Paratrooper Priests and Inflatable Churches

Stories like this makes Monomakhos happy. We used to do things like this. Now I imagine the Army would only be allowed to do this if gay marriages could be performed there.

Sigh.

On another note, it looks like our foreign policy in Syria has decided to abandon neoconservatism. For all the Russian hacking nonsense, the grownups under Tillerson are coming to grips with reality and abandoning America’s slavish adherence to “democracy uber alles”.

Give peace a chance! What a novel idea.

Comments

  1. Billy Jack Sunday says

    Oh man! Charlie Sheen, Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey were totally wrong! The Wolverines shed innocent blood! The Russian church was just trying to finally bring Orthodoxy to America since there obviously is no other way – as all other means have failed. What a tragic loss due to a bunch of hill billy high schoolers freaking out

    • BJS,

      The Wolverines were right. The Soviets sought to bring communism to America, not Orthodoxy. And Papists are still trying to make us all Roman Catholics.

      • Peter Millman says

        Hi Misha,
        Believe it of not, my friend, I actually like and respect you; although I disagree with most of your views, you have a kind way about you.

        MIsha, when George refers to “Holy Mother Russia.” he is mistaken; Russia is not holy. The Russian Orthodox Church is a puppet of the murdering, conniving Vladimir Putin. No country that sits atop seven thousand nuclear weapons can ever be considered holy. Why doesn’t the Patriarch of Moscow speak out against Putin’s foreign policy, assassination of political rivals, and warmongering?
        One thing Orthodoxy needs more than anything is humility. We Orthodox have a great deal to be humble about. I’d say ninety nine percent of us are hypocrites. One of the greatest hypocrisies in the Orthodox Church is the support of war. When the priest asks God to give the US armed forces victory over their enemies, I know this is wrong. That is the language of warmongers, not followers of Jesus Christ.

        • Peter,

          The Lord has shown me that I am far too generous with the enemies of Christ and have naively underestimated the depth of their commitment to their diabolical objectives. But He is willing to work with me on this, so it’s all good.

          I doubt you are Orthodox, probably a Catholic troll. Regardless, you really misunderstand the Orthodox faith and the nature of Christ’s work in the world. He did not come to bring peace, but a sword.

          • Peter Millman says

            Well, Misha, no one ever said that you didn’t have a sense of humor. I’m Orthodox, but there are many things I don’t like about Orthodoxy. By the way, you know that you are completely twisting Christ’s words in your quote.

            As the foremost Bible scholar of the twentieth century so eloquently stated, ” If we know anything at all about Jesus of Nazareth, we know he was nonviolent.” You, my friend, are an exponent of Constantinian Christianity.

            • “As the foremost Bible scholar of the twentieth century so eloquently stated, ‘If we know anything at all about Jesus of Nazareth, we know he was nonviolent.’ You, my friend, are an exponent of Constantinian Christianity.”

              Put not your faith in modern biblical scholarship. Christ cleansed the Temple with a scourge made of knotted rope. He was most certainly not non-violent.

              • Peter Millman says

                Hi Misha,
                Perhaps you could tell me who made these statements: ” Love your enemies; do good to those who spitefully use you; Father forgive them for they know not what they do; and Put up your sword into its sheath, all who live by the sword shall perish by the sword.” I would say whoever made those statements is the most nonviolent Man who ever lived; someone who strictly forbade His followers to participate in killing. “When you see the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place, run to the hills.” Hmmm, He told his disciples to flee instead of fighting, but, of course, you know more than our Lord. My, my! Be careful, Misha, as your friend Shakespeare averred, ” Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”

                • Peter,
                  Wise words indeed. Keep those thoughts in your heart next time you feel like beating up some one who has disrespected you. It might be your ticket to paradise!

                  • Peter Millman says

                    Hi Dino,
                    That’s a funny post. Funny, ironic,and true. I am repenting of my unChristlike attitudes; I’m really trying to live by the Sermon on the Mount, but Misha wants me to go out and buy a sword.

