Dear friends,
As, I promised, I am now going to reply to some of your comments concerning my recent post about the roots and nature of Ukrainian nationalism. First, I thought of replying to your comments one by one, and then I changed my mind. I think that there are some general and recurrent topics which I need to address because they are mentioned several times. That would save space and time and probably make the answers more coherent. Here are the topics which I have identified:
1) The Holodomor
2) Jews/Khazars and their role in the Ukraine
3) The proper way to refer to the Roman-Catholic Church, Papacy, Latins
4) My “general lumping and implication of all Catholics in whatever happened in Russia”
There are probably more and I am more than willing to address them, but these four are the “biggies” which I would like to address today. Ok? Here we go then. First, I will address the first two topics together.
The Holodomor, Ukrainians, Russians and Jews
I am aware that this is a controversial topics and I welcome the controversy about it. I welcome this controversy just as I welcome any historical revisionism because the very point of the study of history is to examine the clash of ideas, theories, different historiographies and interpretations. I my opinion, no topic should ever be off-limits or “dogmatized”. Everything should be questioned, analyzed over and over again, if only because we know that history is written almost exclusively by victors and because we also know that it is mostly written by some very specific social classes (Michael Parenti writes about that). Besides, even authors whose views can appear “heretical” can offer fantastic insights and analyses, such as the Russian Stalinist Nikolai Starikov whose Stalinism I totally reject, but whose books I find absolutely fascinating (well, except for the one on Stalin, of course). Anyway, I wanted you to know my philosophy of history before giving you my understanding of the Holodomor.
On that topics, opinions vary from “it was a genocide of Ukrainians by Russians”, to “it was a genocide of Ukrainians by Jews”, to “it was a famine resulting from western sanctions against the USSR” (Starikov), to “it was an attempt by the Bolshevik regime to eradicate Orthodoxy and national awareness” to “it’s all a myth and it never happened”.
Let me admit immediately that I am not at all sure that I know the truth about this. I have read a lot about it and I think that I have a decent understanding of the basic facts which very much narrow down the possible interpretations. Still, caveat emptor, I am not an expert on this topic. Having said that, I will offer this:
First, I am 99.9999% sure that it did happen. I know personally met people – totally non-political, simple people – who lived through that. There is no doubt in my mind at all that a massive famine happened in the Ukraine before the war.
Second, I am also certain that it was in no way a “Russian genocide of the Ukrainian” people for the following reasons:
1) The famine was not limited to the Ukraine, it also affected Russia
2) Bolsheviks never had any Russian national identity
3) Bolsheviks were almost all rather rabid Russophobes
4) Most key Bolsheviks were not even Russian by ethnicity
5) A type of Holodomor was first tried in Russia in 1918-1921: war communism
So it did happen, but who done it then and why?
I think that this was a combination of factors:
a) western sanctions (boycott on gold) did force the export of grains and foodstuffs
b) Stalin did want to “industrialize the agriculture”
c) The Bolshevik regime deeply distrusted all peasants (Ukrainian or Russian) for their religiosity, patriotism and what the Bolsheviks would call “reactionary class consciousness”.
So the regime did order the de-Kulakization and collectivization of the Soviet rural regions. Now, look at who was tasked with implementing this policies: mostly Soviet Commissars. Those were mostly Jews (more about that later) and they spoke Russian amongst themselves.
Now consider the history of Ukrainian Jewish relations:
Most Jews appeared in the Ukraine during the Polish occupation when they were mostly used by the Polish invaders as overseers of the local peasantry on behalf of the Polish nobility. One of their function was to “oversee” the Orthodox churches. Needless to say, that resulted in a deep sense of hatred towards them from the local peasants. Later, after the Ukraine was freed from the Polish rule, many Jews (and even Poles) stayed. Their comparatively privileged social status and wealth earned them even more hate from the locals. Finally, keep in mind that all of Judaism at this time was rabidly anti-Christian and that the hate which Ukrainians felt towards Jews was nothing compared to the hatred all Jews felt for all Christians, including the local.
Eventually, the pendulum of history swung the other way and Jews began to suffer from more and more mistreatment at the hands of the locals which eventually resulted in mass emigration of Jews to the West. While Alexander Solzhenitsyn did conclusively prove in his book “200 years together” (still not translated into English due to Jewish opposition to this publication) that the Russian state did try hard to stop the so-called “pogroms” (mainly because this resulted in a terrible anti-Russian campaign in the western press), these pogroms did happen. They were organized by locals and some did claim many innocent lives. What is little known is that some of the worst pogroms did not happen under the “bloodthirsty and anti-Semitic Czarist regime” but during the civil war and after and that a lot of them were the fact not of White forces, but of the nationalists, anarchists, various Marxists, etc. who saw Jews class enemies, petit bourgeois and foreign agents. Now, when the Bolshevik faction eventually seized control over the Ukraine the pendulum swung the other way again.
Most Bolsheviks were Jews (which, btw, does not mean that most Jews were Bolsheviks!), especially the local commissars. They absolutely *hated* the Ukrainian peasantry and when the de-Kulakization and collectivization began, the found a perfect opportunity to take revenge on their former oppressors. Hence the mind-boggling cruelty with which the Bolshevik commissars implemented the Kremlin’s orders. Mind you, the pendulum swung back again during Hitler’s invasion of the Ukraine: not only did the Nazis shoot most Jews and all commissars on sight, the local Ukrainians – whether nationalist or not – gladly used this opportunity to massacre, torture, and kill as many Jews as they could.
After the war, the pendulum of history swung – albeit with much less momentum – the other way again and Ukrainian “collaborators” were hunted down and shot, but when the Ukraine became independent in 1991, the pendulum swung back again – again with even less momentum – and now we see the role of a small but very vocal Jew-hating and neo-Nazi segment in the current events.
The only (relatively) good news is that this pendulum of hate has less and less momentum for a number of reasons: many Jews have emigrated, the Soviet education system was firmly anti-racist, modern neo-Nazis are becoming more pro-Jewish and pro-Israeli (see Brevik) and Jews now have the means (finance, media, etc.) to counteract anti-Jewish propaganda. But that hate is still there and it cannot be ignored.
Now on a superficial level, here is what the poorly educated Ukrainians understood: the order to de-Kulakize came from Moscow, the executioners spoke Russian and hated the locals, millions died. It was easy for the nationalists to spin this as “a genocide of Russians against the Ukrainians”, especially since Jews had such a huge stake in concealing their role in these events. In politics its nevermind the truth as long as its serves a political purpose, and all the russophobes (neo-Nazis, Ukie nationalists, Jews, Anglos, etc.) turned that famine into a “Holodomor” with a capital “H” – almost as politically useful as the other “H” genocide:the one of Jews by the Nazis.
So that’s my take on this one. Next, come the issues of, well, what shall I call it?
What shall I call it?
When I began this blog I used to refer to the so-called “Roman Catholics” as Papists. The reason for that was extremely simple and straightforward: the so-called “Roman Catholics” are neither Roman nor Catholic. I have covered the first part (not Romans) many times here, so will just post two links to a through explanation of this topic:
http://www.romanity.org/htm/rom.03.en.franks_romans_feudalism_and_doctrine.01.htm
http://www.romanity.org/htm/rom.16.en.romanity_romania_roumeli.01.htm
The reason why the so-called “Catholics” are not Catholic is that the word Catholic has a precise meaning in Greek: it means both “universal” and “conciliar”. The “Roman Catholic Church” wants to present itself as “universal” for purely propagandistic grounds. When it calls itself “the Church this” or “the Church that” it lays the claim to be The One Original Christian Church. That is, of course, false for 2 reasons:
a) The so-called “Catholic Church” did break-off from the One United Christian Church (formally in 1054) and formed its own ecclesiastical entity
b) The so-called “Catholic Church” introduced a host of dogmas which are in contradiction with the faith “which the Lord gave, which was preached by the Apostles, and was preserved by the Fathers” (Saint Athanasios) and “which has been believed everywhere, always and by all” (Saint Vincent). For example, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Papal Infallibility were only adopted in the 19th century!).
From the point of view of the Church, the Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholics have been in heresy for almost one thousand years already precisely because they have departed from the Tradition of the ancient Church and the Church Fathers and they began to introduce innovations which were in direct contradiction with the teachings of Christ and His Apostles.
Also, conciliar means that the highest authority in the Church is vested upon the Church councils, especially the Ecumenical Councils. The Papists have de-facto and de-jure transferred the authority which the Church only granted to the councils to one man: the Pope. So its either “Papist” or “Catholic” – not both.
So, as an Orthodox Christian, I cannot honestly call the so-called “Roman Catholics” Roman Catholics. I could call them “the Frankish heretics” but that nobody would understand. So I used the word “Papists”. Why?
Because the root cause of all Papist heresies is in their re-definition of what the notion of Pope and their maniacal insistence that all of Christianity submit to him. Mind you, this is hardly a 19th century invention. Check out the kind of crazy notions of the Papacy the Franks introduced in the so-called “Dictatus Papae“. And keep in mind that this is a 11th century document adopted only 20 years after the Franks left the Christian Church. And ever since, the Papists have been willing to compromise on anything and everything except this one “idée fixe”: everybody has to submit to the Pope. So, I figured, why not call them by their own main value: the Papacy. Nope! I got many emails telling me that I was offending and alienating the Papists by calling them Papists. So I tried to find a better word.
First, I asked the folks who were offended by the expression “Papist” what they would suggest. Not a single one offered anything. I even considered “Western Christians” but I discarded that option because that would lump all the Protestant and Reformed Churches with the Papacy. Then I thought “Latins”. After all, that is an expression used in history, so why not? I even contacted my thesis advisor (I am working on a “Master’s Degree in Patristic Studies” – its not called that but its close enough) who replied that both Latin and Papist were reasonable. But I *still* got objections that this was “offensive”. So what was I to do?
The Arabs had it simple: they called the Papist “Franks” and the Orthodox “Romans”. They still do. Sounds great to me, but who will understand anything if I begin by writing about the Frankish role in the education of Bandera?! Exactly – nobody.
