before that, they are mere "balls of cells" that are no different from the cells we lose every morning when we brush our teeth.
• "Savior siblings" are being created for the purpose of generating stem cells and tissues that can medically treat existing children.
• In a deeply bitter irony, doctors commonly implant more embryos than are needed and abort the excess, a process euphemistically called "selective reduction."
• Octomom!
• Poor women in countries like India are biologically colonized, paid by the rich to gestate their babies. If the babies don’t meet desire, the children are abandoned by biological and birth parents to an orphanage.
• Surrogate birth mothers have become objectified, now known by the impersonal term "gestational carrier."
• The IVF industry’s actions lead naturally to reproductive cloning, with some advocates already calling for it to be allowed once it is "safe."
• And now, we have the prospect of embryos with three biological parents, the creation of which would be a blatant form of human experimentation since no one can know the long-term physical and psychological outcomes of such biological alchemy.

Ellen Goodman and her ilk have been proven utterly wrong about the limited nature of IVF and our willingness to meaningfully regulate the sector. But it is too late to matter. IVF, which started from small and compassionate beginnings—one clinic—has grown into a voracious and very profitable industry that refuses to say, finally, enough is enough. Indeed, at this point, it is hard to see any reproductive desire or technology about which contemporary Ellen Goodmans won’t say, "Now we have to watch the development of this technology—willing to see it grow in the right direction and ready to say no."

Read the entire article on the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network website (new window will open). Reprinted with permission.

Date posted: April 18, 2011

One Must Stand by the Cross with Sober Vigilance

Having come to the middle point of the path of the Fast that leads to Thy precious Cross, grant that we may see Thy day that Abraham saw and rejoiced, when on the mountain he received Isaac back alive as from the tomb. Delivered from the enemy by faith, may we share Thy mystical supper, calling upon Thee in peace: Our light and our Savior, glory to Thee! (Matins of Wednesday in the Fourth Week)

The Divine Humility

There may still persist the misunderstanding that the Orthodox Church downplays the significance of the Cross because it so intensely concentrates on the Resurrection, or on other such themes as transfiguration, deification, mystical encounter with God, and so forth. This is an implicit criticism that there is some deficiency in the Orthodox Christian presentation of the place of the Cross in the divine dispensation “for us and for our salvation.” Such criticism may not hold up under further reflection and inspection, for the Orthodox would say that based upon the divine economy of our salvation, resurrection – and any “mystical encounter” with God – is only possible through the Cross. As this was “the purpose of his will” and “the mystery of his will” (EPH. 1:5,9), our salvation could not have been accomplished in any other way. The “Lord of Glory” was crucified (I COR. 2:8) and then raised from the dead. Elsewhere, the Apostle Paul writes that “Jesus our Lord” was “put to death for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” (ROM. 4:25)

The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews writes of “Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” (HEB. 12:2) A text such as this could be behind the hymn we sing at every liturgy after receiving the Eucharist: “For through the Cross, joy has come into the world.” Jesus himself said “that the Son of Man must suffer many things … and be killed and after three days rise again.” (MK. 8:31) Of the Gk. word translated as “must” from these words of Christ, Archbishop Demitrios Trakatellis wrote:

This expresses the necessity (dei) of the Messiah’s terrible affliction. Judging from the meaning of the verb (dei) in Mark, this necessity touches upon God’s great plan for the salvation of the world. (Authority and Passion, p. 51-52)

Many such texts can be multiplied, but the point is clear: The Cross and the empty tomb – redemption and resurrection – are inseparably united in the one paschal mystery that is nothing less than “Good News.” Like Mary Magdalene before us, one must first stand by the Cross in sober vigilance before gazing with wonder into the empty tomb and then encountering the Risen Lord. (JN. 20:11-18)

As something of an aside, part of this misunderstanding of the Orthodox Church’s supposed neglect of the Cross in the drama of human redemption could stem from a one-sided emphasis on the Cross in other churches at the expense of the Resurrection. The redemptive significance of the Cross somehow overwhelms the Resurrection so that it is strangely reduced to something of a glorified appendix to the salvific meaning of the Cross. As Vladimir Lossky wrote: “This redemptionist theology, placing all the emphasis on the passion, seems to take no interest in the triumph of Christ over death.” Since the “triumph of Christ over death” is so integral to the very existence of the Church; and since it is the ultimate paschal proclamation, as in “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death!;” then the Orthodox Church will never concentrate on a “theology of the Cross” at the expense of the Resurrection. Rather, the one paschal mystery will always embrace both Cross and Resurrection in a balanced manner. Within the Church during this week of the Cross, we sing and prostrate ourselves before the Cross while chanting this hymn:

Before Thy Cross we bow down in worship, and Thy holy Resurrection We glorify!

