This past Sunday (May 20, 2012), Ancient Faith Today interviewed Dr. Philip Mamalakis and Andrew Williams who specialize in counseling people with same-sex attraction. It was hands down one of the most illuminating and informed presentations I have heard on this complex and often contentious topic in quite a while.

Without going into particulars (you can listen to the interview below), their grounding in Orthodox anthropology enabled them to avoid the common misconception that the object of a person’s sexual desire forms what I call a “foundational characteristic of personhood.” In practical terms this means that we error when we see a person first and foremost as either “straight” or “gay” believing that “sexual orientation” sums up much of who and what he is.

This way of understanding the human person is taken at face value in the larger culture, but in Orthodox self-understanding it misses the mark completely. We are not to conform our understanding of the human person to whether he prefers men or women because we don’t define a person in terms of his sexual desire. Desires are malleable, they require self-discipline and self-mastery (this is what fasting is about for example). And the knowledge that directs this path of mastery can only be uncovered if there is a deeper understanding of the purpose, meaning, and destiny of the human person.

This deeper understanding has been lost in the larger culture — including in some quarters of the Church — although not by the two presenters in Sunday’s program. They framed same-sex desire in the larger context of the inherent value of the human person and his created destiny to become a son of God (male and female alike). As such we heard no condemnatory language that you might hear from moral rigorists who correctly see homosexual behavior as sin but lack the insight about how the struggle with same-sex desire might actually be a means of transformation, or the moral relativism of those who believe that if something feels good it must be right.

The idea that desire defines personhood also gives rise to the notion that ‘orientation’ is a fixed and objective category of human ontology. In English this means that the thinking — the orientation or outlook that results by acting on desire — is itself the source of the desire. The orientation is understood to be something fixed and unchangeable, similar to say, hair color or race.

Yet, all passions (desires) affect an orientation, especially the inordinate ones. A person addicted to food will have an inner orientation geared toward the acquisition and consumption of more food, the alcoholic to alcohol, a person motivated by anger to anger, and so forth. In sexual terms this is true of the heterosexual as well. A man who fails to master lust will have an inner orientation towards, say, fornication and so forth. His self-understanding is no different from the homosexual activist.

Sexual relationships are properly expressed only in the context of marriage between one man and one woman in order to create a family and continue the human race. The sexual revolution that began in the 1960s overthrew this common wisdom. It created the condom/contraception culture that divorced sexual activity from procreation. The idea that the two parent family was crucial for interpersonal and thus cultural stability was undermined, and sexual activity outside of marriage was seen as a natural and positive good.

Homosexual activism then is a predictable outcome of heterosexual irresponsibility. Anytime sexual activity is divorced from procreation, any notion that the family — the union of one male and one female — is the proper social context for sexual relations erodes along with it. And where sexual desire is elevated as a primary constituent of self-identity, then marriage becomes little more than a legal framework in which sexual desire is actualized. ‘Gay marriage’ seems like a reasonable arrangement under these conditions.

Further, it is not true that the heterosexual model is an ‘orientation’ even though heterosexual desire can be misused. Heterosexual relationships, when properly understood and expressed as one man and one woman joining to create a family, lie within the order of creation, within nature. Put another way, same-sex unions are naturally sterile (not the same thing as infertile). They are biologically closed to the creation of new life. Nature itself rejects the premise that same-sex unions correspond in any meaningful way to the heterosexual family.

These ideas are self-evidently true even though many people have an increasingly difficult time seeing it. The cultural shift in the West is anthropological first, and only political second. Unfortunately this is also true in the Church where some activists work to bring this impoverished view of the human person into Orthodox thinking and praxis. They are not enemies necessarily but they are deeply confused, and their confusion should not be allowed to stand under the rubric of fairness, compassion, or any other appeal calculated to create moral parity.

The person authentically struggling with same-sex desire will learn to bring that struggle to Christ in ways that allow for a deeper transformation into Christ. If the ideas about homosexual orientation prevalent in the larger culture are imported in the Church however, then that struggle will either be truncated or abandoned altogether because of the false anthropology that it posits.

We are more than our desires. The activist seeking to create a moral parity between homosexuality and heterosexuality seeks the dominance of homosexual behavior in the end, and either has a poor understanding of the human person or deliberately set out to change the core anthropological teachings of the Church. Aberration replaces truth when this occurs, and the image of Him into Whom we are to be transformed is distorted.

Listen to the interview on Ancient Faith Today here:

Download audio file (aft_2012-05-20.mp3)

Aggressive atheists don’t like either Communism or Nazism referenced as atheistic ideologies because it implicates atheism in deaths of millions killed by Communists and Nazis. They go to great lengths to dispute charges including claims that Soviet Communism adulterated Marx (Hitchens) to arguing that the Nazi appropriation of Christian symbols to justify Nazi barbarism proves it was Christian. It’s historical revision of the first order. Historical memory is full of inconvenient truths in a civilization built on the precepts of the Christian faith.

Source: Interfax

Moscow, May 15, Interfax – On Tuesday, there will be 80 years since the Soviet government issued a decree on “atheistic five-year plan.”

Stalin set a goal: the name of God should be forgotten on the territory of the whole country to May 1, 1937, the article posted by the Foma website says.

Over 5 million militant atheists were living in the country then. Anti-religious universities – special educational establishments for training people for decisive attack against religion – were organized.

According to the plan on religion liquidation, all churches and prayer houses should have been closed to 1932-1933, all religious traditions implanted by literature and family – to 1933-1934, it was planned that the country, and firstly, youth would be grasped by total anti-religious propaganda to 1934-1935, the last clerics were to eliminated to 1935-1936, the very memory about God should have been disappeared from life to 1937.

However, census 1937 where a question about religion was included on Stalin’s instruction puzzled Bolsheviks: 84% of 30 million illiterate USSR citizens aged over 16 said they were believers, the same said 45% of 68.5 million literate citizens.

Churches were again closed in big numbers in 1937. About 10 thousand churches were closed in 1935-1936, eight thousand in 1937, over six thousand – in 1938. According to the modern data, about 350-400 churches from pre-revolutionary churches were open in early war years.

When bishops were arrested, Metropolitan Sergy (Stragorodsky) had to dissolve the temporary Synod on May 10 and administer all dioceses with the help of his vicar bishop and chancellery, which included a secretary and a typist.

Source: My Footage (Historic and Contemporary Stock Footage)

Clip Title: Soviet Anti-Religious Propaganda 1930s

RU 14, Antireligious propaganda: revealing the relics of Saint Mitrofanii (early 1930s). Bell tower, WS people gathered on marketplace, man showing religious articles, remains and relics, to the crowd, CU faces in crowd, woman speaking to crowd (talking about her lack of faith in God). People applaud, demonstration against church.

Source: Real Clear Politics | Patrick J. Buchanan

It took Joe Biden’s public embrace of same-sex marriage to smoke him out.

But after Joe told David Gregory of “Meet the Press” he was “absolutely comfortable” with homosexuals marrying, Barack Obama could not maintain his credibility with the cultural elite if he stuck with the biblical view that God ordained marriage as solely between a man and woman. The biblical view had to go.

Obama had to move, or look like a malingerer in secularism’s next great moral advance into post-Christian America.

Consider. Obama had an appearance coming up on “The View,” where Whoopi Goldberg would have demanded to know why he lacked the courage of Biden’s convictions. He has a $40,000-a-plate fundraiser at George Clooney’s, where the Hollywood crowd would want to know why he does not end discrimination against homosexuals.

He has appearances lined up before gay activists raising millions for his campaign. Monday, his press secretary was pilloried for his feeble defense of Obama’s now-abandoned position.

