And then there was one...

The Titanic sailing from Southampton

10 April 1912

Barbara West Dainton (96) the second to the last living survivor of the Titanic disaster has reposed. This leaves only one known survivor of the epic catastrophe still among the quick. Ms. Dainton was traveling to America with her family at the time and making the passage on the maiden voyage of the world's largest ocean liner must have been seen as quite a treat for the family. She was too young to recall the accident and always avoided discussing it later in life. However various family sources report that after the ship hit an iceberg her father behaved in exactly the manner expected of an English gentleman of that era. He put his family into a lifeboat and waived goodbye from the deck of the sinking liner. His body was not recovered. More than 1500 people were lost in the ice cold waters of the North Atlantic when the Titanic sank a little over two hours after hitting the berg.

The ship was a marvel of luxury and modern engineering at the time. She was almost 900 feet long and 13 stories from her keel to the top deck. Her three massive propellers could mover her at a very respectable speed of around 22 knots. She boasted such amenities as a French style sidewalk cafe, squash and racquetball courts, an indoor swimming pool and electric elevators. Her 16 watertight compartments that could be closed off from each other by reinforced steel watertight doors were thought to make the ship virtually unsinkable. However the watertight bulkheads did not extent to the top deck. While the ship was said to be able to float with any two or three of her compartments flooded (a worst case scenario in the minds of her builders) the collision opened up her first five compartments to the sea. Tragically the ship carried only enough lifeboats for a little over a thousand people. Even given this terrible discrepancy many of the early boats launched left with room to spare. Of the 2200+ passengers and crew aboard only 705 survived.

Since childhood I have had something of a fascination with the doomed liner. Because her service life was so very short and given the age she was built in there are relatively few pictures of the Titanic around. Many photos of her nearly identical sister ship the Olympic are occasionally mistaken for the Titanic. For those interested I am going post some of the few known pictures of the Titanic below. You may click on any of the photos to see it full sized.

The Titanic dressed in holiday regalia for Good Friday 1912 four days before sailing on her maiden voyage. This is the only known photograph of the ship with all her flags and pennants up.

The starboard boat deck probably taken during the passage from Cherbourg to Queenstown Ireland (modern day Cove)

Titanic's propeller shaft under construction in Belfast N. Ireland

The Titanic's propellers while under construction in Belfast N.Ireland

The Titanic on the stocks while under construction

Titanic fitting out at Harland & Wolfe after her launch. The forward section of her promenade deck would eventually be glassed in (see the picture at the top of the post) to protect passengers during inclement weather. This was one of the few features distinguishing her from Olympic.

The Grand Staircase made famous in the romantic film drama with Leonardo DiCaprio. The elaborate wood carving around the clock was supposed to represent Honor and & Glory crowning Time.

The top of the Grand Staircase under the stained glass dome over the First Class Foyer. The windows look out onto the boat deck.

The First Class Smoking Lounge. Men only of course...

The First Class Lounge

The Palm Court a popular place for afternoon tea

The French style Cafe Parisean

One of only three known photographs of the massive Jacobin style First Class Dining Saloon

This is believed to be the only existing photograph of the Titanic's First Class Dining Room during a meal. Given what appears to be daylight it is likely that it was taken during the lunch served on the 11th of April en route to Queenstown.

First Class dinner menu (almost certainly a reproduction but included to provide some flavor)

The Turkish baths. This is one case where the black & white really does not do the subject justice. The baths were incredibly gaudy and would have fit in well with any Rudolph Valentino movie set.

The gymnasium with its electric rowing and riding machines. There was a large map on the wall that was updated daily with the Titanic's position for passengers keep track of. The odd looking riding machine in the far corner was an electric camel.

Stateroom B-57

Bedroom of stateroom B-58

Stateroom B-59

The bedroom of stateroom B-64

The Second Class lounge

Second Class dinner menu.

The 3rd class (steerage) common room. Compared to most other steamers of the period the 3rd class accommodations in the Olympic class ships were considered quite decent. Of course the standard steerage ticket covered meals but not access to the lifeboats in case the ship sinks. The loss of life among the poor immigrants in steerage was appalling.

The 3rd class dining room.

Paying for Capital Punishment

The New York Times has an interesting story which supports points 2 & 7 in my recent apology against the death penalty. The State of Georgia is beginning to discover that a system of capital punishment that provides for truly competent legal council cannot be run on the cheap. Needless to say they are not happy. While I expect the Supreme Court to affirm lethal injection as a permissible means of execution I also expect the court to continue its slow trend in raising the often abysmal standards for legal council in capital cases.

Some reflections on the occasion of the birthday of Her Majesty the Queen

Queen Elizabeth: A stranger in her own country

By A.N WILSON

Next month, she will become Britain's oldest monarch. But in this provocative essay a historian argues that while her reign has seen more social advances than even Victoria's, it is also the age in which Britain stopped being British

As an historic milestone, it will merit little fanfare.

Yet it is an astonishing truth that in a few weeks' time, Her Majesty the Queen will have outlived even her most illustrious regal forebear, Queen Victoria, making her the oldest monarch in our nation's history.

In fact, it will be on December 22 that Queen Elizabeth II passes the age at which Queen Victoria died on January 22, 1901, aged 81 years, seven months, four weeks and one day.

True, Victoria is still - thus far - our longest-reigning monarch. (She came to the throne younger and reigned for more than 63 years, whereas our Queen has not yet managed 56 years.)

But already, the reign of Elizabeth II has encompassed so much change and has witnessed so many remarkable achievements that it makes her seem almost a time-traveller, spanning not just six decades, but whole centuries.

The Britain of the early Fifties is so utterly different from Britain in 2007 that it is bizarre to think that we have the same head of state as we did when rationing was still in force and Churchill was Prime Minister.

But has this Queen's reign, like that of Victoria, been a time of British success, or of failure?

Will this, the second Elizabethan era, compare favourably with that of her great-great-grandmother?

Read the rest here.
Hat tip to Bill (aka The Godfather)

Repentance & Confession

By John Chryssavgis

Confession is in decline and repentance is misappre­hended. The decline and the misapprehension cannot be easily qualified, but they are unmistakable at least inasmuch as they are considered to be no more than incidental prac­tices in the life of the Church today. The "traditional" way of thinking of sin and forgiveness has collapsed among a growing number of Christians. Nothing less than a theo­logical and pastoral renewal is necessary in order to redis­cover the living meaning of repentance and confession.

The degeneration is often attributed to secularization. Yet secularization should not be seen, in a scapegoat fashion, as merely an external enemy. It acts from within the Church. Even those actively involved in church life suffer from for­malism caused by the established patterns of religious prac­tice. There is a need to appeal to the deepening of repen­tance and confession as spiritual realities rather than their imposition as obligatory customs. It is only in a realization of the nature of sacramental life that repentance acquires its significance as a way of renewal and reconciliation in Christ.

Repentance is indeed an act of reconciliation, of reintegra­tion into the Body of Christ, which has been torn asunder by sin. For "if one member suffers, all suffer together" (1 Corinthians 12.26). "Therefore, confess your sins to one another ... that you may be healed" (James 5.16). The whole Church expresses a search for repentance in the repeated words of the Psalmist, commonly known as the "miserere" (Psalms 50). It is through the faith of the community that the individual is readmitted and forgiven. "When Jesus saw their faith he said, 'man, your sins are forgiven' " (Luke 5.20; cf. Matthew 9.2 and Mark 2.5). "Justification" in the New Testament does not mean a transaction - a kind of deal; and repentance defies mechanical definition. It is a continual enactment of freedom, a movement forward, deriving from renewed choice and leading to restoration. The aim of the Christian is not even justification but a re-entry by sinner and saint alike into communion in which God and man meet once again and personal experience of divine life becomes possible. Both prodigal and saint are "repenting sinners."

