Don't let the door hit you... (conservative Catholic journalist joins Orthodox Church)

Cafeteria is Closed ^ | October 12, 2006 | Gerald Augustinus

[NYer]

Roman Sacristan tells me that Rod Dreher, a right-wing writer (Dallas Morning News, National Review) who used to be Catholic (convert) has jumped ship and joined an Orthodox church (personal take: for me it'd be absurd to join, say, the Russian Orthodox church without being Russian). On Beliefnet, Mr. Dreher explains himself in quite a pitiful manner, citing the sex scandals and dissent in the Church - only to offer up dissent himself.

Back in 2001, when I first started writing about the child sex-abuse scandal in the Church, Father Tom Doyle, the heroic priest who ruined his own career by speaking out for victims, warned me, "If you keep going down this path, you are going to go to places darker than you can imagine." I thought I understood what he meant, but I didn't. Even if I had, by then, I couldn't have stopped. What brought me in touch with Fr. Doyle was my having stumbled upon a cell of clerical molesters at a Carmelite parish in the Bronx. They had preyed on a teenage immigrant boy who was troubled, and whose father was back in Nicaragua. His mother sent him to the priests for counseling, thinking that maybe being around some men of God would do the boy some good. The priests ended up molesting him. When the boy's father arrived in the States and found out what had happened, he went to the Archdiocese of New York to tell them what happened. They offered to cut him a check if he'd sign a paper agreeing to let the Archdiocese's attorneys handle the matter.

And that's how it began for me. At the time, as the father of a young boy, I couldn't shake the thought What if this had happened to my family? Would we be treated this way by the Archdiocese? ...

The sex-abuse scandal can't be easily separated from the wider crisis in the American Catholic Church, involving the corruption of the liturgy, of catechesis, and so forth. I've come to understand how important this point is, because if most other things had been more or less solid, I think I could have weathered the storm. But I found it impossible to find solid ground.
...

After months, we finally made a decision: we would visit an Orthodox parish. As Catholics, we knew at least that the Sacraments there were valid. Though we couldn't receive communion, we could at least be in the presence of the Eucharistic Christ, and worship liturgically with them, and draw close to God on Sunday morning, however imperfectly. I can hardly express the burden of guilt I felt when I crossed the threshold of St. Seraphim's parish that morning. But you know, it was a wonderful place. The liturgy was breathtakingly beautiful. The preaching orthodox. And the people -- half of them Russian, most of the others converts -- could hardly have been kinder and more welcoming. As a new Episcopalian friend told me a couple of weeks ago after he visited St. Seraphim's, "There is life there."

We kept going back, and finally got invited to dinner at the archbishop's house. I feared it would be a stiff, formal affair. I was astonished to turn up at the address given, to find that it was the shabby little cottage behind the cathedral. We went in, and it was like being at a family reunion. Vladika's house was jammed with parishioners celebrating a feast day with ... a feast. There was Archbishop Dmitri in the middle of it all, looking like a grandfatherly Gandalf. I had never in all my years as a Catholic been around people who felt that way about their bishop. The whole thing was dizzying -- the fellowship, the prayerfulness, the feeling of family. I hadn't realized how starved I was for a church community.

Over time, we got to know the people of the parish. They became our friends. It was a new experience for me to be in a parish where you can be openly small-o orthodox, and the priest and the people support you in that. In "Crunchy Cons," the Orthodox convert (from RCism) Hugh O'Beirne says that Catholics new to the Orthodox Church may find it surprising that they don't have to be on a "war footing" -- meaning the culture wars don't intrude into worship. People are on the same page, and if they're not, they're not out trying to get the Church to change her position on abortion, gay marriage, inclusive language, and all that. As someone who more or less is on the front lines of the culture war every day in my job as a journalist, I found it a new and welcome experience to be able to go to church on Sunday and get built back up for the struggle ahead, instead of to find mass the most debilitating hour of the week.

Julie and I could see what was happening to us: we were falling in love with Orthodoxy. On several occasions, we stopped to check ourselves. But we couldn't bring ourselves to leave this place, where we were back in touch with Christ, and learning to serve Him in community, to return to what we had experienced as a spiritual desert. I know this is not every Catholic's experience, but this was ours.
......