His hand was forced. Yet the stand Obama took could cost him his presidency. Same-sex marriage may yet be a bridge too far, even for a dying Christian America.

On the plus side for Obama, his decision is producing hosannas from the elites and an infusion of cash from those who see same-sex marriage as the great moral and civil rights issue of our time.

But Obama may also have just solved Mitt Romney’s big problem: How does Mitt get all those evangelical Christians and cultural conservatives not only to vote for him but to work for him?

Obama, by declaring that homosexual marriages should be on the same legal and moral plane as traditional marriage, just took command of the forces of anti-Christian secularism in America’s Kulturkampf. And Nov. 6, 2012, is shaping up as the Antietam of the culture war.

Obama’s second problem is that he may soon be seen as America’s champion of same-sex marriage, but an ineffectual advocate. For Obama can do nothing, as of now, to impose homosexual marriage on the American people.

Thirty-one states have voted to outlaw it. A constitutional amendment supporting same-sex marriage could not win a majority of either house of Congress, let alone the necessary two-thirds of both.

Hence, Obama is going to spend six months winning cheers by calling for same-sex marriage. But the price of those cheers will be the rallying of millions of opponents of homosexual marriage, who will fight this battle where they are winning it, at the state level.

Only six states have approved homosexual marriage, while 30 have imposed a constitutional ban. In North Carolina, a ban not only on same-sex marriage but also civil unions, though opposed by Obama and Bill Clinton, carried on Tuesday with 61 percent of the vote. Republican turnout in North Carolina’s primary was up half a million, the highest in history. And this is a state Obama carried in 2008, a state whose largest city, Charlotte, will host Obama’s convention.

Even in liberal California in 2008, while John McCain was getting a smaller share of the vote than Barry Goldwater in 1964, Proposition 8, restricting marriage to men and women, won.

How does Obama propose to win this battle?

He has one path to victory—the Supreme Court.

The New York Times, declaring that homosexuals’ right to marry is “too precious and too fragile to be left up to the whim of states and the tearing winds of modern partisan politics,” is looking to the court as the last, best hope to impose same-sex marriage on the nation.

Can’t trust voters, can’t trust elected legislators, can’t trust Congress. Homosexual marriage, says the Times, is too important to be left to democratic decision. The republic must be commanded to accept it by unelected judges who serve for life and against whom the people have no political recourse.

That process of judicial tyranny has begun. A California judge has overturned the decision of California’s voters to ban gay marriage, and his ruling is headed for the high court.

The Supreme Court thus will tell us whether this issue is to be decided democratically by voters and their elected state and federal legislators, or dictatorially by themselves.

Four liberal activists on the Supreme Court—Elena Kagan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor—are probably ready to declare that homosexual marriage is a constitutional right, as their predecessors declared abortion to be a constitutional right.

But Obama needs one more justice. If elected, he will get it, and same-sex marriage will be forced on all of America. If Romney wins, the Supreme Court will likely leave the issue of same-sex marriage to be decided by the people and their elected representatives.

Thus everything is up for grabs this November: the House, the Senate, the presidency, the Supreme Court and whether we still call the United States of America God’s country.

Game on!

Economist Andrew Morris on Patriarch Bartholomew’s ideas on sustainable energy: “[H]e’s asking the wrong questions.”

Source: Acton Institute Power Blog | HT: Koinonia

For PowerBlog readers, we’re posting the video from Andrew Morriss’ April 26 Acton Lecture Series talk in Grand Rapids, Mich., on “The False Promise of Green Energy.” Here’s the lecture description: “Green energy advocates claim that transforming America to an economy based on wind, solar, and biofuels will produce jobs for Americans, benefits for the environment, and restore American industry. Prof. Andrew Morriss, co-author of The False Promise of Green Energy (Cato, 2011), shows that these claims are based on unrealistic assumptions, poorly thought out models, and bad data. Rather than leading us to an eco-utopia, he argues that current green energy programs are crony capitalism that impoverishes American consumers and destroys American jobs.”

Morriss, an Orthodox Christian, begins with a quote from Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, the Istanbul, Turkey-based hierarch. Bartholomew said this in response to the March 2011 tsunami in Japan and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster that followed:

Our Creators granted us the gifts of the sun, wind, water and ocean, all of which may safely and sufficiently provide energy. Ecologically-friendly science and technology has discovered ways and means of producing sustainable forms of energy for our ecosystem. Therefore, we ask: Why do we persist in adopting such dangerous sources of energy?

“The Ecumenical Patriarch and I don’t see eye to eye on this,” Morriss said. “I think he’s asking the wrong questions.”

Also see the PowerBlog post “Green Patriarch: No Nukes.”

In his book, Morriss and his co-authors warn that “the concrete results of following [green energy] policies will be a decline in living standards around the globe, including for the world’s poorest; changes in lifestyle that Americans do not want; and a weakening of the technological progress that market forces have delivered, preventing us from finding real solutions to the real problems we face.” Many of those lifestyle changes will come from suddenly spending far more on energy than we’d like. Green technologies mean diverting production from cheap sources, such as coal and oil, to more expensive, highly subsidized ones, like wind and solar. These price spikes won’t be limited to our electricity bills either, the authors argue. “Anything that increases the price of energy will also increase the price of goods that use energy indirectly.”

The better solution to improving America’s energy economy, the book shows, is to let the market work by putting power in the hands of consumers. But “many environmental pressure groups don’t want to leave conservation to individuals, preferring government mandates to change energy use.” In other words, green-job proponents know they’re pushing a bad product. Rather than allow the market to expose the bad economics of green energy, they’d use the power of government to force expensive and unnecessary transformation.

Morriss is also an editor of the forthcoming Silent Spring at 50: The False Crises of Rachel Carson (Cato, September 2012) with Roger Meiners and Pierre Desroches. The blurb for the Carson book notes that she got a lot wrong:

Widely credited with launching the modern environmental movement when published 50 years ago, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring had a profound impact on our society. As an iconic work, the book has often been shielded from critical inquiry, but this landmark anniversary provides an excellent opportunity to reassess its legacy and influence. In Silent Spring at 50: The False Crises of Rachel Carson a team of national experts explores the book’s historical context, the science it was built on, and the policy consequences of its core ideas. The conclusion makes it abundantly clear that the legacy of Silent Spring is highly problematic. While the book provided some clear benefits, a number of Carson’s major arguments rested on what can only be described as deliberate ignorance. Despite her reputation as a careful writer widely praised for building her arguments on science and facts, Carson’s best-seller contained significant errors and sins of omission. Much of what was presented as certainty then was slanted, and today we know much of it is simply wrong.

Morriss is the D. Paul Jones, Jr. & Charlene Angelich Jones Chairholder of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law. He is the author or coauthor of more than 60 book chapters, scholarly articles, and books. He is affiliated with a number of think tanks doing public policy work, including the Property & Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana, the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University, the Institute for Energy Research, and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. In addition, he is a Research Fellow at the New York University Center for Labor and Employment Law. He is chair of the editorial board of the Cayman Financial Review. His scholarship focuses on regulatory issues involving environmental, energy, and offshore financial centers. Over the past ten years he has regularly taught and lectured in China, Greece, Guatemala, Hong Kong, and Nepal.

Morriss earned an A.B. from Princeton University and a J.D., as well as an M.A. in Public Affairs, from the University of Texas at Austin. He received a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After law school, Morriss clerked for U.S. District Judge Barefoot Sanders in the Northern District of Texas and worked for two years at Texas Rural Legal Aid in Hereford and Plainview, Texas.

