This article may be republished and distributed freely without permission.
Note: Because this is a public article, I have decided to not criticize or praise any hierarch or other spiritual authority by name, with a few slight exceptions. This should not be misconstrued as that I do not have strong opinions on individual ecclesial figures or their particular choices, nor should it be assumed that I am in favor of one jurisdiction over another. I am not pro- any particular jurisdiction. I am only pro- serious people. I attend my particular parish because it works for me personally. It should also not be assumed that I think it is inappropriate for lay people to criticize hierarchs publicly – only that I myself do not feel comfortable doing so on this kind of forum.
Second note: By “COVID” I mean the social and ecclesial phenomenon of COVID. This is not to be understood as statement about any kind of science or lack thereof.
1. Last year the OCA produced a video from His Grace Bishop Alexei of Alaska at the All-American Council explaining the history and troubles of the diocese. He talked about how one of the great fragmentations of the Church in Alaska is recent, that there were abusive spiritual dynamics from authority and that the laity have become very cynical and hostile. He said that the priests were often put to shame in public by higher ecclesial authorities while the laity watched. As a result, Church authority now has to be very gentle and overlook things that they would normally address. He did not go into detail, but the subtext was clear. Some members of the clergy had taken advantage of the people’s trust, and now they have a slow journey to earn it back.
This is what COVID did to the Church as a whole, and there are no exceptions. Some zealots praise certain jurisdictions as having resisted COVID lockdowns, but this is false. Although some jurisdictions opened up and loosened restrictions more quickly than others, all the various synods and ruling bishops still shut down churches in March of 2020. They excommunicated the laity and restricted Easter to the Brahmin caste. The entire ecclesial structure of Orthodox Christianity in the Anglosphere shares in the guilt.
COVID radically shifted power dynamics within the Church. The foundational premises of Church authority changed under COVID, and they will not easily revert back. With COVID we saw a great outward turn in the authority structure. No longer was the authority preserving the tradition from the machinations of the world. Now the authority exists as a liaison for the secular order. Pastoral leadership was outsourced to medical professionals and government bureaucrats. The laity obey the priests, the priests obey the bishop, and the bishop obeys the global shadow government.
Some may object to this claim and say that it is a conspiracy theory or the prideful insurrection of the laity. The truth value of the claim is irrelevant. A large portion of faithful Orthodox Christians believe that this is the reality, and they will act on that reality accordingly. It is true for them. Asking us to not believe it will not convince us. Telling us that there is no evidence or ridiculing us as “conspiracy theorists” who “politicize public health crises” will only harden our mistrust. We cannot be gaslit into not feeling exploited.
And although we expect the government to oppress us, or at least to not care about us, we did not expect this from the Church. We came to the Church seeking God, and instead we found more government. People can put up with a lot of torment from the government, but they will break if they get even a little from the Church.
People are traumatized. They were already concerned that there was a secularizing turn. COVID manifested a shift that had already occurred decades ago, and now it is no longer beyond plausible deniability. Now there is a deep fear of the clergy. There is some bitterness and anger, true. But more than anger, there is terror. People may not be able to vocalize it yet, and it may be only heard in private conversations and blogs. No one speaks of it at coffee hour. But the fear is felt all around. Perfect love casts out fear, and we are terrified that we will not find love in the Church.
People are on the defense. They are in a survival mindset. The Church cannot just say “The pandemic is over!” and act like it never existed. People feel like the Church is out to get them. They think that their loyalty will be taken advantage of, that it is just another commodity. This idea that “the Church is a hospital and not a courtroom” is an insult. People look on their priest like he is a false friend waiting to turn on them. They feel like the Church has been violently stolen from them, like a father ripping a teddy bear from his child’s arms and setting it on fire.