I had to admit that I had never seriously considered the case for Orthodoxy. Now I had to do that. And it was difficult poring through the arguments about papal primacy. I'll spare you the details, but I will say that I came to seriously doubt Rome's claims. Reading the accounts of the First Vatican Council, and how they arrived at the dogma of papal infallibility, was a shock to me: I realized that I simply couldn't believe the doctrine. And if that falls, it all falls. Of course I immediately set upon myself, doubting my thinking because doubting my motives. You're just trying to talk yourself into something, I thought. And truth to tell, there was a lot of that, I'm sure.

But what I noticed during all this Sturm und Drang over doctrine was this: we were happy again as a family, and at peace. Julie said one day driving home from liturgy, "Isn't it great to look forward to going to church again?" ... Here I was beginning to live a more Christ-like life as a fellow traveler of Orthodoxy, and knowing that if I went back to full-fledged Catholicism, I would be returning to anger and despair. What does it mean to live in the Christian truth in that situation? How would I feel if I approached the Judgment Seat and said to God, "I lived as a depressed and embittered man, lost my children to the Christian faith, and was a terrible witness to your goodness. But Lord, thanks to you, I never left Catholicism."

It was not an abstract question for me. I wondered: is the point of our life on earth to become like Jesus, or is it to maintain formal affiliation with the Roman Catholic Church? ...

I can look back also and see that my own intellectual pride helped me build a weak foundation for my faith. When I converted to Catholicism in 1992 (I entered the Church formally in 1993), it was a sincere Christian conversion. But I also took on as my own all the cultural and intellectual trappings of the American Catholic right. I remember feeling so grateful for the privilege and gift of being Catholic, but there was a part of me that thought, "Yay! I'm on the A-Team now, the New York Yankees of Christianity. I'm on Father Neuhaus's team!" ...

A few weeks back, I mentioned to Julie on the way to St. Seraphim's one morning, "I'm now part of a small church that nobody's heard of, with zero cultural influence in America, and in a tiny parish that's materially poor. I think that's just where I need to be."
...

As far as tradition goes, I have moved with my family to a church that I believe stands a much better chance of maintaining the historic Christian deposit of faith over time. To be more blunt, I have moved to a church that in my judgment within which I and my family and my descendants will be better able to withstand modernity. Basically, though -- and this is as blunt as I can be -- I'm in a church where I can trust the spiritual headship of the clergy, and where most people want to know more about the faith, and how we can conform our lives to it, rather than wanting to run away from it or hide it so nobody has to be offended.

Unmanly. Consumerist.

So he left the Church because of the scandals...and his own dissent - let's not overlook that part. Luther complained about scandals...and dissented. One can only hope his small church doesn't have a scandal, where'd he hop to next?

He joined a societally irrelevant, small church. No wonder they all agree. Small size, smaller problems. It's similar to running off to the SSPX - hey, it's 50 of us and we're all USDA Prime orthodox, baby! In the end, the logical consequence would be to start a "church of one". No one else around, no one to disagree with! It's a lot more courageous to stay with a huge Church.

For a conservative he sounds a lot like a member of the "me" generation. Is this a new trend, right-wingers joining Orthodox churches ?

It seems to me that he joined the "American Catholic Right", not the Catholic Church, in the first place.

[Mrs. Don-o]

"Half of all "Protestants" are not affiliated with a Church, nor do they attend Church. Therefore, they are not even Christian in name only. Counting them as Protestants is the same as counting lapsed Catholics as Catholics."

Well, yes.

And... was there something else you wanted to say about that?

[kawaii]

I'm interested also.

Do you feel marriage continues into heaven? I've heard Orthodox sources disent on this (and seen lengthy trheads on Orthodox lists about it).

[Andrew Byler]

Seriously, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't detraction the sin of exposure of someone else's serious sins "without sufficient cause"? ... pedophilia is virtually incurable.

If you comitted adultery in the past and I knew of it, do I have sufficient cause to warn your neighbors that you are an adulterer and that they should protect their husbands from you?

As to pedophilia, having sex with teenage boys (the crime in focus here) is not pedophilia. It is homosexuality, and really, is not particularly different than the crimes covered by marriage of minors laws and statutory rape laws. Lets get off the whole pedophilia schtick.

Protecting parishioners and their families from a man with a history of sex abuse is "sufficient cause" to blow the whistle.

Is a singular instance a "history"?

If a man comes home early once and has sex with the teenage babysitter, does he need to be permanently seperated from all contact with teenage girls?

