Holy Russia?
Commenter Judge373 shared an interesting letter with me titled "Appeal by Metropolitan Hilarion on the celebration of the 1,025th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus". I read the whole thing; it's interesting, though has somewhat strange language with regard to Holy Russia. I imagine this is sort of short-hand for the Russian Orthodox Christian tradition, encompassing the corpus of the Russian Orthodox belief and practice through the 1000+ years of it's existence. Judge highlighted some of what he called the stranger statements.
"As sons and daughters of the Russian Orthodox Church, we are all citizens of Holy Russia."
"If we truly wish to spread the Orthodox Faith in America, we must look to our roots and drink of the pure fountain of Sacred Tradition that is Holy Russia."
"Today, America has need not just of Russia, but of 'Holy Russia', for it is only this Russia that represents true spiritual wealth;..."
"Russia is necessary to us and dear to our hearts as a firm bulwark of the true Faith on earth."
What to make of this. It doesn't disturb me too much, although I agree it represents a strange choice of words. Perhaps not a majority, but I would estimate somewhere around half of American Christian leaders, American Catholic clergy included, make an attempt at simple and ecumenical language in their missives, even when it is addressed to their own flock. At any rate, I plan to keep it in my back pocket for the next time a non-Catholic Christian accuses the Catholic Church of jargon overuse.
I have been told that when you hear "Russian Orthodox Church," think "Russia = Orthodox = Church." From this perspective, there's no meaningful distinction between Russia and the Church.
ReplyDeleteThis sort of language has been getting more and more common ever since ROCOR rejoined canonical Orthodoxy. ROCOR is supposed to be a self-governing exarchate of Moscow, but their de facto status vis-a-vis Moscow seems to be gradually changing.
ReplyDeleteThe whole talk is really a mixture of Russian national messianism combined with a couple veiled slaps at the other Orthodox jurisdictions in the US, particularly the OCA ("renovationist," modernized "Orthodoxy").
So would you say the language contains a sort of "triumphalism"? Are they claiming to be the one church or just the best church?
ReplyDeleteFor a long time, ROCOR was isolated from the rest of "World Orthodoxy", and they considered themselves the *only* valid Orthodox entity in the world. ROCOR has an interesting history — it was founded mostly by white Russians fleeing the Revolution. They are known for being extremely conservative (and if even other Orthodox consider you conservative, you're probably pretty darn conservative). They've still got many of the same agendas and battles to fight, especially against the "Renovationists", that is, the "Living Church" established by the Soviets after the Revolution. They've got a lot of long-established antipathies to the "Paris School" of Orthodoxy and it's more liberal theological "children" such as Fr. Schmemann and the OCA.
ReplyDeleteNow they've rejoined themselves to the Patriarchate of Moscow, and naturally the rhetoric is changing. I suppose there's a lot of cognitive dissonance they have to process, because after spending so long hating the "Soviet Church", they've now re-entered the sphere of Moscow. And the OCA's tomos of autocephaly, granted to the OCA by Moscow and which forbids the Patriarchate of Moscow from founding new parishes in North America, of course puts ROCOR in a strange canonical position.
Nationalism and Orthodoxy over the past few centuries (well, especially since the fall of Constantinople) has been an interesting phenomenon. Just as there is the concept of "Holy Russia', there is the concept of "Holy Greece" and "Hellenism". Whether this phenomenon is simply what happens when Orthodoxy "enculturates" deeply into a society, or if it's a faustian bargain made by the local Orthodox churches is something I'm still trying to figure out.
In most Orthodox cultures, the Church and the concept of nationhood are very intimately tied. Even Greece's Revolution resulted in an autocephalous Church of Greece separate from the Ecumenical Patriarch, and many Greeks attribute their independence and the retainment of their culture and language during the Turkokratia to the efforts made by the Church. It's a big mess, honestly, and finding a way to be Orthodox and American, and avoid all the toxic nationalisms, is a difficult road to travel.
