My parish is falling apart

ArmyMatt · Jun 8, 2021

rusmeister said:
I absolutely want to open it.
But in the end, I think the Republic will fall, whether or not you see the steal. I see it, and so speak accordingly. I think I understand why you don't.

I really don't think that's a can of worms you want to open, and I don't think you get why I don't or else I am pretty sure you'd not want to open it either.

especially if we are talking about the same thing from Texas.

gzt · Jun 8, 2021

And regardless of the prudence of can-opening, perhaps this whole discussion is best handled on one of the other sub-fora?

Chesterton · Jun 8, 2021

rusmeister said:
While I don’t think this quite right, I do think there is something to what you are saying, especially in regard to moral issues, above all, touching on sexuality and the family. Things really ARE coming to a point, and we must indeed choose a side. But that side is not fully represented by, say, the Republican Party, which comes with its own evils. I guess, regarding politics, I would put it this way: the Republicans can destroy our nations in fifty years. The democrats can do it in ten. To that extent, you are right. Tearing down the family, from divorce to all other forms of sexual anarchy (which divorce is a part of) is the fast track to destroying any nation. Without the family, we have no defense against the state, and if the family is an amorphous thing, together only so long as its members “feel like it”, then you have no reliable institution. All sexual perversions arise from this first great attack on the sanctity of the family.

Still, the ”Right” has its evils. The political parties both support the Forever Wars, perfectly happy to maintain an enormous and active standing army, bombing and invading other tiny countries that can’t really fight back and pretending they are great threats. They funnel money to the big corporations as well as continually increase government spending. So while I do see more alignment overall with conservatives, there are points where we would have to denounce some things they stand for and support as well. I wouldn’t consider myself completely on either of the two sides, though for the sake of buying time, and slowing down the clearest and most present danger that sexual anarchy poses, (assuming I as an individual have any actual political power at all) I would support the conservatives in those things in the short run, while continuing to condemn their wars and their own centralization and insane spending, and encourage decentralization.

“I am not altogether on anybody’s side, because nobody is altogether on my side.”
Treebeard, “The Two Towers”

I agree with you on the things like wars, spending, and sexual anarchy, but my main concern is not so much with specific policy decisions, rather with the type of people on one side. Many seemed to have made virtues out of things like hatred, anger, envy, pride, self-righteousness, violence, etc. They revel in punishing people for offenses whether real, imaginary or fabricated. I really think "demonic" is the best word for it.

prodromos · Jun 8, 2021

gzt said:
And regardless of the prudence of can-opening, perhaps this whole discussion is best handled on one of the other sub-fora?

It is a discussion between Orthodox Christians. This is where such discussions belong.

gzt · Jun 8, 2021

Chesterton said:
I agree with you on the things like wars, spending, and sexual anarchy, but my main concern is not so much with specific policy decisions, rather with the type of people on one side. Many seemed to have made virtues out of things like hatred, anger, envy, pride, self-righteousness, violence, etc. They revel in punishing people for offenses whether real, imaginary or fabricated. I really think "demonic" is the best word for it.

I think we have to be careful about this because, and this is very important, we can find examples of this on our own side (whatever that is), and you know full well that your adversaries (whatever side that is) will say the exact same thing you just said. And be right - in some sense. There are people who make tons of money by telling people to be angry and they will find an audience and a set of victims to do it. And they exist among your putative allies.

Chesterton · Jun 8, 2021

gzt said:
I think we have to be careful about this because, and this is very important, we can find examples of this on our own side (whatever that is),...

No, I don't find it much nearly as much on my side. Maybe like a trickle compared to the river on the other side.

...and you know full well that your adversaries (whatever side that is) will say the exact same thing you just said. And be right - in some sense.

Yes, Britain and Nazi Germany said bad things about each other. But in what sense will my adversaries be right?

There are people who make tons of money by telling people to be angry and they will find an audience and a set of victims to do it.

Definitely agree.

And they exist among your putative allies.

Who for example?

gzt · Jun 8, 2021

I'll decline to open this can of worms as well. I will just say that the experience of one side viewing the other is quite different from views from within. EDIT: especially if one is the target of the torrent/stream/trickle.

gurneyhalleck1 · Jun 8, 2021

Something else I might add is travel. While no one has a firm understanding as to how long the vaccine lasts, my family plans to travel overseas in the near future again, likely to Egypt. Going through airports and foreign countries, it was another consideration, though a tertiary one.

