Caught Selling Baby Parts Planned Parenthood Doubles Down on the Lie [VIDEO]

Cecille RIchards

Source: Pravoslavie

By Fr. Johannes L. Jacobse

If a man is merely a biological machine, his sole value is determined by where he fits into the larger machine. He becomes a commodity, a thing to be used in ways that bring gain to other people. We call this a utilitarian world view.

Planned Parenthood ‘aborts’ (kills) unborn babies and sells their parts. It’s a bloody but lucrative business, and the profits increase when Planned Parenthood can provide more intact baby parts to its customers. The unborn child is reduced to a commodity (something to be bought and sold) that serves a larger machine.

In order for this uninhibited trade in baby parts to take place without any pangs of conscience however, a profound dehumanization has to occur first. No one, except perhaps a handful of people beyond the reach of normal human love and compassion, would argue that it is proper to slice up a newborn child in order to sell its parts. Yet Planned Parenthood does just that sometimes moments before the child is born.

The lie that justifies this grisly business is that the unborn child is merely “potential human life.” But since when did potential become divorced from being? Only human beings have human potential. Left unmolested, the developing child in a few short months will appear just like you and me.

The Apostle Paul says that we can do not do anything against the truth (2 Corinthians 3:18). When the truth threatens to lay bare the utilitarian justifications Of Planned Parenthood, when the lie that unborn children are not really human is revealed to be the lie that it is, only one option remains: more deception.

In the video below the President of Planned Parenthood Cecille Richards doubles down on deception. To Planned Parenthood an unborn child suddenly becomes human once you can sell its parts. Now that the lie has been revealed, all that remains is the denial that any parts are sold.

Plannned Parenthood is a business built on blood that self-justifies using the utilitarian logic that abortion is a net social good. This is what happens when dehumanization takes place, when human beings are viewed as commodities, as cogs in a larger machine that exists only to make people like Cecille Richards and her cohorts very, very rich (Richards makes almost half a million dollars a year).

Too much blood. Too much burning of the conscience. Too many children dead that who otherwise would be alive. Too many lies.

It’s time to jail the law breakers and shut Planned Parenthood down.

From The Center for Medical Progress, the producers of the video:

Planned Parenthood senior executives and medical directors told CMP investigators that Planned Parenthood’s abortion providers would be happy to alter their abortion procedures in order to harvest higher-quality baby body parts. The representatives with the most experience harvesting fetal organs, Planned Parenthood’s Senior Director of Medical Services Dr. Deborah Nucatola, and Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast’s Director of Research Melissa Farrell, indicated this already happens at their sites as a routine matter. When Planned Parenthood makes decisions about a woman’s abortion procedure based on what will serve its own tissue procurement needs, it is not treating her like a patient with rights and dignity, but like a harvesting pod.

The harvest and sale of aborted fetal organs and tissues exists to meet the demand for fresh and undamaged body parts, typically from the 2nd trimester of pregnancy. These practical constraints, plus the financial benefits offered by tissue purchasers, create incentives for Planned Parenthood to change their abortion procedures and even use illegal methods like partial-birth abortion to get fresh and intact specimens. In tissue harvesting cases, the absence of feticidal chemicals combined with the active attempt to remove the fetus as intact as possible make it far more likely the fetus may be born alive, only to be vivisected to death for his or her body parts.

Planned Parenthood has never provided any justification or explanation for the admissions of their abortion providers in this footage, because it is simply too damning. State, local, and federal law enforcement must listen to the broad public mandate for Planned Parenthood to be held accountable to the law and continue their investigations to criminal prosecution.

Fr. Johannes L. Jacobse

American Orthodox Institute

14 / 01 / 2016

Comments

  1. Michael Warren says

    If a liberal hate group isn’t punished, fined and jailed for its crimes, it goes on to institutionalize them and amnesty its evil binges: they are profitable.

    The issue of abortion is handled poorly by pro-life groups because they assume the courts will endeavor to hear their pleas for structural shifts. They won’t. The way to fight abortion that politicians like is to use the tax and regulatory code to regulate it out of existence. Politicians, unscrupulous parasites they are, like their pockets filled and their authority accentuated and their power broadened. If abortionists were required to provide 10 years of therapy to the unfortunate women they prey upon, undergo quarterly psychiatric evaluations of their professional competence, carry $25 million in liability insurance, while being held legally responsible for the aftermath of the abortions they perform, this racket they run would stop being so profitable and it would become indeed “rare, extreme, and only by necessity.”

    Class action lawsuits can end the liberal vivisection trade and vilefy this mass of craven evil for the NeoNAZI monsters they are. This is why liberalism is so heinously offensive and hateful. This is why their cultural revolution since the 1960s must be addressed and why these vampires must be called out, stopped, punished and shunned.

    • cynthia curran says

      People don’t like my idea but I brought this up before why not removed the child from one woman and implant it in another woman. This happens in real life all the time and the government can helped to finance this if the woman is too poor to pay another woman to have her child. Why not give the child that is born from the second woman up to adoption. I bet with our technological advances an artificial womb could eventually carry unwanted children.

  2. Nobody will prosecute anybody this time around. The public mandate is not strong enough, and that makes the issue “too political” to be touched.

    However, the PP videos have raised public awareness at a crucial time. On the other hand, abortion doctors will now be more careful about obeying the letter of the law, and it will be harder to catch them.

    This is an early phase in a slow buildup that overturns Roe v. Wade, but it is going to require a lot of action, as well as a lot of charity and patience, by ordinary people.

    • Older But WIser says

      Aha! How wrong you are…somebody *is* being prosecuted. Not the butchers who sell baby parts, but the people who filmed them discussing their business deals. Those darn whistle-blowers with their hidden cameras misused a government document, whatever that means, and could go away for 20 years as punishment for their aggression against the Planned Parenthood eugenicist entrepreneurs.

  3. Fr. Evangelos Pepps says


    why the icons weep

  4. Linda Albert says

    Why do they want undamaged fetal organs? For transplant? Parents of a very sick newborn won’t question the origin of an available heart, liver, kidneys or lungs for their child..

  5. John Skatakoulis says

    Former Archimandrite Marries Man in Civil Ceremony

    Author: Theodore Kalmoukos

    Date Published: 01/21/2016

    Publication: The National Herald

    Links:

    http://www.thenationalherald.com/112155/

    http://www.pokrov.org/former-archimandrite-marries-man-in-civil-ceremony/

    BOSTON – Former Archimandrite of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America John Heropoulos, who left the holy priesthood almost nine years ago, was married to a man on Saturday January 9. The civil ceremony took place at The Neighborhood Club of Quincy, MA with relatives and friends in attendance.

    Heropoulos is very touched by the responses he has received from people.

    Among the first who sent best wishes to the newlywed couple were some close friends of John Heropoulos who learned about the wedding on Facebook. Religious Education Director Tony Vrame congratulated them, as did Presbytera Cynthia Paleologos, the wife of Fr. Constantine Paleologos former priest of St. Spyridon parish in Worchester. She wrote “so happy for you John! Sending love and prayers for health and happiness together.”

    Fr. Dean Panagos, the presiding priest of the St. Sophia parish in New London Connecticut who is also the president of the Clergy Association of the Metropolis of Boston wrote on Facebook, “congratulations John”.

    Heropoulos was a charismatic and able clergyman with excellent administrative ability. He began his Church service as Deacon to the late Archbishop Iakovos. He then became assistant priest at St. Nicholas parish in Flushing NY, presiding priest at St. Paraskevi in Greenlawn, NY, and presiding priest at St. George in Hartford, CT. He also served as director of the office of Archbishop Spyridon and as chancellor of the Metropolis of Detroit.

    He touched the heart of the Greek-American Community when in May of 2003 he donated one of his kidneys to a small boy.

    While everything seemed to be going well he informed Archbishop Demetrios that he was leaving the holy priesthood and requested to be defrocked. He went to Boston and worked for six years for the Children’s Tumor Foundation. Today he is working in the development office of St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral.

    In an interview with The National Herald Heropoulos said that he met his partner Richard “six years ago at a social event in Boston.” Richard works at Harvard University.

    When asked when he decided to get married he said ,”I am 52 years old. When I was raised all these things were impossible culturally and socially. I would say that we got to know each other like anyone would and as we became more and more committed to each other we thought that the good and loving and responsible thing to do would be to get married. The state of Massachusetts and the Supreme Court made their rulings and these things and became easier.”

    Asked how he felt about this new aspect and dimension of his life and being married to a man, he said “I would say that it is another beautiful aspect of love and companionship that I was able to experience. I experienced love as a priest in human relationships in beautiful ways, but as a married man it is a new dimension of love and it drives away the loneliness.”

    TNH asked whether he was attracted to men all of his life or discovered those feelings recently, Heropoulos said, “a gay person is born gay. It is not something that you chose. I was born gay and I was trying to be as good as I could be in my life. As a clergyman I became lonely and so I decided to seek companionship.”

    He also said “I told my entire family and many friends years ago that I was gay and nobody was surprised. Everybody – my father, my mother, my dear friends, my family, were accepting and supportive,” and he added “everybody was thrilled that I found somebody to be in love with and to be married to.”

    This far, nobody has sent him any negative messages or criticism for getting married to a man, he said.

    TNH asked him how he reconciled his past self as a priest, as an Archimandrite, as a official of the Greek Orthodox Church having served in high positions in the Archdiocese, and being well respected, with the new aspect of his life which theologically, ecclesiastically, and spiritually is not an acceptable situation. Heropoulos said “For me, in my service as a priest the issue was to be a celibate priest that was the key issue, to be faithful to the calling to be a celibate priest and then to try to be the best priest that I could be.”

    “Are you saying that when you were a celibate priest you didn’t engage in gay sexual activities,” TNH asked. “I was faithful to my vow of celibacy,” he replied.

    “Did you experience constant pressure? Were you looking to escape, to liberate yourself from that situation,” he was asked.

    “I don’t think it was a matter of escape or liberation. I think that I dearly loved the priesthood and so I became a priest, and I did my very best and I was very faithful to my vows. When I believed that it was the best thing for me personally, spiritually, then I decided it was time to leave,” he said.

    Asked if he is concerned that some in the Greek-American Community would be scandalized, he said “I left the Church respectfully. Whether someone agrees or not that ultimately ones has the freedom to make that decision, there is nothing I can do about that.”

    Heropoulos revealed to TNH that he goes on Sundays and worships in an Orthodox church and that he receives Holy Communion. He said, “yes of course I go to an Orthodox church and yes I receive Holy Communion.”

    To the final question of whether he believed that marriage should be between a man and a woman, Heropoulos, said “I don’t have any comment on that.”

    • Michael Warren says

      Echos of the abomination of desolation in the Holy Place. The slag of Sodom and Gamorah is GOD’S testimony against this filth. This is the sodomite path of Istanbul’s Renovationism and why Istanbul’s leadership in anything is rejected. GOD hates such sin. How can faithful Orthodox not?

    • Peter A. Papoutsis says

      Very sad, very, very, sad. He fails to recognize Homosexuality as a sin and others in the church fail to see it as such as well. I commend him I’m not breaking his vows but the witness that he now gives is so anti Christian that it is completely embarrassing.

      Lord have mercy, lord have mercy, lord have mercy. May God open the eyes of the Greek Orthodox Church to recognize sin as sin once again for we are truly living in a great age of apostasy.

      Peter A. Papoutsis

    • Gregory Manning says

      To the final question of whether he believed that marriage should be between a man and a woman, Heropoulos, said “I don’t have any comment on that.”

      What?! Your “marriage” IS a comment on that! And so are all the congratulations and well-wishes you got. Wasn’t too long ago an ROC priest performed a SS marriage. Moscow annulled the marriage, sacked the priest and bulldozed the chapel because it had been desecrated!

  6. Michael Kinsey says

    In the viral 3 1/2 hour video, Everything is a Richman’s Trick, the extensive concentration camp system was built for slave labor first, and genocide later. These grizzly pro-choice liars are making a buck, too. Am I talking about Nazi Germany or the USSR? These demon spawn women expect only pro-lifer’s will go to the camps, while they fare sumptuously everyday. They are most arrogant, but also convey a confidence, that they will not suffer anything, being queens, who will see no sorrow. These have a hope for the mark of the beast, which will eliminate the pro-life Christian condemnation of infanticide. They have a trump card, just turn you chip off or refuse to be chipped. A win win for them. This is when they will say Peace and Safety. Not so, God is not mocked. The vials and bowls of God’s wrath will blast them worse than Sodom and Gomorrah. The American Nazi’s will not repent, so let them learn the hard way. Divine Justice Rules. .

  7. Texan Orthodox says

    Sheesh. More sentimental gobbledygook of “sexual oppression” among Orthodox clergy.

    What goes unsaid is the terribly obvious elephant in the room: this man who struggled/struggles with same-sex attraction his whole life had no business being a priest. Ever. Not a priest, he would’ve been like the millions of other Orthodox laypeople who struggle with SSA, and this would be a non-story. As a struggling layman, therein is his salvation.

    Now, you have clergy and presvyteroi “congratulating” him and wishing him well “in his marriage” and — yep, you got it — he says he still receives Holy Communion now that he’s “married” to a dude. All this does is ever confuse the faithful and scandalize the church. I’m waiting for the Part 2 follow up story this fall: he and his husband are going to “adopt” a child, because it’s just not fair that only traditional man/woman marriage produces children. Heck, maybe even the GOA will facilitate the adoption.

    For the health of the church, the name of the parish where he communes, and its priest, must be exposed. And, in AD 2016 with the Internet and social media, it will be.

    • yes

    • Gregory Manning says

      Texan,

      I think I’m going to disagree with you about a man who is SSA being a priest but I need you to lay out your reasoning before I proceed. I’ve thought about it off and on this afternoon (I had 2 very important e-mails that used up a lot of my grey matter trying to digest: Christie Brinkley says she’s got a way for me to get rid of wrinkles and somebody’s offering a really special deal on free cremations but it’s a limited time offer so I have to act right away!) Anywho, I think I know what you’re going to say but I didn’t want to jump the gun. Think about it and let me know.

      • Texan Orthodox says

        Gregory,

        Gone are the days when an overwhelmingly Christian culture could keep a person’s (let alone a cleric’s) mild same-sex-attraction impulses in check. Back when we had a Christian culture, probably at least more than 50 years ago, I could see a bishop saying that “priest or deacon so-and-so would never act on their SSA impulses,” as the culture would work to maintain his chastity.

        In our modern post-Christian and aggressively anti-Christian society, those times are long past. A single, SSA-attracted priest, let loose “to the wolves” in our society to pastor a parish? Come on. Maybe an extra-holy man living alone in society could maintain his chastity, but it is not worth the risk, in my opinion. With pornography everwhere (only a computer click or iPhone touch away), being homosexual or acting-out homosexual acts considered “cool” and “trendy” to a lot of people, the risk of scandal to a parish or to a diocese…. I honestly cannot imagine why any bishop would allow a single man who acknowledges SSA to serve as a parish pastor.

        What are your thoughts? I could very well be off-base on this, but this is what I think. I’m open to honest discussion, however.

        • Gregory Manning says

          Texan,
          I get the drift of what you’re saying. Let me clarify some of your points from my perspective and, if you agree then we agree.
          Going back to your first comment, I believe you can reduce the numbers from “million” to a thousand or so. The percentage of the population who are gay, often trotted out by the gay movement is 10%. The reality is more likely about 2%. I’ll wager that , within American Orthodoxy, there are maybe 1000-1500 gay men but that’s just a guess.
          As to your second comment, I also agree that a predominantly Christian moral society, before the Stonewall Riots in 1969, served to make being discovered to be homosexual in the society at large and the church in particular, a shameful thing. Both the Stonewall Riots and Roe v. Wade changed all that by defiantly calling into question the values which had previously contained such activity and then throwing them away all together. Of course, this “liberation” spread throughout most (mainly Western) societies. Once the horses were out of the barn traditional Christian opponents attempted to justify gathering the loose horses and putting them back in the barn by the doomed tactic of frantically citing Scripture. Doomed because the mere recitation of Scripture is a poor defense and because the evolving “liberation” among the various seminaries effortlessly produced clever means of casting doubt on anyone’s (except their) ability to authoritatively interpret Scripture. Kierkegaard’s observation that “Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible” comes to mind. This was all made worse because lay folk were not catechized (if at all) in such a way as to empower them to defend their beliefs. Protestantism was doomed to fail because of the actual effects of Sola Scriptura– an approach to Christian living whose demise was built into it inasmuch as it made discrediting and disposing of so-called traditional Christian values so easy. It does no good to have everybody reading from the same page of the same book if readers are allowed to interpret the words on those pages to their own liking. Roman Catholic catechism with it’s question and answer approach drilled into children and young people proved to be stultifying. Not surprisingly, RC lay people, especially the young, were glad to get out from underneath it. Basically, few people, even those who were supposed to know and understand, had a practical answer for why sin is called sin and why it is a very harmful thing–very harmful indeed. In todays parlance, they didn’t “get it”.
          “Chastity” in your second comment might best be replaced with “celibacy”. Long-term celibacy is attainable with God’s help but you really, really need God’s help attaining the chaste state. Chastity is surely angelic. Celibacy, by comparison, is simply the absence of filth. Too often I read Orthodox folk, including clergy, effectively saying (whether they meant to or not) that those who are SSA should strive for celibacy as though celibacy was an acceptable end in itself. “If you can just stay celibate you should pretty much be in the clear.” But those who mistakenly strive for celibacy as an end in itself are far more likely to be rewarded with failure and worse, neuroses. The real purpose of the struggle for celibacy is to make way for Christ to enter into our lives so that we might experience His mercy, His loving-kindness. Filth and the Divine cannot occupy the same space at the same time; they are mutually repellent. Citing Nancy Reagan’s popularized saying “Just say no”, Fr. Hopko correctly pointed out that when you say “no” to sin you must find something good to say “yes” to to take its place. That good thing is Jesus Christ. The sin must be forced out and, at the same time, we must implore Christ to enter in. The difficulty for most of us at this juncture is that we may have to, as Scripture says, keep asking, keep seeking, and keep knocking (Matthew 7:7); a task which many of us find discouraging and give up on. But the universal witness of Orthodoxy over the centuries seems to be that God rewards persistence. Surely this is an example of the Scriptural teaching that the kingdom of Heaven is taken by force (Matthew 11:12). But, if you force your sin out and leave that place in your heart vacant, then the next time you are tempted or stressed or sad or angry, you’re going to go get that old sin and bring it back because, as nasty as it is, it did provide you with some comfort and consolation and some is better than none; what my former therapist from long ago referred to as being “comfortably miserable”. The sin, the missing-of-the-mark, is that that place in your heart rightly belongs to The Comforter.
          In this same vein I would like to point out that, when hearing of men and women who have chosen the celibate life, average people mistakenly wonder how someone would choose to go through life without sex. That’s the wrong question. The celibate has chosen to forsake the opportunity to experience the embrace of romantic, physical intimacy; an experience vastly more powerful and meaningful than mere sex. It is important to note that poor Mr. Heropoulos’ reason for leaving the diaconate was not so that he could have lots of sex with whomever he desired. Nor did he believe his departure gave him a licence to do so. It was because he couldn’t stand the loneliness; he wanted someone to love. What no one explained to him (because they don’t seem to have understood) is that his sin, his missing of the mark, is in looking for consolation from someone a mere mortal, who can only fill that void as a half-measure. The Man he truly seeks is Jesus Christ. It is in the realization of this that his vocation may be rightly lived out, for those of us who, because of our brokenness, have first-hand knowledge of loneliness and have come to see that Christ is indeed the only answer, can minister to those who, no matter the nature of their brokenness, are living lonely lives. How that ministry takes place requires very careful discernment.
          Might a man who carries the cross of SSA be ordained to the priesthood? I believe the answer is “yes”. But I don’t know exactly how. As I said above, it would require very careful discernment. I would definitely defer to the wisdom of clergy and monastics who are, shall we say, long in the tooth.
          One last point: a single, heterosexual priest is also a candidate for trouble. Loneliness strikes both straight and gay men equally. Though it is not fool proof, best to stick with married clergy.

          • Texan Orthodox says

            Gregory,

            I don’t think single, “heterosexual” men should be parish priests either, unless they are closely connected to and involved in a strong, healthy monastic community. Too risky these days. Our church has no tradition of a non-monastic “bachelor” priesthood.

            And yes, I do think there are millions of Orthodox Christian men who struggle with SSA. There are 250-300+ million Orthodox Christians worldwide, half of them men. 1-2% of 125-150+ million is well more than a million.

            Happy feast day of St Anthony!

            • Gregory Manning says

              Thanks Texan. Population-wise I was thinking of the U.S. Personally, I would be floored if there were many gay men in the Orthodox Church. No matter. Just one man carrying this cross is too many.

              Thanks for the feast day greeting.

