Archbishop Makarios: The Orthodox Church cannot exist without the Ecumenical Patriarchate

“We Orthodox have a history of two thousand years. If during these two thousand years, the Orthodox Church did not have an Ecumenical Patriarchate, it should have created it. Because she would not have been able to proceed otherwise. I can not imagine the Orthodox Church without the Ecumenical Patriarchate. She cannot exist! Despite what is said and heard; despite the voices, the cold and icy voices from the north; the strange voices; the voices of secularisation, there can be no Orthodox Church without the first of Orthodoxy, who is the Ecumenical Patriarch.”

Read the rest here.

Honestly, he should just go off and join the Roman Catholics. He is clearly 3/4 of the way there already.

The Russian Church throws cold water on union with Rome

Russia’s Orthodox Church dismissed talk of union between Orthodox and Catholic Churches but it confirmed earlier in the week that a meeting between Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia and Pope Francis is possible.

Bishop Hilarion, the Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, said that the schism between Orthodoxy and Catholicism has existed for centuries and there are fundamental dogmatic differences between the two churches.

“No one talks about the union of the two Churches because the divisions have existed for a long time, many contradictions have accumulated, they have been living independently for almost ten centuries,” he said, adding “There is no talk of union, but there can be discussions to finally end the state of rivalry, of competition, of hostility, which has existed for many centuries.”

Hilarion, who is in effect the diplomatic envoy of the Russian Orthodox Church, said that he would meet Pope Francis in late December.

“I expect to congratulate him on his 85th birthday on behalf of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, as well as to discuss with him a broad range of issues regarding bilateral relations between our churches,” he noted.

“Among these issues is a possible meeting of Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill. Neither the venue nor the date of this meeting has been determined for now,” Hilarion added.

Pope Francis told a news conference onboard a plane as he was returning from a mission trip to Greece and Cyprus that he might meet with Patriarch Kirill in the near future.

Read the rest here.

Pope John Ireland? (updated)

Pope Francis is now more or less openly at war with the conservative wing of the Catholic Church and is known to hold so called traditionalists, those favoring the pre-Vatican II liturgical and sacramental rites, in particular contempt. In his recent, and perversely named motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, Pope Francis effectively revoked the decree of his predecessor granting broad permission for the use of the ancient rites of the Roman Church. The new rules are far more restrictive and appear to be a preparatory step towards the full suppression of the Tridentine Mass. 

I have already noted the ecumenical consequences of this hostility towards the liturgical patrimony of his church and his belief that he has the power to arbitrarily dictate all aspects of its liturgical life. Any such claimed authority is a non-starter with the Orthodox and a further, very serious, impediment to any talk of restoration of communion. If he believes he can wave his hand and outlaw the ancient rites of the West, why would he, or any of his successors, think they could not do the same to the rites of the Christian East? Indeed, many of the uniate churches have already been subjected to varying degrees of imposed "liturgical renewal" since Vatican II and even well before that. But his hostility to Catholic traditionalists appears to be of a nature where he is not interested in building bridges, so much as burning them. It is widely suspected on both sides of the cultural/theological divide that Francis' ultimate objective is the complete suppression of the old rites which he sees as a rallying point for resistance to the "spirit of Vatican II." There are now rumors circulating that he is preparing to forbid the ordination of priests using the old ritual. This would have the direct effect of crippling the religious orders whose formation and spiritual lives are centered around the old mass and the other sacraments served according to the rites in existence before 1962. It must be a source of continued irritation to liberals to see how these orders thrive, while so many others struggle to find vocations. 

One is left to wonder if Francis is not secretly hoping to drive these faithful Catholics out of his church, in much the way Bishop John Ireland was reportedly none too sad to see large numbers of Catholics whose manner of worship he did not agree with, depart for Orthodoxy. 

Update: Since this was originally posted further confirmation of my above concerns has surfaced. Vatican to implement sweeping worldwide ban on traditional sacraments in accordance with Traditionis Custodes.

HT: Dr. Tighe

Christmas During the Ancien Régime

Christmas at the French court when France was still Christian.

Apologies

I just noticed several comments that landed in my spam folder and they have now been published. Sorry for the delay.

Inflation is near 40 year high

Inflation jumped to the highest level in nearly 40 years, fresh data released on Friday showed, as supply chain disruptions, rapid consumer demand and rising housing costs combined to fuel the strongest inflationary burst in a generation.

The rising costs spell trouble for officials at the Federal Reserve and the White House, who are trying to calibrate policy at a moment when the labor market has yet to completely heal from the pandemic, but the risk that price increases could become more lasting is increasing.

