A Response to “On administering Holy Communion in a Time of a Plague”
This was sent to me and deserves a read. You can read the Calivas article here . We can all agree that we are living in unusual times. However, the nature and extent of the illness that we face, and the proper response of the Church, is a matter of much disagreement. We have seen various responses to the COVID-19 epidemic: calls to close our Churches as infectious vectors, and demands to open them as places of spiritual healing. Directives a) ordering the cessation of sacramental life as part of an effort to “flatten the curve,” and cries for access to the divine grace that flows forth from those very mysteries; b) calling for the restriction of “at-risk persons,” and serious questions about the validity of such controls, c) instructions to liturgists to wear personal protective equipment during the celebration of the divine services and the distribution of the holy Mysteries, and uncertainty about the fitness of such practices. Who has been championing what and on behalf of whom? The ...
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ReplyDeleteAt least here in western civ. (and I suspect largely in Jordan as well) the family as an institution - a little cult-ure, is embedded in the larger anti-Christian secular culture. One he mentions, the school, is specifically designed to negate Christian culture/family. The Church (as an institution - a cult) is at the same time both prior and post family, in that they both depend upon and serve as the soil for each other.
ReplyDeleteSo in the end I wonder about sermons such as this one. Not that there is anything objectionable on the surface, but it strikes me as somewhat shallow and not up to the fundamental problem(s) - sort of like walking into a bar full of drunks and saying "get a hold of yourselves! *Will* yourself out of your drunkenness!" when the truth of the matter (following AA's central insight) is that each of them is *powerless* against their drunkenness.
So I circle around to the institution of the (Orthdox) Church itself and ask what its part of this necrotic situation is (risking of course being seen as making a "protestant" critique). Is it bound in a praxis and life that is in fact dependent upon Christendom - the underlying culture where families, schools, wider cultural life, even the state are in the background always de facto 'propping up' the Christian life. In other words, can the structure/praxis of this Eastern Orthodox Church (which is distinct from Ortho-doxia per se) *live* now that most (all really) of the other cult-ure's are anti-Christian? When you consider the evidence such as this (which is more "objective" yet possibly not as important as actual personal experience) it makes one think:
https://orthodoxreality.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/2020CensusGeneralReport1.pdf