The Vatican’s Representative Speaks Frankly and Openly of What Ecumenism Means to Rome, the Importance of “Common Baptism” and How They Understand the Latest Liturgical “Offerings” of the Orthodox

Here is a very good opportunity for all Orthodox to see clearly the face of Ecumenism and, in particular, Roman Catholic Ecumenism. What follows is an analysis of key aspects of a speech delivered by Bishop Brian Farrell, the Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, in Dublin at the beginning of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (2007).

What do the heterodox understand from Orthodox “overtures” and “love”? Here is one of the Vatican’s point men talking about how he understands the Patriarch of Constantinople’s stance during the recent visit of the Pope.

Our commentary is within the frames.

The full text can be found here.

Take especial note of the history of “the prayer for Christian unity” and what was (and is) meant by this unity.

Bishop Brian Farrell speaking during the recent Papal visit to Constantinople.

January 24, 2007

On reaching Christian unity (Part 1)

DUBLIN, Ireland (Zenit.org)—Here is the first part of a homily delivered on Thursday in Dublin…

…Every time the baptized come together to pray, it is the Spirit who guides them and teaches them how to pray.

* Again and again the followers of the pope stress the idea of a “common baptism” of all Christians, in which the Holy Spirit is present and works. It is this idea of a “common baptism” which is nothing less than another version of the branch theory, which itself states simply that there are various branches of the Church, divided but nonetheless THE CHURCH. In the “common baptism” theory this same idea is expressed, for the WHOLE Christ is present in Baptism, nothing less, and therefore the WHOLE Church is present, too, for the Body cannot be separated from the Head.*

Pope John Paul II sprinkling, not baptizing.

It is the same Spirit who builds the Church’s unity. Naturally, people have been praying for the unity of Christ’s followers since the beginning. Christians who take to heart the 17th chapter of John’s Gospel know that things are not as they should be and that the scandal of division weakens the proclamation of the Gospel; they know that the ecumenical movement is not a luxury in the life of the Church. We cannot separate our following of Christ from our passion for the unity of the Body of Christ that is the Church.

This year, the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is 99 years old.

Ninety-nine years ago, Father Paul Watson, an Anglican priest and co-founder of the Society of the Atonement, introduced a Prayer Octave for Christian Unity that was celebrated for the first time Jan. 18-25, 1908.

Unity for Father Watson meant a “return” to the Roman Catholic Church, hence the symbolic dates of the feast of the Chair of Peter, which at that time was celebrated Jan. 18, and the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul on Jan. 25. This is usually regarded as the beginning of the week as we know it today.

In 1936, a pioneer of ecumenism in French Catholicism, the Abbé Paul Couturier, brought in a new interpretation of the Unity Octave, when he saw that the idea of “return” made it difficult for many Christians to join with Catholics in prayer. He began what he called the “Universal Week of Prayer for Christian Unity,” keeping the same dates of Jan. 18-25, but urging people to pray for the unity of the Church “as Christ wills it.” That is what we are here for this evening: to pray together for the unity, the full communion, of all the baptized, in the way and at the time that the Lord, through the work of the Holy Spirit, will arrange.

* We should remember this deceitful and cunning method when we hear the flattering words of the Pope and his bishops. They are always talking out two sides of their mouth. About such men the Apostle writes: “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways."*

* Then, in part two, Bishop Brian continues…*


Official international delegations to visit Benedict XVI: from the World Alliance of Reformed Churches; from the Lutheran Church of Finland, of Norway, of Sweden; from the World Methodist Council; the Lutheran World Federation; the visit of the archbishop of Canterbury; the archbishop of Athens and All Greece. As every year there was an exchange of delegations between the Pope and the Ecumenical Patriarch, at the end of June for the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, the patron saints of Rome, and at the end of November for the feast of St. Andrew, the patron saint of Constantinople. Except that this year the Catholic delegation to Constantinople was led by Pope Benedict himself.

People want to see results from all this activity. But the communion we seek is neither a question of Church diplomacy nor of strategic agreements made in ecclesiastical back-rooms. In its original sense it has to do with “participation,” having a part in, sharing in God’s gift of redemption and grace. We are brought into communion—with God and with one another—when we all share in the same grace: one Lord, one baptism, one Spirit, one Father of all.

* Actually, the passage of Scripture from which this phrase is taken says: “There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.” (Eph. 4: 4-6).

We see that he left OUT two or more important phrases . Why? Well, because if, as the ecumenists say, all Christians share “one baptism”, or a “common baptism,” why is it that the Apostle (Eph. 4:5) does not in the least separate the one baptism from the one body, one faith and one Lord, one Spirit, and one Father? The Apostle does not separate them, but the inventors of the “common baptism” theory do! The separate it because it serves their interests, or the interests of the enemy of our salvation, who wants to mix truth with falsehood, light with darkness, Christ with the idols - just the opposite of what the Apostle Paul has written elsewhere:

“Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? 15 And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? 16 And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? (2 Cor. 6:15).

Examine all their rhetoric about our “common baptism” and you will see that they want us to believe that in this “common baptism” we already share in the same grace and therefore have communion. For in their legalistic and rationalistic theology they separate the Mysteries from the power of jurisdiction, which rests in the Pope’s hands alone. That is why they can say that the Orthodox have the Mysteries but are separate from the one who holds the keys of the Kingdom, who has jurisdiction. Therefore, it is a great TRAP for the Orthodox to accept their innovation regarding a common baptism, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the Patristic tradition regarding the acceptance of heretics by oikonomia. In the Patristic tradition a kat’oikonomia exception cannot be and is not a basis for our ecclesiological self-understanding. The first is pastoral, the second is dogmatic.*

…Our ecumenical journey is not towards a mere appearance of unity—towards some sort of ecclesiastical good neighborliness. The communion we seek has its source, its model and its fulfillment in the very life of the Trinity. Superficial gestures will not bring about the unity for which the Lord prayed.