Repentance is not to be confused with mere remorse, with a self-regarding feeling of being sorry for a wrong done. It is not a state but a stage, a beginning. Rather, it is an invitation to new life, an opening up of new horizons, the gaining of a new vision. Christianity testifies that the past can be undone. It knows the mystery of obliterating or rather renewing memory, of forgiveness and regenera­tion, eschewing the fixed division between the "good" and the "wicked," the pious and the rebellious, the believers and the unbelievers. Indeed, "the last" can be "the first," the sin­ner can reach out to holiness. Passions are conquered by stronger passions; love is overcome by more abundant love. One repents not because one is virtuous, but because human nature can change, because what is impossible for man is possible for God. The motive for repentance is at all times humility, unself-sufficiency - not a means of justification for oneself, or of realizing some abstract idea of goodness, or of receiving a reward in some future life. Just as the strength of God is revealed in the extreme vulnerability of His Son on the Cross, so also the greatest strength of man is to embrace his weakness: "for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I render glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me" (2 Corinthians 12.9). To be flawed is the illogical, perhaps supernatural characteristic of humanity in which one en­counters God.

The Greek term for repentance, metanoia, denotes a change of mind, a reorientation, a fundamental transforma­tion of outlook, of man's vision of the world and of himself, and a new way of loving others and God. In the words of a second-century text, The Shepherd of Hermas, it implies "great understanding,"1 discernment. It involves, that is, not mere regret of past evil but a recognition by man of a dar­kened vision of his own condition, in which sin, by sepa­rating him from God, has reduced him to a divided, auto­nomous existence, depriving him of both his natural glory and freedom. "Repentance," says Basil the Great, "is salva­tion, but lack of understanding is the death of repentance." [2]

It is clear that what is at stake here is not particular acts of contrition, but an attitude, a state of mind. "For this life," states John Chrysostom, "is in truth wholly devoted to repen­tance, penthos and wailing. This is why it is necessary to re­pent, not merely for one or two days, but throughout one's whole life."[3]

Any division within oneself or distinction between the "time to repent" and the "rest of one's time" is, in the lan­guage of the Church, attributed to the demons. The role of these demons is extortionate, offensive - "diavallo," the root of the word "devil," means to tear asunder.[4] We cannot be deprived of true repentance or diverted from its path by the deception of demons. Yet the demons can work through virtue, working to produce a kind of spurious repentance. By nature we are destined to advance and ascend spiri­tually, but the demons divert the course by simulating ad­vance in the form of a fitful movement, a wobbling from side to side, like crabs. One can test the quality of repen­tance by ascertaining whether it is fleeting or fluttering. In­constancy and inconsistency are a danger signal; lastingness is auspicious. One is being tempted by the demons when one is caused "at times to laugh, and at other times to weep."[5]

THE TWO DIMENSIONS OF REPENTANCE
Divine Initiative

Repentance is not a self-contained act: it is a passing over, a Pascha from death to life, a continual renewal of that life. It consists of a reversal of what has become the normal pat­tern of development, which is the movement from life to death. To experience this reversal in repentance is to have tasted of the glory and beauty of God; it is the mark of man's presence before God in the abundance of His mercy and of God's presence before man in the abyss of his weakness: "Set Your compassion over against our iniquities, and the abyss of Your lovingkindness against our transgression."[6] It is the awareness of God's beauty that makes one realize the chasm that separates one from His gratuitous grace. The ini­tiative belongs to God, but presupposes man's active accep­tance, which is a way of perpetually receiving God within the heart, of God being embodied within man, of divine in­carnation. Here God calls man, and man responds to God and in doing so gains salvation and life abundant: "sorrow working repentance to salvation not to be repented of" (2 Corinthians 7.10). In repentance it is man's total limita­tion and insufficiency that is placed before God, not sim­ply particular wrongdoings or transgressions.

The "dialectic" of beginning and end underlying repen­tance is important. Every manifestation of life has an escha­tological dimension, even while, paradoxically, repentance gives rise to restoration, to a return to man's original state. Everything tends towards and expects the "end," even while being a matter of the here and now. To repent is not merely to induce a restoration of lost innocence but to transcend the fallen condition.[7] Indeed the greater the fall, the deeper and more genuine the repentance and the more certain the resurrection. Man is "enriched" by his experience even if it has been crippling and tormenting. The Fathers appear to express greater love - almost a preference - for the more sinful person, inasmuch as thirst for God increases in proportion to the experience of one's debasement and abase­ment (Romans 5.20).

The word for "confess" in Greek (ἐξομολογοῦμαι, ὁμολογῶ) does not bear the contemporary meaning peculiar to it. When we say "confess" we imply that we accept, recognize or witness an event or fact. But this is not the original mean­ing. The point is not of admitting, more or less reluctantly, a hitherto "unrecognized" sin, but an acceptance of and sub­mission to the divine Logos (exomologesis) beyond and above the nature and condition of man.[8] It is this Logos, the Word of God, that man seeks to regain, or rather to com­mune with. To confess is not so much to recognize and ex­pose a failure as to go forward and upward, to respond from within to the calling of God. Created in the image and likeness of God, man bears before himself and in himself that image and likeness. In repenting he does not so much look forward as reflects and reacts to what lies before and beyond him.

However, repentance is also a way of self-discovery: "Open to me the gate of repentance."[9] Metanoia is the gate­way to oneself, to one's fellowman, and to heaven. It leads inwards, but it also leads outwards by leading inwards. The world ceases to rotate round the self and begins to gravitate towards the other - the divine and the human other. Sin has the opposite effect. It blocks the way both inwards and outwards. To repent and to confess is to break out of this restriction, "to accept with joy," in Isaak the Syrian's words, "the humility and humiliation of nature," to transcend and to recover oneself. The world thereupon ceases to rotate around "me" and begins to gravitate towards the other, cen­tering on God. Then, everyone and everything no longer exist for myself but for the glory of God, in the joy of the Resurrection. One is then able to comprehend more clearly the positive dimension of even sin, suffering, death, the devil and hell. Then, one discovers the depth of love crucified, the presence of the Lord in our midst - even "when the doors are shut" (John 20.19,26). One is not, however, demanded to love God from the outset, but rather to know that "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son" (John 3.16). Nevertheless, the love of God is implicit in His very nature. God Himself is the Archetype of divine love. When John the Theologian says that "God is love" (1 John 4.8,16), love is seen as an established ontological category of both divinity and humanity in His likeness. In fact, the beauty and loving freedom of the human person is, in the words of Nicholas Berdiaev, God Himself. It is He, "the crea­tor of all ... who out of extreme erotic love moves outside Himself ... burning with great goodness and love and eros." It is He who is "the fullness of erotic love."[10] And it is this supreme love that moved God to create human nature in His image and likeness. "As Lover, He creates; and as Loved, He attracts all towards Him."[11] "As a mad Lover He desires His beloved human soul," says Saint Nilos.[12] "Herein is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us (1 John 4.10).

The response to this ineffable outpouring of love is none other than its acceptance. Repentance thereby acquires a different dimension to mere dwelling on human sinfulness, and becomes the realization of human insufficiency and limitation. Repentance then should not be accompanied by a paroxysm of guilt but by an awareness of one's estrange­ment from God and one's neighbor. Why, after all, does one not partake of Holy Communion after committing sin? Not for punishment, but surely because sin itself is a denial of communion. The paradox of God's love is that one is only saved again through communion. Although God is constantly being chased away by humanity, yet He returns day after day in the Liturgy;[13] in the words of the Psalmist, "the mercy of God runs after us all the days of our lives ... for His mercy endures forever" (Psalm 22.6, and 135). God is not only at the end of the journey of repentance but also at the beginning (Revelation 1.8), and Christ is the Way (John 14.6). One seeks, then, Him whom one already possesses; and the voyage is an unceasing arrival as well as a never ending departure. Man in all his sinfulness is loved by God if he can just keep moving towards God. When one does fall, if one only cries out with confidence, the fall is not into noth­ingness but into the arms of God stretched open once and for all on the Cross.