So I am stuck between using a term which is historically false, logically false and basically misleading and using accurate terms which offend precisely due to their accuracy.
So you tell me – do you have a better suggestion?
OK, let’s try that. For the rest of today’s post, and only for today post, I shall use the Arab terminology and speak of “Franks” when referring to the so-called Roman-Catholics.
BTW, if you think – like some do, they told me so – that I have an anti-Frankish obsession I will reply the following: did you ever noticed that I never speak of modern “Judaism” without calling it “rabbinical Judaism”? Why? Same thing!
Modern Judaism is not at all the religion of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – it is the religion of Maimonides, Karo and Luria and its key characteristic is the role of rabbis. In fact, the correct name for modern Judaism should be “Phariseism” (as all modern versions of rabbinical Judaism are the direct descendants of the Sect of the Pharisees described in the Gospels).
Me, personally, I would be quite happy to speak of Romans, Franks and Pharisees. But nobody would understand what I mean. Nobody. So I use “Orthodox Christians, Papists and Rabbinical Judaics” instead. There I get people deeply offended.
So, again, what shall I do?
May I maybe suggest that what causes the offense is not the words I use but the factual historical reality they accurately convey?
Next.
Blaming all the Franks for the actions of some
I think that in my post about the roots of Ukrainian nationalism I have been clear when I wrote:
Though hatred of the Orthodox Christians and Russian still exists in some Latin circles, it has mostly been replaced by a desire to “incorporate” or swallow the Orthodox Church into the Papacy by means of the so-called “Ecumenical dialog”. As for the rank and file Roman Catholic faithful – they simply have no idea at all about this history which, of course, is never taught to them.
And yet, I still get accused of lumping good and decent Franks with the genocidal maniacs I describe in my historical description.
But is that really a fair accusation?
After all, one is not born a Frank (Ouch! there we go. This sentence makes no sense at face value since being a Frank refers to an ethnicity, so one is indeed born a Frank. So? Shall I write “one is not born a Latin” or “one is not born a Papist”?). Being a Frank is a choice, a choice which implies some kind of acceptance, if not endorsement, for history. The Franks tried to have it both ways, on one hand they did apologize for the sack on Constantinople, on the other hand they have not only made saints out of some of the worst enemies of the Orthodox Church, they have even pursued the very same policies! Just look at the role of the Franks in the movements of Ante Pavelic or Stepan Bandera or in the Ukraine right now! They are still at it, though the rhetoric has changed. From being the “Photian schismatics”, they now call us their “Orthodox brothers”. Thanks for that, of course, but when will you pretty please stop trying to convert us or side with all our enemies?! And when will you stop making web pages like this one about some of the genocidal manics who have persecuted us?
Still, I know that most Franks are totally ignorant of the history of their own Church and that they are quite shocked when they hear about it. But even these Franks cannot help but wonder “if we forgot about all that, why does this guy constantly bring it up?! This is long gone, past history, what is he trying to prove? What is his problem?!”. To this, I would reply the following:
My dear Franks, what for you is past history is integral to our ethos and consciousness. We are not Orthodox because we like golden cupolas, beautiful icons and Byzantine church singing – we are Orthodox because we try to remember it all, not only dogmas and traditions, but also our history. This is why we read the Lives of the Saints on a daily basis – to remember our martyrs and be inspired to follow their example. Just like the Shia have the Ashura at the core of their spiritual life, we have to Golgotha and every single martyr which died for Christ and His Church at the core of our spiritual life. Our Menaion is full of the names and lives of our brothers which you have massacred ad majorem Dei gloriam, for us these events are not “long gone history” – they are both today and timeless and when you tell us to please stop bringing it all up, we feel that you are trying, yet again, to change who we are and silence the voices and witness of those who have massacred. The ancient Church has always had her martyrs at the core of Her liturgical life: a martyr’s relic is embedded in every single one of our church altars, every one of our antimensons also contains a small relic. This also used to be the practice in the West – just read the western Church Fathers – which for a full millennium also used to be part of the Universal Church (formally: 33AD-1054AD). Nowadays, of course, there is many more of you then there is of us, but tiny as we are, we still will continue to preserve the full memory of the Church as best we can and we will witness of the past even if you don’t like it. As the Chinese say: “me so sorry!”. Not.
In conclusion I will repeat what I wrote above: could it be that what causes the offense is not the events I describe but the factual historical reality they accurately convey?
Still – my offer stands: suggest to me a word to describe the Franks which would not automatically reinforce the Frankish propaganda and I will gladly use it.
Ok, that’s it for today. I have done my best to fully address some of the points which were raised in the comments section. I apologize if I have missed some. Please feel free to re-post them again here and I will make sure to address them.
Many thanks and kind regards,
The Saker
PS: yes, I know and I agree that Ashkenazim Jews are predominantly Khazars. But then, I cannot check for each “Jew” I mention whether he/she is Ashkenazim or Sfardim. Besides, can you imagine if from now on I add “Khazar” and “Sfardi” to “Frank”, “Roman” and “Pharisee”?! LOL :-) Right now I honestly have no energy for that…
Superb exposition of the Soviet/Bolshevik/Russian Jewish conundrum and how it is grossly simplified to the detriment of Russia itself.
Here is an English translation of 200 Years Together
Most of it anyway – in Samizdat English translation
In my opinion, Saker, your original choice of words is the best, for the sake of a fair balance between clarity and reality:
“Orthodox Christians, Papists and Rabbinical Judaics”
I presume, when the context of an article makes it clear, the first one could simply be called “Orthodox”, and the latter, being somewhat tautological nowadays, simply “Rabbinist”.
That being said, despite Arthur Koestler’s “13th Tribe”, I’ve never been entirely convinced of the biological link between Ashkenaze and the Khazars. The lastest study I’ve read on the matter seems to show that the Ashkenaze were more Germanic tribes (rather than Slavic or Siberian or Asian) converted to Rabbinism than anything else:
Costa et al. “A substantial prehistoric European ancestry amongst Ashkenazi maternal lineages”. Nature Communications, 2013; 4 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms3543
I have read that there are no known descendants of the Khazars, which makes it impossible to do genetic testing as we don’t have anything to test against that we know is Khazar.
The self-described evidence of Khazar origin for Jews fall totally apart if you look at what samples they had, how they chose them and what they were capable of proving.
On the other hand, there are those Renaissance tall, fair, red-haired Christs–did the artists know some secret?
If it is a matter of clarity, truthfulness and logical precision, what name do you propose for Muslims? If Catholics aren’t strictly speaking “Catholic” (and I grant you that) then certainly Muslims should not be called “Muslims” because they do not “submit to the will of God” – or else they would presumably be Orthodox Christians. So, just in the interest of consistency – if not intellectual honesty – if Catholics are to be called “Papists” then Muslims should be called something else, as they manifestly do not submit to the will of God. Shall we return to the 19th Century appellation, “Mohammedan”? Works for me.
About the Holodomor, I think it is systemic, written in the leninist system set up in 1917. Anyone with the power would have been responsible: Staline, Trotsky, etc… You can sum up this period as a war against peasants as you had a very limited working class. So to build up this working class you need a rural exodus toward cities and factories and collectivization…
They apply this system everywhere, Algeria, China with the results we know.
Oops. sorry, screwed up the link.
200 Years Together
Saker,
first of all, I’m happy to note that we both share the same “philosophy of history”, as you called it.
Secondly, I’d like to clarify that I’m not offended by whatever you write, and I think nobody should. Personal “offence” these days seems to be more a way to suppress and impose arbitrary conditions to expression and opinion than anything else.
As to the controversy around what to call Franks et al, well, Papists sounds as good as any you mentioned really. Although, personally, from your description and definition, I would be more inclined to classify those people as Ultramontanists. It seems to precisely describe what you take issue with: the primacy of the Pope.
Anyway, Portugal never was an ultramontanist country. Our kings had to barter many times with the Papacy and a few got excommunicated… eheheh
I will not discuss theology because I don’t know much about it. So I can’t comment on the appreciation you make about the differences between Catholic and Orthodox (or Frank and Roman) doctrine. I will, however, pose the issue to people I know know a bit more about it.
I’d be specially interested in understanding the philosophical differences between them and whether that initial schism was bound, one day, to end up in the sectarianism know as Protestantism – in other words, the shattering of Christian faith into a thousand fragments.
Morally, however, I perceive little difference between what you say and what i was taught as a child… but time will tell.
Finally, on the Holodomor, I never read much into it – I did, however read significantly on the other one – but your analysis seems balanced and reasonable. It matches my own understanding of other events that share some of the actors…
Thanks!
Old Ez:Muslims should not be called “Muslims” because they do not “submit to the will of God” – or else they would presumably be Orthodox Christians. So, just in the interest of consistency – if not intellectual honesty – if Catholics are to be called “Papists” then Muslims should be called something else, as they manifestly do not submit to the will of God. Shall we return to the 19th Century appellation, “Mohammedan”? Works for me.
Muslims never tried to impersonate Christians so I have no beef with their name. Are they doing the will of God? Let me ask you this: are the Orthodox Christians doing the will of God? I am not so sure as we are ALL sinners. In fact, the Church is a hospital for sinners, so it is chock-full of sinners. The ONLY difference between the sinners inside and outside the Church is the “hospital” they chose to try to heal themselves. Also, while I do not agree with the teachings of Islam personally, Muslims strive to do the will of God *AS THEY KNOW IT* so they do submit or, I should say, they try their utmost to submit. In fact, Orthodox Christians – including sinners of course – refer to themselves as “slave of God” (usually translated by a less shocking “servant of God”). So Orthodox Christians also TRY and FAIL (since we are all sinful). Now if the Muslims called themselves Orthodox Christians, that would be a problem for me, but they don’t. As for “Mohammedan” as far as I know, Muslims consider the Prophet Mohammed as infallible only in his conveyance of the message of God to the people. Furthermore, since the Muslims do not have the concept of a church in the Christian sense, they do not have dogmas in the Christians sense either, thus no single Muslim jurist or cleric would claim the kind out authority or infallibility the Pope claims for himself.
