Which Church Father Are You?

You’re St. Melito of Sardis! You have a great love of history and liturgy. You’re attached to the traditions of the ancients, yet you recognize that the old world — great as it was — is passing away. You are loyal to the customs of your family, though you do not hesitate to call family members to account for their sins. Find out which Church Father you are at The Way of the Fathers!

The Vatican Dogma - Bulgakov

"At present the Vatican dogma is the central problem for the reunion of the church—if the Lord ever re­veals to the world this miracle of His mercy. Earlier, at the epoch of the councils of Lyons and of Florence the chief subject of dogmatic disagreement was the dogma about the Holy Spirit, the filioque clause; questions of papal primacy, of using leavened or un­leavened bread for the Eucharist, of purgatory and a few others were of secondary importance. In our time, the question about the Holy Spirit has not of course lost either its importance or its difficulty, but in fact, in the believers’ minds, it has ceased to be an impedimentum dirimens (to use V. V. Bolotov’s term) and admits of calm theological discussion, such e.g. as took place in conferring with the Old Catholics. The question about the unleavened bread and the differences between the Eastern and Western liturgies, the signi­ficance of which was at one time exaggerated out of all proportion, has also almost lost its importance. Even the question of purgatory and of the new dogma of the Immaculate Conception (in so far as it is dissoci­ated from that of papal infallibility) is comparatively of secondary importance. "But all these particular disagreements are blotted out by one that is fundamental: by papacy grown strong during the centuries of schism and established as a dog­ma at the Vatican. This is the basic and decisive diver­gence between East and West. Catholicism identified itself with papacy and takes its stand upon it; Orthodoxy cannot under any circumstances accept papacy which it regards as a heresy in the doctrine about the church, although it can and should recognize the primacy of the Roman See and honour it as of old. We are thus brought to a deadlock: until Catholicism ceases to be papistry and renounces the Vatican dogma (if only through a new and more exact definition of it)—and this requires a kind of geological cataclysm—there is no way to union with it. But what is impossible to man is possible to God, and all we can do is to trust to Provi­dence which leads us, rules the destinies of the Church, and does that which with men is impossible." Father Sergei Bulgakov (1929) - Link to entire article

Paul VI on Christian Unity

"The difficulties in establishing a genuine union between the different Christian denominations are so great as to paralyze any human hope that it can be historically achieved. The breaks that have occurred have ossified, solidified and become institutionalized to such an extent as to make it utopian to attempt to reconstruct a body dependent on Christ as head, and which is, in St Paul's words, well structured. ... The problem of Christian unity seems insoluble, especially because it is a real unity that is sought. One cannot accept any and every illegitimate pluralistic interpretation of the sacred word 'unity.' This need for a genuine unity, when faced with the concrete historical conditions of the various Christian denominations, seems to disappoint any ecumenical hopes: history never goes backward." From a speech given in January 1978

Romano Amerio on Ecumenism

"To think that a reconciliation of opposing doctrines can be brought about by pragmatic negotiation is characteristic of worldly minds; it ill becomes philosophers and men of faith." Iota Unum (1985)

Tuscana

Beautiful paintings of the Tuscan countryside ... by Teri McDonald (September 2007)

How TV Affects Your Brain Chemistry

Link to Dr Mercola's article Groucho Marx: "Television is very educational. Whenever someone turns it on, I go in the other room and read a book."

Dr Nikolai Khokhlov - In Memoriam

On September 4, 2007 [Old Style], Dr Nikolai Evgenievich Khokhlov, 84, died of a heart attack. A former officer of the Soviet NKVD (KGB), Professor Khokhlov defected to the West in 1954, after refusing to carry out the assassination of a prominent anti-communist leader in West Germany. He was one of the first high-ranking Soviet intelligence agents to defect to the West, and his story was splashed, at the time, across major American magazines: Newsweek (31 May 1954), Time (3 May 1954), etc. In the atmosphere of the Cold War, Professor Khokhlov was at once a hero and the subject of suspicion among anti-communist Russian exiles and in Western press reports. This fact and the disappearance (at KGB orders, as he later learned) of his wife, who was pregnant with a son - now a prominent Russian academic - whom he did not know about until after the USSR's collapse, caused him great bitterness throughout his life. The story of his escape to the West is the subject of the book In the Name of Conscience (New York: David McKay, 1959) and a documentary, by the BBC and Russian Public Television, entitled "A Matter of Conscience." Following his defection, Dr Khokhlov collaborated and worked with Western intelligence services, the US government and various anti-communist activists. As a result, in 1957, in Frankfurt, Germany, he was the victim of an assassination attempt by the KGB, which poisoned him with radioactive thallium (see a recent account of this in the London Times, December 1, 2006.) He quite fortunately survived the attempt, despite a long period of difficult recuperation and rehabilitation. A brilliant statistician and computer engineer, on settling in the US, Khokhlov pursued graduate schooling in psychology, completing a doctoral degree (in two years) in clinical and experimental psychology at Duke University. He also did extensive work in the field of parapsychology. In 1968, he began a teaching career in psychology at the California State University. An intensely private man, he eventually remarried and had two daughters and a son. (His son died of kidney failure in his youth, and there have long been largely quiet and unconfirmed suspicions, in intelligence circles, that his illness was also initiated by some sort of poisoning - revenge for the failed attempt to poison his father.) When he was named an emeritus professor at the California State University, Dr Khokhlov was given the following accolade, which perfectly summarizes him: "That so few people are aware of the scope of his international reputation and his intensely personal life struggle, following his defection from the Soviet Union in 1954, is a testimony to his quiet humility ... [and] his 'old world' European Russian gentility." вечная память! May his memory be eternal! (Adapted from Orthodox Tradition - Volume XXIV, Number 3 (2007))

911 : Six Years Later

My Title

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: The Most Honourable Victor the Confused of Withering Glance Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Pavarotti : 1935-2007

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