Bishops, politics and communications
For the last 15 years or so, I've communicated quite a bit on newsgroups, and more so recently, because with the declne in popularity of BBSs following the introduction of Windows 95. Two newsgroups I've participated in quite a bit have been alt.religion.christian.east-orthodox and alt.religion.christian.episcopal
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Far be it from me to claim that Orthodox clergy (or laity) are immune from sexual sins.
Part of my contribution to the discussion included the following anecdote:
A more recent conversation was between a Roman Catholic seminarian and an Orthodox priest. The Roman Catholic seminarian (from Zimbabwe, where there are many Roman Catholics and very few Orthodox) had just discovered that the Orthodox Church had married priests, and said he wanted to become Orthodox because of this. He said that he knew that many Roman Catholic priests, though supposedly celibate, were actually fornicating a lot of the time. He thought this set a bad example, and so he wanted to join the Orthodox Church, so that he could be married and not be a bad priest setting a bad example.
The Orthodox priest (married) said that if that was his reason for wanting to join the Orthodox Church, he should think again. Orthodox priests, even married ones, were no more immune to sexual temptations than Roman Catholic ones, and many of them also succumbed to the temptations and fell into sin.
It is not a matter of saying that the sins of others are worse than ours, for they are not. One of the biggest temptations is to the relatively undemanding exercise of confessing other peoples' since.
But where I see a difference is the idea that there is no sin, that there is nothing to repent of.
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and my reaction should have come after
a more careful reading...and YET...the
problem on this side of things (the mote
in our own eye) is concealment and
I do not know the Lord will see it as less...
but for the man in the pew, or of course
in the pewless place, there is a certain
importance in keeping up appearances.
now I am dithering and have said too much
already ...+S.
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Orthodox psychotherapy.
Source: Hierotheos Vlachos 1994:17.
Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos explains his choice of
title as follows:
"The title 'Orthodox psychotherapy' has been given to the book as a whole because it presents the teaching of the Fathers on curing the soul. I know that the term 'psychotherapy' is almost modern and is used by many psychiatrists to indicate the method which they follow for curing neurotics. But since many psychiatrists do not know the Church's teaching or do not wish to apply it, and since their anthropology is very different from the anthropology and soteriology of the Fathers, in using the term 'psychotherapy' I have not made use of their views. It would have been very easy at some points to set out their views, some of which agree with the teaching of
the Fathers and others of which are in conflict with it, and to make the necessary comments, but I did not wish to do that. I thought that it woudl be better to follow the teaching of the Church through the Fathers without mingling them together."
Orthodoxy & Western psychotherapy.
Source: Schmemann 2000:104.
Discussion with his wife & Fr Tom Hopko about "an Anglican priest, psychotherapist, who wants to convert to Orthodoxy and 'help' in the field of psychotherapy. I need to sit down and carefully think through my instinctive aversion to this whole area with which others are becoming increasingly obsessed. What stands behind it? What is its attraction? Tentatively (but I might be quite wrong), it seems to me that the cult of psychotherapy is difficulty to reconcile with Christianity because it is often based on a monstrous egocentricity, on preoccupation with one's self. It's the ultimate expression
and product of 'I, myself,' i.e. of the sin from which one must be saved. Psychotherapy reinforces that basic egocentricity, which is its basic principle. When
psychotherapy penetrates religious consciousness, it distorts it. The result is often a search for 'spirituality' as a distinct entity. Hence, the darkness and narrow-mindednes of many spiritualists, hence the confustion of teaching, pastoral work, care of souls, with psychologizing. The principle on which Christianity is built -- 'Christ saves, revives, cures' -- is opposed by 'What saves and cures is understanding one's self.' 'To see one's self in the light of God' is replaced by 'to understand oneself and be cured.'"
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