Posted on 01/18/2005 9:46:17 AM PST by sionnsar
The Rev. Louis Tarsitano--rest in peace.
The Rev. Louis Tarsitano, rector of St. Andrew's Church in Savannah (a Continuing Anglican church) and noted writer and thinker, passed away this past Saturday, January 15. His loss will be keenly felt in North American Anglicanism, as he was sound in doctrine and practice.
This sermon by him, True Worship and True Morality, is a good example of his preaching. Basing his sermon on Amos 8:7, the Rev. Tarsitano wrote:
The difference between true and false worship is the difference between life and death. The choice between the true worship of himself that God has established and the inevitable moral degradation that must follow false worship is terribly real, whether we are speaking of Jeroboam’s time, 2800 years ago, or contemplating our own situation today.
Since the 1960s, a great many households within the Christian Church have replaced the form of worship that their ancestors had received from God in his providential governance of his Church with new inventions of their own. These new forms of worship may seem, as Jeroboam’s invented religion did, rather like the old religion, but they have in practice turned out to be the worship of men, the idolatry of men’s ideas and politics, and slavery to the fads of intellectuals. And what has happened?
Church after church is racked with scandals of immorality, including the abuse of children—a sin we always find connected with false religion and paganism in the Bible. New priesthoods and ministries have been invented, and they have divided the Church in ways that we are only now discovering, as we only begin to remember that female priesthood and inverted sexuality were always signs of false religion and rebellion against God in the Holy Scriptures. People claiming to be “Christians” join the clamor to remove the Ten Commandments from public view.
But enough. We know the symptoms. What we need to be clear about this morning is the disease that causes them. And that disease is the disease of Jeroboam and the Northern Kingdom, condemned by God this morning. That disease is the abandonment of the true worship that God has provided for us to offer praise to the glory of his Name for inventions and self-expressions of our own. And once we are disobedient in worship, we have given up the God-given means of our moral reclamation when we go astray.
Truly this was a prophetic voice, and he will be missed. May we learn from his life and example.
Posted by Will at 12 : 09 am | Leave a note {N}
Thanks, FL. See how much attention I pay to things!
It's quite alright. This was never meant to be a prideful endeavor.
"High" and "Low" (and the less often heard "Broad") church in Anglican usage refer to the different tendancies within Anglicanism which resulted from the Elizabethan compromise: uniform liturgy, no uniformity of doctrine beyond a few points on which protestants, Latins and Orthodox would all readily agree (and this came undone since the 1970's).
"High church" Anglican tend to maintain an 'Anglo-catholic' position, and will argue (reasonably) that Anglicanism isn't a protestant church. They favor the maintenance of ritual, have some clear understanding of the reality of the Eucharist, often are familiar with the Greek Fathers, and in exceptional cases will agrue that the Ecumenical Councils are the only standard for the exposition of the Faith beyond the Scriptures. Some 'High churchmen' (the Caroline divines, the non-Jurors, who were actually in union talks briefly, Bishop Grafton of Fond du Lac, who was
close to St. Tikhon when he was Arcbishop of Alaska and All North America) are as close to Orthodox as you will find among post-schism
Western Christians. An Orthodox monk of whom I am very fond has argued that the only Western group worth the Orthodox bothering to have 'ecumenical dialogs' with is a splinter group of high church Anglicans (the name of which I forget) who have dropped the filioque and declare themselves to adhere to the faith of the Seven Councils.
"Low church" Anglicans are basically C of E or Episcopalian evangelical protestants, though they are usually not Zwinglians in their Eucharistic theology, and "Broad church" Anglicans are liberal protestants, and are the group that extended 'Anglican inclusiveness' to apostates even from the minimal Christianity of the Elizabethan compromise.
Any or all of the persuasions may be very fond of the 1928 BCP. Ironically just as the Anglican apostacy really heated up in the 1970's the Prayer Book revisers decided to provide as an option among the Eucharistic prayers (all defective thanks to the lack of an eclepsis), the Anaphora of St. Basil the Great. I have the impression that most of the high churchmen who liked the option are now using the anaphora in its proper setting on the Sundays of Great Lent, the morning of Great and Holy Saturday, the Feast of the Circumcision, . . .
