The Orthodox Christian Fort Sumter?

Below is a talk given in the Chapel of the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, Brookline, MA March 16, 2009 by the Very Reverend Archimandrite Dr. Elpidophoros Lambriniadis, Chief Secretary of the Holy and Sacred Synod. The talk is titled, "Challenges of Orthodoxy in America And the Role of the Ecumenical Patriarchate," and was posted on the web site of Greek American News.com.

Please take the time to read the whole talk. It is, not to put too fine a point on it, it grieves me more than I can say to hear a representative of the Ecumenical throne would speak with such condescension. Personally,I am deeply hurt and offended by Fr Elpidophor's ad hominem argument against Metropolitan JONAH (who he consistently calls JONAS).

While Father makes several good points about the state of the Orthodox Church in the US, I will have to refrain from criticizing his argument lest I sin against charity.

While the talk is long, I encourage you to read all of what Fr Elpidophor has to say and draw what conclusions you do.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Reverend Protopresbyter Nicholas Triantafyllou, President,

Reverend Protopresbyter Thomas Fitzgerald, Dean of the School of Theology,

Reverend and Esteemed Members of the Faculty and staff,

Dear Students,

It is an exceptional honor and a great joy for me to be here today, among you, with the blessing and permission of His All Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch and the consent of His Eminence the Archbishop of America, in order to share with you some thoughts regarding the present condition of Orthodoxy in America and our Ecumenical Patriarchate's position towards it.

You have, my brothers and sisters, the privilege to be citizens of a country which determines to a great extent the fate of many people on our planet; a country where pioneering technologies as well as ideas and philosophies have been discovered and disseminated. The cultural peculiarities and characteristics of the United States find also a reflection in, as it is only natural, and exercise an influence on the religious communities of this country. It is far from accidental that none of the "traditional" religions (coming either from Europe or elsewhere), remained the same once they were replanted on American soil.

The same change can be of course observed in the case of Orthodoxy, whose appearance and development in America was influenced by certain indeterminable factors.

The first and main challenge that American Orthodoxy faces is that it has been developed in a region which, from an administrative and technical point, is that of diaspora. By the term "diaspora" we indicate that region whose ecclesiastical jurisdiction is been unfortunately claimed by a variety of "Mother" Churches, which wish to maintain their pastoral care over their respective flocks, comprised by the people who, over the years, immigrated to the superpower called USA.

In this way, the Orthodox faithful in America became organized according to their national origin and not according to the canon law of the Orthodox Church—that is, they organized themselves not in accordance with the principles of Orthodox ecclesiology which dictates that neither national origin, nor the history of a group's appearance in a particular region but rather the canonical taxis and the perennial praxis of the Church, as codified by the Ecumenical Councils, has the ultimate authority.

According to such ecclesiological principles, in any given region there can be one and only one bishop who shepherds the Orthodox faithful, regardless of any nationalistic distinction. It was, however, the very opposite scenario that took place in America and today one observes the challenging deplorable condition where a number of bishops claim pastoral responsibility for the same geographic region.

A second challenge of the Church in America is that it was brought here by people who left their homelands at a time that these homelands were economically underdeveloped. Economic immigration created, from the very first moment, the need for these people to assimilate to their adopted land in order to achieve, as soon as possible, the high living standards of the privileged Americans and therefore to enjoy the fruits of the American dream. Towards that goal, they changed their names, they put an emphasis on the English language in every aspect of their lives, and at last they succeeded in becoming true American citizens, holding ever higher positions in the financial, commercial, academic, artistic and political life of this country. The negative aspect of this strong emphasis on cultural assimilation was the consideration of the faithfulness in one's cultural background as an impediment to the progress and success in the American society. Thus, the complexes of an alleged inferior nationality or class that, in order to enjoy the fruits of the American dream, is supposed to eradicate any bond to its distinctive culture.

The third challenge of Orthodoxy in America concerns the manner of its ecclesiastical organization. The Orthodox faithful organized themselves in communities of lay people, who, in turn, became identified with the ecclesiastical community in the manner of the traditional organization of Christian communities. Thus, the parish (κοινότητα) being now governed by lay elected members, builds its own Church, school and other such institutions, and provides the priest's salary. Such communal organization improves, as it is right and desirable, the role of laity in Church administration, and increases the sense of responsibility and participation in the life of the Church, offering thus the change to the Church to profit of its talented and able parishioners. On the other hand, however, four very concrete dangers lurk behind such a communal organization of the local Church:

a) That the priest might become alienated from his administrative duties, and from being the spiritual leader of the parish would become a clerk of the parish council,

b) That the parishioners would find it difficult to comprehend the rules according to which the Church is governed and instead they would follow their own secular reasoning,

c) That the structures of the parish would become influenced by the prevalent Protestant models and thus they would replicate and imitate practices that are foreign to the Spirit of Orthodoxy, and

d) That the parishes would degenerate into nothing more than membership clubs, invested with some ecclesiastical resemblance.

As you all know, one of the secrets for the success of the American miracle in its financial, political and technological aspects was precisely its desire to detach itself from the traditional models of the old world, its ability to break free from the established norms, its willingness to question whatever was considered as given or beyond any criticism. As it might have been expected, these tendencies soon found an expression within the life of the Church, sometimes in more extreme ways, other times in more temperate ways. Thus, soon Orthodox clergymen became indistinguishable from the clergy of other denominations, choirs in the western style were adopted, the liturgical tradition became more and more impoverished by being limited only to the bare essentials, etc.

Against that gradual secularization of Orthodoxy in America, a reaction soon made its appearance in the form of a number of rapidly spreading monasteries of an Athonite influence, characterized by ultraconservative tendencies, attached to the letter of the law, and reacting to any form of relationship with other Christian denominations. All of this is nothing but the manifestation of the intense thirst for a lost spirituality and a liturgical richness of which the Orthodox people of America have been for very long now deprived, forced, as they were, to embrace the Church only in the form of a sterile social activism.

The traits of the American clergy today also appear to undergo certain differences.

The secularization of the parish life, as described above, fails to inspire young men and to cultivate in them the religious vocation, so that tomorrow's pastors would be part of the very flesh of today's parish. That vacuum in clerical vocation is covered by candidates who, being unusually older than what was perceived the standard age, have already on their shoulders the domestic burden of a family. Thus they struggle to obtain the necessary degree that would secure for them among others the society's respect.

Another great number of candidates to the priesthood come from converts, who possess little, if any, familiarity with the Orthodox experience and they are usually characterized by their overzealous behavior and mentality. It is of interest that the converts who become ordained into priesthood represent a disproportionally greater percentage than the converts among the faithful. The result of this disanalogous representation is that, more often than not, convert priest shepherd flocks who are bearers of some cultural tradition, but because their pastors either lack the necessary familiarity with that tradition or even consciously oppose it, they succeed in devaluing and gradually eradicating those cultural elements that have been the expression of the parishes that they serve.

It is particularly saddening that the crisis in priestly vocation has decreased dramatically the number but also the quality of celibate priests, who one day will be assigned with the responsibility of governing this Church. Lack of spirituality makes the monastic ideal incomprehensible and unattractive especially among the youth (with the exception, of course, of the aforementioned monastic communities with their own peculiarities).

Having attempted this general evaluation of the American Orthodoxy, allow me to consider briefly the Holy Archdiocese of America, this most important eparchy of the Ecumenical Throne.

The image we depicted above in rough brushstrokes holds also true for the Archdiocese. Thanks to the selfless dedication of our immigrants and under the protection of the first See in the Orthodox world, a strong Archdiocese was created that, in time, reached a level of maturity and excellence and it is today the pride of the Church of Constantinople. The Archdiocese took advantage of the possibilities that a deeply democratic, meritocratic and progressive state, like the United States, was able to offer, in order that the Orthodox faith of our fathers take root deep in the American land.

To this effect, the active participation of the lay element was, as we have seen, very important. We believe that the younger generations of the omogeneia are free of the past's prejudices and complexes, according to which, if you wish to succeed in America you have to forget your cultural patrimony and your language in order to be left naked, so to speak, in the thorny desert of the Wild West. Today's omogeneia has overcome that denial and has come to understand that the secret of the American civilization's success does not lie in the obliteration of one's cultural background but rather in the free and harmonious co-existence of people and races who have come to this hospitable land seeking a life in freedom, in faith and in dignity. Our cultural heritage and our national conscience is not, by any means, an obstacle for our progress and for the successful witness to our faith, especially insofar as ecumenicity (οἰκουμενικότης) is the heart of Hellenism and by definition alien to any form of nationalism or cultural chauvinism.

The Holy Archdiocese of America under the Ecumenical Patriarchate is the most organized, well-structured and successful presence of Orthodoxy today. This is not accidental. This success was not achieved by foregoing its cultural identity. It was not achieved by ignoring the sacred canons and the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils. It was not achieved by succumbing to the temptation of secularism. It was not achieved by imprisoning itself in the darkness of the extreme fundamentalism, nationalism and sterile denial.

Precisely because the Holy Archdiocese of America occupies such an esteemed position in this country we are obliged to offer a self-criticism but also to defend ourselves against the unjust accusations that target this jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

Examining, then, ourselves, I believe that we ought to be more careful towards the easiness with which we are ready to abandon our Hellenism, both as language and as tradition. As we have already said, it is nothing but a myth the opinion that Hellenism is an obstacle to the creative and successful incorporation in the American reality. Hellenism is identified with its ecumenical character and for that reason it can never be nationalistic for both of its manifestations, its culture and its Orthodox faith are concepts that transcend the boundaries of the national.

