Quote by Isaac Newton

But it is not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions: since the Comets range over all parts of the heavens, in very eccentric orbits. For by that kind of motion they pass easily through the orbits of the Planets, and with great rapidity; and in their aphelions, where they move the slowest, and are detain'd the longest, they recede to the greatest distances from each other, and thence suffer the least disturbance from their mutual attractions. This most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets, and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being. And if the fixed Stars are the centers of other like systems, these, being form'd by the like wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One; especially since the light of the fixed Stars is of the same nature with the light of the Sun, and from every system light passes into all the other systems. And lest the systems of the fixed Stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other mutually, he hath placed those Systems at immense distances from one another.

Isaac Newton
1642 – 1727

Informal fallacy: Tu Quoque

 Tu Quoque

Latin: “You, also” or “you, too.”

Similar type:

Argumentum ad Hominem

Two wrongs make a right

This fallacy occurs when trying to deflect the charges against us by pointing to equally or greater charges against our accusers. This is a diversionary tactic aimed at disarming our opponent by accusing them without answering the charges posed. Whether the accuser is guilty of the same thing does not remove the truth of the original charge. It is like the Red Herring fallacy in that it attempts to lead the dogs off their trail and onto the originator’s trail.

Examples:

Sal had borrowed the pencil of Mahmood but remembered that he did not return it. He tells himself that it is okay to keep it since Mahmood would not have returned his pencil if he had borrowed it.

Jameer: “Did you hear about what those terrorists that killed all those people. That is wrong, maaaaaan!”

Murti: “Those terrorists are justified. After all, their land was taken from them and their people murdered. It is morally right for them to do what they do.”

Jameer: “Even when they kill children.”

Murti: “Yes! Payback is payback!”

Mularky was leaving a bakery and realized that he had underpaid the store proprietor by 15 dollars for his goods. He decides not to go back and give the 15 dollars to the store owner because the store owner would have not returned the money to him if situation was reversed.

Beavis: “Hey, you shouldn’t smoke. Smoking is bad for your health. I smoke because I can’t help it so don’t start.”

Bunker: “Hey, you smoke so how can you bother telling me not to smoke?”

Beavis: “I just told you that it is bad for your health.”

Bunker: “What about you?”

Beavis: “Well, I’m older than you, that’s because.”

Thanks to WWW.fallacyfiles.org

thanks to John Sanidopoulos

http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2012/04/logical-fallacies-infographic.html

thanks also to www.hebrew4christians.com

Informal fallacy: Anecdotal Fallacy

 Anecdotal Fallacy

definition of Anecdote: (based on anecdotes or hearsay: consisting of or based on secondhand accounts rather than firsthand knowledge or experience or scientific investigation)

This fallacy occurs when, despite the evidence, we put more attention to the claim of one person or a group that is contrary to the laws of probability or even common sense.

Example:

Antonio Danono had researched the purchase of a Volvo and found multiple studies that agreed that this was a sound automobile to purchase. Just before he was to go to the lot to buy the Volvo, he decided to tell a friend of his decision. The friend immediately dismisses the idea of the Volvo by saying he knows how much trouble his friend had with a Volvo… “He had trouble with the electrical, he was always in the shop, then the engine, etc.  On this one story only, Antonio decides that buying a Volvo is a bad idea and buys something else.

Example II:

Zulio Hanselvontruffenstauffen was approached by a sales agent about purchasing airline insurance that will pay for survival benefits should the plane crash. The sales person, stressing how important it is that Zulio’s family be compensated, pushed the issue. So Zulio purchased the insurance even though he knew that statistics of planes crashing are rare and all the folks that have purchased insurance have not had one incident of payouts because the planes they were on did not crash.

The point to make on this fallacy is that occurs because someone currently, present and in our face, with little reason or evidence (emotive or sensational), or a group with the same illogic, effects our psyche in such a way that we throw away good reason for the anecdotal. It appears that what is sometimes current, regardless of validity, becomes bigger and more powerful in our minds than the past and more researched.

St. Silouan the Athonite: "Unbelief Proceeds From Pride"

Thanks to John Sanidopoulos

http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2012/04/st-silouan-athonite-unbelief-proceeds.html

By St. Silouan the Athonite

Unbelief proceeds from pride. The proud person believes he will know everything with his mind and from science, but the knowledge of God is impossible for him, because God is known by the revelation of the Holy Spirit. God reveals Himself to humble souls. To these the Lord shows His works, which are unknowable to the mind.

An Encyclical Against Fanatical Evangelicals

Thanks to John Sanidopoulos for his work:

http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/search?updated-min=2012-01-01T00:00:00-05:00&updated-max=2013-01-01T00:00:00-05:00&max-results=50

 

My Beloved Christians,

Christ is Risen!

With the help of God we celebrated this year again the great days of the salvific Passion and the glorious Resurrection of our Lord.

However, despite the great blessings of these days, temptations were not absent. Thus, during Holy Week, the so-called Jehovah's Witnesses launched in the region of Mesogeion and Lavriotiki proselytizing activity among Christians, with the purpose of confusing and acquiring unsuspecting followers.

What is even more unfortunate is that along the same lines others were moving, purporting to be preachers of the Gospel and self-proclaimed Christians, that is, followers of the Lord Jesus; people that we are supposedly in dialogue with for mutual understanding, were the same "deceiving and deceived", in the middle of Renewal Week, in the area of Pallini and Pikermiou, sent phone messages by SMS, in an effort to attract "friends" who belong to the blessed body of our holy Church, to possibly include them in their religious organization, what they call "Abundant Life", in order to, as they write, "save people".

These, known by the name Evangelicals, have replaced theology with arbitrary reflection, the Mysteries and worship with sermons and religious songs, and prefer a Christianity that is based more on human reason than divine revelation.

They deny the Panagia and our Saints, the Mysteries and Icons, our blessed Tradition and Worship. They invite the Orthodox to celebrate without the Lamentation Hymns and the Epitaphios, without the Akathists' and the Paraklesis', without Holy Communion and the words of the Fathers, without honor towards the Martyrs and the righteous Ascetics, replacing all these things with dry religious rhetoric.

At a time when many who were deceived by the same and have felt betrayed and thirsty and are returning in groups to our Church - even in our own Metropolis in recent years many dozens have been catechized - they are trying to embrace innocent souls from the blessed baptismal font of our Orthodox Faith.

Our Church can perhaps appear absent from its pastoral calling, and can, as it has accepted state influence by an unhealthy relationship with the state, often seem inconsistent with the life of faith.

But no one can contest that our Church has preserved the authentic Christian teaching till today, as well as the wealth of its high theology and the conscience of true tradition.

With my contribution I wanted to draw everyone's attention beyond all impassioned fanaticism. It is unfair to ourselves to exchange the gold of our Orthodox Faith for the polished copper of pseudo-teachers, to replace the timeless treasure of the truth of Christ with baseless human interpretations of the Gospel.

Those who supposedly evangelize the word of God in the Greece of Martyrs, of Miracles, of Tradition, would do good to learn the Gospel not like they want with their outlandish spiritual weak mindedness, but as it has been lived by the ecumenical Church in its unbroken history, especially in this land.

This is not proselytizing, this is holy evangelism. This is what we need.

This ultimately will incite all of us to return to our Orthodoxy, all of us, even us who are born Orthodox, with our hearts and with our lives.

With warm blessings in the Resurrection and fatherly love,

THE METROPOLITAN

† NICHOLAS of Mesogaias and Lavreotiki

Quote by Gandhi ~ Intentions

Before the throne of the Almighty, man will be judged not by his acts but by his intentions. For God alone reads our hearts.
Mohandas Gandhi

Priestesses in the Church by C.S. Lewis

Priestesses in the Church?

by
C.S. Lewis

[Originally published under the title "Notes on the Way," in Time and Tide, Vol. XXIX (August 14, 1948), it was subsequently reprinted with the above title in the posthumous God in the Dock book, published by Wiilliam B. Erdmanns, Grand Rapids, MI).

"I should like Balls infinitely better," said Caroline Bingley, "if they were carried on in a different manner ... It would surely be much more rational if conversation instead of dancing made the order of the day."

"Much more rational, I dare say," replied her brother, "but it would not be near so much like a Ball." We are told that the lady was silenced: yet it could be maintained that Jane Austen has not allowed Bingley to put forward the full strength of his position. He ought to have replied with a distinguo. In one, sense conversation is more rational for conversation may exercise the reason alone, dancing does not. But there is nothing irrational in exercising other powers than our reason. On certain occasions and for certain purposes the real irrationality is with those who will not do so. The man who would try to break a horse or write a poem or beget a child by pure syllogizing would be an irrational man; though at the same time syllogizing is in itself a more rational activity than the activities demanded by these achievements. It is rational not to reason, or not to limit oneself to reason, in the wrong place; and the more rational a man is the better he knows this.

These remarks are not intended as a contribution to the criticism of Pride and Prejudice. They came into my head when I heard that the Church of England was being advised to declare women capable of Priests' Orders. I am, indeed, informed that such a proposal is very unlikely to be seriously considered by the authorities. To take such a revolutionary step at the present moment, to cut ourselves off from the Christian past and to widen the divisions between ourselves and other Churches by establishing an order of priestesses in our midst, would be an almost wanton degree of imprudence. And the Church of England herself would be torn in shreds by the operation. My concern with the proposal is of a more theoretical kind. The question involves something even deeper than a revolution in order.

