Another dose of reality

The redoubtable Carlos Antonio Palad (a moderator and contributor over at Rorate Caeli) has posted an excellent piece casting more cold water on the kumbaya UNITY NOW crowd. Mr. Palad has consistently demonstrated a very level headed attitude towards the relationship between Rome and Orthodoxy.

More on the birther loons...

Apparently the recent fine of $20,000 for abusing the legal system with frivolous lawsuits has not deterred Orly Taitz, one of the leaders of the so called "birther" movement (previously addressed in this post), from attempts to advance the lunatic fringe's agenda through the courts.

Judge David O. Carter in dismissing Taitz's latest attempts at judicial knavery writes in part...

"Plaintiffs have attacked the judiciary, including every prior court that has dismissed their claim, as unpatriotic and even treasonous for refusing to grant their requests and for adhering to the terms of the Constitution which set forth its jurisdiction," he writes.

"Respecting the constitutional role and jurisdiction of this Court is not unpatriotic,"... "Quite the contrary, this Court considers commitment to that constitutional role to be the ultimate reflection of patriotism."

..."The Court has received several sworn affidavits that Taitz asked potential witnesses that she planned to call before this Court to perjure themselves,"... "This Court is deeply concerned that Taitz may have suborned perjury through witnesses she intended to bring before this Court."

..."Plaintiffs appear to assume that should the Court receive a document from Kenya, the Court would give credence to this document over the American birth records of the President and the case would be resolved."

Source.
Read the entire opinion here.

80 years ago today: Black Tuesday

The great stock market crash of 1929.


A somewhat humorous look at a very unfunny event.

Metropolitan Paul of Kyrenia sharply criticizes the recent Catholic-Orthodox dialogue

On the 8th to the 14th of October in 2007, the 10th plenary session of the Joint International Commission for the Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox and the Roman Catholics had convened in Ravenna of Italy. At the end of the session, a document was issued which included everything that was agreed upon and is known as the "Ravenna Document".

The Ravenna Document had, as its theme:

"ECCLESIOLOGICAL AND CANONICAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE SACRAMENTAL NATURE OF THE CHURCH.

ECCLESIAL COMMUNION, CONCILIARITY AND AUTHORITY"

The basic error of the Ravenna Document is that the Orthodox members of the Joint International Commission of Orthodox and Roman Catholics had regarded their heterodox interlocutors as belonging to the same Church, thus giving the impression that between the Orthodox Church and Roman Catholicism there actually exists an ecclesiological unity, albeit without the necessary theological prerequisites.

The attempt by members of the Orthodox Representation to suppress or bypass the dogmatic diversification between Orthodoxy and heterodoxy as something secondary is undermining the self-awareness of the Orthodox Church as the only true Church - which is the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church - and is giving the impression that the Roman Catholics comprise a partial or local Orthodox Church.

Even though the interruption of sacramental intercommunion is attributed to the Roman Catholics' diversifications from the common Faith of the first centuries, nevertheless, in the Ravenna Document it is mutually confessed by both the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic members of the Joint Commission that their faith is common. In this way, the discussion and settlement of organizational and administrative issues have been set forth, as, for example, the matter of the Pope's primacy, while the theological issues have been bypassed and left pending. As a consequence of this, the Ravenna document concluded with the statement that "It remains for the question of the role of the bishop of Rome in the communion of all the Churches to be studied in greater depth." (Ravenna Document, para.45)

It is therefore imperative that the serious dogmatic issues be discussed first, and furthermore, a framework be determined with the necessary prerequisites that should be based on Patristic criteria, which will ensure that the Dialogue will be conducted on a sound and immovable dogmatic basis and not on unstable secular grounds. It is only with persistence in the precision (akriveia) of the Orthodox dogma and the dogmatic teaching of the Orthodox Church that we can be certain we are working towards the re-induction of the strayed into Christ's Flock.

Read the rest here.

Arnold sends a message

Be careful who you disrespect. Sometimes it comes back to bite you.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger typically attaches a message to bills he signs or vetoes telling lawmakers why he took the action.

A Democratic assemblyman who heckled the governor during a recent event in San Francisco actually received two messages: the veto letter itself and a not-so-subtle rebuke creatively hidden within it.

Like a find-the-word puzzle, the second message was visible by stringing together the first letter of each line down the left-hand margin. It consisted of a common four-letter vulgarity followed by the letters "y-o-u."

"My goodness. What a coincidence," said Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear. "I suppose when you do so many vetoes, something like this is bound to happen."

Read the rest here.

Not terribly classy. But sometimes rude people need to be put in their place. This will probably have to do since modern society has lost the fine art of the Social Cut.

Can We Talk About Religion, Please?

