This
is a very difficult post. We haven’t been very happy with writing
it. But here it is. It begins with a more theological discussion of
the issues raised by Simon in his first email, based on quotations
from that email. These are indented. Then we discuss the more general
issue of Simon’s personal condition and his suitability for the
monastic state.
The
way the Orthodox Church has been administering tonsure the last few
centuries bothers me.
This
is a rather presumptuous beginning. So you’re bothered by the
practice of the Church for the last few centuries. Well, why start
small? There are many, many very holy saints even today who didn’t
tamper with the practice of the Church. There have been monastic
reformers in the history of the Church, including the Church of
Russia. However, a true monastic reformer is called to that task by
God; it is not something he arrogates to himself. Moreover, he must
be illuminated by God to be able to proceed with his reform (see
below where we talk about Tradition in the Church). One of the
mysteries of the will of God is why he calls some people to tasks
such as the reform of the Church and not others. This is not
something we call ourselves to.
For
one thing, tonsure is seen as a second baptism. But if you allow
rasophores to leave—that is, to become unbaptized—isn't that
sacrilege?
The
notion of the monastic tonsure as a second baptism has a long
history. It appears even in ancient Egyptian monasticism (i.e.
Christian monasticism of the first centuries). It is found even in
the medieval Roman Catholic Church, where two post-baptism events
were considered to provide the complete forgiveness of sins: the
monastic tonsure and a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Indeed, one of the
reasons for the medieval military monastic orders in the Roman
Catholic Church was the need to protect Roman Catholic pilgrims on
their way to Jerusalem, and it seems they were going for precisely
this reason.
There
is only one tonsure which provides the full forgiveness of sins; this
is the tonsure to the Great Schema. An analogy can be drawn with the
priesthood. There are a number of minor orders; there are three major
orders: the deacon, the priest and the bishop. Only the bishop has
the fullness of the priesthood; only he can do all the functions of
the priest, such as ordination. Despite that, the deacon and the
priest participate in the priesthood that the bishop has in fullness
and are allowed by the Church to perform certain priestly functions.
It is
similar with regard to the various degrees of monastic tonsure. The
fullness of the monastic tonsure is the Great Schema and only that
provides the complete forgiveness of sins and the complete
ontological transformation of monasticism. However, despite that, the
prayers of the rasophore (and even the various prayers sometimes used
in the novitiate) and the prayers of the stavrophore (Small Schema)
provide grace.
In any
event, there is no such thing as becoming unbaptized. What is implied
in the notion that the tonsure is a second baptism is the forgiveness
of sins. This is not the same forgiveness of sins as in real baptism:
if someone has committed a sin which is an impediment to the
priesthood before baptism, after baptism he can still be ordained to
the priesthood; but if he has committed such a sin after baptism but
before tonsure then even after his tonsure to the Great Schema he
cannot be ordained to the priesthood.
Moreover,
in the case of baptism, people never become unbaptized: people can
renounce Christ and convert to another religion, or even just follow
no religion, but they remain baptized. Such people would never be
received back into the Church by a second baptism; the Church
provides for a different handling of the matter. So what happened to
their sins? Their pre-baptismal sins were forgiven in baptism; what
they have to deal with is the new sins of denial of Christ and so on.
Similarly
if people were to leave the monastic state it is not as if the old
sins come back so that they become unbaptized from their ‘second
baptism’; rather they have to deal with the new sin of breaking
their vows.
There's
the argument that technically they haven't made any vows, but that
implies that stavrophore tonsure is only a legal contract with God.
The
logic of this escapes us.
As
we have written elsewhere, there is a difference of opinion in
the Church about the status of the rasophore—whether the rasophore
is in fact a novice or in fact a monk. If the rasophore is a novice,
he is not a monk and does not participate in any fundamental way in
the Great Schema as indicated just above. If he is a monk, then he
participates in some way in the Great Schema and cannot be laicized;
in this view the vows are treated as implicit since the postulant
understands that he is committing himself to a life of celibacy.
