If you really believe that… why comment at all?

What words would you suggest instead, Helga?

Why did you say this, Mr. Carter?
Who should have remained silent…? and why?

Bishop Savas, as an Orthodox bishop, has, of course, taken monastic vows, but bishops do not reside in monasteries – or they would not be bishops. They would be abbots.

One can debate whether monks with no pastoral experience are the only ‘genuine’ candidates for episcopal office – itself an economia of the Orthodox tradition (of course they aren’t), or the proper course of preparation for qualified men who have not lived in monastic isolation for decades, but a bishop is a bishop, regardless of one’s opinion of his spiritual prep or having an ‘all-star’ elder as a spiritual father.

As for ‘urban monks’ and other absurdities, let’s hope these men will abandon the world, enter a monastery, and save their souls.

Correction: It’s St. John the Baptist Monastery in Essex, England.

Michael, we DO “do violence to the monastic life” at present here in North America, don’t we? Look at the violence being done to HB +Jonah because he is a real monk by Stokoe and his handmaidens in Syosset/MC axis.

BTW, I’ve met HG +Basil on several occasions and am mightily impressed with him. I’m glad he takes his monastic calling seriously.

My apologies, I wasn’t reading carefully enough – some eye problems lately Mr. Bauman, of course.

I know my share of bishops and monks too. I think it’s great that your bishop is connected to St. John the Divine. That’s terrific. My spiritual father, a bishop, is from Philotheo on Mount Athos. We couldn’t be happier.

But what would know about Bishop Savas’ spiritual life – who are you to call him worldly? Really, what gives you the right to judge? Do you judge by Christ? By whom exactly?

My spiritual father says that we are only as close to Christ as we are to worst enemies. He’s right.

What do you think?

Lest we forget:

“Bolshevism [communism] made use of everything for its own triumph. It made use of the weakness of the liberal democratic government, of the unsuitability of its watchwords to weld the insurgent masses together. … It made use of the characteristics of the Russian spirit in all its incompatibility with a secularized bourgeois society. It made use of its religious instinct, its dogmatism and maximalism, its search after social justice and the kingdom of God upon the earth, its capacity for sacrifice and the patient bearing of suffering, and also of its manifestations of coarseness and cruelty.” (Nicolas Berdyaev, The origin of Russian communism)

Sound familiar?

“Marx’s militant atheism requires above all a change of consciousness. Religious beliefs must be destroyed not by imprisonment and persecution but by revolutionizing thought; and this is to happen as a result of the revolutionary class war of the proletariat.”

“Militant enlightenment [social progressivism in our age] usually assumes the form of militant atheism. Reason having mastered itself and liberated itself from the tradition in which it was shackled [Moral Tradition], set itself to oppose belief in God.” (Nicolas Berdyaev, The origin of Russian communism)

All communist/progressive roads lead away from God and towards perdition.

GREAT analysis.

Only the brain dead are continuing the class warfare practices of this administration, as exemplified by the bishop’s comments.

For anyone wishing to review the data on who is paying for what, and how much, I’d invite people to visit The Heritage Foundation, which has done a great job of boiling the facts down to a simple chart book at http://www.heritage.org/BudgetChartBook/runaway-spending-tax-revenue. The bottom line is that the top 10% of earners pay 70% of the taxes. And corporate tax rates which are out of line with the rest of the world are DRIVING corporations out of this country.

For more extensive data series, I’d also recommend the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis database at http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/ which offers over 34,000 series of information, including a very interesting comparison of this recovery to previous recoveries at http://research.stlouisfed.org/economy/us/ which shows that the current recovery is the worst on record with regard to job formation. Interestingly, this is NOT the case in the other major G8 nations (also shown in the series).

I will leave it to you and others to determine if Bishop Savas qualifies as brain dead. But “if the shoe fits”….

best regards,
Dean Calvert

Anestis,

Its Mr. Bauman and I am merely saying that if one holds oneself out as a monk then one ought to have a monastary and a spiritual father to whom one is obedient. Absent those things, one is not a monk. At best one such is a celibate.

My bishop’s monastary is St. John the Divine in Sussex, England. His spiritual father is Archmandrite Zacharias. His assitant is also. My bishop goes to St. John at least once a year on retreat. My bishop also requires every celibate priest in his diocese to become a monk in a similar manner to protect them and their flock. Doesn’t seem too much to ask that we know these basics.

We do violence to the monastic life if we refer to worldly celibates as monks.

Bp. Savas praised Obama in psalmic metaphors right after the election (http://savaonarolla.blogspot.com/2008/11/this-is-day-that-lord-has-made.html). The psalms are always interpreted as Christologic in Orthodox tradition which Bp Savas knows of course. The context was that the country would now be saved from the evil republicans and the great one Obama would lead us to the promised land. To me, that is verging toward heresy. Of course the same problem exists anytime any of us replaces the Gospel with political/economic ideology but it is a bigger problem when bishops do it.

At the very least he is extraordinarily intemperate in his language.

I don’t see the stylistic similarity between Chris and Stokoe either except on the most macro scale that both are critical of bishops. Stokoe’s style is sly, manipulative and fundamentally dishonest. Chris’ is none of those things. In most everything I have read that Chris has written, he is often blunt and undiplomatic. Personally I like that. It means that if I disagree with him, I can be just as blunt and undiplomatic and I don’t have to tax my brain to figure out where he stands (another difference between Chris and Stokoe).

In short, I think your criticism is unfounded unless you simply feel that no public, direct confrontation of bishops is ever warranted.