In addition, and perhaps more tellingly, the growth, development and continuing existence of certain theories of atonement that have proven to be problematic today, but not shared by the Orthodox Church, have had an impact on evaluating the Orthodox Church’s understanding of the Cross on the whole. These theories of atonement will portray God as being primarily characterized by a wrath that demands appeasement, or “propitiation,” something only the death of His Son on the Cross can “satisfy.” These theories would stress the “juridical” and “penal” side of redemption in a one-sided manner. They may also bind God to act within certain “laws” of eternal necessity that would impose such categories as (vindictive?) justice on God in a way that may obscure God’s overwhelming mercy and love. Not sharing such theories of atonement as developed in the “West,” the Orthodox Church may face criticism for lacking a fully-developed “theology of the Cross.” However, such “satisfaction” theories of atonement are proving to be quite unsatisfactory in much of contemporary theological assessments of the meaning and significance of the Cross in relation to our salvation “in Christ.” The Orthodox can make a huge contribution toward a more holistic and integrated understanding of the role of both Cross and Resurrection, so that the full integrity of the paschal mystery is joyfully proclaimed to the world. From the patristic tradition of the Church, the voice of St. Athanasius the Great can speak to us today of this holistic approach (using some “juridical” language!):

Here, then is the … reason why the Word dwelt among us, namely that having proved His Godhead by His works, He might offer the sacrifice on behalf of all, surrendering His own temple to death in place of all, to settle man’s account with death and free him from the primal transgression. In the same act also He showed Himself mightier than death, displaying His own body incorruptible as the first-fruits of the resurrection. (On the Incarnation, 20)

In soberly assessing too great of a dependency on juridical language when speaking of redemption, and anticipating some later theories that would narrowly focus on the language of “payment” and “ranson” in relation to the sacrifice of Christ; St. Gregory the Theologian argued that a “price” or “ransom” was not “paid” to the Father or to Satan, as if either would demand, need or expect such a price as the “precious and glorious blood of God.” St. Gregory says, rather, the following:

Is it not evident that the Father accepts the sacrifice not because He demanded it or had any need for it but by His dispensation? It was necessary that man should be sanctified by the humanity of God; it was necessary that He Himself should free us, triumphing over the tyrant by His own strength, and that He should recall us to Himself by His Son who is the Mediator, who does all for the honor of the Father, to whom he is obedient in all things … Let the rest of the mystery be venerated silently. (Oration 45, 22)

However, getting it right in terms of a sound doctrine of atonement is one thing – essential as it is – but assimilating the necessity of the Cross in and to our personal understanding and the conditions of our life is another. In fact, it is quite a struggle and our resistance can be fierce! If this is difficult to understand, assimilate and then live by, the initial disciples of the Lord suffered through the same profound lack of comprehension. Their (mis)understanding of Jesus as the Messiah was one-sidedly fixated on images of glory, both for Israel and for themselves. A crucified Messiah was simply too much for the disciples to grasp, even though Jesus spoke of this in words that were not that enigmatic. When Peter refused to accept his Master’s words of His impending passion and death in Jerusalem, after just confessing His messianic stature and being blessed for it; he is forced to receive what is perhaps the most stinging rebuke found in the Gospels when Jesus turns to him and says: “Get behind me Satan! For you are not on the side of God, but of men.” (MK. 8:33) It was Satan who did not want Jesus to fulfill His vocation by voluntarily dying on the Cross, so Peter’s refusal to accept Christ’s words was his way of aligning himself with Satan.

The disciples were not enlightened until after the resurrection of their Lord and Master. We are raised in the Church so that we already know of Christ’s triumph over death through the Cross. Our resistance is not based on a lack of knowledge, but of a real human dread of pain and suffering. It may be difficult for us to “see” the joy that comes through the Cross until we find ourselves “on the other side.” “For now we see in a glass darkly, but then face to face.” (I COR. 13:12) It is our hope and the “certainty” of our faith that Christ has indeed triumphed over death, “even death on a Cross.” (PHIL. 2:8) God has blessed us with yet another Great Lent and upcoming Holy Week and Pascha in order to share in that experience of His glorious triumph that begins with the life-giving wood of the Tree of the Cross.

Date posted: April 18, 2011

A Hidden History of Evil

In the world’s collective consciousness, the word “Nazi” is synonymous with evil. It is widely understood that the Nazis’ ideology—nationalism, anti-Semitism, the autarkic ethnic state, the Führer principle—led directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz. It is not nearly as well understood that Communism led just as inexorably, everywhere on the globe where it was applied, to starvation, torture, and slave-labor camps. Nor is it widely acknowledged that Communism was responsible for the deaths of some 150 million human beings during the twentieth century. The world remains inexplicably indifferent and uncurious about the deadliest ideology in history.

For evidence of this indifference, consider the unread Soviet archives. Pavel Stroilov, a Russian exile in London, has on his computer 50,000 unpublished, untranslated, top-secret Kremlin documents, mostly dating from the close of the Cold War. He stole them in 2003 and fled Russia. Within living memory, they would have been worth millions to the CIA; they surely tell a story about Communism and its collapse that the world needs to know. Yet he can’t get anyone to house them in a reputable library, publish them, or fund their translation. In fact, he can’t get anyone to take much interest in them at all.

[...]

Read the entire article on the City Journal website (new window will open).

Date posted: April 18, 2011

Why God Isn’t Doing Well

God is not doing very well these days.

Here are four reasons why:

The first is that increasingly large numbers of men and women attend university, and Western universities have become essentially secular (and leftist) seminaries. Just as the agenda of traditional Christian and Jewish seminaries is to produce religious Christians and religious Jews, the agenda of Western universities is to produce (left-wing) secularists. The difference is that Christian and Jewish seminaries are honest about their agenda, while the universities still claim they have neither a secularist nor a political agenda.

