hispaniasancta

Shutting things down

2007-08-15T22:55:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone. For the next several months it is my intention to keep a journal/record of my prviate thoughts, struggles, and examinations of my conscience. Since this is by nature a private affair, I can't post it on a blog. It will be strictly for me and my father confessor. I am bad enough at adding new things to this blog, and I fear that if my journal and my schoolwork are getting in the way, I will add even less. Due to these factors, this blog is functionally closed until further notice. You can come back and check from time to time to see if I added something nice, but overall I think the blog will be inactive for months if not years to come. Thanks for the insight and comments so far and remember to pray for the servant of God, the sinner Julio!

Wise words from a video comment

2007-08-15T22:23:00.000-07:00

A featured video on Yahoo! today featured a young lady making the annoyed observation that her iPhone bill was a book... a 300 page long book that came in a cardboard package, actually. One of the comments was particuarly insightful:

Everyday my vague sense of the underlying cyclonic swirl of extinction hovering around the human species becomes more palpable. Steve jobs is shilling a relatively useless product with a smug marketing campaign, the premise being that a phone will make your life better and people lined up in droves for it. Now you're complaining that your life isn’t better and surprised that you're just knee-deep in corporate-sponsored bullsh**ification of your life... Carbon neutrality will make your life better. Clean air will make your life better. Growing your own food will make your life better. The collapse of the military prison-industrial complex will make your life better. I'll line up for that.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Western Orthodox Christians- Part III

2007-05-28T19:11:00.000-07:00

In this post, I want to discuss two main reasons why I feel that the Western Rite is so important in American Orthodoxy.

Receiving the Gospel in a Context of Religiously Organized Life

I like being “mechanically religious” a lot more than I like living for God, but I know which of the two is the correct way to do things. One could say that this uncomfortable self-consciousness concerning one’s religion is the unique contribution of Christianity. Roman pagans weren’t conscious of being “pagans”. That was a pejorative term given to them by Christians. They were just good Roman citizens, and that included devotion to the Roman gods and the Roman emperor. Their interaction with the gods was common and it was a major part of their lives, but it was mechanical and transactional in nature. I imagine that it was a part of their lives the way that paying income tax and going to the bank to cash our checks is a part of our lives. Seeing God the way Christians saw him must have been strange and very superstitious to them. When I first united myself to the Church (the Orthodox Catholic Church), one of the hardest things for me to accept was how my new home was not a “church of the converted” in the same way that my old church was. That is a big deal for an ex-evangelical. You see, in an evangelical church, the thrust of the message is concerned with one’s unique conversion experience. Everybody’s got a testimony, and if you ever stop that process of *changing*, of turning to God and of converting… well, at that point you are no longer having “a relationship with Jesus”. You are just a “religious” person. I have heard an evangelical discussing how a family member “goes to church, but they aren’t saved”- and the family member in question is a regular member of a Baptist congregation who lives an upright and moral life. In a limited sense, I agree with this. You even hear similar terminology used among some pious Russian Orthodox Christians. They will describe the majority of the people in Church as “Orthodox” but only some of them are “believers”. You have to convert every day. You have to choose to say your prayers. You have to choose to be like God. I do believe that people should feel like “converts” even when they’ve grown up in Christian households since our fallen will always struggles against us and we really do have to “convert” or turn towards God with every decision we make. I should point out that this is harder than it seems.

However, my reading of the Old Testament (and my understanding of the pious Jews in the New Testament such as our Lord and His Apostles) shows me the other side of the coin. Like it or not, we must receive God within a certain framework or context, and that context is religious tradition and ritual. Humans have needed it since we were created. God DID NOT tell Abel to lift his hands, think about God, and “just praise and worship” as his imagination told him to. He told him to sacrifice- to perform a ritual offering. “Charismatic”, excited, spontaneous, and ecstatic worship is pagan and belongs with the self-mutilating priests of Baal and the mystery cults that inspired it. I know that there might be charismatic Christians reading this blog, and I am sorry that this harsh truth has to be expressed. But I am not sorry for the statement itself. I gotta call ‘em like I see ‘em. Humans are made of matter, and by matter we are saved, so we must worship in a material and ritualized way that becomes part of life and informs the cycles and patterns of our existence. Only by doing so will we worship “in spirit and in truth”. We will see how matter is spiritualized and how spirit is made material for our salvation. And most importantly, we will see how the false dichotomy between “base matter” and “lofty spirit” is a satanic lie and the basis of all heresy and all false religion (i.e. all religion outside of the Truth we live out in the Church).