            • Gregory Manning says

              I’ve thought about it Texan and I believe I’m right. I think you mistakenly assume an even distribution population-wise. Surely the percentage (relative to population) of gay men in San Francisco is greater than the percentage where we live in San Antonio. Aren’t you far more likely to encounter gay men in the Episcopal church than in the Russian Orthodox Church? Having been in the Army, particularly in Vietnam (where I personally observed them playing tennis while the rest of us were filling sand bags!), I can assure you that there are far more poofters in the Air Force (especially the officer class) than the other services combined. You have only to ask anyone in the Army, Navy, or Marines for a reliable verification of my claim. The Air Force attracts nancy boys the way Frisco (I love saying “Frisco”. It used to infuriate my gay friends from the past.) attracts gay men! It’s just a tragic fact of life.

              • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

                Gregory Manning, you’re mostly mistaken. Being a veteran of both the United States Army and the United States Air Force, I replied in detail to your message; however, it appears that George M didn’t want my reply to be read by anyone but him. By the way “poofter” is not an American expression. I liked the tale about your digging fox holes next to tennis courts!!! Stick to Irish Whiskey—fewer hallucinogens!

                • Gregory Manning says

                  I’m sorry Vladyka; I distinctly remember being in attendance at a large meeting of Army NCO’s (both U.S. and Australian) in the quonset hut which passed for our NCO club where the topic was brought up early on in the evening, and I can assure you that by closing time (and much drinking) we unanimously came to the conclusion I stated above. I trusted those guys completely and I can honestly say we arrived at our conclusion without prejudice. I don’t know what else one could ask for!

                  • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

                    Gregory! No need to apologize to me! I questioned your watching Air Force tennis games in Viet Nam as you dug foxholes, and your use of the British term, “poofter.’
                    I served in both the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force. My experiences and observations are the direct opposite of yours. Of course, in the Army I was in the Signal Corps and most of the men I knew were also. I remember three “couples” amongst the soldiers I met in Missouri, New Jersey, Georgia and Japan, and three or four homosexual “loners.” In the Air Force I was always in Law Enforcement and Security, I even served as BDCL (BaseDeputy Commander for Security & Law Enforcement at a SAC base in Mississippi for a short time before being transferred to HQS US Air Force (Air Staff). As BDCL, I served ex officio on the regional Armed Forces Disciplinary Control Board–the organization that, among other tasks, determines what civilian establishments near our military posts/bases should be designated “Off Limits.” We also considered individual cases and trends. By the way, there were a couple rather sensational homosexual bars in San Antonio. They must still be there, for an OCA Priest not too long ago was exposed as frequenting one! I’m speaking of the old Army and old Air Force. Today it should be easy to determine who has the most “LGBT” type servicemen–I bet it’s still the Army! I can understand why you or any other guy would wish to have others believe that HIS service was “straighter” than the others!

                    • Gregory Manning says

                      Sand bags, Vladyka, filling sand bags, not digging foxholes! So, OK, when I stop to reflect back on those awful days I now recall that it was not tennis they were playing but croquet. Allowing for the fact that our eyes were blurring from the profuse sweat running down our faces as we toiled in the mid-day sun whilst trembling from malaria (a hangover), it’s easy to mistake these things!
                      As to the term “poofter”, it was shared with us by our Australian comrades who gently suggested that it was a less hurtful word than the ones we Americans were using. I also note here that both you and Karl overlooked the importance of the testimony and witness of the Australians I cited above. If either of you had known Australians you would know that, unlike Americans, Australian yobos service men actually become smarter the more they drink–a fact verified by the frequency with which, after a rigorous night of canasta, they left with our pay checks in their pockets!
                      At this point I would like to share a touching and moving anecdote with both yourself and Karl. I spent my last 7 months in the Army in the bacteriology lab at the U.S. Army Institute for Surgical Research, commonly known as “the burn center”. Across the hall was Experimental Surgery. Upon entering this august department one encountered the NCO in charge–a formidable man of not inconsiderable debating skills (he liked to argue about anything). Many were the times I watched as he vanquished (they left in exasperation) many who foolishly sought to best him. Poor fools! They repeatedly failed to notice a plaque (paid for by the tax payer) which sat prominently on the front of his desk. That plaque read “My mind is made up. Do not attempt to confuse me with facts!” I am honored to say that, upon his retirement, he solemnly presented me with that plaque with instructions to commit those words to memory then pass it on to another deserving soul. That man did not retire after 20+ years of service as an E-6 because he was a dummy!

              • Gregory Manning–I served in the USAF for 26 years, but, in the last 16 years, I worked closely with members of the other services. It may be that my gaydar is not as fine tuned as yours, who knows? In any case, I did not detect but two or three possible gay folks, and all of them were Army. In any case, the long running joke among all services was that you would not want to drop your soap on a Navy vessel. 🙂

                • Gregory Manning says

                  Sorry Karl. I’m reluctant to say too much about Navy guys. While I was slogging away in Phan Thiet my brother, a freshly minted Navy Lt. JG, was sitting behind a desk in Saigon reading books! I have photographic proof of it which I keep locked away in the event he ever attempts to tell his children or anybody else about his heroism in “combat”.Still, he’s family and I can’t speak ill of family and all that. Otherwise, I stick by the flawless survey I sighted above.

            • Texan:

              There are 250-300+ million Orthodox Christians worldwide, half of them men.

              This “statistic” is a complete joke. It ASSUMES including most Russians among the Orthodox. That assumption is not just dubious – it’s just plain wrong.

              • Gregory Manning says

                OOM,
                Orthodox Texans may only be criticized by another Orthodox Texan. You are not Texan which makes you a foreigner.

                • I’m glad to be considered a foreigner in Texas but I reserve the right to criticize phony statistics no matter the source. Russia is rife with atheists, agnostics, Muslims, wacky cults, Baptists, and other assorted non-Orthodox. For most baptized, Orthodoxy means showing up at church for Pascha and one’s names day. Nominally baptized Orthodox in Russia spend more time frequenting abortion clinics than churches. That’s not a Christian society.

  8. He said, “yes of course I go to an Orthodox church and yes I receive Holy Communion.”

    What is this……

    • Archpriest Alexander F. C. Webster says

      Answer: sacrilege and apostasy by all involved–the deposed former archimandrite, the priest (or deacon) who communes him, and the bishop who authorizes the practice.

    • Michael Bauman says

      What us this? The way of the world. All I can say is Father, forgive me.

    • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

      If this trend continues, it threatens to become as popular as re-marrying persons divorced for reasons other than adultery!

  9. Estonian Slovak says

    Well, he’s recieving to his own condemnation. But the priest who willfully communes him will be held accountable also.

  10. M. Stankovich says

    There is no irony in the fact that a Harris County, TX Grand Jury, investigating Planned Parenthood for violating law(s) regarding the sale of aborted fetal material – body parts, tissue, and so on – today found they had done no wrong, but rather indicted the individuals who posed as researchers seeking to “buy” abortive specimens and secretly filmed the “transactions.” This speaks to several points in Fr. Hans’ essay: his numerous accusations of the “sale of aborted fetus parts for profit” (including “pre-sale” selection of prime parts like so many cuts of choice beef) and the “public mandate” for prosecution are so much hot air and massively incorrect. As I have previously said here and on Fr. Han’s site, he is a leading Orthodox purveyor of “outrage” as tactic, which does nothing but provoke reliance on a once-a-year march, profound mouth breathing, and vitriolic demands of wrath from the Almighty. Ultimately, however, they cause people to believe they have actually addressed the moral dilemmas of our time, when, in fact, they have not.

    Part of the confusion is the purposeful & passionate co-mingling of abortion and the procurement of human specimen intended for medical research. Abortion is a murderous horror that cries out to heaven, a nihilistic antipathy to the “breath of life” of the Creation as it was in the beginning, and ultimately weds itself to the psyche of its participants & practitioners. Further, it has been joined with the pervasive delusion that it is a “woman’s right” to her own body & to her own choice, and that any challenge is “misogynistic” on the one hand, and an expression of “male privilege” on the other.

    The procurement and use of human specimen materials for research is a gruesome, ghoulish business (I once noted to Fr. Hans’ “outrage” over the manner by which the brain was removed from an aborted fetus by pointing out that he obviously was unaware of how one gained access to the brain of an adult cadaver in Human Anatomy in medical school – right out of the Home Depot), but it is totally ignored. I speak from a city of some of the finest research institutions in the US – and some of the largest brokers of human parts. There is no mandate to stop research using procured human specimen – including fetal specimen – because we are addicted to the myth of “medical miracles,” and the next “breakthrough.” More than half of the states have enacted legislation mandating pharmaceutical companies to provide research medication access to “hopeless cases,” despite a lack of safety data. More than 26 years ago, the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator gene (CFTR) encoding the CFTR protein was identified as the cause of CF and the race was on; millions of dollars invested in a “genetic solution,” and we continue to wait, to the exclusion of other directions and services. And the most blatant example I have mentioned numerous times: the vaccine for childhood measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR), that at least in my home state of CA is mandated by law, is derived from a cell line from an aborted fetus. You cannot purchase an MMR vaccine for your child in the US that is not derived from the aborted fetus cell line.

    Outrage is a pitiful distraction that inhibits action by a false “satisfaction” of action where it does not exist.

    • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

      Thanks, M. Stankovich–especially for your first paragraph which puts our finger on the problem!

    • Harris county is not in Texas, it is part of the Peoples Rebublic of Austin.

  11. AGREED, CHECKMATE!!!!

    • agreed

    • Let me clarify what I meant. I have nothing whatsoever against Fr. Hans. Nothing. Sometimes we agree and sometimes we disagree. I was merely siding with Michael S. in the gist of his reasoning about the worship of scientific medical miracles. Also, I don’t understand his point about cadavers. But, so there you go.

      • M. Stankovich says

        Misha,

        Sorry I didn’t see this sooner. Apparently there was an observation of an “undercover researcher” that the brain was removed from an aborted fetus by way of an anterior – referring to the front of the head – incision which, unavoidably, caused considerable injury to the child’s face. My analogy of the cadaver was intended to convey the equally gruesome manner by which the top of the skull is removed to access the brain. The reference to the “Home Depot” was to say that the deed is accomplished with what appears to be an everyday handheld electric utility saw, a hardened steel chisel, and a common household hammer. Both the sound and the smell of the procedure is not soon forgotten.

        Again, my point was an attempt to show the hypocrisy of feigned “outrage” for the post-abortion “processing” of human specimen, yet silence for the utilization of the same specimen in becoming the day-to-day activity of medical research in this country. This only happens because of the myth of “medical miracles.” Fr. Hans is so angry that Cecille Richards’ salary is reportedly $600,000. Fr. Hans needs to investigate the salaries of those who direct the research institutions just in La Jolla, CA alone, who help produce hundreds of articles each year, published in the most prestigious and respected journals in the world. Oorah. But somehow they all conclude with the phrase, ” We have determined that more research is necessary.” Nice gig.

        I hope that explains my intention.

        • Gotcha, Michael. Makes sense.

        • Fr. Hans Jacobse says

          Michael, try not to recontextualize my essay into psychological categories.

          Cecile Richards’ salary is confirmation the Planned Parenthood is in the business of abortion. It’s lucrative. It’s bloody. It destroys the soul and thus culture.

          Secondly, anyone looking into ‘fetal tissue’ procurement knows there is a market downstream. Why do you think PP expanded its businesses into selling aborted baby body parts?

          Ever notice how the unborn baby is only “potential human life” until it is time to sell the baby’s parts? When there is more money to be made the ‘fetus’ suddenly becomes human again — baby hearts, brains, liver and so forth. The videos pull back the curtain of euphemism that hides the practice which is why the abortion industry expends such effort to censor them. That others profit alongside PP while hiding in the shadows is simply a fact not yet visible to most people.

          • M. Stankovich says

            This is a curious interpretation, “recontextualize my essay into psychological categories,” as I see this as of matter of morality & ethics; nothing more, nothing less. The fact is, only a small number of PP clinics perform surgical abortion, but they all provide education regard human reproduction, treat STD’s, provide contraception at little or no cost, and (perhaps to your amazement) pre & post-natal care. These services, more often than not, are provided to women who otherwise could not secure these services because they lack health insurance, etc. Your conclusion that Ms. Richard’s salary is derived from the “bloody business” of abortion – likened to a modern day wife of Macbeth – is not only unfair, but patently false. As I noted on your site, the decision of the grand jury in Texas is the eighth exoneration of wrongdoing in 2015-2016 alone. Ms. Richard’s salary is justified for being the CEO of a national healthcare organization that provides reproductive and OBGYN services to women who otherwise would not have access. For the record, I am not suggesting abortion is anything other than a horror that cries out to heaven, and will be boldly called into account before the Just Judge. But neither abortion nor “harvesting” (where fees for preparation, packaging, and delivery are set by the FDA) are not a “lucrative” source of income for PP.

            Again, while you are fixated on conspiracy theories of fetal cadaver sales, I’m wondering what you believe the ethical ramifications might be if you discover that a parishioner is taking a medication that you know to be derived from the cell line of an aborted fetus? What if it is the only medication approved by the FDA for their condition? What if the medication is being taken by their child? Do pharmaceutical manufacturers have the responsibility to inform us which medications are derived from aborted fetus materials? These are situations that will situations that will undoubtedly arise in the future, and from my perspective, wee seem to have no position.

            • Michael Warren says

              Again, liberal rationalization offered for the trade in the vivisected remains of human children. Mengele lives.

              This liberal, Renovationist advocates things which merit indictments for crimes against humanity. In his warped mind, the remains of humans are fair game for the enrichment of liberal organizations because research procured from them might benefit humanity. Ergo, all those NAZI concentration camp clinical studies have moral force in this diseased ersatz Dr. Moreau’s mind to be included in the literature “because they might benefit humanity.”

              But papers which constitute research not obtained by vivisection which are ideologically contradictory to this hack’s views must be shouted down.

              Repulsive, subhuman, vile, criminal.

          • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

            I would like more information on the “destruction” of souls! Fr Hans referred to this. How, in Orthodox Tradition, is it possible to DESTROY THE SOUL? If that were the case, how could Orthodox pray for the repose of the SOULS of aborted babies?

            [Fr Hans wrote: “It destroys the soul and thus culture.”}
            (I’m also not clear on the “destruction of culture.” Is that evil?}

            • Fr. Hans Jacobse says

              It is possible to destroy the soul in the sense that St. John Chrysostom describes (speaking here of sodomy):

              “A murderer only separates the soul from the body, whereas these destroy the soul inside the body….. There is nothing, absolutely nothing more mad or damaging than this perversity.”

              It is not possible to annihilate the soul (the way you might be reading my comment). It is possible to bring destruction to the soul.

        • Johann Sebastian says

          Many doctors don’t earn a fifth of the salary Cecille Richards brings in.

  12. “As LifeNews reported Monday, a Texas grand jury has ignored the videos exposing a Houston-based Planned Parenthood abortion clinic caught selling aborted baby body parts and has instead indicted the man behind producing the expose’ videos.

    The Texas grand jury indicted David Daleiden and another pro-life activist, Sandra Merritt, behind the videos. Instead of prosecuting Planned Parenthood for selling aborted baby parts, Daleiden was indicted for buying them.”

    He faces 20 years in prison.

  13. Seraphim98 says

    Fr. Seraphim Rose of blessed memory was gay when he entered the church, very actively so. But as his faith grew he soon told his “orthodox” lover they could no longer have sex, and so his lover left. Fr. Seraphim went on to become a monk under the guidance of St. John the Wonderworker, who later over Fr. Seraphim’s protests ordained him as a priest. Fr. Seraphim became a model of prayer, ascetic struggle, and study. He is God’s answer and example to all those who would rather embrace their sin and demand it’s celebration rather than embrace the cross. So yes, it is possible, though rare for an SSA person to be called to the priesthood, but that context is utter devotion and lifelong repentance, setting the hand to the plow with no looking back.

    • Michael Bauman says

      And so I have been told by a priest, a powerful intercessor for those dealing with lust

    • Michael Warren says

      That is not correct. Fr. Seraphim struggled with his homosexuality and his break with it was when he chose to become a catrchumen and enter the Orthodox Church, at which time he ceased to be a practicing homosexual.

      • Gregory Manning says

        Correct word choice, Michael: “practicing”.

        • Michael Warren says

          I believe in the psychiatric view that homosexuality is a pathological condition and I concur with great Saints like Holy Patriarch Niphon of Constantinople that homosexuality is something that must be cured.

          • M. Stankovich says

            My response seems to have gone the way of all flesh – and it was quite benign – so let me “re-phrase” it if I somehow erred: I had noted that the psychiatric view that homosexuality is a “pathological condition” ended in 1973 when the American Psychiatric Association removed from from their official compendium of mental disorders, the Diagnostic & Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders (you can read the full story of the process beginning here). As to the second point – homosexuality needs to be “cured” (and pardon my presumption in assuming there is a certain imminence to this directive) – in my home state of CA, any attempts to “re-orient” or “cure” homosexuality would subject me to a hearing as to my violating the ethical code of licensing; licenses are generally suspended for a period of time, and a remedial course in “diversity sensitivity” would be required at my own expense. Further, if the patient was 18-years old or younger, I would be subject to arrest and prosecution as well. I would note that all of this is accomplished without any empirical scientific evidence that what is referred to as “repairative therapies” for homosexuality are either helpful or harmful. Press people like GLAAD for a defense of their position and they will say the American Psychiatric and Psychological Associations. Press them further and they will call you, “homophobic.” Welcome to the reality of the fallen world, where people stare at you as if you are delusional, are “outraged” at your Traditional Christan morality, call for your job, and your anonymous debasement & humiliation. “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that you should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain.” (Jn. 15:16) Who could have imagined such a thing in our lifetime?

            • Estonian Slovak says

              Sorry, Michael, didn’t mean to give you a negative vote.l was aiming at the clown whose post is below yours.

            • Tim R. Mortiss says

              Who could have imagined it, indeed? Of course, as always, we can see all the signs– looking backwards….but we still wouldn’t have believed had we been told.

              The great question to me is how we help armor our children and grandchildren against these great pressures, which are only just beginning, really. Age and independence are in many ways a protection, but one’s children, in early middle age, and one’s grandchildren, some just entering adulthood, will receive the full brunt of what you describe. Great social pressure, then, as you say, licenses and jobs…..

              We need all the help we can get– in the world. The institutional church is going to be one of the only bulwarks left. This is but one reason I liked the recent joint statement of Patriarch Kirill and Pope Francis. We need all the institutional refuges we can muster.

            • Michael Warren says

              In 1979, 78% of Psychiatrists treated homosexuality and considered it a pathological condition. Today roughly 30% still do, because sexuality is learned behavior and homosexuality arises due to biochemical abnormalities and abnormal/damaged socialization.

              Recent studies have shown that only 30% of homosexuals are gay because of in vetero chemical imbalances. The remaining 70% are homosexuals due to abnormal/damaged socialization. Both groups are people suffering from a treatable pathological condition.

              This renovationist’s morality does not reflect the Orthodox Patristic Tradition. He replaces the life of St. Niphon of Constantinople with the HETEROPHOBIC HATE FILLED propaganda of GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign. His self serving quote of Scripture is a tribute to The Gods Must Be Crazy. This immoral, liberal renegade and his craven hatred of Christian morality put him in the camp of post Christian secularists and opponents of Christianity. His new morality and vision is that of antichrist. In voicing it, he shows complete ignorance of the Orthodox theology of the human person.

              I accept unpoliticized science and the teaching of the Orthodox Church. Contrary to this moral renegade’s gay rights propaganda, the two can be complimentary and contradict his Renovationist, liberal activism. I find his views heretically repulsive.

            • M. Stankovich:

              in my home state of CA, any attempts to “re-orient” or “cure” homosexuality would subject me to a hearing as to my violating the ethical code of licensing; licenses are generally suspended for a period of time, and a remedial course in “diversity sensitivity” would be required at my own expense. Further, if the patient was 18-years old or younger, I would be subject to arrest and prosecution as well.

              No doubt the conservatives reading this will applaud this outstanding example of federalism at work. If M. Stankovich doesn’t like California’s regulations, there are 49 other states.

              M. Stankovich:

              Press people like GLAAD for a defense of their position and they will say the American Psychiatric and Psychological Associations. Press them further and they will call you, “homophobic.” Welcome to the reality of the fallen world, where people stare at you as if you are delusional, are “outraged” at your Traditional Christan morality, call for your job, and your anonymous debasement & humiliation.

              Is M. Stankovich actually claiming to be a VICTIM here ?!? If Stankovich wants to impose his morality (so called “Traditional Christian”), he can try another profession. For example, the world desperately NEEDS another judgmental guilt-inducing Orthodox priest.

              M. Stankovich:

              “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that you should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain.” (Jn. 15:16)

              Oh, come off it.