For me to be called a “Christian” as “follower of Christ” is fine. But then I consider Christ as being both God and Son of God. Muslims to not have a Trinity and thus to call them “Mohammedan” would probably be perceived by them as as containing an implicit accusation of idolatry towards the Prophet whereas only God should be worshiped. So the Muslims definitely do not worship Mohammed. Now read the Dictatus Papae and tell me whether this is papolatry or not?
Bottom line – I have no problem calling Muslims “Muslims”.
Cheers,
The Saker
Hey Saker And all.
Thanks for all the great info here, I have become addicted to this blog.
I just saw a clip I found via RT,regarding the unrest starting in Crimea – at 2:25 some guys are chanting “Allahu Akbar”
Can someone tell me what they are doing their? It just feels very out of Place…
Greetings from Sweden
@ mujahedin: Portugal and the Papacy. I urge you to read the two articles I gave the links for as they discuss a fact you already know about: the North of Europe (the Franks) invaded and submitted the South of Europe (the Romans). Spain and Portugal resisted the Franks and their Papist ideas for a long time, with the support for the Romans from the Constantinople (Byzantium). Even more amazing is the fact that Jews ALSO were on the side of Rome and against the Franks. This is why the Franks so horribly persecuted not only Jews but also many of the local population in the Iberian Peninsula: for being “villians” (read Romanides about this word), for being Romans, for being Orthodox. Same story in France, by the way. Souther France (Occitanie) used to be Roman and Orthodox, same for what is now central and south Italy – they also were Roman and Orthodox. The entire Mediterranean was Roman and Orthodox at that time, and the Franks had to use a systematic campaign of terror to submit the western Roman provinces (which, I repeat, where Orthodox) to their will. So THERE NEVER WAS AN EAST-WEST SCHISM IN CHRISTENDOM. It was a NORTH-SOUTH in which the North first submitted the south in a bloodbath and then turned on the East. Then, of course, the Franks “modestly” turned to their next objective: to submit the entire planet to their will. This is the real ethos of the Papacy. It is the same was as the Judaics: to conquer the entire world and submit it to their will. The history of the Papacy is one never-ending violent struggle to conquer the worldly power over the planet. Something which the Church Fathers of the ancient Church would have considered outright demonic.
Read Romanides. It will tell you a lot about your own past.
Cheers!
The Saker
Wow im getting tired, I forgot the link I mentioned in my previous post about “allahu Akbar” being chanted in Crimean unrest, 2:25, if anyone is intrested.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtsMCDOqDhw#t=14
Again Gretings from Sweden
@Anonymous:I just saw a clip I found via RT,regarding the unrest starting in Crimea – at 2:25 some guys are chanting “Allahu Akbar” Can someone tell me what they are doing their? It just feels very out of Place…
There are 12.1% Crimean Tatars in Crimea. As far as I know, some are pro-Ukraine, some are for an independent Islamic Crimea, some feel that the best for them is to remain with Russia. Crimea use to be a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire (the “Crimean Khanate”) 3 centuries and Tatars were there even before. So they certainly have a strong historical claim on this Peninsula. Whether the ones currently siding with the Ukie nationalists are being smart or dumb about it is a different issue. To me, anybody siding with rabid nationalists and neo-Nazis is dumb. Anybody thinking that Russia will ever abandon Crimea is insane. In Russia, by the way, Ramzan Kadyrov has already condemned these Tatar Islamists (who have conflicts with local Chechens, by the way).
I am frankly horrified to see that these folks, instead of keeping a low profile and siding with civilized majority are getting in the middle of it all with screams of Allahu Akbar. Don’t they understand how dangerous that is for them?! If they keep up with that crap, they are going to get smashed sooner or later…
Cheers,
The Saker
@Anonymous from Sweden: I just saw footage of Crimean Tatars assaulting Russians and screaming “Russians go back to Russia”. OMG, I sure hope that somebody in the Islamic world will bring these folks back to the real world or else they are in for some really bad pain.
The Saker
Hi Saker,
When reading the Romanides articles I often have to stop and think which group he’s referring to. Because all this is new to my Western (ex)Catholic mind.
So I would welcome consistent terms for the parties. Latin or papist is always clear, as is Orthodox. Franks is a little more difficult and the context might require a clarifying bracket after it. Roman can be confusing, as can Christian.
When we explain to others what is familiar to ourselves, it’s easy to forget that others don’t have the necessary background knowledge.
Thanks for all your time and work.
Michael
I meant to post this comment here. I inadvertently posted it to the wrong blog entry else where:
Solzhenitsyn’s 200 Years Together is in fact being translated into English by writers affiliated with The Occidental Observer and Counter-Currents.com.
Here are relevant summaries from Professor Kevin MacDonald:
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=occidental+Observer+200+Years+Together
And here is a link to the chapters of the text that have been translated thus far:
http://ethnopoliticsonline.com/archives/ais/ais%20main.html
This is a volunteer oriented project. It has not received any major funding and publication of this book has been blocked by Jewish bigwigs.
Any help your readers can offer will be greatly appreciated.
Also, I urge your readers who have the stomach for politically incorrect dogmas to take a serious look at Professor Kevin MacDonald’s commentaries on how 200 Years Together applies to the metapolitics that dominate the web today. Professor MacDonald is one of the most important political dissidents of our time, and unlike the ones sponsored by the foundation funded left (eg: Chomsky, Chris Hedges, Bill Moyers, or any “intellectual” appearing on PBS or NPR, you are unlikely to be exposed to his work unless you wander out to the bleeding edge of the radical right.
Here is a video you may appreciate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMlGFGaN-6s
“I think that this was a combination of factors:
a) western sanctions (boycott on gold) did force the export of grains and foodstuffs
b) Stalin did want to “industrialize the agriculture”
c) The Bolshevik regime deeply distrusted all peasants (Ukrainian or Russian) for their religiosity, patriotism and what the Bolsheviks would call “reactionary class consciousness”.”
The main reason was the need to quickly build industries required for impending war. The only way to import the required equipment and technologies was sales of grain. Both collectivization itself and “holodomor” was consequences of the desperate attempt to build the required industrial capacity in a few years. In Stalin and Co. knew well (and said so publicly) that they will need to go to war with western power(s) within 10 years.
So responsibility for the holodomor is with those that pushed Europe and Germany towards the new war in the 1920s and 1930s.
You think you know a lot even though you don’t, then you read and realize you were right and there is so much more to learn and that there is no limit and no end, then you take solace with, just kidding:
I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also was a chasing of the wind. For in much wisdom is much grief; and he who increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow. (Ecclesiastes 1:17-18)
@saker
“the Prophet Mohammed as infallible only in his conveyance of the message of God to the people”
This is a Sunni belief. The Shia belief is that he was infallible.
Your companion does not err, nor does he go astray;
Nor does he speak out of desire.
It is naught but revelation that is revealed
(Quran 53:1-4)
And yes, Muslims would find it insulting to be called Mohammdens. I make sure I tell everyone I am a Shia Muslim. But that is only if they ask “what are you?” which is very common where I stay. I am sure if I stayed in a number of other places I would have to hide that little detail of being a Shia.
mindfriedo
ps: do you know what this ayat of the bible Ecclesiastes 1:17-18 actually implies? I keep wondering if its God being sarcastic.
“OMG, I sure hope that somebody in the Islamic world will bring these folks back to the real world or else they are in for some really bad pain.”
I don’t doubt my fellow Muslims’ capacity for stupidity. They may genuinely feel a sense of Crimean identity, but they never know when to speak, when not to, and when they are being used. Even after the pain comes they will be stubborn and not realize that they brought it on themselves, that is why AllahuAkbar and Muslims are not.
Mindfriedo
@Mindfriedo: “the Prophet Mohammed as infallible only in his conveyance of the message of God to the people” This is a Sunni belief. The Shia belief is that he was infallible.
My mistake is even worse: a very knowledgeable Muslim friend just emailed me and said:
Only *some* Wahhabis, Salafis, and their like consider the Prophet (S) “as infallible only in his conveyance of the message of God to the people”. Muslims in the main believe the Prophet is infallible in *every* word and deed:
“And he does not speak anything of his own whim; whatever he speaks is an inspired revelation”
“Say (O Messenger)! If you all love God then follow me! He will love you and forgive your sins. And God is Oft-Forgiving, Uniquely Merciful”
“Surely for you in the Messenger is a beautiful example”
So I can only apologize to everybody for my crass ignorance, once again! And, it truth, when I think about it, the man who taught me that the Prophet was not only fallible but even sinful, was a Saudi. I should have been more careful before writing what I did…. My apologies to all!
do you know what this ayat of the bible Ecclesiastes 1:17-18 actually implies?
In my opinion, a factual truth: if “ignorance is bliss” then “in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”. Just look at the topics we discussed today: how much evil, how much lies, how many tragedies, deceived people, broken lives. Becoming aware of the true world around us is, I think, a process full of grief, even though on a deeper level we begin to enjoy our internal freedom.
I keep wondering if its God being sarcastic.
The only case in the Scripture in which I sensed something very close to sarcasm from God was in the Book of Jonah when at it end God speaks about “Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle? (Jonah 4:11). I find that hilarious. Not only as the Ninevites listed along with cattle, but their description as being unable to distinguish between their two hands make me think of the lobotomized zombies we see around us nowadays in the so-called “developed” countries.
Isn’t this a hilarious image?
Kind regards,
The Saker
Makes it clearer with context.
” persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand”
this might also mean right from wrong? and that is why they are like animals.
Something similar Muawiah had said of his troops. How can Ali(a.s) teach them if they do not know the difference between a she camel and a he camel?
“lobotomized zombies we see around us nowadays”
when I’m sitting observing people all day I start wondering if i’m the “zombie” and everybody going on with their lives as if everything is normal are the “enlightened.”
thank you for some very informative posts
mindfriedo
You need to stop being an ass and stop with the silly insults towards the Roman Catholic church.
