That Quote Was Not So Hyperdox ... Herman

"Says all homosexuals are damned. Has an icon of Seraphim Rose."

But using a category like "homosexual" - which is about "sexual orientation" - which is about "taste in temptations against chastity" (excepting married men whose sexual orientation is their wife and married women whose sexual orientation is their husband) - and having it stand for a particular sin against both chastity and nature (when Eugene Rose, still in the world, before his conversion, was fooling around with both sexes, was he at least making babies when the sins against chastity were with women or not, I do not know), is so modernist. And making that sin the one that cannot be forgiven even if one repents of it, is so Calvinist.

Frankly, it is one of the things where a little Latin philosophy might help someone out once in a while. Not tearing things apart that absolutely belong together, but refusing to confuse things that are not the same.

Back when I was was Roumanians for two years - and was treated as if I were Hyperdox Herman in person - I wondered if the Penance of Oscar Wilde, late though it came, had merited by intercession the penances of Eugene Seraphim Rose and - unsuccessful as they long were - of the man whom I had a bit earlier called Papa Gregorio XVII de Palmar de Troya.*

I also misremembered a word of Christ - or mingled two of them: the one where Sodom and Gomorrah shall have a better deal on the Day of Judgement than two cities and the one where Prostitutes and Taxcollectors shall enter Heaven before the Jews. I actually thought that the Gay Culture had to start converting before Jews could.

In case anyone wonders, I have not been in love with men, but one of the girls I had crush on was as Lesbian. Is no longer, though her boyfriend is not me. ANOTHER of the girls I had a crush on (back in my Palmarian days) was a Serbian. Wonder if that is why I became Orthodox for a while. If one calls that being Orthodox. Papists do not, since I was not Papist. Photians do not, since I was very Athanasianly filioquist. I used jokingly to call Roman Catholicism as known over centuries "Spanish Orthodox Church" and FSSPX "Swiss Orthodox Church, Patriarchate of Écône".

Anyway, whether Herman wants to be a priest or monk when he has his catechumenate done, or wants to stay a layman, I think his priest might be treating him unfairly by saying he has catechumenitis, sorry, convertitis. If he is seriously worried about whether to be Serbian or Greek or Russian (I was not at first, since I had a stepfather baptised by a Roumanian Uniate, and then I was because I felt myself targeted to convert to either more Photian or more Malthusian positions than I could in good conscience), he might have a problem and "Latin" as in "non-phyletistic Orthodox" alias RC might be the solution, whether he becomes convinced of Papal Supremacy or not. If it comes to spelling with daseia instead of h, I would not like to see that as a statement, I would like to see if 'e can keep that up wiðout looking as if 'e wrote Cockney, ðis 'Yperdox 'Erman - or better still: I'd like if he wrote cockney and spoke it. Greeks no longer pronounce ðe daseia eiðer, so speaking about 'edge'ogs would not be bad. In that line.

My linguistic tip, whether you call that convertitis, hyperdoxy or simply reactionary conservatism: if you learn Russian, use fita and izhitsa for the Greek loans that need them and DO use the yatch and not the ye in contexts like masculine and neuter locative singular or in the stem of Dyeva=Virgin. And do insist that properly speaking a Dyevushka (which is one of the diminutive forms of Dyeva) is between ages 12 and 30. Just like St Mary the Gyshian** had her chance of converting by marriage (not taken, whether the fault was hers or the clients') between her apostasy to a bad life at age 12 and her conversion to anorectic and anachoretic life which was at age 29. God did not want her to fall before she could properly have married and he did not take away her chances of marriage before it was one year before "too late anyway".

It is basically what I do for a language I know much better than Russian: Swedish. In English (except American spelling reform) or even French and German it is less needed, these three basically have their current spelling from the time of Dr Johnson or a little later. But Swedish and Russian went through "language surgery" of a very unnecessary kind (1870's/1906/1950 vs Russian Revolution) very recently, meaning that the older spelling was also used pretty recently, by people speaking a basically identical language, and can therefore be restored. At Constance - yes, I know Hyperdox Herman does not count this as a Council, but this concerns an episode - the Emperor used the form "schismae" and grammarians promptly corrected him that "schisma" being a Greek neuter noun needed a Genetive and Dative that went like "schismatis/schismati". He argued that he was above the Grammarians. They replied he was not above the Grammar. As Emperor Claudius (I) had found out when he had wanted to introduce a half M to denote the nasal vowel in "sum" instead of the m, and a vowel for schwa or ü instead of the i/u in "optimus/optumus". If they were right, that means that the language reforms touching Swedish and Russian were ultra vires of those governments. Not meaning that imposing per compulsion the older spelling would be intra vires, but using it voluntarily is a protest against that proceeding.

But when it comes to concepts that sound modern - like "homosexual" - and maybe are modern, one tip is to avoid them till you find out what they mean, or ask "what is the guy trying to say and how would a real philosopher like Aquinas have stated it"? I had to make such a reflection yesterday since Disney in a war film was misusing as "opposite of reason" the word "emotion" (which includes things quite as much "with reason" like "just indignation" as it includes things "without reason" or "contrary to right reason" like itching for sins against not only chastity but even nature). A blooper Disney could make as a XXth C. man but which a man like St Thomas Aquinas was not likely to make in the XIIIth C.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Georges Pompidou Library
of Paris, and day after
St Lawrence of 2012

*He seems to have been the sole sexual predator in Palmar, and his victims were not children or teens as far as I know but monks and nuns acting under what they considered religious obedience. Wonder if the Palmarians today have something particualr to say about "indiscrete obedience" like obedience when one is sometimes not obliged to obey and sometimes even obliged not to obey a superior? Anyway he died in 2003 and his immediate successor Pedro II in 2011. Now they are at Gregorio XVIII.

**In Paris St Mary of Egypt was called l'Égyptienne but later La Jussienne. I wanted to English that as Gypsian but ... I am not sure how much or little she is honoured by Catholic or Orthodox gypsies by the way. Gyshian is a bit closer.