Introduction

Knowledge of the Orthodox Christian faith is growing in Latin America; there is an increasing number of clergy, parishes, and monastic institutions, and more and more materials are being published in Spanish and Portuguese, as well. This is a cause for rejoicing, as more and more people are able to find the original Christian Church, especially in an age where modernism and relativism obscure the Truth and hinder man’s salvation.

However, as Latin American people become more and more familiar with Orthodox Christianity, there is likewise a growing confusion regarding what exactly constitutes authentic and legitimate Orthodox Christianity. On the one hand, there are numerous so-called “official” jurisdictions which teach and practice things at variance with authentic Orthodox Christianity, but excuse these abuses based on their supposed canonical legitimacy and authority; on the other hand, there are numerous charlatans who take advantage of the ignorance of the common people, and set themselves up illegitimately as Orthodox clergy, without, however, having any legitimate training or the blessing of an established Orthodox Synod.

Formerly, such deception was common among Roman Catholics and Anglicans, where “independent” clergy would pose as Roman Catholic or Anglican bishops or priests, but as the Internet has helped weed out such imposters, they have taken their game to the Orthodox “scene,” where the lack of information available and the perceived exoticness of Orthodoxy has allowed them to have moderate success. In more recent times, they have even taken advantage of the schism between traditional Orthodox Christians (Genuine Orthodox Christians [GOC] or Old Calendarists) and the New Calendarist, Ecumenist heretics, in order to present themselves as traditional Orthodox Christian clergy who are separate from the “official” and “canonical” New Calendarist/Ecumenist Churches due to reasons of faith, rather than due to canonical infractions, scandals, lack of qualifications, or self-will. They are “Genuine Orthodox” in name only, but are able to manipulate the faithful with their sophistry.

Due to this confusion, I intend to begin a series of posts on this blog categorized as “Traditional Orthodoxy in Latin America.” A thorough analysis is needed, and many sub-topics can surely be explored, but for the time being, I will present one historical document and several contemporary links to photos demonstrating a link between the Church in Greece and the Church headquartered in the United States (which has jurisdiction over Latin America) due to a pressing request by our priest living in Colombia, the Rev. Fr. Félix Piñeros, pastor of St. Nectarios of Aegina Mission Parish in Bogotá, Colombia, who left the New Calendarist Church only to find himself in an uncanonical, pseudo-Old Calendarist jurisdiction, and finally made his way to canonical Orthodoxy some years ago. If you are reading this post and have further questions, please leave your comments in the section below, so I can consider them for future posts in this series.

The Origin of the Hierarchy of the GOC of Greece

In an English-speaking context, church websites which advertise their origins and apostolic succession are generally automatically assumed to be spurious. No legitimate Orthodox jurisdiction would need to defend itself by posting a lineage on a website; those who do so are often defensive and trying to establish themselves based on legal arguments of “who ordained whom”; arguments which are foreign to the Orthodox view of apostolic succession and ordination.

Nevertheless, it is occasionally necessary to demonstrate the historical connection that our Old Calendarist Greek Orthodox Church has with the universal Church, given the doubts that are raised by the arguments, claims, and actions of others. This is especially true in Latin America, where good-quality information is difficult to obtain. Therefore, in this post, I will share one historical document about the origins of the Greek Old Calendarist Church here:

Friends,

I’ve been working on several website projects in the evening, and as a result, have had little time to write. However, writing is my passion and something I want to do regularly, even if I am stretched thin with other obligations. For this reason, I am planning to set a schedule of one post every three weeks here for the rest of 2015, on Tuesdays. Please subscribe to the site in order to be notified of each new post.

In Christ,
Anastasios

For whatever reason, I decided to watch the ISIS murder[1] video of the Jordanian pilot by burning after hearing about it on the news today. ISIS has propaganda down well. Here are some thoughts:

That being said, that was not my takeaway from the video, nor the reason I decided to jot down some reflections. Above all, what struck me was how dignified the victim looked during the whole process. He seemed to walk willingly to the cage, and stood there peacefully as they lit up the charge. He only began to move frantically when the flame reached him.

I wondered about this—I’m not the physically strongest fellow out there, and I wonder if I would be screaming like a girl the second I saw the torches, or they doused me with gasoline. He walked calmly to his cage; the other hostages murdered in other videos likewise read statements calmly, etc. Is it brainwashing? Fatigue? Depression? A hope that it will “go easier” if they cooperate? Or perhaps threats against their family members? Still, one would expect to see frantic desperation, and if such existed, one would assume that ISIS would highlight it, in order to paint the victim as a coward (unless I am misunderstanding something about Arab cultural norms and perceptions; add your comment below if you can shed light on that).

Instead, what I saw was a man who stood with dignity and patience, a hero who rested on the fact that he had served his king and country honorably, who faced his fate with courage, calmly and dispassionately. The result for me was a deep respect for this fallen comrade in the fight against evil. ISIS may have tried to use him as propaganda, but in the end, they only made themselves look like fools. This man stood without a veiled face, while the cowards of ISIS killed him without even looking him in the eye, or showing their faces.

Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh, Muslims such as yourself believe with us Christians that Jesus will judge at the end of time, despite your rejecting the Christian belief in His Divinity; I pray that when you encounter Him Whom you considered a mere Prophet, you will be bathed in His light, forgiveness, and mercy, and that somehow you will be granted Paradise on that great and fearsome day. Thank you for inspiring me with your courage and dignity. May your widow and family be granted peace, and may your death be avenged. As an Orthodox Christian, I hope that such avenging is by the conversion of the hearts of your murderers, but barring such, then by their swift destruction.

[1] Following the comment of a journalist, I will not be referring to it as an execution—execution implies legitimate authority on the part of the executioner, and a crime on the part of the executed)

(Originally posted on my personal Facebook page).

2014 was what a year is: some good, some bad. Some success, some failure. A few steps forward, and some back. Certainly not as hard for me personally as 2012 and 2013, when everything in my world changed drastically. But certainly not easy, as some years were. All I can say is that I have continued to grow, learn, and experience things. That being said:

1. I am proud to have finally stopped drinking soda completely, after being addicted to it for 26 years.

2. I am proud to have basically stopped drinking hard liquor, and cutting my beer consumption in half–although when you drink as much beer as I do, that means I still have a long way to go, and it is clearly a struggle.

I don’t celebrate Halloween, out of obedience to my bishop and because my conscience does not permit me to engage in anything that makes light of the dark powers (which, when I was involved with occultic things as a teenager, I witnessed with my own eyes).

That being said, a few points:

1) A lot of the anti-Halloween stuff is derived from Protestant Fundamentalist nonsense, and should not be taken seriously or used in Orthodox arguments against Halloween. We really don’t know what Druids did, what their religion was like, or what the pagans of the British Isles really did on Samhein, apart from a few unreliable testimonies of the Romans, who deliberately fabricated and hyped them up to justify their annexation of Britain and destruction of the British people’s traditional social structure. Recall that the Romans were just as pagan as the British were, but had an “enlightened” form of paganism, so the more inchoate and natural paganism of the Druids and Celts was seen as backward and uncivilized. But the real fact is that the Druids were powerful in that society, and their power needed to be broken. (more…)