Hi, Mr. Stankovich.

I’m sorry I was sharp with you.

You don’t seem “shallow”. You seem upset. And also, maybe brilliant. Or at least extremely well-educated or well-read.

Some of the things you say I can’t follow. It’s over my head. I have no idea what you are talking about, so much so that I can’t even think of a decent question to ask you.

There is so much coldness out in the world; such an absence of love, of feeling, of humanity. It’s everywhere — in elevators, on the sidewalk, in the grocery store… People hold themselves aloof. And on a blog like this, or any communication that is only with words and/or intellect, it can seem very impersonal, too — almost “gnostic” — mind to mind. Empty.

So I appreciate you sharing about your work. It makes you seem more like a real human being. 🙂

Why did you tell it?

Ms. Wintheiser,

I am not crabby, I am shallow.

Like everyone, I’ll return to work – which happens to be mental healthcare in prison – and I will present myself as honest, trustworthy, respectful, and compassionate. I will not identify myself as Christian, nor will I discuss beliefs, faith, or morality. I will conduct a structured evaluation and promise that, while I will make my best effort to locate the services they need on parole, realistically the service doesn’t exist or they don’t qualify. Realistically, they will get five minutes or less, once a month, with a psychiatrist who may or may not look at them as he writes a prescription. I will attempt to inspire, encourage, and always make it a point to say, “I never want to see you again”; and while they laugh, they seem to grasp the portend. And I always say in my mind, “Lord, have mercy,” even on a day when the man leaving has filled me with disgust. My attempt is simply to leave an impression that they have met with a fair, honest, and respectful man. No illusions. No pretense. No drama. I do what I can to influence my little corner, in my little “ministry” to the best of my ability. I am not a leader, nor an “original thinker, but “faithful over a few things.” (Matt. 25:21)

I admire your “rapier” responses – post after post – that accentuate my naïveté and foolishness; as Einstein said, “If I was wrong, it would have only taken one.” And while Mr. Bauman insists, “It is not really given to us to change things or others,” Mr. Bauman apparently missed Jonah 3, “having seen how they had turned from their evil ways God changed His mind” [μετενόησεν ὁ θεὸς]. Nevertheless, who among us has not mimicked Ninevah in word and deed and still met with silence? I personally have never witnessed any “victory by anecdote”- I rarely trade stories, one-for-one – but I am not discouraged.

The essay that began this was not “talking together about what to do,” but proof that one should not hope to find moral authority among the impotent and despondent, beg as you might; and search as you might, “authority” here is either “Christian Right,” “conservative pundit,” or Orthodox theologians who are dead or in a foreign country. Who will staff our new universities?

I’m already in over my head, Mr. Bauman. The water is muddy.

It’s really hot today here in Minnesota; Carissa is gone being a counselor at camp and Jessica and I are taking refuge inside for the day because we’re such wimps when it comes to heat… 🙂 So I have time to sit and write.

I will ask you more questions that I said I would, Fr. Hans and whoever wants to answer — the idea you asked Met. Hilarion about of things happening “on the edges”… 🙂 I’m in no rush, though — it IS the 4th and all… although I don’t feel very festive about it this year…

1. He taxed without recourse: everything written, tea, etc.

2. He force us to quarter his troops at our expense and then they were used against us.

3. He forced us to buy things we did not want to buy, from sources we did not want to buy from (no locally produced goods)

4. In general we were not allowed to make our own laws for ourselves but had to endure laws forced upon us from afar without recourse

5. He blockaded our ports so that we could not trade by sea.

6. He dismissed us as beneath his contempt and notice. He knew better than we did.

I could give clear, specific examples about how we have now come full circle, but I’ll leave it up to the intelligence of those who read. Think about it.

To close I’d like to share a line from perhaps my favorite Protestant hymn: “Rise up oh men of God, have done with lesser things, give heart and mind and soul and strength to serve the King of Kings.”

Still, we are not quite there yet.

If the legacy is dead, there is still life on the fringes.

Ronda, he is crabby because he is crabby. Being an old crumdgeon myself (in recovery) I know how the poison creeps into anything and everything. Mr. Stankovich, I suggest you read Stanislavsky’s great book on acting: “Building a Character”.