Very often it is the significant though almost imperceptible gesture that marks the progress being made. Let me give a few examples.

First, that the Patriarch and the Pope exchanged the sign of peace during the Divine Liturgy itself. Up to now, at the Phanar, this gesture had always taken place after the celebration itself, given that for our Orthodox brothers the sign of peace within the liturgy expresses a very weighty commitment, introduced by the deacon with this exhortation: “Let us love one another that with one mind we may together make our profession of faith.” And then follows the Creed. This may seem like a small thing; but it has much spiritual meaning.

“...that we may confess” the episcopacy of the pope.

* The ecumenists and secularized Orthodox may now take lightly the meaning of our liturgical practices, but the Papists do not. Let all of those Orthodox who downplay the significance of the Patriarchate’s actions read and re-read the above. Is it not clear that step by step a unity, a very real unity, is being forged between the ecumenist-minded of the Patiarchate and other Local Churches and the heterodox - WITHOUT, however, there being ANY real and concrete repentance and change on their part? It is quite clear for him who has eyes to see.*

Posted on 02/05/07| Filed under: The Contemporary World • The "New Christianity" • Neo-Roman Catholicism • Email This Entry

This is a MUST READ for every Orthodox Christian, for it is yet one more important signpost on the path toward Antichrist. . .

“Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is” (Mark 13:33).

A GENERATION IS ALL THEY NEED

One day we will all happily be implanted with microchips, and our every move will be monitored. The technology exists; the only barrier is society’s resistance to the loss of privacy

Dec. 10, 2006. 08:46 AM

Kevin Haggerty
Special to the TORONTO STAR

By the time my four-year-old son is swathed in the soft flesh of old age, he will likely find it unremarkable that he and almost everyone he knows will be permanently implanted with a microchip. Automatically tracking his location in real time, it will connect him with databases monitoring and recording his smallest behavioural traits. Most people anticipate such a prospect with a sense of horrified disbelief, dismissing it as a science-fiction fantasy. The technology, however, already exists. For years humane societies have implanted all the pets that leave their premises with a small identifying microchip. As well, millions of consumer goods are now traced with tiny radio frequency identification chips that allow satellites to reveal their exact location.A select group of people are already “chipped” with devices that automatically open doors, turn on lights, and perform other low-level miracles.

Prominent among such individuals is researcher Kevin Warwick of Reading University in England; Warwick is a leading proponent of the almost limitless potential uses for such chips. Other users include the patrons of the Baja Beach Club in Barcelona, many of whom have paid about $150 (U.S.) for the privilege of being implanted with an identifying chip that allows them to bypass lengthy club queues and purchase drinks by being scanned. These individuals are the advance guard of an effort to expand the technology as widely as possible.

>From this point forward, microchips will become progressively smaller, less invasive, and easier to deploy. Thus, any realistic barrier to the wholesale “chipping” of Western citizens is not technological but cultural. It relies upon the visceral reaction against the prospect of being personally marked as one component in a massive human inventory. Today we might strongly hold such beliefs, but sensibilities can, and probably will, change. How this remarkable attitudinal transformation is likely to occur is clear to anyone who has paid attention to privacy issues over the past quarter-century. There will be no 3 a.m. knock on the door by storm troopers come to force implants into our bodies. The process will be more subtle and cumulative, couched in the unassailable language of progress and social betterment, and mimicking many of the processes that have contributed to the expansion of closed-circuit television cameras and the corporate market in personal data.

A series of tried and tested strategies will be marshalled to familiarize citizens with the technology. These will be coupled with efforts to pressure tainted social groups and entice the remainder of the population into being chipped. This, then, is how the next generation will come to be microchipped.

It starts in distant countries. Having tested the technology on guinea pigs, both human and animal, the first widespread use of human implanting will occur in nations at the periphery of the Western world. Such developments are important in their own right, but their international significance pertains to how they familiarize a global audience with the technology and habituate them to the idea that chipping represents a potential future.

An increasing array of hypothetical chipping scenarios will also be depicted in entertainment media, furthering the familiarization process. In the West, chips will first be implanted in members of stigmatized groups. Pedophiles are the leading candidate for this distinction, although it could start with terrorists, drug dealers, or whatever happens to be that year’s most vilified criminals. Short-lived promises will be made that the technology will only be used on the “worst of the worst.” In fact, the wholesale chipping of incarcerated individuals will quickly ensue, encompassing people on probation and on parole. Even accused individuals will be tagged, a measure justified on the grounds that it would stop them from fleeing justice. Many prisoners will welcome this development, since only chipped inmates will be eligible for parole, weekend release, or community sentences. From the prison system will emerge an evocative vocabulary distinguishing chippers from non-chippers. Although the chips will be justified as a way to reduce fraud and other crimes, criminals will almost immediately develop techniques to simulate other people’s chip codes and manipulate their data.The comparatively small size of the incarcerated population, however, means that prisons would be simply a brief stopover on a longer voyage. Commercial success is contingent on making serious inroads into tagging the larger population of law-abiding citizens. Other stigmatized groups will therefore be targeted. This will undoubtedly entail monitoring welfare recipients, a move justified to reduce fraud, enhance efficiency, and ensure that the poor do not receive “undeserved” benefits.

