I had originally posted a section of an article from a website rather condemnatory of the Metropolitan of Chicago. It explained some recent prohibitions on priests announcing who could or could not receive communion either before distributing it or in bulletins. Given the perceived calumnies interwoven with information in the articles, I've unlinked it. At the same time the Metropolis of Chicago would not be alone historically in telling clergy not to make additional announcements about worthiness to receive (at large feast days, at funerals, etc.). It has been done before and I expect bishops to do it in the future. If anyone has any first-hand information on this occasion of such a directive, I think everyone would like to get additional context. My intent was not to "bash" anyone, but to highlight a local decision and foster discussion.
Friday, November 22, 2019
Met. Nathanael reportedly proscribes communion announcements
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Lord have mercy!
ReplyDeleteI think a comment on the original site makes a very good point: the 'catechumens, depart' would have made sure that only those who could receive the Eucharist would be present at communion time. However, the GOA has only kept those petitions in the presanctified liturgy.
ReplyDeleteIf my bishop were to go down this road I’d be looking for the exit.
ReplyDeleteOne would think that the Greeks at this point wouldn't do anything else to possibly drive more people to the more conservative Russian side...and yet, they do! He sounds like one of Pope Francis' allies!
ReplyDeleteHere's another homily of St. John Chrysostom, to be read on Holy Thursday: https://fatherjohn.blogspot.com/2011/07/homily-for-holy-thursday-by-st-john.html
ReplyDeleteThis is just more of the same unraveling within the Ecumenical Patriarchate. At this point I have no words left.
ReplyDeleteMy family & I are members of a GOAA parish, and I'm even a parish council member. This nonsense makes be contemplating leaving. However, I love our priest/pastor & all the people who make up our parish community, a truly wonderful & diverse group of people. Besides, we don't really have any other options for attending an Orthodox parish in our area.
This is starting to remind me of the iconoclastic period. After liturgy last Sunday I was talking to our Presbyteria, and she pointed out that there were people who were born in the iconoclastic period & died before it was over. It was their fidelity to Christ & His Church that got them through that period. God is merciful & will judge us with insight that we can't comprehend.
Lord, have mercy.
"I love our priest/pastor & all the people who make up our parish community...and she pointed out that there were people who were born in the iconoclastic period & died before it was over..."
DeleteYes, we have all seen the movie before.
I was in an Episcopalian parish in the mid 90's (last parish before Orthodox) in the diocese one of the last bishops who was not ordaining women. The people of that parish on a whole were more classically traditional, less secularized, and (small "o") Orthodox than 2 of the 7 Orthodox parish's I have been a part of. I actually now live within 3 hours of that parish and have thought of driving up to it to see if I can get a handle on what has become of it - is it a "benedict option" stronghold of classical Christianity in the sea of apostasy that is Episcopalianism, or is some lesbian priestess leading a flock of multiculturalists straight to Hell?
My current parish is one of the two. About half of the folks are so secularized they would (and have actually tried - bishop thankfully saying "no") to reform Orthodox Christianity into an image of secularized "church". It's a small parish so I know most of these folks biographies and how the acid and poison of this Secularized age has worked on them and formed them into "men (and women) without chests". On more than one occasion I have thought "why would I come and *commune* here when on any given Sunday I can walk out and knock on the door of most of my neighbors and *commune* with a more fully fleshed out and honest Secularism?"
I have served to some extant, as board member, treasurer, and "traditional" voice, though I confess this has been more of a selfish act than anything else (I have no delusions that I can "fix" the spirit/cultural of any community, or even of a single individual). I have two daughters (5 and 10) and this is the only Orthodox parish in town, so I simply work to keep the basics in place, though is this a mere formalism? Such that the true secularized spirit is only biding its time? I am not a prophet, but I have only a handful of years to do what I can to positively *form* my children in the direction of something resembling an Orthodox mind and heart.
I just looked up the biography of Metropolitan Nathanael, somewhat hoping his mind was formed in "the old country" and thus a religious and cultural naivete could explain his thinking. Nope, educated and formed in the heart of Secularism (Boston mostly). It is most likely he is fool - a full on religious, cultural, and moral idiot and any properly working Orthodox & Traditional Church hierarchy/cultural would have screened him out long ago.
Fact is wee don't have a "properly working" Orthodox and church cultural, not in NA certainly. Instead we have various ontologies that are 'in relation' to the dominate cultural and its Secularism-with-a-capital-S. Fr. Schmemann wrote about this years ago, comprimise-with-the-cultural/age on the one hand, and ethnic ghettoized on the other (i.e. the "bad" sort of benedict option). In a sense, Orthodoxy does not really exist in NA! Not yet, and maybe not ever.
Still, is there any hope that this report is more than a little skewed? You know Timmy as well as I do that reports and rumors about what goes on 'in committee' (your parish board for example) can be wildly off, eccentric, and even diabolical...
