Tueday October 18, 2022 (Arabic Version )
The official church, i.e., the church as institutions, leaders, and people in positions of responsibility, seems to live in a state of denial of the reality of women and men in the parishes, and continues business as usual comfortable with the privileges, money, and donations it receives on the back of the believers’ tragedies (e.g., wars). The official church is also comfortable with the absolute authority it has over the management of its affairs without accountability or oversight in our countries (e.g., Lebanon, Syria, Iraq). Finally, it is comfortable with the benefits it gains from the services provided by the state, derived from the harmony of their shared interests: money and power. The “shepherd” is comfortable, while the flock is under attack by a thousand wolf and wolf: the wolf of civil authority that robs the people and provides leaders with known and unknown services, the wolf of economic authority that most leaders do not feel its long sharp tusks, and the wolf of some leaders themselves, which is our topic today. We have reached a time where we fear that belonging to the church leadership is becoming a refuge to anyone who wants protection from legal prosecution in a society that provide quasi-total immunity to religious figures. When faced with unlawful acts done by one off its official figures, the official position of the church over the years was to shield the “ruling” priestly group against any prosecution, which is practically transforming the leaders into an outlaw group. For that end the gospel is misused: the words of the Gospel are vaguely chewed to suggest that no leader should be held accountable for any act, because the “logic” of the Church (we are told) is not the logic of the world, and “mercy” is the Church priority. In this way, leadership uses the right written in the Gospel to justify the wrong. As we know, mercy in the Gospel means that the opportunity is always and forever open for a human being to change their ways, to turn away from error in order to live a life of love, in harmony with God-Love. Mercy in the Church never meant the absence of questioning, accountability, or discounting confrontation of falsehood and lies with truth “that sets us free”; it was never meant to squash the people’s rights, or to marginalize the victim and the oppressed. In fact, official leaders have long preached, as they should, that the interpretation of the Bible’s verses should not be carried out in a fragmentary manner, but rather in the light of the entire book. However, every time we face wrongdoings committed by one of the leaders, they do just the opposite: they stress “mercy” and forget the exploited and oppressed who Jesus called “my least brethren”, those whose defense and service was considered by Jesus as a criterion for entering His kingdom. Where does the official church positions itself in face of Jesus’s “least brethren”? Where is the work of ecclesiastical leadership that repeats hollow, general, and misleading words about “mercy” while it does not care about the flock? A few weeks ago, a website [Orthodoxy in Dialogue] leaked a letter sent by Ms. Helen Ditko to the Antiochian Orthodox Diocese's email, addressed to [now “retired”!] Archbishop Joseph Zehlaoui. In the letter, Ms. Dikto explains that she had been in an intimate relationship with Zehlaoui for 17 years (2000-2017), which practically ended her marriage and lead to her divorce in 2004. She explains how secrecy caused her great psychological harm, and clarifies that she is sending the letter for to future generations. IN her letter, Ms. Ditko recounted how the bishop's groomed her; how he informed her during a spiritual retreat that he "loves her in a special way", and how their relationship started a few months later and continued for years. She recounted that her husband's eventually discovered their relationship and filed a church complaint that remained without consequences due to the authority of Bishop Zehlaoui. Then she points out with wisdom that leaders do not have, that the Church is not a place for secrets, and that thanks to her participation in a program called VIRTUS that combats sexual abuse in the Catholic Church that she came to understand what she has gone through, to understand that Archbishop Zehlaoui is a "very cunning and predatory" person who took advantage of the state of the postpartum depression she was experiencing. In her letter, Ms Ditko notes that she believed that Archbishop Zehlaoui had many relationships with other women, and that she was shocked that he tried to call her again in the spring of 2022, leaving an audio message, and she finally asks him not to contact her again. People's personal relationships do not concern us, but there is more here than the bishop's personal life, the issue is that the Ms. Ditko worked for him as a secretary. So, it becomes necessary to investigate if Bishop Zehlaoui used his authority as an employer, and his spiritual authority as a bishop, to exploit his employee, and about the circumstances that governed that relationship, especially that Ms. Ditko mentions in her letter that she was going through depressing which put her in an vulnerable situation, and Ms. Ditko accuses the bishop of being a “predator” and the term is used to describe people who make continuous attempts to abuse their powers, or position, to sexually exploit others. Ms. Ditko also mentions her belief in the existence of other women. Did the bishop use his position for