Beliefnet Rod Dreher October 12, 2006
Orthodoxy and me
I apologize for this very long post, but it’s time to clear something up: yes, I am now a communicant of the Orthodox Church, and have been (along with my family) for a couple of months.
I did not intend to make this public until the end of this month, to honor a personal and professional obligation that, the violation of which stood to hurt some innocent people. This is why I’ve taken care since the day I entered Orthodoxy not to claim I am Catholic in writings here, and not to rise to the bait of certain people in the comboxes who have demanded that I declare myself. Though I’ve wanted to get this out there, and not to deceive readers, I had an obligation to keep this to myself until month’s end, for an important reason I can’t really discuss. But now I am forced to reveal all early. Why? Because a certain malicious reader, a perfect stranger and petty little Catholic Prufrock named Jonathan Carpenter, who is unhealthily preoccupied with me nearly to the point of cyberstalking, troubled himself to write a letter to a priest at my parish asking about my ecclesial affiliation — and when he received his answer, undertook to publicize it.
So, here we are. I apologize to readers who feel deceived or betrayed.
That was not my intent; my intent was to honor a prior obligation, whose terms were soon to end anyway. I only now have to give you the long explanation two weeks early. What follows will be lengthy, but it will be all I intend to say about this matter. I know that the comboxes will be filled with discussion, much of it spiteful and vitriolic, and that there’s nothing I can do about that, except refuse to join it. But here is how I ended up where I am today.
. . . more
Well, after reading this long and personal story I have to say none of it is surprising (i.e. it’s not an atypical “journey home” story). His affection for Archbishop Dimitri is obvious. I wonder if he knows that Dimitri has “silenced” his clergy from even talking about the scandal (I am in his diocese)? I have no doubt that Dimitri and men like him (i.e. most other OCA bishops) suffer the same sort of corruption that the bishops of the Catholic church suffer – it’s just that our scandal is of an order below child abuse and it’s cover up. Mr. Dreher will eventually encounter the same level of human falleness in the Orthodox Church has he did in the Catholic. While he intellectually assents to this, I wonder if he is prepared?
No he is not prepared. He will fall out of love, while St Sepharim is a beautiful church in Dallas (been once.) The GOA right down the street is not a very nice place. And you might want to hold your horses on the Orthodox church not covering up sex abuse.
Being in any church will from time to time be a grind, anything worth having is work. The sad thing is if he truly wanted to be an icon for Christ than he should have stayed in the Catholic church so that other Catholics could have benefitted from him and help to reform the American Catholic Church.
There is simply no comparison between the sex scandals in the CC and anything going on in the OC. Even a cursory look at the former reveals a depth of pure evil that is just staggering.
Before becoming Orthodox I did study the muckraking websites that are devoted to trying to stir up scandal in the Orthodox Church. Even if you believe the absolute worst of everything those sites try to insinuate there is nothing that can compare to what as gone in many single dioceses of the CC.
Sin is still sin, and don’t hang your hat on the OC not sheltering pedophile’s. The OC has just not been investigated like the CC and if I remember right, their where a few Greek bishops that where in very compromising situations year or so back.
As Touchstone pointed out a few years back, the argument is not as to whether their are sexually dysfunctional clergy (“gay”, pedophile, etc.) in the CC, but as to what percentage. The range is something like 20-50%! (i.e. even those on the minimizing side admit 20%). I know OC also has similar folks, but a married clergy would naturally get these numbers down significantly. The shear numbers of such people is the CC is staggering. Fact is, the CC has seen the clergy as a shelter for these folks for years (some say going back to the very beginning of the non-married clergy). What strikes me about the financial scandal is the amazing ineptness of the bishops. I am not sure how it is possible to assemble a group of men who could have reacted in so many wrong ways. My point is, that if OC bishops were handed a situation like the CC has with it’s clergy, the outcome would have been no different…
Jason S wrote,
My wife was born and raised in Poland. We married in 1995 in Poland where I was a professor, and then moved to the States. After a few years of struggling to keep quiet, she finally rebelled on me and demanded that we stop attending the Protestant Church I had grown up in.
