Roman
Catholics have been a small but influential force in Dixie, counting among
their number men like Donald Davidson and Walker Percy. But although Roman Catholicism is much closer
in some ways to the Orthodox Church than the Protestant sects, it is still a
system that is separated from the Truth and thus no longer a safe guide to
salvation. Fr Andrew Phillips discusses
one of the deformations that has resulted from the sundering of the
Patriarchate of Rome from the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church in some
correspondence of his:
Why does bullfighting
not exist in Orthodox countries?
J. S., Catalonia
Bullfighting only
exists in certain once Catholic countries, Spain, Portugal, southern France and
ex-colonies in Latin America. On the other hand, bullfighting is unknown in
Ireland, Austria and other Catholic countries. It is also unknown in once
Protestant and once Orthodox countries. However, it seems that in pagan Minoan
Crete, as in the myth of Hercules who ‘took the bull by the horns’, it did
exist. This suggests that bullfighting is a pre-Christian, pagan custom, once
prevalent in many parts of the Mediterranean, but which survives only in the
Catholic west Mediterranean, not in the Greek Orthodox east Mediterranean, nor
in the ex-Greek Orthodox central Mediterranean. Why?
The fact is that
Catholicism has a cult of blood and death, what we may call ‘crucifixionism’,
which very clearly and suddenly began with its birth in the late eleventh
century with images of ‘Jesus’ as a suffering, dying or dead human-being. (See
for confirmation any of the studies of the Catholic Middle Ages by the Oxford
scholar Sir Richard Southern). This developed into the bloody portrayal of the
lives of the martyrs in, for example, the medieval anthology ‘The Golden
Legend’ and also into the constipated sentimentalism of Catholic pietism.
This cult of blood,
dead bodies and death can be seen in the pietistic Catholic veneration of human
organs (bleeding hearts) and wounds, in the tortures of the Spanish (and
French) Inquisition, and in Catholic art (Bosch and Goya, for example).
However, it also exists in other Catholic countries, where bullfighting does
not exist, for example in catacomb mummies, strange funeral customs throughout
the Catholic world and customs of flagellation and self-mutilation in southern
Italy and the once Spanish Philippines, especially on Great and Holy Friday.
This cult of blood is
part of the Catholic cult of suffering and self-flagellation – beloved still
today by Mother Teresa’s followers and Opus Dei. Morbid ‘crucifixionism’, as
can be seen in Italian films on the Crucifixion or the Gibson film ‘The Passion
of Christ’, the portrayal of the bleeding human-being Christ (‘Jesus’) on the
Cross, is indeed partly why Protestantism rejects the Cross, seeing it as a
symbol of death, instead of what it is, the symbol of Life and victory over
death. It may be that the Arian-Protestant sect, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, also
rejects blood transfusions as a result of the rejection of what it associates
with Catholicism.
Bullfighting is
unknown in once Protestant countries (although here bearbaiting, cockfighting
and until recently fox-hunting were once very popular). Today, in these
countries all such blood-sports are frowned on and even detested because of the
prevalence of secularist values with political correctness and animal rights.
Since, for secularists, human-beings are merely intelligent animals, we should
not treat animals any differently from Western human beings. (Non-Western
human-beings may be massacred freely, however, as in Rwanda, Serbia,
Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and the Ukraine).
Why then do we
Orthodox not cultivate bullfighting? Because in Orthodoxy, although and because
we partake of the Body and Blood of Christ in Communion, we have no cult of
blood, no ‘crucifixionism’. As Orthodox, we consider that we suffer enough
simply by being faithful Orthodox Christians – not least through persecution by
Catholicism and Protestantism, and we do not artificially seek or create
suffering or entertain morbid images of torture of the human body.
We do not tolerate
self-flagellation or a morbid cult of death, blood and human remains – the wax
dummies that dead Catholic saints are turned into (which is quite different
from the veneration of holy relics). This is because we do not imitate Christ
outwardly, but imitate Him inwardly. Thus, we live in the Risen Christ, through
the Holy Spirit, by Whom the Church, Whose Head is Christ and Which is the
Risen Body of Christ, lives. Our cult is not of death, but of Life, of the
Spirit, of the Victorious Resurrection, of Christ triumphant on the Cross.
Source: http://www.events.orthodoxengland.org.uk/orthodoxy-on-bullfighting-a-possible-future-revolution-in-russia-religious-statues-and-homosexuality-four-questions-from-recent-correspondence/,
opened 3 Oct. 2017
***
Afterword
on ‘Southern Christianity: The
Shortcomings of the ‘Personal Relationship with Jesus’ Theology’
In
order to clarify that the Orthodox experience of the Uncreated Light of God is
always a personal one (never an impersonal one, as with the Roman Catholic
conception of God as an impersonal essence), we thought it best to add this
short comment from a Transfiguration sermon of Bishop Maxim:
‘Speaking
of the Uncreated Energies revealed as Light at the Transfiguration, Vladika
noted that the Energies can never be separated from the Person of God, or from
the experience of God as Person.’
Source: http://sainthermanmonastery.org/2017/08/24/bishop-maxim-visits-for-the-feast-of-transfiguration-2017/,
opened 30 Sept. 2017
This
article is a good illustration of true Orthodox life being lived out here in
the States. Thanks be to God that it is
also being embraced by more and more Southerners as well:
--
Holy
Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema
to the Union!
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