Four more priests join growing revolt over Crete and Ecumenism

Details.

Fr. Theodore Zisis Suspended and Excommunicated

Details.

A Tragic Anniversary

Saint/Czar Nicholas II abdicated 100 years ago today setting in motion events leading to a century of brutal repression by Communists both in Russia and around the globe. In some places such as North Korea and Cuba, that repression continues today. Untold millions (some global estimates put the number at near 100 million when including China) were murdered for a variety of reasons, and in some cases for no reason at all. The number of New Martyrs will never be known with any exactness but in Russia alone it is almost certainly in the millions.

Disturbing News from Greece

Fr. Theodore Zisis, of whom I am a huge fan, has ceased to commemorate his bishop over disputes revolving around the Creten Event.

Update: More detailed report from Pravoslavie...

On March 5, the Sunday of Orthodoxy, well-known theologian Archpriest Theodore Zisis announced from the ambo of his church that he was ceasing commemoration of Metropolitan Athimos of Thessaloniki, reports Credo.ru.

After years of involvement in the ecumenical movement, since the 1980s Fr. Theodore has become one of Greece’s strongest and most-trusted outspoken critics of ecumenism. Most recently he has been a vocal critic of the June 2016 Pan-Orthodox Synod on Crete, both before and after its convocation. Critics of the council have mainly focused on the text “Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World,” arguing that when the Church is coming together to give voice to its dogmatic self-understanding, it cannot use the term “church” in reference to any other confessions, but must strictly speak of the one Church confessed by the Nicene Creed.

In November, His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew called upon Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens to defend the documents produced at the Crete Council and to quell criticism of them, warning that he would break communion with those individuals who vocally criticized the council, after which Metropolitan Anthimos of Thessaloniki instructed Fr. Theodore to cease expressing any criticisms of the council.

After a time of prayer and discernment, Fr. Theodore has decided that his conscience will not allow him to be silent about what he sees as a danger to the Church, and thus he has responded by ceasing commemoration of his ruling bishop, stating, that the metropolitan has shown “bareheaded” his alignment with the heresy of ecumenism through his acceptance of the Crete Council and his push for a Church-wide acceptance of it at the Holy Synod meeting of November 23-26, 2016.

In using the term “bareheaded” Fr. Theodore alluded to Canon 15 of the First-Second Council, held in Constantinople in 861 and attended by 318 holy fathers, including St. Photios, the Patriarch of Constantinople, which allows for a priest to cease commemorating a bishop who is “preaching the heresy publicly, and teaching it barehead in church.” The canon notes that this “walling off” is not an act of schism, but is indeed praiseworthy, done in defense of holy Orthodoxy.

Fr. Theodore also stated that the Crete Council cannot be justified as it was neither holy, nor a synod, nor representative of the mind of the fullness of the Church. Then directly citing Canon 15, Fr. Theodore announced that on the Sunday of Orthodoxy, when the Church proclaims its triumph over all soul-destroying heresies, he would cease commemoration of his bishop, as he is unable to commemorate all the great saints who have battled against heresy, while commemorating a bishop he believes has fallen into heresy.

His announcement was met with cheers and applause from the congregation.

Both Fr. Theodore and another Thessaloniki priest, Fr. Nicholas Manolis, who has also ceased commemoration, have been summoned to a spiritual court and face the possibility of being defrocked from the holy priesthood. In his announcement, Fr. Theodore asked Metropolitan Anthimos to defer to Canon 15 of the First-Second Council and to allow Fr. Theodore to continue his work.

Note that among critics of the Crete Council there is disagreement over how to proceed. In January, Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos), one of the most respected bishops and theologians in the Church today, who has offered several weighty critiques of the council, urged others not to cease commemoration of their hierarchs.

Foul Weather

In my hometown of Binghamton NY they were told to brace for between 8-14 inches of snow between last night and tomorrow morning. My sources inform me that they are currently at about 30" and it's still coming down at 2-4 inches per hour.

