I’ve just returned from an annual meeting and I’m miffed. I know that as an Orthodox Christian I shouldn’t get miffed. “Glory to God for all things”, I know. But you’ll have to forgive me.
What sort of annual meeting was it? I’m glad you asked that question. Let me set the stage. I live in the middle of a medium-sized city, the biggest one in my little state. My wife and I own and occupy a condo in that city. The AOAO – no, that isn’t a cheer, it’s association of apartment owners – is obligated to hold a meeting every year. Ours was this evening. We always hold it in the Methodist church hall next door to the condominium complex. Well, during the seemingly interminable pandemic there was a hiatus. During that time, apparently a new pastor was called to the church. He graciously hosted our meeting tonight, welcoming us all and helping with the sound system.
Then he gave a (non-) invocation, “since this is a church”, he said. But he did not address the (non-) prayer to any higher being, nor did he end it by saying “in the name of Jesus” or of the Trinity, as Western Christians are accustomed to doing. He just abruptly said “Amen”. Oh, please! If you are concerned about stepping on atheist toes by praying a Christian prayer, then don’t pray at all except in silence.
There are only two sexes, but there are many genders?
The young pastor also told us where the bathrooms were. The ladies’ room is over here and the men’s room is over there. And then came the kicker – “Sorry, we don’t have a non-binary restroom, but we’re working on it.” Sitting in the front row, I couldn’t help but blurt out loud, “Oh, stop it! Enough with this insanity!” Certain members of the board of directors took note. I hope that that young pastor was able to hear me loud and clear. God save him from his delusion, or God save his congregation from his influence. Amen.
This article written two weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine was just too good to leave read but not shared. I won’t cut and paste Mr. Ertl’s entire article, but I will put the two penultimate paragraphs below. And I’ll put the link underneath them so that the reader can go and read the whole thing.
The vanguard of Christian political discourse may be leading us in a more righteous direction. Thanks be to God. American Christians have supported our bloodthirsty warmongers for far too long. It’s past time for us to wake up and realize that our government is not the world’s friend. Now that the Russo-Ukrainian war is a month old, that fact should be eminently clear. Lord, have mercy.)
America, let Russia finish its recovery. Let her new destiny run its course. A destiny that will once again bring her to a place as one of the great Christian nations of the world.
As for post-Christian Europe and America, all that remains is judgment. I believe it to be irreversible. The West has squandered its Christian heritage and blessings. Its 100 years of unending wars, state-sponsored terror, and institutionalized decadence has reaped the whirlwind. The collapse is not coming; it is already upon us.
(I started to write a comment in response to another comment on the Monomachos weblog, but it burgeoned into a short essay, as often happens, so I decided to present it here as a stand-alone.)
Forgive me; I’m still trying to wrap my head and heart around the Orthodox phronema. Our spiritual discipline is painfully introspective, yet most of those who comment here are focused on external events since we are in the midst of a new crisis. For that reason, some Orthodox may wonder why George and Gail have worked so hard to maintain this weblog.
We in the United States have been betrayed by our own country for the last two years. Once we thought that we could put the so-called pandemic in the rearview mirror, war broke out in Ukraine. The two most populous Orthodox countries in the world are shooting at each other. Lord, have mercy.
I’ve vaguely been waiting for someone to say something akin to what Mr. B. has said: That is that all political ideologies are essentially “moralistic nihilisms”. I’ll grant him that the United States’ belligerent adventures have turned out to be nihilistic indeed. My count starts from Vietnam, the war that made so many young Americans of the time to question their government’s motives. And their own. Our generation may never quite get over that one. I was hoping to think that the War on Terror would prove to have been fought with greater honor and success. Now, I have gravely ambivalent feelings about both recent wars and the surveillance state that they spawned.
Where will the new borders be drawn?
“Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” (Ecclesiastes 1:2) Nihilism is a rejection of the motivation that makes us live, work and pray. Political nihilism, if I am to understand Mr. B. correctly, is a negation of the purpose for a nation-state. In other words, for Americans, America is no longer a country worth fighting to preserve. For the Russian people, the Russian lands are not worth fighting for. Where the national boundaries of the Russian lands fall, I am not sure. I’m trying to understand the vast topographical expanses and the long history of that empire, but I’m having trouble drawing lines. I suspect that Mr. Putin will soon be drawing new lines on an old map.
One thing I can say, though, is that all peoples have a country that they call home, even those who remind themselves that they are citizens of heaven who place more emphasis on their loyalty to God’s kingdom than any man’s. (Phil. 3:20) Our Lord was born a Jew and offered a new way of life to the Jews first and then to the Greeks. I’m trying to say that our lives are bound by time and space into which the Holy Spirit steps with exquisite particularity.
