ORTHODOXY, SISSIES, AND THE PERFORMANCE OF MASCULINITY: PART ONE by Giacomo Sanfilippo

13 Comments March 3, 2018 The Editors

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Archpriest John Guy Winfrey

Among my earliest childhood memories of my father’s voice: Sissy. Pansy. You throw a ball like a girl. There’s goddamn Suzie, reading her books again.

When tormenting me into being a more adequate boy didn’t work, my father sometimes tried beating me into it. (That finally stopped when I was 14 and sent him flying backward across the room. The verbal assaults continued right into my 50s.)

When he died seven years ago, I didn’t shed a single tear. Through the Orthodox discipline of prayer for the dead and the grace of God, I have slowly come to love him as deeply as I do my mother, over whom I have shed oceans of tears since she was taken from me forty years ago. Read More

SUNDAY OF ST. GREGORY PALAMAS by Archpriest Isaac Skidmore

2 Comments March 3, 2018 The Editors

The second Sunday of Great Lent in the Orthodox Church is dedicated to the commemoration of the 14th-century archbishop of Thessalonica, St. Gregory Palamas. Its celebration one week after the Sunday of Orthodoxy, which commemorates the 7th Ecumenical Council’s defense of icons, is due to the Church’s recognition that St. Gregory’s teachings represent a second “Triumph of Orthodoxy” (Father Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent).

st_gregorgy_palamas St. Gregory’s message was mostly apologetic, arguing on behalf of a spiritual experience historically grounded in the Church’s theology—not introducing anything new. He defended certain hesychast monks (from hesychia, meaning silence, stillness), who claimed they had encountered God’s uncreated light while in prayer.

Gregory’s main protagonist was a Latin theologian named Barlaam, who argued that direct experience of God was impossible, because God exists beyond all categories of being. Therefore, He can be known only through symbol or analogy. Gregory agreed with Barlaam that God’s transcendence placed Him outside the range of human understanding. Beyond this, though, they parted ways. Whereas for Barlaam, God’s transcendence was the end of the story, for Gregory and the hesychasts, there was an important sequel.

Gregory’s defense of the monks’ experience relied on his assertion (which he saw reflected in Scripture and Patristic tradition) that God is not captive to His transcendence any more than He is captive to the world of the things that we can know with our minds. God ultimately is not bound by either the rules of being or non-being. While those categories may be irreducible features of our own thought and rationality, for God they are as permeable as the walls through which the risen Christ passed when He appeared to Thomas and the other disciples. Read More

ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN CLERGY AGAINST RACISM: SOME ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

4 Comments March 1, 2018 The Editors

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We reported two days ago that a new blog called Orthodox Christian Clergy Against Racism published “A Statement Concerning the Sin of Racism.” In our response later the same day—”Orthodox Christian Clergy Against Racism?“—we questioned the initial motive behind the Statement, not its content. The names of at least two signers stand out conspicuously to us for their questionable relationship to known white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and fans of Confederate symbology. It seemed to us that these two, at least, were in full damage control mode.

We were careful to state, in our fifth point, that most of the clergy who signed were probably unaware of the background of these two, and had undoubtedly signed in good faith.

Last night we had an opportunity to chat extensively—and very fraternally—with one of the Statement’s main drafters, Father Cassian Sibley of Bryan TX. (He gave us permission to use his name in the present article.) He shared details on how the Statement came to be, and some of the reasons for its final form. Our conversation assuaged any concerns that we had about the original drafters’ intentions. Read More