              • M. Stankovich says

                OOM,

                I cannot appreciate your naive & cavalier response. My point was not about me – I’ve been in this business more than thirty years and am on the downside of my career – but about the fact that, increasingly, just having Traditional Christion values has become a “trigger,” in and of itself, for members of our society. We are “misogynistic” and rely upon “male privlilege’ in our priesthood. I am not a victim, I an oppressor (and I was specifically thinking of Brendon Eich, a founder & CEO of Mozilla – think Firefox browser -, who was forced to resign from his own company because it was discovered he had made a donation in support of tradition marriage). I have no idea your age or profession, OOM, but I have to assume that your “solution” of packing up and moving to another state is bravado and not sincere. You imagine this oppression will limit itself to a few states only? Finally, OOM, I have seriously considered not returning to the field of mental health, not because I wish to “impose my morality” on others, but the field of mental health treatment – with the notable exception of medical psychiatry – is leading the way in not allowing me both my opinion & my morality. And for the record, the quotation from the Gospel of John is what was written on the scroll in the hands of the Lord on the iconostasis in the old chapel at SVS. It was also the topic of the commencement address of Archbisop Dmirtii (Royster), of blessed memory, my very first year. I was so moved, I bypassed my fear and approached him. He never forgot my name. I understand you have a need to be sarcastic, but sometimes it is too personal and unnecessarily hurtful.

            • Pdn Brian Patrick Mitchell says

              Obviously Mr. Warren was referring to the scientific psychiatric view based on empirical research, not the political psychiatric view based on propaganda and character assassination. You can read all about both here.

              • M. Stankovich says

                Oh, is it that time again? Madonna Mia, man. Satinover? And you attempt to preempt with the comment of “propaganda and character assassination” because you know what’s coming! Genius, man! Besides the fact that Satinover’s writings in psychiatry where ignored contemporaneously in 1996, as they are now, his truly lunatic “decoding” of the of the Old Testament is for what he is remembered. How, Deacon Mitchell, do you consistently manage to find the very dregs – the “lame and halt” – of psychiatric and psychological “scholarship” (and Satinover is just another of the “reparative therapy” charlatans associated with Moberly, Nicolosi, NARTH, American College of Pediatricians, Regnerus, and Focus on the Family). None of these creeps would acknowledge “truth” if they fell over it. End of discussion.

                Mr. Warren, frankly, you are a scientific imbecile and so far out of your league that you are not worth my attention. There is no “in vetero” process in human medicine or genetics; I presume you refer to in vitro, which literally means “in glass,” which has come to refer to a process conducted outside the human body – think in vitro fertilization, where sperm & egg are combined outside the body, then implanted later.. Obviously, we do not “cook up” homosexuality in a petri dish or test tube, only to implant it later. Perhaps you meant in vivo, referring to “within the living organism?” “Both groups are people suffering from a treatable pathological condition.” Right. Exactly how many patients have you “treated” for any reason under your training and license? What did you say? None? That would be not even one? I knew that. You may thank me for the clarification in terminology, and I would ask that you make no further comment to my posts because your responses betray the fact that you are patently unqualified and provide misinformation. End of discussion.

                • Michael Warren says

                  I referred to the gestation of infants and their development in utero. Yes, science has found that in utero, hormonal imbalances, due to stressors placed on the mother, account for abnormal development of the foetus, which accounts for 30% of instances of homosexuality. The rest of the occurences of homsexuality are due to abnormal/maladaptive sexual formation. Both result in pathological conditions. Abnormal psychology. You shout society must accept abnormal behavior/sexuality and amnesty it, stop considering it as perversion to promote a secular humanist revision of cultural morality and socialization. Nihilism 101. That is not science, but liberal social engineering. We are not buying a ticket to Woodstock Stankovich 21st. Century. You have never treated nor cured this condition, thus openly admitting your incompetence in diagnosing or evaluating its therapy and/or professionally challenging clinical research. I doubt you have personally done any unbiased and unagendized clinical research, making your personal attacks against healthcare professionals/researchers and the literature nothing but political, hack talking points from the Human Rights Campaign. You offer the poseur, liberal politicization of heterophobic gay rights propaganda laced with proud invective and desperate ad hominem. The whole repulsive gay crusade in microcosm. You shout and demand all must bow down to your sectarian arrogation of science in infantile hubris. All hail the sectarian Renovationist, Stankovich! No, no one must, and no one will bow to your idol made of gay pride. Your neo paganism is your own problem.

                  Mr. M15 making 1000 yard shots through two layers of Kevlar body armor with 62 grain 5.56, you were called out on faking it a while ago and you were found lacking. I confused in vetero with in utero semantically, citing a real study on occurence and factors leading to homosexuality. You cited huffpo and made ballistics claims essentially out of an ignorance not matched since the Warren Commission came up with the magic bullet theory. You addressed me. No, you will not talk at me. My point was the Fathers (and Holy Scripture) and the Saints witness that homosexuality is a spiritual illness which can and must be overcome in CHRIST and that the sin of active engagement in homosexual sex “is a sin which cries to heaven and estranges one from CHRIST.” Souls are at stake! Morality is seen in Orthodoxy as a means of moral exploit to liberate humanity from sin so that humans can achieve personhood in the GOD man, becoming totally free of sin and liberated in CHRIST. Homosexuality precludes that possibility and estranges one from freedom in CHRIST imprisoning one in demonic sin, homosexuality being an intercourse with demonic energies in a defiling passion, surrender to demonization. Homosexual lifestyle therefore is irreconcilable with life in CHRIST. Your heterophobic, gay rights propaganda is leading people astray, destroying souls and at complete odds with the moral teaching and spirituality of the Orthodox Church.

                  So you immediately will shout that any empiricism which does not coincide with your liberal politicization of homosexuality is to be disregarded. You will ignore all facts which contradict you. You will slander and revile everyone who disagrees with you. You will try to shout others down to insure your propaganda goes unchallenged, even if said propaganda is contradicted by empiricism and Orthodox teaching. The proof as to why liberalism is nothing but agendized, hypocritical, secular humanist hate. So you admit your views on homosexuality are your own sectarian politics at odds with the scientific method and the teaching of the Church. Thank you, you don’t have to be so heretically repulsive about it. Nor does stylized jargon acting as artifice to mask your deception have any legitimacy. No, we don’t want Stankovich channeling GLAAD in the place of the teaching of Orthodoxy. We Orthodox prefer true science and the teaching of the Church.

                  Please read the life of St. Niphon of Constantinople if you ever get a chance. One of the best books ever published by Light & Life and now sadly out of print.

                  • M. Stankovich says

                    Blah, blah, blah, Mr. Warren. I was not speaking at you, I merely corrected your erroneous understanding of human medicine, of which you are grossly unqualified to speak. Yet, your follow-up is more “shinola,” as it were. You stink of Google scholarship, and in my estimation, you are dangerous. “Hormonal imbalances, due to stressors placed on the mother, account for abnormal development of the foetus.” Really? Where did you study endocrinology? Exactly what sort of “abnormality” occurs that would even theoretically render an individual homosexual? Obviously, you have absolutely no clue of the hormonal process in fetal development. Troll-baiting shinola. “I referred to the gestation of infants and their development in utero.” No, you certainly did not. You were caught peddling “in vetero” shinola and were caught.

                    You stated:

                    You will ignore all facts which contradict you. You will slander and revile everyone who disagrees with you.

                    This is a serious factual error in that, unlike you, I am well educated, highly skilled, thankfully well supervized over the years, and not dumb enough to publish science I am not reasonable assured is true pursuant to my training. So, Mr. Warren, écouter et prendre à cœur (now use google): stay out of my house. This time, learn a lesson & stop embarrassing yourself.

                    • Michael Warren says

                      You have cornered the market on self satisfaction and inadequacy. You offer nothing but the typical liberal scam of self indulgent nonsense. Here you are obfuscating hoping others won’t notice your charade is over. But it is becoming obvious you have no clothes on so you will shout your ignorant blather louder. Go ahead shout as a liberal sociopath how much bile and hate you nourish yourself with. It is all your failed ideology has left.

                      Gay crusade talking points are not a rebuttal. They are just you spouting your effette, liberal political platform which has no place in Orthodoxy. The fact you flock to ideological repetition encased in a posturing which lacks all substance is the typical braying of irrelevant MSNBC donkeys. You really believe worn out, liberal talking points encased in sociopathic bluster validate your ridiculous narcism. I am just laughing at you.

                      I try not to be too personal and toss around my resume, because, frankly, internet forums are for general congress and hopefully edification. My life is a brief instant which will pass. My identity is nothing outside of the GOD man. I need no false idols, because only obtuse rubes worship dying idols they make of themselves. Rest assured, everytime I see the stupidities that you write with the typical self assuredness of an undergraduate taking his first 300 level course, I begin to thank professors for all those papers they require, for true erudition and humility go hand in hand. You lack both, even in your chosen profession which has unchosen you. You are a lingering cliche from 1977 which leaves others feeling awkward and embarassed for you. But ersatz scholars like yourself are simply pathetic. Pathetic.

                      A baby blue polyester suit with a white afro and a superfly hat. And even that is empty!

                      Then you will Google yet again where 29th. Street is in Detroit but fail to appreciate that one has to cross Livernois going down Michigan Avenue to get to it. Because you are a fake, a total fraud. Google molestation being more than a hobby.

                      Thank you for acknowledging the fact of only a MINORITY OF HOMOSEXUALS “being born that way.” Seems you googled the studies.

                      But you still have as yet to profer credential to both critique them or to lend credence that you have ANY competence in diagnosing, treating and/or curing this disorder.

                      Your Daily Koz, peer group self idolatry is now being told to keep to yourself and the altar you have made of your own mirror.

                      Gay crusade propaganda and Orthodoxy are mutually exclusive.

                      Thank you also for silently admitting your views are at odds with the Orthodox teaching on the human person, the passions and spiritual illness. You admit your sectarian Renovationist nonsense colludes with thoughts, passions, sin, demonic energies to imprison souls. That is enough to say that your gay crusade propaganda is of the enemy and warring against salvation. Your neo pagan idol of self is the only god you can ever serve, and it is sickening.

                      I thank you finally for inadvertently lifting the veil on all your repulsive deceptions to show who you really are: you a nihilistic, aspirant Renovationist, liberal demagogue whose only real goal in life is to subject people to a crass idol of yourself you know is hollow, lacking all substance. Your fakery with feigned self importance isn’t anything more than a lame attempt at you reprising a role from banal 1960s television: it is all you have to validate a formation without any real faith. Gilligan’s Island was cancelled, and no one cares anymore, Professor.

                      I don’t pity you. The reason is not spite, but, rather, the fact you relish living life in parody where all thought is jettisoned for your artless echos. A personification of a liberal totem screaming at your certain mortality where you understand your religion of self is ultimately a religion of nothing. The horror, the horror. And a trite nothing at that.

                    • Very well said, Mr. Stankovich. It seems Mr. Warren has a lot of time on his hands to conjur up information that has no basis in reality. Thanks for taking him to task!

                    • Michael Warren says

                      Mr. Timothy, his point was “so what, you found that on Google,” not that I had nothing to say, but that I said everything that contradicted him.

                      It is simply parody when liberals flock around their ideological fakirs, scream me too, and then in the next sentence admit they didn’t understand what their “heroes” said. Stankovich sent you to Google where you can verify that the studies I cite are true. He avoided discussion of the Orthodox theology of the human person because it says that his views (and presumably yours ) cannot be reconciled with Orthodoxy.

                    • M. Stankovich says

                      Michael Warren,

                      Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate you: rebuke a wise man, and he will love you. (Prov. 9:8)

                      You are a latecomer to this soiree, such as it is. I’ve been posting here for five years, in which time I have been examined, prodded, probed, scrutinized, laundered, even been taken to task for my damn hair. If you wanted to find my “qualifications” – and who’s to say you have haven’t already – you certainly easily could have. Where I’m from, if you intend to challenge someone according to substance, you do so with fact, not paragraphs of perseveration. I unintentionally handed you the rope – and apparently you are unable to discern both irony and sarcasm – whereupon you hanged yourself. I just happened to catch you swinging.

                      “Rest assured, everytime I see the stupidities that you write with the typical self assuredness of an undergraduate taking his first 300 level course, I begin to thank professors for all those papers they require, for true erudition and humility go hand in hand.” Let quote to you from Harry G. Frankfurt, Philosophy Professor Emeritus of Princeton University, and his classic On Bull****

                      The orator intends these [bull****] statements to convey a certain impression of himself. What he cares about is what people think of him. He wants them to think of him as a patriot, as someone who has deep thoughts and feelings about the origins and the mission of our country, who appreciates the importance of religion, who is sensitive to the greatness of our history, whose pride in that history is combined with humility before God, and so on… In the old days, craftsmen did not cut corners. They worked carefully, and they took care with every aspect of their work. Every part of the product was considered, and each was designed and made to be exactly as it should be. These craftsmen did not relax their thoughtful self-discipline even with respect to features of their work that would ordinarily not be visible. Although no one would notice if those features were not quite right, the craftsmen would be bothered by their consciences. So nothing was swept under the rug. Or, one might perhaps also say, there was no bull****. It does seem fitting to construe carelessly made, shoddy goods as in some way analogues of bullshit. But in what way? Is the resemblance that bull**** itself is invariably produced in a careless or self-indulgent manner, that it is never finely crafted, that in the making of it there is never the meticulously attentive concern with detail to which Longfellow alludes? Is the bull****ter by his very nature a mindless slob? Is his product necessarily messy or unrefined? The word **** does, to be sure, suggest this. Excrement is not designed or crafted at all; it is merely emitted, or dumped. It may have a more or less coherent shape, or it may not, but it is in any case certainly not wrought.

                      You obviously take no pride even in your attempts to insult & intimidate. So, please, Mr. Warren, I could use the edification about now, feel free to “toss around” your resumé, and let’s get to the bottom of this need to go toe-to-toe in subject matters you know nothing about. Seriously, are you an expert in everything? C’est la vie, bro’, and I don’t quite understand why you can’t simply admit you made a mistake and we’ll all move on.

                • Archpriest Alexander F. C. Webster says

                  RE “Deacon Mitchell”

                  That’s Protodeacon Patrick to you, Dr. S.

                  • M. Stankovich says

                    I stand corrected, Archpriest Alexander. “All the king’s horsemen & all the king’s men…”

                    • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

                      Michael, Alexander is right about how you as a “Layman” should address Patrick! [Alexander would have had a conniption, I fear, if he had been around Patriarch Alexii’s suite when he visited. When His Holiness needed to hear from Archbishop Arseny, he’d simply call out “Arseny!”]
                      But I am surprised Alexander didn’t address you by your Christian name, “Michael!” Perhaps he thinks one should never ignore credentials in favor of ecclesiastical custom! “Dr.S.” seems to be the most unredeemed possible way for an Orthodox Priest to be addressing you, I’m sorry to note!

                    • Yes, Mr. Warren does think he is an “expert” in everything. Those who know so little many times talk the most. Mr. Stankovich, you stand your ground well.

                    • George Michalopulos says

                      Timothy, I will say in Mr Warren’s defense that I have learned quite a lot from him lately.

                  • Michael Warren says

                    Mr. Timothy, I am always willing to broaden my knowledge, but I believe you have a lot to learn before you can teach. I have 25 years of study behind me, and I am confident in stating Stankovich is a fake, and what he believes in is political liberalism used as an engine for Renovationism. Standing his ground is him simply sinking deeper in the muck of heresy and failed liberal politics.

                    Mr. Michalupolos, thank you for your kind words. But we are all learning. I am happy to learn here as well.

                • Michael Warren says

                  Again, the nonsense oozes out of your liberal, Renovationist echo chamber, dodging facts. Reread what I have written. I stand on it. My semantic mistake I have corrected. You, however, are trying to slither away from all of yours.

                  As far as bovine scat is concerned, your presence here for five years with all your ungrounded fakery aptly demonstrated that you worship your own image, believe your own propaganda and that you are nothing but a second string, subcultured voice of the liberal, lunatic fringe. The force of your attempts at propaganda have only either resulted in people either feeling dirty after being exposed to you or others, similar to yourself, feeling liberated that you have removed barriers to their excretions. You have only won the lottery to escape a karmic lashing, and that time is coming to an end. You are guilty as charged. Now take a bath and get your mind off of MSNBC. Being hubritic, deranged and hollow wallowing in your own filth is socially unacceptable.

                  Again, unagendized science and Orthodox teaching on the Human person CONTRADICT THE UNININFORMED LIBERAL, RENOVATIONIST AGITPROP YOU OFFER AND SHOW YOU TO BE NOTHING BUT A HACK. YOU ARE NEITHER SCIENTIST NOR ORTHODOX. You were fired from your position due to incompetence. All you have left is GLAAD talking points. You lack an Orthodox formation. All you have is a desparate attempt at Parisian criticism without a baseline of belief, lacking formation, making you nothing but an aspirant and crude Renovationist heretic. Pathological and abnormal behavior can and must be treated. Homosexuality can be overcome through therapy and grace. It is a behavioral disorder, a sickness, a demonization of the human condition, estranging the unrepentant sufferer from the GOD man and make him a defaced thrall of demonic energies. (I think you might also know a lot about that). Only 30% of homosexuals are “born that way.” 70% socialize (learn/elect) into the behavior. No amount of Human Rights Campaign propaganda can undo the fact that homosexuality is abnormal psychology, perversion. Heterosexual sex addiction is treatable, curable mental illness! So too homosexuality. Other in utero defects are treated. Enough of the gay crusade propaganda.

                  Orthodox Christians should not be proud of anything. Here you are preaching your hubris from the altar you have made of your mirror. The image you share with others is something Lovecraft would find useful as a banal, character study: you are a cross between Cliff Claven, Gilligan and Dr. Mengele.

                  Bad smells last a long time until the areas they occupy are sanitized. I have the Lysol out.

                  I think we shall leave this to your supposed credential, which your peers say is incompetent and inadequate for you to be gainfully employed. I am not a narcissist and I have eaten your kind for breakfast for 25 years. I did not go to St. Vlad’s after being accepted: I met not a few mutts like you doing internships at Detroit area parishes and decided I could never treat people that way nor did I want to think in a way which would leave me and others feeling dirty. I was accepted to institions that weed out your kind after the second year, Harvard, Stanford, savvy? I went to good American schools on full scholarship, University of Michigan, Syracuse University, etc. None of that made me a pharisee to look down on others. None of it made me superior to anyone else: although from your perspective the “elite” were my peers. No, hard working people, honest and faithful Orthodox Christians are my peers, my betters. Definitely not St. Vlads, transplanted liberal Bay Area poseurs like you.

                  Whatever you did made you a hateful sociopath. I am here amongst peers, not as an ersatz sage of neo paganism. I laugh at you. Your hubris is terminal. You live a life committed to bathing in the created energies emanating from your own mirror
                  I am an Orthodox Christian, a sinner, who admits the Church is my ark of salvation. I rely on it. It doesn’t rely on me. It most certainly doesn’t rely on you! I have much to learn from it. No, it has nothing to learn from the likes of you.

                  You are vile, repulsive, typical of a certain generation which left behind nothing but pretension, upheaval and the whines of a poorly disciplined child demanding entitlement. You mistake that self indulgent trash for humanism. It is lumpen, personal dysfunction. Your morality is yourself and what feeds your ego. You caress a hollow idol of Stankovich Woodstock. You are realizing your deity is dying and your creed will die with him. Foul Renovationist, liberal hack. Your legacy is hubris and ideological and personal wreckage left behind you. The horror, the horror.

                  • M. Stankovich says

                    Mr. Warren,

                    I have not been talking at you, I have been talking down to you. I repeat myself: you are a scientific imbecile and you continue to embarrass yourself with unfounded Google scholarship; you are out of your league and you are so grossly unqualified & incompetent to address these matters and are grossly “compensating” with these vile attempts to rescue your fragile ego by attempting to intimidate. Trust me, you will not win a scientific argument by all-caps statements of foolishness. Get your ignorant and name-calling self out of my house. Until you are will willing to share your resumé, demonstrating any competency in the areas of human medicine and genetics, you are the fraud and I will not address you again. If a man – presuming you are, in fact, a man – has such vileness so easily at his disposal and on his lips, something is terribly amiss. And shame on you, Mr. Michalopulos, for allowing this man to write post after post of streaming filth and vileness in streams worthy of James Joyce. Is this characteristic of your “mix?” Am I the only one to notice the absence of some of your most valued and faithful posters since the arrival of Mr. Warren?

                    • Michael Warren says

                      Prayers of exorcism need to be read. What I have written about homosexuality adequately reflects science and Orthodox teaching. Adequately enough to answer Human Rights Campaign talking points. Go and write a white paper for peer review if you seek the harsh judgement of psychiatry. Right now, you are just a heretical liberal with a battered worldview fading away.

