Month: May 2015

Texas Orthodox Clergy Speak Out on Gay Marriage and the “Rebellion Against God’s Created Order”

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Gay Marriage and the Houston Gay Rights Ordinance

Source: Orthodox Clergy Association of Houston and Southeast Texas

We, the Orthodox clergy of Houston and Southeast Texas, are compelled by our responsibilities before God to speak out plainly against the rebellion against God’s created order that we see being waged on both the local and national level.

It is God who created the two sexes, and established marriage at the time of creation, as our Lord Jesus Christ tells us:

But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh.What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder (Mark 10:6-10; cf. Genesis 1:27; 2:24; 5:2).

The so called “Houston Equal Rights Ordinance,” is nothing of the sort; but rather gives a man who wishes to consider himself a woman, on a given day, the right to use women’s restrooms in the city of Houston. Such a man need not have even had a “sex change” operation, or even dress like a woman, since “gender” is considered to be a state of the mind rather than a biological fact. After the City council approved this unjust law, Christians of all races, denominations, and political affiliations organized a petition drive, which resulted in far more than the required number of signatures to get the issue on the ballot. But Mayor Annise Parker, disregarding the law, simply chose to disregard the will of the people and their right to vote in accordance with the law. She also used the occasion to unconstitutionally subpoena the sermons and private pastoral correspondences of pastors who were not even a party to a lawsuit that is seeking to force the Mayor to simply obey the law and allow the citizens of the city of Houston their right to vote. We wish to express our support for the fight against this unjust law, and the unlawful actions of Mayor Annise Parker, and we call upon her to cease ignoring the will of the people — which she clearly knows does not support her actions, or else she would not fear leaving the matter to them.

The question of “gay marriage” is also before the Supreme Court, and it is feared that they will impose “gay marriage” on the entire United States. We want our parishioners, fellow citizens, political leaders, and our nation’s judges to know that if this is done, it will be a violation of the letter and the spirit of the United States Constitution. More importantly, it will be an act of rebellion against “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” We have laws respecting marriage because only heterosexual relationships are capable of producing children, and those children are best provided for and properly raised within the context of traditional marriage. Homosexual relationships cannot possibly produce children, and so cannot possibly fit the meaning of the word “marriage,” neither should the state concern itself with recognizing such relationships. Homosexual couples also cannot provide both a mother and a father to a child, and so should not be allowed to adopt children.

The Declaration of Independence correctly states that our rights come from God, not from the state. The state can either justly protect those rights, or unjustly violate them. No government, much less an unelected court, can justly proclaim something to be a right which violates God’s natural order. The only way society can accommodate the demands of homosexual activists to call their relationships “marriage” and to allow everyone to pick which restroom they desire, is to ignore that men and women are different and have unique characteristics, and to pretend that there is no difference between a mother and a father. This can only be accomplished if we all deny that which we know to be true, and “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Romans 1:18).

Let it be known that we will never recognize such laws or judicial decrees to be either right or just, nor will we be intimidated into silence, but will continue to obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29), and proclaim the whole council of God on these issues (Acts 20:27).

Signed:
V. Rev. Fr. Serge Veselinovich, Ss. Constantine and Helen Serbian Orthodox Church, Galveston, Texas
V. Rev. Fr. Dejan Tiosavljevic, St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Church, Cypress, Texas
V. Rev. Fr. Gabriel Karam, Holy Forty Martyrs Antiochian Orthodox Church, Sugarland, Texas
V. Rev. Fr. Joseph Huneycutt, St. Joseph Antiochian Orthodox Church, Houston, Texas
V. Rev, Fr. Anastasios Raptis, St. Basil Greek Orthodox Church, Houston, Texas
V. Rev. Fr. John Whiteford, St. Jonah Orthodox Church (ROCOR), Spring Texas
Hieromonk John (Anderson), St. Cyril Orthodox Church (OCA), The Woodlands, Texas
Rev. Fr. Lubomir Kupec, St. Vladimir Russian Orthodox Church (ROCOR), Houston, Texas
Rev. Fr. Cassian Sibley, Life-Giving Spring Orthodox Church (ROCOR), Bryan, Texas
Rev. Fr. Michael J. Lambakis, Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral, Houston, Texas
Rev. Fr. James Shadid, St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church, Houston, Texas
Rev. Fr. Richard Petranek, St. Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church, Katy, Texas
Rev. Fr. Demetrios Tagaropulos. Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral, Houston, Texas
Rev. Fr. Anthony Baba, St. Anthony Antiochian Orthodox Church, Spring, Texas
Rev. Fr. Symeon Kees, St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church, Houston, Texas
Rev. Fr. Benigno Pardo, St. Jonah Orthodox Church (ROCOR), Spring, Texas
Rev. Fr. Christopher Xanthos, Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral, Houston, Texas
Rev. Dn. David Companik, St. Jonah Orthodox Church (ROCOR), Spring, Texas
Rev. Dn. Juvenaly Hale, St. Joseph Antiochian Orthodox Church, Houston, Texas

More names from the clergy association are likely to be added.

