"Let nothing be done without the bishop. See that you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as you would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop." - Epistle to the Smyrnaeans (St. Ignatius)
I'm not trying to enforce any discord server rules because frankly I don't care about discord.
There's a misrepresentation of the points made by us that is being misunderstood on the other side. Nobody, and I repeat, NOBODY said Esphigmenou deserves death and cops barging on their monasteries and having a bunch of Bart worshippers taking over. When it was said "brought this upon themselves" the isolation, the isolation from the rest of the TO world was brought upon themselves. On the matters of authority on "being Greek" it's not about being Greek, it's about speaking the language, when Methodios speaks, it's about living in the area where he resides for decades, meaning I can understand his culture, meaning that I can talk to people who have met him in person meaning I can understand him a bit better than Anglophones separated by an entire Atlantic ocean between them, they don't even have captions on their videos, you can't listen to Methodios without speaking Greek, if that's some kind of mistake on my part, feel free to think that.
Their struggle against Ecumenism is a blessed one, but they've made mistakes that made everyone else distance themselves from them. Which happens, it's a thing humans do, mistakes. Their stance against barcodes is an extremely strict one, they don't remove barcodes, they won't touch anything having barcodes, which includes the things you've removed the barcodes from, Father. To them, you've filled your altar with demonic artifacts. It's not a case of being wary of surveillance, nobody thinks that CBDCs aren't a problem or that tracking doesn't exist.
My point regarding being anti-Augustine pertained to the people in the server, not the Greek TOs in general.
An abbot is not a bishop, Esphigmenou is still the only non-commemorating monastic body in Athos without a bishop, and yes, that does mean they're headless, because they're a clerical and monastic collective without an episcopacy overseeing them. Doesn't mean they're not Orthodox, but it does mean they have no bishop, ergo, headless.
My salvation and Unseen's salvation are our own personal struggles and we're free to see to them as much as we want. The only reason I popped in the thread, was because both Byzantophile and Rocaremnant were being misrepresented and the fact that they're unable to have their own opinions and scrutinize errors because they're not Athonite monastics, is fallacious, an appeal to authority. You don't have to be a priest to criticize, were we supposed to silence ourselves when the Chrysostomos of Attica gave away relics?
To add to it, these criticisms do not belong only to a bunch of "blue haired discord communists" but to a lot of clergy and monastics within TO, that's why the other synods won't make a statement in outright support of Esphigmenou.
Unseen still thinks "they brought this upon themselves" means that Esphigmenou deserves to get torched to the ground, which is what: "You’ve admitted it yourself. It came out your own mouths that they were at fault for their current persecution and you repeatedly call them headless." implies. We. Never. Said. That. It's an impossibility on his part to think that maybe he misunderstood what we meant, even though in this thread, we repeatedly said what we meant. But apparently clarifying our point is not good enough, the point we made is the point Unseen thinks we made, we don't have our own voices, only what Unseen thinks we said. I will not allow either myself, or Rocaremnant, or Byzantophile to get slandered to third parties for absolute fabrications. Nobody and I repeat NOBODY said ESPHIGMENOU DESERVES TO GET PERSECUTED AND THAT THEY'RE NOT ORTHODOX, nobody, and by nobody I mean no-one, and by no-one I mean nobody. That's a strawman. End of story.
Getting baptized is a good thing, and the sooner you can get to it (properly, with a proper catechism, try not to misrepresent this point either) the better. St. Constantine got baptized at the end of his life, glory to God, but there's a reason we have infant baptisms, and it's not just infant mortality. It's about being able to partake in the mysteries of the Church as much as possible while you're alive.
And finally, as much as Unseen wants to portray it as such, it's not a debate. He's arguing that we said B when we said A and he's attacking us for saying B. It's a strawman, I don't have to refer to it as a debate. Especially when we're being referred to as effeminate heretics because we don't exactly belong in his own super-correct cognition of what True Orthodoxy is about.