The more university education a person receives, the more likely he is to hold secular and left-wing views. The secular Left argues that this correlation is due to the fact that a college graduate knows more and thinks more clearly and therefore gravitates leftward and toward secularism. But if you believe that the average college graduate is a clear and knowledgeable thinker as a result of his or her time at university, I have more than one bridge to sell you. A radio talk-show host for 29 years, I long ago began asking callers who made foolish comments what graduate school they had attended. It takes higher education to learn that America and Israel are villains, that men and women have essentially the same natures, that human nature is good, that ever-larger governments create wealth, etc.

A second reason God is not doing well among Westerners these days is that many members of the Jewish and Christian clergy decided that their primary role was not to advocate their religion’s moral and religious standards, but rather (1) to make congregants comfortable (“Don’t call me ‘Pastor’ [or ‘Rabbi,’ or ‘Father’], call me Jerry”) and (2) to promulgate the values they learned at their secular left-wing universities.

A third reason God is not doing well is that most of the men and women who are products of this secular left-wing education (meaning a large majority of Western men and women) are theologically, intellectually, and emotionally ill-prepared to deal with all the unjust suffering in the world. I will never forget a Swedish pastor’s reaction to the 1994 sinking of the Estonia, a ferry that capsized in the Baltic between Estonia and Sweden leaving 852 passengers and crew dead. He said he could not believe in a God who allowed such injustice to take place.

This pastor spoke for vast numbers of modern Western men and women. The existence of so much unjust suffering in the world has strongly contributed to their rejecting belief in God. And undoubtedly the devastation caused by the Japanese earthquake and tsunami has further reinforced many individuals’ rejection of God.

Of course, none of us has a fully coherent solution to the problem of theodicy. But the problem is not exactly new. Every great religion has dealt with it, and most of the brilliant minds in history retained their faith in God despite all the unjust suffering they saw.

The difference today is that life has been so good for most Westerners that suffering is no longer regarded as part of life, but as an aberration that can be done away with. Meanwhile, the liberal wings of Christianity and Judaism are too influenced by secularism to make an effective religious case for God, whom the religious Left has largely rendered a celestial buddy.

The fourth reason is Islamic violence and the tepid response to it by the liberal churches and synagogues. It would seem pretty clear that a major, albeit almost never acknowledged, reason for the huge audiences for recent books advocating atheism has been the massive amount of evil committed in God’s name by radical Muslims. Nothing creates atheism as much as evil done in God’s name.

That is why the pathetically weak responses from within mainstream -- i.e., liberal -- Christianity and Judaism have only added to the contempt for God and religion sown by beheadings and suicide bombings in Allah’s name. The liberal Christian and Jewish responses have been to attack fellow Christians and Jews who have focused on Islamist terror. Instead of drawing attention to the damage radical Islam does to the name of God, liberal Christians and Jews focus their anger on co-religionists who do speak out on this issue and label them “Islamophobes.”

That God is not doing well in the Western world may trouble God. But it is we humans who should be most troubled. The moral, intellectual, artistic, and demographic decline in Western Europe (people in secular countries don’t even have the will to reproduce themselves) is only gaining momentum. And the consequences of that decline will be far more devastating than all the tsunamis and all the earthquakes that may come our way.

Read the entire article on the National Review website (new window will open).

Date posted: April 18, 2011

Transcendence, Myth, and the Future of Man

It was not long ago that the rhythm of daily life enjoyed a mixture of science, mythology/religion and practical wisdom that sought from each of these only what each could offer in helping us to understand ourselves and the mystery of human existence.

Remaining vital in their approach and scope to human reality, these disciplines were certainly nowhere as distinct from each other, as they have become in our time. This more settled, holistic way of life was still felt, for all practical purposes, late into the nineteenth century, when fanaticism about keeping these disciplines separate can be said to have begun in earnest, with the advent of positivism.

The major impact that this seemingly scientific paradigm shift has had on Western culture is that today this positivistic outlook on life dominates all aspects of human life, where the unsuspecting are treated to a daily confectioner’s delight of illusory and self-contradicting sense of reality.

Any age that gives itself over to the slavery of merely being content with killing time from day to day, without recourse to the meaning and purpose of things, is also an age that is incapable of wisdom. Ours is a technological sensual age. Ortega y Gasset is correct in suggesting that human existence is defined by resistance and a perpetual having-to-do. That is, we have to remake today what we left unfinished yesterday. Of course, this demands much perspicuity and work on our behalf. This existential grasp of human reality even requires love. However, our engagement with the many daily tasks that we must address becomes merely biological exigency, if not enlightened by an overarching sense of transcendence.

Daily life is a contingent reality. We do not need to be reminded that our lives and well being hang on the balance by the thinnest of threads. Yet to be able to recognize universal and eternal truths, one must retain a distinct longing for the sublime. In the absence of such pathos, we find that we become, as Ortega y Gasset has convincingly argued, demoralized. The triumph of destructive demoralization, the annihilation of transcendent values that inform life and death, meaning and purpose, and rhyme and reason, is the most glaring argument that can be made against sterile philosophical materialism in all its contemporary variations. Our current delight with nihilism and destruction of the sacred is akin to Aesop’s Fable about the cat and the cock, where the moral of the story is that “the want of a good excuse never kept a villain from crime.”