Once e-commerce is sufficiently advanced, welfare recipients will receive their benefits as electronic vouchers stored on their microchips, a policy that will be tinged with a sense of righteousness, as it will help ensure that clients can only purchase government-approved goods from select merchants, reducing the always disconcerting prospect that poor people might use their limited funds to purchase alcohol or tobacco.Civil libertarians will try to foster a debate on these developments. Their attempts to prohibit chipping will be handicapped by the inherent difficulty in animating public sympathy for criminals and welfare recipients — groups that many citizens are only too happy to see subjected to tighter regulation. Indeed, the lesser public concern for such groups is an inherent part of the unarticulated rationale for why coerced chipping will be disproportionately directed at the stigmatized.

Posted on 12/12/06| Filed under: The Contemporary World • Before the Face of Antichrist: How Shall we then Live? • Email This Entry

A band of idealists in the mountains of North Carolina is trying to build a low-energy lifestyle. But must we all live like hippies in the woods to make a difference?

By Joel Achenbach

Washington Post

Sunday, November 19, 2006; W10

THE SOLUTION TO THE ENERGY CRISIS turns out to be, in part, mood lighting. You go with one gentle bulb, a 10-watt number that shoos away enough of the darkness to keep everyone at the table identifiable. We’re having a delicious, if arguably dim, meal on a pleasant summer evening at a place called Earthaven. It’s an “ecovillage.” It’s in western North Carolina, east of Asheville, in a notch in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We’re off the grid, and deep inside one version of the human future.

Susan Lathrop and Kim Rylander, known in the village as Suchi and Kimchi, are hosting me and my guide, Earthaven resident Greg Geis, as I try to figure out how a bunch of suburbanites who’ve fled mainstream America are able to live in the boondocks half an hour by car from the nearest small town, without electrical lines or water mains or flush toilets or streetlights or microwave ovens or washing machines or home entertainment systems or electric garage door openers or fake-log fireplaces operated by remote control or any of the other things that most people consider essential to survival.

Earthaven is not a “commune,” a term now in disfavor (too stale, too ‘70s); the members prefer to call it an “intentional community.” It’s the kind of counterculture social experiment more typically found in places such as Oregon and Northern California. I visited because, while the rest of us worry about gas prices and global warming and terrorists taking over oil fields, the residents of Earthaven have a special approach to energy. They make their own.

Suchi and Kimchi have solar panels that give them enough juice to run a laptop and a coffee grinder and a few low-wattage light bulbs. They follow the weather reports, dialing a local phone number for the latest forecast.

“If I know it’s going to be sunny tomorrow, I know I can be a little more extravagant—put on the Christmas lights for dinner, check my e-mail at night,” Suchi says.

They’re not absolutists, to be sure. They use propane. Even an ecovillage finds it hard to wean itself completely from fossil fuel. With help from a little stove, Suchi and Kimchi have made a fine meal of stir-fried beef with vegetables, basmati rice, garden salad with greens from the community garden, and a blueberry cobbler with berries from the bushes not far from their front door.

There won’t be any leftovers, because it’s all good, and they don’t have a refrigerator. They use coolers. They had a freezer for a while, but it sucked too much energy. When the leaves came out in spring, their solar panels didn’t get enough sunlight. Maybe Suchi and Kimchi needed to add more panels or cut some trees. In the meantime, they simply unplugged the freezer. That’s another solution to the energy crisis. Unplug what you don’t need. They decided they could make do temporarily by hauling ice in milk jugs from an old freezer that’s a few hundred yards away, powered by a small hydroelectric contraption parked on a tumbling stream.

Suchi doesn’t mince words as we talk over dinner about life in the village: “It’s torment living here sometimes—just torment.” But she loves it still, and says, “I have the sanity of living my principles.”

After dinner, I help with the dishes and do what I can to stretch a little pot of hot water heated on the stove. Most of us mainstream people keep a huge tank of the stuff in our homes, say, 30 gallons, maintained at scalding temperatures, at least 160 degrees, even when we’re out of town on a long vacation—in case we need to fly home suddenly and take a bath.

Washing dishes the Earthaven way works acceptably well (though in the gloaming, it’s kind of hard to see what’s happening down there on the plates as you scrub). It’s energy-efficient. It does not require gratuitous amounts of fossil fuel or result in the prodigious emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

When you live like this, you think differently. You think about energy. You think about where it comes from and where it goes. The people of Earthaven have developed a way of life that’s sophisticated, that’s technologically aware, even as it resembles, at first glance, camping. It’s all rather enlightened. Or so you may conclude, after your eyes adjust.

THE KEY TO MODERN LIFE IS STRATEGIC IGNORANCE. There are so many things we don’t know about our lives and that, frankly, we don’t want to know. We don’t know much about the basic things that sustain us. We are clueless “end users” in elaborate industrial supply lines. Energy comes from distant power plants and oil refineries and pipelines and electrical grids, but we don’t think about them when we flick on a light or turn the key in the ignition. We live in a world we didn’t make, by rules and customs and laws we didn’t invent, using tools and technologies we don’t understand.

Even as science teaches us, constantly, that we are part of the fabric of life, that we have a common genetic heritage with all other living things, we continue to hold nature at arm’s length. Predation and cultivation and gathering and even preparation of food have all been outsourced.

