- Roissy: Trump's got game. Too mainstream for my vote but I wouldn't mind if he won. Reminds me of a bit from HBO's "Not Necessarily the News" 30 years ago: "Donald Trump: he doesn't want to be your husband. He doesn't want to be in your family. He doesn't want to be your friend. No, he wants to be your president. He speaks his mind regardless and gets what he wants, personally and professionally. Think he's up for the job? So do we. What America needs right now. Donald Trump: a real son of a bitch."
- Rod Dreher's hypocrisy. Besides simply being angry with him for leaving the church, this gets me. As his most vocal critics note, one minute he's preaching strategic withdrawal from the world, but next thing you know, he's vacationing in Europe or dining at one of New Orleans' great restaurants. Not that good Christians can't enjoy the high life, but you know what I mean. Recently I checked the feed for his blog (I don't that often) and found this sob story and fundraising appeal. Hmm. If his schismatic priest's travails mean so much to him, why not forgo a luxury or two? The man's basically his house chaplain anyway. By the way, ROCOR's a cult. Nicely illiberal like Russia but still. If you hate this country's traditional culture including its church (birettas, novenas, and all) so much, Russia's not Communist anymore; I'll even chip in for your one-way plane fare. Anyway, for real strategic withdrawal, I'm not for the Benedict option but rather the Volodymyr (Sterniuk) option that stays in the church no matter what.
- From here (subscribers only): Training the Ukrainian military is turning out to be a boon for Army note takers studying the warfare of rivaling Russia, according to military officials. The 300-some U.S. Army trainers find themselves vicariously exposed to warfare tactics, presumably stemming from indirect Russian participation in the conflict, that they would not otherwise experience. Among those is a dense rain of artillery and rockets as well as electronic-warfare equipment so disruptive that workarounds must be found to keep up Ukrainian forces' communications in combat. We should not be training the Ukrainian military. Why the hell does our elite want a war with Russia? Is it that scared of Putin's illiberalism? Putin's great for Russia, by the way. He promotes the best in his culture; our elite promotes the worst in ours. Russians love him because he literally saved many of their lives by pulling the country out of a nosedive under gangsters, under Yeltsin. Slavs aren't democratic. They have strongmen because they like them. Anyway, I'm supposed to be suckered into all this anti-Russianism as an old Cold Warrior and a Catholic. No. As a Catholic I try to look at the big picture. And Ukrainian nationalism is really nothing to do with the church, nor Irish for that matter.
- Bob Wallace: I for one welcome our new Eve overlords. Femininity of course is wonderful; God made it. Like anything, separate it from God's plan and it becomes destructive.
- Ex-Army criticizes the non-aggression principle, a libertarian staple I don't think I have a problem with. It's not pacifism. You can and will fight; you just don't start something. Christian.
- T.S. Eliot's American roots. A great man of the last century: artistically innovative while being rooted in reactionary views.
- Kathy Shaidle: Shame or something like it.
Don't apologize for things you didn't do, to people who don't believe in forgiveness or redemption.
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
My favorite mainstreamish presidential candidate and more
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If his schismatic priest's travails mean so much to him, why not forgo a luxury or two? The man's basically his house chaplain anyway.
ReplyDeleteAh, but don't you see? In Rod's BenOp scenario, other people suffer, not Rod. Sacrifice is for the little people. ;)
What about the Serra option: https://franciscanum.wordpress.com/2015/06/15/the-serra-option/
ReplyDeleteLike the Benedict option, distributism and other third-wayisms, and other well-meant at least quasi-Catholic ideas about society, it may be too idealistic but I like it. At face value I'm fine with the Benedict option; it can include the Ukrainian Catholic Church's withdrawal underground in its homeland last century under the Soviets. My only problems with it are its messenger's a schismatic and vain, which make me not trust it.
DeleteROCOR is odd. I know of one fellow who only crossed himself once before venerating an icon and his priest made him do it again!
