Dear Brother in Christ, Alexey,<\/p>\n
Congratulations on the feast of the Image of Our Saviour. May the grace of our Saviour be with you now and always.<\/p>\n
Thank you for your very frank letter, in which your deep concern is very evident.<\/p>\n
Please forgive us if we ourselves have added to your confusion (on the question of the cover), but I sincerely hope you won\u2019t be confused just on our account! I believe (and hope) I presented the matter not in any arbitrary fashion but solely for your consideration, simply to let you know that such an attitude does exist, at least among pious Russians, who don\u2019t feel quite right when they see anything that looks like an icon (that\u2019s why it\u2019s being on the cover is important, because it\u2019s seen) placed under or beside other ordinary objects on a table or wherever, when by its appearance it seems to belong rather in an icon corner. As I think I said (though I believe I wrote in a rush and may not have expressed myself very clearly), it\u2019s a rather fine point and is not subject to a categorical judgment. You\u2019ve correctly observed that we ourselves have violated this \u201crule\u201d to some degree. I would say, in sum, that where a 100% full-fledged icon is concerned \u2014 say, a color icon-reproduction with a large figure, which looks as if it belonged in an icon corner \u2014 it would definitely be best and most sensitive not to use it on a cover. Where anything less of an icon than this is used \u2014 something more like a line-drawing or simple illustration (such as will in fact appear on the new cover of The Orthodox Word) then it\u2019s a matter of Orthodox taste and feeling. If were the only ones who mentioned the matter to you, then by all means don\u2019t give it any more thought, it\u2019s \u201cpassed.\u201d In case we didn\u2019t mention it, we also thought that the illustration is a very good one and very effective, and we certainly don\u2019t think it disrespectful or anything of the sort, and we won\u2019t give you any more trouble about it!<\/p>\n
Concerning your being \u201cforbidden\u201d by Fr. Lev not to print on certain subjects: I trust you realize that he\u2019s not in any position to \u201cforbid\u201d you to do anything whatsoever; and it\u2019s only sad that he wants to make himself think so! Vladimir also mentioned on his visit last weekend his being upset at hearing about some intra-Synod personal quarrels about which numerous carbon copies of private letters are circulated via the \u201cgrapevine.\u201d Thanks be to God, we are mostly out of this \u201cgrapevine\u201d and only seldom get one of these carbon copies; but having received a couple of them in the last few days, we certainly appreciate your distress, because all they do is instil in one a peculiar and frustrating sense of uneasiness about which one really can\u2019t do anything, because the \u201cissues\u201d involved are so bound up with personal attitudes and emotions (and sometimes fantasies) that ther just isn\u2019t anything to grasp hold of. We\u2019ve heard several accounts in particular, of the Ischie-Puhalo fight, in which both are evidently demanding that the other be defrocked, and all we can say is: let\u2019s stay as far as possible away from such things. We frankly aren\u2019t interested in what the \u201ctruth\u201d of this case might be; it really looks as if they\u2019re both unbalanced, but one would hope that thereby they would have more compassion for each other! The atmosphere of a large part of the \u201cgrapevine\u201d is surely unsound, and your distress over it is a healthy reaction.<\/p>\n
Thanks be to God, in the Church Abroad we have much freedom and independence to do and speak as we think is right. Even if there may be some who abuse this right and cause scandal, we would certainly rather weather through such small scandals rather than force everything through some kind of forced higher \u201ccensorship,\u201d as some people seem to think or imply. Anyway, let\u2019s just do what we can while there is time, and not get drawn into side issues. You with Nikodemos should by all means treasure your independence, of course drawing on sound counsel wherever it might come from, but never feeling bound to \u201cobey\u201d anyone who pops out of the woodwork and claims to \u201cknow more\u201d than you or to be some kind of \u201cauthority.\u201d<\/p>\n