Meat in the store has been carefully butchered and wrapped to obscure any association with an actual animal (hence the counterculture movement toward “food with a face"). Novelist Arthur C. Clarke said that when a technology becomes sufficiently advanced it becomes indistinguishable from magic, but he didn’t go far enough: The final advancement comes when the technology ceases to register at all. Electricity, accessed through an outlet, becomes an intrinsic property of residential walls, as are the drywall and the studs. Power comes from a switch. We have the consciousness of small children. We can conjure power at will. It’s a dream world, but one that might not be sustainable.

I’m guessing that for most of us, the only time we really concentrate on energy is at the gas station, because we can feel the fuel surging through the hose and can see the numbers spinning on the pump. The United States uses about 141 billion gallons of gasoline a year. A barrel of oil yields about 19.6 gallons of gasoline, not far off from the capacity of a typical automobile gas tank. If you were really conscious of your gasoline use, you’d say to yourself: There goes another barrel of oil.

Americans make up 5 percent of the global population, and use about 25 percent of the energy. You wake to an electric alarm clock. You grab your cellphone, which has been charging overnight. Your computer monitor is dark, but it’s not really “off,” because it’s one of those vampire appliances that operate in standby mode all the time (the average house has 20 of them, a Cornell study says). Your hot water heater and air conditioning/heating system have been going strong all night, as has your refrigerator, which is a vintage appliance using 7,000 watts a day (and has been keeping the same half-empty jar of exotic mustard chilled since 2002).

You put coffee beans in an electric grinder that sits next to your electric coffee maker that is adjacent to your electric toaster that is struggling to make a frozen waffle edible. National electricity use has doubled in the past three decades. In 1978, 23 percent of American homes had central air; by 2001, 55 percent had it (the booming Sun Belt is also the AC Belt—gone are the days when people cooled themselves by sitting six inches from the fan or by lounging on the porch with a glass of iced tea held to the forehead). Appliances are far more energy-efficient these days, but we make up for that by having more appliances. Only 14 percent of homes had a microwave oven in 1980, but two decades later, 86 percent had one. Your energy statistics are right there on your monthly bill, not that you pay attention. In 2004, the typical household in Washington used 757 kilowatt-hours of electricity a month; Maryland and Virginia, with a greater percentage of stand-alone houses, averaged 1,117 and 1,188 kWh, respectively. Where is your meter? Hidden.

So, too, is the meter that monitors the fuel you use for the hot water heater. It’s easier to sing in the shower when you’re not thinking about the Btus that went into it. The energy the United States used in 2005 came out to about 337 million Btus per person. One British thermal unit is roughly the amount of energy in the head of a match. Collectively, we all struck a lot of matches.

Most of the electricity we use comes from the burning of coal or natural gas, which heats water to create steam and turn turbines. Thus, when you flick on a light, you’re responsible for a certain amount of carbon that goes into the air. You can go online and calculate your “carbon footprint.” Compared with that of most people in the world, mine is Sasquatch-size. I like to drive in the countryside ("motoring," we call it), fly on business a lot, and although my home seems pretty modest, it’s crammed with human beings, including teenagers who leave so many lights on the house can probably be seen from the moon. One Web site calculates that the combustion of a gallon of gas emits 19.55 pounds of atmospheric carbon, and using that standard, driving my six-cylinder Honda Accord for 450 miles from Washington to Earthaven puts about 338 pounds of carbon into the air. Every time my house burns through a kilowatt of electricity, add another 1.32 pounds of CO2. I ran the numbers (guesstimating my household energy use), and the calculator declared that we emitted 47,350 pounds of carbon annually. On a per-capita basis, that’s less than the American average but a long way from being “carbon neutral.”

“If everyone lived at the lifestyle of Americans,” says Jim McMillan, who works on alternative energy for the Department of Energy, “we’d need five planets.”

So how do we change? What’s practical? Sure, we can lower the thermostat in winter, but do we have to wear a parka and a ski mask around the house? Is the right duration for a hot shower two songs, one song or a couple of stanzas? How much energy is “embedded” in each of our consumer decisions? How much fossil fuel did it take to truck that organic salad from California across the country? Does it make environmental sense to wash a glass instead of tossing a cheap Dixie cup in the trash? Desktop computer or laptop? Paper or plastic?

How should we live?

There are those who argue that using energy is, in fact, good. That the solution to the energy crisis will emerge naturally from a full-throttle economy filled with ingenious people, just one of whom has to invent the new thingamajig that yanks energy from the vacuum of space, or whatever. Believers in the genius of the free market will say we should not fret. It’ll work out. Markets solve problems almost magically.

But the business world also tells us to use as much energy as possible. Oil companies are among the planet’s largest and most politically influential corporations. The advertising industry pumps billions of dollars a year into what amounts to an organized campaign to make us into frenetic consumers. The implicit message is: Live it up. Keep buying. More is better.

Earthaven is a low-budget, backwoods advertisement for the alternative view. Its members are attempting to craft a new society, built not around economic growth but around the idea of sustainability and what they call “permaculture,” the goal of creating modes of living that will never damage the planet. And even if they don’t succeed in saving the world, they hope to survive whatever calamity might be coming down the pike.

FROM INTERSTATE 40, YOU DRIVE UP BAT CAVE ROAD FOR ABOUT EIGHT MILES, and if you know where you’re going, you’ll eventually come to a low sign saying “Earthaven Ecovillage.” A gravel road leads down through the trees. A street sign gives the road a name: “Another Way.”

