Orthodixie

Thanks to FWD from Tim Gibson.

We have met Big Brother and he is us.

Today, the 18th of July, is believed to be the anniversary of the fire that burned Rome in 64 AD, while the emperor Nero supposedly played his fiddle. In fact, he wasn’t in Rome. He was away at his holiday villa on the coast, and when he heard about the fire, he rushed back to the capital and took charge of the operations.

The rumors about his playing his fiddle probably came from people in the Roman military who did not approve of Nero’s artistic leanings. He’d come to power at the age of 16. He was the youngest ruler in the history of Rome. He was more interested in music and poetry than in battling the barbarians. And he didn’t play the fiddle; he did play the lyre. But his real passion was singing. He was also known to be a transvestite, which did not endear him to the soldiers.

One of the rumors being spread at the time was that Nero had himself started the fire because he was disgusted by the architecture in Rome and wanted to rebuild the city. And to bolster his own image against these rumors, Nero decided that the fire needed to be blamed on someone else, and he picked out the Christians who were generally loathed by Romans.

The religion of Christianity was only a few decades old when Nero singled it out. Nero rounded up Christians; they were covered in the skins of wild animals, torn to death by dogs, crucified, or they were burned at the stake.

Most Romans at the time despised Christians, but Nero’s program of persecution went further than the people wanted. It had the unintended effect of making people sympathize with Christians. And a little more than 200 years later, the emperor of the Roman Empire himself converted to Christianity, and it became the dominant religion of Europe.

Stolen from The Writer’s Almanac.

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Hey Great Pearl whatchya doin’ out there
Prayin’ alone with such might while I pray here above you
[Protestant] I can hear your music playin’
[Orthodox] I can see your censers swayin’
Although you’re below me you don’t even know me
I love you

Refrain
Oh, my darling, knock three times on the ceiling if you want me
Twice — I’m the Pope — if the answer is no, oh, my sweetness
(Knock, knock, knock!) Means you’ll meet me, oh say, halfway
Mmm — yes, I’m the Pope — (clink, clink) means you ain’t gonna show

If you look in your Bible tonight
Turn to the page with the note that’s attached to my heart [Matthew 16:18]
[Dialogue] O how many times I saw you
[Heretics] How in silence I abhorred you
And only in your dreams will that wall between us come apart

Refrain
Oh, my darling, knock three times on the ceiling if you want me
Twice — I’m the Pope — if the answer is no, oh, my sweetness
(Knock, knock, knock!) Means you’ll meet me, oh say, halfway
Mmm — yes, I’m the Pope — (clink, clink) means you ain’t gonna show

[Charismatic] I can hear your music playin’
[High Church] I can see your censers swayin’
Although you’re below me you don’t even know me
I love you

Tony Orlando & Dawn original lyrics here.

Here’s some quotes of note from a recent interview with Terry Mattingly. There’s more where these came from; click the link below.

In the West the forms of church life that were most compatible with Orthodoxy were killed off. I believe it’s Fr. Michael Keiser who has the wonderful quote, “People need to remember that Orthodoxy in the West didn’t die, it was murdered.”

The heart of the Anglican compromise boils down to putting St. John Chrysostom and John Calvin in the same pew. But neither one of those men want to be there. There are things on which they do not agree with each other, and they would not compromise. And yet the Anglican compromise tried to have both sides of a Protestant and ancient equation be equal. You simply can’t pull that off.

Anglicans are highly skilled and genuinely talented in compromise. When you say that Anglicanism is the church of the via media—the middle way—that implies a kind of compromise position between two camps that often don’t want to compromise. And on moral and social issues, what you have ended up with is a never-ending march to the left—because you’re constantly compromising on the church traditions of the ages. This steadily, slowly but surely, pulls you to the theological left on critical issues. . . .

There are still conservative Anglo-Catholics, but not as many. The most vital and alive conservative elements in modern Anglicanism are charismatic or evangelical low-church Anglicans. There are still some very high-church, fully Catholic Anglicans. But I find it very interesting that modern liberal Anglicanism tends to identify much more with a high-church, liturgical smells-and-bells approach to Anglicanism.

This makes many Orthodox confused, because they see these people and they say, gosh, they even have icons in their church. We have a lot in common with them. When theologically, you may have almost nothing in common with them.

Read the whole interview H E R E.