It should go without saying that, while every group will always have a few unstable people in its midst, the racist and violent views that Mr. Heimbach preaches are not the teaching and tradition of the Orthodox Church. The Church condemns racism, teaching that all human beings, without distinction, are created in the image and likeness of God. In Orthodox Churches here in America, it's very common to see Arabs, Ethiopians, Eastern Europeans, Greeks, converts, etc worshiping side-by-side. The sheer number of languages in which we shout "Christ is risen!" should testify to the equal status of all peoples, races, languages, cultures, etc. before God and in the eyes of the Church.
However, while the outrage about the racism of this new convert is understandable and correct, several people have made comments that touch on larger issues of pastoral care and the relationship between priest and parishioner that I think are very important and worth reflecting on a little.
First of all, some people have faulted Mr. Heimbach's priest for not doing enough research on him before agreeing to receive him into the Church, pointing out that his racist views were publicly available on the internet. Fr. Peter himself has apologized for not doing enough research on him. Others have insisted that Fr. Peter make Mr. Heimbach close down his website and publicly renounce his racist, un-Christian views. What Fr. Peter did or didn't know in advance is private, but I want to speak in more general terms about the idea raised here: Should a priest do internet research a parishioner or potential parishioner? Does the priest's role as shepherd include actively seeking out information about his parishioners beyond what they themselves share? Can priests force their parishioners to do things?
While there are exceptional circumstances, I believe that in general, the answer must be a firm no. Why is that? Fundamental to Orthodox theology is our understanding of both the freedom and the fallenness of the human will. When God created us in His Image, that including giving us the freedom to choose freely between what is right and what is wrong. Through our sins, our God-given will is no longer fully free -- rather, we are enslaved to our habitual sins -- our passions. Our wills are wounded and broken. Because of this, God Himself became man, assuming all of our humanity, including our human will, so that He could heal and repair our broken wills. His Passion gives us the gift of freedom from our passions and opens the way for us to use our wills rightly.
However, it goes without saying that our wills cannot be healed against our will, otherwise God would not be healing our wills, but removing them. God will not force us to be healed. Whatever sins we bring to Him, He will willingly forgive. However, He will not and does not force to repent. He does not make us open our hearts to him. As St. Silouan the Athonite said, "God exercises no compulsion on man but patiently and humbly waits for him to open his heart to Him."
This is key to understanding the relationship between a priest and parishioner. While priests, and especially
Often, this issue can come up in private confession. It should come as no surprise that sometimes, people might not be completely honest in confession. Sometimes, facts may get left out or details may get distorted in a way that's more sympathetic to the penitent. A husband and wife, a parent and child, or just two friends may each come to confession individually and confess the same argument, but with such different versions, that it's clear both versions can't be true. However, the priest should never use knowledge from one confession to "correct" someone else's confession (i.e. "Oh yeah? That's not how your wife describes what happened!"). He must accept how each person describes things and the extent to which each person willingly opens their hearts. If a person lies or conceals things, they do so to their own spiritual detriment. The Church is not the spiritual version of the Gestapo.
Orthodoxy is and must be based on a relationship of trust and freely chosen openness. If people lie or conceal facts necessary to proper pastoral care, they harm themselves by doing that. However, it's not the priest's place to force more openness than a person chooses willingly, to pry deeper into their hearts than he is invited to go. He should, rather, exhort gently and lead patiently, walking with the penitent along the road to the healing we have in Christ. To do otherwise, he opens himself up to temptation and risks alienating the grace of God since, as St. Silouan reminds us, compulsion is foreign to the Holy Spirit.
As priests, we cannot go where we're not invited. We don't Google our parishioners, check their internet search histories, and interview their friends and relatives before we receive them into the Church or give absolution.
Likewise, when it comes to making Mr. Heimbach shut down his racist websites and publicly renounce his views. For better or for worse, a priest cannot make anyone do anything. He can only use the tools that are available to him, all of which are pastoral tools. He can withhold Communion until he is willing to repent, which he is, apparently, doing. Even this, though, is done not as a matter of punishment and force. Rather, a priest withholds communion for the sake of the spiritual well-being of the person, to help heal them, not to harm them. Every encounter we have with God is a moment of judgment. We cannot approach God, whom we cannot see, if we are determined to hold on to hate and violence towards our brother whom we can see, and in whom Christ hides Himself.