Concerning the \u201cShroud,\u201d we poor ignorant ones are not even informed on the subject because we\u2019ve been too busy and lazy to read about it! We\u2019re favorably disposed to the subject and wonder what possible proof there can be that it\u2019s a \u201cfraud\u201d \u2014 one might be uncertain or dubious, but to call it a \u201cfraud\u201d one must be quite definite and have proof. And even if one did have \u201cproof,\u201d I wonder what benefit there will be in exposing the \u201cfraud.\u201d It will certainly confuse the readers of Orthodox Life, that\u2019s for sure!<\/p>\n
As for evolution, which is a hoax and fraud if ever anything was, we have long wanted to have a good objective \u0435\u0445\u0440\u043e\u0455\u00e9 (because of its devastating anti-Christian religious overtones and even foundation), but have never had the chance to go into it ourselves. The statements of Fr. Lev\u2019s which you quoted on it sound naive in the extreme. Over a year ago Fr. Neketas mentioned he was going to print an article on the subject by Kalomiros, but we assumed it would be entirely critical and expose the whole fraud of it. We know of no conceivable watering down or modification of the evolutionary hypothesis which would make it acceptable either to theology, philosophy, or science \u2014 certainly the more sophisticated scientists today no longer take it seriously, and recognize that it became popular solely by an act of faith and highly rigged evidence!<\/p>\n
Well, I think it\u2019s beyond us to start \u201cinterfering\u201d with other fellow Orthodox publications and argue over what we think they should print, unless of course we have some facts or information they don\u2019t have, or unless they ask us to give our opinion. But surely we have the right to accept or reject what they do say, and even (if we feel it is necessary) to publish something that contradicts it \u2014 without, of course, publicly \u201cfighting\u201d with them. I guess we\u2019ll just have to wait and see (there\u2019s usually more noise that ever comes out of the \u201cgrapevine\u201d into public view). We can\u2019t imagine that Fr. Neketas or Fr. Panteleimon would publish anything really pro-evolution, but even a vague middle of the road article would be harmful enough, in view of the fact that evolution seems to be such a key in the whole program of anti-Christianity.<\/p>\n
We pray that all these \u201ctemptations\u201d won’t get you down or swerve you from your path \u2014 which is obviously the devil\u2019s object in working to send them to you! Basically, such temptations are trivial \u2014 but that\u2019s precisely one reason why they\u2019re so frustrating! If there were some great attack or error we would find out how to arm ourselves and reply; but rumors and gossip and unsolicited advice and \u201cgrapevines\u201d can be so unsettling because one doesn\u2019t know quite what to believe or where one stands in the whole picture. There is a type of unstable converts who delight in all this, and that only feeds the whole fire; may God have mercy on them and enlighten them. Certainly we don\u2019t need to judge them, but we shouldn\u2019t allow them to interfere with the honest and good labors that God has blessed us weak ones to perform.<\/p>\n
Above all, we are all human and weak and subject to mistakes and hasty judgments ourselves. We should always keep in mind that we don\u2019t \u201cknow better\u201d about Orthodoxy than anyone else and we aren\u2019t \u201cexperts\u201d in anything at all (much less the \u201cinstant experts\u201d that some converts seem tempted to become), but we only follow the path that we firmly believe leads to salvation, spending our whole life in learning and growing, never really progressing beyond the state of infants in the Faith, and bound by bonds of love and respect with our fellow learners.<\/p>\n
We sympathize with you in your family\u2019s misfortunes. Such things only remind us the more forcibly that life isn\u2019t a matter of \u201cknowing better\u201d at all, but of suffering through whatever God sends us in His wisdom, by means of the grace which He also sends.<\/p>\n
We hope you\u2019ll be able to visit us again before winter and talk over some of these things. Melchisedek informs us that he probably won\u2019t be coming this summer after all.<\/p>\n
Pray for us. Our regards to Susan and Ian.<\/p>\n
With love in Christ,
\nSeraphim, monk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear Brother in Christ, Alexey, Congratulations on the feast of the Image of Our Saviour. May the grace of our Saviour be with you now and always. Thank you for your very frank letter, in which your deep concern is very evident. Please forgive us if we ourselves have added to your confusion (on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}