(My bishop once scandalized the Anglicans by thanking the main Anglo-catholic seminary in the U.S., Nashotah House, for sending him so many good priests.)
Why not pray for your enemies, so that they are saved too?
What accomplishment is praying for those you agree with?
The Orthodox pray for the Orthodox and for all all the people of the world, friend and foe.
Again, it's not the outwardly that matters, but practicing what Christ taught. Dropping your political enemies from your prayer is using religion as a political party. Where is Christ in that?
I'm curious -- what kind of legal limitations do you have on open flames in your locale?
While we have artificial lights in our parish, generally none are used during the services themselves. There is plenty of light coming through our slightly opaque windows to light daytime services, and our church is lit entirely by oil lamps on the iconostasis and the walls, and candles in the "sand boxes" for all evening and night-time services (except for Matins of Pascha, when you want it as bright as possible!) We don't leave any flames burning when we leave the building, of course...
While we certainly have our things we aren't proud of (a certain Greek parish in Hollywood is particularly notorious), both the consistency of the tradtional witness and the general trends are quite remarkable by comparison to the general ecclesiastical environment we are swimming in here in the US.
What I have observed in most Orthodox churches in the US is a trend back toward the traditional. I have seen a couple of Greek churches and one Serbian church remove their old "westernized" sentimental icons, and have incredible traditional icons painted to replace them. I've seen several OCA parishes rid themselves of pews (we have very few left), and several Greek and Antiochian parishes either remove or simply never use their old electric organs. My in-laws' Greek parish has long since rid the choir of robes, and the only ones who wear robes there now are the psalti with their riassa...
The trend in Russian tradition churches is to eradicate the old 19th century romantic-era musical settings and replace them with more traditional chant, and I've seen Greek parishes move away from the turn-of-the century polyphonic settings toward traditional Byzantine chant (although not fast enough for me!) Etc...
The big advantage that we have over western churches in these regards are that the liturgical traditions of the "ancient and undivided church" (to use the term of the most traditional Anglicans) are not nearly as distant for us, and that the traditional has a built-in weight of authority for us that simply trumps or at least can counter-balance any innovating trends -- even those driven or winked at by hierarchs.
So, the outwardly was important -- uniformity of liturgy, damn the doctrine! As long as everything looks good on the outside. But, alas, churches that don't teach the same doctrine are not the same churches. But who cares! As long as they all got together and worshiped the same queen!
Yup, that was the idea. But perhaps we should be a little more forgiving of Elizabeth: She was in Western Europe, where as St. Justin Popovic points out, the papacy had already replaced the God-Man, Christ, with a mere man, the Pope, as head of the church, and hers was the era that saw Western Europe racked by wars of religion. She ascended the throne after period of persecutions with non-papal and papal Christians in England taking turns as persecutors, and had memories of her father's horror at the prospect of dynastic wars. State compulsion in matters of religion was coming to be seen as a bad thing in north-western Europe. It was about the same time that the Netherlands became the only place besides the Serene Republic of Venice (which allowed both Latin and Orthodox churches to function freely on its territory) to not have a state-enforced version of Christianity. Elizabeth was concerned with the peace of her realm more than with deciding anything about religion. And, well, that was her job.
The real tragedy in the whole thing is that Henry didn't have any ties in the East. Had he aligned England with Russia (or more improbably Constaninople where the Turkocratia had already begun) his argument that a marriage to his brother's widow was illegitimate would have been held valid by the Orthodox since it violated Byzantine sensibilities about cosanguinous marriages, and he'd have had his annulment. Maybe if he'd done it right, leading England back the the Church instead of setting up on his own, God would have blessed him with a male heir, or a good court advisor, who could cite the precedents of the Empresses Irene and Theodosia to convince him that a queen could be a strong enough ruler to prevent the horror of dynastic war.