He was formerly the H. Ross and Helen Workman Professor of Law & Professor of Business at the University of Illinois College of Law and the Galen J. Roush Profesor of Business Law & Regulation at Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

YONKERS, NY / SVOTS COMMUNICATIONS] St. Vladimir’s Seminary Chorale delivered a stunning performance of sacred music in the heart of Manhattan on Monday evening, May 7th. With artistic execution and prayerful potency, the singers filled the warm and inviting space of St. Malachy’s Church with a sound fitting for heaven?and needful on earth.

Through a multi-media presentation titled “ORIENT: Sacred Song and Image” the chorale combined word and image to create an evangelical message that proved to be both spiritually powerful and aesthetically absorbing. The performance employed a variety of iconographic projections and liturgical compositions from the Orthodox Christian tradition, seamlessly matched to create a joyous yet profound experience for concert goers, who listened in rapt attention to the 22-voice chorus and expressed their appreciation to the chorale with a long lasting and standing ovation.

Matushka Robin Freeman, a staff member in the Advancement Office at the seminary who holds a Master of Music degree in Choral Conducting from Indiana University?s Jacobs School of Music, created the concert format and conducted in its premiere at IU’s Jacobs School of Music in 2010. She served as one of the concert conductors for the New York City premiere, along with Hierodeacon Herman, lecturer in Liturgical Music and Chapel Choir Director at the seminary.

Seminary Chancellor and CEO, Archpriest Chad Hatfield served as Master of Ceremonies for the evening, and in keeping with concert’s theme, he delivered a homily about the Resurrection of Christ, near the conclusion of the program. Following Fr. Chad’s homily, the producer of the concert, Dr. Nicholas Reeves, assistant professor of Liturgical Music at the seminary, expressed his profound gratitude to Father Richard Baker, rector of St. Malachy’s Church (The Actors’ Chapel), and to his parishioners, for their generous “gift of space” for the concert venue. The evening concluded with the entire crowd joyously singing the traditional Paschal hymn to the Mother of God, “The Angel Cried.”

View a video clip of the concert here, and the full story at http://www.svots.edu/headlines/listen-st-vladimirs-seminary-chorale-delivers-superlative-concert-nyc.

A priest at Sameba Cathedral, the main cathedral in Tbilisi, Georgia baptizing a baby.

One way to reduce abortions is to start valuing life again. Imagine that.

Georgia’s Patriarch Baptizes 400 Babies

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) — The patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church presided over the baptism of hundreds of babies in a Tbilisi cathedral on Sunday as part of an effort credited with helping raise the birth rate in this former Soviet nation.

Patriarch Ilia II has promised to become the godfather of all babies born into Orthodox Christian families who already have two or more children. Since he began the mass baptisms in 2008, he has gained nearly 11,000 godchildren.

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has said the patriarch deserves much of the credit for the rising birth rate, which in 2010 was 25 percent higher than in 2005. The number of abortions also declined by nearly 50 percent over the same five-year period.

Parents of the 400 babies baptized by an array of priests Sunday said the patriarch was instrumental in their decision to have a third or fourth child.

“This is a wonderful day for my family,” said Tamar Kapanadze, a 33-year-old father of four. “Our fourth son, Lashko, was baptized by the patriarch himself, and before this he baptized our daughter Liziko. This is why we decided to have a fourth child.”

Lamara Georgadze, whose fourth child was among those baptized on Sunday, said she and her husband also answered the patriarch’s call to have more children.

“The Holy Father reminded us all of the importance of increasing the birth rate,” she said. “There are too few of us Georgians and therefore this is very important.”

Saakashvili has set a goal of increasing Georgia’s population from 4.5 million to 5 million by 2015.

Since coming to power in 2004, Saakashvili has focused on modernizing and expanding the economy, attracting foreign investment and pushing for closer ties with the United States and Europe. With Georgia’s population aging, he is eager to see a new generation born that could help secure the country’s future.

In his annual address to parliament in February, he said the government would give parents a one-time payment the equivalent of about $600 for a third child and double that amount for a fourth child.

“This will help raise the birth rate,” Saakashvili said. “The patriarch has already taken steps in this direction. We should be thankful to him for continually reminding the Georgian people that we should multiply.”

The president and his Dutch wife have two children.

Excerpt:

George Ostrogorsky in his magisterial History of the Byzantine State shows how the people of Byzantium rose time and again to create wealth, cultivate their intellectual capital, and achieve military success. Ultimately, though, they could not overcome the bad policy decisions that, made over the course of generations, ran counter to the proven path of political strength, cultural vigor, and economic growth. By the time Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the empire was but a shell of its former glory. For Orthodox Christians in Europe, it remained a symbol of the church, or religious commonwealth on earth, but the desolated city that greeted Sultan Mehmet II told a more sobering story of squandered wealth and misguided politics.

Source: National Review Online | Michael Auslin

The empire fell but didn’t have to.

The Byzantine Empire’s long run — 1,100 years — may seem remote from the 21st century, but a reading of its history offers at least three timeless lessons. Understanding some of the fatal weaknesses in the Eastern Roman Empire may help clarify the political and economic problems that America faces today and the choices we have in responding to them.

Founded in 330 by the emperor Constantine, the eastern half of the Roman Empire was centered in Constantinople, the New Rome. By the fourth century, the empire had endured more than a century of instability, internecine warfare, and economic decline. In that context Rome’s eastern lands, arcing around Asia Minor, the Levant, and northern Africa, were especially attractive, being richer and more settled than the comparatively backward parts of western Europe. It was in part to assure continued access to these sources of wealth that Constantine relocated his capital. By A.D. 476, Rome had been overrun by barbarian tribes, and before long only Constantinople in the East had a seat for the emperors.

The first lesson for America to take from the history of Byzantium is about individualism and freedom. While it was no democracy, nonetheless Byzantium flourished when it allowed its citizens, and particularly its soldiers, greater individual freedom and responsibility. Beginning in the early 7th century, Emperor Heraclius moved from the traditional reliance on the provinces and their civilian governors and instead established large military zones, or “themes,” in Asia Minor, which was now the backbone of the empire. Centralization was maintained through the appointment of a single official with both civil and military responsibilities, but the real innovation of the themes was how the land was settled by imperial troops.

In essence, the soldiers became permanent farmers who could be called on for military service yet would be self-sustaining. They relieved the empire of the necessity of recruiting and paying expensive and often unreliable foreign mercenaries. Moreover, while becoming the most effective frontier defense the state had ever known, as individual landholders they added enormously to the productive capacity and wealth of the empire by cultivating their tracts of farmland.

Byzantium’s strength was fatally undermined when the government lost control of the countryside and either acquiesced in or abetted the formation of private landed estates. The farmer-soldiers were steadily alienated from their land, often owing to exorbitant government taxes, and became instead tenant farmers under increasingly independent feudal chieftains. This destroyed the effectiveness of the Byzantine army and also led to a drop in productivity and in tax receipts to the central government. In crushing the entrepreneurial spirit and independence of the small farmers, Byzantium weakened its economy and hollowed out its military. Eventually, politics in the Byzantine state became a competition between what we would recognize as private-interest groups, aristocrats and feudal landlords, who reduced state policy to the padding of their pockets and the settling of personal disputes.

The second lesson from Byzantium is monetary. In addition to establishing his new capital, Constantine the Great created a currency of unparalleled stability. The gold solidus, or nomisma, maintained its value and was the primary international currency in Eurasia until the 11th century.

The strength of the nomisma contributed mightily to ensuring that Byzantium was the center of world trade for nearly a millennium. It promoted economic activity within the empire. As a currency of first and last resort, it globalized the medieval world economy. Even in times of economic weakness, the government strove to maintain the value of the nomisma, which redounded to Constantinople’s political influence in moments of crisis. However, as the great feudal lords began to deprive Constantinople of land, taxes, and citizens, the government’s finances began to collapse. By the 1040s, circumstances forced the empire to devalue the nomisma. Over succeeding decades, it increasingly added base metal.

