2024-05-26

EL PATRIARCA DE ALEJANDRIA ORDENA DIACONISAS UNA VIEJA INSTITUCIÓN DE LOS PRIMEROS SIGLOS

 

WHAT IS THE GOAL?

During Holy Week, ecclesiastical media reported news of the ordination of a liturgical deaconess in one of the churches in Zimbabwe, Africa, affiliated with the Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria. I won't delve into the subject of ordaining a deaconess. That's a matter I'll leave to theologians and synods, for now. In this article, I'll simply raise some questions stemming from this event. Such an event requires Orthodox consensus, as any ecclesiastical action outside Orthodox consensus and unanimity poses a danger and leads to undesirable consequences. How much more so a matter as sensitive as this, especially at this time, would be considered a step towards the ordination of women to the priesthood.

There is no doubt that a deep and faithful study of the Christian heritage, especially the Orthodox one, and the pastoral needs required by the Church in today's world, is urgently needed for this topic. However, resorting to individual decisions remains more dangerous than any step its proponents might perceive as beneficial to the Church. Theological studies require scientific honesty and objectivity, not manipulation of information to serve personal agendas. Here, the role of the pure saints, not just scholars and researchers, is highlighted, lest we negate what we have been saying for centuries, that theology is the experience of God's presence, not just rational or philosophical thinking.

My deliberations stem from a concern for Orthodox unity, which I see in danger due to the absence of dialogue among the churches and the spread of individualism within them, to the point where the fear of following the footsteps of Protestant-type individualism is imminent. May God protect us from replacing Orthodox unity with an Orthodox union.

The existence of deaconesses in the early Church needs further clarification. Our historical information does not confirm that all churches witnessed the service of deaconesses, but rather some, especially large churches and in major cities. Moreover, the distinction between the service of deaconesses and the service of widows also needs further exploration. Our available information indicates that the service of deaconesses included several aspects, such as guarding and overseeing the women's section in the church; according to the social custom in the past, women and men each stood in designated areas of the nave. Also, deaconesses assisted women in baptisms, such as anointing their bodies with oil. Furthermore, deaconesses may have been responsible for teaching women, but not all scholars agree on this. In the fourth service, based on the social tradition of the past, deaconesses accompanied women when they needed to meet with the bishop, as it was forbidden for a bishop to meet with a woman alone.

There came a time when this ministry fell into disuse in the Church. We do not know the exact reasons for its disappearance. Don't we need studies to show the reasons why? Don't we need to clarify its fields of service before adopting it in our churches? Is its acceptance consistent with Orthodox tradition and understanding of the ordained priesthood? Can it be limited to educational service and service of love in all its forms? What are the boundaries between this ministry and the ministry of the faithful (laity)? What are the motives behind giving it a liturgical role? Why is this role necessary?

If this type of service is authentic, should we demand it, and does the Church really need it? To what extent do we demand it as influenced by humanistic and feminist movements? What is motivating the Church to activate its pastoral service: theological thought or worldly thought? How does the Church respond to the faith, moral, and humanitarian challenges facing today's societies? On what basis does the Church build its pastoral programs, social or theological?

Moreso, what is the effect of accepting deaconesses and female priests in non-Orthodox churches that have adopted this phenomenon? Has this acceptance increased their spiritual and numerical growth, or the opposite? Is accepting deaconesses a first step towards accepting priestesses? What would be the effect of having male and female priests on the spiritual and theological concept of the priesthood? To what extent does this contribute to the secularization or degeneration of the priesthood and considering it a religious function? What is the psychological effect of having both sexes around the Holy Table?

Where will the Orthodox Church end up if each church continues to adopt what it deems appropriate without consulting and agreeing among all Orthodox churches? Where is the collective spirit that distinguishes Orthodoxy? What about the unity of the Faith? And what will unite Orthodox Churches if practices without unanimous agreement begin to appear here and there?

Do those who applaud the emergence of deaconesses think about the future of Orthodox unity? How do we know if we are allowing the Holy Spirit to work and create new talents? How do we know if we are limiting It within the framework of our limited thinking? Are we submitting It to our personal desires and visions?

I won't add any more questions here, although they would be necessary if we truly want to be honest, faithful, and pure in every work we do in the Church. The pain from what is happening stifles me.

I hope that some of these questions encourage a few sincere, honest, and humble persons to pause before proceeding with individualism that increases divisions and creates new schisms.