To keep peace in the home, I agreed to look at Catholicism. We attended Mass, and after 10 minutes my wife was fuming. First of all, the Sunday morning mass was barely recognizable as a mass. The priest was barely vested, the people were all casually dressed, and the music featured electric guitars.
She sat through a lot of it in sullen silence, but then finally came visibly unglued when female Eucharistic ministers came forward to distribute the host. I thought she was going to attack someone. She kept asking me, in Polish, “Does the Pope know about THIS! Who are these people?”
I kept assuring, in Polish, “Honey, this is a Roman Catholic Church.”
And she kept saying, “No it isn’t! I’m Catholic. I don’t know what these people are?”
We ended up Orthodox, and from my wife’s standpoint, the Orthodox Church is the closest she can get to the Polish Roman Catholic Church of her youth.
And that, Jason, is my point. I think Rod Dreher could have gotten over the corruption among the Bishops and clergy. Many clerics have fallen into error over the course of history, just as many kings/presidents/Congressman and the like have as well. Heck, common people don’t do so well either.
I think what broke Rod’s back was the total package. The liturgical degradation coupled with the corruption and the complete loss of Catholic teaching in so many parishes simply combined to destroy him. I would have been in the same position, had I joined Rome. My wife and I would have been the scary traditionalists that all the progressives tolerated but never liked.
In the Orthodox Church, traditionalists blend in to the furniture. We are completely unexceptional. The power and majesty of the liturgy with the sacraments provide strength to us.
There will always be more bishops and priests than saints. I don’t think Rod Dreher has any illusions about that. In fact, he said as much, or didn’t you read that far? The fact is that we are not talking merely about corruption of the clergy in the RC, we are talking about outright apostasy in addition to multiple heresies. The overall package was just too much for him, as it was for my wife and for me also. Telling someone to stay where their life and soul are being damaged is just plain nuts.
Also, how do you propose that a layman could reform the RC? And, where do you find in Christian history such a ‘reform’ movement?
Traditionally, if you can’t abide the direction of the Church, then you cut off communion. That has resulted in schisms before, but that is the honest approach. If you can’t abide the teachings of your church, then cutting off communion is the proper response. This isn’t a political entity that you can elect representatives to ‘reform.’ This is a hierarchical church and the proper way to respond to this situation was exactly what Rod Dreher did.
Rather than stay and make himself miserable, he cut himself off from them and united Himself to the one true, Apostolic Church.
Good for him.
So I assume for whatever reason Glen if you move back to Poland she will return to the Catholic Church, since obivously it would be the Catholic Church of her youth and what she would know?
Jason –
There is less than a snowball’s chance in Hades that we would stay Orthodox living in Poland. I’ll put that on the table right here, right now. In Poznan, for example, there is one Orthodox Church in a city of 1 million people. Poznan is close to Berlin, and is my wife’s hometown and the only city we would be likely to live in. We visited the church once on vacation. It does 100% of its services in Slavonic. It has a very small congregation, most of whom were displaced from the East.
I can remember how disappointed Justyna and I both were when we visited and instead of hearing a liturgy in Polish, we got 10 Century Church Slavonic, most of which we could only faintly understand. We had our son then, and he was the only child in the place. In fact, the parish actually had no children. No Sunday school. No youth group. It was hanging on waiting to die, basically, as the elderly, who grew up in Eastern Poland and were sent West after the border area shifted, age and die off while their children become Roman Catholic.
Sad, really.
The church in Poland is still very traditional, and I doubt very much that we could find enough reason to hang on and be in the Orthodox Church under the kinds of conditions I just described. If we were farther East, then it would be a different story, perhaps, where the Orthodox Church while still stuck with Slavonic is much more alive.
If we lived in Russia, of course, then it would be the opposite. We would never go looking for the RC in an Orthodox nation.
Does that clear anything up for you?
The traditional Catholic mass may not be my ideal, I prefer the Divine Liturgy, but the traditional RC in Poland is livable for a conservative.
Some years back we went from Orthodoxy to Rome (to the sadness of many). The reasons are personal and of no concern here.
But I have appreciated the clear-headedness and calm charity of your site. I visit often.
Thank you.
While I have dear convert friends (and rejoice in my heart, and they are a great spiritual help to me), I surely hope and pray that people understand they should only convert to Orthodoxy if they view it as such: ORTHODOX.
