Dear Alexey,<\/p>\n
Greetings in our Lord Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n
We expect to be here all the time for the next several weeks, and will be expecting you sometime in this period. And Phanourios too. I would not have a difficult time choosing between Reno and Etna, but of course one\u2019s heart has to be in it.<\/p>\n
We have heard nothing from Fr. Neketas and frankly have no hope that he will have the slightest willingness to see things differently. He has \u201cgroup security\u201d of a very powerful kind, and it would take a tremendous shock to jolt him out of it, not just an \u201capostasy\u201d from people whose Orthodoxy he seems to have been doubting for some time anyway. I suspect that this article gave him just the opportunity he needed to \u201cknow for sure\u201d that we are not reliable. We\u2019ve received no \u201copen letter\u201d either, and in fact we never received the one that was promised on the Western Saints\u2014we\u2019re piling so many obligations on their letter-writers! Things are probably further complicated by the fact that in our correspondence with Fr. Alexis of Boston concerning Andrew Bond (which on our side consisted only of a few brief notes which \u201chinted\u201d rather than said anything controversial, but on their side was a barrage meant to convince us of the absolute rightness of Fr. Panteleimon, including his private letters to Archbishop Averky and Archbishop Anthony\u2014which shocked us and probably did more than anything else to make us see what he is), we inadvertently hit a \u201csick point\u201d of Fr. Alexis\u2019, and in his hasty reply (in the absence of Fr. P.) he very clearly revealed a deep spiritual insecurity which I don\u2019t think would have passed Fr. Panteleimon\u2019s censorship. Well, we\u2019ll have to wait and see what comes from them. But it is already clear that we have passed \u201cout of fashion\u201d in that circle, and our labors at least for a while will have less visible support than in the past. This is sad, because in these last ten years or so it is obvious that a real interest and desire has been aroused in America in the real Orthodoxy, and this using it for a party line will only do harm to the real Orthodox mission.<\/p>\n
By the way, in reading Prosper of Aquitaine\u2019s attack on St. Cassian (which is not really an offensive work, just narrow) I am distinctly reminded of the Boston school and its \u201copen letters\u201d! His objection to Cassian is: \u201cWe\u2019ve squashed Pelagius through Augustine, and here you are trying to tell us that things aren\u2019t as simple as Augustine thinks either! Whose side are you on? Isn\u2019t it all perfectly logical and clear? You\u2019re really a crypto-Pelagianist!\u201d Substitute \u201cecumenism\u201d for \u201cPelagianism\u201d\u2014and you may have the next \u201copen letter\u201d of Boston!<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve received some new talks of Fr. Dimitry Dudko\u2014and he really does have much of what is necessary not only in the Soviet Union, but here also. He speaks to the point against making \u201cpopes\u201d out of our bishops and spiritual fathers, of everyone thinking for himself instead of leaving it to others. His is one of the soundest and freshest voices in Orthodoxy today (despite some \u201ctheoretical\u201d errors), and gives great hope for the future of Orthodoxy in Russia. With this in mind, we must be \u201copen\u201d rather than \u201cclosed\u201d with regard to the Moscow Patriarchate. The whole question of ecumenism and apostasy cannot be placed simply on the canonical-dogmatic-formal level, but must be viewed first spiritually. Fr. Dimitry also speaks forcefully against letting a purely formal approach to the canons bind us spiritually and actually strangle church life\u2014thus allowing the Protestants to take over with their fresher approach. It\u2019s obvious that Fr. Panteleimon\u2019s approach has nothing to say to Russia today.<\/p>\n
Barbara is well and is writing a letter to her mother. Of course, it is a little \u201cdangerous\u201d (politically) for her to remain so long close to us. \u201cOfficially,\u201d if there is any question, our position in regard to her is: we are moderating her enthusiasm by giving her a little taste of wilderness life while restraining her from just going off to the woods by herself. Fr. Herman has blessed her to be totally by herself for no more than three days at a time, and we knew where she was. God knows what will come of her desire for the desert, but we don\u2019t want to quench it or apply a \u201cformula\u201d to it either. As things have worked out, we are totally alone during this part of the summer, so there are no younger ones to suffer unnecessary temptations by her nearness. Historically (as we know from 19th-century Russian example) those who encourage such \u201ccrazy ones\u201d usually end up being persecuted themselves, but that is already nothing new!<\/p>\n
Hopefully we will be able to give you at last our new OW (Vladika John issue), which has suffered numerous delays, including a week lost due to generator repairs (not serious, but we have no electrician). Fortunately, with God’s help I became enough of an \u201celectrician\u201d myself so that when the generator began acting up a few days after we got it back I was able to remember that it was the \u201cpoints\u201d that were replaced this time, and remembering what \u201cpoints\u201d look like in an automobile, I looked all over the generator until I found them under a special cap\u2014and discovered that the screw holding them to the machine had come loose, thus saving a trip to town. That was rather a consolation!<\/p>\n
With love in Christ,
\nSeraphim, monk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear Alexey, Greetings in our Lord Jesus Christ. We expect to be here all the time for the next several weeks, and will be expecting you sometime in this period. And Phanourios too. I would not have a difficult time choosing between Reno and Etna, but of course one\u2019s heart has to be in it. […]<\/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-1409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409","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=1409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}