Here is some History that you seem to ignore. The Roman Empire was based and named after their capital Rome. After the split of the Roman empire into the two halves they became two different entities. The eastern half became known as the Byzantine empire due to using the Greek language in that half (Byzantium is the Greek name of Constantinople). Its a modern way of more easily and accurately differentiating the two halves of the Roman empire.
The Church also split into two parts and the western half became known as the Roman catholic church while the other half became known as the Eastern Orthodox Church. Due note how Orthodox is a Greek word and the eastern half was dominated by Greeks while the other side was Latin dominated.
Hey it might surprise you but the Vatican is Located in Rome. Someone from Rome is called a what? A papist or a Roman? Hence, Roman Catholic is an accurate description of the church’s location in Rome.
Roman Catholic is the name chosen to represent the church and slandering the church by calling everyone Papist is ridiculous.
Papist is an insult invented by protestants to bash Roman Catholics and you are following the exact script. Pretending that it is historically accurate is pathetic. Its a historic fact that calling someone a Papist is an insult that’s been used to bash Roman Catholics for centuries.
Religion by its very nature is divisive and pretending that you are not intentionally insulting Roman Catholics by calling us Papist is disingenuous in the extreme.
Calling Roman Catholics papist is an insult and i find it highly astonishing that you pretend that it is somehow just a historical word. “Papist” has always been and always will be an anti-Catholic slur.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papist
Its part of the protestant reformation/Catholic split. Maybe you should educate yourself on the word before pretending its not an insult.
Catholic bashing is a huge phenomenon historically and its always remarkable how certain people presume to be infallible when bashing the Roman catholic church. I don’t know anything about Eastern Orthodoxy just like it seems you don’t know squat about the Roman Catholic church or its history.
But its seems that your ignorance hasn’t stopped you from making blanket statements about the Roman Catholic Church.
There are three big Christian traditions that exist today Protestantism Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
Using a Protestant insult (Papist) of Roman Catholics is not clever but quite stupid and easy to debunk. Religion has been used to justify all kind of bad behavior and its seems you’ve fallen into the exact trap of pretending that everyone is a heretic if they don’t belong to your specific branch of Christianity.
This is an interesting website but you should refrain from religious bs because wikipedia does exist and its not hard to figure out that Papist is an insult. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=papist
Taking offence at “naming” is actually the trick used to avoid disscussion of inconvenient truths (the same as political correctness). The “Catholics” will never admit that they are in any error. They don’t held heretical doctrines, they are not infringing the canons of the Church, they never persecuted the Orthodox. No, no, they just put in their place those “insulting” them. They can’t get rid of their narcissism. Good that they are not yet in the position to impose “anti-hate speach” laws! But as Old Ez put it, in the interest “of clarity, truthfulness and logical precision” we must keep the denominations which accurately express the content of the object of discussion.
There is no reason to find a “neuter” name for the Western Heresy. It is Roman because it started at Rome, it is Latin because all Latin peoples partake in the heresy (with rare exceptions like Romanians). It is Papist because the primacy of the Pope is its fundamental dogma. It is not Catholic, because it is not Universal, it is a particular view with pretensions of universality.
The religion of the Hebrews (of the Old Testament), is NOT Judaism. Judaism was the particular deviation that developed in Judaea, among the tribe of Juda, under the aegis of the rabbis (the Pharisees and Scribes of the Gospel) who “nullified the word of God for the sake of their tradition” (Matt, 15,6). Judaism evolved as an declared foe of Christianity.
As was the religion of the followers of the profet Mahomed. Western Christians called them Mahometani, followers of Mahometus. The Orthodox Greeks viewed them as a Christian heresy. “There is also the superstition of the Ishmaelites which to this day prevails and keeps people in error, being a forerunner of the Antichrist. They are descended from Ishmael, [who] was born to Abraham of Agar, and for this reason they are called both Agarenes and Ishmaelites. They are also called Saracens, which is derived from Sarras kenoi, or destitute of Sara, because of what Agar said to the angel: ‘Sara hath sent me away destitute.’” (From Saint’s John of Damascus treaty The Heresy of the Ishmaelites).
WizOz
I’m inclined to agree with Narciso Lopez regarding Catholicism.
Putting aside the historical division between what you call the Papists and Orthodox or the Franks and Romans, the theological differences are pretty slender indeed. Compared to the divide between Catholics/Orthodox and Protestants, much less Catholics/Orth/Protestants and Mormon, they’re minimal.
I deeply appreciate the historical reflection, especially of the politics and emotions surrounding the famine.
You mentioned Arabic terms; I hope the following helps clarify the issue.
When I learned Arabic in Jordan, they had a number terms for different Christian Churches. Their term for members of the (Greek)Orthodox Church was, appropriately enough, “Orthodox” (remember to roll the ‘r’!). However, that only really applied to the Greek Orthodox. The Syrian, Assyrian, and Armenian Orthodox were called by the plural of their ethnic name, with the assumption that all members of that ethnic group were by default part of their Orthodox Church. Even in Egypt, members of the ‘Orthodox’ are called by the plural of the word ‘Coptic’ – an old Egyptian term for themselves.
Historically the Ethnic group = ‘Orthodox’ assumption took a hit when the Roman Catholic Church decided to send missionaries into the east to convert those wayward souls. So it was (starting in the 13th century) each of those ethnic groups reluctantly gave birth to a “Catholic” communion; each one known by a compound of its’ ethnic name with the added ‘Catholique’ – so you get Syrian Catholique, Assyrian Catholique, Greek Catholique, and Armenian Catholique. The Egyptians came in as Coptic Catholique while Maronites (a tribal/ethnic ‘Catholique’ group), were “Maronite” but without the ‘Catholique’!
But for some idealistic purists at the heart of the system whose headquarters is at the Vatican, the fact that those “Catholique” Churches used local languages in their worship was disconcerting to say the least. So a new round of missionaries was sent out (15th century) to produce an even better version of converted “Orthodox”; one that used Latin liturgy and again, appropriately, was labelled by the pragmatic Arabs as “Latin” (pronounced ‘Lateen’). “Latin” also applied to the wider system that took orders from the Vatican.
Interestingly, by implication, the different versions of “Catholique”, including the Maronites, were not seen as under the direction and politics of the Vatican to the same degree as the “Latin”.
We were taught that the word “Rume” described the Greek Orthodox. This was true but in a more generalized political sense; it was an older term, rarely used in the areas of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. I got the feel it had more traction in Turkey.
In our area, the Arabic for “Franks” was one of the terms for Crusaders.
As an aside, when the Presbyterian missionaries arrived, the groups they formed became Syrian, Assyrian, Armenian, Coptic, (etc) Evangelical.
I deeply appreciate the historical reflection, especially of the politics and emotions surrounding the famine.
You mentioned Arabic terms; I hope the following helps clarify the issue.
When I learned Arabic in Jordan, they had a number terms for different Christian Churches. Their term for members of the (Greek)Orthodox Church was, appropriately enough, “Orthodox” (remember to roll the ‘r’!). However, that only really applied to the Greek Orthodox. The Syrian, Assyrian, and Armenian Orthodox were called by the plural of their ethnic name, with the assumption that all members of that ethnic group were by default part of their Orthodox Church. Even in Egypt, members of the ‘Orthodox’ are called by the plural of the word ‘Coptic’ – an old Egyptian term for themselves.
Historically the Ethnic group = ‘Orthodox’ assumption took a hit when the Roman Catholic Church decided to send missionaries into the east to convert those wayward souls. So it was (starting in the 13th century) each of those ethnic groups reluctantly gave birth to a “Catholic” communion; each one known by a compound of its’ ethnic name with the added ‘Catholique’ – so you get Syrian Catholique, Assyrian Catholique, Greek Catholique, and Armenian Catholique. The Egyptians came in as Coptic Catholique while Maronites (a tribal/ethnic ‘Catholique’ group), were “Maronite” but without the ‘Catholique’!
But for some idealistic purists at the heart of the system whose headquarters is at the Vatican, the fact that those “Catholique” Churches used local languages in their worship was disconcerting to say the least. So a new round of missionaries was sent out (15th century) to produce an even better version of converted “Orthodox”; one that used Latin liturgy and again, appropriately, was labelled by the pragmatic Arabs as “Latin” (pronounced ‘Lateen’). “Latin” also applied to the wider system that took orders from the Vatican.
Interestingly, by implication, the different versions of “Catholique”, including the Maronites, were not seen as under the direction and politics of the Vatican to the same degree as the “Latin”.
We were taught that the word “Rume” described the Greek Orthodox. This was true but in a more generalized political sense; it was an older term, rarely used in the areas of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. I got the feel it had more traction in Turkey.
In our area, the Arabic for “Franks” was one of the terms for Crusaders.
As an aside, when the Presbyterian missionaries arrived, the groups they formed became Syrian, Assyrian, Armenian, Coptic, (etc) Evangelical.
I deeply appreciate the historical reflection, especially of the politics and emotions surrounding the famine.
You mentioned Arabic terms; I hope the following helps clarify the issue.
When I learned Arabic in Jordan, they had a number terms for different Christian Churches. Their term for members of the (Greek)Orthodox Church was, appropriately enough, “Orthodox” (remember to roll the ‘r’!). However, that only really applied to the Greek Orthodox. The Syrian, Assyrian, and Armenian Orthodox were called by the plural of their ethnic name, with the assumption that all members of that ethnic group were by default part of their Orthodox Church. Even in Egypt, members of the ‘Orthodox’ are called by the plural of the word ‘Coptic’ – an old Egyptian term for themselves.
Historically the Ethnic group = ‘Orthodox’ assumption took a hit when the Roman Catholic Church decided to send missionaries into the east to convert those wayward souls. So it was (starting in the 13th century) each of those ethnic groups reluctantly gave birth to a “Catholic” communion; each one known by a compound of its’ ethnic name with the added ‘Catholique’ – so you get Syrian Catholique, Assyrian Catholique, Greek Catholique, and Armenian Catholique. The Egyptians came in as Coptic Catholique while Maronites (a tribal/ethnic ‘Catholique’ group), were “Maronite” but without the ‘Catholique’!
