Amen! Put those monk-bishops in office (and not merely *celibate* bishops), like the Saintly Laurus, who recently reposed in blessed memory at Jordanville. When the episcopacy is the crowning summit of an Academic career, and is expected to involve an unchristian superfluity of remuneration, it is no wonder that spiritual life is flagging in the Church. Find a bishop who is content to eat simply and be housed for next to nothing, who lives a life of prayer and visits his parishes like a father (and not a tax collector)… this is a real bishop!

A man who insists on the most glorious vestments, the daintiest food, the most lavish gifts and despotic power… such a man has not mastered even himself, and is likely to bring scandal to the Church after he bankrupts it. In the world, you get what you pay for – and in the Kingdom of God the way of the world is often turned upside down.

Yes, Isa. I forgot to say this above. The nature of an “Ecumenical” decision, is not that it reflects the opinions of people in different lifestyles, but that it refelcts the Christian doctrine passed down from the Apostles, unchanged, in *every* location of the Ecumene (i.e., the world).

Since there are not two different Christian doctrines for the celibate and for the married, but one Apostolic Faith practiced by both, a bishop’s status as a widower or as a life-long spiritual athlete is ultimately irrelevant to the Ecumenical nature of a council’s decision.

Harry, I think you’ll find that there has always been an emphasis and a preference for those who adapt the life of asceticism in the Church, when considering men for the Episcopacy. I agree with you that there were many bishops who had once been married in earlier years of the Church – but, this was the norm when the Church was comprised of converts, and the exception in places where the faith had been inculcated in men from their youth.

Look even at the Scriptures: men who converted to the Church at an “established” age in their lives… i.e., most of the Apostles… had wives (but lived with them as sisters afterwards). Young men, however – like St. John the Theologian, St. Timothy, St. Titus – all embraced the ascetic life and the celibacy that goes with it. Look at all the great Ecumenical Teachers of the Church: Ss. John, Basil and Gregory Nazianze, Ss. Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome and Gregory Dialogos, etc., and one finds life-long celibates… or, at least, celibates since the time of Baptism. Only a few Fathers are found to have once been married… like St. Gregory Nyssa, and even he wrote a treatise, describing how he wisehd he had been celibate from the get-go!

Anyway, marriage is a good thing and my own spiritual father was married for many years before becoming a monk (after his wife died); but, he himself tells me that the monastic life should be valued more highly for its potential for spiritual wisdom and excercise, when it is lived correctly. I don’t deny that married people have many trials and tribulations – they do, and this is part of the reason why St. Paul commended celibacy; it avoids those trials and tribulations and focuses directly upon the most productive kinds of sufferings with an whole-hearted focus on the Lord. The REAL problem, then, is that most of our celibate candidates for the episcopacy today are NOT ascetics, but are schoolboys who embraced celibacy because they had an ecclesiastical career in mind. After a life of relative ease and comfort – a life with many temptations to act selfishly and in a worldly way, and usually built on ambition and pride from the get-go (hence they embraced celibacy at a young age *knowing* it would be necessary for their career later) – they then become bishops in their fourties, with three college degrees and a taste for fine and expensive things, and little real appetite for ascesis and spiritual life. They are chosen because they are cultured men of the world who look good to the outside community. Such men spend Church funds on wasteful things, and are sometimes overwhelmed by their passions in scandalous and public ways.

If we chose our bishops from real ascetics – real scientists of the spiritual life – this problem would be solved. We don’t have to pit marriage against celibacy in this way; the qualification for the episcopacy comes from a life of deep spirituality through following the Lord in imitation of His Passion (and Resurrection). While married men can do this, we should remember that even from the Apostolic age, even when married bishops were allowed, deliberate and self-inflicted ascetecism for love of the Lord directly has been very highly regarded in choosing men for the episcopacy. And, because of various teachings on the state a man should be in while celebrating the Mysteries, continence even within the marriages of clergy has always been valued. We therefore shouldn’t look down on men who have been celibate from a young age – if they do this well, and for the right reasons, then these are the best men amongst us! – we should rather be displeased with a celibate life that detaches celibacy from the context of ascesis and spiritual excercise. A celibacy that merely satisfies a job prerequisite, but otherwise takes place in a life of ease and comfort (and temptations towards intellectual vanity) is the real enemy of an healthy episcopate.