The
Church of Greece takes the view that the rasophore is a novice
whereas the considered opinion of Abbots on Mt Athos and, we believe,
the Church of Serbia is that the rasophore is a monk and bound. The
Church of Russia (Moscow Patriarchate) distinguishes between the
rasophore who is a habit-wearing novice and who can return to the
world, and the rasophore who is a monk and who cannot return to the
world. In this case it would be clear before the candidate put on the
habit (rasa) just what was being done, and the liturgical
prayers, if any, would be different.
We
don’t understand the notion used here of a legal contract with God.
The vows are vows: they are promises to God and have to be kept. As
we pointed out, the Roman Catholic Church gets around the notion of
the unbreakability of monastic vows to God by treating, in at least
some circumstances, the vows as given to the community and not to God
(if the vow was given to the community then the community can
dispense the vow).
The
vow is not in its nature a legal contract; it is a promise to the
Divinity. However, it should be pointed out that in the Rule of
Benedict the monastic tonsure is treated as a legal contract and the
contract is duly signed by the postulant and placed on the altar.
By the
same logic, you could encourage married couples to divorce because
they don't take vows.
This
is arrant nonsense. Married couples cannot divorce not because of
vows, even implicit, but because divorce is forbidden by Jesus Christ
himself.
Yet
like the rasophore, the spouse has taken implicit and silent vows
This
is nonsense. There is a rule that the Church believes what it prays.
If there were vows involved in marriage in the Orthodox Church they
would be explicitly pronounced in the marriage service. They are not.
Admittedly this would argue against the rasophore being a monk and
not a novice but this is something we don’t want to take a position
on; we are merely trying to lay out the status of the rasophore in
current thinking in the Church.
(I
recognize that the Church allows divorce, but that is only in the
case of some kinds of unfaithfulness. God is never unfaithful to us,
so a monk should not divorce his God.)
This
is also nonsense. In divorce, the Church treats the marriage as not
having occurred in reality. Church divorce is more in the nature of
an annulment if we understand correctly. However, we are not experts
in canon law, and certainly not experts in the theology and canon law
of marriage, to be able to discuss this with certainty.
The
issue with the monk is the absolute nature of a vow given to God. If
I vow to give a sheep to God, even as a layperson and not expecting
anything in return from God, I have to fulfil my vow under penalty of
serious sin. It is not because God is small-minded but because we
shouldn’t vow anything to God that we don’t intend to carry out.
God is not mocked.
Another
problem is that there are multiple tonsure ceremonies. If the
rasophore was second baptism, then why have stavrophore tonsure?
The
stavrophore or Small Schema came into existence in the 8th
to 9th Centuries in the Iconoclast controversy when monks
were on the run from the authorities because they supported the
veneration of icons. The vows of the Great Schema (especially the vow
of renunciation of the world) were considered too onerous for monks
in that condition so a somewhat milder form of the tonsure to the
Great Schema was invented which we now know as the stavrophore or
Small Schema. However, the Great Schema is the fullness of the
monastic tonsure and the criterion by which it is measured.
The
nature of the argument posed by Simon here can be seen from
considering the argument that there shouldn’t be multiple
ordinations, since a deacon is a priest and a priest is a priest and
a bishop is a priest, so how can there be multiple priesthoods?
If
stavrophore tonsure is second baptism, then was the rasophore tonsure
meaningless?
Neither
the rasophore nor the stavrophore (Small Schema) participate in the
monastic tonsure in fullness. By analogy, the deacon and the priest
participate to a degree in the priesthood of the bishop but they are
both lacking various aspects of the fullness of the priesthood that
the bishop has.
Often
one takes a new name at each ceremony. Sometimes one will take a new
name upon becoming a novice, and sometimes one will not take a
name upon becoming a rasophore. Doesn't this make the act of taking a
new name into a formality or obligatory convention?