But for some idealistic purists at the heart of the system whose headquarters is at the Vatican, the fact that those “Catholique” Churches used local languages in their worship was disconcerting to say the least. So a new round of missionaries was sent out (15th century) to produce an even better version of converted “Orthodox”; one that used Latin liturgy and again, appropriately, was labelled by the pragmatic Arabs as “Latin” (pronounced ‘Lateen’). “Latin” also applied to the wider system that took orders from the Vatican.
Interestingly, by implication, the different versions of “Catholique”, including the Maronites, were not seen as under the direction and politics of the Vatican to the same degree as the “Latin”.
We were taught that the word “Rume” described the Greek Orthodox. This was true but in a more generalized political sense; it was an older term, rarely used in the areas of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. I got the feel it had more traction in Turkey.
In our area, the Arabic for “Franks” was one of the terms for Crusaders.
As an aside, when the Presbyterian missionaries arrived, the groups they formed became Syrian, Assyrian, Armenian, Coptic, (etc) Evangelical.
New science suggests Ashkenazi Jews are primarily European in origin, probably mixed with Levantine genes.
http://www.livescience.com/40247-ashkenazi-jews-have-european-genes.html
The Khazar theory is losing credence.
Enjoyed your post today!
@WizOz
“Taking offence at “naming” is actually the trick used to avoid discussion of inconvenient truths”… and so is using such “naming”.
I highly value Saker’s comments and his good sense in understanding the politics, yet in the matters of religion he is simply not informed well enough to go past his personal likes and dislikes, and such are not up for discussion – accept them or dismiss them.
Antek
WizOz, An insult is an insult and pretending otherwise is laughable.
An insult does not in anyway avoid or prove an “inconvenient truth.”
The purpose of an insult is to slander and damage the target while forcing the opponent to debunk the make believe of the accuser. Basically you are a troll that is muddying the waters with a bunch of bs masquerading as “truth”
You avoid the obvious fact that calling someone a “Papist” is nothing but an insult.
I see that you think Roman Catholics are Heretics and that only Orthodox Christians are real christians.
“There is no reason to find a “neuter” name for the Western Heresy… Latin peoples partake in the heresy (with rare exceptions like Romanians)”
I’ve never understood religious extremism and quite frankly have idea why the big bad pope scares people.
Protestants used to be terrified of the Papist conspiracy to force them to return to the “whore of Babylon,” today they don’t care because most of them have become shameless agnostics. Western Europe stopped believe in god a long time ago.
Seems to me that the Roman Catholic hate seems to be coming from some fear that the reconciliation of the east-west churches might actually bear some fruit. Not sure why this would cause so much fear?
Seriously why is Using Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox to describe the 3 big christian denominations such a difficult thing for people?
Inflammatory language is only used when people want to end discussion and rally the true believers to whatever cause they are pushing.
Using neutral language, i.e. language that avoids negative connotations is not a dirty trick.
The truth is very simple, people that demand the right to use inflammatory language are fanatics that want conflict by poisoning any and all potential for dialogue.
Slandering and demonizing people is what cause conflict because it destroys trust and prevents any type of compromise between the conflicting parties.
Lets be frank lots of people are fascist that agree whole heartedly with Nazism. i.e. Nazism is basically socialism for a master race and enslavement and extermination for ‘inferior’ people.
Go ahead and continue using Papist. I have no power to stop you from insulting me or others.
The only thing that i have on my side is human decency and the good lords words ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” -Mark 12:31
Maybe your bible is different from mine, I’m after all a western heretic and a “papist.”
A 1922 movie, made from a 1912 Danish novel where the 1905 pogroms are in the background
http://www.finest-film.com/content/love-one-another
Great Famine:
According to Juri Lina’s book “Under the Sign of the Scorpio” the great famine was organized by Kaganovich to reduce the population. Grain was confiscated then exported while people were starving. See p.292 Under The Sign of The Scorpio
On a different tone: Send a quenelle to AIPAC
alizard
Sorry, you should stick to “papist”, it’s the accurate term. While I’m not that hostile to modern Catholicism as I used to be, the basic tenent of submission to the Pope first and before the scripture is a defining term.
Frankish is especially bad as you stated, as it doesn’t make any sense any more. It is an ethnic definition and has only a linguistic sense (dutch, flamish, luxemburgish, mosellan, saarish, franconian, hessian, palatinian, etc; are all frankish dialects).
Furthermore, there is the real risk of confusion with Frankism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankism which can be in fact described as satanic Judaism. Le libre penseur, a friend of Soral, wrote a big book on it and its influence on world politics since Louix XV.
I haven’t yet studied in depth that story but it seems to me, that Frankism is one of the biggest unknown influence in world politics.
@Narciso Lopez,
You hit the point, with a little correction. YOUR Bible is different from mine. Your logic too.
WizOz
Wow, first of all thanks for taking the time to write all that up
I understand how time consuming this type of activity is
So- thanks
I haven’t any issue with your use of labels, you have clarified what each represents in order for us to understand what it is you are saying
So, that’s ok
Wouldn’t the European genes in the lineage of the tribe actually shore up the Khazarian history?
I would think it does.
After the fall of the Khazarian empire, based on where it was located, the Khazars spread out into Europe
I believe..it’s been a couple of years since I read the 13th tribe
but, it seems to me that this is what Koestler described happening?
from the live science
“Instead, a substantial proportion of the population originates from local Europeans who converted to Judaism”
I think that connects back quite likely to the Khazars
“it contradicts the notion that European Jews mostly descend from people who left Israel”
again ties back nicely to the Khazars…
so it’s odd that live science draws the conclusion that it does???
Almost as if politics wins out over science???
That said the live science article makes clear that most of the tribe are not semitic peoples
again ‘a substantial proportion of the population originates from local Europeans who converted to Judaism’
which still tells me the historical/ancestral claims about the little theocratic state in the ME is mostly invalid or unsubstantiated
WizOz: Taking offence at “naming” is actually the trick used to avoid disscussion of inconvenient truths (the same as political correctness).
exactly and well said
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Hi Saker and all,
Your contributions here are greatly appreciated, keep up the good work!
In regards to Holomodor, one of latest points that you have picked for more clarifications I would bring to everyone’s attention the rather undeserved sided story of the Agro-Joints in Ukraine called in fact American Jewish Joint Agricultural Corporation developed between 1924 and 1941 in southern part of the country. Besides the fact that none of these agricultural farms, organized and developed by the Jewish community with western financial help and having the limited scope of helping the Jewish population resettled from the shtetls around Ukraine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtetl), participated in any way to the quotas that the Soviet regime was abusively gathering from the farmers in the area with the solely purpose of making large exports of grains – I doubt any financial pressures by any of the occidental countries that would lead such actions by a frightened Stalin at the time…- they were, by the most indulging assessment, the expression of a social-economic double standard within the Soviet Union. In the particular way that history acts (behaves) and Saker very well recently described here using the pendulum metaphor, this very story of an alternative economic way of well being destined only for Jews triggered soon after, in the first part of WWII, revengeful actions by the Ukrainians against a luckier population, ethnically and religiously distinct, only by the choice of a regime that was from the beginning suspected of being biased toward Jewish population. However this is not to say that all Jewish people that inhabited at the time the territories of the Soviet Union were equally “positively” discriminated, I do not support such view and one of the most clear source on the matter is “200 years together” by the well known Russian dissident.
In short, here, I would warmly recommend few readings that would bring more light on this episode of the Soviet State for the ones interested:
a brief history of the settlements, http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Agriculture;
book, Farming the red land: Jewish Agricultural Colonization and Local Soviet Power, 1924-1941 by Jonathan L. Dekel-Chen;
JCA-ORT-JAS-JDC: one big agrarianizing family by Jonathan L. Dekel-Chen;
book, Jewish Agricultural Settlement in the USSR by Jacob Lvavi;
the archives, 1921- 1932: Records of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee;
the archives of YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Guide to the Papers of Joseph A. Rosen (1877-1949), 1911-1943 (bulk 1922-1938 and probably many more good sources.
Kind regards,
Evia
P.S. This comes from a christian orthodox from a neighboring country that looks worried at the fast and unforeseeable pace of events in Ukraine and will always prefer a moderate environment as this one, brilliantly hosted by such people such Saker, in which I noticed there is not much room for violent or too passionate talk in the sense that would become harmful to all of us.
@EVERYBODY: Thank you all for your comments. Below I will reply to them with a few short comments, and then I need to turn the page and go back to current events as there is *a lot* happening right now. Sorry for the short replies below!
@mjm: yes, Romanides is not an easy read, but it is well worth the effort, at least when he writes about antiquity.
@anonymous:The main reason was the need to quickly build industries required for impending war. Yes, that is true, I should have mentioned that even though this is hardly an excuse to massacre millions of people, this was definitely one of the reasons.
@Mindfriedo: that is why AllahuAkbar and Muslims are not. LOL! I love that sentence which, of course, equally applies to non-Muslims :-)
when I’m sitting observing people all day I start wondering if i’m the “zombie” and everybody going on with their lives as if everything is normal are the “enlightened.”
Having read a lot of your insightful, well informed, very analytical and impeccably logical comments here, I can assure you that you are not the zombie! In fact, I am deeply grateful to you for all that you have contributed to this blog, for which I sincerely thank you!
@Les: thanks for the clarification!!
@gallier2: Furthermore, there is the real risk of confusion with Frankism Good point, but I have to confess I was a little bit tongue-in-cheek with the goody idea of calling the Papist “Franks” even though that is something we do in my family..
@Evia: thanks for the very important information you have provided!
