Hi, Seraphim,

I don’t know who you’ve been talking to (or trying to talk to), but if you have questions–even questions that seem
“impolite” or something, give me a ring! You can reach me at (219) 324-8364, or you can write to: arimatheachurch@yahoo.com.

Blessings–

Fr. James +

Hi, Fabio,

On one hand you write that governments need to become neptic and ascetic, and on the other you write of the futility of trying to change the world. Of course, I understand what you mean, and agree with you! But I submit that we are fallen people in a fallen world who will always produce fallen systems, because that’s all we’re capable of. In the “natural,” we are predators; so it is in our nature to
expand our territory. If we are in government, that means expanding the government’s territory. Ergo, the best government is the
least government because the least government has less occasion to prey upon its people.

If this is all to be even partly realizable, however, we do indeed need to change the world–because the world doesn’t operate like
that. We need to remember that Christ sent us outside, not inside. The Great Commission is not a “great suggestion.” And back
when we followed it, we “turned the world upside down.” (Ac 17: 6)

The world has since turned back. Time to get out and do it all over, again. Our ascesis will equip us for it, but will
not replace it.

What do you Mean?

Well, I think the reason conservatives have failed is they pushed the libertarian instead at doing government at the local level. Kasich is the first to reintroduce federal money to local governments like Nixon and Reagan did. Most ideas today are all market which may not work.

Mr. Leite, I am struck by your image of a government (and by extension, a culture, and the people who make up the society) that “fasts” from desires. It suggests Rene Girard’s concept of metaphysical desire, but manifest on a corporate level. (Just a striking but undeveloped thought at this point.)

UPDATE: I Googled Girard and Carvalho together and it seems that Carvalho has indeed been influenced by Girard. I will need to pursue this further. Thank you for this post!

Fr, your summary and observations are correct and enlightening. Thank you!

I think we Orthodox have the proper word for that: ascesis.

We need, either in the US or in Brazil, an ascetic government that “fasts” from many excesses, from desires, that practices proper neptic attention to prevent governmental temptations.

Much of the concept of separation of powers and true federalism work because it increases the neptic aspect of government.

But it’s true that you need an ascetic people. For all modern standards, the Puritans were as asceptic as a lay person can be living in the world.

I would dare to add to what John Adams said… The original american form of government is not only for any kind of Christianity, but for ascetic Christianity. This asceticism includes not putting too much trust in government itself. The mistake that the Orthodox world has always committed politically was to put far too much trust in government. If we had true Orthodox asceticism together with an ascetic government, it would be far more difficult for the revolutionary mentality to seduce anyone.

I agree, the problem, as we have seen in the history of the United States, is the greed of the individuals for money, power and control creates as centripetal force for central control. John Adams was not a traditional Christian but he said one very insightful thing about the U.S. under the Constitution: “The government we have created is only suitable for a Christian people, it is wholly unsuitable for any other”

The reason he was correct, IMO, is that only in a Christian culture where holiness and virtue are the primary goal, can there be self-government and any sense of genuine freedom. As the U.S. has become less and less Christian and now more and more anti-Christian the totalitarian impulse is not hiding any longer. Combine that with the consumerist essentially fascist economy and what freedom there appears to be is largely an illusion—politically. Laws these days punish the law abiding for the excesses of a few and have little or no impact on the lawless.

So, the only road to real, lasting freedom is the Christian quest for holiness and the consequent expression of virtue, communion and community in love.

“Put not your trust in the princes of men…”

Christians can organize themselves in several ways: republics, monarchies, central governments (not a problem for small countries), federalist governments (ideal IMO for large countries). They can even be under Christian or Christian-neutral governments.

The only thing we cannot do is to base our lives, and thus our governments, on the misguided mentality that we will “change the world”. When a normal person says that, what is usually meant is that we can help in bringing some limited improvements in the lives of a limited number of people.

When a revolutionary says that, he means it literally. He wants to change the *world*, the entirety of existence. Even if action over just a few people, the revolutionary seeks to change their whole lives, even the meaning of their lives, even their bodies.