UN CUARTO DE SIGLO DEL BOMBARDEO DE BELGRADO Y LA DESTRUCCIÓN DE YUGOSLAVIA SIENDO RESPONSABLE UN ESPAÑOL JAVIER SOLANA EL JEFE DE LA OTAN. EL PATRIARCA SEBIO PORFIRIO DIJO QUE HABRÁ QUE PERDONAR

 

ATRIARCH PORFIRIJE PRAYERFULLY COMMEMORATES 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF NATO BOMBING OF YUGOSLAVIA

Prokuplje, Toplica District, Serbia, March 26, 2024

Photo: spc.rsPhoto: spc.rs    

On March 24, 1999, NATO began its aerial bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, which continued until June 10, 1999.

The campaign killed more than 1,500 people and destroyed or damaged hospitals, industrial plants, schools, cultural and religious monuments, private businesses, and more.

This past Sunday, March 24, His Holiness Patriarch Porfirije of the Serbian Church prayerfully commemorated the 25th anniversary of the tragedy with a memorial service at the Toplica Hero’s Square in the city of Prokuplje in southern Serbia, reports the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Despite the terrible violence that was carried out 25 years ago, the Patriarch preached of love and forgiveness:

We gather to pray to God, who is Love and resides in love, to affirm our unwavering commitment to choose love over hate, peace over war, justice over tyranny, truth over falsehood, and the innocent over the guilty…

I am happy as a man, joyful as an Orthodox Serb, and blessed as a priest because no ultimatum has swayed my people from abandoning love, God, and neighbor. Even if the cost of such commitment is high, it simultaneously secures our survival and continuity, not only on geographical maps but also in eternity, in the Kingdom to which St. Sava guided us, and which was embraced by the noble prince and immortal knight Lazar.

All those who suffered in the NATO bomb stand with the innocent victim Abel, while the bombers stand with the fratricide Cain, the Patriarch said.

“The innocent blood shed across the land God gave us became the pledge of our hope and the seed of salvation… But with faith in Christ risen from the dead and the only Lord of love, we confess that nothing will be able to separate us from His love,” the Serbian primate continued.

“Our guides and measures are the holy martyrs,” His Holiness preached.

“Summarizing the reason for tonight’s prayerful remembrance, let us remember the past, live in the present given to us, and resolutely look ahead and move towards the future with hope as our guide, because according to Holy Scripture: Hope maketh not ashamed (Rom. 5:5).

Christians must not return persecution and slander with persecution and slander, but must bear witness to the truth, the Serbian primate encouraged. “Remembering our suffering, the prayerful remembrance of the innocent victims of the NATO bombing is not borne of malice, and with God’s help, it will not turn into vindictiveness,” Pat. Porfirije said. “Remembering our suffering, and our prayer for the innocent victims, is a testament to truth, justice, love, and peace, an effort to manifest the fullness of life in every good deed and virtue,” he added.

And the Patriarch concluded by quoting a prayer of his predecessor, Patriarch Pavle of blessed memory:

Lord Jesus Christ, our God, receive our earnest supplication and forgive us our trespasses. Remember our enemies who hate and oppress us, and do not repay them according to their deeds, but guide them with Thy great mercy, so they too may understand that evil cannot bring forth good. Deliver Thy holy Church and Thy faithful from all evil with Thine almighty hand. Help us, Lord, Thou Who for the salvation of all didst endure the cross and death, to replace hatred with love, unrest with peace, sorrow with joy, across the world and among us, that we might lead a quiet and peaceful life as Thy people, brothers and sisters with each other and among each other. Amen.

from LOS ANGELES TIMES

 

Opinion: 30 years ago, Grace Paley foresaw today’s clash over antisemitism

Grace Paley sits beside a pile of books in her home
Author Grace Paley wrote decades ago of Jewish people being called antisemitic when they criticize Israel’s actions.
 
(Toby Talbot / Associated Press)

In recent months, as clashes over the war in Gaza have fractured American campuses — including my own at UCLA — I’ve been thinking frequently of Grace Paley’s 1991 story “Three Days and a Question.” In this short, autobiographical tale, the Jewish American author and activist recounts three scenes that take place over the course of three days on the streets of New York. In each case, a bare arm is proffered by someone who has suffered trauma. As its title suggests, Paley’s story offers not easy answers but probing questions: questions about Jewish identity, antisemitism and the difficulties of solidarity that remain as urgent as they were when Paley was writing. (She died in 2007.)

All three of the scenes Paley recounts resonate 30 years later, but the first one is uncannily familiar in our moment of conflict. The story opens:

“On the first day I joined a demonstration opposing the arrest in Israel of members of Yesh Gvul, Israeli soldiers who had refused to serve in the occupied territories. Yesh Gvul means: There is a Limit.” As with today’s campus protests, this demonstration, which takes place during the first Intifada, is teeming with members of the press, including an anchorwoman.