I suppose that's why I find this piece disturbing — because when Metropolitan Hilarion (whom I know to be a pious and good bishop) mentions "Holy Russia" in this talk, he should *really* be talking about CHRIST. Holy Russia's not going to do anything for America. And nostalgia for "Holy Russia" means absolutely NOTHING to Americans.
Only Christ saves us.
And yes, it's extremely ironic that Rod Dreher has now joined ROCOR. Dreher likes to argue on his blog that "Orthodoxy is Orthodoxy, all the jurisdictions are the same, etc, etc", when in actuality, he has joined the most anti-ecumenical, conservative and pro-Russian jurisdiction you can find in the world without being an Orthodox schismatic. Once again, his naiveté is gobsmacking.
Dreher's co-conspirator Daniel Wawison (sorry, I think Diane's term was just too perfect) likes to use the term "Holy Russia" too. There's more than a whiff of "at least he makes the trains run on time" in his treatment of Putin, and of course Putin's allies from Damascus to Caracas get a deferential no-vital-American-interest treatment as well.
ReplyDelete-The Man From K Street
I'm coming to think Rod Dreher's mind is sort of like a kaleidoscope and works something like this:
ReplyDeleteOMGTHEYHATEMETHEYHATEMETHEY'REGONNAPULLMYPANTSDOw...
...
Oooooo...grilled tuna on arugula!
If so, good for him if he can even keep what ROCOR is straight in his mind if a ROCKY happens to grab his attention.
Keith
Slightly off-topic...but have y'all seen this?
ReplyDeletehttp://sergesblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/a-rocor-priest-apostatizes-to-cathedral.html
I have no Real Life exposure to ROCOR, so I am not qualified to discuss it. But I must say its anti-Catholicism disturbs me. Me no likee anti-Catholicism.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, though...here's another example of a convert from Catholicism to ROCOR: Father Al Kimel. He became a Catholic priest (after converting from Episcopalianism) and almost immediately decided that he hated being Catholic. Several mutual friends have hinted to me that he and his wife had a really bad experience within Catholicism -- something to do with their diocese being unwilling to cover his wife's expensive medical treatment? something like that? IOW, it was personal, not theological, and his friends (Mike Liccione, at least) found it understandable. (Scott Carson, not so much.)
Well, Father Al became a Western Rite ROCOR priest "on a non-stipendiary basis" per his former Facebook status. All well and good...except that he ultimately started to buy into the ROCOR anti-Catholic prejudices, specifically the refusal to acknowledge the truth, goodness, or holiness of anything in the post-Schism West. (Or so it seemed to me, from his FB posts which Mike L. linked to.)
Here I hope I do not offend any Orthodox readers, but, especially on this FD of Saints Peter and Paul, I gootta say what I believe as a Catholic.
OK, Jesus explicitly founded his Church upon Peter the Rock, whom He made the sole Key-holder. (The other apostles shared in the power of the Keys, but only Peter was made the Key-holder.) Of this Church, founded upon Peter, Jesus said that the gates of Hell would nevwer prevail against it.
Yet, according to Protestants, this same Church immediately went off the rails -- either right after the apostolic age or at the time of Constantine or whatever.
So much for Christ's promise of indefectibility! Guess He didn't know what He was talking about. [insert eyeroll here]
Well, ISTM that anti-Catholic Orthodox do exactly the same thing that Protestants do. They, too, claim that the Church founded upon Peter the Rock went off the rails -- but they assign a different date to the alleged defection: 1054 or thereabouts.
Same mantra, different tune.
Father Kimel has fully bought into this, judging from his FB posts. I find this sad, even tragic. And I do not understand it. He should know better. He knows his Western history, and he knows that it's not all darkness, gloom, and apostasy.
Writing off 1,000 years of Western theology and spirituality is just as bad as the Protestant penchant for jumping from Paul to Luther / Calvin and ignoring everything in between.
Lord have mercy.
Sorry if this is off-topc, kinda-sorta. I just find it sad that ROCOR attracts disgruntled Catholics (even if they've reason for their disgruntlement) and turns them into anti-Western bigots. Or so it seems.