That having been said, I want to make a few things clear. I agree with those who say that Mr. Heimbach should publicly renounce his views. Since he is publicly trying to connect the Orthodox Church to his racism, it seems right to me that he should publicly renounce them. I think it would be appropriate for that to be made a condition of his being readmitted to communion. Also, I am not trying to take a position on the facts of this specific pastoral case. I don't know what Fr. Peter knew when and from whom and I have no desire to know. This specific incident is being worked on by Fr. Peter and Bp. Anthony together who are taking the matter very seriously. In both of these issues, I have full and complete confidence in both Bp. Anthony and Fr. Peter, who know far more of the details than any of the rest of us, that they will do everything they can to work with Matthew and help to lead him in the right direction. Ultimately, however, they cannot force him and so the choice will ultimately be his alone. Let us pray for him, that God opens his heart and helps him to make the right choice.
Christ is risen!
Without impugning anything negative about Fr. Peter Jon, it should be noted there are still questions to be answered, both in terms of this incident (for example, apparently there are two other young men who attend this parish and who have a similar mindset; it seems they have been doing so for some time: what is not clear at this point is whether or not they have been chrismated) and also, questions about American Orthodoxy in general.
ReplyDeleteThe latter, obviously, is probably the more important at this point. For example, to what extent are catechumens across the U.S. exposed to “Orthodox Social Teaching” if at all? Are they told that the heresy of phyletism also applies to the question of race? Is the meaning of the catholicity of the Church adequately explained to them?
And, as seems to be the case, if Orthodoxy at this point is attracting people who think and act like Matthew and his friends – and not for the purpose of repentance – why is this? How is the rich treasure of the Orthodox Christian Faith, that “pearl of great price” – being misrepresented such that people wrongly believe that their opinions on race and culture are congenial with that of Orthodoxy?
Someone has suggested that the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops should issue a “strongly-worded” statement and also, establish a pan-Orthodox trans-jurisdictional working group to deal with this. This sounds like a good idea to me, looking in from the outside. This is clearly an urgent issue, and its resolution, or lack thereof, will have a great deal to do with how Orthodoxy moves forward on these shores.
My prayers remain with Fr. Peter Jon, Matthew, et. al., Father’s parish, his (and your) jurisdiction, and chalcedonian Orthodoxy across the United States, the Western Hemisphere, and the world.
Fr. Greg Blevins, Antiochian Catholic Church in America
Amen! How many of us thought to pray for this troubled soul? I know of another man who likewise struggled greatly. He was abused by authority as a child and had grown cunning in his heart. He heard what we offered to him of Orthodoxy but turned it around in order to hold on to a sense of control, a sense of power over his own life. I don't know how that story will turn out but with us he chose to insist that Orthodoxy adapt to a strongly anti-Muslim stance, that this would be our witness. He took himself (literally) out of communion to the sidewalk beside the church. When this happens, and it often does in far less visible ways, we ought to pray for restoration without any violence in our hearts. Indeed, in condemning the man we condemn ourselves and there is Prelest in this.
ReplyDeleteNow that Fr. Peter's parishioner has created public scandal, less can be done in the purely private realm of Confession. It would seem that the man has only himself to blame for this but how little we grasp when understanding turns on identifying the target for blame? It may be possible to misuse Confession, in the name of overcoming a blockage in someone's spiritual life, by forcing acknowledgment of sin at a vulnerable moment. Force often replies with unequal force. You may think you are opening a can of worms but it may turn out to be sea monsters. When this happens, and it does, the violence may be expressed inwardly such that the penitent harms himself. Often, it is turned in resentment against the priest and the violated soul then remains to torment the priest and disrupt the community. I used the term "violation" intentionally. God does not rape. Neither should we.
There has been on-line community of Ortho-racists for some time now. I first became aware of it three years ago when someone openly questioned my Orthodoxy for saying that Jesus is Jewish. I am not making this up, the person in question thought I was dishonouring Christ for saying that He is a Jew. And that's just one of many instances. I've been told that I'm a "cultural Marxist" because I regard racism as a vice, and that I'm just "not Orthodox" for insisting that there is only one human nature. With plenty of Brother Nathanael videos sent my way, and links to St. John Chrysostom's sermons on the Jews. And plenty of links to Aleksandr Dugin's deranged ramblings.
ReplyDeleteThis is a bigger problem that many people realise, and the Heimbach affair was an accident waiting to happen. And it's not just a "crazy convert" problem. The Russian Orthodox Church needs to discipline Aleksandr Dugin, seeing that he is quoted by ortho-racists more than any other writer. And they need to take Gavril of Belostok out of the canon of saints. While the Church in Greece needs to hand out strongly worded condemnations of the ideology of Golden Dawn, seeing that many racists think Orthodoxy is their Church because of them. While the Romanian Orthodox Church needs to put out a clearly worded statement about the Iron Guard, seeing that they've never really dealt with that part of their history. And the Iron Guard is also invoked by the racists as a reason for why they should not repent.