ReplyDeleteROCOR is in communion with the Russian Orthodox church so they maybe schismatic from a Catholic Church perspective, but not a cult. Now onto more important matters... How do you know how much Mr. Dreher has donated to pass judgement on him. The mother needed 31 quarts of blood and the baby is going to need medical attention. Mr. Dreher has a pulpit that he can use to help someone... why not? If you would post something like this for someone in need, I would donate to. We are pro-life and pro-family so thank you for posting so I can donate.
ReplyDeleteNice try. First, it's odd as the Rad Trad wrote. Second, Rod Dreher's on vacation AGAIN this year. I'd think a persecuted conservative Christian family withdrawing from worldliness and raising money for their minister's family in dire straits would dial it back to maybe one vacation a year but not our boy (see Diane above). Maybe he really doesn't have a clue how he comes across, strange for a man so successful. Or maybe he's so well off he doesn't care what we think, but why have a blog, for example?
DeleteThe interest in Rod Dreher is fascinating to watch. It reminds me of how many Americans follow and gossip about the activities of their favorite celebrities. Do you consider Mr. Dreher as a celebrity?
DeleteI wish I had taken a picture of the ROCOR Western Rite liturgy I attended last night so I could show you how "anti-West" they are.
ReplyDeleteWestern Rite Orthodoxy is artificial and stunted because the Orthodox obviously don't really want it. It's a non-community. Catholicism is Eastern as well as Western, even though 98% of Catholics are Western. The western Ukrainians, the Malankarese Indians, the Melkites, and the Chaldeans, for example. Generational, real Eastern communities.
DeleteDid you talk to the konvertsi at coffee hour? Get 'em started on Catholics. I bet they're just a bunch of ecumenical teddy bears brimming over with irenicism and bonhomie!
Delete"Western Rite Orthodoxy is artificial and stunted because the Orthodox obviously don't really want it."
DeleteFrom a historical perspective, the divine services offered in Western Orthodox parishes are closer to authentic continuations of the ancient Latin Liturgy than are the modern, artificial creations offered in the majority of Roman Catholic parishes.
Additionally, the historical record of St. Alexis Toth’s interactions with Archbishop John Ireland denotes that some Latin-rite Catholics traditionally did not want their Eastern counterparts.
"The western Ukrainians, the Malankarese Indians, the Melkites, and the Chaldeans, for example. Generational, real Eastern communities."
Unless you are willing to exclude all Eastern Catholic Churches that are not generational from being "real" (e.g. Ethiopian Catholic Church and Hungarian Greek Catholic Church), your comment has no meaning in relation to the status of Western Orthodoxy.
Diane,
DeleteInterestingly enough, it is the ecumenical teddy bears that you prefer who are your Church's worst enemies. While Orthodox Christians who reject your patrimony must pain you to no end, all that they say is based on solid doctrinal principles, which clearly define and defend the ancient ecclesiological boundaries of the Church. If ever convinced that the post-Schism Latin Church retained its connection with the pre-Schism Church in doctrine and praxis, these same Orthodox Christians would be the most valiant defenders of your patrimony, which the Orthodox cuddle bears that you currently support would easily sell out your patrimony for the proverbial thirty pieces of Protestant and secular tarnish that their Latin counterparts have already done.
From a historical perspective, the divine services offered in Western Orthodox parishes are closer to authentic continuations of the ancient Latin Liturgy than are the modern, artificial creations offered in the majority of Roman Catholic parishes.
DeleteBut although their orders are valid, a recognition not necessarily reciprocated by the Orthodox, certainly not by the extremely anti-Western ROCOR, this is still outside the church, as an Anglo-Catholic priest offering our traditional Mass is outside the church. (And the A-C priest probably isn't hostile to us like these folks.) If done by ex-Catholics, not pleasing to God.
Additionally, the historical record of St. Alexis Toth’s interactions with Archbishop John Ireland denotes that some Latin-rite Catholics traditionally did not want their Eastern counterparts.
Archbishop Ireland and an even better (worse) example, the 1920s-30 Catholic authorities who started later Eastern Slavic schisms in America (ACROD and a Ukrainian split), have a lot to answer to God for. I can't tell you how much those schisms hurt me, and I'm not even Slavic. I've been to the old churches that were ours and met the people. The Slavic Greek Catholics weren't heretics and only wanted things here to remain as they were back in Galicia and Transcarpathia. That said, the history is clear. The Orthodox attitude to Western Catholicism is Archbishop Ireland's anti-Easternism with the poles reversed and turned way up.
