A Phone Call and Disorientation Or the Woes of a Bishop
"Are you talking to me?"
☦︎ B.P.
I received a phone call. It was a clergyman.
Yes, I knew him. We met in the mid-1980’s when he was a state church, world orthodox deacon seeking to be received in the Church of the True Orthodox by the bishop who ordained me a priest.
He became a priest by that same bishop and we lost contact. Then the phone rang out two weeks ago. It was that very same priest!
After a minute or two of pleasantries, this Father started to get at the subject that was eating at him. First of all, he said, “I heard you are still a fanatic.” I waited to let him explain more clearly what he defined “fanaticism” as. One of the basic things was that “fanatics don’t commune world Orthodox”. “You know, you know like the Matthewites.”
My response was that I won’t bestow all of Orthodoxy on the Matthewites. If we are talking about the subject of intercommunion with heretics, yes, I agree with the Matthewites but that doesn’t make it Matthewitism at all. That was one of the standard beliefs of the True Orthodox. And what this hieromonk was calling “fanaticism” I simply call Orthodoxy. So far so good…
“What is past is prologue.” (~ William Shakespeare)
