http://JonathansCorner.com/writings/letter/
The communities of Mount Mathos have released an open letter to the Oecumenical Patriarch yesterday. Abbot Pythagoras explains.
Reports were confirmed in the past week that the Oecumenical Patriarch on a visit to the USA was approached by a beggar sometime in the past month and simply told his deacon to "Give her some change from petty cash."
It is difficult to overstate or overemphasize the significance of this remark. While we approve and always have approved of almsgiving, and must give that our fullest blessing, Hell is inexact. It would perhaps have been better for the Oecumenical Patriarch to say "Give her a dollar bill," or "Give her three quarters and a dime," or even to say "Give her two dollars" without saying anything about what bill, bills or coinage by which to complete the gift.
But even that may be overlooked. What cannot be overlooked by the truly Orthodox is the fact that the Oecumenical Patriarch made a complete violation of accounting principles by allowing the books and the cash in his possession to be less than fully reconciled.
Consider the case of numbers in a computer. One thing computer scientists quickly learn, early on in their training if their teachers are worth their salt, is that there is a big difference between so-called "integer clean arithmetic," which retains uncompromised accuracy after any number of calculations even if sometimes integer clean arithmetic requires one one to rethink one's approach, and sloppy so-called "floating point numbers," which become more and more imprecise with each calculation: at first the calculation is imperceptibly off but with startlingly few calculations the numbers can easily be double or half what they should be. It is a matter of "Measure with a micrometer, mark with chalk, and cut with an axe."
We as a set of communities in communion believe that there is no fuller way for us to express our communion with the Oecumenical Patriarch then by publishing a series of open letters with searing indictments of what the most recent letter justly styles his "abhominable inexactitude."
What is Orthodoxy if it is not a training ground for living the true life of an accountant?
Our interviewer asked, "But don't the basic principles of accounting as a discipline allow for major things to be measured to the last penny while some things may still be handled approximately by a healthy organization?"
Abbot Pythagoras paused, looked at his watch, coughed, and shifted his position slightly. "It's been thirty minutes to the second, and this is exactly the time I allotted to this interview."