@WizOz: YOUR Bible is different from mine
Actually, it should be. The Papist should be reading Saint Jerome’s translation the Vulgate, but since most of them cannot, they fall back on a text based on the Masoretic which, as I am sure you know, is a Jewish forgery (denounced as such by Saint Justin Martyr in his “Dialog with Trypho the Jew and by Saint John Chrysostome in his “Against the Jews” iirc). What is certain is that the Papists do not read the Septuagint (of which the vast majority of them never even heard). So technically speaking, their Bible is different, one way or another (though at least Saint Jerome was aware of the Septuagint). As for the alphabet soup of modern translations, they are also all based on the Masoretic text anyway. But then, their ignorance is mind boggling. Have you ever met a Papist who actually understood what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception means? I my experience they all mistake it for the virginity of the Mother of God or that Christ was conceived without the Original Sin. 99.99999% of them think that, even their clergy. It is quite amusing, really. Check it out for yourself. A friend of mine even had a Jesuit get it wrong, LOL!
@EVERYBODY:
Looks like there is no good solution for the correct way to refer to the Papacy. Frankly, I suspect that using the word “Latins” ruffles less feathers than “Papists”, so that is that I will mostly use in the future. Of course, there is only that far you can go discussing the history of the Papacy with the Papists before they get mad at you, which is par for the course – I would expect no less of them.
As to any Latin/Papist reading this I will say this: go and study your own history and your own dogmatics. Don’t just rely on the modern “decaf” version you are taught today, but study the real thing, Thomas Aquinas, Anselm of Canterbury (on “satisfaction”), read up on the First Vatican Council and Bishop Strossmeyer’s speech there (http://www.mtc.org/bishop_s.html), go beyond the Wikipedia and get the original sources. Do that or you will spend the rest of your life like a citizen of Nineveh ;-)
Cheers and thanks to all,
The Saker
@EVERYBOBODY
One more thing: this morning I received a very interesting email from one of my readers which, among other this, said this:
But there may be something about the word “Papist” you may not be aware of, and that is the very long, very ugly persecution of Irish Catholics by the English Anglicans and transplanted Scots Presbyterians. Papist was, and remains, the epithet of choice so, as you have seen, it is “a fighting word” deeply embedded in the hearts and souls of just about every Irish Catholic everywhere. I share your viewpoint, but can’t imagine anyone Irish, given their 800-year-long-and-still-counting murderous repression, being able to take it in properly.
Here I have to unequivocally plead guilty! First, my Orthodox background really removes me from the history of western Christians. And it should not. I good Irish friend of mine (a Latin) told me about the horrors which were suffered by the Irish “Catholics” at the hands of the English Anglicans and how they lasted for centuries. And, it is true that while I maybe do not intend the word “Papist” as an insult (I *really* don’t!), the fact that it has been used for centuries as such is a fact I cannot simply ignore. Especially, since on a personal and cultural level I am especially close to a few “Papist” countries and people: the Argentinians first and foremost, but also the Spanish, the Brazilians, the French, the Belgians, the Irish and the Italians. Furthermore, on a purely cultural, family, traditional level, I feel much closer to my Latin friends and their traditions then I do to the Protestants/Reformed. The truth is that I don’t hate “Catholics” at all, even though yes, I do hate the Papacy, that is true.
So, believe me I am sincere here, I am REALLY annoyed by this naming business. The polite and easy way is obvious: speak of “Roman Catholics” or “Catholics” and make everybody happy. But that makes *ME* UN-happy, for all the reasons I outlined. It makes me feel like I am glossing over all the (real) Romans which were persecuted and butchered by the Franks and it makes me feel like a coward because it looks like I accept a claim made by the Papacy which I categorically reject (that of being universal and/or conciliar).
So, for the time being, I am stuck with “Latin” which is less than brilliant anyway if only because the Romanians are Latin by culture while the Poles are not.
So, really, I would be IMMENSELY GRATEFUL for any accurate and non-offensive designator you could suggest to me. I have been breaking my head over that issue for a long long time now and it frustrates the shit of out me :-(
Thanks “N.H” for your reminder!!
Cheers to all,
The Saker
@EVERYBODY:
Sorry, me again for one more thing. Please tell me which is less bad:
1) Latins
or
2) “Roman-Catholics“
or even
3) “Catholics“
but with quotation marks around the word(s)?
These are the three options I see.
What do you guys recommend?
Thanks,
The Saker
“Catholics” for lack of a better description.
Dear Saker, I was baptized in the frankish rite in the lower church of “saint” Josefat(kunyevitch) basilica in milwaukee…don’t hold it against me,as I had no choice,being an infant and all…
I would like to stick to the important facts being displayed around the Vineyard, not those arguments about religions and offenses… I’m not a religious person, but I would like to say that, living in a Catholic Country (Portugal), people, here, when talking about someone greedy, they call him a «papist» and when talking about mischivousness we call it «judiarias», a word with its roots in the word «judeu», Jew. So, our ancestors probably had good reazons for this! So I’m completely at ease with the Saker’s choice of words…
Ana
Hi Saker,
I’am Roman Catholic, and I have a similiar problem like you. I regard the Orthodox Church as formally schismatic, and the Protestants as heretics, so when I think it appropriate to describe them in this way, I speak of them as:
“schismatic brothers” or “heretic brothers” :)
The term “brother” moderates the offensiveness of the term “schismatic” or “heretic”, and expresses an attidude of brotherly love to our fellow christians, who were led astray by the evil one.
I would suggest to you to use the phrase “papist brothers” or something similiar (i.e. a combination of an offensive term, although seemingly truthful to your eyes, and some kind term).
Enough rhetoric :)
@bfrakes:don’t hold it against me
OF COURSE NOT!! My God, do I really come across as such a bigot as to blame others for choices they have not made? I guess I do and for that I apologize. Let me go even further – I don’t blame your parents, family, God parents or anybody else who is trying to live according to his/her conscience, seeks the truth and tries to act with kindness, honor and compassion. I am fully aware that most “Catholics” have absolutely no idea about the topics I raised and I do not blame them for not knowing. My beef is only with those who do know, but don’t care. For those who say “wrong or right – my country” and will defend the indefensible. But there are very very few of those nowadays. But I would never blame anybody for being baptized in this or that church, or for being raised in any religion for that matter. All of us, whether religious or not, have to make our own personal decisions once we become adults: to accept this or that faith, or reject them all. For these decisions, yes, we are accountable for, if they are freely made. But for our education?!
Dear bfrakes – I come from a totally dysfunctional family with neglectful and/or abusive parents and a nasty, very hard core reactionary political education. I bought that crap for many years, and I feel bad about it, of course, the number of idiotic and outright evil things I believed then is embarrassing to me today, but I was a kid and I did not know any better. I am telling you this so you will know that I speak from the heart when I say that I would never ever blame anybody for the education he/she has received. I also know that there are good people everywhere, literally in every group, party or religion, and that they themselves are often mislead (as was the case with my family).
So, please, even if I might sound like a total bigot and hate-filled fanatic to you (and others), believe me that I am not. Its *ideas* I fight against, not people.
Very sincerely,
The Saker
@Radik: I regard the Orthodox Church as formally schismatic, and the Protestants as heretics, so when I think it appropriate to describe them in this way, I speak of them as:
“schismatic brothers” or “heretic brothers” :)
The term “brother” moderates the offensiveness of the term “schismatic” or “heretic”, and expresses an attidude of brotherly love to our fellow christians, who were led astray by the evil one.
I would suggest to you to use the phrase “papist brothers” or something similiar (i.e. a combination of an offensive term, although seemingly truthful to your eyes, and some kind term).
Makes sense! From the Latin point of view Orthodox Christians are most definitely schismatics though I would argue that when a schism becomes justified in doctrine, this constitutes an ecclesiological heresy, thus it would also be reasonable from the Latin point of view to see Orthodox Christians as heretics. I fully accept that.
Now the “brother” thing is more ambiguous in my opinion because it often is understood as “brothers in Christ”. If by “brother” we mean “brothers in Adam” I have no problem with that either, but “brother in Christ” (even if the latter is implied) would contradict the “diagnosis” of heresy. Does that seem logical to you?
Many thanks and kind regards,
The Saker
dear saker: you’re totally cool with me!! I really like this blog!
By the way, I cannot follow this with neutrality so I’ll say that it is not true that Romanians (myself being one)are all the way latin.
The old province of Dacia (roughly the Romania after WWI, so including Bessarabia) was conquered by Roman legions in a proportion of about 14%.
Tha name of the country and its people, Dacia, was in use until late nineteenth century. In the way political tricks are put at work today it was similar back then, about in late 1700’s, when a tiny elite youth from Transilvania (part of the Austrian Empire back then but largely inhabited by Romanians) went for studies abroad. As the Enlightment era was in full swing, naturally our promising students went to western Europe and, by some suspectful choice went to Jesuit schools. After a while they come back to the country and started a national Romanian movement but with a central theme on its own, the Romanity of the Romanian people. This was the beginning of a propaganda campaign that ended up in the second half of the nineteenth century by giving our people a most undesirable and false denomination, implying of course our Romanity. This and other subtle machinations were apparently driven by the same people you are talking about. Long story short, the Latins or Papists you are referring to are called here Uniats (as in united with the Church of Rome) or Papist(ash) or Greek Catholics the latter being used most frequently.
I hope it helps,
Evia
@Saker: Makes sense! From the Latin point of view Orthodox Christians are most definitely schismatics though I would argue that when a schism becomes justified in doctrine, this constitutes an ecclesiological heresy, thus it would also be reasonable from the Latin point of view to see Orthodox Christians as heretics. I fully accept that.
Yes, I agree. A schism made doctrine is a specific form of heresy.
(Here some good definitions of these terms: https://www.ewtn.com/expert/answers/heresy_schism_apostasy.htm)
Now the “brother” thing is more ambiguous in my opinion because it often is understood as “brothers in Christ”. If by “brother” we mean “brothers in Adam” I have no problem with that either, but “brother in Christ” (even if the latter is implied) would contradict the “diagnosis” of heresy. Does that seem logical to you?”
