Much bullshit is spoken about things we do “for the children.”
This is not bullshit. It is the author at his white-hot best:
It will be said that the one—the unrepentant or semi-repentant sinner, the one who wants to have the faith on his own terms—is “marginalized,” a word I detest, but which may serve my purposes this once. If adults in immoral sexual relationships are “marginalized,” Lord, let me speak up now for people who do not even make it to the margins, for the poorest of the poor, for people who have no advocate at all.
Let me speak for the children of divorce …
Let me speak for the children thrust into confusion, to justify the confusion of their parents or of people in authority over them …
Let me speak for the children exposed to unutterable evils on all sides. Here is a girl at age twelve who has seen things on a screen that her grandmother could never have imagined. She is taking pictures of herself already, and making “friends” among the sons and daughters of Belial …
Let me speak up for the young people who see the beauty of the moral law and the teachings of the Church, and who are blessed with noble aspirations, but who are given no help, none, from their listless parents, their listless churches, their crude and cynical classmates, their corrupted schools …
Let me speak up for the young people who do in fact follow the moral law and the teachings of the Church. Many of these are suffering intense loneliness. Have you bothered to notice? Have you considered all those young people who want to be married, who should be married, but who, because they will not play evil’s game, can find no one to marry? …
(Anthony Esolen, Who Will Rescue the Lost Sheep of the Lonely Revolution?)
See also the Update from the 31-year old former “prototypical ‘good Christian girl'” at Rod Dreher’s blog here.)
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Dr. Alfred Kentigern Siewers responds to a deservedly controversial piece floated by a Priest on the Orthodox Church in America’s “Wonder” site. The OCA version is down but the priest’s parish hosts a copy.
The priest author is just fine with some sorts of unrepentant or semi-repentant sinners who want to have the faith on their own terms, less hospitable toward convert “fundamentalists.” They don’t count. They don’t make it to his margins. They are stock figure bad guys. Maybe the poor Padre doesn’t have any of them in his parish, but only unrepentant or semi-repentant who heard that he’s especially friendly toward their sort and who hope to lead Orthodoxy into the promised land by the leading of “the spirit.”
[C]hanging the Tradition in response to American secularism paradoxically seems OK. This often involves a kind of cultural American phyletism–on the one hand criticizing the influence of American Orthodox converts, while on the other emphasizing the need to engage an imaginary homogenous American culture and to be less “old world.” Ironically, the “old world” element in American Orthodoxy often can be pluralistic and cosmopolitan by comparison.
(Dr. Siewers, emphasis added.)
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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 