As I mentioned earlier this week, my family and I spent a week in Las Vegas, attending a fraternal convention. I am proud to say that I only lost $45.00 playing roulette. Mostly, I sat by the pool, smoked my pipe, admired the Good Lord’s creation as exemplified by the pulchritudinous nature of those of the weaker vessel, and tried to manage Monomakhos via my smart phone. (I’m afraid I accidentally may have deleted some postings, please forgive me if I did so as my fingers are rather clumsy and the letters are so tiny.)
On our last night there, I took the wife and kids to see Love, performed by Cirque de Soleil. Ordinarily I don’t go in for Cirque-type-ballets but this was a Beatles tribute so I bit the bullet and bought four tickets. To say it was fantastic would be an understatement. I can’t tell you how wonderful it was. Even my wife, who’s no great Beatles fan was astounded by the entire experience. It propelled you into another universe, one dominated by Beatlemania and even if you weren’t alive to experience it the first time around, you were immersed in it. The music, the art, the lingo, the very vibe makes a person acutely aware of how significant The Beatles were to modern civilization.
Our tickets were for Friday night and I was debating whether to go as I didn’t want to miss the opening ceremonies of the Olympic games. I’d heard that Sir Paul McCartney was going to close the show. About 3:00, I looked at The Drudge Report on my smartphone and saw that Daniel Craig and Queen Elizabeth II had opened the games by parachuting into the stadium. (I guess we were nine hours behind London.)
I thought “wow! I bet that was something!” As our show was at 9:30, I thought we could catch both.
Well, needless to say, it was impossible to do both. Dinner beckoned and we needed to catch a cab to The Mirage. The decision was easy to make given what little we actually saw. To be terse, I’m glad we went to see Love. The parachute jump that opened the Games was a little hokey but full of Bond nostalgia. When I saw Her Majesty being escorted down the halls of Buckingham Palace by James Bond (Daniel Craig) and two of her beloved corgis I couldn’t help but think that “there would always be an England.”
Unfortunately, everything that followed led me to believe that the England of our cherished memories was no more. It was pure Leftist claptrap. It was a slap in the face of the body politic by the Progressive elites, essentially telling the Little People who actually made Great Britain great, that there was more of where this crap came from, so just sit down and shut up (thank you very much). Sean Grab, a British columnist called it a “giant Potemkin village erected by the ruling class.” Unfortunately, that would be an insult to Potemkin villages; all dear old Gregory Potemkin tried to do was spruce up the place when Empress Catherine came calling. The old military parades of the USSR were far more uplifting than what Danny Boyle inflicted on the four billion people who saw this grotesque spectacle.
The full 2,000 year panoply of British history was reduced to evil industrialists giving way to hundreds of screeching orphans in nationalized hospital beds. The giant Olympic flag was held aloft by no Englishmen at all but by a bevy of multi-culti eminences and wannabes who had no business being there. Even McCartney’s performance was uneven. To say it was the high point of the evening would be admitting that the bar was extremely low. It’s hard to botch “Hey Jude” and anyway, it’s so iconic that it’s better when sung a capella, especially if the choir is 80,000 strong.
I guess my point is that the debasement of culture is pretty much complete. The fact that millions of dollars were spent on drivel even more inelegant than the typical Off-Broadway fare and forcing the Sovereign and the Archbishop of Canterbury to sit there and take it, leads me to believe that the nihilistic enterprise is pretty much complete. I was hoping that somehow Great Britain would be spared such putrefaction but –guileless naif that I am–I was wrong.
Boy, am I glad that we went to see Love after all.
Yeah, it was a real Marxist fantasy:
My wife and I saw “Love” a couple of years ago and we thought it was a great show. We also enjoyed the fact that a fair number of the acrobats in the cast appeared to be ex-Soviet and likely Orthodox. I’m told the handful of Orthodox churches in the Las Vegas area attract a proportion of these type of entertainers and their families.
Here’s a better one.
Ode to the Socialist Motherland:
Multi-culturalism brings Orthodoxy to America along with horrible things like the anti-Christ Beatles who sang quite anti-Christian songs.
The Beatles were very problemmatic from a Christian standpoint, as was Franz Liszt, Mozart, etc. “Multi-culturalism” may indeed have “brought” Orthodoxy to America but unfortuantely, it has also kept it in a ghetto as well. I’m not sure that’s been a boon, and if I were a bishop on the ACOB, I certainly don’t want to stand before the Lord and tell him “I knew you were a greedy master so I buried the one talent you gave me, here it is Master.”
I like Josef Conrad’s writing.
Your Grace, I love Josef Conrad. Seems as if we have something in common.
Why is the Beatles music problematic from a Christianviewpoint?people on this blog are incredibly narrow minded and opinionated.
It and the life style of the creators of the music glorified licentiousness of all kinds, atheism, drug use, pagan religions and nihilism in general. Last I check, all of those are problematic from a Christian viewpoint.
Arrogance,quasi-intellectualism,pompous opinionated babbling.Are these Christian Michael?
As you know Roboacolyte, James sets forth the standard for which we all must strive. I know of no one who meets this standard except perhaps Met. Zacharias of St. John’s monastary in England although I am sure he would be the first to deny that he does meet it.
Anyone who posts on a blog, uses a cell phone or any other modern means of communication violates St. James’ standard repeatedly and easily. That being said, I don’t understand how your posting of unspecified epithets helps anyone else rise to the level we are called to.
To me your words do not rise much above a non-sequitur. If you have specific reasons why a particular person’s post is inadequate, would it not be better to question them and find out more than to condemn them with generalized epithets that really don’t mean much at all?
There are folks who post here who are quite well educated and learned in the faith, who demonstrate an admirable humility and evidently work quite hard at crafting their posts. Others who do not or are uneven in the quality of their posts.
Emotions are high about the matters discussed here, it is not surprising that our tongue’s are too often unbridled, but that is not the whole story. If you are disapointed in the level of discourse, work harder to make it better rather than issuing blanket condemnations. Then we can all get better.
Thanks for saying it, Nicholas.
I don’t like the Beatles’ music either.
Soon after becoming Orthodox, I found I could hardly listen to modern popular music of any stripe, but especially of that variety that involves confused thinkers warbling their bad ideas against a backdrop of amped-up guitar. I took my entire popular music collection down to the local college record store, dumped it off and have never regretted it–there were a few Beatles records in the mix.
Sounds like a bible thumpin fundamentalist to me.
Please clarify what you mean by “Bible thumping” and “fundamentalist”. Generally speaking, resort to caricature as argument merely demonstrates that you have neither a grasp of what is being said nor the ability to refute.
Ahh you know what I mean.Mike.
I don’t. Sounds like you are calling names, putting yourself above Catherine, judging and in need of looking up words to see what they actually mean.
I’m here to learn.Since you seem to be ABOVE me,what words are you talking about that I should look up?Bible,Thumping,or Beatles?
fundamentalist
“a person who believes that the basement is the only floor.”
Since there is only one floor (all though many rooms) in the universe because God is all in all even in hell, your defintion seems meaningless to me particularly in reference to the Beatles.
There are much better definitions of ‘fundamentalist’ that actually might be germaine in some conversations. However, I’d suggest that you be careful that you don’t fall under your own definition of fundamentalist in believing that there is only the basement when it comes to moral, spiritual and artistic discernment.
I would say that by your definition all egalitarianism is ‘fundamentalist’. Would you agree.
Then please clarify what you mean by ‘bible thumping’ and ‘fundamentalist’ and how such meaning contributes anything positive to the discourse. I ask because there are actually rational and spiritual reasons for putting aside such music.
I would say that the rational reason for ‘putting aside such music’ would be the fact that not all cerebral cortexes are the same diameter.For example if one believes in Orthodox theology,as you seem to believe,than one considers himself rational and even spiritual.The truth of the matter is really
(comparatively speaking of course)that one can only be compared to those of the same ilk.In other words,opines turn in their own mud,water seeks its own level and lesser minded thinkers cavort with the same.Would you agree?
Roboacolyte, no I would not agree. Music effects the soul and goes deeply into us whether we want it to or not carrying its message by both the words, the rythmns, the various pitches and harmonies.
Orthodox music is designed to uplift us and open us more fully to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ so that we may progress on our goal of deeper communion with Him.
Modern music is designed to appeal to and manipulate or emotions and, often,appeal to the basest of our passions, particularly sexual lust.
While not everyone listening to such music will be negtively effected, others may be and like the alcoholic who needs to avoid alcohol, it is to their spiritual benefit to avoid the music. That is a perfectly rational decison.
The life of the Church is ascetic in nature which means that we are continually asked to discipline our appetites in various ways and at various times. However, there is a wide latitude granted each person as to the specifics of that ascetism. Some are able to take on more than others.
There is no lockstep, mindless following of rules in the authentic Christian life in the Church. We are in an interrelationship with our God in the person of Jesus Christ and each person has different needs.
In general we are called to be “not of this world” but we each find our own balance within that general call. Yes, we are in it together and support each other and tend to go in generally the same direction on many things, but as you may have noticed, we are certainly not of one mind about everything.
In fact, we Orthodox tend to be a bit rambunctious in the use of the freedom of thought and action that our Lord allows us in His Body, the Church. By His grace it all works together for good in those who love Him. We care about how our Church is ordered and about the depth of our own separation from God. We care about each other (though it often does not appear so, Lord have mercy). It is an integral part of our humanity to bring order to our surroundings and we often struggle for an answer in the midst of a world that is heavily influenced by disorder and evil.
That is our goal, to learn to love and forgive and worship Him. Whether you realize it or not, that is the intent behind a great many of the posts on this blog whether we agree with each other or not.
Thankyou.Why am I considered a pupil to you?I’m also Orthodox and your equal.When first approaching this blog the atmosphere seems akin to a tempest in a teapot.It appears that I’ve ruffled your feathers a bit by being a trifle rude.You rose above your previous sanctimonious attitude by writing this inspiring post.If you want to attract more Orthodox believers to discuss these important issues I would suggest being less condescending.Robo.
Forgive me Roboacolyte, during the course of our conversation my intention has never been anything other than seeking to understand what you meant and to explain as best as I might what I understand.
If we are not all pupils to one another, then learning and growth tends to stop.
Sounds like The Holy Order Of Mans.Is your father Stephen Bauman?
No. Stephen Bauman is not my father. I’m curious though, why do you ask? Is it relevant to our conversation?
I much prefer St. Basil the Great’s words as to the purpose of music in the Church, words with which Michael Bauman is, of course, familiar!
Well..the Beatles, eh? Some of their music, Paul McCartney’s, for example, has been re-arrranged for symphony orchestra concerts. “Yesterday” is, for example, hardly licentious or libidinous, etc. I believe that George Harrison, too, composed some pretty good stuff from time to time…Apple Scruffs springs to mind.
But I’ve never been their FAN. I’ve preferred rhythm and blues, especially that of Joe Turner. I’ve never heard a deeper penetration into the world of the truly poor than one of his songs which speaks of having in his wallet only one bill: a torn, wrinkled photo of his mother, and living on a diet of “wind puddin’.
I can understand throwing away records that an old folks’ home might have enjoyed having, but I’d personally rather see TV sets being trashed. I still remember, back in my Wayne State Univ. days how two friends of mine, husband and wife and completing, both of them, Masters in Social Work, invited a bunch of us over to their house for a party. The highlight of the party was their taking their Emerson TV and rolling it, crashing, down the basement stairs. We all cheered and imbibed some more suds. Come to think of it, the Beatles were rather TAME as those groups go, compared to the Stones, Black Sabbath, etc., etc. and often disparaged for their lack of daring, especially in sexual matters!
Cool post.
There are always exceptions to the general as you well know your Grace. Music is quite powerful and has has the capability of drawing beauty out of smelling dung heaps, however, if people don’t like the music or find that the majority of the corpus is not uplifting it is far better to not listen wouldn’t you say?
George, thanks for the post. Note, though, that the name of His Royal Highness the Prince Consort is Philip, not Phillip. Misspelt with two Ls, the meaning of the name changes from Lover of Horses (Phil-ipos) to something like lover of fat (Phil-lipos).
Thanks for the Philippic!
Thanks for the laugh, your Grace. Really enjoyable.
As in:
A Simple Desultory Philippic (or How I Was Robert McNamara’d Into Submission),
your Grace?
If you like.
It was a “spectacle” of the most modern kind, the antecedent to Roman bread and circus made especially for thoroughly modern masses of millies and miltons. See the role of spectacle in modernism in “Exploring the Modern” and “Transgressing the Modern” by John Jervis, which has nothing to do with “left” or “right”, but only with the type of propaganda appropriate for the times by which ruling elites maintain control. It matters not to them whether they use monarchal “rightist” claptrap of yesteryear or “leftist” claptrap of modernity as long as snookering of the masses to their selfish ends is achieved. Modernism is anti-cultural. It reduces real cultures to quaint multicultural museum appendages of modernity to be manipulated to elitist ends. Real culture to a large degree is a function of connection to the land, to Creation, Creation being the medium of Divine provenance for humanity, that shapes human culture – language, clothing, shelter, food, etc. all of which are taken from the land. Modernism with it’s machine facilitated mammon worship has divorced humanity from such relationship to Creation, distorted relationship between human and human, and distorted human relationship to God. Modernism destroys diversity of real culture in the name of global uniformity, because, well it’s just easier for producers to amass their fortunes when “one size fits all” consumers. So it’s naive to expect anything more than what was delivered. And anything less would merely be nostalgia and Oz wizardry. England began to become a modern mirage with Charlemagne, the Norman invasion, and the Great Schism, all of which are the basis in which modern western “civilization” is rooted, the same civilization we are awash in day to day. Each day that passes is one day closer to Apocalypse and Parousia. Those who read Holy Writ with comprehension, understand that and have no room for nostalgia for the past, only great expectation for the glorious second coming of the Lord Ioesus Christos.
http://spring.dstall.com/living/economy/consumerism/
http://spring.dstall.com/living/economy/militarism/
Wow, DStall, you really unloaded! I hope you feel better.