The result was devastating to the economy. Byzantium’s currency quickly lost its value and international status. As inflation flared up throughout the empire, the government introduced new coins in an effort to stabilize the monetary system. Taxes steadily increased, in part to make up for the shortfall from reduced economic activity caused by the worthless money. Merchants and taxpayers alike were gradually impoverished. For the last several hundred years of its life, the Byzantine Empire lacked both a stable fisc and a growing trade sector, which in turn led to greater competition among its increasingly powerful interest groups.

These examples lead to a final political lesson for the United States. Despite the dismissive view of historians such as Edward Gibbon, Byzantine society remained vibrant and capable of reinvigorating itself even after centuries of disorder. What doomed it was decades of bad political decisions. Specific choices by emperors and feudal leaders weakened the economy, undercut the military, and sapped the empire’s cultural energy.

George Ostrogorsky in his magisterial History of the Byzantine State shows how the people of Byzantium rose time and again to create wealth, cultivate their intellectual capital, and achieve military success. Ultimately, though, they could not overcome the bad policy decisions that, made over the course of generations, ran counter to the proven path of political strength, cultural vigor, and economic growth. By the time Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the empire was but a shell of its former glory. For Orthodox Christians in Europe, it remained a symbol of the church, or religious commonwealth on earth, but the desolated city that greeted Sultan Mehmet II told a more sobering story of squandered wealth and misguided politics.

Michael Auslin is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

Pope Benedict meets Abp. Hilarion in Rome

A year and a half ago, while searching for a recording of Bach’s Matthäus-Passion to share with a friend, I stumbled across a YouTube clip entitled simply: ”St Matthew Passion. No. 1.”

Filled with idle musical curiosity, I clicked away, and within moments, realized that I had discovered something extraordinary. This was breathtaking music; grandiose, yet restrained; a piece that spoke more eloquently of the sorrow and hope of Christ’s suffering than anything I’d experienced since hearing Bach’s own Matthäus-Passion for the first time. Yet despite the obvious influences of Leipzig’s Capellmeister, the piece’s sombre Russian sensibilities were equally unmistakable. Who was this composer? And why had it taken me so long to discover his work?

A bit of research revealed an answer as unexpected as was my initial (lucky) discovery: this astonishing work was written barely five years ago. And its creator, despite producing some of the most beautiful, traditionally-influenced sacred music I’ve had the pleasure to discover, isn’t even a “full-time composer.” He’s a bishop.

Meet Hilarion Alfeyev, Metropolitan of Volokolamsk, Vicar of the Moscow diocese, and chairman of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Department for External Church Relations.

Recently, the Metropolitan found some time in his (superhumanly busy) schedule to talk about his Passion and his musical influences, the unusual opportunity he has to be both composer and celebrant, and his hopes for future dialogue between the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches.

Crisis Magazine: Your Matthäuspassion was heavily influenced by J.S. Bach, whose music you call “ecumenical in the original sense of the word, for it belongs to the world as a whole and to each citizen separately.” What draws you to Bach’s music, and what characteristics of his compositional method — musical and spiritual alike — did you strive most to emulate in your own works?  

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev: I do not know anything in classical music more sublime, meaningful, profound and spiritual than Bach’s works. Bach is a colossus; his music contains a universal element that is all-embracing. As the poet Joseph Brodsky said, “In every piece of music there is Bach. In each of us there is God.”

Bach was a man who managed in his creative work to combine a magnificent and unsurpassed skill in composition, rare diversity, melodic beauty and very profound spirituality. His music, even his secular music, is permeated by a feeling of love of God, of standing in God’s presence, of awe before Him. One can say that music for him was the worship of God.

Bach was a true ‘Catholic,’ in the original understanding of the Greek word katholikos meaning ‘universal,’ ‘all-embracing,’ for he perceived the Church as a universal organism, as a common doxology directed towards God, and he believed his music to be but a single voice in the choir praising the glory of God.

Bach’s music is deeply mystical because it is based on an experience of prayer and ministry to God which transcends confessional boundaries and is the heritage of all humanity.

Bach’s music is deeply Christocentric. I believe that hidden in Bach/s music filled with spiritual symbolism and spiritual content is the secret of its relevance for people of all epochs. This is a music which does not become obsolete because it touches the central themes of human life. It is addressed in the main to that which people live for – to God.

You said that my St. Matthew Passion was heavily influenced by Bach. This is so and not so. Indeed, the idea came to me to compose this piece on 19 August 2006, the feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord and I first of all thought of Bach’s Passion. However, I wanted to fill Bach’s form with the Orthodox content. First and foremost I thought of conveying the atmosphere of the Orthodox divine services of Holy Week in my Oratorio which is not meant for church. May I draw your attention to the fact that, unlike Bach’s Passion, there is no libretto in my composition, but only the Gospel texts and texts from the divine services of Holy Week.

Crisis Magazine: Your “All-Night Vigil” and “Divine Liturgy” are evocative of the sacred works of other Russian greats: Tchaikovsky’s and Rachmaninov’s “Liturgies of St. John Chrysostom” come to mind, or Rachmaninov’s Vespers. How conscious was their influence on your work — or were the similarities more a result of the sacred texts for which you were composing, rather than an intentional homage to your predecessors? 

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev: Sergei Rachmaninov is one of my favourite composers. However, I think that his All-Night Vigil would be quite difficult to perform in church; it is more suited to a concert stage. At the same time it is such a profound work, imbued with a truly ecclesiastical spirit, that it opens up much to people, including those who are not part of the Church.

In approaching the composition of the Liturgy I primarily thought of how to write such music that would enable prayer. Today many hymns are performed by choirs either too loudly, so that the priest has to drown out the choir, or too quickly, so that the priest has no time to read the appropriate prayers. And at times, on the contrary, because the singing is too slow, the service is artificially stretched out. It happens that during the service the sanctuary has its life while the choir stall has another. In the sanctuary one sacred action is taking place, while in the choir stall something completely different is happening; it is more like a concert that divine worship.

The reason for this, I think, is that the majority of composers who write and have written church music are not priests and listen to the service ‘externally,’ not from within the sanctuary. By God’s grace I am able to hear it standing before the altar, and it is this experience which I wanted to convey in the Liturgy and All-Night Vigil. I would like to write music which would not distract me from performing the sacred actions and reading the appropriate prayers, nor distract the faithful from prayerful participation in the service. The melodies which comprise the Liturgy are simple and easy to remember, they are similar to the common chant. When the composition is performed in worship, the person praying in church ought to have the feeling that he is listening to familiar chants and his ear should not be distracted by the novelty or unusual nature of the music.

Crisis Magazine: In a lecture delivered at the Catholic University of America last year, you said that “at the dawn of the twenty-first century, the best representatives of the art of music” have brought their skill “back to God, praising Him ‘with strings and pipe.’” Who gives you the greatest hope amongst the composers of our modern age?

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev: As to the composers of our modern age who give me greatest hopes I would like to name the Estonian Arvo Pärt, the Pole Henryk Miko?aj Górecki, and the Briton John Tavener. Though there are differences in their work, much unites them not only on a musical but also on a spiritual plane. They have all experienced the profound influence of religion and are ‘practicing’ Christians: Pärt and Tavener are Orthodox, while Górecki is a Catholic. Their creative work is permeated with the theme of religion, replete with a deep spiritual content and is inextricably linked to the liturgical tradition.

