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Question:

How common or prevalent is it in the Byzantine Catholic monastics or Orthodox monastics for monks that take the vow of stability to go on vacation. Leaving the monastic grounds of course. Apperantly in the Latin Church this is something that is done. Also for any Roman Catholic out there that may know - is this the common practice amongst all Roman Catholic monastic orders that profess the vow of stability?

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Also for you of any Apostolic Church that have great minds or big theological understanding - do you think it is wrong, or at least not the place, for monks (or only a monk or friar) to be involved in politics through the means of books or associates or even via the internet or camera or perhaps so much so as occasional visits to grass roots community orginizations? I know the Pope has given explicit direction to the clergy not be involved in politics ( at least for us Latins ). Thomas Merton was political though wasn't he in some way? When monks were at onetime directly involved in Western politics - like the Renaissance period was this good or bad?

Dear Maximus,

I'm only of an Apostolic Church . . .

Under no circumstances are Monks to get involved with politics. That is clearly against the canons of the Eastern Church. I understand the Pope has a thing or two to say about the matter as well .

They are also not to teach as happens with RC teaching Orders. But what can you do with us Eastern yahoos? I mean what with the long beards, flowing robes and dangling prayer ropes - how can they even write straight with chalk or use a pointer?

In terms of vacation, I've met Orthodox monks from Athos who were here on preaching missions et al.

I'm not sure if our Monks are ever allowed to go on vacation or otherwise take it easy.

Perhaps they could if they continued to sleep in their hair-shirts with their whips at their elbows for only three hours a night . . .

Alex

Thank you Alex for your reply

No, I don't think of most of you Easterners as yahooes or whatever

But while I admire the rigid strictness of Orthodox monastics, it's the attitude of many in the ranks of the Orthodox monastics along with certain customs they adopt that just makes them come of as odd, scary creatures, from a time long gone, out of touch with the advancements of humanity. Well that's how I see them.

It's the monks of the Orthodox Church from what I understand that are the "hardliners" of the Orthodox Church. And they make it quite well known when they come out for demonstrations calling the Pope the Anti-Christ and so forth. And refuse to pray with the Pope. Also a Bishop of the Roman Church wrote about his experience visiting a Greek monastic island, where by the way suppossedly no females were allowed - female animals included (LOL!), and the Orthodox monks made their experience unpleasnt by mumbbling under their breath refering to them as "barbary" or something like that. The Orthodox monks think and refer to us Latin Catholics as barbarians appearantly - at least of the Greek persuasion.

But in the year 2002 can you see how some of this stuff can seem a bit "yahoo" to me?

Thanks again.

Dear Maximus,

Not all Orthodox Monastics are hardliners as you say.

One of our monastic priests, an Eastern Catholic, visited Mount Athos and wrote a book about his experiences.

He found some monasteries to be rather open to him and once they heard he was Catholic, they even hugged and kissed him!

Others received him but encouraged him to return to the faith of his fathers.

I've always admired the Eastern Orthodox for being strong in their faith. They are strong and are very serious about it. No watering down and no anything that smacks of compromise.

Isn't that what traditional RC's want from their Church today? And aren't getting it?

The Orthodox reticence about the West comes from their conviction that it is heretical.

Monastics especially feel that visits from heretics "defile" their sacred space. For them, either you are a member of the True Orthodox Church, or you are not.

I admire their dedication. That isn't backward, that's just standing firm.

And all this running after being modern in all our Catholic Churches - where has it gotten us?

I am sometimes very jealous of the Orthodox, their convictions, their dedication to their traditions NOMATTER what others may think of them.

As for women, yes, the Orthodox Monastics are strict.

There are strict rules for Orthodox married priests as well. Did you know that there are Rules of pentitential prayer for priests should they have a wet dream the night before serving the Liturgy?

And the Orthodox Church wouldn't "recycle" clerics charged with sexual abuse. It would defrock them and prevent them from ever having any dealings with people again.