The major problem that our time has encountered, and which is choking our humanity, is that we no longer find the need to tell ourselves stories that convey a transcendent meaning. Our stories, today, whether cinematic or in the printed page, only seek to help us kill time. We have been effectively convinced by sophomoric minds that we no longer have a need for the lessons of “moralizers.” This is truly regrettable, for the exigencies of living in complex times demand that we make sense of reality.

Mythology might be just that – myth - but if we take that line of thought, we eventually discover that we paralyze our capacity for understanding. Notice that I did not say for knowledge, for technical know-how we have plenty of, possibly in excess. Understanding and technological knowledge might be neighbors, but they don’t necessarily need to visit each other’s house.

Myth enables us to separate ourselves from the grind of daily existence. It is only when we are allowed to reflect about our own existence, and our place in nature and society that we have a fighting chance of attaining self-knowledge. Doing so allows us the luxury of finding out what beliefs we actually live by. In the absence of myth, we rarely come to the full understanding of the values that we uphold, often until we are confronted with tragedy. The marketplace of “ideas” often serves as a vital source of communication – or misinformation, in many cases – but man needs much more than ideas in order to fulfill his vital substance.

Our sweeping eradication of tradition, Ortega y Gasset points out in The Revolt of the Masses">The Revolt of the Masses, is a recent aberration that has never been achieved in recorded history with such ease and which has created such defoliation of Western culture. It is only recently that man turned his back on history.

Contemporary man – what is undoubtedly the gross embodiment of the new man – prides himself in creating a minimalist cultural and moral desert that make no demands on our modish nihilism. The creation of the status quo of our radicalized demoralization is not only a major source of suffering, but also serves as the impetus for the establishment of aberrant practices and beliefs that have been normalized.

The eclipsing of all historical valuation has made contemporary man dizzy with the baggage that this new embodiment of “freedom” from duty entails. Yet existential freedom has more to do with what we ought not to do than about picking and choosing from an extensive repository of hedonistic delights. Freedom that is not backed up by sound moral/spiritual values is a one-way ticket to tragedy. Ironically, what we truly encounter today is no other than a childish flight from existential freedom, where freedom has been negated because, in its authentic form, it always works to keep us honest.

Post the 1960s; we have heard time and again, how all our traditional institutions must be toppled. We have brought down all literary, philosophical, and artistic values from what critics considered their high-brow perch. Today we employ a species of charlatan known as the “life coach,” a parasitic guru whose job it is to literally coach us through living. It seems that circus acts were never as ridiculously comic or tragic.

The failure of modern psychology - which is incidentally still dominated by Freud’s thought whether most people in that field recognize this - is evident every time that we witness the abysmal distance that exists between belligerent academic cynicism, and the freshness and healthy naiveté of a child. When we consider that most of the latest research done by psychologists and sociologists has very little to do with people of flesh and bones, we quickly come to understand the depth and scope of our malaise. Our current predicament demonstrates to what degree we have rationalized all aspects of life.

Myth serves as an explanation of the order of the Kosmos and man’s place in it. Like a sculpture in high relief, myth helps us to jump out of the background of nature, for man is truly an extra-natural entity. Myth accomplishes this by giving us a framework by which we can measure the parameters and limitations of human reality. With the apparent ensuing death of organized religion, our age is now dominated by a vacuous secularism that lacks all capacity to engage the sublime. Words like transcendence and sensibility, whether poetic, moral or philosophical, sound corny, or simply ridiculous to our fashionable twenty-first century ears.

Myth’s greatest asset is its ability to embrace the imagination. Myth never smothers or destroys this vital aspect of human existence with demands for scientific proof. Hence, myth has always been a practical measure of what we can achieve given our limitations. In myth, we recognize human limitation and finiteness as a settling of accounts with our embodied reality. However, Human limitation becomes an asset to us when we recognize that human existence is always besieged by resistance. The recognition of this basic fact ought not to frighten us. On the contrary, it should re-direct us to embrace our genuine possibilities as persons.

It is not very difficult to realize why today we have given up on the power of myth and religion as vehicles that communicate a sense of transcendence. Transcendence makes demands on us that go beyond the pale of our sensual, spatial-temporal reality. The best proof of this is that while we enjoy the fruits of a highly technological civilization, the average person knows and cares virtually nothing about science. Today, we only care for the fruit, not the tree. This should strike us as odd. Most people today view science with a sense of entitlement that looks only to the gadgets that applied science can furnish us with.

What can we assert about the future of man by simply taking our cue from the past? A highly technological age has the added burden of being a time of necessary participation between people and science. Free will has never seemed so crucial a tool for human survival. There can be no easy way around this glaring fact.

If applied science is perpetually supplying us with newer and more efficient tools to aid us in living, then this particular aspect of science must remain at the mercy of man’s fundamental spiritual/moral nature. Fortunately, most of the creations that science allows us to enjoy are life-affirming. Again, the practice of free will is a fundamental component of human existence that every individual must contend with.

Having said this, we ought then to concentrate our attention on those aspects of man’s future that appear to be in dire straits at the present moment. The most pressing of these concerns is no less than our ability to continue to be moved by the sublime. The aforementioned is an element of human reality that is characteristic of spirit. Yet the recognition of man as manifested spirit is one of the great taboos of today. The negation and subsequent disappearance of spirit from the human condition threatens to deliver us to a time of bare existence, one which merely takes its cue from sensual/biological laws.

