More on the Married Man Becoming a Monk

We received a comment on our post Can a Divorced Man Become an Orthodox Monk? from N.  F. Perry. Ordinarily we anonymize the identity of inquirers but Mr Perry has used his own personal identity in the comment posing his question and we cannot anonymize it. Moreover Mr Perry is something of a public figure. Mr Perry’s comment is this:

Seems good and clear advice. My own question is: if my marriage (recognized under civil law of UK) in church has not been registered with any diocese, can I become a monk without obtaining a civil divorce but with the consent of my wife? Would appreciate very much your observation on this situation from the point of view of Orthodox canon law.

This is a somewhat perplexing question. Mr Perry is originally from the UK. That suggests to us that his marriage was originally in the Anglican Church. However, he seems to be saying, his marriage, although recognized under the civil laws of the UK—so that under UK law Mr Perry and his wife are married—has not been registered with any (Anglican?) diocese despite the fact of having taken place in a church (presumably Anglican). Under these circumstances, Mr Perry wishes to know, can he become a monk without getting a divorce, merely with the consent of his wife?

First of all we, Orthodox Monk, are not Orthodox canon lawyers or in any way experts in Orthodox canon law. Moreover we are not a secular lawyer anywhere. We can only speculate.

Next, we assume that Mr Perry wishes to become a monk in the Orthodox Church. His biography says that he lived for a time in a monastery in Crete; such a monastery would ordinarily be Orthodox, Crete being an island that is part of Greece, where Orthodoxy is the state religion. Mr Perry has also published a novel about Mt Athos but we have no idea how much time Mr Perry spent on Mt Athos and the state of his relations with the monks of Mt Athos.

Mr Perry lives, or has been living, on a property in Chile. We have no idea if the Orthodox Church is represented in Chile. Chile is a country where the dominant religion would be Roman Catholicism, although we imagine that there is a certain amount of religious pluralism and even outright atheism. Moreover we have absolutely no idea of Chilean law. So the issue arises of the disposal of the property in Chile—and any other property in any other country—in the context of Mr Perry’s entry into a monastery.

We assume that Mr Perry is still a citizen of the UK. We have no idea of Mr Perry’s status in Chile. Has he become a citizen? Is he a legal resident of Chile? How does the Chilean state view his status under Chilean law and especially the status of the property he is living on in Chile? How will Chilean law view a legal separation between Mr Perry and his wife executed in the UK (see below)? We don’t know.

Let’s make some basic observations. You can’t become a monk in the Orthodox Church unless you are Orthodox. Somewhere along the line Mr Perry has converted to the Orthodox Church or will convert to the Orthodox Church. If Mr Perry has not converted and does not intend to convert to the Orthodox Church we can say nothing since only a member of the Orthodox Church can become an Orthodox monk. If as a non-member of the Orthodox Church he wished to take up his abode in an Orthodox monastery that would depend on the discretion of the Abbot and the local bishop; however the situation would be unusual because a non-member of the Orthodox Church could not receive the sacraments of the Orthodox Church, including monastic tonsure.

Next, the question arises of the status of Mr Perry’s marriage in the Anglican Church. Is it recognized as a marriage by the Anglican Church? Mr Perry says that he was married in church but the marriage was not registered with any diocese. Mr Perry would have to ask an Anglican canon lawyer or bishop whether he is married in the eyes of the Anglican Church. We have no idea. This is outside the realm of our expertise.

Next, let’s suppose that Mr Perry has converted or is going to convert to the Orthodox Church. The place where he converts would have an approach to his Anglican marriage, whether the Orthodox Church recognized that marriage or not. On this question Mr Perry would have to ask the people who were receiving him formally into the Orthodox Church, or if he has been Orthodox for some time, the monastery where he wished to become a monk. This is a matter that has to be analyzed concretely in the context of specific places and specific people where Mr Perry is going to become a member of the Orthodox Church and/or an Orthodox monk.

In the Orthodox Church you have to become a monk somewhere. There must be a specific monastery that you become a monk in. That means that there are specific people—the Abbot, the Council of Elders, the local Orthodox Bishop—who must be persuaded that they want to make you a monk in their monastery. Now it is possible that Mr Perry could become a monk in a monastery in Crete and be sent back to his property in Chile to live while still depending ecclesiastically on the monastery where he became a monk, but that is something the monastic authorities enumerated above would have to agree to.

While we understand that Orthodox canon law views monastic tonsure as dissolving the marriage and while we think that in Greece in the Church of Greece or even in a monastery on Mt Athos a signed consent of the wife to the husband becoming a monk would be sufficient for the ecclesiastical authorities if the parties to the marriage were both Greek and Orthodox, we think that the ecclesiastical authorities would still want some formal disposition of the property involved in the marriage. However, the situation is far more complicated in the case of Mr Perry as we have discussed above.

