| Tweet Нравится Saints Piran and Constantine of Cornwall Dmitry Lapa St. Piran " s Church in Perranarworthal, Cornwall (source - Geograph.org.uk) Cornwall is an English county and an ancient Celtic region in the extreme southwest of England. It is washed by the Celtic Sea (part of the Atlantic Ocean between the southern coast of Ireland and western Brittany) to the north and west, by the English Channel to the south. Cornwall borders the county of Devon in the east over the River Tamar. It is unknown exactly when Orthodoxy was first brought to Cornwall. According to unreliable medieval legends, St. Joseph of Arimathea may have visited Cornwall together with the Infant Christ. There is no evidence at all to confirm this, but Joseph was a trader and Cornwall has been famous for its tin since time immemorial, so it is not completely impossible. However, in the fourth century Orthodoxy of the “Roman-British” variety was legalized throughout Britain, as elsewhere in the Roman Empire. In the fifth century the first monks arrived in Cornwall and the whole region gradually became Christian. There were many missionaries from Ireland and Wales, as well. St. Piran " s cross at Perranzabuloe, Cornwall Although a small region, Cornwall over its Orthodox period produced roughly between fifty and sixty individual saints who can be identified, but their number may be greater, given the existence of many obscure saints. Cornwall remained in the Celtic tradition of Orthodoxy and independent from the rest of England more or less until the tenth century. After the Norman Conquest it became Roman Catholic, as all other parts of Britain. The Bible was not translated into the Cornish language until quite recently, and that is why the language has died out, although attempts have been made to revive it. In the nineteenth century, Cornwall was under the strong influence of Methodism, but a liturgical revival began approximately 100 years ago. Today nearly every town and village of Cornwall has its own patron saint, and there are over 100 holy wells in Cornwall (on average, each English county has three or four local saint, and the number of wells is considerably lower also). Lives of many Cornish early saints were well researched by the Anglican hagiographer Gilbert Hunter Doble (1880-1945) and by our contemporary Prof. Nicholas Orme from University of Exeter. Let us now talk about two saints of Cornwall, one of whom was Irish but moved to evangelize Cornwall, and the other one who was Cornish but left his native land to preach in faraway Scotland. They are Sts. Piran (feast: March 5/18) and Constantine (feast: March 9/22). |
| The rate of increase of the length of a day due to slowing down of the earth’s rotation, back to the 8th century BCE, has been fixed at an average of 1.7 milliseconds per century (1.7 ms/c; Stephenson, op cit. pp. 513, 514; cf. New Scientist, 30 January 1999, pp. 3033). For this period, therefore, we are on “safe ground.” Furuli can hardly be unaware of this. Today, the gradual change in the rate of the earth’s rotation is definitely not a significant source of error when using astronomical tablets from the NeoBabylonian and Persian eras to calculate the chronology of these periods. The interpolation of intercalary months to compensate for the difference between the solar and the lunar year Arguing that the interpolation of intercalary months in the Babylonian lunisolar calendar might be another potential source of error, Furuli (p. 34) quotes Drs. Ben Zion Wacholder and David B. Weisberg, who say: “As Professor Abraham Sachs pointed out in a communication to us, some of the readings of the intercalary months recorded in Parker and Dubberstein’s tables may not be quite reliable, while a handful are admittedly hypothetical. But even assuming the essential correctness of Parker and Dubberstein’s tables, Professor Sachs maintains, the supposition of a 19year cycle prior to 386 B.C.E. may be reading into the evidence something which possibly is not there.” (Ben Zion Wacholder, Essay on Jewish Chronology and Chronography, New York, 1976, p. 67) Nothing in this statement is not also admitted by Parker and Dubberstein, as can be seen in Babylonian Chronology 626 B.C.–A.D. 75 (1956), pp. 19. As Wacholder and Weisberg further demonstrate in their work, the development of the 19year standard scheme of intercalary months was a gradual process begun in the 7th century. The final stage took place in the 5th and early 4th centuries, when the seven intercalary months of the 19year cycle were fixed in years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14,17, and 19. This process is also clear in PD. Furuli concludes: “This means that calculations based on the Julian calendar can be wrong as much as 44 days or even more if the intercalary months were not added regularly.” (p. 35) This conclusion is based on the unlikely supposition that sometimes four years could pass before an intercalary montli was added. But the weight of evidence, based on the economic and the astronomical texts, shows that this never happened after 564 BCE. (See the updated tables of documented intercalary months presented by Professor John P. Britton in J. M. Steele & A. Imhausen (eds.), Under One Sky, Munster: UgaritVerlag, 2002, pp. 3435.) |