I have every respect for those who wish women to be priestesses. I think they are sincere and pious and sensible people. Indeed, in a way they are too sensible. That is where my dissent from them resembles Bingley's dissent from his sister. I am tempted to say that the proposed arrangement would make us much more rational "but not near so much like a Church".

For at first sight all the rationality (in Caroline Bingley's sense) is on the side of the innovators. We are short of priests. We have discovered in one profession after another that women can do very well all sorts of things which were once supposed to be in the power of men alone. No one among those who dislike the proposal is maintaining that women are less capable than men of piety, zeal, learning and whatever else seems necessary for the pastoral office. What, then, except prejudice begotten by tradition, forbids us to draw on the huge reserves which could pour into the priesthood if women were here, as in so many other professions, put on the same footing as men? And against this flood of common sense, the opposers (many of them women) can produce at first nothing but an inarticulate distaste, a sense of discomfort which they themselves find it hard to analyse.

That this reaction does not spring from any contempt for women is, I think, plain from history. The Middle Ages carried their reverence for one Woman to a point at which the charge could be plausibly made that the Blessed Virgin became in their eyes almost "a fourth Person of the Trinity". But never, so far as I know, in all those ages was anything remotely resembling a sacerdotal office attributed to her. All salvation depends on the decision which she made in the words Ecce ancilla; she is united in nine months" inconceivable intimacy with the eternal Word; she stands at the foot of the cross." But she is absent both from the Last Supper and from the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost. Such is the record of Scripture. Nor can you daff it aside by saying that local and temporary conditions condemned women to silence and private life. There were female preachers. One man had four daughters who all "prophesied", i.e. preached. There were prophetesses even in Old Testament times. Prophetesses, not priestesses.

At this point the common sensible reformer is apt to ask why, if women can preach, they cannot do all the rest of a priest's work. This question deepens the discomfort of my side. We begin to feel that what really divides us from our opponents is a difference between the meaning which they and we give to the word "priest". The more they speak (and speak truly) about the competence of women in administration, their tact and sympathy as advisers, their national talent for "visiting", the more we feel that the central thing is being forgotten. To us a priest is primarily a representative, a double representative, who represents us to God and God to us. Our very eyes teach us this in church. Sometimes the priest turns his back on us and faces the East - he speaks to God for us: sometimes he faces us and speaks to us for God. We have no objection to a woman doing the first: the whole difficulty is about the second. But why? Why should a woman not in this sense represent God? Certainly not because she is necessarily, or even probably, less holy or less charitable or stupider than a man. In that sense she may be as "God-like" as a man; and a given women much more so than a given man. The sense in which she cannot represent God will perhaps be plainer if we look at the thing the other way round.

Suppose the reformer stops saying that a good woman may be like God and begins saying that God is like a good woman. Suppose he says that we might just as well pray to "Our Mother which art in heaven" as to "Our Father". Suppose he suggests that the Incarnation might just as well have taken a female as a male form, and the Second Person of the Trinity be as well called the Daughter as the Son. Suppose, finally, that the mystical marriage were reversed, that the Church were the Bridegroom and Christ the Bride. All this, as it seems to me, is involved in the claim that a woman can represent God as a priest does.

Now it is surely the case that if all these supposals were ever carried into effect we should be embarked on a different religion. Goddesses have, of course, been worshipped: many religions have had priestesses. But they are religions quite different in character from Christianity. Common sense, disregarding the discomfort, or even the horror, which the idea of turning all our theological language into the feminine gender arouses in most Christians, will ask "Why not? Since God is in fact not a biological being and has no sex, what can it matter whether we say He or She, Father or Mother, Son or Daughter?"

But Christians think that God Himself has taught us how to speak of Him. To say that it does not matter is to say either that all the masculine imagery is not inspired, is merely human in origin, or else that, though inspired, it is quite arbitrary and unessential. And this is surely intolerable: or, if tolerable, it is an argument not in favour of Christian priestesses but against Christianity. It is also surely based on a shallow view of imagery. Without drawing upon religion, we know from our poetical experience that image and apprehension cleave closer together than common sense is here prepared to admit; that a child who has been taught to pray to a Mother in Heaven would have a religious life radically different from that of a Christian child. And as image and apprehension are in an organic unity, so, for a Christian, are human body and human soul.

The innovators are really implying that sex is something superficial, irrelevant to the spiritual life. To say that men and women are equally eligible for a certain profession is to say that for the purposes of that profession their sex is irrelevant. We are, within that context, treating both as neuters.

As the State grows more like a hive or an ant-hill it needs an increasing number of workers who can be treated as neuters. This may be inevitable for our secular life. But in our Christian life we must return to reality. There we are not homogeneous units, but different and complementary organs of a mystical body. Lady Nunburnholme has claimed that the equality of men and women is a Christian principle. I do not remember the text in scripture nor the Fathers, nor Hooker, nor the Prayer Book which asserts it; but that is not here my point. The point is that unless "equal" means "interchangeable", equality makes nothing for the priesthood of women. And the kind of equality which implies that the equals are interchangeable (like counters or identical machines) is, among humans, a legal fiction. It may be a useful legal fiction. But in church we turn our back on fictions. One of the ends for which sex was created was to symbolize to us the hidden things of God. One of the functions of human marriage is to express the nature of the union between Christ and the Church. We have no authority to take the living and semitive figures which God has painted on the canvas of our nature and shift them about as if they were mere geometrical figures.

This is what common sense will call "mystical". Exactly. The Church claims to be the bearer of a revelation. If that claim is false then we want not to make priestesses but to abolish priests. If it is true, then we should expect to find in the Church an element which unbelievers will call irrational and which believers will call supra-rational. There ought to be something in it opaque to our reason though not contrary to it - as the facts of sex and sense on the natural level are opaque. And that is the real issue. The Church of England can remain a church only if she retains this opaque element. If we abandon that, if we retain only what can be justified by standards of prudence and convenience at the bar of enlightened common sense, then we exchange revelation for that old wraith Natural Religion.

It is painful, being a man, to have to assert the privilege, or the burden, which Christianity lays upon my own sex. I am crushingly aware how inadequate most of us are, in our actual and historical individualities, to fill the place prepared for us. But it is an old saying in the army that you salute the uniform not the wearer. Only one wearing the masculine uniform can (provisionally, and till the Parousia) represent the Lord to the Church: for we are all, corporately and individually, feminine to Him. We men may often make very bad priests. That is because we are insufficiently masculine. It is no cure to call in those who are not masculine at all. A given man may make a very bad husband; you cannot mend matters by trying to reverse the roles. He may make a bad male partner in a dance. The cure for that is that men should more diligently attend dancing classes; not that the ballroom should henceforward ignore distinctions of sex and treat all dancers as neuter. That would, of course, be eminently sensible, civilized, and enlightened, but, once more, "not near so much like a Ball".

And this parallel between the Church and the Ball is not so fanciful as some would think. The Church ought to be more like a Ball than it is like a factory or a political party. Or, to speak more strictly, they are at the circumference and the Church at the Centre and the Ball comes in between. The factory and the political party are artificial creations - "a breath can make them as a breath has made". In them we are not dealing with human beings in their concrete entirety only with "hands" or voters. I am not of course using "artificial" in any derogatory sense. Such artifices are necessary: but because they are our artifices we are free to shuffle, scrap and experiment as we please. But the Ball exists to stylize something which is natural and which concerns human beings in their entirety-namely, courtship. We cannot shuffle or tamper so much. With the Church, we are farther in: for there we are dealing with male and female not merely as facts of nature but as the live and awful shadows of realities utterly beyond our control and largely beyond our direct knowledge. Or rather, we are not dealing with them but (as we shall soon learn if we meddle) they are dealing with us.

Shamanic Practice and the Priesthood by Alice C. Linsley

Saturday, August 4, 2007

Shamanic Practice and the Priesthood

Alice C. Linsley

Tungus shaman with eyes veiled

A fundamental principle of cultural anthropology states that the study of existent primitive societies helps us to understand archaic societies and vice versa. This is especially the case when we compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. What do I mean?

There is no benefit in comparing practices of peoples belonging to totally different regions and language groups, yet this is done fairly often in politically correct textbooks to prove a point. This is intellectual dishonesty.

The other explanation for this sloppy approach is that those who apply it don’t know enough to realize the fallacy of the comparison. If this is the case, they should neither claim to be experts nor should they be recognized as experts.

To illustrate the comparison of apple and oranges, I’ll refer to a textbook that I’m presently using to teach World Religions. In the section on shamanism, the author generalizes that shamans are the priests of the ancient world and that since there are Japanese and Korean female shamans, there must have been female priests. This is of course the politically correct thing to say, but it is based on a false premise and employs an incorrect anthropological method. Here is the author’s reasoning in syllogistic form:

Premise: All shamans are priests.
Females are shamans.
Therefore female shamans are priests.

The problem here is that the premise is false. While there are ways in which shamans and priests are similar, the distinction between them is clear. Two of the oldest institutions known to man are the offices of priest and shaman. The first pertains to the Afro-Asiatic peoples and the second to the Altaic and Uralic peoples. While priests and shamans serve similar functions in their societies, their worldviews are very different.