You forgot to tell us how YOU define “modernism.” One might feel your rant was against the Modern, rather than Modernism.
Leslie White of the University of Michigan, modernistic author of “The Science of Culture” a kind of now antiquated primer in cultural determinism/evolution was never ever “anti-cultural.” You should, after telling us how you define “modernism”, also let us know how you define “culture.” Great academic wars have been waged over just that!
And this peculiar idea: ‘Creation being the medium of Divine provenance (sic) for humanity, that shaped culture…” etc. My, oh, my! Someone needs a good editor badly! I have to admit I got a secret enjoyment out of the idea of us being “awash” in modern western “civilization” (your quotes). Awash!!!!!
Oh, are the days not WAY too short??!!!!
Culture! Or should I say, “Cul-chuh!!” One of the quaintest epithets of the now vanished Soviet Russian world was the pejorative epithet: ‘nekulturny”, “not cultured.” I think that may be the watchword of D.Stall’s complaints.
D. Stall’s tirade has all the appeal of a car horn blaring non-stop outside your bedroom window.
It has that pedestrian screech, that relentless, driving, in your face energy much like the feminists had in the early days of their revolution.
WHAT DO YOU WANT? FREEDOM! WHEN DO YOU WANT IT? NOW!
Amin Nicholas, you took the words right out of my mouth. “My Sweet Lord” is probably some of the most awful multi-cultural antichrist garbage ever to come out of the UK. To think how many souls were lead astray by the Beatles’ endorsement of the Hare Krishna cult. So sad.
Well, I’m convinced and I don’t even understand Chinese. The very cool choreography and armbands where the clincher for me. When in doubt, look at the armbands.
I thought it was quite an enjoyable ceremony which I would rate a 7 or 8 – some elements didn’t quite gel with me (the extended party – though the music was good). I really liked the NHS element – I do think it is one of the best things in the UK and I think Brits are very lucky to have it. I was impressed by the transformation from agrarian to industrial society and who can beat Ken Branagh reciting Shakespeare.
In respect of the whole multicultural label, well the truth is the UK is a massive hotch-pot of different nationalities, beliefs and cultures – I came here 22 years ago just after the fall of Communism and it has changed a lot…some good and some bad but I like the fact that I can walk down one road and come across a Caribean community then cross the road and come across a Nepalense one.
Today, freedom of religion dies in the USA
What is truly appealing about this article is how it ends. Really? A Mormon president is a good thing? He’s just as bad as Obama, if not worse because his crazy theology seems to be mixed with his foreign policy. Wake up! Inever thought I would see the day that American Christians would compromise themselves into irrelevance.
A Mormon president buys time—nothing more. It’s imperative to stop Obama from further destroying the country with the littkle power we have left to us. One more term, and we won’t have the ability to affect the outcome. This will be our last free election, if 2008 wasn’t already—yes, it’s really as dire as that. The US will become like Chicago or Moscow: you have your choice of a Leninist, a Maoist, a Fabian Socialist or a Trot.
This rapid descent into fascism must stop.
But you see, that line of reasoning is a clever lie. The so called right and left are equally responsible for the destruction of our country because they are two sides of the same materialist/humanist coin. A conservative moral stance is completely compromised by placing ideas, such as limited government, ahead of the gospel. To the Christian socialism vs capitalism is meaningless.
andreas, I’ll agree with most of what you say except for the last sentance. Economic activity is not meaningless. It is not slavific, but it is not meaningless. I am afraid you are confusing the type of statist, global economic system we have for capitalism. It is not, it is closer to facism (a form of socialism) than anything else.
You are correct in that we should never exalt any economic/political ideology above the Gospel and our communion with our Lord Jesus Christ, but to say there is no difference between to vastly different economic systems does not help, especially when socialists/statists of all types have an alarming tendency to persecute Christians whenever they can.
It is quite possible, though increasingly difficult, to glorify God by our labor to support ourselves and our families which includes trade and many other types of economic activity. It is increasingly difficult because we have indeed deified the activity itself rather that giving glory to God and also deified the state at the same time.
Michael,
Actually I didn’t say there was no difference between the two. There are very real differences. My point is that capitalism is not salvific, but too often people treat it that was. I will put it a different way. Capitalism is no more inherently virtuous than socialism. Btw Obama is not the socialist the right tries to paint him as fwiw.
andreas, in fact capitalism is inherently more virtuous than socialism as it allow for the free exercise of one’s own labor for one’s own benefit and creates situtations that allow for real charity as well. And, since work is part of our salvation as given us in Genesis, capitalism (the real thing) allows for the freedom to work as God leads us–if we choose. That it also allows for perversion is part and parcel to the freedom. However, to set it up as salvific in and of itself is not correct.
Socialism, even the more benign forms, don’t have any of that. The worst forms: facism and communism are inherently evil. As I said, what we have now as an economic system in this country is much more akin to facism than it is to capitalism, but then we’ve always had a facist temptation in the American mind almost from the beginning. Christianity has helped to keep it at bay until the last 40 years or so.
What is your proof that our President is not a socialist? It is quite evident that he is a statist who has no regard for the work and freedom of others. Mr. Romney may be quite similar, but one good thing about the Morman faith is that they encourage self-reliance and strong local communities as well as attempting to inculcate and maintain a high moral standard and are largely opposed to abortion.
Frankly, I’d rather have the theology of the Mormans guiding our President than the pseudo-Christian clap-trap Obama mouths when he absolutely has to, such as “sin is violating my own values” especially when he and his left-hand woman Sebelius are the most virulent supporters of abortion we’ve ever had in high office.
This Presidential campaign will be the dirtiest since Adams-Jefferson and there is likely to be all kinds of voter fraud too. Don’t forget that it took Mayor Daley of Chicago voting a couple of cemetaries in Chicago to get John Kennedy elected and the hanging of thousands of chads in the Bush-Gore debacle.
Whoever is elected, we are still in deep trouble, morally, spiritually and economically. IMO Obama and his Chicago land crew will just make things much, much worse.
Ever seen Bertold Brecht’s play “The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui”? The rise of Hitler to power placed in the context of Chicago gangland politics. Even if Obama was stellar in all of his policy positions, I would not trust any politician out of Chicago to be anyting but corrupt and cruel. Given the philosphical commitment of so many of Obama’s mentors, that makes it even worse.
Michael I agree with your statement that capitalism is more vitreous than socialism, but the degrees of difference in virtue is not much. The real virtue of classical capitalism is that it allows and fosters an individual to work and achieve one’s own personal greatness. However, without a complete grounding in the Gospel of Jesus Christ the sin of Greed takes over and monopoly and crony capitalism reign supreme.
The vurtues of socialism are that they stopped making the individual a nameless cog in the wheel of Capitalism (industry). However, socialism, by it’s very nature, then solves this dilemma by making the individual a cog in the State. The State becomes God, family the person’s very identity.
So yes, capitalism is more vurtueous than socialism, but even capitalism without any grounding in the Gospel and the Christian belief in the intrinsic worth and value of the Individual Human Being becomes, as we see with Globalism, patently evil.
Peter
Peter, you are correct. The value of capitalism especially over the more tryannical forms of socialism is that captialism is much more amenable to the impact of the Gospel and the activity of the Holy Spirit.
Capitalism does not cause greed, it allows for more obvious greed that socialism, socialism is state greed. Ultimately the value of the human being as person is founded upon our creation in the image and likeness of God and the Incarnation.
Agreed.
Everything was semi alright untill the last two sentences.You get carried away with yourself.30something?
I would agree that both parties are the cause of our present problem, however, I would point out that it is very much due to the all-pervasive influence of Marx on our culture. A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth.
For example, the Left repeatedly claimed that the Rosenbergs were innocent and that there were no Communists in Hollywood or the government; in the last decade, all of that has been proven to be manifestly false. Senator McCarthy was on to something, but he has been vilified beyond redemption in the public mind. Today, it has become almost impossible for most of us to detect the tentacles of totalitarianism, even they they fasten themselves around our throats. Very few Americans under the age of 45 have been exposed to enough objective information about history and economics to preserve their freedom—but they know a lot about the deeply destructive Marxist/Gramschian vision of “social justice.” That vision is responsible for our loss of our First Amendment rights on Wednesday and the present, losing, battle in the Roman Catholic church.
When you are discussing human freedom—and God most assuredly intended for us to be free, else he would not have given us free will–economic policy is of the essence: Marxism subjugates the individual; the free market encourages him. Apparently, you are blissfully unaware of the relationship between freedom in economics and personal freedom. The Marxist state only enslaves. Surely, that can’t be more godly than the free market.
Read the works of Bastiat, Hayek, and Friedman. If you’re too lazy, then read “I, Pencil”, by Leonard Read (online)—it demonstrates clearly the degree to which competing and disparate human interests may be served by voluntary cooperation and the exercise of free will.
If you’re too lazy to read, watch the inestimable Milton Friedman—happy 100th birthday, Milt!— explain the concept in less than 3 minutes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Gppi-O3a8
Five, your comment would be quite fine and instructive without the perjorative comments about the persumed sloth of andreas and others. Due to the lack of real education given to most folks in the last 40 years or so, most folks don’t even know of the people of whom you speak.
Thanks for the bibliography though.
Quite right, Andreas, quite right! Does ANYONE who believes marriage is defined as being between one man and one woman imagine that the Mormon candidate BELIEVES that? Has he condemned Joseph Smith’s teaching and life, then? And what about the baptism of the dead? And what about the Lost Tribes of Israel being discovered in America? Did he let Netanyahu know of this wonderful discovery? Or maybe he offered to baptize all the victims of the holocaust, in the Mormon way of baptizing the dead! Shall we invest in a Mormon Underwear company in anticipation of a real run on the market for longjohns with arcane markings on them? They’re called “Temple Garments”. GIs are given a special dispensation from having to wear them, lest they be ridiculed, but if Romney is elected, everyone will want a pair, ESPECIALLY the lobbyists, like AIPAC!
The man who trashed George W. Bush for years even though he was a true Christian and couldn’t care less about his faith. The cheerleader for Barack Hussein Obama who was not bothered one bit that said president had as a spiritual guide a marxist racist preacher and regularly attended a social-justice hate-America church for 20 years where Jeremiah Wright ‘blessed’ the attendees with “G-d d**n America”, suddenly cares about the faith of a Republican candidate. What pathological hypocrisy!
Your radical marxist slip is showing!
What will really be funny if {God forbid} Romney is elected is how will be go to the Temple.Non Mormons may not enter once it is dedicated. He will have to have Mormon secret service men which will go against the federal hiring standards about religion not being a factor in hiring. I remember when Metropolitan Isaiah of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Denver got into hot water when he said all Mormons who converted to Orthodoxy had to be baptized.The old men in Salt lake City were very angry. If people really looked into what Mormon believe they would be shocked. One can become a god and get one’s own universe to rule.
Absolutely true. “God The Father” is a being as we are, just far more ‘evolved’. “God The Son/Christ” is also, he is just lord of this planet. “God the Holy Spirit”, I’m never quite sure how he fits in other than they are distinct and totally separate beings. For them to claim (as they do these days) that they are Christian is a patently false claim. For Christians to accept them as fellow Christians show how little we care/know about our own faith. Bishop Isaiah is correct. Anyone coming to the Church from Mormanism needs to be baptized. If they converted to Mormanism previously from a Trinitarian Christian denomination, they ought to be treated as apostates (whatever that entails).
Hadn’t thought about the Secret Service men/women part. But since most Mormans don’t go to Temple on a regular basis, it might not be a problem.
Still I’d rather have a Morman, even with largely statist politics, than a man like Obama who is a nihilist or a so-called Orthodox who votes for policies that contravene the faith and teaching of the Church (the east coast Greeks for instance). They are an embarassment.
Metropolitan Isaiah was not the first to say that a Mormon who converts to Orthodoxy has to be baptized. The Ecumenical Patriarchate made that ruling years ago. The standards for the reception of a convert in the Antiochian Archdiocese also require the baptism of converts from Mormonism. An Orthodox Christian cannot marry a Mormon either, because Mormons are not Christians. Mormonism is a cult founded by a swindler named Joseph Smith.
Archpriest John W. Morris
Or as I like to say to the eternal dismay of my extended Mormon family members: Joe Smith – used buggy salesman.
I do not care if you are a bishop, your comments are on Romney are offensive and I wrote a pamphlet published by Concilliar Press against Mormonism. Romney’s Mormonism is irrelevant. Do you honestly think that Obama is a Christian? He does not even belong to a church. The last church to which he belonged was the United Church of Christ, that is so heretical that it can hardly be called Christian. Obama favors same sex marriage. He favors making us pay for abortions, and does not respect the right of the Catholics to refuse to violate their beliefs and provide free birth control to those working at Catholic institutions. Obama supports the Muslim radicals who are killing Orthodox Christians in the Middle East. Obama is opposed to practically every moral principle taught by the Orthodox Church.
Archpriest John W. Morris
Romney can hardly be called exemplary either. The Mormons say they are for traditional family but they are just a revelation away from accepting same sex marriage. The problem is that Mormonism is a facad. Romney seems to exemplify that aspect quite well. Obama is a protestant. Either protestants are Christian or they are not. The fact that Obama is following Protestantism to its logical conclusion should be no surprise. The real issue blinding people to Romney is a misplaced view that the democratic party is the party of the devil. Beware the republicans in sheep’s clothing.
andreas, as long as the democrats have official planks in their national platform supporting abortion and the (coming) one for the legalization of homosexual unions as marriage in all of the states it seems pretty difficult for any faithful Orthodox to vote for them on a national level. I just don’t see any rationalization that would allow it.
