The practice of living the life in Christ: fasting, vigil lamps, head-coverings, family life, icon corners, and other forms of Orthopraxy. All Forum Rules apply. No polemics. No heated discussions. No name-calling.
While it is true that the Russian True Orthodox clergy and monastics during Soviet times did not wear any outward signs of their vocations in order to be free to move about and minister to the Faithful without being arrested or shot, we who for the time being still live in relative freedom of religious practice should consider these two articles that demonstrate the terrible mistake of dispensing with the strict traditional standard grooming and dress for clergy and monastics of the Orthodox Church. If we submit to the "terrors for children" of a dirty look or an "alqaida comment, how shall we be able to stand firm if threatened with beatings, imprisonment, tortures, or death?
Here are then are two articles, one by an ecumenist Coptic priest, and another by a Catholic layman who is a well-known writer and college professor. They are like scouts who have run ahead of the pack and discovered that modern dispensing of traditional appearance is a bad move because both of these religious organizations having embraced modernism in many quarters and found it is full of negative consequences and the loss of many good things preserved by maintaining tradition. It is surprising then that the Orthodox Ecumenists are still so blindly gleeful to embark and join their foray into secularization. The heresies of the Latins and Copts aside, these two writers underscore why the World Orthodox should abandon the ecumenist agenda and why we who are Traditionalist Genuine Orthodox Christians are so blessed to have men and women monastics and to have clergy who are able to stand up to an opposing "culture" and be a witness to the True Faith.
Priestly Attire
In issue no. 6 of The Russian Pastor, an article by Archpriest Boris Kizenko, "Do not associate yourself with this age," was printed. There he touched upon the question of whether or not priests should wear their cassocks or riasa. I would like to share a few thoughts on this matter.
Concerning the Orthodox Tradition of Long Hair and Beards
The question of the appropriateness of long hair and beards is frequently put to traditional Orthodox clergy. A comprehensive article appeared in Orthodox Life concerning clergy dress in the J./F. 1991 issue. At this time we would like to address the topic of clergy appearance, i.e. hair and beards.
Anyone looking at photographs and portraits of clergy in Greece, Russia, Rumania, and other Orthodox countries taken in the early twentieth century will notice that almost without exception both the monastic and married clergy, priests and deacons, wore untrimmed beards and hair. Only after the First World War do we observe a new, modern look, cropped hair and beardless clergy. This fashion has been continued among some of the clergy to our own day. If one were to investigate this phenomenon in terms of a single clergyman whose life spanned the greater part of our century one would probably notice his style modernize from the first photographs up through the last.
There are two reasons given as an explanation for this change...
St. Nectarios also wrote on this topic because modernists like the future EP, Meletios Metaxakis, and others were asking priests not to wear facial hair or the priestly frock, which Metaxakis regarded as backwards and not progressive. This concern with one's appearance is the height of pride, and St. Nectarios attributed this progressive spirit to secular educations at modern universities.
Not only modern universities, but many of the WO seminaries minimize traditional disciplines and customs of the Church. I am sure there are exceptions, but the number of WO clergy that can be seen in jeans, Roman collars or the like is quite sad, especially for those who are full time paid employees and do not have to work in the secular world.
Not only modern universities, but many of the WO seminaries minimize traditional disciplines and customs of the Church. I am sure there are exceptions, but the number of WO clergy that can be seen in jeans, Roman collars or the like is quite sad, especially for those who are full time paid employees and do not have to work in the secular world.
If I am not mistaken, many of the seminarians in WO seminaries are told to shave and keep their head of hair short. If they will not obey, then they are told that they are not obedient, and that this is a sign of their lack of a vocation. The late Met. Philip of the Antiochians would tell all his seminarians to shave and not to let their hair grow long. He disliked the monastic look.