Beware of blind faith

Make sure that no one traps you and deprives you of your freedom by some secondhand, empty, rational philosophy based on the principles of this world instead of on Christ.
(Colossians 2:8 JB)

Beware of false prophets who come to you disguised as sheep but underneath are ravenous wolves. You will be able to tell them by their fruits. (Matthew 7:15-16a JB)

This week, considering allegations I heard of against an Orthodox bishop, of the nature of “a fall into sin”, and meeting only with evasiveness when I enquired within my own community, I happened upon this resource on the internet: Pokrov.org, “a resource for survivors of abuse in the Orthodox churches.” I’d actually found this website once before, by accident and without any question in mind, and at the time I let it pass. After all, I didn’t want to be a “disloyal” Orthodox. Sergei Fudel writes in his book Light in the Darkness, “A person is not untrue to his Orthodox faith or to his piety if he comes to recognize a mistake or an error made by a saint. But he will be untrue to his Orthodoxy if he starts out looking for such errors, consciously searching them out.” Well, when the “errors” of the saints come after you in hot pursuit, I hope this belongs to brother Sergei’s first category!

Currently in the Greek church in America, there’s the case of sexual abuse of young males by a (now defrocked, former) priest, Nicholas Katinas. Without going into the particulars, it seems that there may have been a cover-up by Orthodox hierarchs and other clergy, not unlike what has happened in the Roman Catholic institution. My purpose in writing this has nothing directly to do with sexual abuse of Christians by their pastors, but rather with another type of abuse, far more widespread, and for which the victims have to bear at least equal responsibility with the perpetrators—abuse of church authority.

Only this from a report on the case is pertinent to my discussion:
The legal petition also alleges that, “…in the summer of 1987, when [the victim] was 11 years old, Katinas sexually abused him… [The victim] was confused by this behavior, but thought if a priest was doing it, it must be all right…” (Italics mine.)

If a priest is (doing it, saying it, writing it, commanding it),
it must be alright.
“Here,” thought I to myself, “is the root cause of every subversion of authority in the Church, from its first occurrence down to the present day—we place our faith blindly in men rather than in God.”
Hence, the title of this post, Beware of blind faith.

A few weeks ago in my email I was sent an appeal for monetary support for the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and in the same time frame I think I remember that a tray was passed by the Philóptochos (an organization of Greek Orthodox women who have it trumpeted before them that they love and help the poor—only those of their choice, of course) for the same thing. Patriarch Bartholomaios (whom I affectionately refer to as Patriarch Bart, pictured above with Pope Benny) needs money. Generally, I will “give to all who ask” (cf. Matthew 5:42), and in this case I probably should have, since the Lord declares, “your Father in heaven… causes His sun to rise on bad men as well as good” (Matthew 5:45 JB), but both requests I turned away, hypocrite that I am. Why am I risking my salvation over “the giving of five” to some crusty old patriarch who’s probably languishing in a Turkish prison? Well, actually, though the “Great Church” of Aghía Sophía in Constantinople has been stolen from him (about 550 years ago) and he has to be content with Saint George’s, a ramshackle tiny cathedral the size of an average American parish church, he’s personally well cared for. He just needs the money for lawsuits he’s filed against the Turkish government to get back other properties stolen from him more recently. Again, why not give the old guy something?

Back to the words of Jesus quoted above, of those “…disguised as sheep but underneath …ravenous wolves. You will be able to tell them by their fruits.”

Why not give the old guy something? Ask the monks of Esphigménou, a monastery in the republic of Mount Athos in northern Greece. They are currently under siege by the Greek government, which receives its orders from the Patriarch. There’s a blockade of all humanitarian deliveries to the monastery. As the monks continue to lose weight and become ill from the denial of food and medicine, the Greek government continues to prohibit the visitation of doctors to the monastery to provide medical care. There is a land and sea embargo enforced by the Greek Police and Greek Coast Guard, not broken even for humanitarian reasons. This is worse than the embargos placed against terrorist nations.
What are the crimes of these monks (five of them pictured above), that the Patriarch wants them evicted or killed?
They have withdrawn their spiritual support of Patriarch Bartholomaios because of his stated intentions and actions to bring Orthodoxy into union with Roman Catholicism.
Hey, I don’t want that to happen either!
The monks say this, “Our battle is for truth and the true orthodox way of life, which the patriarch is attempting to silence.”
I’m with them.

