26 June 2016. A Point to Ponder…

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In a secular state and society, religions have no right to impose their creeds and moral standards on all comers. NO RIGHT AT ALL. We all have the right to freedom of conscience, and that means that no one sectarian notion can prevail in the public square. The hatred and bigotry spewed by some “religious” people towards those that they dislike is amazing. If such “religion” were to disappear, Satan would lose one of his most effective weapons…

BMD

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18 June 2016. There’s NO State Church Here Thanks to Separation of Church and State… THANK GOD!

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I made the following comment on FB:

There’s no state church that the government forces us to support even though we may not be members. Thank God for that. Here in the USA/Canada, any such religion wouldn’t be Orthodoxy… in fact, such a situation would deform our Orthodoxy. Just look at the konvertsy nutters amongst us who want to bring heterodox notions into the Church… it’d be twice as bad, I’d warrant.

The separation of Church and State is a blessing for those of us who follow “minority” faiths… it means that the “Evangelical” scummers can’t embody their oddbod notions into law (of course, they can try, but with such separation, they can’t do it everywhere and always). It’s bad enough that semi-converted konvertsy like Freeman, Dreher, and Whiteford continue to indulge in heterodox fancy once in the Church. If there were a “state church”, such figures would be twice as bad, and they’re quite bad enough, thank you very much.

BMD

Government and SYRIZA Clash Over Church Tax Proposal

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On Monday, the relationship between the Greek state and the Church of Greece became the focus of a fresh clash between the government and the main opposition SYRIZA party after a leftist MP proposed the introduction of a new tax to pay clerics’ wages. SYRIZA deputy Tasos Kourakis said that the Church should start funding itself instead of relying on dwindling state coffers. Kourakis told a conference organised by the Theology Department of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki that another option would be to impose a church tax on all Greeks who declare themselves Orthodox Christians. He said that revenues from it could go toward church costs and clerics’ salaries.

The rightwing New Democracy shot down the idea, which likened the proposed tax to “Stalinist measures”. ND argued that such a levy would be unconstitutional, as it would discriminate between Greeks based on their religious beliefs. SYRIZA noted that Kourakis’s proposal was the MP’s “personal opinion”, but said that Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras had mooted a similar initiative in the fall of 2011 when the latter was head of the Foundation for Industrial and Economic Research (IOBE). Stournaras accused SYRIZA of distorting comments that he made during a TV interview, when he noted that other European citizens don’t pay clerics’ salaries through taxation without proposing however that Greece follow suit.

28 January 2013

Kathimerini

http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite1_1_28/01/2013_480874

Editor’s Note:

What SYRIZA proposes is nothing more than the system in place in Germany, where citizens pay a “church tax” that goes to the church of their choice. If one isn’t religious, the money goes into a general charity fund. “Stalinist” is usually “right-speak” for “we don’t like this and we want to demonise the people making this proposal” (such as Potapov’s recent crackbrained initiative concerning “Stalingrad” in the ROCOR). In short, the SYRIZA proposal isn’t leftist at all; it’s merely fair. It simply places the burden of support of the Orthodox Church on Orthodox believers. That’s as it should be, kids… New Democracy is sinking into irrelevance along with PASOK… SYRIZA is Greece’s future, as this common-sense proposal indicates. You can have SYRIZA or you can have Golden Dawn (which is neo-Nazi, fascist, racist, and xenophobic… that’s no choice at all)… that’s the real-world choice on offer… there’s nothing else. It’s clear that SYRIZA’s the better choice.

BMD

 

29 December 2012. IOCC Goes to the White House… Nothing Posted on oca.org Even Though One of the Participants Was From St Fagomir’s in Yonkers

Image in original low resolution… note well that it wasn’t a largish affair… nonetheless, it occurred. It’s a pie in the face to the DC cabal of Rod Dreher, Victor Potapov, JP, and Mattingly… none of them were invited (or wanted). 

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Read this. Read it? Good! Let’s get down to business here. There were NO OCA bishops present, although the new Greek carpetbagger ACROD bishop was at this Dixie Fry. OK, it didn’t happen at the White House; it happened at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. That’s the Greeks for you, always puffing things up a little more than they should be. However, this was a lovefeast between the EP (for the IOCC is a creature of the EP… there’s no such thing as a “pan-Orthodox” agency… that’s simply not true) and the present centrist Obama Administration. It shot the entire thesis of the more wild n’ woolly konvertsy all to hell. The only named OCA person at the event was from SVS… that means that if the OCA goes down, SVS will be traitors and jump to the EP, rather than to the Mother Church (does that mean that Dahulich and Moriak will do likewise, attempt to backstab us, and try to take their dioceses with them? Perspirin’ minds wanna know…).

One of the Cabinet whispered:

I wonder how the rightwing convert trash will spin this?

Indeed. They who laugh last, laugh best…

BMD