®Monomakhos

In Case You Were Wondering, the Answer Is “No”

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  1. The answer is to this question:  “Will the GOA leadership ever learn to stop being so cringy”?

No.  The answer is no.  They never will.  At least not in most people’s lifetimes.

<—This won’t end well.  Just ask the Piskies.

What am I talking about exactly?  Only this:  Archbishop Elpidophoros of the GOA, the “Exarch of the Atlantic and the Pacific,” pontificating on why we should be just like the Episcopalians:  “Discriminating against people based on whom they love is not Orthodoxy.”

This is actually from the May 12, 2024 issue of The Orthodox Disturber but we shouldn’t have to worry about its timeliness.  Like so much that comes from the hierarchy over at 79th Street, it’s a hardy perennial.  https://www.goarch.org/-/lifo-interview-2024-pantazopoulos

I won’t bore you with the details as you can read them for yourself.  You know the drill:  “It’s not how you love or whom you love, but that you love.”  I remember this little bit of tripe from Rod McKuen from way back in junior high.  It made me retch then and still turns my stomach now.  The fact that this is the level of discernment that animates His Eminence’s mind kind of makes you wonder.

Simply put, it’s embarrassing.

For my money though, the most cringeworthy statement is this:  “The purpose of the visit is to meet with the man who leads the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America with 540 parishes, 800 priests, and about 1.5 million believers.”

Let’s do the math, shall we?   1.5 million adherents divided by 540 parishes equals 2,777 parishioners per church.

You buying that?  Me neither.

So why does 79th Street keep on doing it?  I can think of any number of things:  (1) one-upmanship vis-a-vis the other jurisdictions, (2) a sense of inferiority, or (3) self-delusion.  Perhaps a combo.

What’s particularly cloying is that it’s not necessary.  We Greeks have much to offer America.  Beautiful churches, wonderful fellowship, the flowering of monasticism and so on.  When the apparatchiks in New York throw bogus numbers like the “1.5 million,” something which is so unbelievably false –and worse, easily falsified–it throws all that is good away.

That being said, I should be more concerned about the GOA’s headlong rush into all things worldly, like the whole Fordhamite agenda, Gaia-worship and weaponized ambiguity when it comes to abortion.  Those things actually more important.  Unfortunately, I can’t get past the recurrent propaganda.  It’s childish.  But is it enough to fool the Deep State into putting all their Orthodox eggs in the GOA basket?  You see, that’s what worries me.

I’ll be honest:  we no longer live in a constitutional republic.  Laws are broken willy-nilly; whatever is expedient for the Deep State is on the table.  The FBI infiltrates chapels where the Latin Mass is celebrated.  NPR sends “journalists” to report on people who attend ROCOR parishes.  Soldiers are forced to march in stilettos and men are allowed to beat the crap out of women at the Olympics.  The Secret Service goes out of their way to not protect a former president.  What else?  the removal of a president from office via a coup?

I’m not seeing a whole lot of constitutionalism here.  For that matter, I don’t think Timothy Leary could have made any of this stuff up on his worst acid trip.  And yet, here we are.

So what’s my point?  Only this:  I fully expect the Federal government to confiscate Orthodox parishes which are not on board with all this cultural Marxism.  Because of “hate crimes,” I can see individual parishes lose their tax status.  And because Elpidophoros is the primate of the largest jurisdiction in America, I can envision the government sweeping in and giving him all the parishes from the other jurisdictions which aren’t on board with the program.  Primarily because he is on board with their globalist program.

St John Chrysostom was supposed to have said that “martyrdom does not blot out the sin of schism.”  Those are sobering words.  But what option do the American Orthodox jurisdictions which adhere to Orthodox tradition have?  Practically speaking, are we not already in schism with the GOA?  If it’s not the skittles agenda or altar girls, it’s bishops who have communed with actual Ukrainian schismatics.  As a Greek-American, this is painful to me on a personal level.

The good people of the GOA have options; they can congregate at the nearest monastery or join another jurisdiction.  Unfortunately, I think these are temporary fixes as far as the larger problem is concerned.  What will the other jurisdictions do should the full power of the Federal government comes against them?

This is the ultimate question.  I don’t know what the answer is.  Do any of you?

Comments

  1. Some very promising news: https://www.westernjournal.com/amazing-jesus-revolution-reported-iran-mosques-close-muslims-turn-christianity/

    My personal opinion/hope:

    Let’s pray that after finding Truth in Christ they find Truth in His Church: Orthodoxy.