The sad and tragic part is how humans seeking truth will look in all the wrong places for ritual, tradition, and that earthy material context for their faith if none is offered to them. We can see this in the popularity of so-called messianic Judaism and of other Jewish rituals among evangelicals and low-church American Protestants of all stripes. They have the inborn human need for cycles of worship, for a liturgical life, a religious calendar, for deep ritual actions which conceal greater truths than what can be expressed in words, BUT they would rather get all of that from post-Messianic, anti-Messianic, Talmudic rabbinical Judaism (read: the Babylonian “traditions of men” of the Pharisees) than from the Worship of the New Israel. You have to laugh to keep from crying.

Why am I stressing the context and ritualized aspect of living a life in Christ? Because once that context becomes familiar, it gets ingrained in the culture even among the un-churched of that culture. My greatest awareness of being an Orthodox Christian did not come when I first started coming to Church as a zealous convert with all the answers. It came when I saw those pious old Ukrainian and Slovak people who instinctively made the Sign of the Cross when they heard an ambulance siren or a bit of bad news. It is more real for them than it is for me because they don’t have to remind themselves to do it. For them it is life. And like it or not, the Western European and Northern European descendents of most Americans received Trinitarian, “little ‘c’” catholicism centuries ago. This cultural memory stays with them even if they are un-churched. Little girls in America dream of growing up, meeting a nice boy, and saying their vows at the altar. Read it again. They do not dream of and will never dream of exchanging their crowns at the wedding table. We may have a bunch of converts in N. America running around with a fetish for 19th century Russia, but we are deluded if we feel like we are going to uproot a cultural memory which stretches back, in some cases, to the point where the East and West were still in communion. After the recent convert has finished convincing himself that he is in the right Church, there comes a point where all those troparians, metanias, and sleepy Sunday mornings at Orthros seem, well, just a little forced. The West knows what Church is. In the West, Church has “Sunday Service” or “Mass”, not Orthros and Liturgy. It has steeples and stone bell towers, not onion domes. It has pews, kneelers, and hymnals or missals. It has King James English, not Slavonic or Greek. They both may be almost as hard to understand for the uneducated masses fed on MTV, but even they recognize that only ONE of those is our liturgical language. If our Orthodox Churches put Pope St. Gregory the Great on the calendar and commemorate him after Presanctified Liturgy, then they shouldn’t have a problem with Orthodox Christians praying the way that he prayed. If we say that praying the way that he prayed is not allowed, then I say we are hypocrites.

Reasons for Not Wanting a Western Rite

I noticed early on that the criticism of the Western Rite was a full of hooey. The reason why I noticed this was because the criticisms were very different and even contradictory depending on who they came from. One side says, “Western Rite Orthodox Christians are not really converting at all. Just look at them, at their prayers, their devotions, etc. They are a bunch of Anglicans and Catholics in communion with Antioch!” The other side insists, “They aren’t Western enough! They are just Byzantinized converts who have a self-loathing for their Western identity and are therefore hiding in this exotic Eastern home.” Well, which is it? Since they haven’t been around for a terribly long time, I have the feeling that these contradictory reports have less to do with what Western Rite people are and more to do with what the vast quantity of Eastern Orthodox “experts” want them to be. But what we want them to be is irrelevant. They have their bishops for that. They aren’t Anglicans trying to be Orthodox or Orthodox trying to be Anglicans. They are simply Orthodox Christians. Accept it and move on.

The belittling of the Western Rite is also an annoying occurrence. “They are simply an ‘experiment’ you see, something we don’t have to think about now but will require our approval later.” Hogwash- this experiment has added a number of new missions in just the last couple of years. The bigger and more vibrant Western Rite parishes have converts who have come from a variety of background including former agnostics and un-churched individuals. The Western Rite is alive, vibrant, growing, and under vigorous episcopal oversight. So much for being an “experiment”.

And what of those who don’t like the AWRV because it interferes with ecumenical relations and send a bad message to Anglicans and Roman Catholics? Personally I think it (the Western Rite) sets up a framework for future corporate reunion. It says, “If your church and our church was to ever get back together, it would look like this.” And in the meant time, what is preferable. Waiting for Anglicans to first fix their moral crisis, then fix their liturgical issues, then decide that it is a bad thing to have Calvinists and Catholics in communion with each other as long as they use the same Prayer Book... seriously, we could all be waiting here for a while. Western Rite Orthodox Christians should of course know their relationship to Anglicans and Roman Catholics (they obviously do have a relationship) and they shouldn’t pretend to be pre-schism Christians. That is just historical reenactment. We aren’t living in the 11th century. Orthodox Christians nowadays are to simply be Orthodox Christians and 21st century American citizens. We have to find out how to make both of those things work together or else we are all going to become extinct. And we can find ways to be Orthodox Christians living god-pleasing lives in this century whether we receive communion from a priest’s hand while kneeling at a rail or on the tip of a spoon while we stand. All Orthodox Christians in North America should get used to that idea.