The Consumer Price Index climbed by 6.8 percent in the year through November, the data showed, the fastest pace since 1982. After stripping out food and fuel, which can move around a lot from month to month, inflation climbed by 4.9 percent.

Prices were up 0.8 percent from October, according to the report. That’s slightly slower than the prior monthly increase, but still an unusually rapid pace.

The question is what happens next. Fed officials have become increasingly concerned about rising price — both because the uptick has lasted longer than expected and because it shows signs of broadening to areas less affected by the pandemic.

Read the rest here.

China Faces Massive Corporate Default

HONG KONG — For weeks, global markets have been watching the struggles of China Evergrande, a teetering real estate giant weighed down by $300 billion or more in obligations that just barely seemed able to make its required payments to global investors.

On Thursday, three days after a deadline passed leaving bondholders with nothing but silence from the company, a major credit ratings firm declared that Evergrande was in default. Instead of resolving questions about the fate of the Chinese behemoth, the announcement only deepened them.

The firm, Fitch Ratings, said in its statement that it had placed the Chinese property developer in its “restricted default” category. The designation means Evergrande had formally defaulted but had not yet entered into any kind of bankruptcy filing, liquidation or other process that would stop its operations.

It’s the nature of that next step — bankruptcy, a fire sale or business as usual — that remains unknown. In the United States and many other places, bondholders could push an unwilling company into some form of reorganization, usually in court, and divvy up the pieces.

That may still happen. But Evergrande is faltering in China, where the Communist Party keeps a firm hand on corporate meltdowns to keep them from spreading out of control. With Evergrande, the risk is high: A sudden unwinding of the company could hit the country’s financial system or, potentially, the many homeowners in China who have already paid for Evergrande apartments that are yet to be built.

The company’s largely resigned investors are now waiting to see what Evergrande, under the advice of a group of financial types tied to the state, will do next.

“We all expected that Evergrande was not going to be able to pull a rabbit out of their hat,” said Michel Löwy, chief executive of SC Lowy, an investment firm that has a small position in Evergrande bonds.

“Now, the ball is in their court to come up with some form of restructuring proposal,” he said.

Evergrande did not respond to a request for comment. Fitch said the company had not responded to its own request for confirmation about whether it had met or missed an $82 million payment to bondholders due on Monday, which prompted the ratings firm’s Thursday move.

Fitch on Thursday also put Kaisa, another large and distressed developer, into its “restricted default” category after the company failed to pay bondholders $400 million earlier this week.

Read the rest here.

For more background information, see this. 

New Zealand Embraces Prohibition

New Zealand on Thursday announced plans to prevent young people from ever being able to buy cigarettes as part of an initiative to make the country entirely smoke-free by 2025.

The measures will mean that anyone born after 2008 will not be able to purchase cigarettes or tobacco products in their lifetime, while the level of nicotine in cigarettes available to older people will be reduced.

The number of retailers able to sell cigarettes could also be cut substantially, officials said. The legislation is expected to be enacted next year.

Health officials and campaign groups have welcomed the move, recognizing the proposed reforms as one of the world’s toughest crackdowns on the tobacco industry.

New Zealand already requires plain packaging and has high taxes on cigarettes, but the health ministry says more action is required if it is to reach the goal of making the country smoke-free.

“This is a historic day for the health of our people,” Dr. Ayesha Verrall, associate health minister, said in a statement.

“We want to make sure young people never start smoking so we will make it an offense to sell or supply smoked tobacco products to new cohorts of youth. People aged 14 when the law comes into effect will never be able to legally purchase tobacco.”

Read the rest here.

Ireland Gains Freedom

Ireland Is Made A Free State

100 years ago

China is secretly preparing a military base in the Atlantic

BATA, Equatorial Guinea—Classified American intelligence reports suggest China intends to establish its first permanent military presence on the Atlantic Ocean in the tiny Central African country of Equatorial Guinea, according to U.S. officials.

The officials declined to describe details of the secret intelligence findings. But they said the reports raise the prospect that Chinese warships would be able to rearm and refit opposite the East Coast of the U.S.—a threat that is setting off alarm bells at the White House and Pentagon.

Principal deputy U.S. national security adviser Jon Finer visited Equatorial Guinea in October on a mission to persuade President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and his son and heir apparent, Vice President Teodoro “Teodorin” Nguema Obiang Mangue, to reject China’s overtures.

“As part of our diplomacy to address maritime-security issues, we have made clear to Equatorial Guinea that certain potential steps involving [Chinese] activity there would raise national-security concerns,” said a senior Biden administration official.

The great-power skirmishing over a country that rarely draws outside attention reflects the rising tensions between Washington and Beijing. The two countries are sparring over the status of Taiwan, China’s testing of a hypersonic missile, the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic and other issues.