harassment? Did he use his spiritual position to exploit Mrs. Ditko and other women? Is there any “predatory” behavior? We do not know today, and we suspect that none of the leaders asked themself the question. How can such situations be avoided in the future? How can people be protected? As usual, none of the leaders, care. The Patriarch published a message in which he said that he will follow up the matter and report on the appropriate steps with “transparency”. The Church administrators in North America announced that they had hired a law firm to conduct an “independent” investigation. “Transparency” appeared yesterday in the leaked “independent” confidential investigators’ report. In the report, the law firm concludes with shameless disdain, that after meeting only a few people and interviewing Ms. Ditko, it found that the issue is no more than accusations without evidence, of the type “he said” and “she said”; which suggests that the investigators concluded that the matter was baseless, even though they acknowledge that they had not completed the investigation! The report indicates that there has been another report, dated back to 2005, and that does not appear to have reached any conclusions. Finally, the investigators advise that the report be kept confidential because it could be used by Ms. Ditko, and possibly other employees, to file a claim of workplace harassment, and they warn that the California legislature is considering a law that may allow lawsuits to be filed by past employees for workplace harassment. What about the law firm's investigation with the bishop? It is absent. The report states that the bishop was not interviewed because the law firm has been asked to stop the investigation due to the bishop’s resignation! Case closed! The “outstanding” law firm did not complete the investigation but concluded that the issue is just gossip. Most likely the people who asked the firm to investigate asked it to stop the investigation. Everything suggests that the people who hired the law firm wanted it to reach what it had reached: burying the issue with all “transparency”, in an attempt to increase “mercy” towards the leaders and wolfishness towards the parish.
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Christo El Morr
Tuesday October 4th, 2022 (Arabic version) Whenever one reads Kirill, the Patriarch of Russia, declaring that whoever defends his country and dies in the war “his sins are erased,” years after an official spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church declared that Russia’s war in Syria is a “holy war”, one wonders what this rhetoric reach in the event of a third world war. Historically, since Emperor Constantine entered Christianity, the Church has not called on Christians to leave the military or public life. The general basis remained that “all human beings are the children of God” because of the “paternity” of God the Creator, and that every killing is evil, and it is also a killing that occurs between family members. The position is that although the aggravation of evil may require a war, and consequently murder, murder in itself remains evil and does not become good merely by having to do it; that is, killing is sometimes a necessary evil. For this reason, the Byzantine Orthodox Church subjected those returning from war to a path of repentance because they had to kill in war. For this reason, Orthodoxy did not know in its theology such expressions as “holy war”. There is nothing in the Bible, nor in the history of the Orthodox Church, that can be relied upon to justify a holy war, no matter how necessary and defensive that war, so much more if it was not? The only holy one is God whom Christianity sees as love, and therefore there is no holiness outside love represented by Jesus Christ, who died freely defending his principles and a witness to the truth, and for that he was killed and did not kill in a situation similar to what was mentioned in the Qur’an “If you raise your hand to kill me, I will not raise mine to kill you” (Al-Ma’idah). Therefore, the official position of the Orthodox Church remains that only those killed for the sake of faith are called martyrs. As for forgiveness, it is a process that takes place on the basis of a path of return from “sin” (the word literally means missing the aim), a return to the path and aim of love. But Patriarch Kirill, in his attempt to support his people and his country's political and military position, went as far as distributing a kind of indulgences. In an unfortunate past, some Popes used to give a certification for the forgiveness of sins in exchange for a donation of money, and today Patriarch Kirill asks for more, asking for human life as a sacrifice on the altar of civil authority in exchange for a fake indulgence. He goes beyond some of the popes of the past, using human life as a price for a key to heaven that he devised to serve the civil authority, and thus he turns against his role, as his role is to bear witness to the word of the Gospel, even if it is in conflict with the civil authority, in order to maintain the independence of the faith realm from the political realm so that the latter does not to become a servant in the court of the state and its interests. On the other hand, we have the Ecumenical Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew in Istanbul, serving what agrees with the court of the United States of America. In 2019, he hastily agreed unilaterally, and in violation of ecclesiastical laws, to create