Recently Aristotle Papanikolaou, of Fordham University, had a Twitter interchange with Fr Whiteford, in which he derided Fr Whiteford's alleged "Yosemite-Sam Orthodoxy: gun-loving, Confederate-sympathizing, pro-death-penalty, Trump-MAGA-supporting, pro-brutal-dictators, etc."
Frankly, Yosemite-Sam Orthodoxy sounds kind of awesome, but obviously this is not what the normal Orthodox parish is doing. Normal Orthodoxy is just looking for normalcy.
But let's break down the illustrious schoolteacher's accusation. What is he sending the kids to the principal's office over?
- Guns. Papanikolaou wants a defenseless citizenry.
- Confederate sympathizing. This son of immigrants wants to erase the heritage of the descendants of the settlers. More on this below.
- The death penalty. Implicit is the assumption that pro-death-penalty people are pro-death, as they are blood thirsty.
- Trump support. That is, Middle America values. Or rather, something resembling normalcy.
- Strongman political leaders. Presumably this is a reference to Putin. What Putin did to America, no one knows, but we know that he is the next Hitler.
But really, Papanikolaou is saying that you shouldn't be allowed to believe these things. He doesn't say this explicitly, but the implication is that one should be excommunicated for supporting self-defense, supporting ethnic heritage, decisive punishment for criminals, restriction on immigration, and the right for other countries to self-govern. One should not be able to find a religious expression that allows for such beliefs, because such beliefs should not be legal.
The theological fallacies and misappropriation in Papanikolaou's arguments are not worth examining. Everything that Bartholomew's Brahmins say is a policy position, not a serious, sober analysis of the Tradition. The only people who believe in the EP's ideology are those who are paid to believe in it.
Let's look at #2. His opposition to Confederate support.
Obviously, no one is proud of slavery. We can argue whether slavery is morally acceptable or not, but no one would say that they support the introduction and increase of slavery. (Or rather, no W.A.S.P. would, but the beliefs of Mohammedans and Hebrews may differ.) People don't wave the Confederate Flag because they want to return to the plantation system – they wave it because you told them that they can't. It's a libertarian sentiment. The Rebel Flag is a reminder that the government can't be trusted.
And of course the left-wing knows this. Taking down statues has nothing to do with the moral lapses, real or imagined, of the people depicted. No one is agitating to take down the statue of Lenin in Seattle.
Rather, the anti-Confederate agitation is about you, dear reader. When they want to take down statues of Confederate generals, they actually want to take you down. They want to erase history, because they want to erase you. Papanikolaou does not merely want Fr Whiteford defrocked and banned from Twitter – he wants him to drown in the sewage ditch of a FEMA camp.
The ideology of anti-slavery is just the legalistic excuse to introduce what they want. Their actual ideology is anti-normalcy. Anything normal and decent is what they want to destroy. They want everyone to sink down to their own depravity to prove that everyone else is as much a child of Gehenna as they are. If you want to be a rebel, just be a decent, honest person who keeps your word and deals with people straightforwardly. Everyone will shove their way in line to slit your throat. They did the same thing to Jesus.
What do we do in these times? Nothing. There is nothing that we can do. I hope I'm wrong, but when the Great Apostasy comes in the next five to twenty years, even ROCOR will follow the way of the world. There is nothing any of us can do to stem off the Great Apostasy, hence the name of it.
But what you can do is maintain your own integrity. The only thing that no one can take away from you is your integrity. They can fire you from your job, freeze your bank account and exile you from the Church. They can even tie you to a chair and force you to take the Vaccine. But only you can give up your integrity.
Go to liturgy and be the best Orthodox Christian you can in your own local community. The rest of the Church can apostatize, but you are yourself responsible for being that final candle in the hurricane. Maybe your priest or bishop will fall into heresy, and that is their choice. All you can do is keep your hands clean the best you can, and God will sort it all out on Judgment Day.
And most importantly, do not hate traitors like Papanikolaou. If you hate them, then they win. They want to be hated, because anger is an emotion from a place of impotence. Recognize the traitors and invaders for what they are. Don't buy into their scams, but don't give them your emotional energy either. You defeat the Judeo-Freemasonic order by overcoming your passions, not by fighting hatred with more hatred.
— Augustine Martin
Thanks to Jovan on X for the Yosemite Sam meme we egregiously stole to use as the featured image of this post.
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