World-wide, the U.S. finds itself maneuvering to try to block China from projecting its military power from new overseas bases, from Cambodia to the United Arab Emirates.

In Equatorial Guinea, the Chinese likely have an eye on Bata, according to a U.S. official. Bata already has a Chinese-built deep-water commercial port on the Gulf of Guinea, and excellent highways link the city to Gabon and the interior of Central Africa.

Read the rest here.

University alumni are withholding donations, demanding free speech reforms

Two years ago Cornell University asked a California real-estate developer and longtime donor for a seven-figure contribution.

Carl Neuss didn’t write the check immediately, saying he was worried about what he saw as liberal indoctrination on campus and declining tolerance toward competing viewpoints.

To allay Mr. Neuss’s concerns, the development office introduced him to some politically moderate professors, he said. The attempt backfired. The professors, he said, told him they felt humiliated by the diversity training they were required to attend and perpetually afraid they would say something factual—but impolitic.

“If you say the wrong words, you could lose your position or be shunned,” said Mr. Neuss.

Joel Malina, Cornell’s vice president for university relations, said “robust debate and a discussion of all views remain hallmarks of the Cornell experience both in and out of the classroom.”

Mr. Neuss, who graduated from Cornell in 1976, withheld his donation and then helped start the Cornell Free Speech Alliance. It is one of about 20 such dissident alumni organizations that have taken root on college campuses over the last couple of years—including several this fall.

Many of the groups are driven by politically moderate or conservative men who graduated from college in the late 1960s and 1970s, according to interviews with several of the group leaders. They believe progressive groupthink has taken over college campuses, and are urging schools to protect free speech and encourage a diverse set of views. In some cases, alumni are withholding donations to pressure schools to take them seriously.

“This is a battle for our culture and, in many ways, for Western civilization,” said John Craig, who heads a similar organization at Davidson College in North Carolina called Davidsonians for Freedom of Thought and Discourse. “Open and free expression is what makes our country great, and if we lose this, our country is in deep trouble.”

Some faculty and students say campus politics are more complicated now than it was when many of these baby-boomer alumni were in school because student bodies are much more diverse.

Students carefully calibrate their remarks because people from so many more backgrounds and beliefs are listening, said Carol Quillen, president at Davidson.

“A little intellectual humility is not a bad thing,” she said

Read the rest here.

Bitcoin Plunges (Again)

Crypto craziness was on display again with the latest huge sell off in Bitcoin, which dropped around 17% over the last 24 hrs. Yet its proponents continue to tout it as a "safe haven" for currency volatility. Meanwhile in Turkey; the lira continues its rapid decline with inflation now running around 20%. Turks are rushing to convert their money... into dollars and gold.

Roe v Wade is on life support

Arguments today before the Supreme Court strongly suggest a majority (probably 5) of the justices are ready to reverse Roe. Chief Justice Roberts hinted at the possibility of severely curbing Roe while in theory leaving some part of it intact. He was probably thinking about limiting abortion rights to the first trimester. But it didn't sound like the other five conservative justices were interested. Seeing the writing on the wall, the three progressive justices were basically left to mourn the imminent demise of murder on demand as a judicially invented constitutional right.

Notre-Dame interior faces woke 'Disney' wreckovation

Paris' fire-ravaged Notre-Dame cathedral risks resembling a "politically correct Disneyland" under controversial plans for its renovation seen by the Daily Telegraph.

Critics have warned that the world-famous cathedral will be turned into an "experimental showroom" under plans to dramatically change the inside of the medieval building.

Under the proposed changes, confessional boxes, altars and classical sculptures will be replaced with modern art murals, and new sound and light effects to create “emotional spaces”.

There will be themed chapels on a "discovery trail", with an emphasis on Africa and Asia, while quotes from the Bible will be projected onto chapel walls in various languages, including Mandarin.

The final chapel on the trail will have a strong environmental emphasis.

“It’s as if Disney were entering Notre-Dame," said Maurice Culot, a prize-winning Paris-based architect, urbanist, theorist and critic who has seen the plans.

"What they are proposing to do to Notre-Dame would never be done to Westminster Abbey or Saint Peter’s in Rome. It’s a kind of theme park and very childish and trivial given the grandeur of the place,” he told The Telegraph.

A senior source close to the renovation said the plans risked turning the global beacon of Christianity into an “experimental showroom” that would “mutilate” the work of Viollet-le-Duc, the celebrated architect who restored the cathedral following the ravishes of the French Revolution in an effort to recapture the spirit of Medieval Christianity.