an ecclesiastical entity in Ukraine separated from the Moscow Church, that is, to split the Russian Church into two churches each in a country. The United States was pushing for secession and publicly supporting it through the person of the US Secretary of State at the time, Pompeo, who was the first US Secretary of State to visit during his term the Ecumenical Patriarchate. In flagrant violation of Orthodox theology, the Ecumenical Patriarch has appointed himself as the head of the entire Orthodox world, violating ecclesiastical laws that do not accept the declaration of the independence of a new church (autocephaly) without the approval of all churches. This is while the newly installed Ukrainian Patriarch of the Church of Ukraine is deeply involved in the game of Ukrainian nationalism and hatred. The two Ecumenical and Russian Churches are quarreling over the leadership of the Orthodox world, and the two Churches are immersed in the worship of their Greek and Russian nationalisms, declaring that their liturgical languages are “holy.” The two patriarchs are working to employ God in the service of death and war. The two patriarchs are involved in employing the Church to serve the courts of political and military authority. American empire on the one hand and Russian nationalism on the other. Both use countries like ours as pawns for their interests, and they are reconciled with the apartheid regime in occupied Palestine, support it, and are comfortable with it. And while our countries are weakening, the patriarchs of the East continue in a gloomy repetition of dull discourses devoid of life, and they follow a shameful silence about the oppression and exploitation of our political authorities, normalizing with injustice and normalized by it, in return for enjoying ecclesiastical authority and preoccupation with “major” tasks such as placing the obedient bishop in the appropriate place for religious authorities, protecting politicians and corrupt people of power, including metropolitans, priests, and monks, continuing a barbaric religious-political dance over the remains of nations and people. All this takes place in a church whose only master died in the nakedness of the poor and the marginalized outside the walls of power, lived in the service of the poor, and taught that authority is service not domination, and that those who are called children of God are the peacemakers. Christo El Morr
Tuesday September 27, 2022 (Arabic Version) There is no true living of faith without freedom. Coercion, coercion, negates honesty in action and speech and pushes people to falsify their existence, to live in dichotomy, so that they live on the outward level in word and deed in a state imposed by coercion, and on the intellectual and emotional level in an opposite state. Coercion inevitably leads to hypocrisy. But hypocrisy is not compatible with faith, and how can it be? A person may enter into a religion and follow all the rituals, while their personality remains far from the requirements of faith. The root of faith does not lie in following rituals or entering into a religion, but rather in a sincere relationship with God, and this relationship cannot take place in truth unless it is reflected in a sincere relationship of the person to others, and a sincere relationship to oneself, so that behaviour and internal life are compatible, without duality. Rituals are an expression of the relationship with God and others, as well as tools to deepen that relatinoship; but it is not the root of faith. The root of faith is in a conversion, and conversion cannot be by coercion, the word conversion itself is contrary to coercion. Conversion means a discovery and personal acceptance of what a person epxriences in their being, that is, by their mind, psyche and emotions, in an atmosphere of respect for their freedom as a human being. With conversion, the relationship with God begins and continues in a many ways, including rituals, but its test is one's relationship with the other persons, and the relationship cannot be healthy if it is not sincere, and it cannot be sincere if it is not free. The relationship with God, the love of God, from which worship stems, presuppposes freedom; there is no love without freedom. The state is a form of social life whose instruments are coercion (law, police, judiciary, etc.). The problem of the religious state is that it assumes that it has access to the realm of personal faith, and when it enters it, it can only do so with its tools, that is, with the tools of coercion. When the state uses its tools to force a person to refrain from making noise in thier house in the middle of the night, for example, it forcibly limits their freedom to do whatever they want, but it does not interfere in their relationship with God; it only curbs their narcissism and pushes them to consider the lives of others, regardless of their relationship to these others. But when it intervenes to impose on a person a way of clothing, fasting, or prayer, it interferes with that unique person’s relationship with God and in their conviction stemming from their unique existence; the religious state wants- if it can- to force them to act in a certain way according to its interpretations of religion, which are necessarily circumstancial and partial interpretations, as long as they do not represent all of time (e.g., it does not reprepsent future interpretations that may differ or go opposite to today's ones), nor do they represent all sects, nor all interpretations