Met. Phillip Asserts Prerogotives and Assumes Carte Banche

Metropolitan Phillip of the Antiochian Orthodox Church is at it again. Now embolden he has initiated and asserted himself as the Supreme Leader with his Taliban mindset. He has declared that he will set the church agenda making any cross talk by his bishops or clergy an infraction. He has declared the cassock outside of church illegal and has removed Father David Moretti from his Church and released him. Metropolitan Phillip now seemingly unable to manage his own ego has taken pointers from secularists like Ataturk. Metropolitan Phillip and his hounda is on the march.We must remove the holy and sacred from the public square. Rather then increasing our orthodox visibility we must blend and stand amongst the American clerics. We can appear as a good Roman Catholic or Presbyterian but must shake off our cassock. The Metropolitan has redefined self rule and resigned himself and his church to his own irrational understanding. Unity and loyalty are not synonymous with gag orders or the casting off of traditional and uniquely orthodox customs.

All this while Ephremites are attacked for their traditional stances. Wrongly compared with Evangelicals heterodox rather then as being the keepers of the traditions. The Reformed Jew doesn't believe that the Orthodox Jew is polluting the Jewish faith but rather they are the keepers of Judaism. Those who keep the faith and practice it in their lives can't rationally be perceived as a destructive force. It is only through infidelity or disregard that one is destructive. It is when those like Met. Phillip assert that the tradition limits his own reign. His is blinded by his own pride and fails to realize that his legitimacy comes only from the Church and her Canons and Dogma. Only in the Orthodox Christian faith do reckless individuals assault the devout to excuse their own infidelity.

Too many attend church for Christmas and Pascha too many which to dispense with confession, fasting and moral living.  Christian living is difficult; actually apart Christ, impossible. The problem doesn't rest with the Church protocol; it resides within the dismissal of what is sacred, holy and understood as uniquely Orthodox. We are fighting an adversary who has been before the the fall and he wishes nothing less then for us to forsake the light unto our path.