                • Peter,

                  “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.” – John 2:15

                  “Then Jesus asked them, ‘When I sent you out without purse or bag or sandals, did you lack anything?’ ‘Nothing,’ they answered. ‘Now, however’, He told them, ‘the one with a purse should take it, and likewise a bag; and the one without a sword should sell his cloak and buy one.'” – Luke 22:35-36

                  “And the LORD said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.” – Exodus 17:14

                  “When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them: Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the Lord be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly. But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire. For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth. The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people: But because the Lord loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations; And repayeth them that hate him to their face, to destroy them: he will not be slack to him that hateth him, he will repay him to his face.” – Deuteronomy 7:1-10

                  The problem with painting Christ as a pacifist is that you have to reject significant parts of the New Testament and the entire Old Testament in order to make it stick. That is precisely what the heretic Marcion did. He rejected the Old Testament and taught using only a redacted version of Luke’s Gospel and some of Paul’s letters. He taught that the God of the Old Testament was a demon, not the God of Christ.

                  Don’t go down that road.

                  Christ beat the money changers out of the Temple with a scourge and told His own Apostles to arm themselves. These are not the statements of a pacifist.

                  Moreover, the fundamental truth of Christianity is that Jesus Christ is Yahweh. That is what the early Christians meant by saying, “Jesus is Lord.” or “Christ is Lord.” Obviously, Yahweh is not a pacifist in any sense of the word.

                  It is troubling to some Christians and understandably so. However, it makes sense if you understand that Christ exhorted His followers to be as patient as humanly possible, even accepting martyrdom if it was for the greater good. Yet at the same time, He did not begrudge us self-defense or defense of others as His statements above make clear. Non-violence is a choice, a weapon, a sword in and of itself; not a straitjacket or a suicide pact.

                  Some have cleverly observed that in order to strike a man on his right cheek, a normal right-handed man would be using a back handed slap – i.e., a form of rebuke, not assault.

                  No doubt Christ’s audience who understood His Aramaic tongue and its tendency to hyperbole understood Him clearly when He said things that strike us as Ghandian. He also said to pluck out your eye and cut off your hand if it offends you toward sin.

                  He expects us to use a little common sense.

                • Peter,

                  He said that He did not come to bring peace, but a sword. That sword, the weapon, is non-violence. It is always an option and sometimes a very effective one. Nonetheless, it is simply one weapon.

                  It is very effective in civil life. If a man back handed you on the right cheek to reprove you, turning the other cheek might serve to calm him down. It certainly lets him know that you have no fear of him.

                  If you want to wear the straight-jacket of mandatory pacifism in the coming festivities, be my guest. But that has never been the Church’s answer. All one need do is look at the history of Orthodox empires and the writings of the Church Fathers.

  2. Sergei Kalfov says

    A better version of the clip…

    https://youtu.be/V5cgPu1c4wA

  3. Pat Reardon says

    Love it!

  4. The elites continue to lose it:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/31/opinion/and-now-the-dreaded-trump-curse.html?ref=opinion&_r=1

    Paradox

    At the most basic level, a paradox is a statement that is self contradictory because it often contains two statements that are both true, but in general, cannot both be true at the same time.

    First they called it “female circumcision”. But that was not an exact analogy. The Muslims cut out the clitoris of females, not around it. Then they called it “female genital mutilation”. One surmises that their hatred of religion is such that they equate circumcision with “male genital mutilation”.

    Female emasculation

    That’s what they should have called it. The sick mutilation that the Religion of Peace imposes upon some of its females. But we live in a feminist matriarchy and they had to mince words.

    And in a feminist matriarchy, men are so afraid of offending the more powerful sex that they confuse their God given role as the dominant person in Christian marriage with being a domineering person, a bad thing in their minds, as if God had not cursed women to be ruled over by their husbands. As if Eve came first. As if Adam was to be a worthy helper to Eve. But Adam came first.

    There was a man named John, a disciple of Christ, a Holy Apostle. Christ entrusted this man to be the guardian of his mother since He would no longer be dwelling on earth. This was the same Christ who appeared to the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus.

    Christ, the God-man.

    Paradox

    “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so [let] the wives [be] to their own husbands in every thing. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife [see] that she reverence [her] husband.” – Ephesians 5:22-33

    Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with [them] according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered. – 1 Peter 3:7

    But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. – 1 Timothy 2:12

    “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in darkness; and the darkness overcame it not. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.