The property has 320 acres fingering the mountain hollows along several converging creeks. You might catch a glimpse of a ridgeline overhead, but there are no grand vistas. Somewhere out there the Blue Ridge Mountains fall away toward the flatland, and in the other direction are the Smokies, but it’s all a bit disorienting. You’re in the woods.

The main street passes by a few structures and over a creek before reaching the humble center of the village. There’s a visitor’s kiosk where you sign in. The White Owl Cafe and the trading post are directly ahead. Off to the left, down a trail and over a footbridge that crosses a stream, is the Hut Hamlet, the first neighborhood on the site. To your right is the Village Green, a pasture where you might see a small cow, named Bridget.

Landscaping is minimal. Woody debris is piled along the creeks. There’s even a junkyard. The place is an aesthetic mishmash, a bit shabbier than an ecovillage ideally would be. As co-founder Chuck Marsh, 55, puts it, “If we’re going to make a place that’s going to inspire others, we’ve got to make it beautiful.”

At the moment, you’d call it interesting. Permaculture emphasizes such “natural” building techniques as using plastered-over straw bales as wall insulation. Windows are tall, for natural lighting, and floors are often concrete, built thick to hold heat in winter and remain cool in summer. One house, in a style known as an “Earthship,” is set into a hillside, with walls made of dirt-filled, salvaged automobile tires.

Rain is precious here. Rooftops channel it into cisterns. Some people draw water from small springs on higher ground. There’s a communal shower with a water-saver button on the shower head (to shut off the flow while you lather up). It is acceptable to pee on the ground, because it nourishes soil that can later be cultivated. “Pee Here Now” a sign will say in a spot that someday will be a garden. There are several communal composting toilets, which are basically outhouses. Sawdust cuts down on odor. Everything eventually is repatriated to the soil. Permaculture is pretty uncompromising.

There are a couple of satellite dishes on the property, but it’s not really a television-watching culture. There’s no cell coverage whatsoever. Residents rely on voice mail, e-mail and—radically in this modern age—face-to-face communication. At one point, my guide Greg Geis said he had to call someone, stepped outside and whistled. It didn’t seem to work, but I got the point. Birds do it; people can do it.

Founded in 1994, Earthaven is less radical than some intentional communities. Members don’t share income. Some older members are affluent and comfortably retired; others find work inside Earthaven, like construction, or hold jobs in nearby towns. The property is communally owned (and fully paid for), but everyone must lease his or her plot of land. Joining costs $4,000, not counting the lease and the additional cost of housing and energy. So you can’t just walk up and pitch a tent. Applicants go through a six-month-minimum trial period and must win approval from everyone else—Earthaven isn’t a democracy but, rather, is governed by consensus.

There are a lot of philosophies swirling through the air here. Feminism runs strong. A men’s movement searches for “the sacred masculine.” There’s a lot of yoga and meditation and holistic healing. You hear references to “radical honesty” and “neo-tribalism.” “The white cultures no longer remember the tribal knowledge their ancestors had,” says a member named Ivy Bolick.

They talk about Peak Oil. That’s the hypothesis that global oil production will soon decrease, triggering a global economic collapse. (Peak Oil is, in a sense, the cure for global warming.)

One day, one of the founders of Earthaven, Arjuna daSilva, invited Greg and me for lunch, which turned out to be a veritable feast of pasta with red sauce, fish with squash and onions, and a leafy salad. We were all feeling fat and happy, even as the conversation turned toward the end of civilization as we know it.

“It’s a little too late to do major salvation of the planet,” Arjuna, who is 60, said. “We’re screwed.”

Will we face a worldwide economic depression?

“That may be the best-case scenario,” Greg said.

“Worldwide depression is what many of us have been hoping for for the last 30 or 40 years,” Arjuna said.

Wipe the slate clean. Start over. It’s an appealing concept when you’re already in the community-invention business.

One night in the Hut Hamlet, a 37-year-old Earthaven member named Robert Carran talked about the coming collapse.

“Something will come to a head in the next five years. Definitely in 10 years. It could happen tomorrow. There’s a term bandied about called Roving Cannibal Hordes.”

He didn’t explain it fully, but the gist seemed to be that, someday, when the mainstream collapses, people will roam the countryside in search of food and energy supplies and, who knows, any source of meat. If the food supply collapses, Robert said, “I’m ready to eat some bugs. Run up in the hills and eat some bugs.”

I questioned that. He backed off.

“I’m not ready to eat bugs,” he admitted.

It’s all a work in progress. There’s no script. They’re making up a lot of it as they go, and there are basic questions they’re still trying to answer. How many people can be supported by 320 acres of land? What is the right number of people for a village? What does it actually mean, to be “sustaining”?

And finally, how do you create—out here in the sticks, with only a tiny labor pool and very little energy—a functioning economy?

THE SUN WAS OUT, AND GREG GEIS WAS MAKING ENERGY. A little meter on the wall told him how much: 12.4 amps of net gain as our friendly star blasted his solar panels. Greg tapped a button on his meter and learned that his batteries were at 85 percent capacity.

The meter is right there in the living room, next to his bulletin board. That’s typical for Earthaven: The meters are centrally located, crucial to life management. If the sun hasn’t been out for days and your batteries are low, you probably shouldn’t watch that movie on the VCR.

Greg has more creature comforts than many of his neighbors. When you enter his residence, you might well hear Pat Matheny coming from the sound system and see Greg typing away on a desktop computer in the corner. He’s not roughing it.