Underlying shamanism is the belief that there are powerful spirits who cause imbalance and disharmony in the world. The shaman’s role is to determine which spirits are at work in a given situation and to find ways to appease the spirits. This may or may not involve animal sacrifice. Underlying the priesthood is belief in a single supreme Spirit to whom humans must give an accounting, especially for the shedding of blood. In this view, one Great Spirit (God) holds the world in balance and it is human actions that cause disharmony. The vast assortment of ancient laws governing priestly ceremonies, sacrifices, and cleansing rituals clarifies the role of the priest as one who offers animal sacrifice according to sacred law.

Another way in which the author misleads the reader is by comparing a trait (female shamans) in cultures in the Eastern Altaic language family with a trait (male priesthood) in cultures in the Afro-Asiatic language family. This is comparing apples to oranges and violates a fundamental principle of cultural anthropology.

Here is the oft-cited support for female shamans and goddesses: In Japan the Shinto goddess, Amaterasu, is said to protect the imperial family. She is associated with the sun. The author writes, “In contrast to many other religious systems, the goddess is associated with the sun....” He also notes that Japan and Korea have female shamans. What the author cites as an exception actually illustrates the norm. Let us investigate this case further.

Females nurture and are often taken as patronesses. Consider how the Church regards Mary, whose care for others is illustrated by her advising the servants at the wedding to “do as he tells you.” So it is not surprising that the imperial family should have a goddess as patron. Nor is it surprising that this goddess is associated with the sun since the sun is the emblem of Japan’s Imperial House (as is her moon brother's sword).

Where there are goddesses there are always female devotees, thus the female shamans in Japan and Korea. Such a phenomena has been observed surrounding the goddesses of ancient Greece and Rome as well. But these represent a worldview quite apart from the biblical worldview in which male and female are binary opposites and the male is regarded as superior to the female in strength and size, just as the Sun is larger than the Moon and the Moon's light is merely the reflection of the Sun. In God, the male condescends in love to His inferior so that she may share some of His glory.

What is Holy Tradition by Alice C. Linsley

Thursday, January 22, 2009

What is Holy Tradition?

Alice C. Linsley

In his essay "Man, Woman and the Priesthood", Bishop Kallistos recognizes that the nature and authority of Holy Tradition must be addressed in consideration of the question of women priests. He correctly notes that "Tradition is not to be equated with cultural stereotypes, with custom or social convention; there is a vital difference between 'traditions' and Holy Tradition."


What is Holy Tradition?

At the very least, we may say that Holy Tradition is the dogma received from the Elders and faithfully passed from generation to generation. As dogma it is not to be changed. The Saints stood for the unchanging Tradition no matter what pressures or persecutions were applied to them. Indeed many were martyred in defense of Holy Tradition.

We may also say that Tradition is a worldview in which God is central and humans are accountable to God for all things. (Later we will explore the cultural context from which this worldview emerges.) According to this worldview, God is ever at work fulfilling the divine promises made to the ancestors. If we pursue this we can't help but be struck by the Apostles' proclamation that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of God's promises to the Patriarchs, to the Prophets and to David.

If we consider the teaching of St. Paul, we may go so far as to say that the Tradition of the Elders is the single true and adequate view of Reality; that Reality is synonymous with the Christ through whom all things were made and are held together. Paul’s understanding is that Reality is hidden in Christ and has been revealed in His incarnation, death, resurrection and ascension. Paul's central message is Jesus Christ as the fullness (Pleroma) of all things in heaven and on earth, both invisible and visible.

The biblical worldview is a picture of Reality centered in the divine person of Jesus Christ. Scripture and Tradition agree that nothing exists outside of Christ, and what is exists by the virtue of His Life-giving Blood. When we understand Holy Tradition in this light we avoid the erroneous notion that it is something akin to "best business practices". Holy Tradition is a Person.


What is the value of keeping the Tradition?

Among the Israelites, tradition was a social value, each father being responsible for teaching his children. Every time the Israelites failed to adhere to tradition, they found themselves in trouble. So it is that St. John of Damascus writes, "I beseech the people of God, the holy nation, to hold fast to the tradition of the Church... for the gradual erosion of what has been handed down to us will bring down the whole fabric in ruins."

The 'whole fabric' to which John of Damascus refers in his treatise on Holy Images is a specific and historic worldview with identifiable characteristics, including reverence for the ancestors. It is the worldview born of the experience of Afro-Asiaticswho lived long ago. They passed their tradition from generation to generation with great precision because they knew that they were preserving something of great value. Today we may drink of their wisdom in the Bible.

The value of keeping the Tradition of the Elders can be traced back to Israel’s African ancestors. An “ancestor” in traditional African religion is someone who died a good death, practiced the traditions of his people and faithfully transmitted them to his descendants. In this patriarchal context, a first-born son is most likely to become an ancestor because he is able to maintain the chain of the generation in a long genealogy. So, Jesus Christ, the only Begotten of the Eternal Father, delivers to us Holy Tradition and He heads a long chain of spiritual descendents.

As is still evident among primitive tribal groups, tradition entails the collective wisdom of many generations and the revealed wisdom granted by the Creator. The arrogance of the Enlightenment permeates Western civilization so thoroughly that we are astonished to discover that our empiricism and technological advances have not made us wiser than our primitive ancestors who intimately knew the seasons, accurately read the stars and constellations, and were attuned to Nature's messages from the Creator. If this were not true, St. Paul could hardly have accused the ancients of being without excuse since God has made known in Creation what is most fundamental for humanity to know about the Creator.

St. Ephrem the Syrian has expressed this most poetically. He wrote, "If God had not wished to reveal Himself to us there would have been nothing in creation that would be able to say anything at all about Him" (Hymns of Faith 44.7). He expanded on this, proclaiming, "This Jesus has so multiplied His symbols that I have fallen into their many waves" (Hymns on Nisibis 39.17). And finally, he confesses, "Wherever you look, God's symbol is there; wherever you read, there you will find his types. For by Him all creatures were created, and He stamped all His possessions with His symbols when He created the world" (Hymns on Virginity 20.12).


Is Holy Tradition the same as Holy Scripture?

It is clear that the preservation of the Tradition of the Elders is not dependent upon the invention of writing. Tradition is not the same as Scripture though Scripture presents the wisdom that humanity needs to avoid deception, destruction and suffering. The assumption that Tradition and Scripture are identical entities is a Protestant perception that fails to express the fullness of Christ and the Church. Certainly the Church receives the Scriptures as authoritative, but what the biblical writers speak of is beyond Scripture and Tradition.

Both Scripture and Tradition speak of Reality as being in Christ and very specifically in the life-giving Blood of Christ. For St. Paul, the “pleroma” is the manifestation of the benefits of Jesus’ timeless Blood. The Apostle Paul refers to the Blood of Jesus no less than twelve times in his writings. Because God makes peace with us through the Blood of the Cross, he urges “Take every care to preserve the unity of the Spirit by the peace that binds you together” (Eph. 4:3).

Jesus Christ is the Tradition that we receive and His symbols are written in Creation and in the Book from Genesis to Revelation. The Gnostics used “pleroma” to describe the metaphysical unity of all things, but Paul uses the term to speak about how all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ in bodily form (Col. 2:9). This means that the Church can expect no change in Holy Tradition, only the consummation of all things when Christ returns.


The Priesthood and the Pleromic Blood

Paul's understands that the Blood of Jesus constitutes the Pleroma, the single true all-encompassing Reality. Holy Tradition expresses this Reality. The Church is recognized where Tradition is upheld through apostolic preaching, right doctrine and the dominical sacraments, both of which are constitued by the Blood of Jesus with Water and the Spirit (the Three Witnesses of which St. John speaks).

The whole fabric of Holy Tradition is one with the Pleromic Blood of Jesus Christ. No where is this more evident than in the institution of the priesthood which is essentially the Messiah Priesthood. The Messianic Priesthood is unlike any other religious institution. It at once makes distinctions in its binary character and brings unity through its power to redeem and cleanse. It makes distinction between God and humanity and it makes distinction between male and female. The distinction in both cases addresses the primeval universal anxiety toward blood, an anxiety which many cultural anthropologists have observed.

Underlying the priesthood is the belief that humans must give an accounting to God, especially for the shedding of blood. The priesthood is intrinsically linked to blood. The priest is the functionary who addresses the guilt and dread that accompany the shedding of blood.

There are two types of blood anxiety: blood shed by killing and blood related to menstruation and birthing. To archaic peoples both types were regarded as powerful and potentially dangerous, requiring priestly ministry to deal with bloodguilt through animal sacrifice and to deal with blood contamination through purification rites.

Not a single female in the Bible served in a priestly role. We can argue a case for women deacons, but the deacon is not intrinsically linked to blood. Despite the efforts of many to create an egalitarian reality, we find no basis in Tradition or Scripture upon which to argue for women priests. The Bible does not say that women can be priests because the binary distinctions that frame the biblical worldview make “woman priest" ontologically impossible.

The Scriptures do not forbid women priests because the very idea of women sacrificing animals in the Temple was beyond imagination. It would have been regarded as an affront to the Divine order.

It was a bloody business when a priest sacrificed a lamb, so much so that the carcasses were burned outside the walls. It was a bloody business giving birth to children, so much so that the birthing hut was set outside the community. In the ancient Afro-Asiatic worldview from which Holy Tradition emerges, the two bloods were ordained for different purposes and could never share the same space. C.S. Lewis presents the grotesqueness of women priests in his depiction of the savage slaying of Aslan by the White Witch. If you wonder why the image is so troubling, consider that woman was made to bring forth life, not to take it.