Still, the Philóptochos passes their trays. Either they don’t look closely enough at this “tree” to check its “fruits,” or else they think, “if a patriarch is doing it, it must be alright.”

Can you endure any more?
Let’s get a little closer to home, from Aghía Sophía in Istanbul to Aghía Triás in Portland.

Quoting from Pokrov.org’s welcome statement, “Abuse occurs anytime someone uses their power (spiritual power, political power, physical power, etc.) to trick, coerce, manipulate or force another person into submission.”

There’s no question (I hope) of anyone in my community being forced into sexual submission by the clergy. But that’s not the only kind of submission, as I’ve stated earlier. A more dangerous and hidden type is at work here. Referring again to the scripture quoted above, “Make sure that no one traps you and deprives you of your freedom by some secondhand, empty, rational philosophy based on the principles of this world instead of on Christ.”

One of the manifest weaknesses of Orthodoxy, in fact of almost all Christian churches, is the reckless willingness of the people to place blind faith in their leaders.
When it comes to politics, the Greeks are just as critical and rebellious against (what they perceive to be) what’s wrong as anyone else. Yet, when it comes to church affairs, though they can see and hear things from church leaders (bishops, pastors and other clergy) that they know are wrong, they acquiesce, ignoring usually, but sometimes justifying and agreeing with statements and actions they know are wrong, when their clergy say or do these things.

Some clergy do not speak from the lips and heart of Christ. They don’t speak out of the Holy Spirit but out of their own hearts. According to John Chrysostom, they preach false interpretations according to the human heart’s thoughts and ways, which are not God’s thoughts and ways. They’re not reforming themselves according to God’s Word, but creating a false religion after the pattern of their own ideas to please the flesh. Pretending to preach, they deceive. Deceiving, they persecute and do it atrociously. Yet they do all this in the name of Christ and God, “disguised as sheep, but underneath …ravenous wolves.”

I’ve spoken to many of my friends at Aghía Triás privately about the current state of affairs, and though they agree with me, they throw up their arms in resignation or despair, “What can we do?”
It seems we’re all so connected through various bonds of personal loyalty that we fear to take action when the flock is being picked apart, one by one.

I like to think that Orthodoxy will prevail as always, because the people preserve it even when the clergy don’t. That’s been an attitude, if not an official teaching, time out of mind. But can we always depend on it? Can we always just hope that “someone else will take care of it”? (I’m talking about those of us who do see what’s happening here and do not agree, not about those who place their faith blindly in men, thinking, “if father says it, it must be alright.” Hey guys, what about THE Father? “When you gonna wake up?”)

Keep alive in yourselves what you were taught in the beginning: as long as what you were taught in the beginning is alive in you, you will live in the Son and in the Father; and what is promised to you by His own promise is eternal life. This is all that I am writing to you about the people who are trying to lead you astray. But you have not lost the anointing that He gave you, and you do not need anyone to teach you; the anointing He gave you teaches you everything; you are anointed with truth, not with a lie, and as it has taught you, so you must stay in Him.
1 John 2:24-27
Jerusalem Bible

To the honor and in remembrance of Bp Anthony Gergiannakis of San Francisco (pictured),
and of Fr Elias Stephanopoulos,
both of blessed memory;
and following the straight teaching of their worthy
co-workers and successors,
Fr Michael Courey,
Fr Photios Dumont,
Fr James Retelas,
Fr Gerasimos Markopoulos,
and their worthy Presbyteres.

Και η δοξα τω Θεω!