As we talked, the number on his meter began to go down, below 10 amps, below 5 . . . below zero.

Posted on 11/27/06| Filed under: The Contemporary World • Understanding the Age in which we Live • Before the Face of Antichrist: How Shall we then Live? • Email This Entry

<< Cardinal Bernard Law, the former archbishop of Boston, followed the late pope’s example at a suburban mosque in 2002. As the Boston Globe reported on Nov. 25, 2002, “Law removed his shoes. Then, as the imam chanted the sunset prayers, the bishop knelt with his forehead just inches from the carpet and offered praise to Allah.” Afterward, Law partook of the meal that breaks the day-long Ramadan fast. ''I feel very much at home with my fellow fundamentalists here,” Law said, “who are convinced that God must be at the center of our lives.” >>

-- This article further illustrates the deluded and apostate state of the leadership of Roman Catholicism. This tragedy of the further apostasy of the leadership of Roman Catholicism should only go to drive home in the hearts and heads of every Orthodox Christian our own hierarchy’s tragic error in identifying themselves with such a decrepit and dying institution.

SLOUCHING TOWARD SUICIDE

By Joseph D’Hippolito

FrontPageMagazine.com | November 13, 2006

During his visit to Germany, Pope Benedict XVI stunned the world on Sept. 12 by issuing a subtle, discreet yet formidable challenge to Islam – a challenge that drew praise from various observers.

The pope’s rhetoric, however, contrasts with his failure to confront a more fundamental problem: the Catholic Church’s willingness to concede its own worship space to Muslims, without regard for the consequences.

In Europe and the United States, Catholic authorities have encouraged the transformation of Catholic schools and churches into Muslim schools and mosques. One order of friars is helping Italian Muslims build a mosque right next to its monastery. In Belgium, meanwhile, the Catholic bishops let illegal Muslim immigrants live and worship in churches to force the government to grant amnesty.

Those same Catholic authorities would not grant similar concessions to Protestants or Eastern Orthodox, whose theologies are infinitely more similar.

Given the violent, anti-Semitic and anti-Western ideology permeating contemporary Islam – as well as decades of massive Muslim immigration to Europe – the implications are obvious.

“While Western Europe is turning Muslim, its Christian churches are committing suicide,” wrote The Brussels Journal’s Paul Belien in May.

The Norwegian author Fjordman expressed the situation less dramatically but no less accurately for the same outlet in September: “The ideological civil war within the West is not just between secularists and religious people; it runs straight through the Church itself.”

The Catholic Church’s problem has its roots in an ecumenism that borders on syncretism and a sense of compassion that crosses into indulgence. Pope John Paul II set the example by praying in a Damascus mosque during his 2001 trip to the Middle East.

Cardinal Bernard Law, the former archbishop of Boston, followed the late pope’s example at a suburban mosque in 2002. As the Boston Globe reported on Nov. 25, 2002, “Law removed his shoes. Then, as the imam chanted the sunset prayers, the bishop knelt with his forehead just inches from the carpet and offered praise to Allah.”

Afterward, Law partook of the meal that breaks the day-long Ramadan fast. ‘’I feel very much at home with my fellow fundamentalists here,” Law said, “who are convinced that God must be at the center of our lives.”

Law’s basic attitude appears to be prevailing as Catholicism declines in the West. In Detroit, Our Lady Help of the Christians Catholic Church held its final Mass on Oct. 29. The Archdiocese of Detroit sold the church’s property to the Islamic Center of North Detroit, which plans to convert the complex into a mosque, an Islamic community center and a school for the neighborhood of Bangladeshi immigrants.

The archdiocese had leased another one of its properties to Muslims, the Detroit News reported Oct. 27, but did not disclose the location. The church, built in 1923 for Polish immigrants, was serving just 124 families when it closed.

The same month in Italy, the Capuchin Franciscan friars agreed to help the Union of Islamic Communities and Organizations in Italy (UCOII) build a mosque in Genoa immediately adjacent to one of its monasteries. The order agreed to exchange the land for an abandoned factory that the union had planned to convert into a mosque – and even agreed to build the new mosque’s foundation.

One of the deal’s most vociferous opponents is Magri Alam, an Egyptian immigrant to Italy who became a conservative journalist and a passionate critic of radical Islam.

In the Oct. 16 edition of the Milan daily Corriere della Sera, Alam wrote that the UCOII encourages “an extremist version of the Qu’ran, where Christians, Jews and Westerners are criminalized, as well as women and other Muslims who don’t submit to their rule.”

The union’s president, Mohammed Nour Dachan, has refused to sign a document in which Muslims pledged to accept Italy’s constitution, denounce terrorism and recognize Israel’s right to exist. His organization also demands Islamic schools, Islamic banks and clerical supervision of textbooks, as Front Page Magazine reported in its article, “How Will Rome Face Mecca?”

In Glasgow in 2003, Catholic officials approved attempts by Muslims to turn St. Albert’s School into an Islamic institution. More than 90 percent of the school’s 360 students were Muslim.

“We are in favor of Muslim schools,” an unidentified church spokesman told Edinburgh’s The Scotsman on Nov. 23, 2003. “We support faith schools across the board. In the case of St. Albert’s, we see a school in which for 95 percent of the children, the festival of Eid has more significance than Christmas or Easter. It is de facto not a Catholic school.”

