Due to the Bishop’s visit. On discussion with our Bishop, Father Pat received economia to move the observance of the Feast to Sunday and to relax the fast for the day.

In response to this last series of posts, more than one priest in a certain jurisdiction has emailed me to say that they hate going to the ecclesial meetings I describe for the very reasons you suggest, and they have thanked me for my posts or at least stated an agreement with them. Some of the accounts I have read have been heartbreaking. I certainly in no manner mean to condemn them in any respect. But I am fairly certain that these priests do not seek the head of the table, and, being something of an observer of human nature, I bet I could pick them out of a line-up of golf-loving yuppies used to fine dining.

Categories such as those I suggest do not define all persons. They do define discernable social movements that many recognize. And some persons are all but completely given to certain social movements.

As for pastoral compassion for the rich who would flaunt their wealth and defend that flaunting, I believe we should show the same compassion for such persons that Christ and the fathers show, which is to say, not all that much. They have their reward. Laugh them to scorn, as Chrysostom admonishes.

Rrrr, uhm, well….

I cannot see how your comment does not lead to antinomianism and epistemological anarchy. Everyone has their sacred cows. These need to be eradicated or mitigated through some sort of evaluation which results in each of us letting go of any criticisms we have. My criticisms of Baptidoxy are necessarily equivalent to Baptidoxy’s criticisms of ethnic club Orthodoxy or traditionalist’s criticisms of SCOBAdoxy and everybody’s criticisms of whomever they criticize. All criticism is the same. In the end, if we subscribe to this view, no one ever has a valid criticism of anything.

Your 60’s background is one I have some second-hand knowledge of via my father. Like most intellectuals who left formal Marxism, my father is extremely leery of all ideologies today, and on the constant lookout for ideology. I grew up in an intellectual world that was all about the critique of critique and the supposed dismantling of ideology or a futile play between ideologies. This carries its own intellectual baggage, sure. I admit as much.

That said, in part because I am a Christian, I cannot subscribe to the notion that there is not a discernable right and a discernable wrong. Or that ideology cannot be critiqued in a manner that is fair, or at least approaches fairness, and is accurate.

+Philip has done many things that are unequivocally wrong, and completely ridiculous in the context of the Church hierarchy. Priests golfing at expensive resorts during Church conferences before eating $100 a plate dinners is unequivocally wrong. The OSB selling itself as a translation of the Septuagint when it is not is unequivocally wrong. Clark Carlton’s nonsense about Byzantium being proto-capitalist is unequivocally wrong. Christians who drive luxury cars to Liturgy, subscribe to Orthodox magazines that present images of the good Orthodox life as materially glossy/pretty and financially successful, eat expensive Boca meals during every fasting meal, and then wax on about the importance of asceticism and their gratitude for the Orthodox teaching on the process of theosis is, unequivocally, absurd.

That a monastery markets itself in order to receive donations is one thing. One might ask the model of marketing used. One might question and even discern the intellectual pedigree of the method of marketing used. That is the sort of question at hand here.

One falls into the realm of behavioralist psychologies when, upon encountering a critique of the heath&wealthism embraced by a certain sector of American Orthodoxy, one responds with comments that suggest a necessary relationship between a “jaundiced view of institutional religion and a knee jerk reaction to anything that looks like marketing, posing, facades, fronts, profiteering, salesmanship and merchandising in any Church” and the content of the criticism itself, as if the content of the criticism is somehow only validated or invalidated, or has truth or falsehood, only in relation to the motivation behind it.

For the record, I am not against anything that looks like marketing, posing, facades, fronts, profiteering, salesmanship and merchandising in any Church. I am opposed to specific forms of these things, especially when I have knowledge of their pedigree and the ideological structure behind them.

Yes, I come from a long line of Welsh noncomformists and have a former communist for a father. I know people of similar backgrounds who entirely disagree with me on this issue. My criticism of that which I have critiqued follows my readings on health&wealthisms, the market, the Church, faith, and society in such authors as Ivan Illich, Fr. Alexander Schmemann, Neil Postman, Neal Gabler, Bl. Seraphim Rose, Marshall McKuen, Wendell Berry, C.S. Lewis, Philip Sherrard, Fr. Andrew Louth, a number of Orthodox priests I know, and others. Either their insights on these matters are correct, or they are incorrect. Either my appropriation of their insights is correct, or it is not correct, or it is partly correct and partly incorrect.

Many persons now held as important figures in American Orthodoxy, including both Schmemann and Bl. Seraphim, were, loosely speaking in regard to this term, cynical of some of the very sorts of things I criticize here. If we were to eliminate all criticism of all forms of American Orthodoxy, what would the result be?

Again, I don’t expect to “win” here, I fully expect to “lose.” Fine.

A friend of mine just got back from a long trip. During that trip he stopped in a B&N bookstore in MO. In the Bible section he noticed an OSB between the Newlywed’s Devotional NIV and the 5-Minute a day devotional Bible. Some folks are going to find that OSB and become Orthodox. Heck, they might even some day become Orthodox who recognize that the OSB is not an Orthodox Bible (not really the Septuagint, etc.). Praise God if they convert. But that OSB Bible in that location sold in that manner with that glossy cover and that Evangelical utilitarianspeak found in the notes will have its consequences. Those consequences are things that can be objectively described and discerned. Indeed, if we focus on the precise issue of the OSB, the potential consequences have been discerned and described by Orthodox from many jurisdictions and postures. The issue at hand is not simply a matter of my personal issues.

If you had to take the posture that you do to survive in the Church, then so be it; I think I can understand that.

I will raise my children to follow St. John Chrysostom’s command that we “laugh to scorn” those priests who wear expensive clothing. As far as I am able to understand it, that is the Gospel, and not some notion that we all need to get along because we all have these issues we drag in with us.