Human Response

"Penthos" is the conditioned sorrow of a repentant soul, adding sorrow upon sorrow each day, like a woman suffer­ing in childbirth."[14]

Repentance, as has been noted, is not a mere incident or stage through which one passes and then leaves behind; rather it is an attitude which colors one's whole life and for which, at the same time, one must struggle continually. It is a way of life, and as such a way of transfiguration, in which man's heart and mind continuously receive illumina­tion by the Holy Spirit. It is a continuous pathway, at least in this life, a perennial striving, an all-embracing motion and not merely an occasional emotion. Repentance is ultimately a gift of the Holy Spirit who transforms the heart of the human person, and not a fruit of individual effort or anguish.

Whether related to this continuity and endurance or to the depth of moral sensitivity involved, for the Fathers of the Church there is an intimate link between repentance and tears. There are other criteria,[15] but grief is para­mount, and its intensity is proportionate to the depth of repentance. "Truly you are blessed, Abba Arsenios, for you wept for yourself in this world! He who does not weep for himself here below will weep eternally hereafter; so it is impossible not to weep, either voluntarily or when com­pelled through suffering."[16] Gregory the Theologian be­lieved that everyone must weep. He even identified repen­tance with tears, whatever other ways of expressing it there may be: "All must shed tears, all must be purified, all must ascend."[17] Symeon the Theologian is even more definite: "Remove tears and with them you remove purification; and without purification no one is saved."[18]

The word penthos (mourning) has the same root as pathos (passion): both stem etymologically from the verb "to suf­fer." A Christian speaks of worthy suffering, of subsuming suffering in God, just as passion and mourning are subsumed in God. There is suffering in compunction (katanyxis = pricking), which also causes tears.' 'Joyful sorrow" trans­figures this suffering and pain through grace. Penthos con­sists in mourning for the loss of God's presence; it makes for sorrow at His absence and thirst for Him. "Passion or suf­fering for God gives rise to tears."[19] Man is in a state of be­reavement, and the Church Fathers and liturgical hymnology speak of Adam sitting opposite paradise in mourning over his bereavement and estrangement from God. The Makarian Homilies say that man must "weep his way back" to para­dise.[20] But tears - a concomitant and a culmination of re­pentance - are also a turning point in homecoming, a pledge of return, and a firstfruit of its joy. The longing for return from exile is also an anticipation of the glory to come. Tears demonstrate the frontier between the present and the future.

The tradition of the Christian East gives special promi­nence to the "gift of tears."[21] The tradition can be traced to the New Testament, through the Desert Fathers, to John Kli­makos, through to later times, with Symeon the New Theo­logian standing out as one of its most important witnesses. "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted" (Matthew 5.4). Tears are primarily "up to God," and only derivatively "up to us." There is a thirteenth-century French tale "Le chevalier au Barizel" according to which the knight was supposed to fill up a barrel with water; he travels all over the world to do this, but the water always passes through the barrel. Seeing that his efforts achieve nothing, he weeps, and one teardrop is sufficient to fill the barrel. Tears bespeak a promise, and they are also proof of hope fulfilled, of sins forgiven. But there is a time to weep and a time to rejoice, although the one flows into the other. There is a kairos, "a season and a time" (Ecclesiastes 3.1) for each divine gift, and this kairos is the time in which God acts, calling us to participate in His action. Tears are a way and a consequence of purification through repentance; the ulti­mate goal is transcending light and delight.

THE SACRAMENT OF CONFESSION

A Christian, at any rate an Orthodox Christian, views re­pentance as a dynamic act of responsibility to God, but also to other men. It is not pining away in narcissistic self-reflection, even while implying self-knowledge and self-examination. Sin itself is a relational act - a break in the "I-Thou" relationship. It concerns my relationship with another person. When the prodigal son "came to himself" in the Gospel parable (Luke 15), he did so in relation to his father: "I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before You" (v. 18). We repent in the face of God; and we repent in communion with others, in the Church. Repentance in the early Church was in fact a solemn public act of reconciliation, through which a sinner was readmitted into church membership. Even in Buddhism, monks regularly confess their sins publicly before Buddha and the congregation; the phenomenology is the same as in the Church, even if the theology or ideology is different. Sin (and evil) divides, repentance conciliates, confession affirms the conciliation. Outside the community, outside the Church repentance would settle into guilty gloom, dulling the spirit or even driving to despair: metanoia turning into paranoia.

Confession, too, takes place within the Church. It is not a private procedure, a treatment of some guilt-ridden indi­vidual on an analyst's couch. It is not based on an admis­sion of guilt and certainly cannot be reduced to a feeling of guilt, of liability for conduct contrary to norms and laws which render a person subject to punishment. It is related to what is deepest in man, to what constitutes his being and his relation with other human beings as well as with God. It is a sacrament - "the visible form of an invisible grace" (Saint Augustine), re-establishing a bond of union between God and man, between man and man. This is why confes­sion also takes place within prayer because it is there that a personal relationship in all its intensity is realized both with God and the entire world. As such, confession and prayer are not merely technical terms but means and op­portunities offered by the Church for overcoming sin and death. Repentance is indeed the cause and consequence of prayer, being the highest and fullest foundation for and form of prayer. "True prayer," according to Saint Anthony, "is that in which one forgets that one is praying,"[22] and genuine re­pentance enables one to forget oneself and simply long for God, who is present in the very depth of repentance. For it is 'before Him alone that one sins" (Psalm 50.3-4) - this is the personal or relational aspect of both sin and repentance.

The supreme act of communion is the eucharist, the com­munal sharing of bread and wine, symbolizing sacrament­ally the reconciliation to come and the reconciliation already achieved in the here and now. Repentance and confession as sacrament seals man's change of direction from disruption to reconciliation. An examination of the early forms of con­fession shows that they are derived from community ser­vices and even liturgies. Origen explicitly stresses the signif­icance of the eucharist for the forgiveness of sins.[23] Later services for confession developed undoubtedly from com­munity rites closely related to the eucharistic celebration, or else to the monastic offices of matins or compline.[24] Since forgiveness of sins involves reconciliation in and through the eucharist, the eucharistic prayer contains peni­tential elements as immediate preparation for communion.

In early Christian times the exhortation of James served as a foundation for the sacrament of repentance: 'Therefore con­fess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed' (5.16). Confession was regarded as a form of re­pentance and regeneration (Matthew 3.6; Mark 1.5; Acts 19.18). The actual ritual aspect of repentance was a direct result of such apostolic testimony, at first in the form of confession be­fore the entire Church and, subsequently, before a spiritual fa­ther.[25] Nevertheless, the earliest order of confession is of rela­tively late origin (tenth century, and is ascribed to John the Faster, Patriarch of Constantinople.[26] This text may well be the source of later Greek and Slavonic services of confession. The communal, sacramental aspect of confession was more apparent in the early Church when penance constituted a public act rather than an individual episode. It was only after the fourth century that private confession was more widely practiced. But even then penance did not have the legalistic and clericalistic character which it acquired later. In fact, very few Church Fathers refer even to absolution as a formal procedure, although such silence does not necessarily mean that absolution in some form or other did not exist. It is the reduction of sin to a punishable legal crime, an act of law­breaking inviting a penalty that is almost wholly absent in patristic literature.[27] "Have you committed a sin?," asks Saint John Chrysostom, "then enter the Church and repent of your sin ... For here is the Physician, not the judge; here one is not investigated but receives remission of sins."[28]