Taking
a new name indicates a change in state and implies a commitment on
both sides that the person will continue in the monastic state. The
change of name can create problems if a novice with a new name later
returns to the world. If he gets married, under what name? For this
reason it is best if the name is changed only at the time that a
monastic tonsure is done beyond the novitiate. This means that if you
consider the rasophore to be a novice you shouldn’t change the name
but if on both sides you consider the rasophore to be a monk then you
can change the name. It is not obligatory to change the name at the
monastic tonsure but it is understood that if someone is tonsured to
the monastic state with the same name as before then they have made
their old name their new name. This happens.
Then
there's how people view the schema. It seems as if it's a medal or an
award.
This
is unfortunately the case in the Russian jurisdictions. It was the
case also in the Greek jurisdictions until the reform introduced by
Nikodemos the Hagiorite around 1800.
However,
Russian liturgical practice often reflects more ancient Greek
practice. The Russians are liturgically very conservative and much
more loathe to change their liturgical typikon than the Greeks. But
the Russians took their liturgical typikon from the Greeks when
Russia was Christianized (ignoring here the reforms of Patriarch
Nikon in the 16th Century).
We do
not know the origin of the Russian practice of having a Bishop
tonsure the monk to the Great Schema, whether this is a Russian
innovation or something that they took from the Greeks which the
Greeks subsequently changed. The Greeks of course have a priest who
is also a monk of the Great Schema tonsure to the Great Schema. In
Greece it would be considered unseemly for a priest who was not a
monk of the Great Schema to tonsure to the Great Schema. Of course, a
bishop has the fullness of the priesthood and can tonsure to the
Great Schema whether or not he is a monk of the Great Schema.
We
also do not know whether the actual service of the Russian Great
Schema differs in any significant way from the Greek Great Schema
service.
It is
also noteworthy that a Russian Great Schema monk is barred from
ordination to bishop—since he has renounced the world—whereas
current Greek practice is to allow and even to encourage this. It is
historically very rare for a Great Schema monk to be ordained to
bishop in Russia.
The
Russian attitude is that the Great Schema monk is the perfect monk
and should be living a life of prayer in retirement preparing for
death whereas the Small Schema monk is the more active monk.
Silouan
the Athonite was a monk of the Great Schema but Seraphim of Sarov was
only a monk of the Small Schema because, he thought, he was not
worthy of the Great Schema.
The
Greek attitude since the reforms of Nikodemos around 1800 is that the
Great Schema is the normal monastic state; there is no provision for
the Russian ‘super-monk of the Great Schema’. But as we said we
do not know the history of the Russian practice. However current
Greek practice on Mt Athos is to avoid tonsure directly to the Great
Schema (see below for a discussion why). Instead there is an
intermediate stage for a period of years.
There
is a book which provides a historical discussion of the evolution of
the monastic tonsure in the Orthodox Church and a Great Schema
tonsure service from about 1000 AD in the original Greek. The service
is very interesting and significantly different in many respects from
the service found in the Greek Euchologion today. Unfortunately apart
from the texts of the Greek services the book is in Latin since it is
an older Roman PhD dissertation.
The
book is:
Wawryk,
Initiatio
Monastica in Liturgia Byzantina,
Orientalia
Christiana Analecta 180, 1968, Pontifical Institute of Oriental
Studies, Rome.
To
continue:
Are
not all clergy dead to the world?
Well,
let’s hope they’re dead to sin but some of them are married.
Are
not all rasophores committed to virginity?
Depends
on how you understand the rasophore and virginity. If you mean
life-long virginity, then the Church of Greece would disagree since
it will allow rasophores who have left their monastery to be married
in Church. The Abbots of Mt Athos disagree with the Church of Greece
on this.
