Concerning Greeks and Latins

We begin with the fact that there are no "Latin" or "Greek" Fathers of the Church. All Fathers of the Church within the Roman Empire are Greek-speaking and Latin-speaking Roman Fathers of the Church with their localities attached to their description. The Carolingian Franks literally invented the distinction between "Greek" and "Latin" Fathers of the Church. Why? In order to cover up the fact that they had no Father of their Church until Rabanus Maurus (776-856). So they simply broke the Roman Fathers in two and began calling them "Greek" and "Latin" Fathers of the Church. In this way they simply attached Rabanus Maurus and his successors to their so-called "Latin" Fathers of the Church. But the Fathers of the Church who wrote in either Latin or Greek or in both Latin and Greek, were neither Latins nor Greeks, but were simply Roman Fathers of the Church.

Fr. John Romanides

The Eighth Council

Without ever mentioning the Franks, the Eighth Ecumenical Synod of 879 condemned those who either added or subtracted from the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, and also those who had not yet accepted the Seventh Ecumenical Synod. It must first be emphasized that this is the first instance in history wherein and Ecumenical Synod condemned heretics without naming them. In this case, the heretics are clearly the Franks.

Fr. John Romanides

Add another council to the list

Nicea 3?

...politics [might I add church governance?] that rejects Christian Truth must acknowledge "the people" as sovereign and understand authority as proceeding from below upwards, in a formally "egalitarian" society [church].

Fr. Seraphim (Rose)

Forgetfulness: the curse of human nature

...see, I pray you, after such signs had been wrought, what evils within a short space ensue. Such is human nature: it soon forgets. Or, do ye not remember what has been the case among ourselves? Did not God last year shake our whole city? Did not all run to baptism? Did not whoremongers and effeminate and corrupt persons leave their dwellings, and the places where they spent their time, and change and become religious? But three days passed, and they returned again to their own proper wickedness. And whence is this? From the excessive laziness. And what marvel if, when the things have passed away (this be the case), seeing that, the images lasting perpetually, the result is such?

St. John Chrysostom

Something to ponder in this age of terrorism and (sometimes) increased "religiosity."

Math is your friend

"Proof" positive
Logic's loaded gun

Christian Faith is mighty not only when it agrees with sensory reasoning and sensory logic but when, and especially when, it contradicts sensory reasoning and sensory logic.

St. Nikolaj (Velimirovic)

A “new god” is clearly required by modern man, a god more closely fashioned after the pattern of such central modern concerns as science and business; it has, in fact, been an important intention of modern thought to provide such a god…the new god is not a Being but an idea, not revealed to faith and humility but constructed by the proud mind that still feels the need for 'explanation' when it has lost its desire for salvation…Whether 'deist,' 'idealist,' 'pantheist,' or 'immanentist,' all the modern gods are the same mental construct, fabricated by souls dead from the loss of faith in the true God.

Fr. Seraphim (Rose)

...when God does anything, reasonings are of no use; for how did He make us out of those things that were not?

St. John Chrysostom

Mega-something

I need to get in on this: Taking over

(maybe tomorrow I'll be one of the lucky 175000)

Baptists under attack

It appears there is someone out there that doesn't want the Baptists to have their little meetings: Bombshell Baptists

Under lock and key

That religion is a sickness with a specific cure is known from the tradition of the Old and New Testaments. However, that this sickness and cure exists in the Bible is known only to those who know that it is there and know how to use the Bible as a guide to said cure. For this reason the Bible is a closed book to all others, even to most Jews and Christians today. This means that Jews who accept the Old Testament alone, or Christians who accept both the Old and the New Testament, yet are not in the process of being cured under the guidance of one already cured, i.e. "glorified" (1 Cor. 12:26), automatically and unknowingly distort these books into supports for the sickness of religion, rather than its cure. Many such students of the Bible become Fundamentalists and at times quite dangerous. On the other hand the critical Biblical scholar, who uses whatever tools he has at his disposal to understand the Bible, cannot complete his task unless he knows the existence of the sickness of religion and its cure, and indeed in a Bible which is supposed to be his specialty.