With the above caveats, therefore, we think that the approach would or should be this. Mr Perry has to go with his wife to a lawyer in the UK to arrange a legally binding agreement with his wife that they will be permanently separated until death. This agreement will stipulate that Mr Perry intends to become a monk in an Orthodox monastery and that Mr Perry’s wife agrees with that decision. We are taking the view that a mere written consent of the wife to Mr Perry becoming an Orthodox monk would be too weak given all the complications enumerated above. The concrete Orthodox ecclesiastical authorities with whom Mr Perry was working might disagree and accept a simple written consent of the wife. We would stand corrected. The UK legal agreement would stipulate the terms of the permanent separation with regard to any legal issue that might exist especially concerning the disposition of any property belonging to one or the other party to the marriage and any property held in common.

The UK lawyer would have to establish that the agreement would be recognized to the extent necessary under Chilean law. If for some reason the Chilean state did not recognize the UK separation agreement, then something would have to be worked out under Chilean law for the disposition of property in Chile—and we suppose for the separation itself. Conceivably the property in Chile would have to be sold and Mr Perry might have to leave Chile because of legal issues, we don’t know.

At the same time that Mr Perry and his wife are working on a legal separation in the UK, Mr Perry would be discussing with the concrete Orthodox authorities in the place where he intends to become a member of the Orthodox Church and/or an Orthodox monk how those Orthodox ecclesiastical authorities will view his UK separation agreement with his wife. We would think that if the Orthodox ecclesiastical authorities were confident that the UK separation agreement was valid in law both in the UK and in their own legal jurisdiction then they would be satisfied that Mr Perry could become a monk in the Orthodox Church, assuming that all other issues had been taken care of.

The Obligations of the Monastic to their Parents

We have received an email from someone who poses the question of the responsibility of the monastic towards their parents in the light of Mark, 7, 9 – 13. This person—let us call her Euthymia, after St Euthymius the Great—poses her question in the context of our post Is a Rasophore a Monk or a Novice? We received Euthymia’s permission to quote her email and discuss it. Here it is:

Dear Orthodox Monk,

I ask for your blessings and prayers. Thank you for maintaining such an interesting blog.

My question has to do with the penultimate paragraph of the post:

“Rasophore monk Seraphim raises the issue of possible legitimate reasons to return to the world—aged parents and so on. These things are pretexts since on the one hand they would have been discussed with the Abbot before the tonsure and directions given; and, on the other hand, the monk has no obligations to those in the world such as Rasophore Monk Seraphim describes. For example, when a married man becomes a monk, under canon law the marriage is automatically dissolved. So the monk is free of such worldly obligations; indeed they must be seen as temptations of the Devil to return him to the world.”

The Lord's teaching in Mark 7,9 – 13, in the situation of a monk or nun whose parents are in need, seems to imply that the monk or nun in question is required to do whatever is necessary to care for the parents. This principle might be stretched to cover other situations. How can one offer one's life as a sacrifice to the Lord via a sinful means—by neglecting love and responsibility to one’s family? I am curious to know how the Orthodox interpret such passages. Say, for the sake of argument, that the parents of the monk or nun fell into unforeseen need after their child was already tonsured. Is it true that “the monk has no obligations to those in the world” in such a case?

For the sake of disclosure, I am not dealing with such a situation; I’m just curious. This passage has always been fascinating and challenging to me.

In Christ,

Euthymia

Let us start with the passage in question:

And he said to them: Well you displace the commandment of God so as to keep your tradition. For Moses said, “Honour your father and your mother;” and “He who speaks ill to father or mother, let him die by execution.” But you say, “If a man say to father or mother, that of mine which would benefit you is ‘Corban’ (which is to say ‘gift’),” then you no longer allow him to do anything for his father or mother, invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have transmitted; and many other such things do you do. (Mark 7, 9 – 13).

Let us clarify the basic meaning of the passage. The Pharisees maintained certain oral traditions in addition to the Mosaic Law. In the case at hand, the Pharisees have complained to the Lord that his disciples have eaten with unwashed hands, something according to the Pharisee’s tradition the disciples should not have done. The Lord replies by commenting on a particular tradition of the Pharisees. That tradition is that if someone says that some property or possession of his is dedicated to God (this is the meaning of ‘Corban’) then that person’s parents no longer have the right to be benefited by that property or possession in accordance with the commandment of Moses.

Euthymia’s question is how this passage bears on our remark to Seraphim that the Orthodox monastic leaves his parents behind. Let us turn to some basics on the monastic vocation.

First of all, a monastic vocation is a call from God. It is not human. It is not something I decide to do because I don’t want to get married, because I want to dissolve a marriage, because I want to evade my responsibilities in the world. The most basic passage concerning the monastic vocation is Matthew 19, 10 – 19:

But I say to you that he who dismisses his wife, except on the grounds of adultery, and marries another, commits adultery. And if she who has been dismissed marries, she commits adultery. His disciples said to him, If such is the cause of a man with his wife, it is not profitable to marry. But he said to them, Not all can contain this word but only those to whom it is given; and there are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother’s womb and there are eunuchs who were castrated by men and there are eunuchs who have castrated themselves for the Kingdom of the Heavens. He who is able to contain this word, let him contain it.