| Was Moses Really the Author of the Pentateuch? How should the Orthodox be? I would suggest, above all, not imposing grievous ties on oneself by confusing the stubbornness of Protestant fundamentalism with Patristic Tradition. For them, the authority of Scripture is based upon a literal interpretation of Revelation: God dictated these words to the great Prophet Moses, and therefore they are trustworthy. But for them, on the other hand, there is no such thing as Tradition. The average Orthodox reader of the Bible doesn’t think about questions such as the authorship or dating of individual books. The first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch of Moses? Of course, the Prophet Moses wrote it – after all, that’s what it’s called, and that’s what Scripture and Tradition teaches. And whoever doesn’t agree is an impious atheist. But then this Orthodox reader might come up against arguments from the other side. He either rejects them out of hand, starting directly from the conclusions without bothering with the arguments, or… he considers them and agrees with some of it. Does this then mean Scripture and Tradition are unreliable? Some draw this conclusion. Let’s stop and think about it. Tradition is a difficult and diverse thing; in it one can find all kinds of different statements (for instance, about a flat earth, the sun revolving around the earth, and the marriages of hyenas with morays), but only some of them are in fact of doctrinal significance. The question of the authorship of Biblical books clearly is not one of them. But what about the name the “Pentateuch of Moses”? Doesn’t it indicate an author? Not necessarily. Thus, the Psalter bears the name of King David, but David definitely didn’t write Psalm 136, “By the waters of Babylon,” simply because he died long before the Babylonian captivity. It’s unlikely that Jonah, Ruth, and Job themselves wrote the books that bear their names. And the Prophet Samuel certainly didn’t write the two books bearing his name in the Hebrew tradition (First and Second Kings in ours [i.e., in the Septuagint]) simply because he died in the middle of the first book. |
| It could be that for an average Orthodox person, weighed down by everyday errands and worries, such resources are not so obvious or readily available, and that they do not have access to proper interpretations of Church writers in the modern context. These would most directly be provided by the parish priest. Also, certain Church writings might seem to offer a lot of theory, but not much practical advice on how to meet existing challenges that parents face. Many younger parents belong to a generation that did not have the privilege to grow up in a Christian home, and they feel disconnected from the vast experience and traditions that such a life offers. These parents are now actively searching for a new set of values to impart to their children that would arguably be deeper than the superficial adherence to societal rules of proper conduct. Seeing that quite a few Orthodox texts and books are painfully disengaged from real life, contemporary Orthodox parents often turn to secular parenting books in search of answers to their child rearing dilemmas. However, while there are plenty of “real issues” addressed in them, few of these books even remotely reflect the values and goals of parenting the Orthodox would find relevant. So, what are these experts saying? It proves to be a tall order – 1) their advice to take charge of our children’s life, and 2) the enormous responsibility thrown at parents to be the omniscient, omnipotent enablers of their children’s happiness and success in this world. No mention, naturally, of giving our children over to God’s care and tending to their souls rather than worrying about their worldly success and material needs alone. After all, parents need a break, too, and relief from the pressure to break the code of perfect parenting. Ironically, oftentimes this pressure comes from the very people who advertise their intention to (see note below) Today’s parents are stressed out, overworked and anxious about doing the right thing by their children. This concern often inspires them to “overdo it” in their parenting efforts, resorting to what has been labeled as “helicopter parenting,” micro-managing their children’s existing activities and burdening them with an ever increasing list of new ones. |
| As the chronology after this Introduction indicates, the Orthodox-with the Jews, Muslims, and other traditional Christians-trace their beginnings back to the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and then to Moses-if not before the Patriarchs to humankind’s prototypical parents, Adam and Eve. These stories are so well-known that they hardly bear repeating here. But it is worthwhile to point out that the Orthodox understand this “history” (not always history in the modern sense) as a chronicle of God’s revelations, not only to particular human beings, but to humankind in general. The revelations are infrequently, if ever, individual in the restrictive sense of the word, but are meant to guide all of humanity by ultimately forming a people (the People of God) that lives its community life in communion with the one self-revealing God. Further, for the Orthodox this revelation continued personally in Jesus Christ, the unique and preexistent Son of God and Lord, and personally as well in the revelation of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit and revelation are ongoing in the life of the Church-one God in three Persons. Indeed, the Orthodox faith described as the Church of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and the life of the Holy Spirit is arguably more apropos than that of the Ecumenical Councils, since religious faith and experience are more meaningful and readily accessible to the average American than the difficult historical and theological questions of the conciliar period. Orthodox history, most simply put, is a retrospective view and present appreciation of the life of God’s Spirit embracing humanity. Probably the most striking historical witness of the Orthodox Church for modern Christians is its uninterrupted presence at the holy places described in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, the Apostle Paul, or the Bible generally. Further, the Orthodox may also be found speaking the descendant language(s) in which the words of the Bible were originally spoken and written-appreciating these words from within their own languages rather than from without. When Western Christians make pilgrimage to the Holy Land or look at the Church’s roots, they invariably meet the Orthodox firmly and permanently entrenched on these foundations-whether in the Church of the Resurrection (Holy Sepulcher), on the Ascension Mount, or in the ancient churches of Thessalonika or Athens. This history is intrinsically connected with classical Western history from Rome to Charlemagne, on to the Crusades, Renaissance, Reformation, and up to the present. Hierarchy and Administration |
