{"id":1357,"date":"2016-09-20T06:06:36","date_gmt":"2016-09-20T06:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/?p=7806"},"modified":"2016-09-20T06:06:36","modified_gmt":"2016-09-20T06:06:36","slug":"191-oct-5181975","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/?p=1357","title":{"rendered":"191. Oct. 5\/18,1975"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Fr. Valery,<\/p>\n

Blagoslovite!<\/p>\n

We rejoice in the recovery of Sergei, for whom we prayed fervently. May God preserve him for many years of true Christian life unto salvation!<\/p>\n

Your article on Jeane Dixon did not disturb us, but we agree with you that the \u201cpolemical\u201d nature of the response is disturbing. This is something which we have seen in our Greeks in the Synod, and often in Americans. It seems to come from some kind of inner lack of balance and discretion, requiring the need to tell everyone: \u201cLook, I am right, and he is wrong.\u201d But it is most disturbing to find this quality now in young Russian priests, revealing that they have lost the oneness of mind and soul which should be uniting true zealots of Orthodoxy, and no longer have the calmness in Orthodoxy that characterizes those who carry the true tradition of Orthodoxy within them. This summer we received a letter from Fr. Alexander Lebed, criticizing our use of the term \u201cTrue-Orthodox,\u201d which seems to have something of this self-righteous agitation in it.<\/p>\n

Of late we have been very disturbed by precisely this quality in our \u201cconverts,\u201d led by rather Panteleimon and his Greeks. More and more our \u201cGreeks\u201d give a feeling of sectarianism combined with a kind of academic conceit, as if telling us all: \u201cWe are the only ones who really are Orthodox, we are experts and you know nothing. The Russians are really secret Catholics, are under \u2018Western influence\u2019; only we are \u201cpure.\u201d But in feet they are not at all pure\u2014at every step they reveal how much they are (evidently quite unconsciously) under very Western, modern influences\u2014even to belief in evolution. Fr. Neketas Palassis\u2019 latest attack against Blessed Augustine (where he says that only the \u201ctheologically uneducated\u201d or \u201cLatin-leaning\u201d accept him as a Saint or a Holy Father) is simply childish\u2014but these \u201cchildren\u201d think they are leading the Church of Christ! For years Fr. Panteleimon has been spreading distrust among the converts\u2014toward Bishop Petros, toward Bishop Laurus, toward any convert priest who doesn\u2019t become his \u201cfollower,\u201d and lately toward us also, apparently because we are \u201cRussians\u201d who are under \u201cLatin influence\u201d\u2014 and at the same time he himself keeps a \u201cfile\u201d with copies of private letters (at least two of them outright forgeries) proving that there is a \u201cplot\u201d against him, and that it is the others who are spreading distrust of him. Well, it is about time somebody started distrusting him\u2014he is involved in precisely that \u201cpolitical\u201d church atmosphere which so grieves Vladika Averky, and we begin to see him now as a \u201cclassic case\u201d of prelest, brought about by self-esteem and vainglory.<\/p>\n

We feel that our \u201cGreeks\u201d will not be with us much longer\u2014you and others have felt this for a long time, sensing their foreign spirit; but we supported them for a long time, thinking they were really helping our converts to receive true Orthodoxy. Fr. Panteleimon in his self-deception does not realize how far out of harmony he is with our Church\u2014he thinks that the bishops also think what the Greek-Americans and many converts tell him, that he is the only real voice of Orthodoxy in English. Dr. Kalomiros in Greece writes us that in his opinion Fr. Panteleimon and his followers have fallen into \u201cgroup pride,\u201d thinking that they alone are the standard of Orthodoxy. Fr. P. has done much harm in Greece also, but siding against the majority of Old Calendarists and supporting the \u201cMathewites\u201d\u2014who are real fanatics and legalists. We feel that disaster is coming upon our poor- English-speaking mission, and the converts who trusted the \u201cGreeks\u201d too much will have a tragic fate.<\/p>\n

But we are peaceful about all this, seeing that it only makes us more sober. We must simply struggle all the harder to give the real feeling for Orthodoxy. The number of True Orthodox Christians seems to diminish rather than increase, and the devil attacks always from some unexpected direction! Our own experience with converts (we had four new ones with us this summer) teaches us how difficult it is for them to absorb true Orthodoxy, and how easy it is for them (because of their self-opinion and soft life) to fall for some \u201cfaker.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the way, we are very impressed by the book by Fr. Dimitry Dudko. We should not call him a \u201cconfessor\u201d (as one of your critics does!) so as not to confuse people into thinking he is \u201cthe real thing\u201d 100%, and also some of his ideas are a little off\u2014but his voice comes through as very genuine, as spoken through suffering\u2014which seems to be the dimension lacking in our poor \u201cconvert-Ortho- doxy.\u201d Have you read it?<\/p>\n

I would like to write more\u2014but no time. We think about the Psalter from time to time\u2014but technically it seems an immense project; and we have just finished the May-June issue of the Orthodox Word!<\/p>\n

We ask your prayers.<\/p>\n

With love in Christ,
\nSeraphim, monk<\/p>\n

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Dear Fr. Valery, Blagoslovite! We rejoice in the recovery of Sergei, for whom we prayed fervently. May God preserve him for many years of true Christian life unto salvation! Your article on Jeane Dixon did not disturb us, but we agree with you that the \u201cpolemical\u201d nature of the response is disturbing. This is something […]<\/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-1357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1357","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=1357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}