The Orthodox Leader

The recent turmoil surrounding the recent passage of healthcare legislation by the United States Congress is providing ample opportunity to look at the absence of Orthodox leadership. As a reminder, this blog’s purpose is not political. To the extent this legislation reflects Caesar’s affairs, it is generally best for the Church to remain silent.

Sadly, though, this legislation is not purely about political matters, for it has provisions for using taxes gathered from individuals, including Christians, to pay for elective abortions in all or part (c.f., here and here). Despite the scandalously equivocal language used by the Ecumenical Patriarch in discussing abortion (c.f., here, here, here, and here),  the Church’s teaching cannot be misunderstood. As a best example, consider St. Basil the Great (AD 330-379), who says absolutely nothing new: “Women also who administer drugs to cause abortion, as well as those who take poisons to destroy unborn children, are murderesses” (Letter 188). Children in the womb are human beings, and their willful destruction is murder. So what about all those who will now find themselves accessories to the crime through the new legal requirement to fund abortion?

In the face of this legislation, this question, and the evil that is elective abortion, the silence from our Orthodox leaders is deafening. Goarch.org? Oca.org? Antiochian.org? ROCOR? The Serbian Church in America? SCOBA? Nothing. We are justified in wailing with grief over more than 250,000 dead in Haiti, yet over 1.2 million elective abortions are performed each year in the United States alone. All is now set to begin funding them with tax dollars, and no official word of protest or exhortation is to be found.

Worse, at least one professor at Holy Cross Seminary is reportedly elated at the passing of this legislation, and I am nearly certain he has company among the faculty at St. Vladimir’s. Is it any wonder, then, that our parishes have so many individuals – often lifelong Orthodox Christians – who think abortion is no big deal? Is it any wonder that many of our parish clergy are indifferent to (if not supportive of) abortion? If the shepherds won’t wield their staves to drive away wolves wearing power suits and lab coats, aided by the Internal Revenue Service, who will? If they won’t, who can reasonably be expected to?

To those bishops (especially those whom I have overlooked) and my brethren who are speaking against the wanton destruction of these little ones by means of tax subsidies in the name of health care, I thank you and pray that your efforts would yield much fruit by strengthening and encouraging the Orthodox faithful to stand firm. To the others, the bigger lambs need someone to feed them (Jn 21:14-19), and the littlest ones need someone to speak in their defense. Who will do it?

[Edited 3/23/10, 4:20pm EDT, to fix a sentence.]

Since secular work, house blessings, and kids’ school projects have conspired to slow down the next segment of the Making of a Priest, I thought it might be worthwhile to point out that St. Theophan the Recluse (1815-1894) addressed the question of “What to do about a bad priest?” well over a century ago. (Many thanks to Fr. Justin Frederick for translating the original.)

Read it: What to do about a bad priest?

As you work your way through it, consider St. Theophan’s counsel in light of many reactions today to poor leadership. Readers are invited to weigh in in the comments.

To continue the previous post on the “business” of the Church, I begin by saying that the emphasis of this particular reflection is not on tithing. Rather, the interest is on the perils of distractions within the Church corporate, at the parish, diocesan, and jurisdictional levels.  It is a distraction when we, with the complicity of our leaders (clergy and lay), have a Church life dominated by festivals, building programs, hall rentals, and semi-annual golf tournaments.

These things are distractions because they are all inward-looking. They set up a virtual mirror where we preen and think about our infrastructure and our “stuff” rather than caring for those in our midst and proclaiming the Gospel. (NB: Oftentimes, caring is proclaiming, only with a whisper. Whom do you know that could use a helping hand?) God repeatedly rebukes such introspection. The entire Old Testament account of God’s refusal to sanction the building of a permanent Temple prior to Solomon suggests that the Israelites were to live first as God’s faithful, as the seed of Abraham in which “shall all families of the earth be blessed.” (Gen. 12:3). In short, if we are spending all of our thinking time on something other than being lights to the world, we’re not shining very brightly.

Mark Phinney has noted, in comments on a previous post, that he feels personal spiritual development and formation are the number one leadership issue facing the Orthodox Church in North America. I agree. We would make significant headway against our ills with real spiritual development. The difficulty is that there are a lot of things that masquerade as spiritual development, these distractions being chief among them. It is terribly easy to spend all our time thinking about and working on these side projects while telling ourselves that these efforts are spiritual labors and, worse, beating up those who challenge that thinking. Salvation will not be found in a balance sheet.

True spiritual development, and a fundamental aspect of the business of the Church, not only begins but continues with a real look inward, with repentance. It is time to stop berating those prophets who remind us that our distractions are not the same thing as the Gospel and instead heed them. Repentance is the looking inward that leads outward, for it is with the eyes of repentance that we truly live and share the life in Christ. Such sharing is the true business of the Church.