At top is a late-January photo op of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who proclaimed that it is “‘unacceptable’ for people — especially Christian clergy members — to ‘deny the reality’ of the pandemic” and that “the rejection of the mask and all precautionary measures does not arise simply from ignorance but from the necrosis of love within them.”
The controversial hierarch, a Western-backed ally of the global and technocratic elite and most certainly not the “spiritual leader of more than 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide,” added that getting the covid jab is a “responsibility to fellow human beings.”
Vaccine apologetics
So, it shouldn’t be a surprise when the Bartholomew-influenced Orthodox Theological Society (OTS) asserts that “COVID vaccines present best ethical option despite use of fetal cells.” Not only does the society base its recent statement on a summit held by the unscrupulous Bartholomew, but it also cites the Vatican and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops as sources for its pro-vaccine stance.
Honestly, as an Orthodox, why should I care two hoots about the moral advice of the Catholic Church, which has long stated that vaccines made using DNA from aborted human fetuses are “worthy of continued use, despite their origins”? The OTS goes on to admit that the “vaccine” won’t stop sickness or its spread, yet insists the benefits still outweigh the risks. What are those benefits? They do not say.
The same day as the OTS news was making the rounds, another essay describing Mount Athos monks as “particularly fearful” and allegedly getting the covid jab was being shared and debated in Orthodox circles. So, I’m publishing for you a snapshot of one particular thread that was generated after an otherwise conservative priest shared the article.
Don’t excommunicate the messenger
This is not to be “mean,” as I’m sure will be the accusation from some. This is a distraction technique, or “progressive rhetorical gamesmanship” as Rod Dreher calls it, used to deflect from the larger point at hand. Unfortunately, the psyop strategy of attacking the messenger as to avoid the message and shut down critical thinking has become commonplace even among traditionalists who feign outrage over diminished civility.
Dreher got trashed recently for taking to task a leftist seminarian just because the middling “conservative” divulged her Twitter handle, whereas I’m sharing the real names. My father confessor advised that I keep the names in the screenshots only if they add value to the story, which they do, in my opinion.
I think this public conversation illustrates quite nicely the “globohomers gone wild” phenomenon (as described in part 1) and the frustrating predicament we dislocated Orthodox find ourselves in when trying to engage in previously civil spaces and in an increasingly divided Church. The prevailing tenor of “dialog” these days is one-sided, condescending, and sometimes outright hostile, and should be pointed out if we’re ever to remedy this quagmire. What could be more important than open and honest discussion on living vs. existing, life vs. death, and to be of this world vs. in it?
If Christians cannot have constructive discourse over some of the biggest ethical and ecclesiastical issues of our day, all of which can and will have long-lasting ramifications for the Church, for people’s salvation, and for society at large, we are missing the mark more than any of us had ever imagined. So here goes … I pray this essay will enliven deliberation and foster healthy debate.
I was actually taken aback by Fr. Thomas and others participating in the slights against Father Peter Heers, an American-born priest living in Greece and founder of Uncut Mountain Press and Orthodox Ethos. Maybe they’re incensed that Fr. Peter said the original post was “fake news” and that there are “Greek articles issued already exposing the propaganda piece.”
He added, “The monks [getting the “vaccine”] are few and they are from the monasteries that support the patriarch [Bartholomew].” Since Orthodox Christianity teaches that “the devil’s strongest weapon (is) death itself,” … “fear of death leads one to sin and thus to bondage” … and that “Jesus sets us free from this bondage of sin and death,” I’m thinking that Fr. Peter’s assessment is spot on.
Strange too that Fr. Thomas laughs at Manolo’s first comment, and gives a thumbs-up to his and Photius’ other snarky remarks, yet Fr. Tom thinks that my (correct) assessment that he’s dog-piling is “unnecessary.”
Everything I say above is true. Yet, Manolo thinks vaccines – and experimental, rushed-to-market, new-technology, litigation-resistant, social-credit-system-creating ones at that! – are a laughing matter. He continues with his infantile quips, as opposed to thoughtfully debating a fellow Orthodox Christian. Science is never settled.
Even ROCOR’s Archbishop Peter got the vaccine and said that “the question of vaccination is not an ecclesiastical one.” While I’m not sure I agree with that, I do agree it is indeed a question and one that should be vociferously debated, politically, ethically, and spiritually.