The benefit of the doubt for Church authority is gone. Now a very large chunk of the laity sees the clergy as agents of the new world order that we begrudgingly have to get along with as a condition of the religion. This is a radical shift from seeing the clergy as father figures. The priest is not a beloved father – he is a middle manager who has to be worked around. There is often a vague sense that the local priest will destroy you if you cross him, and your only option is to appeal to the bishop to destroy him back.
Who are these priests and monastics to berate us? After all we went through with COVID, how can they expect the lay people to accept their authority at face value for the sake of the authority itself? It amazes me how they still act like it is 2019. Remove the ecclesial context, and the priests and monastics are no different than frumpy school teachers scolding the boys for being too rowdy. And then they are shocked when the laity react with hostility.
The laity are on edge, waiting to be attacked, and they no longer have any benefit of the doubt to offer. The priests and monastics are our enemies, and they can no longer appeal to the laity’s debt of obedience. The people now understand that Church authority is arbitrary and bureaucratic, that the authority gives the right answer based on the book but not on experience. Obedience is a means of stealing the faith from us, not confirming it.
The clergy view loyalty as a commodity to be stored in the bank and cashed in later. They think that loyalty and authority exist in the abstract. But the people have learned that loyalty will not be rewarded with reciprocal loyalty. If you are civil and respectful towards your priest, then he will not return the courtesy. If you are careful to not offend anyone by saying the word “Monophysite”, then there will be no gratitude. There is no benefit to being part of the social community of the parish. There is nothing to be gained from encouraging your priest. The safest thing to do is to just take the Eucharist, put $20 in the offering box and quickly go home.
This is not my perspective, and these are not my threats. This is what the people feel, regardless of whether or not it is fair or traditional or healthy. The new dynamics of ecclesial authority exist regardless of whether or not they should. This problem will only manifest further. It cannot be ignored. Claiming that it was all in the interest of public health will not comfort people. In ten years the effects of this shift are going to be felt much more strongly. The insularity of the Church has been broken, and a broken vase will not be easily glued back together.
Who would want to become a priest? Who would want to become a monastic? The hierarchs and hegumens will find that they now have a much more difficult time recruiting. No longer are we allowed to do simple Orthodoxy. We are not allowed to worship and believe and die as our fathers did. Now there is this bizarre social-civic baggage attached to the renunciation of the world. If a priest or monastic chooses to live the faith of his fathers, then he stands to lose everything.
Our word “patriarch” is Greek for “ruling father”. Patriarchal power is familial and insular power. Abraham is the head of his tribe. Although his authority is final, people follow him because they trust that he will lead them to success. He protects the tribe from outsiders. If the tribespeople are kidnapped, then he will win them back. His tribe is taken care of, and his slaves enjoy working for him. Abraham may eat better than his slaves, but he does not exploit their trust. The slaves have no reason to rebel or abandon him, and Abraham does not chain them down or beat them.
A pope, however, holds power as an abstract in itself. Papal power is managerial and distant power. If it is wielded recklessly as a sword, then there is no appeal. There is no context to papal power except for the power itself. The lives ruined by it do not diminish its strength, and there are no consequences to their exploitation. People do not follow papal power so much as they are afraid of it being turned against them. They do not trust papal power, but they cannot escape it.
COVID did to the Church what feminism could not – it smashed the patriarchy. Now we only have popes. And as one all-American hero once said, “If we wanted to be under the pope, we would be under the real one.”
2. Our word “crisis” is Greek for “judgment”. It is in times of judgment that we discover our character. Some people rise to the occasion and overcome, but others buckle under pressure. Often someone can be very spiritually advanced and fail the crisis, while those who are spiritually weak will use crisis to understand the seriousness they need to have. We often see this in martyr stories. Many saints were losers their entire lives until the moment of martyrdom, and then they trampled the secular order and proved that there is more to live and die for than careers and consumerist goods.
For some of us, COVID was an opportunity to strengthen our faith. Going to church illegally became a wordless proclamation. We had to prove to ourselves that the faith could not die. Walking up the front stairs on Sunday was a declaration of the invincibility of Orthodoxy. The world is passing away and the lusts thereof, but we will abide into eternity.