Meaning anything else is not Orthodox, but “wrong-o-dox” known also as heretical.A very hard, even shocking concept to understand for anyone infused by the consumer and pc culture of our country.
Do not convert because we are more “conservative” or just as valid in their view as traditionalist Catholics.
Convert because the Orthodox Church is the one Church Christ formed and the only one.
If you don’t believe this, you are burdening yourself greatly when receiving the Holy Gifts! It would be better for you on that Day not to have defiled the Mysteries.
With FAITH and LOVE draw near. (Or DON’T, it’s better for you!)
Dia,
While I agree with you, not everyone does. Take Bishop Kallistos Ware, whose recent editions of the “Orthodox Church” presents the view that other churches (particularly the Roman church) can be though of as merely schismatic. We have many anecdotal reports from those who know him that he takes this view personally. I would say the institutional elite (i.e. seminary professionals, ecumenical participants, etc.) in American Orthodoxy generally finds your view a bit unnuanced and parochial…
Christopher, exactly why I take everything coming out of Orthodox academia especially the English academia with skepticism.
While I respect Bp Kalllistos’ personal piety and his devotion to the Church, that does not always translate into the ability or the will to rigorously champion the fullness of the truth.
Traditionally, lay people have been the bulwark of the Church in many cases.
Here is my take on it which differs slightly from Dia’s: The Orthodox Church is the Holy receptacle of the fullness of the Truth. To the extent that other Christian traditions hold to the truth, they share in that truth and so have a partial connection to the Church by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Where there is active heresy, we have the responsibility to point it out as such in humility and love.
Those that want to be received by the Church always come with mixed motives, to expect purity of intention is to expect too much. What is more important is that they come with a heart and mind open to the fullness of the truth and a willingness to be formed by the Spirit within the Church. They must desire to know God, desire to worship God in spirit and in truth and to live a life of repentance within the Church. God can take care of the rest.
The only part of Mr. Dreher’s article with which I take strenous issue is his stated belief that there was no reason why the RCC could not have the same community around their bishops as he experienced with Bp Dimitri. I believe such a community to be a spiritual and practical impossiblity within the RCC because of the instituion of the Papacy as it is conceived in the RCC. The institution of the Papacy denies the fundamental teaching of the Fathers that where the Bishop is there is the Church.i.e. the Sacramental authority of each bishop forms hubs around which the faithful can gather to experience Christ and salvation, but Christ is always at the center, not the Bishop. The insitution of the Papacy consciously and willfully destroys the oportunity for such community to exist.
Despite Bp Kallistos opinions to the contrary, I believe the 1848 Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs on the subject of the Papacy remains the most complete, authoritative statement of our belief. It quite clearly says that the institution of the Papacy as it then existed was heretical in nature and that was before Papal Infallibility was promulgated. http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/encyc_1848.aspx
Since I see nothing in the RCC that has improved since 1848 and much that has worsened, I see no reason for me to be so presumptious as to disagree with the signers of the document.
Christopher, you especially might be interested in this: http://midwestdiocese.org/
Bishop Job seems to be a light in the OCA.
Dear Christopher,
thank you for your comment. It gives me the opportunity to make my point a little more clear.
To be schismatic, as in to tear yourself appart and away from THE Church obviously means to put yourself outside of THE Church.
That is one step. You may remain there and just be outside the Church.
Then taking a step further to claim that you are THE Church and act like you are is when you start becoming heretical.
In the process you invent new procedures, dogmas, beliefs and make claims that are not true which makes you even more heretical and distances even more from the Truth (Christ).
I am also inclined to believe that the simple Christian folk of the Western Roman empire had no clue of what was happening and in a few generations just became Catholic instead of the Christians they were.
“Merely schismatic” though is a strange statement. Schismatic is a pretty bad situation no Christ minded person would want to find themselves in.
The Catholic Church holds that the local church (diocese), where the body and blood is partaken of, is and represents the church as instituted by Christ. The Pope is the center of unity, The Pope is not a fourth order in the heirarchy of the Church or some kind of king and the bishops are barons. The Pope can still be considered a heretic and thrown out of the Catholic Church and must abide by all ecumenical councils and the will of the church past and present. Any teaching of the Pope he considers infalliable must meet three standards, it must be a teaching that has been held at all times by the church and must be held by all dioceses of the church and it must be the product of the Holy Spirit.