His Eminence, Bishop Maximos, retains the title of abbot of St. Gregory Palamas Monastery. After Fr. Seraphim left St. Gregory’s (to teach Byzantine Chant in – I believe – North Carolina), Fr. Joseph Morris took over as superior of the monastery. He would be “episcopabile,” since he came within a hair’s breadth of being consecrated a bishop in the Romanian Diocese of the OCA. The Romanians decided they wanted a Romanian in the end, however, hence he felt free to move on to St. Gregory’s.

Also, it should be pointed out that the small monastic house formed by monks who left St. Gregory’s many years ago, St. Theodore House, is now defunct after the death of the eldest monk and sundry difficulties, chiefly financial. I noticed that somebody listed it above, but it no longer exists as a monastic house per se (though the building still exists and two monks still live there).

I agree with the above comments, regarding the availability of many male monastics in our monasteries for episcopal consideration; one of the things that struck me when I first looked at the clergy directory of the Patriarchate, was how many of the bishops in the Old Country came from monasteries, and how few of them come from monasteries in the USA. This strikes me as a sign of the great spiritual infirmity of our American Orthodoxy, and I hope this will change. The spirituality of a celibate academician is usually very different than that of a celibate ascetic (though not always), and I hope a revival of interest in the ascetic and spiritual virtues will help to renew the episcopacy in coming years.

In my time at both St. Gregory’s and at St. Theodore House, I found three men who would be good bishops: Fr. Ambrose Young (who was almost made a bishop in the ROCOR, but his diagnosis with Alzheimer’s led him to withdraw his name from consideration); Fr. Joseph Morris (a very pious and meticulous man, almost made a bishop amongst the Romanians); and Fr. Gregory (not even a priest at the moment, but one of the strongest, humblest, most *truly* learned men – i.e., educated and wise at the same time – whom I’ve ever met). Interestingly, I think the simple, unordained monk would be the best candidate of the three – though I have great respect for all of them). Any of these men, would be bishops of whom the Church could be very proud.

Just for reference: Fr. Seraphim was once the superior at St. Gregory Palamas, but has not been so for some time. As far as I know, no one has actually yet been named abbot.

We knew that, now, didn’t we?

My question is this: usually whenever Kalmoukos breaks a story, there’s more to it than that. What is the other shoe that is to drop?

Annual Salary: $75,000
Housing: $30,000
Healthcare: $17,000
Gifts of “Luv” $24,000 (Parish visits, events etc)
Misc Comp. $10,000

Total Year 1: $181,000

Now lets assume again this bishop will be active for 30 years and lets also assume this compensation will increase by about 4% per year ( a modest estimate if you ask me).

Over a 30 year period the total cost to the people in the pews to support this bishop will be: $9.2 million.

If you adjust the salary to $100,000 per year the cost to the people the pews will be $10.7 million

Now multiply this figure by 12 which is the current number of active GOA bishops and the cost to the people in the pews to support 12 GOA bishops for 30 years is $128 million dollars.

These 32 clergy are in line for a very comfortable life, guaranteed healthcare, permanent job security and a life of comfort that the vast majority of their flock will ever see or enjoy.

This sure has an aristocratic feel if you ask me. Of course none of this includes retirement. Is this even sustainable????

Reread the Chief Secretary’s speech at Holy Cross. The answer to your quesion is in there.

Many years +Isaiah and +Maximos!

In the upcoming, unlike past, actual councils the votes will come only from the voices of the bachelor ‘ordained young and never married’ group such as the Vatican has limited to be bishops able to influence the agenda and to vote.