But others broke under COVID. One prominent monastic priest quickly told us that we should all become desert hesychasts, as though this were something realistic. He told us that we should trust the NHS unconditionally since they already have a monopoly on the medical industry. He said that saying the Jesus Prayer at home has the same effect as the Eucharist and therefore it is all arbitrary. Many mainstream Orthodox outlets published this article.
I cannot think of a better way to sell one’s soul to the Antichrist than to praise the NHS for closing churches. That he spent decades mentoring people and building souls is irrelevant. Crisis came, and he immediately fell into the abyss. Meanwhile, others of us began to climb the church stairs anyway, refusing to be conquered.
But the people want to believe in the Church as an institution. They do not want to be black pilled on ecclesial authority. They want to trust and have faith. They want a community of reciprocal love.
And this is an easy solution. The people yearn to extend forgiveness, but they want to know that their forgiveness will not be exploited. If the authority will apologize, and if they will do so without anonymity, then then people will forgive.
I am told that a particular jurisdictional synod has informally decided that the lockdowns were harmful and that they should not do it again. This is not good enough. We do not need internet rumors. Gossip does nothing to allay our anxieties about the future. We need assurance that we can trust again.
Will a single hierarch come forth to apologize?
“During the COVID crisis I had difficult choices to make, and I chose wrongly. Many people were hurt because of my choices, and I promise to never make these choices again. I ask the people and priests of my diocese to pray to God that this not be held against me on Judgment Day.”
If a hierarch put out that statement, then everyone would praise him. He would be our hero. The internet would ring with choruses of “axios”. All would be forgiven and forgotten, and we would be ready to follow him to the gulag.
But until that happens, there will be no forgiveness. Jesus said, “If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him.” [Luke xvii.3, NKJV] We can never forgive the hierarchs and priests for doing the easy civic thing during COVID. If they did not support us during times of war, then they will not receive the respect of the priesthood during times of peace. There is no debt of obedience to any priest who enforced mask laws in liturgy and who will not publicly repent of his sin.
3. It is said that, aside from virginity, all monastic principles apply to Christianity broadly. While this is somewhat debatable, obedience is taught throughout the New Testament. Saint Paul writes, “For to this end I also wrote, that I might put you to the test, whether you are obedient in all things.” [II Cor ii.9, NKJV] Saint Peter applies this broadly: “all of you be submissive to one another.” [I Peter v.5b, NKJV]
The COVID crisis gave obedience an external dimension outside the insularity of the covenant. No longer was obedience based on the assumption that the patriarch was following the tradition and protecting the tribe. Now the authority exists to acclimate the Orthodox faithful to the Antichrist. People are terrified that when the Mark of the Beast manifests, the Church will use the full weight of its authority to coerce people into taking it.
People see ecclesial authority as part of the civic polite society, that the Church will be swallowed up by the new world order. The Church is no longer separate from the world. Rather, the Church is the world’s ambassador to the people gullible enough to believe that the world can be resisted. The Church as a civic organization is as much a functionary of the world as anything else, and “the whole world lies within the evil one.” [I John v.19b, freehand]
Or if that is too speculative, then at the least, Church authority is more concerned about lawsuits and civic standing than the tradition. The hierarchs exist to ratify what outsiders have decided. If the civic authority decides that they want vaccines and climate change ideology, then Church authority will unquestioningly translate that into Orthodox-speak. A gangbanger dies of an overdose while resisting arrest, and the Church exploits the people’s obedience to make them sing hymns of liberation theology.
How does this affect monasticism? Can the hegumen coerce you into taking chemotherapy? Previous generations of monastics refused painkillers. They died at home in their monastic garments surrounded by their monastic family so that they could experience the fullness of what it means to die. They died in pain but with love and dignity.