Dorothea said:
Thanks for taking the time to explain where you're coming from. I do understand your perspective and why you chose the route you did. I really do think each person has a different experience with regard to exposure to Covid, depending on where you live and if you are often around or have family members with serious medical issues or immune-compromised systems. Like my best friend's husband and mentally-ill son are very high risk, and so she and family all got vaccinated (given the shot...I really don't think it's a vaccine because Dr. Fauci (although he flip flops on quite a few issues) says it just lessens symptoms and he isn't sure it stops transmission, which has been proven with the "break-out" cases. Anyway, I certainly understand everyone has a different experience with this virus. I'm in an area that really wasn't that bad throughout the whole time the virus has been around. Hence, this is why our area is back to normal, meaning everything is voluntary now.

In any case, I appreciate your response and respect it.

rusmeister · Jun 8, 2021

ArmyMatt said:
I really don't think that's a can of worms you want to open, and I don't think you get why I don't or else I am pretty sure you'd not want to open it either.

especially if we are talking about the same thing from Texas.

The purpose of “opening a can of worms” is to reveal the truth. It refers to complex issues where various interests, held rightly or wrongly, are intertwined and a proper “opening” would force people who are prepared to be honest with themselves to be ready to reconsider aspects of their position, what they think true. Now tell me why I don’t want that among people I ostensibly share the chief basis of worldview with.

rusmeister · Jun 8, 2021

Chesterton said:
No, I don't find it much nearly as much on my side. Maybe like a trickle compared to the river on the other side.

Yes, Britain and Nazi Germany said bad things about each other. But in what sense will my adversaries be right?

Definitely agree.

Who for example?

I agree with you here, but think the last two statements by gzt to reduce all issues to mere emotion, as if there were not truth behind anything, and no legitimate reason to ever get angry, so I would not respond in the light he casts the issue in (your last response “Who for example?”).

In your WW2 analogy, you could just as well say that the purpose of the BBC was to get British citizens angry at the Germans. The question is, who should be angry at what; and when, and why?

In the general division I described earlier, the war of modernity (fashion) on tradition, the extreme danger feared by the moderns is of radical fundamentalism, a complete elimination of liberty by traditionalists, “The Handmaid’s Tale”, in a word. The extreme danger feared by the traditionalists is of radical liberalism, a general rejection of tradition and morality as understood in common by Christians both in the Church and even shared by the schismatics of history until the day before yesterday, in a word, of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Which of these two extremes is the greater and more obvious threat in the Christian world? The answer is not hard and only a highly dishonest person would deny that the world is pushing the latter, and not at all the former. “The Handmaid’s Tale” remains absolute fiction, while the slide towards Sodom and Gomorrah is ever more apparent. There may come a time when spiritually healthy people would have to stand up against “Christian” fundamentalists who would do what Muslims actually do in countries they dominate, but it is not this day. As concerns the OP, it does mean that the much greater danger is posed by those that would advocate sexual anarchy in stages, by accepting widespread divorce, serial marriage, same-sex “marriage” and fornicating partnerships blessed by the Church, the denial of the role of the sexes in pushing first “deaconnesses”, secretly with a long-term eye on later bringing in priestesses and bishopesses, just like many other once solidly traditional but heterodox Christian confessions have already done, to resist both ethnophylism and the politics of racial division now being pushed in public life, to follow the way of the world, to reject the Christian ideal as “sour grapes”.

So yes, while both sides can err, in our time one side poses a much greater danger than the other. Choosing to defend traditional marriage, traditional priesthood, and the rest against these incursions doesn’t mean that we are going to magically agree with others on everything else. But if we find the common ground here, we can resist heresy, and maintain and pass down a Faith that was handed down to us. We ought to be radically Christian, and distinguish ourselves from the world by adopting the seemingly impossible standards of holiness and pious life that are all too easy to set aside.

Dorothea · Jun 8, 2021

gurneyhalleck1 said:
Something else I might add is travel. While no one has a firm understanding as to how long the vaccine lasts, my family plans to travel overseas in the near future again, likely to Egypt. Going through airports and foreign countries, it was another consideration, though a tertiary one.

Makes sense.

gurneyhalleck1 · Jun 8, 2021

Every once in a while I do! LOL!!!!

Dorothea said:
Makes sense.

Dorothea · Jun 8, 2021

gurneyhalleck1 said:
Every once in a while I do! LOL!!!!