The statist republicans are not much better. It is too bad we are so logistically tied to a two party system that there could not be a couple of other parties that allow Democrats who support life and real marriage to have a party and a similar situation for Republicans who are not statist or for a ‘global’ economy.
The libertarians are just an awful mess as I learned when I watched their national convention a few years ago.
I would go further and say that an Orthodox Christian cAnnot, in good conscience, vote for either. To say that the Republican party is only marginally better is subjective.
I do not care if you are an archpriest, but I think it’s impossible to speak offensive enough concerning any politician. If Romney’s Mormonism is irrelevant, as perhaps it should be, then why isn’t Obama’s “Christianity,” or lack thereof, irrelevant? I get so tired of hearing how Catholics are forced to violate their beliefs. The Catholic Church can’t convince their adherents to accept their views on contraception, so they want the state’s help–please!
Our Orthodox Bishops issued a statement supporting the Catholic Bishops on this issue. No one is trying to ban birth control. That is not the issue. The issue is that Obama is trying to make the Catholic Church pay for birth control. Why cannot the women themselves pay for their own birth control. Why is free birth control a civil right? Besides Obama’s mandate includes abortion causing medications that are against the Orthodox Faith. This is the most serious governmental attack on freedom of religion in American history. This whole thing is just a cynical attempt to divert attention to Obama’s utter failure as President. I cannot as a faithful Orthodox Christian support a presidential candidate who is pro-abortion and same sex marriage.
Fr. John Morris
Well, some might ask, “Why do I, a Catholic, have to pay on my own for something that Protestants, Jews, Orthodox, Muslims and even atheists do NOT get billed for? Of course, they’d have to be told, ‘But your Church doesn’t allow birth control> And then you have to bring up separation of Church and State. After which you’re accused, a Catholic, of being a Commie.
I repeat the Bishop’s Assembly issued a statement supporting the Catholic Bishops on this issue. If you work for a Catholic institution you have to accept the fact that the Catholic Church has certain beliefs that the government has no right to force it to violate. Our Orthodox beliefs are violated by the Obamacare mandate because we do not believe in abortion causing medications. Religious freedom is a fundamental principle of our constitution. If the religious freedom of the Catholics is violated, the religious freedom of everyone is threatened. What would we do if the government suddenly decided that the way that we administer the Eucharist is unsanitary, or that breathing incense is unhealthy? We must protect religious freedom from the ever increasing power of the secular state.
Archpriest John W. Morris
Thank you, Father Morris!!!!
The issue here is not whether religious institutions should be protected from government interference in their Constitutional right to freedom of religion. The question is the difference between a religious institution and a for- or not-for-profit corporation that may be owned or operated by a religious institution? What about for- or not-for-profit corporations that began as purely/primarily religious institutions but have become fare more secularized? Is a ‘religious university’ still religious when most of its faculty, staff and students are not of that religion and no particularly religious bent is mandated by the curriculum? Does its founding by a religious order for discriminated co-religionists and specifically teaching that religion in the curriculum give the institution a pass forever on following the rules in the public square? Or is ‘ownership’ or ‘control’ the issue? Would believers be able to deed ownership of a business, a shopping mall, a housing complex or gated community, or an office building to their religion and have that property/institution fall under religious law? If we were talking Sharia or Hasidism vs. the Catholic church – and Republican vs. a Democratic in a polarized election year – I think opinions would be decidedly different on the merits.
in short, churches and seminaries and monasteries and specifically religious institutions are exempt. Nominally religious hospital and university corporations are not exempt. I’m sure there are examples that are quite difficult to split the baby on, but that’s more a matter of better adjuicating and legislating exceptions to the rule than it is a wholesale attack on religious liberty, yada yada.
Thank you melxiopp for a more balanced and reasoned posing of the issue.
Do we want the government to have the authority to dictate to a church or other religious organization what is a religious institution or social ministry of that religious group. A school, clinic or hospital operated by a church is an extension of that church’s ministry even it employs people who are not members of that church and serves people who are not members of the that church. There are those who want to define the first amendment to freedom of worship, so that they can force us to keep our opinions behind the walls of the church and deprive us of the ability to speak out on the public square on moral issues. The reduction of freedom of religion down to freedom of worship reminds me of the old freedom of cult in the old Soviet Union.
Archpriest John W. Morris
Fr John, I think I have the answer to your question: My evil twin Skippy tells me that in reality, “yes we do want government restricting the content of religions (if by ‘we’ we mean Leftists, Socialists, secularists, etc.), just as long as the people being restricted are Christian. Muslims, Amish, and Hasidic Jews get a pass.”
Logan46, because as with most things, Obama tries to pass himself off as something he isn’t knowing full well he isn’t. Romney just believes in something that isn’t. To what extent, I don’t know.
One is deluded but sincere, the other a lying, power mad, hypocrite. Good choice huh?
And BTW:
Health insurance is designed to cover medically necessary treatments for accidents or disease. Birth control is none of that. There is no reason it should be covered at all unless a married woman cannot get risk getting pregnant because of health reasons and even then it is problematic.
My wife had three children after doctors told her she would be risking her life to try to have any more. Those children are great people, the doctors not so much.
And in case you are wondering Logan46, I know more about insurance than probably anyone else on this blog. The long history of government mandates (state and federal) to health insurance of things that are not medical in nature is staggering and always leads to two things: rise in cost and fewer people covered for less–especially when the coverage is ‘free’
It is insane in so many ways I cannot even begin to list them.
I will repeat it one more time just in case it might get through your ideological armor: The actuarial assumptions used to price out Obamacare for the health parts of the stupid bill are unsupportable. They are so far out of line that they will inevitably lead to massive tax increases and rationing. That is the professional opinion of the head actuary of the State of Kansas Department of insurance and his boss (sarcasm on) both so widely known for their radical anti-Obamacare views (scarasm off). In actuality, the actuary is like most actuaries I’ve met, careful not to offer any opinion that is not supported by numbers and his boss the insurance commissioner is a supporter of Obamacare. Even though she is a Republican by registration she is a good friend of our late, not-so great govenor, the Secretary of HHS Sebelius.
Of course in all of this mess they find in necessary to stuff contraceptives down the throat of every one in the U.S. And, of course, (sarcasm on) its to make legal abortion rare (sarcasm off). Actually it is a prelude to 2014 when the abortion mandate comes in.
Unfortunately, Romney is unlikely to do much to really over turn the bill.
For Michael: I predict the only difference between Obama and Romney is that Romney hasn’t had the opportunity to be a “lying, power mad, hypocrite” of a President. It’s difficult for me to understand how satanic motives are the sole province of Obama, especially coming after a President that started a needless war that cost thousands of lives. Who wouldn’t be for change after that?
As far as Obamacare and “my ideological armor,” I’m no fan of Obamacare, but I don’t think a person’s lifespan and health should be solely determined by economic status. If we can spend trillions on weaponry and killing other humans, as well as meeting every materialist need that marketing mavens can dream up, then why can’t we have healthcare for every citizen? We are paying less in taxes than ever before and have the highest standard of living in history. Are we truly that selfish and self-centered?
I fault the Democrats for not seeing that a “culture of dependency” is a valid criticism; however, the Republican inference that poor people have only themselves (and the government) to blame for being poor is insufferable tripe.
Your statement that “they find it necessary to stuff contraceptives down the throat of every one in the U.S.,” is puzzling. How is Obamacare doing that? Women still have the choice to use or not use contraception. The fact is women overwhelmingly want (affordable) contraception. They should have that choice.
Two questions Logan46:
1. Why?
2. Why should anyone else be required to pay for it?
It is not a medication to treat something, It is used primarily for 1 purpose i.e, to allow folks to be immoderate and immoral in their sexual behavior thereby divorcing sexual behavior from both marriage and child begatting.
Its not good ethics, its not good morals, its not good insurance, its not good theology. Its not good anything.
Well, if I were a Catholic wife and ahd just learned that Obamacare was amended so that only Catholic women would have to pay for birth control devices and other contraceptive measures, while Protestant, Jewish, atheist, and even Muslim wives could get them for free, I’d cry “Discrimination!” And I’d complain about the government making mixing church and state.
Just sayin’.
The point your Grace is that contraceptive devices and drugs should not be covered at all for anyone under insurance. No one should have to pay for someone else’s use of them.
Romney a sincere misguided person? Oh please, that’s too rich! You forget he was gov of Mass and his political record. Mittens was the father of “Obama Care”. He’s flipflopped and reinvented himself so many times he makes the Waffle House (southern institution) look like a cake shop.
MIsguided in his faith but, I think, sincere. He shares many of the same short-comings as a politician as most do. He wants to accrue power to himself. As such he may well become a power mad hypocrite.
Since we have untethered our governement from the restraining forces of both the Constitution and Christian morals that is about the best we can expect don’t you think?
Electing Romney will at least break the momentum of Obama’s increasinly un-Constitutional rule.
In either case, the likelyhood that the United States will long allow us to live in undeserved comfort and ease is extremely slim.
How quickly you forget the Bush years. Patriot Act anybody? I’m sorry I just can’t take this kind of whitewashing seriously anymore.
Most of our recent presidents have signed acts or issued executive orders that undermine the Constitution. Both parties are guilty. No American who understands the Constitution and values Liberty can approve of either without serious reservation.
His success in implementing health insurance in Massachusetts is what put him out there as the Republican who “worked a miracle In Massachusetts!” THEN the Republican party BRAGGED about what their man had done, and put him on the road to where he is today. Only thing, the Republican party changed: he didn’t.
Now, now, Father John! Calm down!
Let’s just take my first comment on Mitt Romney: ” Does ANYONE who believes marriage is defined as being between one man and one woman imagine that the Mormon candidate BELIEVES that?”
Now, Father John, please, just answer that one without bringing in totally irrelevant and off-the-subject remarks about President Obama. After all, it seems irrational, does it not, to write, “Romney’s Mormonism is irrelevant,” and then launch into a tirade about how the incumbent President’s religion is crucial and wicked? In fact, for a self-anointed expert on Mormonism, it seems almost schizophrenic to proclaim it irrelevant if you are writing for Conciliar Press as if it is relevant. Why, that would be as ridiculous as giving instructions to accept baptism that only is in the name of the Trinity, but doesn’t require water (or anything else!!!).
I’m not a big fan of President Obama, but I feel that the Israelis (NOTE, not the Jews as such) and Americans, both Republican and Democratic, are responsible for the death of more Orthodox Christians in the Middle East than today’s “Muslim radicals.’ Q.E.D. If you say that President Obama is “opposed to practically every moral principle taught by the Orthodox Church,” this only tells me that you may not know the moral principles that well. After all, Archpriest, did not the Lord,God and Saviour of the Orthodox Church tell us how two commandments sum up ALL our “moral principles”? What group in our Saviour’s earthly life wished to “improve” on those two great commandments? Do you know that President and Mrs. Obama do NOT love the Lord our God with all their heart, soul and mind, and their neighbor as themselves? Please let me know the tenets that YOU consider to be necessary supplements to the moral principles cited by our Saviour. Remember, it is YOU that brought up “every moral principle.” Yes, Obama is being pushed to support the Muslim radicals revolting against the Syrian President; but he never has gone so far in supporting them as has Mitt Romney. Those Muslim radicals in Syria, as well as the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia are hand in glove with Israel and the American Republican party, and Senator Liebermann.
…..but I feel that the Israelis …. and Americans, both Republican and Democratic, are responsible for the death of more Orthodox Christians in the Middle East than today’s “Muslim radicals.”
Mmmh, as long as you FEEL it, it must be alright then, no?
Your Grace, Mr. Obama’s radical pro-abortion position is one concrete example, his support of the legalization of so-called gay marriage is another. It is unlikely that his mentoring by several haters of Christianity had no effect on him.
His public statement that he believes sin to be the violation of his own values, pretty much takes care of the ‘love God with all your heart, mind and soul.
Repentance is always possible and I honestly pray for that. Of course, no one can know for sure except God.
For me, his policies are ones that I cannot in good conscience support as I view them as inimical to our faith, our country and the lives of all of us.
The government of Israel and many of its citizens don’t like us and Ababic speakers have banded together to finght them. However, at least some of the opposition to Israel comes from good old anti-semitism (yea, I know that means they hate themselves too, but that is not far wrong).
That does not mean that the Muslims, once in power would not contiune to wage their jihad against infidels (that’s us you know). They are waging it now in Nigeria, Sudan, Somalia, Indonesia, Iraq and Iran–everywhere they have the power to do so. Your statement is kinda silly.
“That does not mean that the Muslims, once in power would not contiune to wage their jihad against infidels (that’s us you know).”
No, I don’t know. Neither do you (know what you’re talking about, I mean.) Some Islamic heretics may not know what the Quran says about the “people of the book,” viz. Christians and Jews, but I do, and so should you, if you would presume to talk about Muslims. Christians and Jews are NOT infidels in classical Islamic theology. You’re darkening counsel without knowledge.
Mike, that’s an incredibly naive thing for you to say. Either you’ve never been to a country where the faultlines between Islam and Christianity/other religions are clearly drawn or to an Islamic country. The roseate picture you present has no bearing on reality and the theological distinctions you draw regarding how Muslims feel about “peoples of the Book” is hallucinogenic. Yes, I know what the distinctions are. I also know how liberals like you go ape-s**t when Christians talk about gay “marriage” and complain about “Christian sharia law,” but look the other way when Muslims kill non-virgins, stone homosexuals, and perform Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).