In any case, all this is a bunch of nonsensical speculation. As Rod notes about the Priest in question:

"He had been suspended by his diocese in Pennsylvania after formal abuse accusations had been leveled against him. The priest came back to his hometown, Dallas, and got other work -- but was helping out on the weekends in this particular parish. It turned out that the pastor knew all about his past, had concluded that he had been falsely accused, and put him into active ministry in the parish -- without telling the parish, or even his bishop. Now, this priest might well be innocent -- nothing has been proved against him"
http://www.beliefnet.com/blogs/crunchycon/2006/10/orthodoxy-and-me.html

So with no proof whatsoever of anything other than the Priest - Fr. Christopher Clay of the Diocese of Scranton - having supposedly been suspended pending his case being ajudicated (this is the new policy that came out of the 2002 Dallas meeting - make an accusation and the Priest is sent packing without proof or ajudication needed), Rod outed him and the up till now secret accusations by publishing unproven allegations about him in a local newspaper, and simultaneously slandering the rest of the lower clergy as a "herd of moral geldings" (another crime in Canon Law is to encourage animus against the clergy). "Can. 1373 A person who publicly incites his or her subjects to hatred or animosity against the Apostolic See or the Ordinary because of some act of ecclesiastical authority or ministry, or who provokes the subjects to disobedience against them, is to be punished by interdict or other just penalties."

The actual history of the Fr. Christopher Clay case is here:

http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2004_07_12/2004_07_02_Adams_ExBishopPriest.htm

Apparently, the Police found no cause to charge him, and his alleged victim declined to sue. Maybe because he was innocent! A priest friend of my family is in this conundrum right now. He was suspended by Bishop Wuerl in Pittsburgh 4 years ago now, and has been forced to sit in suspended animation at an old seminary since then, with no progress being made in his "case" (which apparently centers around him having taken pictures of kids flexing their muscles poolside at a trip he had organized 20 years ago). If this is the level of some of these acusations, they are really quite flimsy.

[Andrew Byler]

But based on what Rod Dreher has been though, I blame the instituional church far more than Dreher himself on why he is leaving.

What has Rod been through, exactly? Getting himself angry and scandalized at sin? Allowing his faith (if he ever had any), to die in a fit of anger at the Church?

[ichabod1]

If I went Maronite I wouldn't be leaving at all, would I? I left the Episcopal church because of the immorality, but that didn't mean I naievly thought there was none in the Roman Catholic Church. It was because I decided that the RCC was the true repository of Christianity on earth. Furthermore, though individuals, too many of them, behave in an immoral way, our church is not afraid to say what's wrong is wrong. That was very important.

[Agrarian]

The Church discourages remarriage, but does allow it. What that means, I don't know. We clearly aren't given that information.

[Mrs. Don-o]

"As Rod notes about the Priest in question: "He had been suspended ...after formal abuse accusations had been leveled against him...the pastor knew all about his past, had concluded that he had been falsely accused, and put him into active ministry ... Now, this priest might well be innocent -- nothing has been proved against him" "

Since this is what Rod said about this priest, the charge that Rod is guilty of the sin of detraction needs a little more substantiation, wouldn't you say?

You also charge Rod with the sin of taking scandal. This means being shocked-shocked when there was nothing to be shocked-shocked about. For instance, I saw this on an unnamed bee-in-the-bonnet blog:

"Cardinal Karol Wojtyla on a hiking excursion around 1975. His intimacy with this woman is such that he is comfortable being pictured with his knees touching hers. "

Geez! if somebody has a problem with this picture I'd say that's a pretty clear example of "the sin of taking scandal."

In Rod's case, the scandals were real--- and serious. As a journalist investigating the sexual-abuse situation for a major metropolitan daily as well as for the Catholic World Report, he saw and heard a lot more than was ever published. (That in itself shows discretion, not scandal-mongering.)

More than one bishop of Dallas was implicated in cover-ups involving clergy who were guilty of multiple crimes of abuse. You should read up if you don't know this.

"If a man comes home early once and has sex with the teenage babysitter, does he need to be permanently seperated from all contact with teenage girls? "

He'd certainly be separated from contact with MY teenage girls; and from me as well.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Those are good points.

(1) If you went to a Maronite Catholic Church you would not be breaking communion with with Pope and the rest of the Church, founded by Christ on the Rock of Peter and the Apostles.