When a Christian helps a person and that “changes the life” of the helped one, it’s not the Christian doing anything. We just give a very limited help in supporting or motivating the person to open his heart to the Holy Spirit, and God is the only one who can make a “revolution” in one’s life, for only He has the wisdom, the knowledge, the love and the power to do so. Every revolutionary, trying to take the betterment of the world in his own hands is just repeating that old Luciferian pride.

The concept of absolute autonomy and of social utopia, that is that of individualism and socialism, are just the two faces of the same coin.

Only absolute individuals can be the “atoms” of a perfectly undifferentiated amorphous mass. Collectivism and individualism always come together because they are the same thing seen from different perspectives. Only when you have intermediary natural institutions like family, church, autonomous villages and others we can achieve balance between the two. And of course, in case of the Orthodox Church itself, the concept of communion of persons (human/human and human/divine persons), the twin idols of individualism and collectivism fall appart.

Intertwined in the inversions is the idea that we are autonomous individuals perfectly capable of controlling the future and that we should.

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. 2 Chronicles 7:14

Everything is “global’ these days. “Global” solutions for local even common personal problems and no one may opt out.

The cultural forms that Carvalho outlines are only possible in de-Christianized Christendom. Ideas drawn from the well of Christian thought are powerful and when the cultural memory of God grows dim for whatever reason (sin, the attacks of cultured despisers, whatever) their power is retained although the new forms are distortions, grotesque caricatures of their former beauty and ultimately destructive to the human person. This occurs because the world view the ideas shape becomes self-referencing as notions of the transcendent character of those ideas are lost.

Put another way, ideology arises in a world de-sacramentalized. Once the sacred character of creation is lost, the only option is utopian tyranny.

Longing for a Christian monarchy cannot reverse this. Only a restoration of the Gospel in the spirit and power that the early Christians knew offer any hope and it may take a collapse before that Word is heard again. Then again, maybe not. We don’t know.

I found this section particularly powerful for a reason I will explain below:

To fight this cultural monstrosity, we must also not put the “issues” first, even if they are being pro-life, pro-Christianity, “pro-love”, “pro-truth”. We have to fight the very substance of the revolutionary mentality, because it can advance even with pro-Life and pro-Christian ideas. Either being pro or against gay parades and unions, if the political action advances a whole planning for the whole of society, it is the revolutionary mentality in action.

We must radically abstain from working for, or even wishing, any kind of fixed future, any kind of whole planning for the whole of society. We must abstain from considering we can revise the past to justify this image of the future.

We must, at the cost of our very souls, avoid measuring the goodness of our actions according to their impact in “changing” the world toward a “better place”, and never judge people and ourselves as “pro” or “con” utopic ideals. Actually, we should not judge others even regarding their final salvation, much less concerning if they are “helpful”, “conscious” or not in relation to any social good.

We must reestablish that the past is fixed and unchangeable, that the future is like an amorphous foam of possibilities wherein our own choices are but few among the infinite elements of circumstantial tensions that will influence it. We can be saved from our sinful past, but not really change it.

These words tell us that we must always expose the lie as a lie. Argue in terms of the lie, and the lie is never revealed as a lie because the ground on which it rests is never touched. One a lie is exposed as such, it loses its power just as Christ’s death put death to death.

I used to think that building walls against the cultured despisers would buy time to educate those who were confused by their words. Then I saw the same confusion (and moral and intellectual corruption) among those who would be charged to lead the restoration were it ever to take place. Now I see it is only the Gospel and the life that emanates from it. Again, that means we have to recover that spirit and power that the Early Christians knew.

Somebody said these words and I find myself in agreement:

The leaders we can believe in are the Saints and Fathers. The men we can trust are those who have the Saints and Fathers as their leaders.

The inversions spoken of here are exactly what Nietzsche preached too.

One must be careful too, not to sink into an existential apathy but look to the tools of the Church: prayer, repentance, forgiveness, almsgiving, worship and chastity–learning to embrace with joy the holy present so that God might reveal Himself in it.