[W]hen Greek Orthodox Archbishop Damaskinos of Athens ordered his people to hide persecuted Jews, SS commander Jürgen Stroop threatened to shoot the archbishop. Rutler finishes the tale by recounting a striking example of episcopal sangfroid: “The archbishop replied by recalling the lynching of Patriarch Gregory of Constantinople by the Turks in 1821: ‘According to the tradition of the Greek Orthodox Church, our prelates are hanged, not shot. Please respect our tradition.’” The archbishop, happily, lived until 1949; Stroop was hanged after the war for his role in liquidating the Warsaw Ghetto.
(George Weigel) Be it noted that Orthodox weren’t the only clergy to acquit themselves well:
When Bishop Felix Roeder of Beauvais failed to dissuade the local authorities from genocide by argument, he took, as Fr. Rutler neatly puts it, “another course.” The Germans had ordered Beauvais’s Jews to register at town hall. “On the strength of his claim to have had a distant Jewish ancestor, the bishop formally processed through the streets to register his own name, wearing full pontifical vestments and preceded by an acolyte carrying the cross.”
The Orthodox Newbie (among whom I still count myself) corner of the cybersphere seems to be teeming with conjectures about whether the late Sir John Tavener did or did not slide from Orthodoxy toward or into syncretism. I’ll not provide any links. I’m resisting the temptation to wallow in such speculations myself. Really. (Maybe tonight I’ll have spare time for fruitless speculation?)
Sir John wrote sublime music. His eternal destiny is above my pay grade, though I’m reminded that 40 days of prayers are appointed:
Christ our eternal King and God, You have destroyed death and the devil by Your Cross and have restored man to life by Your Resurrection; give rest, Lord, to the soul of Your servant Sir John, who has fallen asleep, in Your Kingdom, where there is no pain, sorrow or suffering. In Your goodness and love for all men, pardon all the sins he has committed in thought word or deed, for there is no man or woman who lives and sins not, You only are without sin.
For You are the Resurrection, the Life, and Repose of Your servant Sir John, departed this life, O Christ our God; and to You do we send up glory with Your Eternal Father and Your All-holy, Good and Life-creating Spirit; both now and forever and to the ages of ages. Amen
And Amen.
I guess I could – should? – segue from that into this, which deals with one of two possible destinies of us all:
I enjoy reading between the lines. I think there’s quit a lot between the lines in today’s Dave Bangert column on the continued support for HJR-6 by its sponsors:
- Sponsors know the measure has become more widely unpopular since 2011, when the process began.
- There’s a constituency that will see dropping it, however flawed the second sentence is, as a betrayal and surrender to the forces of evil.
- There’s a constituency that will see continuing the effort as hateful and homophobic and anti-growth and any other epithet you can think of with the possible exception of “gay.”
- The aforesaid constituencies are frighteningly close to equal in size and ire.
- The political response to the preceding realities is to downplay the substance and emphasize the Democratic procedure.
- Another name for point 5 is “plausible deniability.”
I’ll take Bangert’s word that passage by the General Assembly is likely. That will be a fundraising bonanza next year for the major groups opposing each other on the measure, as they gear up for big media buys for unbearably vilifying TV ads.
Let me tell a little story (I wish I could say “familiar story,” but that would be presumptuous) that’s been on my mind a lot lately:
Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.
But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the Lord. And the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them. According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt even unto this day, wherewith they have forsaken me, and served other gods, so do they also unto thee. Now therefore hearken unto their voice: howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them, and shew them the manner of the king that shall reign over them.
And Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the people that asked of him a king.
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 