Although I am sure it is much better in Russian than the English translation.

I also seem to recall a recent post by Fr. Hans somewhere in which he instructed us to pray about 25 times.

Here is the thing about pray. It is not really given to us to change things or others. It is given to us to change ourselves so that we might have the mustard seed of love in our communion with God.

Still, as ususal you argue for empirical fact when it suits you and ‘mystery’ when it does not. The Orthodox faith is incarnational and antinomical. It is not separated into the here and the there the facts and the mystery.

As I told you once before, if you wish to contend with Ronda, you are going to get in over your head. Seems to me you already have.

If you are the legacy and she is the fringes, I’ll take the fringes any day.

I was not saying anything about Florevsky, I was commenting on your penchant to paste proof texts in a manner that proves nothing: That is Google theology. But of course, you know that. You are an intelligent man. You just choose to ignore what I was actually saying.

Gee. Why didn’t I think of that?

Mr. Stankovich…

That isn’t something that should be taken for granted, or assumed, so maybe from now on every time one of us posts an idea, we’ll start out with a sentence or two about how first of all we should be praying and fasting just to keep ourselves cognizant of it.

For several decades now, many of us who are activist pro-lifers have regularly — and I mean weekly — met in front of abortion clinics to pray. And since I became Orthodox, I have inserted prayers for all of these things into my morning rule of prayer.

Ever hear of 40 Days for Life? Ever participated?

I am being sarcastic, I admit, and maybe I shouldn’t be. But one reason I don’t say anything about that is because it sounds like bragging.

Your own sarcasm about how we have trivialized prayer because it’s not an action plan deserves a rebuttal as well. And like it or not, I’m going to use another personal anecdote.

When I realised my little girl had autism years ago, it paralysed me with grief. I was almost catatonic. I could hardly even pray, and when I did it was something like begging. There is no way to describe the horror I felt. Autism in my second born seemed even worse than the death of my firstborn.

I spent almost two years grieving and praying (begging). I knew that probably wasn’t the right kind of prayer, but I wanted her to be healed.

During those two years, I read a book about applied behaviour analysis, which is an intense, extremely sophisticated language-based early intervention program for educating young children based on the research of Ivar Lovaas at UCLA that had amazing results: 47% of children in his experimental group lost their diagnosis of autism.

It required a 40 hours per week of therapy for the child, for at least three years. When I asked local educators about it, it was universally disparaged for various reasons, and one of them was how much work it took and how expensive it would be — how impossible. So I put Jessica into the early childhood special education program that the school district offered. She was there for two years.

During that time, I continued to grieve and pray for her healing, and I read a book the title I don’t remember now, written by an Orthodox monk who is a bread baker, and he was using breadmaking as a metaphor.

One day, all at once, reading it, I had a kind of epiphany about my children in that metaphor. I thought that in a way they are like sheaves of wheat given to us by God. And that what we are supposed to do with them is like baking a loaf of bread. You have to thresh and winnow the wheat out of the sheaf and grind it into flour (don’t take that too literally! 😉 ), and then mix it with yeast or leavening of some kind, and salt, and water, and then knead the heck out of it, several times… Punch it down, let it rise, punch it down, let it rise… 🙂

To me (maybe the monk said this in the book; I can’t remember), the leavening represents the Holy Spirit working, and our prayers.

But the thing that struck me in my epiphany was a realisation that faith is a two-edged sword, or a coin with two sides… It must include prayer, but it also must include action.

I realised I had no right to beg God to heal my little girl unless and until I was willing to do something myself. Some kind of action.

Nothing happened for Jessica in the school district’s program in those two years. She made no progress whatsoever.

So I decided to put action next to my prayer, and without going into all the big long story of it, I took her out of their program, found a psychologist to train me and a team of high school and college kids, and we had our own ABA program in our little log cabin in the woods for six years.

Three years in, I felt I had demonstrated to God that I was serious and that I could finally ask Him, formally, to heal her, so I made arrangements to take her to St. Mary’s Cathedral and I asked the priest there for Holy Unction, which she received.

Jessica has not been healed of her autism. She will be 21 in August.

