Papoutsis1 wrote:During his recent visit to the United States, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew stated repeatedly that he prays and hopes for the union of all Christians, while very clearly underscoring that this must be a unity in faith - specifically in the Orthodox faith which he stressed is the only genuine and true Christian faith.
Peter,
Could you please provide me with a direct quote from Pat. Bartholomew that the Orthodox Church is "the only genuine and true Christian faith"?
My experience with claims like this in the past has been that the said quotes were in fact very diplomatic, and certainly "implied" that the Orthodox Church was the One Church, but could easily be interpreted in broader more ecumenical terms. That's just the problem with ecumenical speech: it's so ambiguous.
Met. Isaiah of Denver has a reputation for being one of the more conservative bishops in the GOA, so his statements do not surprise me. If his brother bishops were a bit less implicit and more explicit about their ecclesiology, perhaps we "schismatics" would see the light, but I really don't think that's their primary concern. The World Orthodox get quite a bit of money from these ecumenical organizations, which is why they don't want to alienate themselves from their "brother Christians."
Some people prefer cupcakes. I, for one, care less for them...
Dear Sean:
I know from talking to my Bishop, Metropolitan Iakovos, he has always adamantly defended the Orthodox Church as being THE ONE TRUE CHURCH. There was never any diplomacy on his part on this issue and fact!. The EP has also stressed this very clearly and has upset the modernists in the WCC and NCC when he has taken this stance.
What you may call diplomatic I call not enflaming people's emotions. At a recent seminar headed by Fr. Frank Maragos in regards to how the EP was treated by Turkey many Greeks in the audiance knew the history we had with the Turks and were throwing out many enflamatory retoric. Fr. Frank said no, that's not the way. If you don't couch your language things won't get done to protect and support the EP.
We here in the safety of America don't understand why the EP may say or do things a certain way, but try to understand his position. The EP lives day in and day out with a metaphorical gun to his head. Members of his Synod have been found dead, even as recently as 1997 from just my memory.
Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians have been massacred and have had genocide comitted against them for no other reason except they were Christian and non-Turkish.
I don't blabe the EP for being "Diplomatic" in its language, if that is the case as I do not have a formal quote infront of me, otherwise it would be destroyed. The turkish Ultra-National Group the "Grasilyki" have vowed to destroy and exterminate not only the EP but also the Greek minority in Constandinople. So under these circumstances do you really blame the EP for being diplomatic, as you put it?
He can say, and he does say, that he have held onto the true unadulterated Christian Faith and we are the one true faith, but he will not only distance himself from the Catholic Church, but also enrage the Muslims. The EP never looks to or thinks about just one group, but how all groups will react to his words and deeds.
The Theological School of Halki was closed by the Turks because it was allegedly fostering Patriotic Hellenism to take over Turkey. In reality they wanted it closed so no Turkish born Greek could receive a theological education and thus, become a priest and one day Patriarch. Hence the closing of the school.
Diplomacy is what will open that school. EU membership for Turkey will empower the EP and stronger retoric will do nothing but hurt these long term plans. This is not a do or die situation. I was in Turkey in 2006 and visited the EP. It is right smack in the middle of the most Islamic Fundalmentalist section of town you could find, which was intentionally made that way by the Turkish Government.
When they saw our group going to the EP and after finding out it was for a Baptism we were definitely not welcomed, nor made to feel welcomed. I went back a few days later for the start of the Festival of the Theotokos on August 1st with my wife and we were definitely not welcomed. Dirty looks, filthy comments, construction going on during the service, etc.
So whether its the EP or his metropolitans they are definitly of one mind when it comes to our Church, but you get more done with honey than you do with vinyger. That's just me.
God Bless
Peter
Papoutsis1
I am currently still in World Orthodoxy though I am almost always in total agreement with the Traditionalists.
Here you make a good point about diplomacy but I would tell you this:
Christianity is not a religion of false friendship and p****footing diplomacy it is the Church the One True Faith of the Martyrs who stood up and spoke the Truth enraging the pagans and heretics who tried them and were often brutally killed.
I am the last and least and am no role model but anyone who studies Church History will be slapped in the face by the truth of this.
Plus I don't know about you but if my brother was killed for the Church I would not blaspheme his memory by submitting to the pressure of his murderers I would stand up and die with Him never giving in and speaking for what is Right and Just!
When one has no choice but to stand for Christ or face death that is one thing. To stand for Christ and use your wits to preserve the Church that's been in Constandinople for over 2000 years and protect your flock is quite another.
Its easy to say you will die for Christ, but very difficult to live for Him and protect His flock which is what a true shepard does. Let us not be too quick to judge for it was these hierarchs that kept many of us Greeks alive during the "Turkocratia" or Russians alive during the Communist Era.
Instead of understanding we are so quick to judge.
God Bless
Peter
This is a response to the Polonium Halos you mentioned:
What Gentry calls "polonium halos" are not polonium halos: they are radon halos, constructed as the result of alpha particle cascades following inculted pathways in the rock matrix of assorted minerals. He should have known this fact, since at least one of his samples was collected at a uranium mine.
Gentry has been corrected on this subject many hundreds of times after his book was published. Gentry should have had a physicist check his hypothesis first, before publishing the book. But of course Gentry is a Creationist, and the last thing a Creationist will ever do is have a scientist or two check his cherished and much hoped for beliefs.
Which is a shame: Gentry is a good person. It is sad to see him making a fool of himself over such a simple and basic error.