    That was the true Light, that lights every man that comes into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the children of God, even to them that believe on his name: Who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” – from the Prologue to the Gospel of St. John the Beloved

  5. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2017/03/31/is_putin_the_preeminent_statesman_of_our_times_133485.html

    Buchanan sums it up: nationalism, traditional Christianity, classical conservative economic policy.

    Don’t you love it when a plan comes together?

    • Michael Bauman says

      Misha, except two legs of your stool are intimately linked to a nihilist understanding of polity. Both nationalism and “classical” economics don’t really fit well with Christianity. (One is either genuinely Christian or an heretical one — not the same as being a heretic BTW).

      Unfortunately the two questionable legs fit very well with heretical, esp. Protestant pusedo-Christianity).

      • Michael,

        Nationalism and “Classical Conservatism”, aka “classical economics” fit perfectly with Christianity. The Church Fathers taught monotheism and monarchy. They believed that democracy was polytheism/polyarchy. And they certainly were not atheists or anarchists.

        The economics of righteous kings, Orthodox emperors foremost among them, involved a redistribution of wealth from the wealthy to the poor. The largesse of the crown has always been part of the divine right of kings. That is not to say that it is egalitarian. By no means. We are not communists. There is hierarchy, to be sure.

        Wealth is not forbidden if it be used for that which is necessary. … A covetous man is one thing, and a rich man is another thing. The covetous man is not rich; he is in want of many things, and while he needs many things, he can never be rich. The covetous man is a keeper, not a master, of wealth; a slave not a lord. For he would sooner give any one a portion of his flesh, than his buried gold. (Chrysostom 1842, 41).

        See:
        http://www.unipi.gr/faculty/tas/papers/29.pdf

        My stool is fine and perfectly supported. The problem is rather that Christianity and democracy are absolutely incompatible because of the passions of the masses. In a heterodox democracy, the passions rule.

        America, thank God, was not designed to be a democracy but a republic. That is probably the only reason that God might spare it given its full tilt boogie embrace of the role of the Whore of Babylon. It was our republican form of government as expressed in the electoral college that resulted in the election of our Republican president, Donald Trump.

        This was no coincidence.

        If Trump gets his act together, he may be permitted to rule, by God, in a way similar to the rule of Putin in Russia – i.e., in accord with sovereign democracy, the political ideology under which Putin operates.

        Sovereign democracy is dominant party politics of the type that was practiced in Japan after WWII. One party ruled for generations, the other parties simply served to keep the ruling party honest. If you are going to have elections in a republic, sovereign democracy is the only way to square the circle since true democracy and Christianity are mortal enemies.

        But of course, for this scenario to actually work, Trump will have to rule as a Christian ruler. He seems to want to do that. It is up to the Orthodox in this country and in Russia to help him since he does not yet know what true Christianity is.

        • cynthia curran says

          Probably, but part of the problem is neither the Orthodox or protestant or Catholics do their own welfare state at least not enough I think a worked house 19th century welfare reform without all the negative things that went with work houses would be a great wayd to attack modern homeless.

  6. Fr. David Alexander says

    Dear George, I don’t often read your site, but I do look at it from time to time, and this caught my eye. Please don’t speak too soon. As a Marine paratrooper chaplain from the Antiochian Archdiocese, I have jumped many times with my Orthodox Liturgical kit and held services afterwards, making my own altar out of MRE boxes or even the tailgate of a tactical vehicle. And I am not the only one…Fr. Jerome Cwiklinski of the OCA was a Marine paratrooper chaplain (and my mentor), and Fr. John Anderson was a paratrooper chaplain with the Army Special Forces. My good friend Fr. George Ruston Hill is a master parachutist, and has served with both the 82nd Airborne and the Army Special Forces (he and I served together on my second tour in Afghanistan). Fr. Peter Dubinin and Fr. James Parnell, although both reservists from the OCA, are also Army paratrooper chaplains. Fr. Sean Levine, my eldest child’s godfather, is an Air Assault chaplain (a “heli-borne” trooper, which is close enough) in the Army. All of us have also served multiple tours in combat. It’s great that we honor the chaplains of other countries, but please don’t forget your own. None of us are saints, but we put our lives on the line for our (especially Orthodox) servicemen in harm’s way.

    • George Michalopulos says

      Thank you Fr David. If you have any information (or videos) along the lines of what our chaplains do, please feel free to send them my way.