ArmyMatt · Jun 9, 2021

rusmeister said:
The purpose of “opening a can of worms” is to reveal the truth. It refers to complex issues where various interests, held rightly or wrongly, are intertwined and a proper “opening” would force people who are prepared to be honest with themselves to be ready to reconsider aspects of their position, what they think true. Now tell me why I don’t want that among people I ostensibly share the chief basis of worldview with.

it's not that. unless I misread, the can of worms we don't want to open would have been the lawsuit on behalf of Texas.

FenderTL5 · Jun 9, 2021

ArmyMatt said:
I really don't think that's a can of worms you want to open, and I don't think you get why I don't or else I am pretty sure you'd not want to open it either.

especially if we are talking about the same thing from Texas.

I agree.

As it stands, Texas can't dictate how another state votes. Nor can (as example) California dictate how Texas sets its voting rules. To change that is certainly a can of worms that should be opened - unless one prefers changing the Constitutional protocol of having each state decide their own rule in favor of one federal standard.

ArmyMatt · Jun 9, 2021

FenderTL5 said:
I agree.

As it stands, Texas can't dictate how another state votes. Nor can (as example) California dictate how Texas sets its voting rules. To change that is certainly a can of worms that should be opened - unless one prefers changing the Constitutional protocol of having each state decide their own rule in favor of one federal standard.

correct. because that could open the door for more pro-abortion states like California to force pro-life states like Georgia to loosen their abortion restrictions, because the pro-abortion states are being overburdened with Georgian residents coming to California seeking abortions.

Nick1000 · Jun 9, 2021

gurneyhalleck1 · Jun 9, 2021

I’m trying to ascertain how you have gleaned “gullible” and “deluded” from my frustration with conspiratorial thinking? It seems to me that you’re feeling an emotionalism that isn’t there. You’re internalizing the disagreement as a guilty feeling of stupidity with which I’m not charging you?

The notion of conspiracy obviously can exist. To believe that nobody could conspire would require me to be so stupid that it would border on a level of retardation for me. I’ve been the victim of conspiracy! Do you recall my former principal enlisting two new teachers who hated me to lie about me and I was placed on paid administrative leave for three months? That was an obvious conspiracy and my coworkers fought for me and proved it was nonsense. I’ve personally experienced 4-5 conspiracies in my career. I’ve observed others.

Your posts seem to try to prove a massive coordinated conspiracy one minute, then the goal shifts to convincing me conspiracies exist at all in this life. O’Keefe has exposed some incredible stuff over the years, but he also has done some questionable editing and cherry-picking as well as the drawing of conclusions that has gotten him in hot water. Fact-checking has exposed some definite editing and context manipulation on his part. YouTube has punished him for posting videos of people who did not wish to be filmed, and his supporters see the ban as a critique of the hiding of his truth.

What I would expect from you, Rus, is consistency with your ethos about drawing conclusions about places in which we do not live. For years in here your thesis has been to any poster criticizing or claiming an opinion about Russian politics “You don’t live in the Russian Federation. I do. You cannot presume to know more than me.” Actually, I have agreed with that. But you can’t have it both ways. You now are more a Russian than an American. What you understand is tainted by Russian media, your own biases there, your friends and family, and a very distant observation of America. You are saying you can speak to American politics as well as Father Matt and Reader Gurney here. You are entitled to that opinion, but it’s inconsistent with your previous angle.

Nobody here sees you as a fool. Far far far from it. But I think you felt frustrated on election night and read a narrative developed by the losing side that offers comfort to your desire to believe that Americans could never elect a cluck like Biden and Trump can’t lose. The conspiracy made sense to you. You drew conclusions based on some claims while ignoring the fact that investigations, recounts, and court hearings turned up nothing substantial. I don’t think it’s foolish so much as trying to make the evidence fit the crime.

I, though disgusted to the nth degree with this inept and diabolical White House, do not see them as illegitimate….just depraved, immoral, and un-American.

Your conclusions about my view of conspiracies are wildly inaccurate though.

rusmeister said:
Gurney, the only thing I think I can successfully say here is that we don't agree, that there IS something splitting us all apart; we see different things. You and Matt ask for evidence now: I have been seeing piece after piece of evidence for months, not even counting election night itself. I wonder how you missed O'Keefe. I wonder how you missed Crowder. They demonstrated election fraud solidly, and yet they are suppressed by big tech. I wonder a lot of things. But you are yourself entrenched in a view that hates the election results, but accepts them as legitimate. We all seem to be entrenched in something or other. I know for a fact that there is such a thing as conspiracies. I know they really exist. Everything you have said here suggests that you do not; your pronunciation of the word is synonymous with "foolish", "silly" and "deluded". By that standard, Guy Fawkes didn't exist. (a page from English history that we Americans mostly missed) So while I understand that you believe there is no conspiracy here, as I believe there is, I do wonder whether you admit that the idea of conspiracy itself is not merely a silly concept for gullible people.

