The sacramentalization of bureaucracy

Mar 07, 2006 22:56

Twenty-four years ago today Fr Alexander Schmemann wrote ( Read more... )

bureaucracy, orthodox church, theology, church administration

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and for russians seraphimsigrist March 7 2006, 21:43:16 UTC
would he perhaps ,I expect he would,
add that in russia money flows through
a precisely Gogolian
buueauracracy and arrives in pockets even
more easily than in america?
alas in our church in america I am afraid
we may be learning the worst rather than the
best lessons from the motherlands of our
family... :(

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Re: and for russians douloijohanna March 7 2006, 21:55:47 UTC
Yes, news such as this (http://www.ocanews.org/) can seem quite discouraging.

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Re: and for russians methodius March 9 2006, 08:56:25 UTC
Yes, it was discussion of that in one of the newsgroups that made Fr Alexander's comments seem to appropriate.

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Re: and for russians methodius March 9 2006, 08:15:25 UTC
And perhaps the motherlands in the Second World, in their rush to embrace the "free market system" after the fall of Bolshevism, have been learning the worst, rather than the best, from the West?

About the time that Fr Alexander wrote his observations, I observed that there was a tendency to worship the economic powers, which are among the principalities and powers that St Paul spoke of (and Charles Williams, in The place of the lion). There was a kind of idolatry -- that man must be subject to the power of economics and money.

And one could apply to this too the saying of our Lord Jesus Christ: The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the SabbathBut the difference between the communist and the freemarketeer was simply a denominational one within the same religion: the worship of economic forces. For one, the deity was "the dialectical forces of history" and for the other "the free rein of the market mechanism", but both sought to subject man to the power of economics and money. I think I have an interesting quote from Berdyaev on ( ... )

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golodhgwath March 7 2006, 22:59:49 UTC
Is that in his Journals? I am begining to think I need everything he has ever written. "For the Life of the World" contained so much of this sort of wisdom and criticism.

Thanks for that.

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The church bureaucratic. methodius March 9 2006, 08:02:42 UTC
Yes, the source is:

Schmemann, Alexander. 2000. The journals of Father Alexander
Schmemann 1973-1983. Crestwood, NY: St
Vladimir's Seminary Press.
Dewey: 281.9092
ISBN: 0-88141-200-7

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