‘The Gurus, the Young Man, and Father Hilarion’

“You’re sincere enough.” She laughed shortly. “Heaven protect the human race from the sincere idealist!” — Algis Budrys, Some Will Not Die (1961), Chapter 5

Wherein I get a little more personal…

It’s never really a good idea to Google your name. Especially in my case. After February of last year, when news broke that I had embraced Islam, I heard all sorts of wild rumors about me that were spreading online. My favorite one was that I stole money, ran away to Turkey with a woman named ‘Aly Candland’ [where did that name come from?] in order to set up my own cult funded by the Saudis/Sufis after I had been ‘secretly Muslim’ for all these years in an act of dastardly calculation and deception.

All of these rumors were easily dispelled by simply asking me. Or reading what I had written. I’m generally an open book. Or at least I try to be. I’ve always valued sincerity as one of the highest virtues. I’ve always felt that one’s sincere intentions will cover a multitude of sins. I’ve always felt that if you worked hard, had sincere intentions, and trusted in God, this would be enough. I’ve always felt that everybody operated on these same principles, more or less.

Perhaps I was naïve. Or maybe an idealist? I’m not sure. In spite of everything, I felt there was an inherent goodness in everybody. Sin, I felt (as a young man), was something more like a misunderstanding — a misunderstanding of our brother, a misunderstanding of God, a misunderstanding of each other, a misunderstanding of ourselves, a dis-connect in society… “Nobody’s bad,” I once wrote in my teenage journal. “We’re just misguided.”

All that to say… I can take all sorts of rumors about me. All sorts of misunderstandings. But one thing that really bothers me is an attack on my sincerity.

For example, a few weeks ago, I accidentally came across a thread about me on the media-formerly-known-as-Twitter, and one person said this about me:

Now, the point of this article is not to type out some manically defensive screed. People are always going to say all sorts of things about you, whether you like it or not. That’s the nature of the beast. But I do think this raises some good points about the nature of the Internet and Social Media in the current state of things — which I feel has been more or less solely destructive.

But to clear a few things up: First of all, I never had any social media when I was in ROCOR (the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia). My ministry as a priest was completely within the monastery, with the exception of the occasional travel outside the monastery to serve at a parish here or there. Or to attend some conference. All though, I did have regular correspondence with various people as well as extensive communication with ‘the world’ as part of my job as a priest, as guest master, and as an online seminary student. I never had social media until I entered the Byzantine Catholic world with guidance of a canon lawyer. At that point, I quite honestly felt lonely and devastated that everyone that I had known in my entire world was now cut off from my life. My friends and family had been mostly out of touch with me for years. Sitting in my guest room in a monastery in Wisconsin, I decided to go against my own principles regarding using Facebook, and I opened an account — simply to talk to old friends and family whom I hadn’t talked to in many years. Slowly, however, people started to message me: “Are you a priest?” Yes, I responded. And that’s how it started.

For much of my life, I had been painfully shy by nature. As a young novice in my first years in the monastery, I was constantly pushed out of my ‘comfort zone’. My abbot saw that I was good with people, so I was made the unofficial ‘guest master’ — giving tours of the monastery, talking to the visitors, giving little talks, and taking people on hikes. After such encounters, I was emotionally and physically drained. I would collapse in my monastic cell following these interactions. Whenever a group of people would come to the monastery unannounced asking for a tour — and I was called upon to show them around — I would immediately go to our little monastery church and fall down on my knees before the icon of the ‘Mother of God’ and plead that I would be given the words to say. And by the grace of God, it would always work out splendidly. The words to say really just seemed to come to me. But when it was all over, I would collapse again in exhaustion.

All this was as a monastic novice. This ‘exhaustion’ increased and intensified when I was ordained a priest three years into my monastic life. And I remember moments in the early days as a priest feeling overwhelmed with exhaustion and anxiety at the weight placed on me. I would sit in my office, close my eyes, and listen to a recording of the Psalms in Slavonic with ‘soothing rain sounds’ playing in the background until the feeling of anxiety dissipated.

Yet as a priest, I had always tried to make myself available to people. It was my job, after all. I remember the day I was asked to be ordained. It was Lent of 2013. I was in church one morning, and my prayer felt dry. I didn’t ‘feel’ anything. We were all tired from the long services, the hard work schedule, and from fasting. So I initially prayed to God that morning to help me in my dryness and to ‘give me a sign’ or ‘show me an angel’ — and then I immediately realized the wrong-headedness of such a prayer and request. So instead I asked God for the grace to make a good struggle. All at once, I felt the heaviness lift from me, and I heard a voice in my heart that said: “You must be magnanimous.” Magnanimous? I wasn’t sure what that meant or where it came from. But it made an impression on me. Magnanimous!