Igumen Nektary (Morozov): What Makes a Priest Rejoice at Confession

(Speaking of the great champion of Roman Catholic orthodoxy Fr. Z, see the previous thread, confession is one of his favorite subjects.)

What gives you joy when one person after another lines up to take confession? Not when you hear the confession that many call, “on duty”, but when you become a witness to change that’s happened (perhaps even before your very eyes) in a person; when you have become the witness of his struggle, the result of his work on himself and the action of God’s grace that goes with it. This is always experienced as a marvelous miracle—the most important and most necessary of all miracles, the most unbelievable and most saving.

However, it’s not only the miracle that makes you rejoice, but even the more for the person standing before you. He just now stood far from God, was veritably shrouded in a twilight shadow, and in an amazing way happened this turnaround, this conversion and return to the Father; and he is no longer in that deathly shadow, but in the light that illumines him and you together.

A person can repent of the most terrible sins, the most barbaric evil-doing; his tale may be bitter and worthy of tears. But if an inner change occurs, that very “metanoia”, that is, a change of mind, or more precisely, of the entire human personality, there is no feeling of weariness. To the contrary: the soul becomes so light, like after a thunderstorm when the thunder claps and the lightning strikes, and the water pours down to cleanse and refresh the poor, sinful earth.

Usually when you hear another’s confession or when you yourself confess, you think, “For what does the Lord love us so much?! No, of course He doesn’t love us for something, but in spite of everything…” And here something reveals itself to you... It’s the beauty of the human soul that words cannot express—wondrous, primordial, hidden usually by the deformity of the passions, the wounds of vice, the scabs of sins. It reveals itself—and you understand at last why the Creator loves His creation: As St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) says, in a drop of dew, in the human soul is reflected the light of the Sun, the light of the Divinity, and you admire it in a moment, giving thanks for this mercy and gift.

And more… you rejoice because you feel that you are not standing there in vain in your priest’s stole before the analogion with the Gospels and Cross; nor is your tiny labor in vain or futile, and there is some benefit from your service, your prayer, your words, or at least from your attention and inner sympathy. You are only a witness, and not the performer (there is only one true Performer!), but how good it is that this witness is not fruitless!

And, of course in order to feel and experience all this it is not necessary to see another Mary of Egypt turning from a harlot into a great saint, or Abba Moses the Ethiopian, a murdering thief who once brought fear to all but later became the humblest of monks. You don’t necessarily have to hear a confession filled with dramatic details, “unusual” or “out of the ordinary”. There may not be anything particular to its content. The main thing is that very feeling of change spoken of above. The main thing is the feeling that the person is truly laboring, and the Lord accepts and blesses that labor. And that painful, by no means swift, modest and yet infinitely glorious—ascent to the heights…

Source.

Fr. Z on the Synodikon of Orthodoxy and the Great Anathemas

For the Orthodox, Sunday 5 March was the Sunday of Orthodoxy.   They had solemn proclamations of “ANATHEMA” against heretics.   It is very festive.  I envy them conviction and this solemn ceremony.  We Latins really should have something like this.

Here is looong video from Holy Trinity Monastery, Ekaterinburg in Russia, yesterday.  Yes, this is 2017, not 1054. Click around in it if you can’t watch/listen to the whole thing. It is grand...

Read the rest here. The comment thread is also quite interesting.  And yes the video of the service is really very good.

Divine Liturgy for the Second Sunday of Great Lent (St. Gregory Palamas)

In Church Slavonic

St. Patrick of Ireland and other Western saints officially added to Russian Orthodox Church calendar

St. Patrick, the great enlightener of Ireland, will be officially celebrated in the Russian Orthodox Church for the first time this year on March 17/30. At its March 9 session, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox, under the chairmanship of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, officially adopted St. Patrick and more than fifteen other pre-schism Western saints into its calendar, according to the report published on the patriarchate’s official site.
The decision was taken after hearing a report from His Eminence Metropolitan Clement of Kaluga and Borovsk, chairman of the commission for the compilation of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Menaion, or calendar of saints, with the proposal to include several ancient saints who labored in western lands before the Great Schism of 1054.