Unfortunately confession at times undermines and even replaces the genuine inner repentance of a Christian: peo­ple feel "entitled" to communion after confession. This con­tradicts the true nature of repentance. It is a result of the sacrament being narrowly and juridically reduced to "abso­lution." Scholarly theology tended to transpose the concept of sin, repentance and forgiveness into a forensic idiom, and placed the emphasis on the power of the priest to absolve. In the Orthodox Church, the priest is seen as a witness of repentance, not a recipient of secrets, a detective of speci­fic misdeeds. The "eye," the "ear" of the priest is dissolved in the sacramental mystery. He is not a dispenser, a power­wielding, vindicating agent, an "authority." Such a concep­tion exteriorizes the function of the confessor and of con­fession which is an act of re-integration of the penitent and priest alike into the Body of Christ. The declaration "I, an unworthy priest, by the power given unto me, absolve you" is unknown in the Eastern Orthodox Church. It is of later Latin origin and was adopted in some Russian liturgical books at the time of the domination of Russian Orthodox theology by Latin thought and practice .[29] The idea served to bring confession into disrepute, turning it into a procedure of justification and exculpation in respect of particular pun­ishable offenses. Forgiveness, absolution is the culmination of repentance, in response to sincerely felt compunction. It is not "administered" by the priest, or anybody else. It is a freely given grace of Christ and the Holy Spirit within the Church as the Body of Christ.

A word must be said about "general" confession, as dis­tinct from a face-to-face confession between penitent and priest. General confession, in certain circumstances, could be a living model of repentance as a communal act, involv­ing the whole body of the Church and as such manifesting the very essence of confession.[30] But it is not strictly a sub­stitute for personal confession, involving intimate self-exami­nation on the part of the penitent and possible guidance on the part of the confessor. Altogether, the function of the priest should not be ignored or minimized. "All who have experienced the blessing of having as their confessor one imbued with the grace of true spiritual fatherhood," writes Bishop Kallistos Ware, "will testify to the importance of the priest's role. Nor is his function simply to give advice. There is nothing automatic about the absolution which he pro­nounces. He can bind as well as loose. He can withhold ab­solution - although this is very rare - or he can impose a penance (epitimion), forbidding the penitent to receive Com­munion for a time or requiring the fulfilment of some task. This, again, is not very common in contemporary Orthodox practice, but it is important to remember that the priest pos­sesses this right ... Not that the penitence should be re­garded as punishment; still less should it be viewed as a way of expiating an offense ... We do not acquire 'merit' by fulfill­ing a penance, for in his relation to God man can never claim any merit of his own. Here, as always, we should think primarily in therapeutic rather than juridical terms."[31]

The most significant effect of confession is indeed due neither to the penitent nor to the priest, but to God who heals our infirmities and wounds. It is not a matter of a let­off, a clearance; it has the force of healing, of making the penitent whole. As such it is a gift from God which man must be open to receive, and learn to receive: "Let us apply to ourselves the saving medicine of repentance; let us ac­cept from God the repentance that heals us. For it is not we who offer it to Him, but He who bestows it upon us." [32] It is significant that the Greek for confession, exomologesis, im­plies not only confession but also thanksgiving (cf. Matthew 11.25; Luke 10.21): "I shall confess/give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart, and tell of all His wonders" (Psalm 9.1).

Reference has already been made to the cloud of guilt which at times shrouds the sacrament of confession. It is by no means a theoretical question, for guilt is part of the tragedy experienced by many people, whether in their per­sonal lives or in the face of the appalling sufferings and misery - mental, physical, social - which afflict the world at large today and for which we all share the responsibility and the guilt. But in the specific context of repentance and confession, guilt is a highly misleading concept, largely fostered by Western thinking.[33] It originates in a hyper­trophied individualistic, self-regarding view of sin and sal­vation, and indeed of repentance with its attendant legalis­tically oriented penitential system. Orthodoxy always re­sisted legalism, whether in repentance or in confession, eschewing both undue confidence in man's achievement or merit and the overwhelming sense of guilt, which is the negative aspect of being centered on oneself and seeking for some means to propitiate God's wrath. By contrast with this God is seen to declare His love for men at their most unac­ceptable. It is God's identification with man and His loving acceptance of the worst that men can do that makes repen­tance and confession a way of rediscovering God and one­self, and thereby of being set on the road to full and loving relationship with God and with other men. There is no men­tion in Scripture of the word "guilt" (ἐνοχή), although there is the adjective "guilty" (ἔνοχος). Instead of "guilt" there is "sin" (ἁμαρτία) - failure, loss, a break-up in relations, result­ing in a kind of false consciousness. Even "ἐνέχομαι" implies keeping fast within, cherishing, sharing, as distinct from be­ing ashamed in the face of God who inflicts retributive punishment.

Break in communication or communion can lead to path­ological forms of guilt. But there is guilt born of a sense of responsibility for others as well as for oneself, leading one to an awareness of other people. The Christian view of man is largely a social one. Where there is a breakdown in per­sonal love, or a rise in institutionalism, one finds a thicken­ing of the atmosphere of guilt. Its antidote is collective con­fession, communal prayer to "our Father." A saint might con­fess daily without fear of neurosis, because he is in constant communion with God and man. Acknowledgment of one's limitations leads to personal communion with God who alone can erase sin: "I acknowledged my sin to You, and I did not hide my iniquity.... Then You did forgive the iniquity of my sin" (Psalm 32.5).

Through the forgiveness of sins in confession, the past is no longer an intolerable burden but rather an encourage­ment for what lies ahead. Life acquires an attitude of expec­tation, not of despondency; and confession becomes the way out of the impasse caused by sin. In this respect, repentance is also an eschatological act, realizing in our very midst, here and now, the promises of the age to come. Looking back­wards would seem to imply the fate of Lot's wife (Genesis 19.26); 'No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God" (Luke 9.62). God Him­self is revealed before us and walks in front of us. "One thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead" (Philippians 3.13).

NOTES
1 Mandatum, IV, ii, 2.
2 De Perfectione spirituali 4 PG 31:636B.
3 De Compunctione I, i PG 4,7:395 and I, ix :408.
4 Abba Isaias, Logos 29,4.
5 John Klimakos, Ladder 26:iii, 30 PG 88:1088C.
6 First prayer of Kneeling Vespers at Pentecost.
7 Cf. John Klimakos Ladder 4:125 PG 88:725D and 5:19 PG 88:780B.
8 Cf. Archbishop Stylianos Harkianakis, 'Repentance and Con­fession' (in Greek: Ahropolis Newspaper, Athens 10-4-80), p.6.
9 Hymn of Great Lent.
10 Dionysios, De Div. Nom. 4, 2 PG 3:712AB and Maximus, Comm. in Div. Nom. 4, 17 PG 4:269CD.
11 Maximus, ibid. and De Amb. PG 91:1260.
12 PG 79:464.
13 De Charitate 3, 2 in Philocalia, vol. 2.
14 John Klimakos, Ladder 7:60 PG 88:813D.
15 Cf.John Klimakos Ladder, 7:25 and 48 PG 88:805C and 809D.
16 Apophth. Arsenios 41 PG 65:105CD.
17 Oration 19,7 PG 35:1049D-1052A.
18 Catechesis 29.
19 Theodoret of Kyrrhos, Philotheos Historia XXX, Domnina 2 PG 87:1493AB.
20 15, 17. Cf. Kontakion and Oikos of Cheesefare Sunday in Trio­dion Katanyktikon (Rome 1879, p. 105. Cf. also the prose-poem by Staretz Silouan in Archim. Sophrony, Wisdom from Mt Athos (London 1974), pp. 47-55.
21 The doctrine regarding the 'gift of tears' is by no means unknown in the West, but it seems to have been accorded a higher place in the East, probably on account of the greater emphasis on the heart as a vessel of the Holy Spirit.
22 In Cassian, Conferences 9, 31. Cf. also Evagrios, De Oratione 120 PG 79:1193B.
23 De Oratione 28 PG 11:528-29.
24 Cf. F. Nikolasch, 'The Sacrament of Penance: Learning from the East,' in Concilium 1, 7 (1971), 65-75.
25 Apostolic Constitutions 8, 8-9; Gregory of Neocaesarea, CanonXII. For confession before a spiritual father, cf. Socrates, Ec­clesiastical History 5, 19 and 7, 16; John Chrysostom, Sermon 4 on Lazarus PG 48:1012.
26 For a detailed description of this order, see N. Uspensky, Evening Worship in the Orthodox Church (S.V.S.: New York 1985), p. 227f.
27 Cf. J. Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical and Doctrinal Themes (London 1974), pp. 195ff.
28 De Poenitentia 3, 1 PG 49:292.
29 Cf. A. Schmemann, Confession and Communion: A Report (New York 1972), pp. 13-16.
30 St Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain (d. 1809) underlines the fact that it is God, not the priest, who forgives: Cf. Exomologetarion (9th ed. Venice 1885), pp. 77-78.
31Bishop Kallistos Ware,. 'The Orthodox Experience of Repen­tance,' in Sobornost/Eastern Churches Review 2:1 (1980), 24-25.
32 John Chrysostom, De Poenitentia 7, 3 PG 49:327.
33 Timothy Ware, Eustratios Argenti: A Study of the Greek Church under Turkish Rule (Oxford, 1964), p. 20 ff.