Immediately, once that church service was over, I was called up to the abbot’s sitting room. It was there, to my complete surprise, that I was asked about being ordained that year. I thought about it, and then said: “Whatever God wills.” And that’s how it happened.

But ever since then, I had taken as my guide as a priest that word: “Magnanimous.” I must be magnanimous.

In my own life, I’ve often been treated less than ‘magnanimous’ by people. I’ve experienced plenty of trauma and emotional abuse over the years in family situations. Being a determined and stoic little guy, I vowed to ‘rise above it’ and to treat others the way that I wasn’t treated. Much of this was a result of my own parents’ divorce. As a young man of sixteen or seventeen, I found that I often had to be the adult, emotionally, and ‘keep it all together’ when the adults around me neglected their charge as adults. Worse than this, I remember being told that ‘I didn’t understand’, as I was too young. This infuriated me. After all, as the Scripture says: “Wisdom is the gray hair unto men” (Book of Wisdom, 4:9). It was not age that gave wisdom, but rather the Lord who imparted wisdom to those who listen — with eyes to see and ears to hear.

And I remember, as a young man, walking home from high school with all these thoughts running through my mind. And it was right then and there that I vowed to myself, when I grew up to be an adult, that I would never disparage the youth — simply because they are young.

This is also something I carried over into my priesthood. So many young people came to me because they couldn’t get ahold of a priest or because they just had a question or because they were having suicidal thoughts or because their parents kicked them out of their house or they were struggling with drugs… whatever it was. I simply made myself available to people. And I had a heart for everyone who was struggling in this broken world that we live in. Of course, nobody is perfect. We all have lots of growing up to do — even many adults — but if I can see the sincerity in people, then this is the seed from which much greatness can grow with the help of the grace of God.

What I feel that we’re living through now — especially in the Church — is an acute crisis of authority. When I was young, I remember it being totally out-of-line to even question a Catholic bishop. Or even a priest. They were held up to such a high degree, and to such a high standard. There was a mystique about them. An aura of authority and holiness. Almost all of that has been destroyed since the 2002 revelations of massive abuse scandals in the Church in Boston and elsewhere — with new devastating revelations being uncovered every year, it seemed.

On top of that, add the festering chaos of Francis’ pontificate. Not only is the dogma and teaching of the Church increasingly unclear and called to question on a popular level, the very organ of the Church which is meant to safeguard and uphold ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘sound teaching’ — the Pope — is often times now the origin and sustainer of confusion within the Church. It seems already a lifetime ago — PCE, or Pre-COVID Era — that the Church was in turmoil about the Amazonian Synod and the ‘Pachamama’ debacle. This was an issue which was never really resolved — what was the goal of the Amazonian Synod? Was the Pachamama supposed to represent the Virgin Mary? Was it a symbol of something else? All of these questions swirled around the Church and muddied the waters of Catholic life in 2019.

While there had been factionalism and questions of teaching and authority since the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, I saw in the growing chaos of 2019 an acceleration of factionalism and of a crisis of authority. For the first time since perhaps the Middle Ages, normal, everyday Catholics were questioning out loud the legitimacy of the Pope. Rumors of dark secrets in the Vatican began to swirl around the internet and on YouTube. Satanism in the Vatican, Freemasons, homosexual orgies, Black Masses on the altars of St. Peter’s, Illuminati influences, Communist infiltrations, etc… all things that had once been relegated to the ‘lunatic fringes’ of acceptable opinions were now being discussed in best-seller books and popular Catholic Youtube channels and blogs. And in this environment, what did it mean to be a Catholic? Was it to hold to the ‘timeless teachings’ of the Church? And which were those? Pre-Vatican II? Pre-Schism of 1054? Or was it to be obedient to the Pope no matter what? And what does that mean? Does it mean to ‘hold your nose’ and vow fidelity, even if you don’t like what you see? Or does it mean to understand the Pope as doing a ‘new thing’ — and perhaps even celebrate it as the Church ‘getting with the times’?