                      You lack credential to address the treatment and cure of homosexuality as you have never successfully done it. You are a liberal, Renovationist fraud. Besides that you were fired from your position because you lacked the competence to do it. In profering your credential, you have announced your lack of it. Leaving only the typical, liberal GIGO of dogmatically asserting your political agenda lacking substance, and doing that poorly. You don’t get a pass on lying to people and then saying you are their superior so they must accept your asinine liberal platform as gospel. No.

                      You were fired from your position because you are unqualified to adequately do a job as a mental health professional. So you have no credential, savvy? How does that not compute? Or do you like being an abusive and failed hack?

                      This is a forum of peers. So take your GLAAD propaganda back to Gay and Byzantine Progressive chat room of Koz. You are a fake.

                      Your ideas clash with true, unagendized science and the teachings of the Orthodox Church, making you simply a scientific and moral and spiritual imbecile. They are murdering the souls suffering from the spiritual disease of homosexuality. They have no place on an Orthodox forum

                      You aren’t talking down to me. You are talking up at the person who has shown your gay rights propaganda to be inimical with Orthodoxy and unagendized science. Take it elsewhere. The karmic lysol is out. My education at the places which accepted me and where I went is where you wanted to go when you grow up. Your Crestwood, as you telegraph, was an ashram of subcultural education ashamed of its subculture projecting elitist hate while validating belligerent inadequacy, a place for pretentious bullies to get a piece of paper being nothing more than cabbage and noodles elitists aspiring to make the world take you seriously as you sold out and trod upon your benefactors and your heritage. You are a Renovationist epithet. You traffic in liberal, Renovationist hate. And your preach from a clogged, heretical toilet bowl. Well, flush and rinse. Bullies will not be tolerated. The world isn’t the old babushki your kind dismiss and mock, the same women who slaved making pierogi to build parishes and help Crestwood produce […] bullies like you. You answer to them. They don’t answer to you!

                      I have more and better education than you do, from more prestigious schools. I don’t consider you a peer. My reflex is to gag after laughing as you are totally stale in being a ridiculous wannabe. The agitprop is just more of the same escape from Woodstock and excrete on the world’s doorstep liberal agenda. You are a sociopath. You will not go unanswered in your gay crusade propaganda. You won’t bully me. Frankly, casting yourself as the professor from Gilligan’s Island when you are really Gilligan is pathetic.

                      No, this blog is not your MSNBC degenerate echo chamber. Liberal fossil from 1978, the gig is up. Take your narcissist, neo paganism to the people who want to worship your clownish image.

                      In the choice between you and Orthodoxy, people choose Orthodoxy.

                • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

                  Thanks, MichaelStankovitch! “Scientific imbecile” was exact and apt!

            • Carl Kraeff says

              Once again, your voice is that of knowledge, experience, wisdom, and from an Orthodox POV. Thank you and have a blessed Lenten season.

      • MW:

        That is not correct. Fr. Seraphim struggled with his homosexuality and his break with it was when he chose to become a catrchumen and enter the Orthodox Church, at which time he ceased to be a practicing homosexual.

        JUst because someone READS something doesn’t make it true. MW knows NOTHING about if or when Reverned Rose stopped having GAY SEX.

        • Estonian Slovak says

          Do YOU do it? Do YOU do it? You talk about it.

        • Michael Warren says

          Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose). He was a faithful monk obedient to his Bishops and Spiritual Father. They knew and know. He fought the spiritual sickness of homosexulaity, and he struggled in podvig to the point of self sacrifice.

          You don’t. You don’t even know how to properly refer to him.

    • Gregory Manning says

      Well said Seraphim!

  14. Estonian Slovak says

    You are right about Fr. Seraphim’ s earlier lif, however St. John did not ordain him. Bishop Nektary of Seattle ordained him in 1977 eleven years after St.John reposed. No doubt because of his former life, Fr. Seraphim wanted to remain a simple monk.
    St. John did bless the formation of the St. Herman Brotherhood, but Frs. Herman and Seraphim were not tonsured monks until 1970, the year St. Herman of Alaska was glorified.

  15. Peter A. Papoutsis says

    This is what a life without God looks like:http://www.theatlantic.com/notes/all/2016/01/personal-stories-of-abortion-made-public/423831/?utm_source=yahoo#note-459753

    This is what a life with God looks like:http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/diognetus-lightfoot.html

    The best line that sums up the difference between us Christians and the rest of the Pagan world is this:

    5:6 They marry like all other men and they beget
    children; but they do not cast away their offspring.

    – Letter of Mathetes to Diognetus

    Peter

  16. Tim R. Mortiss says

    Just another mention: we are again getting a lot of posts lately with non-working links. Linking a post here is easy; use the “link” box.

    • Tim,

      I don’t care unless George does. It’s that simple. Copy and paste. It only takes a second.

      • For anyone reading on a handheld in particular, as I usually am, it is a real pain when people won’t take 3-5 extra seconds to use the link function rather than just pasting the url into the body. But I long ago realized this was a lost cause. The main effect when you don’t make a link is that fewer readers will look at the article.

        • Sh*t, fine. I’ll see what I can do from now on, Edward.

          • Tim R. Mortiss says

            It’s true that the system here isn’t the easiest. We have become used to sites where the link is automatic upon the pasting-in. Also, the links here sometimes come in strange forms; as a customary link, as a piece of the posted text, etc…..

        • Peter A. Papoutsis says

          I apologize Edward. I will also try the link function again.

          Peter

  17. Gregory Manning says

    Well, I’ve been hearing about the campaign for legalizing pedophilia for years but I didn’t realize this was in the works, or at least to such an extent.

    • M. Stankovich says

      Gregory Manning,

      I wanted to comment on your post, but I keep taking the bait elsewhere… I was a bit perplexed as to your interpretation of this article as an example of the “campaign for legalizing pedophilia,” as it very specifically refers to consenting adults, albeit incestuous adults. The issue of pedophilia arises – and correct me if I am wrong – only in the commentary as a “conspiratorial agenda” to condoning pedophilia “later with the sweep of a pen.” On the other hand, I was surprised that you let pass the “casual” correlation of pedophilia and homosexuality – that homosexuals are more likely to be victims and perpetrators than the general population – without comment. The only reason I find this even vaguely interesting is that, in the seemingly never-ending cycle of rehashed topics for discussion, the insistence that this correlation is true (and it most certainly is not) arises on this and many Orthodox sites. This erroneous belief that, in addition to the generalized hatred for homosexuals in the Orthodox Church, can be sustained by the fact that they can also be considered “dangerous” to our children. It was fascinating that the article you linked was on a “Christian” site, and perhaps was analogous and provided some insight for us.

      • Michael Warren says

        The Church does not hate homosexuals
        It hates the sin, perversion, of homosexuality, which demonizes souls, imprisoning them to fallen, demonic passions which estrange them from CHRIST. You hate homosexuals because you want them to remain the thralls of demonic passions and estranged from CHRIST. The Orthodox Church and real science works to cure them.

        Your gay crusade propaganda and your Renovationism is condemned by the Orthodox Church. Your hate is condemning the souls of suffering people.

      • Gregory Manning says

        Michael S.

        What I meant to observe was that, though I was aware that there had been public venues where pedophilia was being discussed in a favorable light I didn’t realize that a movement to normalize incest was also afoot.

        I am uninformed about a correlation between homosexuality and pedophilia; my instincts, “informed” by my past life amongst promiscuous homo and heterosexual men is that the appeal of “barely legal” youth is likely evenly distributed. So, no, in the absence of facts which persuasively contradict my instincts, I also reject the implication or claim of a greater likelihood that the church or parents need to be more worried about the mere presence of gay men around male youth. Having said that, speaking as a gay man who is not youth attracted, I am seriously disinclined to place myself in any circumstance that could be, rightly or wrongly, misconstrued in such a way as to cause scandal, period. Indeed, such young men would more likely complain about having to deal with an impatient, short-tempered, condescending S.O.B! Still, I’m certain that it’s better to avoid such circumstances.
        Permit me here to digress into a small screed. As I noted, there are likely as many straight men as gay who are attracted to the young. Therefore, I am flabbergasted that there are parents in our churches who foolishly believe that it is O.K. to allow their pre-teen daughters to wear the flimsiest of clothing to services! If you suspect there are gay men who notice your young sons I can assure you that there are straight men who are noticing your daughters! Since there is no way to determine who is who, I implore parents to please, please dress your daughters modestly! I beg this of you for the sake of straight men in the congregations who, if they are not struggling with an attraction to youth, are certainly struggling to avoid seeing attractive young women who, I regret to say, are also guilty of immodest dress. I don’t think most priests like to seem to be scolding their flock but they must address this. It is reckless “parenting” not to.

        • M. Stankovich says

          This is a very important point you make in regard to the overall research of the prevalence of adolescent sexual abuse before the age of 17, led by the pioneering effort of Dr. David Finkelhor and the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. Their now classic prevalency study of 2013 (funded by the US Dept. of Justice & awarded for its scrupulous design and data integrity) was shocking in its findings:

          The lifetime experience of 17-year-olds with sexual abuse and sexual assault was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 19.8-33.5) for girls and 5.1% (95% CI 2.6-7.6) for boys. The lifetime experience with sexual abuse and sexual assault at the hands of adult perpetrators exclusively was 11.2% (95% CI 6.4-16.1) for females and 1.9% (95% CI .5-3.4) for males. For females, considerable risk for sexual abuse and assault was concentrated in late adolescence, as the rate rose from 16.8% (95% CI 11.5-22.2) for 15-year-old females to 26.6% (95% CI 19.8-33.5) for 17-year-old females. For males, bit rose from 4.3% (95% CI 1.9-6.8) at 15 years to 5.1% (2.6-7.6) at 17 years.

          Imagine, a nearly 27% prevalence rate – nearly a full third – of all females by age 17 will be sexually abused/assaulted by a peer (someone their own age who is known to them, but with whom they are not necessarily in even a casual relationship) and 11% by an adult who was previously known to them. You would think this would put to rest concerns over the “safety” risk of random homosexuals and pedophilic “strangers” – and paroled sex offenders, who, statistically, are the most unlikely to be in an Orthodox Church and to re-offend. But it does not. Neither does it explain the “outrage” at my suggestion that the only way you will guarantee absolute safety is to handcuff every male over, say age 11, as they enter the church, and uncuff them in the parking lot as they go home. And I must say that, of the nearly 500 clinical examinations I have conducted of child sexual predators, I would suspect a substantial number of Houdini’s. You are absolutely correct to say that the only way to lessen the rate of sexual abuse/assault is to engage the community, from parents to clergy, and everyone in between. But it is infinitely more difficult when unfounded myths fuel fear and prejudice.

          To conclude, Johns Hopkins Medical, Dept. Psychiatry in Maryland sponsored a conference in conjunction with the opening of their treatment program for pedophilia. While there a good number of scientific presentations regarding the results of fMRI studies that discriminated for “abnormalities” in brain functioning, etc. in pedophiles, the discussions of treatment were the most fascinating: clinicians were under the mandate of reporting child abuse, so they discouraged patients from disclosing “criminal” behaviour (including fantasies & dreams) that mandated reporting, but encouraged an “open discussion of feelings and emotions.” WAT? How is it possible to have therapeutic relationship where topics directly pertinent to to your course of treatment cannot be discussed out of the clinician’s fear of being forced to report, and the patient’s need to talk about what is, in effect, criminal behaviour, but symptomatic of their pathology? I suspect a lot of unethical practice goes on in the name of “therapy.” There were under 30 attendees to this highly marketed conference, and I have never heard about them since.

        • Michael Warren says

          Why are most instances of pedophilia, same-sex? Why was there greater instances, proportionately, of it in the population of papist priests than say that of papist parishoners?

          When lines are skewed between normal sexuality and abnormal, the acuteness of sexual dysfunction only masks itself to the point where one refuses to notice higher instances of sexual predation among sexual minorities AKA perverts. Is NAMBLA a homosexual organization? Undoubtedly. But when agendized science fails to report and treat homosexuality as the disease it is, its more acute strains get a pass. Heterosexuals are treated for sex addiction and its more acute aspects don’t get a pass. Homosexuality enjoys a more privileged treatment due to its sacrosanctity as an arm of liberal social engineering.

          In this liberal Twilight Zone where sexual repression is the enemy, perversion goes untreated by science to the point where we today find it politically incorrect to impugn the homosexual identities of those engaged in both perversion and sex crimes. Except when lawsuits are brought to court by the victims and the N.Y. Times gets on a soapbox to attack the Vatican. Then the sexuality aspect is forgotten while an anti Christian crusade is enabled.

          • M. Stankovich says

            Do you intend to provide citations for any of your authoritative statements? I will answer my own question in that you cannot because such data simply does not exist. You ask, “What percentage [of] pedophiles are same-sex attracted?” and “Why are most instances of pedophilia, same-sex?” and the answer to both questions must rely, nearly exclusively, upon individuals who have been arrested and convicted of child sexual predation, and may or may not be reflective of pedophiles in general. We have no way of knowing. The world of pedophiles is highly secretive and hidden. It is not as if you can advertize for behvioural research subjects at colleges or universities, or private clinicians or clinics as is customary. Further, you imply, for example, that same-sex attraction is the key factor in pedophilia within the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church, when the research identifies “opportunity” is a much more significant factor:

            The overwhelming number of male victims of clergy sexual abuse led to assumptions regarding sexual preference of clergy offenders. The present study examined 9,540 records (incidents) of alleged cleric sexual abuse in the United States between 1950 and 1999 to explore situational factors of the abuse by victim gender. No evidence was found to suggest that male victims were purposefully targeted more than female victims; rather, the abuse appeared to be more a function of opportunity. These findings support a situational framework of sexual abuse for the majority of clergy abuse and the assertion that abuse in church can be understood as not a crisis regarding homosexuality but as a social problem that must be examined in its context.

            Holt K, and Massey C. Sex Abuse. 2013 Dec;25(6):606-21. “Sexual preference or opportunity: an examination of situational factors by gender of victims of clergy abuse.”

            This is an emerging dilemma for researchers in that “rogue” elements within the research community would suggest (like every disorder under the sun) that MRI/ fMRI and genetic studies “suggest” a neurological difference between pedophiles and controls (and here); cognitive problems that develop during development (as opposed to, say, intellectual or “processing problems); assessment of interpersonal skills (in this case, derived from childhood attachment disorders); minor physical anomalies; and in the category, “thought you had heard it all, “here. In the end, it is only reasonable & prudent to agree with the authors of an article in the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry. 2013 Mar-Apr;36(2):144-56 (Woodworth M, Freimuth , Hutton EL, Carpenter T, Agar AD, and Logan M. “High-risk sexual offenders: an examination of sexual fantasy, sexual paraphilia, psychopathy, and offence characteristics.”: “High-risk sexual offenders are a complex and heterogeneous group of offenders about whom researchers, clinicians, and law enforcement agencies still know relatively little.” There are 140 citations in the National Library of Medicine related to the prevalence of pedophilia: they are admittedly limited, they are outdated, and the vast majority are applicable to countries other than the US (which does not necessarily mean that the findings as related to 30 pedophiles in Sweden are unrelated to pedophiles in the US, but we have no empirical way to make such a determination).

            You do no favor by confusing the issues: “perversion” is not a scientific matter or term, it is a matter of morality & theology. Medicine does not treat “perversion.” You are also incorrect in stating that it is “politically incorrect to impugn the homosexual identities of those engaged in both perversion and sex crimes.” In the state of California, if you are convicted of any sex crime, you will be on “Megan’s List,” identified by name and photo for as long as you draw breath, and it is highly likely you will will wear a GPS tracking bracelet for the rest of your life, hopefully beginning by the end of this year. That is clearly a direct and undeniable consequence however you wish to define it.

            Finally, you are not a clinician and have never been responsible for the diagnosis and treatment of anyone; I have conducted nearly 500 clinical assessments of serial child sexual predators in CA state prisons and been certified by the courts as an expert. The treatment of pedophilia and other paraphilias is disgraceful. There is neither coherence nor a theoretical/conceptual treatment research agreement among the states. My sense is that their focus is, first and foremost, preventing recidivism (i.e. a criminal consideration). But CA has more than adequately demonstrated that this can be accomplished programmatically with law enforcement & GPS. This leaves the the value of the need to attempt to rehabilitate perpetrators by the wayside. As long as a man is capable of drawing breath in this world, he capable of repentance. It seems a much more appropriate focus rather than the NY Times and “agendized” science – in fact on the day you are able to lift a man from his pallet and heal him as the Lord directs – you are exceptionally naive and to what science can and cannot provide. And you certainly cannot say I have tried to inform you.

            • Michael Warren says

              Well, since you ask questions to which you don’t want answers, having written in other posts you were acquainted with studies you have run across on Google, you have answered your rhetorical question for yourself and in a disingenuous manner.

              Opportunity versus same sex attraction is a curious statement of obfuscation, especially since you admit the literature is either suggestive of same sex attraction being a key element of pedophilia, but that the studies and literature are dated because a political agenda has either tried to prevent them from happening or that it simply is concerned with preventing recidivism and is not preoccupied with the causes of the disorders because science may open a can of worms studying them. My contention is that homosexuality provided the drive for pedophiles to seek an opportunity, that pedophilia in most instances is simply a more acute form of homosexuality. Indeed, if one examines historical homosexuality from Ancient Greece to the Islamic world to religious counterfeits, sex with young boys seems to be a hallmark trait of homosexuality. Socrates and his pupils gave up intercourse with their wives to be with and mentor young boys. In Ottoman Turkey and Afghanistan sex with young boys in some subcultures was a rite of passage or a “reward of priviledge” (simply repulsive!). In all these instances, including the Roman Catholic world of predatory priests, homosexuality prompted sufferers to find doors of opportunity, where homosexual lust was the engine for sexual activity.

              Mental healthcare has gone through various revisions of its lexicon over the last 150 years. Words like perversion will be encountered in Freud, for instance, but have been abandoned in the last half century especially to divorce therapy from religious/moral “bigotry” which some feel is subjective and harmful in its shaming and negative conditioning. Their answer, however, is the crux of the matter because their “objective” assessment of behavior has its chief concern in redefining morality, acting as a counter cultural vehicle of transformation of society’s views, many instances pushing the Church out of society at large. The point of poltically correct debasement of science is used to push a secualar humanist, anti Church new morality and social engineering. Such a system of agendized science and propaganda avoids the word perversion to promote it intentionally, consciously aware that its intent is to socially engineer new moral and religious paradigms.

              We both are not healthcare professionals. Neither you nor I. You are no longer employed. Your treatment/study of said individuals by your frequent admissions here show that your premises from the outset rejected Orthodox understandings of spiritual illness and a scientific model which recognized all these sexual dysfunctions as pathological conditions in need of therapy. Thus you never treated these people to cure them and at best concentrated on symptoms and not causes. That is a seminal point in my critique of your approach. This is a forum of peers and not a lecture hall. If you are so obsessed with credential and professional peer review, then you shouldn’t be writing here but rather submitting your ideas to journals with your own white papers. But internet forums are assemblies of peers sharing ideas and criticism for popular edification, where peers are neither professional boards of review nor a captive and unenlightened mass, but equals in congress and expression.

              • M. Stankovich says

                Let me be emphatic here, Mr. Warren: you are not a healthcare professional, and now admittedly so. That would mean that you knowingly & purposely deceived the readers of this forum as to your qualification. This strikes me as extraordinarily hypocritical in that you basically guaranteed this forum I was a fraud and a fake while your pants were aflame. I would demand your apology to me and the readers of this forum for your purposeful deception – particularly when you were caught attempting to pass off “in vetero” science as fact – but I suspect heaven and earth would pass away before you would ever humble yourself and muster contrition.

                Who am I, Mr. Warren? I am words on a computer monitor. You have never met me nor heard my voice. I may have given you the best haircut in your life, maybe even drawn your blood. How would you know? You say, “You are no longer employed.” Are you sure, Mr. Warren? The fact is, I am always employed- for a number of years now as an overnight clinician on one weekend in a crises house, and the same for what is now considered the psych “urgent care/ED.” Does that make me a healthcare professional again, Mr.Warren?

                You also say, “Thus you never treated these people to cure them and at best concentrated on symptoms and not causes.” Mr. Warren, I “treat” the sickest of the sick, psychotic disorders (schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, delusional disorders). I do not “treat” persons with SSA in that in my home state of CA it is unethical to do so, and jeopardizes funding for research, licensing, and the means of supporting myself & my wife.

                You sorely confuse “credentials” with “qualifications.” If I am “obsessed,” it is with the latter. When untrained, unqualified Google scholars such as yourself delve into areas of, in this case, medical expertise, you are not only pretentious and foolish, you are dangerous. Ask anyone who has trained as a physician and they will tell you that you “become” a physician in the extended practice & supervision; the day-to-day seemingly endless tasks and frustrations of the practice and instruction. If this were not the case, medical school would be offered on-line.

