Aw, I was just teasin’ ya. I knew what you meant. And you’re right about the social x-rays and socialites. Lots of folks go to the symphony and the opera just because it’s the thing to do in some well-to-do circles, not because they love the music. (This has been true for centuries, BTW.) It’s frustrating to those of us with developed ears. On the other hand, their money frequently makes the performance possible.

James Morris sang Mephistopheles in that production of Faust. One of contemporary opera’s greatest basses, and I remember how impressed you were (and I was too) by his “diabolical” air.

Isaac post your link so others can find your blog. Nice blog BTW, and posting the link here will help drive traffic to it. I noticed you linked to the Russell Kirk Center. Here’s an article you might want to consider posting down the road: Russell Kirk, “Civilization without Religion?“.

What do I mean by “Orthodox triumphalism”? I mean when form supersedes function — when knowledge of, say, the Fathers’ writings supersedes the concrete encounter with the Risen Christ that they actually wrote about. It is not much different than what you are saying, although bearded, non-lisping priest can exhibit the same hollow chest (to paraphrase C.S. Lewis) as any non-bearded and lisping one. It really depends on what stuff the man is made of, or at least what he has become in and through Christ.

Bill good points and the opera was great. My first opera in real life actually and I could see why people fall in love with it.

So where does the idea of an opera clap come from? The movies probably, you know, the prim socialite — maybe even a social x-ray although today the arms are toned and not just thin — wistfully clapping four fingers into the inner palm. It’s a stereotype I know, but even stereotypes contain some truth.

You’re right though. The applause that evening was thunderous. I knew I had witnessed something great.

Fr. Hans, I know you went to hear Faust at the Met when we were at seminary. And I know Thomas Hampson sang in that production and got deafening applause after his first-act aria. So where do you get the idea that applause at the opera is tepid? 🙂

What do you mean by Orthodox triumphalism? I hear it thrown around a lot and I don’t know what it means, given that we just celebrated the Triumph of Orthodoxy a week ago.

I am glad your bishop’s sermon was good, father. I too love simplicity. I enjoy it when my priest simply reminds us, for instance, of the seriousness of our lives, our need to repent, the dangers of sin (and not simply the sins against political correctness), the beauty of virtue, etc.

I plan to write a good post soon on my own humble little blog on why America will not become Orthodox. I plan to outline the fact that between the nominalism of most of the laity and the bad formation of the clergy in the soundness of a thoroughly patristic mindset, that our sickly parishes for the most part seem devoid of the ascetical-spiritual modus vivendi, of “tserkovlenie,” and because of this we aren’t really living up to the rich inheritance that the fathers gave us.

We have beardless, lisping priests who “deconstruct” the Gospel just like the Roman Catholics, and/or who buy in to the Schmemann-dorffian version of Orthodoxy– one that is incorrect and lifeless. Many of our parishes have little to no Eucharistic discipline (which is, I suspect the real eastern analogy to western adoration– that is, we are called to prepare by fasting, confession, rules of prayer and forgiveness of others, under the guidance of our spiritual father, of course.) Many of our parishes have one 45-minute vespers a week on Saturday, and an hour and a half Liturgy on Sunday, and that’s it. Rather unsurprisingly, no monastics to speak of either– unprecedented in the history of Orthodoxy. How will such a Church stand the test of persecutions?

My point: I think our Church already IS small, and will continue to lack real visibility and significance because the version of Orthodoxy that prevails here is sickly and anemic, disorganized and unhealthy.

Alexis, here again we see an artifact of the ‘glass house’ situation so many of our hierarchs live in. The moment they start to weigh in on issues surrounding marriage, folk who disagree will ask ‘and how does it come to pass you are in a position to know what you are talking about?” I’m not so sure ‘moral cowards’ is fair in that if they weigh in then they’ll become the targets of those who disagree. And in the rough and tumble of politics those who disagree ‘go negative’. Now, you know, folks in the church sort of pull their punches on bishop, ah, foibles. But if they ‘stand up’ well it can all change.

Now if we had our clergy who years back would be bishops on the basis his wife died young (as so many, many sadly did) and he was in charge of a few parishes in a town, and not a distant rock star that shows up, gives a nice speech (one hopes) and off he goes, well that life by example carries a lot more weight with people. Indeed we see other Christian groups situated in that way making big differences in daily civil life on the basis not of their direct political activity but because of the considered, unforced, assent and consent of the members.

Furthermore I am not a big fan of legislating those aspects of morality that have no impact on those who do not consent. Laws should define the outer boundaries of tolerable behavior, virtue has to be chosen to be real.

Alexis, we peons are supposed to tend the crops in front of us by taking care of the people around us and our own heart. If we do not, we are little different from the bishops.

I really appreciate your input, Harry. It’s really frustrating to see hierarchs being moral cowards, for they have the power and influence to speak up and out about the basic meat-and-potatoes issues in the Manhattan Declaration and make a dent for the Lord. However, they are too comfortable being lukewarm – administrators and politicians – rather than fiery foot soldiers for Christ. It’s nauseating. So what’s a peon like me supposed to do, right?

Alexis, sometimes I read folks who not only use these texts as a ‘justification for doing nothing’ as you write, but these folks think they are doing a good thing by not doing everything they can, but worse. They do this thinking to force horrors sooner rather than later to ‘make God’ step in at a time of their choosing (like, you know, a week from Tuesday). These folk tend to favor conspiracy theories but sort of in the very odd way a person who likes setting fires themselves likes to talk about fire trucks zooming down the road.

However history is quite quite clear that the only thing that happens when folk choose to relax, when folk choose to allow preventable misdoing in their sight, when folk choose to increase the likelihood of horrors (to someone else, somewhere else) through inaction or by way of gaining unearned benefits through exploitation, what happens is — horrors. Takes the phrase ‘God will not be mocked’ to a whole new level.

Well said. This corresponds, it seems to me, to the widespread pursuit of heightened experiences (what were once -and still – called passions). An increasingly synthetic world will only accelerate the desperate grasping for anything to fill the awful desolation that results from the absence of any genuine experience of communion. The hope is that it will eventually lead to a “bottoming out,” and a search for what is Real – for God, and genuine Communion. When one can experience Communion, little else is needed; without it, nothing else is adequate.

Issac, you can take your answer from the qualification in my initial quote on the subject above ‘Leave Mormon theology to the side for a minute and….”

Harry,

Can I safely assume you are not actually arguing that Mormonism is Christianity? All the positive elements of Mormonism are largely irrelevant to answering that question. At the heart of Mormonism is the striving of individuals to become beings who will be worshiped some day. That should be all the difference we need to hear to completely dismiss the religion as something not Christian.