| According to World Health Organization and UN data from 2005, Georgia has 19.1 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age, one of the highest rates in Europe, although it is in the middle among former Soviet countries. The average woman in Georgia will have three abortions in her lifetime. To Ban Or Not To Ban Conservative forces in Georgia, including the influential Orthodox Church, see a broader problem and are urging an outright ban on abortions. In his Easter message this week, Patriarch Ilia II declared: “This happens because of the desire and decision of the parents. It is a horrible murder of an innocent, helpless creature. And the doctor is an accessory to this murder. When the country is in such a difficult demographic situation, I think that the government must pass a law banning abortions, with just a small number of exceptions, of course.” Feminists and other women’s advocates see the debate as a question of fundamental women’s rights. Tbilisi-based gynecologist Mzia Gambashidze says abortion bans are dangerous and counterproductive. “No bans! We had one under the communists and how many people died from unsanitary, illegal abortions? How many doctors were thrown in prison for performing them?” she asks. “This is not a way out of the current situation.” Gambashidze urges greater family-planning education to reduce the abortion rate. She recounts seeing patients who wanted abortions because they had been advised by their Orthodox priests not to use birth control. Nina Tsikhistavi, head of the Caucasus Women’s Network NGO, says the right to abortion must remain sacrosanct, although she, too, is concerned about the alarming figures on sex selection. Is Development The Answer? Lawmaker Khundadze agrees that an outright ban is no solution. “It is impossible to completely ban pregnancy termination, since that would increase the number of abortions done unprofessionally and that would lead to more deaths,” he said. “We will consider this topic together with the appropriate specialists at a session of my committee.” |
| However, what is the cause of the deaths? Alas, but it is due to a sad imperfection of human nature, namely, that it is natural for people to die. They die regardless of whether they are participating in trials or just watering the plants at their country house. If there is no war or other emergency in the country, people die with approximately the same rate: this is called the natural death rate. It is by the way how much it has exceeded that epidemiologists are now calculating how many lives the coronavirus has taken. Trials of the Prizer/BioNtech vaccine took place from April 29 to November 14 (to be more precise, they are still ongoing, it is simply that documents with a report for this period have been submitted to the FDA). In total, more than 40 thousand people took part in them. It is almost inevitable that some people out of these 40 thousand would die. Moreover, calculations based on the natural mortality rates in the countries, where the tests were conducted, show that the rates are almost the same. Yet, the trials of other vaccines were suspended several times due to side effects in participants and a special investigation was conducted, and only after it established that there was no connection, the trials were resumed. This is true, but it concerns suspicious side effects: that is, those for which natural causes of death are not immediately evident, and which are similar to complications that may somehow relate to the vaccination. Obviously, deaths in the placebo group should be excluded: especially since Pfizer/BioNtech used normal saline and not another vaccine as in AstraZeneca trials, for example. Heart attacks and strokes are the most common causes of death in all people from western countries, so there is no reason to believe that these two deaths are due to the vaccine and not due to the natural course of things. Moreover, the overall mortality rate among volunteers did not differ from the average one. When a participant developed transverse myelitis, an autoimmune disease, during the AstraZeneca vaccine trials, they were immediately suspended, as this is, to put it mildly, not the most common disease and, importantly, it can theoretically be related to vaccination, since both vaccination and transverse myelitis affect the immune system. |
| Russian intellectuals in exile analysed the reasons of the collapse of their ideas in the storm of the Russian revolution, unleashed by them: “The prevailing simple explanation, which every average “repenting” Russian intellectual arrived at, is “people’s unreadiness”, S.L.Frank wrote in the “repentant” collection “From the depth”. “According to this explanation “people” due to their ignorance and lack of education in state issues, where the same the “old regime” was at fault, turned out to be unable to realize excellent reforms planned by the intellectuals and ruined the country and the revolution with their rude and awkward behaviour. Today there is a tendency to explain all the faults of “democracy” and market and criminalization of the Russian economy again with the primeval Russian habit of slavery, irresponsibility and paternalistic role of the state, Russian inability