I do not support the opinion that we can today oblige everyone to speak Greek, but I think that we have to offer that possibility to those who so desire, to learn Greek in well organized schools, by talented teachers. I think that we owe our children the possibility of choice. We owe to our culture the obliteration of contempt for a language that expressed the Gospel and became the vehicle for the most subtle meanings in the articulation of the dogma by the founders of our faith and Fathers of Christianity.

I do not support the opinion that the services here in America should be done exclusively in Greek. Simply I do not understand how it is possible that any priest of the Archdiocese might not be able to serve in both languages. It is not understandable how an institution of higher education cannot manage to teach its students a language, even in the time span of four years!

My brothers and sisters, I am not one of them who believe that there is a sacred language (lingua sacra) for the Church. I just wonder why in every Theological School in the world the students are expected to learn the Biblical languages, and it is only in our School of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America that such a requirement seems anachronistic, nationalistic or conservative.

Speaking now of your Theological School, do you think that the Church's expectation that the graduates of this School know theology, canon law, Byzantine music, be able to celebrate the service of matins, vespers and the sacraments, be able to preach the Word of God and instruct our youth in the catechism is unreasonable or excessive?

My dear brothers and sisters, allow me now to return to the problem of the diaspora and the jurisdictional diversity that one observes in the USA.

First of all, allow me to remind you that the term "diaspora" is a technical term denoting those regions that lie beyond the borders of the local autocephalous Churches. It does not mean that the Orthodox people who dwell in these regions live there temporally, as misleadingly it was argued by His Eminence Phillip in a recent article ("The Word"). According to the 28th Canon of the 4th Ecumenical Council one of the prerogatives of the Ecumenical Patriarch is precisely His jurisdiction exactly over these regions, which lie beyond the predescribed borders of the local Churches. The canon in question uses the technical term "barbaric" in order to denote these lands, since it was precisely referring to the unknown lands beyond the orbit of the Roman Empire.

On account of this canon, the Ecumenical Patriarchate has suffered the unfair and unjust criticism of two American Orthodox Hierarchs: Metropolitan Phillip and the newly elected Metropolitan Jonas.

It is my duty to refute the injustice directed against the Mother Church of Constantinople for the sake of historical truth and for the sake of moral conscience.

Metropolitan Jonas, while he was still an abbot, in one of his speeches presented what he called "a monastic perspective" on the subject "Episcopacy, Primacy and the Mother Churches". In the chapter on autocephaly and primacy he claims that "there is no effective overarching primacy in the Orthodox Church." He seems to be in opposition to the institution of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, because he considers that such an institution "is based on primacy over an empire-wide synod" and that this "has long become unrealistic." What surprised me the most in this "monastic perspective" of His Eminence Jonas was the claim that allegedly "now only the Greek ethnic Churches and few others recognize the Ecumenical Patriarchate to be what it claims to be." It is indeed saddening the ignorance of this Hierarch not only on account of History and canonical order but even on account of the current state of affairs. How is it possible that he ignores that there is no Church that does not recognize the Ecumenical Patriarchate? Perhaps he is carried away by the fact that the ecclesial schema over which he presides and which has been claimed as "autocephalous" in rampant violation of every sense of canonicity, is not recognized but by few Churches and it is not included in the diptychs of the Church.

Please allow me, by way of illustration, to sample a few other points of the same article that should not remain unanswered.

Metropolitan Jonas claims that in America "there is no common expression of unity that supersedes ethnic linguistic and cultural divisions." Does His Eminence ignore the fact that under the canonical jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in America belong Greeks, Palestinians, Albanians, Ukrainians and Carpathorussians? Is this not proof enough of a common structure that supersedes ethnic and cultural divisions? Does he imply perhaps that SCOBA either constitutes a common expression of unity that supersedes such divisions?

The most provocative of his claims is that which asserts that with the formation of the so-called OCA "the presence of any other jurisdiction on American territory becomes uncanonical, and membership in the Synod of the Orthodox Church in America becomes the criterion of canonicity of all bishops in America." It is perhaps a sign of our times that he who violated the holy canons par excellence, the most uncanonically claimed as allegedly autocephalous, makes now himself the criterion of canonicity and vitiates the canonical hierarchs as uncanonical. O tempora, o mores!

Instead of acknowledging the mercifulness of the other Patriarchates which, in spite the uncanonical status of the so-called OCA, accept it in communion, its representatives choose to subject them to such an unfair treatment that contributes nothing to the common cause of Orthodox unity. I would be interested to hear an explanation from His Eminence in response to the question "How will the so-called OCA contribute to our common Orthodox witness in diaspora by electing bishops holding titles which already exist for the same city". Especially our Ecumenical Patriarchate not only is it not "unable to lead" as most unfortunately Metropolitan Jonas claims, but already since last October (in order to limit myself to the most recent example) has launched under the presidency of His All Holiness the process for the convocation of the Holy and Great Synod. I am not sure whether His Eminence, upon his ordination to the episcopacy, refused to put on the vestments of a bishop, which he, in the same article, and while he was still an abbot, had called as unfitting to the real nature of the arch-pastorship (p. 11).

Let me add that the refusal to recognize primacy within the Orthodox Church, a primacy that necessarily cannot but be embodied by a primus (that is by a bishop who has the prerogative of being the first among his fellow bishops) constitutes nothing less than heresy. It cannot be accepted, as often it is said, that the unity among the Orthodox Churches is safeguarded by either a common norm of faith and worship or by the Ecumenical Council as an institution. Both of these factors are impersonal while in our Orthodox theology the principle of unity is always a person. Indeed, in the level of the Holy Trinity the principle of unity is not the divine essence but the Person of the Father ("Monarchy" of the Father), at the ecclesiological level of the local Church the principle of unity is not the presbyterium or the common worship of the Christians but the person of the Bishop, so to in the Pan-Orthodox level the principle of unity cannot be an idea nor an institution but it needs to be, if we are to be consistent with our theology, a person.

The second article that I have to mention here is that of His Eminence the Antiochean Metropolitan Phillip under the title "Canon 28 of the 4th Ecumenical Council—Relevant or Irrelevant Today?"

Metropolitan Phillip begins his argument with an entirely anti-theological distinction of the holy canons into three categories 1) dogmatic, 2) contextual and, 3) "dead".

I would like to know in which of these three categories, following his reasoning, His Eminence would classify the canons of the Ecumenical Councils that demarcate the jurisdictions of the ancient Patriarchates. Are they "contextual"—subject, as it is, to change? Does His Eminence believe that in this way he serves the unity among Orthodox, by subjugating the holy and divine canons under the circumstantial judgment of some bishop?

Based on the above distinction, and although he accepts that canon 28 of the 4th Ecumenical Council is not "dead" (since there is so much debate about it), he affirms that indeed it gives certain prerogatives to the Ecumenical Patriarch, on the other hand, however, he claims that this happened for secular and political reasons that have nothing to do with today's state of affairs. Implicitly and yet all too clearly, Metropolitan Phillip implies that the prerogatives of the Ecumenical Patriarch can be doubted. The question then is: does His Eminence know of any Church whose status (Patriarchal or Autocephalous) were not decided according to the historical conditions that they were current at the time? Or, does His Eminence know of any Church that has received its status on the basis of theological reasons exclusively? Every administrative decision of an Ecumenical Council is equally respected to perpetuity together with its dogmatic decisions. Imagine the consequences for the Orthodox Church if we begin to re-evalutate the status of each local Church!

The correct interpretation of canon 28 is considered by His Eminence as "novelty", by invoking only sources of the 20th century, while it has been scientifically established already by the late Metropolitan of Sardeis Maximos the uninterrupted application of the canon in question during the history of the Church of Constantinople.

The question, my brothers and sisters, is rather simple:

If Constantinople was not given that prerogative by canon 28, how was she able to grant autocephalies and patriarchal dignities to the Churches of Russia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Czech Lands and Slovakia, Poland and Albania? Under the provision of which canon did Constantinople give the right of jurisdiction over the remaining of Africa to the Patriarchate of Alexandria in 2002?

And if the Ecumenical Patriarchate has not granted the Patriarchate of Moscow the privilege to bestow autocephaly as it pleases it, then what gives it the right to do so on the expense of the Orthodox unity?

Summarizing my lecture, I wish to call your attention to the following points:

1. The Ecumenical Patriarchate is a Church that undergoes martyrdom, a Church that often has received unfair criticism, especially by those Churches which were most richly benefited by it. At no point, the spirit of nationalism took hold of the Ecumenical Patriarchate because that is incompatible with the concepts of Hellenism and Ecumenicity (ecumenical character) as well as with the Christian Orthodox faith. The proof of this emerges in the most decisive manner throughout the 17 centuries of its history, during which it never Hellenized, not even attempted to Hellenize the nations to which it gave through its apostolic missions the undying light of Christ. What better example than the Slavic tribes which owe even their alphabet to the Thessalonian brothers Cyril and Methodios. I, who speak to you tonight, although I am an Antiochean from my maternal side, nevertheless I serve as the Chief-Secretary of the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Church of Constantinople.

2. The Ecumenical Patriarchate neither had nor has territorial claims against the sister Orthodox Churches. That truth is testified by the fact that, although the Patriarchates of the East were virtually destroyed during the difficult times of the 17th and 18th centuries, nevertheless, the Patriarchate of Constantinople was taking the care to have a Patriarch elected for those Patriarchates, supporting their primates in every possible way.