What I could hope to achieve is an admission from you folks that I am wrong, but I AM reasonable, as I hope and think you are equally wrong, but reasonable. We could start getting somewhere by granting that. That's why I don't really want to argue, let alone quarrel, over issues we cannot resolve, be they elections or masks or vaccines. We all believe things and hold positions on them, and we all think we have evidence that supports our position, evidence that the others reject for whatever reasons. Then maybe, as we manage to do that with each other here, we could bring that into our parishes, and to some small extent, prevent more acrimonious splits and encourage more friendly relations in spite of sharp disagreement about important matters.

rusmeister · Jun 10, 2021

gurneyhalleck1 said:
I’m trying to ascertain how you have gleaned “gullible” and “deluded” from my frustration with conspiratorial thinking? It seems to me that you’re feeling an emotionalism that isn’t there. You’re internalizing the disagreement as a guilty feeling of stupidity with which I’m not charging you?

The notion of conspiracy obviously can exist. To believe that nobody could conspire would require me to be so stupid that it would border on a level of retardation for me. I’ve been the victim of conspiracy! Do you recall my former principal enlisting two new teachers who hated me to lie about me and I was placed on paid administrative leave for three months? That was an obvious conspiracy and my coworkers fought for me and proved it was nonsense. I’ve personally experienced 4-5 conspiracies in my career. I’ve observed others.

Your posts seem to try to prove a massive coordinated conspiracy one minute, then the goal shifts to convincing me conspiracies exist at all in this life. O’Keefe has exposed some incredible stuff over the years, but he also has done some questionable editing and cherry-picking as well as the drawing of conclusions that has gotten him in hot water. Fact-checking has exposed some definite editing and context manipulation on his part. YouTube has punished him for posting videos of people who did not wish to be filmed, and his supporters see the ban as a critique of the hiding of his truth.

What I would expect from you, Rus, is consistency with your ethos about drawing conclusions about places in which we do not live. For years in here your thesis has been to any poster criticizing or claiming an opinion about Russian politics “You don’t live in the Russian Federation. I do. You cannot presume to know more than me.” Actually, I have agreed with that. But you can’t have it both ways. You now are more a Russian than an American. What you understand is tainted by Russian media, your own biases there, your friends and family, and a very distant observation of America. You are saying you can speak to American politics as well as Father Matt and Reader Gurney here. You are entitled to that opinion, but it’s inconsistent with your previous angle.

Nobody here sees you as a fool. Far far far from it. But I think you felt frustrated on election night and read a narrative developed by the losing side that offers comfort to your desire to believe that Americans could never elect a cluck like Biden and Trump can’t lose. The conspiracy made sense to you. You drew conclusions based on some claims while ignoring the fact that investigations, recounts, and court hearings turned up nothing substantial. I don’t think it’s foolish so much as trying to make the evidence fit the crime.

I, though disgusted to the nth degree with this inept and diabolical White House, do not see them as illegitimate….just depraved, immoral, and un-American.

Your conclusions about my view of conspiracies are wildly inaccurate though.

Hi, Gurney,
I think online misunderstanding can go both ways. I am aware of that, and am ready to adjust my own assumptions accordingly.
My objection was to your referring to “conspiracy theories”. I think the use of the term, not necessarily your personal intent, implies an unreasonableness to the suggestion of conspiracy. You don’t mean that, evidently, but that’s how everybody else is going to read it. Very very few would read the term neutrally, as something that could honestly be either true or false. It is used, as I said, to draw automatic reactions without thinking; therefore I object to its usage without overt qualification.

Also, I think there is an extent to which you are right about my current knowledge of America - but only an extent. There is much in which I have a real advantage over you, and most (but not necessarily everyone here) in terms of speaking of Russia vs America. I really did spend half my life, and my formative years in America. That means I have a large body of experience that is still valid and helps me understand my fellow Americans culturally. And of course, all of our knowledge is topical and local to the extent of what we actually experience. What seems to you to be inconsistency is really not. I don’t actually listen to nearly as much Russian media as you might think; I have strong personal reasons for sticking mostly to media in English. And I certainly don’t give media credence just because I listen to it. I have criticism for the talking heads of the conservative right (to say nothing of the Left); whether it’s (for example) Shapiro or Tucker or Andrew Klavan and the rest of the Daily Wire gang, I can think and talk critically about what they say as well as about what their enemies say. We live in an age where, though I don’t live in California, I can access most of the media you access, and think about the various claims and counter-claims by Americans about America, and filter and distinguish between facts and assertions.