    This would be an amazing missionary opportunity for the Moscow Patriarchate. Russia & Iran have excellent relations and given the Church of Russia’s mission activity around the world, especially in India, SE Asia & Africa, this would be an opportunity for Iranians to come not only to Christ & Orthodoxy, but being under the political protection of Russia as Iran is not likely to make Russia mad.

    I’ve been saying the same thing about Christians in Turkey for a while. If the EP is unwilling or unable to convert Turks without political persecution, then the Church of Russia would be able to.

  3. Very interesting events regarding Orthodoxy in Ukraine. One gets the sense Bartholomew knows the end is near and is pushing for a “union” between the OCU & UOC.

    I recommend reading Metropolitan Luke’s letter to Met. Onuphry first and reading the rest of the articles through that lens:

    https://orthochristian.com/162947.html

    https://spzh.live/en/news/81607-zelensky-urges-rada-to-convene-and-solve-issue-of-spiritual-independence

    https://spzh.live/en/news/81603-epifaniy-urges-uoc-primate-to-dialogue-on-unity-without-preconditions

    https://orthodoxtimes.com/metropolitan-of-kyiv-appeals-for-dialogue-with-metropolitan-onufry/

    • Petro, if I didn’t know any better, it looks like Dumenko (as well as his puppet-master, the EP), are seeing the handwriting on the wall. What’s the phrase the liberals always liked to spew when Trump was president? Ah yes: “The walls are closing in.”

      • That’s my thoughts exactly

        If the cards were in Bart/Dumenko’s favor then there’s no way they would even be considering this.

        I fully expect Met. Onuphry to “speak Truth in love”

        He has the weight of not only the canons and Truth of Orthodoxy behind him, but he has the overwhelming majority of the Orthodox World on his side.

        What Met. Onuphry should do is send a letter to Dumenko, Bartholomew and all heads of the Churches.

        There can be no union with these people without actual repentance and valid ordination.

        Met. Luke alludes to this in his letter to Met. Onuphry and essentially says that if there is a false union with the OCU, God will remove his Grace from the UOC.

        Powerful words.

        From everything I have seen it looks like now that the Ukrainians have officially invaded Russia, they have forced Putin’s hand/restraint and the gloves are now about to actually come off.

        I believe by the November election we will be seeing the end of an official Ukrainian state based out of Kiev.

        Not only this but I am truly of the opinion that Russia’s inevitable victory in Ukraine, the pivot of the world towards BRICS and the end of globalism means that there is a zero chance that Bartholomew will have a successful union with Rome next year. We’re 8 months out from Pascha 2025 and not only has the Orthodox World not sided with Bartholomew on Ukraine, they have all been essentially telling him he’s wrong.

      • Looks like the Ukrainian Rada has officially adopted the bill that essentially “bans” the UOC.

        I put bans in quotation because the bill requires that any religious institution (i.e. UOC) in Ukraine that has ties to Russia/based in Russia, must sever those ties.

        Keep in mind that the UOC essentially severed ties with the MP over 2 years ago.

        This is not going to help the so called “union” that Dumenko/Bartholomew are trying to push. Furthermore, the law gives the institution 90 days to officially cut those ties, but, given the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk I’m having doubts there will be a Ukraine in 3 months. Putin has said there will be no further negotiations and I fully expect the gloves to officially come off.

        What that looks like is a different story.

      • Very, very interesting set of articles on the current UOC/EP/OCU situation from yesterday and today:

        1st: https://spzh.live/en/zashhita-very/81676-phanar-ocu-relations-on-the-ropes-attempts-to-find-a-way-out-of-the-crisis

        2nd: https://spzh.live/en/news/81674-media-poroshenko-lobbies-for-banning-uoc-before-phanar-commission-arrival

        3rd: https://spzh.live/en/news/81672-media-a-delegation-from-the-ecumenical-patriarchate-is-heading-to-ukraine

        Now that the UOC has for all practical purposes been banned, this is going to more than likely send a road through the Orthodox world. Given how the Patriarchs of Antioch, Bulgaria, Serbia & George have just in the past few days said that Met. Onuphry is the only canonical Orthodox head of Ukraine, this is going to further destroy the EP’s reputation in Orthodoxy.

  5. Subversion by government is demoralizing our nation. A technocratic government is being put in place. What was will be no more. We are experiencing a digital illusion and mass reeducation on a global scale. Don’t bother yourself worrying about old Bart. Read in depth about the one world religion the political gods are creating for you. The Lucis Trust. Study this twisted website in depth. The UN consults with it. The devil has mobilized chaos across the globe. Secession is on the minds of many. Get involved in local government. We are in the endgame of this reset. ..