Pärt’s creative life and destiny as a composer is typical of his time and is largely similar to these of Henryk Górecki. They both began in the 1960s as avant-garde composers of serialist works. Górecki moved away from his earlier modernism in the 1970s to study medieval music of the Catholic Church and composed the Third Symphony also known as Symphony of Sorrowful Songs in 1976. It became a worldwide success. Pärt withdrew from the composition to study early polyphony in search of his own style in the 1970s. The period of his voluntary silence and seclusion ended in 1976: he composed his first pieces in a new self-made technique, which he called ‘tintinnabulation’ (from the Latin tintinnabulum, a bell). The ‘tintinnabulation’ style is characterized by seeking maximum simplicity of the musical language. At the same time, this music exerts a strong impression on listeners, including even those unsophisticated in classical music. Once a hospice staff member told me that the dying people called Pärt’s Tabula Rasa an ‘angelic music’ and asked to let them hear it on their deathbed. It may be that simplicity, harmony and even a certain monotony of Pärt’s music correspond to the spiritual search of contemporary man.

After his emigration from the Soviet Union in 1980, Pärt composed only sacred music, which was meant, though, for concert performance. Between 1980 and 1990 he wrote many compositions on traditionally Catholic texts, including St. John’s Passion, Te Deum, Stabat Mater, Magnificat, Miserere, Berliner Messe, and The Beatitudes. The influence of the Catholic tradition is shown in using organ and orchestra along with the choir and the ensemble of the soloists. The influence of Orthodox church singing and Orthodox spiritual tradition has become appreciable in Pärt’s creative work since the early 1990s. He wrote many compositions on Orthodox texts, mostly for choir a capella, including Kanon Pokajanen (The Canon of Repentance) on the verses of St. Andrew of Crete, I am the True Vine and Triodion on the texts from the Lenten Triodion. His pieces for orchestra, such as  Silouan’s Song for string orchestra, are also marked by a profound influence of Orthodoxy.

Recently, I have discovered a very interesting composer, Karl Jenkins. He lives in Wales and writes beautiful music, which is bright, accessible, and simple. I regard his Requiem a real masterpiece of contemporary music.

Vladimir Martynov, under whom I studied in my youth, has composed a wonderful Requiem. It is a major requiem. Certain parts of it are an open pasticcio of Mozart or Schubert. This music is delightful, positive, light, and harmonious, which, I believe, contemporary man needs as he is tired of the negative, dissonance, and cacophony.

Crisis Magazine: The power of the Divine Liturgy is often lost upon “Western” Catholics like me who rarely have the opportunity to experience it. Your setting emphasizes a number of its more distinctive features: its reliance on the chanting of sacred texts, for example; its use of repetition; its emphasis on the mysterious, incomprehensible nature of what is taking place. What challenges do these pre-existing, unassailable characteristics present to a composer like yourself? And what are the advantages to composing for a liturgy with such a long and venerable musical tradition?

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev: I would like to quote one of the greatest of Russian saints who lived at the turn of the twentieth century, St. John of Kronstadt: ‘The church and worship are the embodiment and realization of all Christianity: here in words, in persons and actions is conveyed the entire economy of our salvation, all sacred and church history, all that is good, wise, eternal and immutable in God… his righteousness and holiness, his eternal power. Here we find a harmony that is wondrous in all things, an amazing logical connection in the whole and its parts: it is true divine wisdom accessible to simple, loving hearts.’

These words express the essence of Orthodox worship as a school for prayer, theology and discourse on the divine. All elements of worship, including the church’s décor, the exclamations of the priest and the singing of the choir are subordinated to a single aim – to direct the believer towards prayer, to enable his heart and mind to unite with the Lord.

Regarding the differences between Christian worship in the West and in the East, I think that all of us – both Orthodox and Catholics – ought to reflect deeply on the common roots of liturgy. Indeed, when we speak of the Latin Mass, we usually picture to ourselves either the short version which was adopted at the Second Vatican Council or, not so often, the Tridentine Mass which, we ought to recall, was composed relatively recently.

And of course the worship of the Russian Church – in particular the music which is performed at it – is far from ancient.

Yet if we turn to the sources of our liturgical traditions to Gregorian chant in the West and to Byzantine and Znamenny chants in the East – we see that we have more in common than what separates us.

From the 17^th century onwards Russian church music started to feel the influence of the West. On the one hand, this led to a rupture with its medieval traditions – in particular, unison singing almost completely fell into disuse. Yet on the other hand contemporary Russian liturgical music is more comprehensible to the Westerner, and when he enters a Russian church he does not feel any ‘culture shock.’

When I wrote liturgical music I tried to draw inspiration from the music traditions of Russian Orthodoxy in all their fullness. I mean by this that in following the canons no impediments are made in the creative process; just the opposite – it helps the composer, artist, and hymnographer.

Crisis Magazine: What would be the greatest benefit of an increased familiarity amongst Eastern and Western Catholics with their alternate liturgies — a more concerted effort to, in John Paul II’s words, “breathe with both lungs”? If you were asked to describe the most fundamental characteristic of the Orthodox Church and its followers to a “Westerner” like me, what would you say?

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev: A detailed answer to your question would take up much time. But if I am to be brief then I would say that Orthodox Christianity is a religion of beauty and freedom, a religion of love and light. Orthodoxy opens up a boundless expanse for spiritual creativity, for inner self-education and – what is most important – for an encounter with God. No one should feel that in Orthodoxy he is being constrained, deprived of air, or made to feel uncomfortable. There is a place in Orthodoxy for the scholar and the poet and the artist, for the rich and for the poor, for the gifted and for those not blessed with great talents, for the educated and the simple.

Crisis Magazine: In a recent interview following your visit with Pope Benedict XVI at Castle Gandolfo, you mentioned how encouraged you are by the pontiff’s attention to the dialogue between the Catholics and the Orthodox. What, to your mind, are the greatest theological and hierarchical hurdles that stand between our two churches? What role can we, as laypeople, play in the greatly-desired unification of the East and the West?

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev: In dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church we proceed from the fact that this is a Church which has preserved apostolic succession in its hierarchy as well as having a doctrine on the sacraments which is very similar to our doctrine. It is also very important that both Orthodox and Catholics have the same moral foundations and a very similar social doctrine.

The theological differences between Rome and the Orthodox East are well known. Apart from a number of aspects in the realm of dogmatic theology, these are the teaching on primacy in the Church and, more specifically, on the role of the bishop of Rome. This topic is discussed within the framework of the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue which has been taking place for several decades at sessions of a joint commission specially established for this purpose.

But today a different problem is acquiring primary importance – the problem of the unity of Orthodox and Catholics in the cause of defending traditional Christianity. To our great regret, a significant part of Protestant confessions by the beginning of the 21^st century has adopted the liberal values of the modern world and in essence has renounced fidelity to Biblical principles in the realm of morality. Today in the West, the Roman Catholic Church remains the main bulwark in the defence of traditional moral values – such, for example, as marital fidelity, the inadmissibility of artificially ending human life, the possibility of marital union as a union only between man and woman.

Therefore, when we speak of dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church, I believe that the priority in this dialogue today should not be the question of the filioque or the primacy of the Pope. We should learn to interact in that capacity that we find ourselves in today – in a state of division and absence of Eucharistic communion. We ought to learn how to perceive each other not as rivals but as allies by understanding that we have a common missionary field and encounter common challenges. We are faced with the common task of defending traditional Christian values, and joint efforts are essential today not out of certain theological considerations but primarily because we ought to help our nations to survive. These are the priorities which we espouse in this dialogue.

I am convinced that the laity – both Catholic and Orthodox – can play and is already playing a most important role in this cause, each in his own place, to where the Lord has called him, by bearing witness to the values of the Gospel which our Churches preserve.

You wonder why Georgetown even bothers calling itself Catholic anymore.