How to explain authoritative fatwas against female genital mutilation required by tribal, not Muslim tradition? Especially when the horror is practiced outside Islam as well, in animistic and even Christian educated societies/tribes in Africa?
What the? “Gay Marriage?” is THAT Islamic? Why, I thought that was a feature of “Christian Civilizaton at War with, or “Clashing” with islam!” I believe that Muslim wives are, by and large, non-virgins–yet Muslims are not killing them. it does not enhance the Christian Faith when its defenders are so reckless with their tongues and pens. How often, according to your records and statistics have homosexuals been publicly stoned for promiscuity in Muslim lands? How often, according to the same records, have homosexuals been beaten up or murdered or dragged behind speeding cars in the nation under God? I saw violence against sissies, fags, and queers in grade school and high school. I’ve participated in it. Yet we were all Christians, and we had in high school our Baccalaureate services before graduation ceremonies and congratulated ourselves on being permitted to be Jew, Catholic, Lutheran, whatever (including Muslim..we had one in our class, an Albanian American kid). But, hey, attack and strip a Fairy on the way home from a football game? Hey! Now you’re talking. One got seriously cut because the real guys slipped when they were shaving the Fairy’s genitals! I know I know. All of that conduct is based on Fear. But stoning of non-virgins did not stop because Christ indicated He did not approve, did it? I believe that cruelty perpetrated on the innocent in Muslim lands is known to us almost entirely through “the Liberal Media.”
In Iran, George, LIBERALS are executed. And the executions are based not on Islam but on politics, the special political instructions of the reformationist Ayatollah Khomeini. giving dictatorial power to one leading, divinely appointed Clergyman, keeping the state loyal to “the religion of our Founding Fathers.” Liberals and “deviationists of the Left” jostled against Solzhenitsyn in the Gulag. Liberals, Gypsies, Serbs, and homosexuals jostled each other in Camps (for “illegals’).from Romania to West Germany.
George, I know you feel strongly about your personal opinions, but I think that when you speak fo me of ANY distinctions drawn by me as “hallucinogenic,” I am at a loss there.
In fact, i didn’t draw ANY “theological distinctions”…’regarding how Muslims feel (sic) about ‘peoples of the Book” at all. Theological distinctions! Hallucinogenic! Even the more logical, but wrong, word, “hallucinatory” is way over the top I’m sorry for pushing whatever button caused that lashing out, truly sorry.
I feel that I know what Metropolitan Jonah must have felt when he was informed that he was bewildering. THEY never thought of calling him “hallucinogenic”. I don’t even know what LSD looks like!
George is right! If anyone is interested, the “Religion of Peace” website regularly links to the daily incidents of Islamic terrorism and violence around the world.
Since 9/11 Islamic Terrorists have carried out more than 19,932 deadly terror attacks. But, hey, who are we to “judge” them. After all, according to the delusional and pathologically distorted views of bishop Tikhon, us Christian “zealots” are just as bad.
“Centurion” should turn his bloodshot gaze on “Contributions to Peace of the Byzantine Emperors and Their Families!” How about blinding thousands of Bulgarians, except for one in a hundred to lead them back home?How about Emperors and Empresses blinding their children or having them killed in order to insure the succession of this one or that one? How about St. Helena (in the old, pre-Christian days, of course) having St. Constantine’s first wife, Fausta, strangled in the steam bath, or Constantine (in the old, pre-Christian and pre-Arian Baptism days, of course) having his son by Fausta killed? Where did the legendary Sultans who boiled people in oil, castrated captives and so forth “get their ideas?”
They learned so much at the First Crusade. The Muslims controlled the city, where the Greek Orthodox attended their Liturgies and the Jews worshipped in their synagogues. Then the armies of the Christian Pope, to save the Holy Places from the Infidels launched brave Christian “knights” brandishing swords and wearing clothes and banners emblazoned with the image of th Life-Giving Cross, to recover the city from the “Unbelievers.” War was fought as usual. Casualties on both sides. Some “Christian soldiers managed to infiltrate, through mining and other means, the city, but were killed in battle with Muslim soldiers in the city. To show that the invaders had failed, the Muslims displayed their corpses atop the walls. So far, still normal warfare. But what did the wearers of the Holy Cross do, in response? They trotted out their POWs, Muslim captives, before the walls had them kneel and then be beheaded by knights. Then, the brave Christians CATAPULTED the severed heads of their POWs over the walls!!!!
Let’s not even speak of the subsequent slaughter or Greek Orthodox Christians right alone with Muslims or the burning of the Jews, herded into their synagogues.
Centurion mentions “a family of eight”, “three people’ “Four people” “Three children”, “sixteen”, and “nine souls!” Yes, Muhammad as well, grew up in an area where Christians and Jews were everywhere. he incorporated a lot of Jewish and Christian ethical practices of the day (such as physical punishment of female adulterers, stoning heretics and other, castrating) into the Qor’an, especially all the abominations listed in the Jewish/Christian Old Testament. Why do so many ostensibly educated Westerners seem shocked by the conduct of Muslims, especially those in less-civilized areas under Muslim rule? Would King David or KIng Solomon have found the stoning of adulterous women to be shocking? What about the Christian rulers of Middle Ages Europe? What did they do to “witches?” Was not all the horror of Christian jurisprudence relative to adulterers and heretics supervised and blessed by Christian clergy, or “imams”?
“Islam’s Latest Contributions to Peace”, indeed, Centurion! Forty-four casualties? Horrors! How about the thousands upon thousands of American soldiers being contributed to “Peace” by Bush, but not alone by Bush? So glad he obtained peace, right?
Oh, I almost forgot. I’m not expecting any rational opposition to what I wrote above. I’ll say it myself,” Oh there they go again, the liberals with their hatred of everything American and irrational swallowing of Muslim propaganda!!!!!
As bishop Tikhon peddles his pro-Islam dribble and directs his hate at messengers, his peaceful and beloved “religion of peace” which he so passionately defends continues its murder and mayhem campaign.
Read Bishop Tikhon’s comments. He makes the case against your arbitrary comic book mentality more eloquently than I could. The bottom line is that the murderers and pseudo-religious nihilists of the Arab world are no more Islamic than the far more effectively murderous and pseudo-Christian crusaders, old and new, are Christians. We’ve maddened the modern world’s mostly Arab Muslims as a result of injustices of all kinds perpetrated by “Christian” nations” and their cuplable stewardship of the Near East since WWI.
I love it that your sort resorts to pointing fingers while screaming hysterically at vile and barbaric practices in some Islamic societies so you can feel better about your own sort of vile barbarism and ignorance, while using it as a stick to beat people like me who urge you to consider supporting a more generous, rational and decent foreign policy and less loathsomely aggressive and fraudulent politicians. I suppose these self-righteous tactics are very convenient in helping you speciously justify our nation’s abominable foreign policy and foreign meddling and warfare, but it’s nauseating hypocrisy, too. How grimly amusing that you can’t see the transparent desperation in these “arguments” and how they depend utterly on the ignorance of the dupes who buy them. I also love how you pretend to some sort of deep knowledge of the “reality” of the Arab Muslim world. What did you do, Vanity Pundit, go to some weekend conference once in Beirut? I’m no fan of Islam but I will say that some of the countries under its influence have often shown far more decency, tolerance and other traits of civilization than some nominally “Christian” ones have done.
Mike, this is what pisses me off about Liberals. They bend over backwards to draw out distinctions regarding Muslims but heaven help us when the Westboro Baptist Church which is the most fringe denomination out there, one disdained by the SBC and everybody else who has the “Baptist” moniker attached to them, shows up at a soldier’s funeral and screams “God hates fags!” Then it’s all “SEE! I told you Christians are evil!!!”
George, this is the sort of BS that makes me despair of reasoning with you. Your discourse is a cornucopia of fallacies and non sequiturs. I suppose this stuff is “persuasive” enough among your set out there in the sticks but really, you should be made aware that it’s just embarrassingly lame.
I give up on you yet again.
Mike, please list me the “non sequitors.”
Yeah, Pappas, his sort: blowhard nominally Christian & hypocritically generalizing, basically racist, bigoted, ignorant & jingoistic anti-Muslim ranters blind to the world-historical sins and abominations of pseudo-Christian nations while hysterically parroting arbitrary, self-righteous blather about Muslim “terrorists” and Muslim incivilities while supporting barbaric, unjust foreign policies guaranteed to multiply widows, orphans . . . and “terrorists.” Specific and analytical enough for ya?
George, if you’re honestly unable to see for yourself what doesn’t follow (the meaning of non sequitur) in your comment, then I just can’t help you. I was talking about the spiritual bankruptcy of the vast majority of American Christians who support the criminally disproportionate destructiveness and grave injustice of modern warfare, and you trot out some nonsensical rot about libruls and a few scammers.
The latest example of terrible, catastrophic, doom-portending iniquity, out of a dozen plus I could cite: What have the Iraqi people done to Americans to deserve what we (mostly) did to them and their nation? The answer is nothing. Absolutely nothing whatsoever. And yet we’ve been systematically destroying their nation, barbarically, for 20 years — children suffering probably worst of all during much of this time. This destruction transpired after Carter/Reagan had goaded Sadam into invading Iran 30 years ago, which led to a brutal stalemate, and after a million human beings had already died on both sides and after millions more had been maimed and psychologically brutalized, their lives and their children’s and friend’s and loved one’s lives ruined. And what have we gained out of it? Probably, any time now, a region-wide Sunni – Shi’ite religious war, catalyzed largely by us “Christians.” And WWIII to follow, close on its heels. That’s a world-historical war crime. Now, just because we can incinerate the planet — and therefore cannot be apprehended and charged — well, that doesn’t change the fact of it. It seems most of you here aren’t even aware of these things. And yet, astonishingly, y’all have the gall to chatter piously about Muslim religious nihilism, and to point the finger disapprovingly at the ugly acting out of all the internalized rage that can be seen in Muslim nations. That’s cosmic chutzpah, folks. Cosmic hypocrisy. I can imagine the sort of things that would be happening in this country if the tables had been turned and we had been forced to suffer what these weak nations must suffer at our hands.
And your reply is to babble surreally about the professional scammers of Westboro BC, who, you ridiculously assert, “liberals” allegedly claim prove that “all Christians are EVIL.” That noise is presumably intended as some sort of reply to my point. That is a non sequitur, fyi.
Am I supposed to treat grade school idiocies like this with respect? I can’t imagine why, to be honest. It isn’t worthy of respect.
Too often, you’re just a sorry clown, friend. And you people, many of you, some priests included, simply do not talk like serious adults. You’re closer to sounding like moral cretins, way too often. IMHO. I suppose a good case could be made that it’s cruel for me to speak to you like this, as though you were serious adults, when many of you clearly are not.
Mike, you’re being illogical. I asked for an example of one of the many”non-sequitors” I’m supposedly guilty of promulgating, and you tell me about Iraq. Where have I mentioned Iraq anywhere in relation to this topic or anywhere else for that matter?
As for the “destructiveness of war,” OK, lot of things go “BOOM!” and people die. That’s a bad thing. Whether the ministry of war is evil qua evil is left to better men to decide, including Fr Alexander F C Webster, who wrote a book on it. BTW, none of the Church Fathers condemned war as a necessary evil, and the only canonical sanction that I know of for men who fought in war is St Basil’s recommendation that they abstain from the Chalice for three years. (Anybody who knows different, please tell me.)
Besides, I’ve long ago seen through the mendacity of the Left when they talk about the evil of war. They are way more than happy to blow people to kingdom come when its one of their own (Stalin, Che, Mao, Pol Pot) doing the blowing. After all, these guys were “agrarian reformers.”
George Orwell saw through this hypocrisy when he took the largely homosexual elite of England (“The Apostles”) to task when they signed the Cambridge Declaration, that they would fight for neither King nor Country. Boy did they fight and commit espionage for good ole Uncle Joe.
So, save me your pieties, bromides, and platitudes regarding how evil America is. I’ll believe them when you concentrate your intellectual brilliance on the even worse malefactors of the Left.
I can’t make head or tails out of Michael Baumann’s latest, except that he’s rehearsing all the usual stuff about President Obama and feels that Muslims, unlike Christians, are all of the same denomination: Jihadists. Fact remains that for centuries, the most Muslim states in the MIddle East, such as the former Ottoman Empire, then Mesopotami/Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Iran/Persia tolerated prosperous Christian and Jewish communities in their midst for those centuries All those years, Muslims had different kinds of Jihads as the Christians have had their Crusades: although Christian Crusades, the original ones, though directed a Muslims, were easily directed against Christians. Popes launched Crusades by the Teutonic Knights and Knights of the Sword that had no interest in Islam at all, but a big interest in other Christians. It’s easy to see that in our very own time, Muslims in many places, especially the places mentioned by Michael Baumann have made their Jihads a particularly anti-Christian and anti-Jewish Crusade: in Niger Sudan, etc. What has energized Today’s new Islamist fanatics? I say fanatic because being anti-Christian and anti-Jewish go against tradtional Islam and the Qor’an, which tolerates them all, calls them “dhimmi’ or “protected people” and “People of the Book” and VENERATE Jesus Christ but not as God, and VENERATE the Virgin Mary, but not as Theotokos, and VENERATE John the Baptist. What energized them in our day? is it our calling them Evil? Is it our invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, pretending we were reacting to 9/11, when we’ve always known that Al Qaeda and the 9/11 murderers were all Saudi Arabs, belonging to a (until the invasion of Iraq) generally scorned sect, the equivalent of our Skinheads, which almost overnight convinced a BIG part of the Muslim world that we were reviving our ancient, warlike, crusading spirit, like the one of the time of the bloodthirsty Crusadess and the Invasion of Muslim/Christian/Jewish Sapin in order to wipe out everything but Christianity. That good old spirit that was shooting up the worshippers in that Sikh Temple in the name of a Country that once bragged about its “Freedom of Religion” which is fast becoming “Freedom to be Christian ONLY.”