The Catholic Establishment’s indulgent sense of compassion manifests itself most powerfully in its attitude toward immigrants. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster in London, demonstrated that attitude in his May 1, 2006 sermon at Westminster Cathedral:  “In migrants, the Church has always contemplated the image of Christ who said, “I was a stranger and you made me welcome” (Matthew 25:35). Their condition is, therefore, a challenge to the faith and love of believers who are called on to heal the evils caused by migration and discover the plan God pursues through migration even when there are obvious injustices. God’s appeal, made so forcefully in both the Old and the New Testaments, is for fraternity – for there to be new bonds of friendship forged between newcomer and native.

“The Church does not approve of illegal immigration…But nor can the Church ignore the plight among us of those who are here without legal status…We stand in solidarity with you too.” The Church, said Pope John Paul II in his migration day message, “is the place where illegal immigrants are also recognized and welcomed as brothers and sisters.”

“It is one of the central tasks of Christians – a constant theme of the Old and New Testaments – to offer hospitality to the exile and the stranger, seeing in him and her, the face of Christ. Faith in the presence of Christ in the migrant leads to a conversion of mind and heart, which leads to a renewed spirit of communion.”

The Catholic Establishment is so infatuated with creating such a spirit that it refuses to ask immigrants even to show a fundamental respect for others, let alone to assimilate into their new societies and obey the laws. Perhaps this is most true in Belgium, where the bishops encourage illegal Muslim immigrants to take over churches in virtually every diocese.

Posted on 11/15/06| Filed under: The Contemporary World • The "New Christianity" • Neo-Roman Catholicism • Email This Entry

What should an Orthodox Christian think when he sees people opening talking about the probablity of whole societies advocating and implementing the implantation of microchips under their skin for “security” reasons and “peace of mind” and the like? Well perhaps the following passages of Holy Scripture ought to come to mind:

“For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief” (1 Th. 5:3)

Or, “And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God...” (Rev. 14:9).

But above all, such articles should only reinforce the following words of the Saviour:

“And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth.Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass,and to stand before the Son of man” (Lk. 21:36).

Read it on the original web page.

Britons ‘could be microchipped like dogs in a decade’

30.10.06

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news

Experts predict that humans could soon have ID chips implanted under the skin

Human beings may be forced to be ‘microchipped’ like pet dogs, a shocking official report into the rise of the Big Brother state has warned.

The microchips - which are implanted under the skin - allow the wearer’s movements to be tracked and store personal information about them.

They could be used by companies who want to keep tabs on an employee’s movements or by Governments who want a foolproof way of identifying their citizens - and storing information about them.

The prospect of ‘chip-citizens’ - with its terrifying echoes of George Orwell’s ‘Big Brother’ police state in the book 1984 - was raised in an official report for Britain’s Information Commissioner Richard Thomas into the spread of surveillance technology.

The report, drawn up by a team of respected academics, claims that Britain is a world-leader in the use of surveillance technology and its citizens the most spied-upon in the free world.

It paints a frightening picture of what Britain might be like in ten years time unless steps are taken to regulate the use of CCTV and other spy technologies.

The reports editors Dr David Murakami Wood, managing editor of the journal Surveillance and Society and Dr Kirstie Ball, an Open University lecturer in Organisation Studies, claim that by 2016 our almost every movement, purchase and communication could be monitored by a complex network of interlinking surveillance technologies.

The most contentious prediction is the spread in the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology.

The RFID chips - which can be detected and read by radio waves - are already used in new UK passports and are also used the Oyster card system to access the London Transport network.

For the past six years European countries have been using RFID chips to identify pet animals.

Already used in America

However, its use in humans has already been trialled in America, where the chips were implanted in 70 mentally-ill elderly people in order to track their movements.

And earlier this year a security company in Ohio chipped two of its employees to allow them to enter a secure area. The glass-encased chips were planted in the recipients’ upper right arms and ‘read’ by a device similar to a credit card reader.

In their Report on the Surveillance Society, the authors now warn: ”The call for everyone to be implanted is now being seriously debated.”

The authors also highlight the Government’s huge enthusiasm for CCTV, pointing out that during the 1990s the Home Office spent 78 per cent of its crime prevention budget - a total of £500 million - on installing the cameras.

Posted on 11/01/06| Filed under: The Contemporary World • Before the Face of Antichrist: How Shall we then Live? • Email This Entry

What do mega-church pastors, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Jewish groups in Jerusalem all have in common? They are all awaiting their “messiah” who will reign on earth. They are all chiliasts, or hold the belief that their respective kingdoms and messiahs will set up their reign on earth. But, this will actually be the reign of Antichrist, for Christ’s kingdom is “not of this world.” He has “no place to lay His head” below. His reign is eternal, as we confess in the Symbol of Faith of Nicea (and have for 1700 years): “And [He] shall come again, with glory, to judge both the living and the dead; Whose kingdom shall have no end.” On the other hand, he who will attempt to set up a kingdom on earth over the entire earth will be none other than the Antichrist - apparently he who these three religions (or sects within religions) are expecting…

Read the original story here.

‘End Times’ Religious Groups Want Apocalypse Soon

‘End times’ religious groups want apocalypse sooner than later, and they’re relying on high tech—and red heifers—to hasten its arrival.

By Louis Sahagun, Times Staff Writer

June 22, 2006

For thousands of years, prophets have predicted the end of the world. Today, various religious groups, using the latest technology, are trying to hasten it.

Their endgame is to speed the promised arrival of a messiah. 

For some Christians this means laying the groundwork for Armageddon.