The egalitarianism that prompts clergy to keep talking about women priests is not consistent with the Biblical worldview. God’s order in creation is binary in structure, distinguishing East from West, Night from Day, and Male from Female, yet holding them together as a single Reality (pleroma) in Jesus Christ. The order exists to orient humans to Reality, to keep us from becoming lost, to prevent us from confusing life and death. In this binary worldview we are given two coordinates. As anyone familiar with orienteering can explain, you must have at least two coordinates to determine your location. And it is senseless to speak of either of the coordinates as superior to the other.

Two coordinates enable us to know our earthly space and time. So God has given us the sun and the moon, the planets and the constellations to orient us. God has given us the sunrise in the East and the sun set in the West in orient us. Out of deference to the Creator whose emblem, the Sun, claims the heavens from East to West, Afro-Asiatic chiefs maintained their two wives on a North-South axis. These households marked the northern and southern boundaries of their territories.

God also has given us the Three Witnesses: the Water, the Blood, and the Spirit that we might know the Blessed Trinity. In Genesis, two coordinates signals a geographical territory whereas three signals the Kingdom of God.

The Church is not a democracy in which leaders may change Tradition according to popular consensus. No councils, even ecumenical councils, can change God’s order in creation. This is God’s message to Job. Who do we think we are to question what God has established? Were we there when God created the world and all that is in it?

Why Women Were Never Priests by Alice C. Linsley

Why Women Were Never Priests

by Alice C. Linsley

A convert to Orthodoxy from being an Episcopalian priestess, Ms. Linsley renounced her priestly order in March 2004. She left the Episcopal ministry on the Sunday that Gene Robinson was consecrated and has not entered an Episcopal church since. After years of studying the question of women priests she is persuaded that this innovation is the root cause of the schism within Anglicanism. She is also the author of the excellent blog: Just Genesis.

The Messianic priesthood of Jesus Christ is the true and single Form[1] of the Priesthood. Every priest, either living before Christ or after Christ’s appearing, stands as a sign to this one priesthood. The priesthood is unique (not to be confused with the office of shaman) and it is impossible to change it in any essential way.

All attempts to change the priesthood, such as developed out of Protestant theology or the ordination of women, corrupt the sign so that it no longer points to Messiah. The Church itself has no authority to change the ontological pattern since the Priesthood existed before the Church and was not established by the Apostles.

The first priest mentioned in the Bible is Melchizedek who lived during the time of Abraham. The author of Hebrews tells us that Melchizedek is a type pointing to Jesus as the true Form/Priest:

“This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the Presence behind the veil, where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus, having become High Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek" (Hebrews 6:13-20).

Melchizedek represents the Messianic priesthood, but he doesn’t represent the beginning of the priesthood. Cain and Abel acted as priests when they offered sacrifices in Genesis 4. This means that the priesthood was not established by the Apostles, it existed long before them. According to Saint John Chrysostom, a Church Father, the priesthood “is ranked among heavenly ordinances. And this is only right, for no man, no angel, no archangel, no other created power, but the Paraclete himself ordained this succession…”.[2]

If the Apostles are not the source of the Christian priesthood, what is the source? It can only be the eternal Christ, who is the eternal Form/Priest. Through Jesus Christ the eternal truth signified by the Priesthood comes into focus. He alone is Priest, fulfilling atonement through His own shed blood. The Priesthood therefore, is necessarily tied to the Blood of Jesus Christ. Where people deny the saving nature of Jesus’ Blood there can be no true Priesthood. A priest who denies the necessity of repentance and trust in Jesus’ Blood as the means of forgiveness, is a false priest.

What can we say about the Priesthood?

First, we can say that the priesthood is verifiably one of the oldest religious offices in the world, traced back to at least 7000 B.C. It emerges out of the Afro-Asiatic civilization which, at its peak, extended from the Atlantic coast of modern Nigeria to the Indus River Valley. The Brahmanas (Hindu Priest Manuals) [3] express the richness of this institution. The “priest” offered sacrifice at fire altars which they constructed according to geometry and at the proper seasons which they determined through astronomy. The Vedas also reveal the danger of a priestly order that becomes too powerful and self-serving, as happened also with the priests of Jesus’ time. When the True Priest appeared among them, they were unable to recognize Him because their understanding of the office of the Priest had become corrupted.

The priest emerges out of primeval perceptions of blood as the substance of life, purity and righteousness. We are able to verify that this conception is very old because it has a wide linguistic dispersion.[4] The Hebrew root “thr” = to be pure, corresponds to the Hausa/Hahm (West Africa) “toro” = clean, and to the Tamil (India) “tiru” = holy. All are related to the proto-Dravidian (Pakistan) “tor” = blood. These cognates point to an ancient priesthood for which purity, holiness and blood are related concepts.

From the dawn of time humans recognized that life is in the blood. They saw offspring born of water and the blood. They knew that the loss of blood could bring death. Killing animals in the hunt also meant life for the community. They sought ways to ensure that their dead entered life beyond the grave, especially their rulers who could intercede for them before the Deity.

This is why peoples around the world covered their dead rulers in red ochre dust as early as 80,000 years ago.[5] This red dust is a sign pointing to the Pleromic Blood of Jesus.[6]

God planted eternity in our hearts so we innately know that Christ’s Blood is not only redemptive, but also the source of our life. This is what St. Paul calls “the mystery of Christ”. As his second missionary journey, Paul preached that, “in Him [Jesus Christ] we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

He also wrote:

“In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times, He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth” (Ephesians 1:7-10).

These words follow Paul’s explanation of the saving work of Jesus Christ in Ephesians:

"But now in Christ Jesus, you that used to be so far apart from us have been brought very close, by the blood of Christ. For He is peace between us, and has made the two into one and broken down the barrier which used to keep them apart, actually destroying in His own person the hostility caused by the rules and decrees of the Law. This was to create one single man in Himself out of the two of them and by restoring peace through the Cross, to unite them both in a single body and reconcile them with God. In His own person He killed the hostility… Through Him, both of us have in one Spirit our way to come to the Father" (Eph. 2:13-14).

Second, we know that the priest functions to mitigate blood guilt. Anthropologists have noted that there is considerable anxiety about shed blood among primitive peoples.[7] Among the Afro-Asiatics, the priesthood served to relieve blood guilt and anxiety and to perform rites of purity. The priest addresses impurities by seeking purification through blood sacrifice. He also addresses anxiety about shed blood through blood sacrifice.

Third, we know that no woman served as a priest in any official capacity. Women didn’t enter the area of the altar where blood was offered in animal sacrifice. We know this because the Afro-Asiatics, from whom we received the priestly office, believed that the blood shed by men and women were never to mix or even be in the same place. Sacred law prohibited the blood shed in killing (male) and the blood shed in giving life (female) to share the same space.

This binary worldview supports clear distinction between life and death.

The same distinction of life-taking and life-giving is behind the law that forbids boiling a young goat in its mother’s milk (Deut. 14:21).

The only Christian denomination to have women priests is the Episcopal Church. Not surprisingly, the Episcopal Church also has a Seminary President, Katharine Ragsdale, who recently stated in a sermon:

"Let me hear you say it:

Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done.

Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done.

Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done."[8]

Women Leaders in the Church are Never Priests

In this essay we have discussed the origins and nature of the priesthood. Holy Tradition and Scripture reveal numerous women in positions of leadership; Deborah and Huldah among them. Daughters of priests are remembered as great women also, Asenath and Zipporah among them. However not a single women can be identified as a priest in Holy Tradition or the Bible. It is clear then that women have never been priests and that the nature of the priesthood from the beginning has been such that it pertains only to men.

So called “priestesses” of ancient Greece were not priests at all. They were seers who pronounced oracles in a trace state, like shamans. Likewise, Shinto “priests” are also shamans as they deal with the spirits. Use of the term “priest” in both cases reveals ignorance about the different worldviews of priests and shamans [8], an ignorance (or bias?) that pervades 20th century academia.

God has not changed the office of the priesthood. It survives in Christian communities that preserve catholic Holy Tradition. [9] When the priesthood is held high and priests live above contamination, the world is drawn to Jesus Christ. This happens because there is only one Priesthood: the Messianic Priesthood. There is only one Priest: Jesus Christ, and there is only one Blood, Christ’s pleromic blood which is the life of the world. St. Paul expresses it this way:

“There is one Body, one Spirit, just as one hope is the goal of your calling by God. There is one Lord, one Faith, one baptism, and one God and father of all, over all, through all and within all” (Eph. 4:4-5).

As C.S. Lewis has written:

“With the Church, we are farther in: for there we are dealing with male and female not merely as facts of nature but as the live and awful shadows of realities utterly beyond our control and largely beyond our direct knowledge. Or rather, we are not dealing with them but (as we shall soon learn if we meddle) they are dealing with us.” (From C.S. Lewis’ “Priestesses in the Church?”)

NOTES

1. Plato taught that there is but one true Form of all observable entities and this Form exists in eternity (outside of time and space). Species of natural objects observed in the world are merely reflections of their true Forms. We know what trees are because one Form/Tree exists, which our souls intuitively recognize.

2. St. John Chrysostom, On the Priesthood, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press (1977), p. 70.

3. The Brahamas are Vedic texts that provide instruction for Hindu priests. These texts give detailed instructions about sacrifices offered at altars of fire. They also make it evident that the Priest is a close associate of the King and the King relies heavily upon the Priests’ services. This is evident in the Priest-King relationship that we find n the Old Testament. For more on this, see Bujor Avari’s book India: The Ancient Past, pp. 77-79.