Just writing this in case you do not understand the role of the Pope.
To show you the limits of Papal power, he may not visit another diocese of the Catholic Church unless invited. He cannot change doctrine (ie the Holy Trinity, he cannot make it the holy duality). He can not interfere in the life of a local diocese if it is orthodox in teaching and action. Their are many other limits but it seem some of you on these blogs have an inflated view of the Pope.
Jason S, I am unable to reconcile your claims about the powers of the Pope with Pastor Aeternus, which is official church dogma. Here are excerpts.
You say “he may not visit another diocese of the Catholic Church unless invited…. He can not interfere in the life of a local diocese if it is orthodox in teaching and action.” But the Catholic Church teaches:
You say “Any teaching of the Pope he considers infallible must meet three standards, it must be a teaching that has been held at all times by the church and must be held by all dioceses of the church and it must be the product of the Holy Spirit.” But the Catholic Church teaches:
I submit that you are mistaken about the powers of the papacy; they are far, far greater than you say. And in fact, your views are heretical according to the Catholic Church. If I am mistaken, I would welcome correction from authoritative sources.
Only through divine assistance (ie the Holy Spirit) and something that is been held by the whole church, past and present, may the Pope make infalliable statement. So if he said the ‘holy duality’ is a doctrine held by the whole church past and present, he would be a liar and a heretic.
Now the logical is circular but, the Pope cannot invent a doctrine and claim it was held for all time and everywhere. Many of you will go yeah right who would try to kick out the Pope. But before Vatican II their was serious discussion among the cardinals to declare the Good Pope John XXIII a heretic for calling V2.
As far as your first point let me do more research on that to give a correct answer, I based the comment based on tradition, no Pope has preached or taught in another diocese unless invited. And no Pope has ‘fired’ another bishop. May have excommunicated him, but because the bishop was heretical.
Jason S, no that won’t wash. Consider the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. It was promulgated with alleged infallibility by the pope, but no serious student of the issue claims it had been held by the whole church past and present. (Neither was it a complete novelty, of course.)
Of course a Catholic is bound to hold as an article of faith that the pope will never issue an infallible declaration that is contrary to the received deposit of the faith. But it is clear from the language of Vatican I that the pope may make infallibly promulgate dogmas previously unknown to all or part of the church, and in fact popes have done so.
No that I disagree with the Pope may not make a proclamation that contradicts any ‘o’rthodox teaching of the church. And it states as such he can not make a proclamation that is not held by the whole church.
As far as the IC teaching that was in some way shape or form something that the church past and present would agree with and hold. The sinless nature of Mary would never have been in question or to state another way her complete receptivity to God was never impaired like every other human being is at birth.
The Pope has made only one infalliable stmt, that being the IC teaching. Techincally the Pope being infalliable is not an infalliable stmt. The words declare and define must be in the teaching for it to be infalliable.
Now if you can convince me otherwise I am at the nearest Orthodox Church converting.
Jason S,
I think you’ve pretty well established that you are not an expert on this subject and you are in no position to lecture the Orthodox or anyone else on the papacy. So I’ll drop the discussion now.
For you, or anyone else still following this thread, I will just note that the Wikipedia entry on papal infallibility is pretty good as a starting point for learning about the subject.
Wow your a bit of an internet bully. You want to assume, and it is partially true, that a catholic cannot think outside the box that is the Pope. In fact it seems if it does not fit inside your preconceived notions then you dismiss it out of hand. The fact that you cannot accept the Pope having limits is troublesome. Do you like having the Catholic straw man to beat up on instead of the real thing?
The FACT is their has only been one infalliable stmt made.
“But it is clear from the language of Vatican I that the pope may make infallibly promulgate dogmas previously unknown to all or part of the church, and in fact popes have done so.”
It is clear from the language of Vatican I that the pope may not make a infalliable stmt that runs contrary to tradition. And since their has been only one DECLARED and DEFINED Dogma then how can more than one pope have made infalliable stmts like you just stated.