3. The submission of the diaspora to the Ecumenical Patriarchate does not mean either Hellenization or violation of the canonical order, because it is only in this way that both the letter and the spirit of the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils is respected. The Mother Church knows, however, that such a submission is difficult to be accomplished under the present historical conditions. For this reason, and by employing the principle of economy, it was suggested and it has now become accepted in Pan-Orthodox level, that there will be local Pan-Orthodox Episcopal Assemblies in the diaspora (like SCOBA in the US). The principle of presidency is followed, namely the representative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate presides over these Episcopal Assemblies in order to preserve the necessary element of canonicity.

As you surely know, last October the Ecumenical Patriarchate summoned in Constantinople a Synaxis of the Primates of the Orthodox Churches. The Primates accepted the proposal of Patriarch Bartholomew to move ahead with the Pan-Orthodox preparatory meetings, within 2009, so that the Holy and Great Synod of the Orthodox Church take place as soon as possible. For the record, please note that this decision was reached thanks to the concession on behalf of the Ecumenical Patriarchate which accepted that the Autonomous Churches will no longer be invited as to avoid the thorny problem of the Church of Estonia in the relations between Constantinople and Moscow.

4. With regards to the United States, the submission to the First Throne of the Church, that is, to the Ecumenical Patriarchate is not only fitting with the American society and mentality but also it opens up the horizons of possibilities for this much-promising region, which is capable of becoming an example of Pan-Orthodox unity and witness.

The Mother Church of Constantinople safeguards for the Orthodox Church in America those provisions that are needed for further progress and maturity in Christ.



Please allow me to conclude with the phrase of His Beatitude Ignatios Patriarch of Antioch during last October's Synaxis of the Primates at the Phanar: "In the Orthodox Church we have one primus and he is the Patriarch of Constantinople."



Thank you for your attention.

The Psychology of Leadership I: Looking at the Research

Here is the information for my upcoming webinars, "The Psychology of Leadership I: Looking at the Research"  (Tuesday, March 24, 2009, 2:00 PM CDT/ 3:00PM EDT/7:00 PM GMT) and "Psychology of Leadership II: Applying the Research to the Parish" (Tuesday, March 31, 2009, 2:00 PM CDT/ 3:00PM EDT/7:00 PM GMT).  The  event is sponsored by the Diocese of the Midwest of the Orthodox Church in America.

A couple of things to note. I'll be doing live PowerPoint presentations both days.  While participants will be able to ask questions and make comments via instant messaging, you will not be able to speak directly to or IM the other  participants.  Most users who have computers equipped with speakers and running some version of Windows, Linux or Mac OS and running IE, Firefox, or Safari should have no trouble. 

I have reproduced below information about the webinar's from the Parish Health Ministry web page.

Look forward to meeting some of you online next week!

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Background

When we say that someone is "a strong leader" we often mean that we see in the person particular skills (e.g., being a good communicator, or a good organizer) or personality traits (e.g., forceful and directive) that we value.  Just as frequently, we evaluate another as a "weak leader" because of the perceived absence of these valued skills and traits or the presence of skills and talents we don't value.   In either case, we tend to think of leadership in very abstract terms and without reference to the whole social and organizational context within which the person functions in a leadership role.

Recent empirical research into the psychology of leadership, however, argues that context is a key element in understanding leadership.  Leadership, it is argued, emerges from social situations and what is effective style of leadership in one context might be harmful in another.

Organizationally, any individual is a leader only within the context of personal and administrative relationships.  Being a leader implies not only the presence of followers, but also that one is interacting with those who are peers/colleagues and supervisors.  Among other things, how I evaluate an individual as a leader depends on my organizational relationship with that person and in the community.

For example, in looking at the priest as the leader of a parish what relationship do we see?  Most immediately the priest relates on a daily basis with parishioners (i.e., "followers").  But he also relates to his brother clergy ("peers" and/or "colleagues", and his bishop ("supervisor").  All of these people are reasonably concerned with different skills, personality traits and outcomes.  For this reason the standard for what makes a successful leader is not necessarily a shared standard.  It is more accurate to say that in the Church (as with any other human community, religious or secular), there are multiple standards and outcomes that serve as the standards by which we determine who is, and who isn't an effective leader.  While these standards and outcomes are often complimentary, they are not necessarily so.  Sometimes they are unrelated, but they may also be contradictory and even mutually exclusive.

Overview
In this, the first of two webinars, we will look together at lay and clerical leadership within, and for, the parish in light of the current psychology research.  We will begin by brief summarizing this research on the psychology of leadership and followership.  What we will see is that leaders not only need followers, in a different context a leader can be, and often is, also a follower. 
We will conclude by looking at two dysfunctional of parish organization:  collusion and competition.  We will see that not only are these self-defeating forms of parish administration they are contrary to the biblical witness of the Church as "one body with many members"


Speaker
Rev. Fr. Gregory Jensen, Ph.D. Priest-in-charge, Holy Assumption Orthodox Church (OCA), Canton, OH.

A native Texan, after finishing his doctorate in counseling, ministry and spirituality at Duquesne University's Institute of Formative Spirituality in 1995, Fr. Gregory was ordained to the holy priesthood 1996.  Together with his wife Mary he served for 7 years as missionary in rural northern California where he also taught psychology and served as a consultant and trainer for area social service agencies. From 2003-2007, he was the Orthodox chaplain for the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. 

A psychologist by profession, his research focuses on the relationship between classical and contemporary psychology theories of personality and Christian spirituality.   His conference and published work focus on theoretical and applied issues in clinical and developmental psychologies, pastoral theology, and Christian spirituality.  An avid blogger he maintains the blog Koinonia (www.palamas.info), is active in the Youngstown, OH chapter of the Society St John Chrysostom (an ecumenical group devoted to Catholic/ Orthodox reconciliation) and is a frequent speaker at retreats.

Learning Objectives

1. Participants will be introduced to the current social psychological research on leadership and followership.
2. Participants will have a better understanding of the different facets of lay and clerical parish leadership.
3. Participants will come to understand why effective leadership within the parish must take into account the role of the parish in the deanery, the diocese and the national Church.
4. While not directly concerned with outreach and evangelism, religious education, the philanthropic ministry of the parish, or stewardship, this webinar offers the parish a more effective, empirically based, foundation for the planning and implementation of these and other critical parish ministries and programs.


The Details

• Date: Tuesday, March 24/31 2009
  
• Time: 2:00 PM CDT/ 3:00PM EDT/7:00 PM GMT
• Registration: Click here for Part I and here for Part II.si
  

Webinar SNAFU

Image by ChrisB in SEA via Flickr

Alas, the webinar scheduled for this afternoon didn't come to pass--fear not though my loyal readers, it will be re-scheduled soon.

Your prayers please, gentle readers, I've got to give a workshop on stewardship this evening.

(When did I become the practical one?)

Oh, and Happy St Patrick's Day!

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Sound Familiar?

TS at Broken Alabaster, has an interesting quote from Tracey Rowland's Ratzinger's Faith. According to Rowland, Ratzinger "speaks of the twin pathologies of bourgeois pelagianism and the pelagianism of the pious. He describes the mentality of the bourgeois pelagian as follows." And so, (to quote Ratzinger) for the bourgeois pelagian,"If God really does exist and if He does in fact bother about people He cannot be so fearfully demanding as He is described by the faith of the Church. Moreover, I am no worse than others; I do my duty, and the minor human weaknesses cannot really be as dangerous as all that."

Rowland continues that "This attitude is a modern version of 'acedia' - a kind of anxious vertigo that overcomes people when they consider the heights to which their divine pedigree has called them. In Nietzchean terms it is the mentality of the herd, the attitude of someone who just cannot be bothered to be great. It is the bourgeois because it is calculating and pragmatic and comfortable with what is common and ordinary, rather than aristocratic and erotic."

As for the "pious pelagians," what of them? They "want security, not hope. By means of a tough and rigorous system of religious practices, by means of prayers and actions, they want to create for themselves a right to blessedness. What they lack is the humility essential to any love - the humility to be able to receive what we are given over and above what we have deserved and achieved. The denial of hope in favor of security that we are faced with here rests on the inability to bear the tension of waiting for what is to come and to abandon onself to God's goodness."

Thinking about these words, I realize that I encounter this as well in the Orthodox Church. Many of those born and raised in the Orthodox Church suffer from what is described here as "bourgeois pelagianism," while many of those who join the Church later in life suffer because they are "pious pelagians."

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Game Theory and Trust

Besides the beginning of the Great Fast, my time these last two weeks have been has been taken up preparing for several presentations I'll be making between now and the beginning of April.

Currently, I am finishing the research for a two part online seminar on parish leadership (a webinar). In addition to reviewing the psychological literature on leadership, I've had the chance to look at some VERY introductory material in game theory (Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life, by Len Fisher and Game Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions), by Ken Binmore)

"Game theory?" you ask, "what is game theory?"

Glad you asked. I'll tell you.

Game theory, according to the Wikipedia (that online repository of everything) article on the subject, is a branch of applied mathematics that "attempts to mathematically capture behavior in strategic situations, in which an individual's success in making choices depends on the choices of others." In addition to its application in the social sciences (especially economics), the theory and insights of game theory have be applied to disciples as diverse as "biology, engineering, political science, international relations, computer science (mainly for artificial intelligence), and philosophy."

While there's a great in game theory that I find interest—and useful—one of the things that has caught my attention as a I prepare for my parish leadership seminar is what game theory says about fostering trust in interpersonal relationship.

