June 15th: Feast of the Great and Holy Prince Martyr Lazar of Serbia

Holy Prince Lazar pray for us, especially for your suffering children in Kosovo.

June 15th: Feast of Blessed Augustine of Hippo

Yes, he is an Orthodox saint.

He wrote some things which are not generally accepted in Orthodoxy. But we commemorate him for his great spirituality. His confessions are still powerful reading.

Eastern Rite Catholic's and the Filioque

Perry Robinson has posted on Rome's forbearance (and lack thereof) with respect Eastern Catholics and the Filioque. My comment is here. Apologies in advance to my Catholic readers. Neither Perry nor I are members of the kumbaya club.

While I have great respect for the Roman Church as I have said on multiple occasions, that does not extend to restoring communion absent some fairly major doctrinal shifts on her part. Nor would I expect anything less from Rome than a demand for complete acquiescence to all of her post schism doctrines and dogmas as a precondition to restored communion. Which in a nutshell is why I believe we need to work on the things we can agree on (there are many) and stop trying to put all the water back in the reservoir a thousand years after the dam burst.

Jim Grant on printing money

This is a really good interview (two parts) on the consequences of printing money. Jim Grant is highly respected in the financial world. Some of this is a little jargon heavy, but I think even the layman can figure out his points.

On a side note posting may be thin over the next couple days as I am out of town visiting some friends. However, I do have internet access so I will be trying to check email etc. And finally thank you to the many people who emailed or posted birthday wishes to me. Your kind words and wishes were much appreciated.





Hat tip to Al over at Accrued Interest. Although I don't agree with him, Al has been a consistent and very articulate champion of the deflationist position. I would encourage anyone interested in getting a contrary opinion on the dangers of inflation to check out some of his postings on the subject at his web site linked above.

Finland sends a priest to the European Parliament

I have mentioned in previous posts some disturbing goings on in the Finnish Orthodox Church. (here & here). Now there is an article in the New York Times about a Finnish Orthodox Priest who has been elected to the European Parliament. The Times notes that he has been suspended (though they do not use that term). But they also seem to have gone almost out of their way to avoid any discussion of what his positions are on political matters.

Indeed there is not a single political issue mentioned anywhere. I find it suspicious in the extreme that someone would write an entire article about an Orthodox priest elected as a European MP, taking note that his political affiliation is a left of center party and that the priest has been suspended, while declining to identify his position on any political issues. While much space is taken up with the good Father's opining that there is a long history dating to the days of the Empire of Orthodox clergy being involved in politics, not one sentence is devoted to explaining what his politics are.

Has Father Mitro sought election to public office in order to bear witness to Orthodox Christian moral values and spirituality in an environment that, I don't think would be unfair to characterize as a spiritual desert? Is he a missionary of God's Church to a body that seems to have forsaken God? For some reason my naturally cynical nature is telling me that if such were the case he would...

a) ...never have been elected in the first place.

and

b) If he were somehow elected the press (especially the Times) would either have ignored him or described him as a right wing extremist. I also strongly suspect that most of the other Euro MPs would have gone to great lengths to bar him from being seated in a body that is so notoriously anti-Christian that it has made repeated efforts to force the monks of Mt. Athos to permit women on the Holy Mountain and once refused to seat an elected MP who expressed as a matter of private religious belief that homosexual behavior was a sin.

All that said, I will forbear any judgment pending some clarification of his politics. But in the meantime you may color me highly skeptical.

Happy Birthday

Happy 85th to former president G. H. W. Bush (the good one). He celebrated his birthday by skydiving (I am not kidding). Personally I have never seen the point in jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, but to each their own. I understand that the first time he did this it was not voluntary. His airplane had just been perforated with multiple holes courtesy of the Japanese and after parachuting into the pacific ocean he spent some time drifting around before a submarine rescued the future commander in chief.

By happy coincidence it is also my own birthday. I however have no plans that involve anything more adventurous than taking advantage of a fast free Friday.

Can you balance California's budget?

Try your hand here. There are a number of things I would like to do that were not on the options list. But I suspect some are prevented by law or one of those %^&#ed public referendums that have helped make California effectively ungovernable.

A glimpse of Orthodox Bulgaria

Not for lightweights: A Baptist minister discovers Orthodoxy

From the blog Real Live Preacher

Last Sunday was the 4th of 13 in my sabbatical time. Each of them is precious to me. Each week I am choosing a place and a way to worship. I’m not a church tourist, hoping to see new things. I’m seeking spiritual experiences. I want to worship. Saturday night Jeanene and I still hadn’t decided where to go. I experienced something common to our culture but new to me. The “Where do you want to go to church - I don’t know where do YOU want to go to church” conversation. I found the Saint Anthony the Great website. It's an Orthodox church that has beautiful Byzantine art in the sanctuary. We decided to go there.

