www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Hitler and Stalin live in Iran

That's because I want to be the Emperor!!!


Or at least the Patriarch!!! :p


St. Peter had a wife!

You might want to read "Theology Of A Classless Society" by Gee Varghese Mar Osthatios. When someone--anyone--on the right rises intellectually to the point of, say, Comblin or Jose Miranda or Gustavo Guttierez the larger issues can be debated. Until then, I'll accept the Othodoxy of Gee Varghese Mar Osthatios.

Besides the terrible cataclysms which creating or reinventing modern monarchies would certainly take, the institutions themselves are outmoded, authoritarian verging on dictatorial or suck tremendous resources from civil society. These people have a certain tendency to turn their countries over to foreign powers and leave with wealth and titles, living dissolute lives in exile. And where none of this is true, modern monarchs do provide some aumusement and keep an entertainment industry going with their foibles and peccadillos; I doubt that this is your intention, however. Their days are past. Societies which are welcoming back their monarchies are more to be pitied than anything else.

I think that my point about the foundations of democracy being found in our religion and in the workings of the Holy Spirit are best covered by our dear Gee Varghese Mar Osthatios and by Comblin. I'll stand by him and my points.

Faithfully,

bob r.

Henry VIII is all the reason I need to oppose monarchies on this earth, now and forever.

Ptui on crowned heads!

For those of you advocating a return to a monarchy, I think you should review Medieval History. There were three estates: the nobility, the church, and the common person. The nobility & the church composed about 10% of the population, but contolled almost all the wealth. I've visited numerous castles in Europe, in which the nobility or church officials wined & dined on meat, white bread, puddings, etc. And they had bards, jugglers,clowns, etc. for entertainment. Outside, the people, who were serfs, ate coarse, brown bread and rarely ate meat at all. If they did, it was pork. Why do you think sausages are so popular in Europe? Old age was around 35-40 years of age!
Case in point: Salzburg, Austria. Here, the church functioned as government & nobility. Church officials lived in an oppulent castle high on a mountain (people today take a cable car to the top) while the common man slaved away in the salt (salz in German) mines deep below the earth. Nice system . This was not ended until Napoleon rolled through in the early 19th century. The past couple of hundred years have seen Europe slowy recover from feudalism.
All the great European authors wrote witty, disguised literature poking fun at the system.
Also, read your Bible. God did not want a Theocracy. The Israelites saw the system from neighboring countries and begged God for a similar system.
-Wolfgang

Christ is Born!

Gentlemen, you're being quite silly. Setting up a straw-man caricature of your opponent's positions and knocking that down doesn't even win you cheap debater's points. It's not only bad debating, it's intellectually dishonest.

No-one here is advocating a return to monarchy in places that have lost it or never had it. Losing this God-ordained institution is something we have to live with in this state of negative entropy after the Fall.

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Bob:

For your supposed intellectual reading, you seem to have missed St Thomas Aquinas - a far greater mind than GeeVarghese Mar Osthatios. You've also completely failed to address the points in my previous post - either you are unable to rebutt them?

Japan and Thailand provide excellent examples of old monarchies still in place, deeply respected and loved by the peoples of their respective countries - and with no scandals.

While we're at it - to label all on the right as unable to rise to the supposed intellectual level of an obscure Indian bishop whose name is unknown to the vast majority of scholars, is, at best, hilarious ranting, and at worst, obfuscation and hideous ignorance.

Wolfgang:

God did not want a Theocracy - who's advocating a Theocracy here?

Juan Diego:

You've then forgotten the excellent examples of the Royal Martyrs of Russia, Blessed Charles of Austria, King Charles the Martyr and countless other holy and blessed Royals since Henry VIII.

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All I can say is, if the best arguments and debating tactics that the opponents of monarchy can come up with are these - I'm glad to be on the other side.

Well, it seems rather pointless to me to respond directly for several reasons. I certainly don't want to be a source of conflict or a cause for further sarcasm and insults, the point of the original thread seems to be lost, I don't share any of your assumptions, neither of us are going to change our points of view and the matter has been settled by an almost inexorable historical process--monarchy lost and attempts to revive them have been tragic at best.

I think its fine to refer to traditions and scholars of the past--we can't live without them--but tradition and scholarship existing for themselves or read and used out of context or seen outside of unfolding historical processes blinds us to the work of the Holy Spirit. Read Comblin writing on the Holy Spirit and get back to me.

If I provided some means of amusement for you or gave you something to think about, I'm satisfied. In any case, I don't want to be a source of conflict--and especially so about a matter decided by history and explained so well by Comblin or Jose Miranda or Gustavo Guttierez or Gee Varghese Mar Osthatios.

On the other hand, I apologize if you were somehow offended or bothered by a voice and assumptions different than your own.

Greetings on Epiphany!

bob r.

Dear Anastasios you said:

"1) Arabs are Semites, so how can they be anti-Semitic? Anti-Jewish, sure, but not Anti-Semitic. And before someone quotes Webster's dictionary in an attempt to state that Anti-Semitic means Anti-Jewish in modern English, I reject that definition as prejudiced and believe that our language should be updated (as it often is) to be more precise.

2) Iranians are not even Arabs anyway, but are "white people" being Aryans (Iran = Aryan).

I say:

Good comment! At one time the word Anti-Semitic meant exactly that. It was the European prejudice against the Semite Jews living in Europe. But now it becomes rediculous, considering that almost everyone in the Mediterrean has some Semite blood in their veins...not to mention the Arabs are almost pure Semites. I say almost, because they have quite a bit of European blood in them too.

Actually Aryans refers to the 'root' language that became the most dominant in Europe. I don't believe for a second that there were not other people...speaking other languages, in Europe. That of course would account for the differences in appearances.

As for Hitler, and the Germans in general, they were surrounded by Slavic nations. Now the Germans couldn't help but do what everyone else in Europe did; hate their neighbor.

So believe it or not, the Nazi's measured the facial features of the countries they conquered in order to see if they were pure 'Aryan'. It didn't matter that the Slavic languages were Aryan language too. To them they were an inferior people, or as Hitler said when asked to obey the League of Nations. "How can we take orders from people as inferior as the Czechs."

Zenovia

As for Monarchy or Democracy:

Does it really matter? If we are with God, He will be with us in whatever government we have.

Now at the time that we were revolutionizing the world with our revolt against Britain, we had to find legitimacy. Up until then, this legitimacy that protected the world from anarchy and chaos was given to a 'Church' anointed monarch. The monarch in other words, was made holy.

Well it seems to me, it was this lack of legitimacy that has our Founding Fathers mentioning and rementioning God in the Constitution, Declaration of Independance and what not. We too, and our form of government had to be made 'holy'. Otherwise how could our nation be presented to the world and acquire any trust and respectability? Is it any wonder then that England expected us to fall apart in our first twenty years.

Then of course there is something else to consider. What if George Washington had children of his own and not his wife's? Would he have given up the crown so easily?

Zenovia