Good point. I have not thought about the precise meaning of the phrase “brother in Christ”. You are right, if it strictly means a *full and complete* communion with the Church.
But from a Catholic point of view, the Orthodox Churches are still part of the body of Christ, *although not perfectly*, since they have valid Sacraments and have a valid Apostolic Succession. In special circumstances its even allow for a Catholic to go to an Orthodox Mass (if they are also ok with it).
So if the phrase “brother in Christ” implies just any form of communion, then it would still be applicable to the other side of the divide, I think.
@Ana in the sense of “greedy” I had not crossed myself with, but i’ll share with all a very common expression which is quite in use recently:
“Ser mais papista que o papa”, in free translation:
“To be more papist than pope himself” in the context of someone keen on defending an issue not even the most directly interested shows efforts in defending.
Current Portuguese Government is being accused of this, of extending troika’s imposed reforms beyond what had been agreed on the text of the memorandum.
In the religious sense I find: “He who is party with the supermacy of the Pope. Name for Catholics used by Protestants.”
As a non religious person, it’s easy for me not to take issue with any of the mentioned designations. I deem them mostly qualifiers, and not merely pejoratives.
Although I tried to free the word “Latins” of any precautions of use by the host of this blog I do think that the word has only a meaning of ethnicity attached and not a religious weight, at least for common people. Roman Catholics or Catholics are both frequently used in Romania, as well as Greek Catholics.
Regards,
Evia
Saker, you’re no bigot!!! Quite the opposite in fact. But our religious beliefs are pretty close to the heart and it’s always very difficult to examine one’s own totally dispassionately. Add in ethnic conflict and it’s a major minefield for anyone to traverse. Given the intensity of feeling on all sides here, I’m really impressed with how well you’ve done it.
I have been reading your blog for some time now. I really like it! It has confirmed some of what I already knew and has taught me a lot of knowledge that was unknown to me.
Say, Have you heard of Shaykh Imran Hosein. He is an Islamic scholar who talks about cultivating a Muslim-Orthodox Alliance to defeat the ever aggressive NATO which seeks to impose on Mankind a messianic rule from Jerusalem. He has mentioned the differences between “Western Christianity” & “Eastern Christianity”. Of course it is from the Islamic view point and he does not know of the doctrinal differences between them. This is why the NATO supported “Muslims” in Syria are murdering Christians so as to bring about enmity between the Orthodox world & Muslim world. NATO knows that this alliance can destroy her!
Another thing I would like to say is that I do not think that these modern “Neo-Nazis” or “nationalists” in the Ukraine or Baltics or anywhere else are really knowledgeable about National Socialism. I feel that we need to study that period very carefully and sift out the ever continuing Allied lies & propaganda to get to the truth of what happened.
@Radik: what a joy it is for me to be able to calmly and intelligently discuss important issues of terminology with somebody like you! Even though we have fundamental differences of views, we can at least *understand* the point of view of the other without having to endorse it or compromise our own. We don’t have to “defend our shop” – we can instead openly and unapologetically uphold and affirm that which is consistent with our own spiritual and intellectual system of reference. As I mentioned above, I fully understand that within the Latin doctrine Orthodox Christians are both schismatics and heretics. This is not an insult, it is a diagnosis. I would go even further: if I was a Latin, I would object to calling schismatics and heretics “Orthodox” – that makes no sense at all. Instead, I would say that submission to the Pope is a condition sine qua non of being a true Orthodox Christian. Of course, I don’t personally believe this, but I DO understand that within the Latin doctrine this is logical.
This is one of the things I try to do on this blog: cut through the bullshit and call things by their correct names. Replace cheap and hypocritical but nice-sounding words and formulas with correct names. This is why I speak of “Ukrainian *insurgents*” now and not of the “Ukrainian opposition”. This is why I say “homosexuals” not “gays”, this is why I do not call the rioting pussies of Pussy Riot “ladies”, etc. I reject both a vapid politically correct language (“Ukraine” instead of “the Ukraine”) and “pre-formatted” expressions such as “Holocaust” or “marriage for all” when they clearly are aimed at framing a conversation and thus, really, at hindering any intelligent discussion.
Let us all agree to disagree, politely, but honestly, with the freedom to use whatever words or expressions which best represent and express our thoughts and opinions, and let us always value truth and honesty above everything else, except compassionate love, of course :-)
Many sincere thanks and kind regards,
The Saker
@Saker: I fully share the sentiment :) Call all things by their proper name, and follow the argument wherever it leads.
Re the term “Orthodox”. I also prefer to stay close to the etymological roots of a word, but since the connection between a name and a concept is more or less arbitrary, I have no problem to adapt to some new meaning of a word.
The most important thing is just that the audience grasps the same meaning I want to convey, so that we talk about the same things. Many useless disputes arise from different understandings of the same term, or because a term is loaded with some antagonistic emotions which then close the mind of the other person.
Its a whole lot easier to convince a person, if one uses the common and familiar expressions of their ideology, so as to “become all things to all men” so to speak (1. Corinthians 9, 22).
Truth is independent of words and signs.
Regards
Radik
@St Jerome, Vulgata
We should not pass lightly over the fact that the Vulgata was translated after a Hebrew text with the help of Rabbis. “In this translation, Jerome adopted the principle of returning to “Veritas Hebraica” as the superior one in the interpretation of the Old Testament. Jerome himself called the sense of the Hebrew text in this way and in the Middle Ages Jerome’s translation was called
“Veritas Hebraica”, as this was his
favourite saying.”
So, in fact Jerome rejected consciously the Septuagint (first of the Vetus Latina-the Latin translation of the Septuagint), for which he deserved the strong rebuke of St. Augustin. The rot starts early!
I can’t appreciate enough your effort to “cut through the bullshit and call things by their correct names”. That was a principal tenet of all real philosophies. The Greeks called it orthotes onomaton, Chinese tcheng ming, Hindus Nirukta. The sense is “rectification of names”. Look how Confucius answered to the question of what would be the first thing for good governance: “The first thing is the rectification of names; if names are not rectified, the words would not match; if the words would not match the state affairs would not succeed…”.
@Evia,
I know, and probably better than many, that the Romanians are not “all the way latin”. It happens that I come from the same parts of the world as you,
Doamne ajuta,
WizOz
Denying the Holdomor is not the same as denying that their was ever a famine during the 1930’s in the Soviet Union. The people who talk about a HOldomor are referring to a deliberately created famine that was allegedly used as a tool of genocide rather then a famine that results from mistakes in government policy and things outside of government control such as crop blights.
It seems strange and a bit ridiculous to me that the vast majority of the discussion here is about the terminology (kind of a “tempest in a teapot”, no?), rather than the very interesting description of the different perspectives on the “Holodomor”.
Anyway, using “Latin church” the first time in a post (to avoid confusion) followed by “Latins” seems like it would suffice. It would then be clear from context that you’re not talking about the Romanians or the speakers of Latin-derived languages.
That seems like the least cumbersome option of those mentioned.
Just to add some clarity to your fascinating exegesis: while there are usually two Jewish ethnicities cited, Ashkenazi and Sephardic. There is in reality a third category, Babylonian Jew, which reflects the migration of those of us who left in the first diaspora. We migrated east to what is now Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. We speak Arabic or Pharsee. The Sephardim migrated west to Morroco and Spain; they speak Ladino. While the Ashkenazi went to Eastern Europe and speak Yiddish. All three groups worship in Hebrew but have varying customs and eat foods exhibited during religious observances that are aligned with the predominant culture of their ethnicity (i. e., European, Spanish or Arabic.)
@Anonymous: while there are usually two Jewish ethnicities cited, Ashkenazi and Sephardic. There is in reality a third category, Babylonian Jew
Really?! I had no idea, this is most interesting. Forgive me, but I have to ask you a few questions as my curiosity is now really “bubbling”
1)Did that first diaspora not integrate with the latter ones? If you consider yourself a Babylonian Jew, are you saying that you have no Ashkenazi or Sephardic ancestors?
2) How do you worship? Have you accepted rabbinical talmudism or are you following a Karaite approach of “only Tanakh” (to paraphrase the Reformed “sola scriptura”)?
3) Do you know to what degree your ancestors have inter-married with the locals? In other words, do you think that you are genetically closer to the pre-Exile Jews than the Ashkenazim and the Shephardim?
4) Has a history of the Babilonian Jews ever been written?
5) What is the position of the Israeli rabbinate towards you? Do they consider you fully Jewish or not?
Many thanks for any replies and sorry for the long list of question!
Kind regards,
The Saker
Saker:
1) My mother was born in Baghdad; my father in the British protectorate Aden. They met and married in Palestine. I was born in Jerusalem in 1949 with a British birth certificate. The British granted a choice of either the new Israeli citizenship or the retention of their citizenship; my father chose the latter. In 1955 we left Israel for the US. My ancestors are from Turkey, Yemen, Iraq and Iran. I grew in a household that was mostly Iraqi foods and Arabic language. Though my parents spoke Hebrew and my father and I English. I know of absolutely no family that is Ashkenazi and as far as Sephardic while many don’t know they are Babylonian, the true test is if they speak Ladino.
2) My Bar Mitzvah (essentially a literacy test for thirteen year olds) was instructed in an Ashkenazi synagogue but I just couldn’t get it right. My father took me to a Yemeni temple in Brooklyn to complete my studies and recite the Torah. He BTW also took me to an African American temple in Harlem to show me the broad band of the Jewish heritage. We were looked down upon by the Ashkenazi Jews as being dark and ignorant, which was why father felt compelled to leave Israel at the time.
While I grew up nominally Jewish and had Bar Mitzvahed my sons, I was brought to believe that no one can mediate your relationship with the Divine. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob did not have a mediator but knew their God through direct experience. Perhaps that is why my current practice is more Hindu Advaita and Buddhist, in which ethnicity, country and culture are delimiting constructs. Generally, the rabbis would certainly not approve of me as only Orthodox Jews are considered the real deal.
