Hi, EC,
I happen to agree with you on things like “church shopping”, and that bishops have the authority to authorize cases of acceptance via chrismation. If we have a point of contention, it may be in your words that I agree with, “in certain theological, pastoral, or doctrinal matters”, and that fact that I do not think a general mandate to “vaccinate” or wear a mask fall under such matters, where we might really disagree. Covid really IS political. It was artificially created in a lab in China, wargamed by Bill Gates and Co in Event 201, and released in China a month later. Then lied about by Fauci and Co, who KNEW it had been engineered in the lab THEY had funded, then spun us tales of bats in wet markets.They hounded people who doubted - even I believed and obeyed for a couple of months - only in the end, the “conspiracy theories” turned out to be the unvarnished truth. So Fr Peter isn’t “making” it something that it most certainly is. The people who cannot see that are those who committed themselves to believing the narrative that turned out to be a lie.
I’m experiencing a parallel in my own life here; that of speaking with friends in Russia last year who pushed for the power of the government over its citizens and crushing dissidence, and would never touch me (an American) under the general assumption that the government would always agree with them, do what THEY thought right, and conduct policies that they thought good, right, and true. The idea that their own government could turn against them never crossed their minds.
We’ve already talked about when bishops go bad; it seems that you speak from the general assumption that they don’t and won’t. In your response, you said nothing about what would be right to do if your bishop put out a directive that all must wear a blue ribbon to church, or, as a better analogy, a socialist/BLM symbol, because he happened to believe that these secular movements were good and right.
No bishop has the authority to command things outside of our Tradition. A bishop oversteps his authority if he should tell a priest to wear one of the political symbols I mentioned above, and I don’t believe a priest is obligated to obey him in such things. Sure, an abbot can tell a monk to carry water from the well as an obedience, but if the thing ordered violates our own conscience, as masks and “vaccines” do mine when they are orchestrated by the wealthy for the sake of control, as is the case here, then I can respectfully tell the bishop that I will not comply, and I believe a priest should, too. Like a military officer, a bishop may not give unlawful orders. He may believe it to be lawful, but if my conscience tells me it is unlawful, then I must not obey, even if i have to pay a price for that.
I think you are truly unfair, even prejudiced, against Fr Peter. I have listened to him at length, and am not convinced you have. I have had no direct dealings with him, but he DID “like” a post of mine in which I insisted that none of us know better than the Church in the consensus of the fathers, and his own words indicate that humility regarding himself that you have not seen, but I have. And when you say, “He says things which may sound “OK””, I almost have to give up the question. It’s like saying “Hmm, he said, that we ought to not commit adultery and commit to repentance and loving our enemies. That sounds OK, I guess.” OK?? That IS Orthodox teaching, and it’s not just OK, it is good, right, and true, and as Scripture commands, we should think on these things.
I once had a priest actually unfriend me on FB. I t was a shock, and I was hurt. Later I found out that he had been ordered by his bishop to cut back on FB dealings, and it wasn’t at all personal. I had misjudged his action and his silence. I think Fr Peter is in a tough spot where anything he says is going to make bishops gone bad look worse, and he knows that as a priest, he ought not to do that. As I said, the bishops could easily and quickly resolve his situation, and agree whose authority he is finally under, and they choose not to. And you are not curious as to why they don’t, and interpret his silence in a malevolent manner. I don’t necessarily agree with everything he says, and I’m not going to sign a blank check supporting him, but I can see that the attacks themselves are unreasonable, because I have taken some time to actually listen to him. The fact is that I have seen the hierarchies of both the Russian and western Churches go bad and have strengthened my mistrust of anything they say that is not directly supported by our Tradition. So again, I will agree that it is wrong to forbid acceptance by chrismation, and I do appreciate that you see evils on the left as well as the right, and I do grant extremes of the right; I live as a refugee now as a direct result of the Russian expression of that. On the whole, I think Fr Peter is, for the most part, walking that middle road that you advocate, and that you just don’t see it because you haven’t really listened to him much.