                You, in particular, are arrogant enough to post information I know for a fact is drawn from single-study conclusions, out-dated, insufficient, unreplicated, unsupported, or simply untrue, yet you do so without saying where it is sourced, purposely avoiding scrutiny. Trust, brother, that you will not intimidate me with your customary “shineola” of MSNBC, prayers of exorcism, GIGO, HuffPo, and other assorted bull****. Stay out of my house.

                • Michael Warren says

                  In other words, you intend to continue with your fraud. You present information at odds with unagendized science and the teaching of the Church.

                  By your own admission on this forum, you were fired from your position, meaning that you lack credential.

                  I will never apologize to a liberal, Renovationist fraud whom I have shown to be someone with a heretical, political agenda, engaging in propaganda for gay rights. Take it back to Koz, Gilligan.

                  Again, this forum is not a captive audience for your liberal worship of your own echos. If you seek professional peer reviews, submit white papers to professional journals. Otherwise keep your poseuring hubris and lies to yourself.

                  My contentions stand in critique of your gay agenda propaganda. You as much as admit everything I have stated here by saying you are aware of the information and studies I cite, albeit they contradict your political agenda. You admit to ignoring studies and theology which contradicts your political agenda. Checkmate.

                  • M. Stankovich says

                    Let me be emphatic here, Mr. Warren: you are not a healthcare professional, and now admittedly so. That would mean that you knowingly & purposely deceived the readers of this forum as to your qualification. This strikes me as extraordinarily hypocritical in that you basically guaranteed this forum I was a fraud and a fake while your pants were aflame. I would demand your apology [to me] and the readers of this forum for your purposeful deception – particularly when you were caught attempting to pass off “in vetero” science as fact – but I suspect heaven and earth would pass away before you would ever humble yourself and muster contrition. [IS THERE AN ECHO IN HERE?]

                    Happy Xmas. War is Over. If you want it to be. Come on, Mr. Warren, Checkmate? I set your bag on the porch. Get out of my house.

                    • Michael Warren says

                      Thank you for admitting I am right and that your gay crusade propaganda was a lie you engaged in to deceive people.

                      Are there professional journals for terminated poseurs? Well you can submit your white papers to one for peer review. But if you choose to participate here, you do so among Orthodox peers. Your tired, narcisstic elitism and semiliterate poseuring is now in check.

      • Gregory Manning says

        Michael S.,
        Speaking of taking the bait…as I noted in another posting, my mother was a geneticist. My father (born in the rural south in 1896) left school after completing the eighth grade, a common practice at the time in rural America. While my mother was devoted to my father her patience was often tested by many of the “facts” he pronounced on but, dutifully, she never challenged him in front of the children. One night at the dinner table he crossed the line. He being a rancher and we having several horses, I asked him why we never had a white horse–that I rarely saw them anywhere. He allowed that white horses were indeed rare but that they could be produced if the right breeding procedures were followed. To get a white horse required that one stand in front of a pair of copulating horses and vigorously shake a white sheet! Mom instantly rose from the table, glared at him, and with tears in her eyes left the table and retreated to their bed room. Dad, sensing that he was in serious trouble, sheepishly looked around the table at his children, slowly got up and followed her into the bedroom where the door was closed. Nobody knows all that was said but all heard my mother when she raised her voice and said “Bill, I have always respected you and I have never challenged you in front of the children, but this is too much. IF I EVER HEAR YOU REPEATING SUCH FOOLISH AND IRRESPONSIBLE CLAIMS AS YOU DID TONIGHT, I WILL CHALLENGE YOU ON THEM NO MATTER WHO IS PRESENT! Dad spent the rest of the evening doing his best to pretend that he had not in fact been seriously scolded by his wife.

        Two days later, riding with him in his truck, he warned me to avoid Catholics at all costs. Catholic nuns conspire to kidnap Protestant children so as to brain wash them into bowing down and worshiping the Pope. Children who resist are offered as a blood sacrifice! One would have thought he had learned his lesson but, no. Incorrigible. Utterly incorrigible!

        P.S. Like a lot of folks from that era Dad was a conventional racist but he held a particular view which, to this day, I am unable to account for, namely, that black men are never homosexual. In today’s parlance he would have said “it wasn’t in their DNA”. There was not a doubt in his mind on this matter. Where he got that is anybody’s guess. But the same could be said about most of his claims as well as some encountered on this and other blogs.

        • Michael Warren says

          Written while contending the preposterous notion of a gay gene. If a homosexual is cloned, normally develops and is raised normally with heterosexual identity reinforced, the clone will be heterosexual.

          It is always odd and unseemly in an uncomfortably personal way when one uses ones issues with ones family members publicly to build straw men to burn in effigy with hate. It is even sick.

          So, dear arbiter of the eighth grade human genome project, this fellow here acknowledged that on Google he will run across research which overthrows his and your opinion as quack politicization of human sexuality. While you both absolutely are at odds with the teaching of the Church on an Orthodox forum. But discussing the ORTHODOX understanding on Orthodox forums and illustrating how your agendized nonsense is nothing but gay crusade propaganda is unread, inappropriate and haughtily dismissed because your view is liberal dogma and everything else, including that which spiritually, morally and empirically contradicts you is illegitimate because it shows your ideological bigotry to be illegitimate. Typical hubris. Guess that eighth grade education doesn’t do you all too well, does it?

          But I was entertained with the gay gene no nothing science. Liberals have mapped the humane genome decades ahead of actual fact to profer a propaganda which demands that all morality, religious teaching and actual science submit to puerile ridicule and it banging the shoe of Human Rights Campaign LGBT propaganda on the table known as society at large. The typical agendized fakery I have been ripping apart. Is there a pedophile, necrophile, bestiality gene as well? RIDICULOUS QUACKERY.

          But let’s go one further. If it is empirically proven that there are genetic predilections to schizophrenia, does that make schizophrenia any less a mental illness?

          Your eighth grade gay rights quackery just made you the villain of your own narrative.

        • Michael Bauman says

          Gregory a postulation on your dad’s belief that black folk were never homosexual: there was for a long time quite an anathema within the black community on homosexual men. Part of that was a sort of denial that such men existed at all. That could easily be twisted around to a belief that they did not exist.

          Of course, I learned about that piece of cultural history from a black homosexual friend of mine so there you go. Another black homosexual friend of mine was subject to beatings if he lingered too long in the black neighborhoods in Wichita back in the early 70’s.

          Wow, see what disreputable people I’ve know in my life. Oh my!

          • Gregory Manning says

            I know what you’re saying Michael B. I simply always thought it odd that Pa would hold such a view about the male members of a race he otherwise held to be inferior. And since in the 1950’s homosexuality was very rarely a topic of conversation at anyone’s dinner table I couldn’t help but wonder, in later years, from where he pulled that out. The only black folks he knew were laborers.

            • M. Stankovich says

              Michael B & Gregory,

              I was a resident at St. Vincent’s Medical Center, Downtown, in Greenwich Village, NYC, at the height of the first plague of HIV/AIDS. This was before AZT or any antiretroviral, so, in effect, there was no treatment for AIDS, but only for some AIDS-related complications (e.g. opportunistic infections such as PCP pneumonia, toxoplasmosis they shared with cats, Cytomegalovirus (CMV) that rendered them blind, etc.). The patient demographic was fascinating, proportionally broken down into primarily gay white men; black men who were IV drug users; Hispanic males who were IV drug users; and a minuscule group who had contracted HIV from contaminated blood products, inadvertent needle-sticks, and gay black & Hispanic males.

              The stigmatization of African-American & Hispanic males with SSA within their own culture is well documented and well known (think Easy E of NWA; the National Enquireresque gossip battle continues as to how gangsta Easy E contracted HIV, the implication being he was bisexual – a dis – 15 years after his death) . They are less likely to seek care in the earlier stages of HIV-disease, are sicker when they do seek help, and have worse outcomes. I remember the shame felt by AA & Hispanic IV-drug addicts as they hid gay newspapers among newspapers they carried – as they often were filled with XXX photos, but they were also the only source for information about fair housing, job security, SSI benefits, medical services, and so on. Unfortunately, their situation has not dramatically changed in a quarter century. They are hidden, but they most certainly are there, and the CDC does an admiral job in attempting to reach them.

              Gregory, my father came to the US after being liberated from Dachau as a captured Serbian military officer. He loved America, and believed pretty much anything people told him was American custom & tradition. It so happened that a retired Federal Judge bought a home close to my father, and somehow they had started talking and started having coffee together, then lunch, etc. I was visiting my father, and I saw him pull this gigantic fish (an ugly, disgusting carp) from the bed of his truck – caught, I believe in the Detroit River – and start up the street. I yelled out, “Whoa! Where are you going?” He explained that people had told him Black people loved carp and he was going to surprise the judge. WAT! I told him, “You are not giving that bottom-feeding, disgusting fish to a retired federal judge!” After arguing for a while, he finally conceded. My mother told me that he & his Serbian immigrant friends “misinterpreted” the “DP” portion of “DPW” (Detroit Public Works”) in the 1950’s on collection barrels outside federal buildings. They interpreted “DP” to have something to do with “displaced persons” and presumed it solicited charitable donations. They tossed a few dollars in. I’m sure you’ll have guessed DPW referred to trash cans.

            • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

              My father, born a Canadian, had a mindset apparently like that of Gregory’s father. And we, too, Dad, Mom, my sister and i, used to hold excited conversations around the supper table—in our case, this was about the only “free time” my father had for such discussions. His mind was as completely closed on the topic of “colored” people (actually, he used the N-Word exclusively) as Michael Warren’s on the weighty topic of “Across Livernois!” My (older) sister and I would gang up on him until, instead of crying “Uncle!” he would declare decisively: “Well, THAT may be, but they still STINK!”
              No one in my generation doubted the inevitable incidence of homosexuality amongst black people after James Baldwin’s semi-confessional “Another Country!” There are some today, still, who secretly believe black men are more “masculine” than white men, and that homosexuality is, in men, a FEMININE or EFFEMINATE trait! As for what is “natural” or “unnatural”, as an adult I’ve found no reason to doubt what an Anthopologt professor taught at Wayne Stte: the human being is NATURALLY omnisexual, being susceptible of sexual stimulation by animal, vegetable or mineral entities of any gender UNTIL BEING “SOCIALIZED.”

              • Gregory Manning says

                “Well THAT may be” but…. I remember that one! Ha Ha! As far as ganging up went, that had to be done carefully. There had to be a shared unspoken sense that there was a chink in his armor which we, “all for one and one for all”, could attack. If one were to mis-read the group one could find oneself all alone and Dad’s ability to sense weakness was equally well developed. Turning against the “King” could be a perilous adventure if you weren’t careful! And spiteful siblings could conspire to leave you hanging. Occasionally he would expand on some of his preposterous views and, not unlike some comments one encounters, were so scattered with absurdities mixed in with actual facts that you just didn’t know where to start–so you didn’t.

                James Baldwin? Never heard of him in those days. We were contentedly parochial then. Everything we knew about the world came from the lips of Walter Kronkite and, later, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. If they didn’t talk about it (whatever it was) then it must not have been important. Literature consisted of a collection of Readers Digest Condensed Books (which I read) and a monthly “Forward Day by Day”. There was a Bible but as we were Episcopalian, it’s actual contents were essentially foreign to us. Familiarity with Scripture was the provenance of bible thumpers, which is to say people who were not “one of us”. The encyclopedia we possessed had never heard of Adolph Hitler or Nazism. But Dad was a wealth of folk lore, (some) folk wisdom, disgusting folk medicine, and limitless “facts”.
                Those were the days!

            • M. Stankovich says

              Gregory Manning,

              I did not read that your mother was a geneticist! If it is not too personal a question, is she alive or did she live to see the completion of the mapping of the human genome? I would imagine it would/would have been an extraordinary experience for her.

              I remember hearing the Nobel Prize winner in Medicine Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard lecture at – as best I recall – NYU Hospital /Payne Whitney Clinic (which I believe they now call NY Presbyterian Hospital). She shared the Nobel Prize for her work on the influence of mutated phenotypes on embryonic development. Long before it was ever imagined that we would gain the insights we now possess into human genetics, she pioneered the use, of all things, the epidermis of a common fruitfly, Drosophila melanogaster, proving it could be utilized for “the large scale screening [of] embryonic lethal mutations,” bolstering the discovery that

              The common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is a well studied and highly tractable genetic model organism for understanding molecular mechanisms of human diseases. Many basic biological, physiological, and neurological properties are conserved between mammals and D. melanogaster, and nearly 75% of human disease-causing genes are believed to have a functional homolog in the fly.

              Pharmacol Rev. 2011 Jun; 63(2): 411–436. Pandey, UI and Nichols, CD. “Human disease models in drosophila melanogaster and the role of the fly in therapeutic drug discovery.” Full-Text PDF

              This is astonishing. But I only mention Dr. Nüsslein-Volhard because of what she said in her lecture at Payne Whitney: we will never, ever discover a single-gene (a genetic marker) responsible for homosexuality, alcoholism, other chemical dependencies, and so on, for the same reason we will never find a single-gene marker for height, weight, hair, color, eye-color, and so one. Why? The more complex the trait, the more likely a polygenic inheritance. And obviously, we have a new and opening door with the discover of the process of epigenetics – and I emphasize the definition, changes “without alteration of genetic structure” – likened to a massive board of switches, where a genetic event can occur in relation to the activity or lack of activity of another switch, or an uncountable number of other switches. For example, researchers have demonstrated that current rates of obesity in the Netherlands were affected genetically by the Nazi imposition of famine in as little as a single generation.

              We are not born homosexual, schizophrenic, certain to develop cancer, or much of anything else. We were created, κατ᾿ εἰκόνα ἡμετέραν καὶ καθ᾿ ὁμοίωσιν at the Hand of our Creator as a biological/genetic, psychological, social/environmental, and spiritual being intricately woven inseparable into the “nature of the Kingdom.” In our fallen nature, however, some of us, for reasons we cannot understand or explain, inherit a preponderance, a potentiated biological risk, or an increased sensitivity for disease or behavioural processes that are known to be familial. Hopefully, we will know more in the future.

              • Gregory Manning says

                Alas, she died in 1987. My memories of her during her career in genetics where piles of glossy 8×10 black & white photographs of chromosomes, all over the dining room table; photos she examined with a magnifying glass!

                I once asked her why she liked genetics so much. She said the discoveries to be made were nearly endless. I asked her if that meant we would discover everything. “No” she said. “We will eventually come up against a wall beyond which is God and we may not go there. Many of my future colleagues will not be happy. In the mean time there is much to learn and I am obliged to use what God has given me to contribute what little I can.”

  18. Michael Bauman says

    Self-determination is a noxious and flawed idea that has done little but destroy people and nations. It is especially heinous when inevitably paired with the ideology that all human beings are autonomous.

    It even makes its way into the Church promoted by those who think themselves bishops, priests and/or monastics so they are.

    Lies and more lies from the father of lies.

    It is the great lie shown to be such by the life of Jesus Christ in His incarnation, death on the Cross, Resurrection and Ascension.

    God forgive me.

    • Michael Warren says

      Sexuality is a choice. One can either have sex or not. If one is attracted to little boys, one does not have to act on it. Likewise, one does not have to engage in sex with people of the same sex.

      The Church teaches that homosexuality is a spiritual illness which comes about through giving in to unclean thoughts, acting on them and then freely overpowering ones will to repeat them in a demonic passion which then becomes a compulsion. This is the view of the Fathers and ascetics of the Church, that is of the Church, and not of “some.” Homosexual lifestyle estranges a human being from CHRIST, celebrates demonic captivity of a human and makes the human a slave to sin, a thrall of demonic energies. It condemns souls after enslaving them. But the enslavement comes about by free will, choice.

      • M. Stankovich says

        And there you have it, Mr. Warren. In two paragraphs you have summed up the human condition and evoked the Nancy Reagan theology of the passions: if you are a pedophile, just don’t do it. Excellent, if not sage advice.

        I sat in the open cellblock of Salinas Valley State Prison in Soledad, CA (you remember the “Soledad Brothers,” Mr. Warren?) when everyone was in lockdown except me and one man with schizoaffective disorder who was handcuffed and then chained at his waist & feet to the floor as we sat at a table. He was a convicted serial child sexual predator who was to attempt parole for the second time. He kept talking about how overwhelming his urges for children could become, and how overpowering the voices became – and believe me, pedophiles exaggerate everything, mainly attempting to manipulate to get increases in meds, or additional meds, or special considerations – and I was asking what he would do differently to avoid coming back. He leaned over to me as whispered, “Can I tell you a secret?” I usually avoid situations where I would have to testify against a man (in prison there is no presumption of privacy except with a lawyer), but I said yes. He said, “The first thing I’m going to do when I get out is buy a pair of handcuffs at Walmart or someplace,” and it literally set me back momentarily. He continued, “If I am tempted, I am going to cuff myself to some pole, or bench, or some object and start yelling for someone to call the cops or my parole agent because I am not coming back here. I’ll kill myself first.” He began outright sobbing. I immediately saw all the little windows in the cell doors fill with faces looking out to see what was happening. I said to him I would do my best to help him and I asked the officers to return him to his cell to spare him the shame of others seeing him crying. For a week I kept thinking, “How can such a sick man live with such overbearing passions? How is possible?”

        You have never had to be responsible for the treatment of such sick individuals, who are also the “lepers” of our day, the despised and rejected, and despicable. And I certainly make no excuse that their actions were other than horrible and inflicted life-long consequences on their victims, whom I have treated as well. But I repeat: as long as a man and they are overwhelmingly men) is capable of drawing breath, he is capable of repentance. It is simple to speak of pedophiles and passions from a comfortable distance. It is a completely different matter to answer the question: where was the Lord to be found? Among the despicable, the loathed, and the lawless of His people. Surely you recall that some demons do not come forth by endless words, “This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.” (Mk. 9:29) I suspect you need to dirty your hands with something other than the keyboard.

        And before you resort to your customary rambling response, cool off by watching A Place for Paedophiles, a documentary produced by the BBC about CA’s Coalinga State Hospital that houses over 800 “patients” designated as “sexually disordered offenders,” approximately 19 of whom have been released by the state in the 15-years of the hospital’s existence. I caution that the language can be a bit offensive, but it is limited.

        • Michael Warren says

          Bingo! My answer is Orthodoxy and psychiatry divorced from the LGBT agenda. Both pedophiles and homosexuals are sick individuals with a compulsion which needs both spiritual and clinical treatment. Perhaps even chemical therapy. The Grace of the Church is much more than “just saying no.” But the first part in helping anyone with chemical/psychological dependencies IS to get them to say NO and repent. Otherwise, you have to resort to coercive therapies, which in the case of sexual predators are the machinery of the state used to protect society. We are talking about acute degrees of sexual dysfunction, mainly same sex attraction (which itself is perversion ) but also hetero and polyamorous perversions.

          The demonic imprisonment of a soul does have very advanced degrees which sometimes call for the isolation of these sufferers to protect them and society at large. The key here is appreciating the victims, their rights, what sexual predation has done or can do to them. Then there are the afflicted, those spiritually and mentally imprisoned to demonic perversions. These people with sinful compulsions to demonic passions began their journey with a demonic thought which was accepted becoming a conjunction acted on becoming a sin became frequent due to the “demonic pleasure” it provided becoming a habit. The sufferer then decided it was something he wanted as part of his behavior and it became a passion. Finally, the sufferer realized he couldn’t stop himself, that he had completely surrendered his free will and he found himself in demonic imprisonment. That is the Church’s teaching on the thoughts whose answer is the therapy of grace, the struggle with the thoughts, the unseen warfare, which works. It can be aided by psychiatry. What we are talking about here is a form of demonic possession. The Church’s understanding of demonic imprisonment applies to active homosexuals as much as it does to pedophiles and to other sexual deviants. The function of the Church here is to engage in active, even proactive, therapy. Grace works. So can psychotropics, but some people become so damaged they have lifetime struggles ahead of them. The Church and mental health facilities exist to help these sick people. The state has a vested interest in instances of sexual predation to incarcerate some of these sick people.

          What society is tasked with doing is recognizing the illnesses with compassion, not with an embrace, and steering these people to therapy. What we cannot do is redefine morality to accomodate various degrees of perversion from harmless, consensual to predatory, criminal because the demonic energies are preying on souls and defacing the Likeness of CHRIST destroying human beings. That is why sexual dysfunction, same sex and otherwise, is a such an immediate challenge for mental health and the Church in society. Those suffering (and their victims) are not serviced well with Victorian or humanist solutions (and definitely not Freudian). The approach to treatment and cure must be holistic with different approaches to conditioning and repentance employed. Souls must be saved. Yes, homosexuality (and all instances of sexual immorality, compulsion) is a sin which cries unto heaven destroying souls.

