Danger of Monastery Icons

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I am Roman Catholic but, my church uses incense from Monastery Icons. I have heard that items from them are cursed or “blessed” using occult rituals. (See:orthodoxinfo.com/general/monasteryicons.aspx) I am concerned that the using this incense may cause trouble and I feel that I need to warn my priest. Any thoughts?
 
Occult rituals?? Last time I looked, Monastery Icons was run by Eastern Orthodox folks, and while the Orthodox might not be in accord with Rome, they’re far from being occult.
 
Why on earth would they buy incense made from Monastary Icons? How weird.
 
They’re probably not aware of the background of this group. I would advise them about this, and encourage them to support a Christian monastery instead. There are many wonderful Catholic and Orthodox ones that would put the money raised to good use.
 
This news broke a few years ago. The affiliations of this company have been called into question. A rather long thread developed in The Byzantine Forum on this topic (byzcath.org/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/67674/1). While there is a lot of semi-related chatter here, if you look at the posts of Irish Melkite in particular, you will see the results of some thoughtful investigative inquiries into this matter. One thing is clear - this business is not the online bookstore of a true monastic community, and adherence to the norms of icon writing may not be evident in some of their product offerings.

Proceed with caution, and rely on your conscience.
:gopray2:
 
Yes, let your priest know immediately! It’s unfortunate about Monastery Icons. I was really sad to find out about them, because I was considering buying some of their (what to me seemed like) truly beautiful icons, but as soon as I read an article on them last year, I changed my mind. I believe it’s the same article which Brother has linked to. The Devil is good at disguise.

It’s strange your parish gets incense from them though, you’d think they’d order from an actual Church supplie, like Desmarais & Robitaille, or Aquinas and More even!
 
I brought up the problem to my pastor several weeks ago, because I noticed that our parish had been ordering incense from them as well. My pastor was grateful to me for explaining the danger of this outfit. However, he explained to me the difficulty of finding quality incense at a good price. Apparently, the incense provided by Monastery Icons is of very high quality and not adulterated with additives as much of it tends to be. So it is an unfortunate thing that their goods are considered spiritually dangerous. My family was disappointed at the news as well, but we will never order from them again.
 
This is something that’s always scared me. Buying something you think is nice and Christian but is really new age or occult or demonic.
 
How might one go about purifying or disposing of these icons? I’m guessing burning?
 
BertBlyleven said:
How might one go about purifying or disposing of these icons? I’m guessing burning?
Click to expand...
Some very knowledgeable priests in the Byzantine Forum thread I had referenced previously indicated that blessing of these icons (a good idea irrespective of source) would be sufficient to “purify” them.

However, those who did not wish to keep these icons were advised that the proper manner of disposal was to (i) burn them and (ii) dispose of the ashes in a place that would not be regularly trampled upon (e.g. under a shrub or bush).

Burial was not considered sufficient, as the icons would likely not readily decay for some time given some of the materials used in their reproduction.
 
Elizium23 said:
I brought up the problem to my pastor several weeks ago, because I noticed that our parish had been ordering incense from them as well. My pastor was grateful to me for explaining the danger of this outfit. However, he explained to me the difficulty of finding quality incense at a good price. Apparently, the incense provided by Monastery Icons is of very high quality and not adulterated with additives as much of it tends to be.
Click to expand...
I have purchased inferior incense (and inferior charcoal) at parish festivals. But the incense made by legitimate Orthodox monasteries in the US is high quality. My parish uses Holy Cross incense . We usually buy it from the ROCOR Cathedral bookstore near us where they have it in large cans, maybe the one pound I see here. We use a lot of it during Divine Liturgy and services, to the point of setting off the smoke detectors at times. 🙂 Hopefully you can find a local Orthodox bookstore or monastery where you can buy it, or just go on line. I can certainly recommend the product from Holy Cross.
 
If I convince my priest to eventually get rid of this stuff, does the censor need to be blessed and does the cabinet that held the incense need to be blessed as well as anything that may have touched the stuff? How much purifying is needed?
 
Well that’s quite alarming. It also suggests a real need for someone else to step up and start making us some good icons for our newer Western saints… Eastern Catholic artists, I’m looking at you. 😃
 
:eek: My parish has Icons of the four Gospel writers that appear to be a dead on match from Monastery Icons up on the wall on both sides of the altar. I sent a link to this thread to our pastor so that he knows about it.
 
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