Uncle Sam is no substitute for Peter but he has a bigger budget

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23 Responses to Uncle Sam is no substitute for Peter but he has a bigger budget

  1. Petros says:

    Thanks for that, CL. I’ve forwarded this on to lots of relatives and friends.

  2. NFA says:

    Nothing to see here… move along.

  3. Megan says:

    Happily, most Greek Orthodox jurisdictions are not renovationist; neither are they in the pocket of the American government or beholden to liberal, secular donors. In fact, when the Greek parliament voted to ratify same-sex marriage, the Church of Greece called the decision “demonic” and excommunicated several of the “immoral lawmakers” who voted for the bill.

    Demonic. Exactly, but unsurprising. Those Christians with non-renovationist views of our faith are more and more limited in trying to find those whose leadership they expect to uphold biblical teaching. Which is the whole point, right?

  4. cuckoo says:

    Sorry to hear that an Orthodox patriarch is a climate change nut. I seriously expected better from these people. You expect it from the demasculinized drones who have been marinating in the relativist junk culture of the West but I thought those from a more integrated culture would have held out longer.

  5. Foster says:

    CL, direct pipe for Putin sewage.

  6. Cassie of Sydney says:

    CL, direct pipe for Putin sewage.

    As opposed to your own conga line for Biden sewage.

  7. C.L. says:

    An interesting article.

    Schismatics for more than a thousand years, the Orthodox – God love them; and I mean that – have a few delusions they’ve never been willing to jettison. It started with Rome’s decision to make little Byzantium (ecclesiastically, a suffragan backwater) the ‘new Rome.’ The Patriarchs of Constantinople eventually came to believe that the city’s political status brought with it a pontifical status for them; or that, at best, Rome was simply ‘first among equals’.

    The Orthodox still maintain the debunked claim (some would call it a lie) that St Andrew founded the old diocese of Byzantium. Andrew was St Peter’s elder brother and the first to answer Christ’s call to apostleship. Get it? They were equals – and perhaps Andrew/Constantinople was even the principal. All of this was (and is) historical nonsense. Andrew didn’t found the see of Byzantium. The story was made up for a reason. St Peter was – ab initio – Prince of the Apostles and his see acknowledged as the ultimate locus of authority.

    See Francis Dvornik on the Myth of St. Andrew and Constantinople.

    (Dvornik was the twentieth century’s preeminent master of these subjects).

    I’ve always thought of the Orthodox as being too vertical, theologically. Their commitment to ancient liturgical rites, architecture and iconography is admirable – enviable even. But they have done next to no mission work or evangelisation and have little interest in the horizontal problems of social man. For the Latins – or Western Catholics – the opposite is true. They are too invested in the horizontal (the topical, the newsy, the now, the ‘pastoral’) and casual about the vertical; the disregard for liturgical rites (more ancient even than the East’s) is an example. The Orthodox are too proud of the gorgeous and the Latins too proud of the garrulous.

    Sympathy is warranted for a church cast out of the Second Rome and, for several decades, cast out of the Third. Exile breeds stubbornness. Stubbornness without humility, however, breeds self-deception. The adolescent Orthodox opposition to the filioque for 1400 years is only the best-known example of their tendency to cherish a quibble so as to preserve beloved otherness. That it has come to this – the Ecumenical Patriarch humbling himself to Washington – is beneath dignity.

  8. C.L. says:

    Interesting remarks by J.D. Vance on how neocon imbeciles have destroyed the world’s most ancient Christian societies (video clip):

    https://twitter.com/JDVance1/status/1783130615048487025

  9. Lee says:

    Foster: broken record; one trick pony.

  10. Rosie says:

    Very nice summation CL, particularly of the failure to evangelise.
    I know some Episcopalians converted to various forms of orthodoxy, must be difficult when churches are based on ethnicity.
    I noticed that Tim Andrews (Orthodox, possibly Russian) pointed out that Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel presided over a schismatic church he described as Nestorian and someone else suggested the good bishop would not appreciate that descriptor and that he was in communion with the something something church of the East.

  11. C.L. says:

    I’ve noticed that Bishop Emmanuel wears a Roman cardinal’s soutane and fascia (sash) – which is cheeky and rather odd.

    He isn’t really any kind of bishop, of course.

  12. NFA says:

    Here’s some more Putin propaganda for you Fosterite,

    Joe Biden Makes Sign of the Cross at Abortion Rally in Florida

  13. Rosie says:

    I didn’t think so.
    There seems to be a community of religious sisters attached to his church too.

  14. Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare says:

    CL, it was most interesting to read your account above re the varieties of ‘Orthodox’ historically extending from the schism. I have visited quite a few Orthodox monasteries in Greece, Crete and elsewhere. They are strikingly contemplative places, so beautiful, conveying to all comers the sense of the hierarchical search, a sheer godliness of purpose, rather than worldly concerns; and the churches certainly display that love of the gorgeous, whereas we in our modern era have consigned much that is tinsel to Christmas.

  15. C.L. says:

    Correction:

    I checked Wiki’s now lengthier entry for Mar Mari Emmanuel and it says he was consecrated in 2011 as a suffragan bishop for the ‘Ancient Church of the East’ (founded: 1964) – which is one of three claimants to being the legitimate manifestation of the ‘Church of the East,’ which is one of three manifestations of Nicene Eastern Christianity.

  16. C.L. says:

    Lizzie, the Catholic Church should never have abandoned – or tried to abandon – its Latin heritage. The Orthodox deserve respect for cherishing their rituals and ways – which they take extremely seriously. I’ve come to the view that a revival of the old Mass (and much else besides) is inevitable. Cultural and anthropological garbage that can’t go on – won’t.

  17. Rosie says:

    I love the iconography of Eastern rite churches.

    There is a beautiful Greek Catholic church in Rome (more or less opposite the church of St Nicholas in Prison) and some particularly stunning examples of Byzantine style mosaics in at least three of the churches of Palermo (one just outside).

  18. NFA says:

    what C.L. says: 25 April, 2024 at 2:01 pm

  19. cuckoo says:

    I’ve come to the view that a revival of the old Mass (and much else besides) is inevitable.

    May it be so. And may I, like Simeon, live to see it.

  20. P says:

    Simeon

    I thought of this today when praying the Fourth Joyful Mystery.
    (Luke 2:22-35)

  21. NFA says:

    More Putin propaganda,

    Joe Biden slobbers over a little girl then wonders (out loud) ‘how many times’ Trump has to prove Biden and his buddies ‘can’t be trusted’
    By Olivia Murray

    Joe Biden finally said what’s on all our minds, and posed this question before a little gaggle of ostensible supporters: “How many times does he [President Trump] have to prove we can’t be trusted?”

    It was just too perfect a Freudian slip, too embarrassing a gaffe; see below:

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