Everything I say, Michael is silly, because I’m silly, but I’ve gone beyond comic books and their equivalent in the publications of the Illiberal elements in our society.
Your Grace, you’re not being fair to Mr Baumann. like Mike Myers earlier, you uncritically accept the Koranic distinctions regarding Peoples of the Book. Likewise we in the South believed the American dictum that “all men are created equal.” It’s just that we didn’t view blacks as being on the same order of humanity as whites.
It’s not for me to accept or reject, critically or non-critically the directions of Muhammad contained in the Qor’an. EVERYBODY knows that Christians and Jews are discriminated against by paying higher taxes and such annoyances as the clergy not being allowed to wear colored clothes (like the episcopal mantia) outside, only black. That’s why bishops come to the door of the Church in black and those inside hurry to clothe them in their purple or red or green or blue mantiya when they step across the threshold. Why do you say I uncritically accept ANYTHiNG in the Qor’an? The majority of the muslim conquerors and rulers, however, over the centuries, have LIMITED their limitations on the Christians to those in The Book. Black people in America, on the other hand, were MUCH less equal than Christians in Syria, or Turkey, or Greece or Egypt. To simplify, but with truth, even when freed from slavery, black men could not enter the work force (i.e., take our jobs away in Tea Party terms, like illegal immigrants), One of the few jobs open to a black man was Shoe Shine Boy, and there’s not an American of my generation who does not remember how many of those there were and who universal they were. White people, however, would say to one another, “Even after being freed from slavery, the only thing they’re capable of is being shoe shine boys!” Not ALL Christians were like the Mansours of Umayyad Damascus—Viziers t the Caliph himself. Not all of them were prosperous business men like the Greeks and Copts of Alexandria and other Middle Eastern metropolises and centers of commerce. if you look at the richest Armenian, Cop\tic, Greek, etc., families of today, their fortunes can be traced back to the free-wheeling capitalism of the Muslim states and their rulers. Some Greeks made their fortunes as “Phanariotes” in the Muslim dominated Balkans, even.
What is going on in Sudan, etc., is a diversion from historical Islam and islamic societies–almost always pluralistic IAW the Qor’an, and never slaughtering in the name of the Crescent. I believe that more people, families, and communities have been put to the sword by those warring with the Holy Cross leading them or guiding them, as in Spain, or in the incredible Thirty Years War than in Muslim states. TODAY, however, the fundamentalistic denominations within Islam have been given the equivalent of Speed and Meth by the fear of what horrors (such as Iraq) the Christian west will inflict on them next.
Of course, Muslims, while accepting or rejecting us labeliing Sudan as typically Islamic, when we KNOW it is not, may be puzzled by how Christian businessmen or Mormon businessmen were able to find a vehicle, the American equivalent of “off-shore’ investments for Salvadorans in, oh, say, Bain Capital, in which the latter couldinvest their capital, gained through the achievements of death squads in their native lands, achievements like murdering a Roman Catholic bishop serving Mass.
Your Grace,I’m surprised you believe hook,line and sinker,the fable about 911.From evidence
I’ve read it’s possible this was a Pearl Harbor set up .Alot of reputable historians believe that was a ploy to start the war;just as the 911 attack could have been for the War on Terror.
Not EXACTLY “hook, line, and sinker,” Roboacolyte! Not exactly.
You see the scenario you cited IS supportable by the long, blank=faced immobility of President Bush sitting in that kindergarten—as if waiting to see if the tower WOULD implode…. but, no, I think we’re just seeing a lost boy, stupefied by what he’d heard.
… and thus we have entered la-la-land.
It still amazes me how narrow minded people on this blog are.Most of them think that if they write their posts as if they are submitting a term paper that somehow they are ‘educated’.The idea I’m entertaining is whether or not the new bevy of Orthdox converts are Campus Crusaders with a new costume.Bishop Tikhon is a very creative and inspired thinker and yet look what resistance and criticism he gets.
I disagree. I do not think that any reputable historians believe that Roosevelt deliberately set up Pearl Harbor to get us into WWII. However, the evidence does show that our intelligence was certainly lacking. Had our intelligence been up to standards, we should have realized that the there was a threat to Pearl Harbor. Because I have studied the German role in World War II , I know of one incident that should have warned us. A Serb named Dushan Popov was sent by the German Abwehr spy agency to report on defenses at our naval base at Pearl Harbor in August 1941. Popov whose code name was Tricycle was actually a double agent and alerted the FBI of plans to attack Pearl Harbor. Hoover did not take the information seriously enough to inform Roosevelt.
Ian Flemming knew Popov who was one of the inspirations for character James Bond in his spy novels.
Fr. John W. Morris
Fr John, in the main I agree with you. However former President Herbert Hoover’s primary documents have just been published. While in the political exile, he travelled the world as a goodwill ambassador and spoke to many people. The name of the book escapes me at present, but while he doesn’t come out and say that FDR had inside knowledge of Pearl Harbor, the fact remains that FDR’s administration went out of their way to ignore entreaties from the Japanese to resolve the situation in East Asia. There were significant divisions within the Japanese military hierarchy, one was called the “Anglo-Saxons” and they were primarily in the Imperial Navy. They tried to reach out to the Americans to broker a face-saving way out for the Empire out of Manchuria. FDR’s people consciously rubbed their faces in it and so the pro-Americans lost immense moral clout vis a vis the anti-American militarists.
This is incredibly brief and over-simplified but the picture that Hoover painted (and this was before the war when we wouldn’t know the outcome) was one of American culpability. It’s regrettable.
But you’re right, that FDR didn’t know about Pearl Harbor in advance is correct. (Interestingly enough though, Theodore Roosevelt wrote 35 years earlier that if America wasn’t careful, we could not unreasonably expect a Japanese strike at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese had executed the same audacious strategy at Port Arthur against the Russian navy.)
Fr. John I assume you are talking about J. Edgar Hoover, not former President Hebert Hoover, correct?
George says: “. . the fact remains that FDR’s administration went out of their way to ignore entreaties from the Japanese to resolve the situation in East Asia. ”
Japan’s entreaties were based primarily around the fact that the US was the principal materiel supplier of the Japanese war machine. Even remaining aloof from Japanese acts of genocide, it was still prudent for FDR not help arm a potential future enemy.
I would like to hear Fr. John’s historical perspective on FDR and WWII. My take is FDR was the right president for the time, and how the FDR administration put this country on a wartime footing in 18 short months was a phenomenal achievement.
Your Grace
First of all the Orthodox Church does allow baptism in air in cases of extreme emergency when a person is dying and there is no water. There is always the category of baptism by desire that covers just about every possible situation.
Secondly, the Mormon Church renounced what they called plural marriage in 1890 so that Utah could become a state. The Orthodox Church does not consider Mormons Christian and requires all converts from Mormonism to enter the Church through the Sacrament of Baptism. Romney is on public record supporting marriage as one man and one woman.
It is also true that the Orthodox Church does not consider the Mormon Church a Christian institution. Mormons desiring to become Orthodox enter the Church through Baptism like any other non-Christian.
I am not sure that Obama is a Christian, at least as we define a Christian. I do not think that we would consider the United Church of Christ, Obama’s last religious affiliation, a Christian body. Even now the rules of the Antiochian Archdiocese require a convert from the UCC to prove they were baptized “in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” before they can become Orthodox through Chrismation. I personally think that any sect that allows its clergy to use inclusive language for God lacks a sufficiently Orthodox understanding of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity to allow the use of economy to receive a convert from that body through Christmation, but that is not my decision to make. Study their theology, or lack thereof and you will see what I mean. The UCC is the most radically liberal of all American groups calling themselves Christian. They have binding no doctrinal standards except political activism for left wing causes. They were the first American “church” to ordain openly practicing homosexuals and lesbians and to bless same-sex relationships.
In terms of policies on moral and ethical issues, despite his Mormon religion, Romney’s positions are much closer to Orthodoxy than Obama’s. Obama is radically pro-gay. He unconstitutionally refused to enforce or defend the Defense of Marriage Act. His state department has declared the defense of gay rights one of its highest priorities. He supports same sex marriage. He is also radically pro abortion and strongly supports federal funding for Planned Parenthood the largest abortion provider in the country. He uses Obamacare to force Churches to pay for medical procedures that violate their moral teachings, including abortion causing medications which are against the Orthodox Faith. Under his administration the Moslem brotherhood has taken over Egypt endangering the Orthodox living there. Now he supports the rebels in Syria that have already begun persecuting Orthodox Christians. I have a special concern about Syria since it is the headquarters of the Patriarchate of Antioch.
In summary, I believe that despite his non-Christian religion Romney’s position on moral issues are much closer to those that I hold as an Orthodox Christian than Obama’s. I cannot remain faithful to my moral beliefs and vote for Obama. Nor could I use my common sense and vote for Obama. I firmly believe that he will go down as one of the worst, if not the worst presidents in American history. I am not vested, nor standing on the Bema. I am sitting in my family room wearing a tee shirt and sweat pants. Therefore, I am not trying to use my position as an Orthodox priest to advocate secular political views.
Fr. John W. Morris
Fr. John W. Morris
FAther John Morris . I asked why your instructions for Baptism did not include water. Get it?
Any damn fool has heard of extraordinary baptisms in air and baptism by blood. I didn’t see anything in your instructions referring to baptism by air or blood… Why did you choose NOT to instruct others to baptize with water? Is it because you were too fragile and fearful of controversy if you spelled out HOW TO USE the water? Or because you didn’t care whether it was water or rose petals or garlic cloves or an atomizer? I remember how Daddy Grace (or was it Father Divine?) appeared in photos seen across the country in newspapers as he baptized five thousand with a fire hose.
Just seems to me, Father John, given the practice of St. John the Baptist, and his Baptism of the Lord in the Jordans waters, and the Baptism of Russians under St. Vladimir that water (not to mention the meaning of the word “baptize” in Greek!) might have been mentioned somewhere by an Orthodox Priest in instructing others how to baptize! You won’t dry up and blow away if you admit to a mistake!!!
As for the achievements of President Obama. The previous administration, even after destroying Iraq, losing the lives of thousands of American young men on battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, could not nail the main perpetrator of 9/11, even though they knew him and his family and their whereabouts! Yet, this disaster of a president, Obama, nailed him. I think that if we spent so much wealth and blood OSTENSIBLY to catch and punish him, it’s the ultimate in SILLY to say President Obama is the worst president ever. He didn’t st in a kindergarten looking thoughtfully nowhere after 9/11 and then casually start the wheels rolling to get at Saddam Hussein while dramatically shaking his fists at Bin Laden who could run but not hide! Yeah, right. Bush threatened and murdered for years and years killing every body BUT Bin Laden.
And, father, what in the world difference does it make whether you’re vested or in sweats? I don’t get that at all. Is it like Superman? You change your character depending on what you’re wearing?
Why didn’t you instruct that Baptism is performed with water and in the name of the Holy Trinity? After all, St. Tikhon and the entire Russian Church for centuries and the rest of the Churches for centuries, accepted heretics who had been baptized with water in the name of the Holy Trinity.
They all knew, without even Father Morris’s instructions that in the most unusual and extreme of circumstances a baptism could be conducted without any matter. One could be buried in the air, right, so that we could be, what?
Your Grace:
Do not call me a damn fool. That kind of attack does not belong in polite conversation. Mature people should be able to disagree without it being reduced to the level of calling people names. The only time that you might have some grounds for accusing me of being disrespectful to your position as an Orthodox bishop was when I objected to your public criticism of Bishop Antoun. I still do not think that an Orthodox bishop should publicly criticize another Orthodox bishop.
I am perfectly aware of the Orthodox teaching on baptism. I have done extensive research on this issue as a part of research on the reception of converts. There is a whole chapter on this subject in my book on Orthodox Fundamentalism. I also sat on the committee of the Antiochian Archdiocese that wrote the rules concerning the reception of converts.
It is not silly for a professionally trained historian to make an historical judgment. I have an area on America before 1877 on my MA and on early America history on my Ph.D. and have taught both halves of American history on the college level. Historians do make historical judgments. I firmly believe that 10 or 20 years from now that historians will judge Obama as being one of the worst presidents in our history. I could write an entire book on his failures as president.
I believe that Obama makes a good speech but that he he lacks leadership skills. We have not had a federal budget ever since he took office. One of his major responsibilities is to get a budget through congress. Had Obama been a real leader, he would have called the leaders of both houses of congress and of both political parties to a meeting and work with them to persuade both sides to make enough compromises to produce a budget. Instead, he makes speeches blames the Republicans and accomplishes nothing. Obama is not the first nor will he be the last president who has to deal with one of both houses dominated by the other party.
I will never vote for any candidate of either party that is as radically pro-abortion as Obama is. Not only did I develop a very strong respect for the sanctity of human life through my studies of Nazi Germany and the death camps, I have personally dealt with this issue in my own life. When I was in seminary my wife got pregnant with our first child. She had rubella during the crucial period of her pregnancy. The doctors in Boston pressured her to have an abortion because there was a very high chance that he would be born mentally retarded or physically deformed. Obviously we could not murder our unborn child. We trusted in God and pleaded with the Theotokos to protect our child. My wife was anointed on the feast of the Annunciation and he was born quite normal on the feast of the Falling Asleep of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Had we listen to the doctors we would have killed our son. Thus, I will never, ever, vote for or support any politician like Obama who is radically pro-abortion.
