Posted on 09/09/2014 11:55:44 AM PDT by NYer
That is very true. A Google News search picks up two (2) references, from "Christian News Wire" and Breitbart, plus a generic article in the style "What Will Obama Do" from Canadian National Post.
Neither Bush nor Obama had the right philosophy in dealing with Islam, but at least for Bush we can say that he did not know at the time what would and what would not work.
Certainly, the idea that democracy, propped up by American bayonets, would transform the Middle East was utterly wrong, and that was Bush’s central assumption.
Bush’s thinking was largely shaped by the military men, Israeli concerns and the American Evangelicals. It was not in touch with neither Catholics nor Orthodox, and that had the effect of not noticing the middle-eastern Christian subculture.
The West liberated the Balkans from the Ottomans?????????????
My ancestors beg to differ as would those of our fellow Balkan mountain bandits, the Serbs, Romanians and Bulgarians.
Bulgarians would certainly credit the Russians, and so probably would the Serbs. Also remember who stopped them at Vienna.
The Greeks still credit the Orthodox Russians to one extent or another. They do not credit the Western secular, Latin or protestant powers. Stopping the Mohammedan Turks at Vienna didn’t save the Balkans from centuries under the heel of the Ottomans, but the sack of Constantinople by the 4th Crusade absolutely assured the fall of The City two centuries later and centuries of oppression to this very day.
If the Turks were not stopped at Vienna, the liberation of the Balkans would not be feasible, and that was Catholic West that stopped them. The sack of Constantinople was indeed a disaster, but so was the deliberate on the part of Byzantium failure of the Florentine Union, which was the proximate cause of the fall of the City.
Where does that come from? We were left to the tender mercies of the Turks. We liberated much of Greece in the Greek War of Independence. Various other uprisings of local peoples liberated certain other ares until the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 when we, contrary to the efforts of the West, we ran the Turks out of Europe.
“The sack of Constantinople was indeed a disaster, but so was the deliberate on the part of Byzantium failure of the Florentine Union, which was the proximate cause of the fall of the City.”
So, had we as the Laos tou Theou, agreed, as so many of our miserable hierarchs did, to grovel before the feet of the Bishop of Rome, all would have been well? I heard one of your more arrogant cardinals make that claim at a meeting of Orthodox and Latin hierarchs and laity. He was hooted down and left red faced. His remarks are often trotted out when talks get going on reunion.
The basic information is here: Battle of Vienna .
In the aftermath, Hungary and Transylvania were liberated and the Turks no longer were a threat to Western and Central Europe. Russia achieved dominance over its southern borders as well, and in 19 c. liberated Bulgaria. This is what I mean by Catholic West and Russia stopping the Turkish expansion. That Turkey still commands Constantinople and its European territories is unfortunate, but if the victory at the gate of Vienna did not occur, Turkey would still be a major player in Europe, with the Italian, Hungarian, Austrian and Romanian nations lowered to the condition of Bosnia and Albania. Certainly the collapse of the Turkish rule in Greece would not have occurred, regardless of the bravery of the Greeks.
had we as the Laos tou Theou, agreed, as so many of our miserable hierarchs did, to grovel before the feet of the Bishop of Rome, all would have been well?
The pivot between the "mitres" and the "turbans" was not invented by "our arrogant cardinals"; that was the conscious choice of the ruling class of Byzantium. They chose the turbans. What the status of Constantinople would have been if the Florentine Union had held, we do not know, but again, Catholic countries such as Austria and Hungary fought off the aggression, and Orthodox Greece that refused the union did not.
“The pivot between the “mitres” and the “turbans” was not invented by “our arrogant cardinals”; that was the conscious choice of the ruling class of Byzantium. They chose the turbans.”
Not the ruling class, Alex. It was the bakers and butchers and shoemakers who overthrew the decision of the hierarchs at Florence. Of the hierarchs, only +Mark of Ephesus stood with the Laos tou Theou, who had always and to this day constitute the guardians of Orthodoxy. Holy Russia almost immediately repudiated the apostasy of Florence. Without us groveling before the Bishop of Rome, the military aid from the West was all but cut off and we know the rest.
The turbans were never chosen; my ancestor didn’t choose the turban. He died on the walls at the side of the God Ordained Emperor Constantine XI Paleologus and the women and children of the family were raped at Agia Sophia, near the altar where the good Roman Catholic boys of the 4th Crusade set up a whore and dressed her as the Patriarch.