4. Anthropologists have discovered that the wider the dispersion of a culture trait the older the trait.

5. Sophisticated mining operations in the Lebombo Mountains of southern Africa reveal that thousands of workers were extracting red ochre which was ground into powder and used in the burial of nobles in places as distant as Wales, Czechoslovakia and Australia. Anthropologists agree that this red powder symbolized blood and its use in burial represented hope for the renewal of life.

6. “Pleroma” means the fullness or totality of all things. Blood symbolizes life. Since the Blood of Jesus works to bring life both in time and in eternity, the Blood of Jesus is perceived to be the original source of life and the means of eternal life.

7. This has been discussed in many of the great monographs: Benedict’s Patterns of Culture, Lévi-Strauss’ The Raw and the Cooked, and Turnbull’s The Forest People.

8. Read the full report on President Ragsdale here: http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=10231

9. To read about the difference between the worldview of the Priest and the Shaman, go here: http://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com/2007/08/shamanic-practice-and-priesthood.html

10. To read more about Holy Tradition surrounding the Messianic Priesthood, go here.

Thanks to John Sanidopoulos

http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2010/05/why-women-were-never-priests.html

Vatican II issues to disturb and some comments...

Want to again thank John Sanidopoulos for his hard work and postings.



http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2010/06/disturbing-innovations-of-post-vatican.html





Six Marks of the
Novus Ordo Mass (or Right-thinking Believers Scrutinize the New Mass)
by Father Stephen Somerville, S.T.L.
Father Somerville is a former member of ICEL now solidly committed to the Latin Tridentine Mass.
At the Good Friday trial of Jesus, Pontius Pilate the governor asked Jesus, "What is truth?" To this day, people are still wondering about truth, and where to find it. When St. John the Apostle wrote the introduction to this Gospel, he said to us, "In the beginning was the Word, the Word of God ... and (this) Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we (Apostles) saw His glory ... full of grace and truth." Jesus, the Word of God, is full of truth. We must constantly refer to Jesus to know the Truth.
In the very first prayer of the Roman Canon of the Mass, we pray God the Father to bless our sacrifice which is offered for the whole Church, including all right-thinking believers and teachers of the Catholic and Apostolic Faith.
Thus, in every Mass, we recall that Jesus is full of truth, and has given us a faith that makes us right- thinking believers. Let me add one article of this Catholic faith of ours. This article or truth is spelled out in the Secret Prayer of one of the Sunday Masses after Pentecost. This truth is that God has enacted one perfect sacrifice, that of Jesus His Son, in place of all the victims that were sacrificed under the Old Testament before Christ. We pray God to receive this one perfect sacrifice and to sanctify it in order to help us all to attain salvation.
Now I sum up briefly: Jesus, full of truth, has given us a right-thinking Faith that says the Mass is a perfect sacrifice of Jesus' very Body and Blood, that replaces all the Old Testament sacrifices of lambs and bullocks and so forth.
Now I want to remind you, in sadness, that those who are called Protestant do not accept this notion that the Mass or Eucharist is a true, unbloody sacrifice of the real Body and Blood of Christ. For Protestants, the Eucharist or communion service is merely a religious meal that is a symbol and memorial of the Last Supper of Jesus. It is not a true victim-sacrifice offered by an actual priest. This contradiction of our Catholic faith means that we cannot consider our Protestant neighbors to be "right-thinking believers," even though we may love them and pray for them. What is more, you know that there are other notions or articles of Catholic Faith that Protestants do not accept. Examples are the Seven Sacraments, the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Holy Mary, and the Infallibility of the Pope.
But let us return to the Mass. In 1969, Max Thurian, an important Protestant theologian who helped found the ecumenical Taize monastery in France, made this statement: "It is now theologically possible for Protestants to use the same Mass as Catholics." Protestants offering the same Mass as Catholics? How is this possible? How can we all be "right-thinking believers"? How can Protestants in honest conscience accept to offer the Catholic Mass?
To answer these questions, remember that the year is 1969. The Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church has ended only 4 years earlier, in 1965. The Liturgy Commission set up by the Pope in early 1964 was mandated to prepare a reform of the Mass and all the other liturgy services of the Catholic Church. This commission, called Con- silium for short, did in fact reform the Mass, quite promptly, and the Pope, who was Paul VI, did approve this new order or Novus Ordo of Mass on April 3, 1969. This is the New English Mass that is so well known and used in Catholic churches today around the world. It is quite different in many respects, large and small, from the traditional Catholic Latin Mass, even though it is recognizably similar to a Catholic Mass. We must ask ourselves: How should right- thinking Catholic believers evaluate this New Mass of Vatican II? What should we ourselves, as right-thinking Catholic believers, think of the Novus Ordo Catholic Mass, the Vatican II Mass, the neo-Catholic Mass?
To answer this serious question, let us briefly describe the New Mass in the language of expert theologians and liturgists. First, they describe it as ECUMENICAL. This means designed to foster unity and agreement with non-Catholic beliefs. Thus it becomes important to "accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative". One must emphasize what we believe in common, and tone down the beliefs we do not share. The New Mass has changed many prayers, especially the Collects, to speak less of Hell, less of eternal punishment, less of the world as the enemy of God, less of the need to fast, and so on.
The Novus Ordo Mass is next described as ANTIQUARIAN. This means emphasizing the ancient, early, original features of the Mass in the time of the Church Fathers, that is, the first four to six centuries. It means recovering supposed early simplicity of worship, and other primitive qualities. It means diminishing or removing the enrichments of the Catholic Mass that were developed in medieval times, in renaissance or baroque times, in post-reformation times. It means a more austere, bare- bones, elemental kind of worship. Some of these simplifications include less bows or genuflections by the priest, shorter prayers, less use of bells and incense, less feasts of saints, less statues and holy water, and so forth. This then is the antiquarian aspect of the new liturgy.
The third characteristic is to be COMMUNITY- BASED. Now the community is the horizontal dimension, that is, around us. The alternative is the vertical dimension, that is, above us. It means pointing to God, to Heaven, to the angels. The Novus Ordo tends to emphasize us more than God, here more than hereafter, goodness in human society rather than in the mystical body of Christians. Notice that new churches, that is, Mass buildings, are wider and lower, with little or no tower that points up. Notice the big entrance lobby for people to meet and chat, horizontally, rather than to pray to Heaven, vertically. Notice the new sign of peace, when the congregation has a surge of hand-shaking. The New Mass, then, is community-based.
The next element is that of a DEMOCRATIC church. This means literally government by the people, rather than by priests and bishops and Pope, which is hierarchic, not democratic. It means that the Mass should be led not just by the priest, but by many lectors or readers taking turns, by many communion ministers, including women and even teenagers, by many ushers or so-called ministers of hospitality, and above all by a parish liturgy committee that decides the style and structure of the various Masses. The cantor or leader of song is another player on the team of the democratic liturgy.
A fifth trait of Novus Ordo is to be DESACRALIZED. This means rendered less sacred. It means signs of reverence or mystery, of transcendence or Heaven, should be reduced to a minimum or removed. Some of these eliminations and purgings of the Mass were mentioned earlier, under the antiquarian quality of keeping the gestures etc. of only the early age of the Church. Other trimming of the sacred we see in no more communion railing, no more Latin language, simpler and less ornate vestments, and in priests who do not even wear some of the proper vestments, but remain more casual. Many priests no longer wear clerical attire even outside the Mass. They celebrate Mass facing the people, not God. They act more as a chairman or presider of a meeting, rather than as a sacred Minister before God. This is liturgy desacralized.
The sixth and last adjective to describe the Vatican II Mass is PROTES- TANTIZED, that is, harmonized more with Protestant views and practices. This is a theological area, that is, it touches on what we are taught and do believe about God, about the Sacraments, the Church and so forth. Because of the ecumenical urge, and also the urge of modernist heresy, the designers of the new liturgy have certainly made Catholic worship more Protestant in tone and content. We could call this element deviance, because liturgists are deviating from traditional Catholic belief. Here are some specific examples:
The doctrine of the Real Presence is toned down, that is, the reality of Jesus' Body and Blood under the appearance of bread and wine. Thus the tabernacle is off in a corner or even in a separate room, out-of-sight. One receives Communion not kneeling and on the tongue, but standing and in the hand. One must fast not three hours or from midnight, but only one hour. The word transubstantiation is omitted from documents on the Mass.
The practice and doctrine of Confession, almost unknown among Protestants, is less and less surviving among Catholics, and the risk of sacrilegious communions is now chronic, that is, Holy Communions received in the state of mortal sin or without prior absolution by the priest.
The ministerial role of the priest is much diminished. We spoke of this in the democratic emphasis in the new Mass. The priest is actually a man chosen apart and made sacred for a holy task of offering worship and sacrifice, even if only few or no faithful are present. But the new priest concept is more that of a functionary, an elected or appointed official, a presider or master of ceremonies, even sometimes an entertainer. No wonder there are few young men today answering the call to be such an uninspiring, humanist kind of priest.
We already noted that the sacrificial character of the Mass has been largely lost. The Mass is merely a "sacrifice of praise" now, in offering of holy words to God. One quality of true sacrifice is to be propitiatory, that is, appeasing God's anger over our sins. If we believe that Jesus did this more than adequately on Good Friday for all time, or if we believe that God is too kind and loving to demand atonement for sin, or if we believe that God is too magnificent to be offended by our puny sins, then we have lost the Catholic Faith, and, in this case, a propitiatory sacrifice would make no sense.
We have now seen the six marks of the New Order of Catholic Mass: ecumenical, antiquarian, community-based, democratic, desacralized, and deviant or Protestantized. By contrast with Catholic tradition up to 1960 and before Vatican II, it features numerous changes, reversals, and opposites, and it is hardly a Mass for right- thinking believers. It makes us understand why a strong and holy movement to preserve and restore the traditional Latin Catholic Mass sprang up very soon after Vatican Council II. It is sad to report that this traditional Catholic movement is ignored, or suppressed, or combated fiercely by the Novus Ordo establishment. I hope you will follow up this short meditation by constant prayer, and generous reading and study, so that we all become or remain "right-thinking believers," and disciples of traditional, Catholic Truth.
Note:
1. D. Bonneterre, The Liturgical Movement, p. 100.