          • M. Stankovich says

            Had you extended me the common respect to actually read what I have written on this site; or such sites as Fr. Han’s site; forums of the Washington Post & NY Times; challenging GLAAD and the majority of national LGBT sites; and my own site, you would have seen that what wrote is what I have contended for five years (though I did have the integrity to quote & cite Sts. Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, Symeon the New Theologian, Met. Anthony (Bloom), Abp. Averky of Jordanville, and Bp. Basil (Rodzianko)). I, however, am not naive as to the implementation of “treatment”: there is no “plan” or model for providing such an undertaking and we do not know if it is helpful or harmful (there is an abundance of anecdotal data on both sides, but little, if any, empirical data); the LGBT community is furiously opposed (for obvious reasons) and has caused the enactment of state laws prohibiting “reparitive therapy” and research; and the Orthodox in America seem to show no interest in embarking on such a mission, therefore there are no leaders or significant advocates. I thank God for every SSA individual who has made their way to Fountain of Healing that is the Church and the true Physician, by whatever means, but I do not expect to see a living Orthodox ministry to to individuals with SSA in my lifetime.

            • Michael Warren says

              Thank you. Now you admit that homosexuality is an illness and that it could be treated by mental health professionals if it weren’t for the fact that politicized science and the gay lobby stand in the way to treating and curing homosexuality. It is strange to now read you have somehow agreed with me all along.

              There are plenty of monasteries and parish priests. In other words, your concept of Orthodox ministry seems to not be in full appreciation of the therapy the Church provides. In a copy of the Trebnik, for instance, you will find prayers to be read over those suffering temptations. Moreover, your narcissistic, liberal positions in reality, despite what you now write, have consistently expressed positions consistent with liberal politics. The fact that you disingenuously pull names out of a hat to say that you haven’t advocated gay propaganda when everyone has witnessed it only makes your presentation more despicable. You may even believe your own lies. Pathetic.

              But thank you for now agreeing with me after spending a week writing anything and everything you could to advocate the gay agenda and personally attack me.

              • M. Stankovich says

                Mr. Warren,

                As to your first point:

                Now you admit that homosexuality is an illness and that it could be treated by mental health professionals if it weren’t for the fact that politicized science and the gay lobby stand in the way to treating and curing homosexuality.

                I neither said nor believe any such a thing. You are not a healthcare professional so you obviously did not comprehend the portent of my statement, “there is no “plan” or model for providing such an undertaking and we do not know if it is helpful or harmful (there is an abundance of anecdotal data on both sides, but little, if any, empirical data).” No ethical healthcare professional would undertake “treatment” provision without first establishing an empirically acceptable risk-to-benefit ratio. This is an internationally agreed upon standard for the protection of patient safety. Perhaps you should consider the story of Walter J. Freeman, MD before you claim authority.

                As to your second point:

                There are plenty of monasteries and parish priests. In other words, your concept of Orthodox ministry seems to not be in full appreciation of the therapy the Church provides. In a copy of the Trebnik, for instance, you will find prayers to be read over those suffering temptations. Moreover, your narcissistic, liberal positions in reality, despite what you now write, have consistently expressed positions consistent with liberal politics. The fact that you disingenuously pull names out of a hat to say that you haven’t advocated gay propaganda when everyone has witnessed it only makes your presentation more despicable. You may even believe your own lies. Pathetic.

                I would be happy, Mr. Warren, to escort you to a CA state prison (did I tell you the number of times I interviewed patients on Death Row at San Quention?) where I would be absolutely honoured to be instructed by you in proper “Orthodox ministry in full appreciation of the therapy the Church provides.” I grant it’s a tough gig – serial sex offenders, cuffed and chained, with a mesh bag over their heads so they can’t spit in your face, long fingernails sharpened to a point for “safety” – but you seem to be fearless. At least on the internet. And lastly, you had no right to insult Michael Bauman & Gregory Manning, both fine Orthodox men of integrity in whose shadow you creep. Mr. Michalopulos, a webmaster of a well-respected Orthodox site shut down all commentary on his site because of the sudden appearance and vicious insult of “R. Michael Warren,” the troll. There must be a message there.

                • Michael Warren says

                  So let’s get this straight you now say that science could help people suffering from samesex attraction by either treating them or leaving them alone (you aren’t sure which), but you still maintain that SSA is a pathology which induces suffering and that science has been prevented from empirically asserting the benefit or harm of treatment due to the politization of the topic and that you agree citing study x. Thank you for agreeing with me again in regards to the pathological nature of SSA.

                  Then you seem to suggest that all the people suffering from SSA are violent criminals from Pelican Bay who would brutalize someone trying to help them. Seems what we have here is more obfuscation. SSA afflicts roughly 1% of the population and that number blossoms to 3% when all LGBT and like-minded deviants are included, and they aren’t all imprisoned at Pelican Bay. These people have a means of getting the Church’s help, even in Pelican Bay BY ASKING FOR IT. The Church can treat those who come to her of their own free will asking her help and guidance, including prison inmates who are not deprived of seeking the counsel and aid of representatives of religion. The problem here is the gay lobby and liberals (with likeminded conservatives) do not allow the Church to freely help and witness to society at large because its work undoes the liberal social engineering afoot in the West. Thus, the Church’s treatment, though effective, is prevented by structural intolerance and religious persecution.

                  As far as x, y, z screaming me too in your peanut gallery because they like the liberal, Renovationist propaganda you have been poisoning people with, you have made them accessories to your worldview which you yourself have admitted was flawed when you conceded my points were correct. So you have left them in a lurch. Not my problem that you taught people GIGO and that you had to flee from it, albeit with obfuscation.

                  As far as my presence here, without it, you would still be beating the heretically liberal, Renovationist drum of the gay crusade and bullying everyone who wouldn’t bow to your narcisstic, heretical idol of yourself. This blog is not your indoctrination facillity. You are no longer employed in the field you claim expertise in, meaning you are not a peer to active healthcare professionals. In participating here you are tasked with treating with Orthodox peers and not subjects for liberal, Renovationist indoctrination. Savvy? Now, goodbye and checkmate.

      • Michael Bauman says

        Mr. Warren sexuality is not a choice. We are created male and female. That polarity and the interrelationship between male and female is an integral part of creation.

        How me manifest and respond to our sexuality and that of others is a choice only in the sense that we can either discipline ourselves with God’s help to respond appropriately; give in to whatever species of lust and perversion is prevalent in our hearts or live in some shadow land of guilt and recrimination and judgment.

        Sexuality is not just an existential, ephemeral part of our person. There is an ontological quality to it that can rise to perfection in marriage and through the cross of celibacy in the monastic life. Both fully realized result in chastity.

        It is for that reason that we must both call ourselves and others to account but in a manner that is merciful and compassionate. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God in our sexuality as well as in every other area of our lives–at least that is what the saints tell us. We are not to hurl anathemas at every turn. If we do that we run the risk of loosing our own souls to even deeper depravity than that which we self-righteously condemn.

        I am afraid that the thunderings you present as the Orthodox faith are leading you into that sort of condemnation. No matter how factually correct you are. Forgive me for offending as I say this realizing that I too often enter into the same condemnation.

        • Michael Warren says

          I think the thunderings here are from yourself asserting your template as the filter. I have to say that in essence I agree with you but that your point of view cannot reach a secular world and science which teaches sexuality is learned behavior. The issue of sexual identity is a matter of biology, unless of course you maintain that sexes can be trapped in the wrong body like some charlatans calling themselves Orthodox.

          As far as hurling anathemas is concerned. Establishing the teaching of the Church in the face of liberal Renovationism is simply drawing a line between Truth and error. Bishops and synods can decide on anathemas. Orthodox Christians, however, are entitled to an explanation of what a heretical teaching on human sexuality is and how it is irreconcilable with the teaching of the Church especially when said liberal Renovationism is the work of an ideological bully with a cudgel anathemizing all who don’t hold to his idol of self and gay propaganda pseudo-science programming. Your lack of consistency here is unfortunate.

          Now as to my tone and language, the parties in question have three fingers pointing back at themselves. They have admitted to indoctrinating an agenda and doing so in conscious knowledge of science and Orthodox teaching which contradicts them, abusively so, demanding a captive audience of sheeple and throwing punches left and right. So your feigned outrage might be better served if it showed a consistent standard. Backing down to these people and their bullying has only enabled them to poison minds and harm souls. I do not apologize for actively interfering to stop the heretical and liberal bullying. Especially since it began with me being punched in the face.

  19. M. Stankovich says

    Mr. Michalopulos,

    At one time you had a column for “breaking news,” where you segregated the discussion & comments to its own thread. I note that this thread, dedicated to Fr. Hans’ timely essay on contemporaneous manners related to Planned Parenthood, was hijacked by someone who thought it was necessary to report on some dumbass priest who married a man. Down the rabbit hole the discussion has gone (and I take responsibility for a comment myself), currently fixated over the exact moment he stopped having gay sex. Madonna Mia! At SVS we referred to this business as “looking in the church’s underwear drawer,” referring to dad hiding a Playboy magazine under his boxers. Monomakhos Underware Drawer. You will know exactly what’s there, and avoid it as you will. Finally, I met Fr. Seraphim Rose, and he was an “image of repentance” and piety; a gentle character. It seems to me that if Fr. Seraphim is to be discussed, the bearing of his podvig and God’s mercy is more appropriate.

    • Michael Bauman says

      M. Stankovich, you are exactly right on Fr. Seraphim. His example and life are immensely important to we in the United States. It does not surprise me that one of his podvigs was same sex attraction. It is precisely what is needed for our time.

      There can be no doubt that he offered his podvig to God–whether he fully “succeeded” or not it irrelevant, at least to me.

      Blessed Seraphim, pray for us and the depravity of our souls.

  20. Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

    “I am the Lord, and there is none else. There is no God beside me/ I girded thee, though thou hast not known me. That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none else. I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create evil. I the Lord do all these things.” ISAIAH XLV:5-7.

  21. M. Stankovich says

    There is an Op-Ed in the NY Times today from its Editorial Board, Showdown on Abortion at the Supreme Court, reminding us that on Wednesday, the SCOTUS will hear the “SB5” case from Texas that, in effect, will force the closing of nearly half the abortion clinics in the state. The law requires that, in the interest of “women’s health,” all abortion clinics must be certified under the strict requirements of out-patient surgical centers, and that physicians have admitting privileges at local hospitals. What the Times rightfully predicts is that the SCOTUS will tie across liberal/conservative lines, 4-4, and the case will return to the lower court where the constitutionality of the law was upheld. It would also stand to reason that a nearly identical law enacted and under appeal in the state of Louisiana would similarly be upheld. It is said to be most significant abortion case since Row v Wade, and contrary to the Court’s previous holding’s against similar attempts to limit a woman’s choice pursuant to the law.

    The Times quotes the Lieutenant Governor of Texas tweeting his constituency that the intent of the law was to “close clinics,” and not protect women’s health – and it may or may not be “editorial license” to suggest it was the “open lie” of the intent of the law – but it seems to me that it raises several questions regarding the ends justifying the means, the constitution, and ultimately, cowardice in the face of great societal immorality. And before I describe what I contend, let me repeat emphatically what I have stated at the beginning of this thread, lest any pretentious jackass attempts to misconstrue my words:

    Abortion is a murderous horror that cries out to heaven, a nihilistic antipathy to the “breath of life” of the Creation as it was in the beginning, and ultimately weds itself to the psyche of its participants & practitioners. Further, it has been joined with the pervasive delusion that it is a “woman’s right” to her own body & to her own choice, and that any challenge is “misogynistic” on the one hand, and an expression of “male privilege” on the other.

    Do not question my opposition to abortion as murder.

    The fact is, 1% or less of surgical abortions require medical intervention beyond what the typical clinic provides. Forcing clinics to meet the grossly expensive and clearly unnecessary mandate of certifying as out-patient surgical centers, as well as mandating physicians to endure the expensive and often difficult process of securing admission privilege under any circumstance, let alone one that draws attention and predictable protest – again, when it is medically unnecessary, begs the question of the ends justifying the means. We either believe in the constitutionally established rights afforded to women or we do not. And if they are abhorrent and morally outrageous & unacceptable to us as Orthodox Christians, we are afforded the constitutional mechanisms to overturn them. The idea of manipulation and trickery/tactics utilized to circumvent the constitutional process, it seems to me, should be as frightening as it is disgusting. And ultimately, to see the upholding of such laws as Texas SB5 as a moral “victory” is as shortsighted as it is magical thinking. It is, in fact, a circumvention of the instruction of St. Peter:

    Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asks you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear: Having a good conscience; that, whereas they speak evil of you, as of evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ. For it is better, if the will of God be so, that you suffer for well doing, than for evil doing. (1 Pet. 3:15-17)

    No one wants the burden of standing up against the feminists, the LGBT community, and the immorality that governs our society and the world of our next generation, and apparently everyone believes we will somehow escape their attention. Cowardice reigns; the clergy are in silk and gold ornaments, and only a few bravely come to the streets; and the internet is the kingdom of the American idiot – who believes if your opinion is loud and vicious enough, it is, unquestionably, truth and reality. St. Tikhon, Metropolitan of Moscow, and the Intercessor for America, said the night would be long and dark. He did not say it would also be so cold.

    • Michael Warren says

      There is no right of one human being to take the life of another if it “is privately done.” Such liberal evil is a fundamental overthrow of the concept of human rights. An unborn human being is not 3/5 of a person that any court can deprive of rights as “life unworthy of life.” To responsibly prevent abortion AND TO SAVE LIFE making aborton rare means that a state has the obligation to exhaust all legislative means at its disposal to make it unprofitable and a procedure only performed when absolutely necessary. The Roe vs. Wade less restricted advocacy “pro life stance” presented is the typical liberal spew that insists states must accomodate the death industry of abortion to preserve a “woman’s reproductive rights.” It happens to accomodate the Democrat pro abortion platform while paying homage to the “war on women” rhetoric. Yet this person “clearly opposes abortion” in a liberal, abortion friendly pro Choice way. The Texas law recognizes “reproductive rights” with restrictions and limitations legislated by the state according to the Tenth Amendment. And the liberals say that the Tenth Amendment must be ignored to enforce an inferred Fourth Amendment “reproductive right” so that unborn humanity must exist at the whim of a new iteration of the Dredd Scott decision.

      But this Renovationist liberal opposes abortion?! Like a NAZI opposes antisemitism. How does one oppose abortion by opposing restrictions to it which will make it rare, unprofitable, understood as extreme as opposed to the inferred, liberal preference of advocating a less restrictive model of obtaining an abortion? So pro abortion is the new pro life?! A diseased liberal mind believes that abortion is opposed by accomodating less restrictive interpretations of Roe vs. Wade. Here we go again – Liberalism before truth, reason and humanity. Lie and fake it to obfuscate and deceive.

      • M. Stankovich says

        To responsibly prevent abortion AND TO SAVE LIFE making aborton rare means that a state has the obligation to exhaust all legislative means at its disposal to make it unprofitable and a procedure only performed when absolutely necessary.

        And how does this differ from me saying

        if they are abhorrent and morally outrageous & unacceptable to us as Orthodox Christians, we are afforded the constitutional mechanisms to overturn them. The idea of manipulation and trickery/tactics utilized to circumvent the constitutional process, it seems to me, should be as frightening as it is disgusting.

        I have absolutely no objection to using every provision under the moral law – honestly, ethically, and directly – to make abortion rare. The answer to your question, “How does one oppose abortion by opposing restrictions to it which will make it rare” is by refusing to allow nor tolerating “victory” of this goal by another act of ethical immorality.

        And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest’s, and smote off his ear. Then said Jesus to him, Put up again your sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Think you that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? (Mt. 26:52-53, cf. Jn. 18:11)

        On Monday, January 22, 1973, I had gone out to purchase a pair of dungarees, and I was shocked to hear on the car radio (NYC’s WINS, “You give us 22-minutes and we’ll give you the world.”) that Row v Wade had been upheld. And equally shocking was the notable absence of anyone even vaguely Orthodox. Someone, some group of Orthodox clergy, led by the hierarchs, could have and should have raised a moral voice; taken a moral stand in the public forum, and assumed a role of moral leadership as the final defenders and upholders of the Truth entrusted to us at Hand of the Lord Himself. They did nothing. And as we rapidly close in on the 45th anniversary of this court decision, we may add same-sex marriage, and yesterday, the governor of South Dakota – Madonna Mia! Imagine! – vetoed legislation that would have “forced” trans children as young as 5 to use bathrooms and locker facilities consistent with their born sexual gender. Today, he is being hailed as the “voice of fairness and equality.” Ask yourself why no one will stand up to these people. Because it is far easier to take these matters up again with indirect, unethical “tricks” & “tactics” like Texas SB5. And you are with them, Mr. Warren. Except only on the internet.

        • Michael Warren says

          Tricks and tactics like the Tenth Amendment.

          In other words, you have a problem with the government acting to make abortion rare and confined to extreme circumstances because ideologically you disagree with the people doing it, because their interpretation of moral law is to do all that is necessary to save the lives of innocents. To you this is unethical because it acts within the liberal framework to undo the ideological integrity of the framework. Your ideology cannot be compromised, of course. That’s just a liberal like Harry Reid saying he is pro life but voting for funding of planned parenthood because abortion is the law of the land or a conservative like Rudy Giuliani saying he is a strict constructionist therefore he sides with pro abortion justices because the right to an abortion is settled case law and an accurate understanding of the Fourth Amendment.

          Hypocrisy basically stating that the murder of infants isn’t as immediate a concern as your ideological house of cards falling. Your position amounts to advocacy for abortion because that’s its effect.

          Now to challenge your liberal nonsense: if the state says this is the rule of law by which we govern ourselves and then uses it to write in provisions for the murder of unborn children, it is morally consistent, IMPERATIVE, to act within the framework of that rule of law to write in protection for unborn infants and act to protect life. It is unethical for a state (or anyone) to take innocent life. It is an obscenity for the state to do so by creating schemes of “worthiness” or “personhood” which amount to creating a standard of “life unworthy of life.” 3/5 person. It is a moral imperative to check, to stop and to hold accountable any state organism which does this. Using that state’s rule of law to undo its evil is called reform and advocacy for human rights which is only immoral in liberal and NAZI worlds where subhumanity exists as a class the state empowers the disposal of to advance an immoral ideology.

          • M. Stankovich says

            You would windowdress this whole matter in the jingoism of a “politics” that makes God impotent in this world, and in need of great arbiters and masterminds such as yourself. Because your high calling only exists in the context of defeating “liberal and NAZI worlds where subhumanity exists as a class the state empowers the disposal of to [sic] advance an immoral ideology,” ends justifying the means, which may in some circumstances include the cold-blooded murder of abortion providers like dogs. “The time comes, that whoever kills you will think that he does God service.” (Jn. 16:1)

            Yours is an astonishing delusion that curiously “forgets” that our God is a jealous God, and a Just Judge, Who will suffer no injustice against the righteous.

            Who is this that comes from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? this that is glorious in his apparel, traveling in the greatness of his strength? I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save. Why are you red in your apparel, and your garments like him that treads in the winefat? I have trodden the wine press alone; and of the people there was none with me: for I will tread them in my anger, and trample them in my fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled on my garments, and I will stain all my raiment. For the day of vengeance is in my heart, and the year of my redeemed is come. And I looked, and there was none to help; and I wondered that there was none to uphold: therefore my own arm brought salvation to me; and my fury, it upheld me. And I will tread down the people in my anger, and make them drunk in my fury, and I will bring down their strength to the earth. (Isaiah 63:1-6)

            All of your endless ranting is a perseverance of self-righteousness, because what is indisputable is this: there is no justice in this world, and you – rationalizing in the name of the “state” – seek a justice that is not yours, but belongs to our God alone, Who will render it in His own time. You are impatient; it is “IMPERATIVE, to act?” You lack the faith and trust that He Who stretched His hand through the mist of nothingness to create this world is incapable of managing holocaust without you. You need to read & re-read St. John Climacus before you would instruct anyone. I have routinely responded to you with ideas directly from Sts. Gregory of Nyssa, Maximos the Confessor, and Symeon the New Theologian. You have routinely identified them as “renovationist,” “liberal,” and worse. I strongly suspect you need to make yourself teachable.

            • Fr Hans Jacobse says

              Proof-texting is not an argument. If the Fathers or the prophets before them took your counsel, they would have remained mute.

              When Michael Warren writes:

              It is unethical for a state (or anyone) to take innocent life. It is an obscenity for the state to do so by creating schemes of “worthiness” or “personhood” which amount to creating a standard of “life unworthy of life.” 3/5 person. It is a moral imperative to check, to stop and to hold accountable any state organism which does this.