Perhaps Fr. Tom considers my reality-based insights as an “extreme POV” (point of view). This is one of the main beefs of dissenters toward the globohomo narrative: that we have never been heard, not even pretended to be heard or taken seriously. Instead, what we have experienced is being castigated as “naysayers” with “unreasonable faith,” and “radicals” who “act Protestant” and peddle in “self-righteous garbage.”
This is why “pro-reasonable” is such a peculiar phrase, not to mention “limited … (and) minor inconvenient measures for a season.” Those days were done after “15 days to flatten the curve.” We are dealing with major, not minor, changes both in church and in society at large. So, wouldn’t it be reasonable to reassess?
Seriously, there could be nothing more pro-division and anti-humility than acting like Orthodox are top-down papists and that laity are an annoying after thought who should be scorned when they defend the faith or even dare to ask legitimate questions. It’s disappointing that the loudest Christian opposition to the fear porn and its ungodly aims has overwhelmingly come from Protestant and Catholic clergy.
Thus, many of those frustrated Orthodox have left their former parishes and have either found new parishes that do not cave to the covid-crazy, or they aren’t attending church at all. As Orthodox Reflections rightly states, “So to all the clergy, do not blame mass apostasy for your diminished flock. The vast majority of people skipping church services continue to believe in God. It’s you they don’t believe in, and that is your fault.”
Loserthink
New to the thread is Deacon James. His barbs about “patently awful sources” and “contextualized information” are odd, since “half-truths, untruths, ‘expert’ opinion, and anecdotal data” are the very foundations upon which the cult of covid were built.
After all, it is “pharma-funded corporate media and medical bureaucrats who have a conflict of interest” and will vilify and call a “quack” and censor physicians like Dr. Peter McCullough, a consultant cardiologist and Vice Chief of Medicine at Baylor University Medical Center, because his contention is that effective home remedies make the “vaccine” unnecessary.
As Dilbert creator Scott Adams notes in his book “Loserthink,” “One thing I can say with complete certainty is that it is a bad idea to trust the majority of experts in any domain in which both complexity and large amounts of money are involved.” Indeed.
There are plenty of previously well-respected medical experts, researchers, cultural critics, and brave people of faith who adamantly oppose the pro-lockdown, pro-mask, pro-vaccine tyranny. Counter-experts are out there, yet the globohomers refuse to listen to them, much less even admit they exist. Like biochemist Kary Mullis said in a 2007 interview (taken from the full-length documentary AIDS Inc.), “You can’t expect the sheep to really respect the best and the brightest, they don’t know the difference.”
“The vast majority do not possess the ability to judge who is and who isn’t a good scientist” and the “funding is being done by people who don’t understand it,” added Mullis, who won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for co-inventing the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique and died in August 2019. Interestingly enough, he was no fan of faustian bureaucratic Fauci, even back in the day.
Pro-life … until it counts
Since Deacon James had to “hold his tongue,” I poked around and found that he has a website. In his most recent essay, James asserts that “you cannot just make broad, sweeping, black and white assertions” when it comes to vaccines and the use of fetal cell lines in vaccines and other antibody therapies.
This, of course, it a hot topic in Christian circles, especially since so many Orthodox claim that their jab was “ethical.” However, there are some things that are uniform, black-and-white, absolutely singular and universally consistent.
According to Luke 1:39-49, there is no gray when it comes to innocent life. At the Annunciation of Our Most Holy Lady Theotokos, Jesus is already fully Man and the incarnate Son of God, even though He’s not fully formed within her womb. Hence, a fetus is a person.
Yet, those who condone the degradation of the pre-born humans that it took (and will take) for the harvesting of fetal stem cells would never condone that Jews who died in Auschwitz be used for such scientific “progress,” even if the prisoners’ tissue was obtained only for the testing stage of a supposed world-saving, pandemic-ending vaccine, and if it only utilized a couple of murdered Jews from 75 years ago. Would it still be about the greater good then?
I know that even mentioning the holocaust in an effort to undo globohomo can easily get someone tagged an anti-Semite these days. But the analogy, which Father John Whiteford shared with me, is an apt one because it points out the sanctimony of the pro-vaccine crowd. And if they don’t think a baby in the womb has as much worth as does a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp, well, I think they need to seriously reexamine their pro-life stance. Or they can open their hearts and minds to what the other side is saying.