Shelby and Lillian went with us. On the way we warned them that this was going to be different. “They might not have changed their worship service much in a thousand years or so,” I told the girls.

That was an understatement.

Saint Anthony the Great isn't just old school. It's "styli and wax tablets" old school. We arrived ten minutes early for worship and the room was already filled with people lighting candles and praying. There was one greeter. I said, “We don’t know what to do.” She handed me a liturgy book and waved us inside.

Pews? We don’t need no stinking pews! Providing seats for worshipers is SO 14th century. Gorgeous Byzantine art, commissioned from a famous artist in Bulgaria. Fully robed priests with censors (those swinging incense thingies). Long, complex readings and chants that went on and on and on. And every one of them packed full of complex, theological ideas. It was like they were ripping raw chunks of theology out of ancient creeds and throwing them by the handfuls into the congregation. And just to make sure it wasn't too easy for us, everything was read in a monotone voice and at the speed of an auctioneer.

I heard words and phrases I had not heard since seminary. Theotokos, begotten not made, Cherubim and Seraphim borne on their pinions, supplications and oblations. It was an ADD kids nightmare. Robes, scary art, smoking incense, secret doors in the Iconostas popping open and little robed boys coming out with golden candlesticks, chants and singing from a small choir that rolled across the curved ceiling and emerged from the other side of the room where no one was singing. The acoustics were wild. No matter who was speaking, the sound came out of everywhere. There was so much going on I couldn't keep up with all the things I couldn't pay attention to.

Lillian was the first to go down. After half an hour of standing, she was done. Jeanene took her over to a pew on the side wall. She slumped against Jeanene’s shoulder and stared at me with this stunned, rather betrayed look on her face.

“How could you have brought us to this insane place?”

Read the whole thing here.

The minister has since made a couple more trips to Orthodox parishes which you may read about here and here.

Work in progress...

Playing with the website a bit today. You may see some things appearing, disappearing and being moved around.

A glimpse of Orthodoxy in the Ukraine

Lord have mercy!

Political Crisis in Britain

We Americans tend to ignore the politics of other countries to a degree that is frankly a bit embarrassing. But for those who have missed the news the British Labour Party appears to have suffered its second electoral drubbing in less than a week. Polls indicate that it has been crushed in European Parliamentary elections held yesterday by the Conservative Party and even came in behind a couple of fringe political parties. Last week Labour suffered massive losses in local elections.

This follows on the heels of a huge scandal which has rocked Britain's political establishment. It would appear that large numbers of Members of Parliament (MPs) have been abusing the official expense account for years. Charges for obviously personal items have been rung up on the public's nickel (or should that be shilling?) and the British public is livid. Making matters worse is that this scandal broke during a brutal recession which has left their working class in the same kind of pain we are feeling here in the states. The fact that the Tories (conservatives) were also up to their eyebrows in this scandal does not seem to have registered much with the voters who appear intent on punishing the party in power.

Under Britain's unwritten constitution the government (they use that word in the same sense we use the word "administration") must call for a new general election within the next year. And as one might expect the Tories smell blood in the political waters and the sharks are circling. Prime Minister Gordon Brown is now facing a revolt in his own party as Labour MPs are becoming concerned that they are political dead meat if they go into the next general election with Brown as their party leader. There have been a slew of resignations from his cabinet over the last week including one former female minister (political, not clergy) who accused Brown of using her as "window dressing."

Reading the tea leaves I think it's looking bad for the prime minister. He has been so severely damaged by members of his own party calling for him to step down, that even if he manages to hold onto power his ability to govern effectively has all but evaporated. This would seem to render his position untenable during a time of extreme economic crisis and potentially looming foreign crisis (N. Korea etc.).

If I had to make a guess I would say his chances of surviving in office are now less than 50%. The odd thing is that the Tories may have won too big in the recent elections. More than a few Conservative MPs grasp that Brown is by far the man they want to run against in a general election. If he is ousted it may not strengthen their electoral prospects unless it occurs in a way which forces an early election.

But my gut says Brown is political toast and he will be gone by the end of the week. If I am wrong and he survives this week then I think he will hold on until the general election, when the Tories will get their wish.

Stay tuned...

Some food for thought...

From Mike Liccione who updates his blog far too infrequently...

