Dear Alexey,<\/p>\n
Thank you for the \u201cmessage\u201d from Fr. Neketas. We are rather puzzled as to why he should be so agitated. Perhaps there is a personal element in it, but it seems to have more to do with fears and suspicions on a general church level, which would also explain why the fathers at Boston were so upset with his letter. (The letter, by the way, didn\u2019t really disturb us at all, since we were expecting it, and in our exchange with him we were able to express things which had been until then tensely covered up.) Perhaps they suspect that we are \u201cjoining the Russian bishops\u201d and are about to betray the Old-Calendar cause, join the ecumenist bandwagon, etc. (If they do think this, I wish they would say so!) Or perhaps the real root is, once more, the old question of \u201cauthority\u201d\u2014we\u2019ve made it pretty clear that we don\u2019t accept the authority of Fr. Panteleimon, and to some people that seems to be a terrible blow. Well, we will write Fr. N. in a few days and try to allay some of his possible fears.<\/p>\n
I trust Barbara and David arrived safely. Vladika Anthony stayed overnight with us for the first time, and in general had his best visit with us. We talked at length with him on questions of \u201crebaptism\u201d etc., and found ourselves in complete agreement with him. We translated for him all the \u201ccontroversial\u201d passages in our Metr. Philaret article, after hearing which he crossed himself and thanked us for writing it. It is obvious that the \u201czeal not according to knowledge\u201d is becoming a matter of some concern for him and many of our bishops, and I\u2019m afraid the solution to it, if any, will not be easy. As long as Fr. Panteleimon has his own \u201cpsychological diocese\u201d within our Church, there will be a constant source of friction and misunderstanding. \u201cTwo or three days\u201d with Fr. Panteleimon will not resolve it, either! I think probably the basic quality needed is a certain deep humility of mind that enables one to accept other ways of looking at things, other emphases\u2014as equally Orthodox with one\u2019s own. On their side, that would involve ceasing to protest against catechisms, accept Blessed Augustine for his good side, ceasing to be terribly upset about the Shroud, etc. If they could do this, I think the tension on our side would cease to exist. On the whole, it is probably good that they have gotten upset, because this might give them a better chance to see things as others see them, and rethink things a little for themselves. But we shall see.<\/p>\n
As for the rest of us\u2014we should just keep on the same independent path, with no particular thought of being \u201cfor or against\u201d Fr. Panteleimon. He has much to offer himself, and there is much others can give that he can\u2019t.<\/p>\n
We send you greetings for the Dormition. I\u2019ll try to get you the new chapter on Sederholm before long. Also a new sermon of Vladika John.<\/p>\n
With love in Christ,
\nSeraphim, monk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear Alexey, Thank you for the \u201cmessage\u201d from Fr. Neketas. We are rather puzzled as to why he should be so agitated. Perhaps there is a personal element in it, but it seems to have more to do with fears and suspicions on a general church level, which would also explain why the fathers at […]<\/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-1412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1412","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=1412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1412\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}