Western Rite Orthodoxy comes in two versions. There are the relatively Catholic-friendly Antiochians, basically traditional American Anglo-Catholics (Tridentine but non-papal) under new management, relatively mildly byzantinized. The Antiochians are doing variations of the Tridentine Mass including American Anglo-Catholic ones, and including feasts of the Sacred Heart and the Rosary. They don't pretend it's pre-schism. A good analogue to the Uniates. (But I understand Metropolitan Joseph, their new supremo in America, isn't keen on them.) Then there's the grotesquerie of ROCOR's WRO, embodying everything I've written here. So anti-Western it's ridiculous, the Western stuff so half-hearted. Byzantinizations run wild: beards, icons, and "Matushka So-and-So" everywhere. To join ROCOR is to pretend to be Russian. It's a feature, not a bug, of the thing. Like I said, John Ireland², with the poles reversed. Their guiding principle, unlike the Antiochians', is spite: as long as it's not recognizably Roman Catholic. A cobbled-together Roman Rite noticeably not ours, and an equally cobbled-together Anglican-style service; Protestants are evidently preferable to papists. (As if the tsar liked the British but not the Austrians at the moment.) The xenophobic Russians and the self-hating Protestant converts in that shop will keep it that way, hoping the newcomers will get with the Byzantine program.
The Ukrainian Catholic Church in the (western) Ukraine, for example, has a generational past and a future. WRO no.
Interestingly enough, it is the ecumenical teddy bears that you prefer who are your Church's worst enemies.
DeleteI've noticed the libcath/libdox connection, but they're not exactly working together for the same ends, to the Orthodox' credit. The libcaths take some Eastern stuff out of context to push their Protestantizing, modernizing agenda. Married priests, for example. They don't give a flying about the ancient rule ordaining the married but not marrying the ordained, with celibate bishops. They imagine something in a spectrum from married Protestant ministers to some f*ckfest fantasy (such as the secular world's serial monogamy, divorce and remarriage).
The ecumenical Orthodox cuddle bears, while suspected by Orthodox hardliners, are actually fellow good Orthodox, trying to persuade us to ditch our doctrine and convert to their side. They may be our mortal enemies but that gets my respect.
While Orthodox Christians who reject your patrimony must pain you to no end, all that they say is based on solid doctrinal principles, which clearly define and defend the ancient ecclesiological boundaries of the Church.
Horse crap. It's ethnocentrism masquerading as theology, as when I heard a late ROCOR supremo try to scare the kids out of marrying outside the tribe by preaching the myth of "St." Peter the Aleut, whom I'm convinced is fictional. Likewise for the only American Orthodox big enough to matter demographically, the Greeks: "Orthodoxy is Hellenism and Hellenism is Orthodoxy." Theological principles, my ass. It's idolatry.
If ever convinced that the post-Schism Latin Church retained its connection with the pre-Schism Church in doctrine and praxis, these same Orthodox Christians would be the most valiant defenders of your patrimony.
So I and other Catholic online writers have our work cut out for us. It's a matter of showing them that this is true.
...which the Orthodox cuddle bears that you currently support would easily sell out your patrimony for the proverbial thirty pieces of Protestant and secular tarnish that their Latin counterparts have already done.
True of some libdox but to that side's credit I think few.
"Horse crap."
DeleteWhatever you claim it is, it holds the ground on the ancient boundaries of the Church (only accept doctrine, saints, and a spiritual life considered to be part of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church). Sure beats the "ecumenism of blood" and its principled acceptance of a common martyrology coming from Pope Francis and the Augean stables of the modern Vatican.
Brimming with irenicism and bonhomie...just like you, right, Diane? :-) I don't think it's good to be an ecumenical teddy bear like all your Popes since John XXIII have been, but I don't think it's right to hate or bad-mouth anyone either. Your current Pope refuses to judge sodomites. You could at least not judge Orthodox Christians and people who go on vacations with their families.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like for you and John, anything less than the Orthodox embracing the papacy means that we "hate your guts."