We discuss the monastic vocation in greater detail in Questions about Orthodox Monasticism and The Monastic Vocation and we would recommend that Euthymia read those two posts before continuing.

Now there are other passages in the Gospel that discuss the relation of Jesus’ disciple to the disciple’s parents. In Luke, 18, 20 – 21, Jesus says that his mother and brothers are those that hear the word of God and do it. In Matthew 10, 37 – 38, Jesus says that he who loves father or mother more than him is not worthy of him and he who does not take up his cross and follow Jesus is not worthy of Jesus.

Part of the monastic calling is the renunciation of the world, including the family. In other words, in its classic form, monasticism is a radical renunciation in order to respond to Jesus’ call to love Jesus and him only, the monastic taking up their cross and following Jesus to the exclusion of all else. It is in this context that the Church has understood Matthew 19, 16 – 22 where Jesus counsels the rich young man, if he wishes to be perfect (and not just to be saved), to sell all that he has and give to the poor, and to come follow Jesus.

What can be inferred is that if someone has a divine calling to the monastic state, then that calling supersedes love of parents. This can be seen in the historical record. In the Pachomian monasteries, St Theodore the Sanctified refuses to see his mother who has come with a letter from the bishop. There are many other such cases.

In the Ladder of Divine Ascent, St John of Sinai discusses the temptation to the postulant arising from their love for (or attachment to) their family. John is clear that a fundamental part of the monastic vocation is renunciation of family. (In this, we would suggest that Euthymia read Steps 1 and 2 of the Ladder in the Lazarus Moore translation, published by Holy Transfiguration Monastery.)

While Sinaite monasticism is not strictly the same as Egyptian monasticism, on this point the two traditions agree. This is important since to a very great extent Egyptian monasticism became the dominant form of monasticism in the Orthodox Church.

However, we would also suggest that Euthymia read all of the ascetical works of St Basil the Great, which constitute a somewhat different tradition in the Orthodox Church. We would think that the relations between the monastic and the monastic’s parents would have a somewhat different treatment in Basil’s ascetical works, especially the Short Rules.

Next, depending on the tradition within which Euthymia is situated ecclesiastically, there will have been different historical evolutions of these basic ascetical traditions. By which we mean that if Euthymia were to enter say a Russian monastery whether in Russia or outside Russia she would encounter a somewhat different attitude to renunciation of one’s family than in say a strict Greek monastery. In this regard it behooves Euthymia to study the historical evolution of monasticism in the jurisdiction in which she is situated. Two good ways to do this are the monastic typika (plural of typikon; the monastic typikon is not the liturgical rule but the organizational rule of the monastery) in her tradition and the lives of the saints in her tradition. Euthymia should consider, for the Byzantine tradition, looking at the complete collection of translated monastic typika in the Byzantine tradition published free online by Dumbarton Oaks. She should also seek out the best translations of the best texts of the lives of the saints—preferably those written by an immediate disciple. Dumbarton Oaks publishes online a free set of 10 lives of woman saints in the Byzantine Tradition and also free the very important life of St Lazaros of Mt Galesion. Also relevant would be the Sayings of the Desert Fathers but the offerings in English are minimal, the best work having been done by French Catholic scholars and published in Latin or Greek with French translation in Sources Chrétiennes.

We would also suggest that Euthymia spend some time in a good woman’s monastery in the home country of her jurisdiction in order to discuss these matters with the nuns and perhaps the Abbess, so that Euthymia can understand how her jurisdiction at its best understands these issues. In this regard we might remark that monasticism in the Orthodox diaspora is not always in its ideal condition.

Reply to a Comment

A reader has posted a comment on our post, Comments on the Vows of the Tonsure to the Great Schema. We tried to reply with a comment but for some reason it doesn’t work. Here’s our reply:

A married man can become a monk but by becoming a monk he dissolves the marriage in the eyes of the Church. However, the secular authorities would probably not recognize his action as dissolving the marriage. He would therefore at the least be liable for whatever actions and penalties under the secular law someone who had abandoned his wife and children would be liable to. However he himself would be bound to celibacy for the rest of his life.

In Greece in the 19th Century, the Government under the Bavarian King's Protestant advisors attacked Greek Orthodox monasticism forcing many monks and nuns to marry—but this was a persecution of the Church.

The only instance of married monks is in Japan where in the 19th Century, if we remember correctly, the Meiji Dynasty forced Buddhist monks to be married by law. This of course is a contradiction in terms for a Buddhist monk. There are even today married Buddhist monks, and even married Buddhist Abbots, in Japan. We have no information on how they live with their wives.