By reducing spirit to the utility of the day-to-day, we become victims of the servitude of our own passions, what is tantamount to being slaves of the sensual. We have become masters of resisting resistance. It does not take much imagination for us to conceive of a not so distant future, when man is merely viewed as a mechanical/biological machine. This stage of human history might even come to be viewed as the pinnacle of liberation. Sure, there will remain stalwarts who rebel against this aberration, those who will continue to want more out of life, but the great mass of people might come to see themselves as conscious multi-celled organisms.

Such a state of moral savagery also brings about the greater question of the role of spirit in human existence. Of course, perhaps a more meaningful and proactive question is: what moral/spiritual mechanism must we have in place in a civilization in order to safeguard spirit? This not-so-science-fiction scenario is hardly a new one, even though it has now taken on a contemporary hue. We do immeasurable daily damage to the human psyche through the continual push by progressives and other dystopians who continue to create institutions that aim at engineering human perfection.

Those who want to reduce man’s being to mere biologism, physicalism, or trans-humanism, to name a few of these blatant forms of materialism, take great pleasure in the pursuit of absolute power. Apparently, these people have learned very little from human history. This incessant and sophomoric desire to make man into something that he is not capable of being, or meant to be, is one of the dangers that spirit must contend with in our world in the twenty-first century.

The future will continue to excite us but only as long as we respect the fact that it is autonomous persons that populate the human universe, and that it is individuals who recognize their lives as self-conscious existence. When we deviate from this basic truth, we also make the tragic mistake of politicizing the human condition. Science cannot strip us of the sense of mystery that we represent to ourselves in the greater scheme of ultimate reality, only our negation of free will can achieve that task.

Date posted: April 18, 2011

“Srebrenica” and the Power of Reason

"Truth and reason are eternal,” Thomas Jefferson wrote to Rev. Samuel Knox in 1810. “They have prevailed. And they will eternally prevail . . . ” Jefferson was wrong. His belief that “Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it” was naive. As Patrick J. Buchanan proves in a passing reference in his otherwise sound latest column, even men of generally sound understanding and good intentions end up the victims of the disinformation campaigns that pass for media reporting.

“In none of the Libyan towns affected by fighting in recent weeks,” Buchanan writes, “has anything like the massacre in the Ivory Coast taken place, let alone Srebrenica.”

It is noteworthy that “Srebrenica” is used here not as a geographic location that needs to be preceded by a noun (“the massacre in…”) but as a stand-alone term that denotes horror, on par with “Auschwitz,” or “Katyn,” or “Hiroshima.”

“Srebrenica” used in this sense has established itself as a myth based on a lie. As the introduction to an enlightening recent article points out, we need to transcend the routine banalities of the Srebrenica debate which turns mostly on numbers; but the very term “debate” is rejected by those who should be on one of the two sides in that debate:

They deny as a matter of principle that there is anything to debate. So many thousand prisoners were executed and a distinguished international judicial forum of unquestioned authority has found it to constitute genocide. (These are the “routine banalities” that define the parameters of Srebrenica as an issue at least, if not as a debate.) According to our hypothetical debating partners there is nothing to debate because everything is settled and clear.

Reasonable people with no ethno-religious axe to grind in the Balkan quagmire have long fought such “routine banalities,” including the claim that as many as 8,000 Muslims were killed in cold blood and the systematic misuse of the term “genocide.”

BACK TO THE NUMBERS—The fact beyond dispute is that during the Bosnian war thousands of Muslim men were killed in the region of Srebrenica. Most of them died in July of 1995 when the enclave fell almost without a fight to the Bosnian Serb Army and the Muslim garrison—the 28^th division of the Bosnia-Herzegovina Army—attempted a breakthrough. A significant number reached safety at the Muslim-held town of Tuzla, 60 km to the north; a few found shelter in Serbia, across the Drina River to the east. An unknown were killed while fighting their way through; and many others—numbers remain disputed—were taken prisoner and executed by the Bosnian Serb army.

The numbers remain unknown and misrepresented. With “8,000 executed” and—inevitably—thousands more killed in the fighting or reaching the Muslim lines, the column attempting to break out should have counted 12 to 15,000 men—an impossibly large number. There should have been huge gravesites and satellite evidence of executions, burials, and body removals. The UN searches in the Srebrenica vicinity, breathlessly frantic at times, still falls far short of the sanctified figure of 8,000. The Islamic shrine at Potocari, where the supposed victims are buried, includes those of soldiers killed in action, Muslim and Serb, between May 1992 and July 1995.

The Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague (ICTY) never came up with a conclusive breakdown of casualties. That a war crime did take place is undeniable. The number of its victims remains forensically and demographically unproven. According to the former BBC reporter Jonathan Rooper, “from the outset the numbers were used and abused” for political purposes. The number of likely casualties corresponds closely to the ‘missing’ list of 7,300 compiled by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Rooper says. But the early estimates were based on nothing more than the simple combination of an estimated 3,000 men last seen at the UN base at Potocari and an estimated 5,000 people reported ‘to have left the enclave before it fell’:

Perhaps the most startling aspect of the 7-8,000 figure is that it has always been represented as synonymous with the number of people executed. This was never a possibility: numerous contemporary accounts noted that UN and other independent observers had witnessed fierce fighting with significant casualties on both sides. It was also known that others had fled to Muslim-held territory around Tuzla and Zepa, that some had made their way westwards and northwards, and that some had fled into Serbia. It is therefore certain that nowhere near all the missing could have been executed.