    Leave normalcy bias behind. What lies ahead is suffering.

  7. They’ve been throwing around that 1.5 million figure for a very long time. I believe that’s the # of people who are Greek American, so naturally the misguided Archbishop is going to assume they are all members of the GOA.

    The problem with that is that we know it’s absolutely NOT true. Pretty much any study that has come out has show the GOA is in a demographic collapse.

    My perception: The majority of people in American Orthodoxy, clergy & laity, have already left the GOA behind. Minus the Ephraim monasteries of course.

    There has been a MASSIVE influx of Americans converting to Orthodoxy over the past 2-3 years and as best as I can tell the majority are going to the following:

    1) ROCOR
    2) Antiochians
    3) OCA

    I’m sure the GOA has gotten some but I see far, far fewer people converting to the GOA than the above 3. And the people who are converting are doing so in conservative GOA parishes (of which, to be fair, there are very many).

    But, overall this is my perception of how Orthodox hierarchs in America who are not GOA view the GOA: “We all have that one friend who claims to be a 6’1 hunk…who is actually a 5’4 pipsqueak.”

    That’s how I would sum up the GOA.

    Between the GOA disaster in America and the impeding doom of Ukraine, I get the feeling that Bartholomew knows the walls are closing in on him. When the Orthodox Times starts posting slander pieces you know it’s bad.

    Meanwhile, Orthodoxy in America will continue to thrive and IMHO needs to either ignore or shed the GOA to do so.

    It’s sad but true

  8. BTW, It\s not because of altar girls per se that I used this photo. The problem with this proposal is that we know where this will end up: priestesses.

    That’s in the long-term. Short-term it’s going to make the lives of GOA priests who know better miserable. So far, I know of three parishes (2 in the metropolis of Atlanta and one in Chicago) which have altar girls.

    Priests in other dioceses won’t have a leg to stand on when the libs in their parishes say “why not us?” The other bishops won’t be able to put a stop to this for that matter.

    If there was ever a time for the EP to stand up and do the right thing (for once in his life), this would be it. But he won’t.

  9. Curiosity question for someone familiar with the Book of Jeremiah.

    Jeremiah spends a lot of time warning Judah and Jerusalem concerning their sinfulness, especially of worshipping other gods and the consequences.

    Repent or you will be destroyed.

    Then he warns them to go to Babylon and they will be safe. Anyone who stays behind will lose their life.

    So a group chose to go to Babylon where they stayed for 70 years. Is this the same group that composed the Talmud?

    • The Prophet Jeremiah was active between about 626-587/6 BC
      (from the 13th year of King Josiah until the Babylonian captivity).

      In 539 BC the Persian King Cyrus the Great ended the captivity.
      *Some Jews returned and rebuilt Jerusalem, but some did not.
      The Second Temple was then constructed under Esdras and Neemias.*

      Interestingly, Cyrus is named as Messiah/Khristos (Esaias XLV: 1-3)
      for his role in enabling the return and later restoration of the Temple.

      The Mishnah (the central component of the Talmud) was compiled in Palestine
      about 200 AD – some 60-70 years after the Emperor Hadrian wasted Jerusalem.

      There are two versions of the Gemara (the commentaries and analyses
      that complete the Talmud). The first version is the Palestinian Talmud,
      likely compiled in Caesarea and Sepphoris between 350 and 400 AD.
      The second is the Babylonian Talmud, compiled in Babylon c. 500 AD.

      Hence it is possible (indeed likely) that the Talmud was compiled
      by descendants of the Exiles, both in Palestine and in Babylon;
      but the distance between exile and composition is 700-1000 years
      (if we take the Mishnah as the starting point of the composition.

    • Correction: The Emperor Hadrian refounded Jerusalem
      as the colony of Aelia Capitolina, some sixty years after
      the future Emperor Titus destroyed both it and the Temple.

        • In the Vision [Revelation] of St John the Divine, Jesus applies the term “Synagogue of Satan” [Rev 2:9 and 3:9] to those Jews in the synagogues of Smyrna and Philadelphia (and, by extension, elsewhere), who were persecuting the Church. Essentially they were the party of the Pharisees which, having survived the ruin of Jerusalem by Titus, were now reserving the term ‘Jew’ exclusively to themselves (both religiously and ethnically) as they set about constructing what was to become Rabbinic Judaism out of the wreck of their xenophobic aspirations.