Even when you pray, and work, there is no guarantee that what you desire will be accomplished. So just because we are still facing the horror of 56 million babies’ deaths and more to come every day and apathy and this debacle of a law, etc. etc. etc. does not mean that we haven’t been praying.

Of course we should pray more, and fast more, and work more. But there is nothing wrong with us talking together about what to do, Mr. Stankovich, and I don’t understand why you’re so crabby about it.

It is certainly interesting that you would refer to Fr Florovsky’s Christianity and Culture as “Google theology.” Such a random reference to treasure.

The operative stance on these issues, IMO, Mr. Bauman, is that there is infinitely more to be gained in the tactic, as St. Seraphim taught, of “saving yourself and hundreds around you will be saved” than in anything to be found in the public square; that it is infinitely better to have the Psalms on your lips than the “Federalist Papers”; that pretty much anything I’ve seen being sold in the parish bookstores of Orthodox Churches in San Diego is significantly more edifying than anything recommended by this site on Amazon; and who could have imaged that amidst a sea of human détritus, YouTube would be a repository for the sermons of Met. Anthony (Bloom)?

I am almost embarrassed to note that no one – and certainly no priest – has suggested what the theologian of blessed memory, Fr. Michael Pomazansky, referred to as “the air, the breath, the life of the Church: prayer. For what is the Church itself, if not a ‘world of prayer?'” I am sad to think that we have trivialized prayer to the point that it is no longer seen as a viable “effort” because it is not an “action plan,” “unrealistic,” and “ineffective.”

Indulge me this “withering criticism from within the Church” which I cloak in “the language of the moral tradition”: George Will sits down with one of the priest/pundit/conservatives and asks, “Father, where do we begin?” “Prayer and fasting.” As a stunned Will looks on, our “Man for All Seasons” rises, turns on his heel and departs.

I feel better already.

Yes, I did. And I know that we already withdraw food and water here in the U.S. — like they did to Terri Schiavo. Families make this decision now — they are OFFERED the idea and allowed to do it if they want to. So now that we have this law, and we have a president who has demonstrated that he has no regard for people’s conscience rights (e.g. that nurse who was forced to perform an abortion or else be fired), not to mention the HHS mandate, I think it will not be long before doctors will be required to perform abortions and begin to put people to sleep like this… It is insidious, as you said, Fr. Hans.

Here is Obama himself, hemming and hawing around the question, and using contingencies that have nothing to do with the question this woman is asking, to obfuscate and avoid the real question and to put her off…

Regardless of what his attitude is, though, the reality is that now it is out of our hands. The government will now decide FOR US what treatments and remedies we can have.

My, as much as you have castigated others for ‘Google’ science, it seems as if you practice ‘Google’ theology…and as a long winded as I get, I’ll bet the number of words you’ve posted on the contenious topics is at least equal to mine.

The opertative stance on these issues, IMO, is resist not evil, do good. That means that each of us needs to find as many ways as we possibly can to help, and fewer ways to hurt. I know Ronda does that a lot more than she talks about it.

But, most of the debates that you and I have had center on adherence to the traditional anthropology of the Church. Many of the same issues are present in this debate. To me you have a tendency to go after the more modern interpretations.

Personally, I’d like to go to a lottery system of political office holders and a modified spoils system for the regulators and other civil service bureaucrats.

For public office take the Consitutional requirements and a few other resonable ones, draw up a list of everyone in the country who qualifies on the basis (excluding former office holders until all others have been exhausted) of the list and pull one out of the hat.

There would be a term of office for the bureaucrats when the relatively short-term expired, the party in power would nominate two folks and the current holder could re-apply. A panel would decide based upon a blind submission of the qualifications who had the best credentials.

Ronda, did you see this?

130,000 elderly patients killed every year by ‘death pathway’, claims leading UK doctor

Source: Lifesite News | Thaddeus Baklinski | June 21, 2012

LONDON, June 21, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – An eminent British doctor told a meeting of the Royal Society of Medicine in London that every year 130,000 elderly patients that die while under the care of the National Health Service (NHS) have been effectively euthanized by being put on the controversial Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), a protocol for care of the terminally ill that he described as a “death pathway.”