              …he is absolutely correct. A plastic anthropology cedes the definition of human personhood to the state and history shows where that will end. The only difference between say, the bloody imposition of the Marxist New Man and today is that the battle is fought with more sophistication. Today the word is that abortion is deemed a social good which is to say the divine dimension of human life grows increasingly dim. It’s an inversion of the truth. Remain mute if you want, but your scoldings don’t have the authority of those you quote behind them.

              • M. Stankovich says

                Fr. Hans,

                As the Karl Rove of American Orthodoxy, you would insist Ronald Reagan was at the core of the collapse of the Soviet Union. I would insist the collapse of the Soviet Union was the result of the selfless sacrifice of the Holy New Martyrs upon whose blood the church arose; but there are also those who suffered the loss of everything, even the basic right to exist. And shame on you, Fr. Hans, who made a champion of Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn – “Words have meaning,” you said – who was the first to so dramatically, and with fastidious detail, reveal to the West the secret world of the Gulag, the final blessed resting place for the crowned anonymous Holy New Martyrs, yet reach out your hand to the vitriolic, mean-spirited, vicious insanity of R. Michael Warren.

                Your return to these “Rovian” tactics and the accompanying jingoism brought me enormous amusement, but est-il pas toujours temps et contratemps, no? Such is life.

                A plastic anthropology cedes the definition of human personhood to the state

                . Regardless of the silly Rovian modifier, it actually was the hierarchs & clergy of the Orthodox in America who ceded and continue to cede the definition of personhood to the state. How? All of you, with rare exception, have abandoned the moral voice in the public square, and abandoned your responsibility for moral leadership. And a website is not leadership, for you, or a Holy Synod! You certainly cannot blame me! I could ask why you are not banging on your Met. Joseph's front door early in the morning like Julie Dreher did with former Met. Jonah of the OCA? Could it be that you fear he would pull you out of Florida and assign you to the Aleutian Chain, or worse, assign you nowhere at all? I understand the dilemma. I empathize with the dilemma. But this is typical of the "martyrdom" to which we are all called. Archpriest Alexander Webster once said to me that "people" – and he gave the examples of school teachers, parents, people "in the trenches" confronted by LGBT, Inc. – didn't believe I really understood the dilemma. I insisted I was more vulnerable than any priest. I stood up to them, Archpriest Alexander and accepted the consequence. Oorah. Now I have 2 employers who called me, hearing I was available, and directed me to their on-line employment applications. And when it asks, “Have you ever been fired or separated from a place of employment?” if you click “Yes,” a full-screen box opens with the instruction, “Please provide EXPLICIT details.” Would it be unethical to click “No,” and just move on? Or should I fear δίκη (cf. Acts 28:4)?

                Finally, Fr. Hans, fifty times if I’ve said once: I studied logic with the Jesuits, and apparently you with poodles. “Poof-texting is not an argument.” and “Remain mute if you want, but your scoldings don’t have the authority of those you quote behind them.” Madonna mia! The only reason for your attempted preemption (where have I heard this before) is because you have not read the Holy Fathers:

                The main distinctive mark of Patristic theology was its “existential” character, if we may use this current neologism. The Fathers theologized, as St. Gregory of Nazianzus put it, “in the manner of the Apostles, not in that of Aristotle”— alieutkos, ouk aristotelikos (Hom. 23. 12). Their theology was still a “message,” a kerygma. Their theology was still “kerygmatic theology,” even if it was often logically arranged and supplied with intellectual arguments. The ultimate reference was still to the vision of faith, to spiritual knowledge and experience. Apart from life in Christ theology carries no conviction and, if separated from the life of faith, theology may degenerate into empty dialectics, a vain polylogia, without any spiritual consequence. Patristic theology was existentially rooted in the decisive commitment of faith. (G. Florovsky, “St. Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers,” p.108, Collected Works, vol.1)

                And finally, Fr. Hans, as to the matter of “scolding,” I again pose the question: Who will speak to Nineveh? There was a king who heard the word of the prophet, who “arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes,” (Jonah 3:6) and called for the people to fast and repent. “And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do to them; and he did it not.” (3:10) We have neither prophet nor king, and that is your fault. It is your fault because rather than pursue the soul-saving words of the Holy Fathers and accepting your “patristic” responsibility, you have dedicated yourself to “authority on the impact of ideology and narrative on culture.” Pardon me, but who cares. We are to our necks in a sea of delusion and immortality, and you come with a single life-jacket for the meanest, vitriolic, insulting, and vicious individual present, who is kicking at people attempting to enter the lifeboat. As Lowell Fulson sang in the 1950’s, “Reconsider, baby.”

                • Michael Warren says

                  Bless Father. I have answered this fellow as he continues repetition of the same answered ideological rhetoric on this topic, on homosexuality, on Fr. Florovsky and the Mind of the Church. The moderator has not posted my replies while allowing Stankovich to go unchecked. I will allow that speak for itself if this reply manages to get posted. Stankovich is a fraud who doesn’t know what he is talking about, but for reasons no one can ascertain he is being allowed a captive audience.

                • Fr. Hans Jacobse says

                  I’ll leave aside the insults and explain “plastic anthropology.”

                  The modifier “plastic” refers to malleable, as in ‘plastic arts.’ It is the term used to describe the shift in anthropology of the last, say, twenty years or so that underlies much of the “gender” (“sex” would be more accurate) wars of the present age. You reveal it in your own arguments about homosexuality when you remove it from the category of the passions as it is understood in Orthodox anthropology and attempt to ground it in biology. You restrict your exercise to homosexuality but that decision is arbitrary because if homosexuality is understood as something other than passion, that is, having a biological grounding, then it must necessarily apply to every other passion as well. That is what is meant by a “plastic anthropology.” (The term is not mine, BTW. It is used to describe the shift in anthropological understanding evident in arguments like yours.)

                  As for abortion, the defense of the unborn in whatever venue asserts that all life has value. This too is essential to maintaining at least the memory of classical anthropology. Any assertion that denies this classical understanding most always takes the form of an appeal to a greater good (or in your case scoldings of those who assert it) and thus defends a lie. Why do you suppose the Fathers were unequivocal in their defense of the unborn? See: The Fathers of the Church on Abortion.

                  • M. Stankovich says

                    Fr. Hans, you may presume to “school” me when you and your new albatross, R. Michael Warren, finally get around to actually reading the Holy Fathers, and not until. You have referred me to the same “Fathers on Abortion” three times, while Mr. Warren is content with simply contriving patristic references of his own. Likewise, you will not bait me into a solo fox trot of “my” anthropology, position on homosexuality, or theology in general because as I have insisted for several years, 1) you have neither read nor understand the writings of Sts. Gregory of Nyssa, Maximos the Confessor, and Symeon the New Theologian, upon whom the Church, let alone me, has relied upon to articulate the nature of our humanity, “as it was in the beginning,” and in this fallen world; you have not read nor grasp the ancient, classical philosophy behind the nuanced thought process of the Holy Fathers; your knowledge of genetics and human science is insufficient for the level at which you presume to enter – in fact it is embarrassing – but you would rather rely on charlatans than admit your ignorance; and you continuously bait, taunt, and misrepresent. Four word conclusion: you waste my time.

                    In that I have been your personal instructor in human genetics (and remind me to tell you about my new focus, CRISPR and Cas9 and the moral & bioethical dilemma it will pose for us sooner than we imagined), embryology, endocrinology, neurology, and psychiatry, I would note to you that “plasticity” is a term primarily associated with neurology, but I appreciate your effort. “Plasticity” in neurology refers to the brain’s resiliency and ability to adapt and compensate for deficits as the result of disease or injury. In that it is a positive, dynamic, and promising term, expressing emergent beneficial discoveries. Because of this, I reasonably conclude you are employing this term inappropriately & incorrectly, or you have taken your definition from some right-wing source who has corrupted it to “describe the shift in anthropological understanding evident in arguments” like mine. Sadly, the fish are not biting Insults? Seriously, Abouna? I have never, ever spoken of you as you have of me. We are done here, Abouna. You’ll find your bag on the porch next to that of Mr. Warren.

                    Honestly, I am so bored with proof of concepts, but if you ever change your mind and wish to address anything I actually pose to you, you know where to find me. Or, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you, Abouna? You just put your lips together and blow. Oh! Pardon me! That was Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not. Wow. I’m really tired. Hey, R. Michael Warren, do you want to know know why I’m so tired? I’ve been working too much! I’m a healthcare professional. That cracks me up.

                    • Michael Warren says

                      Last we left the question of homosexuality you conceded my points.

                      You were also shown to not understand Fr. Florovsky’s article.

                      Then you contradicted your own supposed mentor, Fr. Schmemann, with your escapist views on Orthodoxy and the world.

                      So to recap: 1). your understanding of Orthodox anthropology was found to be heretical. You conceded that point. 2). You also conceded that homosexuality was an illness to be treated. 3).You admitted at Christmas on this blog you were fired from your position. So you lack credential. 4).Then you tried to contrive an argument for reformation by not understanding and misrepresenting Fr. Florovsky. A ridiculous lack of reading comprehension encased in obfuscation. 5).Finally, you came up with some contrived nonsense of escapism being in your mind the only mode of Orthodox interaction with the state.

                      I suppose we could roll in the quotes but why bother? Your chief allies are liberals, sick old men, and people who oppose the teaching of the Orthodox Church. You are a fraud. You are a liberal promoting Renovationist heresy trafficking in idols of yourself hoping to ensnare weak minded people sympathetic to your failed ideology.

                    • Michael Warren says

                      St. Maximos the Confessor taught the passionate nature of human sexuality was a result of the corruption of eros (Appetetive love) with the fall of humanity in the Garden. He holds that human reproduction was intended to occur in holiness and dispassion.

                      St. Gregory of Nyssa likewise taught that the passions warred against humanity and as a result of the fall impeded the work of grace on our natures thus he calls us to askesis to attain purification then illumination to finally eternally pursue perfection. In other words, he instructs us in works such as the Life of Moses to transform eros in askesis and perfect it in dispassion.

                      St. Symeon the New Theologian goes further in instructing us to channel Eros in askesis and in love of CHRIST so that by grace or transforms from vice to virtue restored and perfected in the GOD man by dispassion.

                      In all of these Fathers the war with the thoughts to attain purification, illumination, theosis is key where demonic assaults against human sexuality have no quarter. The fact you make no mention of thoughts, the passions, theosis means you either have not read the material you allude to or you simply are wantonly deceiving people out of desperation to save your failed liberal, Renovationist agenda.

                      I think you write heretical nonsense because you have too long not been challenged on your fakery. You, sir, are mischaracterizing the Fathers and deceiving people. You don’t know what you are talking about. Your views are at total variance with Orthodoxy and you are a liberal, Renovationist fraud.

                    • Fr. Hans Jacobse says

                      Again, overlooking the insults and self-aggrandizement…

                      You wrote:

                      …upon whom the Church, let alone me, has relied upon to articulate the nature of our humanity, “as it was in the beginning,” and in this fallen world…

                      The clause “as it was in the beginning” is entirely your construction and you have never been able to explain what it means; you (not the Church) simply assert it. It’s where the relocation of passion into biology occurs and where your plasticized anthropology is revealed.

                    • M. Stankovich says

                      Fr. Hans,

                      Apparently my response to you was “dropped”, but for the record, the expression, “as it was in the beginning,” is not my creation, but that of our Father and Defender of the Faith, John of Damascus. You’ll find if you want it. I would note that you have had five years on your site and this site to correct my articulation of what I first wrote in 2010:

                      Comments you will read here derive from a belief that medical science is a fundamental unity or a συμφωνία (meaning a unity of “sounds” that result in a single “voice”) of biology (including human genetics), psychology (including the impact of developmental experience and “events”), social (including environmental events) , and spiritual (including one’s faith, morality, integrity, transcendence, and sobriety) dimensions. And so unified, so symphonic is this relationship, that attempts to “explore” or ascertain the correctness of, say, a biological principle, in isolation from the συμφωνία will necessarily result in error, a likening to the ancient story of the blind men attempting to define an elephant. Therefore, the message of Καὶ ὁ Λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν (John 1:14), is an Orthodox anthropology as defined at the Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon: Following the holy Fathers we teach with one voice that the Son [of God] and our Lord Jesus Christ is to be confessed as one and the same [Person], that he is perfect in Godhead and perfect in manhood, very God and very man, of a reasonable soul and [human] body consisting, consubstantial with the Father as touching his Godhead, and consubstantial with us as touching his manhood; made in all things like unto us, sin only excepted; begotten of his Father before the worlds according to his Godhead; but in these last days for us men and for our salvation born [into the world] of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God according to his manhood. This one and the same Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son [of God] must be confessed to be in two natures, unconfusedly, immutably, indivisibly, [and] distinctly.

                      And by analogy, I have include this phrase from the Seventh Ecumenical Council as well: “for the honor accorded to the image passes over to its prototype, and whoever adores the image adores in it the reality of what is there represented.” This is significant because the manifestations of His humanity – his biological/genetic, psychological, environmental/social, and moral/spiritual dimensions – are essential to our understanding of our humanity reflected in Him, a humanity, as Met. Anthony (Bloom) noted, we no longer recognized.

                      Is it even necessary to explain the obvious that Genesis begins with the words Εν ἀρχῇ, and by the sixth day, God created man κατ᾿ εἰκόνα Θεοῦ ἐποίησεν αὐτόν, ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ ἐποίησεν αὐτούς (Gen. 1:27) to “legitimize” the simple fact that the catastrophe that constitutes our fallen humanity is grossly divergent from Him who appeared among us “consubstantial with our nature in every aspect save sin?” “That was the true Light, which 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.” (Jn. 1:9-10)

                      I have not changed a single word in anything I have said since I came here or to your site for a very simple reason: they are not my words. I have argued with you and defended the position of the Holy Scripture, The Holy Fathers, and the Holy Tradition. You will not find “primary binaries”; “sex v gender”; the appropriation & defense of charlatan creeps & the heterodox; and now “plastic anthropology” that has permeated your “fluid” thought since I came here. You simply do not trust in the sufficiency of the Holy Scripture, The Holy Fathers, and the Holy Tradition. Period. I believe I have more than adequately addressed your ridiculous assertion that I “have never been able to explain what it [the phrase, “as it was in the beginning”] means; you (not the Church) simply assert it.”

                    • Fr. Hans Jacobse says

                      Michael, your response contains a multitude of words with plenty of references from this and that authority as well as some Greek thrown in for good measure but the devil, as they say, is in the details. Here’s the rub:

                      This is significant because the manifestations of His humanity – his biological/genetic, psychological, environmental/social, and moral/spiritual dimensions – are essential to our understanding of our humanity reflected in Him, a humanity, as Met. Anthony (Bloom) noted, we no longer recognized.

                      There are two assumptions in your responses that never sit right with me mostly because they are asserted but never defended except in the most abstract ways I have already pointed out (proof-texting and so forth):

                      First, biology and by extension psychology are the authoritative ground by which we understand the human person (the scoldings are illustrative here because you tend to shout down anyone who challenges this assertion).

                      Second, which is a corollary of the first, you tend to essentialize what otherwise has been traditionally understood as a passion in Orthodox anthropology. Specifically you seem to argue that same-sex attraction is intrinsic to human personhood. I say “seem” because whenever this point is broached the scoldings, the proof-texting and the copy and pasting of Greek start all over again and we never get a clear answer. It is true of course that all desire has bio-chemical manifestations. It is not true however, that one must be a biologist or psychologist to speak on same-sex desire, or any other desire for that matter.

                      Most important however is that same-sex desire should never be essentialized; seen as a foundational constituent of human personhood and thus self-identity. Same-sex desire is being essentialized in different quarters of Orthodoxy today (Inga Lenova, Maria McDowell and other activists for homosexualism subscribe to it, even some of the Fordham group believe the fallen world is the world as it was created). Essentializing passions is not Orthodoxy. It leads to a plastic anthropology which will one day, if it continues in Orthodox circles, constitute a new heresy.

                      From my perspective you either don’t comprehend this point or you agree with it. The scoldings, the endless proof-texting, the mocking of those who don’t agree with you seems calculated to avoid this very point that I raise. Maybe the failure is mine. Could you clarify it for us?

                    • Michael Warren says

                      All these quotes to intentionally obfuscate the difference between Image and Likeness, where the Image of GOD is restored by rebirth in CHRIST in Holy Baptism in the Church and the likeness becoming CHRIST-like through our lives in HIM as we live in CHRIST to purify ourselves of sins and the passions, with a primary necessity to remove obstacles to grace freely given, obstacles which include homosexual thoughts, acts, sin, passion, demonic enslavement. For all of your writing and quotes you show no understanding of Orthodoxy anthropology. You redact the Fathers with a verbosity you use to support your ideological, erroneous conclusions. You fail to mention Image and Likeness in adressing the Prototypos or the GOD man and you thoroughly neglect purification, illumination, theosis as the means of perfection the likeness in CHRIST.

                      A liberal, Renovationist fraud engaged in an intentional, ideological deception which is so hubritically vile as to constitute nothing but heresy. You are openly distorting by decontextualization and redaction what the Fathers and Scriptures have taught to contradict them, the Church and advance a foreign, Reformed doctrine of your own ideological contrivance. It is disagreeable in the extreme that you so cynically and heretically call your agenda Orthodox by disfiguring what the Church really teaches. You are a heretic preying on people with crass tactics of bullying, narcisstic, faux elitist invective.

                      To return to discussion of Orthodox anthropology: we are disfigured by the fall in mortality and sin. It is through repentance, rebirth in CHRIST in HIS Church that our Image is restored and by our life in HIM that grace freely acts as we remove sin and falleness from its path. We aren’t born saved in CHRIST. The old man must die for the New Man to live.

                      As our likenesses are transformed in the THEANTHROPOS, we become Icons of HIM reflecting HIS In Dwelling in us. That is what St. John the Damascene really wrote. Thus when we generate Icons of the Saints, we in turn are generating the PROTOTYPOS WHO has transfigured them in theosis in the Uncreated Energies of HIS grace.

                      No, St. John Damascene is not writing that homosexuals are Icons of CHRIST to be venerated because they are born homosexual Images of the GOD man and therefore their sickness, sin is holy and reconciled in CHRIST because “HE made them that way to be holy that way.” Such dualist heresy is an overthrow of Orthodox Christology and wantonly blasphemous, reprobate. This Renovationist, heretical nonsense is totally antithetical to Orthodox anthropology.

                    • M. Stankovich says

                      Fr. Hans,

                      You have made these inane, distracting points here and on your site numerous times. I have answered your “concerns” many times over, and I have no intention of pursuing them yet again. You are well aware that I have absolutely no personal interest in being “right,” and have always insisted that the truth is always more important than me. To that end, I have requested correction as to matters of substance – patristic, scriptural, genetic, and medical science – and I will gladly correct any error.

                      I have never written about the relationship of psychological dimensions of our humanity to the passions because I am not a psychologist; nor have I ever commented on “essentializing” SSA as an identity. For better or for worse, they are simply two issues of many to be addressed on the path of repentance, none of which are insurmountable. Sadly, you waste your time attempting to find how I am “similar” to Lenova & McDowell, rather than appreciating the beauty of the Holy Scripture & the Holy Fathers. Five long years you have criticized & critiqued nearly every word I have written, and to what end I’m not exactly sure.

                    • Fr. Hans Jacobse says

                      The point is not “‘essentializing’ SSA as an identity.” The point is essentializing a passion. The passion could be anything, not just same-sex attraction. Once the passions are seen as essential to being, as a defining constituent of human personhood, then the passions become the ground of self-identity and anthropology is plasticized (malleable). You make man what you will; you are what you feel.

                      Further, the proper understanding of Orthodox anthropology is not a “distracting point.” Rather, it’s the one point you must clarify. Lenova, McDowell and their fellow travelers (relevant only because they identify as Orthodox) understand the received tradition but militate against it. Your writing is muddled because you never deal with this point with any clarity.

                      Maybe you don’t understand it.

                    • Michael Warren says

                      From reading what you have presented Fr. Hans, you have been misrepresenting the Fathers for five years and deceiving people. I explain your fraud above.

                    • Michael Warren says

                      Notice the witness of the Early Church on SSA. It definitely does not reconcile with Stankovich’s fraud.

                      St. John Chrysostom

                      “[The pagans] were addicted to the love of boys, and one of their wise men made a law that pederasty . . . should not be allowed to slaves, as if it was an honorable thing; and they had houses for this purpose, in which it was openly practiced. And if all that was done among them was related, it would be seen that they openly outraged nature, and there was none to restrain them. . . . As for their passion for boys, whom they called their paedica, it is not fit to be named” (Homilies on Titus 5 [A.D. 390]).

                      “[Certain men in church] come in gazing about at the beauty of women; others curious about the blooming youth of boys. After this, do you not marvel that [lightning] bolts are not launched [from heaven], and all these things are not plucked up from their foundations? For worthy both of thunderbolts and hell are the things that are done; but God, who is long-suffering, and of great mercy, forbears awhile his wrath, calling you to repentance and amendment” (Homilies on Matthew 3:3 [A.D. 391]).

