Byzantine, Texas

Snippet below. Complete post here . During my hiatus, I at times contemplated things that seem contrary to our understanding, or what we normally think about on various subjects. For example: We associate Italian food with tomatoes. Bruscheta, tomato sauce on pasta, pizza, canneloni! But tomatoes came from the new world, and consequently Italian food had no tomatoes in it until about 1650 and many great Italian saints never even saw one. Spelling in the English language is not consistant throughout history, or in the current time. When Dan Quayle spelled potato with an "e", as was once the accepted spelling, the media flipped and ran with headlines that Dan Quayle couldn't spell even though he used a perfectly acceptable spelling. Conversely on the liberal side, John Kerry was mocked endlessly by conservative radio hosts for pronouncing Ghengis Kahn as "Jenghis Kahn" during his Vietnam war testimony. In reality Jenghis was an accepted pronunciation and spelling ...

37. "Then the righteous will answer Him, `Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? 38. `And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? 39. `When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?' 40. "The King will answer and say to them, `Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.' 41. "Then He will also say to those on His left, `Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; 42. for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; 43. I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.' 44. "Then they themselves also will answer, `Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a strange...

http://www.bobbyjindal.com/ The below article really resonated with my wife and me. We are both fierce Jindal fans since initially reading about him in the Weekly Standard and having a lot of family in Louisiana... Northern Louisiana at that. As a Christian of the apostolic succession variety I can certainly understand what he said, even after reading the article in context. Louisiana is, as the article mentions, a state divided - with Protestants in the Northern half and Catholics in the Southern half. Try looking for a non-Protestant church in the North and you'll be looking a while. Asking people at gas stations will get you a stare. You can imagine what it was like when our Northern Lousiana family came to a three hour baptismal divine liturgy. Baton Rouge, Aug 23, 2007 / 10:35 am (CNA).- A political scuffle has ensued between rival candidates who are campaigning to become the next governor of Louisiana. The brouhaha began when Bobby Jindal’s challengers ran a television ad t...

Discussion of theology is not for everyone, I tell you, not for everyone - it is no such inexpensive or effortless pursuit. Nor, I would add, is it for every occasion, or every audience; neither are all its aspects open to inquiry. It must be reserved for certain occasions, for certain audiences, and certain limits must be observed. It is not for all people, but only for those who have been tested and found a sound footing in study, and, more importantly, have undergone, or at the very least are undergoing, purification of body and soul. For one who is not pure to lay hold of pure things is dangerous, just as it is for weak eyes to look at the sun's brightness. ... Those for whom it is a serious undertaking, not just another subject like any other for entertaining small-talk, after the races, the theater, songs, food, and sex: for there are people who count chatter on theology and clever deployment of arguments as one of their amusements. St. Gregory of Nazianzus An Introductory Se...

Sometimes comments are just as readable and informative as the blog posts themselves. Take this post from The Young Fogey in reponse to a posting on the Byzantine Forum. Just about everybody agrees that the Oriental Orthodox are not really Monophysites after all but estranged Orthodox who don't use the Byzantine Rite. I've been saying for some time echoing Kallistos (Ware) and others that official Oriental Orthodox-Eastern Orthodox reunion is only a matter of time and will happen much sooner than any big East-West reconciliation... because they're both Eastern! It seems that locally with the Antiochians it's happening. The Middle East seems a case of 'when in Rome'. Melkite and Antiochian families - Christian Arabs surrounded by Muslims - identify as one or the other but intermarry, intercommune and have their kids baptised and chrismated at each other's churches all the time and the clergy know it. Also, the custom is for a wife to join her husband's c...

I've always found Samuel Adams beer less than tasty. In fact, if that's the last beer a pub has on tap I'll just get an iced tea. Now I know why... take a read at Alive and Young's post entitled Sex, Beer, and a Catholic Church . I am justified albeit for different reasons (flavor / perdition). Go take a look. I hate telling people what to do and what not to do, but you might want to reconsider drinking Samuel Adams beer, and for that mater anything that comes from the Boston Beer Company. I kept hearing rumors that Samuel Adams sponsored, on a number of occasions, a contest called "Sex for Sam" that encouraged contestants to engage in sex in some strange places: Times Square, NBC Today, on a Bus, in a museum (click here for the list); each place the contestants had sex, they would receive points for its corresponding location... Read on here.