With that goal in mind, mega-church pastors recently met in Inglewood to polish strategies for using global communications and aircraft to transport missionaries to fulfill the Great Commission: to make every person on Earth aware of Jesus’ message. Doing so, they believe, will bring about the end, perhaps within two decades.

In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a far different vision. As mayor of Tehran in 2004, he spent millions on improvements to make the city more welcoming for the return of a Muslim messiah known as the Mahdi, according to a recent report by the American Foreign Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.

To the majority of Shiites, the Mahdi was the last of the prophet Muhammad’s true heirs, his 12 righteous descendants chosen by God to lead the faithful.

Ahmadinejad hopes to welcome the Mahdi to Tehran within two years.

Conversely, some Jewish groups in Jerusalem hope to clear the path for their own messiah by rebuilding a temple on a site now occupied by one of Islam’s holiest shrines.

Artisans have re-created priestly robes of white linen, gem-studded breastplates, silver trumpets and solid-gold menorahs to be used in the Holy Temple — along with two 6½-ton marble cornerstones for the building’s foundation.

Then there is Clyde Lott, a Mississippi revivalist preacher and cattle rancher. He is trying to raise a unique herd of red heifers to satisfy an obscure injunction in the Book of Numbers: the sacrifice of a blemish-free red heifer for purification rituals needed to pave the way for the messiah.

So far, only one of his cows has been verified by rabbis as worthy, meaning they failed to turn up even three white or black hairs on the animal’s body.

Linking these efforts is a belief that modern technologies and global communications have made it possible to induce completion of God’s plan within this generation.

Though there are myriad interpretations of how it will play out, the basic Christian apocalyptic countdown — as described by the Book of Revelation in the New Testament — is as follows:

Jews return to Israel after 2,000 years, the Holy Temple is rebuilt, billions of people perish during seven years of natural disasters and plagues, the antichrist arises and rules the world, the battle of Armageddon erupts in the vicinity of Israel, Jesus returns to defeat Satan’s armies and preside over Judgment Day.

Generations of Christians have hoped for the Second Coming of Jesus, said UCLA historian Eugen Weber, author of the 1999 book “Apocalypses: Prophecies, Cults and Millennial Beliefs Through the Ages.”

“And it’s always been an ultimately bloody hope, a slaughterhouse hope,” he added with a sigh. “What we have now in this global age is a vaster and bloodier-than-ever Wagnerian version. But, then, we are a very imaginative race.”

Apocalyptic movements are nothing new; even Christopher Columbus hoped to assist in the Great Commission by evangelizing New World inhabitants.

Some religious scholars saw apocalyptic fever rise as the year 2000 approached, and they expected it to subside after the millennium arrived without a hitch.

It didn’t. According to various polls, an estimated 40% of Americans believe that a sequence of events presaging the end times is already underway. Among the believers are pastors of some of the largest evangelical churches in America, who converged at Faith Central Bible Church in Inglewood in February to finalize plans to start 5 million new churches worldwide in 10 years.

“Jesus Christ commissioned his disciples to go to the ends of the Earth and tell everyone how they could achieve eternal life,” said James Davis, president of the Global Pastors Network’s “Billion Souls Initiative,” one of an estimated 2,000 initiatives worldwide designed to boost the Christian population.

“As we advance around the world,” Davis said, “we’ll be shortening the time needed to fulfill that Great Commission. Then, the Bible says, the end will come.”

An opposing vision, invoked by Ahmadinejad in an address before the United Nations last year, suggests that the Imam Mahdi, a 9th century figure, will soon emerge from a well to conquer the world and convert everyone to Islam.

“O mighty Lord,” he said, “I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the promised one, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace.”

At the appropriate time, according to Shiite tradition, the Mahdi will reappear and, along with Jesus, lead Muslims in a struggle to rid the world of corruption and establish justice.

For Christians, the future of Israel is the key to any end-times scenario, and various groups are reaching out to Jews — or proselytizing among them — to advance the Second Coming.

A growing number of fundamentalist Christians in mostly Southern states are adopting Jewish religious practices to align themselves with prophecies saying that Gentiles will stand as one with Jews when the end is near.

Evangelist John C. Hagee of the 19,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio has helped 12,000 Russian Jews move to Israel, and donated several million dollars to Israeli hospitals and orphanages.

“We are the generation that will probably see the rapture of the church,” Hagee said, referring to a moment in advance of Jesus’ return when the world’s true believers will be airlifted into heaven.

“In Christian theology, the first thing that happens when Christ returns to Earth is the judgment of nations,” said Hagee, who wears a Jewish prayer shawl when he ministers. ”It will have one criterion: How did you treat the Jewish people? Anyone who understands that will want to be on the right side of that question. Those who are anti-Semitic will go to eternal damnation.”

On July 18, Hagee plans to lead a contingent of high-profile evangelists to Washington to make their concerns about Israel’s security known to congressional leaders. More than 1,200 evangelists are expected for the gathering.

“Twenty-five years ago, I called a meeting of evangelists to discuss such an effort, and the conversation didn’t last an hour,” he said. “This time, I called and they all came and stayed. And when the meeting was over, they all agreed to speak up for Israel.”

Underlining the sense of urgency is a belief that the end-times clock started ticking May 15, 1948, when the United Nations formally recognized Israel.

“I’ll never forget that night,” Hagee said. “I was 8 years old at the time and in the kitchen with my father listening to the news about Israel’s rebirth on the radio. He said, ‘Son, this is the most important day in the 20th century.’ “

Posted on 07/02/06| Filed under: Ecclesia • Eschatology: The End and Our Age • Email This Entry