in a certain sect. And in the end, no matter how correct these religious interpretations are, the state with its coercive instruments interferes with a person's relationship with God: it limits one's freedom to believe or not to believe, to live their relatrionship with God in the way they want not in the way others' want, and to bear their responsibility for their own faith before God. No matter what we say and rationalize, the religious state does not acknowledge the existence of the unique individuality of every human being, and tries to crush it. If the coercion comes from the state, or from a group of people, the result is the same: a human being is forced to behave in the matter of faith according to others' views, that is, according to hypocrisy, not according to the truth. And what kind of logic is it that is satisfied with the consolidation of hypocrisy in the middle of a community that wants to be sincere to a faith, and to defend it? With coercion, hypocrisy rains, and it is no longer possible to distinguish between what is true and what is false in behavior, feelings and relationships. Even the person loses this distinction within oneself, as the threat makes them feel weak and without dignity, which is what pushes them to escape from this feeling by using an external social mask to cover up the loss of their self-dignity. Rather, in his attempt to cover up this humiliation, they may be tempted to increase their ardour in religious mattters, in rituals, and in appearances in order to restore some sense of self-worth through conformity with the religious group, and through adoption of a frenetic fundamentalist defense of the religious appearances that the group defends. This extreme and outwardly integration with the principles of the group is an attempt to drown out the person's real feeling of defeat, fraud, fear and squandered dignity by coercion. At the same time, the integration makes the person feel protected in the midst of a powerful group. In such case, the result is the falsification of existence, as this human being becomes alienated from others: their relationship with others is forged because they are pushed to hypocrical relationship by the rule of oppression, and their relationship with God is forged because it takes place without a free personal conviction; and the end result is the loss of the self. The state - coercive by default - as well as the coercive groups, when they interfere with a person's relationship with God, can ensure that everyone submits to outward relationships, but it certainly creates an environment that fosters hypocrisy in faith and falsification of existence, and this would spoil faith relationships between people and their Creator, relatrionships that cannot be real unless free. Compulsion in religion produces religious hypocrisy, and this undoubtedly distances people from God. Compelling groups may be happy with the surface of appearances, and they remain unaware that they created all the circumstances to keep the hearts away from God, and what would benefit a person if they lived all appearances and lost onself in the forgery that emanates from oppression in relationships. Only freedom allows honesty and conviction in relationships, and respects the uniqueness of each person. Christo El Morr Tuesday September 20, 2022 (Arabic version) Al-Mayass Dance group appeared on a television program and was followed by those who usually follow the art of dance and those who do not follow it. Perhaps the general frustration experienced in Lebanon is a strong motive to find something beautiful that shines in the psychological darkness that the country is within. The choreographers of the troupe were inspired by “oriental” cultures in their beautiful choreography. Those who watched the performances must have noticed the group's use of symbols originating from religious myths (for example, the serpent). The overwhelming majority of people were happy with the performances and success of the group. What motivates Christian religious voices (I have not read of Muslim religious voices, and this does not rule them out) to attack the group accusing its members of worshiping Satan? Religious leaders at all levels tend to impose their own vision of what is permitted and prohibited in art. They raise the slogan of “harming” religious feelings whenever an artwork deals with a religious issue in a way that they do not like, as they feel that it harms rituals or beliefs. The Catholic Center for Media in Lebanon has the upper hand in requests to ban artistic groups that hurt the sensitive religious feeling of Father Abu Kassem (head of the center) and his companions. But the prejudice against the Al-Mayyas group reached a great extent on the charge of dealing with the devil, and I believe that the reason lies in the fact that they are women. Through the ages the Church has been prejudiced against women; even today there is an entire mountain full of monasteries in Greece (mount Athos) where woman are banned, and among the monastic stories that some monks pass on, we find a story that describes a woman as the devil (i.e., her very existence is an temptation for the “poor” monks. But I prefer another monastic story with significance in our subject: it is said that during a fasting period a monk in one of the monasteries went hungry and secretly entered the kitchen with an egg, and began to put it over the candle in the kitchen to cook it (don't ask me how), and when the head of the monastery in the kitchen surprised