Keith, I went to your first Dreherrian link, and I must admit I agree with Dreher, and I think he put it very well. ;)
ReplyDeleteTo give the divil his due (as my Irish grandmother would say)....
Diane,
DeleteMy point (which I have no doubt you got) was that Dreher felt so strongly about what he typed out there that his very next post was about the exciting things going on in his mouth, tummy, and points beyond. In any other person you might ascribe this sort of behavior to ADHD ("Yeah, as I was saying...look...flies!").
But Dreher isn't your everyday ordinary person and I think he knows very well exactly what notes to play to keep his acolytes there swaying to his every move like charmed cobras, even those who foolishly believe they are arguing passionately against him; they don't realize that, like advertising, all attention paid to Dreher is indistinguishably a vote for him as their bloglord and blogmaster. I just think that's all such pieties are to him, random performance notes of the passing moment, and I don't think he actually believes very much in anything at all beyond its value to draw attention to him, whether it's anti-SSM, grilled tuna, or anything else at all. To my eyes, Dreher is the quintessential hollow man, headpiece filled with straw.
Keith
Ahhhh sooo. I guess I got confused because by your title for your first link. I expected to find Rod bewailing persecutions directed specifically at himself. OK, I'm slow.
DeleteBut I totally see what you mean. Yes, he throws red meat to his base, then turns around and goes all foodie. Very weird.
Yeah, my bad for Dreherifying the link title. I guess I'm just assuming that if Dreher is the narcissist I and others say he is, then by definition he's gonna see the consequences of persecution from SSM in his own peculiar personal paradigm, affecting only him, hence my shorthand reference.
DeleteHere's something funny, though. Has Dreher ever actually come out against SSM? I know he always talks around it by talking about the consequences of SSM for religious liberty, but I can't really recall him ever actually condemning it on his blog. Maybe because he has so many gay and liberal commenters. So, just like in high school, it's up to others to protect his six, so to speak.
Anyway, to make up for confusing you needlessly, here's something that occurred to me. Crunchy conservatism has no mascot, no spokesanimal like the GEICO gecko or the AFLAC duck. Behold, then, Crunchy, my candidate for the new spokesface of crunchy conservatism (I used the Shutterstock image from Google images only so as not to thoughtlessly tar the site of any innocent).
Keith
I should specify (in charity) that I do not know any of the details re Father Al's disgruntlement with Catholicism. And I have no idea whether he's truly anti-Catholic or just willing to buy into that Western-Church-Went-Off-the-Rails garbage for whatever personal reasons.
ReplyDeleteThe whole thing is just a mess, anyway.
Diane I saw your link. that ROCOR priest is Dreher in a couple years. And you know that when Dreher finally outs himself as whatever it is he chooses to be at that moment, he WILL make a video or do the equivalent on his blog.
ReplyDeleteI'm the same age as these guys, I strongly suspect, and I recognize this type. It's a Gen X thing; happy to reject the values of boomers, but not quite ready to embrace the right wing squares either. There's sexual panic and ambiguity going on here as well (after all, they grew up on Duran Duran, who wore eyeliner). Wanting to have it both ways in every sphere of life, emphasis on "every", causes a lot of angst, which is why they are *always* looking for assurance and feedback in the form of blogs, like Dreher, or making self-important pronouncements on youtube like this ex-ROCOR freak. And the fact that the internet allows for this effortless visibility is just too intoxicating for them.
Kathleen, I think your analysis is spot-on, as usual. That's Dreher in a few years...yep.
DeleteIt's a Gen X thing; happy to reject the values of boomers, but not quite ready to embrace the right wing squares either.
DeleteBingo. That's exactly why I was libertarian in college. Fortunately that was the extent of my political rebellion, and I've come back around to reality. But what seem to be rebellious phases in some people is just a manifestation of deeper contrarianism and a refusal to even acknowledge other points of view.
BTW, I'm totally against this new immigration reform bill which might be of interest since you all know I'd like to see some type of overhaul of the present stupid system. But I don't want the introduction of new stupidities.... So I've changed my mind as to whether it's worth passing something imperfect. I've decided it's not because I'm a security hawk and they are down on security, simply put.