Western Orthodox Christians- Part II

2007-05-28T16:57:00.000-07:00

Now that I’ve covered the basis for my belief, I want to finally get to the reason why I am writing these posts. I am writing to defend the existence of the Antiochian Western Rite Vicariate and to help my Eastern Rite Orthodox brethren to understand that if they have nothing to say about the people in the AWRV, they should say nothing at all.

Regarding Latinization of the Eastern Rites and “Byzantinization” of the Eastern Rites:

From what I wrote before, it naturally follows that each local church that considers itself to be the True Church must naturally feel that it has preserved the True doctrine. If I was a committed Roman Catholic, I should naturally believe that where the West differs theologically from the East in ways that are contradictory and mutually exclusive, the East is where the real error lies. Modern scholars like to interpret contradictory statements in a way that does not necessarily imply contradiction. In the process of doing so they make the very concrete theological expressions of both communions into vague statements that can easily be interpreted however the observer wants it to be. I am of the opinion that if the people who lived hundreds of years ago during some of these controversies did not see a way to reconcile two different beliefs, then we are being presumptuous by assuming that we “understand things better”. A historical scholar reading manuscripts in a 21st library will never be able to explain the motives and the underlying mentality of X-individual better than Y- individual who was X’s neighbor, lived in X’s culture, and spoke X’s language. And if 500 people formed their opinions under the tutelage of Y-individual, then in my book they are also to be trusted more than our presumptuous and all-knowing 21st century scholar. Again, I feel that this was also the way that the Roman Catholic hierarchy and laity operated until around the 1950’s.

It follows then that some Latinism is to be expected and even desired in Eastern Rite Catholicism. I mean, they don’t have to fill their churches with Sacred Heart statues and Polish Catholic paraphernalia. But (for example) it should be mandatory for them to say the filioque. If I’m an honest traditionalist Roman Catholic or a loyal, papal-maximalist Ukrainian Catholic, then I believe that the Holy Roman Church added the filioque to the Universal Creed under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It was added to express an essential idea and a belief that is important to our understanding of triadology. Furthermore, I would know how the rebellious and schismatic “Orthodox” Churches don’t use it as a way of showing that the Holy Father has no such power to amend the Creed and to show what they believe to be a difference in Trinitarian theology. Just out of plain solidarity and obedience with the Pope and in order to show that I am not some rebellious Greek, I would use the filioque. It is only consistent.

And so it is with a number of other practices. Did some Latinisms go to far? Yes. Were some only introduced out of bias towards Eastern liturgical forms? Sure. But remember, if I were an honest Eastern Catholic, I believe the Catholic Churches in communion with Rome to be the FULLNESS of the Catholic Church. If there were substantial places where Rome differed from the rest of the world after the schism, I should at least consider how She differed since Rome was the one that remained Orthodox in doctrine and free from the poison of schism.

So it is with Orthodox Christians. I have no idea why an Anglican or Roman Catholic would have me believe that when the Church became involved in the Palamite controversy, it was simply arguing “semantics” and describing things in an “Eastern way”. That’s a bunch of B.S. St. Gregory and the Fathers before him and after him are describing reality when they speak of what happens during prayer and during mystical experience. It is experiential and universal. That is why Slavic monks who are descendants of Vikings and live in a country with extensive Western European influence describe the same thing. That is why Romanian monks who speak a Romance language (like Spanish or Italian) and live in country bordering Hungary and looking like this also describe the Uncreated Light. The whole “Eastern” label is really old and lame. Buddhism is Eastern. Shinto is Eastern. Islam is Eastern. Greek is not Eastern. If you study Western philosophy, you read Plato. You don’t read Lao Tzu. The uncreated light is neither Eastern nor Western. It is a description of reality and it is human. If the most authentic, most pure, and least spiritually dangerous and deceptive form of ascetic practice and life of prayer was preserved in the Eastern Roman Empire because that is where the Holy Catholic Church survived… well is that so weird? And expecting this to be normative for all honest Orthodox Christians is not culturally biased or an attempt to Byzantinize anything. It is simply being consistent and honest.

In a relatively recent post, a fellow Orthodox blogger that I often read and even link to on my blog has commented on another recent blog post about how Western Rite Orthodoxy is not the same as Roman Catholic Uniatism. I can think of one really important way that these two concepts are different from each other: In WRO, where was the political involvement and large scale “turning over” of parishes without the majority of the laity knowing what was going on? To put it simply, where in the Western Rite of Orthodoxy has there been something comparable to the Union of Brest-Litovsk. Answer that question, then you can refer to Western Rite Orthodoxy as Uniatism.