My thoughts on this as a layman:

Not sure people outside the church or even inside of the Church of Christ understand the importance of the Divine Liturgy, not only a source of spiritual food, but also a source of real beauty that helps souls. To understand the Liturgy, we must understand that it is both technical and simplistic. I am not an expert on these things. I do believe that Jesus Christ gave His Church some very potent weapons against heresy as well as evil, but we must be always vigilant that we do not lose this because of slight- of- hand and battle of words,  semantic twists. The Catholics changed their mass, while we Orthodox have preserved it. Why? And does it matter? After all, is it not all the same?

I have to say that if words or ways do not matter and traditions do not matter, then why have them at all? Why not do whatever we want in Church or even when applying this same reasoning while playing the game of baseball. Let’s make a ball really a strike and let’s make an out really an in for the player to take the ball that he catches into the nearest Inn for a beer. We see that some things are better left alone and if the game of baseball started changing the wording, the game would soon have no meaning. I can’t get into all the technical details of the Liturgy, but let me say this, there is a determined and pure beauty to it as it is. Why did the Catholics change their mass, or at least the Vatican II folks  (some still participate in the old Roman mass)? The best reason I can think of (if this is true as well: that certain protestants were involve in Vatican II formation), is that the ecumenical movement is the goal. In order to attract the most possible people to the mass, to make it more inclusive, so that these others do not feel threatened like the Protestants, the Hindus, the Muslims, Judaists, Buddhists, Taoists, etc., then this seems the way to do it. But let’s look at how they did it. In the most stealthy way possible, with the stretching, modifying, and removing words so that, on first blush, it appears kosher or pure. If I were an enemy of the Church of Christ, I would attack the very same thing and of the biggest Church body. Let me fiddle with the words enough, so that clergy and laymen think we are being more inclusive and progressive, when in reality we have destroyed the mass and the Spirit of God in the process. The Liturgy is for the people, for their very core being… their return in purity towards God. If the mass has truly been destroyed would we not have problems in the Catholic Church today and maybe western society? I think it strange that a Catholic priest would wear a pagan outfit or invite Hindu priestesses in the Holy place, and others to dance half-nude,  place a statue of the Buddha (Gautama), on The Alter or near The Alter.  Why would a priest dress as if his position is trivial and not the representative of Christ Himself. Why wear a bozo the clown outfit? Why make a circus of the Mass? A circus is a circus and different from Mass. And Why did Pope John Paul II try to bind Christianity with Hinduism by his receiving Hindu ash on his head and other such strange things with other faiths? Other such accounts with other religions and philosophies are posted as well with John Paul II. What it is the purpose of these things? They seem a strange ploy of politics and of a move towards a united nation of religions or one religion to please all as if that could ever be possible. Have you tried to please everyone? It is not feasible or logical to try to please everyone because in the end you will fail; it is an impossibility.

I am not disparaging other faiths or philosophies. This is not the point of these thoughts. For it follows that what is truth in these faiths/philosophies outside of Christ’s Church should be respected and are perhaps good custodians to those who are humble and pure; however, truth is truth and all the faiths and philosophies of the world cannot be true at the same time: they can all be false, but they cannot all be true. The point remains that whatever is, is. Aristotle’s first law of identity states that Divine Liturgy is the Divine Liturgy. Christianity is Christianity and Hinduism is Hinduism. The Catholic Mass is the Catholic Mass. Aristotle’s  third law of the excluded middle states that something must either be or not be. Christianity is true or Hinduism is true, Christian or not Christian. So it follows that the Catholic mass is or it is not, there is no middle here. It is either Protestant or it is Catholic.

Folks will debate why should the Priest face East towards The Alter and why instead not face the people? Did Jesus pray to the Father? Is the Priest as the representative of Christ not praying to God the Father by facing The Alter. See the subtle difference? Why should the priest face the people? If the priest faces the people is he not making prayers and supplications to the people instead of God? It may seem trivial to some, but look at what happened to Saul when he listened to the people rather than God. Is the Christian faith now based on the amount of members we have? Or a progressive political agenda? Let us not confuse Christianity with politics nor should we leave the Church to flighty feelings. The real Christian Church has thrived under persecution and came out triumphant. Take a look at the Orthodox Church in Stalinist Russia or under 400 years of occupation under the Ottoman Turks. Perhaps as C.S. Lewis said that the Church begins to die in times of good-cheer and abundance and only thrives under persecution. St. Basil the great said on facing East… “For instance, we all pray facing East, but few realize that we do this because we are seeking Paradise, our old fatherland, which God planted in the East in Eden….” Facing the west is symbolic of the technological world of the west and that our hope lies here.  Hope in a world of inventions, of men and his measure of the rational and scholastic humanism, Darwinian socialism and a loss of the mystical and internal. Alas, hospitals become our cathedrals and churches and doctors our priests. We should meditate to reconcile our base self with our eternal divine self. The world of technology will cease one day, but God and His energies will never cease.

As a Greek Orthodox Christian… the only person allowed near The Alter during Liturgy is the Priest, the deacon, the alter-boys and other clergy. We are not allowed to go there and it is shut after the Liturgy to make the point that this alter is Holy. It is not a place to eat lunch or to sit on casually. This makes sense to me. As a Protestant, I know, it does not matter. But as to an Orthodox Christian it does matter. Do you think that Solomon’s temple was to be put together any old way or without reverence and honor--- please, such a thing is axiomatic, at least to me. Should The Alter just be a regular table that I brought from my house so we all sit around it and tell jokes? The Alter is distinct as it should be. As we are distinct from God, The Holy.

Why are Catholics looking to become more Protestant or to become ecumenical with other world religions and philosophies? In the process of trying to bring everyone to the table, as we should always do, as Christ did, we should never sell our own faith and creeds and Divine Liturgy (Mass) short for the satisfaction of everyone. Because to do so is to lose the faith and not be Christian and all. There already is a Universalist/Unitarian assembly of people but they are not Christian, are not traditionally Christian, Orthodox, Catholic, or Apostolic. Sorry. It just is not so. if you feel that Christianity is too exclusive, then you do not understand that anything with any creeds and beliefs has a standard for its beliefs and practices and those that fall away from these creeds are outside of it by definition. There is no formal place that does not have rules or things that set them apart. Siddhartha Gautama left Hinduism because he did not like the doctrine of the untouchables. For if we do not have definitions or words to differentiate this from that, then what is the point of having any standards at all. Where is meaning? Say football is really baseball and vice-versa and you have no football or baseball. What is the point of differentiation? Why not all be the same? This may be the way “blind” democracy is headed but the Church cannot change with it, not Christ’s Church--- no way. The Church of Christ is here to save souls and it is not interested in how rich you are, how intelligent you may seem, or how popular. The mass has always been for the people and their benefit. The fallacy of popular opinions does not equal truth. It is not up for a vote. Christianity, liturgy, mass, and sacrament are not up for popular vote to appeal to the masses. Do we really believe we can all meld into one faith of the world? How would our Christian faith and the blessed blood of Christ ever be the same when He is just the same as Muhammad, Gautama, Vishnu, Confucius or Lao-Tzu? If you make Christ equal to them, then He is no longer Lord and just another good teacher. Christ did not give us that option. He either is who He said He is or he was a liar and charlatan; that’s it, these are the options. When we lose the meaning of words, traditions, and moral absolutes, we lose more than we think. This may be proper for the moral relativists and the ecumenists who think no religion or one world religion will save them or bring man to the final place of peace, but this is a lie. There never will be or can ever be happiness apart from God. C.S. Lewis aptly and poignantly said it, “God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.” A wise Confucius said this, “He who sets work on a different strand destroys the whole fabric.” We lose the basis of meaning and things slowly become meaningless. Confucius says of the importance of the meaning and restoration of words or names, “What is necessary to rectify names… if names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things.”

I think there is something to the fears of those for the old Roman rite. There is that creepy feeling of the “old devourer” who seeks to unite men but not for their own good as sacred but for his own ends of slavery and decay. Keep your eyes peeled, be vigilant for that lion and ravager of ideas, of Truth and of people because everyone should understand that we sometimes look for a big explosion to signify the presence of evil, but I’d say the effectiveness of subtlety is even more powerful than brute, savage force: The subtlety of persistently, slow gradualism and the zeitgeist of blind oligarchical politics of the utopian thinkers apart from God and the only Son... and alas of the Eden that will not be forced this way. I shudder to think that just in a short 4 or 5 decades, people could wipe out what the saints have died for over the last 2,000 years.