          This pushing of the Church outside of the Synagogue (claiming it was a: not Jewish and b: *new*) deprived it of the protection from official requirements to observe the Imperial cultus afforded to Jews. This was one of the chief roots of the Imperial persecution of the Church – frequently following on Jewish denunciation of Christians to the Imperial authorities.

          In short: Jews persecuted Christians before Christians persecuted Jews.

  10. The Greek monasteries in America founded by Elder Ephraim are not in schism with their bishops. So, unless perhaps some poor soul is stuck in ROCOR, why on earth would anyone want to be in schism with those same precious Greek monasteries we have in America?

  11. Finally got around to reading the interview of the archbishop.

    The interpretation of the Adam and Eve Genesis story was interesting. I have never read comments that the it had anything to do with sexual activity specifically.

    God had said don’t eat or there will be consequences. Eve believed the snake and Adam went along with it.

    Since then God has given us the Ten Commandments and other guidelines to follow.

    He has also given as the right to choose whether to follow his guidelines or not and informed us of the consequences if we don’t.
    We obey or we don’t obey, our choice.

    But the archbishop then seems to say the we are discriminatory if we say that people acting outside the boundaries are not included.

    In effect saying that God has set no boundaries. Anything goes.

    Adam and Eve were kicked out of paradise because of their disobedience. Was God discriminating against them?
    Did God say, Oh you poor dears, you must have misunderstood me!”

    No. He found them some loincloths and escorted them out. He still loved them but they were no longer in paradise.

    God through Jesus has given us a way back in. Repentance.

    But repentance infers that we know we’ve done wrong in the sight of God.

    The rest of his reasonings all seem to flow from his misinterpretation of this story.

    • Neither candidates are centrist, that is Trump and Harris, and both have radical agendas. At least that’s my observation.

      Why no centrist candidates? Apparently the American populace has been radicalized on both ends, and America simply doesn’t want a centrist candidate.

      I am afraid that’s the path to civil war and the death of democracy. Democracy only works if people believe in it.

      • “Why no centrist candidates?” I’ve wondered that, too, but more from a spiritual POV. Like oil and water, we seem to be separating and it’s happening all over the world. Why this moment in time?

        If I had to guess, I would say it’s because of indoctrination. Never before (speaking in my lifetime which is getting alarmingly longer: I remember when I dreaded turning 40 but if someone said I looked 40 now, I would be kissing their feet) have I seen so much division but it’s not the division they tried to create. Blacks and whites don’t hate each other. Blacks don’t feel inferior or deprived, so they’ve abandoned that strategy to divide us, I think. I also don’t think they banked on COVID having such a unifying affect on us either.

        Part of the problem is generational. Boomers were brought up with the idea that no one was going to give them anything so they better work hard. Younger people have a more defeatist attitude which is not entirely their fault. In todays world, it’s hard to have the same expectation of being able to have a home and a family. They’re the new “blacks” being told they need society to give them something because they can’t earn it on their own. This is the same lie they told the blacks when they said, “You need whites to give you everything, cause you’re not capable of getting anything yourself.” As Kamala puts it: The goal is “equity” over “equality.” Equity in her mind means bringing everyone down to the lowest common denominator. It’s a “hand out” instead of the “hand up.” If everyone fails equally, there is no one left to hold up the world, but the elite. Just ask Ayan Rand. Having worked with both black and whites, beside them, under them. and over them, I can tell you they are just as smart and capable as anyone else. Sometimes more so, with the more successes they get under their belts.

        I had an interesting experience with a black woman who had been hired by a Fortune 500 company as a Project Manager. She took advantage of all the educational opportunities offered to her and went through a 4 day boot camp to get her PMP certification, which is 4 days of hell learning terminology that in large part is made up. Project Managers, need a variety of skills and she didn’t have them. What she did have is natural intelligence and the ability to acknowledge every person she had ever met all the way up the food chain, in a huge corporation, which is no easy task. She also had the requisite swag she was told she had to have as a black woman and the bag of tricks they give you in HR if you’re black and want to stay hired. At the time, I needed a strong PM and she wasn’t it. But the thing is, she was willing to do anything to prove herself and frankly I found that extremely refreshing. One time I gave her 40 changes to make to a document, and to my surprise, that woman made all 40 of them. That hugely impressed me because I expected her to blow it off and cry foul. In talking to her, I found that I genuinely liked her, minus the swag. (I remember telling her that smart women don’t need swag and she dropped it.) I asked her to move closer to where I sat hoping instead of being insulted, she could pick up a few things and by the time I left a year or so later, she had mastered the job. All she needed was a genuine opportunity to learn. Something she didn’t get in all the black schools she attended. She didn’t need “help.” She needed the opportunity to prove herself and she did.