Still, that was the choice, however it was arrived at: Catholic West or Muslim East, and it was made by the Byzantine nation as a whole. The Church was not going to mount a fifth crusade when the will for the union was that weak, and Constantinople fell to the Turks.
Makes Rome and the papists sound like ISIL, Kosta.
ISIL fought four crusades to protect the Byzantine Empire from the Muslims, arrived at a theological agreement in Florence, and did not fight the fifth one after the Florence Union was rejected, not exactly clear by whom on the byzantine side?
There was no doubt at all, either in Constantinople or Russia, who rejected the apostasy of Florence. There isn’t today either. Bottom line, either kiss the feet of the Bishop of Rome or die.
Thanks
Signing the Unia, then rejecting it after some pro-Muslim agitators kicked themselves into gear is by definition “doubt”. Again, Rome had shown willingness to fight for the Byzantine causes for centuries after the Great Schism, but every charity reaches its limits when the recipient of it is acting two-faced.
What in heaven's name are you talking about, Alex? If you mean the rejection of Florence by the people and lower clergy, that's the way Orthodoxy works and always has. Hierarchs don't rule over us, though they often try to. We saw an example of it in this century with the removal of the unlamented Spyridon as Archbishop of America. It works the same way with dogmas. If the people do not evidence their acceptance of a dogma from a council, give their “Great Amen” as we say, by living out the dogma in their lives, it is no dogma. For example, the “dogma” against artificial non-abortifacient birth control would be no dogma in the Latin Church if you had the same sort of ecclesiology.
The person in the world who has access to the mist information not only denies he is a Muslim, he denies that a major threat from a terrorist group is Islamic.
Until our leadership acknowledges the obvious truth we will constantly be exposed to danger.
It is not that simple. Mark of Ephesus was no "people and lower clergy" and he was the major force in rejecting the union. Therefore my assertion of pro-Muslim agitation against Florence was accurate except, of course, it was pro-Muslim in its inevitable effect rather than theologically. I am not sure from whom the famed expression "better the turban than the mitre" came from but its horrific succinctness suggests a political calculation hardly on the minds of people and lower clergy. It took a familiarity with the Muslim principles of dhimmitude to make, hence it could not be a popular sentiment.
Further, neither the issue between Eastern and Western Churches is of such nature that faithful peasants on either side could make. Neither the procession of the Holy Ghost nor the proper role of papacy yield to plain seat-of-the-pants analysis. It was entirely proper that Florence was conducted by theologians and brought to its temporary success by theologians; it was mindless anti-Catholic agitation and pliability of the plain folk, and the insidious calculations of the pro-Muslim political leadership that wrecked it.
I am moving West with my family, so I'll be mostly off line for a couple of days.
You are correct. In fact, he was the only hierarch of any consequence who opposed the False Union of Florence. Together with the monastics, lower clergy and the People, the dictates of the hierarchs and the Pope were frustrated. I still have no idea who you think the Mohammedan collaborators were. The remark about the Sultan's turban was made by Loukas Notaras, the last Grand Duke of the Empire. He was from the beautiful Greek city of Monemvasia. He was an interesting character who worked with Constantine Paleologos XI to gain military aid from the West while at the same time trying to keep the Orthodox populace of Constantinople from rioting because of a perceived alliance with Rome, hence the remark. He was deservedly, in my opinion, executed after the fall of The City.
“Further, neither the issue between Eastern and Western Churches is of such nature that faithful peasants on either side could make. Neither the procession of the Holy Ghost nor the proper role of papacy yield to plain seat-of-the-pants analysis. It was entirely proper that Florence was conducted by theologians and brought to its temporary success by theologians;....”
But Alex, the People always have the final say with us. That's the way it was and still is. We have no innovation like Rome's institutional magisterium. Holy Tradition is our magisterium and Holy Tradition is lived out in our lives as Orthodox Christians, not as subjects of the Bishop of Rome or anywhere else for that matter.
Have a good and safe move, my brother!
the People always have the final say with us
That is not a virtue. The People are easily manipulated by various interests who know how to inflame the People's passions. Examples are not limited to the Mark of Ephesus's efforts. Ask an average (you are not average) member of the Orthodox People today (I have a Russian, Bulgarian and Greek experience from which I speak) about Catholicism and he will say things about kissing the Pope's shoe and (at best) the procedural illegality of the Filioque insertion. Yet he cannot discuss things that separate us in depth, because, I propose, they do not exist. It is all agitation, power hunger and ethnic strife.
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