St. James’ Church, Skaneateles, New York
For the last half century, I have lived apart from the region of the country where I was born and bred, but the desktop picture on my computer is the nineteenth-century lakeside church where I first caught the wistful glimpses and heard the lofty melodies of the mystery which lifted my soul and transcended all physicality.
Especially in troubled times like this, many of us wish that we could go back to a time when our world was quieter. I almost wish that I weren’t witnessing the period in history when our nation is ruled by charlatans who supposedly represent us but who, in many cases, represent nothing but their own lust for power. It can make you bitter. Oh, how betrayed by tenfold the Ukrainians must feel about their recent government and about the violent intrusion by the Russian army! Many of them now wish they had never even been born, to be sure.
Ukrainian soldiers
There’s a bond that both draws the Russian peoples together and tears them apart. I don’t understand it. God help them all. What I am trying to understand is the root of attachment that I have to my own country. Due in part to the fact that my own son was twice deployed to the Middle East, and in part to the fact that I lived outside this country for many years, the attachment is very strong indeed. There is a fury in my soul that has no outlet and deepens ever further as I see the way that the black dog bites and tears at the fabric of our society, once so new and vigorous.
Maybe Mr. B. is right. Maybe all of us should just turn off our electronic devises and create little monasteries in our icon corners. Maybe I should just repent in sackcloth and ashes, knowing that my fellow man’s sin is my fault. After all, it is Lent.
Autumn in New England
But, I can’t just let it go. I love my country too much to sit back and watch it go to hell without saying something about it. It’s that old “not-on-my-watch” fury. I trust that most of us here feel the same way. Deeply. Some of us have an attachment to another country, like Ukraine or Russia. Or Greece. Without that sense of a homeland, especially for those who have been separated from theirs as the millions of Ukrainian refugees have been, then we are nothing but nomads. Listless.
I’m proud of the America whose ideal I hold close to my heart: God-fearing, hard-working, generous, and strong. I suppose the Russians peoples have a similar pride in the Russkiy mir. and I suppose those adjectives describe them as well.
In that sense, and if I haven’t misunderstood Mr. B., I would say that a political philosophy that longs for what one’s homeland once was and fights to regain it and retain it is not a nihilistic pursuit. It’s what one does without second guessing when one’s country comes under attack from enemies both foreign and domestic.
My wife and my eldest grandchild turned sixteen on March 17. (No, his parents did not name him Patrick after the saint. ) I asked him whether he was following the war in Ukraine, and decided to follow up on that conversation with an e-mail. It’s below. I also sent to him with a link to Pres. Vladimir Putin’s soon-to-be famous address to the Russian people of February 21. The link to the speech is here:
Certain Kool Aid drinkers of the disreputable American press consider Putin’s speech to be irrational and the autocrat to be unhinged. I challenge you to find evidence of mental illness in the speech in that link above.
Here’s what I wrote to my grandson in that e-mail message:
“When considering current events and historical events, it is always best to refer to original sources. I am enclosing Pres. Vladimir Putin’s speech to the people of Russia dated February 21. At the conclusion of the speech, of course, Putin declares that Russia will recognize the two states in the Donbass region of southeastern Ukraine. Importantly, however, the preceding body of the speech outlines Putin’s rationale for his subsequent actions, i.e. the historical attachment of Ukraine to Russia, the present corruption in Ukraine’s government, and the encroachment of NATO. “
Yours truly
Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev
Next is something that has been of great concern over the last four years to Orthodox Christians who have been paying attention to the state of the Church and the pseudo-Church in Ukraine. Below is a paragraph from that same speech by Pres. Putin. We can pray there will be a silver lining to the tragedy of war, i.e., that the contra-canonical violence against the OCU-MP will be eliminated by Russia’s military actions.
“Kiev continues to prepare the destruction of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. This is not an emotional judgement; proof of this can be found in concrete decisions and documents. The Ukrainian authorities have cynically turned the tragedy of the schism into an instrument of state policy. The current authorities do not react to the Ukrainian people’s appeals to abolish the laws that are infringing on believers’ rights. Moreover, new draft laws directed against the clergy and millions of parishioners of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate have been registered in the Verkhovna Rada.”
Former papal nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, has written a stunning and thoroughgoing indictment of the leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the United States – particularly President Joe Biden – the European Union, President Zelensky, the Italian Prime Minister and oligarchs of the New World Order like Klaus Schwab, George Soros and Bill & Melinda Gates. He rightly blames them for triggering the unfortunate conflict between Russia and Ukraine. There are few elder statesmen alive today, but Abp. Vigano is one of them. Here is the open letter that he has issued to the world.
Handwritings on the Wall 