According to a “social concept” statement put out by the Russian Church in 2000, the use of human tissue within the confines of true science can be ethical but only if the donation is voluntary and if the act doesn’t result in the death of the donor. Neither criteria is satisfied in the case of the covid jabs.
And here’s a personal anecdote … even before I was Orthodox, I came to realize that having an IUD didn’t prevent fertilization of an egg, but instead changes the lining of the uterus and prevents the implantation of the zygote. So, I got my IUD removed. Sure, I paid for that thing and still had 3 years to go on it, but I decided it wasn’t in line with my pro-life view and that there really was no wiggle room on the matter. The stuff really ain’t rocket science, y’all.
Moreover, fetal-cell procurement has undoubtedly created a market for those highly valued murdered babies, whose body parts actually go for top dollar when harvested while the child is still alive. Remember the investigative journalist who exposed Planned Parenthood abortionists openly discussing this? It’s no secret. It’s big business! It’s just supply and demand, y’all.
“It’s MUCH more complex than naysayers would have you believe,” Deacon James notes. Yep, it’s we “naysers” who are actually urging the globohomers to “peer past the obvious,” as Frederic Bastiat advised. So let’s have a real conversation, shall we, gentlemen?!
I was trying my best here to not get distracted by those mocking increased immune health through proven methods like vitamin D and zinc, and yes, even elderberry extract. Just get the jab, Nazi! Trust the liars, fascist! Don’t question the narrative, Judas!
Funny that some folks screech at you for pointing out that ivermectin may be a good medicine for drastically reducing mortality rates, even though the WHO agrees. But it is you who are the crazy one for noting how suspect it is that the global “health” organization still won’t recommend the cheap therapeutic alternative.
Even King Fauci testified before Congress that it takes about 7 years for the typical vaccine to be developed, yet here we are at 120 million “emergency use” experimental jabs and counting. And still we must “double the pace” and do more, more, more, demand the malicious medical bullies like Dr. Ezekiel “death panels” Emanuel.
Ugh. I sometimes feel like I’m living in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and the whole world is filled with Nurse Ratchets. But then I remember my “covid-denying” cohorts who proclaim such globohomer-triggering gems as this:
Let the little children come unto Me, but only if they are vaccinated according to the CDC Schedule. #ThingsJesusNeverSaid
Where two or three vaccinated are gathered in My Name, there I am also. #ThingsJesusNeverSaid
Greet one another with a holy kiss, except if you’re unvaccinated. #ThingsSaintPaulNeverSaid
No gentlemanly treatment for dissenters
I’m not exactly sure if Fr. Tom is being as dismissive or not, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. What I am sure of is that it is an increasingly common occurrence in American Orthodoxy that priests walk on egg shells around progressive Orthodox, self-policing and always trying to be “fair” and “loving” and “edifying” to left-wing subversives, while the-fiery hot wrath of the patriarchy is doled out with abandon to right-wing mamas and Ortho bros.
If I were a blue-haired wannabe deaconness who had a crush on the priest’s wife, I would fully receive an empathetic pastoral ear. If I were an Orthodox grrrrl who pushed LGBT as doctrine or a priest who’s unapologetically woke, mum’s the word. Heck, if I were a transhumanist who identified as satan’s cat, many priests would at least give lip service to my struggles, if they labeled them as struggles at all.
And because we have 13 months of overwhelming evidence, we know darn well how we’d be treated if we supported altering our time-honored Liturgy and ancient rites out of irrational fear. That’s not cautious; it’s caustic.
It ain’t water under the bridge
Fr. Tom’s claim is more circular reasoning than it is a fait accompli. A “water under the bridge” scenario would require the course be irreversible and presumably would encompass some measure of self-reflection and lessons learned. After all, uncorrected mistakes over time can add up to separate people from Christ.
Plus, this is not the first time that government mandates, social pressure, and bishop directives regarding a sickness have been used to manipulate the Church. Just ask those who suffered under the Bolshevik yoke.
As Edward Roslof explains in “Red Priests: Renovationism, Russian Orthodoxy, and Revolution, 1905-1946,” “Parish churches were often closed when they refused to register clergy or because of the threat of ‘epidemics, that is, on the pretense of preventing the spread of disease by parishioners who gathered together for worship.”
And it sure won’t be the last. Just ask us “covid-deniers” who’ve been suffering under the gas lighting, belligerence, and censorial culture within the Church for more than a year. We boldly proclaim, “This is all reversible, fathers!”