Nor can I as an Orthodox Christian support a candidate who is so strongly pro gay. He proclaimed June national gay pride month. He supports same sex marriage. He has instructed the state department that one of its major responsibilities is support for gay rights on the international level.
As an historian, I have some knowledge of economics. Economically Obama has been a terrible president. His policies have made a bad situation worse. Keynesian economics do not work. We learned that in the 1970s. Now he is making the same mistakes that were made in the 60s. y
I have already written about the serious threat that his policies are to the principle of religious freedom.
Fr. John W. Morris
Be careful, Archpriest. I did not call you a damn fool. I don’t have the time to read the rest of your message which I’ll assume is an example of being totally defensive.
I repeat this now, because I want everyone to know that you are fabulizing if you accuse me of calling YOU a damn fool. I did not. I say to you to be careful because you are playing with your salvation.
The sound you hear are my eyeballs rolling on the floor…
Your Grace:
If I misinterpreted your post, I apologize and beg your forgiveness. I would never deliberately treat any Orthodox Bishop with disrespect.
I do not agree with some of the political statements that you have made. Since you post them on a public forum, it is not out of line or disrespectful for me to respond with a different point of view. I also believe that since the Bishop’s Assembly has spoken rather clearly on this issue, that my opposition to the Obamacare mandate on forcing Churches to pay for birth control and medicine that causes abortion is well within acceptable opinion for an Orthodox Christian. We do not believe in abortion of abortion causing medications. There are even some Orthodox, particularly from some monastic traditions, who consider birth control forbidden for Orthodox Christians. Therefore, I feel that my Orthodox Faith requires me to oppose efforts to use the power of the federal government to promote abortion.
Archpreist John W. Morris
So that’s why Heracleides’ views are so bizarre! Who woulda thunk it?
It’s make a great cartoon. Did he ever retrieve them, do you suppose?
Fr. John,
Amen, Amen, Amen! You speak the truth and have justly discerned the catastrophic and immoral policies of Obama. He is, bar none, the worst president in American history.
Chris,
Thanks! Thanks! Thanks! You always erase all my doubts, especially, but not only, religious doubts. “I believe, help my unbelief! I agree, and Chris is the help I get.
Wow we know where the people on this blog stand.So much for free THINKING,people.
Roboacolyte, given your obvious feelings perhaps you should heed Matthew 7:6
But you sign the above as “Father John W. Morris”
Mormons rejected plural marriage “in the flesh” but a Mormon who is sealed in the temple to a woman can be sealed to other women should that first woman die and he remarry and they will all be together as husband and wives in the Celestial KIngdom. As a mormon told me “Plural marriage is still a doctrine .It is just not convenient right now”.
When I was in graduate school at the University of Chicago the UCC had a lot of students in the Seminary Consortium at the University and I was shocked at how liberal the UCC students were but they were doing a lot more work in social justice ministries than everyone else and this includes the Jusuits and the Lutherans who alo had students in the Seminary Consortium.
We are not electing a national theologian. We are electing a president. Romney’s personal religious beliefs have little relevance to the question of what kind of president he would make. In my not so humble opinion any person would be an improvement on Obama.
Fr. John W. Morris
Martin Luther said “it is better to be ruled by a wise Turk than a foolish Christian.”
Then you are being selective in your arguments for Mittens and against Obama. At least be consistent.
You my friend are very popular here,keep up the good work and backward thinking.
It is amazing how most of the discussion on Obama vs Romney misses the issue of waging wars and thus contributing to mass killings. Are policies on sexual perversions and contraception so much more important than killing people? Abortion is murder, no doubt about it, but so is war in most of its forms.
????What wars is Romney waging?
lxc
A quote from Romney:
On Face the Nation on Sunday, June 17th.
Obviously, when considering a new presidential candidate, we have to go by what he proposes or promises to do.
Mitrich, please point to one respected Orthodox theologian who condemns war, per se, as murder.
It is not fair to blame Iraq solely on Bush. The majority of both houses of Congress voted to approve the use of force including the majority of Democrats. Besides Bush is not on the ballot. At least Bush went to Congress for approval before he involved us in military action. Obama did not ask approval before he got us involved in Lybia. He sought no approval from Congress to send aid to the rebels in Syria. I hope that I do not wake up someday and hear on the news that the Muslim Brotherhood has taken over Syria. Since we invaded Iraq the Muslims have driven almost the entire Christian community, some of which are Orthodox, out of Iraq. I pray that we do not get dragged into a war with Iran.
It is the teaching of our Church that war is always wrong. We do not have the concept of just war like the West. However, the Church recognizes that there are times when there are no good choices. It is not a good choice to allow a foreign nation to invade or attack one’s country. Thus the Church has recognized that sometimes the lesser of evil choices is to fight. World War II is a good example. Hitler was evil and his evil rule had to be defeated. However, my friends who are Orthodox chaplains in the military tell me that even in war, an Orthodox Christian who kills another person is placed under penance and must go to Confession before he receives Holy Communion.
Archpriest John W. Morris
Archpriest John W. Morris wrote: “It is not fair to blame Iraq solely on Bush.”
True. And it’s not fair to blame anything America has done on any President. Let’s make that our fundamental political ethic. Do not solely blame a President for anything.
Besides, if someone wanted to blame any President “solely” for anything, then we’d be treated to mountains of evidence about paid-off congressmen, opportunistic lobbyists, such as Iraqi exiles and AIPAC, and so on. Just look at how they line up shadowy background figures in the “case” of President Obama. i recall how the Republicans once claimed that the Jew , Franklin Delano “Rosenfeldt” was the tool of Jew bankers. (Henry Ford and Father Coughlin of The Shrine of the Little Flower really liked that one!) Why one contributor here, an important one, would like to have Pol Pot, Stalin, etc., be liberal leftists. By the way is a “non-sequitor” the Roman person in charge of non-sequiturs?
Please, don’t take me wrong here. I did not say “war, per se.” I said “war, in most of its forms.” A defensive war is different from murder. Yet, even when talking about the defensive wars the Eastern Roman Empire was waging against barbarian incursions, St. Basil the Great said:
Regarding the wars we are facing now, instead of a theologian, I will quote Metropolitan Jonah:
(from a pastoral letter written for Sanctity of Life Sunday, 2009).
Well, the canons do call for an excommunication for 10 years for anyone who kills another, even soldiers in war. War has always been seen as an evil thing by the Christian tradition; sometimes necessary, in our fallen world, yes, but still evil.
No, that is not true. The penance for murder is much more than that for a soldier killing in war; if I recollect properly (I don’t have my book here at hand), the penance for murder is 15 years without Communion; for a soldier killing in battle only 3 years. That difference should tell us a lot.
Actually St. Basil the Great recommended 3 years for a soldier who kills in war and made a clear distinction between that and murder.
Part of the problem with Met. Jonah’s approach is that it does nothing to distinguish between justifiable (and not evil) use of deadly force and those which are not justifiable and therefore evil. There is a leveling egalitarianism in is argument which is really problematic IMO.
These are not gray areas. There is a real distinction. The choices that must be made, especially by soldiers in combat can be horrendous. Yet the list of saints who carried out their assigned duties in the Roman Army (not noted for its compassionate use of force) is quite long. They were not sainted because of their martial duties, but there was not impediment either.
The key here is whether we deify the state or not. The inherent agressiveness of statists at all points of the policital spectrum is my greatest objection to them.
Romney is, unfortunately, a statist and so he will be militarily aggressive and therefore have less moral sensibility. That is not a good thing. Nevertheless, we count as a saint the Empress Irene who had her own son’s eyes gouged out to protect her throne.
We are presented in the Presidential election with the choice between two statists, but anyone who is a head of state has the authority and responsibility to make decisions about the use of force, even deadly force all the time. All law is maintained on the knowledge that the state will use force if the law is broken.
That use of force is not, in and of itself, evil (even war). We must be more discerning about such things if we are to improve our politics.
Both candidtates have really bad theology but it is unlikely that anyone with good theology would choose to run for President in this day and age. The conversation hasn’t really been about theology at all, but about one’s favored political ideology.
The issue is that waging war is a grey area because there is a case to be made for defense of the innocent. The problem it that this ambiguity is used to somehow relegate the initiation of the pointless wars as being less bad than abortion. Never mind the subsequent impoverishment and starvation and then there is the profiteering.
No. The real issue, and you will see it on both sides of the divide, is that people have become completely blinded by misplaced hatred. Right vs. Left, Liberal vs. Conservative, and on and on and on. To the rational person it’s ridiculous and absurd. There are things that are right about both and things that are wrong and it is easy, by picking and choosing, to create what seems like a morally justifiable defense. The greater evil, as it were, is to allow onself to be duped by it. For example, someone earlier on this forum stated that Capitalism was inherently compatible with the Gospel but Socialism was not. Talk about selective reasoning. That’s just wrapping the cross in materialism.
Andreas, you have not properly understood my statement about capitalism. Your statement above does violence to my position.
Let me try to restate it:
1. Our economy today for the most part is not really capitalist, it is more facist in nature, yet it is called capitalist and all of the corruption and greed visible in the system are imputed to capitalism which is then demonized.
2. Captialism is merely a generally free way of exchanging goods and services and allowing the common consensus of all those involved in those exchanges to set value and more or less appropriately use the resources available efficently.
3. Since there is more freedom involved in capitalism, it is more amenable to the influence of the Gospel
4. Because of who we are, and the Incarnation, we are called upon to sanctify every part of our activities, including economic ones. The greater freedom of capitalism makes that much easier.
5. I hold freedom to be good because God does but clearly there are certain activities that need to be restrained. The state is part of that.
6. However when the state becomes active in, and is thought of as the souce of good and that they should therefore be in charge economically, that is socialism and worse. Our economic freedom is restricted beyond what is reasonably necessary especially on the local level.
7. That has nothing to do with materialism at all unless you assume that all matter is bad and we should be free of it which is heretical dualism. Or perhaps there is the belief in the total depravity of man so that we are simply incapable of using our freedom in a virtuous manner. Statists tend to believe that in my observation.
In a more general sense, I’ve come to the conclusion that human beings mostly don’t like freedom because that means we have to be responsibile for ourselves, for others and for the creation God has given us to order and sanctify. We’d much rather give that responsibility over to someone else “higher up” and then go play. Statists appeal to that weakness and we generally elect them because they promise us an easier life.
Capitalism without free enterprise and competition can be just as bad as socialism if monopolies are allowed to develop. The major problem with socialism is that it gives all power to the government which has no competition. Give any group too much power and sooner or later they will abuse that power to benefit themselves at the expense of the rest of society. To quote Lord Acton, “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. This applies to every element of our society; the government, big business, Wall Street, big labor, or any other group that plays a role in our society. Even the poor can get too much power if they use their votes to elect people who will take wealth from the people who work and give it to people who do not work. To be free, we must have competition and checks so that no one group gets too much power. For that reason, I believe that limited government and free enterprise competitive capitalism with protections for private property and restrictions to prevent any company from getting too large a share of the market is the best economic and political organization for any society.
I believe that Obama is gathering too much power in his hands. Our system was designed with checks and balances to keep one branch of government from gathering too much power over the others. He has no constitutional power to legislate but uses executive orders to do just that. He has even overturned laws passed by congress with executive orders.
Archpriest John W. Morris
I really can’t see how the corporatation of the world,which came out of capitalism,is amendable to the Gospel.It has leveled culture and destroyed our freedom.Lets see how many thumbs down I get on this,all you right wing Orthodox.
Archpriest John Morris wrote: “Capitalism without free enterprise and competition’
The most important example of that was the Soviet Union, the absolute peak of development of state capitalism, ironically hiding behind the totally hypocritical and fictional labels of socialism and communism! In this respect. today’s Russia is fast getting back onto that good ole state capitalism track!
American business and finance titans can only look on in envy, and do their best at election time with their wealth.
Michael Bauman ,given your obvious predeliction for sermonizing and general pontificating.I recommend any Desert Father’s teaching on Humility.
Well, I find it remarkable that none of those people who cried out at the totally non-existent RC views of the Canons imputed without any basis in fact whatsoever, to Archpriest David Blum, have any problem accepting part and parcel the almost word-for-word Roman Catholic “doctrine” of the “just war” imported by Father Webster!
There is no just war, but there can be righteous reasons for taking up arms and soldiers can use them righteously if they are willing to put God above country and the chain of command.
While there is no Orthodox doctine of Just War, nor should there be, there is no Orthodox doctrine of which I am aware that requires pacificsm, nor should there be.
That’s the rub, the difficult little thing we Orthodox have–freedom to work our our salvation in fear and trembling.
‘Taint easy sometimes.
A couple of comments Fr. Alexander made in his earlier book: “The Pacifist Option” (a comelling book for said option BTW) still ring in my memory even though it has been years since I read his work (I am paraphrasing):
1. The more specific we get on acutal military and economic policy the more we tend to become dominated by our political ideology rather than by the dictates of the Gospel and the teaching of the Church (applies to all, not just one part of the spectrum);
2. The Zero Sum Dilemma: pacifists by their inaction can allow people to be harmed who might not have been harmed if they had taken action.
My question does their inaction then become a ‘necessary evil’?
Forgive me Father, if I have missrepresented your work.
Fr John, while I do believe that Obama will go down as history as one of the worst of presidents (from a Constitutional standpoint), I cannot say that he hasn’t been effective. The damage done by him and his party (and three GOP turncoats in the Senate) for the first two years in his office will not, nor can it, be undone. In this sense, he was an extremely successful president.
I see your point. He did get Obama Care through congress. However, the way that he did it made it one of the most unpopular pieces of legislation in American history. Had he tried to bring the Republicans into the discussions and tried to achieve some sort of bipartisan agreement based on a few compromises he could have gotten it passed in a way that did not cause such a serious divide in our nation.
