"I have long spoken of the "diverse center" as persons of different and often passionately held points of view whose over-arching desire has been to walk together as integral members of Christ's risen body in the service of mission to our broken world."
Is there something in the Bible or the Holy Tradition or the writings of the Fathers about the "diverse center" that I missed somewhere along the line? I am, after all, a sinful and simple fellow and quite easily could have overlooked it.
"Some of you expressed the sense that we are ready to release ourselves from our past history as a House and our preoccupation with what has been. I share this view. While self-examination is always an appropriate discipline for persons and communities of faith, it can become an invitation to inversion. Being overly focused on our internal life can obscure our call to be engaged in God's work beyond ourselves. Looking to the past is only helpful if it liberates us and orients us toward our future in God."
To me as an Orthodox Christian this is a most astonishing statement. Yesterday my formerly Congregational wife commented during a conversation with her sister that for her one of the most magnificent and comforting reasons for being Orthodox is that we believe and proclaim the exact same Faith and worship in virtually the exact same manner and with the exact same words as Orthodox Christians have for about 1700 years, but that from that secure history she has learned that in clinging to the Faith once revealed and worshipping the ineffable God, time is quite meaningless.
Past, future and now have no meaning in the Faith, though it may to each of us mortals individually.
Sadly, Griswold and his fellow travelers are simply heretics. These men have developed a new religion, which of course they are free to do. The Church teaches that we are to have nothing to do with them save to pray for them.
Thank you for saying that, Koloko. I was beginning to fear that my own outrage at what I continue to read from my erstwhile brothers was overwhelming what little Christian charity I muster as a general rule.
But, to people to whom even God is no bar to their imagination and presumption, it is clear that no mere human rebuke is ever going to have salutory effect.
So I pray that Blessed John Paul intercede for these misguided shepherds to pour the Holy Ghost on them in truth and to illuminate their errors. It's all I can do, under the circumstances.
May God have mercy on them,
Deacon Paul+