The Red Cross reported at the time that some 3,000 Bosnian Army soldiers managed to reach Muslim lines near Tuzla and were redeployed by the Bosnian Army “without their families being informed.” The number of military survivors was also confirmed by Muslim General Enver Hadzihasanovic in his testimony at The Hague.

The last census results, from 1991, counted 37,211 inhabitants in Srebrenica and the surrounding villages, of which 27,118 were Muslims (72.8 percent) and 9,381 Serbs (25.2 percent). Displaced persons from Srebrenica registered with the World Health Organization and Bosnian government in early August 1995 totaled 35,632. With 3,000 Muslim men who reached Tuzla “without their families being informed” we come to the figure of over 38,000 survivors. The Hague Tribunal’s own estimates of the total population of the Srebrenica enclave before July 1995—notably that made by Judge Patricia Wald—give 40,000 as the maximum figure. It does not add up.

Having spent five days interviewing over 20,000 Srebrenica survivors at Tuzla a week after the fall of the enclave, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Henry Wieland declared, “we have not found anyone who saw with their own eyes an atrocity taking place.” A decade later a Dutch field investigator, Dr Dick Schoonoord, confirmed Wieland’s verdict: “It has been impossible during our investigations in Bosnia to find any people who witnessed the mass murder or would talk about the fate of the missing men.”

A “PROTECTED ZONE”?—It is often pointed out that Srebrenica was an UN “protected zone,” but it is seldom noted that the enclave was simultaneously an armed camp used for attacks against Serb villages in the surrounding areas. Muslim General Sefer Halilovic confirmed in his testimony at the Hague Tribunal that there were at least 5,500 Bosnian Muslim Army soldiers in Srebrenica after it had obtained the “safe haven” status, and that he had personally arranged numerous deliveries of sophisticated weapons by helicopter.

French General Philippe Morillon, the UNPROFOR commander who first called international attention to the Srebrenica enclave, is adamant that the crimes committed by those Muslim soldiers made the Serbs’ desire for revenge inevitable. He testified at The Hague Tribunal on February 12, 2004, that the Muslim commander in Srebrenica, Naser Oric, “engaged in attacks during Orthodox holidays and destroyed villages, massacring all the inhabitants. This created a degree of hatred that was quite extraordinary in the region.” Asked by the ICTY prosecutor how Oric treated his Serb prisoners, General Morillon, who knew him well, replied that “Naser Oric was a warlord who reigned by terror in his area and over the population itself… he didn’t even look for an excuse… One can’t be bothered with prisoners.”

Cees Wiebes, who wrote the intelligence section of the Dutch Government report on Srebrenica, notes that despite signing the demilitarization agreement, Bosnian Muslim forces in Srebrenica were heavily armed and engaged in provocations (“sabotage operations”) against Serbian forces. Professor Wiebes caused a storm with his book Intelligence and the War in Bosnia 1992-1995, detailing the role of the Clinton administration in allowing Iran to arm the Bosnian Muslims.

On 11 July, 1995, the Muslim garrison was ordered to evacuate the town which the Serbs entered unopposed. Local Deputy Director of UN Monitors, Carlos Martins Branco, wrote in 2004 (“Was Srebrenica a Hoax?”) that Muslim forces did not even try to take advantage of their heavy artillery because “military resistance would jeopardize the image of ‘victim,’ which had been so carefully constructed, and which the Muslims considered vital to maintain.”

POLITICAL BACKGROUND—Two prominent supporters (at the time) of the late Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic, his Srebrenica SDA party chairman Ibran Mustafic and police commander Hakija Meholjic, have subsequently accused Izetbegovic of deliberately sacrificing the enclave in order to trigger NATO intervention. Meholjic is explicit: in his presence, Izetbegovic quoted Bill Clinton as saying that 5,000 dead Muslims would be sufficient to provide the political basis for an American-led intervention on the side of the Muslims.

Testifying at The Hague Tribunal, Muslim Generals Halilovic and Hadzihasanovic confirmed this theory by describing how 18 top officers of the Srebrenica garrison were abruptly removed in May 1995. Ibran Mustafic, the former head of the Muslim SDA party in Srebrenica, is adamant that the scenario for the sacrifice of Srebrenica was carefully prepared:

Unfortunately, the Bosnian presidency and the Army command were involved in this business … Had I received orders to attack the Serb army from the demilitarized zone, I would have rejected to carry out that order. I would have asked the person who had issued that order to bring his family to Srebrenica, so that I can give him a gun let him stage attacks from the demilitarized zone. I knew that such shameful, calculated moves were leading my people to catastrophe. The order came from Sarajevo.

Military analyst Tim Ripley agrees that Srebrenica was deliberately sacrificed by the Muslim political leaders. He noted that Dutch UN soldiers “saw Bosnian troops escaping from Srebrenica past their observation points, carrying brand new anti-tank weapons [which] made many UN officers and international journalists suspicious.”

