Posted on 10/13/2006 4:59:56 PM PDT by NYer
I don't understand your point. How does the martyrdom of a Syrian Orthodox priest make Rod Dreher's decision to become Orthodox wrong, faux, inauthentic?
It seems to me that Dreher is trying to ground himself and his family deeply in Christ. He was a good Catholic; I think he'll be a good Orthodox.
Let's refrain from flip put-downs of a brother who has struggled and suffered much for the truth.
I am personally pretty sick and tired of organized "religion" all the way around. Christ said to "come unto Him". So, I have finally settled down and "come unto Him" as He commanded, the best I know how. I have bounced from Big Church Baptist, to Non-Denominational, Unstable, Name It & Claim It & Get Rich Quick With Jesus, to American Orthodox (that quickly became more and more Greek every time the bishop came to visit from headquarters), then to Small Church Baptist where the preacher and his wife seemed to be frustrated control freaks who made my life a misery (my husband was a deacon, and it's a long story), and now to a very small country church in my community loosely connected to "headquarters" of any kind. I didn't make a final move to a truly non-headquarters type church, mainly because I'm just tired of looking, but if the tentacles of the organization get too strangulating where I am; I'll go where I can have peace; because after all, it is the Gospel of Peace, Not the Gospel of Strife.
God bless Rod, his bride, his sons, and most especially, his new daughter (born today!).
The bashing makes for an extremely poor witness to the hope that is within us.
Thanks be to God for all his blessings. Amen.
Several commentators on the Crunchy Conservative blog said that was simply not the case. A quick Google search confirms what they said.
I would look at what drove them away and whether they will attend church and participate in the life of The Church or not. If crossing over means that they will spiritually come back to life, I would be happy. Indifference would be concern if they left The Church for some Protestant sect.
As it is, in the Orthodox Church, their souls will continue to receive sacraments and the Eucharist, make signs of the cross, worship the Holy Trinity, atted a 1600 year-old litugry that even Latin used to serve at one time, commmorate the dead, fast nearly six months of the year, baptize their infants, magnify and venerate the Ever-Virgin Mother of God, and other Saints, and live a life based on the Holy Tradition.
What exactly have they lost that should be of concern?
So why don't you talk to the parish priest and organize a coffee and donuts after Mass? Do you volunteer at the parish? I've found that's one of the quickest ways to meet everyone! =)
There is a lady at work who was the daughter of a Southern Baptist minister. In her early twenties she joined the Catholic Church and was a nun for ten or so years. After that she joined the Greek Orthodox Church. She's remarkably hostile to the RCC and Evangelical Protestant in many ways. But hey she's ancestrally Greek.
SSPX is still in schism.
The feeling I got reading this is, Here's someone who has unconditionally surrendered in the cultural wars. Full-on liberalism isn't far away.
Really! My google search turned up one Byzantine Church in Irving TX. What did you find?
"In her early twenties she joined the Catholic Church and was a nun for ten or so years. After that she joined the Greek Orthodox Church. She's remarkably hostile to the RCC and Evangelical Protestant in many ways. But hey she's ancestrally Greek."
I suspect that her hostility has more to do with 10 years as a nun more than anything else. On the other hand, there used to be a deep seated anti-Roman Catholicism in Greece. Its pretty much gone now, but it was a one time quite prevalent.
" Rod says here:
I kept thinking about the older Catholics I know who are faithful, but whose children have been lost to the faith. Maybe it would have happened anyway, but knowing them as I do, I think it's not an unreasonable thing to fear the effect of having no real parish support for orthodox Catholicism on raising Catholic children. As my kids have gotten older, I have been deeply impressed by the importance of community in supporting and reinforcing what parents teach. Most of my Catholic friends with kids are doing the best they can in a bad situation."
My oldest, 26 years old, tells me that he is the only one among his gang of friends (except for one special young Orthodox lady) who goes to Liturgy every week, or ever for that matter. All of his friends save two are born Roman Catholics. One of my best friends, a man I eat breakfast with every morning, is a very faithful Roman who attends daily mass. Not one of his three kids were married in the Roman Catholic Church or attend mass. Its tragic. In the meantime, fundy Protestant assemblies have sprung up around here like mushrooms...all filled with former Catholics. Clearly, at least around here, there is something very wrong. As I said earlier, it has been my experience that very few Roman Catholics become Orthodox (possibly for the reverse of the very reasons Kosta points out about why becoming Orthodox is no great change for them) while we have a steady stream of Episcopalians and evangelical Protestants. Personally, I find it hard to believe that Roman Catholics as a group leave that particular church over matters of deep theology. From what I have seen, the theological formation of most Catholics is limited at best and among those who are theologically educated, I should think that they would end up Orthodox, not in a Protestant ecclesial assembly. So why do they leave the Roman Church and drift into heterodoxy? The only thing I can think of is a perception of a lack of community in large Roman parishes. Just yesterday I had lunch with a monseignor, among others, who has a "small" parish of 1000 families! Absent a strong ethnic tie among those people and taking into consideration the top down management style traditional in the Latin Church, how do you create a sense of community in a group like that? Are there times when the whole parish gets together to work on the church building, or run the fundraisers or suppers? Do days come when parish council members or "selected" parishioners have to write personal checks to stave off a cut off of the water or the lights? If the diocese always picks up the tab, if people think their only obligation is a few bucks in the basket on Sundays and "Father and the diocese will take care of everything", then people won't care about each other and the children won't grow up surrounded by their "uncles and aunts" at church watching out for them. Another dear friend, a Latin rite priest for 40 years, once told me that when a parish hits 400 people, its time to open a new one...but at least up here there aren't enough priests.
The one thing that the Orthodox know that the Latin Catholics seem to forget is that Catholics don't want a mass that looks like the Fundy church up the street.
Get back to the traditions and the churches fill.
We have a very Historically Catholic parish, We are breaking out the back of our hall on Monday to begin building a new church. We need to seat the families that have joined. That amount has tripled in the last three years.
If you give them a Catholic Holy Mass, all the smells and bells. May Crownings, devotions, a sprinkling of Latin, they will come.
And our parish has an average age of 30. We have at least four "family buses" in the parking lot (6 kids and over)
What he left was specifically the secular AmChurch.
However, were I in Rod's position, I don't think I'd have switched over from the Catholic to the Orthodox Church, for various reasons: (1) I think the papacy is both true, and a practical asset; (2) I couldn't go from a church that explicitly rejects divorce/remarriage and contraception, to one that doesn't; and (3) though nothing shakes my faith more than the amazing success of evil --- and Rod was exposed to toxic doses of corruption in way-high places when he was investigating the clerical exploitation of minors --- it just seems that there's noplace you can go to get away from the broken human condition.
For whatever set of intellectual and emotional reasons, Dreher couldn't pray in his parish anymore. He (and his wife) would come away troubled or angry or upset; and they didn't want to raise their kids that way.
So they found a place where they could pray.
If --- IF --- that's an accurate take on the situation, then I say to brother Rod, "Go pray with the Orthodox, and God bless you." A wise priest once said to me, "Pray as you can, not as you can't." I guess that goes for all the rest of us, too.
I'll be Catholic til the day I die; and then, relying on God's mercy, we Catholic and Orthodox will meet merrily together in heaven. And many others, too --- since God has a mighty, mighty will to save: Savior is His name.
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