Posted on 10/13/2006 4:59:56 PM PDT by NYer
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.
I agree with you, sitetest.
I had to check the whole thread to see whether I'd offered any comments other than "Bless his heart," and "Neil Cavuto's a good broadcaster," but it looks like most of my discussion has been on other threads.
However, I'll say the same here: I think the rumpus is not about the Orthodox Church, but about Mr. Dreher and the attitude toward others that is conveyed in his writing. It seems that many readers, myself included, really find authorial persona very, very unlikeable. (Usual disclaimer, may be a wonderful guy in Real Life, don't know him personally, etc., etc.)
After reading his Opus, I truly felt pity for him. Obviously he and his family were experiencing dreadful unhappiness, and I am sorry for them, although I don't share their feelings in any way. I hope they will find peace.
Cheers, y'all,
Tax-chick
That was "his authorial persona." I went and took the capitals out, and zapped the pronoun, too.
Let's pray for this new-father and always-brother. And I'm gonna see if I can get me one of them "contexts" for myself :o)
Context is a wonderful thing. In the Big Picture, it's probably better to have a Roseate Context than to be an unbiased reviewer of journalistic output.
And it's good to be reminded that there's a real person behind the words.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Ii is comforting that you do not consider SSPX to be in schism :)
Willful formal heretics are not "brothers", no matter how nice a person they might be. Formal heretics are not members of the Church in anyway. And since they are against us by their formal opposition to the Holy Faith, they cannot be with us either. Mark 9.39.
By all means pray, but don't lose sight of the seriousness of what Rod has done.
At least some Calvinists on this board are fair enough to Catholics not to engage in egregious misrepresentations by pretending that Catholics don't consider Christ to be the head of the church.
Some evidently are not.
Who is the head of the church on Earth with final authority while in the seat of Peter?
Christ? or the Pope?
The Orthodox don't put all that power in one guy. They have councils.
I think it's an error to take Mr. Dreher's fit of hysteria (or bout of depression, depending on how one looks at it) too seriously. What a person does when he's in a disturbed condition is not my idea of "formal heresy."
It's rather as if my son fell head-over-heels for a Pentecostal girl and started attending the Assembly of God. I'd be disappointed, and hope it didn't turn out dreadfully, but it's not exactly a deeply reasoned theological decision.
And I like having a large family, even including people who wouldn't include me :-).
Dear Andrew Byler,
When I was in college, an old priest told me that it can be difficult to be a formal heretic. Material heretic? Piece o' cake. Probably most of us misapprehend some part of Catholic teaching sufficiently to qualify. For me, every day is a process to be more conformed to the Gospel as taught by Christ's Church. But formal heretic? Not quite as easy.
Like Tax-chick, I'm not anxious to apply that label to Mr. Dreher. I'm not sure he has all his beans about him in this thing. His apologia for leaving the Church seemed shallow and confused. I know he says he's agonized about all this, but I wonder whether Mr. Dreher's fears and other emotions have clouded his judgment.
Then again, maybe he IS a formal heretic.
However, that determination I'll leave to folks above my own paygrade.
"By all means pray, but don't lose sight of the seriousness of what Rod has done."
With this, I agree entirely. Whether or not Mr. Dreher is truly a heretic, he has done a thing that isn't good.
sitetest
There are types and degrees of brotherhood; there are different senses in which a man can be a brother.
Anyone who wilfully departs from the Catholic Church is in grave error and grave danger. For this reason, our attitude, I think, should be one of endeavoring to win him back into full communion with the successor of Peter and with all Catholics.
What good does it do any sinner if, when he's still in the "far country," the prodigal's father makes a point of publishing that, "He's not my son," or if the Good Shepherd insists, "He's not my sheep," or if you make a point of saying, "He's not my brother"?
I don't think you'd do that to a natural brother, a blood brother who was estranged, in danger and in error. You'd emphasize the bonds you still have. You'd try to get him back.
Good post.
Excellent.
Christ? or the Pope?
???? Why would Christ take a demotion to sit in the seat of Peter???
Look up the meaning of the word "vicar," why doncha.
"Seperated Brethren" is the term for those who were baptized into and raised in other Christian communities. This is not a term for Catholics who publicly deny an article of the faith (the Papacy in this case) and make a public spectacle of the break with the Church over what are frankly BS reasons.
Rod has left the communion of the Catholic Church and is publicly denying the historical basis of the dogmas of the Papacy. A Catholic who denies one article of the faith does not have any divine faith at all - just an overinflated opinion of his own making. And in denying the faith, one is no longer a Catholic.
What good does it do any sinner if, when he's still in the "far country," the prodigal's father makes a point of publishing that, "He's not my son," or if the Good Shepherd insists, "He's not my sheep," or if you make a point of saying, "He's not my brother"?
No one is saying that. Rather Rod is publicly inveighing against the Catholic faith, clergy, and faithful. If Rod were coming back on his knees begging for mercy, and we were to kick him in the face and say "begone with you heretic!" that would be comparable to the treatment of the Prodigal by his brother. Additionally, the issue with the Prodigal was loose living, not denial of the faith and fighting against the Jewish people and Priesthood. Rod's doing nothing of the sort in either begging forgiveness or cavorting in public personal sin, so lets not confuse the issue. He is attacking the Church and the Pope, the heirarchy, and his former co-religionists.
Quite the contrary: he hasn't been seething, he's been bleeding.
OK, he shouldn't have abandoned his post; his story so far is not the perfect fortitude of the saints. But scroll about a third of the way down this Beliefnet blog until you get to October 24, "Belief in the Ruins."
I'm afraid for him and his little family; I can see him getting disillusioned when he runs into scandals in Orthodoxy (they're there aplenty), and then declining into (at best) some kind of quietist pietism, or, worst case, post-everything alcohol funk.
(Not that I know of him drinking; it's just I've seen that happen to some, when their hope seeps away.)
My brother, and yours too. Please pray hard.
Poor Mr. Dreher seems to be serving as a Rorshach blot for the public. (By his own choice, of course.)
One person's "heretic" is another person's "overwrought guy who needs a long vacation, followed by a new career as a landscape architect."
Aren't we all projecting? :-).
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