Author: Alex. Nemoianu
February 12, 2011
“When it comes to fools, infinite is the number”
Truth was defined in numerous ways during the historical times.
Most often it was defined as being the sum of the accepted knowledge at a certain moment. Obviously that is a very shaky definition and, at best, condemns “the truth” to a perpetual condition of relativity. That condition is determined by the fact that the “common knowledge” could change, could be proven false or could be enriched. Such a condition of relativity is not acceptable and is not acceptable especially in matters of Faith.
For the faithful “the Truth” is an absolute and more exactly it is a Person. …” I am the way, and the truth, and the life”…(John,14,6)
Even Pontius Pilate ,the representative of a political system based on an eminent system of law, was shocked when confronted with “the Truth” and was to mumble,” what is the truth?”. In fact, in that murmur he recognized that human systems are imperfect and that they missed the mark.
That was and is the fate of all human “truth”. It was and is the fate of a very common mistake. A mistake that results from connecting the truth with the opinion of the majority (political trickery). In between those two there is no relation whatsoever. More than that.
Most of the time the difference between the truth and the opinion of the majority, the opinion of the “politically” wise, is in the details. That difference, of “details”, is in itself significant, because the unclean one dwells in the details.
As was already said, regarding errors in matters of Faith, expediency in matter of dogmas, are especially dangerous, and in fact they are mortally dangerous. During the Council of Florence in 1439 the feeble Byzantine authorities, secular and ecclesistical, shamefully succumbed to the arrogant demands of the Roman Church in the hope of some political and military help. Those authorities capitulated, they made the pact with the
unclean one, only to find that it was for nothing, just to their shame. That politically motivated subordination (the Byzantine authorities called it “union”) toward the Roman Church was rejected by the Orthodox jurisdictions of the time who were, as they still are, local and under no obligation to follow the disposition of a “center”.
In the meantime the faithful, the people, the Body of Christ, unequivocally rejected that moral capitulation. That refusal was summarized in the heroic words of the Byzantine “mega dux”, Lucas Notaras: “I will rather see the Muslim turban in the midst of the city then the Latin mitre”.
A similar test confronts today the Orthodox faithful of the New World.
They have to choose between the politically motivated machinations of the Old World and the canonical independence of the New World. It is a choice between political expediency and the future of Orthodoxy. It is by now well known that the bodies of the Old World have ganged together (under the trappings of the Chambesy “accord”) in order to suffocate, to stifle the very idea of Orthodox autocephaly in the New World.
The case of the Romanian-American Orthodox is a very sad but illustrative example. The body promoting the subordination of the “Vatra “Episcopate to the Romanian Patriarchate (unfortunately, today, nothing but a typical neo-communist cleptocratic entity),the so called “Joint Dialogue Commission” (JDC), who grossly exceeding its mandate, is using and was able to concoct a limited, but lame, number of “arguments” toward that nefarious end, chief among them being ‘philetism” and “ethnocentrism” (in fact tribal chauvinism), two pathetic, non Orthodox aberrations.
This case should be a warning and a wake up call for all the Orthodox faithful of the New World. In fact those in good faith should lose no time making their choice, as “the Truth” is obvious. The only reasonable choice is Orthodox autocephaly for the New World. In my opinion it is OCA’s way, all the way.