                      “All of these affections [in Rom. 1:26–27] . . . were vile, but chiefly the mad lust after males; for the soul is more the sufferer in sins, and more dishonored than the body in diseases” (Homilies on Romans 4 [A.D. 391]).

                      “[The men] have done an insult to nature itself. And a yet more disgraceful thing than these is it, when even the women seek after these intercourses, who ought to have more shame than men” (ibid.).

                      “And sundry other books of the philosophers one may see full of this disease. But we do not therefore say that the thing was made lawful, but that they who received this law were pitiable, and objects for many tears. For these are treated in the same way as women that play the whore. Or rather their plight is more miserable. For in the case of the one the intercourse, even if lawless, is yet according to nature; but this is contrary both to law and nature. For even if there were no hell, and no punishment had been threatened, this would be worse than any punishment” (ibid.).

                      Blessed Augustine

                      “[T]hose shameful acts against nature, such as were committed in Sodom, ought everywhere and always to be detested and punished. If all nations were to do such things, they would be held guilty of the same crime by the law of God, which has not made men so that they should use one another in this way” (Confessions 3:8:15 [A.D. 400]).

                      The Apostolic Constitutions

                      “[Christians] abhor all unlawful mixtures, and that which is practiced by some contrary to nature, as wicked and impious” (Apostolic Constitutions 6:11 [A.D. 400]).

                    • M. Stankovich says

                      Fr. Hans,

                      Let me be clear here: I alone will determine what I must clarify, and the fish are not biting. I was naive enough to be led on those “monkey-chased-the-weasel” clarification treks by you. “Maybe you don’t understand it.” My sides.

                      Your “game bag” has the same old tactics of claiming “scolding,” “finger-wagging,” “proof-texting is no argument,” “you seem to be saying,” “your writing is murky,” blah, blah, blah. Everything but the Holy Scripture, Holy Fathers, and the Holy Tradition. I’m afraid you will be dancing alone.

                    • Fr. Hans Jacobse says

                      No, you forfeited the right to determine what must be clarified when you proof-texted the Fathers within an anthropological framework you refused to clarify. The Fathers don’t belong to you. They are not to be used in any context without the willingness to examination or explain the assumptions that determine the context in which they are used. Since you are unwilling to discuss your assumptions so your claim that only you are allowed to determine what must be clarified is drained of any authority.

                      The tradition is clear: same-sex attraction is a passion. The anthropological shift is also clear: passions are to be essentialized leading to a plasticized anthropology. It is evident that some quarters of Orthodoxy promote the new anthropology: Lenova, McDowell, Arida, and others. One does not need to prove the received tradition to its detractors. One only needs to point out where they are in error and, if necessary, explain why they are.

                      It should not be necessary to point out to you why the new anthropology is in error. It’s curious though when asked to clarify where you stand on the new anthropology you go mute.

                    • Michael Warren says

                      Bless Father.

                      I believe you are right in your appraisal of his anthropology. I simply would suggest that he was intentionally redacting texts and trying to bully people into accepting his views on homosexuality and then having the heretical audacity to posit the notion that homosexuals being made in the Image and Likeness of GOD possess GOD’s Blessing to be homosexuals and that their lifestyle can be perceived as moral and even lead to holiness, “because GOD made them that way to sinfully live that way” in perversion, GOD in this liberal Renovationist’s mind the Creator, Cause and Deifier of their sick, demonic passion. The blasphemy here is apparent to his (and to those of his gay crusade fellow travelers’) liberal, Renovationist position. This is his five year long Renovationist, liberal contention. He has intentionally clouded the discussion in redactions and verbal coercion in order to effect gay rights with an Orthodox imprimatur. However, upon closer examination of the literature, he has been misquoting and intentionally excluding Orthodox anthropology to effectuate a blasphemous fraud. Unfortunately, too many of the Crestwood crowd perpetrate this methodology to advance liberalism and Renovationism in the Orthodox Church, their “sorting of wheat from chaff” allowing them to all too eagerly put forward their own dead germ in the place of Patristic wheat. Metapatristics 101. This man is a deceiver and an unashamed teacher of error.

                  • M. Stankovich says

                    Fr. Hans,

                    Please. Do not play me. Let anyone go to your site and see my “clarifications” as voluminous, succinct, and as precise as when I began formulating them. I choose my words carefully, poignantly, and thoughtfully lest there be confusion. What you disparagingly refer to as “proof texts,” I provide as the living, breathing “patristic” mind that guides us, and the Greek texts that give insight into the poetic thought process and beauty of the very words selected to convey a message. Words have power, no? I have responded to every question posed to me repeatedly, and have never diverted or changed. But, most importantly – and I repeat myself – these are not my words! They are from the Holy Scripture, The Holy Fathers, and the Holy Tradition. Plasticity is “malleability?” Plasticity has any relevance to Orthodox anthropology whatsoever? Says who? Says you. You are the greatest authority in your own “fluid” theology, and from my vantage, your house is built on sand.

                    I will conclude by saying to you that, in consideration of the ridiculous things you have said to me over the course of five years of “discourse,” your claim that it is “curious” that I am mute over the “new anthropology” is breathtakingly dumb. I would point anyone to a dialog between us, brought about by your claim of “martyrdom” on this site, in which you manage to dog Frs. Schmemann & Florovsky as “dated,” and label Priest Robert Arida as a “new Gnostic” as well. If you are so forgetful of what you have said, I again renew my offer for referral to a neurologist, but no one can say I am not clear about my opinion of heresy and its purported playas. I will acknowledge your cheap insult in the spirit you intended it, but mark my word: Priest Robert Arida is a brilliant man, yet he is not calculating, malevolent, nor malignant. Indeed, you are, as I have pointed out before, πολυλογίας – a man of (too) many words – in the simplicity of Hamlet, “Words, words, words,” but unfortunately the wrong words. You may stand down.

                    • Michael Warren says

                      I have illustrated how you intentionally MISQUOTE Fr. Florovsky and redact the Holy Fathers to lie and assert things they do not say. Your “voluminous” verbosity is nothing but a smokescreen for a heretical and blasphemous anthropology which contends GOD made gays in HIS Image and Likeness therefore SSA and homosexual lifestyle are normal to the human condition and can even lead to holiness. Your Crestwood, metapatristic, plastic anthropology mistakes the human condition for a demonic passion.That is a blasphemous and demonic lie! You are a fraud.

                      In other quotes here, you tried to contend that Fr. Florovsky in THE LOST SCRIPTURAL MIND argues that the phronema changes with time and place and is expressed by anyone reading Scripture and redacting the Fathers as they will: THAT IS THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT FR. FLOROVSKY WROTE.

                      Thus, for five years your volume of quotes have been aimed at either 1). Intentionally deceiving people to promote your heretical, liberal, Renovationist agenda OR 2). Ignorantly doing so to fit your liberal, Renovationist ideology into Orthodoxy. Either way, the volume of your quotes does not redeem their wrong interpretation and shows you to teach error. Crestwood Metapatristics 101: fake it until you make it.

                      From this point forward, we have deconstructed the fraud of yourself and your gay crusading fellow travelers so that when “voluminous,” fraudulent haze is conjured to intentionally teach your heresy, we can say emphatically, “No, this is not what your sources teach and your contention (what you struggle to mask in volume and misquotes) is not supported by the authorities you quote.” Obfuscation is not an argument: especially if it has gone on for five years.

                      One last thing, you are not Orthodox, neither in formation, nor in phronema, nor in temperament. There is a place which accomodates your worldview and theological orientation, even celebrates it with vestments, bells and smells and Greek dancing: the ECUSA. Please retire there and lead others to retire with you so that you can be an unmolested idol, your religion can flourish, and your convalescent, ideological fellow travelers can find safehaven with you to engage in all the liberal, post High Church Reformation you could ever desire. The Episcopal Church of St. Gregory of Nyssa in your area caters to just that liberal, Renovationist dream you envision in the altar you have made of your mirror. They wouldn’t mind bishops and namedropping Crestwood grads to join their flock. This is where Eastern Rite liberal Protestants only belong.

                    • Michael,
                      This is a bit harsh, especially in the season of Lent. If you have followed closely, you would notice that M. Stankovich’s career as a social worker and researcher has brought him close – maybe too close – to those who constantly fall into sin. Like Christ, he goes to those who are forgotten and lost in the hope he can help in the process of redemption. My limited exposure helping at a homeless shelter brings out mercy on those you would otherwise only judge. When you constantly try to help the helpless perhaps over time you make allowances for weakness. I am not sure that means you can justify Sin and I am not sure I ever read in his posts that he ever did so. It does mean you can learn to have mercy on those who never otherwise receive it in this life.

                      Have a blessed Lent.

                    • M. Stankovich says

                      Now, it is not seldom suggested that, probably, “the Age of the Fathers” has ended much earlier than St. John of Damascus. Very often one does not proceed further than the Age of Justinian, or even already the Council of Chalcedon… Indeed, the Fathers of the Fourth century are much more impressive, and their unique greatness cannot be denied. yet, the Church remained fully alive also after Nicea and Chalcedon. The current overemphasis on the “first five centuries” dangerously distorts theological vision, and prevents the right understanding of the Chalcedonian dogma itself. The decree of the Sixth Ecumenical Council is often regarded as a kind of an “appendix” to Chalcedon, interesting only for theological specialists, and the great figure of St. Maximus the Confessor is almost completely ignored… We often forget that the famous formula of the Consensus quinquesaecularis [agreement of five centuries], that is, actually, up to Chalcedon, was a Protestant formula, and reflected a peculiar Protestant “theology of history.” It was a restrictive formula, as much as it seemed to be too inclusive to those who wanted to be secluded in the Apostolic Age. The point is, however, that the current Eastern formula of “the Seven Ecumenical Councils” is hardly much better, if it tends, as it usually does, to restrict or to limit the Church’s spiritual authority to the first eight centuries, as if “the Golden Age” of Christianity has already passed… Our theological thinking has been dangerously affected by the pattern of decay, adopted for the interpretation of Christian history in the West since the Reformation. The fullness of the Church was then interpreted in a static manner, and the attitude to Antiquity has been accordingly distorted and misconstrued. After all, it does not make much difference, whether we restrict the normative authority of the Church to one century, or to five, or to eight. There should be no restriction at all. Consequently, there is no room for any “theology of repetition.” The Church is still fully authoritative as she has been in the ages past, since the Spirit of Truth quickens her now no less effectively as in the ancient times.

                      From “St. Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers,” Ch. 7 in Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View, Vol. 1 of the Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, Nordland Publishing Company, Belmont, MA, © 1972, pp.110-112.

                      You have never read the writings of Fr. Florovsky, Mr. Warren, save one article you continually “paraphrase.” You were entertaining in the beginning, as I considered if you were truly disturbed or simply darkly calculating & malignant; whether you are actually Russian, Orthodox, & absconded with the name of “Michael Warren,” the eccentric Oakland County, MI Circuit Court Judge, or “R. Michael Warren,” the retired businessman & politician who chills across the river in Windsor, Ontario. In the end, honestly, it’s none of my business. Nevertheless, there are two things I would point out to you. Orthodox Christians do not speak of one another or to one another as you speak to people on this forum, and as I have read you speak on other forums as well. You have been asked to “tone it down,” turn off the CAPS – and on another forum you even promised – but you are constitutionally unable to keep your word. You need to address this problem because it is serious. Secondly, you are disingenuous in complaining that Valdyka Tikhon is “stalking” you, when every time I make a comment, more often than not, it is immediately followed by a comment directed at me by you, regardless of the topic. You are stalking me & acting like a creep. You are incapable of intimidating me, so get out of my face. That’s all.

                • Michael Warren says

                  Bless Father.

                  According to this fellow, Solzhenitsyn and the Holy New Martyrs were frauds for not offering non resistance to evil like good Tolstoyans. He believes that a secular liberal state should be left alone by Orthodox Christians to arbitrate what life is worthy and what is not. He also contends that no one has a right to life, that as a private matter the state cannot intrude to prevent the murder of unborn children and that it is wrong for Orthodox Christians to speak out on the matter. That much wanton double speak comes from carrying the corpse of Hillary Clinton on his back instead of carrying the Cross of CHRIST.

                  Here I am a labelled Christian Bolshevik (although that is just a lazy, unread understanding of my position), Leftist, making common cause with churchmen of the Center-Right. How can this be? Because human rights are universal, and any ideology which denies the right to life is fundamentally morally derelict (no matter what sophistries and platitudes it nourishes its accomodation of murder with) inhuman and evil.

                  Thou shalt not kill.

                  Part of the Mosaic Law, the Basis of the Law of Christian states, which transformed cultures from pagan debauchery into Christian polities. Yet our liberal, Renovationist friend only seeks to turn the clock back to neo pagan immorality. The platform of the DNC requires it.

                  • Michael Warren says

                    I find it all so very fascinating that these escapists argue there is no right to life, that Orthodox participation in the state is somehow unChristian while they run cover for a state promulgating the right to murder and then branding non interference to such a “right” proper Orthodox Christian behavior.

                    The likes of Stankovich et al have just canonized Adolph Hitler inasmuch as by their standard he was a didactic instrument, justified, his evil being none of their business, their non resistance making them holy and acting to redeem his state and its policies. Monstrous, liberal ideological pornography.

                    Nothing is as hateful as a liberal whose standard of morality is some zoological confusion between subhuman and reptilian behavior.

                    • M. Stankovich says

                      Nothing pleases me more, Abouna Hans, than to witness the ritualistic symbiosis of the albatross and his sponsor. You could predict, however, that I would be skeptical of the sincerity of “Bless Father” amidst a narcissistic rant – particularly one that invokes the name of Adolph Hitler – but, hey, that’s me. “Monstrous, liberal ideological pornography.” Dude, we’re gettin’ the band back together! [For the record, Mr. Warren, you not having an academic background and all, it is et al., the abbreviation for the Latin et alii (masc.), et aliæ (fem.) or et alia (neut.), meaning, “and others.” You kids these days…]

                    • Michael Warren says

                      In other words, you concede yet again.

  22. Michael Bauman says

    M. Stankovich, you are correct in your assessment IMO. However it raises in my mind whether any traditional church can exist in a “rights” structure-especially as such “rights” are construed in our time.

    The fact is there is no “right to life” just as there is no “right to privacy”. Each of them is made up and part of the rebellion against a traditional worldview. Always in such contest of “rights” the rulers will have to decide which “right” to make preeminent, i.e, which right it will use force to uphold.

    The more we protest and legislate based on “rights” without a national consensus to found said “rights” upon, the more tyrannical our state becomes.

    The revolutionary polemics of the Declaration of Independence that each individual person has the “right” to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness has been subsumed into the Constitution to such an extent that Hillary of Clinton sees no difference between the Declaration and the Constitution despite the fact that there are no such guarantees in the actual Constitution. Beyond that it has become the duty of the government to enforce such “rights” no matter what the cost and no one has any longer the “right” to object to such tyranny. BTW, Donald von Trump has essentially the same view, just a slight difference as to which “rights” should be enforced against whom.

    • Michael Warren says

      In other words, you don’t believe in the legitimacy of the law.

      Thou shalt not kill.

      That means there is a fundamental right to life.

      This fellow’s position is nothing but an attempt to justify liberal politics. Yours being an attempt to justify some sort of nihlism divorced from reality.

  23. Michael Bauman says

    Mr. Warren you have no idea what I believe and I expect I have a greater understanding of nihilism than you do. The “rights” mentality of the modern world is in fact nihilism at work. It provides neither order nor justice — simply endless conflict leading to tyranny and the rise of the Ubermensch. It is part of the destruction of the “Thou Shalt” that Nietzsche says in essential in the triumph of the will.

    Your attitude is one of a bully so full of his own righteousness that he can admit no truth. You need to stop.

    Nevertheless for the sake of clarity: Life is a gift given by God, only God has the authority to take it away by “taking away our breath”. That is why His canon is set against self-slaughter and all sorts of homicide. Paradoxically it is those who so vehemently demand a “right” to life who seem to be quite willing to kill those who violate that “right”.

    That does not convey a man-made legal “right” in the modern sense. In fact, it is just the opposite.

    We are called by God to dress and keep His creation, We are also called to protect and defend life and bring it to fruition in the full knowledge that “of our own selves we do nothing”. We are to give back everything including our lives to Him who gives it us: “Thine own of thine own we offer unto Thee….”

    The fullness of the Law that Jesus Christ brought through His passion is that the grace of God has rent the veil of the temple and the gates of paradise are opened to all who repent. Even me.

    The modern concept of “rights” is a conscious attempt to abrogate the authority of God and to destroy any sense of the Eucharistic life we are meant to live leaving us bereft of all hope. It has no connection to the Law.

    It is the abortionist who demands the “right” of the woman to choose; the homosexualist that demands the “right” of marriage; the lovers of euthanasia that demand a “right” to die, etc, etc, etc. The corollary to these “rights” is that Christians in particular are not allowed to act on the reality of God’s order expressing the life of God in thought, word and deed. We are to be banished, isolated, purged and killed.

    Demanding “rights” is the revolutionary concept upon which the enemy of Christ (according to you), the United States, is built. It is our main poisonous export, IMO.

    It is the same principal upon which Islamists demand the “right” to Sharia law courts in non-Muslim countries.

    It is the prodigal who demands what is “rightfully” his. Only when he realizes that he would be better off as a servant, accepting whatever is given to him by his father does he return.

    May God grant you mercy and peace and a long life of repentance full of His presence.

    • M. Stankovich says

      That would be checkmate, Michael Bauman. Well said.

      I, a wretched man, hide my face in shame:
      I have squandered the riches my Father gave to me;
      I went to live with senseless beasts;
      I sought their food and hungered, for I had not enough to eat.
      I will arise, I will return to my compassionate Father;
      He will accept my tears, as I kneel before Him, crying:
      “In Your tender love for all men, receive me as one of Your servants and save me!”

      From the Aposticha of the Vespers of the Sunday of the Prodigal Son

      • Michael Warren says

        You seem to live in a world neither St. Paul nor St. Leontios of Byzantium nor Blessed Augustine knew, which is some idealized fiction.

        Thou shalt not kill was civil as well spiritual law for the Children of Israel, which also was part of the Code of Justinian and Roman civil law after the Christianization of the Empire. It established a right to life in a Christian state and punished murderers. It was also a part of English Common Law, all existing in Christian states centuries before Bakunin and his revolutionary catechism and the foundation of nihilism, which exists precisely to reject the old order and overturn it and its legal structure and morality.

        You live in a land where you have left the world behind for a theocratic utopia, something Fr. Schmemann, for instance, criticized, but your liberal, Renovationist friend here now champions to engage in personal attacks and redacted propaganda to worship at the altar of his own mirror.

        Thou shalt not kill secures a right to life, and no amount of ersatz pietism undoes that fact. St. Paul teaches us to respect the authority of the state, for its authority is given by GOD. You are engaging in a ridiculous fit of nihilism running away from its identity. You seemingly espouse Christian anarchism. Anarchism establishes itself by rejecting the superstructure of the existing order to destroy it and free humanity of its bondage: nihilism is the path anarchists pursue to bring this liberation about.

  24. Michael Bauman says

    That in God’s order life should not be taken from us without cause does not imply any right.

    The state, after all, wields the sword and can take life. In fact taking life is what most states are good at.

    Don’t blame me because you education and mine did not encompass the same things.

    You obviously do not understand the context of what I say. Your lack of comprehension does not make what I say wrong.

    Blessed Lent

    • Michael Warren says

      Thou shalt not kill. I am aptly stated my case above.

      Let me add this to broaden your education and relieve it of its satisfaction:

      “Is every ruler elected by GOD to the throne he occupies? Is every emperor, king, and prince chosen by rule? If so, is every law and decree promulgated by a ruler to be regarded as good, and thus to be obeyed without question? The answer to all these questions is, no. GOD has ordained every society should have rulers, whose task it is to maintain order, so that people may live in peace. GOD allows rulers to employ soldiers, whose task it is to capture and imprison those who violate the social order. Thus GOD will bless and guide any ruler and any soldier who acts according to these principles. But many rulers abuse their authority…by unjustly punishing those who dare to speak out against their evil…. Such rulers have not been elected by GOD, but rather have usurped the position which a righteous ruler should occupy. And if their laws are wrong, we should not obey them. The supreme authority in all matters is not the law of the land, but the law of GOD; and if one conflicts with the other, we must obey GOD’s law.”
      —St. John Chrysostom

      ON LIVING SIMPLY, Ligouri, 1996, (41).

    • Michael Warren says

      Since Christian states, Orthodox Christian states, have in the past, and even today, recognize the Right to Life, your contention does not hold merit.