(2) Our church is not afraid to say what's wrong is wrong. At least, dadgummit, when we Catholic sinners sin, we know damn well that we're sinning.

And that IS an advantage. It makes it harder for us to fool outsleves into thinking everything's OK, and makes it possible for us to repent.

[kawaii]

This is the book I first read it in:
http://www.narrowpathbookstore.com/PRODUCTS/CON-PTL.htm

I've seen very strong supported conclusions on both sides...

[Andrew Byler]

Since this is what Rod said about this priest, the charge that Rod is guilty of the sin of detraction needs a little more substantiation, wouldn't you say?

No, what Rod wrote was basically a smear job on a man who appears to be innocent. See these two articles:

http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2004_07_12/2004_07_01_Dreher_BlowingThe.htm

http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2004_07_12/2004_07_02_Adams_ExBishopPriest.htm

Rod claims proudly: "I helped reveal troubling information about Father Christopher Clay, an accused sexual abuser"

However: "Bishop James Timlin and others say the Rev. Christopher Clay was entitled to resume ministerial duties when no criminal charges resulted from a young man's accusations against him."

Rod decided that it was better to publish what are apparently hafltruths and innuendos to help further his career than it was to take the proper route of going to his Bishop with his problems with Fr. Clay. He even publicly said that even had St. Ambrose been his Bishop, he wouldn't have given him a chance to resolve the issue before splashing it in the press.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I agree that in normal times and under normal circumstances, he should have gone to his bishop first.

But you've touched on a difficult point about which I have a perplexity of conscience. I have grave doubts about it because of the bishops' very poor decades-long history of prompt effective action (yes "the" "bishops," 75% of whom have personally shuffled and covered up allegations of abuse). And this is triply true of the man who wears the mitre in Dallas, Most Reverend Charles V. Grahmann, who frankly has a substandard record in this regard.

Your allegation that Rod Dreher published what he knew "to help further his career" is uncalled-for. You impute the worst possible motive, when Dreher's stated and perfectly plausible motive was to inform the public about a matter which was already public (the Scranton bishop had issued a press release) and to protect his parish and his fellow parishioners.

Why are you, who are laudably committed to protecting the reputation of a priest, so casual about impugning the motives of a layman: a husband, father, parishioner, and journalist?

So many good Catholic lay people have tried to act in filial trust toward their pastors, only to be ignored by chancery functionaries and obstructed by layers of clerical bureaucracy. Isn't it amazing, how chancery offices communicate with us now through press releases and lawyers!! How lay people long for a bishop who is at least accessible when serious matters arise ---a spiritual father and shepherd of souls!

[Andrew Byler]

And this is triply true of the man who wears the mitre in Dallas, Most Reverend Charles V. Grahmann, who frankly has a substandard record in this regard.

The parish in question is in Arlington in the diocese of Ft. Worth.

[rwfromkansas]

At least the Orthodox have a correct theological understanding that Christ is the head of the church and that councils decide issues, not one man.

I visited one before, and it was an incredibly beautiful service.

[Andrew Byler]

Your allegation that Rod Dreher published what he knew "to help further his career" is uncalled-for. You impute the worst possible motive,

No, Dreher is stating the worst possible interpretation of the circumstances, and has been riding herd scandalmongering for several years now, building himself up as quite the "expert" in the matter. The Dallas Morning News is also a known anti-Catholic fishwrapper according to local Catholics. He is helping to push forward an anti-Catholic agenda in the Liberal/Masonic press. And of course he is doing it for career advancement - that is what we all strive for at work.

when Dreher's stated and perfectly plausible motive was to inform the public about a matter which was already public (the Scranton bishop had issued a press release) and to protect his parish and his fellow parishioners.

The matter was not public until Dreher gave his Newspaper to the story. The press release and Dreher's piece followed.

Why are you, who are laudably committed to protecting the reputation of a priest, so casual about impugning the motives of a layman: a husband, father, parishioner, and journalist?

Because he has made himself a public heretic, by renouncing the Papacy in public, which brings to the fore his questionable judgement and thought processes already to be seen in his very extremist reaction to the homo Priest scandal in the Church (essentially, "the Church is untrustworthy, most parishes worthless and snares of the devil, I can't let them near my children, and all/most the Priests and Bishops are guilty of being part of this cover-up"). His questionable judgement has been used to help impugn the 99% of priests who are innocent, and seperate them from influence on the lives of Catholic children. What a masterstroke for the Devil for Rod to do this work for him!