He promised “hope and change” and has turned out to be an old fashioned bare knuckled Chicago thug politician. His ads and speeches are filled with lies, not just exaggerations, but outright lies. He is one of the most divisive presidents in American history.
Fr. John W. Morris
To stand up for truth is nothing. For truth, you must sit in jail.
…
You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.
…
The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.
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In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.
…
If I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible what was the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: ‘Men had forgotten God; that is why all this has happened.’
…
A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage . . . . Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society.
A friend, who is an Anglophile, and I were talking about the opening ceremony, and we agreed that it started off good with the choir, but it got a lot worse by the middle of the ceremony, with the Industrial Revolution and HHS piece. We just couldn’t figure out what this was all about. I also pointed out to my husband that that brown-skinned guy all suited up as if he was a rich industrialist was an anomaly because as far as I can tell, there weren’t that many black people who were rich enough to be at that level. Oh, sure, some of the industrialists may have been descended from that Roman soldier from the farthest south reach of the Roman Empire or that servant who moved to that part of London in the 16th century. But still . . .
The opening ceremonies where a disgrace; little more than a glorification of socialism and popcorn, superficial cultural themes. Makes the Chinese 2008 ceremonies look amazing and inspiring by comparison.
Olympic Disaster: A Tribute to Socialism
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/blog/2012/07/olympic-disaster-a-tribute-to-socialism/
London Olympics Open with Left-Wing Tribute to Socialized Healthcare
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/blog/2012/07/london-olympics-open-with-left-wing-tribute-to-socialized-healthcare/
Well that is a bit of a rubbish article!
People in the UK will agree that the NHS is not perfect but it is wildly popular here…no government would dare attack it and I just think all these “OMG socializ(s)ed healthcare – evil, work of the Devil” etc. I think “socialism” and “liberalism” mean totally different things to a Brit and to an American.
Bashful, nobody will attack it because once government subsidizes something it doles out just enough benefits to keep it politically viable. Same thing here in the States with Social Security. What began as a “supplemental” pension has become the only means of income for the elderly. Everybody knows it’s going to bankrupt the nation but nobody thinks long-term. Just as long as I get my check that’s ok.
Same thing in the Later Roman Republic with the grain dole. It was unsustainable and it necessitated that Rome constantly expand its frontiers.
Well, I suppose that if the organizers of the opening ceremonies at the Olympics ever read anything on the Orthodoxy Today blog, they’d buy drinks all around, celebrating their having got their messages across so well, even to the remotest sticks, the teeth-gnashing, knickers-twisting precincts of illiberal Sourville.
I think one should always include Palestine in any discussion of multi-culturalism. Incidentally, here’s a link lamenting the tragedy of Palestinian Christians, and, George, I learned from it that Saint George (whom you know intimately) had a Roman father and a Palestinian Christian mother!!
http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/palestinian-christians-swept-aside-as-israel-rewrites-history#
why waste time watching the Olympics when you could be taking a nap? Oh wait. I can do both at the same time.
I tend to agree within certain limits. There is a lot less societal stress, crime, displacement in a monoculture…say like that of the Japanese. It doesn’t mean there cannot be serious problems, injustices, etc. , but with a common narrative and a commonly ascribed to set of societal rules everybody knows what is expected of them and where the boundaries are. They are also bond together by a common narrative, with whatever lessons, ideals it contains. From highest to lowest they understand themselves to be one people.
Mulitcultralism where all cultures are equal (except perhaps the old founding culture which is free to be despised or disregarded as an antique) is just a recipe for chaos…and the more the harrier. It’s all hamster dance meets Banana phone meets Lalala Man meets Peanut butter jelly time (with a baseball bat). Empires however have to deal with multiculturalism because they hold together so many different groups of people. The only way I know of for it to work though is for the imperial narrative…the founders narrative to stand over that of the others…to have the preference on the public square as it were without necessarily disparaging its other client cultures. This invites a certain level of assimilation across the empire. Take Rome…it may have been great to eat at the Egyptian or Sythian take out joint even if you were a Helvetic Celt visiting the capital. You may speak your native tongue and publicly follow your native customs on your home turf but to get anywhere in the empire you’ve got to speak like a Roman and know the Roman way of doing things better than they do. In an imperial system, there is no pretense of the social equality of all cultures. Not if that system is going to hold together.
So…for me the founding culture (in origin a colonial culture that displaced indigenous ones) of North America is Anglo-celtic, heaven on the Anglo…except where I live it’s a bit heavier on the Celtic (throw darts at the map and three out of ten cities and towns hit will have a Mac or Mc as part of their name. That’s the glue, that the norm, foundations, the culture that is to be assimilated into to greater or lesser degree. Where I’m from we’ve seen just such assimilations in the past from Lebanese and other Middle Eastern families….I was in my late 40s before I realized “Farris” was not an old antebellum southern name…but you would never know it. They looked enough like us, talked like us, enjoyed the same things we did, and got misty eyed when the high school band played Dixie just like the rest of us. We are beginning to see something similar with Indian (from India) families. Take Bobby Jindal of Louisiana for example…to hear him talk, to hear his concerns and political aspirations for his state…not a lick different than that of may other 12th generation or more Southerner (like me…know of one ancestor from 1652 Jamestown, and another from further back…the majority of which descendants have stayed below the Mason Dixon line…basically every ancestor I have in what is now the US was here by 1740…1751 at the latest) .
But there’s the rub as well…my native culture is protestant of one stipe or another…predominantly Baptist and Methodist. I’m the first male …the only male of my generation in my family (ether mother or father’s side) to have entered Orthodoxy…I’ve a cousin who converted as well. She married a guy from Greece and her children are cradle Orthodox…still even though we are in all other respects as Southern as they come…buy becoming Orthodox and preferring Orthodoxy above some communion of Protestantism we are not longer as much a part of or representative of our parent culture as we were before. And frankly I would be very happy to see Orthodoxy in the South grow to where it is as prevalent and common as the Baptists are now.
But that would mean a massive cultural shift…a change…an adoption of another cultural religious expression as normative…which is a bit at odds with the whole idea of monoculture. Perhaps the growth of a massive Orthodox western rite expression in the South would seem less wrenching.
Anyway…its just a little odd to be an advocate of either a monoculture or an imperial culture while at the same time being an advocate for the change of the religious orientation of that monoculture.
It is the egalitarian notions of modern ‘muti-culturalism’ while at the same time condeming all cultures that were begun or were significantly influenced by ‘dead white guys’ that bother me.
The death of society, British or otherwise, is the amalgamation of secular materialism driven by hand held devices. Once the Islamists learn to Tweet it’s even over for them.
Well, George in the 2nd century a lot of large land owners refuse to go with the Gracchi reform, so a lot of poor folk that lost their land went to Rome, Rome had an underemployment problem but I read that some of the grain dole wasn’t always for the poor. Rome limited the grain dole to large cities like Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, maybe no more than 10 cities in the empire, if you lived in some small town in Gaul no grain dole. The worst development was the Marian Military Reforms great for the Military but a general could grant land to his veterans. This was responsible for the rise of Julius Caesar and later Octavian-Augustus not a military man but he had the best generals and admirals of the time Agrippa who easily defeated Mark Antony at Actium.
Of course, Cynthia. I should have been clearer but my point is that the grain dole bankrupted the Roman system not because it was only for the poor, but because it was for everybody. One of the reasons that made St John Chryosostom so unpopular was that he went through the welfare rolls which the churches maintained and booted off widows who were cohabiting with men who were gainfully employed. He told them: “either get married or you will lose your widow’s pension.”
That’s the dirty little secret of all social welfare systems: it’s usually the more well-connected (i.e. wealthier people) are the ones who take fuller advantage of welfare programs. Even those that aren’t monetary based are able to be re-jiggered by the more politically savvy. Case in point: Affirmative Action. It was supposed to uplift the black male householder but it has instead benefitted white working women far more than black men. Hence, the increased racial/class stratification of our society.
As for Circus, the Eastern Romans used that term and also had a grain dole until 621 when they lost Egypt that provided with for it. Empress Theodora had been a Circus girl since she acted in dirty plays before meeting Justinian. Her father was the bear keeper. To the Byzantines chariot racing was the favorite of the Circus in the Hippodrome . Women could not attend the Circus if they were proper.
Well, the same can be said of the Stones, Lady Jane almost sounds medieval though.
Well, there a lot of propaganda but being an ex-age grouper swimmer I know that Michael Phelps and Misty Franklin get some attention instead of Football and the other professional sports. Yes, the Olympics is a lot of propaganda unfortunately, I had a friend that swam in the 1972 Olympics Shirley Bashashoff and when she was at her peak the East Germans in the 1976 Olympics used steroids.
Bible thumping fundamentalist, well I guess the Church in Byzantium were since they ban plays in 7th century.
Well, the left is wrong on certain things like Hiss and so forth. Also, the left when it quotes stats on Texas and the south should realized that Texas would do great on those stats if it was as white as Vermont. Texas whites have a below national average poverty rate and a above average finishing high school and attending college. Texas Hispanics which are growing faster have high poverty rates and low finishing high school. Texas politicians like their counterparts in California allowed their state to become heavily Hispanic since Hispanics that are immigrants will work entry level groups at age 30 while the native born leave those jobs at usually around 20 years old. Granted, they are bordered states by neither governments did much to discourage employers from hiring illegal Hispanic immigration. A lot of Hispanics born in the US have to faced constant competition in the job market by a new group of immigrants that the white population doesn’t faced as much.
My feeling is Obama is what is called a fabian socialists which means gradual. He has had far left influence since childhood. His grandparents had him in a Unitarian church. Most Unitarian churches today unlike 100 years ago when William Taft was President are pretty left on both theology and politics. Two as a teenager he spent several years under the company of Frank mention in his book. Frank was Frank William Marshall who even had a communists party number. Second in Chicago politics he was involved a lot with the new party and could their endorsement. at local offices they usually endorsed their own and national levels. Obama was involved with Bill Ayers whose politics are still pretty left and Alice Palmer also hard left in the 1990’s. Obama had to comprise with the Republicans since the Republicans made it impossible for him to do what he wanted not because he is a moderate.
I disagree I think that Obama is more of a fascist. He believes in state control, not necessarily state ownership. Socialism can be democratic like the state welfare socialism of Scandinavia. There is nothing democratic about Obama. More than anything Obama is a megalomaniac who thinks that he is always right on everything. He has no ability to build consensus or work out compromises. Like any good fascist, he believes in crony capitalism that rewards his friends and supporters. He is obviously anti traditional Christian as his policies on abortion, support of same sex “marriage” and persecution of the Catholic Church shows. His policy in the Middle East has favored the Muslim Brotherhood at the expense of the native Orthodox Christians. He does not care what the constitution or the law says, he does what he wants and rules by executive order if he cannot get what his legislation through congress. We have the delusion that Nazism was a right wing movement. It was ultra nationalists, but had a very heavy socialist element in its domestic program. It will take years to undo the harm that he has done to our country, if we ever can return it back to what it should be.
Fr. John W. Morris
Here’s a good one, for George on multiculturalism, both Dems and Some Republicans thought it was good to changed from non-Hispanic white to Hispanic. in the long term Here’s the following stats from Anaheim Ca. Hills which is more non-hisapnic and white: Families with husband and wife 81 percent and Anahiem HIlls is 65 percent white and 12 percent Hispanic. Male wihout wife 4 percent and Woman without husband 8 percent. In the flatland population around 64 percent Hispanic and only 18 percent white. Husband and white only 53 percent and male without wife 8 percent and woman without husband 22 percent. Now the Flatlands have a higher number of children in the family total under 18 29 percent while the Hills 25 percent. So, more single parent families in the Flatlands. Now people with complain because Afro-Americans do bad but Afro-Americans had ancestors that were forced here and they are growing slowly as a group while Hispanics now make up 20 percent or more of births in the US which means more children in single parent homes with lmore poverty and so forth. Image if hispanic immigration from Mexico or Central America was lower then probably less poor neighborhoods and both Mexicans and Central Americans might had a chance to moved more into the middle class before the recession hit.
Any document on the subject of Baptism that makes no reference to water is neither Orthodox nor orthodox. Do you suppose it’s just shoddy workmanship?
That’s true about Irene and her ambition. I think she was a saint because of her support of Icons. Too lazy here to be a great scholar on Irene.
Just saying, St. Irene did indeed support the use of icons and the Church has held that as more important than her obvious violence. It is just possible that a similar dynamic could be in play here. There may not be a moral equivalence between aggressive wars and abortion as those opposed to war often like to suggest. What do you think?
Oh, multiculturalism sure ruined the Russian Empire, the USSR, and today’s Russia, right? Look how it destroyed the Russian Orthodox Church, right? Canada, the U.S.===total flops, right?
Let’s put it this way,, multicultural Texas has a higher poverty rate than multicultural less Vermont. So having people of different backgrounds may not an advantage all the time.
But is greater wealth an unmitigated blessing? “Is it not the rich who oppress you and personally drag you into court? Do they not blaspheme the fair name by which you are called?” (James 2:6-7) Relative wealth should not, perhaps, be the measure of good. Social cohesion, however, is lost, or at least diminished, with the promotion multiculturalism and the attendant erosion of the culture of the founders and builders.
“Post hoc, ergo propter hoc”, because of that, therefore this.
That is fallacious thinking, Cynthia.
“Multi-culturalism” may or may not be a factor in Texas’s economic performance as compared with Vermont.
I strongly suspect that if it is (and first we need to define what “multi-culturalism” is and determine whether it inherently fosters economic poverty – btw, has anyone here ever been to Singapore?), it is only one of a cluster of causal factors.
