20 November 2011. Six Republicans Kiss Up to the Religious Right… Here’s What Three Russian Leaders Say About Morality in Leadership…

Here’s a REAL Christian leader… Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (1952- ), he puts all the Republican charlatans in the dust, doesn’t he?

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Read this. To see Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain posture about morality is simply disgusting. Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann weren’t much better. Let’s not expatiate on what’s WRONG. Let’s zero in on what’s RIGHT. Here are three Russian leaders (two political and one religious) to blaze the CORRECT PATH:

There are things I believe, which shouldn’t, for someone in my position, at least, be shared with the public at large, for everybody’s consumption, because that would look like self-advertising or a political striptease.

Vladimir Putin

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Let the great values and aspirations of labour, justice, equality, brotherhood, and truth, things that are bedrock to the timeless Christian faith and the communist ideal alike, triumph in our lives.

Gennady Zyuganov

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If your earnings are higher, consequently, that increases your moral responsibility  to society, too; it follows that you can afford to pay more taxes to help those who can’t earn their own bread. High-income people earn more than most do; yet, others can’t earn a thing, they need our help. Society shouldn’t be a place where wolves chase rabbits; even a wolf pack has a certain amount of mutual support. If society refuses to support its weaker members, of necessity, it surrenders to the “law of the jungle”. This isn’t vacuous moralising; all of human history validates these things.

Vsevolod Chaplin

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You can have Rick Perry… or you can have VVP. You can have Herman Cain… or you can have Gennady Zyuganov. You can have Newt Gingrich… or you can have Fr Vsevolod Chaplin. You can have six Republicans competing in a “political striptease” or three Russians giving the straight deal. I KNOW where I stand… I wonder who Reardon supports, by the way? Does he support VVP (who’s always been loyal to his wife) or does he support Slippery Ol’ Newt of Many Wives (giving divorce papers to someone in a hospital bed with cancer… c’mon!)? Perspirin’ minds wanna know…

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Sunday 20 November 2011

Albany NY

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20 November 2011. The Latest **UNOFFICIAL** Word on Dickie Wood…

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The following is highly probable, but **NOT** official. It comes from a source that has always been accurate in the past. However… I’ll label this as an “Unofficial Well-Placed Leak”… which means that its probability is very high, indeed, but we don’t have any confirmation of it as of yet. With the Syosset gang, you’ve seen what’s happened over the last twenty years… it could lead a saint to the bottle. Here’s what I received:

According to a source close to his lawyer, Vlad Berezansky Esq, Fr Zacchaeus AKA “Tricky Ricky” Wood was suspended by OCA Holy Synod last month at the Sobor and ordered to return to America forthwith.  If Wood fails and/or refuses, he was advised he will be tried by a spiritual court in absentia. Wood had been on leave of absence by Met Jonah amidst allegations of sexual and other misconduct.

We’ll have to see. We’ve all seen too much to take this at face value. The source is good… that’s why I’m calling it “PROBABLE”… it’s not set in stone, yet. Hey, Ginny, put up a post stating that he’s suspended on oca.org… that IS one of the purposes of an official website, after all, kid… pass me the jug, the world’s not getting any less crank, is it?

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Sunday 20 November 2011

Albany NY

20 November 2011. St Maksim Sandovich was NOT Alone! Pan-Slavism Lived… Pan-Slavism Lives… Pan-Slavism Shall Live!

Petr Chelčický: Do Not Repay Evil with Evil

from the cycle, “The Slavonic Epic”, nr 12

Alfons Maria Mucha

1918

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Many of you are aware of St Maksim Sandovich of Gorlice, the Protomartyr of the Lemkovshchyna. A smaller number, but still large, knows of the Austro-Hungarian concentration camps at Talerhof and Terezín. However, most Orthodox people in the USA aren’t aware that the Russophiles and Pan-Slavs scared the bejesus out of the Habsburgs (and their Uniate lickspittle running-dogs). They weren’t scared of the Poles or Croats… the Croats and Poles were loyal to the Dual Monarchy. They weren’t scared of the Uniate leadership (both lay and ecclesiastical)… they were in their pockets. They WERE scared absolutely shitless of the Pan-Slav Movement. Look at what happened in America… thousands of Uniates “came home” to the Mother Church. The Lemkos, Slovaks, Czechs, and Carpatho-Russians scared them… the spectre of the po-nashemu people rising up against their Habsburg oppressors haunted their sleep. Ergo, when war broke out, they started shooting Russophile activists such as St Maksim.