George Pastourakos | Theology and Society

This week, it was revealed that Georgetown University — America’s oldest Catholic institution of higher learning — selected Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), to be a speaker at one of its graduation ceremonies on May 18.

Sebelius is of the Roman Catholic faith, but is pro-abortion and the principal spokesperson for supporting the Obama administration’s contraception mandate.

Consequently, a plethora of Catholics have been shocked that Georgetown chose Sebelius to be a graduation speaker. In fact, the Cardinal Newman Society has posted a petition — which thousands of people have already signed — at GeorgetownScandal.com, in an effort to protest this outrage.

We agree with the Cardinal Newman Society that Sebelius should not be a speaker at Georgetown. Although Sebelius claims to be a Catholic, one would never know it from her anti-Catholic actions and beliefs.

In 2008, Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City told Sebelius — who was governor of Kansas at that time — to stop receiving the Eucharist until she publicly recants her position on abortion and makes a “worthy sacramental confession.” Today — four years later — Sebelius has still not followed Archbishop Naumann’s directive.

Hopefully, Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl will carry out the Cardinal Newman Society request that he send a letter to Georgetown President John DeGioia, urging him to immediately withdraw Sebelius’ invitation to speak at the university.

The fact is that — by inviting Sebelius to be a speaker — Georgetown is conveying its arrogance, disrespect, and indifference toward Catholicism and toward America’s Catholic bishops, all of whom have condemned the Health and Human Services contraception mandate.

While we believe that a university must be free to accept all viewpoints as it works to achieve its goal of enhancing learning and knowledge, we also believe that a Catholic university has an irrevocable responsibility to support Catholic doctrine and the teachings of Christ.

Indeed, by inviting Sebelius to be a speaker this month, Georgetown University has disgraced itself by promoting anti-Catholic and anti-Christian beliefs. Needless to say, it will now take Georgetown many years to regain the respect it once had as a first-rate Jesuit institution of higher learning.

After two years so it’s probably time for a meeting. Josephus Flavius, curator of Byzantine, Texas put it well:

We’ll see which model the assembly chooses to use on providing an update after this meeting. Will it be a perfunctory listing of people who showed up with a reference to the joy they have at being together or will it be a “meaty” report with details and future plans.

Met. Philip was even more pessimistic when the Assembly was cobbled together:

We are faced now with a very serious procedural nightmare. We are, supposedly, here to discuss a new organization to replace SCOBA. The question is: Was SCOBA dissolved and if so, by whom? And when?? SCOBA has a constitution which is fifty years old. If this constitution has to be amended, let us then amend it according to correct procedures. No one can dissolve SCOBA except SCOBA itself. SCOBA has organized Bishops’ Assemblies before Chambesy told us to do so. The first Assembly was held at the Antiochian Village in Ligonier, Pennsylvania in 1994, under the chairmanship of our brother, Archbishop Iakovos, of blessed memory. The second Bishops’ Assembly was convened in Washington, D.C. and the third Bishops’ Assembly was convened in Chicago, Illinois, both under the auspices of SCOBA and the Chairmanship of His Eminence, Archbishop Demetrios.

TWO – The second point which I would like to note is concerning the term “Diaspora” which was used several times in the literature which we received from Geneva. I remember, there are many of you who were at the Antiochian Village in 1994 and should remember that the term “Diaspora” was unanimously rejected by our assembly. We are not in Babylon; we are in North America, the new world. We are dealing here with second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth generations of American Orthodox and they refuse to be called “Diaspora.”

I had hopes for the organization when it was first announced but after going through a critical two years in our country the only word of direction or analysis was a poorly worded, one time, defense of the Roman Catholic Church against the egregious overreach of the Obama administration’s HHS mandates. Other than that, silence.

I wouldn’t expect too much.

HT: Byzantine, TX

(AOB) – Since much of the work of the Assembly of Bishops falls within the purview of its thirteen committees, the success of these committees is essential for the success of the Assembly as a whole. Therefore, the Secretariat’s Coordinator for Committees, Bishop Maxim, is organizing a face-to-face meeting of the Assembly’s thirteen committee chairmen, scheduled to meet on May 30. The chairmen will gather for the day at the Metropolia Center of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA, where they will be hosted by Archbishop Antony, who currently serves as the Assembly’s Treasurer and the chairman of the Committee for Financial Affairs.

This historic meeting will include a dozen bishops as well as most of the committee liaisons from the Secretariat. In the instances where a committee has yet to meet, it is hoped that this will help its chairman organize an initial meeting and so begin to address the goals outlined in the committee’s Terms of Reference. In those instances where committees have already begun meeting, this gathering will allow the chairmen to share the concerns and difficulties with which they have met and to find common ways of addressing them.

Along with Dr. John Mark Reynolds and host Kevin Allen, I participated in the debut of the program Ancient Faith Today several weeks back that, from all accounts, was very successful. Ancient Faith Radio reports the program generated well over 11,000 complete downloads in just 10 days.

The program Ancient Faith Today tackles topics of high interest in the larger context — from atheism to gay marriage and a few others in between. The next program deals with same-sex attraction and airs on May 20, 2012 (see the full schedule). We’ve also set up an AFT Forum under the American Orthodox Institute umbrella.

Download audio file (aft_2012-05-06.mp3)

Fr. Peter-Micheal Preble, an outspoken and courageous defender of religious liberty, looks at a recent sermon by Roman Catholic Bishop Daniel Jenky that examines the ominous portentions of the HHS Mandates for the Catholic Church. An excerpt:

Recently, Daniel Jenky, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Peoria, Illinois preached a sermon in which he said that President Obama was heading down the same road that Hitler and Stalin had taken. He was referring to the change in the HHS mandate that would require religious institutions to provide abortion and contraception coverage regardless of their moral objections. This change, in my opinion and the opinion of many others, is a direct attack on the religious freedom we have always enjoyed in America. I have written on this topic myself and was publicly taken to task by a bishop of my own Church for what I had to say.

[...]

I believe we have lost sight of the fact that the Church does not change to fit the culture; the Church is supposed to influence the culture and keep the culture on track. When a church changes to fit what society wants her to believe, she has failed in her mission and confused the people. The Church does not decide matters of faith and morals based on opinion polls; the Church decides on what has been revealed to her by the Holy Spirit and through her long tradition. If the culture needs correction, it is up to the Church, and her authentic teachers, the bishops, to bring that culture back on track. I believe we are where we are as a society, because we, the Church, have not been doing our job effectively.

Source: Fr. Peter-Michael Preble

One of the fundamental characteristics of a good leader, no, strike that, a great leader is courage. Of all the skills that leaders, especially leaders in the Church, need it is courage. We are faced with an unprecedented attack on religious freedom in this country, and what we need more than anything are leaders who are not afraid to say what needs to be said. We need leaders who put themselves out in front to protect their flocks from attack. We need leaders who will speak the truth in all situations regardless of the consequences of that truth.

I spent twelve years in the Army of the United States, and I served under many leaders. The one thing that distinguished the good ones from the bad ones was courage. I am not talking about courage under fire on the battle-field, but courage to do what had to be done, regardless of the consequences. That is the mark of true leaders: the willingness to risk it all to complete a mission because they know what will happen if they fail. Courageous leaders always have the welfare of those they are leading in the fore-front of their mind and think of themselves only after they think of those they are leading. Their platoon’s or their church’s welfare is more important than their own.

Bp. Daniel Jenky

In that April 14 sermon, Bishop Jenky said that the Church will survive what is being done to her and that many “have tried to force Christians to huddle and hide within the confines of their churches.” It is important to note that those governments that have tried to extinguish the church have all fallen, yet the church continues. As Jenky said.

Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services and health care…

In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama – with his radical, pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path…

Every other Roman Catholic bishop in America has made similar statements saying what the Church should be teaching and speaking what her bishops are speaking.