Fr. Gregory Jensen: The Moral Limits of Psychology

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Source: Acton Institute

By Fr. Gregory Jensen

Defenders of the free market insist that virtue is essential to a just and thriving economy. If morality is relevant to economics, it is equally so to allied fields of social science, all of which have as their object of investigation the human person. Indifference to the moral dimension distorts the study of human action in economics; so too does it deform the discipline that reaches behind that action to the human mind: psychology.

Built on a sound anthropological foundation and guided by an equally sound morality that is clear on the proper goals of human life, the empirical findings and practical techniques of psychology can foster the flourishing of both persons and communities. Unfortunately, as Theodore Dalrymple argues in his most recent book Admirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality, contemporary psychology has long been not only hostile to traditional morality but also indifferent to and dismissive of the larger context of Western culture within which it arose. As a result contemporary psychology, according to Dalrymple, “is not a key to self-understanding but a cultural barrier to such understanding as we can achieve.”

Operating within its own limits, psychology can be helpful. Too often however we appeal to psychology for assistance without a proper understanding of the empirical and moral limits of the discipline. Like all social sciences, psychology’s findings are expressed in probabilities that are narrowly defined by the researcher. In other words, given a specific set of variables (which ignore others for the sake of the research), in a given percentage of cases this or that is likely true. Like all sciences, psychology knows the general but it does so at the expense of the particular about which it knows only probabilities.

Dalrymple’s observation about behavioral psychology is true of the whole discipline (and as Hayek reminds us, economics as well): “What started as methodology became ontology.” Rather than situating itself modestly within the larger context of the Western intellectual tradition, psychology set itself up as a critic of the culture. This isn’t limited to the deformative aspects of culture and personal behavior that have been the concern of critics since Socrates and the Old Testament prophets. No like Freud’s Oedipus, psychologists and psychology have increasingly sought to undermine the culture itself.

And so, Dalrymple says, “the overall effect of psychological thought on human culture and society … has been overwhelmingly negative.” Why? Because, he says, “it gives the false impression of greatly increased human self-understanding where none has been achieved, it encourages the evasion of responsibility by turning subjects into objects where it supposedly takes account of or interests itself in subjective experience, and it makes shallow the human character because it discourages genuine self-examination and self-knowledge.” Unmoored from the Western Christian tradition as canonical, contemporary psychology “is ultimately sentimental and promotes the grossest self-pity, for it makes everyone (apart from scapegoats) victims of their own behavior.”

Nevertheless, used “sparingly and with discretion” psychology can “be very useful to carefully selected individuals.” Though narrowly defined, we ought not to minimize or reject the real insights and benefits of psychology. That said, Dalrymple warns that we must be mindful of “the self-aggrandizing nature of most modern ‘caring’ professions that alleged competence in and sovereignty over matters which are beyond the reach of technical understanding or solution undermine any residual modesty, realism, or judgment that they might otherwise still have had.”

Human flourishing is never simply a technical matter but requires “appreciation of the tragic dimension.” Without this “all is shallowness; and those without it are destined for a life that is nasty and brutish, if not necessarily short.” Whether, as Dalrymple concludes, “it is psychology’s vocation to deny and hide” all this “from view with a thin veneer of science” is for me an open question. That said, he makes a good case for the proposition that, psychology “is a watered-down secular version of Christian redemption, with Man in the place of God.”

Dalrymple’s critique is a salutary reminder that, while our efforts to build the Kingdom of God benefit from the scientific knowledge provided by the methods of economics and psychology, we are still more dependent on the wisdom supplied by Christian revelation and moral philosophy.

Fr. Gregory Jensen

The Rev. Gregory Jensen is a social scientist specializing in religion and personality theory. Currently he is the interim pastor of St Ignatius Orthodox Church in Madison, WI and Orthodox Chaplain at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He blogs at Koinonia and the American Orthodox Institute. In 2013, he was a Lone Mountain Fellow with the Bozeman, Mont.-based Property and Environmental Research Center (PERC).

Theodore Dalrymple: Progressive Ideology ‘Dehumanizes The Population’ [VIDEO]

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Theodore Dalrymple has been a favorite essayist of mine for years (see my review of his book: Our Culture, What’s Left of It). He writes for City Journal, arguably one of the better online magazines in existence today that is published by the Manhattan Institute.

A prison doctor before retiring, Dalrymple sees the decline of his native Britain not in terms of systemic injustice (Progressivism) but as a collapse of character and virtue, particularly among the leaders who, in an earlier era, recognized the privileges of income, wealth, even birth imposed an obligation to serve that has in recent generations been lost.

Dalrymple’s latest book is Admirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality (I have not read it yet). Michael Mattheson Miller, friend and colleague posted a review of the book on his website:

Dalrymple, a retired psychiatrist, addresses everything from Freud and psychotherapy to behaviorism, cognitive behavioral therapy, the “real me” fallacy, genetics and the trends within neuroscience that try to reduce the complexity of human motivations, desires, choices, emotional responses, and everything else to a function of certain parts of the brain.