him, he regretted it, and said quickly, “The devil has tried me.” Then the devil appears and says to the head of the monastery: “Don't believe him, I was learning from him.” There is an ancient fear in men of women as relayed by psychoanalysis, a certain man’s dread and of this being capable of giving birth to a new human being in the world. An even more important issue is added, which is the fear of a man who did not know how to deal with their sexual, so they suppressed it (there is a difference between suppression and restraint) and treated sex as a frightening irritable energy, and so tried to evade it by expelling it from the field of consciousness and placing it in a dark corner of their psyche. Therefore, sexual energy is excluded and separated from their integral personality, so that it remains unmanageable energy instead of being refined with tenderness and human relationship with an other person, recognized as a distinct and free individual. And if the repressed sex drive resurfaces from the depth of consciousness in its crude state, whenever a man desires another human being (a woman in our conversation), then he sees her as merely a body, and necessarily a seductive body, since the suppressed sexual desire rises in its crude, random, consumerist state. At this point, feelings of turmoil and fear overwhelm that man, which turns into anger and a desire to justify oneself and rationalize one’s desire, so he projects on the other his impulses, and imagines and portrays women as if she is the one who seeks to seduce and tempt men, and that she is a “demon" who tries to make the “innocent” men commit sin. He attributes to the woman, subject of his lust, a terrifying power and considers her the root of evil (in the story of Adam and Eve, for example). The more intense the desire, the more intense the reactions; the more the person evades their feelings by projecting them onto an other, the more intense the attack on that other. These mechanisms relayed by psychoanalysis are still valid today; in the past, they led a Church led by men to prejudice women and commit atrocities against them during a campaign against those who it stigmatized as “witches.” Those who were brutally abused by the Church at the hands of sadistic monks were especially women; in fact, the Church abused and killed fifty women, for every one man. The abuse was brutal and extremely cruel, as the death sentence was carried out by strangling or burning. Thousands of innocent people were subjected to organized ecclesiastical extermination, and the organization was official, as two monks, at the request of the Pope, in 1486, developed an ecclesiastical manual showing the means of detecting alleged “witches”, the trial procedures and the necessary sentences. This is how the church killed an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 women for collaborating with Satan. The attack on the Mayyas group is the same phenomenon, but this time it happens in an era when repressed mobs of clergy are not able to burn women, otherwise the women of the Mayas group would have seen the same fate as those women who were burned by repressed men projecting their own desires on powerless women. Thanks God, who gave us the reason to investigate the roots of phenomena, and who provided us as human beings with what is possible of wisdom so that we can distinguish in our days between religious confusion and genuine faith, between repression in delirium and science examining facts, between the use of religion for domination and its use for human service. On our end, we adhere to human freedom, which God - according to Christianity - willed to create and respect even if it rejects its creator. Al-Mayyas group, with the capabilities of dancers and designers, brought us beauties in charming paintings inspired by thousands of years of dread and exploration of the secret of the creation and life, and most of us rejoiced. Sunday 18 September 2022
To my friend and mentor who preceded us there, Costi Bendali As expected, the accusations by a woman of the Archbishop of North America in the Orthodox Church that he had an affair with her for 17 years that destroyed her marriage, in addition to his relations with other women, ended (currently) with the resignation of the Archbishop. The resignation is a clear indication to the validity of these accusations and to the patriarch’s endeavor to find a silent way out, without noise. The metropolitan is dismissed, and a new metropolitan is appointed (affiliated with whom?), and the case is closed. But there are questions that the "wise" men did not ask themselves: Does the bishop behaviour during his tenure - which has not officially ended yet - amount to a misuse of a position of authority? Did the bishop use his religious authority to emotionally and sexually abuse that woman and other women? The bishop is accused of buying two houses with two different women. Is there a financial abuse related to abuse of power? What can the Church do in order to avoid similar situations that exist today or may occur in the future? Religious leaders of all faiths wield very great power; Children and adults are often taught to respect religious figures, automatically consider them trustworthy and that they truly represent their role as spiritual and moral leaders. Of course, such education is catastrophic, and all that it teaches is nonsense; the reality is completely different and contradicts this beautiful image of those with religious authority. But this nonsense is