It
should also be pointed out that virginity is not a requirement of the
tonsure to the monastic state in the Orthodox Church. Indeed,
previous sins of the flesh are not an impediment to the monastic
tonsure. However, all monastics commit themselves to a life of
chastity and celibacy and in the fullness of the monastic tonsure
this chastity and celibacy is vowed with explicit vows.
Doesn't
the word ‘monachos’ mean ‘solitary’?
So?
In the
early days, the schema was given upon first tonsure—there were no
multiple tonsure ceremonies.
The
very early history of monasticism is not that clear on this point.
It’s not even clear if in the beginning there was a formal tonsure
service and if so just what it contained.
Wawryk’s
book mentioned above is a history of the tonsure in the Orthodox
Church but it is written in Latin which makes consulting it
difficult.
One of
the problems of doing research into such a field is that you need
primary documents to give you data about the target period. These
documents are not always available. One work which attempts to remedy
this is a collection of all the Byzantine monastic typika in
English translation. Simon could well study this very large
multi-volume work to learn more about the historical development of
Orthodox monasticism—although the book concerns itself with
Byzantine monasticism and not with Russian monasticism. The book is:
Thomas
& Hero eds, Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents, 1998,
Dumbarton Oaks, Washington DC.
This
book can, we believe, be found on the Internet.
We
even see this more recently in St. Bogolep the child schemamonk.
The
exception is not the norm.
In On
Holy Virginity, St. Augustine defines two categories: the
married man or woman, and the committed virgin.
This
is the basic division of the Gospel. However, Augustine is not
normative for Orthodox monasticism. He is not even normative for
Orthodox theology in general. In the matter of monasticism, Augustine
had no experience of monasticism before becoming Bishop of Hippo and
his monastic rule is
intensely
personal, having no connection to Egyptian practice or to the rules
that were written by monks who had been in Egypt before they arrived
in France. John Cassian comes to mind, but there are also a number of
rules written about the same time in Southern France that reflect a
more Egyptian orientation (see
Les
règles
des
saints pères,
Sources
chrétiennes
297
& 298; see also La
règle
du
maître,
Sources
chrétiennes 105,
106 & 107 and La
règle
de saint Benoît,
Sources
chrétiennes 182
& 183).
He
does not talk about those considering committed virginity.
Just
because Augustine doesn’t discuss the novitiate as a state of life
doesn’t mean that he didn’t recognize that such trial periods in
the monastery existed. But frankly this is not something we have
studied.
However,
while we do not recall the exact history of the novitiate in the
Orthodox Church, we are sure it came to be institutionalized very
early. The novitiate is prescribed in the Long Rules of Basil
the Great (died 379) and Basil is far more normative for Orthodox
monasticism than Augustine. Moreover, the Emperor Justinian
legislated in 535 that the novitiate should last 3 years. While one
might object that this was secular legislation which should not be
binding on the Orthodox Church, we are sure that the Emperor was
merely codifying existing good practice. We are certain he did not
invent the novitiate.
In
part, the monastic novitiate is a scripturally grounded test of the
postulant’s ability to make a life-long commitment to chastity and
celibacy (‘Let him receive this who can...’). While grace
certainly plays a role in the monastic’s ability to lead a life of
chastity, the particular psychological and physical character of the
postulant whether male or female is also very important, and
this—together with the free will of the postulant—is what is
being tested. That is, because the postulant is a man or woman with
free will and who has a certain psychological character and physical
constitution, one cannot simply look inside them to judge what will
happen over the course of their life; it would require a prophetic
revelation. But even prophetic revelation is subject to the free will
of the person being prophesied about, as we learn from Scripture.
Hence, the person is tested before being tonsured because we want to
see what they will do in practice over a period of time.
Moreover,
it should be understood that there are other aspects of the monastic
vocation besides life-long celibacy, notably obedience, stability and
the ability to get along with the other members of the monastic
community, that are being tested in the novitiate. In regard to
interpersonal relations, it should be noted that the vow of obedience
is not just to the Superior but to the Superior and all the members
of the brotherhood.