In any case, you need to provide evidence for your assertion for it to be meaningful. Without evidence, it is simply a statement of prejudicial opinion (ie a preconceived judgment based on unfounded ‘facts”).
Basil, Cynthia is on to something here. Culture matters. Max Weber pointed that out decades ago. Even liberals like Jared Diamond believe it. It’s just common sense: if you import cock-fighting and pit-bull fighting into the States, you will get a whole lot of pathology and not a lot of rocket scientists. Large swaths of the Central Valley in California and the Rio Grande Valley of Texas are now indistinguishable from Third World favelas. If you don’t think that that’s going to have a negative impact on the Border States vis a vis Vermont, you’re mistaken.
The emergence of favelas in the USA has less to do with multi-culturalism than with an economic restructuring that has made the “financial services industry” more than 18% of the total economy.
There were shantytowns in the Guilded Age, and again in the 1930s. Income inequality leaves people living in squalor, not the color df their skin or the nations from which they hail.
CQ, the emergence of these favelas has to do with unrestricted, illegal immigration and a conscious desire by the Democrat Party to expand poverty and the Republican Party to undercut the wages of the native working class.
You confuse symptom and cause.
Illegal immigration is a symptom of the illness in the economic system, not its cause. Do you really think that the financial services industry is 18% of GNP because of illegal immigration? Do you really think that Bear Stearns and Loehmann Brothers were destroyed, and that the economy of every nation on earth has been stressed to the point of breaking, by illegal immigrants?
One would not blame a patient’s cancer on the pain it caused, but here you blame the features of the brave new world of libertarian economics peddled by the right wing for more than three decades now on their effects.
Yes I do. Greece’s economic collapse was precisely because if illegal immigration.
!!!
Greece’s economic woes are self-inflicted with an assist from the global financial system.
Yes, and allowing hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens into your country in order to undercut native wages is “self-inflicted.” Greece has more illegal aliens per capita than the US. California is well on its way to becoming Greece, America. One-third of all welfare cases are in the formerly Golden State. The school system is crumbling. The prison system is bursting at the seems. Over 300,000 productive people are leaving every year –equal to the entire population of Wyoming.
This is unsustainable.
Please understand, unchecked immigration is not the only source of our growing inequities. The feminization of the workforce, no-fault divorce, an uneven (at best) public education system, exaltation of “diversity,” all have contributed to the current slough of despond.
Every one of my great-grandparents were born in the United States of America. My maternal grandmother and mother were both born in my hometown of Los Angeles, California,
How about you, George? Where are your people from? My maternal great-grandparents are all from Missouri, my paternal ones all from Michigan. Which United State of America do your
great-grandparents hail from?
Truth now: Empire requires multi-culturalism. Doesn’t matter the historical era or geographic region. Empire requires multi-culturalism. Indians in London or Jews in Rome or Italians in Beijing, doesn’t matter. Empires that require mono-culture are short-lived.
CQ, I am a full-blooded Greek. My father was a merchant sailor from Messinia, who “jumped ship” in 1957 in New Orleans. He was an illegal alien and when he married my mother, he had to go to Canada, cross the border, and seek re-entry into the United States. My mother was born here. Her parents came in 1928 I believe. Her father’s father (my great-grandfather) came to the Midwest to work on the railroads for about a two year period in 1897-99 then went back to his native island of Imvros.
You will notice that nowhere did I say that I was against “immigration.” Despite my own origins, I am against illegal immigration. That is a huge difference, on the order of being against murder but for justifiable homicide. One reason I can say this with a straight face is because even though hundreds of thousands of immigrants to the United States had experiences similar to my father, up until about thirty years ago (“For English, press One”) it was understood that any immigrant would assimilate to the Anglo-American culture. My father did even though his English is still not that fluent. More on this another time.
As for “empire,” I have come to despise that concept. While I applaud the British Empire and see the need for other empires, I categorically reject it for our Republic. We do not need to spend our blood and treasure on foreign adventures for the sake of a Wilsonian pipe-dream that thinks all other nations and cultures want to be just like us. They do not.
America was founded as a Republic, for the “posterity” of the founding population (as The Constitution itself says). And no, this did not mean the aboriginal, Amerindian population, who the writers of The Declaration of Independence called “merciless savages.” Whenever you see the word “religion” in the writings of the Founding Fathers, they meant only Christianity and all of them belonged to established churches. Even Thomas Jefferson was a Vestryman in the Church of England.
Anyway, we won WWII seventy years ago and we still have troops stationed in Germany and Japan. It’s time to come home. As for the Middle East, they need us more than we need them.
One of your clearest hoisting of your personal “colors”. Gag.
Oddly, George, where we see “Religion” in the Constitution the framers meant “Western Christianity.” It’s fair to note that the Enlightenment values enshrined in the Constitution are post-Protestant, not proto-Orthodox. That Greeks were allowed to come here at all, much less bring their form of Christianity with them, is because the greed-oriented diesm of the Framers thought religion to be ultimately unimportant save for show. And American culture has continued down that path ever since, witness the “conservative” embrace of Libertarian economic theory.
America consumes more of the world’s resources than it produces, and that requires empire. Amreican bankers and traderrs profit from economic transactions in every nation on earth, and that requires empire. America is the most militarily powerful nation on earth, and that makes us an empire whether we like it or not. Every American, conservative or liberal, Jew or Gentile, male or female, is dedicated to the American consumerist culture that demands empire.
And every successful empire in the history of the world has been multi-cultural.
CQ, only two of the Founding Fathers were deists: Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. And Jefferson had nothing to do with The Constitution.
But yes, you are right when you say that “religion” to the Founding Fathers meant Western Christianity. That of course makes the point that they were even farther removed from multi-culturalism.
And no, in case you didn’t get my point, I don’t want America to become an empire. If it is one already (arguable) then we should divest ourselves of these vestiges as quickly as possible.
I think we should simply declare that all immigrants are legal. After all, it wouldn’t be much different from the process which took place when we ‘incorporated” Spanish/Mexican America into the U.S.A. The entire populace, Native Americans and Latinos almost all, were declared citizens by fiat as it were overnight! Applying Occam’s razor, the two worst things to happen to California and the conquered Latino west were Proposition 13 and the Federal Government’s War on Drugs which filled the prisons with pot-smokers with long senttences and no longer has room for mass murderers, defenders of our Christian legacy…..
Thomas Jefferson was this kind of Christian: the kind that wouldn’t have any problem with Islam and the kind that no Muslim would have a problem with. He re-wrote the Gospels to omit anything showing Christ had God-like powers or was divine. He thought, like a Muslim, that everything could be believed about Christ except that he was God.
So if American Muslims are one HALF as clever as some think they are, and one-HALF as determined to take over America, they might consider naming any new missions or store-front mosques, “The Thomas Jefferson Society.”
Your Grace, I agree that Jefferson was a deist, however he felt nothing but revulsion for Islam the civilization, Islam the culture, if not Islam the religion. Indeed, he was far more revolted by it than Christendom.
Do you really wish America to cease to be the world’s pre-eminent military power, to cease to be the world’s pre-eminent currency, and to cease to be the world’s pre-emiment marketplace?
Are you prepared to conform yourself to a world in which China and Russia are the military giants, in which global finance is conducted in Yuan or the Euro, and in which America cannot import the fuel, clothing, furnishings and electronics that it currently imports?
Having America divest itself of its position in the world because you don’t like multi-culturalism raises the question of what you would have come next. What do you think the world would look like if America decided to divest itself of its global position?
CQ, I do NOT want the US to “cease to be the world’s preeminent military power.” However our misadventures overseas (and this means NATO at this point as well as the Middle East) will erode our military capabilities as well as our economy.
And no, I don’t want the US dollar to stop being the world’s reserve currency. It will happen though probably by 2012, thanks to the massive debt load that we have incurred and will probably not be able to reverse –ever. The Chinese and Russians are already talking about bailing out on the dollar. It will happen barring a change in our fiscal policies.
This begs the question however: why are we incurring such a massive debt load? Entitlements.
You don’t want America to be an Empire, you merely want it to be the dominant military and economic power on earth. In essence you want all the benefits but not the responsibilities.
You might consider that the attitude you have toward Empire is really the problem facing the globe, not “entitlements” but entitlement. Just as you feel entitled to the trappings of Empire but decry the necessary costs, so the world feels entitled to the trappings of wealth but doesn’t wish to bear the costs. The solution: debt! What could go wrong?!?
Avarice and pride always lead to disaster, but here in America we treat them as virtues. The world has seen our apparent success and emulated it because we are pre-eminent. But emulating the success of a system dedicated to sin is the way to death. The wages of sin are death.
Rather than acknowledge our sin, however, we prefer to locate our illness outside of us, and the convenient scapegoats are always the same down through history, the least powerful and most different: the impoverished immigrant. Thus the symptom of our spiritual and moral illness is identified as its cause.
There’s nothing new under the sun about this, George, you’re following an age-old script.
Interesting distinction, CQ. We can be dominant without being imperial. The Good Lord blessed us with two great oceans on either side of us. Invasion would be difficult if not impossible. Why do we have to go bail out the rest of the world from their follies?
I never believed or hinted that Jefferson did not despise the Muslim peoples of the world, and did not deny that he called himself a Christian. I merely pointed out that those who claim that he was a founding father who was a Christian must realize that if HE is a Christian, so are almost all Muslims, since he and almost all Muslims held and hold the same beliefs about Jesus Christ: namely, He was a holy man who was not God. In theory, then, the entire government could become Muslim and hold the same beliefs about God and Jesus Christ as one of the most famous of our Founding Fathers; Thomas Jefferson.
Muslims believe it to be insulting that God could be improved by Incarnation.
How do you plan to dominate any nation, much less the entire globe, without being understood as an Empire?
Very good question. One can “dominate” in the general sense that Manny Paquaio is generally left alone while walking down the street. He doesn’t have to shove every person out of his way or try to get them to supplement his income by mugging them. He does well enough on his own by his own talents. The US was well on its way to being a dominant power in the 19th century both economically and militarily and it had no troops stationed in Europe.
So as long as America beats the tar out of someone every few months we can walk down the street without being bugged by everyone else?
Your depth of understanding of economic and foreign policy is staggering.
Of course culture has an impact upon economic prosperity,George.
Religion, as a critical former of culture, comes in here to, as any reader of Max Weber – yourself included, I’m sure – would know.
But I’d still like to see some hard data in historical context before we condemn an entire sub-culture (sub-text = race or better “ethnos”) as indigent and a drag on general prosperity. I re-iterate, the explanations for any deficit in Texan economic performance as compared with Vermont (apples and oranges?) are likely to be much more complex than the existence of favelas in the Rio Grande. If this were proved to be the case, though, perhaps, pace Max Weber, we should be praying for the success of Protestant missionaries among the Hispanics of Texas? 😉
Btw, do not overlook the likely long term economic benefit to the US of the human capital invested in the favelas . In the 19th C. American Nativists deplored the formation of ethnic ghettos in the great cities of the north-east and mid-west, yet America’s 20th C. prosperity could not have been built without the labor and later the intellectual contribution of that despised underclass.
Reality is always much more complex and nuanced than the simplistic rhetoric of dog-whistlling politicians suggests.
The USA is not “multi-cultural.”
US culture has long transcended religion and national origin, even political and philosophical viewpoint.
US culture is dedicated to commerce and conspicuous consumption, everything else is secondary. We consume more than 20% of the world’s product, though we make up less than 5% of its population. We treat our consumption as a birthright, and fight wars to protect our ability to consume more. That is true whether one is Jewish or Christian or Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu or Sikh. That is true whether one’s ancestors are from Asia or Europe or Africa or the Middle East. That is true whether one is liberal or conservative. American’s dedication to consuming more than anyone else is absolute, so much so that Avarice and Gluttony are considered virtues.
Those who decry homosexuality are not seen decrying gas guzzling SUVs, 4,000sqft homes, super-sized fries with double-double burgers and extra large shakes (a meal that would put to shame the meal the Rich Man had while Lazarus died at his gates) nor would they question the need for a 56″HDTV flatscreen with 200 channel cable service.
American culture is only “multi-cultural” in restaurants and the theme parks that we call “churches.” Otherwise, everyone agrees that we need to do whatever is necessary to preserve our ability to consume as much as possible as quickly as possible.
What CQ said . . . +1+1+1+1+1 . . .
I feel I’m not gilding the lily of CQ’s essay, but I hate to see anyone fail to mention that we also have to have one hundred per cent pure drinking water in our toilets, in order to urinate and defecate in a style which would make Byzantine, Chinese, Roman, Persian, Mongol, imperial rulers green with envy. Such wonderful stewardship of the Lord’s Creation SHOWS that the Nation under God is truly a Nation under God. As for those subhumans in India, Pakistan, Asia, Africa, and so on, that can’t even manage to get pure water to drink…well…We WORKED for the drinking water in our toilets!!!!! Furthermore, we need these necessities so we can have enough time for the freeway, and for texting, and for professional sports watching!!!!
And for you KNOWSTHE SCORE(sounds like a racehorse,last place.)I recommend posting somemore of your pithy wisdom so I don’t have to buy the book.
Well, Hispanic immigrants are different from immigrants in the 19th century in the following area. Most immigrants in the 19th century had about the same level of education as everyone else. Hispanic immigrants have about an 8th grade education which in the United States today means that the jobs available pay under 40,000. Immigrants from India have an education above the US average so more of them are going to have jobs that pay 80,000 or higher. So, a lot of the immigrants of the late 19th century and early 20th century actually left the US after a certain period and return home about 30 percent of them. In the 1920’s the quota system slowed immigration down and Greeks and Italians and Eastern Europeans moved more into the middle class.