Originally published in 1990 by Holy Cross Orthodox Press.

Quote of the day...

...I do ask that Anglicans recognize when they have changed Anglican doctrine, and my argument runs thus

Major Premise: Changing the doctrine on the ordination of women is a departure from “biblically faithful, traditional Anglicanism.” Call it what you will, but the decision to ordain women was an innovation and a departure from the received teaching of Anglicanism on the Sacrament of Orders.

Minor Premise: Changing the doctrine on the marriage of homosexual persons is a departure from “biblically faithful, traditional Anglicanism.” Call it what you will, but the decision to marry homosexual persons is an innovation and a departure from the received teaching of Anglicanism on the Sacrament of Marriage.

Conclusion: Those Anglicans who accept the ordination of women have no standing to reject the marriage of homosexual persons.

Both decisions are radical innovations in Christian doctrine, totally rejected as unbiblical and untraditional by the vast majority of Christians of every time and place (including almost all Anglicans until this generation), and those who accept the first change cannot give a coherent argument from Scripture or Tradition for rejecting the second change. Either doctrine can be changed by majority vote of the General Convention, or it cannot. The doctrine on the ordination of women was changed by majority vote, and even the party of resistance in TEC (represented by Nashotah and Trinity) accepts the legitimacy of that change; on what basis, then, is a change on homosexual marriage by majority vote rejected by those who accepted the first change?

The only possible answer is, We approved of the first change, but we don’t approve of the second change. And that is simply the Will to Power, not an argument about the proper role of authority in the Church. To provide an adequate rejection of homosexual marriage (which I believe must be done by faithful Christians), it is also necessary to admit that the ordination of women was an illegitimate innovation in the life of the Church. And that’s not a Catholic argument; that’s just the operation of right reason and ruthless honesty.

-Fr Jay Scott Newman (Roman Catholic)

From a wide ranging discussion at T-19.

A little baseball wrap up

First of all... congrats to the Boston Red Sox. They won the big enchilada, and they deserved it. Given the choice in this year's World Series I rooted for Boston mainly because I am from the East Coast (though I currently live in California). But neither team had any real emotional pull for me. Boston snapped its dry spell back in '04 and that was when my sympathy cheer expired. Boston is now the new baseball dynasty team replacing the fragmenting Yankees. Speaking of which...

Alex Rodriguez (aka Pay-Rod) opted out of his $252 million contract tonight. He did not wait for the Yankees to present their offer. I confess to a certain amount of surprise in this move. I kinda expected him to opt out. But I figured he and his agent Scott Boras would wait until close to the end of the deadline to do it. The timing here is a clue to motives. It kinda says to me that Alex was not really happy in pinstripes. In which case his moving on is probably a win win situation. (It certainly is a huge win for the Texas Rangers who are now relieved of their obligation for $21 million they would have had to pay the Yankees had the Bronx Bombers kept him.) My reason for suspecting this is that he is unlikely to get a much better offer from any other clubs. The Angels and the Giants would be strapped to come up with his money without gutting the rest of their payroll. The Mets don't want him. The left side of our infield is set thank you very much. I think realistically we are left with Boston and the Cubs. Since the Cubs were for sale last I heard that could make negotiating with them for a hefty contract problematic. Boston may or may not be interested in him. They can certainly afford him. But do they really need him? And do they need the baggage that would come with him?

If this was done for money, I think it will be recorded as a really bad business decision. If on the other hand it was because he is not happy in NY and wants a change in scenery even at the expense of a modest pay cut, then I am happy for him and wish him the best. My guess is that this is the real story. Alex already has more money than the Federal Reserve Bank. Whatever faults he may have, he never struck me as being all about the money. If he liked playing in New York I think he would have waited to at least give the Yankee's offer a show of consideration. He had nothing to loose from that. This basically is Alex shaking the dust of the Bronx from his sandals.

Oh well, five months and four days til opening day. :-)

Benedict XVI &The Spirit of Assisi

It's hard not to notice when the Pope shows up. And you can sometimes say the same when he doesn't. Last fall, Pope Benedict XVI was a notable no-show at a September ceremony to mark 20 years since John Paul II had hosted a groundbreaking gathering of world religious leaders in Assisi, Italy. Some viewed the Pope's absence as a slap to those working for inter-faith dialogue, both inside and outside the Catholic Church,. On Sunday, however, Benedict will be center stage at the most lavish, and well-attended inter-religious ceremony of his papacy, organized by the same Sant'Egidio community that helped launch Assisi. What has changed? Why is Benedict marking 21 years since "the spirit of Assisi" was uncorked, after skipping out on the 20th anniversary?

Read the rest here.
(Hat tip to T-19)

On a practical level I understand why he is doing this. But I really do wish he wouldn't. Unfortunately I have read too much about the history of Islam and the way it works to entertain any serious hope for an understanding. My feeling is that we should extend to them the same level of tolerance that they extend to Christians in predominantly Muslim countries, except for the killing them part. I do draw the line there. Beyond that I think they should stay in their part of the world until they learn to play and get along well with others.

With respect to discussions within Christendom, I think my feeling is what is the point? Protestants are Protestants and are not gong to change. The only exception might at one time have been the Anglicans but they reached a fork in the road back in the 70's. Their choice was go Catholic or Protestant. They have clearly made that choice, and they are realistically way past the point of no return. The dream of Anglican-Catholic reunion is dead (with the possible and intriguing exception of the TAC). The sooner Rome grasps this, the better for all concerned. Among Christians the only ones Rome really has any business holding serious talks with are the Orthodox.

The Christian world is fast dividing into two camps, the apostolic churches on one hand and the theological flavor of the moment groups on the other. Sorry if that offends some readers. But from the Roman / Orthodox perspective that’s really what it comes down to. I am perfectly OK with talking to other groups in order to promote improved understanding and mutual tolerance (which I do think is extremely important). But ecumenism for the sake of getting that cheap warm fuzzy is not a good idea. There has been enough dilution of truth. I have something less than zero use for groups like the NCC and the WCC. My profound albeit respectful theological disagreements with the Roman Church notwithstanding I think B-16 is the best thing to hit their side of the Tiber in a LONNNGGG time. The man calls it like he sees it. I may not agree with him all the time. But I have never failed to respect him. Truth is NOT relative.