For
him, it was almost an instant decision before baptism.
We
doubt this; it’s not even a particularly Gospel teaching. The
Gospel teaches us to count the cost. Consider the parable of the king
going out to battle against the king with more troops and the parable
of the man who will build a tower who sits down to calculate what it
will cost.
And in
his Rule, he [Augustine] does not mention the novitiate. All this was
less than 100 years after St. Anthony the Great and over 100 years
before St. Benedict of Nursia.
One
Father, even Augustine, is not normative for the theology of the
Orthodox Church. For Orthodox monasticism, Anthony and Benedict of
Nursia would carry far more weight than Augustine. Benedict does
discuss how to receive postulants.
Basil
the Great died about 20 years before Augustine wrote his rule. Basil
founded his monastery for which he wrote his rule about 45 years
before Augustine wrote his rule. And as we have said, Basil
prescribes a novitiate.
It
would be impossible to maintain a practice of tonsure without the
novitiate in the Church today.
Moreover
tonsure directly to the Great Schema is extremely rare even after the
novitiate. Exceptions have been known, notably at Optina in the 19th
Century and even on Mt Athos today, but these are indeed exceptions
and rather dangerous because of free will.
There
is something similar in ordinations to the priesthood. The Church
forbids ordination directly to bishop although there have been
occasional exceptions. The Church wants a gradual series of
ordinations. The reason is that the grace of the various priestly
ordinations is heavy and the person has to get used to the grace in a
lower order and learn to live with it and handle it before moving on
to the next heavy dose of grace in the higher order. There are also
issues of pride and ego inflation in receiving too much grace too
soon.
It is
similar with the various tonsures to the Great Schema. It is the rare
person who can be tonsured to the Great Schema cold without spiritual
damage. Sometimes such a tonsure is done on the death bed (in part
for the complete forgiveness of sins) but it is well known that if
you do this the person might not die and you have to live with them
afterwards as monks of the Great Schema.
Orthodoxy
is not a system; it is a teaching.
This
is nonsense. The Orthodox Church, dogmatically defined, is the Church
founded by Jesus Christ. The norm of the Orthodox Church is defined
as Tradition. The most relevant remark is that of Lossky, who defined
Tradition as the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church. Hence
what Orthodoxy is, is Tradition, defined as the presence of the Holy
Spirit. This distinguishes Orthodoxy from the western rationalism of
the Catholic Church. (Protestants oscillate between rationalism and
emotionalism.) What Orthodoxy is, the Holy Spirit teaches us after
Baptism, spiritually in our soul. However, the formal teaching of the
Church is defined by the consensus of the Fathers of the Church, who
have been especially illuminated by the Holy Spirit. (We
ignore here the matter of dogmatic decisions of Ecumenical Synods.)
The
system of Orthodoxy is a reflection of that teaching, but many people
seem to think the system at this current time is the only correct and
perfect way to do it.
Well
that’s preferable to people who think that they are ready to change
the last few centuries of Orthodox practice right after entering the
Orthodox Church.
This
is a soft manifestation of Roman development of doctrine
No.
Rather,
perhaps sometimes the system of Orthodoxy becomes skewed (although
not too much), and it is our job to preserve its integrity.
Fix
yourself first. Elder Sophrony (Sakharov) in his book on Silouan the
Athonite discusses the development of a dogmatic consciousness as one
stage of the spiritual growth of the person. What this means is that
as the person grows spiritually, at some point the Holy Spirit
illuminates them so that they have an inner sense or criterion of
theology. Of course this is a prerequisite for a Father of the Church
but in the case of a Father there is much more involved, sometimes
including very deep training in secular philosophy and philology
(Gregory the Theologian, Basil the Great, Gregory Palamas).
My
point is not that the schema or novitiate are wrong. Rather, my point
is that it seems that the Orthodox Church has turned monastic tonsure
from an ontological change into a legal contract in the same way that
the West has done to marriage and pretty much everything else.