The commission, created on September 18, 2014 by the blessing of His Holiness, had been working on compiling a list of western saints guided by the following criteria: their unblemished confession of the Orthodox faith; the circumstances in which their glorification took place; the absence of their names from polemical works against the Eastern Church and rite; and their present veneration in foreign dioceses of the Russian Orthodox Church and other Local Churches.

Also considered were the “Complete Menaion of the East” by Archbishop Sergius (Spassky), the report of St. John Maximovitch to the Holy Synod of the Russian Church Abroad in 1952, the articles of the Orthodox Encyclopedia and the Snaxarion compiled by Hiermonk Macarius of the Athonite monastery of Simenopetra.
The Western saints added into the calendar of the Russian Orthodox Church are:

Hieromartyr Pothinus, bishop of Lyons, and those with him (June 2/15; c. 177)
Martyrs Blandina and Ponticus of Lyons (June 2/15; c. 177)
Martyr Epipodius of Lyons (April 22/May 5; c. 177)
Martyr Alexander of Lyons (April 24/May 7; c. 177)
Hieromartyr Saturninus, first bishop of Toulouse (November 29/December 12; c. 257)
Martyr Victor of Marseilles (July 21/August 3; c. 290)
St. Alban, protomartyr of Britain (June 22/July 5; c. 304)
St. Honoratus, archbishop of Arles and founder of Lerins Monastery (January 16/29; 429)
St. Germanus, bishop of Auxerre (July 31/August 13; 448)
St. Vincent of Lerins (May 24/June 6; c. 450)
St. Patrick, bishop of Armagh, and enlightener of Ireland (March 17/30; 451)
St. Lupus the Confessor, bishop of Troyes (Gaul) (July 29/August 11; 479)
St. Genevieve of Paris (January 3/16; 512)
St. Germanus, bishop of Paris (May 28/June 10; 576)
St. Procopius, abbot of Sazava in Bohemia (September 16/29; 1053)

Also approved and recommended for Church-wide liturgical use was the texts of the service to the Synaxis of Saints of Diveevo, the service to St. Hilarion of Optina, and the troparion and kontakion to St. Adrian of Ondrusov.

Source.

USDA Threatens To Shut Down Farm For Conservative Article In Break Room

Maybe it’s just nostalgia talking, but the slaughtering, processing, packaging, and distribution of animals used to be so much simpler.

For hundreds of years, the meat-packing industry bore the responsibility for transforming Bessie the Cow into carnivores’ favorite source of protein, and more recently the Food Safety and Inspection Service inspectors of the U.S. Department of Agriculture ensured that the finished product was “safe, wholesome, and correctly labeled and packaged.”

Not so anymore. Due to agency rules issued during the Obama era, FSIS inspectors enjoy expanded duties, including monitoring facilities for any “disrespectful” or “insult[ing]” communication (no, not among the animals). Should they uncover any such communication, inspectors are empowered to take “corrective action,” even if that involves slicing and dicing fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment.

The Fateful Day Don Put an Article in the Break Room

Predictably, unleashing meat inspectors to police the exercise of free speech—with guidelines that provide only vague directional prodding—is the equivalent of releasing a bull in a china shop. At least, it was for Don and Ellen Vander Boon, the owners of West Michigan Beef Company. (To be fair, Mythbusters found that bulls can be surprisingly respectful of grandma’s china. The same cannot be said for the USDA and the First Amendment.)

The USDA threatened to shut down this family-owned company, not because of health concerns, or because short ribs were incorrectly labeled as plate ribs (incidentally, you would not believe the labeling requirements), or because People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals infiltrated their ranks in some sort of hostile takeover bid. Rather, the so-called offense consisted of an article Don placed in the breakroom.

The breakroom at West Michigan Beef includes tables that essentially serve as a repository for newspapers, magazines, articles, and other forms of literature that employees or the owners wish to share with those who care to read them. Think of it as a pre-technological Facebook. Importantly, no one is required to read the materials, any more than I am required to flip through a two-year old copy of People while sitting in my dentist’s lobby, or to read my friend’s Facebook post about replacing smoke detector batteries (true story).

