[AmericaAirline 111]

Obviously anecdotal, but an eye-witness account has some merit. He has expressed one opinion, you are obviously expressing yours. One seems a little more informed than the other but I will let each reader make up his or her mind as to which one.

Andrew was not an eye-witness. What he posted is totally "hear-say," as the saying goes. We know absolutely nothing about the source of his information, how objective he is, or just how complete his knowledge of the facts really are. Such testimony would carry zero weight in a real court of law; and the eye-witness would be subjected to rigorous cross-examination, to say the least, before his testimony would ever pass as credible.

Not letting someone who is a baptised Orthodox Christian venerate relics because he is supposedly an "unbaptized heretic" is unbalanced.

Yes, on the surface this does appear bad, but still! If it is true, as reported, who is the Guestmaster anyway? Does he speak for the entire Brotherhood? Do we even know for sure that what your friend told you is an accurate "word-for-word" account of what the Guestmaster said; and not just his own "private" interpretation of what he thought he heard him say?

From what I've been told by someone who visited the monastery, Esphigmenou has threatened that they will dynamite the whole place if the brotherhood is forced out...

I doubt this very much, for several reasons; but provide some kind of reasonable proof that they have made this threat, and perhaps I may be persuaded to think differently. To begin the post with a comment like this just makes the rest of the post seem all that more incredible and harder to believe.

From what my friend told me about his conversation with the monk, the monks are not allowed to read primary texts of the Fathers ...

Once again, this strikes me as incredible; that is to say, essentially unbelievable! If it is true at all, then I suspect it is a rule of obedience administered with discrimination to certain individuals, and not indiscriminately to the entire brotherhood. And I doubt it would apply to all the Patristic writings, but only selectively, and for good reasons arising from the nature of the therapy being applied to certain individual monks.

... they listen to books on tapes by the Abbot and other Old Calendarists, mostly about the heresy of the World Orthodox, the rightness of Old Calendarism, etc.

Assuming this were true, (and it has not been proven yet to be so,) there is absolutely nothing wrong with them doing this, as far as I can see. There is certainly nothing wrong with 'Old Calendarism.' That's for sure! Is there something "unorthodox" about being Old Calendar?

I think they exaggerate just how much they are persecuted. They have a siege mentality and cause problems for the rest of the monasteries on the Holy Mountain.

Go to the You Tube website and watch the video clips of the mob smashing down the front gate with sledge-hammers. Is it still a "siege mentality" when a riotous mob with heavy sledge hammers are trying to smash through your front-gate? When your brothers have died because of a blockade that has cut off your food and medical supplies?

They also exaggerate their numbers - they claim that they are the largest monastery on Agion Oros. In truth, they inflate their numbers by including all the Zealots from the sketes as members of the brotherhood of Esphigmenou.

Once again, more total "hear-say," without a stitch of proof.

I sympathize with the moderate Old Calendarists and resisters of innovation, but the stance of Esphigmenou is not balanced or healthy.

I too sympathize with the Old Calendarists, but the fact that your friend never cited or mentioned a single good or redeeming thing about the brotherhood is reflective of a negative bias and an inherent imbalance in his testimony.