G.K. Chesterton Quote ~ on scandal and truth

"There is a case for telling the truth; there is a case for avoiding the scandal; but there is no possible defense for the man who tells the scandal, but does not tell the truth."


G.K. Chesterton 1874-1936

Quote from Charles Darwin

"If the philosophical extensions are made from my naturalistic assumptions, the possibility of the future is nothing short of unbridled violence"

Charles Darwin 1809-1882

Quote by C.S. Lewis

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.
C. S. Lewis
1898-1963

Orthodoxy and Homosexuality, Part Two

Transcript
Welcome to this edition of Steve the Builder. It has been four months since my original podcast on Same Sex Attraction. A lot has been going on since then, partly a surge of construction work which has kept us out of foreclosure and bankruptcy so far, partly our Mission Church, partly working on my book called “Orthographs” and my new Curmudgeophan the Recluse cartoon strip from my blog called “Pithless Thoughts”, and partly avoiding this second installment because of the sensitivity of the follow up. But, I finally compiled and edited months of email exchanges since the last podcast, and this is what I’ve come up with. This is not intended to be THE last word on the issue, but it will probably be MY last words on it. So without further introduction, I’ll just jump into the questions and answers.
Q: SSA: Sounds like a “Syndrome”, can we discuss the topic without labeling people?
A: After talking with the people who participated in the creation of the original they preferred SSA to “homosexual” or “gay” or “lesbian”. SSA defines the condition, not the person like the other labels do. It is not a pejorative nor a “label”, it is merely a way to describe what people are struggling with without stigmatizing the person. For the sake of communication it had to be called something, and this was the “label of choice” that we landed on for the article.
Q: Steve, clearly you have a heart for those struggling with homosexuality, but I fear you are clinging to theological notions of homosexuality that are inconsistent with reality. In effect, you are requiring 100% of gay men to do something that fewer than 1% of heterosexual men are able to do successfully: live a celibate life. That is a recipe for failure for gay men everywhere, who are doomed by your very precept to fail.
“You are not your sin” is not a comfort to those of us who know that our sexuality is indeed an integral part of our humanity, just as it is with heterosexuals. The Church may be authoritative in matters of faith, but matters of science, psychology, and diagnoses are not her bailiwick. As a gay man who has cried and prayed and struggled for half my life, I know that I will not change. And I finally have come to accept myself, whether the church does or not.
A: I can’t presume to say I can live inside your pain, but I can say I know suffering related to sexuality pretty well both personally and through my years of counseling. That said, I feel I must take issue with several of your theological and propositional statements, in all kindness and compassion for your personal struggles.
First, it is not only 1% of heterosexual men that are called to or able to live celibate lives. I don’t have statistics but I’d guess at least 30% or more of heterosexual men are unmarried. All of them are called to celibacy by God. Whether or not they or a homosexual IS or CAN be celibate is another issue entirely. Theological notions are often inconsistent with our “personal realities”, but the point of theology is to define reality not accommodate everyone’s individual issues with it.
The “recipe for failure” is the same for hetero and homosexuals if you are assuming that because you have a biological desire it therefore demands or therefore is a right to fulfillment. Theologically the reality is that all “diagnoses, psychologies and sciences” are of the fallen order: all of them merely define or identify ways in which we fail. However, because the DSM-IV does not identify something as a disorder does not necessarily make it so. The Church is indeed involved in diagnosis of human issues because that is what the Eastern spirituality is about: the healing of the human being in the image of God. The issue as I see it is that sexuality is indeed PART of our humanity but not the overarching definition of it under which all other aspects of our being function. Sexuality is subsumed to the created human image of Trintarian love which trancends sex. The Agape of the Trinity is what heals the human being, not mutual orgasms, no matter how pleasant or powerful they might be to our psyche.