As for whether Dreher will embrace "marriage equality" I have no idea. But I think it's possible that Dreher will become a ROCOR priest. It seems like it should be about as easy as becoming a bartender if this chuckleheaded beardo can become one. Why not? No celibacy required and he has already got a church out the back.
DeleteAs penance for once-again drifting way off-topic on this ROCOR thread, let me offer the latest meow-hiss-spit ("a crackhead babushka who is having chronic hot flashes") from Dreher to his perennial critic Barbara-Marie Drezhlo.
ReplyDeleteI don't pretend to know a thing about Russian Orthodoxy or ROCOR (I'm just a bad Methodist who never really figured out what the method was), but I swear I don't see that much of a difference between these two.
Keith
Wow--so Varvara is a man? Diane, did you know that?!
DeleteYep. Not initially but did learn it later.
DeleteS/he's also as mad as a hatter. But pretty entertaining, at least sometimes. (That Stalinist shtick gets tiresome, though.)
I just noticed that Dreher linked to Varvara last November also. I guess he'll actually link to people whose criticism of him lacks substance and who are strange enough to be easily mocked.
DeleteRE: Drezhlo: It seems to me from reading his blog that Drezhlo equates Marxism with Christianity. Persisting in this kind of warped thinking can only lead you on a downward spiral and, for him, that spiral has led to transsexualism.
Oy!! I made the mistake of following that link to Rod's November post.
DeleteWhat. A. Jerk. God forgive me, but what a petulant, snot-nosed, self-serving bratty little jerk.
And, of course, he invokes The Scandal again as his catch-all excuse for abandoning Catholicism...as always, conveniently ignoring the fact that child sex abuse exists in his own communion, too, that it is covered up there quite effectively (with far LESS transparency than we now have in the RCC), etc. etc.
DeleteDespicable.
Now that I know Barbara Drezhlo is actually a man the sissy slap-fight between him and Dreher makes total sense. I say we name the unhappy couple Dreherzhlo.
DeleteROFLMAO!
DeleteBut who will get custody of Crunchy?
Keith
Keith, I meant to comment before that I think Crunchy is adorable. ;)
DeleteDiane, I don't think anything comes closer to illustrating my contention that Dreher uses phony principles to conceal the underlying truth that he doesn't have any principles, only urges and the changing tastes that steer them, than his timely exit from Catholicism.
ReplyDeleteForget for the moment that Dreher's exit from Catholocism coincided so neatly with the cusp between his third and what, for many a believing Catholic, would more than likely have been his fourth and fifth children (and from a woman, IIRC, who was only one vaginal birth out of three removed from her girlish figure). Anyone can just chalk that up to my cynicism and meanness. We really don't know.
But here's the thing. After the Scandals, Catholics who stayed Catholic couldn't run away in the popular mind from being "those people who believe that religion where their priests like to molest little boys". Anyway you slice it, that becomes an unfashionable social liability - at least in the narrow dimension of social fashion. Happened to you. Didn't happen to me, I'm not Catholic. But of course being Catholic, for real Catholics, isn't about being socially fashionable, or being vaginally fashionable for that matter. It's about sticking with a faith that you believe in, a faith whose basis doesn't suddenly change after thousands of years just because a few bad guys go off the reservation.
But it happened to Rod Dreher, too, and if his relationship with the Church had been one of faith, he would have been no different than you or Pauli or Pik, and he would have stayed Catholic, because that was his faith. So his relationship to the Church must have been something else, and that something else, at least as I see it, was only the thinnest of veneers, only a psychologically therapeutic social fashion statement.
"Let's see," Rod Dreher sez, standing before the psychologically therapeutic social fashion religion Vend-O-Mat, "Catholicism has become much too much of a social liability now for an ambitious young man like myself. Everybody can smell the bad priest stink, and I need to wash myself clean of it. So what do we have in the Vend-o-Mat that might rock as even more ancient and steampunky than Catholicism in the popular mind, yet be clean of any easily detectable bad priest stink? Southern Baptist? Heavens, no; can't drink. Click. Episcopalian? Obviously too gay. Click. Ah! Here we go: Eastern Orthodoxy! Full of thingies like beards and icons to telegraph loudly to the populace just how ancient and steampunky crunchy me is. 99.9% the same faith, so no work there. And no bad priest smell to harsh my blogging career on the religion beat. It'll be no more hassle than switching from BP to Shell!