Saying that I have the same theology as the rest of the Orthodox world makes me "Byzantine"? That makes no sense to me. There have been pro-Orthodox Anglicans making that claims since the 17th century. Like I said before, if the Orthodox Church is The Church, and I am a convert to the Orthodox Christian faith in a Western Rite parish (hypothetically), then I shouldn’t feel squeamish about being formed by the literature and theological teachings of modern Orthodox saints, fathers, and writers- even if they are Greek speakers or Russian speakers who worship according to the Constantinopolitan Rite. It makes me no more Byzantinized than an Eastern Rite parishioner who draws spiritual nourishment from C.S. Lewis. If I was a Western Rite parishioner and I wanted to know whether the AWRV is really Byzantinized, the only opinion that matter is this one. All those who feel the AWRV is too Byzantine for their tastes should promptly send a message to Metropolitan Philip and explain to him why he is lying. Oh, by the way… when has a Roman Catholic bishop issued a similar promise to not forcibly impose changes in the liturgy of the Anglican Use parishes in the U.S.? I think that shows all of us which is the safer place to call home.

Does the Orthodox Church have to have a Western Rite to be truly Catholic? Absolutely not. The Church is the Church, and it lacks nothing to be the Church. If the Church was reduced to one parish of Ukrainians who barely spoke English and had only 4 elderly parishioners, it would still be the Catholic Church because of what lies in the Chalice on the Holy Altar after the priest has consecrated the gifts. It needs nothing to *be* the Church, but it may indeed lack one thing (or two or five or a hundred) in order to better serve its mission *as* the Church. That is a key distinction. And of course, even though the Church does not need a Western Rite, it would be sorely impoverished- I think- if it did not have one. My next post will explain why I hold that opinion.

Western Orthodox Christians- Intro

2007-05-28T16:26:00.000-07:00

I feel it is necessary at first for me to explain the basis for why I feel that there should be a Western Rite within the Orthodox Church. I am going to follow this up with a couple of other posts, but this covers the important presuppositions I always work with in my mind.

Within 3 centuries the Church had conquered the Empire and put the inhabited, civilized world under the feet of Christ the King. Relatively early on, the different communities of believers in different cultural and political settings starting calcifying certain positions, stances, forms of theological expression, and liturgical uses in a way that differentiated them from the rest of their Christian brethren. So for example, the fact that the “Great Schism” is conveniently dated to 1054 doesn’t mean that many (most) Christians in the West hadn’t been acquiring a lofty view and sometimes exaggerated of the Roman pope for centuries before then. The fact that they were not influential in the politics of the Empire and they were just a bunch of staunchly conservative hicks living in the Barbarian-ravaged backwater of the West rather than the vibrant and urban East mean that their opinions could be politely nodded to and not paid much attention. That is, until they had a way to back up those opinions. I'm thinking in particular at the way that the Popes from Zachary to Adrian I found it to their advantage to attract the favor of the Franks in defense against the Lombards and therefore found it increasingly easy to thumb their noses at the Byzantine Exarch in Ravenna. From this point on we can then speak of two major “mindsets” that developed by the last half of the first millennium. I’ll come back to this, but first let’s see how these mindsets impacted other areas of the Christian life.

In particular I want to look at liturgical life. In the extremely primitive condition of the early Church, it was logical that there should be a number of different local liturgical uses. It is likewise sensible to assume that this was not the ideal condition. The early Church is not the pure prototype we must always seek to emulate as so many Christians nowadays seem to think. Instead it was the seed from which the lofty tree of the fully developed Church would one day sprout. So I’m not an advocate of having 300 different liturgies just because the “early church” had them. Some Orthodox are so in love with liturgical archeology that they want a Mozarabic liturgy for Hispanics, a Syriac liturgy (or two) for middle-easterners, a “Celtic” liturgy for those Americans who are a quarter Irish, etc. This is unnecessary and more than a bit silly, I think. Once again, all the little local liturgies are pretty, but I don’t think they reflect the ideal condition of what the Church was meant to eventually develop into. Instead, we would be better off thinking of the Church’s liturgies developing into two distinct “families”. So even though I don’t believe in having a zillion local liturgies so that all the converts can feel proud of their ethnicity when they go play their medieval reenactment games in Church on Sunday, I would be foolish to deny the existence of two distinct liturgical mentalities that existed within the Church by the end of the first millennium.