Banning God from (religious) schools?

(Swedish)Education Minister Jan Bjorklund told a Swedish newspaper that new rules being drafted by the government would ban religious elements in subjects other than religion, such as biology. He said, "Students must be protected from every form of fundamentalism."

Bjorkland's spokeswoman says, "A student shouldn't be able to pass a natural science test by answering that God created the world. We don't think that's OK."

She said the new rules, which need parliamentary approval, would be introduced in 2009.

From One News Now.

Take this job and...

Breaking News:
Joe Torre declined a 1 year $5 M contract offer (with bonuses based on playoff performance) offered by the New York Yankees. This officially ends his 12 years as manager of the club. During his tenure the Yankees went to the playoffs every year, and the world series six times. They won the World Series four of those six. Torre is universally recognized as one of the classiest men in baseball (unlike his employer). I suspect that all of the polite statements aside he may have finally had enough of Mr. Steinbrenner. Those of us who are not Yankee fans are going to have some mixed emotions to sort through over this. Clearly this is great news for the rest of the baseball world. But it is also the end of an era. I wish Joe the best in his future. But I somehow doubt he will remain unemployed for very long (unless he decides to go lie on a beach somewhere for a year).

Ecumenical Sand Castles

Over at the excellent Sacramentum Vitae Mike Liccione has posted his thoughts on recent developments in the world of ecumenism. His report on the developments with the TAC was very interesting (and not terribly surprising). I wish them luck in their efforts since Rome is a vast improvement over being a splinter sect of the fast disintegrating Anglican Communion. However that is not the subject of tonight’s post. I wish to address very briefly Mike's suggestion of a compromise that he feels might help us Orthodox get around Vatican I. Those who have read some of my earlier posts know that I generally see the decrees of that council as quite likely the single greatest obstacle to eventual restoration of communion.

Before proceeding let me begin by noting that I abhor the schism dividing the Latin Church from Orthodoxy. It is an open wound in Christendom that has been aggravated by all too often petty and self interested parties on both sides of the great chasm. And I have no patience for knee jerk anti-Catholics who seem too often more possessed of small minded prejudice than Christian agape. But my great concern is that any restoration of communion be based on a mutual understanding of Truth in the great issues which have separated us. Anything less than that is like trying to build a castle out of sand. It may look pretty, but what is its life expectancy when the tide comes in?

Now let me present Mike's views and idea in his own words.

"...But there is hope nonetheless, and action motivated by such hope. Constantinople and Athens remain closely involved in the current panel discussions. My optimism about the Orthodox stems from the fact that they have held no council, of a kind even they would consider ecumenical, committing Orthodoxy dogmatically to rejecting the Roman communion as one of true, particular churches. There seem to be many Orthodox who take the view that "we know where the Church is, but we don't know where she isn't." Not all Orthodox take the view of the Athonites that popery is a diabolical scourge of Christendom and that Rome doesn't even have a canonical bishop. That actually allows many Orthodox to consider the Latin Church a church with true sacraments, even if she's gone off the rails somewhat about doctrine. Imagine that. But what, realistically, could talks on primacy yield?

Taking their cue from the generation-old Ratzinger proposal made in his book Principles of Catholic Theology, some Eastern Catholics seem to take the view that Vatican I's decrees about papal authority would hold only in the West, not in the East, within a reunited Church. That's a non-starter. If the pope is what Vatican I says he is, then he is that in the East as well as the West. The Orthodox should not expect Rome to retract anything she considers dogma any more than Rome should, or does, expect the Orthodox to retract anything they consider dogma. The real room for compromise is on the level of the exercise of jurisdiction. And that's where theology can help.

The compromise might look like this: to end the schism, the Orthodox patriarchs would defer to Rome on matters not resolved otherwise, and Rome would confine her interventions in those patriarchates to matters not resolved otherwise. The theoretical basis for such an arrangement exists in nuce in the work of Ratzinger on communio and of Zizioulas on eucharistic ecclesiology. I for one believe this is how one aspect of the Ratzinger proposal can be worked out: the one where he says that Rome can require no more of the East than was "held in common during the first millennium." To be sure, views about what was thus held in common diverge, and often diverge sharply. Getting agreement on the point will require consensus about what general form the development of doctrine may take. I think that's where the hard work remains to be done. But it's far from hopeless. I've encountered a good number of Orthodox authors who, while averse to the phrase "development of doctrine" as smacking of addition to the faith-once-delivered, admit what amounts to development in a sense not irreconcilably different from what Newman and Vatican II meant."

First let me restate that I think many Catholics put way too much stock in the lack of a council anathematizing any of the various dogmas of the Latin Church. Councils are not generally held to discuss something which is not controversial. And the decrees of Vatican I relating to Papal Infallibility and Universal Jurisdiction are simply not controversial over on our side of the fence. That’s not to say that we accept them. Rather it’s to say that we are more or less of one mind on the subject. And since we can’t even agree on what day it is, that’s pretty impressive. In the minds of even the most ecumenically minded Orthodox, the decrees of Vatican I are heretical (though many are too polite to say it). Those few who don't see it as heresy either have swum the Tiber or they probably should as a matter of personal honesty.

Having said all this, Mike’s suggestion for getting around the problem of Universal Jurisdiction is an interesting one. But it has a fairly major flaw. This compromise lasts only for as long as Rome chooses to adhere to it. In other words it is a compromise of choice for Rome not of obligation. The decrees of Vatican I remain fully in place. The lack of papal intervention in the Churches of the East is based on restraint, not a lack of authority. And the Pope could at any time choose to set aside that compromise if he deemed it proper to do so. Living under an absolute monarch who chooses to exercise restraint in the use of his powers is not the same thing as having rights which he is bound to respect. However benevolent or restrained the current Pope may be, what guarantee is there for the next, or the one after that?

I am not going to get into all of the theological arguments since that’s a horse that has been beaten to death. But the bottom line is this… If Vatican I is not heresy, we Orthodox have no business doing anything other than kneeling in front of the Pope and kissing his ring. And the Pope has no need or legitimate reason for not exercising his universal jurisdiction throughout The Church. If God gave him the authority it was not done with a view to only using it in the West. And if Vatican I is heresy, then Orthodoxy must never ever under any circumstances compromise with it. Whatever failings I have (and they are legion) I am not a relativist. Any attempted compromise in a matter of Truth is a recipe for disaster. It is the foundation for another Florence. As Owen the Ochlophobist once observed in one of his more memorable quotes (I paraphrase) 'In order for communion between Rome and Orthodoxy to be restored, one or the other must cease to exist.' Either Rome is right or we are.

Those are not comfortable words. But there it is.

Quote of the day...

...It is an officer’s duty to disagree in private with civilian authority if he believes that an egregious mistake has been made. Then, if the order is not changed, it is that officer’s duty to resign, to throw his stars down on the table and to publicly condemn the policy in question.

It makes me sick that our generals did not have the guts or the courage to condemn Mr. Rumsfeld’s poor planning. Instead, they allowed thousands of our troops to die needlessly.

- Debra A. Ciamaccia (former Captain USMC)
From a Letter to the Editor of the New York Times

Apologia Contra Letum

This year the Supreme Court will address the constitutionality of certain aspects of the death penalty (DP). At one time I was a strong supporter of the DP. However as Winston Churchill once observed when asked why he was reversing his position on a policy, "I absolutely reserve the right to be smarter today, than I was yesterday." Today I am opposed to capital punishment. My opposition is not based on the issue of cruelty or justice. The truth is that some of those on death row deserve a level of punishment that we as a civilized nation can not impose. My reasons for opposing the DP are...

1. It has no proven deterrent value. Indeed the overwhelming body of evidence indicates the DP has no statistically significant deterrent effect.