Return to the Blog

We just wanted to let our readers know that having finished our project we are back on the blog.

Someone has submitted a comment to Medical Aspects of the Monastic Vocation. We do not wish to publish it in full. In part it reads:

The late … in … suffered from bi-polar disorder. Much of her … [work was] produced during her manic periods, because she either did not or could not take the proper medication. And don't forget St. Pimen the Sickly of the Kievan Caves, a bed-bound invalid, who was miraculously tonsured by the Holy Angels themselves. The State Church of Greece, unless I am mistaken, has provision for women to be tonsured as nuns and maintain their own residences and livings. …

We will comment on this in a separate post.

In addition we would like to ask how many of our readers would be interested in a full, formatted print-out of the blog. Please let us know in a comment.

—Orthodox Monk

Medical Aspects of the Monastic Vocation

We have received a very interesting email from a woman we shall call ‘Sarah Jean’. Here is the email, with some of the details altered:

Dear Orthodox Monk:

I just started reading your blog, and have enjoyed it immensely. I was just writing because I have a question.

I am interested in becoming an Orthodox nun one day, but I have a health condition. This condition does not keep me from leading a normal life, but I have to take medication for it. Because of this, I am going to have to have health insurance. I was just wondering if I even have a chance of being considered for the monastic life.

Thank you for everything.

Sincerely,

Sarah

The issue here is whether a pre-existing medical condition might prevent Sarah or anyone else from joining an Orthodox monastery.

There are a number of aspects to this question. The first is the economic issue of whether Sarah Jean can expect to be accepted into an Orthodox monastery in the United States when she has a pre-existing condition that requires medical insurance—obviously because someone has to pay for the medication that she will have to take for the rest of her life.

This is part of a broader issue. Let us suppose that we screen random young men or women in the population for pre-existing ailments, removing those who have them so that we are left with 100 healthy young men or women. Now let us put them into a monastery of monks or nuns as the case may be for the rest of their lives. Obviously some of these healthy young men and women are going to fall sick over their lifetimes. They might have dental problems. They might have a hidden ailment that is genetically based that comes to light after 20 years in the monastery. They might get cancer. They might have an accident in a workshop or in a car. They might get mentally ill. Any number of things can and might happen. So what then?

Should the monastery accept postulants and make them monks or nuns for only as long as they are healthy, expelling them if they get sick? Should the monastery demand that each postulant have enough money to purchase medical insurance for the rest of their life before they enter the monastery? Obviously not. Clearly the monastery has to make some provision for the medical and dental care of its monks or nuns. This can range from private medical insurance to self-insurance (i.e. the monastery is wealthy enough to pay its monastics’ medical bills out of pocket) to government medical insurance in those countries that have such a thing. So the clever postulant would inquire what the policy is of the monastery that they are thinking of entering concerning medical issues.

Now we can see that Sarah Jean must necessarily ask about such a thing even if she isn’t clever at all—she needs medication every day and someone has to pay for it.

Now every monastery is different and every monastery will have a formal or informal policy on the matter. It seems to us that just as the monastery will want to know about each postulant’s medical history each postulant will want to know about the monastery’s policy on medical and dental treatment. Only the foolish, naïve postulant will accept an answer that God provides or similar handwaving.

Now, as far as we know Sarah Jean is thinking of joining a monastery in the United States. We frankly don’t understand Obamacare and its ramifications for the medical treatment of monks or nuns on a lifetime basis. This is not because we have a political position. Rather, just as a practical matter we don’t know what the implications of Obamacare are on this point. We do know that some countries have cradle-to-grave medical care for citizens and perhaps even for legal residents of the country who are not citizens. Certainly Sarah Jean could join a monastery in a country in which the state would cover her medical expenses for the rest of her life, assuming that Sarah Jean was happy with the country and the monastery and could integrate into the culture of the country; and both the monastery and the country were happy with Sarah Jean. St John of Sinai recommends ‘exile’—living in a foreign country as part of the monastic vocation—but not everyone is capable of doing that or even willing to do it.

This is something that Sarah Jean will have to discuss with the monastery she is thinking of joining. For to become a nun, Sarah Jean will have to join a specific monastery; there’s no other way to become a nun.  Same for becoming a monk.

So this is the economic dimension.

Now there is another dimension. That is the impact of a pre-existing medical condition on the potential monastic vocation. This is a delicate matter and we do not want to offend anyone. There is a broad spectrum of pre-existing conditions that a person might have. Some of them are purely physical but some of them involve genetically-based emotional disorders. In general, a medical condition that allows a person to live normally if the proper medication is taken should not affect a monastic vocation. However, it should be understood that the monastic vocation is a struggle towards perfection and therefore inherently more stressful than married life in the world. Hence given the specific medical condition that Sarah Jean has (and we have no idea what it is) one would have to assess the effect of the monastic life on the potential evolution of the condition.