When trust is lost, when I offend or hurt you, if I'm a descent person, my natural inclination is to apologize and try and win back your trust. While the first half of my response—the apology—is a good thing, my second step, my attempt to win your trust, is (assuming I've understood what I've read) is likely to have a result opposite that for which I hope (that you trust me). So the question now becomes why? Why do I so often fail when I try and win back your trust?

Game theory is concerned with "strategic situations." In somewhat simplistic terms, strategy is about acting to achieve a particular goal. A strategic situation is one in which the participants are each trying to accomplish a goal relative to each other. They might, for example, be in competition with each other, or they might cooperate with each other. The riding on a seesaw is an example of the later, game of chess is an example of the former.

"But what about restoring trust Father Gregory?! How do I do that?" I'll tell you.

The best way to foster trust or cooperation, or so some game theorists argue, is not to ask for it, but to offer it. That's why apologizing when I've caused you harm is a good thing and often brings a good response from you. And it is also why asking (or trying) to win your trust often fails. Let me explain.

When I, or anyone for that matter, apologizes I'm making myself vulnerable to you. My vulnerability, my willingness to be rejected or in some way hurt by you, demonstrates my trust in you to treat me with respect and to not take advantage of me. When, however, I follow my apology up with the request, "How can I earn your trust back," I am asking you to be vulnerable to me—to let your guard down by asking you to reveal to me (a self-acknowledge untrustworthy person) the ways in which I can hurt you.

Let me try and explain this a bit better.

My wife and I have begun house hunting in anticipation of our upcoming move to Madison, WI. Like most home buyers, we will apply for a mortgage to help us purchase our new house. Now in addition to a credit check (i.e., our character in financial matters) and a check on our income (i.e., how much money we've got), the bank will also require from us two things: a deposit on the house (that is, that we pay them a percentage of the house's cost) and collateral (in our case, the house itself).

Why does bank wants a deposit and collateral from borrows? The deposit isn't to lower the amount that they will borrow; nor is putting the house up as collateral meant to give the bank something to sell if the borrowers default on the loan. It is rather to raise the cost for the borrowers of their defaulting on the loan. In effect, the bank is willing to trust us (or any borrowers) only to the degree that we have something to lose if we fail to repay the loan.

Trust is won by my willingness to suffer loss if I am untrustworthy in our relationship. If dishonesty or untrustworthy behavior doesn't cost me anything, you are unwise to trust me.

At first this might sound a harsh and judgmental standard—it certainly did to me. But as I thought about it, I began to ask, what is it that I mean by trust? Is it simply a warm feeling or is it my ability to predict your future behavior? While forgiveness need not be mutual, trust must be. Trust requires that we walk together as it were. It isn't necessarily bad or sinful if we don't walk together—but if we don't walk together our relationship is not trustworthy for the simple reason that we aren't together on this or that issue.

What has all this to do with pastoral leadership?

I think were often pastors go wrong is that we are not clear as to the cost of failure to us if we fail in a pastoral relationship. Or maybe it is more accurate to say, the cost we bear for failure is not relevant to those we fail. Often clergy and laity deal in rather different "currency" from each other. Most priests I know that failure very personally, but this deep, personal sense of failure while sincere, is often not seen (or necessarily valued) by those that we fail.

I will, in my next post, come back to what might be a more meaningful pledge by clergy to those we serve. I suspect that much of the tension we see in the Church today reflects the fact that we do not have a shared standard of valuing the cost of behavior (whether perpetrated by clergy or lay leaders) that violates the bond of trust that holds us together.

Until then, your comments, questions and criticisms are not only welcome, but actively sought.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Upcoming Webinar on Parish Leadership

Tomorrow, Tuesday, March 17th and then again on Tuesday, March 31st at 2:00 PM (CST), 3:00 PM (EST), 7:00 PM (GMT) I will be leading an online seminar on parish leadership. The first seminar, "Psychology of Leadership I: Looking at the Research," will be an overview of some of the psychological research on leadership. The second seminar on the 31st will meet at the same time and will more directly apply the findings of the psychological research on leadership to the parish. Both webinars will last approximately 45 minutes and you will be able to submit questions via instant messaging. Finally, the webinar is free.

If you are interested you can register by clicking here.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

The Art of Living | Front Porch Republic

Stewart K Lundy of the blog Front Porch Republic does a very good job of what I was trying less successfully to say about the need for the Orthodox Church to articulate a vision of natural law. Here's a snippet of his post.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

p.s., More posts later--Lent's keeping me busy.

+FrG

According to Okakura Kakuzo’s short work, The Book of Tea, this conservative impulse is the “art of being in the world.” Isn’t this “art of life” precisely the virtue Alasdair MacIntyre claims we have lost in his After Virtue? Humility, gratitude, and the pursuit of virtue affirm nature as normative not because it dictates morality but because it is a gift. Nature surely does not mean to us what it did to the Scholastics, but I wish we could rediscover the earth as our home. The loss of a normative sense of nature has set up the world against the earth in a destructive manner. We can thank the likes of William of Occam, Francis Bacon, and Descartes for the loss of nature and the birth of modern science. It used to be that nature was seen as the artwork of God, as an acheiropoieta (an icon “not made by human hands”). But no longer do we see nature as an icon, giving glimpses of God; instead, we see nature as blocking us from God. Instead of seeing truth through the physical world, fideism sees truth in spite of the physical world and its natural counterpart, atheism, limits truth to the physical world. Speaking of the spiritual realm as “supernatural” is only a step away from speaking of the “unnatural” realm. The natural-supernatural divide has cut off access to God. The death of God followed the death of nature. Before, creation was seen as the art of God; now, creation is dead and so is its Creator.

H/T: Rod Dreher: The Zen of conservatism

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A More Than Moral Life

Then Bildad the Shuhite answered and said: "How long will you speak these things, and the words of your mouth be like a strong wind? Does God subvert judgment? Or does the Almighty pervert justice?

(Job 8:1-3, NKJV)

Writing in FIRST THINGS: On the Square, R. R. Reno offers an interesting observation. In his review of "Jacques Barzun's searching analysis of modern education, The House of Intellect," in which Barzun explores "the triumph of the Bohemian ideal, and the end of what John Lukacs has called the Bourgeois Era," Reno comments briefly on what he terms the "Bohemian project," which

retails itself as the royal road to self-discovery through the alchemy of self-expression. It promises a more "real," more authentic, and more individual existence. As Barzun suggests, the claims are hollow. The emerging Bohemian Era will be anti-intellectual: characterized by an externalized and collective sense of purpose (politics über alles) and an undifferentiated, amorphous inner life (the empire of desire).

As I read this, I began to think about the difference in character between Job and his friends. For all that Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar might present themselves as champions of religious orthodoxy in the face of Job's (seeming) dishonesty and self-deception, these men embody in their words to Job the very anti-intellectualism and "externalized and collective sense of purpose . . . and an undifferentiated, amorphous inner life" that Reno argues has taken hold of contemporary Western culture.

Precisely however because of the historical and cultural distance between Job's time and our own, it seems to me that these men typify not only cultural decadence, but a collapse, and even a rejection, of the human possibility of transcendence. Rather than undergo the deep, inner struggle as does Job, his friends flee to mere moralism a way of life that is not only the opposite of a life of transcendence, but the sign that we have refused the possibilities open to us in the spiritual life.

This is not to suggest by any means that we can dispense with the moral law. Indeed, reading through the patristic commentary on Job, it becomes clear that the fathers generally agree with the anthropology that Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar articulate. Even when a particular father disagrees with the applicability to Job's situation of the words spoken, they nevertheless see the general applicability of statement. Just to offer one example, in his own reflection on the Bildad's comment to Job that I quoted above, St John Chrysostom writes:

[E]ven though Bildad's words are not entirely applicable to Job, let us see what he means. Do you not perceive the profound justice that reigns in the creation and its profound order? And how everything is well regulated and settled? Therefore could He Who maintains justice and order among the senseless creatures overturns the rules in your case?

Instead of answering his own question, Chrysostom asks more questions, the asking of which reveals (as we say earlier) the convergence of cosmology and anthropology in the life of the particular person:

Further why did God create everything? Is it not because of you . . .? And so He Who has created so many things, did He not give you what was right to share? He Who has created you out of love, if He has shown His benevolence toward the universe, this also is proof of His power.

This then is the crux of the matter: We are created in the image and likeness of the God Who creates "out of love" and Who, again "out of love," has ordered and regulated the whole creation in justice. Creation makes manifest the goodness of God precisely because of its own inner harmony, its own internal integrity on both the microscopic and macroscopic levels. Or, in a word, the justice of creation "declares the glory of God." (Ps 18/19.1)

And what of us?

Again, while he may have missed the mark in his estimation of Job, in Chrysostom's view Bildad has nevertheless grasped something profoundly true about humanity in general: "We often overturn justice because of our powerlessness, but "He has created everything" he says. Will He, Who is so wise, so just, so powerful, be unjust?" ("Commentary on Job," 8.2A-3B, ACCS, vol VI, p. 44)

Here then is the difference between the spiritual life, the life of the inward man, and life of mere moralism, of merely external conformity and pseudo-self-expression. This difference turns on my response to my own powerlessness.

