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The Crumbling of America and the American Orthodox Church
The real institutional danger facing Orthodoxy in American arises less from malfeasance and more from reasonably well-intentioned individuals making decisions without a sense of their own limits and the frailty of the Church as a social institution.
On Holy Saturday, Peggy Noonan published an interesting and important editorial in the Wall Street Journal (The Catholic Church’s Catastrophe). She writes that often leaders of “mighty and venerable institutions” can, over time, “become blithely damaging” to the very institution they serve. This happens when we—and as a priest I need to include myself in this—allow ourselves “to think of the institution as invulnerable—to think that there is nothing [we] can do to really damage it, that the big, strong, proud establishment [we’re] part of can take any amount of abuse, that it doesn’t require from its members an attitude of protectiveness because it’s so strong, and has lasted so long.”
This has happened, she goes on to say, in “the past decade on Wall Street.” Ironically it was “those who said they loved what the street stood for, what it symbolized in American life” who “in the end tore it down, tore it to pieces” by their indifference to Wall Street’s institutional vulnerability. To be sure those who destroyed it “loved Wall Street” but their actions nevertheless “killed it.”
Moving from business to politics Noonan points out the same thing has “happen[ed] with legislators in Washington who’ve grown to old and middle age in the most powerful country in the world, and who can’t get it through their heads that the actions they’ve taken, most obviously in the area of spending, not only might deeply damage America but actually do it in.”
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When our hierarchs proclaim that clergy have no place in the bedroom (a facile and sophomoric distinction drawn from the tawdriest corners of pro-abortion polemics) because they have no courage and refuse to uphold the moral tradition regarding abortion, what do they say when confronted with Gianna Jessen? Bravo Gianna!
Gianna Jessen from LMF CAM on Vimeo.
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Tbilisi Cathedral in the Republic of Georgia
A friend sent a photo of the Holy Trinity Cathedral recently built in the Republic of Georgia. It is beautiful. I had no idea it even existed. Flickr has some great shots.
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Essays like Fr. Gregory Jensen’s below, give me hope. It reveals the new thinking needed in American Orthodoxy, the kind that is thoughtful and responsibly self-critical. An excerpt is included below. You can read the full article on either the new and improved! Orthodoxy Today, or the AOI main page. (Click the pic for a full view of the image too.)
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The Rejection of Tradition
On a post on my blog Koinoia (“An Editorial: Orthodoxy & the Public Square“), I wrote that whether or not I like Frank Schaeffer’s politics or his moral theology, or whether or not his support of abortion and gay rights are compatible with the tradition of the Church, the reality is that he is well within the mainstream of current Orthodox opinion in America. According to the PEW survey, the majority of Orthodox laity agree that abortion and gay marriage should be legal. It may surprise you, then, that the problem isn’t Schaeffer – it’s us; specifically, it’s the clergy. For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, we clergy are not effectively communicating the moral tradition of the Church to the laity. Or, if we are, the laity aren’t listening –- which would imply that the clergy are willing to tolerate the laity ignoring the Gospel.
We see the same prevalence of pro-choice, pro-gay marriage positions among Orthodox politicians. This kind of a consistent pattern of belief does not just happen. As in the Catholic Church, we see in the Orthodox Church evidence of a significant pastoral failing. This appears to be more than just a widespread lack of sound moral education for the faithful. It appears to be an embrace of, or at least resignation to, the influence of secularism in our parishes.
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This is a compelling interview, although the promise towards reconciliation it offered may be delayed, or worse, cut short, with the terrible airplane crash of Polish dignitaries near Moscow yesterday. They were flying to Russia to commemorate the Katyn Massacre (called “tragedy” below), and, if the interview below is accurate, look for some common ground to heal this grave wound of historical memory. I can’t help but think that an event of great promise has been lost. Certainly the crash is catastrophic for Poland, and the lost opportunity may be a grave loss for the rest of Europe. An Orthodox bishop was one of the fatalities.
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‘The task of the Russian Orthodox Church’s dialogue with the Catholic Church in Poland is to rise above political conjuncture’. Interview of DECR vice-chairman Hegumen Philip Riabykh with Blagovest-infor news agency.
Father Philip, on April 7 Russia and Poland will mark the sorrowful date, the 70th anniversary of the Katyn tragedy. The Russian Orthodox Church will take part in this commemorative event. Please tells us what exactly will leaders of the two Slavic nations remember on this day?
The Katyn tragedy or the Katyn shooting are the names given to the execution of Polish officers who were captured in the course of the Red Army’s entry into the territory of Western Ukraine and Byelorussia in 1939. It is rather a conditional name because Polish captives were shot to death in other places, too, such as Kalinin (now Tver), Kharkov and other places in the former Soviet Union. The Katyn forest near Smolensk became a common grave for about four and a half thousand Polish officers. It is not the largest burial place since at Mednoye near Tver over six thousand Poles were buried.
However, these executions are firmly associated with Katyn as this place was discovered first, already during World War II.
April the 7th, 1940, chosen as the commemoration day of the Katyn victims, is considered to be an estimated date of the executions near Smolensk, which continued till the middle of May.
Can we say that Katyn is a common grave only for Polish officers?
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