Fr. John Romanides

I'm Jive With Ebonics

District to 'affirm' Ebonics

The common element in all of this is the degeneration of language into an instrument of rape. It does contain violence, albeit in latent form. And precisely this is one of the lessons recognized by Plato through his own experience with the sophist of his time, a lesson he sets before us as well. This lesson, in a nutshell, says: the abuse of political power is fundamentally connected with the sophistic abuse of the word, indeed, finds in it the fertile soil in which to hide and grow and get ready, so much so that the latent potential of the totalitarian powon can be ascertained, as it were, by observing the symptom of the public abuse of language. The degredation, too, of man through man, alarmingly evident in the acts of physical violence committed by all tyrannies (concentration camps, torture), has its beginning, certainly much less alarmingly, at that almost imperceptible moment when the word loses its dignity. The dignity of the word, to be sure, consists in this: through the word is accomplished what no other means can accomplish, namely, communication based on reality. Once again it becomes evident that both areas, as has to be expected, are connected: the relationship based on mere power, and thus most miserable decay of human interaction, stands in direct proportion to the most devastating breakdown in orientation toward reality.

Josef Pieper


Our countrymen do not want to speak too much, not because they do not have an adequate vocabulary or imagination, but because they do not want to lose the substance of the spoken word. Through abuse, words have lost their power; once a word was equal to the act, but now words are devoid of real meaning; they have become abstract. This is why monks recommend silence.

Fr. Roman Braga

Found in "Cathedral of St. John the Divine" ...

St. John, St. Gregory, St. Symeon, St. Gregory Palamas and Calvin(?)

Calvin the "Theologian"

A true definition of Theologian from Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos:

...theologians of the Church should be called "those who have reached theoria (vision of God)", who formerly purified their heart from passions or at least are struggling to purify them.

Further:

…the beholders of God, specifically those who follow the whole methodology of the Church and attain perfect faith -the illumination of the nous.

From the pen of Fr. John Romanides:

The true Orthodox theologian is the one who has direct knowledge of some of God's energies through illumination or knows them more through vision. Or he knows them indirectly through prophets, apostles and saints or through scripture, the writings of the Fathers and the decisions and acts of their Ecumenical and Local Councils. The theologian is the one who through this direct or mediated spiritual knowledge and vision knows clearly how to distinguish between the actions of God and those of creatures and especially the works of the devil and the demons.

And from St. Neilos:

"If you are a theologian, you will pray truly. And if you pray truly, you are a theologian"

From a true Theologian:

...He makes my disobedience His own as Head of the whole body. As long then as I am disobedient and rebellious, both by denial of God and by my passions, so long Christ also is called disobedient on my account. … But when all things shall be subdued unto Him on the one hand by acknowledgment of Him, and on the other by a reformation, then He Himself also will have fulfilled His submission, bringing me whom He has saved to God. For this, according to my view, is the subjection of Christ; namely, the fulfilling of the Father's Will. But as the Son subjects all to the Father, so does the Father to the Son; the One by His Work, the Other by His good pleasure, as we have already said. And thus He Who subjects presents to God that which he has subjected, making our condition His own. Of the same kind, it appears to me, is the expression, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" It was not He who was forsaken either by the Father, or by His own Godhead, as some have thought, as if It were afraid of the Passion, and therefore withdrew Itself from Him in His Sufferings (for who compelled Him either to be born on earth at all, or to be lifted up on the Cross?) But as I said, He was in His own Person representing us. For we were the forsaken and despised before, but now by the Sufferings of Him Who could not suffer, we were taken up and saved. Similarly, He makes His own our folly and our transgressions; and says what follows in the Psalm… For in His character of the Word He was neither obedient nor disobedient. For such expressions belong to servants… But, in the character of the Form of a Servant, He condescends to His fellow servants, nay, to His servants, and takes upon Him a strange form, bearing all me and mine in Himself, that in Himself He may exhaust the bad, as fire does wax, or as the sun does the mists of earth; and that I may partake of His nature by the blending. Thus He honours obedience by His action, and proves it experimentally by His Passion. For to possess the disposition is not enough, just as it would not be enough for us, unless we also proved it by our acts; for action is the proof of disposition. …by the art of His love for man He gauges our obedience, and measures all by comparison with His own Sufferings, so that He may know our condition by His own, and how much is demanded of us, and how much we yield, taking into the account, along with our environment, our weakness also.