I'd like to see our Catholic Churches return to our ancient traditions in so many respects, rather than forever bending to every latest fad and whim.

To be a Christian, from the Orthodox perspective, is to be true to Christ precisely in this way.

Alex

"it's the attitude of many in the ranks of the Orthodox monastics along with certain customs they adopt that just makes them come of as odd, scary creatures, from a time long gone, out of touch with the advancements of humanity. Well that's how I see them."

I think that it is hard to generalize. There are differences of practice among various Orthodox monasteries. But, in any case, I don't think any of them mind if they are seen as out of date or out of touch with advancements.

"It's the monks of the Orthodox Church from what I understand that are the "hardliners" of the Orthodox Church."

More complex than that. The monks have always had a strong voice in the Orthodox Church. That voice increased significantly during the Venetian occupation of Constantinople (when the Orthodox turned to the monks for continuity of the Orthodox tradition), during the Palamite period, and also following the Council of Florence. In more recent times, it has been the monks who have resurrected the Philokalia, bringing back to life a tradition of Orthodox spirituality that was, in many quarters, hardly being practiced any longer. The monks have a critical role to play in the church -- theologically and spiritually.

I don't think it's accurate to say that the monks are "hardliners". The monks, rather, are a kind of "conscience" for the Church -- they call the Church to task when she may be straying. After the Florentine debacle, it was the monks, yet again, who rallied around St. Mark of Ephesus, drawing the laity and the lower clergy with them. Some Catholics can interpret that as an example of "hardline", but really it's an example of the role that monastics can play in the Orthodox Church.

"And they make it quite well known when they come out for demonstrations calling the Pope the Anti-Christ and so forth."

This was genuinely unfortunate -- but it wasn't "across the board" -- there were considerable differences of approach and only a few monasteries took this regrettable approach.

"And refuse to pray with the Pope."

That's their prerogative, if they wish to do that.

"and the Orthodox monks made their experience unpleasnt by mumbbling under their breath refering to them as "barbary" or something like that. The Orthodox monks think and refer to us Latin Catholics as barbarians appearantly - at least of the Greek persuasion."

There is a lot of historical tension between Greece and the West. That has much to do with the way that the Greeks (monastics and others .. there were many laity participating in anti-papal rallies as well) react to the West, whether in the form of the Papacy or the EU or the U.S. President. That sense of history in Greece is a very real force there ... it is a living presence there today. That is *extremely* hard, bordering on impossible, for North Americans to understand or relate to --- but so it is.

The good news is that the wounds are starting to be healed. We're at the beginning of that process, but at least it's a beginning.

Brendan

LOL!!!

I appreciate what you said about your desire for the Catholic Church returning back to it's roots in many respect and not bending to fad and whim. But this, what is above, is over the top LOL! But hey you Easterners are free to practice this sort of thing if you want

Brendan, thank for your post I got some things out of it. But come on... not praying with the Pope? You no that in all honesty if I and a bunch of other Latin Catholics refused to pray with any Orthodox Patriarch - it would be finger pointing as to how Latin Catholics think we are superior to the East and proof that we don't truely respect the East or want true communion, but rather want *Latinize* them. But you are free to support this rather ridiculous decision.

Dear Maximus,

Congratulations! Congratulations!

Anyone who can provoke Brendan to come out of lurkerdom and post here once again is to be congratulated!!

Perhaps that is a bit extreme by today's modern, lax standards, but the tradition of this prayer rule goes back to the West as well.

As for "over the top," I don't think it is. Prayer for sinfulness and the like never is.

For me, "over the top" is the idea of kissing the underside of the Pope's slipper, a tradition in the West that was only stopped by Bl. Pope John XXIII.

A celibate clergy across the board - that's another "over the top" thing for me.

As for prayer with heretics, there are many Roman Catholics today who would also say that it is wrong to pray publicly with anyone who does not share your faith.

The Orthodox still regard the Pope as a heretic and won't pray with him.