an ongoing education and reality; most people trust clergy and view them, as they view every person of authority, with a mixture of respect and awe. For this reason, it is the responsibility of the Synod to consider the questions that we have raised above, as well as other questions. What is the position of sex in monastic life and in the life of unmarried clergy? We have heard more than once about a bishop who spoils the life of a theology student by tempting him to leave his girlfriend to become a monk, be promoted in the church hierarchy and become a bishop (a submissive one) later on. Therefore, it was a great day, not only for me, but for the "angels in heaven" as well, to hear about a metropolitan who left his service and joined his beloved and married her. This person was lost and became found, and he was dead and came alive, and this is a reason for the joy of the angels in heaven, according to Jesus, because that man repented of the sin of forsaking love for the sake of power. As for the one who becomes celibate in greed for power, he is still in death if he continues on this path. Celibacy can only be authentic if the celibate looks at sex positively, and is reconciled with his sexual energy. Sex is an inner desire that cannot be escaped. It does not disappear just because a person decides to become celibate. Since there is no escape from something that exists in the body and soul, the person who remains incapable of taking a position vis-à-vis his sexual energy, and turns a blind eye to it instead of living it or consciously monitor and control it, causes himself what is called repression in psychology. With suppression, the sexual energy remains present in all its might, beyond the reach of human consciousness. Such repressed person may become celibate, but he is never chaste. His sexual energy remains a wild energy, far from the center of the personality, unpolished; it becomes as a foreign body with its own independence. But the repressed does not disappear, rather it returns, and it returns in many forms, as we will discuss in the following. Sex is an energy that pushes us to meet an other, and for this reason the refusal to integrate sex with one's personality disrupts our energy for encounter, for love in the broad sense of the term. The result is what we often observe in introversion, sadness, emotional dryness, and even cruelty, in some celibate clergy. The repressed sexual inclination may focus on the self, so the celibate is occupied with oneself, even if he preaches humility and love all day long. This self-occupation is revealed in his pride, and a spirit of stifling spirit of domination over those around him. The pervasive spirit of authoritarianism in the Church must be analyzed from the point of view of sexual repression, that is, from an educational-psychological angle, and therefore, in our opinion, confronting it must be based on psychological data. In addition to domination, repressed sexual desire may return through greed, the craving for money and its accumulation, or through extreme miserliness. Also, the return of the repressed may be manifested in excessive interest in sex. This explains, for example, what young women and men recounted about their spiritual fathers who suddenly ask them about their sexual lives, and whether they had sexual relations or if they watched pornography. The interest of those "spiritual" fathers in sex (without any mention of it by those young women and men) indicates an excessive interest that has gone out of its way and reached the limits of verbal harassment (which in some cases led to physical harassment). Repressed sexual desire may also manifest itself in the opposite, by being alarmed by any mention of sex in writing or speech. Some might think that this behaviour indicates a "delicate" chastity, but in fact it is a false chastity because it is the inversed expression of an excessive interest in sex that floats on the surface of consciousness at the slightest reference to the subject, which causes fear and anxiety. Finally, the repressed may explode suddenly and return in an unruly and destructive manner, in a way that the sexual instinct is acted in a primitive manner, indifferent to an other and their feeling, and a sexual aggression may occur. In light of that psychology reveals about the effect of sexual repression, which we have tried to summarize what we know about above, one can understand the deviations that we observe at the level of monks and nuns, and at the level of bishops [authoritarianism, emotional dryness, cruelty], and the deviations in the way some use to attract young people to celibac; a method that represents grave psychological sabotage to young people's life. And if repression is an explanation, it does notconstitute a justifcation of the abuse of authority, monastic or episcopal, of to sexual assault on young women and men, or their exploitation, or to the rule of the spirit of domination, and to the worship of money in the Church. These are deviations that have grave consequences, and represent an abuse of power that requires complaint and must be confronted. Does not wisdom - dear to the heart of the Patriarch - require that the Synod makes a serious review of ecclesiastical education and the processes used to accept people into monasticism and the episcopate? But we do not count on leadership's wisdom, we count on the young women and men of the Church to carry out this review and push for it. |
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