I’m not taking any sides here, but I merely wish to point out that out of this confusion came all sorts of gurus, grifters, bloggers, and scholars — some sincere and some opportunists — to try to lead the way through the growing confusion. And everybody more or less falls in line under some faction. ‘Are you of SSPX? Are you of ICKSP? Or perhaps FSSP? Do you follow Taylor Marshall? Or Michael Lofton? Or maybe the Holy Family Monastery and the Dimond Brothers?’

My own opinion has always been: what is the Tradition? Follow that.

At times this put me at odds with one faction, at times with another. Especially when you add the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox traditions into the mix.

Even so, I show up on the scene right as this is all happening. As a younger priest with a somewhat interesting background who sticks to tradition and who makes himself available to people… well, I attracted some attention. People just sort of ‘liked’ me, frankly.

But as a priest and monk in a monastery who spent many hours counseling people and hearing confessions, I knew full well the results of false elders and bad priests. I’ve seen people who had given their lives over to charismatic priest-monks who had a wide, popular following in the Church, yet behind closed doors were controlling and abusive. I’ve seen people first-hand who were spiritually and emotionally ruined by such ‘false elders’. Some of these people even, to the point, of needed extensive therapy or losing faith altogether.

These cases don’t even begin to touch the issue of sexual abuse, which is not uncommon — even in the Orthodox Churches. Much of it which you never hear about, because it doesn’t make the news. But they are things spoken about in backrooms when an issue has to be ‘dealt with’. Men in the priesthood and in positions of power and leadership who make you wonder: “How did this happen?” Did they have faith at one point, then lost it? Did they ever have it to begin with? When they became priests as young men, for example, and then go on to abuse dozens — hundreds — of children and young boys, sometimes within the same families, often within the church property or during confession… How does this happen?

Part of the answer, I think, is that some people simply do not operate by the same rules that my ideal young self once thought. For example, according to a 2014 article in The Week, the clergy is the eighth profession with the most psychopaths, which includes sociopaths. Furthermore, studies consistently show that roughly 33% of clergy in active ministry suffer from sociopathy and Narcissistic Personality Disorder, with these numbers higher within the bishopric and in higher positions of authority. (This Psychology Today article discusses this issue in further detail.)

But I digress a bit…

With the crisis of authority in the Church, and with many parish priests being absent or overworked/overwhelmed or not of sound teaching, people seek out gurus and ‘saviors’ online. This is an issue in the Orthodox Church as well, with young men often getting their ‘catechism’ from certain ‘based’ online personalities.

All in all, the Internet and Social Media has caused a great deal of havoc, both in the Church and in society. (Throw Islam in the mix, and you have similar issues there as well.)

As for my own role in all of this… I feel that I got swept up in it as well, even if I considered myself to be well-meaning. After all, I’m not perfect either. But I never set myself up as a ‘guru’. Too many people would say things to me like: “Oh, Father Hilarion! You are a PRIEST! You are ‘ontologically different’ from us lay-people!” And then they would proceed to heap praises on me. When I would warn them not to do this, saying: “Listen… I’m just a young priest. I’m struggling just like you. You should not seek elders and gurus. And I’m certainly not one.” The response was often: “Oh, Father Hilarion! You are just being humble!” And as a wise priest once told me: “Be careful of people who are quick to praise you. Because these are often the very first people to denounce you.”

And wouldn’t you know it. That’s exactly what happened.

Having said all of this, I still can’t fault all the younger generation who are trying to find their way in today’s Church and today’s society. There’s often so much abuse heaped upon them from pundits and media — the “rad-trads” and the “mad-trads” and the “meme-squads” and the “based” and what have you. Often many of these young men — and by and large they are young men — are trying to sincerely find what is real and true within a society and institution that has largely failed them, forgotten them, or marginalized them. It’s not simply that they get maligned online, but in real-life and in real time. Recently, it was revealed that the FBI was spying on and infiltrating “radical traditionalist Catholics” as being some sort of national threat. Also recently, an entire book was written by an Orthodox ‘sociologist’ with a questionable agenda who painted whole swaths of the Orthodox Church as being Putin-loving, dangerous, ‘anti-trans’ racists and ‘white supremacists’. People who simply try to hold to their traditional faith, traditional teachings, traditional practices, and traditional world-view are actively slandered as evil subversives and threats to polite society and to national safety.

There’s definitely plenty of problems in the ‘trad’ world, but there are problems everywhere. It’s human nature. But as long as the crisis of authority in the Church continues, people will continue to seek out people who are willing to speak the ‘truth’ — for better or for ill.