Turkey bars Orthodox prelate from visiting Ankara, Aug. 14, 2007 (CWNews.com) - The Turkish government has barred a proposed visit by the Orthodox Archbishop Chrysostomos of Cyprus, for the second time in 4 months, the AsiaNews service reports. Archbishop Chrysostomos had planned the August visit in order to meet with Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, the leading prelate in the Orthodox world. Earlier plans for a meeting in May had also been thwarted by Turkey's refusal to admit Cypriot prelate. Orthodox officials stressed that the visit by Archbishop Chrysostomos would have been entirely religious, rather than political. But the Ankara government has been displeased with the archbishop's strong criticism of Turkish involvement in Cyprus. Moreover a Turkish court recently announced that Patriarch Bartholomew has authority only over the small Orthodox community in Istanbul; the government refuses to recognize his status as the "first among equals" in the world...

Catholic-Orthodox ties improved, Cardinal Etchegaray repeats Novosibirsk, Aug. 13, 2007 (CWNews.com) - An influential Catholic prelate reaffirmed that relations between the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox Church are improving, during an August 12 press conference in Siberia. Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, the retired president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, traveled to Siberia after a stop in Moscow, where he met with Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II. The cardinal gave the Russian primate a personal letter from Pope Benedict XVI, to which the patriarch promised a reply. At his press conference in Novosibirsk, the French-born cardinal confirmed what he had told reporters in Moscow: that he saw a distinctly positive trend in Catholic-Orthodox relations, with much of the progress brought by joint efforts to revive the role of Christian faith in European culture. Cardinal Etchegaray's perspective is regarded as particularly important because he has frequently been chosen to ...

East of Byzantium has an enjoyable read from St. Clement of Alexandria on his blog. It begins thus: Listen to a tale which is not just a tale but a true account of John the apostle, handed down and carefully remembered. When the tyrant was dead, and John had moved from Patmos to Ephesus, he used to go when asked to the neighboring districts of the Gentile peoples, sometimes to appoint bishops, sometimes to organize whole churches, sometimes to ordain one person of those pointed out by the Spirit. So it happened that he arrived at a city not far off, named by some as Smyrna, and after settling various problems of the brethren, he finally looked at the bishop already appointed, and indicating a youngster he had noticed of excellent physique, attractive appearance, and ardent spirit, he said: “I leave this young an in your keeping, with all earnestness, in the presence of the Church and Christ as my witness.” When the Bishop accepted him and promised everything, John addressed the same a...

Just found this book while downloading podcasts from Our Lady of Perpetual Help's podcast . I already have 3 books coming in from Amazon/Half.com so I need to retract my child-like need to have everything "Now now now!" If you are not similarly afflicted, go here to order. "This epic work traces the history of Soviet Catholicism from its rich life in 1914 through its tentative fate in the first sixty years of the USSR. Rev. Christopher Lawrence Zugger tells of the faithful men and women shackled by dictatorship, doomed to deportation, and abandoned by their own church in the west. Soviet Russia was an empire born of atheism. Religions, per se, were viewed as a threat to the State's notion of individualism. By 1932 Dictator Josef Stalin firmly declared that religion would be extinct in the USSR within five years. In this compelling volume, Rev. Zugger details the Soviet campaign against Catholicism among many ethnic groups, several Catholic rites, and devou...

June 21-24, 2004 Oriental Lumen VIII Orthodox-Catholic Dialogue: Whats Our Bottom Line? Washington D.C. Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia on the matter of the existence of the Eastern Catholics I very much regret that because of this question the Catholic-Orthodox International Dialogue seems to be making very little progress. My own feeling as an Orthodox is that the Eastern Catholic Churches have a right to exist. And I add, we Orthodox need to ask pardon for the way we have often treated Eastern Catholics in the past. And, not only that, I would add that we Orthodox should see the Eastern Catholics as our best friends in the Catholic Church. Who are best able to understand us. So while I value very much my relations with the Eastern Catholics, I definitely don't see them as being my " bottom line " (referencing discussion topic's title). They are rather my " top line ."