The two “families” of liturgies and the two “mindsets” or self-concepts that the Catholic Church eventually grew into are the Western Roman Catholic tradition and the Eastern Roman Catholic tradition. Actually, we would even be accurate in calling them the Northern Catholic tradition and the Southern Catholic tradition. Here is what I believe about these two traditions: the former was culturally Celtic and Germanic, it was Latin speaking, it was slightly more terse and strict in its use of ritual and long flowery prayers (I’m speaking in general), and it was spiritually centered on the city of Elder Rome in the Italian peninsula and the person of its bishop. The latter was culturally Roman (with all the baggage and benefits included in that package), Greek-speaking, urban, extremely political, and unfortunately centered on the person of the Emperor and the Imperial court in New Rome. Any spiritual leadership from the Ecumenical Patriarch was just due to his association with the Imperial court as was the very fact that this bishop was even a patriarch in the first place.

So far, I sound like I should be a Roman Catholic. However, I’m not. I believe that once these two sides of the Church began to calcify themselves in their differences, they became distinct enough from each other to constitute two separate ecclesiastical bodies. I believe that this process took centuries of slow drift after the official schism and it was not perfectly accomplished until the Council of Trent. Furthermore, if I take an honest look at both bodies, their liturgical life, their history of liturgical development, their devotions, and their ecclesiology, I can honestly say that one has retained enough of the Truth to still be considered the surviving Church founded by Jesus Christ. The other, I believe, has not. This is a faith claim and I can’t ever prove it 100%, but I believe that the communion of local churches collectively known as the Eastern Orthodox Church is actually the fullness of the Holy Catholic Church led by the Holy Spirit and nourished by the Holy Mysteries. By default, that unfortunately leads me to a few other conclusions:

1) All other ecclesiastical bodies which claim the title of the One True Church, the Catholic Church, etc. are not in fact the Holy Catholic Church. I know, it sounds mean, but if we are to be consistent, this is the natural implication. I believe that the Church must be One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic as the Symbol of Faith says, but I would add a couple of other titles. It must be visible and retain an earthly, identifiable hierarchy. The New Israel is visible and one just as the Old Israel was visible and one. If I want to find the limits of its presence, who is in it and who is outside of it, I should be able to do that. It has both an earthly, visible quality and an equally true spiritual and invisible quality. Both of these qualities are essential and must be present just as the Head of the Church, Our Lord, is one hypostasis with a human and a divine nature. Without one nature or the other, Our Lord wouldn’t be Our Lord and you would have a Christological heresy on your hands. Without a clear and identifiable Church, you likewise have an ecclesiological heresy.

2) Wish washy branch theories and ecumenically minded stupidity which claims that the Church of Christ is only now being built both constitute a gross departure from the way that the Church has always understood herself. Other ecclesiastical bodies may be closer to the fullness of the Truth, or they may constitute separated bodies with varying degrees of similarity to the Church. An American charismagelical coventicle is “Christian” in a very vague sense. A traditional, orthodox Roman Catholic, Melkite, or Anglican Church is obviously closer to the Truth. In some cases, it may be so painfully close that the fact that such a body is not in the Church is a source of much anguish and lack of sleep on my part. I hate the fact that a schism ever happened. I hate it that there are similar churches alongside The Church and that the separated brethren in these communities can’t partake of the same Mysteries with me. But the fact remains: when faced with these other ecclesiastical bodies, I must confess the only Truth I know- “The Orthodox Church is THE Church, and I can’t say with certainty what those other groups are.”

3) No amount of miracles, saints, and good works outside of the Orthodox Church disprove this belief. It only shows how merciful the Holy Spirit is and how He moves where He wills.

4) I fully understand, respect, and expect that other churches may believe the same thing about themselves as the Orthodox Church believes about itself. I understand that, for example, the Roman Catholic Church used to believe the same thing as what I described above. Modern Latin Catholics play flip-flop with their history. “Real particular churches” my ass. It would be more consistent and honest to think of us as stubborn schismatics as we think of you. Traditionalist Roman Catholic sources and literature as well as almost any pre-1950 Catholic literature shows that this was the historic Latin view. If we must be separated, let us be sincere.

5) By extension, it would be sincere, honest, and totally expected for the Roman Catholic Church to have Eastern Rites and Eastern Churches in its communion. If you honestly believe that all those references in the 1st millennium that speak about the “Catholic Church” are actually referring to your Church, then prove it… you should have both of those cultural “mindsets”, both of those liturgical “families” that were alive and well in the first millennium. The Orthodox Church may have a right to bitch about corrupt aspects of Uniatism such as in-your-face proselytism or money offers for those who convert. However, the Orthodox Church has **NO** right to complain about the concept of Eastern Rite Catholic Churches themselves. The Roman Catholic Church believes itself to be the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. Why shouldn’t have an Eastern Rite?

