Oriental and Eastern Orthodox: questions

[John Charmley]

Dear Kirk,

How very much I agree with what you have written.

I suspect Fr. Gregory's point was more to do with discussions at the level at which both you and he mention, rather than at the more local one; but here your point about the attitude of the clergy is very relevant.

All religious groups have what might be called a 'Taliban tendency'; I guess in Orthodoxy that would be the 'Orthodox Taliban Tendency' (or OTT for short). They look for what divides rather than what unites; they confuse ethnic practice with Orthodox praxis; and they seem more obsessed with punishment than with the Gospel of love. If one wants to see examples, one only has to look at some of the pronouncements from Mt. Athos after the visit of the Pope at Christmas time; if some of those things are part of Christian obedience, few of us would wish to be part of Christianity; but they are not, they are the product of narrow minds channelling strong feelings of displaced hatred; in short, just the sort of Pharisaical behaviour Our Lord spent so much time castigating. 'Whited sepulchres' indeed! May the Lord they worship bring enlightenment and peace where there seems so much darkness and strife.

The spirit breathing through your post. Kirk, is of the loving Christianity which your Church has preached always and everywhere. How right you are to hope that we might all, yet, join in a prayer of thanks to He who has loved us so much and who has sent His only begotten Son to the end that we might live.

Yours is a wonderful post, Kirk, and gives me much hope. Of course, no one is preaching a syncretism in which necessary doctrines and dogmas are dissolved into a sort of Anglican fudge; but for most laymen and women, the things we hold in common are greater than those that divide us. He asked that we should love each other so that the world might know whose disciples we were; can we not, this Holy Week, try that one?

Again, Kirk, thank you for such a powerful and moving message.

In Christ,

John