What need is the to protect the reputation of someone who lets it all hang out in public? All I am doing is drawing conclusions from what he has done and written.

So many good Catholic lay people

Rod is no longer good or a Catholic. He has denounced and renounced Holy Mother Church and its Pastors. Don't get confused on this point.

[NYer]

The parish in question is in Arlington in the diocese of Ft. Worth.

After much research, I was able to locate the editorial written by Rod Dreher 2 years ago.

---

Blowing the Whistle:
Troubling Information on Priest Could Have Made Me a Hypocrite

By Rod Dreher rdreher@dallasnews.com
The Dallas Morning News [Dallas TX]
July 1, 2004

Troublemaking whistleblower or peacekeeping hypocrite – which would you rather be? I made my choice earlier this week when I helped reveal troubling information about Father Christopher Clay, an accused sexual abuser ministering in the Roman Catholic parish I was attending. Here's what happened.

A few weeks back, my friend Rachel Dillard told me she wanted to be received into the Catholic Church. I suggested that she ask Father Clay, a dynamic orthodox priest at the marvelous St. Mary the Virgin parish in Arlington, if he would instruct her in the faith.

Father Clay seemed like the kind of priest lots of Catholics wish for, but rarely find (which is why my family had been driving all the way from our Dallas home to Arlington for Mass). He was not officially on staff at St. Mary, but he told me he was helping out while on leave from the Diocese of Scranton, where he'd run afoul of liberal diocesan politics. When he agreed to catechize Rachel, I believed she was in good hands.

About a week ago, I asked her how her lessons were going. She raved about Father Clay and what a "treasure" he is. I agreed enthusiastically, and said, "Can you believe the liberals ran off such a good priest?"

"That's funny," she said. "He told me he came home to Dallas because the conservatives drove him away."

Rachel went home and ran Father Clay's name through an Internet search engine. She discovered he had been suspended by Scranton in 2002 after a sex-abuse allegation involving a male teen. Rachel e-mailed this information to me that night, saying, "Please don't let this be true."

I spent the next several days trying to find whatever information I could about Father Clay's situation. It was true: Father Clay had been banned from active ministry.

What to do with this information? I wasn't worried about Father Clay. I was worried about Father Allan Hawkins, the parish's very fine pastor, and the good people of the congregation.

I thought: Can't this be handled quietly, so Father Hawkins and the parish aren't embarrassed?

And then I thought: If I go that route, I am no better than the bishops and others I have criticized. They kept it in-house for the sake of the church and led us all off the cliff. Public exposure is the only sure way to handle Father Clay.

But he might be innocent! Yes, he might be. But Father Clay is on suspension. He surely knew that before he presented himself to Father Hawkins and offered to help. Why was it so important for him to get back into parish work?

Because of my inquiry, the Scranton diocese had already issued a press release about Father Clay. Why not let the Pennsylvania media break the story?

If I do that, I thought, what do I tell my editors when they want to know why I didn't tell reporters at my own newspaper? The answer would have been: Because I was protecting a parish and a pastor I didn't want to see hurt. That is, because I am a hypocrite.

I couldn't be a hypocrite. The protection of children must come first. I wrote down everything I'd learned and sent it to the religion desk. Susan Hogan/Albach worked the story and wrote the article in yesterday's paper.

Rachel and I feel absolutely horrible about all this. But I have no doubt that we did the right thing. Father Clay had to be stopped. Parishioners looked up to Father Clay, liked him, admired him, trusted him. How ironic that his downfall came out of a conversation in which Rachel and I gushed about what a wonderful priest he is.

Rachel, God bless her, still wants to become a Catholic. I am searching for a new parish for my family, though my wife and I are left wondering if we'll ever be able to trust the church with the safety of our two young boys.

I am left with two lessons: First, the church's child-protection rules are only as reliable as those people whose job it is to enforce them. Catholic parents cannot have faith in bureaucratic procedures.

Second, I have more empathy with those I have denounced. I have never been able to understand why bishops and parents of abused kids would try to handle things quietly. Well, I get it now. The only reason I anguished over any of this was not for the sake of Father Clay, but for trouble publicly exposing his deception would cause innocent people.

In the end, though, kids have to be shielded, and the church has to be liberated from this curse of secrets, lies and clerical privilege. I did what I had to do, and am not sorry for it.