“‘What do you think?’ the anchorwoman asked. ‘What do you think,’ she asked a woman passer-by — a woman about my age.

“‘Anti-Semites,’ the woman said quietly.

“The anchorwoman said, ‘But they’re Jewish.’

“‘Anti-Semites,’ the woman said, a little louder.”

At this point, one of the demonstrators steps forward and confronts the passerby in accented English: “Are you crazy? How can you … Listen what we’re saying…. How you dare to say that — all of us Jews. Me, he said. He pulled up his shirtsleeve. Me? You call me? You look. He held out his arm. Look at this.” The passerby refuses. But the demonstrator persists: “You look at my number, what they did to me. My arm … you have no right.” She remains unmoved: “‘Anti-Semite,’ she said between her teeth. ‘Israel hater.’” The demonstrator, now revealed to be a survivor bearing a Nazi-inflicted tattoo, responds despairingly: “No, no he said, you fool. My arm — you’re afraid to look … my arm … my arm.”

Demonstrators wave Israeli and American flags
Israel supporters marched outside the USC campus earlier this month.
 
(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)

Many who are Jewish will recognize the scene Paley describes. Whether on social media, in family discussions or on campuses, versions of intra-Jewish conflict are a constant feature of our post-Oct. 7 moment — as, in truth, they have been for some time. The horrific events of Oct. 7 and Israel’s catastrophic war against Gaza have exacerbated tensions among American Jews about how to think about Zionism, Jewish identity and Jewish ethics. While the mainstream Jewish community remains staunchly supportive of Israel, polls also show a growing generational divide, with many younger Jews embracing the Palestinian cause. Across the United States, there are Jewish students and faculty on both sides of the barriers set up on campuses around Palestinian solidarity encampments. Jewish division has probably never been so visible in this country.

Paley’s story also presciently predicts a phenomenon that is becoming increasingly prominent: the weaponization of charges of antisemitism to stifle dissent about Israeli actions. As Paley emphasizes, even a critic with the most radical personal experience of antisemitism — deportation to Auschwitz — can be accused of anti-Jewishness. Paley seems to have grasped decades in advance just how politically charged and consequential the issue of antisemitism would become.

Today, we are faced with a situation in which the accusation leveled by Paley’s passerby may take on the force of law. On May 1, the House of Representatives passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which if passed by the Senate and signed by President Biden would link federal antidiscrimination laws to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s controversial “working definition of antisemitism.” Beyond the vagueness of the definition itself, the alliance’s definition is subject to abuse because of the illustrative examples that accompany it, which disproportionately identify forms of antisemitism with criticism of Israel and Zionism. If signed into law, it would make critics of Israel even more vulnerable than they are now. As Paley predicts and as we see playing out in Germany, it would lead, absurdly, to the targeting of many Jews as antisemites.

Paley’s story, however, does not stop with this unsettling encounter between demonstrator and accuser. Her final two vignettes clarify that she is more broadly interested in how confrontations with suffering and injustice provoke discomfort. On the second day the narrator meets a young man with AIDS who bares his arm to show her his lesions while begging for money: “No one will help me. … Look at my arm. … Have you ever seen lesions? That’s what people see.” On the third day, a Haitian taxi driver stops his cab, holds his bare arm up to the passenger divider and asks why refugees from his country are refused entry: “You tell me — this skin, this black skin — why? Why you hate this skin so much?”

The tale concludes with Paley’s own question. What does it mean, she asks, to have confronted “those gestures, those arms, the three consecutive days” of unsettling encounters? Her question is our question too — a question about how we should respond to an excess of suffering, to conflicts with kin and colleagues, to clashing narratives about war and peace. Instead of offering easy answers, Paley’s story helps us see discomfort as a necessary component of solidarity.

Today’s protests about the war in Gaza have generated anger and accusations of antisemitism, just like the protest depicted by Paley; it is, indeed, disturbing to be confronted with the realities of political violence. Gaza is not the only place of suffering on Earth; there is more than enough all over. But if we look away or try to deflect, like the passerby in the first vignette who mutters “antisemite,” we risk becoming complicit in the injustice unfolding around us — both outside our doors and thousands of miles away.

Michael Rothberg teaches English, comparative literature and Holocaust studies at UCLA.

More to Read

 El ALMA BABLE DE DON ARMANDO IV

 

Tal y como van las cosas dan ganas de tirar la toalla que dicen en el boxeo o de arrojar las filacterias al fuego que dicen en la sinagoga pero hay que seguir. Metralla en el cuerpo y avanzando. 

