Theology

Clips from Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew’s various environmental symposia are now on YouTube. This first video is from the patriarch’s address in Santa Barbara, Calif., in 1997 which, the accompanying text says, “was the first time any religious leader had ever called harming the environment a sin.” The second video is from former Vice President Al Gore’s welcome in Washington during the same 1997 visit. See more videos here.

Get info on the OCL Conference here: www.ocl.org/roadtounity

Contact: George Matsoukas, Executive Director, Orthodox Christian Laity, 877-585-0245, ocladmin@ocl.org

LIGONIER, Penn., Sept. 11 /Christian Newswire/ — Orthodox Christianity in America stands at the threshold of a new era of renewal. As the ancient faith lays down new and dynamic roots in America, new and indigenous leadership is emerging as the Church engages American culture. Meeting in Ligonier, Pennsylvania on October 20-31, 2009 for “The Road to Unity: From Vision to Action” conference, leaders and participants will develop ideas on how the American Orthodox Church can achieve unity in America.

The meeting takes on greater significance as world church leaders challenge the American Orthodox jurisdictions to work together to present a nuts and bolts plan for a unified North American Church. The process toward unity was established at the Fourth Pre-Conciliar Pan-Orthodox Conference of Orthodox Patriarchates in Chambesy, Switzerland, June 2009, and will be guided by an Episcopal Assembly that is inclusive of all canonical jurisdictions, chaired by Archbishop Demetrios of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

Newly-elected Metropolitan Jonah, Primate of the Orthodox Church in America, will present the keynote address. His unique vision for establishing Orthodox unity in America has stimulated much discussion in national Orthodox circles. Other hierarchs joining him include: Archbishop Nathaniel, Ruling Hierarch of the Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of America; Bishop Thomas, Diocese of Charleston, Oakland and the Mid-Atlantic, Bishop Melchisedek, Diocese of Pittsburgh and Western PA and others (confirmation pending).

“Orthodox unification in America is more than an administrative project – it is a spiritual imperative,” said George Matsoukas, Executive Director of Orthodox Christian Laity (OCL) that is sponsoring the conference. “If we don’t unify, we risk losing our faith and the opportunity to share it with our fellow Americans who are seeking the roots of Christianity.” Continue reading →

A report from Wells Fargo Securities shows a “record drop” in consumer credit this summer. “Despite the cash-for-clunkers program starting in the last week of July, nonrevolving credit fell at a staggering 11.7 percent annualized pace,” analyst Yasmine Kamaruddin wrote. Indeed, much of the decline was attributed to a spike in charge offs, which points to the ongoing, widespread distress in economic life.

But here’s the thing, and it’s very simple. The reason that major sectors of the economy such as autos and housing have suffered historic declines — indeed in some cases been on the verge of collapse — is that consumers suddenly stopped buying what companies were selling. Certainly, much of this pull back can be explained by growing joblessness and fear about the future. But I suspect that there’s also a cultural shift going on, which may continue long after the economy bounces back. In the future, we may see less consumption, especially for things like the McMansions and oversized SUVs, because people are learning about what they really need. Now in fact, you may have a large family and good reason to live in a large house. Or you may be a rancher or a tradesman have a perfectly suitable need for a large truck. But too much of what the American consumer was buying in recent years was inexplicably “super sized.” So, if we are indeed undergoing a shift in priorities, learning to live within or below our means, that can only be a good thing in the long run.

This cultural shift is in the hands of consumers and is vastly more powerful than if “nanny state” government officials had attempted to manage it from the top down through legal mechanisms such as luxury taxes or excise taxes, which often have a moral rationale. Whether you agree on the moral justification or not. So, why not a “sin tax” on soda pop, as President Obama is suggesting.

At any rate, the people who are running government in Washington right now aren’t the sort of tutors we need for learning how to live within our means.

The Church has a role here. By teaching us that asceticism can be practiced not just on a mountain top, but in every day life, we can learn shed those material things that threaten to enslave us. And we do this freely and powerfully — without demonizing and scapegoating abstract impersonal forces like “the market” or “globalization” as the sources of materialism.

A good exposition of the power of every day ascetism is found in Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew’s 2008 book, Encountering the Mystery, in the chapter on “The Way of Ascesis.”

When we think of ascetism or discipline, we imagine such things as fasting, vigils, and rigorous practices. In the words of Abba Isaac the Syrian (ca. 700): “No one ascends to heaven with comfort.” There can be no ascent without ascesis. That is indeed part of what is involved; but it is not the whole story. Ascesis involves a display of what in The Philokalia and other classics of the Orthodox spiritual life is called frugality or self-restraint (enkrateia). We are to exercise a form of voluntary self-limitation in order to overcome self-sufficiency in our lifestyle, making the crucial distinction between what we want and we we in fact need.

Only through self-denial, through a willingness to forgo and say “no” or “enough,” will we be able to rediscover what it means to be truly human. Ultimately, the spirit of ascesis is less a judgment on the material goods of the world than a way of liberation from the stress and anguish that result from the desire to “have more.” It is the key to freedom from the gridlock of consumerism (cf. 1 Tim. 6:9-10)

From “Catholic Consciousness: The Anthropological Implications of the Dogma of the Church” by Vladimir Lossky. English translation (from the French original) in St. Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly, Volume 14, No. 4, 1970.

No differences of created nature — sex, race, social status, language, or culture — can affect the unity of the Church; no divisive reality can enter into the bosom of the Catholica. Therefore one should consider that the expression “national Church” — which is so often used in our day — is erroneous and even heretical, according to the definitions condemning phyletism that were pronounced by the Council of Constantinople in 1872. There is no Church of the Jews or of the Greeks, of the Barbarians or the Scythians, just as there is no Church of slaves or of free men, of male or of female.

There is only the unique and total Christ, the celestial Head of the new creation which is being realized here; the Head to which the members of the one Body are intimately linked. At this point any particular consciousness connecting us with any ethnic or political, social or cultural subgroup must disappear in order to give way to a consciousness “according to the Whole” (kath olon), a consciousness greater than the consciousness which links us with the aggregate of humanity.

In fact, our unity in Christ is not only the primordial unity of the human race, having only one origin, but the final realization of this unity of human nature which is recapitulated by the last Adam (Eschatos Adam).

This eschatological reality is not some kind of ideal “beyond,” but the very condition of the existence of the Church, without which it would be a sacramentalizing organism whose sacraments would have only a figurative sense, instead of being a real participation in the incorruptible life of the Body of Christ.