Polonium Halos
Lorence Collins
Also:
Polonium Halos (2000)
Lorence Collins
Several patrons have made claims or asked questions regarding the use of "Polonium halos" in granites as evidence of instantaneous creation (see, for example, Halos.com). In response, the Secular Web contacted geologist and petrologist Lorence Collins who had already tackled this complicated issue, and following is his reply for the benefit of our readers.
For your information Robert Gentry does not have a Ph.D. degree in physics, only a master's degree. But he is a competent physicist, and his laboratory experiments dealing with the amounts of radiation necessary to produce halos in mica and fluorite are accurate and acceptable to the referees for major journals. Hence, he has been able to publish in Major Journals and outside the creationists' sponsored journals. His science (at least the experimental part relating to radiation) is not at fault. It is his interpretations and applications of his results that err. As just one example of the problems with his interpretation, in some places polonium halos occur in granite that underlies some fossil-bearing sedimentary rocks and is older than the sedimentary rocks, but in other places polonium halos are found in granites that penetrate sedimentary rocks and are younger than the fossil-bearing sediments, impossible on Gentry's view.
I suspect that Robert Gentry likely claims that he has refuted me. Generally, it has been my experience that no logic exists that will change the minds of the die-hard creationists that instantaneous creation during the Genesis Week is the real truth. There are five articles on my website on Creationism that provide direct or indirect evidence that the Gentry model is wrong. Two of particular note:
First and foremost: "Polonium halos and myrmekite in pegmatite and granite"
Besides Po halos in biotite and fluorite, these halos also occur in coalified wood, as is discussed by Gentry. See "Are Po halos in coalified wood evidence for the Noachian Flood?" This article shows why such Po halos can form by natural causes.
As an effort to refute my articles about the natural occurrence and origin of Po halos, a creationist, Mark Armitage, and chemist and co-author Ed Back, attempted to do experimental work on Po-halos to show that they could not have been formed in granite by natural means. Their experimental results and articles are published in the Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal [a creation science periodical] (v. 8, n. 2, 1994, pp. 212-222; "The thermal erasure of radiohalos in biotite") and in American Laboratory (November, 1997, no. 22, p. 25-33; "The effect of thermal stress on radiohalos in biotites").
However, these authors disregarded the anaerobic environment and the high pressures and temperatures that really exist in the granite in which the Po halos are found. They did their high temperature experiments at one atmosphere pressure in air. Their experiments merely demonstrated that biotite will oxidize and blacken under these conditions, becoming opaque, and that released water from the biotite structure will cause the biotite to decrepitate as steam escapes, tearing the mica sheets apart. In either case the Po halos can no longer be seen through the microscope, but they would not have been destroyed by their experiments, although Armitage claimed they were. In no way are their experiments a valid refutation of the model I propose because they have not duplicated the conditions in which the granite once was formed nor the conditions under which the Po-halos would have formed. See my review of their work and another critique by a competent petrologist, Kurt Hollocher, for the expanded answer to their articles. A final article that bears on the issue of Po halos in an indirect way is my article "Equal time for the origin of granite - A miracle!" This article provides evidence that granite cannot have been formed instantaneously during Day 1 or Day 3 of the Genesis Week without breaking all natural laws. All evidence shows that most granites form by crystallization of melts, and some are formed later than Day 1 or Day 3, if the literal interpretation of Genesis 1 is assumed.
"Evolutionists" in various email talk-groups have engaged creationists in discussions of some of the above articles with no resolution. More heat than light is generally produced in these talk groups, and I avoid them and do not get involved. The creationists always claim they are right. They have to be right, or else their theology is based on sand or a stack of playing cards that will fall down. Their belief in literalism is too much to give up, and they will always claim that my articles have been refuted. Mark Armitage was outraged that his science was challenged and said that his article went through the referees for the journal American Laboratory with no problems. That may be true, but I surely question the quality of the review on the basis of my own analysis and that of Kurt Hollocher. Another article by Richard Wakefield, "The Geology of Gentry's 'TINY MYSTERY'," provides additional evidence, but Robert Gentry does not accept Richard's arguments.
Since jousting with Robert Gentry, my own research has resulted in 36 articles demonstrating the validity of the replacement origin of some granites. More will be added. These articles show (among other matters) that granite that contains Po halos does not form from magma. The generally accepted model that all granites of large size must form from a magma is the basis for Gentry's own model for instantaneous origin of granite. Gentry is correct that Po-halos cannot form from granites that have crystallized biotite from magma at the same time that the Po-halos form. The short half-lives of the Po isotopes make this impossible. But if Gentry's initial premise is wrong about the necessity for granites to form from magma where Po-halos are found, then his whole thesis is wrong. There is no better refutation of Gentry's model that I can offer than my own research reported in the above website: (1) Not all granites must be formed by crystallization from melts and (2) granites that contain Po halos do not require instantaneous formation. They can be formed by replacement conditions that allow millions of years for their production and in purely natural environments. Moreover, experimental work is included in articles 36 and 37 on my website that supports the hypothesis that some granites form at temperatures below melting conditions by chemical replacement processes. Thus, my model is not just theoretical but has field, microscopic, and experimental support.
I hope that this information is helpful.
This links lists the many blasphemies of Bartholomew, including his praising of Islam (which in itself is a canonical violation).
http://www.trueorthodoxy.org/heretics_w ... omew.shtml
Everything is documented there
