September
2
2010
From NRO‘s Mike Potemra comes this:
In a forthcoming book of public letters exchanged by Bernard-Henri Lévy and Michel Houellebecq, I ran across this quote from The Brothers Karamazov: “People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one’s heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us.”
We often discuss the mystery of evil; this comment from Dostoevsky challenges us to investigate the even more profound mystery of good. I don’t think the author was indulging in our own age’s cloying romanticization of childhood; I think he was pointing to the striking fact that somewhere, deep in our memories, almost at the vanishing point, there is an image of things being as they should be. Examine the human condition — fear, hatred, envy, struggle, war, heartbreak, disease, death — and you will soon realize how unusual and counterintuitive this sense of the existence of good really is. And yet, even in the condition the Calvinists unflinchingly describe as Total Depravity — the capital T in the Reformed TULIP — this sense persists.
It is the source of religion and love, and of the idea that transcending our state of war is not impossible.
In Christ,
+Fr Gregory
h/t: Chrys
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September
1
2010
Though it is counter-intuitive to say so, one of the central reasons that parish stewardship campaigns fail so is because we ask for money. Why this is, is the theme of this post. In a later post I explain how, in a practical way, a parish might want to go about meeting its financial needs. But for now I want to talk about why asking for money so often fails.
Again, I know that saying we fail because we ask for money is counter-intuitive–after all, the parish needs money to stay open, right? Yes but saying this begs the question: What is money? Because we don’t know the answer to this question, our attempts to begin a parish stewardship program invariably end up generating much less support–financial and otherwise–then they should.
Let me explain.
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August
27
2010
At a recent parish life conference sponsored by the Orthodox Church in America, I did a presentation on parish stewardship. In addition to introducing the audience to the mechanics of a stewardship program, I also presented a model of parish life based on three key adult developmental needs: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. In addition to their centrality to wholesome human development, these three factors also figure prominently in the current psychological literature on motivation. You can find a good summary of the literature in Daniel Pink’s TED presentation that I’ve included at the bottom of this post.
In my presentation I drew a distinction between simple and complex tasks. What might these look like in a parish?
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August
21
2010
Need I say more?
Happy Saturday!
In Christ,
+Fr Gregory
August
19
2010
The Old St Nicholas Greek Orthodox Christian Church
The Ground Zero Church/Mosque controversy has not been at the center of my attention. Shame on me maybe but there you go. There are some links at the end of this post for those who know less than I do about the matter.
Let me make a pastoral suggestion…
Let the mosque be built where ever the Muslim community can purchase land; it is their right under the Constitution.
It is also the right of those who disagree to move first and buy up the desired land or to outbid the Muslims who wish to build a mosque.
Alternative, let the mosque be built and let us, all the Orthodox Christian jurisdictions in America, re-build St Nicholas not in its former spot but across the street from the main entrance to the new mosque. And let us have services in St Nicholas–Vespers, Matins and the Divine Liturgy–everyday. Let St Nicholas become the “mother parish” of the American Orthodox Church with all the various jurisdiction committing themselves to making sure the church is always open and that in addition to the services it is staffed with men and women knowledgeable about Islam.
And let these men and women have a charge from ALL the bishops to evangelize the Muslims at this new mosque.
Just one priest’s idea but what do I know.
In Christ,
+Fr Gregory
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August
19
2010
- Image via Wikipedia
A common delusion in the spiritual life is that I am some how exempt, as Fr Adrian van Kaam once put the matter, exempt from the normal course of human development. Van Kaam argued that the source of this misunderstanding of my humanity is typically a real religious experience that I take up ideologically. In other words, instead of inspiring me to greater depths of self-knowledge and service to God and neighbor, I make my experience an end in itself.
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August
19
2010
A regular reader of Koinonia? Own a Kindle or planning on getting one soon? Why not bring both of these together and subscribe to Koinonia for your Kindle? It’s only $1.99 and you can subscribe here: Koinonia for the Kindle.
In Christ,
+Fr Gregory
August
17
2010
My friend Fr Michael Butler has his blog up and running. He’s started a critique of Elizabeth Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation: Orthodox Perspectives on Ecology (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 2009); I reviewed that book earlier this year for Acton Institute.
Fr Michael makes some very good points in his review. A personal favorite, “Taking to task people who live in the South for air-conditioning their homes strikes me simply as mean-spirited. She might as well take northerners to task for presuming to heat their homes in the winter.” AXIOS! Fr Michael, you are absolutely on target.
A central criticism I had with the book–and so St Vladimir’s Seminary Press for publishing it–was the author’s uncritical identification of her policy positions with the Tradition of the Church. To this Fr Michael has, rightly, pointed out that the author’s bias is broader than merely theological. It is geographical, cultural and economic.
It is the last of these that undermines the integrity of her argument. Again, Fr Michael:
[Her] call to reduce our quality of life, .. I find it hard to square with her concern for the poor and the weak, for whom learning “to do less with less” is a recipe for catastrophe. She says, on p. 19, “most environmental problems take their toll on the poor and weak long before they affect those who can afford to live far from the landfills, upwind of the factories or power plants, and well above sea level”. If the poor and the weak suffer in our current economy, their suffering in a reduced economy will be unspeakable. A vibrant economy helps everyone; poverty in the United States, for example, is incomparable with poverty found elsewhere in the world. The poor and weak will not be helped by making everyone else poorer and weaker.
Do go to Fr Michael’s blog and read the rest of his post (Living in God’s Creation) it is excellent.
In Christ,
+Fr Gregory
August
17
2010
There is to be sure a pervasive anti-Catholic mentality among Orthodox Christians. Denying this is pointless and foolish and I have called Orthodox Christians on it both publicly and privately. But identifying a problem is easier than understanding its causes. My pastoral experience suggests to me that while anti-Catholic rhetoric can reflect a lack of charity, it more often is rooted in theological/historical illiteracy.
That said, I don’t think that Orthodox anti-Catholicism is institutional . While individual Orthodox Christians–laity and clergy–are guilty of this sin, it is not the Orthodox Church as such which is anti-Catholic anymore than the Catholic Church as such is responsible for say the sacking of Constantinople (to pull an Orthodox favorite).
So yes, there is a pervasive anti-Catholic mentality among the Orthodox. But in a conversation about the theological differences between our two Churches this is a red herring. I do think that the psychological question of various attitudes of Orthodox Christians toward Roman Catholics is an important one–as is, by the way, the diversity of not always irenic Catholic attitudes toward the Orthodox–but it seems to me that we must be careful to not mix psychological and theological questions.
I do think that while Catholics are right to object to much of the rhetorical excesses of Orthodox apologists, they are often unaware of how not simply individual Catholics, but official Catholic policy have contributed to the hard feelings. Let me explain.
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I Also Write for the American Orthodox Insitute (AOI)- OCA summarizes Met. Hilarion’s visit September 1, 2010
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- Fr. Preble: Duties to the State from a Romanian Orthodox Church Perspective August 30, 2010
- Cardinal Pell of Australia: The Election August 30, 2010
- I Also Write for Acton Institute PowerBlog
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- Defining Devotion Down September 1, 2010
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