Sounds like I know a little bit more about the Pope than you.
It is also not an articule of faith that the Pope will not contradict Tradition, but and article of LOGIC. He can not do it or he is a heretic or bad student of history.
Also if you want to know about the Pope, go to his website, not to wikipedia.com.
I am not an expert, in fact I am just trying to learn. While most bloggers here have been cordial and informative, you have been the first I have seen that has been mean spirited. I have a lot to learn about Church politics and the way things work and instead of you using this as teaching experience for me you have decided to denigrate me.
And I guess that is why their will never be a healing of the great schism, People.
Jason S,
I understand your position, and have heard it all before. It is indeed “Pope” 101. Now, you do realize you are posting on a site called “Orthodoxy Today”? We have a different take on the Pope, and per our tradition, find the whole reasoning heretical. My question to you, is why would you want to have a discussion like this here? What is the point, and what good could come from it? We hold to the Orthodox position (call it “Orthodoxy 101”). Perhaps you should discuss things that we are more likely to have fruitful relations about. I would not wonder onto I site called “Roman Catholicism Today” and ask them to agree with me that the Papal claims heretical (which they are) – what would be the point?
If I only argued with people that agreed with me, what would I learn? I would learn the positive arguments for a certain point of view but I would not know its weakness.
Sorry for butting into ya’lls blog.
Jason,
I understand what you are saying, but sometimes a “debate” is not the best way to learn. Even when it is, one at least has to “prepare” for the debate. For example, you can find all sorts of information on the Orthodox view on the Papacy and Papal claims on the internet and in books. Bishop Ware’s “The Orthodox Church” or even better Clark’s “The Faith” are excellent starting points. The OCA and the Greek Archdiocese maintains excellent web sites which have good explication of Orthodox ecclesiology, and how it compares to Roman ecclesiology. Matthias was not trying to be “mean spirited”, it’s just that he has been down this road before and your coming into the play during the third act wanting a recap. The rest of the audience had moved on…
Guys, the best way to understand infallibility is to look at the context in which it developed. As Europe grew increasingly liberal (Enlightenment, not Classical, liberal), the Christian cultural authority was increasingly challenged. To counter the cultural drift, Protestantism came up with the infallibility of scripture, Roman Catholicism the infallibility of the Pope.
Both of course reference the source of authority in their respective traditions. Keep in mind that Papal infallibility was not promulgated as doctrine until 1869 (Vatican I). Catholic theology of course grounds the doctrine in earlier teachings. The notion of the infallibility of scripture arises in Protestant apologetics around the same time. (Don’t confuse the infallibility of scripture with sola-scriptura.)
From the Protestant direction the problem with infallibility is simply this: what criteria determines whether or not an official interpretation is indeed infallible? It’s fine to say that the scriptures are “infallible” but this has no real meaning since any explication of scripture is necessarily interpretive (an infallible scripture does not make an infallible interpreter). You could assert of course that the scriptures are “true” (and be right in asserting it), but truth and infallibility are two different things.
From the Roman Catholic direction, infallibility works with a strict reading of the Pope as the Vicar of Christ on earth but the modification that infallibility has to conform to the magisterial consensus renders the concept virtually meaningless. Further, with the concession by Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict that the entire concept of Papal Supremacy needs redefinition (from a jurisdictional to pastoral supremacy), the concept is rendered moot or, as Roman Catholicism tends to do with troublesome pronouncements, redefined into a non-functionality.
Greetings to all,
I happened to read the following for my personal edification but thought it fits well with comments #10-14 above.
http://www.philokalia.org/
(an excerpt):
Without Truth there is no Love, because both Truth and Love proceed from God. Many people today are searching for love without Christ, for truth without Christ; in other words they have isolated these two uncreated energies of God from their Source. The result is an anthropocentric love: the attempt to promote love among all people regardless of faith, dogma, regardless of religious background. This is a trap, so in our need to avoid conflicts between people of different religions we begin dialogues of love patronizing other faiths compel to show our respect for other peoples’ faiths, as some of our Church leaders want to teach us. So very suddenly we find ourselves in the super-heresy of ecumenism, one of the greatest plagues of our Church.
In Christ,
Dia