St. Gregory the Theologian

And a swift kick in the pants from Khomyakov:

...having rejected legitimate tradition, it has deprived itself of every right to condemn a man who, while acknowledging the divinity of the Holy Scriptures, might not find in them the refutation of the error of Arius or Nestorius

Aleksei Stepanovich Khomyakov

Nothing like porn neon to get the word out...

Lie, lie, lie

Can a lie be taken as communication? I tend to deny it. A lie is the opposite of communication. It means specifically to withhold the other’s share and portion of reality, to prevent his participation in reality. And so: corruption of the relationship to reality, and corruption of communication—these evidently are the two possible forms in which the corruption of the word manifests itself. … The very moment, as I have stated, that someone in full awareness employs words yet explicitly disregards reality, he in fact ceases to communicate anything to the other.

Josef Pieper

Rock of Ages

The Liberal view of government, as one might suspect, is an attempt at compromise between these two irreconcilable ideas [Orthodox Christian Monarchy and Anarchy]. In the 19th century this compromise took the form of "constitutional monarchies," an attempt--again--to wed an old form to a new content; today the chief representatives of the Liberal idea are the "republics" and "democracies" of Western Europe and America, most of which preserve a rather precarious balance between the forces of authority and Revolution, while professing to believe in both.

Eugene (Fr. Seraphim) Rose

A Nation Build on the Rock?

Souvenirs from my run in with the law.....the law of gravity that is...

I'm going to have to go with the parking spot on this one...

I don't think I've ever seen anything as ambiguous and yet loaded as this add. We have the Rainbow/Push coalition (need I say more) in a time of "civil unions" presenting a conference, stealing a phrase from the constitution: "a more perfect union"; trying to connect their fight for "civil rights" to MLK jr. Add to that Jesse Jackson and you have one wacky tossed salad...

Malpractice

...from the viewpoint of Protestant needs, the WCC is certainly the best kind of medical treatment possible for the maladies of Protestantism. However, from the viewpoint of Orthodox needs, membership in the current organizational structure of the WCC is an aimless adventure, simply because the maladies of Orthodoxy and Protestantism are not the same.

Fr. John Romanides

Pertinent article: WCC One correction: they think there is a difference between the "Catholic" church and "Protestant" churches.

-Manly Help- -- I doubt this is immediatly as hilarious to you as to me so I will explain. "Help" is a feminine word so the adjective must be in feminine form-in this case "man". So you get girly "manly" help.

Coward- what a descriptive word.

In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.

Pip in Great Expectations

It still amazes me that a writer from 145 years ago could describe my life so well; I get the same feeling when I read Dostoyevsky.

No stinkin' cars allowed!

In full bloom...

...the cult of individualism blossoms luxuriantly [in the West], finding prophets in fashionable philosophy and singers in the belles-lettres, Christ's ideal of the Church can, of course have no place; for it negates self-love and self-will in people and demands love from them all.

St. Hilarion (Troitsky)

incen-delicious

Now that my previously hardly existent readership has turned non-existent I am back from my Russia and etc. hiatus. As you can see I have changed the name of the blog to conform more to the current content; since you're here you obviously know that the address changed as well. So...

A picture of sucess?

By the new standards Hitler too was “successful,” until the “spirit of the age” proved him “wrong”; and the avant-garde and its humanist “fellow-travellers” have no argument whatever against Bolshevism today, unless it be that, unlike national Socialism, which was “expressionistic” and exciting,” it is completely prosaic and Realistic.

Fr. Seraphim (Rose)

pseudos...

It is entirely possible that the true and authentic reality is being drowned out by the countless superficial information bits noisily and breathlessly presented in propaganda fashion. Consequently, one may be entirely knowledgeable about a thousand details and nevertheless, because of ignorance regarding the core of the matter, remain without basic insight. ... Arnold Gehlen labeled it “a fundamental ignorance, created by technology and nourished by information”. ...the place of authentic reality is taken over by a fictitious reality; my perception is indeed still directed toward an object, but it is a pseudoreality, deceptively appearing as being real, so much so that it becomes almost impossible any more to discern the truth.