The term “genocide” is even more contentious than the exact circumstances of Srebrenica’s fall. Local chief of UN Monitors, Carlos Martins Branco, noted that if there had been a premeditated plan of genocide, instead of attacking in only one direction, from the south to the north—which left open escape routes to the north and west, the Serbs would have established a siege in order to ensure that no one escaped:

The UN observation posts to the north of the enclave were never disturbed and remained in activity after the end of the military operations. There are obviously mass graves in the outskirts of Srebrenica as in the rest of ex-Yugoslavia where combat has occurred, but there are no grounds for the campaign which was mounted, nor the numbers advanced by CNN. The mass graves are filled by a limited number of corpses from both sides, the consequence of heated battle and combat and not the result of a premeditated plan of genocide, as occurred against the Serbian populations in Krajina, in the Summer of 1995, when the Croatian army implemented the mass murder of all Serbians found there.

The fact that The Hague Tribunal called the massacre in Srebrenica “genocide” does not make it so. What plan for genocide includes offering safe passage to women and children? And if this was all part of a Serb plot to eliminate Muslims, what about hundreds of thousands of Muslims living peacefully in Serbia itself, including thousands of refugees who fled there from Srebrenica and other parts of Bosnia? Or the Muslims in the neighboring enclave of Žepa, who were unharmed when the Serbs captured that town a few days after capturing Srebrenica? To get around these common sense obstacles, the ICTY prosecution came up with a sociologist who provided an “expert” opinion: the Srebrenica Muslims lived in a patriarchal society, therefore killing the men was enough to ensure that there would be no more Muslims in Srebrenica. Such psychobabble turns the term “genocide” into a gruesome joke.

Yet it was on the basis of this definition that in August 2001, the Tribunal found Bosnian Serb General Radislav Krstic guilty of “complicity in genocide.” Even if the unproven figure of “8,000” is assumed, it affected less than one-half of one percent of Bosnia’s Muslim population in a locality covering one percent of its territory. On such form, the term “genocide” loses all meaning and becomes a propaganda tool rather than a legal and historical concept. On that form, America’s NATO ally Turkey—a major regional player in today’s Balkans—committed genocide in northern Cyprus in 1974. On that form, no military conflict can be genocide-free.

As Diana Johnstone explained in a seminal “Counterpunch” article, the ‘Srebrenica massacre’ is part of a dominant culture discourse that is highly relevant, some years later, to the ongoing intervention in Libya:

We people in the advanced democracies have reached a new moral plateau, from which we are both able and have a duty both to judge others and to impose our ‘values’ when necessary. The others, on a lower moral plateau, must be watched carefully, because unlike us, they may commit ‘genocide.’ … The subliminal message in the official Srebrenica discourse is that because ‘we’ let that happen, ‘we’ mustn’t let ‘it’ happen again, ergo, the U.S. should preventively bomb potential perpetrators of ‘genocide’.

The accepted Srebrenica story, influenced by war propaganda and uncritical media reports, is neither historically correct nor morally satisfying. The relentless Western campaign against the Serbs and in favor of their Muslim foes—which is what “Srebrenica” is really all about—is detrimental to the survival of our culture and civilization. It seeks to give further credence to the myth of Muslim blameless victimhood, Serb viciousness, and Western indifference, and therefore weaken our resolve in the global struggle euphemistically known as “war on terrorism.” The former is a crime; the latter, a mistake.

In more ways than one “Srebrenica is, indeed, a totem for the new world order. And I hope that Pat Buchanan reads this.

Read the entire article on the Chronicles of Culture website (new window will open). Reprinted with permission.

Date posted: April 18, 2011

Atlas Shrugged – See the Movie, Skip the Book

First posted on the American Orthodox Institute blog.

I received permission to reprint this blog post by Acton Institute blogger Bruce Edward Walker. Walker, correctly in my view, draws out the authoritarian impulse in Rand's philosophy of "Objectivism" that can be distilled down to this: The libertarianism (man's moral agency is self-referencing) that describes Rand's Objectivism stands against the classical liberalism (what we today would call moral conservatism) of a Burke, Kirk, or even Tocqueville which see the bonds between people and thus society and culture as fundamentally religious in character.

Ayn Rand

Rand stood against the cultural leveling of statism, particularly the loss of character and mediocrity it fosters. That is the appeal of her philosophy. There is little difference between, say, Soviet materialism and the state-sponsored corporatism of the modern welfare state (Europe in particular but increasingly so in the United States). However, the final refutation of this debilitating journey into what Friederich Hayek warned is a new "serfdom" is actually moral renewal. Rand was not able to penetrate the moral dimension of statism because of her passionate atheism. The best she could offer was an anti-statist libertarianism that inevitably results in an authoritarianism of a different sort (and fostered a personal life that is best described as morally chaotic).

Whittaker Chambers

I've included two items that shed more light on Rand and her influence on American intellectual history. The first is the critique of Atlas Shrugged by Whittaker Chambers, the ex-Communist turned Catholic who's book "Witness" is perhaps the clearest testament of moral clarity of his age. The second is an interview with William F. Buckley, who fills in some of the cultural history of the era. Buckley described Atlas Shrugs as "ideological fabulism." (Chambers worked for Buckley at National Review in the 1950s.)