By contrast, there are few more undignified ways to die than in a sterile hospital room wearing a gown with tubes sticking out of you. But what if the hegumen says that you have to? What if you are told that to refuse your chemo is an act of suicide because civic authority decided that chemo is medicine? The hegumen exploits the obedience you swore to him by shifting it onto a faceless oncologist. He breaks the insularity of the Church and the monastic community and throws your pearl of obedience to the heathen swine, and you are forbidden to die in the way that your monastic ancestors modeled for you. It is the easy civic thing to do, and if something goes wrong, then he can always blame someone else. Americans will do anything to avoid taking blame for their choices, regardless of ethnicity. That the monasteries are full of tonsured monastics does not change that they are also full of Americans.
Why has the faith been stolen away from us? No longer are we allowed to do regular Orthodoxy and regular monasticism. The priests and monastics seem unaware how farcical they look with flimsy blue masks over their beautiful phailónia and schemata, and the laity forbidden to feel pain at seeing the vestments of our heritage defiled by the very symbols that exiled us from our churches. Why are we not allowed to believe and practice the same things as our ancestors in the faith? The word “Monophysite” has been replaced with “Orthodox”, and yet they lie to us that we still have the “ancient faith”.
But our faith cannot be stolen, because the faith and its tradition belong to everyone. The fullness of the tradition belongs to the entirety of the Church, including the things which only the priests and monastics participate in. No one has a monopoly on the faith and the tradition. When the papists say “tradition”, they mean the administrative structure in Rome, not the kinds of things people otherwise use the word for. But for us there could never be a Vatican II, because the clergy do not own the tradition. Rather, the clergy are stewards of the tradition. They serve the liturgy in the sense that they are servants of the liturgy, but they do not own the liturgy. The priests do not own the sacraments. They may partake of a greater material portion of the Eucharist, but they do not receive a greater energetic measure. The priest’s gulp-and-chunk Eucharist is not more Eucharisty than the teaspoon-and-crumb Eucharist that the laity receive.
The laity are not obligated to listen to blasphemous liberation theology, and they are not obligated to attend a blasphemous liturgy with COVID masks and plastic spoons. If priests teach that Jesus was functionally black because of the ancient Jews’ social position, or if priests dismissively tell the laity that they can watch the liturgy at home if they do not feel comfortable wearing COVID masks, then the priests have betrayed their priesthood and will not get the respect thereof. The concept of apostolic succession is apostolic doctrine, and without apostolic doctrine there can be no apostolic succession. The priests who prefer a socially acceptable civic religion over the faith of our fathers need to quit oppressing the laity, leave the Church and become unitarians.
Rev. Nicholas Anton – Director of Operations for the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops from a speech in November 2021
You cannot get sick inside of an Orthodox church, and even if you could, it would not matter. We have now been expected to sing “Christ is risen from the dead, conquering death by death” while wearing a flimsy piece of cloth out of fear of dying. This is an insult to every martyr and those who love them.
Even if you were to die of the plague inside of a church, that would count as martyrdom, because you were there out of faith and bearing witness to the hope of the resurrection. In his eighth sermon against the synagogues, Chrysostom tells us that it is martyrdom to die of a disease if the cure is evil. And so there is never any reason to abstain from church or to modify your behavior therein because you are worried about getting sick.
But of course we have excised Chrysostom from our tradition along with John Damascene. Chrysostom has no place within American consumerism, and neither of them have any place within American pluralism. And so the clergy lie about the tradition with some kind of patchwork “neo-patristic synthesis”.
Why not record the liturgy on DVD and send us the Eucharist in the mail? What difference does it make? At least then the laity would be allowed to receive it. Priests get angry when I ask them that question, but they have not answered it. If we cannot ship the Eucharist by UPS, but the liturgy is broadcast on the Internet, then the liturgy is divorced from the Eucharist, and we have no need for priests. Now the liturgy is something to be enjoyed from a distance. It is no longer experiential. Rather, the liturgy has become another source of entertainment, another consumerist good to fit into your life. Byzantine chant, yoga, SoulCycle – they are all on the buffet of your personal spirituality.