So, dogma is not merely propositional theology or a concept that can be tweaked according to “what is true for you according to your personal issues”, it is ultimately an objective definition of the human being created in the image of God. And therefore, dogma defines the possibility of the return of the human being to the life of Love in the image of the Trinitarian God. All psychology does is diagnose the ways we fall short of that glory, but only the Church offers the true and final cure. It is not a matter of the Church “accepting you”... the Church does accept you because Christ accepts ALL fallen human beings no matter what they are attracted to that damages them. As I said in the first podcast, we ALL live with some consequence of the fall, whether it is premature baldness, a fat butt, a predisposition to alcohol, heroin or men. We all work out our salvation within our specific spiritual arenas. For God to ask someone to struggle against a self destructive tendency in order to attain a higher spiritual state is not “rejection”, it is a prescription for healing. It is destructive to “accept ourselves” if by that we mean we redefine our humanity so that the tail wags the dog… by this I mean that we cannot let our attractions and desires rule our emotions and define our self worth rather than our “true worth” in the image of God defining and limiting what desires and feelings we act on and define ourselves by. There are many parts of my own personal being that I know will “never change”, believe me. But I do not look at them as “gifts of God” or something to be celebrated or a license to “be what I am”. If I did that God knows what a bigger wake of destruction I would leave behind me than I already have.
At the risk of sounding cold, years of tears are not the permission for us to redefine our humanity in order to stop crying. If anything they are an existential and spiritual badge that you are indeed human because you are struggling. Only human beings have the capacity to self examine and assess and weep over a self definition. And many of us will spend a lifetime as a human being that weeps over facing personal limitations and issues we did not ask for, things that we cannot control or change, and whose consequences we must confront and deal with whether we feel like it or not.
All that said, I hope no one thinks I’m saying any of this flippantly or lightly. This is indeed “the arena” and the struggle is great, and there is no platitude that will make it go way or lighten it for any of us who choose to enter the fight.
Q: The Church condones marriage by declaring it a sacrament—something that helps individuals journey closer to God. So it is OK for a man and a woman to be sexually intimate within the bounds of that marriage and sexual intimacy outside of those bounds is not a good thing. Now take a same-sex couple who are just as devoted to one another as a committed opposite-sex couple. Why is it OK for the OS couple to have sex and it’s not OK for the SS couple to have sex?
A: Let me try to unpack some of my thoughts, hopefully in an orderly manner. Your question regarding marriage and “committed relationships” is a fundamental issue when discussing this topic. There are several facets to this issue in my mind. Here’s my thinking in no particular order of importance.
I think the Western Christian world has corrupted marriage in the sense that since the 60’s sexual revolution (and probably way before actually), marriage is seen as a Church issued “license to have sex”. Cloak it any way you like, but the gist of the arguments regarding “committed relationships” is about the religious or civil legitimacy of the ability to have orgasms with someone of your choice. Yes, it is “OK” for heterosexual couples to have sex within marriage, but even that does not guarantee that once you are married you WILL always have the ability or circumstance to actually have sex. The issue in my mind is not how many people can or cannot have sex with whom and how often, but it is even more basic than that: what is the legitimate place of genital contact within the theological definition of a “committed loving relationship”.
The arguments FOR sex within ANY committed relationship I think views sex as a “right” and sexual attraction as a desire that, if left unfulfilled somehow leaves a facet of our humanity wanting. What I am saying is that the desire to have sex (with anyone) is human. The fulfillment of that desire (with anyone) is not a “right” that can be fulfilled willy nilly or in just any context I decide is right for me simply because I desire it and think it is what I must have to be fulfilled as a human being. Sexual fulfillment is neither a “right” nor is it central to the definition of the human being. It is gender defines the created human being, not sexuality. Millions of people have lived and do live without sex and the definition of them as complete human beings is not compromised. The fact that SOME people can fulfill sexual desires within a certain theological framework of marriage and the definition of the human person does not legitimize sexual intimacy for all people in any circumstance.
But not all committed intimacy boils down to sexual intimacy, and I would submit that the Church legitimizes ALL committed relationships. A monastery is a group of same sex people who live in committed relationship. They do not have sex with the Church’s blessing, but they live in an intimacy with one another that rivals that of a marriage. Intimacy is what the human being is created for. Sexuality is subsumed to that and CAN be an aspect of intimacy and yes, it feels good and makes us feel close, but it does not define intimacy, and in fact often is a barrier to true intimacy even within heterosexual relationships. That fact is well documented within psychological research of marital and psycho-sexual issues. We are ALL looking for “love” and often settle for sex. And as Woody Allen once said, “Sex without love is an empty hollow experience, but as far as empty hollow experiences go, it’s one of the best.”
Q: But as far as relationships go, heterosexuals at least have the opportunity to have a loving partner in life. I believe that the sexual aspect is the culmination of a deep intimate relationship. It is the ultimate expression of love in intimacy. The scripture speaks of celibacy as gift, but it is not for all. Again the scripture reminds us “it is not good for man to be alone”. The homosexual person is left no alternative.
A: It is always with great fear that I address “intimacy/sex” issues because they come off sounding callous, uncompassionate and patronizing, especially because I am married and heterosexual and of course anything I say can be dismissed because well, “that’s easy for ME to say…” That said, I think both homosexuals and heterosexuals are victims of our Western romanticized and sexualized culture. While sex CAN be AN expression of intimacy, I will have to differ with you… it is not the highest or deepest or best. I think everyone would agree that the highest expression of love and intimacy was Christ on the Cross in His self sacrifice for the human race. Sex or even physical contact is not a necessity for intimacy, though I’ll be honest, personally I’d rather have intimacy with sex than intimacy without it.
That said, the opportunity and desire for marriage to heterosexuals does not guarantee an intimate sexual partner to anyone. I can say I have counseled as many heterosexual men who wept because they could not find wives as homosexual men who had to forgo “lovers” for the sake of their faith. The pain of loneliness and unfulfilled desires is the same for both.
So, just because sex in marriage for heterosexuals is “biblically legitimate” does not make the struggle any less intense for someone who cannot fulfill a desire for marriage and sex because of some physical issue, psychological problem or genetic defect. It was news to a homosexual man I was having a discussion with that heterosexuals incapable of having a “legitimate heterosexual relationship” feel just as strongly and have to fight just as hard against lust, fornication and passions as a homosexual. Involuntary or voluntary celibacy is a curse to anyone who cannot do what their biology is screaming for because of their “religion”. It is not only the homosexual that MUST chose to be “a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom” in spite of not feeling like they have the “gift of celibacy The Scriptures teach that all have the same calling, regardless of orientation, regardless of reasons for inability to have sex within a heterosexual marriage: celibacy. As with ANY besetting sin, orientation, inclination and habit, the promise by God is the same: The thorn may never be removed but His grace is sufficient. Forgive me if I have sounded uncaring, that is the furthest thing from the truth. The fact is that none of us can live in another person’s skin totally, so we all usually assume our existential pain is greater than the next person’s, but that is ultimately narcissism, the plague of us all when it comes to our own peculiar faults and fallenness.
Q: Gee, just what I needed to hear: “Eunuch”. This is why I struggle and have doubts in regards to the whole - Homosexual=bad, Heterosexual=good - thing. I know that I am simplifying things but in reality, that’s what it is. I hear one side debate scriptural interpretation and context, then the other side is always reminding homosexuals that they will not inherit the kingdom if they act on their feelings.
But what it comes down for me is this: If I have to deny what feels natural for me it means more then a life without sex. It means a life without a very important type of intimacy, more than a good friend or buddy. It means not having a partner to share and walk through life with. It means no dates. It limits my life and leaves me feeling less than human. When I hear Eunuch, I envision someone whose manhood has been denied by force or by choice. I know for me, that it is not something that I have been given a gift for. For me to deny my personhood is for me a curse. The question that always comes to mind for me, is why? It is not like we are choosing to lie or be disobedient, we’re just a person, seeking companionship and Love. As we grow older, friends are more fleeting, people have families and lives to lead. The person that doesn’t have these things is not left with a lot.
A: I don’t think in Orthodoxy it is “Homosexual=bad, Hetero=good”. Perhaps in some Christian circles that is preached. In the grand scheme of the Orthodox view of salvation, ANYONE who “acts on their feelings” risks not inheriting the kingdom. Our feelings are not the guide for life and godliness. What “feels natural” or even brings us comfort or happiness may in fact be ungodly and in fact ultimately a denial of our true personhood. No where in Scripture or the teachings of the Church are we commanded to deny friendship, intimacy, love, or deep commitment to another human being. In fact, those are what make us human. The challenge for both the heterosexual and homosexual is how to do that in a godly way that does not involve the flesh, passions and violate our own and others’ bodies. “Eunuch” in the context of the Gospel is not an involuntary castration, but a voluntary walk for the sake of the “beauty of virginity” which is a phrase one NEVER hears in our modern culture. We are not asked to deny our personhood, but our flesh. We are not asked to deny the image of God in which we are created, we are told to deny our passions. This is not just for homosexuals, it is for all people regardless of how natural or passionately they feel about any relationship. Homosexuals are not singled out in the sin of fornication or adultery. Any sexual sin by any person is a violation of an aspect of our true personhood. Marriage is prescribed by God as ONE path to salvation. Marriage is one, virginity is another. Both have their benefits and problems. Heterosexual marriage is more than just sexual intimacy, and anyone who has been married for any length of time will tell you, sex is the first thing to go when spiritual and emotional intimacy is lost or violated. The grass is not greener with a “license to have sex” if that is what marriage is seen as. As I mentioned earlier, marriage may appear on the outside to be “God’s license to have sex”, but even within marriage that aspect can and often does become through no fault of the partners due to sickness, handicaps or mental illness, unavailable or impossible. I know several people who are married and cannot have sexual relations. What then? Marriage does not survive on sex, nor is sex necessary for marriage and all of its “non-physical” intimacies to thrive and deepen. As I’ve mentioned before, homosexuals are not the only class of human beings who are denied the “right to sex” by the Christian faith. Sexual intimacy is not a human right. While the culture might guarantee us the “pursuit of sexual happiness” the Gospel does not. The Gospel guarantees us the pursuit of full personhood and gives us the prescription for it. As strong an instinct and feeling it may be in the human being, sexual intimacy is not a necessity to the realization of personhood nor is it necessary for the attainment of deep communion and intimacy with another human being, male or female regardless of orientations.
That said, I hear the loneliness and despair in your voice. Homosexuals are not the only people on earth who are alone, wanting friendship, intimacy and connection. The world is full of desperate and lonely people who do not know how to connect with another human being, to have intimacy that is not defined by sexuality and physicality. I meet them every day. In that sense we are victims of our culture that force feeds us “sex-as-intimacy” and fulfillment as a human being through sex and romance. We have bought a false definition and then despair that our lives will never look like that definition. But again, this is all easy to talk about on the internet. It is desperately hard to come to terms with in the middle of the night when we have no one to share a bed with and every cell in our body wants a warm body next to us no matter what our orientation is. That is the struggle. And no pontification on theology will make it easy. Forgive me if I have sounded like I have minimized your pain. That is the furthest thing from my intention.
Q: We are more than monastics and ascetics. We are people who need Love and crave relationships and human touch. We also need families and adult relationships. “It is not good for man to be alone”…
A: I need to speak to your statement that: “we are more than monastics and ascetics” because it implies a juxtaposition of the ascetical life with “wholeness, intimacy, family, relationships, etc.”. The word “asceticism” in Orthodox terms applies to everyone, it is not only for monks, the radically committed or goofy zealots. It is the definition of the painful and long process of the healing of the soul of the human being ravaged by corruption, death and the futility of this fallen order. To the degree that someone engages the process is the degree to which one will experience the healing of the soul. In that sense everyone is called to ascesis, the denial of the lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the vainglory of life. These are manifest in manifold ways and every person has predispositions, issues and inclinations brought on through genetics, nature and nurture. The reality is that asceticism properly understood in the context of an Orthodox anthropology encompasses and enhances the possibility of relationships being MORE authentic to our human nature. Wholeness, intimacy and deep relationships are in fact the GOAL of asceticism, not only in the arena of SSA, but in every aspect of our lives no matter what our sexual orientations are.
The definition of “wholeness” is not the “permission” to live according to our passions or feelings or perceived needs. Fulfillment of desires is not necessarily fulfillment of our personhood. No asceticism is pleasant or easy. The outcomes and goals of self denial are usually not apprehended while we are engaged in the combat. The spiritual disciplines of an ascetical life in an Orthodox framework encompasses the entirety of human existence, not just sexual orientation. In the final analysis, the roots of human despair and lack of intimacy and authentic relationships all boil down to a core of issues that are manifested in a multitude of human failure and weaknesses, and SSA is merely one of those issues. That is why the Orthodox Church does not make homosexuality the unforgivable sin or demonize it, OR hold out false promises of healing and change. The glutton, the womanizer, the egoist, the narcissist, the miserly, the wrathful, the disobedient, the lazy, etc. etc. ALL face the same hard path to shedding their besetting weaknesses and finding healing and wholeness through arduous and prolonged struggle.
So, I am not minimizing the anguish of homosexuals, I am informing them that they are not alone in the difficult and gut wrenching struggles they face. It is in that sense that I believe that homosexuals, like all human beings who are suffering, often are narcissistic in their insistence that they experience despondency and despair to a greater depth than other people, and that no one except other homosexuals can understand their feelings.
I recall a gay man telling me that I HAD to watch “Brokeback Mountain” because it defined the gay experience. I told him I watched “Brokeback Mountain” and to me it was just a gay “Bridges of Madison County”. He eventually responded, “I see what you mean”. Homosexuals are not the only people on earth who struggle with relationships, sexual desires and are broken deeply because of them. Perhaps it is because of my intense involvement in broken people’s lives that I see everyone is in a great battle and no one’s struggle is truly greater than another’s.
So nothing in this podcast is intended to minimize the truth of anyone’s struggles, but to level the field of what it means to wrestle with ourselves and God. The reality is, all human beings are diseased, all are afflicted and all who choose to enter the arena are engaged in a desperate spiritual warfare. And the cure for all is the ascetical path of self denial within the context of a community of love and intimacy.
As a final note, one of the things I’ve consciously avoided in the podcast is giving specific spiritual counsel and advice. I’ve had several long email exchanges with people who are having difficulty with their spiritual director’s advice and disciplines. As I said in the previous podcast, all spiritual fathers are not created equal and it is not a sin to not confess or take spiritual direction from someone you believe is not equipped to work with your issues. The only advice I can give in a podcast is that both finding and leaving a spiritual director should be undertaken extremely carefully and soberly.
And I as I said in the introduction, these podcasts are not the final word or even the “Church’s word” on same sex attraction. These are my thoughts and those of a few who have agreed to participate in a discussion of the issue in the context of living the Christian life in the context of the Orthodox faith. I pray that these podcasts have been helpful and I beg the forgiveness of any whom I have offended and marginalized inadvertently.

Thanks to Steve "The Builder"
http://ancientfaith.com/podcasts/stevethebuilder/orthodoxy_and_homosexuality_part_two