I think your case against O’Keefe doesn’t have much behind it. There is essentially no such thing as unselective editing; when he edits things, it is to show people with limited attention spans the most relevant parts; NOT to deceive or falsify his claims. He has (surprisingly, given my opinion of the courts) won every court case thrown against him to the best of my knowledge, which strengthens that claim. That wrongdoers meddling in and committing fraud and libel in public affairs don’t wish to be recorded in public draws no sympathy from me at all. I say that they should not merely be recorded, but imprisoned.

FWIW, I didn’t ignore the things you think make your case. I think them either heavily controlled, or limited to legal considerations that throw out the spirit of the law in the name of the letter of the law, and in our time, the letter of the law is worshipped to an untoward degree (making judges somewhat pointless, in my opinion). That combined with the divorce of law from morality, drastically reduces the authority of the courts in my eyes, as they sink to the level of courts in Russia.

Again, I do accept that your own understanding of the idea of conspiracy is more reasonable, and that you only think my view mistaken, as I think yours to be. But the human tendency with these code terms is to react automatically without thinking about these issues, which makes you something of an exception as well.

Light of the East · Jun 10, 2021

Gen 37:18 And when they saw him afar off, even before he came near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him.

1Sa 22:13 And Saul said unto him, Why have ye conspired against me, thou and the son of Jesse, in that thou hast given him bread, and a sword, and hast enquired of God for him, that he should rise against me, to lie in wait, as at this day?

1Ki 15:27 And Baasha the son of Ahijah, of the house of Issachar, conspired against him; and Baasha smote him at Gibbethon, which belonged to the Philistines; for Nadab and all Israel laid siege to Gibbethon.

1Ki 16:9 And his servant Zimri, captain of half his chariots, conspired against him, as he was in Tirzah, drinking himself drunk in the house of Arza steward of his house in Tirzah.

1Ki 16:16 And the people that were encamped heard say, Zimri hath conspired, and hath also slain the king: wherefore all Israel made Omri, the captain of the host, king over Israel that day in the camp.

2Ki 9:14 So Jehu the son of Jehoshaphat the son of Nimshi conspired against Joram. (Now Joram had kept Ramothgilead, he and all Israel, because of Hazael king of Syria.

2Ki 10:9 And it came to pass in the morning, that he went out, and stood, and said to all the people, Ye be righteous: behold, I conspired against my master, and slew him: but who slew all these?

2Ki 15:10 And Shallum the son of Jabesh conspired against him, and smote him before the people, and slew him, and reigned in his stead.

2Ki 15:25 But Pekah the son of Remaliah, a captain of his, conspired against him, and smote him in Samaria, in the palace of the king's house, with Argob and Arieh, and with him fifty men of the Gileadites: and he killed him, and reigned in his room.

2Ki 21:23 And the servants of Amon conspired against him, and slew the king in his own house.

2Ki 21:24 And the people of the land slew all them that had conspired against king Amon; and the people of the land made Josiah his son king in his stead.

2Ch 24:21 And they conspired against him, and stoned him with stones at the commandment of the king in the court of the house of the LORD.

2Ch 24:25 And when they were departed from him, (for they left him in great diseases,) his own servants conspired against him for the blood of the sons of Jehoiada the priest, and slew him on his bed, and he died: and they buried him in the city of David, but they buried him not in the sepulchres of the kings.

2Ch 24:26 And these are they that conspired against him; Zabad the son of Shimeath an Ammonitess, and Jehozabad the son of Shimrith a Moabitess.

2Ch 33:24 And his servants conspired against him, and slew him in his own house.

2Ch 33:25 But the people of the land slew all them that had conspired against king Amon; and the people of the land made Josiah his son king in his stead.

Neh 4:8 And conspired all of them together to come and to fight against Jerusalem, and to hinder it.
Tools

Amo 7:10 Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, Amos hath conspired against thee in the midst of the house of Israel: the land is not able to bear all his words.

Conspiracies are not a "theory." They are FACT of broken human nature.

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