This
seems nonsense. While it is possible that you have landed in a rather
formalist jurisdiction, there is much much more to the monastic
tonsure in the Orthodox Church, even today, than a legal contract.
There is the grace of the Holy Spirit.
Am I
alone in this opinion? I'm fairly new in Orthodoxy, but I can't
imagine that I'm the only one who's noticed this. Could you point me
to some further resources?
Simon
Jaguar, future monk
The
second issue that strikes us is Mr Jaguar’s attitude. Anyone
reading over the correspondence will, we think, be struck by Simon’s
inordinate anger. Now it doesn’t bother us that Mr Jaguar is angry
at Orthodox Monk; we are an anonymous blogger and if worst comes to
worst we can block Simon’s email address in our spam blocker and be
done with him. If that doesn’t work we can turn off our computer.
However,
we think that Simon’s anger isn’t a one-off directed at Orthodox
Monk. In fact we think it is quite the opposite: we think that this
is how Simon is in general with the people around him. His behaviour
strikes us as consistent with his being a disturbed high-school
student; if Simon is much older than high-school student age, then so
much the worse: something is definitely wrong.
One
issue we wonder about is how with this sort of anger Simon can go to
communion. Not only is such anger monastically depraved but it isn’t
even acceptable in the Gospel for a lay person. Now we are not saying
this to bash Simon but to lay things out in clarity for Simon and for
our other readers. Simon should bear in mind that we wanted to avoid
dealing with his email, giving him only a summary opinion and asking
him to leave us alone. He insisted, however, and we have given our
opinion worthless as it is.
To our
mind one of the major issues with this anger is its origin. Simon
mentions that he was a member of a fundamentalist Protestant church
and we, Orthodox Monk, have seen such anger among fundamentalist
Protestants: the street preacher who hates the people to whom he is
preaching is an example. This is a Protestantism that is powered by a
spirit of anger.
It is
possible in our view that Simon was immersed in such a Protestantism
and then converted to Orthodoxy. We wonder, however, if this is
indeed the case, why Simon retained this spirit. How was he received
into the Orthodox Church? As we learn from Diadochos of Photiki in
the Gnostic Chapters, Orthodox baptism drives all the demons
out of the inner spirit (nous) of man and replaces them with
the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is a Spirit of meekness and
love. Was Simon received into Orthodoxy by baptism? If not, he should
consult either with the monks on Mt Athos or with a jurisdiction that
receives by baptism.
If
Simon was received by baptism, did he make a sincere and humble
confession of all his sins at the time of his baptism? Baptism only
works if such a full confession is made; if sins are hidden then the
baptism doesn’t work, presumably until the hidden sins are
confessed.
But if
Simon has made such a clear confession and that isn’t the problem,
is it sin after baptism that has led to this condition? That is
possible since we can certainly sin after baptism. In this case there
is a need for repentance and confession—and reconciliation to the
people around him by Simon (he can leave us out as having forgiven
him).
Is it
something biochemical? This is always possible but we are not
psychiatrists to give such a diagnosis, and certainly not over the
Internet.
Is it
something psychological, having to do with the circumstances of
Simon’s early childhood? We only know what’s in Simon’s emails
and we have no idea.
However,
what is clear is that Simon is going to have to do something about
this anger. Not only is such anger a serious impediment to a monastic
vocation until it is overcome both spiritually, morally and
psychologically, but it is also against the Gospel. In such cases,
the priest, we think, would want to see evidence of a serious—and
we mean serious—effort to overcome this habitual anger before
allowing communion. But we are not Simon’s priest; he should be
discussing this blog post with his confessor in a very serious way.
There
is another aspect of Simon’s emails that we wish to address.
Although Simon is a recent convert to Orthodoxy he wishes to purify
the last few centuries of Orthodox practice. He signs his email
‘future monk’. He seems to be implying that he has found a
precedent in Augustine that he can become a monk directly without
going through a novitiate. Moreover, he insists that we give reasoned
replies to his arguments.
