Sunday, June 26, 2011

"Correct and judge justly those who are subject to you"

"A demoniac boy came one day to be healed, and some brothers from an Egyptian monastery arrived.  As one old man was coming out to meet them he saw a brother sinning with the boy [(ἁμαρτάνοντα μετὰ τοῦ παιδίου)], but he did not accuse him [(αὐτὸν)]; he said, 'If God who has made them [(αὐτοὺς)] sees them and does not burn them, who am I to blame them?'"

     Abba John the Persian 1 (PG 65, col. 236).  This one doesn't appear in the Collection systématique (SC 387, 474, and 498), or, at least, not in the Concordance (SC 498, pp. 217 ff.) under John the Persian.  The desert Christian:  sayings of the Desert Fathers:  the alphabetical collection, trans. Benedicta Ward (New York, NY:  Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1975), 107.  Cf. pp. 30, 86, 100, 118, 131, 133, 145, 191, all of which make it clear that acts of this sort (including those between "consenting adults") were considered (if not any worse than fornication more generally) seriously problematic.  The only real question, then, is that of the wisdom of the indiscriminate application of this approach (focused as it was on the sin of pride) to the contemporary context, given the previously unprecedented demand for affirmation and celebration.
     (And that's to say nothing of the wisdom of it considered as a matter of episcopal policy.  I mean, who, pointing to the example of Abba John for whatever reason today, would recommend it to the bishops of the Catholicor any otherChurch qua procedure?)
     However, I have only begun to dabble in this material.

     The title is taken from Collection systématique X.46 (SC 474, p. 42) = Abba Macarius of Alexandria 2 (PG 65, cols. 304-305):

"Abba Macarius went one day to Abba Pachomius of Tabennisi.  Pachomius asked him, 'When brothers do not submit to the rule, is it right to correct them?'  Abba Macarius said to him, 'Correct and judge justly [(SC 474:  Παίδευσον καὶ κρῖνον δικαίως / PG 65:  Παίδευσον, καὶ κρίνον δικαίως)] those who are subject to you, but judge no-one else.  For truly it is written:  "Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?  God judges those outside."' (1 Cor. 5.12-13)"

     The desert Christian:  sayings of the Desert Fathers:  the alphabetical collection, trans. Benedicta Ward (New York, NY:  Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1975), 152.

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