As Job says of himself in his retort to Eliphaz, "My life is lighter than speech and perishes with an empty hope." (7.6, LXX) He continues:

Remember then, my life is a breath, and my eye will no longer return to see good. The eye of him who sees me will not see me again; your eyes are on me, I am no more. I am like the cloud that cleared away from the sky. (7.7-9, LXX)

Job and his friends all acknowledge the powerlessness of the human. Each in, his own way, offers us a meditation on the often converging themes of human contingency and sinfulness. But for the critics of Job, there is (I think) some comfort to be found in the possibility that Job suffers because of some secret on his part that makes him qualitatively different from them. The reason I say this is because even though Eliphaz cannot convince Job that this is so, it is still worth his effort to make the argument if only to convince himself that he is safe from the affliction that has visited Job. In this Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar reveal themselves to be men of pure externality in response to their own inner poverty.

Job, for his part, does not, and will not, take this route. He will not use the occasion of meeting a friend, even a friend who has betrayed him, as the opportunity to comfort himself at the expense of the truth of the human condition. For Job, there is no denial of his own powerlessness; he denies neither his contingency nor his sinfulness. At the same time, he sees himself and his condition in others, even as he sees others in himself.

Commenting on Job's words, St Gregory the Great says that "this mortal life passes day by day; . . . . Just as we said before, while the time in our hands passes, the time before us is shortened. Moreover, of the whole length of our lives, the days to come are proportionally fewer to those days that have gone." ("Morals on the Book of Job," 8.26, quoted in ACCS, vol VI, p. 41) It is the pain of human morality, of their own contingency, that Job's friends fight against. And it is just this, the fragility of all humanity, that, verse by verse, Job grows to more and more accept in his own flesh.

None of this is to suggest that Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar are bad men. They aren't. But they are weak men and so seek safety and security in the merely moral. Like Job, they have learned "to restrain the flesh by continence." Unlike Job, however, each man suffers because his "mind has not been taught to expand itself through compassion" for his neighbor. (Gregory the Great, "Morals on the Book of Job," 6.53, quoted in ACCS, vol VI, p. 32) Later in his reflections on the book of Job, St Gregory reflects on the condition of those in the Church who are like the friends of Job. He says that they are the one "who certainly keep from the gratification of the flesh, yet grovel with all their heart in earthly practices."

Gregory continues his mediation by imagining the Church saying of these "earthly" and "dusty" Christians that

are members of me in faith, yet . . . are not sound or pure members in practice. For they either are mastered by foul desires and run to and fro in corruption's rottenness, or, being devoted to earthly practices, they are soiled with dust. For in those whom I have to endure, people filled with wantonness, I do plainly lament for the flesh turned corrupt. And in those from whom I suffer, those who are seeking the earth, what else is this but the defilement of dust that I must bear? ("Morals on the Book of Job," 8.23, quoted in ACCS, vol VI, p. 41)

Even while he says that his life "is a breath," Job shows himself to be a man of substance. He sees the fragility of his own life but there is no hint of narcissism in his complaints nor does his own suffering become the excuse for a lack of compassion for his neighbor.

And now we see the real struggle of the spiritual life: To embrace the whole truth of our situation, the good and the ill. But as Job's own situation also makes clear, to live this way will—necessarily it seems—put us at odds with those who, like Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, have yet themselves to turn inward.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

The Mystery of Purification

Behold, happy is the man whom God corrects; therefore do not despise the chastening of the Almighty. For He bruises, but He binds up; He wounds, but His hands make whole.

(Job 5.17-18, NKJV)

Eliphaz's response to Job highlights the struggles that are inherent in the first moment of my inward turn. Let me explain.

He argues that if Job is truly an innocent of any wrong doing he would not suffer. As he says to Job (4.12, LXX), "if there had been any truth in your words, none of these evil would have befallen you." In other words: Those innocent of sin do not suffer (4.7, LXX), since Job is suffering he must be guilty of sin.

St Gregory the Great rejects this line of reasoning. He sees in Eliphaz and the other "friends of blessed Job," the image of the "heretics," of those "the evil ones" who "are as much to blame in their admonitions as they are immoderate in their condemnations." For the Pope of Old Rome both experience and Scripture testify to the fact that the innocent and the righteous do suffer and suffer often. He goes further and says that

They, then, are genuinely righteous who produce the love of the heavenly country to meet all the ills of the present life. For all who fear enduring ills in this life are clearly not righteous people. They have forgotten they suffer for the sake of eternal blessings.

Turning explicitly to Eliphaz, Gregory explores why it is that this friend of Job "does not take into account [why it is that] either the righteous are cut off or that the innocent perish here." The saint argues that this memory lapses reflects an even more profound lapse: "For people often serve God not in the hope of heavenly glory but an earthly recompense." He continues that as does Eliphaz, many "make a fiction in their own head of that which they are seeking. Thinking themselves to be instructors in preaching earthly immunity, they show by all their pains what is the thing they love." ("Morals on Job," 5.34, quoted in ACCS, vol VI, p. 22)

Reading through Job, I am struck that—for the second time—Eliphaz is overwhelmed by Job's situation. Just as at the end of chapter 2, he and his friends are struck dumb in the face of Job's suffer (2.18), so too Eliphaz begins his admonish by acknowledging his poverty in the face of Job's sorrow: "Have you been often spoken to in distress? But who can endure the force if your words?" Though Job's circumstances are more than he can endure, Eliphaz nevertheless takes it upon himself to lecture his friend.

St John Chrysostom helps us see the irony here of Eliphaz's intervention. Chrysostom observes that Eliphaz is hesitant and uncertain in his response to Job not from "moderation," but because he knows he "cannot convince Job about an evident fault on his [Job's] part." Instead Eliphaz is undone by Job's insistence of his own innocence AND his willingness to share "the same fate as the impious." ("Commentary on Job," 4.2 quoted in ACCS, vol VI, 21)

Having begun now to detach himself from his inordinate loves, Job finds within himself the possibility of identifying with the unrighteous and the sinful to such a degree that—in anticipation of Christ—he is willing to share with them the consequences of their sin. This is beyond what Eliphaz and the other friends of Job can imagine for themselves—or indeed for anyone—because they have not yet taken that inward turn. They are still very much attached to their own egocentric desires.

They can reprove Job—but they can have no compassion for him. To do so, to be willing to suffer along with Job—which is to say, to imitate his own imitation of Christ and bear innocently the consequences of human sinfulness—is impossible as long as they are attached to their own egoic desires. Job is a provocation to Eliphaz and to all who structure their lives according to the desires of their own will.

My inordinate attachment to the created does not reflect the intrinsic value of the things themselves. Rather my attachment to the created order reflects the egocentric value I posit of creation. My desires are inordinate because they are arbitrary; they reflect my momentary, transitory whims. I do not desire the goodness of creation as is given by God. Rather what I desire is the self-referential utility to which I can bend creation, my neighbor and even God Himself. What I value in God and creation is their value for my own plans and projects.

More tragically, reflecting as it does the desires of my ego, the life I live life is one ever decreasing appreciation for the goodness of God and His creation. Even the images of the self that I catch in the fleeting reflections from the world around me are ones I select and arranged according to my own egoic desires. And so my attachment to my desires leads to a similar, personal, downward spiral in which I come to see ever less of my own goodness.

A moment ago, I said that Job embodies a provocation to Eliphaz. The provocation, I think is this. I can no more choose the path of purification than I can choose my own birth (or death for that matter). Just as birth is the condition of possibility for my freedom, and so prior to freedom itself, purification is what makes me free, but it is not something I am free to choose. In fact, if my analysis of the diminishing sense of my own goodness is true, I am not free either to reject purification since this merely ratifies the work of sin and death in me (if I may borrow from the Apostle Paul).

Finally, let me conclude with what I see as the fundamental difference between Job and Eliphaz and for each man represents for the spiritual life.

For Job, unlike for Eliphaz, the truth of cosmology, the truth of anthropology, are not merely abstract facts to be manipulated by me as I seek to make a point or win an argument. Yes, Job can say with Eliphaz, "blesses is the man whom God corrects; therefore do not reject the chastening of the Almighty." (5.17). Unlike Eliphaz, however, Job would not stop there. He would confess his gratitude to the God Who "causes a man to be in pain, but He restores him again. He smites, but His hands heal again." (v. 18) For Eliphaz this is simply a truth about God and about humanity's relationship with God. While Eliphaz gives voices to what is true for all and is willing to apply this to Job, he (curiously) does not apply this truth to himself. And again, this is not how it is for Job. Like Christ, Job lives in his own flesh the mystery of God's wounding and healing love for every human person. And, needless to say, it is to this way of life, to Job's way of life, that we who are in Christ are also called.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Facing the Danger of Looking Inward

The inward journey is not, as the text of Job illustrates, without its own dangers.

For Job, at the end of the second chapter, the first such danger that he encounters is this: Even as he comes to see himself more clearly, he becomes increasingly unrecognizable to those who are closest to him. Soon after Satan strikes "Job with painful boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head," (v. 7) his wife comes to him and says "'Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die!'" (v. 9) Job, however, remains faithful to the journey he has begun: "'You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?' In all this Job did not sin with his lips." (v. 10)

Writing in about the fifth century, the Christian priest, Hesychius of Jerusalem, in one of his homilies on Job offers the following reflection on the brief exchange between Job and his wife:

Now, since the betrayer [i.e., Satan] had been defeated in every battle, had failed in all his attempts, had been hindered in all his hunts, had been deprived of all his schemes, and all his traps had been broken, after destroying Job's wreath, after the death of his numerous children, after ripping Job's body with his blows, at last, and in the betrayer's opinion, most compelling resource, he leads his wife against Job. ("Homilies on Job," 4.2.9, quoted in ACCS, vol VI, p. 13)

The more I make the inward journey, the more I allow myself to feel the grief that is symptomatic of my love of the gift over the Giver, the more I realize that I have confused myself with my possessions, my accomplishments, and ultimately my own egocentric desires.