And btw, John, at least the Western Rite Orthodox are there by choice and not by political coercion, like the Uniates. And it is growing now more than ever. I think Western Rite Orthodoxy can be compared to the Ordinariate, but you don't put them down. Maybe some Orthodox (or more than some) don't want WRO, but they have it, and I'm glad.
There's ecumenism rightly understood, to teach the faith and be better informed oneself, and then there's indifferentism, which neither side teaches of course, each claiming to be the true church. Pope Francis can't and has never tried to greenlight homosexuality, even before he was Pope. Your choice of bishops OK divorce-and-remarriage (no matter that it's old; it's illogical, sub-Christian: "Sometimes adultery is OK," sloppy theology or even rank bullsh*t) and now contraception, just like Protestants in both instances. Dreher's a hypocrite and vain because in some blog posts he presents himself and his family as conservative Christians under siege while in others he's not just going on a yearly family vacation (which would be fine) but apparently multiple pleasure trips a year, including trips without his family. If the former is true, why not go low-profile online (as I might have to someday), and if his priest's family is in such dire need, rather than sybaritic holidays in France and Italy (he just can't keep away from us Catholics, and he doesn't hang out with real Orthodox; verrrrrry interesting), why not cut it down to a date night at Olive Garden and use the difference to pay Matushka's medical bills, all without talking about it publicly? (I appreciate the point about online fundraising but get a clue; don't post your personal vacation pictures at the same time.)
DeleteIn Eastern Europe the Uniates' loyalty to the church is deep. Regarding political coercion, all of the Uniate bishops there last century were heroes. The Communists, like the sultans and tsars (all masters of political coercion themselves), hated Catholicism because they couldn't own it, and especially hated the Uniates as turncoats. So they ordered them to switch to Orthodoxy, which, once they'd slapped it around, they did own, as the sultans and tsars did. Every Uniate bishop said no, choosing martyrdom or exile. In Slovakia the Ruthenian parishes in the east were herded into the so-called Czechoslovak Orthodox Church (as the Russians did Ukrainian Catholic parishes, into the Russian Orthodox Church); in the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia in 1968, when the country briefly rebelled against Soviet rule, the Ruthenians just about unanimously returned to the church, as did the Ukrainian Catholics in the Ukraine (after 40 years underground or nominally Orthodox) after 1989 as Soviet power waned. The first Eastern Christians I knew well were Ukrainians who chose exile over schism, coming to America right after World War II. I've met a man from Romania whose Uniate family, when the Communists gave them a choice to become Orthodox or go Roman Rite, went Roman rather than leave the church.
It seems like for you and John, anything less than the Orthodox embracing the papacy means that we "hate your guts."
Pretty much. There are principled Christians who don't accept Catholicism but have my respect, such as the Robert Hart kind of Anglicans and Missouri Synod Lutherans, but they're not anti-Western. The Orthodox aren't just un-Western (which Catholicism can be too); they're anti-Western, even more unforgivable from convert Westerners.
I am convinced that Eastern Orthodoxy will never be the main religion in America, thank God, and that Western Orthodoxy will remain a footnote in Christian history like a movement a lot of the first Western Orthodox had ties to, the supposed continuation of Western Catholicism after Vatican I defined papal infallibility, the Old Catholic communion of Utrecht, now basically Dutch Episcopalians, a rump sect.
"ROCOR is odd. I know of one fellow who only crossed himself once before venerating an icon and his priest made him do it again!"
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of a lady in the SSPX who genuflected on the right knee in honor of one of the Society's bishops and was told to genuflect properly on the left knee in honor of bishops, since the right knee genuflection is reserved for the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle.
Do you consider the SSPX odd for this insistence on correct Latin liturgical etiquette?
Good point; I thought of that. ROCOR isn't odd for keeping and teaching its recension of the Byzantine Rite. It's odd because like the rest of Orthodoxy it's narcissistic, mistaking that culture for the whole church; in ROCOR that's in spades.
Delete