The Issue

Last week the Vatican invited Anglicans who are, as The New York Times put it, “uncomfortable with female priests and openly gay bishops” to reunite with the Roman Catholic Church. If a secular institution, Wal-Mart or Microsoft, for example, made a similar offer — Tired of leadership positions being open to women and gay employees? Join us! — it would be slammed for appealing to bigotry. Some criticism was directed at the church, but it was faint. Are we right to speak softly when discussing a subject as sensitive as religion?

The Argument

Etiquette holds that religion, especially another person’s religion, should be treated with deference or, better still, silence by nonbelievers. Hence the familiar dinner-party injunction: don’t discuss religion or politics. Even at a table full of co-religionists, feelings can run high, and there is a reluctance to combine digestion with discord (particularly where knives are nearby). To the observant, a nonbeliever’s comments on church doctrine can feel less like a discussion of theology than a personal attack.

Yet despite the risk of provoking the ire of believers, we should discuss the actions of religious institutions as we would those of all others — courteously and vigorously. This is a mark of respect, an indication that we take such ideas seriously. To slip on the kid gloves is condescending, akin to the way you would treat children or the frail or cats.

The passionate intensity unleashed by religious matters is evinced in responses to The Ethicist, my other column for The Times Magazine. When I take up a secular question that provokes broad disagreement, I typically receive a few hundred responses by e-mail that begin: “Dear Sir, I am appalled…” When I write about religion, I cause a tidal wave. The week I rebuked an Orthodox Jewish real estate agent whose beliefs forbade his shaking the hand of a female client, I stopped counting after receiving 4,000 ferocious messages, lambasting not only my argument but my character, my appearance and my parentage: it was speculated that dogs played a part.

My political beliefs, my ideas about social justice, are as deeply held as my critics’ religious beliefs, but I don’t ask them to treat me with reverence, only civility. They should not expect me to walk on tiptoe. It is not as if religious institutions occupy a precarious perch in American life. It is not the proclaimed Christian but the nonbeliever who is unelectable to high office in this era when politicians of every party and denomination make a public display of their faith.

Some of my most indignant critics have declared religious practice a matter of free association: what people do voluntarily among themselves is nobody else’s business. But children raised in a particular faith did not choose it. And sometimes one spouse is pushed into a pew by the other. Even when membership is truly volitional, once a group reaches a certain size and acquires power and influence in the larger community, to treat it like four people getting together in someone’s rec room to play bridge is disingenuous. Its actions are still subject to moral scrutiny, whether the group is the Boy Scouts or Nascar or the Roman Catholic Church.

Read the rest here

An interesting and thoughtful piece from someone who desperately wants to break the social conventions against attacking other people's religious beliefs. My position on the subject is essentially libertarian. You are free to criticize to your heart's content. Just as I and others of religious belief are free to practice our religions and to respond to said criticism. The rights of all involved end at the tip of the other's nose. Which is to say your rights end when they materially interfere with someone else's.

That said, social conventions exist for a reason. And those who contemplate breaking them should do so with great caution. The same principal by which you claim the right to flaunt convention and offend people, gives the more polite element the right to snub you or exclude you from their society in various ways. To some it means little if they are thought of as rude or boorish. But most people would prefer to avoid that kind of label as it carries a certain stigma even in our rather sad modern world.

Escape From New York

New Yorkers are fleeing the state and city in alarming numbers -- and costing a fortune in lost tax dollars, a new study shows.

More than 1.5 million state residents left for other parts of the United States from 2000 to 2008, according to the report from the Empire Center for New York State Policy. It was the biggest out-of-state migration in the country.

The vast majority of the migrants, 1.1 million, were former residents of New York City -- meaning one out of seven city taxpayers moved out.

"The Empire State is being drained of an invaluable resource -- people," the report said.

What's worse is that the families fleeing New York are being replaced by lower-income newcomers, who consequently pay less in taxes.

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

Cell Phones in Church = 100 Prostrations

“Not turned-off cell phones in church – 100 prostrations”

Picture shamelessly stolen from here.

Rumors: +Jonah and the Western Rite

I am hearing things. Is anyone else?

Orthodox may not use elevators on the Sabbath

No. Not us. The other Orthodox.

JERUSALEM - The Jewish day of rest has become a bit more labor-intensive for Yosef Ball.

The Orthodox Jew and his wife are no longer using elevators custom-built for the Jewish Sabbath, ever since a rabbinical ruling last month outlawed them. Instead, they have been hiking up seven flights of stairs to get home each Saturday, lugging with them their five young children and a double stroller.

"It's been very hard, but we're walking up the stairs slowly and with a lot of patience," said Ball, 29, while pushing a baby carriage with two toddlers in tow on a recent day.