Me reconforto regresando a las brañas de mi juventud, anhelo incierto, de la mano certera de Palacio Valdés. Bajo el cálamo de su prosa titila el alma de Asturias. 

El pensamiento, la construcción y el tono cantarín es bable aunque se exprese en el más puro y elegante castellano. 

Cuando escribe “El idilio de un enfermo” no habían llegado al principado las desinencias y diferencias políticas que derivan en enfrentamientos, rivalidades y muertes (La Aldea Perdida, El Cuarto Poder, Tristán o el Pesimismo) que escribiría andando el tiempo y le harían abandonar la tierrina.

 En Riofrío que así se llama el lugar donde el estudiante madrileño va a recuperar su salud las únicas discusiones versan sobre el toro del conceyu que padrea a las vacas pues es tan pesado que a veces las derrenga al montarlas. 

Habría que ir a la feria y comprar otro garañón menos voluminoso a costa del erario municipal. Unos decían que sí y otros decían que no. 

La aldea vibra con las fiestas patronales. 

Andrés acompañado de Celesto su espolique o guía, introductor de embajadores, en todos los sentidos de la palabra, con el que va a mozas y lo lleva a descubrir sitios y situaciones como el de la romería de la Virgen de la Peña, sigue prendado de la molinera que le mira de reojo cuando en la iglesia asiste a los oficios. 

Le pide baile  a la chica que está en un corro con sus amigas durante la fiesta. 

Los músicos atacaban en ese momento los compases de una giraldilla, pero Rosa le da calabazas. Al pretendiente galante le duele el desaire. Sin embargo, ríe el seminarista giróvago experto en tratar a las mujeres. Y le advierte:

−Ay Andresín del alma, le dice, la yegua soltote una coz. Mas, no te apures estas que al principio dicen que no luego resultan las mejores

 

domingo, 26 de mayo de 2024

 

El ALMA BABLE DE DON ARMANDO IV

 

Tal y como van las cosas dan ganas de tirar la toalla que dicen en el boxeo o de arrojar las filacterias al fuego que dicen en la sinagoga pero hay que seguir. Metralla en el cuerpo y avanzando. Me reconforto regresando a las brañas de mi juventud, anhelo incierto, de la mano certera de Palacio Valdés. Bajo el cálamo de su prosa titila el alma de Asturias. El pensamiento, la construcción y el tono cantarín es bable aunque se exprese en el más puro y elegante castellano. Cuando escribe “El idilio de un enfermo” no habían llegado al principado las desinencias y diferencias `políticas que derivan en enfrentamientos, rivalidades y muertes (La Aldea Perdida, El Cuarto Poder, Tristán o el Pesimismo) que escribiría andando el tiempo y le harían abandonar la tierrina.

 En Riofrío que así se llama el lugar donde el estudiante madrileño va a recuperar su salud as únicas discusiones versan sobre el toro que padrea a las vacas pues es tan pesado que a veces las derrenga al montarlas. Habría que ir a la feria y comprar otro garañón menos voluminoso a costa del erario municipal. Unos decían que sí y otros decían que no. La aldea vibra con las fiestas patronales. Andrés acompañado de Celesto su espolique en todos los sentidos con el que va mozas y a descubrir sitios en la romería de la Virgen de la Peña sigue prendado de la molinera que le mira de reojo cuando en la iglesia asiste a los oficios. Le pide baile y Rosa le da calabazas. Se ríe el seminarista giróvago experto en tratar a las mujeres:

−Ay Andresín del alma, le dice, la yegua soltote una coz. Mas, no te apures estas que al principio dicen que no luego resultan las mejores

 

domingo, 26 de mayo de 2024

 26 mayo san Felipe Neri 1515-1595

 

Fundador del oratorio, trató de reformar al clero romano cuando en el siglo XVI la lujuria. Reformador de costumbres. Era el tiempo de la  Lozana andaluza que yo estudio por menudo en mi libro sobre el descubrimiento del lazarillo. La hora del Saco de Roma por las tropas del marqués de Borbón 1527

La simonía y la depravación de costumbres hacían estragos, el tiempo de Lucrecia Borja y de papas como Alejandro VI, tan descreídos, el saco de Roma. sátiros y putos con órdenes mayores. 

Zugazaga escribió una biografía de san Felipe, fue el censor del régimen de Franco. Te puse en berlina, tal vez te difamé por ser pedófilo, repugnante vicio. Donde quiera que estés, Josemari Zugazaga, te pido perdón por haberme reído de ti