And so with COVID, the religion has gone from being a communal faith to being an individualistic faith. This is a painful loss, but we are determined to live and believe and die in the same way as our ancestors. Faith has always been contingent on itself alone, but now it has been divorced from the community. And so the community has been erased.
How is the faith not individualistic? The monastics said that we are all supposed to become desert hesychasts, and the priests all banned us from communion. Very well, then: the priests are irrelevant. They told us so themselves. In a post-COVID world, faith must be individualistic in order to survive. Obedience is dead, and the priests killed it by hogging the Eucharist to themselves.
4. Saint Jerome said, “A monk’s function is not to teach, but to lament; to mourn either for himself or for the world, and with terror to anticipate our Lord’s advent. Knowing his own weakness and the frailty of the vessel which he carries, he is afraid of stumbling, lest he strike against something, and it fall and be broken.” [Against Vigilantius, NPNF 2.4]
Years ago I read an article called 5 Reasons You Should Not Visit a Monastery by some hieromonk out in California. OCA. Many bishops were opposed to monasteries, but this was an actual monastic superior warning about them. The article was a little reductive, but he hit upon something we were not ready to come to terms with. The author felt something he could not adequately express. There was something not malicious but deeply insincere lurking within the Church. Something that viewed the Church as a commodity. Over the years there were many things he said that forewarned what was to come. They were not always tactfully said, and sometimes he could not lay hold of the core issue, but his instincts were always correct. People were not ready to listen, and even his friends were offended. They beat him down for it and overwhelmed him, and he did not always have the right reaction in the moment. But on a long enough timeline, he has been vindicated.
–Augustine (Austin) Martin with the support of Metropolitan Jonah Paffhausen
Do you support freedom of worship for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church? Then please read, sign, and share our petition supporting Metropolitan Onuphry and his Church.
“ Pastoral leadership was outsourced to medical professionals and government bureaucrats.”—and long before Covid lockdowns, the same pastoral leadership similarly abdicated spiritual counseling and godly advice to the psychiatric tyrants who’ve now drugged with mental medications one out of every four women, millions of men, and tens of millions of children. And there’s not a peep out of the hierarchy. But secular people are speaking out strongly; go figure!
Thank you Austin Martin for this simply outstanding post!
I’m left wondering what exactly was said.
We served the Liturgy through out lockdowns, got stopped and questioned by police, and took communion to the sick in their homes. The Orthodox Church did not entirely submit.
Glory to God! We need more such stories!
So did we. Our parish was the only Church in the entire city that remained open.
Thanks, Augustine and your supporter Met. Jonah. The “one, true Church of Christ” run by frauds and blasphemers! Where are the Shepherds that imitate the anger and manliness of Christ in the Temple?
LIVE NOT BY LIES
On the day Solzhenitsyn was arrested, February, 12, 1974, he released the text of “Live Not by Lies.” […]We are approaching the brink; already a universal spiritual demise is upon us; a physical one is about to flare up and engulf us and our children, while we continue to smile sheepishly and babble: “But what can we do to stop it? We haven’t the strength.”
We have so hopelessly ceded our humanity that for the modest handouts of today we are ready to surrender up all principles, our soul, all the labors of our ancestors, all the prospects of our descendants—anything to avoid disrupting our meager existence. We have lost our strength, our pride, our passion. We do not even fear a common nuclear death, do not fear a third world war (perhaps we’ll hide away in some crevice), but fear only to take a civic stance! We hope only not to stray from the herd, not to set out on our own, and risk suddenly having to make do without the white bread, the hot water heater, a Moscow residency permit. We have internalized well the lessons drummed into us by the state; we are forever content and comfortable with its premise: we cannot escape the environment, the social conditions; they shape us, “being determines consciousness.” What have we to do with this? We can do nothing.