Just consider William’s heavyhearted question. It highlights so brightly the terrorism under which too many people have been held captive. The never-ending scare tactics and changing goal posts are so effective precisely because no discussion is allowed. That’s the true propagandistic power of a narrative when it goes unchallenged.
The Body of the Church
According to the Orthodox Study Bible (OSB), there are Four “Orders” in Church Government, the first of which is laity, who are also “called ‘saints,’ the ‘faithful,’ and ‘brethren’ … (and) are the people of God, the ‘priesthood.’ … It is from among the laity that the other three orders [the deacons, priests, and bishops] emerge.”
“In the Orthodox Church, authority is resident in all four orders, with the bishop providing the center of unity. His authority is not over the Church, but within the Church,” the OSB adds.
“Church leadership does not consist of one or more orders functioning without the others. Rather the Church, with Christ as Head, is conducted like a symphony orchestra, a family, the body of Christ, where all the members in their given offices work together as the dwelling place of the Holy Trinity.” That is Orthodoxy’s criteria, not mine.
Perhaps Manolo’s ego would get a little deflated if he read Father John Whiteford’s essay on Holy Communion during times of plague. Or if that’s a little too radical for his sensibilities, he could always just peruse what his jurisdiction’s own website has to say about the spread of disease and Liturgical matters.
Is that love?
I wonder how many covid “vaccine” injuries, adverse drug reactions, and deaths here and abroad will be considered too many? Globohomers dismiss such queries as tin-foil mad hattery, and the more honest ones will even sometimes opine, “Well, the risks harm few and help many.” However, it is this very same masked ilk whose muffled but malevolent shouts can be heard from the highest phase-three, socially-distance-approved rooftop, “If lockdowns/vaccines save just one life, then it’s worth it.”
Well, apparently, even the FDA is second-guessing that “thinking,” having just paused the Johnson & Johnson jab due to reports of blood clots. These are similar complaints to that of Europe’s AstraZeneca “vaccine,” which even the EU admitted is linked to deaths caused by blood clotting, well, before the centralized drug-regulating agency decided to then deny it. Science!
Possibly the worst part of this “great reset” rigamarole is that all the tyranny, corruption, and needless suffering is being done in the name of fighting a virus that has only a .07% chance of killing people — a dubiously high stat since it’s ceding to the elites their greatly inflated mortality inputs and not factoring in the sad reality that more than 1/3 of those US deaths have occurred in nursing homes. This is the “necrosis of love.”
“The choice of not being vaccinated does not endanger public health, as long as it does not abolish another person’s right to receive the vaccine – and with it, any protection it provides,” notes Hagiorite Monk Paul, Biologist, MD Molecular Biology and Biomedicine, of Vouleftiria, Holy Mountain.
“Consequently, that which is condemnable is every kind of complaisance that criminalizes a person’s stance towards living in a body free of suspicious vaccines, and which transforms societies … to herds of undecided and expendable animals.”
Beasts aren’t blessed with the gifts of verbal communication, free will, and discernment. We are, my fellow Christians, and utilizing them is our responsibility. It may not be deemed popular, but wisdom rarely is. Glory to God in the highest.
A few additional resources for your “anti-science” stockpile:
• Dissident Mama, episode 32 — Betsy Ball Clark
• Your Facebook Friends are Wrong About the Lockdown: A Non-Hysterics View of Covid-19
• COVID-19 Vaccines Likened to ‘Hacking the Software of Life’ with Dr. Joseph Mercola
• The Proof: Many Aborted Babies are Used in Vaccine Creation with Dr. Stanley Plotkin
• Vaccines, Abortion & Fetal Tissue: Right to Life Michigan
• Charlotte Lozier Institute: Fetal Tissue & Genetics
• Human Cell Lines and the COVID Vaccine with Dr. Pamela Acker
• The Dangers of the Covid-19 Vaccine with Dr. Steven Hotze
• Fear of Germs and Holy Things: From the “Spiritual Counsels” of St. Paisios of Mount Athos
• St. Paisios: “If You Receive the ‘Inoculation,’ You will be ‘Marked’” as explained by Fr. Peters Heers
Source: Dissident Mama – Globohomers gone wild, part 2
.
Such are the quirks and intricacies of us heritage Americans.