Josef Pieper

You're a nihilist...I'm a nihilist...

And indeed the Christian is, in a certain sense--in an ultimate sense--a "Nihilist"; for to him, in the end, the world is nothing, and God is all. This is, of course, the precise opposite of the Nihilism we have examined here, where God is nothing and the world is all; that is a Nihilism that proceeds from the Abyss, and the Christian's is a "Nihilism" that proceeds from abundance. The true Nihilist places his faith in things that pass away and end in nothing; all "optimism" on this foundation is clearly futile. The Christian, renouncing such vanity places his faith in the one thing that will not pass away, the Kingdom of God. ... But it is a mere literary device to call the nothingness and poverty of the Christian "Nihilism"; they are rather fullness, abundance, joy beyond imagining. And it is only one full of such abundance who can squarely face the Abyss to which Nihilism has conducted men.

Fr. Seraphim (Rose)

You've no authori-ti...

The Innovator attacks the traditional values (the Tao) in defence of what he at first supposes to be (in some special sense) ‘rational’ or ‘biological’ values. But as we have seen, all the values which he uses in attacking the Tao, and even claims to be substituting for it, are themselves derived from the Tao. If he had really started from scrach, from right ouside the human tradition of value, no jugglery could have advanced him an inch towards the conception that a man should die for the community or work for posterity. If the Tao falls, all his own conceptions of value fall with it. Not one of them can claim any authority other than that of the Tao. Only by such shreds of the Tao as he has inherited is he enabled even to attack it. The question therefore arises what title he has to select bits of it for the acceptance and to rejects others. For if the bits he rejects have no authority, neither have those he retains: if what he retains is valid, what he rejects is equally valid too.

C.S. Lewis

The five senses

Since in the crafts and the sciences there is a continuous development and perfection, they think that the same thing ought to happen in the Christian religion, that here too there should be a continuous revision, change, and replacement of the old by the new—in a word, "modernization." Looking at Christianity rationalistically, they misunderstand its revelatory character and demote it to the level of the systems which the mind of man has formed on the basis of reason and the observations of the five senses.

Constantine Cavarnos

The tyranny of words

Public discourse, the moment it becomes basically neutralized with regard to a strict standard of truth, stands by its nature ready to serve as an instrument in the hands of any ruler to pursue all kinds of power schemes. Public discourse itself, separated from the standard of truth, creates on its part, the more it prevails, an atmosphere of epidemic proneness and vulnerability to the reign of the tyrant.

Josef Pieper

No dams here...

Those who speak about the insufficiency of life in the Church usually refer to the insufficiencies of church administration, the thousands of consistory papers and so on. For all those who genuinely understand Church life, however, it is as clear as God's day that all these consistories with their ukases do not affect the depth of Church life at all. The deep river of abundant, Grace-filled life flows increasingly and gives drink to everyone who wishes to quench his spiritual thirst. This river cannot be dammed up with "paper."

St. Hilarion (Troitsky)

ecclesiology schmecclesiology...

In the ancient Church, whenever they talked about the body of Christ, or about Christ as the Head of the Church, they did not mean that Christ was extended to the entire world in a bodily (corporeal) fashion, having, as it were, his head in Rome, his one hand in the East and the other in the West.

Fr. John Romanides

нельзя!

Since this is my first incredible quote post from Russia I thought it apropos that I post a Russian source. (As a side note: I went yesterday to Novo-Devichy monastery and in the Church they have an icon of St. Hilarion; while I was venerating I was yelled at by a wrinkly babushka [as if kissing the glass does any harm to the icon behind it]. I guess she takes the position that harm(?) done to the glass passes to the prototype; anyway...)

Tolstoy clearly demonstrated for us what results to expect from the absurd separation of Christianity from the Church and the negation of the Church in the name of imaginary Christianity. If one is to separate Christianity from the Church, then there is no need for the divinity of the Savior and the Holy Spirit is unnecessary.

St. Hilarion (Troitsky)

Indulgence: Foolish or senseless behavior

Deacon Theophan and I illegally imbibed and consumed cheap food at Moody posing as representatives from an Eastern European evangelical church...