Dr. Patrick Pullicino, a consultant neurologist for East Kent Hospitals and Professor of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Kent, claimed that doctors are putting people on the LCP without proper analysis of their condition, citing “pressure on beds and difficulty with nursing confused or difficult-to-manage elderly patients” as factors.

According to the Daily Mail, the doctor sounded the alarm that of the approximately half million deaths in Britain each year of elderly people who are in hospital or under NHS care, about 29 percent, or 130,000, are patients who were on the LCP.

The Liverpool Care Pathway, developed by the Royal Liverpool Hospital and the Marie Curie hospice in the 1990s, and described by its formulators as a “template” to guide the care of the dying, was approved in 2004 by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), the government’s health scrutiny body in charge of rationing health services.

The LCP, reportedly adopted nationwide by more than 300 hospitals, 130 hospices and 560 care homes in England, allows for withdrawal of water and nourishment, and “continuous deep sedation” for patients judged to be incurable. Combined with withdrawal of fluids, deep sedation leads quickly to death.

Pullicino related the personal experience of removing a man from the LCP who went on to live another 14 months, proving that the claim of the diagnosing doctor that the man had only hours to live was “palpably false.”

“I found him deeply unresponsive on a Monday morning and was told he had been put on the LCP. He was on morphine via a syringe driver. I removed the patient from the LCP despite significant resistance,” Pullicino told the Royal Society of Medicine. “His seizures came under control and four weeks later he was discharged home to his family.”

“The lack of evidence for initiating the Liverpool Care Pathway makes it an assisted death pathway rather than a care pathway,” Pullicino stated. “Very likely many elderly patients who could live substantially longer are being killed by the LCP.

“Predicting death in a time frame of three to four days, or even at any other specific time, is not possible scientifically. This determination in the LCP leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy. The personal views of the physician or other medical team members of perceived quality of life or low likelihood of a good outcome are probably central in putting a patient on the LCP.”

“If we accept the Liverpool Care Pathway we accept that euthanasia is part of the standard way of dying as it is now associated with 29 per cent of NHS deaths,” Dr. Pullicino concluded.

According to the Daily Mail, a Department of Health spokesman panned Dr. Pullicino’s assertions. “The Liverpool Care Pathway is not euthanasia and we do not recognise these figures. The pathway is recommended by NICE and has overwhelming support from clinicians – at home and abroad – including the Royal College of Physicians,” the unnamed spokesman said.

However, Pullicino’s claims echo a similar statement last year by Dr. Clare Walker, President of the Catholic Medical Association in the UK, where she said, “euthanasia is being widely practiced in the NHS in an official way” under the LCP protocol.

Dr. Walker explained that “she is regularly contacted by distressed healthcare professionals and managers who describe their experience of witnessing repeated instances of unofficial active euthanasia in their local areas,” adding that, “in some hospitals the LCP has become known as the Lazarus Care Pathway due to the number of people who have been put on it inappropriately, are not moribound and subsequently need to be actively treated.”

Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director of Canada’s Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, responded to Dr. Walker’s statement at the time, saying, “Whether active euthanasia is actually widespread is unknown and anecdotal at best but the reality is that the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition regularly receives phone calls and emails from family members and friends of people whose medical care-givers appear to be intentionally causing their death.

“Many of these cases are concerned family members reacting to end of life decisions that are made because the person is actually dying, whereas, sometimes these cases appear to be euthanasia.”

