Bishop Graber's "Athanasius and the Church of our Time"

What we have suffered is terrible and quite intolerable; it is not possible to give an adequate account of it. But so that the horror of the events might become known more quickly, I considered it good to call to mind an account in the Holy Scripture. A Levite, who had suffered great insult by the outrage committed against his wife—she was a Hebrew woman of the tribe of Juda—could not but recognise the enormity of the crime. Appalled at the outrage which they had dared to commit against him he cut the body of his murdered wife into pieces—as the Holy Scripture recounts in the Book of Judges (Judges 19)—and sent the parts to the tribes of Israel. Not he alone but all were to suffer this heinous crime with him. If they were afflicted by it with him, they were all to revenge it. But if they wanted to know nothing of it, then disgrace was to befall them all as if they themselves were the evildoers. The messengers announced what had occurred. But those who heard and saw it cried out: There was never such a thing done in Israel from the day that our fathers came up out of Egypt. All the tribes of Israel were filled with fury and all gathered together against the evildoers as if they themselves had suffered the outrage. The malefactors were defeated in battle and were the abomination of all. For the assembled hosts paid no heed to tribal membership but saw only the crime before them and were filled with contempt.

You, my brethren, are familiar with the story and the point that the Scriptures express clearly in it. I do not wish to enlarge on it further as I am addressing those who know it and I am now pressed to draw your attention to what has just occurred, which is something much worse than what happened then. But that is the very reason for my calling this story to mind, so that you might compare the present events with those at that time and recognise that the present deed exceeds the previous one in cruelty. May you, on the other hand, be filled with more intense indignation at the evildoers than was the case at that time. For the persecution we are suffering is also harsher. The Levite’s misfortune is but small compared with what is being ventured against the Church today. Nothing worse has been heard of in the world, none has suffered greater injury. Then it was but a single woman to whom injustice was done, a single Levite who was the victim of violence. Today, however, the whole Church is suffering injustice, the priesthood has been insolently abused and—what is worse—the Godfearing persecuted by the godless. On that occasion every tribe was struck with horror at the sight of one part of a single woman. Today the whole Church is seen dismembered. The messengers are seen who are sent to you and others to relate what insolence and injustice they have suffered. Let yourselves be scandalized, I implore you, not as if we here but as if all of you had suffered injustice. Each of you should offer his aid as if he himself were the victim of it. Otherwise the order and Faith of the Church may shortly go to ruin. For both are threatened if God does not quickly repair the crimes through your agencies and expiate the injury inflicted on the Church.

The Church has not just recently been given order and statutes. They were faithfully and soundly bestowed on it by the Fathers. Nor has the Faith only just been established but it has come to us from the Lord through His disciples. May what has been preserved in the Churches from the beginning down to the present day not be abandoned in our time; may what has been entrusted into our keeping not be embezzled by us. Brethren, as custodians of God’s mysteries, let yourselves be roused to action on seeing all this despoiled by others. You will be hearing more from the messenger; I am pressed to set this down in all brevity so that you fully realise that an attacks of this kind has not been made on the Church since the day on which the Lord, raised into Heaven, gave the disciples His commission with the words: "Going therefore, teach ye all nations: baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.”

(Bp. Graber) "WHAT HAPPENED over 16oo years ago is repeating itself today but with two or three differences: Alexandria is today the whole Universal Church, the stability of which is being shaken, and what was undertaken at that time by means of physical force and cruelty is now being transferred to a different level. Exile is replaced by banishment into the silence of being ignored, killing by assassination of character. The usurper in the See of Alexandria at that time, Gregory, has been described by our Holy Father as the “Satan who forced his way into God’s temple through a crack”. If we lay the blame for the confusion in the Church at Satan’s door, that still does not excuse those who allow themselves to be used by him or even believe they can deny his existence, but on the contrary demands a clear and unequivocal statement of the Biblical truth that there is a devil, who is the father of lies (John 8:44) and a murderer ..."

“It has reached the stage at which we find ourselves everywhere enveloped and surrounded by lies as if by an atmosphere: they are breathed in and out ... Thus it has come about that in the most important matters we are living in a world of fiction; in an artificial realm of fable which we have conjured up for ourselves out of our narrow-minded notions, our pre-conceived opinions, our shallow thoughts and shabby emotions; a world so far removed from the reality of things that they are no longer recognisable in the slovenly and distorted copy.” (Gorres, quoted by Bp. Graber)