3) My family recently repatriated with a long lost cousin, whose mother, my aunt from Iraq, ran off with a Muslim soldier in her youth. She was disowned by her family of 10 brothers and sisters; in the Arabic culture she was dead to them. As her dying wish many years later, she asked her son to seek us out. Surprisingly the family that remains embraced him though he is a practicing Muslim. The Iraqi side of the family stuck together as a community here but their children have inter-married with Ashkenazis as well as Christians.
Here are some sources:
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/babylonian1.html
http://www.aish.com/jl/h/cc/48949881.html?tab=y
5) ironically, I doubt I would be considered “fully” Jewish by the rabbis though I’m sure I would be denigrated as a Jew by all those people whose hearts are filled with hate, vengeance and envy.
Here is a good book about the alleged Holdomor. Fraud, Famine and Fascism by Douglas Tottle. http://books.google.com/books?id=5wkJi1jvL3UC&printsec=frontcover&dq=douglas+tottle&hl=en&sa=X&ei=TTsRU9PwKYuD1AHX7YD4Bg&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=douglas%20tottle&f=false
Also, how does the policy of War Communism count as a form of Holdomor. The 1021-22 famine was caused by the ravaging of the former Russian Empire by years of warfare during the First World War and Russian Civil War. The railroads were disrupted, making it more difficult to transport food. Their was also a drought in 1921, that aggravated the situation.
May I offer a view on religious nomenclature? Yes, “Catholic” is an honorific whose original meaning does not accurately describe that institution. To take such a name is really a claim to power–in this case, to universality. While it’s fine for practitioners to accept the claim, what right do they have to insist that anyone else do so, especially when its literal meaning is obviously inapplicable? i.e. if that church really were “the whole”, as the name “catholic” implies, there wouldn’t be an “anyone else” in the first place.
However, the same objection can be made against the term “Orthodox”. It too is an honorific; it means, as you know better than I, “the correct teaching”. To a fair-minded outsider, this too seems a claim which practitioners may accept but have no right to impose on others. Why should one call “orthodox” what one does not oneself hold to be the correct teaching?
I believe the way out of your conundrum is to recognize that there are two principles at work here, a lesser good and a greater good, and that one should choose the greater good.
The lesser good is accuracy. You do not wish to use the name “Catholic”, not out of prejudice or ill-will, but because doing so would be a betrayal of truth and your first duty is to your conscience. Let’s accept that as a good. Nevertheless, there is a greater good, and that is charity. We are called to treat others, not with maximum accuracy, but as we would wish to be treated ourselves.
I believe that if you would consider in your heart that there are people on the other side who, just as fervently as you, hold the opposite faith in their hearts–I don’t speak of intellectual parlor games, but of deep and sincere faith–then *even though you still believe they are wrong*, charity would compel you not to deny them their traditional name, just as you would not want them to deny yours.
I have a few lesser points to make, but your comment system is rejecting my verbosity, which while laudable, I think I will try to circumvent by posting said lesser points separately.
Sincerely,
A well-wisher
Some lesser points to follow the more important one I posted a moment ago.
Absolutely no one uses the word “catholic” to mean “universal” in English any more. Surely the last generation that used to say things like “he is catholic in his tastes” passed a while ago. If anybody hears that now, they do not think “he likes everything”; they think, “he likes crucifixes”. (If anything, “orthodox” retains more of its original meaning in English than “catholic” does.) If you are really to insist on accuracy and consistency re the original meaning of words, such accuracy and consistency compel you not to use *countless* words the way people use them in contemporary English. There is no reason to stop at the few you mentioned, except that those few are the ones most charged with falsehood in your personal perspective–for reasons which have as much to do with identity as with truth. Here again I think charity needs to enter the picture. We must all remember that our personal perspective is not God’s whole; it is not (if you’ll forgive the joke) catholic.
There are two adages of worldly wisdom that your insistence on literal accuracy, if you stick to it, will cause you increasingly to violate. One is “penny wise and pound foolish”. The other is “choose your battles wisely”. What I mean is this. You are increasingly attracting readers who are open-minded, not partisan, and wish to learn. Such people are your natural readers if not your natural allies. As soon as they run into one or two usages of the term “papist”, they are not going to do as I have, namely read the entire page until they can understand and empathize with why someone might use such an archaic term. Instead they are going to think “sectarian bigot” and immediately close the page. You may say, “so be it, if they don’t take the time to understand,” but this again would be to choose the lesser good of literal accuracy over the greater good of informing your fair-minded readers. I think you should choose the higher function, which is to teach, over the lesser one of strict accuracy over convention. And let your inevitable critics skewer you for what you are– the passionate expositor of a certain Russophilic view, historical and contemporary, to an English audience–rather than for what you are not–a sectarian bigot. Choose your battles wisely.
Sincerely,
A well-wisher
I am a self-identified “Roman Catholic” and am not offended by your term Papist (although for sure it has a pejorative connotation because of how it is generally used.)
I never in my life heard any of what you just wrote about the illegitimacy of the Church (no offense if I stubbornly continue to capitalize it!)
My uncle, who was a Catholic priest, at first embraced the Eastern rite (not Orthodox but closer, no?) but ended up adopting the Latin rite and becoming a South American missionary instead. I suspect if he were still alive he would be able to tell me more of what you speak – no doubt give his side of the story!
I hesitated to comment for fear of increasing your workload, but I felt compelled to seize this opportunity to point out that there’s no hope for anyone really seeking the truth if he cannot examine his own assumptions. I had never before even considered the things you mentioned, but I have to be willing to be open to questions about my own institutions and identity if I am to justify challenging others’ in this quest for truth.
I should also mention that there is an “us vs them” element in governments, parties, religions and so many other institutions. We should beware of allowing the “them”s to co-opt the “us”s in their political maneuverings. (For example, I of course refused to defend the Vatican Council on Peace and Justice’s call for a world govt, world bank and world currency following the 2008 financial crisis… http://www.news.va/en/news/full-text-note-on-financial-reform-from-the-pontif, and it didn’t make me less of a Catholic, it made me more of one. Similarly, not all Israelis support their government’s policies http://zope.gush-shalom.org/index_en.html )
Hi Saker,
Here’s a taste of more hues added by Andrew Jackson to modern Ukrainean nationalist movements and historical context that is always much needed in such analyses:
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2014/03/nationalists-jews-and-the-ukrainian-crisis-some-historical-perspective/
We all due to aprofundate these intricate facets and background of mentioned movements, keep us out of a “manichean” – black & white – understanding of history and be under no circumstances victims of such reductionist traps.
With most respect to his research I care less about his parti pris with the new power in Kyiev and the actions that these people inflicted on other citizens of Ukraine.
Kind regards,
Evia
@The Saker
I was truly delighted to read your perceptive and historically accurate analysis.
It is deeply shameful and revolting that the great historical work of Alexander Solzhenitsyn “200 years together” has been prevented from being translated into English. Have we indeed come to that? Who actually rules our world?
Here is the entire Solzhenitsyn’s 2-volume book, the Russian original, in html format:
http://www.russia-talk.org/cd-history/200-let/
Saker, I find your posts very informative. And with regard to Russian history and your analysis of contemporary events in the Ukraine, I probably rely on your information for a balanced account, than on any other. However, your posts about the Catholic Church are quite parochial, and your hostility unjustified. I will discuss just a few points.
1. The Catholic Church calls itself “catholic” because it is one of the successors to the universal church which arose from Christ’s teachings and activities. Prior to the schism in 1054, the Roman Catholic church, along with today’s Eastern Orthoodox churches, comprised the universal (catholic church). Today, we have 2 branches of the Church: the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches. We recognize the Eastern Orthodox church as an apostolic Church which continues the teachings of Christ and the Patristic saints.
2. Both Churches adhere to the same fundamental Christian teachings. As an apostolic Church, the Eastern Orthodox church has the same 7 sacraments as the Roman Catholic Church. Your Church has an ordained clergy, recognizes the Real Presence in Communion, confession to ordained priests as a means of obtaining grace from God, the normative necessity for Baptism, and that full christian teachings are found in the bible as interpreted by the Church in accordance with Sacred Tradition, and I could go on and on. These fundamental similarities between our 2 Churches are not shared by those which also self-define themselves as christian, outside of our 2 Churches.
3. Much, not all, but much of the differences we have are based on differences in culture stemming from geography. The Roman Church had its focal point in the Western Roman Empire, the East Orthodox, its focal point was Constantinople with a predominantly Greek, not Roman, culture. Human beings, being human, tend to find ways and reasons to argue and fight. Cultural separation made controversy between the West, and the East, inevitable.
4. What you refer to as “heresies”, such as the Immaculate Conception of Mary simply states that Mary, as the carrier of Christ, could not have been with sin. The Infallibility of the Bishop of Rome simply states, that as a pronouncer of official doctrine, acting in his capacity as Bishop of Rome, the Holy Father is prevented by the Holy Spirit from making errors in doctrine. He has never been considered or described as an infallible human being. Other remarks you have made in the past, such as about scholasticism refer to areas which are not official Church doctrine. One does not need to believe in scholasticism, to be a Roman Catholic.
Saker, I respectfully request, should you have an interest in testing your presumptions about the Roman Catholic church, and I encourage you to test them, try reading what the Church publishes. You may find that many of your presumptions are not borne out. You dislike a Church which does not exist, except in your presumptions.
Our 2 Churches have so much in oommon! That they are estranged is one of the greatest tragedies in Christian history. God, and humanity, will rejoice should they, and I pray that they will, be drawn closer to together in what Christ called for: One Church, in whatever form that may be!
God Bless!
I
That much of the grain confiscated in the Ukraine was allowed to rot or thrown in the sea seems to indicate genocidal intent.
That grain was indeed destroyed was reported both by American journalists, and also by the British socialist (later turned Christian conservative) who had emigrated to Russia intending to become a Soviet citizen while reporting for the Manchester Guardian newspaper. Muggeridge visited the Ukraine and reported on the apparently deliberate wastage of confiscated grain.
A fine debate with your readers! More.