Popular Orthodoxy needs a new lexicon. The terms of today's books trend towards defining just how not like the Catholics they are. Book after book cracks the same whip of unfounded papal claims, the errors of scholasticism, or the Fourth Crusade. If I went on a job interview could I get the job by saying exactly who I wasn't? Possible Employer: Mr. Flavius, could tell me a little about yourself? Me: Well, I'm certainly not from the North with their bad manners and constant cursing. P.E.: Umm... I see. So how would you describe your work ethic? Do you tend to pace yourself or go all guns blazing after a problem? Me: Damned Yankees seem to work work work like little machines. No time for polite discourse. Nothing to them that MTV or ivy league universities didn't fill their silly little heads with. P.E.: I... well... so before the interview we gave you a short test to judge your technical skills for the position. You seem to have just marked out a few of the obviousl...

Recently the Orientale Lumen people (specifically, that wonderful man, Jack Figel) came out with OLTV . It's purpose is stated below. There are lots of conference videos with more material being added all the time. I highly encourage a looksie. Videos of Fr. Robert Taft, Bishop Kallistos, the Ecumenical Patriarch, the Melkite Patriarch, and others. The mission of OLTV is to provide a new technological method so that ... Eastern Christians in America can reinforce their religious traditions, and educate themselves and their families. Newly arrived Eastern Christian immigrants can maintain contact with their homeland. Western Christians (Roman Catholics and Protestants) will become more aware of the Eastern Churches.

If you have been following the events of the Anglican union for any length of time you will know what a "flying bishop" is. For those that don't, a little explanation is required. Some people like old-style Coke in a bottle (in Texas and a few other places called "Mexican Coke"). They like the authentic flavor and think the glass does something for the flavor. Some people think the new Coca Cola in a can with all the cherry, black cherry, diet, diet with Splenda, etc. varieties are just as tasty and allow more people to have the Coke experience. For Anglicans/Episcopalians the same divide applies. Some parishes like their Anglicanism the old-fashioned way - without priestesses, acceptance of the gay lifestyle, or perceived Liberal mindsets. Some parishes want "everyone" to have the "right" to feel "accepted" in their church "community" (Warning: if any sentence requires more than two quotes that distance the author fro...

The entire document is here . Problem: Current overlapping jurisdictions is "uncanonical" and an obvious heresy of "phyletism (ethnicism)". It also states that the term "diaspora" is untrue; the churches are an "Episcopal Assembly" that will one day be a "General Synod of Bishops". 42 years of discussion are long enough. It is time to act as it is cried out for by North America. Solution: They say basically that they want the Orthodox jurisdictions to meet within the next six months (that's quite a short time line) to come up with "concrete" plans, ask for the Ecumenical Patriarch to convene a meeting of all the North American Mother Churches so that they can discuss their situation, and that there should be a standing body with representatives from each church to meet twice a year to speak with one voice on the issues of the day.

Go read Byzantine Ramblings post on multiculturalism here . I am reminded of Mata Hari when I ponder the effects of multiculturalism. She came back from Asia and took on the guise of a foreigner who did a "sacred dance" that involved translucent outfits that left little to the imagination. Accepted as a dance from the mysterious East there was more acceptance of what she did because the rules of polite society simply didn't apply to this ignorant woman. Had they known she was a girl from far north reaches of the Netherlands, raised entirely properly (even a school teacher for a short while), would they have so readily accepted her exotic dances? I think not. Similarly, placing something in the "other" category does not abrogate good taste or morality. Just because something came from somewhere else does not mean you are barred from making a "judgment" (hold your gasps, please). I don't believe all cultures are equal. I don't hold to the belief...