This takes courage! Shortly after Jenky’s sermon, a left-wing, God-hating group filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service citing the sermon as a violation of the IRS tax code in relation to churches. And the faculty of what used to be a Roman Catholic University, Notre Dame, publicly called on Bishop Jenky to retract his statements but so far he is standing by his words.

I believe we have lost sight of the fact that the Church does not change to fit the culture; the Church is supposed to influence the culture and keep the culture on track. When a church changes to fit what society wants her to believe, she has failed in her mission and confused the people. The Church does not decide matters of faith and morals based on opinion polls; the Church decides on what has been revealed to her by the Holy Spirit and through her long tradition. If the culture needs correction, it is up to the Church, and her authentic teachers, the bishops, to bring that culture back on track. I believe we are where we are as a society, because we, the Church, have not been doing our job effectively.

We can look back at the political takeovers of the last century, and see that one of the first things accomplished was the silencing of the Church. When the Nazis rolled into Poland the Roman Catholic Church gave her assent, because Hitler had promised that the Church would not be affected. Soon after the Nazis arrival, that all changed; the Church began to be persecuted.

The socialist plan will not work unless the government is in control of the moral compass of the people. The moral compass of the people is the Church, the authentic Church and her bishops. Right now, with few exceptions, the Roman Catholic Church is fighting this fight on her own. She has the loudest voice, yes, but this is not a simply a Roman Catholic issue, as the liberal media would like us to believe. This is an issue of religious freedom that will affect all of us in America. If we stay silent, we will end up like the Roman Catholic Church in Poland of the 1940s.

To be a leader means to have the courage that it takes to stand up when needed. Leaders cannot be afraid of the political or economic fallout of teaching and upholding what the Church teaches. The Church is to be counter-cultural and to remind people that we do have a moral code, a code that this country was founded on and, if we are not careful, a code that will become a distant memory.

This moral code is very counter-cultural, and most of the adherents to the Orthodox faith are confused on many of the issues that face them every day. The Orthodox faith is not simply a faith practiced on Sunday or when it is convenient another issue that the faithful need to consider but it is a faith that is lived, a faith that is part of the very fabric of our humanity. We can’t separate our life outside the Church from our life inside the Church, because there should be no difference.

What we need now, more than ever before in the history of America, are leaders who are filled with the power and the boldness of the Holy Spirit, as the apostles were on the day of Pentecost. Courageous, Spirit-filled leaders leading the church and say what needs to be said, whether or not it is politically correct and regardless of the fallout. We need leaders who are not afraid to stand up and say that what is being done is not right and who will tell the world we will not be silenced.

But it is not just up to the leaders of the Church. The laity needs to support its leaders when they come under attack. The Church needs to be defended at all levels of society and everyone needs to be involved in this defense of the faith.

The Church needs courageous leaders who are and will be authentic shepherds of their flock and are, in a very real way, willing to lay down their lives for those that God has entrusted to them. Thanks be to God, the Church does have leaders like this, but we need so many more. We need leaders with the courage and conviction of Bishop Jenky, who will stand up and be counted, and take the government and the faithful to task for what they are doing or not doing.

Throughout Scripture, the image of the shepherd is used as an image of Jesus leading His flock. This image has been repeated throughout the history of the Church in reference to the clergy, who lead the Church as descendants of those very apostles. The shepherd who stands on the hillside is not there for his own gain, but to watch carefully over the flock that God has entrusted to him. He is constantly scanning the horizon for any threat to that flock. He provides the nourishment the flock needs. His first thought in the morning and his last thought at night is about his flock. If left alone, the flock is not able to defend itself. The flock needs the shepherd.

Each bishop of the Church carries a staff like those of the shepherds on the hill-side. That staff is to remind him, and the faithful, that he is there to protect them, nourish them, and lead them at all times. If the shepherd turns away, even for just a moment, he opens the flock up to attack. He needs to be as concerned for the ones in the back of the pack as he is for the ones in the front. The shepherd has to be fearless in the defense of his flock, and he has to be willing to lay down his life to save just one.

We have just completed the holiest week of the Church year. The entire week was spent focusing on the Cross. The hymns of the Church services and the Scripture reads helped us to focus on the events that took place. In a very real way, we walked along side Jesus as He went to His voluntary death. We walked alongside Him as He laid down His life for His flock.

The Romans had used the Cross as a symbol and instrument of terror and death for years. The action of one man, Jesus Christ, transformed it to a symbol of freedom. This symbol we need to cling to. With the Crucifixion of Jesus, the cross changed from a symbol of fear to a symbol of courage. We wear that Cross around our necks as a reminder what Jesus did for us. The Cross has become a symbol of truth, and if we just cling to that symbol, we find the courage that we need.

I was reminded recently that the role of the priest is to be the mediator for his people. When priests or bishops put on their vestments for the liturgy, we are reminded that we are clothing ourselves with the armor of God and preparing for battle. We are warriors in the army of the Lord and we are to use that armor to defend the flock.

More than 2,000 years ago, Jesus Christ called twelve men to follow Him and to continue His teaching as the inheritors of His mission on earth. One of those chosen fell into temptation and sold Him into the hands of the enemy, but the others became the voice that has given us the church we have today.

The earliest settlers of America had the courage to leave all that they knew to come to a harsh and uninviting place, simply because they wanted to be able to practice their faith without government interference. For more than 200 years, that has been the law here in America. Recently, with the stroke of a pen, that liberty and freedom has been taken away. For the first time in the history of America, the government has forced the Church to go against her teachings. The wolf is standing close to the flock. We need leaders who are courageous who are not afraid to place themselves between the wolf and the flock.

– Source: Huffington Post

They are called “clergy killers” — congregations where a small group of members are so disruptive that no pastor is able to maintain spiritual leadership for long.

And yet ministers often endure the stresses of these dysfunctional relationships for months, or even years, before eventually being forced out or giving up.

Adding to the strain is the process, which is often shrouded in secrecy. No one — from denominational officials to church members to the clerics themselves — wants to acknowledge the failure of a relationship designed to be a sign to the world of mutual love and support.

But new research is providing insights into just how widespread — and damaging — these forced terminations can be to clergy.

An online study published in the March issue of the Review of Religious Research found 28 percent of ministers said they had at one time been forced to leave their jobs due to personal attacks and criticism from a small faction of their congregations.

The researchers from Texas Tech University and Virginia Tech University also found that the clergy who had been forced out were more likely to report lower levels of self-esteem and higher levels of depression, stress and physical health problems.

And too few clergy are getting the help they need, said researcher Marcus Tanner of Texas Tech.

“Everybody knows this is happening, but nobody wants to talk about it,” Tanner said in an interview. “The vast majority of denominations across the country are doing absolutely nothing.”

A secret struggle

The issue of clergy job security will be front and center next month when delegates to the quadrennial General Conference of The United Methodist Church considers a proposal to end “guaranteed appointments” for elders in good standing. The church’s Study of Ministry Commission says clergy job guarantees cost too much money and can focus more on the clergyperson’s needs rather than the denomination’s mission. On the other side, many clergy express fears that eliminating job security may lead to arbitrary dismissals. A major concern is that clergy will be judged based on their performance at “toxic” congregations, churches with so much internal conflict that it is difficult for any minister to have success.

The clergy have good reason to worry. A small percentage of congregations do seem to be responsible for a large share of congregational conflict.

Seven percent of congregations accounted for more than 35 percent of all the conflict reported in the National Congregations Study. And that conflict often had a high price.

In the 2006-2007 National Congregations Study, 9 percent of congregations reported a conflict in the last two years that led a clergyperson or other religious leader to leave the congregation.