I’ve spoken nothing about Islam here, because I’m dealing now mostly with issues related to my own past. But my own ‘minor internet celebrity’ status followed me even into Islam — though I initially intended just to slip off into a quiet, private life in embracing Islam. In many ways, the ‘celebrity’ status got worse. I feel that many people, once the novelty of my own conversion to Islam as a priest and monk, will be less than happy with some of my own positions regarding things like Sufism, Ibn Arabi, relations with Christians, and so on, just to name a few.

The same message is true here: “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the sons of men”, to quote the Psalms. There are certainly truly holy men and women, but many of them are hidden. For the most part, we are all just struggling along, with God’s help. Your priest, your monk, your imam… they all have struggles, worries, fears, problems… some of them you probably will never even know about. They need our support, too, and our prayers. There is an old Russian saying: “If we are saved, we are saved together. Nobody is saved alone.” Your priest and your imam is your brother, as well. They often struggle silently in order that they may be there for other people. In order that they can be magnanimous. In order that they can act as leaders.

That said (and going back to my personal situation), young priests need support. It is entirely too quick for a young man to come in off the streets to a monastery and three years later find himself as a priest practically running an institution. Overwork is a real thing. This is an issue in parish life as well. Too many young priests are simply overworked with a lack of resources to help them. This is a large reason why alcoholism and substance abuse is also high among clergy. But if a priest is set up in a situation to fail, then nobody wins in this situation.

I don’t wish to ramble on for much longer, so I’ll leave it at that. Yes, I think the ‘internet guru’ phenomenon is troubling. But like I said, I think much of it is a result of a failure of leadership and a crisis in authority. And I think much of it is unconscionable and wholly unavoidable.

As for me, I truly regret some of my own failings in my own past. I regret some of my own naiveté, and looking back, I would have done things differently. But we can never go back. We are always moving forward. We make mistakes, and with God’s help, we repent. We learn. We heal. We grow. We ask forgiveness. We make amends.

I ask forgiveness from everyone for my own failings.

To end, and in response to some of my ‘detractors’, I’d like to quote in length one of my dearest, favorite ‘prayers’ by St. Nikolai Velimirovich from his much-beloved Prayers by the Lake. The blessed bishop wrote:

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Enemies have driven me into Your embrace more than friends have. Friends have bound me to earth, enemies have loosed me from earth and have demolished all my aspirations in the world.

Enemies have made me a stranger in worldly realms and an extraneous inhabitant of the world. Just as a hunted animal finds safer shelter than an unhunted animal, so have I, persecuted by enemies, found the safest sanctuary, having ensconced myself beneath Your tabernacle, where neither friends nor enemies can slay my soul.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them. They, rather than I, have confessed my sins before the world. They have flagellated me, whenever I have hesitated to flagellate myself. They have tormented me, whenever I have tried to flee torments. They have scolded me, whenever I have flattered myself. They have spat upon me, whenever I have filled myself with arrogance.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them. Whenever I have made myself wise, they have called me foolish. Whenever I have made myself mighty, they have mocked me as though I were a dwarf. Whenever I have wanted to lead people, they have shoved me into the background. Whenever I have rushed to enrich myself, they have prevented me with an iron hand. Whenever I thought that I would sleep peacefully, they have wakened me from sleep. Whenever I have tried to build a home for a long and tranquil life, they have demolished it and driven me out. Truly, enemies have cut me loose from the world and have stretched out my hands to the hem of Your garment.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them. Bless them and multiply them; multiply them and make them even more bitterly against me — so that my fleeing to You may have no return; so that all hope in men may be scattered like cobwebs; so that absolute serenity may begin to reign in my soul; so that my heart may become the grave of my two evils twins: arrogance and anger; so that I might amass all my treasure in heaven; ah, so that I may for once be freed from self-deception, which has entangled me in the dreadful web of illusory life.

Enemies have taught me to know — what hardly anyone knows — that a person has no enemies in the world except himself. One hates his enemies only when he fails to realize that they are not enemies, but cruel friends.

It is truly difficult for me to say who has done me more good and who has done me more evil in the world: friends or enemies. Therefore bless, O Lord, both my friends and my enemies. A slave curses enemies, for he does not understand. But a son blesses them, for he understands. For a son knows that his enemies cannot touch his life. Therefore he freely steps among them and prays to God for them.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

May God grant us a good repentance.

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Thank you, and may God reward you! Glory to God for all things!