In all past councils the voices of those widowers and others who actually gave up and sacrificed marriage (to a woman) were included as bishops among the actual celibate monastic bishops of the day. Today, the ‘black’s’ suppression of the ‘white’ bishops makes ecumenical legitimacy impossible no matter the puffed up language and gold robe red carpet appearances to be published online. While the ‘seeming’ might be puffed forward, the ‘being’ will be absent and with it the legitimacy an ecumenical council requires to be accepted as such by the church over time.

The world has changed a great deal since the last council: indoor hot water not from pots over a fire, in fact all indoor plumbing, indoor light from other than candles, transportation other than cart or on foot, democracy, The Reformation, marriages not arranged by parents, vaccines, world war I and II, the Russian church’s love of monarchy to the point the people rejected both royalty and the church in favor of communism, the earth not so much the center of the universe– you know, a big further list.

In the days of the last actual ecumenical councils people died often from toothaches or simple infected cuts or any pregnancy now handled routinely with a C-section. So then working age widower priests were everywhere and were made bishops — while in their working years before their retirement age or death unlike today when women generally outlive men. Remember too that the lifespan was half or less than it is today. Never was being a bishop thought to be a 50 year plus career sinecure.

Of central utmost relevance: a great many bishops voting in actual ecumenical councils had the experience of being actual fathers, of being married, of having actual children and in-laws for whom they were responsible 24×7, they weren’t students of ‘co-suffering’ — they lived it.

And it’s fair to suggest most of them knew personal loss in the form of dead siblings at a young age or children who died young from such things as infected simple cuts while shaving (ever wonder why clergy beards are preferred– when a shaving cut could be fatal.. So many practical orthodox practices ‘falsely theologized’ in the modern context)

So at this proposed council, the nature of the upcoming council attendees will not be ecumenical in the sense of the previous councils. The entire voice of the vast majority of the Christian population who know something about what it is to be married and family life beyond the teenage years will be absent that was before present: those who know by wisdom and experience, and not just as students, the realities of fatherhood and husbandhood.

A super-majority of those who will be voting and attending this wrongly deemed ‘ecumenical’ council will be drawn nearly entirely from the ranks of those who generally were ordained young and almost universally never married bachelors. It must be said events reported in the press and paid for by the church through lawsuits bluntly prove that a disproportionate number who will be able to vote at this council, compared to past councils wrestle with same-sex attraction.

Ecumenical– but with nearly zero voices of those who know actual marriage, and a great number of voices with these sexual history concerns not with women. Really? Who can seriously compare such an event with the Seven Great and Holy Councils of the church? Can more robes in gold and perfumed incense and red carpet events overcome who the never married have declined to invite?

The world has changed in ways the present ‘ordained young never married’ bachelor leadership of the church has self-servingly and career-protectively declined to recognize for over a century– we must re-include the married empty-nester priests as candidates for full bishops as was done and as called for plainly by the Gospel and the church for centuries.

Without that, the ecumenicity and authority of the upcoming council is doubtful no matter the result, as it can’t be said to be of the same nature and effect as prior Ecumenical councils, most obviously because those who are there to do the voting do not represent the fullness ecumene as was the case in all prior councils.

While it may represent the sense of those who are nearly all ordained young and never married bachelors, much as the Vatican’s group does, that is not the ecumene.

To have a much needed actually ecumenical council, the churches should ordain senior empty nester priests as bishops in numbers that represent the population of the monastic and married faithful, and to wait a few years for their voices to be added to the authentic monastic bishops in harmony. Any council held after that has happend could then be properly recognized as expressing the voice of the ecumene and so be thought an ecumenical council.

Without that, it the adjectives future historians might use to qualify as a shorthand for the common nature of the limited group voting in the name of ‘all the ecumene’ at the upcoming council I fear will be both accurate and not so uplifting.