It is difficult to get specific denominational figures, Tanner said. Many churches do not keep records indicating when a pastor was forced out as opposed to leaving voluntarily. And not only is it difficult to get clergy to open up about such painful experiences, many ministers are forced to sign a nondisclosure agreement to receive their severance package.

In their study, Tanner, Anisa Zvonkovic and Charlie Adams recruited respondents through Facebook groups relating to Christian clergy. Four-fifths of the 582 ministers participating — 410 males and 172 females from 39 denominations — ranged in age from 26 to 55.

The participants were asked whether they ever left a job “due to the constant negativity found in personal attacks and criticism from a small faction of the congregation.”

Twenty eight percent of the respondents said they had been forced from a ministry job. Three-quarters had been forced out once, and 4 percent had been forcibly terminated three or more times, the study found.

Even one time, however, is more than enough.

A heavy toll

Ministers who were forced out of their jobs because of congregational conflict were more likely to experience burnout, depression, lower self-esteem and more physical health problems, the online study found.

In addition, more than four in 10 ministers forced out of their jobs reported seriously considering leaving the ministry.

A separate survey by Texas Tech and Virginia Tech researchers of 55 ministers who were forced out of a pastoral position found a significant link with self-reported measures of post-traumatic stress disorder and generalized anxiety disorder.

“This study shows that not only is forced termination an issue, but a cruel one that has very distressing effects on those who experience it,” Tanner, Zvonkovic and Jeffrey Wherry reported in the current issue of the Journal of Religion and Health. “It is important that Christian organizations recognize the problem and implement steps to increase awareness and solutions.”

Months of suffering traumatic and demeaning psychological and emotional abuse as they are slowly being forced out of their pulpits due to congregational conflict, Tanner said, “is a really, really horrible process.”

What makes it even worse is the complicity of silence that prevents clergy from getting the help they need to go forward.

David Briggs writes the Ahead of the Trend column for the Association of Religion Data Archives.

Below are some pictures of the consecration of St. Nicholas Cathedral in Kronstadt, Russia. A window to heaven has opened and the harmony of the unseen and uncreated are made visible to man. The Church is nothing short of astonishing.

The only other place I have seen such depth of beauty outside of nature is in the iconography of the new chapel in Ossios Lukas monastery in Greece. There the icons possess an ethereal but ordered brilliance that reflects the harmony that must have existed at the beginning of creation and points to its final restoration; a non-material and dynamic logic that infuses all created things and establishes their material limits and governs their workings. I see the same revelation here.

Harmony is revealed through art. If art touches that non-material logic, the pulse that runs through all things like the steady note that rings off the tuning fork, the divine is discerned and the soul is elevated and nourished. If art rebels against harmony and order, the soul is darkened, knowledge is lost, and hope dies.

First, the photographs, then the Google translation (choppy but still understandable) from the Russian text. More photos are available at Православие и мир.

HT: Byzantine, TX (one of the most informative Orthodox sites on the web). Click photos to enlarge.

Video of the consecration.

Source: Православие.Ru

Google Translation:

April 19, 2012, Thursday, Bright Week, the Holy Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill performed the rite of consecration of small Kronstadt Naval Cathedral of St Nicholas, and then headed the ministry in the church liturgy, transfers Patriarchal.

At the service sang the chorus of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, St. Petersburg (choir director Lev Danube).

By the visit of His Holiness the unique interiors have been recreated Nicholas Naval Cathedral, as well as original sketches made on the subjects of church utensils – censers, tabernacles, Eucharistic vessels, altar Gospel used in the Patriarchal liturgy.

Temple could not accommodate everyone, and for many residents of the Kronstadt sailors and the service was broadcast on screens installed in Anchor Square near the Cathedral.

At the end of the Liturgy of His Holiness appealed to the faithful with the primatial word, and then handed the award a number of high church officials, particularly labored in the rebuilding of the temple of naval glory.

As a gift to St. Nicholas Cathedral of the Russian Church Primate conveyed the icon of “The Baptism of Russia.”

After the service, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill and President of the DA Medvedev visited the baptismal (lower) Church of St.. John of Rila, where candles were lit before the icon of the Resurrection of Christ, and then climbed to the upper temple, where they examined the crash site of German shells, left neotrestavrirovannym in memory of the Great Patriotic War. President of Russia and head of the Russian Church, candles to set the image of the Mother of God and the temple icon of St. Nicholas, which was donated to the cathedral by the President.

After visiting the Cathedral of St. Nicholas D. Medvedev and Patriarch Kirill headed to the Anchor Square, which sent a congratulatory words to the High Command and the Russian Navy sailors, residents and visitors of Kronstadt.

Next, a reception was held, at the conclusion of which His Holiness has announced its decision on awarding Nikolsky Kronstadt Naval Cathedral stavropigialny status. Archpastoral care about the current activities of the cathedral – the liturgical life, educational, social, cultural work – was entrusted to Metropolitan Vladimir of St Petersburg. “So we, on the one hand, we give Stavropighial, the highest status of the church, on the other hand, do not tear off from the real life of the Church of St. Petersburg”, – said the Primate.

With the blessing of His Holiness the liturgy in the cathedral will be performed weekly: Saturdays, Sundays and days of religious holidays, and in the future – every day. The full blessing of St. Nicholas Naval Cathedral is planned to make in 2013 – the 100th anniversary of the consecration of the first temple.

The Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church said that at one time in the cathedral choir sang only the sailors, and expressed the hope that in our days Chorus Baltic Fleet will participate in the most solemn services, just as the Kuban Cossacks Choir accompanied by the Patriarch of worship in the Krasnodar region.

Philanthropists and leaders of contracting organizations who took part in the restoration of the cathedral, were presented to the Patriarch, and state awards.

The same day, His Holiness departed from St. Petersburg to Moscow.

April 20, 2012

Source: The Atlantic

APR 23 2012, 8:46 AM ET 280

By Robert Wright

Last night’s 60 Minutes segment about the plight of Christians in the West Bank has gotten a lot of attention, in part because of the attempt by Israeli ambassador Michael Oren to intervene with CBS brass while the segment was being put together. (See the 11-minute point in the video below, where CBS correspondent Bob Simon confronts Oren with this fact.)
You can see why Oren might rather the piece hadn’t aired. Things that Palestinian Muslims routinely say about the Israeli occupation may get more traction in America when Palestinian Christians say them. Such as this, from a Christian clergyman: “The West Bank is becoming more and more like a piece of Swiss cheese, where Israel gets the cheese–that is, the land the water resources, the archaeological sites, and the Palestinians are pushed in the holes.”

Also, Oren clearly doesn’t want this document, mentioned by Simon, to get attention. In it an interdominational group of Middle Eastern Christian clergy–Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant–refer to the occupation as “clear apartheid.” (Oren hints that they’re anti-Semitic.)

Finally, the 60 Minutes piece complicates the post-9/11 Israeli narrative according to which Israel and Judeo-Christian America are involved in a common struggle against Islamic radicals, and the occupation should be viewed in that context. Hence the importance of the moment when Oren insists Christians are leaving the West Bank under duress from Islamic radicals, not because of the occupation, and Simon presents testimony to the contrary.

Notwithstanding Oren’s understandable qualms, the piece struck me as legitimate and balanced. Its subject–the ongoing exodus of Christians from the Holy Land–is of undeniable interest to American viewers. And Simon emphasizes that Israel isn’t singling out Christians for persecution; their plight is simply the plight of Palestinians in general–a plight that, Simon notes, is due partly to actions taken by Israel to secure itself against terrorism. Now that Oren has had a chance to see the 60 Minutes piece, I’d be interested in hearing what, if any, parts of the story he thinks CBS should have included but didn’t.