“Can you imagine the administration of the Holy See allowing something like this in the Sistine Chapel?,” said the senior source with access to the latest plans. “It would be unimaginable. We are not in an empty space here.”

“This is political correctness gone mad,” said the senior source. “They want to turn Notre-Dame into an experimental liturgical showroom that exists nowhere else whereas it should be a landmark where the slightest change must be handled with great care."

Read the rest here.

Happy Thanksgiving

 

Wishing you and yours a blessed feast. 

Ireland in 1902

Remarkable film footage of the people and city of Cork in Ireland taken in 1902.

Putin Moves to Suppress Memory of Communist Atrocities and Modern Rights Groups

MOSCOW — In the days after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the upheaval and uncertainty that gripped Russia were accompanied by a liberating climate of openness, in which free expression, historical examination and political dissent could flourish.

But in the two decades since Vladimir V. Putin took power, the government has steadily rolled back those rights. Mr. Putin has tamed the oligarch class, muffled the media, jailed religious groups and dissidents and suppressed political opposition.

Now Mr. Putin has set his sights on rewriting the memory of one of the most painful times in Russia’s turbulent history: the era of the gulag, when millions of Russians toiled and died, mostly in the first half of the 20th century. Russian prosecutors are moving to liquidate the archive and human rights center of Memorial International, the country’s most prominent human rights organization, which is dedicated to the remembrance of those who were persecuted by the Soviet Union’s often-brutal regime.

Activists and dissidents consider the threat to Memorial a watershed moment for independent thinkers in Russia — a sobering example of the government’s determination to silence its critics and sanitize the narrative surrounding the Soviet Union, which Mr. Putin views as a heady era of Russian influence and power.

Mr. Putin is obsessed with “making Russia great again,” said Aleksandr Baunov, editor in chief of the Carnegie Moscow Center’s website. “Putin’s Russia builds itself on the denial” of the 1990s, with its reforms, self-criticism and social and economic upheaval, Mr. Baunov said, because to him it represents the time in recent history when Russia was its weakest.

Eliminating Memorial, Mr. Baunov said, would help Mr. Putin suppress a forensic examination of one of Russia’s most shameful periods, even as descendants of its victims continue to grapple with the consequences.

“You know this expression ‘power vertical,’” Mr. Baunov said, using a term that has come to define Mr. Putin’s autocratic governing style. “The state wants to build a ‘Memory Vertical,’ too. It does not deny victim status to victims, but it wants to control the repression narrative.”

Two court hearings this week may decide Memorial’s fate. On Tuesday, Moscow’s City Court will consider allegations that Memorial’s Human Rights center “justifies terrorist activities” because it included members of imprisoned religious groups on its list of political prisoners. Later in the week, the Supreme Court will take up charges that Memorial International, which houses the group’s archive, violated a draconian “foreign agent” law.

Read the rest here.

All these official 'fill in the blank' days...

I think may be getting a little out of hand. 

Met. Hilarion of the Russian Church Serves With Met. Tikhon of the OCA

His Eminence Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, visited St. Tikhon’s Monastery and Seminary in South Canaan, Pennsylvania over the weekend, after his visit to St. Vladimir’s Seminary.

During his visit, His Eminence had the opportunity to serve with His Beatitude Metropolitan Tikhon of Washington and All America and Canada in the monastery’s Church of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk.

St. Tikhon’s is the oldest Orthodox monastery in America, founded by the future Patriarch St. Tikhon during his time serving in America. It has been connected to many of the great saints who served in America, and is home to the relics of St. Alexis Toth, as well as the miraculous She Who is Quick to Hear Icon of the mother of God and a miraculous icon of St. Anna.

Met. Tikhon, the primate of the autocephalous Orthodox Church in America, is a monk of St. Tikhon’s Monastery.

Following the service, Met. Tikhon greeted Met. Hilarion and briefly recounted for him the founding of St. Tikhon’s Monastery by St. Tikhon and the venerated Archbishop Arseny of Winnipeg, as well as the first Divine Liturgy at St. Tikhon’s celebrated St. Raphael of Brooklyn, St. Alexander Hotovitsky, and St. John Kochurov.

Met. Tikhon then gave Met. Hilarion an icon of St. Nikolai of Žiča, who was rector of and reposed at St. Tikhon’s Seminary, and relics of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, St. Isaac of Syria, and St. Hilarion the Great.

In turn, Met. Hilarion noted that this was his first visit to St. Tikhon’s, but that he deeply venerates St. Tikhon as an apostle in America. He also noted that he especially venerates St. Nikolai as both a hierarch and theologian. Met. Hilarion then presented Met. Tikhon with an episcopal Panagia.

Source.

This is pretty neat