In 2015, following the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges that purported to redefine marriage for the entire country, various employees shared articles and information related to the decision. Don participated by sharing an article that expressed the traditional Christian view that God designed marriage as a union between a man and a woman and set forth reasons for that position.

When a USDA public health veterinarian, the on-site inspector, saw the article in the breakroom, well, he had a cow. He removed the article and reported it to his USDA supervisor. The pair stampeded into Don’s office and threatened to remove USDA inspectors—effectively shutting down the facility—if Don returned the article to the breakroom, stating the article was offensive and harassing under expanded agency rules.

Read the rest here.

Trans Rights

Surely a compassionate society must recognize this individual's right to be recognized as a member of whichever species he self identifies with.

156 Years Ago Today

On the eve of the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln and a civil war that would claim upwards of half a million American lives, Czar Alexander II of Russia issued an imperial decree abolishing slavery (serfdom) with a stroke of a pen.

The Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete for Clean Wednesday

Feds: After wettest winter in at least 20 years drought appears over in California

Hans Kung: End the schism!

...A further pivotal point in the commemoration process will be the main Service of Repentance and Reconciliation that the Council of the Protestant Churches and the Catholic bishops' conference will celebrate together at Hildesheim on March 11, 2017.

We have, however, heard Vatican declarations of intent and suggestions of repentance and reconciliation all too often. We ecumenically committed Christians at long last want to see actions. Unfortunately, the "Common Word" does not mention the deadlock that exists in both church hierarchies on the decisive issues and disregards the fact that in many Protestant and Catholic communities, ecumenism has already been practiced for a long time now. For these communities, mutual recognition of each other's ministries and Eucharistic hospitality are no longer a problem. Church leaders lag far behind them. If the leaders do not take the matter of "overcoming the still remaining obstacles" seriously, they alone will have to bear the responsibility for not doing so before God and the faithful.

In the 2017 Jubilee Year, those responsible should consistently put the results of the ecumenical Dialogue Commissions into practice. The Catholic Church should consider the following issues:

• Martin Luther's rehabilitation,
• Lifting all the excommunications that were pronounced in the Reformation era,
• Recognizing Protestant and Anglican ministries,
• Mutual Eucharistic hospitality.

Innumerable Christians want to see the Protestant side bring these postulates to the attention of the Catholic Church just as clearly and outspokenly — but naturally not without the necessary self-criticism. Merely celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Reformation without really ending the schism means incurring yet more guilt. May the pressure exerted by theologians, grassroots Christians, Christian communities, and many committed men and women help the church leadership in Rome and elsewhere, which is so often hesitant and afraid, not to miss this historic opportunity but to wake up, otherwise yet more people will turn away from the Church and more communities and groups will take the law into their own hands! In today's globalized, secularized world, Christianity will only come across as credible if it presents itself in truly reconciled diversity.

Read the rest here.

The President's Speech

It was a home run. In all likelihood it was, at least rhetorically, the best speech he has delivered. If you look at the evolution of Trump's public speaking from the early days of the campaign to the primaries, then his generally good but not great speech at the convention and most recently his inaugural, I think we can say with some safety that he is getting better. Trump appears to be a quick study. If this also applies to the job he now holds the next four years could be very interesting times.

For lefties who are feeling a bit blue (pun intended) this morning, take a deep breath. Yes, Trump did much better than most expected last night. He looked and sounded presidential. But... he's Donald Trump. And as far as I know he has not given up his twitter account. So just wait a while. He's bound to do or say something that will get people riled up again.

If/when he gives up Twitter, that will be a sign that it just might be time for the left to panic.

The Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete for Clean Tuesday

The Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete for Clean Monday

On the Eve of the Great Fast

Please forgive me for any injury or offense I have caused, especially on this blog.

Vacation

Sorry for the blog blackout. I'm taking a pre-lent vacation and should be back next week. I'd post more but the sun is making it hard to see the screen and the sand is getting into my keyboard.