of self-dependence and unreceptiveness of civilization. Such explanations are a diagnose of irresponsibility of the politicians, who developed their programmes and actions counting on some invented ideal people, and not the existing one. But such statement of the question is inherently false. It goes without saying, that it depends on the cultural and moral consciousness which ideas and mode of operation will be most effective. But the general total is always determined by the interaction between the public consciousness and the course of ideas of the minority that becomes the herald. If Frank is not surprised that in the course of the revolution “people’s passion” in its straightness only tested in real practice the given ideas, and uncovered “the intellectuals’ slogans from the wraith of philosophising and moral-free tactical distinctions”, so one should not be surprised at the mass moral lapse in the 90s. Double experience in the 20th century shows the rule: in the same society and the same individual there always co-exist anarchical, anti-state and socially destructive passions and instincts as well as great creative, conservative-protective, spiritually healthy, nationally uniting forces. |
| After his transfer to Seattlés Orthopedic Children " s Hospital and later to Seattlés Medical Center, Dr. Morse began to systematically examine the question of dying. He questioned many children, who had experienced clinical death, comparing and documenting their accounts. Additionally, he remained in contact with his young patients through adulthood observing their mental and spiritual maturity. In his book Closer to the Light, Dr. Morse insists that all the children whom he studied grew up to be more serious, moral, and spiritual than the average adult. All of them accepted their experiences as a manifestation of God " s mercy and a sign from above that they should live in uprightness. Until most recently, such accounts of the afterlife could only be found in the realm of religious literature. Worldly magazines and medical journals, as a rule, avoided publishing such material. An overwhelming majority of physicians and psychiatrists reacted very disapprovingly to any spiritual accounts and did not acknowledge the existence of the human soul. It is only within the last twenty years, at the very, so-called triumph of materialism, that some doctors and psychiatrists have begun to seriously examine the existence of the human soul. A catalyst for this movement was Dr. Raymond Moody " s well-received book Life after Life published in 1975. In it, Dr. Moody collected a series of first-hand accounts of near death experiences. Initially, Dr. Moody " s interest in the subject was sparked by stories related to him by some of his friends. As he began to collect these stories, he realized that there were large numbers of people who had out-of-body experiences during the time they were clinically dead. This shocked him. However, many of these people, did not relate their stories to anyone to avoid embarrassment or worse, the questioning of their sanity. Soon after the appearance of Dr. Moody " s book, the sensation-hungry press and television media widely publicized the contents of his book. A firestorm of discussions and public debates on life after death issues followed. This caused a flood of doctors, psychiatrists and spiritual leaders, some of whom felt their field of expertise had been infringed upon by an incompetent source, to launch independent investigations to review the data and results published by Dr. Moody. Many of them were very surprised when the accuracy of Dr. Moody " s observations were verified. Specifically, that upon a person " s death, their existence does not cease, but on the contrary their soul continues to hear, think and feel. |
| More often than not there will be a small number of people who use the leader and they themselves are the true authorities. Either way, the average follower is under scrutiny to keep up the appearances of perfection. All this gives the schismatic a sense that he belongs to a different and superior society. The rules of the group are more important than that of the greater society. This gives the schismatics a sense of superiority and entitlement. Worldly society has no real authority over them and sinful people have no real rights. They may obey civil laws begrudgingly to avoid prison. Many begin to talk about belonging spiritually to theocracies and ideal governments that do not exist. The realpolitik of political life is scorned. Some will even begin to develop their own communities. The schismatic, suffering from a sense of superiority, entitlement and exclusion, begins to see his group as an island haven in a sea of sin and hostility. The overwhelming sense of hostility will lead to the group developing paranoia. These groups become suspicious of others. People in the group begin to doubt the loyalty and fidelity of others. They speak little of their internal conflicts. The group image of perfection is upheld at all costs. When this occurs, the Christian schismatic become apocalyptic. People begin to talk more about the Devil and the Antichrist ruling the world. This way of thinking only increases the schismatic’s justification for his behavior. There becomes an increasing belief that the end is near. Talk in the community will be about how God will only save the faithful remnant. Now an interesting phenomenon occurs. The superior people, especially the leaders, begin to fall into antinomian behaviors. Antinomianism means against or opposed to the law. Through out history exclusive apocalyptic movements end up justifying immoral behaviors for themselves. The most common sins involve money and sex. It is not uncommon for the leader or leaders to exploit members for money and sex. |
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