So...5,000O words to protest too much for the rubes? No problemo, I'm nothing if not a glib and prolix writer.
And the added bonus of keeping mama tight?
Priceless."
People ask how Dreher could ever post a picture of himself like this?
How could someone with 10W-40 for principles like Dreher ever not?
Keith
Thank you, Keith. I think you are spot-on. IMHO Dreher never understood Catholicism in the first place. He once revealed that, back during his Catholic honeymoon period, he thought of the Catholic Church as the "New York Yankees" of Christendom. Ohhhhhkay. IMHO, this illustrates exactly what you are saying: Catholicism works for Rod only as long as it's What the Cool Kids Do, or something like that.
DeleteRod's contention that Bad Bishops (or bad priests for that matter) invalidate a church's ecclesiology is patently absurd. Neither Catholics nor Orthodox believe such a silly thing. (Saner minds than Dreher freely admit that Orthodoxy has had its share of Really Bad Bishops, forsooth.)
But Dreher never really got Catholicism, and I don't think he gets Orthodoxy, either. So far, he has managed to pretend (publicly at least) that there are no sex-abuse scandals to speak of in Orthodoxy. But, given that all the data show consistently that roughly the same percentage of clergy are sex-abuse perps across every denomination and communion, Dreher will not be able to remain in denial forever. At some point the facade must crack.
However, Orthodoxy flies under the radar screen, so it probably won't ever become unfashionable, no matter what. Still and all, I would be surprised if Dreher were still Orthodox five years hence.
Just realized who his hair reminded me of: Rowdyruff Boy Butch.
DeleteLast comment on Dreher (right now), swear.
ReplyDeleteGet a load of this from "Careful With HRC".
Can't compete with them on Topix, so he tries to coopt them.
Guy's a friggin' pinworm.
Keith
LOL. Did you see the natives' comments re Dreher? Priceless.
DeleteOh my freaking gosh. Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Why, why, why did you have to remind me of that abomination? I hadn't heard it mentioned in, like, decades. Next you'll be making me remember Rod McKuen. Arrrrggggghhhhhhhh....
ReplyDeleteLOL, that hat. Now I need brain-bleach.
ReplyDeleteBTW, that Rod can publish his gushing acolyte's reference to *Jonathan Livingston Seagull* without raising an eyebrow, without so much as a knowing smirk, just blows my mind. I mean, when your oeuvre is being compared with *Jonathan Livingston Seagull*...Mama Mia! LOL!
ReplyDeleteDiane, it's probably only Dreher's narcissistic bubble that's shielding him (like Get Smart's "cone of silence") from seeing what all the innocent children in the village already see, that it was exactly the sort of white trash pretentiousness that Dreher works so hard to produce day in and day out that John Kennedy Toole was lampooning in "A Confederacy of Dunces". Dreher's embrace of that book can only be understood as some sort of psychological Darwinian survival function, a vaccine, like horror movies or jokes about death.
ReplyDeleteKeith
Diane, I guffawed at the remark about the JLS book. I read that when I was about 20 or so. Back then I was way into poetry, non-judgmentalism and I wouldn't have known pretentiousness if it bit me in the ass. I remember thinking "Kinda cool." About nine years later I picked it up, read a passage and thought, "Oh, what tripe."
ReplyDeleteThe commenter was either serious (me at 20) or sarcastic (me at 30) but either way you're right; the lack of a knowing smirk is telling.
Pauli, don't feel bad. My mom (much older than 20 at the time) thought that song about "the bright elusive butterfly of love" was Great Poetry. I kid you not.
ReplyDeleteWhat tripe my generation went gaga for! All those "Desiderata" posters, the Kahlil Gibran books...LOL!