This is going to serve as the basis for my next posts on the Western Rite in Orthodoxy. If you ever are reading my future posts and are wondering why I came to the conclusions I came to, please refer to this first post. It explains the basis for why I feel the way I do.

Someone Thinks That I've Been Thinking

2007-05-13T14:58:00.000-07:00

I have been tagged once again. My blog is not even that active, so I do most of my thinking offline. In any case, thanks, S-P. There is a thing going around where you tag five people... OK, rather than explain in my own words, I'll just copy and paste the instructions:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think;
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme;
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn't fit your blog).

Now for the five blogs. I'm going to tag some people who have already been tagged, but that's OK. I'm just going to be honest about the top five blogs that I constantly visit and that always give me something to think about. They are...

1. The Ochlophobist
2. The Sarabite
3. Western Orthodoxy
4. The Lion and the Cardinal
5. Conversi ad Dominum

Occidentalis used to be high on that list, but it is now inactive.

Now I just have to figure out how to post the little award tag thingy.

Four Saints

2007-05-12T12:45:00.000-07:00

I’ve been tagged. I need a break from writing case reports anyway.

Name four favourite saints, a favourite blessed saint, and somebody you think should be canonised.

Four favorite saints:

1) Pope St. Julius I- Most Orthodox would hate me for choosing this, but he is my patron saint. Among other things, he helped to solidify the primacy of the Roman pope and he asserted this primacy over the other patriarchs. He wrote to the Eastern bishops, “this is the custom, that we should be written to first, so that from here what is just may be defined.” The Orthodox Christians nowadays have an anemic and useless view of primacy. They do not give Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem (in that order) the due respect, honor, and yes, authority that these ancient sees deserve. Instead, they look to their national churches and sometimes pull stunts that affect all the Orthodox world without consulting first with their elder brothers in Christ. Through the intercessions of my holy patron Julius, may we learn once again the true meaning of primacy- even if it means swallowing our pride from time to time.

2) St. Moses the Black- This is like my unofficial patron. He is the saint I most admire, most respect, and the one whose intercessions I ask for most often. He lived a sinful, passionate, and violent life until his conversion. Even after his conversion, he struggled to concentrate in prayer and he was tempted by the memories of his past life. He was the first saint whose intercessions I asked for while I was still considering Orthodoxy, and he was the first who ever answered my petitions.

3) St. John Maximovitch- Ever since he helped me in a very dramatic and miraculous way during a stats test, I have been forever in his debt.

4) St. Michael the Archangel- Everyone needs a little protection.

Favorite blessed saint:

Blessed is just a term used to describe certain saints in Orthodoxy. It is not a step below canonization like in the RCC. I guess then that means my favorite blessed saint is St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo-Regius. He may have engaged in some theological speculation which was not in line with the rest of the Church’s theology, BUT he was a holy man of God, a good bishop, and he was willing to be corrected by the Church. That last quality alone puts him far above most Orthodox Christians nowadays. If you have not read his Confessions, do so. To be honest, the only reason I must choose him is because I haven't read anything written by any other blessed saints. I have read Augustine's Confessions and his Sermons to the People. His holiness has impacted me.

Person that should be canonized:

Definitely Dom Denis Chambault. I have no idea why he is not yet canonized. Well, maybe I do. He was Western Rite and that is obviously a bad thing in some quarters. I have yet to hear of a convincing reason why that should be.

Now to tag some people. I'll only tag a couple: John and Steven- you guys are it.

How Narcissism Really Looks- Part II

2007-03-04T16:49:00.000-08:00

When discussing the Fall and the reason for the current condition of the human psyche, it is of course necessary to speak of the sin of our forefather Adam and of his wife Eve. However, if we want to look at the Fall even more closely, it is necessary to discuss the sin of that old serpent, the “star of the morning” who desired to make himself equal to the Most High and was cast down- along with a full third of the bodiless powers- from the heavens by St. Michael the Archangel. In light of this fact passed down to us by our Fathers and Mothers in the Faith, one can safely say that the true original sin was that of narcissism, or what the Fathers call “self-esteem”. Evil- the corruption and misuse of that which is good- was introduced into universe when an intelligent being thought of itself as so unique, so special, and so “different” that it deserved to be made an equal to God.