We need a theology of culture, even for our “practical” decisions. No real decision can be made in the dark. The dogma of Creation, with everything that it implies, was dangerously obscured in the consciousness of modern Christians, and the concept of Providence, i.e. of the perennial concern of the Creator with the destiny of His Creation, was actually reduced to something utterly sentimental and subjective. Accordingly, “History” was conceived as an enigmatic interim between the Mighty Deeds of God, for which it was difficult to assign any proper substance. This was connected again with an inadequate conception of Man. The emphasis has been shifted from the fulfillment of God’s design for man to the release of Man out of the consequences of his “original” failure. And, accordingly, the whole doctrine of the Last Things has been dangerously reduced and has come to be treated in the categories of forensical justice or of sentimental love. The “Modern Man” fails to appreciate and to assess the conviction of early Christians, derived from the Scripture, that Man was created by God for a creative purpose and was to act in the world as its king, priest, and prophet. The fall or failure of man did not abolish this purpose or design, and man was redeemed in order to be re-instated in his original rank and to resume his role and function in the Creation. And only by doing this can he become what he was designed to be, not only in the sense that he should display obedience, but also in order to accomplish the task which was appointed by God in his creative design precisely as the task of man. As much as “History” is but a poor anticipation of the “Age to come,” it is nevertheless its actual anticipation, and the cultural process in history is related to the ultimate consummation, if in a manner and in a sense which we cannot adequately decipher now. One must be careful not to exaggerate “the human achievement,” but one should also be careful not to minimize the creative vocation of man, The destiny of human culture is not irrelevant to the ultimate destiny of man. Fr. George Florovsky, “Faith and Culture” in Christianity and Culture.

Perhaps if there were signs of a re-devotion, a re-dedication the size of a mustard size (Lk. 17:6) to reassuming our role as “king, priest and prophet”; an acknowledgment that for each who would save themselves, according to St. Seraphim, “hundreds around you will be saved”; and the words on the lips of the clergy were not verbatim from a Rupert Murdoch “franchise,” I would be content to sit back like a neutered cat, and lick the wounds of being a “withering criticism will come from within the Church.” And, yes, Mr. Bauman, apply a salve to my frostbitten nose. But what I observe is the continuous, unrelenting verbosity of impotence. Fr Florovsky continues:

The chief danger in our days is that there are too many conflicting “beliefs.” The major tension is not so much between “belief” and “un-belief” as precisely between rival beliefs. Too many “strange Gospels” are preached, and each of them claims total obedience and faithful submission; even science poses sometimes as religion. It may be true that the modern crisis can be formally traced back to the loss of convictions. It would be disastrous, however, if people rallied around a false banner and pledged allegiance to a wrong faith.

So, I shall gather an Amazon wishlist, a “compendium without stress or offense” Orthodox Christianity for the Cultural Sensibilities of the “Christian Right.”– And here I’m not sure – to be read before or after the “conservative conjecture wishlist,” where God may not necessarily be “all in all,” (1 Cor. 15:28), but the return of “conservative thought” is an acceptable surrogate. Fr. Florovsky observed, “There are so many in our time who have no hope precisely because they lost all faith,” and this is the toothless, “flavorless,” (Matt. 5:13) mediocrity we would offer them.

Christians are not committed to the denial of culture as such. But they are to be critical of any existing cultural situation and measure it by the measure of Christ. For Christians are also the Sons of Eternity, i.e. prospective citizens of the Heavenly Jerusalem. Yet problems and needs of “this age” in no case and in no sense can be dismissed or disregarded, since Christians are called to work and service precisely “in this world” and “in this age.” Only all these needs and problems and aims must be viewed in that new and wider perspective which is disclosed by the Christian Revelation and illumined by its light.

“I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ Then said I, ‘Here am I; send me.'” (Isa. 6:8)

No they don’t, and by that you mean (just so everyone understands) that once you institutionalize killing as we do by defending and funding Planned Parenthood, the evil logic that justifies the killing spreads like a virus. Of course it is all wrapped up in a mythology because evil always masquerades as good. The Communists slaughtered millions in service to the secular New Jerusalem. Communism finally ended when it exhausted itself, although it took a generation and oceans of blood to reach it.

Thanks for these thoughts, Fr. Hans. 🙂

I do think that the scenario I made up will definitely be part of this “health care” system eventually if we don’t repeal it.

But I didn’t actually intend to say that. What I was thinking is that the people here and elsewhere who are defending and embracing the Affordable Health Care Act even though they are supposedly opposed to abortion are using a similar argument some use to defend Planned Parenthood.

“Oh look how much good they do! Abortion isn’t that big a part of their business; they do a lot of good for low income women, they do mammograms (lie), they do breast exams, and contraception — heck, they’re trying to prevent abortion! They’re saving lives! So what if they operate a little killing business on the side?”

I don’t think they see it’s no different from gassing Jews in Germany or starving people on the steppes in Siberia or Pol Pot’s killing fields in Cambodia…