It is a traditional position that goes back hundreds of years on both sides of the Adriatic.

But I thought you were arguing in favour of traditional values moreso than liberalized ones?

No matter. At least you brought Brendan back.

Alex

Can a Western monk get in on this conversation?

As far as the vow of stability is concerned - is this an Eastern practice? Even in the West I think people misunderstand it. As a Benedictine my monastic vow include stability, but the emphasis is more on fidelity and faithfulness to a single religious community, not so much never leaving the property. The purpose is to free the monk from the temptation to wanderlust: the desire that maybe the "grass is greener" somewhere else. In our modern world where absolute commitments to marriage, churches, etc. are rare this is definitely a countercultural value.

My own monastery's practice, which is similar to most others, is that monks can make trips for good reason. Currently, I live with another monastic community while I pursue graduate studies in theology. Also, our monks are allowed to go to doctors and visit family [NOT to be called a vacation] once a year. This is an improvement IMO from the past in which religious were to sever all contact with their relatives. This often resulted in cruel behavior where monks & nuns were forbidden even to go to family funerals!

Also stabilty should not be confused with enclosure or keeping cloister. This was/is the practice of the monastic living areas being "off limits" to outsiders. Enclosure was strictly enforced especially for women's communities. This was done more to keep people out for the sisters protection, rather than to lock them in as many assume. I guess that it was so strict that is why many nuns did away with it after Vatican II along with the habit (I notice that even some Byzantine sisters don't wear habits - but that's another topic!) However male religious never really were put under such strictures.

Concerning the involvement in politics, it is true that we are forbidden to hold public office - but we can vote just like any other citizen.

PAX

Benedictine

[ 03-05-2002: Message edited by: Benedictine ]

I had never heard of this (but then, I am new to the Constantinopolitan tradition).

What reason is there forbidding Eastern monks from teaching?

Athonite monks do not take a vow of stability, so it is not uncommon for them to move from one monastery to another, or to a smaller monastic community, such as a skete, kellia,etc. Some will become hermits--in the truest tradition of the ancient Church. Most Athonite monks never leave the Holy Mountain and remain there until they die.

Greeks have never worried much about "popularity." And Greek Orthodox monastics have a "built in" aversion to conforming to the spirit of the age or following the crowd.


Greek monks are---just like all
Greeks---very political. And they will fight for "the cause," as they did during the Greek war of liberation from the Turks. Literally thousands of Athonite monks left Athos to fight the Turks. Of course, many didn't return.

Contemporary Orthodox Greek monks reject the western concept of the secular state, just as their predecessors also did. For the traditional Greek monk, the state plays a collaborative role in the "building and maintenance" of the Kingdom of God, but one subservient to that of the Church. In the true Byzantine tradition, the monks would accept the fruit of the church-state tension, or the tangible result of the Christian politeuma, which is the formula for the existence of Byzantine Christian civilization and which must be immersed into the three organic (living) elements of traditional Byzantine civilization: Truth as Beauty, liturgy, and ascetics (the monastic way).

Monastic culture is at the core of Orthodox spirituality. Without it, Orthodoxy would cease to exist.

It is this centrality of monastic faith and practice to the whole life of the Church, from the Christian state---"Justiniain and Theodora offer to Thee"--to the episcopacy, the priesthood, including the married priesthood, to the simplest layperson, which reveals that the monastic way is the universal way for all Orthodox Christians, even in a truncated form. Here, the West and the Orthodox East part ways.

A few points:

Monastic spirituality and ascetics are the Christian ideal that all sincere Greek Orthodox strive to attain, with the full knowledge that we will fall far short of the mark.

We may not always agree with our monks, but we love them.

Some Athonite monks are teachers,
especially those of the monasteries of the Holy Mountain that have monastic schools. A number of highly educated and sophisticated monks now call the Holy Mountain their permanent "home away from home" and not a few of them are Greek Americans.