For the rest of this post, I will only speak of the “average” narcissism of most humans living after the Fall, not of the openly dangerous pathological narcissism of those suffering from narcissistic personality disorder. In the United States or the rest of the Western world, and at the time this is being written (2007 a.D.), one rarely sees a narcissistic person acting openly narcissistic. They won’t say, “I’m so beautiful and special… more than other people in fact. No one is like me!” The only exceptions I can think of are the "famous" celebrities like Paris Hilton who have enough money and popularity to act in an openly obnoxious way without fearing that their behavior will cause them to be ridiculed. For the rest of us who live in the shadow of these foolish idols, the manifestations of narcissistic behavior have to take on another form. Allow me to explain…

I am unlucky enough to live in South Florida. The residents of this tri-county area (Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade) have grown used to seeing their home cities portrayed on MTV and in various spring break specials. Due to this, they have developed a way of speaking, acting, laughing, sitting, walking, spending their money, and having relationships that betrays a disturbing fact: they seem to have a subconscious conviction that their every single move, thought, and act is being recorded by some unseen video camera. This is not something confined to a class or a particular ethnic group. One quickly becomes aware when talking to many of my peers that they are simply thinking and saying what they ought to think and say. I even find such gross behavior in myself many times. This has convinced me that the only 100% non-narcissistic people- and therefore the only 100% unique people- are the saints. But there is more. Even the seemingly meek and mild “underdog” who thinks that he is always being singled out at the office or picked on at school is conforming to a media-influenced role and spending an inordinate amount of time in his mental life thinking about himself. This was illustrated perfectly in a story told to me by a very wise priest. An individual came to him frequently while struggling with bouts of insecurity and interpersonal conflicts. The man would constantly complain, “Why do they keep singling me out at work. You know I can’t hear what their saying, but I can tell it is about me by the way they look at me. They don’t want to recognize my usefulness in the company.” This person may sound like the most non-narcissistic person in the world. The poor thing! He needs to develop his self-esteem. However, the priests response was very different. He replied, “What makes you so unique and difficult to understand that would cause your whole office to constantly speak about you? What if they think about you a lot less than you believe they think about you?”

The man did not need to constantly run around reminding everyone of his beauty and his skills. His suspicions about his coworkers revealed the truth: he was convinced that everyone else was as preoccupied with him as he was. Again, in his mind, he was- at least subconsciously- the leading male part in an intricate drama. The fact that his “role” made him a misunderstood victim instead of a handsome hero does not detract one bit from his spiritually unhealthy preoccupation with himself.

And so, narcissism consumes us little by little. We are given frequent suggestions by the church to keep us from focusing on ourselves. The Church tells us to go and live in subjection to others and in relationships with others that require us to give more of ourselves than we are comfortable giving. It does not matter whether these responsibility-demanding relationships involve marrying and having children or selling all we have so that we can live in a coenobitic house with a monastic community. Both methods are equally effective in that they make us forget ourselves just a little and live for someone else. We are assuming here that the person enters into either of these two relationships in the way that these relationships are meant to be entered into. You can have a narcissistically disordered marriage which is entered into in order to “be happy” or “be fulfilled”… whatever the hell that means. The Church marries people to save them, not to make them happy. Most of the marriages in this age are of the narcissistic type, I think. And as for the monastic life, I direct all readers of this post to the icon for the Sunday of the Last Judgment. On the lower right-hand corner in the flames, one can easily notice that the majority of the figures are bearded and wearing monastic cowls. Most of the others are bishops and priests.

The Church also gives us spiritual fathers and mothers, fasts, vigils, mortifications, the lives of the saints, the Sacraments, etc. In her holy icons, we see figures portrayed in a consistent, dispassionate, and simple form according to strict rules that govern the arrangement of the subjects. The saint in an icon is sort of an “anti-celebrity”. He or she is locked into a particular pose, stance, arrangement and setting over and over again no matter how many times he or she is portrayed. They are always presented in the context of the background of the icon (usually pure gold representing paradise)- something that you can’t get from a free standing statue*. They stand out by virtue of where they are (heaven) and by who put them there (the Lord). I can find no better cure for the “garden variety narcissism” and self centeredness of most humans. We will only be real humans as God designed us to be if we put ourselves at the bottom and forget ourselves just bit. If we can do that, then God will give us the greatest reward we could ever ask for. He will make us a direct participant in His blessed life. He could never settle for just letting us have a mere intellectual knowledge or “vision” of Him. Instead, He will make us by grace what He is by nature. And so, we will always love Him and live with Him- with the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Both now and forever, and unto the ages of ages.