Jake,
DeleteI completely agree with you. The conflation of modern secular culture/philosophy with the Orthodox ethos/culutre, which should exist in our parishes & homes, has resulted in an unbelievable "lukewarmness" in many Orthodox parishes & homes. Yes, Fr. Alexander Schmemann (then) & Fr. Stephen Freeman (now) talk(ed) a lot about this, thank God!
My concern is also for my two young daughters as well (6 & nearly 9). Our presbyteria's comments last week were balm for my aching soul. I have to remind myself that truth faith is exercised & developed under less than ideal circumstances that require humble & patient perseverance in the midst of crisis as we struggle to actually "...commend ourself, each other & all our life unto Christ our God."
You astutely pointed out that true faith is a sacrifice because we have to let go of the delusion that we are in control of anything other than how much we choose to struggle to crucify out own sinful passions, trusting in God who is really the One accomplishing that.
I always catch myself lamenting the mess that things are in, but then I reflect on Church history & our Lord himself, and I'm reminded that the cross (the crises what we are constantly in) are actually gifts given to us for our salvation. As one of the hymns on the Feast of the Exaltation of Cross states: "The cross is the invincible weapon"...if we wield it properly.
A priest friend of mine states this simply by saying: "There's no theosis without kenosis, just as there is no resurrection without crucifixion." "The cross is the the door to paradise..." as the same hymn of that feast states. A jagged pill to swallow, but it's the "red pill" (Matrix reference).
I pray we are granted the faith to deny ourselves, take up our crosses & follow Christ!
When an episcopal guy starts down the road to being an episcopalian. Or rather when he arrives.
ReplyDeleteThese self-loathing, WASP-wannabes types of clergy seem to think that by kowtowing to the modern world will ingratiate themselves to it. Maybe get a nice puff piece in the weekly bulletin of the nearby Episcopalian parish. "What an interesting and nice toady this Metropolitan or whatever he calls himself is. Let's hope he doesn't bark or smell as much as our previous rector's chihuahua. Good doggie." With hierarchs like this guy, we deserve to be laughed at and looked down on.
ReplyDelete"...WASP-wannabes types of clergy..."
DeleteMany would say you are being snarky, but there is real truth in this.
Reading this:
https://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/June-2018/Q-A-His-Eminence-Metropolitan-Nathanael-of-Chicago/
Reveals a man who has so confusedly mixed secular/Protestant social gospel concerns with the Christ-as-true-humanity Orthodoxy that a person can't tell which way is up. On the one hand he is addressing real human issues in our current time and place, and on the other his 'answers' lead straight to a 'post Christian' secular ontology which is exactly where the Protestant's and (increasingly) RCism are at - a Christianity that does not need Christianity and a Christianity that "saves the world" in a moralistic way.
There is no sense of the paradoxical Two Ways (one of death, one of life) of the didache, the very "teaching of the Apostles" at all. There is only the church as "hospital" and a therapy that is a kind of "moralistic therapeutic theism" that dispenses with the reality of of the Two Ways implicitly, and in a generation or two it will be explicit...
It would be more comical if it weren't so common among many clergy and laity. It's understandable to a point; immigrant communities are typically poorer at first, but too many assume that their material and social advancement require that they take on a false snobbery about their native lands and customs, looking down on the riches they bring to this country in a pointless attempt to fit in at best, suck up at worse; never realizing that such behavior only confirms to establishment Americans that they are not even worth walking their dogs much less be accepted as anything other than community ornaments (who wants a suck-up around anyway who brings nothing to the table but obsequiousness?)
DeleteSometimes I contemplate leaving GOARCH for OCA or ROCOR (the nearest near me), GOARCH seems to be going down the road of Mainline Protestantism.my priest is fantastic, is very traditional, and sympthizes with the Ephraimite Monasteries, Romanian-American who has no shame in saying the Holy Communion is only the Orthodox in good standing, and to please stand while there Holy Communion, and also doesn't want to see Orthodox as a ethnic ghetto, being a Romanian married to a American convert.i stay mostly for the priest , and the fact , the converts at my parish are the most zealous.
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ReplyDeleteI am going to confine myself to saying that for a variety of reasons, which probably don't need to be enumerated here, I have decided to limit my attendance at parishes under the GOARCH to occasions of either practical or social necessity. Both are so rare as to be almost nonexistent. I have also decided not to commune in their parishes unless there is an urgent necessity and no alternative.
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ReplyDelete"One would think that the Greeks at this point wouldn't do anything else to possibly drive more people to the more conservative Russian side...and yet, they do! He sounds like one of Pope Francis' allies!"
ReplyDeleteYou're assuming that Greeks care at this point.
I had thought Greeks would fight tooth and nail for what they consider to be Orthodox, but the utter lack of resistance to the Council of Crete and the Ukrainian fiasco among Greeks tells me they will do anything and go along with anything that Bartholomew wants.
The biggest sin for many Greeks I think, is to be seen as pro-Russian.