Wednesday, November 25, 2020
St. Katherine of Alexandria
Sunday, November 22, 2020
The Age of Regress?
We have reached not the age of progress which the liberals once promised to us but the age of regress. I commented to a friend of mine recently that in order to have a liberal democracy dissent must be allowed and permitted. Otherwise, the democracy turns into a dictatorship. But let's clarify further that the term liberal in liberal democracy only qualifies the word democracy. It does not indicate that democracy is inherently a liberal idea. The idea of liberalism has been corrupted ever since the 19th century from the idea of freedom once perpetuated to the idea of democracy. A dictatorship can certainly be just as democratic, if not more. A dictatorship is simply just the logical consequence of collectivism as a result from democracy.
Erik Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, in his article "Monarchy and War" in The Myth of National Defense places this accusation rather bluntly on democracy. Citing British Prime Minister Disraeli, "[t]he tendency of an advanced civilization is in truth Monarchy. Monarchy is indeed a government which requires a high degree of civilization for its full development. ... An educated nation recoils from the imperfect vicariate of what is called a representative government." (84) Kuehnelt-Leddihn recalls the political nature of the prosecution of Socrates under the Democratic State of Athens. Socrates was placed to death for the corruption of youth. According to Kuehnelt-Leddihn, part of that corruption was the teaching of monarchy (84). But that is not the least part where we see the brutality of democracy unfolding.
As we move further and further away from hierarchical structures, we move further and further away from a monarchial view of the family in nature, and as such in governance. We move further and further away from nature as a result. We grow the power of the government as a consequence. We become blood-thirsty for power. As Søren Kierkegaard noted, "Is it tyranny when one wants to rule leaving the rest of us others out? No, but it is tyranny when all want to rule." (in Garff, Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography, 487). The turning point for modern culture was indeed with World War I. It started as an old-fashioned territorial dispute which blossomed into a battle to defend democracy as the United States entered in 1917. "When in March 1917 the U.S.-allied Czar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate and a new democratic-republican government was established in Russia under Kerensky, [Woodrow] Wilson was elated. With the Czar gone, the war had finally become a purely ideological conflict: of good against evil." (Hoppe, Democracy: The God That Failed, x). Everything Austria represented was inherently wicked to the American Left according to Kuehnelt-Leddihn. It "inhereited many traditions of the Holy Roman Empire (double-headed eagle, black-gold colors, etc.); it had led the Counter-Reformation, headed by the Holy Alliance, fought against the Risorgimento, suppressed the Magyar rebellion under Kossuth..., and had morally supported the monarchial experiment in Mexico." (x)
Friday, November 20, 2020
The Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple
Today, we celebrate and honor the Feast Day of the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple. She is the Queen of all Heaven and the Bride of God. This feast day commemorates Sts. Joachim and Anna presenting her into the Temple of God as dedication much as St. Hannah presented the Prophet Samuel into the Temple. There is strong typology in the stories here. St. Hannah is a prefigurement of St. Anna. Both share the same name (Hannah in Greek is Anna), both women were barren, and both presented their children to God in the Temple from a young age.
Tuesday, November 10, 2020
Joseph "Stalin" Robinette Abiden (Whose Name in Greek is Apollyon), Jr. is scoring more Mussolinis than Trump
Wednesday, November 4, 2020
Catholic, orthodox, and the meaning of words
"Hooker is writing as a Catholic because the Church of England is a Catholic Church. You are stuck in the narrow minded view that Rome alone has the power to do this. This is a view not accepted by anyone who is not a member of the Roman Church."
And herein comes to the question of definitions. I am not saying that Hooker is not a catholic or that the Church of England is not catholic. Indeed, as adherents to Nicaea, all Christians must affirm themselves as catholics or the creed makes no sense! What I am saying is that the Church of England is not Catholic. I touch on this as well in my post on the concept that comes up a lot in the East of being Orthodox in communion with Rome. The way that terms developed in the history of the Church, the Latins typically ended up using the term "Catholicos" to describe the Church and the Greeks used the term "Orthodox" to describe the Church. Until the schism, this implied no separation. Both referred to the same Church. When the schism occurred, so did confusion in terminology.
Even before the Great Schism of 1054 A.D., there was another schism between the monophysites and the Orthodox. Those Christians, ironically, also refer to themselves as Orthodox and are commonly known today as Oriental Orthodox. Of course both the Byzantine Orthodox and the Oriental Orthodox have different conceptions of what Orthodoxy is and it is perhaps every bit as confusing and puzzling to them to see these terms used like this. I pointed out, when asked by two of the deacon's daughters as to whether I was "Orthodox Catholic or Roman Catholic", how meaningless the term "Orthodox Catholic" is. Because all Catholics are certainly orthodox! Or one would hope. A Roman Catholic is every much as "Orthodox in communion with Rome" as I am!
Another analogy I can draw is when my friend heard me refer to my godmother as the "Crazy Church Lady". He protested that there were quite a number of such crazy church ladies to which my godmother insisted, "I am THE Crazy Church Lady!" Certainly the presbytera is a crazy church lady, and so is my friend's wife, maybe one of our deaconesses, etc. But overall, THE Crazy Church Lady is only one person. She is The True Crazy Church Lady. Maybe there is an essence of craziness belonging in other crazy church ladies but there is only One Crazy Church Lady.
If we are asking precisely from an Anglican perspective of what catholicity implies, there does bear fundamental differences between itself and the Catholic Church. As a High Anglican, I never referred myself as a Protestant unless it was in the context of communicating with Catholics for the sake of clarity. Being that as the Anglican Church broke away from the Catholic Church in the protest movement against the Papacy, the term "Protestant" is definitionally sound and meaningful. But in the sense that a high view of the sacraments is held, that the Eucharist is central to the Church, sacrament over word, our conceptions of tradition and scripture, the Anglican Church is quite catholic. It is via media between Rome and Protestantism, in a sense. Another one I had heard as an Anglican was "Catholic but Reformed". In the same sense, Lutheranism is also quite catholic. But from a Catholic perspective, while these hold an essence of the Church in them by their baptism, they are not The Catholic Church.
So there we have the divergency of terminology. Of course the Church is "narrow-minded" on this issue. She has declared herself Holy Mother Church, the Church of all the Faithful. If she does not hold an exclusive view, then why bother with even claiming to be Holy Mother Church? But I wonder if Mrs. Hoff would hold herself to be Orthodox if she entered into conversation with an Orthodox Christian about this topic? Certainly, she is entitled to. But again, the terminology is what needs to be defined. An Anglican is not in communion with Constantinople, nor do they share unite with a monophysite church. Thus, it is understandable that an Orthodox Christian would also seek to clarify that what an Anglican is, is orthodox.
And in the sense in which Anglicanism deviates from Tradition, the Catholic and Orthodox alike would deem those deviations heresy and thus, both orthodox and catholic claims end up flattening. From a Protestant perspective, an Anglican is quite catholic, maybe even Catholic. But from the Catholic and Orthodox perspective, it depends on the sacraments, namely that of baptism. Anglican baptism is valid so Anglicans would be catholics by virtue of baptism but they are unconfirmed, so they cannot be Catholic. This is really just a semantic war that Mrs. Hoff is engaging in here.