One can see that simple physical problems—let us say that the body does not produce a certain enzyme and the person has to take the enzyme orally—should have minimal effect on the vocation.

However, because of the stress inherent in the monastic vocation complex emotional problems might have a very serious evolution were the person to become a monastic, so much so that major mental illness is normally considered to be a natural impediment to the monastic vocation.

In the middle are more complex physical ailments such as type 1 diabetes, which requires constant medical monitoring and which has serious ramifications both for the physical and for the mental wellbeing of the person suffering from it. That is, while the person suffering from type 1 diabetes might well be able to carry on a successful professional career, their lives are by no means simple and it is not at all obvious that they would be able to become a monastic. In these middle cases, the monastery would have to make a discernment whether it was the will of God for the person to undertake a monastic vocation and whether it was the will of God for the person to undertake the monastic vocation in that monastery. Two different questions. In our example of type 1 diabetes, it might be that the person has a vocation but to a specific monastery where their condition can for some reason easily be monitored—maybe the monastery is next door to the local diabetes clinic.

Also in the middle are complex neurological conditions.

In thinking about this issue of pre-existing conditions, one should also consider the following. Going back to our hypothetical example of 100 postulants who are perfectly healthy, assuming that they were all to become monastics in our hypothetical monastery, some of them will develop a condition where they no longer produce a certain enzyme and have to take the enzyme the rest of their lives; some of them will develop major mental illness; and some of them will develop if not type 1 diabetes, then type 2 diabetes, which can be just as difficult to manage as type 1 diabetes. Moreover, some of the 100 postulants will ultimately develop neurological illness, whether Alzheimer’s or multiple sclerosis or whatever.

So from the point of view of the monastery there has to be the possibility of caring for these people who started off healthy but no longer are healthy across the full spectrum of possible medical conditions. This is both economic and spiritual. In other words it’s not just a matter of paying for these persons’ medical care, but of being able to care for these people emotionally and spiritually within the confines of the monastery.

Finally, in considering a vocation the monastery has to consider the following. What is going to be the effect on the rest of the monastic community if the person under consideration is accepted? Let us take the obvious case to see what we mean. Let us suppose that we accept someone who is medicated for serious mental illness into the monastery. Is the monastery resilient enough to accept the stress of the entry of that person into the monastery without excessive distortion of the monastery’s social system? A monastery is not a refuge; it is a wrestling arena for healthy people to strive for perfection. Hence if the monastery is large and robust, it might conceivably be able to accept such a person into the monastery without a distortion of its fundamental purpose. However, if the monastery is not so large or not so robust, acceptance of such a person might distort the social system of the monastery so much that the monastery no longer meets its primary objective of providing a wrestling arena for healthy people to achieve spiritual perfection. In such a case, there is going to be a crisis in the monastery because the serious spiritual seekers will be disappointed and leave. This model analysis applies to all medical conditions from the simplest and mildest to the most extreme.

So to summarize:

1. There is an economic issue which has to be discussed with the monastery.

2. There is the issue that the monastery has to care both economically and spiritually for its members who fall ill on the road of life. A monastery which didn’t wouldn’t be worth joining.

3. There is the issue of whether the person entering with a pre-existing medical condition can reasonably be expected to live a serious monastic life given the particular stresses of such a life.

4. There is the issue of whether the monastery is resilient enough to accept the person with their medical condition without excessive distortion of the monastery’s primary goal of seeking after spiritual perfection.

We would suggest that Sarah Jean discuss the above with her doctor, her confessor and any monastery she is considering joining. As we said, we have absolutely no idea what Sarah Jean’s condition is; we are just trying to give a comprehensive analysis of the issues. We wish Sarah Jean well.

Question Time

Someone has sent us a question. In full the email reads: 

Where ru a monk 

Answer in full: 

Here

Prelest and Positive Thinking

Those of our readers who want to know why we’ve been silent may be pleased to see that we have taken time off from our current time-consuming project to answer an email we have just received.  There are a number of other emails that are in the queue but we have been too busy to deal with them.  We hope to get to them in due time.

Someone, let us call her ‘Martha’, has written to us.  We replied to her as follows:

Our policy is only to answer emails publicly on the blog.  We remove all information that could be used to identify you.  We also edit for clarity and style.  Is this acceptable to you?

To which Martha replied:

Sure, as long as you keep my identity private!  Thank you!

Here is Martha’s email, extensively edited for clarity:

Hi Orthodox Monk,

I’m curious to know why you guys are promoting the ‘positive thinking’ idea that your neo-elders are teaching.  Such as in the books

Elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain

The Gurus, the Young Man and Elder Paisios

and the book Wounded by Love.