I cannot judge Job's wife harshly. As with his friends (vv. 11-13), Job's wife does "not recognize him." (v. 12) Just as he is becoming clear to himself, Job becomes a cipher to those closest to him. And why not? They know only the mask, the false self, which Job projected to the world. Having themselves not yet turned inward, they see only Job's loss, his suffering, but not his purification, not his gain in self-knowledge and peace. Truth be told, even though he does "not sin with his lips," at this point Job is still a cipher to himself.

One of the great dangers of turning inward is the temptation is to abandon our journey rather than face the rejection of those closest to us. Abandoning the journey means that, like Job's wife and friends, giving I instead give myself over to a despair born of untransformed grief. Seeing but not understanding her husband's transformation, Job's wife can only say, "Curse God and die." Job's friends, "Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite," are all likewise undone by their grief. The appearance of Job in the first moments of his new birth strikes them dumb; all they can do is weep with grief at the loss of the man they knew. And Job must face the temptation to join in their untransformed grief and forgo a life of compassion and forgiveness.

In the first moments of my inward turn, the burden of grief that can so overwhelm me that I simply give up. The sign that I have given up is that I see my suffering is purely external. Forsaking the inward journey mean that I see my grief not as it is, rooted not an inordinate attachment to my own ego, but rather to the circumstances in which I find myself. "If only," I tell myself, "my life had been different."

Job faces this temptation in chapter three. Mindful of all that he has lost, mindful of his alienation from his wife and friends, "Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth." (v. 1) Quickly, Job's curse takes on a life of its own as it passes from personal to cosmological (vv. 4-9). Nevertheless, he is still able to again considers himself:

"Why did I not die at birth?

Why did I not perish when I came from the womb?

Why did the knees receive me?

Or why the breasts, that I should nurse? (vv. 11-12)

Thinking about his own life in light of these larger, cosmological issues, inspires Job to think more deeply about his life. But now cosmology must become anthropology and he realizes that his is the lot of all humanity, "kings and counselors" (v. 14), "princes" (v. 15), "infants" (v. 16), the "wicked" (v. 17), "prisoners" (v. 18), the "small and the great . . . and the slave." (v. 19) It is at this moment that we see the beginning of the real fruit in Job's (and our own) inward turn— compassion and forgiveness.

Job understands (as I still must) the terrible mystery of creation. Nothing and no one is ontologically necessary. That all is a gift is true enough. But to the one who would control life rather than receive it thankful as a gift from the Divine Giver, this realization is a frightening. The choice is clear; I succeed on God's terms or fail on my own. Or, as St Gregory the Great has it,

Those who are endued with might in love of their Maker are those who are strengthened in the love of God as the object of their desire. Yet they become in the same degree powerless in their own strength. The more strongly they long for the things eternal, the more they are disenchanted with earthly objects. The failure of their self-assertive strength is wholesome. ("Morals on the Book of Job," quoted in ACCS¸ vol VI, p. 18)

Job's struggle, the struggle of his friends and family with him, is that they do not—at least in the first moments of his revelation—recognize the real Job. They failed to do so because they were attached to the facsimile of the true man within. Like Job I must first face my own inordinate attachments if my grief and despair are to be transformed.

Job struggle is part and parcel of the journey of not only the Great Fast, but the whole of the Christian life. Like Job I must confront the gratuitous, but not capricious, character of all creation including my own life. Again this is an inward journey and it is only by turning first turning inward that, by God's grace and my own effort, I am able to "transform . . . very evil habits into virtue." (Gregory the Great, "Morals on the Book of Job," quoted in ACCS¸ vol VI, p. 14)

As I said above, this transformation, should it come at all, bears the fruit of a life of compassion and forgiveness. Why do I say this? It is only when I am mindful of my own weakness, I can have compassion for my neighbor in his weakness and so extend forgiveness to him. This neither Job's wife nor friends were able to do for him—they could not forgive his weakness because they had no compassion having not accepted their own poverty before God.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Transforming Life’s ‘Little’ Ironies

Naked I came from my mother's womb,

And naked shall I return there.

The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away;

Blessed be the name of the LORD.

(Job 1.21)

One of life's bitterest and most tragic ironies is that which symbolizes the great gift of my life has been corrupted by sin. Instead of being a source of great joy, this symbol has become instead the symbol of my deepest shame. I am speaking here of nakedness.

In the beginning, we are told in Genesis, the man and the woman are created naked. And naked they stand before each other in gratitude to God an purity of heart, with neither lust nor shame to mar their lives for God or each other. It is only after their transgression, only after their eyes are "opened" that each becomes a stranger to the other. And underneath this hostility toward the other, there is as well a self-loathing, a shame and self-alienation ground in an even deeper estrangement from God.

Compare this to the naked Job.

There is, so St Ephrem the Syrian tells us, no hint of this bitterness in Job's words quoted above. Rather for the longsuffering patriarch and despite all the pain that has come upon him, Job, unlike Adam, has not "covered [his own nakedness] with crimes and evil deeds." Instead, and again unlike Adam who hides from God, Job is "firm in his holy frankness" before God and man. Easily we can "imagine [that] he had never turned aside from righteousness nor would [he pass] from virtue to vice in the future" ("Commentary on Job," 1.21, quoted in ACCS, vol VI, p. 7).

Job's steadfastness in the midst of his suffering highlights for me my own lack of gratitude before God for the gift of my own life. Reflecting on my own, rather ordinary suffering and my own rather pedestrian smallness of heart, I am struck by the words of Clement of Alexandria.

Clement in his commentary on Job focuses his attention on the anthropologically rich fact of human nakedness. Unlike all other creatures, the human being "alone is born in all aspects naked, without weapon or clothing." He continues by telling me that "This does not mean that you are inferior to other animals." Our nakedness is given to us by God "to produce thought." It is because of our original physical, even ontological, poverty that "in turn, we [are able to] bring out dexterity, expel sloth, introduce the arts for the supply of our needs, and beget a variety of ingenuity."

Reflecting on the practical consequences of our nakedness Clement continues by observing that "naked human beings are full of contrivances, being pricked by their necessity, as by a goad, to figure out how to escape rains, how to elude cold, how to fend off blows, how to till the earth, how to terrify beasts" and even "how to subdue the more powerful" of our own kind. Because of our nakedness, because of our poverty, we are "wetted with rain" and so "conceive of a roof." Because we have "suffered from cold" we "invent clothing." He says of poor humanity that being "struck," we "construct a breastplate" to guard ourselves. Our "hands bleeding with the thorns in tilling the ground," cause us to "avail [ourselves] of the help of tools. Because our "naked state[makes us] liable to become prey to wild beasts," we have "discovered from [our] fear an art which frightened the very thing that [frightens us]."

And so, he concludes, there is a certain irony to our poverty. "Nakedness begets one accomplishment after another." Going further he say that "even [our] nakedness" the sign of our poverty and our weakness must be seen as "a gift of benevolence." For his part, having understood and accepted as a gift his own physical and ontological poverty, "Job [though] being made naked of wealth, possessions, of the blessing of children, of a numerous offspring, and having lost everything in a short time" is able to utter "this grateful explanation: 'Naked came I out of the womb, naked also I shall depart thither,' to God and the that blessed lot and rest" ("Catena," Fragment, 1, ACCS, vol VI, p. 8).

The book of Job presents me with a standard that is well beyond me—and which I suspect will always be well beyond me. If I am honest, while I may regret the former, I am just ever so slightly relived by the latter. is frankly so much easier to cultivate in myself a sense of gratitude when, unlike Job, I get to pick and choose the parts of my life for which I am grateful. But it is for this reason, because I am so willing to limit my gratitude to what confirms to my own ego, that each year during the season of the Great Fast I am brought again to sit in the place of Job.

As he always does, St Augustine goes right to heart of the matter. With his usual eloquence, he highlights one of the bitter ironies of my spiritual life. It is hard not to recognize myself as one of "those feebler souls who, though they cannot be said to prefer earthly possessions to Christ, still hang on to them with a somewhat modest attachment." How am I able to recognize myself here? Because, as with all feeble souls, I discover "by the pain of losing . . . things how much [I was] sinning in loving them." Like all feeble souls, my "grief is of [my] own making." (City of God, 1.10, quoted ACCS, vol VI, p. 9).

If we are not careful, we can look at the season of the Great Fast as purely negative event. There is, to be sure, a negative quality to this time of year, but is it the negativity of the catharsis (purification) that leads to theoria (illumination) and eventually theosis (divinization). It is during the season of the Great Fast that I am lead each year to discover evermore fully not only what Augustine might call my inordinate attachments to created goods, but also, to paraphrase Clement, the ingenious variety of my own, and my neighbor's, creativity and intelligence. And all this I must come to see in thanksgiving as God's gift to us.

But again, I can only discover the benevolence of the latter if I am willing to suffer the grief cause by the slow and steady purification of my "somewhat modest attachments." As I said yesterday, this purification only happens if I willing, like Job and with the Church as my guide, turn inward, dive deep beneath the surface of life's bitter and tragic ironies, and rise on the Third Day with Christ our True God.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

The Heart’s Hidden Depth

So it was, when the days of feasting had run their course, that Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, "It may be that my sons have sinned and cursed[a] God in their hearts." Thus Job did regularly.