But the first and foremost "vocation" of the Orthodox monk is "to pray and to pray unceasingly."

I do not believe it is possible for the average American to understand the intense sense of ethnic identity that comprises the core of the Greek personality and the national ethos. All Greeks, from agrarian peasants to college professors, are "historians."

Greek Orthodox monks are not only guardians of doctrine and praxis, but of Orthodox civilization.

They are the intercessors of our liberty and the heralds of our race.

An Apostolic Church that, in the name of modernity, neglects (or worse) its monastic traditions and institutions is not a true apostolic church, or it is one that is "diseased."

ER

Xrisi Aygi

Golden Dawn

[ 03-06-2002: Message edited by: Ephraim Reynolds ]

It is interesting ... I wrote to these monks when this was supposed to have happened and they responded that the news media went to town on this - it did not happen at all in the ways the news media portrayed it.

This is what I was told by Orthodox authories.

Interesting responses.

Benedictine, wanderlust? Never heard that before but it's a good name I suppose. As for vacation... this was not a term I invented for the purpose of describing your yearly sabatical (if that is a word to use). It was a monk of the Benedictine order actually who refered to the monks taking vacation, which usually the monks use to visit their biological family. But I should point out I read this out of a catholic paper... so I suppose mistakes could have been made. Anyways I found the concept of monks taking vacation rather odd. But I appreciate your reply and found it helpful.

ER, I'm surprised to find that you would support monks speaking out against those that hold political office or cultural trends that have little to do with abortion but in themselves can be quite threating to country and perhaps at times humn dignity it's self. To be honest I thought I might get my head bit off just for raising the question. I'm not entirely certain one way or the other, so of course I must follow the Popes lead on this, but one thing I do know is that many people today (at least in America) feel so distant from a Church that seems to offer nothing but Sunday service, conjectures about an invisible God, and condemnations of women's abortions yet distance themselves far from many political risings that many times turn into cultural norms that foster a culture for things such as abortion. At least this is the way many people come across to me feeling. For instance what has the *clear* and *direct* stance of the Colombian and North American Bishops been on the FARC group in Colombia? The FARC and the Colombian government has believe it or not indirect but all the same significant influince on North American internal politics and culture, that in it's self reflects attitudes toward legalized abortion in the States. Just some thoughts and or questions. But I have felt for quite sometime that the Monastaries can be breeding grounds that turn out true, honest, moraly courageous men, who could be some of the fiercest fighters in our modern day culture wars. If only they would be allowed to go on the attack more in an intellectual way. But perhaps I'm wrong. I don't know. You could chalk that up with a number of things I don't know

Just to back up a second, the church's practice is that clergy are not to serve in elected office. 'Getting involved in politics' certainly is something much to vauge to be prohibited or promoted.

K.

Dear NDHoosier,

Monks in the Eastern tradition could not teach secular subjects to secular students as happens with religious western Orders.

Now, not every Eastern Church followed this and the Kyivan Academy of Mohyla did, in fact, have scholars who were tonsured at the Kyivan Caves Lavra.

But they weren't Monks living in a monastery and were sent out on mission and teaching fields throughout the Russian empire.

The Eastern Catholic Metropolitans of Kyiv tried to curb the Latinizing trends in their Church by trying to prevent the Basilian Order from teaching - saying that such went against the tradition of the Eastern Church.

Personally, having gone to a Catholic school run by a religious Order, I don't think it is a good idea.

My religious teachers were overworked and barely had time, as my Latin teacher said, "to say an Our FAther" much less the Office.

Alex

I, for one, am glad the Orthodox monks are sometimes extreme. They are a constant wake-up call to a sometimes appathetic, materialistic, and hedonistic culture worldwide. OF course, I think they too can be over zealous and not always lead by purely religious ideals in their social stance at times. However, I see monastics, both East and West, as the ideal to which all Christian should immitate. Their teachings and examples are an aid to me in my journey of Theosis. May they not be hindered in their search for the Divine.

Dmitri