2. There are no uniform standards for effective legal council. In some states if the defense attorney has a pulse and is not CURRENTLY disbarred he will do. Examples of some who have passed muster in the courts as adequate legal council in capital trials include lawyers who had no experience trying criminal cases (one was a tax lawyer who had never even tried a traffic ticket), drunks, a lawyer who slept through most of the trial, lawyers who called no witnesses for the defense and did not cross examine any prosecution witnesses, attorneys who have been previously suspended or disbarred and so on. It is not surprising that those states with the higher rates of executions tend to be the ones with the lowest (or no) standards for effective council.

3. Both in capital and non-capital cases there have been a disturbingly high number of wrongful convictions which have been brought to light in recent years. There are also at least two post Furman cases (one in Texas and one in Missouri) where available evidence indicates an overwhelming likelihood that innocent persons were put to death.

4. The appeals process is excruciatingly long and so expensive that it is generally cheaper to incarcerate someone for their natural life than pursue a death sentence.

5. Some states have severely limited the right of appeal in order to reduce expenses and speed up the rate of executions. In some of those states this even extends to prohibiting the introduction of exculpatory evidence discovered after the conviction! This greatly increases what I believe to be an already unacceptable risk of miscarriage of justice.

6. Statistics show that cases where the defendants were able to afford good legal council prosecutors rarely seek the death penalty even when the vital circumstances of the crime are demonstrably the same as other cases where the defendants could not afford top notch lawyers and the death penalty was sought. Translation: Those that got the capital, don't get the punishment.

7. States that do (or did in New York's case) have high standards for competent legal defense in death penalty cases see few capital sentences and very few or no executions.

New York had the highest standards for capital defense lawyers in the country during the roughly ten years the death penalty was on the books. Of the seventy-two capital cases prosecuted in New York between 1995 and 2005, sixty-three resulted in First Degree Murder convictions, fifty-one of those resulted in Natural Life sentences, eleven in death sentences and one died before being sentenced. Of the nine not convicted of First Degree Murder, seven were convicted of lesser charges and two were acquitted.

Of the eleven sentenced to death over that ten year period, in 2005 five were still on death row, six had had their sentences overturned on appeal and none had been executed. Shortly thereafter New York's Court of Appeals overturned part of the death penalty law. Subsequently the state legislature declined to amend the law to restore capital punishment to the state. The cost to the taxpayers over that ten year period exceeded $100 million (!) dollars. (Exact figures were not available from my primary sources since several counties had not reported their total expenses. The aforementioned figure is therefore conservative.)

8. There have been numerous documented instances of prosecutorial and police misconduct in capital cases. Those who question if this really ever happens should take a look at the recent case in Durham NC where a prosecutor attempted to railroad three young students from Duke University for a crime he knew never happened. It is likely the only reason they were not packed off to prison is that they came from families with the means to hire outstanding criminal defense teams.

9. Although the United States is a sovereign country, and we are within our rights to order our justice system as we see fit, I think that when virtually the entire of the developed world has abolished capital punishment and we have not, that should be cause for reassessing our position. When we stand alone in the developed world in defense of an institution that has been uniformly rejected, to not ask ourselves some very tough questions is perhaps tending towards the sin of pride and hubris. Why are we so isolated on this matter?

10. The argument for the death penalty as a form of societal self defense against irreformably violent offenders has been effectively nullified by the introduction of natural life sentences (life without parole). Yes, there are violent inmates in prisons. However, once identified they can be isolated in so called "super-max" security facilities and neutralized as a danger without killing them.

More clergy kidnapped in Iraq

Via Rocco Palmo there are reports that two Eastern Rite Catholic priests have been abducted in Iraq. A one million dollar ransom is being demanded by their captors. According to the reports this figure is quite beyond the resources of the local church. Christian Clergy and laity alike are routinely being abducted or just simply murdered outright by Islamo-fascists and terrorists there. Please pray for their safety and for the relief of the persecuted Christian faithful of that tragic country.

The Crisis in the OCA

Back in May I opined that the OCA was moving into a situation where the continued leadership of Met. +Herman might well be openly challenged. In that post I sharply criticized some of the actions His Beatitude had taken in regards the recent scandals in the central administration. With a view to his suspension of the special committee investigating those scandals (from which all but two of its members subsequently resigned in protest), I suggested that a possible response might include a formal vote of "No Confidence" by the Metropolitan Council.

In the last few weeks the Diocese of the Midwest whose Archbishop (+Job) has been at the forefront of the demands for full disclosure, actually did in fact pass a No Confidence resolution, among others. This weekend the Diocese of Western Pennsylvania followed with their own vote calling for +Herman to be replaced. Both dioceses also have now voted to withhold vital funds from the central administration of the church pending sweeping reforms.

I will refrain from making any judgments beyond what I have posted elsewhere. However it is now clear that what was a scandal is becoming a moderately serious crisis in the OCA. There are at present two dioceses that have openly declared their lack of trust in the leadership of our primate. These sentiments are almost certainly felt in many other quarters of the OCA where diocesan conventions are not currently meeting. This is the situation which confronts the Holy Synod as it prepares to meet this week.

Setting aside for now all of the questions which have been raised about +Herman's actions in response to the scandals, the most serious issue is whether or not the Metropolitan can continue to effectively lead a church which is increasingly and openly hostile to his primacy. The central administration is in something close to extremis financially. You have two diocese withholding funds. At least one hierarch (+Job) has openly called for +Herman to resign and the same two dioceses have passed No Confidence resolutions. Of course as I noted in my earlier post suggesting this course of action, we are not a democracy. The Holy Synod makes these decisions. But the bishops must be aware that it is one thing to say "we accept him as our primate." It is an entirely different matter to govern the church effectively when the faithful do not also accept him as their primate.

How can the Holy Synod force people to send money to Syosset? How can they prevent next years All American meeting of the OCA from becoming a highly contentious event? The answer may well be learned at the conclusion of this weeks meeting of the Holy Synod. As I said before I will make no judgments in this matter beyond my previously expressed concern over some of the decisions made by Met. +Herman in dealing with the scandals. I hold no office of responsibility beyond a seat on my parish council so it is not my place to pass judgments (for which I thank God). But I feel that events may be moving at long last to some sort of decisive moment in the life of the church. Frankly I would not be terribly surprised if His Beatitude announced his retirement at this meeting. There have been some hints that the Synod may have concluded that the time has come for a change.

Should this in fact happen we must take great care to avoid the sin of triumphalism. This is especially true for those of us who in the past have been critical of the central administration and the Primate's handling of things. The issues confronting our church will not vanish with the departure of any hierarch. And I think we should also all be deeply mindful of our own shortcomings and failings before judging someone who has born the heavy cross of office like Met. +Herman.

In closing I ask all who may have occasion to read these words for your prayers for the OCA and its Synod. These are challenging times and it is doubtful that there has been a meeting of the Holy Synod since receiving autocephaly that has been faced with decisions of such moment. Let us all pray that God will grant to our bishops the wisdom to discern right from wrong, and the strength to act for the right.

An Orthodox Europe?

+Alexei II Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia

From a fascinating article over at Yahoo (originally published by the Christian Science Monitor)...

For decades, many social scientists had pretty much two things to say about Eastern Orthodox Christianity: 1) that like all religions, it was disappearing with the advance of modern civilization; 2) that it derived most of its support from the reactionary tides of authoritarianism and nationalism.

Those pronouncements are being proved wrong. Today, as in the parable of the prodigal son, throughout Eastern Europe people are returning to the Orthodox Church in droves, and the effect in the public sphere, contrary to most expectations, is quite benign.

Though historically viewed with suspicion by Catholic and Protestant Europe, Orthodox Christianity can actually help bridge the Russia-West gap.

