Brother Nathaniel wrote:Junior member David Hawrhorn wrote"
"I forgive the insinuation, Brother."
Dear Junior David,
It was not an insinuation. It was a definitive assertion.
As I am but five years younger than you, sir, I will not cowed by your hoary beard; when it comes to that, the hairs on my head testify to the likelihood that I could grow one myself.
Insinuation or assertion, you have rendered evil to one to whom you call yourself "brother". You know he does not defend child molesters nor power-mad hierarchs. I have ceased to wonder why the management fails to curb your slanderous tongue. Oh, I know: you do not consider it slanderous to denounce the evils of monks and clerics and hierarchs. In one sense, perhaps it isn't; but there's more to life than just railing against evil. And anyway: who appointed you chief prosecutor? You have witnessed to your own experiences more than adequately, indeed, to the point of tedium and annoyance. And as at least one person pointed out, in the original incident that provoked this you were, in their and my opinion, in the wrong, and (again in my opinion) you amplified it by essentially throwing a very public tantrum of a character that my nine year old daughter might produce. And somehow what you perceive to be your ill treatment (and notice that I agree that some of how you were dealt with was petty and cruel) annoints you to the rank of accusers of every miscreant out there, and gives you leave to heap abuse upon those who reject your self-appointment to this position.
Number me among those who reject the vocation you have chosen, and who find your ranting to be a blot upon the forum. Number me among those who reject the guidance of this elder Ephraim. Number me among those who reject the inevitable schisms and politics which seem to be part and parcel with traditionalist Orthodoxy, as we now see from afar in the latest ROAC turmoil.
I only ever came to this forum in an attempt to keep in check some of the secular insanity that dressed itself in vestments of silk and gold and spoke as if from beneath a miter. Surely, over time, I stepped over the line I had drawn for myself, and I do not ask forgiveness for this, but only express my regrets for having done so. But of late I have come to believe further efforts to be futile, and the current spate of diatribes and scandel-mongering has reinforced that belief.