Jewish law, or halacha, forbids the use of electrical items on the Sabbath. But for decades rabbis have allowed special elevators that automatically stop at every floor without the riders pushing any buttons, permitting Orthodox Jews to ride them and live in high-rise buildings.

Debate over elevators reignited
The ruling last month by one of Israel's leading rabbis, calling the elevators a no-go, has reignited a vigorous debate over the lifts, forcing Orthodox Jews living on top floors to decide if they're up for the steep hike home from synagogue on Saturdays.

The decision stretches far beyond Israel's borders. Buildings with Shabbat elevators are common in Orthodox communities around the world, and residents in places as far away as New York are now struggling with how to interpret the ruling.

Read the rest here.

The Pittsburgh Post Gazette: Hopes rising for unifying Orthodoxy's U.S. churches

America's Orthodox Christians, divided for decades among about 10 churches based on Greek or Serb or other ancestry, soon may be moving toward the formation of a united American Orthodox church.

Many of them have dreamed of that for decades, especially as conversions to Orthodoxy have skyrocketed. But most church patriarchs have squelched such talk.

Now it appears that the patriarchs are not only supporting but demanding some sort of unity. To explore what this may mean for believers in the United States, the independent, pan-Orthodox group Orthodox Christian Laity will gather for three days, starting Thursday, at Antiochian Village in Ligonier.

In 1994 that retreat center hosted the first and only gathering of all Orthodox bishops in North America. Believing they had approval from church patriarchs overseas, those bishops called for a united church in which the faithful would not be treated as "scattered children" of ancestral homelands.

But the ecumenical patriarch in Constantinople -- the spiritual head of global Orthodoxy -- denounced it as a rebellion against the ancient church and replaced the Greek archbishop who had led it. The unity movement lay dormant for 15 years.

Then, in June, the 14 Old World patriarchs gathered in Chambesy, Switzerland, and declared that all Orthodox bishops outside of traditional Orthodox lands -- including North America -- will begin meeting to address their own issues in their own lands.

Read the rest here.

Somebody wake me up in April

A World Series between the Evil Empire and the Evil Empire's National League cousin... I will pass thank you very much.

Why do I have the nagging feeling that somehow this is because of that cheeseburger I ate during Lent?

Elder Cleopa on prayer

Western Rite: A celebration of Vespers and Holy Mass according to the Use of Sarum

This announcement via Fr. Chadwick's (see the preceding post) liturgical egroup:

With the blessing of His Beatitude Metropolitan Hilarion of Eastern America and New York, First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia it is announced that on Tues., Oct. 27, 2009, at 6:00 p.m., at the Russian Orthodox Monastery of St. Nicholas in Ft. Myers, Florida, Vespers will be sung in the Sarum Use of the Roman rite. The service will be mostly in English.

On Wed., Oct. 28, 2009, at 6:30 a.m., the Hours will be sung followed by Holy Mass according to Sarum Use,at 7:00 a.m. (Divine Liturgy of St. Gregory the Dialogist). The service will be mostly English. The procession and relics-veneration appointed for this day will be done after the Liturgy at about 8:30 a.m. The monastery's substantial Saints'-relics will be available for veneration with special prayers invoking their aid for every affliction. Oct. 28 is, on the old calendar (Sarum Use), the Feast of the Holy Relics. Many hundreds of Saints'-relics will be laid out in the church with great solemnity, and part of the procession of the relics is the reading of the names of all the relics.

Notes to those who may be able to attend: If you are Orthodox and wish to receive Holy Communion, please make arrangements in advance for Confession. The monastery, realizing that people often drive long distances of several hours to attend, extends hospitality to the extent possible. For overnight accommodations, contact the monastery as soon as possible.

These divine services will be held at 111 Evergreen Road, North Fort Myers, FL 33903. (239) 997-0579

(Note: I had to do some internet searching to locate the phone number for the monastery. I have not verified its accuracy. The last time I was in Ft. Myers this was a women's monastery under the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese (GOA). Apparently they have since passed under the omophorion of ROCOR.)

An Anglo-Catholic priest writes on recent events

I refer the reader to the blog Reflections from Normandy by Fr. Anthony Chadwick (TAC) for those interested in some fascinating, personal and often moving reflections on the recent announcements from Rome. For a little background Fr. Chadwick has been down a difficult and often lonely spiritual road, passing through the schismatic Catholic Society of Saint Pius X and later getting involved with various episcopi vagantes before settling into the Traditional Anglican Communion. His continued yearning to return to full communion with the Holy See despite some troubling experiences with the canonical Roman Church inspires a sense of deep respect from me.

Fr. Chadwick maintains a very interesting website the home page of which can be found here.