These teachings are nothing more than ‘New-Age’ and ‘Occult’ terminologies as well as practices!  They have never before been used by true orthodox elders and none of the holy fathers spoke about such things nor are they found anywhere in the Holy Bible.  To me this indicates that Orthodox Christianity is being blended in with the Occult, and thus slowly taken us away from God.  Are we not supposed to trust God in all matters?  Not our own self, and our positive or negative thoughts, given us through our own man-made power?  To attract this or that from energies or within ourselves (a power or energy that we do not possess) yet Elder Paisios claims that we do.  This is a demonic and completely un-Orthodox teaching!!!

Are these new elders in prelest?  Maybe you could shed some light as to why it is not only being promoted but encouraged for spiritual enlightenment.

And while we’re on the topic of enlightenment, here is my next question: why and how do all of Elder Ephraim’s Abbots and Abbesses obtain the gift of clairvoyance so easily?  Isn’t this supposed to be given (maybe) only to those who have accomplished great ascetic struggles in extreme humility, and only if God wills?  Not every elder obtains all the holy gifts or even seeks them, yet the Ephraim monastics work in a way opposite to this.  This is the exact same way that the Charismatic Protestant movement goes about obtaining the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Anyway I didn’t mean to upset anyone; I’m only inquiring so as to obtain true answers and knowledge for myself (I hope in fact that you are a real monk).

Asking you to please keep my identity private.

Thank you, and waiting for your response.

Martha

Let us take the issues one by one.

First we didn’t realize that we, Orthodox Monk, were promoting the ‘positive thinking’ that is found in the books that Martha lists.  Also we didn’t realize that we were promoting the ‘neo-elders’ that Martha speaks about.  Indeed, as near as we can make out we have made a serious effort over the years not to promote or to denigrate one or another elder.  Guess we weren’t as careful as we thought we were.

Now, let us run through these books to make sure that we’re all on the same page.  The first book, Elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain, was written by Hieromonk Christodoulos who at the time he knew Elder Paisios was a monk at the Monastery of Koutloumousiou, a short walk from Elder Paisios’ cell or house.  We understand that Hieromonk Christodoulos met with Elder Paisios a number of times and that he took notes of his conversations as soon as he returned to Koutloumousiou after speaking with the Elder.  Our friend George who knows far more about Mt Athos than we do says that the conversations that Hieromonk Christodoulos presents ‘ring true’ as presenting the real Elder Paisios.  We ourselves have not read the next book,  The Gurus, the Young Man and Elder Paisios, and have no comment on it.

The third book, Wounded by Love, is the English translation of an early edition of a book called in Greek Bios kai Logoi.  That book came about as follows.  Elder Porphyrios permitted two of his disciples, now nuns, to record a number of conversations with him.  The transcripts of those conversations became the book in question.  So the book is really just the transcripts of a number of conversations or discourses of Elder Porphyrios with two of his disciples.  It is not a ‘set-piece’ theological work by the Elder.

We will discuss Elder Paisios, Elder Porphyrios and Elder Ephraim separately.

Now the first point to make is that Elder Paisios wrote a number of books himself, which are to be found in English translation.  It might be useful for Martha to find these books and read them so as to get direct from the horse’s mouth what Elder Paisios thought and taught.  Here is a list of those books (all available in English):

Saint Arsenios the Cappadocian

Elder Hadji-Georgis the Athonite

Athonite Fathers and Athonite Matters

Epistles

These books are published by the Holy Hesychasterion of St John the Theologian, Souroti, Greece.  That is where Elder Paisios was buried in accordance with his own wishes.

There is also a series of books published by the Holy Hesychasterion of St John the Theologian that have been constructed after the Elder’s death by assembling on a thematic basis notes and recordings of sayings by Elder Paisios collected by the nuns of the Hesychasterion, who are the Elder’s disciples and formal literary executors.  While these books are certainly of some weight in understanding Elder Paisios’ teaching, they would rank second to the books actually written and edited by Elder Paisios while he was alive.  The volumes presently published are (all available in English unless otherwise noted):

Spiritual Counsels 1: With Pain and Love for Contemporary Man

Spiritual Counsels 2: Spiritual Awakening

Spiritual Counsels 3: Spiritual Struggle

Spiritual Counsels 4: Family Life

Spiritual Counsels 5: Passions and Virtues (not translated)

In the third rank would be books written by someone who knew Elder Paisios and decided to write a book about him.  Elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain by Hieromonk Christodoulos, discussed above, would belong to this category.  Among such books, the best in our opinion is the one by Elder Isaac called Elder Paisios of Mount Athos.  Elder Isaac, since deceased, was a personal disciple of Elder Paisios.

It should be noted that when we recommend a book, we recommend it in the original language.  We have no opinion one way or another on the quality of a translation.  A translation is an interpretation of the author’s meaning, and in the case of a group translation, an interpretation by a committee.