So that's what Daley's puting all that parking ticket money into...

As if being a (Frankish) priest is the only way to change the world...

Well on her way to being a junkie Anna is prepared with her needle disposal system....

boundaries...

For, according to the Apostle James (2:19), the devils also believe; as attested by the Gospel, they confessed their faith like the Apostle Peter did (Matt. 16:16;8:26; Mark 1:24; Luke 8:28). But do they belong to the one Church of Christ?

St. Hilarion (Troitsky)

Incredible Quiz: Round 2

Translatumus: Cognosco tres homines, unum qui per crucem salvat, alterum qui per crucem salvatur, et alterum qui per crucem damnaur.

If I were a betting man I would go down to OTB and bet who gets this translation.... so he better not dissapoint me.

Your new superheros: the Originators

I think Laura would rather come back in the form of this "Origin" bottle than in spherical form.....

get your priorities straight.....

Which for us is more necessary and important: to strive for ecumenical communion and union with those who think differently and who remain in their different opinion, or to preserve catholic communion of spirit with those teachers of faith, lamps of faith [saints], who by their life and by their death showed faithfulness to Christ and His Church and entered into yet fuller union with Her Head?

Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky

Lou Malnati's.... come here for an adventure in food service..... the pizza we waited an hour and a half for.....

I don't know which of these two statements is more outrageous....

back with the smack.....

I'm terribly sorry to my avid readers for my relative silence over the past week, I was basically living at Church on top of it being the last week of school, however, now I will be posting with a vengeance. I'm going to Russia on Thursday which will upset posting for a few days but after that I will be sending you indendiary remarks across the globe. I digress....on to fiery statements.

Not only do they need to make their "worship" contemporary they have to make their "eucharist" contemporary as well.....

Spring is in swing at UIC.....unfortunately that doesn't improve upon the architectural dog vomit........

Worldly ends

The Liberal is undisturbed even by fundamental deficiencies and contradictions in his own philosophy because his primary interest is elsewhere. ...he is more immediately interested in worldly ends, and because everything else is vague or abstract to him.

Fr. Seraphim (Rose)

The obese American's second favorite restaurant next to mcdonalds.....

I love you, you love me, we're an ecumenical family.....

It may sound strange, but it is a fact that ecumenism today is threatening the "ecumenical nature" of our Church, as it falls more and more to compromising and syncretistic tactics which contradict the basic principles of our Orthodox faith. We must not forget that correct faith is the first and foremost prerequisite for the salvation of mankind, according to the divinely-inspired Patristic declaration: "Whoever wishes to be saved is first of all obliged to keep the catholic faith; if he does not keep this faith safe and unblemished, without hesitation, he will be eternally lost" (The Symbol of Faith of St. Athanasius the Great of Alesandria).

Holy Monastery of the Paraclete

no comment...

Scholastic roundup

As this school year draws to a close I'd like to reflect on the attitude at most of our modern day "institutions of education":

If truth is, in the highest sense, knowledge of the beginning and end of things, of the dimension of the absolute; and if nihilism is the doctrine that there is no such truth; then it is clear that those who take scientific knowledge for the only truth, and deny what lies above it, are nihilists in the exact sense of that term. Worship of the fact is by no means the love of truth; it is, as we have already suggested, its parody. It is the presumption of the fragment to replace the whole; it is the proud attempt to build a Tower of Babel, a collection of facts, to reach to the heights of truth and wisdom from below.

Fr. Seraphim (Rose)

On a similar note:

Previously young people had been expected to learn. Because they didn't want to appear to be ignoramuses, they worked hard willy-nilly. But now all they have to say is: Everything in the world's nonsense! And that's that. Young people are delighted. The fact is that previously they were simply dunces and now they've suddenly become nihilists.

Pavel Petrovich in Fathers and Sons

It's nice to know I have a special place in the Mason's heart...

I'm not sure who this "St. Stephenson" is....must have been an oppressed minority that didn't make it into the calendar whom our modern exegetes discovered after a millennium of obscurity...

Caution: hot potato...