These
positions speak of great pride. First of all, as John of Sinai
remarks somewhere in the Ladder of Divine Ascent, anyone who
insists on their opinion is sick with the Devil’s disease. That of
course is pride. Indeed, apart from any issues of Simon’s anger,
any Abbot with any sense who encountered Simon in his present
condition would, judging from Simon’s email correspondence to us,
get rid of Simon in a very short time. The Abbot would be unleashing
a terror on the Orthodox Church if he kept Simon and tonsured him—to
whatever rank of the monastic state. Indeed, in our opinion any Abbot
who didn’t immediately get rid of Simon would be of very
questionable judgement, an Abbot that we would recommend against,
even for Simon: Simon, we go to the monastery to learn, not to teach
the Abbot what the proper practice of the Church should be. In your
present condition it’s impossible for you to become a monk—you
have to fix your basic Gospel orientation—but even after you
rectify your basic Gospel orientation and still want to become a
monk, you are going to need a sound Abbot who isn’t going to put up
with your anger and pride. Again, there is material on this in the
Ladder. If we recall correctly, a novice with great pride was
sent permanently to the gate of the monastery to make prostrations to
all persons entering and leaving the monastery, asking them to pray
for him since he was an epileptic (demoniac). This went on for
something like 17 years. The man died a novice.
We
strongly recommend that Simon read the Ladder. We recommend
the translation by Lazarus Moore published by Holy Transfiguration
Monastery. We have the impression that it is out of print so he will
have to search for it. We do not recommend the other translation,
although that translation has a good introduction by Metropolitan
Kallistos (Ware). The introduction to the Moore translation isn’t
by Moore and is not up to the level of Moore’s translation.
Is
Simon a hopeless case for monasticism? In his present condition, yes.
Can he change? Yes. But he has to realize that he’s on the wrong
road and repent. He will have to do serious work with his priest.
Another
aspect of Simon’s emails that struck us was his inability or
unwillingness to read exactly what we wrote. We are a careful writer
although somewhat recondite and normally we speak with precision.
Simon
misquoted us on our statement, ‘Your attitude suggests that you are
far from a monastic in spirit and that you will have serious
difficulties.’
Simon
played this back to us as: ‘You cannot know whether I am ‘far
from a monastic spirit’ and that I have an ‘attitude’ just
because I see an inconsistency in sacramental theology.’ This is
not exactly what we said.
Moreover,
Simon obviously didn’t read our posts carefully because he
completely misses our intention to reply in detail in due course
(despite our disinclination to do so).
We are
emphasizing these things because we fear that Simon will not take the
time to read this post carefully and to make a serious effort to
understand what exactly it is we are saying. This creates two
problems. The first problem is that we don’t want to engage in a
slanging match with Simon, especially about things that Simon has
misinterpreted. (Leave us alone, Simon. No one knows who you are.)
The
second problem that we fear
is
that Simon will have interior pre-existing psychological states and
feelings triggered by what he thinks he is reading in our post,
things with no foundation in what we’ve written in our post. In
other words, just as Simon’s habitual anger was triggered by our
response even though our response did not warrant such anger, we fear
that Simon will have other psychological reactions triggered by this
post that are not warranted by the content of the post.
To be
clear what our message is, then, we are saying, Simon, that in your
present condition you are not suitable for the monastic state. We are
also holding out the hope that in the future you might be suitable
for the monastic state if you do a lot a work on your anger, pride
and inability to hear what the other person is saying. This is
something you should discuss in detail with your priest. Don’t
listen to your thoughts; they are confusing you. Print this post out
and take it to your priest. Have him read it. Discuss it with him. If
he tells you that we, Orthodox Monk, ‘don't know crap about what …
[we] believe and aren't interested in rhetoric,’ well we agree and
that’s a good reason for you to leave us alone and go your way.