        They lied to blacks when they said they couldn’t get ahead. If they were telling them the truth, they would have said, “We’re going to make it impossible for you to get ahead. We’re going to recruit you to burn down your own cities so we can rebuild your communities for ourselves. We’re going to teach your kids not even to hope for anything more because they’ll never get it.”

        Teaching Critical Race Theory is one of the cruelest things they’ve ever done to a population. They lie to them all the way up through college about virtually everything.

        The schools allow young people to yell over their teachers and if a teacher complains, it’s the teacher who goes. Instead of turning our kids into functioning members of society, they’ve turn them into spoiled, self-entitled brats whom they sign up as crisis actors, paying them good money to show up out of nowhere to protest this or that. You can always tell, too. Like when they get mixed up and say they support the Palestinians, i.e. Hamas, you know they don’t have a clue who Hamas is, which is an agent of the U.S. as they yuck it up in Qatar drinking and playing pool while the true Palestinians are starved out of existence. They aren’t told that the money we send to the Palestinians, first passes through the hands of Hamas, and after they take what they want off the top, they give what’s left over to the people. They have literally divided up the Palestinians into districts under the auspices of “protecting them” which they don’t do to any great degree. I think the Palestinian death toll has reach over 40,000. Hamas. . . who knows?

        So, there is going to be war. On that we agree. But if the right people are in control, it will be short one. When I see all those kids spray-painting monuments, I think of how much fun it would be to fly a plane over their heads equipped with canisters of unremovable red paint that permanently attaches to the mitochondrial DNA of their hair shaft. They’ll round them all up, regardless of where they try to hide. There have been no consequences as of yet, but that doesn’t mean their won’t be. Talk about “being scared straight!” The military doesn’t play by civilian rules. JAG will set aside a day or two and come to a speedy decision, which will probably include cleaning up their mess while waiting for their hair to grow out. Redheads and skinheads will have a whole new meaning! That’s my fantasy, anyway.

  13. Great question, George:

    “What will the other jurisdictions do should the full power of the Federal government come against them?”

    The response by faithful Christians in Bolshevik Russia and Nazi Germany offers us a blueprint.

    “Russia’s Catacomb Saints” (1982) by I. M. Andreyev is a collection of personal accounts and letters of the why and how the faithful were driven underground after Pat. Sergius essentially handed the keys of the Church to the Soviets in 1927. If ever there was justification for schism, this was it. Their tales of martyrdom, courage and endurance are both chilling and instructive for us comfy moderns.

    “Hitler’s Cross” (1995) by Erwin Lutzer outlines how Lutheran Christians were duped, divided and decapitated by one party rule. They swallowed Hitler’s call to make Germany Great Again by adopting his Popular Christianity (think health and wealth gospel wrapped in a Nazi flag), the vast majority consented to erecting Hitler’s cross on the altar in exchange to stay open. Those that refused went underground or were issued one-way tickets to the camps.

    Rod Dreher in “Live Not By Lies” (2020) urges the faithful to form small local groups of support for the moral and spiritual support needed to stay strong under tyrannical rule (I add, and WHEN our shepherds capitulate to the woke mob to save their own skin). Families, church members and citizen groups are essential cells of resistance, he says. I helped form Magic Valley Liberty Alliance for just such a purpose (www.mvlibertyalliance.org).

    It’s an open secret that my jurisdiction (Antiochian) is a self-induced administrative hot mess following Met. Joseph’s so-called retirement. They did this to themselves. Anyone paying attention knows this, despite the crickets of ‘obedience.’

    In the meantime, pray for go-along-to-get-along pastors to repent and confess to surrendering to the fear and intimidation tactics of their superiors. This dereliction of duty leaves the faithful woefully uninformed, unequipped and unprepared for countering the government tyranny (and apostasy) that is both here and is only going to get worse.

  14. This scenario resembles far more an Orthodox bishop who is way more interested in earthly power and getting praise and accolades than he is in bowing down before and serving his Lord. Yes, CNN or MSNBC will love him for about 5 minutes. But at what cost?

    Please, GOA leadership, just become eastern-rite Episcopalians already, get out of the way, and let the rest of us Orthodox Christian Americans get on with our Church life here. Please stop behaving like the drunk uncle who insists that he doesn’t have a problem.

  15. Maybe why we Antiochians have a Bishop from the old country leading us since our best bishop retired.

    Projecting into the future hard to do other there will be surprises in both directions.

    Tough not to let one’s heart be turned to stone even by objecting to the antics.

    God forgive me, a sinner.