* A small note to all my brothers and sisters in the Western Rite of the Orthodox Church- I certainly don’t see a problem with having some statues in church, since this is an ancient tradition and a very special feature in the Western Church. My comment simply indicates my personal feelings of why 2d icons have a slight theological “advantage” over statues, but this doesn’t mean that statues don’t fill their own architectural and decorative role. It may be harder to produce a tasteful and non-kitschy statue than it is to produce a tasteful and non-kitschy icon, but many of the marble, unpainted statues with real golden haloes that I’ve seen in Western churches are simply breathtaking.

How Narcissism Really Looks- Part I

2007-03-02T12:24:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week, a couple of different individuals on the blogosphere posted entries on the topic of narcissism among students. I am specifically referring to this post by Owen and this entry by Michael Liccione. This topic is of great interest to me since I have anecdotally noted this same trend recently among my friends, family, and colleagues. I only wish I had blogged about it here so that I could have the pleasure of saying, “I told you so.”

First, I’d like to indicate the reason why this is a topic of interest to me. I recently completed my undergraduate studies in psychology and I have been recommended for honor's admission to graduate school. In fact, I have just recently received an interview date for March 9, 2007, and I would like to request the prayers of any who may be reading this. Upon acceptance (grant this O Lord), I plan to eventually work towards a doctorate degree in clinical neuropscyhology. In the meantime, I am working fulltime at a community mental health agency. I am responsible for facilitating groups where I (hopefully) teach life skills and basic self care to individuals with long standing, persistent mental illness. I never write about my job or my clients for reasons of confidentiality. Also, it may be interesting for someone else to listen to my rants about how one of my clients can hear voices emanating from her molars, but for someone who does it every day 9 to 5 (the work, not the voices), it is not especially exciting or out of the ordinary. Suffice it to say that the program where I work puts me into contact with individuals who are in need of very specific professional help. Hmm… I wonder if the Orthodox Church has a category for Holy Unmercenary Psychotherapists.

Finally, I’d like to note that in the process of writing this, my point of reference is of course the The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition as it is for most mental health professionals in the United States of America. I am aware that many clinicians overseas- and even in this country- use the more internationally recognized The International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems. I am of the opinion that diagnostic categories in mental illness are only broad frameworks that assist in research and in the communication between clinicians. Rarely will you find a perfect textbook case client who manifests a picture perfect consistent case of X illness with every single criteria present. People are people… not words on a page, and a diagnosis will never be able to fully illustrate an individual’s story. Furthermore, I am somewhat inclined to agree with the concept of schizotypy rather than the medically influenced categorical view of mental illness. In laymen’s terms that simply means that I hold to a view of mental illness that sees full blown manifestations of mental illness as extremes on a continuum, not as a category where you are either “in” or “out”. This concept usually applies to psychosis, but I would extend it to the personality disorders as well.

We should clear up some terminology first. The article in question cited by Mike L never says that there are more students walking around with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. It talks about the trait of narcissism which can even include healthy narcissism. Indeed, I would find it hard to believe that our nation’s universities are populated by individuals suffering from the “inflexible and pervasive” pattern of behavior “across a broad range of personal and social situations” that the DSM lists as necessary for one to be diagnosed with a personality disorder. This is especially true considering that for one to seek professional help, this pattern usually must lead to “clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning”. Mike even notes as much when he acknowledges the existence of the disorder and voices his (I’m guessing uninformed) opinion “there aren't that many NPDers walking around, torturing those around them.” If we take a caricatured view of the issue, then I guess I can agree. But not every narcissistically disordered individual is a movie star villain whose grandiosity is vocalized at every turn. My professors for both abnormal psychology and personality theory were quite clear in their insistence that clients seeking help for personality disorders most often seek help due to their longstanding failures in relationships, especially romantic ones. Not all people around the disordered individuals are constantly tortured, Mike. Just the ones closest to them.

The second part that I disagree with is the way that Mike minimizes the extent of the problem, especially in its more bearable and mundane form. Mike insists that aside from the extremely disturbed individuals, “…we stop worrying. Reality has a way of curing garden-variety narcissism. We need to be more worried about how terrible so many people really feel about themselves.” I have to laugh at this. The “reality” of life the way it used to be, say, before the Industrial Revolution may have cured garden-variety narcissism. However, the Reality-TV, self-esteem obsessed culture we have in 21st century America is hardly a way to experience reality. One has to have their head stuck in a hole to not realize this.

I have to get to work before I get behind in my paperwork, but in my follow up to this entry, I would like to illustrate exactly how lower and more subtle levels of narcissism look in the average population.

Liturgia Mozárabe - Sanctus Another clip from the Mozarabic

2006-12-21T19:05:00.000-08:00

Liturgia Mozárabe - Sanctus

Another clip from the Mozarabic Liturgy- singing of the Sanctus.