The problems with psychology reflect some of the key problems of our age, notably an incoherent commitment to empiricist rationalism mixed with technological utopianism that thinks we can solve any problem if we can just arrange society, education, the economy, or the neurotransmitters in the right way. But as Dalrymple notes, real life experience (and good literature) show the folly of such an approach.

Clearly I need to read the book.

Source PopModal Videos

This English writer, prison doctor and psychiatrist has traveled the world, talked with the ordinary people elites avoid and warns America to stop its intellectual dishonesty to restore a healthy society.

He thinks his own country is incentivizing the decline of its culture with policies and has insightful suggestions for America, if we will only listen.

Anthony Daniels, who uses the pen name, Theodore Dalrymple, says the West is “too weak-willed,” “accepts obvious untruths” and “treats people as objects.” In this 28-minute video interview with The Daily Caller, he says “the intellectual dishonesty of the West is the greatest threat – we can’t say what we really think.” To him, the solution is to speak up and write, as he has with many articles and books, such as his 2007 one, “Our Culture, What’s Left of It.”

Dalrymple, based on his work in British prisons, is a critic of “determinism” — the dominant progressive theory that minimizes personal responsibility and portrays people as forced, by their circumstances, to behave as they do. Speaking here about prisoners who take heroin, he discusses this theory as it relates to what prisoners say about why they started taking heroin.

James Kushiner: Military and Monastics

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This essay appeared in the Fellowship of St. James Creed and Culture newsletter.

By James Kusner

It dismays me to read the blog post (Homosexual Assault Grows in the Military) by Michael Avramovich about the rise of sexual assault in the military. I remember reading in Stephen Ambrose’s works about homosexual activity among American troops in Europe during WWII—it was nearly non-existent.

Today’s military problems are a part of the larger cultural problem bequeathed to us by the Sexual Revolution of circa 1968. But it began earlier, certainly in the mainstreaming of deviant sex—supposedly merely reported but—fraudulently promoted by the pervert “Dr.” Kinsey. The “everybody’s-doing-it” and “they’re-all-going-to-do-it-anyway” philosophy of sexual instruction have been merely self-fulfilling prophecies. Permission was given society-wide for stimulating the sexual appetite “as you like it,” as long as there is no coercion.

But you reap what you sow. Now the military and campuses are rife with “coercion.” But remember that the appetites grow the more they are indulged, recruited and promoted. Is it possible to diminish this wildfire, and return it to the fireplace where it belongs, where it is the only really “safe sex” and is productive rather than destructive?

While the biblical examples of treating such wildfire are not encouraging—using brimstone and more fire—I am put in mind today of a strong counter-example that many have forgotten about or sidelined: monasticism.

May 15 is the Eastern feast day of Pachomius of Egypt (d. 348), a contemporary of Anthony, who shared in the establishment of monasticism in Egypt in the fourth century. One of his foundations had 3,000 monks, I read this morning, and that’s just one.

What in the world was going on that, rather than sexual license exploding, warfare against the passions was receiving a flood of new recruits? We shouldn’t dismiss the phenomenon as a blip, or an abuse, since chastity and the gift thereof are clearly laid out by our Lord and his apostles as one expression of living “for the sake of the kingdom.” But it is a gift.

Monasticism was quasi-military in the sense that it was viewed as warfare and required strict discipline. We may think some of it overboard, but compared to Navy Seal training, is it? Discipline and self-control can make a comeback, in sexual matters, spiritual matters, economic matters, in all matters pertaining to life and godliness. It requires faith, hope, and love. Prayer. Repentance.

St. Anthony of the Desert

Egyptian Monasticism even spread. Monks from Egypt are referenced in connection with Switzerland (!) and even more so with Ireland. St. Verina was a Coptic hermit, who evangelized in Switzerland near Zurich. She was a relative of St. Victor, who along with St. Maurice—all from Egypt—we martyred in Switzerland. Twenty-one Swiss communities were dedicated to St. Anthony of Egypt. Ireland’s Stowe Missal gave prominent position to the Egyptian desert fathers. And the Book of Leinster contains a litany of St. Oengus, which “invokes unto my aid through Jesus Christ” the “Seven Egyptian monks in Disert [hermitage] Ullaigh.” Art, organization, artifacts all suggest the influence of Coptic monks afar. Quite an army.

One of Pachomius’s largest foundations, after his death, gradually declined through the influence of decadence. Monks are not infallible. Nor soldiers or armies invincible. The point is to struggle toward the right target, under the good grace of God, toward love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law—only true freedom, and no coercion.

Chastity for all. It’s a good word. And some people today—burned out by an oversexed “culture”—are pulling back from the “sex”, finding out they have spiritual capacities waiting to be discovered, renewed, by grace. We should all want chastity, and all to be chaste.