“Be careful, dear! It’s the latest hooey from oca.org! You KNOW how radioactive it is!”
______________________________
Of course, people who know both Russian and English know what I did with that caption… “hooey” is a euphemism in English, but in Russian, it’s a phonetic transliteration of one of the most powerful “mat” words. Needless to say, I meant it in both senses… doesn’t it all make you want to hurl to clear out your system? Often, goodthinkers accuse me of being “unloving”, “unforgiving”, “disrespectful”, and “confrontational”. I beg their assorted pardons! Only a person who loves Christ and His Church, who loves the Truth, would put up with the garbage that I’ve put up with from the terminally “nice”, the cynically opportunistic, and the incorrigibly ignorant (especially Canon- and Fathers-spouting konvertsy who haven’t the slightest notion about what they’re bugling).
Before I deal with my (needed) absence from posting on this site yesterday, let’s examine the topic of automatic excommunication. That’s complete and utter BS, it was one of ADS’ favourite hobby-horses (Mark Stokoe is a fan of this horrid lie… but, then again, Mark was a wild-eyed fanatical devotee of Schmemann (ADS) whilst he was at SVS). I asked several people better versed in this than I am, and they said:
A cleric can’t/doesn’t depose himself, regardless of what he’s “done”; his bishop has to suspend him in a formal manner, try him in a proper and canonically constituted Spiritual Court, and, if the Court finds him in violation of the Sacred Canons, a Synod of Bishops can canonically depose him. Until then, he’s a cleric in good standing, even if the allegations are true. Then, it’s the sin of his bishop for not acting; the cleric isn’t sinning by serving. It’s the same for an excommunication (“anathematisation” more formally, strictly speaking) of a layman. A layman does NOT excommunicate himself as falsely taught by Westernised “scholars” at SVS.
It’s interesting, virtually all of my contacts agreed, damn-near word-for-word… if that doesn’t tell you that the Holy Spirit is ALIVE and still guides our Church, nothing will. The Church has a “system”… it isn’t broken; it’s still functional. That is, NO ONE can “excommunicate themselves”. There’s a procedure involved, purposefully convoluted and difficult, to protect people from the accusations of the bloody-minded, self-serving, and self-righteous.
In fact, sometimes, the Church will anathematise an idea, but not the person who propagated it. That happened in the cases of Pavel Florensky and Sergei Bulgakov. Parenthetically, both of these heretical thinkers were faves of ADS (and ADS passed on his predilection for their noisome “thought” to his drooling acolytes… such as Stokoe, Benjamin Peterson, and Eric Wheeler). I stand under correction, but the only known anathemas in modern days (that is, after the time of Tsar Pyotr Veliki) are for setting up opposition “candy stores”… let’s see… there’s Valentin Rusantsov, Philaret Denisenko, and Aleksandr Vvedensky (ADS was fond of the last-named… he held Vvedensky up to his students as “a great homileticist”… that shows you the depth of ADS’ contempt for the Church). Hell, the Church didn’t excommunicate even Solovyov for his hallucinatory “ideas”. For that matter, in future, the Church will hold that most of what ADS wrote was pure bunkum, but it won’t posthumously condemn him… he’ll simply be noted as just another heretic who managed to stay in good odour in his lifetime (and ADS’ books will be of antiquarian interest only, known only to specialised scholars inured in dusty libraries).
There’s been much too much talk lately amongst half-baked semi-converted konvertsy circles of this one or that one “automatically excommunicating” themselves. Go soak your heads in a bucket of ice water until some good sense arrives (obviously, they have none at present). If you have a complaint against someone, do start a formal “process” against them… if you can. Most of these jabonies (in the inimitable words of Alexander Lebedeff) “don’t know an ecclesiastical court from a tennis court”.
As for stepping away from it all… I was like a shell-shocked footslogger stumbling in the mud of the trenches. It all just adds up… each incident isn’t much in and of itself, but the cumulative effect is mind-numbing and corrosive. It’s why I fight on… these people are inflicting the “death of a thousand cuts” on the believers; ergo, someone has to stand up and say “loudly and proudly” what everyone else is just whispering (they’re afraid of being treated like pariahs by the clergy… that’s one of the costs of doing business, so, one accepts it). I had to involve myself in something “positive”… therefore, I spent a very pleasurable day working on my art sites, doing some research into and posting on New Roman-style mosaics in Italy. There’s nothing like working with “good stuff” to regenerate one’s “tired blood” (and you won’t need a slug o’ Geritol, either).
Look at these… after you do… look in the “tags” in each post, and click on “Christian art”. That’ll show you what I’ve been working on the last two days. Some is new; some is old (updated, or with new “better” images). To say the least, inspiring stuff… here are the links:
http://03varvara.wordpress.com/2011/08/25/unknown-artist-christ-the-warrior-sacellum-archiepiscopale-archiepiscopal-chapel-ravenna-italy-6th-century/ (get a load of “Christ the Warrior”… now, that’s cookin’ with gas!)
Now, I think that I can go back to the Church news “salt mine”… see ya there!
Barbara-Marie Drezhlo
26 August 2011
Albany NY
Voices from Russia 
You must be logged in to post a comment.