During 1009-1046 the Franco-Latins completed their expulsion of the Orthodox Romans from the Church of Old Rome and finally replaced them with themselves, thus inventing today's Papacy.

Fr. John Romanides

Neither from the 7th century till 1054, nor since, have the Franco-Latin bishops and popes have had the slightest knowledge of, or interest in, the cure of the human personality via the purification and illumination of the heart and glorification (theosis). They still have a magical understanding of apostolic succession which many Orthodox have also have been accepting since the so-called reforms of Peter the Great.

Fr. John Romanides

Just a little something to ponder at this current juncture...

Someone has let their opinion be known to the world....

When the edifice of the Church is destroyed and, on the bare, poorly leveled place, there is erected only the edifying sermon, the result is sad and terrible.

David Strauss

In this case the nave as oposed to the edifice, but the effect is the same.

The price of words

It is true, I think, that these are times when the financial rewards for sorry writing are much greater than those for good writing. There are certain cases in which, if you can only learn to write poorly enough, you can make a great deal of money.

Flannery O’Conner

This makes me think of the Da Vinci Code among countless other modern day collection of words they call "literature".

I become very leery when I find these type of things around the city...

...shootin' some b-ball outside of the school
when a couple of guys who were up to no good
started makin' trouble in my neighborhood...

The Doctor is in

In the hands of neurologically sick people the Bible becomes a source of "uncontrollable fantasies." And indeed religion is ... most dangerous. Instead of being a manual for the cure of the sickness of religion the Bible becomes a book for the propagation of the sickness of religion.

Fr. John Romanides

Where the Wind Blows...

...this weekend the wind is blowing me to Michigan. So I expect to see your incredible comments when I get back.

Survey Says...

As the translation exercise elicited no response we'll see if any one has an opinion on this question: "Is dogma 1) a protection from speculating quack doctors and 2) a guide to the cure of the purification and the illumination of the heart and glorification (theosis), or not?" That is the question Fr. John Romanides and myself pose to you. Comments?

No soup for you!

As no one seems to be interested in an incredible prize I will be forced to give the translation myself. "Το γαρ απροσληπον αθεραπεντον ο δε ηνωται τω Θεω, τουτο και σωζεται" - “What is not assumed can not be healed, and what was united to God is saved” - St. Gregory Nazianzen - The essential tenet of our salvation.

Southern (non)Comfort

Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological. That is a large statement, and it is dangerous to make it, for almost anything you say about Southern belief can be denied in the next breath with equal propriety. But approaching the subject from the standpoint of the writer, I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.

Flannery O’Conner

An itty bitty spider...

I always imagined that you would take me to some place where there was a huge, wicked spider as big as a man, and we should spend the rest of our lives looking at it and being afraid of it.

Lisa in The Possessed

So does anyone remember that movie Arachnophobia? I always thought it was pretty scary.

The ugly truth is confirmed...

In the vestiges of the "Peace Fest" the remnants of the pinata mentioned earlier were found. Indeed the peaceniks pummeled the pinata. What I had not noticed earlier was that the pinata has a likeness of the President plastered on it which proves the earlier quote even more apropos.

Sasha TV

As I recently learned of the "Jacob cam" during Church services I thought it would be quite apropos to post something self-depreciating:

All this sounds false and theatrical. He pronounces the words, and one feels that the tone and diction are pre-planned, and that he looks around at what kind of impression they create on others. It is quite possible that objectively all this is accepted differently. But I know him, and cannot free myself from this feeling. He knows well the church service, he loves it; but this precision and this effectiveness-is not the Orthodox way of doing things.

War...what is it good for?

So today there was a "Peace Fest" on the campus here at UIC. While walking through on my way to work I observed a "peacie" hanging up a pinata. I thought to myself "what better way to promote peace than pummeling a pinata?"

"Look, Pedro. I don't know how they do things down in Juarez, but here in Idaho we have a little something called pride. Understand? Smashing in the face of a pinata that resembles Summer Wheatly is a disgrace to you, me, and the entire Gem State."