Whittaker Chambers: Big Sister is Watching You

William Buckley on Ayn Rand & Atlas Shrugged:

Source: Acton Institute | Bruce Edward Walker

Atlas Shrugged – See the Movie, Skip the Book

Is it conceivable to endorse the cinematic adaptation of Ayn Rand’s libertarian manifesto Atlas Shrugged – as I do – while rejecting the flawed ideology which inspired it?

I would argue, yes. On the one hand, I place the Beatles at the pinnacle of 1960s pop music while concluding that their song “Mr. Moonlight” is wince-inducing to the point of being unlistenable. Likewise, I admire 99.9 percent of G.K. Chesterton’s body of work yet disagree with him on his assertion only men should vote. On the other hand, I disagree for the most part with Camille Paglia’s worldview yet admire her writing style and intellectual honesty.

So it goes with Ayn Rand. Her free-market views were a welcome antidote to New Deal policies and the malignant growth of government programs and crony capitalism. And for the same reasons I warmly welcome the first installment of the planned cinematic trilogy of Rand’s Atlas Shrugged – timed to coincide with the traditional Tax Day this coming Friday – which renders her themes in such a fashion they appear ripped from the headlines of today’s Wall Street Journal.

Atlas Shrugged-Part I captures the malaise of our times in its depiction of a United States of the near future when businessmen look to government to throttle competition by any means necessary (e.g. legislation and regulation) rather than innovating and investing to succeed. Part I ignores Rand’s anti-collectivism, rampant individualism, atheism and, for the most part, libertarian libertinism, to focus on her depictions of government looters and corporate rent seekers.

All this recommends the movie to lovers of liberty properly understood, to borrow a phrase from Russell Kirk. In fact, I’ll go so far as to encourage readers to see the film and skip the book.

My problems with Rand and Objectivism, the ideology of “enlightened self-interest” she founded, go beyond the oft-quoted admonition of Whittaker Chambers in which he expressed her autocratic intransigence led him to read Rand’s command to all detractors real and perceived “to the gas chambers go!” on every page. There is some truth to Chamber’s critique, to be sure, in that any worldview that rejects faith and community eventually succumbs to obduracy leading to what Russell Kirk labeled the “chirping sect” of libertarianism (a phrase he borrowed from T.S. Eliot).

By chirping sect, Kirk intentionally references Edmund Burke’s “insects of the hour” — those libertarians who splinter into ever smaller groups and thereby sacrifice both the personal and common good on the altar of their own narcissism masked as “individualism.” One need only read about the internecine strife within the Objectivist’s ivory tower to note the wisdom of Burke and Kirk. The CliffsNotes version: Arguing with Rand meant immediate exile to intellectual Siberia.

Contrary to Rand’s individualism, the United States since its beginning has congregated in townships and parishes where true democracy flourishes under the express influence of religious faith. Nineteenth-century writers Alexis de Tocqueville and Orestes Brownson both noted these communal incubators and conservators of liberty – small collectives that reflect their respective faiths to advocate for the good of all within their sphere.

As Tocqueville wrote in his seminal Democracy in America:

In the United States the influence of religion is not confined to the manners, but it extends to the intelligence of the people. Amongst the Anglo-Americans, there are some who profess the doctrines of Christianity from a sincere belief in them, and others who do the same because they are afraid to be suspected of unbelief. Christianity, therefore, reigns without any obstacle, by universal consent; the consequence is, as I have before observed, that every principle of the moral world is fixed and determinate, although the political world is abandoned to the debates and the experiments of men. Thus the human mind is never left to wander across a boundless field; and, whatever may be its pretensions, it is checked from time to time by barriers which it cannot surmount. Before it can perpetrate innovation, certain primal and immutable principles are laid down, and the boldest conceptions of human device are subjected to certain forms which retard and stop their completion.

Among his many salient points against libertarianism enumerated in the essay, “Libertarians: the Chirping Sectaries,” Kirk said:

What binds society together? The libertarians reply that the cement of society (so far as they will endure any binding at all) is self-interest, closely joined to the nexus of cash payment. But the conservatives declare that society is a community of souls, joining the dead, the living, and those yet unborn; and that it coheres through what Aristotle called friendship and Christians call love of neighbor.

Elsewhere in his essay, Kirk delineates the differences between individualism as expressed by Rand and her like and the community spirit so intrinsic to our national character by invoking Eric Voegelin, whom, Kirk states:

[R]eminds us – is not between totalitarians on the one hand and liberals (or libertarians) on the other; rather, it lies between all those who believe in some sort of transcendent moral order, on one side, and on the other side all those who take this ephemeral existence of ours for the be-all and end-all-to be devoted chiefly to producing and consuming. In this discrimination between the sheep and the goats, the libertarians must be classified with the goats – that is, as utilitarians admitting no transcendent sanctions for conduct. In effect, they are converts to Marx’s dialectical materialism; so conservatives draw back from them on the first principle of all.

In short, capitalism and the toxic individualism of Rand and others for the instantaneous benefits supposedly granted leads to liberty misunderstood in the forms of materialism and licentious behavior – both antithetical to liberty properly understood as the fully realized temporal life in community and faith.

So I’m thankful Atlas Shrugged-Part I avoids the toxic elements of Rand’s so-called “philosophy” and am hopeful the subsequent installments of the film trilogy steer clear of the same pitfalls. By all means, see the film and avoid the book.

Date posted: April 18, 2011