However, how many of you are aware of the Pan-Slav ferment in the musical and art worlds of the Dual Monarchy? Fearful Habsburg secret police agents tailed musicians like Leoš Janáček and artists like Alfons Maria Mucha. Yet… Pan-Slavism lived! Mucha produced his seminal The Slavonic Epic… a series of 20 historical paintings documenting the historical path of the Slavs. Janáček wrote In the Mists and On an Overgrown Path… we shouldn’t talk about music and art… we should LOOK at art and LISTEN to music…

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In the Mists…

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On an Overgrown Path…

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As for the art, I just finished posting the entire Slavonic Epic on Art and Faith, Too… click here to go to the first painting. Before you do anything else, look at the “tags” and click “The Slavonic Epic”… that’ll bring up all the works in order. Everything has links to most obscure points, so, you’ll learn a lot about the Western Slavs, in particular.

Any time that you hear some Uniate claim, “I’m Orthodox in Union with Rome”… remember St Maksym… remember St Aleksei Kabalyuk, remember Blessed Gavriil Kostelnik… remember Fr Mikhail Shuvar. Ask your Uniate interlocutor if his church honours St Maksim… do note the silence that’ll greet that question. Yes, Virginia, Pan-Slavism not only lived, it lives now… and we’ll pass on the flame to the next generation, too…

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Sunday 20 November 2011

Albany NY

This Just In Department:

A friend of mine wrote me:

You might like to know that Mucha’s niece became Orthodox and a matushka in the Czech Republic (she died quite recently) and Janáček’s grand-daughter also became Orthodox. She’s in the USA in a ROCOR parish.

Who woulda thunk it? SMALL WORLD…

BMD

20 October 2011. Metropolitan Isaiah Chronopoulos of Denver Smacks Down GOAA Believers for going to Court

“You ARE subject to me, priest… if you break the civil law, you’ll pay the law’s penalties. Any questions, sir?”

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Ecclesia vivit lege romana.

The Church lives with the Roman (secular) law.

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Read this. Note this quote:

Meanwhile, Metropolitan Isaiah Chronopoulos, the Greek Orthodox leader for a 12-state region that includes Utah, has written to pastors of the two Salt Lake area churches, saying that plaintiffs and an attorney in the lawsuit are not to be allowed to attend the general assembly or vote. “After they’ve submitted written apologies or have afforded themselves the Sacrament of Holy Confession for going to secular courts, which St Paul condemns (I Corinthians 6.4-7), they’ll be recognised by me as faithful members of the parish”, the metropolitan wrote from his Denver office in a letter dated 16 November. “I’m hopeful that they’ll exercise humility and repentance and thereby eliminate the scandal they’ve caused against the parish”.

This is what hyperclericalists like Lebedeff say. Can you believe that he attacked Kristi Koumentakos, the VICTIM of an abusive priest, because she went to court? No doubt, Mr Lebedeff doesn’t like the fact that the Church is liable to the civil law, just as everyone else is. In any case, we don’t believe that the Church is immune from the secular authorities… we’re NOT papists.

For instance, the parents in Vladimir in the RF weren’t wrong in appealing to the media and the state to redress a wrong at a local convent (paedophilia on the part of a priest assigned there and abuse by the nuns towards kids). Anyone who says that people have to lie down and allow clergy to rape them because they’re clergy and that our only recourse is a “packed” Church court is not only nutters, but out of step with Orthodox practise over the centuries. The married clergy were NEVER a high social estate in the Orthodox homelands and were nothing but high-powered PEASANTS under the law. That is, local officials could beat a priest publicly if he transgressed the law. The Church was always subject to the civil authorities, and any impartial reading of history will show that.

Interestingly enough, the idea enunciated by Isaiah Chronopoulos snuck in amongst Greek-flavoured Orthodox when the Patriarch of Constantinople became the Ethnarch of the Millet-i Rûm under the Ottomans. Many civil functions became part of the patriarchal administration, including law courts for Christians. In this case (and in the case of the pagan courts referenced by St Paul), the Orthodox canonical interpretation was that one didn’t go to a court of another “civilisation” (in this case, Islamic) to solve “Roman” disputes. In the case of Ms Koumentakos, that wasn’t so. Both English Common Law and Roman Statutory Law arose from CHRISTIAN roots. Ergo, St Paul’s prohibition DOES NOT APPLY. The Church IS subject to the civil law… and that’s that.

Paedophile or thieving clerics ARE subject to the civil courts… do ask Seraphim Storheim. Parishioners also have recourse to the civil courts for civil wrongs committed against them by clergy. It’s what symphonia is all about…

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Sunday 20 November 2011

Albany NY