This could mean several things: all the art of Mexico fits in this dumpster so they didn't need a building or conversely this is their building and they are tiny people or yet again, this is a "statement"- need I say more; I will quote Fr. Seraphim: In art and literature the Nihilist is not concerned with the modification of old aesthetic canons regarding subject-matter or style, nor with the development of new genres or traditions, but with a whole new approach to the question of artistic "creation" and a new definition of "art."

I still prefer to call it a "cathedral" but "hood" is just as good I guess; after all Jesus is my homey...so I guess the bishop would be as well.

More goodies

If you haven't noticed I added a link to "Truly Incredible Photos". This is a small collection (to be expanded) of my slightly more serious photos. Please visit.

ps. If you haven't seen Napoleon Dynamite Pedro says you should.

I know you've always wanted to see the inside of a masonic temple. I could be exterminated for showing this to you...

Ponder this juxtaposition...

Jumpin' Gibberish

"What! This vanity-eating galimatias! But don't you see they're all lost their minds from pride and vanity?"

Lizaveta Prokofyevna

[ps. To my dear readers: Sorry for the delay today; I've been haggling with the Russians and their visas.]

[pps. No one has yet competed in the competition. In order to win a sweet prize you must at least try...and try again.]

The Price is Right...

I think it is time for a little friendly competition on the ole' blog. The first round will be a test of wits; one will need to translate the forthcoming phrase and ascribe the correct author. The first one to comment with the correct information will get an incredible prize. The phase is: Το γαρ απροσληπον αθεραπεντον ο δε ηνωται τω Θεω, τουτο και σωζεται.

[Rules and regulations: Enter as many times as you like, however, one prize per household. Heretics don't receive prize even if answer is correct.]

Frenchiness

"You don't believe in the devil? Disbelief in the devil is a French notion, a frivolous notion."

Lebedev in The Idiot

What am I doing paying $6000 a year for UIC when I could go to St. Michael's Kiddy Kollege? I no I wood lurn how to spell write their...

The ubiquitous segue: So...

The other night two friends and I (they've requested to remain annonymous [ok, so they haven't but it's more exciting to say they have-I'm just playing the Fyodor]) were sitting in Starbucks cafe in Barnes and Noble where we were enjoying fine (ha!) coffee and fine (truly) conversation. All of a sudden we were confronted by a gruff and unintelligible voice which to my amazement came from a solicitor standing right next to me. (This takes place inside Barnes and Noble mind you [security was obviously slacking off.]) Although I couldn't understand the man I knew exactly what he wanted- the ubiquitous "change". While my lack of change (or any cash for that matter) made me impervious to the assault one of my friends succumbed and gave him a dollar. (On reflection I should have bought him some some food since after all we were in a cafe [I was still shocked by the initial confrontation and I was preoccupied with something else which I will proceed to shortly.]) After he had completed his objective we all expected him to move on to the next solicitee in his never ending search. However, he simply stood there and began more semi-intelligible communication. He was expressing, in not so many words, that he was tired which could be duduced from his lolling eyes. At one point he almost went into a swoon in which I was afraid that he would fall right on top of me (I even raised my hand in anticipation). Eventually he seemed to figure that it was time to go and almost walked right out an emergency door. My generous companion helped him to avoid this mishap and he turned right around and proceeded towards the correct door. When all was said and done I turned to my friends and asked, "Did you see his shirt?" They, however, had not so I informed them of its slogan: "United College fund- A mind is a terrible thing to waste". All I could add to that was "isn't it ironic...don't ya' think?"

This plaque is quite fine for those of our present world who are so entrenched in this world that they cannot see beyond it; those who's conception of heaven is a mamby-pamby life reclining on a cloud. However, I found this outside of a Franco-Latin (Roman Catholic) church, in front of a statue of our Lady-who is the supreme example of one who forsook this world for the joy of life eternal.
Pertinent quotes:

The future Kingdom has not been abandoned by modern Christians, but it has been so "toned down" that one wonders how strong the faith of Christians is. Particularly all the involvement of Christians in the projects of social idealism, seems to me a way of saying: "You, the worldly, are right. Our Kingdom 'not of this world' is so distant and we can't seem to get it across to you; so we will join you in building something we can actually see, something better than Christ and His Kingdom—a reign of peace, justice, brotherhood on earth." This is a "new Christianity," a refinement, it seems to me, of the Christianity of the "Grand Inquisitor" of Dostoyevsky.

