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The journalist Cristian Tudor Popescu explained, on Friday night, on the Digi24 program “Cap Limpede”, what he meant with the written comment addressed to the Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church. He said that he could not respond to the insults, but that Patriarch Daniel’s argument from authority was a “prison, a barrier to thought.”
Claudiu Pândaru, Digi24 journalist: You wrote and spoke of that statement from Patriarch Daniel after the end of the service at the relics of Saint Demetrius in the Capital, which were taken out in procession, after which you received a response from the Patriarchate. Then there was an avalanche of criticism from you, from some politicians or characters.
Cristian Tudor Popescu: “Why do you want to call them critical, when they are oaths, insults, filth, insults, slander. They are not critical. Criticism is based on facts, reasons, arguments. Have you seen something like that?”
Claudiu Pândaru: You will not respond to these insults.
CTP: “No. I can’t. How do you respond to someone who insults you? You can’t respond to a curse. It is valid in itself. It doesn’t make any rational sense. How do you contradict it? If someone says” You “to me, can I contradict it ? Tell him that it is a difficult operation, given my current physical condition. How to respond rationally? “
It’s not about me. It is a question: Is it a sin to think for a believer?
There is in the Church, over time, this idea, more explicitly or more implicitly, that people must believe, the believer must believe, not think. Faith is valuable. If you start thinking, it turns out that you are not a true believer. “
Claudiu Pândaru: Love in the Orthodox faith is also valuable. Without thinking, you cannot love.
CTP“That is what you believe. But many believers and many Church leaders believe this, that love is possible without reason. Thinking, everyone thinks. Reasoning, less.”
What did Patriarch Daniel say? He said: “Because he banned the pilgrimage to the relics of Saint Demetrius in October 1989, communism fell within a few months.” He addressed this phrase to the faithful. I commented on it in the following way: “To deceive people, the charlatan Daniel does not need mathematics or logic, he gives it directly as a cry for the cattle that herd them” and follows this phrase of Patriarch Daniel. From this was taken what I said “the workhorse is the cow.” All kinds of people shouted that I consider Orthodox believers, even Romanians – the extension was made immediately – won.
We commit this sin, namely reason. Believers already have a problem: “Who said what that phrase said? The Patriarch said so. Here comes a first mental misery, a first defect, a malfunction of the mind: the argument from authority, which is a kind of “argumentum ad hominem” (argument to the person). If the Patriarch said, then it is definitely true. We no longer have to think, whether it is true or not, to try to analyze logically. This is a first prison of thought, a cult, a barrier to thought: the argument from authority. There are many more.
What am I saying here? I say: “He gives it directly, like a cry for the cattle he is caring for.” Does it follow, logically, that only cattle graze? No! If you want to consider yourself a cow. I say that the Patriarch herds people and livestock. The cry cannot be directed at people, because people will think and say that such a thing is stupid ”.
Claudiu Pândaru: Do you think that if this word were missing in your text you would not be attacked in the same way?
CTP: “Probably easier, more modest, because people connect with words and sometimes prevent you from thinking. This is a word that blocks the minds of many, but it is absolutely justified. You are” beef “, it which means that you have a discernment equivalent to that of the calf contemplating the new door in relation to the old one, if this phrase is taken for granted: Forbidden to kiss relics, it turns out that communism has fallen, I did not say that no orthodox Christian is a cow.
Claudiu Pândaru: Please explain to the people in your house that all the explanations, arguments, even the theological ones that you give, do not come from the hatred that you would have towards the faith, that you may need to explain that too.
CTP: “Hatred means, first of all, ignorance. All these people who hate me for what I say have no idea what they say they defend. They have not read the Bible, they have not read Saint Augustine, to Look how he says:” The way of reason is not forbidden on the way to God. “I once did an experiment. I asked some people why it says” INRI “on the cross. They had no idea. INRI was the crime committed by Jesus. which was believed to be He was the King of the Jews, and so it was written above on the cross: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.
I am not ignorant, I know what Jesus said, I read the Fathers of the Church. How could I hate it? If it was ugly, it would be ignorant in the first place.
A phrase, by Nicolae Steinhardt, was carried out in communist prisons: “Jesus said be good, not stupid.”
Look at the whole argument of Cristian Tudor Popescu in the video.
Editing: Alexandru Costea