[Mrs. Don-o]

You're right: Ft. Worth, not Dallas. My error.

[Andrew Byler]

Saw this elsewhere, and thought it apropos ...

http://mliccione.blogspot.com/2006/10/doxing-of-rod-dreher.html

---

OK, I think I've calmed down a bit about this. Initially, I confess, I was less grieved than fighting mad. Not because Dreher Doxed--did anyone really think he wouldn't? No, I was angry at the graceless way he announced it--sliming the Church and his fellow Catholics as he made his very public exit. (And oy, what a bunch of airy-fairy reasons he gave for his decision.)

In his book, I'm told, he refers to his fellow Catholics as "ignoramuses," as flawed, drossy souls who are spiritually and morally inferior to His August Crunchiness ("...we see things more clearly"--gag!). In his parting shots on his blog, he asserted that the Catholic Church is so hopelessly bad that faithful Catholics are barely tolerating it with "white knuckles." As one Silicon Valley Steve pointed out, this is "slanderous bile." It is an insult to the 200,000 people who enter the U.S. Catholic Church every year (is someone sticking a gun up their backs? Are they entering against their wills, with white knuckles? Gimme a break). It is also an insult to the countless Catholics I know--whom we all know--who remain joyfully, happily Catholic, actively involved in their parishes, spiritually fed at the Eucharistic Table, and completely content to remain where they are, with no thought of going elsewhere. Indeed, given the fact that the Catholic Church is growing by leaps and bounds while his newly chosen communion remains relatively tiny (a fact that apparently appeals to his crunchy Small-Is-Beautiful sensibility--so much for that mustard seed, eh?), well, it might be safe to conclude that the "white knuckles" are elsewhere, not within the RCC. (Sorry that sentence is so mangled.)

Mark Shea pinpoints the problem as relgious consumerism, but I think there's more to it than that. I think it's part and parcel of the whole Crunchy Thing: snobbery, elitism, disdain for the Great Unwashed. This snobbishness simply drips from Mr. Dreher's sweepingly unfair characterizations of Catholic parishes ("Our Lady of Pizza Hut") and of Catholics themselves (ignoramuses, spiritually dead, white-knucklers).

This is what got me so angry when I first read Dreher's announcement--the sheer snottiness of it all. And especially the way that snottiness was manifested--in open contempt for Catholics and Catholicism. His whole shtick smacked of, "Well, you folks can settle for that hoi polloi Catholicism, of course, but we holders of the Secret Gnosis are too good for that sort of thing." To paraphrase Elizabeth Bennett, I would not have minded his pride so much if he had not mortified mine.

In his most recent post on the subject, he has indicated that he cheerfully intends to go right on bashing the Catholic Church, because, after all, he is an "opinion journalist." (Double-gag.) All I can hope is that his further forays into Catholic-bashing will be ignored and consigned to irrelevance. Just as Matthew Fox became irrelevant when he left the Catholic Church, so I hope that Mr. Dreher's sweeping characterizations of Catholic churches as pizza huts, of ordinary Catholics as "enablers" of sex abuse, and of the pope as Enabler-in-Chief will garner the non-attention they so richly deserve.

[Mrs. Don-o]

You must have seen stuff that I didn't see. I don't have my copy of Crunch Cons anymore (sold it via Amazon.com) but I don't remember him calling Catholics "ignoramuses" -- in fact he said quite laudatory things about Catholics. But my memory is vague, and if anybody could give quotes one way or the other I would appreciate it.

[sitetest]

Dear Andrew Byler,

Thanks for the ping... any particular reason why you pinged me?

Not that I object, just curious.

Thanks,


sitetest

[sitetest]

Dear Mrs. Don-o

Here is some of that which Andrew Byyer speaks:

"What I didn't understand, nor anticipate, was how difficult it would be to find an orthodox parish here. We have lots of faithful Catholic friends here, and I don't think it's unfair to say that most of them are doing what most (but not all) orthodox Catholics in this country do: grit their teeth and white-knuckle it out in their parishes, doing what they can to hang on."

Perhaps I'm not an orthodox Catholic, or perhaps I'm just not part of the majority of orthodox Catholics, but I'm not sure that I grit my teeth and "white-knuckle it out."

I think much of the criticism directed toward Mr. Dreher is appropriate, fair, and true.


sitetest