Eugene (Fr. Seraphim) Rose

...man in his fallen condition feels the dissolution of the present world and of his own existence as a pain, a suffering; feels it as a sorrow because he has bound the affections which form part of his very being to the image of this world which is passing away. This attachment to the things of this world is felt particularly strongly by those who do not believe that there is any further transformation of this world after the life which we now know.

Fr. Dumitru Staniloae

The modern idealism that hopes for "heaven on earth" hopes likewise for the vague "transformation" of man—the ideal of the "superman" (in diverse forms, conscious or not), which, however absurd, has a great appeal to a mentality that has been trained to believe in "evolution" and "progress."

Eugene (Fr. Seraphim) Rose

My dream car: a Buick with dual straight pipes.

Payless- not just the place for shoes anymore...

I wouldn't reccomend these guys- it'll take a real long time...

Unity- as one stand together...

Christian unity cannot be realized merely by determining what articles of faith or what creed should be regarded as constituting the basis of unity. In addition to subscribing to certain doctrines of faith, it is necessary to achieve the experience of a common tradition or communis sensus fidelium preserved through common worship within the historic framework of the Orthodox Church. There can be no true unanimity of faith unless that faith remains within the life and sacred tradition of the Church which is identical throughout the ages. It is in the experience of worship that we affirm the true faith, and conversely, it is in the recognition of a common faith that we secure the reality of worship in spirit and in truth.

Oberlin Statement of Orthodox Churches

I wouldn't trust these guys with my "europian" car...

The Condition...

...if man chooses to treat himself as raw material, raw material he will be: not raw material to be manipulated, as he fondly imagined, by himself, but by mere appetite, that is, mere Nature, in the person of his dehumanized Conditioners.

C.S. Lewis

...the function of Liberalism was to obscure, with the smoke of “tolerance” and agnosticism, the higher truths concerning God and the spiritual life...

Fr. Seraphim (Rose)

человека-бога

Then there will be a new life, a new man, everything will be new. Then history will be divided into two parts: from the gorilla to the annihilation of God, and from the annihilation of God…to the physical transformation of the earth and man. Man will be god.

Kirillov in The Possessed

America's new motto.

First rule of business: It's all in the name.

If you're out there Al, this ones for you.

Our forebears, Adam and Eve, sought to become "like gods" without God, relying on the magical power of the beautiful "apple." This is how many of our contemporaries dream of being saved: with the Gospel, but without the Church and without the God-man. They hope on the book of the Gospel exactly as Adam and Eve hope on the paradise apple. The book, however, does not have the power to give them a new life.

St. Hilarion (Troitsky)

I personally prefer the eight pointed Byzantine cross but I guess the 2 pointed is ok...you know, what works for you...

...about as useful as a fan vent on a jungle gym...

...psychoanalytical knowledge of man, is unscrupulously employed in this business. ... They [advertisements] are simply nonsensical, yet they are no simple nonsense but rather an extremely calculated and highly financed nonsense! What should make us stop and think is the ease with which we buy all this-buy it in both meanings of the word.

Josef Pieper

Attention foreigners: wash your laundry here.

This one goes with a shout out to Laura and Gabe... (ignore the spelling)

Gabriel attempts to lick the worlds biggest ice cream cone.

The Fr. Seraphim Show

The unreflective scientific specialist sees no need for any other kind of knowledge; occupied with the demands of his specialty, he has, perhaps, neither time nor inclination for "abstract" questions that inquire, for example, into the basic presuppositions of that specialty. If he is pressed, or if his mind spontaneously turns to such questions, the most obvious explanation is usually sufficient to satisfy his curiosity: all truth is empirical, all truth is relative.
Either statement, of course, is a self-contradiction. The first statement is itself not empirical at all, but metaphysical; the second is itself an absolute statement.

-From Nihilism

Quick! To the fallout shelter! S-bomb, incoming!!

The Nihilist Revolution stands against authority and order, against Truth, against God, and to do this is, clearly, to stand with Satan.

Fr. Seraphim (Rose)

They weren't lying when they said it's high living in Chicago...