But we can do—everything!—even if we comfort and lie to ourselves that this is not so. It is not “they” who are guilty of everything, but we ourselves, only we! Some will counter: But really, there is nothing to be done! Our mouths are gagged, no one listens to us, no one asks us. How can we make them listen to us?
To make them reconsider—is impossible. […]Our way must be: Never knowingly support lies! Having understood where the lies begin (and many see this line differently)—step back from that gangrenous edge! Let us not glue back the flaking scales of the Ideology, not gather back its crumbling bones, nor patch together its decomposing garb, and we will be amazed how swiftly and helplessly the lies will fall away, and that which is destined to be naked will be exposed as such to the world. And thus, overcoming our temerity, let each man choose: Will he remain a witting servant of the lies (needless to say, not due to natural predisposition, but in order to provide a living for the family, to rear the children in the spirit of lies!), or has the time come for him to stand straight as an honest man, worthy of the respect of his children and contemporaries? And from that day onward he:
· Will not write, sign, nor publish in any way, a single line distorting, so far as he can see, the truth; Will not utter such a line in private or in public conversation, nor read it from a crib sheet, nor speak it in the role of educator, canvasser, teacher, actor; · Will not in painting, sculpture, photograph, technology, or music depict, support, or broadcast a single false thought, a single distortion of the truth as he discerns it; Will not cite in writing or in speech a single “guiding” quote for gratification, insurance, for his success at work, unless he fully shares the cited thought and believes that it fits the context precisely;
· Will not be forced to a demonstration or a rally if it runs counter to his desire and his will; will not take up and raise a banner or slogan in which he does not fully believe;
· Will not raise a hand in vote for a proposal which he does not sincerely support; will not vote openly or in secret ballot for a candidate whom he deems dubious or unworthy;
· Will not be impelled to a meeting where a forced and distorted discussion is expected to take place;
· Will at once walk out from a session, meeting, lecture, play, or film as soon as he hears the speaker utter a lie, ideological drivel, or shameless propaganda;
· Will not subscribe to, nor buy in retail, a newspaper or journal that distorts or hides the underlying facts.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of the possible and necessary ways of evading lies. But he who begins to cleanse himself will, with a cleansed eye, easily discern yet other opportunities.
Yes, at first it will not be fair. Someone will have to temporarily lose his job. For the young who seek to live by truth, this will at first severely complicate life, for their tests and quizzes, too, are stuffed with lies, and so choices will have to be made. But there is no loophole left for anyone who seeks to be honest: Not even for a day, not even in the safest technical occupations can he avoid even a single one of the listed choices—to be made in favor of either truth or lies, in favor of spiritual independence or spiritual servility. And as for him who lacks the courage to defend even his own soul: Let him not brag of his progressive views, boast of his status as an academician or a recognized artist, a distinguished citizen or general. Let him say to himself plainly: I am cattle, I am a coward, I seek only warmth and to eat my fill.
For us, who have grown staid over time, even this most moderate path of resistance will be not be easy to set out upon. But how much easier it is than self-immolation or even a hunger strike: Flames will not engulf your body, your eyes will not pop out from the heat, and your family will always have at least a piece of black bread to wash down with a glass of clear water. Betrayed and deceived by us, did not a great European people—the Czechoslovaks—show us how one can stand down the tanks with bared chest alone, as long as inside it beats a worthy heart?
It will not be an easy path, perhaps, but it is the easiest among those that lie before us. Not an easy choice for the body, but the only one for the soul. No, not an easy path, but then we already have among us people, dozens even, who have for years abided by all these rules, who live by the truth.[…]But if we shrink away, then let us cease complaining that someone does not let us draw breath—we do it to ourselves! Let us then cower and hunker down, while our comrades the biologists bring closer the day when our thoughts can be read and our genes altered.
And if from this also we shrink away, then we are worthless, hopeless, and it is of us that Pushkin asks with scorn:
Why offer herds their liberation?