At the heart of much of the miscommunication between Russia and Europe today lies the unacknowledged and untapped longing of Orthodox Christians to be recognized as part of a common European cultural family again. The latest effort to bridge this divide was Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II's remarks in France, where he spoke poignantly of how the Christian identity Europeans historically share should promote dialogue on issues like human rights and peace, even with atheists and members of other faiths...

...Western suspicion of Eastern Orthodoxy can be traced back to before the Great Schism that divided the Christian Church in 1054. One hundred and fifty years later, it fueled the Crusaders' zeal for the sacking of Constantinople. In the 18th century, it became a main theme of Edward Gibbon's influential interpretation of the Roman Empire, which was later echoed in the writings of Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee. And in modern times, Samuel Huntington, among others, has warned direly of the potential for clashes between "Slavic-Orthodox" civilization and the Catholic-Protestant West.

With the exception of Greece, this sad legacy has made Western Europeans notoriously slow to accept countries with large Orthodox populations into pan-European institutions. In the current expansion eastward, however, it is inevitable that the values and mores of European institutions and alliances will be shaped more and more by the traditionalist views of Orthodox Christian believers and less and less by the modern, secularized Protestant assumptions of Western European democracies. Orthodox believers already far outnumber Protestants across Europe, and by some estimates they may eventually even surpass Roman Catholics. If 21st-century Europe ever develops a religious complexion, it will be predominantly Eastern Orthodox.

In the long run, therefore, while the greatest challenge to Europe's cultural and political identity may come from the growth of Islam, its more immediate challenge is how to deal with some 40 million to 140 million Orthodox Christians who, when given a voice in European policymaking, will argue that churches should have a more prominent voice than heretofore in the shaping of social policy.

Read the entire article here.

Mass in San Francisco

Read this first. WARNING: Some of the pictures are disturbing.

I saw the pictures before I read the text of the report. (I refuse to post them on this website.) My first thought was "nothing new here, just the Episcopalians doing their thing." Then I read the report and I have to confess my astonishment. Yes. It is well known that the Roman Church has some bishops who are a little sketchy in terms of their adherence to what comes from Rome. But this is beyond the pale. I really don't want to sound like I am picking on my former co-religionists. The overwhelming majority of RCC bishops (even most of the sketchy ones) would not be OK with this. But still...

WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?

I mean really... What was the man thinking? I know that one of the Latin Church's alleged advantages I am repeatedly reminded of is that they have the Pope to maintain some sort of discipline. I will be very interested to see what comes of this sacrilege. In Orthodoxy we don't have the centralized chain of command that exists in the Western Church and yes we have our share of problems. But I can tell you that it is inconceivable that something like this could happen in an Orthodox church. In the unimaginable circumstance that a bishop did do something like this; I think he would be called on the carpet very quickly by the Holy Synod.

Forget the Pope in Rome. I will be most interested in any reaction from his fellow bishops here in America. Is that the sound of crickets I hear?

On a related note this sort of thing does not help the ongoing efforts by Pope +Benedict XVI aimed at restoring communion with Orthodoxy. Ignoring for the moment the very real theological issues dividing us, most Orthodox see this and shudder. 'What further evidence do we require, that the time has not yet come to restore communion with the Latins?' It is a stark reminder of all the baggage that would necessarily come with the Roman Catholic Church in the event of restored communion. And frankly it is baggage no one over here feels we need.

More on Salvation in The Church

At the risk of being seen as a cheering section for Fr. Stephen (I have been accused of worse things); I draw to the reader's attention another excellent post following up on his discussion of salvation and The Church. This one is a home run.

A Hierarchical Liturgy

Scenes and music from a hierarchical liturgy of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Who should be saving whom?

Find out by reading this excellent essay by Fr. Stephen Freeman. My first reaction was that this was must reading for Episcopalians. (I still think they would do well to read it.) But then after reading it a second time, I began to realize this is must reading for everyone in the Orthodox Church in America. And then after reading it a third time I realized that this was must reading for everyone in my home parish. And after reading it for the fourth time, I realized he was talking to me.

Picking up the pieces

Well… we lost. That’s it in a nutshell. Now how did we get here? With 17 games left in the regular season the Mets enjoyed a comfortable 7 game lead in NL East. And it was confidently noted that no team with such a lead and 17 games left had ever blown it. Ummm…yea.

Being on the left coast I was spared actually witnessing the collapse (we don’t usually get east coast games out here). But reading it in the papers was enough to get the gist. The New York papers and for that matter all of the talking heads on the various sports shows are now trying to dissect what went wrong. I am not going to get into all of the numbers or who did (or did not) do what. Others are doing that quite well enough thank you. My diagnosis is simple.

We lost because we deserved to. Somewhere in the early part of September the team essentially went on auto-pilot and just figured the season was over in all but name. Thus we have the bizarre numbers alluded to above. Some players were acting as though they were entitled to the division pennant. I have heard more than a few people observe that the Mets essentially stopped playing serious ball. That’s probably a fair assessment.

But it is not the whole story. I have heard some people say that the Mets essentially gave the pennant away. That is not fair. The Phillies won the pennant. It was not given to them. While the Mets went on paid vacation for the last several weeks of the season the Phillies never gave up. If it had just been a case of the Mets folding in the last few weeks they would still have won. But the Phillies never gave in to despair. They were hungry and they played like their lives depended on the outcome of each game. In short the Phillies deserved to win as much as the Mets deserved to loose. And while I don’t like loosing; I tip my hat to Philadelphia. They proved in many ways that they were the better team.

As one might expect there is a lot of talk about hubris and humble pie going around. I can confirm that I have been taking a lot of not so gentle ribbing from various (cough cough) friends. Most of these are fans of the other team from New York (the name escapes me). And I must say that it’s not fun. One can only imagine what the guys on the team are feeling right now. I can think of some words that probably are good descriptives like pain, humiliation, guilt and anger. And that is all for the good.

Frankly I hope that they are getting their noses rubbed in it. Not just because they deserve it. Rather, because they need to remember how they felt Sunday afternoon for the rest of their lives. What happened over the last few weeks was unprofessional and inexcusable for players who are being paid as much as them. They were playing like the keystone cops in baseball uniforms. And if they are smarting from their own failure then again, that’s a good thing. They need to dine on some crow and get razzed and suffer with being the laughingstock of the National League. And they need to remember Sunday afternoon every day between now and April, and thereafter every time they stand in the batters box or play in the field.

David Wright (one of my favorite players and one of the few who honestly bears little blame for the collapse) observed a couple days before the end that he did not want this on his resume. Well sadly it’s there. If any member of this team died tomorrow somewhere in the first paragraph of his obituary would be something to the effect of “blank was a member of the 2007 New York Mets who suffered the most spectacular late season collapse in the history of major league baseball.” Nothing any of them can do will ever completely remove that line from their resume or obituary. But what they do in the future can help determine where that line fits in their resume, i.e. at the top or buried somewhere underneath a long list of remarkable accomplishments. For the Mets the long road to redemption (and maybe a little good old fashioned revenge) needs to start today. For the Mets, today needs to be treated like the first day of April.

Alexei II: Meeting with Pope likely in a year or two

This via the traditionalist Roman Catholic website Rorate Caeli; Patriarch Alexei II of Moscow indicated in an interview with the French paper Le Figaro that he expects to meet with Pope Bendict XVI in the next year or two. Assuming the accuracy of the story, this is a significant development. It would be the first explicit declaration by Moscow that there will be a meeting with the Pope of Rome. The Russian Church has been very cool towards Rome for years and has resisted attempts by the Vatican to arrange a meeting with the Pope. This was especially true under the previous pontificate. However since the election of B-16 there has been a noticeable warming in relations between the world's largest Orthodox church and the Holy See. Read the details here.