Yes, I've seen the same thing as well.
IMHO, I believe that much of this that occurred in the United States was a direct result of the immigrants wanting to better fit into their new country and not wanting to be seen as being socially "backward."
Now people are beginning to realize that some very important things are sacrificed by making these changes and that we really don't want to follow where some of the western churches are leading.
"IMHO, I believe that much of this that occurred in the United States was a direct result of the immigrants wanting to better fit into their new country and not wanting to be seen as being socially "backward."
That is exactly what was going on. There was even a desire on the part of some hierarchs many years ago that the Orthodox Church here model itself on ECUSA, right down to the clerical dog collars. It was all about "passing for white". Most of that is gone these days except in a some large city areas and I must say a good deal of the change is due to two things, converts who really know what American society is like and how dangerous, spiritually, it can be, and a crop of younger, very traditional priests. Since the seminaries are now graduating large numbers of traditional type American born priests, the future looks pretty good.
It would not have been very popular or even correct, post revolution, to send up prayers for "our king, N."...
The only quibble I will make comes from limited personal observation:
Any or all of the persuasions may be very fond of the 1928 BCP.
In my experience, low church tends to prefer the 1979 BCP for its modern language (and given a choice of rites, the modernized Rite II therein). High church tends to prefer the 1928 BCP, or if stuck with the 1979 for whatever reason, Rite I (which is closer to the 1928) therein.
The Continuing churches, though, have a very strong preference for the 1928. (I'm not aware of any that use the '79.)
That's why I said -- where is the Christ in this!? Religion is used as a political party, not as a following of God. So, a church that doesn't preach or uphold that which Jesus taught is not a church.
Didn't Jesus say "pray for your enemies?" I think if Jesus walked into most churches today and called us hypocrites, we would throw Him out, and probably have Him arrested for disturbing the peace.
With some priests it's difficult to even tell they are Orthodox. A Greek priest in Ft Myers' only Greek church comes to mind, as well as a visiting Romanian priest in Orlando, both in Florida. Dog collars and spanky clean shaven faces to "disguise" the origin, I guess " is passing for white" Anglo-Saxon and not sticking out in a crowd. They looked quite "catholic" to me; in fact, after seeing the Ft Myers' priest first, I had to go back and look at the sign to make sure it was an Orthodox church!
But I trust your observations that this is changing, and that may be another sign that perhaps we are blessed more than others.
BTW, Ft Myers, FL has a small Greek Orthodox monastery in the section called North Ft Myers. Unlike the church downtown, the monastery uses only beeswax candles and pure olive oil lamps. I would say the lamps are on all the time because when I walked into the administrative offices with a small shop and a lovely small chapel, the lamps in front of the icons were lit. Yet the church 10 minutes south of that place has electric lamps and paraffin candles in the "sand box." Fire codes must not be the reason.
I don't pray for my twin brother. Not because I hate him. But because I don't have one.
Our prayer book has prayers for the president and those in authority. They're generic, however. The 1979 BCP could have revised the prayer to read, "our president, Jimmy Carter," but it would have had to be changed the folowing year. Yet the earlier books of common prayer did just that. They didn't drop the earlier king because he was now out of favor. He was just... not king anymore.
But I don't even agree to pray specifically for those in authority by name. Remember, the first should be the last. The teachers should be the servants. The Church should pray for all mankind and specifically our enemies. For that is what Christ commanded us to do. A 'politically correct' church -- and that goes for all of them -- is not a church as far as I am concerned because it puts our preferences before Christ! Nothing earthly should be above what God taught us. We can do no more than teach what He taught. Everything else is human corruption of His message.
I was similarly surprised to see how many of the OCA priests in the Washington DC area were clean-shaven...
...until someone pointed out to me how many of them are actually military chaplains, where you comply with the regs or you do not serve, or ex-military.
Now I don't really understand why the ex-chaplains still shave but...?
I seriosuly doubt that there are many Orthodox military chaplains, given that Orthodoxy is such a small church in America, and they are not all in the DC area, for sure.
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