Now let us begin with Martha’s criticisms, as near as we can make them out.  First of all, we were rather surprised to be taxed with teaching the doctrine of Elder Paisios on positive and negative thoughts.  We didn’t think we had addressed the issue.  Be that as it may, we understand Elder Paisios’ teaching to be as follows.  A monk or nun or layperson would come to Elder Paisios and express dissatisfaction with their elder, their abbot, their abbess, their spouse, their children, their parents, their job and so on.  Often, we imagine—we weren’t there—these people would be depressed and would want to ‘vent’.  Forgive us, Martha, but your remarks seem similar.  Now what Elder Paisios would say—as we understand it!—to these people is that they were allowing themselves to be swept up in negative thoughts.  What they should do, Elder Paisios would say, was concentrate on positive thoughts.

Martha thinks this is wrong, New-Age and Occult if we understand her correctly.  Certainly not to be found among the elders of old and not to be found in Scripture.

The basis of Elder Paisios’ teaching is to be found in a tradition in the Philokalia that goes back to very early times.  The great systematizer of this method as it entered into the Orthodox Hesychastic tradition is Evagrius Ponticus (344 – 399) but the method is also found in Neilus of Ankara (died 430) and Mark the Ascetic (5^th Century), of whose works it was said, ‘Sell everything and buy Mark.’  The method is referenced in Diadochos of Photiki (5^th Century) and other writers of the period; the fullest discussion is perhaps to be found in the Ladder of Divine Ascent by John of Sinai (7^th Century).  It is an integral part of the Hesychastic program of Hesychius of the Burning Bush (8^th Century).  It is referenced by the Gregory Palamas (14^th Century).  So the foundation of what Elder Paisios is saying is certainly Orthodox and certainly taught by some very big names in Orthodox spirituality.

In brief what these authors discuss is the genesis of an impassioned thought in the mind.  Normally the cause of such an impassioned thought is a temptation by a demon, although Evagrius for example recognizes that people can quite often get on with a tempting thought without a demon on the basis of their own emotional tendencies to sin.  One of the demons is specialized for sowing thoughts of sorrow (depression) but there are other demons of envy, malice, rancour and so on.  And the demons would have no work if we didn’t have emotional tendencies to sin that corresponded to their specialties.

The best treatment of the emotional tendencies to sin and the evolution of a tempting thought is found in the Ladder of Divine Ascent.  John of Sinai’s treatment is largely based on Evagrius although he produces a much more refined analysis.

So basically what Elder Paisios was saying to these people is that they were allowing themselves to engage with tempting thoughts sown by a demon or by their own emotional tendencies to sin.  Since that was not healthy and interfering with these peoples’ lives, better for them to make an effort to think positive thoughts instead of the negative thoughts sown by a demon, their own passions or even on account of some biochemical imbalance.  (Since Elder Paisios on occasion sent people to see a secular psychiatrist he would surely have recognized the possibility that there might be an organic issue that needed medical attention.)

We ourselves would remark that there are people who always look on the dark side, always focusing on what can go wrong.  There are also people who always look on the bright side—the personal executioner employed by the late Ibn Saud, King of Saudi Arabia, was said to be a jovial fellow with nary a depressive bone in his body—and that is probably preferable to being depressive.  However, to make a serious decision it helps to be realistic, neither unrealistically depressive nor unrealistically optimistic.

Now this is our interpretation and we see nothing wrong with counselling people not to succumb to the temptation to think negative thoughts.  Now Martha is correct that for most people the only way for them to resist such negative thoughts is to pray.  We doubt that Elder Paisios would disagree.  However his point, we think, is that unless you recognize that you are being foolish in accepting to think such negative thoughts it’s not even going to occur to you to ask Jesus to save you from them.

Now for the rest, we do not know what Martha thinks that Elder Paisios taught that is so objectionable about inner powers and so forth.  We are quite sure, however, that Elder Paisios was quite Orthodox.

Now, as for Elder Porphyrios.  We are not aware of a similar teaching about negative thoughts by Elder Porphyrios, and certainly not in Bios kai Logoi.  What we recall from that book is a discussion of the eternal Church, Elder Porphyrios’ reliving of the Apocalypse to John on Patmos and so on.  Of course we could be wrong.  It’s been a while since we read the book.

Now is Elder Porphyrios teaching New Age and Occultism?  We hope not.  He was just made a saint of the Orthodox Church by the Ecumenical Patriarch at the beginning of December, less than a month ago.  So it’s not Elder Porphyrios any more, it’s Saint Porphyrios.

Next, Elder Ephraim of Arizona.  Martha’s complaint does not seem to be with Elder Ephraim himself, who George tells us is highly respected on Mt Athos, as having been a major factor in the renewal of Mount Athos by the disciples of Elder Joseph the Hesychast.  Martha’s complaint seems to be that all of Ephraim’s Abbots and Abbesses are also clairvoyant.  Too easy she thinks.  We ourselves have no doubt that Elder Ephraim is a holy man.  We ourselves do not doubt that he is also clairvoyant.  However, we have no information on his disciples, if they are clairvoyant and if so where they got it.  The statement in the Ladder of Divine Ascent by St John of Sinai, that it is shameful for an elder to pray that a disciple receive a charism that he himself does not have, says to us that if Elder Ephraim’s disciples are genuinely clairvoyant it is because Elder Ephraim prayed for them to receive the charism.  However, as we said, we have no opinion on the matter.