…………………
Their heritage each generation The yoke with jingles, and the whip. February 12, 1974 https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/live-not-by-lies
Covering all the basis, that was a home run, knocked it out of the park, into the parking lot, into some bishop’s EV windshield.
History lesson: midwives to Pharaoh (paraphrased): “We are sooooo (chuckle, chuckle) sorry Mr. Pharaoh, but the Hebrew women give birth before we get there…..(wait for it!)…the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women…they are vigorous (ha, ha, what an insult to the head of a fertility cult). Did the midwives tell the truth? Of course not. However, pinning them with a “lie” is almost impossible. And, this is taking a page out of the enemy’s playbook, telling the truth in a deceptive way.
Notice the brilliant strategy here: rather than full frontal blockade (just saying no), the midwives craftily deflected the fiat, then gave everyone in Goshen a really good belly laugh by the insult. Then they all just made a lot more babies.
As for Jaal, and Tamar, well, I think they just lied; but the Scripture makes them both heroes.
Another history lesson: During the Nazi regime, Christians in Europe were sheltering fugitives in their homes. Some of these Christians were bent on telling the truth under all circumstances. In a few cases, Nazis would just knock on the door, ask the home own if they were harboring fugitives and—because they did not want to lie—said, yes, we have some. Of course, the Nazis slaughtered everybody even the home owner. Dietrich Bonhoeffer went about to set things rite. In essence, he told them to lie and that this lie was the rite thing to do because it hindered evil. With the dishonest, be dishonest.
According to the principles of covenant, everything must come into balance. If somebody is seeking information to do harm—a very dishonest action—then—keeping all things in balance—it is appropriated—even righteous—to answer on the same basis (that of dishonesty). There is a rite time to lie. In fact, to do otherwise is to be unrighteous because it distorts the basic covenant of communication, that the underlying assumption—what is called in the business world—is all participate in “Good Faith”, no hidden intent, or agenda. To give honor, where honor is do, has a flipside; give dishonor where dishonor is due, and, for Pete’s sake—never give honor where honor is not due. Keeping all things in their proper balance.
BTW: the Ten Commandments never said not to lie; the Ten Commandments said, “not to bear false witness” which is a totally different thing. Capiche?
With the rumor mill going full speed, COVID 2.0 on the horizon, the timing for this article could not be better. In reality, if masks are mandated, the faithful should just ignore them. If enough ignore it, it will put the chain of command in a bind. With noncompliance, heads will roll in middle management (they eat their own), but the worst they can do is excommunicate (still waiting for mine) which would create instant martyrs, and heroes, and a new American Jurisdiction.
It is they who need to fear us. If the Church has any connection with the Kingdom, then, we will have to take it back by force. “It’s my territory, it’s your territory, they are just rentin’ it.”[1]
Don’t mask up, don’t mask your babies, don’t mask the icons, don’t take the jab. Force the issue, make them become the bad guys they are, by forcing their hand. This will draw them out into the open, subjecting all their ass—ets to the vulnerability of being public.
If they are going to channel Caesar, by no means make it easy on them. Don’t just leave, make them throw you out.
And for God’s sake—and the Church—don’t fund this behavior. In the eyes of the courts, every diocese regardless of denomination is a business entity and owns only buildings. Whatever authority beyond that, is either ecclesiastical or perceived. All—all means all—authority has measure and boundary—only God’s authority is limitless. Whenever—get that? whenever—ecclesiastical authority channels Caesar’s authority, it is outside its realm of territory and is fully fictional.
If the government enforces masks, its not the priest’s job to be Caesar’s cop or give speeding tickets to parishioners. It would be as asanine as an Orthodox Seminary professor to go public with an infomercial for the frankenshots (oh, wait… that already happened, did St Tikhons ever get paid?).
Don’t be afraid to press the issue. With enough push-back, they will back off, because they have no army (to quote Andrew Jackson who bucked the US Supreme court). Do the rite thing; don’t submit the faithful to Caesar under any circumstances.