Here we go again

Some comments regarding unity with the Roman Catholic Church from a bishop of the Bulgarian Church that may or may not have been quoted accurately or in context are creating a stir among the kumbaya "UNITY NOW!" crowd all over the internet. Assuming he was quoted accurately and in context I find some of his remarks to be somewhat problematic. You can read the report of his remarks here. I posted a couple of responses to them which may be found here and here.

The GOP: Has the party of Lincoln become the party of Jefferson Davis?

Is the GOP in danger of becoming a far right party with little strength outside of the old Confederacy? Some seem to think so...

Is there room in the Republican Party for genuine moderates? Truth to tell, the GOP can't decide. More precisely, it's deeply divided over whether it should allow any divisions in the party at all.

That's why the brawl in a single congressional district in far Upstate New York is drawing the eyes of the nation. Conservatives are determined to use the race to prove that there is no place in the party for heretics, dissidents or independents.

President Obama set up the fight by nominating the district's former representative, John McHugh, as his Army secretary. Maybe Obama is as fiendishly clever as his more paranoid opponents believe him to be.

When local Republicans picked a moderate, Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, as their candidate for the Nov. 3 contest, many on the right rebelled. They are backing a third-party conservative, Doug Hoffman, and he may well drive Scozzafava into third place. For the moment, at least, polls show that Bill Owens, the Democratic candidate, has jumped into first place on the split.

It demonstrates just how right-wing some Republicans have become that former House speaker Newt Gingrich is on the moderate side of this civil war against his old nemesis Dick Armey, who served under Gingrich as majority leader.

Gingrich, who backs Scozzafava, always understood that he would never have become speaker without help from Republican moderates. Armey prefers ideological purity and, like fellow members of the Tea Party movement, is supporting Hoffman.

Read the rest here.

Why the Vatican Wants Anglicans

The Vatican announced on Tuesday that it would make it easier for Anglicans who are uncomfortable with the Church of England’s acceptance of women priests and openly gay bishops to join the Catholic Church. The Vatican will set up a formal conversion structure to allow Anglicans to preserve some of their liturgical traditions, including allowing married Anglican priests to remain married after they convert to Catholicism.

What does this announcement say about the Catholic Church and its willingness to grant such flexibility?

* David Gibson, author, “The Rule of Benedict”
* John L. Allen Jr., The National Catholic Reporter
* M. Cathleen Kaveny, professor of law and theology
* Colleen Carroll Campbell, Ethics and Public Policy Center

Read the rest here.

Pope’s Offer Raises Idea of Marriage for Catholic Priests

ROME — In making it easier for traditionalist Anglicans to become Catholic, Pope Benedict XVI once again revealed the character of his papacy: to reach out to the most fervent of like-minded believers, even if they are not Catholic. Yet some observers wonder whether his move could paradoxically liberalize the church — or at least wedge it open — on a crucial issue: celibacy.

In a momentous move on Tuesday, the Vatican said it would help Anglicans uncomfortable with female priests and openly gay bishops join a new Anglican rite within the Catholic Church.

The invitation also extends to married Anglican clergy. And so some have begun to wonder, even if the 82-year-old Benedict himself would never allow it, would more people in the Roman Catholic Church begin to entertain the possibility of married Catholic priests?

Read the rest here.

Note: I received an email today from one of the regular readers of the blog who indicated that the text color I have been using for quoted material (a very light gray) does not show up well on RSS Feed. I am experimenting a bit to try and find a suitable color that stands out against the background without becoming invisible on a Feed that has a white background.

Feedback on this is appreciated. Drop me an email.

The Pope causes an internet stir

OK. I give up. I have been making a serious effort at keeping up with the discussion of the move by what one wag called "the Vatican's mergers and acquisitions department." But if there is another topic in the blogosphere getting much more attention right now I don't know what it is. There is a lot out there at the moment.

The press (especially in Britain) have been all over this with articles ranging from solid and steady reporting to the kinds of sensationalism I would expect from a supermarket tabloid. It seems that everyone is chiming in on this one. I even found a blog run by a heavy metal rocker(!) who posted on the subject. Judging from the young man's errr... colorful... comments I am guessing he is not a regular church goer. But it was amusing.

In any case here are a few links to web sites posting some of the better stories or blog posts on the subject for those interested.

Anglican sites:

Thinking Anglicans - News on all things Anglican

Stand Firm

Virtue Online - News from the Episcopal Resistance

TitusOneNine

Roman Catholic sites:

RORATE CÆLI- (Traditionalist)

What Does The Prayer Really Say?

Vivificat!

National Catholic Register

Chiesa - Sandro Magister's Vatican Insights

Links to some of the British Press-Media

The BBC

Damian Thompson's Holy Smoke

Guardian

London Times

London Telegraph