What Martha could do is ask Elder Ephraim.

Now what about us?  Orthodox Monk?  Martha is worried that we might be a disciple of Elder Ephraim.  Well, again, she could always ask Elder Ephraim.  For how would she know if we were telling the truth if we said we were?  Or if we said we weren’t?

We said all we have to say on our monastic state and affiliation in a post called Who is Orthodox Monk?.

Martha replied with two emails, which she has also given us permission to discuss publicly.

Here they are, again edited extensively for clarity:

[1^st Email:]  Thanks for posting in reply, but let me correct you, Orthodox Monk.  I never said or implied that I was worried about your being affiliated with Elder Ephraim.  I only asked you to which monastery you belong (meaning name and country).  I did also ask from curiosity if you were under Ephraim (which you still have not answered).  Please do not confuse my words.

Secondly you made it sound like I was attacking the elders, which clearly I wasn’t!  If you read the books I mentioned you would clearly see where I got my questions of concern.  As for the Ephraimites I am sure you have heard all the rumours circulating about them, especially the death of Scott Nevins.  Now why couldn’t Elder Ephraim save his life?  And have helped him since he lived there 7 years?  That is, if Elder Ephraim is not in prelest?  Before you judge anyone on your blog or accuse them of criticizing, just remember that just because it didn’t happen to you, it doesn’t make it any less true.  I thank you for your response but obviously you are with world orthodoxy (ecumenism) so I expected no less.

[2^nd Email:]  Also one more thing: There are many cults and false elders out there.  There is nothing wrong with people doing their own homework by asking questions to learn and to discern the spirit of the times.  If this troubles anyone then this is an indication that they are trying to mask something.  True Orthodox Christian people should be proud of those who ask questions and want to learn the true meaning of things.  They should encourage questions and not oppose them, and not expect only blind obedience to whoever claims to be an elder or even Orthodox.

Here’s our answer:  Martha, first of all, no one is obliged to read our blog.  If you don’t like it you don’t have to read it.  We have written several hundred thousand words on the blog (enough for a number of books) and everything is there for anyone who wants to read it.  Our views should be quite clear.  No, we haven’t given you a direct answer whether we are or are not affiliated with Elder Ephraim.  To do so one way or another would be to say more about ourselves than we care to.  If that bothers you, then stop reading the blog.

Next, of the three books you mentioned, we have read two; we haven’t read the Gurus book.  It was admittedly some time ago that we read the two books but we don’t remember any questions arising in our mind of the sort you are posing.

Next, no we are not up to date on ‘the Ephraimites I am sure you have heard all the rumours circulating about them, especially the death of Scott Nevins’.  By and large we avoid that.  Sorry.  In particular we have not studied what happened in the case of Scott Nevins and have no intention of doing so.  Nor do we intend to spend any time on the possibility that Elder Ephraim is in prelest.  It’s just not who we are, Martha.

Next, you write ‘Before you judge anyone on your blog or accuse them of criticizing, just remember that just because it didn’t happen to you, it doesn’t make it any less true.  I thank you for your response but obviously you are with world orthodoxy (ecumenism) so I expected no less.’  We are not sure what you mean.  Do you mean that we are criticizing someone else or that we are criticizing you?  Our strongest criticism of you was that you have a tendency to listen to your bad thoughts.  If it is you that you mean we have been criticizing, then ‘because it didn’t happen to you, it doesn’t make it any less true’ suggests that you have had some bad experience, unless we completely misunderstand what you are saying.  If you have had a bad experience, then we suggest you speak to a clergyman face to face.  A blog is not the place to sort out personal bad experiences.

Martha replied.  We will let her have the last word:

I did not have nor do I have any intention to read your blog.  I only wrote a simple email on the ‘positive thinking’ idea, which you took way out of proportion to my intent, in cold heartless replies.  No, I have not had any bad experiences and even if I had that would not excuse the fact that the Ephraimites are in prelest!  Moreover, there are many complaints about them from thousands who have had similar experiences.  You can choose to cover up for the wrongdoings of the Ephraimites but just don’t forget that people are not stupid!!!  The truth always comes out in the end!  And I don’t even believe that you live in an Orthodox monastery let alone that you are a tonsured monk, just going by your cold accusatory, assuming replies.  I am done talking with you!

Martha later sent us another email:

Dear Orthodox Monk:

I have realized that I made a terrible mistake with regard to my ‘positive thinking’ query and about Elder Ephraim being in prelest.  I did some more research and I have found out that I was terribly wrong.  Thank you.

Future Monk? 4

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 8^th to 9^th 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 16^th 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 19^th 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.