Every parish—every parishioner— that has a good priest, one who did not cave, will not cave; start thinking in terms of keeping all donations in pocket, that if the priest is forced out—the diocese does own the building, but, never the people—another location can be secured overnight, and the folks just vacate the building. Fund the good priest by direct donation of whatever they need. Take his wife grocery shopping; instead of trading in a car give it to somebody needy, including a priest. Do whatever it takes. Start the work arounds, now.
When we keep funding it, we cannot belly ache when they keep up the mischief. It is they who fear us, make no mistake. To fund evil, is to participate in evil. By now, the GOA and the OCA should have near zero income.
The Church is for, and by the folks. Keep that in mind. With no people, there is no Church. God gave bishops because there were people to take care of, God DID NOT make people just so bishops would have something to abuse. If they will not be shepherds, but tyrants, can their butts, or at the very least, starve the finances. Send all your giving to where you see real fruit.
There will be “false brethren”, make no mistake, who will spy for the bishop, but that is to be expected. And some dioceses actually have bouncers; this I have witnessed. Yet, the Church will go on, but under new management, even if underground.
[1] Punch line from one of my all-time favorite movies, “Reign of Fire.” 2002.
Your comment sort of reminds one of your piece on the women in the lineage of Christ. Seems that at least two of them engaged in what could be called “ethically” questionable activity for the larger goal of the Kingdom (sleeping with a Father in law, harboring spies against one’s own country). We all sincerely hoped, once upon a time, that we would be done publishing these kinds of articles by now. Alas, Lord have mercy, not yet.
Kudos, my patron ~ Saint Mark of Ephesus is cheering you on! When the members of his own delegation tried to pressure him into accepting the false union he replied, “There can be no compromise in matters of the Orthodox Faith.”
Well, this article does more than ask hard questions. It accuses hierarchs and priests of sinning. I do not believe the author has proven his case; nor have those who complied with restrictions proven their case. I am still trying to find, or hoping somebody will write, a history of any and all things that the Orthodox Church has done or not done in response to plague. We have 2000 years of history and plagues must have happened to Orthodox churches innumerable times. There should be a ton of history and tradition for us to discover, publish, discuss, pray about, and follow. Yet it seems despite the COVID-19 disaster beginning in March, 2020, this still hasn’t been done. What in the world are those people who are qualified doing that they think is more important? Are we going to be sucker-punched again the next time we have a plague, and remain just as clueless as we are now about what the Orthodox tradition is regarding how we deal with plagues? People impose requirements in the dark; people condemn requirements in the dark. When will somebody qualified to do so bring to light the actual, historical, Orthodox experiences and tradition regarding plagues? Does the Orthodox Church really follow tradition? How can it, if it can’t be bothered to find out what it is, let alone follow it?
You might find this collection particularly helpful.
https://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/search?q=plague
Actually, the Socialism, behind the masks, and vaccines done for profit, this is a bigger problem. If you like to read, something based on real facts of real people, about resisting Socialism, right now on Lulu website you can order the book “The Catacomb Saints of Russia.” I just got my copy. God allowed me to meet 6 of the gulag survivors, five priests and a mother superior.
On the other hand, for a sober example on hierarchy being complacent, years ago, I was stunned by reading in a book, written by a gulag survivor, just one tough line – “None of the hyerachs of the Romanian Orthodox Church went thru any of the gulags created by the regime.” Not only that, some even went a long way to persecute priests coming out of the prisons of that time, in order to show the loyalty to the new leaders.
This is the human nature even in the area of the sacred environment…
Beautifully expressed!
God bless you, Austin, for encapsulating all of the past three and a half years into such a beautiful and accurate picture of everything we have suffered and hoped and understood. I am forwarding to my priest, who said, “Never again – I will lose my priesthood if I have to, but never again.” We are all in need of healing from the actions of those who should have demonstrated the most love, but rather demonstrated only fear and obedience to a master not of God.