Brother Nathanael must be stopped

ArmyMatt said:

indeed

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Amen to that.

By the way, on this subject, the US has an acute shortage of mental health hospital beds. It has always seemed a pity to me that we Orthodox in the US do not have the kind of medical facilities due to the historically small demographics that once characterized us compared to in countries with an Orthodox majority population. But perhaps we might be on the forefront of mental health care. I have to confess I dream of the Orthodox Church in the United States operating a hospital system on the scale of the Roman Catholic, Protestant, Adventist and Jewish hospitals.

prodromos said:

Riassophore - wearer of the monastic garment.
Stavrophore - wearer of the cross.

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So what's the difference? Are they essentially first vows followed by final vows? Sorry for asking so many questions, lol.

RileyG said:

So what's the difference? Are they essentially first vows followed by final vows? Sorry for asking so many questions, lol.

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stavrophore is like when you get married and you kinda cross the ascetic Rubicon

ArmyMatt said:

stavrophore is like when you get married and you kinda cross the ascetic Rubicon

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thanks, Father

RileyG said:

thanks, Father

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no problem

The Liturgist said:

Amen to that.

By the way, on this subject, the US has an acute shortage of mental health hospital beds. It has always seemed a pity to me that we Orthodox in the US do not have the kind of medical facilities due to the historically small demographics that once characterized us compared to in countries with an Orthodox majority population. But perhaps we might be on the forefront of mental health care. I have to confess I dream of the Orthodox Church in the United States operating a hospital system on the scale of the Roman Catholic, Protestant, Adventist and Jewish hospitals.

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We can't even agree on the same English translation of the Our Father and we have overlapping jurisdictions because too many people think that the Orthodox Church's job is to preserve ethnic identity and not to spread the Gospel. There are 27 Orthodox parishes and missions in the DC area and none of them cross jurisdictional lines - ever.

According to the 2020 Orthodox Census, there are roughly: 675,765 total Eastern Orthodox Christians in the USA; of that number, roughly 183,020 are regular attendees. (https://orthodoxreality.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/2020CensusGeneralReport1.pdf).

That means, all Orthodox funding comes from anywhere from 183,000 - 675,000 people. And we all know that not everybody tithes. In the grand scheme of things, this is an incredibly finite number of resources and instead of working together we spend it one duplicates of the same crap because God forbid that someone else's bishop endorses something! God forbid we build an iconostasis with the deacons doors next to Christ and the Theotokos instead of at the end. We divide ourselves over equally stupid things as Protestants and we call ourselves the True Faith? Yeah, Orthodox medical facilities are a pipe dream at this stage. You would sooner see Trump tell an actual fact or Biden utter a coherent sentence without sounding like a prop from "Weekend at Bernies"!

E.C. said:

Yeah, Orthodox medical facilities are a pipe dream at this stage.

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There are already Orthodox mental health practices in the US, and my view is that we Orthodox need an overarching plan in order to bring about both the unity and the level of financial contributions from the laity that would be desirable.

We have already been able to do some amazing things, for example, Elder Ephraim of Arizona opened nearly twenty monasteries in the US in addition to revitalizing one on Mount Athos, which I believe is the world record for the largest number of monasteries founded by one hegumen, and which demonstrates a strong underlying demand in the US for holiness both from cradle and convert Orthodox Christians. And his central monastery in Florence, Arizona, is as beautiful a monastery as exists anywhere in North America.

So clearly, we are making progress in the right direction. The main hindrance in terms of unity is of course the schism pertaining to the EP and the MP, but here we have to pray for reconciliation and unity.

At any rate, since we already have Orthodox psychologists, the good news is that there are people in the Orthodox Church who can assist Brother Nathanael with his mental health issues.