(Job 1.5)

For Great Lent, I have encouraged my catechumens to read the book of Job. Since I generally follow the counsel I give, I began today to read Job.

For my first reading, I am using the new Orthodox Study Bible's (OSB) English translation of the Septuagint (LXX). Afterwards, I go back over the text a second time, but this time using the volume dedicated to Job in the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (ACCS) series. This series allows me to get a bit of the flavor of patristic commentary on the book. While I am of two minds about both texts, I think it is good now and then to look at a familiar text of Scripture from a different perspective. But, this is really neither here nor there.

Reading through the commentary of chapter 1, my attention was drawn to the words of Didymus the Blind (ca. 313 – ca.398) Reflecting on the verse at the top of this post, Didymus says that, "the text stresses the great purity of Job's children." He then something interesting, while Job "did not perceive any sin" in his son, he nevertheless offered sacrifices because of the sons' "disposition." The explanation for this is straightforward: "Job was aware that the human weakness and sluggishness that mark young persons often escalates. This is also what St. Paul said, 'I am not aware of anything against myself.' (1 Cor 4.4) And the psalmist, 'Forgive my hidden faults.' (Ps 19.12/18.13 LXX)"

Thinking about this, two thoughts came to mind.

First, I am aware that I often do not have any sense of my own sinfulness. Or rather, my awareness is often limited to only my surface sinfulness. Yes, I know that I am a sinner, but I do not know this in depth. This why I think that not only the season of the Great fast, but all the penitential periods and disciplines of the Church can be beneficial. They can help me come to know a bit more of the depths of my own sinfulness. In words of the Great Canon of St Andrew that the Orthodox Church celebrates during Lent (9^th Ode):

The mind is wounded, the body is feeble, the spirit is sick, the word has lost its power, life is ebbing, the end is at the doors. What then will you do, wretched soul, when the Judge comes to try your case?

I have reviewed Moses' account of the creation of the world, my soul, and then all canonical Scripture which tells you the story of the righteous and the unrighteous. But you, my soul, have copied the latter and not the former, and have sinned against God.

The Law has grown weak, the Gospel is unpractised, the whole of the Scripture is ignored by you; the Prophets and every word of the Just have lost their power. Your wounds, my soul, have multiplied, and there is no physician to heal you.

For many, including man Orthodox Christians, these words are hard to say. And they are even harder to apply to oneself.

But they don't exhaust the hidden depths of the human heart. Yes, there is in my heart profound sin but not only sin. Again, in the words of tonight's service:

I am bringing before you examples from the New Scripture, my soul, to lead you to compunction. So emulate the righteous and avoid following the sinners, and regain Christ's grace by prayers, fasts, purity and reverence.

Christ became man and called to repentance robbers and harlots. Repent, my soul! The door of the Kingdom is already open, and the transformed Pharisees, publicans and adulterers are seizing it ahead of you. (Matthew 21:31; 11:12)

Christ became a babe and conversed in the flesh with me, and he voluntarily experienced all that pertains to our nature, apart from sin; and He showed you, my soul, an example and image of His own condescension. (Matthew 1:25)

Christ saved wise men, called shepherds, made crowds of infants martyrs, glorified old men and aged widows, whose deeds and life, my soul, you have not emulated. But woe unto you when you are judged! (Matthew 2:12; Luke 2:9-12; Matthew 2:16; Luke 2:25-38)

When the Lord had fasted for forty days in the wilderness, He at last became hungry, showing His human nature. Do not be despondent, my soul, if the enemy attacks you, but let him be beaten off by prayer and fasting. (Matthew 4:1-11; 17:21; Mark 9:29)

The human heart, my heart conceals within itself not only sin and death, but also the possibility of repentance and renewal in response to God's grace. If I may speak this way, not only sin but also repentance is a possibility for me. I suspect that, to the degree people turn inward at all, most of us remain on the surface.

But if I go deeper and see the sinfulness that is right underneath the surface of my respectable life, I am tempted to turn away from the ugliness with me and retreat once more into a life of mere respectability. Or else, if I avoid flight, I can find myself mired in the reality of my own sinfulness, my own pettiness and shortcomings.

The real anthropological genius of the Church's liturgical tradition is that it takes me even deeper into myself and shows me the image of God that is obscured by my sinfulness. It is at that point, when I see my life as it has come to me from the Hand of God that I can begin, by God's grace, the upward climb that is the life of repentance and theosis.

The great paradox though is that I cannot ascend unless I first descend into the "weakness and sluggishness" that characterizes not only the life of young people, but my own life as well.

A blessed Lent and a glorious celebration of Christ's Resurrection.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Office Supplies Challenge; Liquid Fuel Rocket

It Just for Fun Saturday. And so, while I haven't built my own Office Supplies Rocket, nor can I encourage anyone to do so, for your amusement, let me offer the following set of instructions. File it away under, "Wow! ain't that cool!" Or, as one of the mothers in a parish I served once said, "We don't do EVERYTHING Fr Gregory says!"

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

H/T: Lifehacker:

We donned our mind-reading helmet here at Lifehacker and have divined the perfect thing for a little Friday Fun: a high altitude rocket made from office supplies.

An inventive user at DIY site Instructables details how to turn a few common office supplies into an impressive rocket. If you can get your hands on a sharpie, a can of compressed air, and an assortment of other office items like tape, rubber bands, and bottle caps, then you're on your way to winning the Office MacGyver award. The parts list has a Leather Multi-Tool as an item but as you'll see in the video below all you actually need are needle nose pliers.

We can't promise you it will achieve low earth orbit or even break low lying cloud cover, but we can promise you'll put your eye out if you're not careful, so unless you want to live out your career known as the One Eyed Pirate of Cubicle Farm Four, we recommend exercising extreme care with your homemade projectiles. (Or just, you know, get your vicarious fix through the video. It's what we're doing.)

Office Supplies Challenge; Liquid Fuel Rocket - More DIY How To Projects

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• Turn a Sharpie into a Liquid Fueled Rocket [Friday Fun] (lifehacker.com)
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Natural Law and the Kerygma

Natural law, I would argue, is an important, and much neglected, element of the kerygmatic ministry of the Church. To come back around to Fr George's essay—and the Orthodox resistance to natural law—I think one valuable contribution Orthodox theology might make to natural law theory is helping to deepen the evangelical character of the natural law tradition. Such a work is, after all, certainly compatible with the example of St Paul who offers us an archetypal expression of the kerygmatic or evangelical function of natural law in the opening chapter of his letter to the Church of Rome (1.18-32).

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. (vv. 18-23)

The Apostle offers us a biblical sound basis upon which to offer a natural law theory that is anthropologically sound, evangelically relevant and compatible with the patristic understanding of natural contemplation (theoria).

Let me conclude by offering a pastoral, intra-Orthodox, observation. I cannot help but wonder if many of the scandals that have plagued the Orthodox Church in recent years are not the consequence of our theoretical, and more importantly, practical/pastoral, rejection of a Pauline theory of natural law. The Apostle is rather clear that a refusal to be obedient to God as He manifests Himself in the created order brings with it just the kind of division we see in many quarters of the Orthodox Church.

For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them. (vv. 24-32)

If every element of what Paul describes is not seen in our recent scandals, there is enough of a "family" resemblance to make me wonder if we have not failed in at least this one area of our pastoral obligation to "rightly discern" the Word of Truth.

As always, your comments, questions and criticisms are not only welcome, they are actively sought.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

You've Got the Time (To Listen to the New Testament During Lent)

Sherry W from Intentional Disciples has posted information about what she describes (rightly I think) "a most encouraging ecumenical Lenten initiative in Houston." What is it you ask? Well, I let Sherry explain:

Cardinal DiNardo, Archbishop of Houston is encouraging parishes to participate in You've Got the Time, a city wide, inter-denominational campaign to listen to audio recordings of the New Testament during Lent.

Sherry continues,

This is part of the Archdiocese' year long campaign, The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church.

So far more than 50 parishes have signed up to listen to the whole New Testament in the New American version.

You've Got the Time is a project of Faith Comes by Hearing, a evangelical group that is committed to offering the Bible in a format that will connect with the world's 50% illiterate population. Looking for an audio New Testament in Tiv or Kinyakyusa? (And I knew you were!) This is the place.

What is called "Orality" is a big issue in missions circles these days as the heirs of the Word-driven Reformation wrestle with the reality that 18% (over 1 billion) of the world's population cannot read and write.

But it is estimated that 65% of the American public have never read the new Testament. 60% don't know Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount. So what better time than Lent to remedy that situation?

There are, sadly, similar levels of biblical illiteracy among Orthodox Christians.

As we prepare to enter next week into the season of the Great Fast (or for my Roman Catholic and Protestant readers as you prepare to start Lent tomorrow), would you please consider going over to the site, You've Got The Time Houston, and listen this Lent to the New Testament? Alternative, you can click on the banner that will sit on the top of this blog until Pascha.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Criticizing the Critics

Where I would disagree, however, with Orthodox critics of natural law is the tendency to assume—as does Fr George in his essay—that natural law is (1) derived from empirical, scientific observation alone and that (2) the tendency to assume that the use of reason is somehow opposed or harmful to the life of faith.