As as another Tiber-swimmer, Fr. Al Kimel, once wrote: "A church which does not claim to be the Church, outside of which there is no salvation, is not the Church founded by Jesus Christ." The Anglican Communion has, historically, understood itself to be at most a "branch" of the Church; but for Fr. Jeffrey and many others, the recent history of that communion calls even that claim into question. A church which recognizes no doctrinal authority other than a "consensus" identifiable by scholarship and subject to reversal by allegedly new things done by the Spirit cannot reliably transmit the "faith once given" to the saints—nor, indeed, eternal life. It cannot present divine revelation as anything more than a set of data about which various opinions can be entertained and should be tolerated. Such a church is not an authoritative vessel and teacher of truth, the Mystical Body of Christ which shares in his authority as her Head.

Read the whole thing here. Mike and I would disagree on where The Church lies. But here are words which express a very Orthodox understanding of the word "catholic" and what it implies. There are no multiple Churches and multiple Truths. There are no "branches." There is The Church, and there is that which lies outside it. Of course not all sects are created equal. There are varying degrees of error. But the Ark of Salvation and the true and grace filled Mysteries can only be found within the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church affirmed in the Symbol of Faith.

This is something which I think we have become a bit timid about pointing out to those outside of it. In all honesty I am guilty of this myself. No one wants to offend others and I seriously doubt many converts have been won by insulting people. But there is a fine line between being sensitive to causing unnecessary hurt or offense and fudging the truth because it might make people uncomfortable. Sometimes I think we shy away from saying things like this not because we are afraid we might hurt someone's feeling but more because we are afraid what others will think of us.

New Orthodox Church in Rome

The Russian Orthodox Church has a new church in Rome. There are some very nice pictures here.

Hat tip: Rorate Caeli & Carlos Antonio Palad

Caution: If you go to the Rorate post on the new church be prepared for the usual snarky anti-Orthodox comments.

More nauseating clap trap from the religious left...

A prominent Catholic academic and supporter of President Barack Obama says that Roman Catholic Archbishops Raymond Burke and Charles Chaput and Bishop Joseph Naumann did not take a "Catholic approach" when they insisted that prominent pro-abortion Catholic politicians should not take communion.

He also said bishops and priests who deny communion to pro-abortion Catholic politicians are engaging in “intimidation.”

“Let me tell you that to be separated from the body of Christ even once is intimidation,” said Douglas Kmiec, professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif.

Kmiec--a campaign advisor to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008--was barred from communion by a priest in California last year. Kmiec wrote a book, “Can a Catholic Vote for Him?” which promoted the idea that pro-life Catholics could support Obama, who supports legalized abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, and same-sex unions.

“But it is not just an isolated case of a mistaken priest who thankfully, with the discipline of the local archbishop (Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles), wrote a letter of apology, which of course, is accepted," said Kmiec, speaking of his own case, on a panel at the National Press Club last week.

“It is instead that since 2004, it has been the teaching of at least some bishops that this is something that should be readily advertised and pursued,” said Kmiec.

Kmiec, a former dean of the Columbus School of Law at Catholic University of America, cited these examples:

“‘Mr. Kerry, don’t come to St. Louis.’ ‘Mr. Biden, if you’re in town, in Denver, and you’re attending mass, you should think twice about coming to the altar rail.’ ‘Kathleen Sebelius, because we disagree with how you have discharged your responsibilities as you’ve been advised by your legal counsel, stay away. Publicly confess.’

“I suggest that is not either an effective or a Catholic approach,” Kmiec added.

Read the rest here.

Episcopalians mourn "hero" abortionist

First put down your coffee and grab the trash basket before reading further. You have been warned.

Join the Boston community in sharing our grief and celebrating the life of Dr. George Tiller, a true hero for women across the country.

Monday, June 1st
6pm

St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral
138 Tremont St., Boston
Across from the Park St. T stop

Read the rest here if you have the stomach.

Peter Schiff: Libertarians should take over the Republican Party

Obama gets a pass...

Big surprise here (that someone in the press is actually noting this).

The Obama infatuation is a great unreported story of our time. Has any recent president basked in so much favorable media coverage? Well, maybe John Kennedy for a moment, but no president since. On the whole, this is not healthy for America.

Our political system works best when a president faces checks on his power. But the main checks on Obama are modest. They come from congressional Democrats, who largely share his goals if not always his means. The leaderless and confused Republicans don't provide effective opposition. And the press -- on domestic, if not foreign, policy -- has so far largely abdicated its role as skeptical observer.

Obama has inspired a collective fawning. What started in the campaign (the chief victim was Hillary Clinton, not John McCain) has continued, as a study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism shows. It concludes: "President Barack Obama has enjoyed substantially more positive media coverage than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush during their first months in the White House."

Read the rest here.

The (British) Supreme Court has ruled...

Pringles are a potato chip.

You just can't make stuff like this up. No one would believe it.