Yes, certainly, there are those who have advanced an understanding of natural law that is divorced from Christian faith. And yes, some who have done so are themselves Christians. But I think the Orthodox rejection of natural law is (as I alluded to above) a rejection of a particular understanding of natural law that admittedly has deviated from the biblical and patristic tradition. Again, as so often seems to be the case, it is easy to reject a position if I compare my best to your worst. This I think is what has been done with Orthodox critics of natural law.

Pope John Paul II encyclical, Veritatis Splendor (Latin for "The Splendor of Truth"), offers Orthodox critics a biblically and philosophically sound defense of natural law and its relationship to conscience that would serve as a better touchstone for Orthodox critics of natural law. For example, in his reflection on Matthew 19:17 ("If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments"), John Paul writes:

Only God can answer the question about the good, because he is the Good. But God has already given an answer to this question: he did so by creating man and ordering him with wisdom and love to his final end, through the law which is inscribed in his heart (cf. Rom 2:15), the "natural law". The latter "is nothing other than the light of understanding infused in us by God, whereby we understand what must be done and what must be avoided. God gave this light and this law to man at creation". He also did so in the history of Israel, particularly in the "ten words", the commandments of Sinai, whereby he brought into existence the people of the Covenant (cf. Ex 24) and called them to be his "own possession among all peoples", "a holy nation" (Ex 19:5-6), which would radiate his holiness to all peoples (cf. Wis 18:4; Ez 20:41). The gift of the Decalogue was a promise and sign of the New Covenant, in which the law would be written in a new and definitive way upon the human heart (cf. Jer 31:31-34), replacing the law of sin which had disfigured that heart (cf. Jer 17:1). In those days, "a new heart" would be given, for in it would dwell "a new spirit", the Spirit of God (cf. Ez 36:24-28).

At least as articulated by the late pontiff, natural law is not the fruit of human reason operating in isolation, much less opposition, to divine grace. Rather, it is the product of the mysterious interplay of faith and reason. Natural law is born from the convergence of human freedom and creativity, one the one hand, and divine revelation and grace on the other. If the categories used are not immediately familiar to those trained in Orthodox theology, we nevertheless would do well to follow St Basil's observation: "Dogma is one thing, kerygma another; the first is observed in silence, while the latter is proclaimed to the world." (On the Holy Spirit ch. 27(66))

In my next post, I will try and fill in a bit of what I think is the biblical and evangelical character of Christian understanding of natural law.

Until then, your comments, questions and criticisms are not only welcome, they are actively sought.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Orthodox Criticism of Natural Law

One of the most valuable things, for me at least, about keeping a blog is the questions and criticisms that people offer in response to what I've posted.

Certainly this has been the case with my recent series of posts on the psychology of pastoral leadership. One commentator in particular, David, has offered a number of penetrating observations. (Unfortunately, my shift from Holscan to JSKit for my comments means that David's comments and questions have not shown up here—I suspect I need to go back to Haloscan or possibly move my blog over to Wordpress, but this is for another day.) You can read David's comments here, here and here. (I hope!)

As a recent article in The Tablet suggests (thank you Sr Macrina), one of the difficulties in a discussion drawn from the catholic moral tradition is that most of us are unfamiliar with the philosophical presuppositions that frame the discussion. That is certainly true with my own thoughts on subsidiarity. As I allude to in an earlier post (which can be read in its entirety here), subsidiarity presupposes at least a basic understanding of natural law. But this of course raises another question: Which view of natural law?

Natural law theory has had a much greater influence, I think, in Western Christian theology than in the Eastern Christian theology. Indeed, two contemporary Orthodox theologians—Fr Alexander Schmemann and Vladimir Lossky—seem to reject the idea that natural law has any application in Christian theology since (following ironically enough, an argument which St Augustine, that paragon of Western theology, would have embraced) what is "natural" for human is our state before Adam's transgression. Now what we know about humanity is profoundly unnatural.

In an essay that appeared several years ago in The Word, "Pastoral Considerations on Current Problems: Sex, Natural Law and Orthodoxy,"
Fr. George Morelli, a licensed Clinical Psychologist and Marriage and Family Therapist and Coordinator of the Chaplaincy and Pastoral Counseling Ministry of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese, offers what seems to be a typical criticism of natural law. In response to the idea that extra-marital sexual relations are not contrary to "natural law" Fr George writes:

Extra-marital sex is not against the natural law. In science, when we speak of natural we mean what is in nature. In nature, many types of behaviors exist. There are many varieties that we see in our own culture and even more varieties that we can see in cross cultural comparisons. Sociological and anthropological studies lead the way here. Thus monogamy, polygamy, war, murder, chastity, and homosexuality, etc., are all equally lawful in nature because they all exist. For example, we may observe that in a certain culture, homosexual behavior occurs and thereby deviates from what the average individual does. But that neither makes it unnatural nor immoral. The fact that it exists means it is natural, as natural as a sunrise or an earthquake, a flower or a flood.

Fr George argues that we cannot basis Christian moral norms of empirical science, but only on the Gospel. He goes so on to argue in the above essay that whenever the Church "has based its faith, dogma or morals on science, she has been terribly embarrassed." Precisely because the primary concern for the Orthodox Church is evangelical, Fr George argues that as Christians "We do not obey a proscription, sexual or otherwise, because it adheres to some so-called "pseudo" natural law."

Rather Christian obedience is of a different kind.

We obey according to the measure of our faith. The measure of our faith will be based on the depth of heart and sincerity of our prayer. It would be well to keep in mind what our holy fathers have taught us - obedience leads to faith and prayer, and in turn, faith and prayer lead to obedience. Being excellent psychologists, the fathers tell us that the main pitfalls to prayer and obedience to God's will are forgetfulness, ignorance and laziness. Possibly we could sum up these three categories into two: knowledge and perseverance (or persistence). Real knowledge of the Christian spiritual-moral life can only come from the light of faith in accordance with the Gospels and the guidance of the Church. Persistence in seeking the will of God and obedience to His commandments also comes through faith. Obedience itself makes for even greater love, faith and obedience.

As I said, I think that the above argument is a good, popular expression of the rejection of natural law by many Orthodox theologians. In which the Orthodox criticism asserts, that our knowledge of the spiritual and moral life comes "from the light of faith in accordance with the Gospels and the guidance of the Church," I would heartily concur, as I suspect would most Catholic thinkers.

I will, in my next post, offer a response to the Orthodox rejection of natural law.

Until then, your comments, questions and criticisms are not only welcome, they are actively sought.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

What Doesn’t Work

Fidelity to the personal and communal vocation of the human person requires from those in authority that they are restrained in the exercise of power even as God's is Himself restrained in His relationship with His creation. (While I think this restraint must certainly be personal, i.e., ascetical, reflecting on my own experience as an American, I also think the restraint must also be systemic, i.e., by wise laws and procedures overseen by wise and ascetically self-limiting leaders. But a fuller explication must, alas, wait for another day.) Though not without significant differences, reflecting as they do the relationship of Persons in the Triune God, parish leaders (or really, any human leaders) must as we've seen be characterized by trust. As God trust His creatures so the human leader must trust those he leads.

Practically, this means that as a pastor, my relationship with the parish should largely be "hands off." Just as I ask deference (that is to say, trust) for decisions I make, I should also defer to lay people as they go about their own personal and family lives. While this is relatively simple in personal, one-on-one, relationships, trust becomes more difficult when we speak about the day to day, week to week, year and year out, governance of the parish.

The model that largely structured the life of the parish throughout most of the 20^th century is some form of lay trusteeship. Occasionally this model made possible a collaborative and cooperative working relationship between priest and parish. In the main, however, it has taken the form of the priest being responsible for "upstairs" (i.e., the liturgical and sacramental life of the parish) and the laity for "down stairs" (i.e., everything else).

Under this lay trustee model it was not (and in some places still is not) uncommon for the priest to use the sacramental lives of the Church as a means of exercising control over what he saw as a rebellious the laity. And the laity, for their part, were not shy (and still at times, are still not shy) about using the power of the purse to force compliance of what they say to be a stubborn priest. (In both cases, I should add, there was often some justice for the complaints. But just as frequently the matter was (is) simply a desire for power.)

While this approach has the virtue of simplicity, it in fact is grounded in a system of dysfunctional relationships that do not embody or reflect a respectful openness to the uniqueness of others. Much less is it grounded in an imitation of the relationship of Persons in the Holy Trinity. Rather it is a model in which priest and laity seeing each other as competitors who must zealously guard their respective areas of authority from encroachment by the other. Worse, still are those situations where priest and lay leaders collude with each other to maintain a monopoly on power in the parish.

Whether the life of the parish is marked by power struggles (the competitive mode of leadership) or the tight fisted control of the many by the few (i.e., collusion) the life of the Spirit is quenched and the parish dies a slow spiritual death that often takes root years before its numerical death.

In the Tradition of the Orthodox Church the principle of subsidiarity finds its counterpart in terms such as synergia, (i.e., the working together of wills human and divine) syndiakonia (i.e., a co-service of clergy and laity) and symphonia (the working together of Church and State). All of these, I would stress, are grounded in the mutual obedience of all parties involved to the will of God as manifested not only in Holy Scripture and the writings of the Fathers, but also natural law.

While synergia, syndiakonia,
symphonia are all rich terms, where I think Orthodox thought would profit most from Catholic Social Teaching is in the grounding of our understanding subsidiarity not simply Holy Tradition but also natural law. I will in my next post try and offer a bit of an apology for natural law as a useful adjunct to Orthodox theological reflection on Church leadership.

Until then, and as always, your comments, questions and criticism are not only welcome but actively sought.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory