I thought about going Orthodox a while ago, but then I saw all the young men turning Orthobro and heading thataway, so my fad alarm went off, and I . . . decided not to, as per my contrarian custom. So I remain an Eastern Catholic, although these days I congregate with old-school Anglicans—or, as I think of them, the Northern Catholic Rite. I guess I like being Rome-adjacent but not Roman. The Romans don't reliably share the wine, which bothers me a lot as a poetic matter.
Yep, if I were looking east right about now, I’d think the same thing. Heck Sundays are getting weird and crazy, the temple is full of them… I’d probably end up in some fringe offshoot of the Eglise Celtique Orthodoxe or something. BTW I love “Northern Catholic Rite.” Currently reading a great book on theopoeisis by a lesbian Episcopal priest so there you go.
I think that's why I hang out in the Anglican universe these days -- it really does hinge around sharing the body and the blood.
"Northern Rite Catholic" hits a chord with me. When I abandoned my Orthodox catachumenate, it was not least because I felt I was being dishonest -- to say nothing of the inordinate beauty.
When I read anything from the great Anglican writers and poets, I think, "that's a tune I can rightly sing, too".
Being Eastern Catholic is the best. You get the Byzantine liturgical life and spirituality, but can still incorporate Western devotions and thoughts without worrying about your Church calling it heretical.
Definitely a great option. Unfortunately for me, I am divorced, and it would require me to acquiesce to a lie in order to be received — I would have to ask for an annulment of my first marriage, that is, to claim and to agree that it was not real. But it was real. It is not a thing that never was; it is a thing that was and is broken. So there, there is actually a hard boundary of canon and conscience that I cannot cross. For awhile I thought I might, for exactly the reason you describe. But in the end, it seemed to me that I was easier anyway in my heart to stand in the east and love the west, than vice versa. But no judgment from me. I love my eastern Catholic sisters and brothers. We are the same Church in the end. Two lungs.
You may appreciate this, a quote from George Fox, founding father of the Quakers
As I had forsaken the priests, so I left the separate preachers also, and those esteemed the most experienced people; for I saw there was none among them all that could speak to my condition. And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do, then, oh, then, I heard a voice which said, "There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition"; and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord let me see why there was none upon the earth that could speak to my condition, namely, that I might give Him all the glory; for all are 'concluded under sin, and shut up in unbelief' as I had been, that Jesus Christ might have the preeminence who enlightens, and gives grace, and faith, and power. Thus when God doth work, who shall let (i. e. prevent) it? And this I knew experimentally.
This reminds me a bit of Mormon founder Joseph Smith’s First Vision:
[The Father and the Son] told me that all religious denominations were believing in incorrect doctrines and that none of them was acknowledged of God as his church and kingdom.
Smith, of course, uses this as a reason to found his church, but look at it another way and we can see it, and Fox’s realization, as clearly true, as a realization or revelation that all of us have.
“All my hopes in [preachers] and in all men were gone,” no denomination is exclusively “acknowledged of God as his church and kingdom,” a redeemed heaven and redeemed earth linger out of our sight, and for the time being all we have to guide us is our own reason and our own consciences—ourselves alone with our God.
Or, as the greatest American prophet, erstwhile Hicksite Quaker Walt Whitman, chanted:
We understand then do we not?
What I promis’d without mentioning it, have you not accepted?
What the study could not teach—what the preaching could not accomplish is accomplish’d, is it not?
Thanks for this. I haven't had many second thoughts since entering the Orthodox Church 23 years ago, but I think it helped that my journey into Orthodoxy was slow (13 years before my chrismation). I also knew something of the messiness and diverse characters in the global Orthodox family, and the good and holy things God has given to non-Orthodox people. My late mom (baptized Orthodox and later as a Baptist, and married to a Lutheran pastor for 66 years) said it was only Christ who kept her in the church. Jesus Christ, the celebration of His Pascha with His Mother and all the Saints, and their recognition of His image in every human being, keep me in the Orthodox Church.
Wow, this is beautiful and expertly written. I have nothing else to add, you've said it better than I ever could. Thank you for your touching reflection and words.
Excellent essay. You’ve put your finger on why I and presumably others with “leanings to the mystic,” to perhaps a perennialist polytheistic pantheism (it would make so much more sense of the insoluble problem of suffering), stay in Christianity: Jesus. He’s captivating, somehow even across the millennia. He seems real and human and authoritative and a great mystery, so much solider and wiser than any church or Christian leader in his wake. And also more accepting. A rabbi to the marrow of his bones.
As for Orthodoxy, for whatever reason I have never felt a call to the East even as I have irritatingly agonized over whether to stay Catholic or go where I feel most comfortable, in Anglicanism. When I hear about oikonomia or the minimal amount of dogma, it all sounds wonderful, but when I hear about the fasting expected or how priests can excommunicate you for missing Divine Liturgies, let alone the Orthobros, I think this is not for me. More than that, it’s not my world: I love the Christian East, but I am for better or worse a Western Roman Christian in belief and, more importantly, practice.
Thank you much for this post. I will be returning and re-returning to it.
The one thing that didn't make it into this essay that was in my heart at the beginning is just, For better or worse, Orthodoxy is my home. I actually wrote something about how people shouldn't convert away from their home tradition if they have one. https://www.chansonetoiles.com/p/the-christ-who-is-already-there
Even though I'm a convert to Orthodoxy, it was so long ago, and my soul has grown like a bonsai trained against this structure, that I feel like I've become a cradle. This is just my home. Generally speaking I don't think people should leave their homes.
I’m not sure I have a faith home; though I was baptized and brought up in the RCC, religion was never a big deal for my family (or, rather, “being Catholic” was a huge cultural deal for the Italian side of my mom’s family; believing in Catholicism was irrelevant). My main spiritual teacher, my former-altar-boy grandfather, was much more an Emersonian transcendentalist (with leanings towards Hinduism) than an orthodox Christian.
On his deathbed, he refused to talk to a priest, though he chatted for a while with a rabbi who’d come to talk to his hospital roommate. When I mention this to RC priests, to a man they look at me quizzically; they don’t understand people like my grandfather at all.
But something about Catholicism would never take for me. The expectation of obedience, for one, despite Catholics’ telling me obedience is humility and the beginning of wisdom. As I child I was told simply to obey and not to ask questions; that rankled me then and rankles me now.
Yes it rankles me too! And I have decided pretty much to ignore it. It happens in Orthodoxy. If I were at a parish with a priest like that, I'd go somewhere else; our jurisdictional chaos is super helpful in this regard LOL. I happen to know too, and could hold my own with any priest in arguing it, that the conscience is primary -- not only MAY I obey it, I MUST obey it! Any priest with a heart has to understand how people get turned off of the institutional church, and if he can't say something different to find a way into their hearts, he needs to be a better priest IMHO.
Many priests lack hearts, I’ve noticed. They’re company men and have to defend the company against all claims of conscience or movements of the soul. Not all, of course, but many.
My last few priests didn’t get me at all. One said I sound like a Protestant already. One said my doubts mean I’m stubbornly refusing the unconditional offer of grace God is giving me and this won’t look good for me on Judgment Day. One said I have already excommunicated myself by believing in sola fide and I should look for another spiritual home.
And in the back of my mind there is always my first confessor who told me at 8 years old that I could go to hell for missing Sunday Mass.
"One said I have already excommunicated myself by believing in sola fide and I should look for another spiritual home." WT actual F. Hello -- calling shepherds. "Oh hell sounds like you've already made friends with the wolves [from his perspective], just go get eaten already and get tf out of my hair."
And... your first confessor... there are certain Gospel words for him about millstones and necks and seas, I believe. Lord, have mercy. It's a testimony to your heart's receptivity that you've remained a Christian.
I mean I say, generally I don't think people should move home, or get divorced for that matter, but there are real situations where it makes the most sense.
Of course, I can point to priests who weren’t like this; these guys are just fresh on my mind (plus that first confessor, who left me with the notion that I probably am going to hell).
There’s a priest who posts here with whom I’ve emailed several times and who has been a wealth of help and advice for me, and I am in his debt forever. Most of the Jesuits I knew in college were OK, though I don’t know what they’d be like if I brought my current disagreements with the RCC to them. I had one Paulist confessor a month or two ago who spent a long time with me, commiserating about bad priests.
But—the other type is more common. And even at their best, they’re subject to company policy: They can’t undo the teaching on mortal sins as cutting off grace entirely unless confessed to a priest or undone by perfect contrition, which to me is unbearable. (One priest said to me, “So what do you want from me? You want me to say something that goes against Church teaching? I’m not going to do that”).
“Get tf out of my hair” is the attitude I get fairly often. They don’t particularly care about, for example, people using birth control, I’ve come to realize; they just want people who won’t make a stink about the Church’s policy on birth control. If you do make a stink, they either guilt you or want you out. Or they use the weird tactic they’ve used on me: “*One day* the Church might change; for now keep your head down, keep praying, keep receiving the sacraments, keep loyal to Holy Mother Church. Whatever you do, be like Peter who repented, not like Judas who left. ‘Master, to whom shall we go?’”
As for remaining a Christian—at this point it’s mostly just Jesus who keeps me Christian, as I wrote above. All the churches seem corrupt, backbiting, corporate, schismatic, political, power-hungry, fallible up to the highest levels, including councils, popes, and consensuses of the Fathers. But Jesus is an interesting guy.
As for moving home… I mean, again, I don’t think I ever had a church home. I probably never will. But I’m looking for somewhere I can at least hang my hat.
I’m newly Orthodox and 1-year in, hopefully forever. Your content has helped me through rather challenging and provocative thoughts and experiences. I thank you for that. You have your own unique way of making me interiorly uncomfortable with my idealizations, and shaking them up a bit, and I like that.
There is a difference between serious intellectual, aesthetic deep consideration of the big picture and the reality where you actually live in and experience. Your essay brought these verses to mind
“I do not concern myself with great matters or things to wonderful for me. But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, put your hope in the Lord, both now and forevermore” Psalm 131
The joy of the Spirit is found in the immediate here and now. It’s okay to have joy. This shallow charismatic christian says, “Take a toke of the Holy Ghost!”
Do you read fiction, Loup? Because if you like fantasy, I think you'd get a real kick out of A.A. Attanasio's Arthuriad retelling (first book is The Dragon and the Unicorn). I have yet to find a work of literature that captures so well the peculiar feeling of Jesus arriving in an enchanted, glorious pagan world. The first time I read it, some twenty-odd years ago, I could actually feel my imagination growing a few sizes bigger.
I thought about going Orthodox a while ago, but then I saw all the young men turning Orthobro and heading thataway, so my fad alarm went off, and I . . . decided not to, as per my contrarian custom. So I remain an Eastern Catholic, although these days I congregate with old-school Anglicans—or, as I think of them, the Northern Catholic Rite. I guess I like being Rome-adjacent but not Roman. The Romans don't reliably share the wine, which bothers me a lot as a poetic matter.
Yep, if I were looking east right about now, I’d think the same thing. Heck Sundays are getting weird and crazy, the temple is full of them… I’d probably end up in some fringe offshoot of the Eglise Celtique Orthodoxe or something. BTW I love “Northern Catholic Rite.” Currently reading a great book on theopoeisis by a lesbian Episcopal priest so there you go.
I think that's why I hang out in the Anglican universe these days -- it really does hinge around sharing the body and the blood.
"Northern Rite Catholic" hits a chord with me. When I abandoned my Orthodox catachumenate, it was not least because I felt I was being dishonest -- to say nothing of the inordinate beauty.
When I read anything from the great Anglican writers and poets, I think, "that's a tune I can rightly sing, too".
Being Eastern Catholic is the best. You get the Byzantine liturgical life and spirituality, but can still incorporate Western devotions and thoughts without worrying about your Church calling it heretical.
Definitely a great option. Unfortunately for me, I am divorced, and it would require me to acquiesce to a lie in order to be received — I would have to ask for an annulment of my first marriage, that is, to claim and to agree that it was not real. But it was real. It is not a thing that never was; it is a thing that was and is broken. So there, there is actually a hard boundary of canon and conscience that I cannot cross. For awhile I thought I might, for exactly the reason you describe. But in the end, it seemed to me that I was easier anyway in my heart to stand in the east and love the west, than vice versa. But no judgment from me. I love my eastern Catholic sisters and brothers. We are the same Church in the end. Two lungs.
Unless you are remarried or are planning to remarry, you don't need an annulment. But I understand.
Remarried!
You may appreciate this, a quote from George Fox, founding father of the Quakers
As I had forsaken the priests, so I left the separate preachers also, and those esteemed the most experienced people; for I saw there was none among them all that could speak to my condition. And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do, then, oh, then, I heard a voice which said, "There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition"; and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord let me see why there was none upon the earth that could speak to my condition, namely, that I might give Him all the glory; for all are 'concluded under sin, and shut up in unbelief' as I had been, that Jesus Christ might have the preeminence who enlightens, and gives grace, and faith, and power. Thus when God doth work, who shall let (i. e. prevent) it? And this I knew experimentally.
I LOVE THIS PASSAGE. It has lived in my heart as the luminous star of Quakerism.
This reminds me a bit of Mormon founder Joseph Smith’s First Vision:
[The Father and the Son] told me that all religious denominations were believing in incorrect doctrines and that none of them was acknowledged of God as his church and kingdom.
Smith, of course, uses this as a reason to found his church, but look at it another way and we can see it, and Fox’s realization, as clearly true, as a realization or revelation that all of us have.
“All my hopes in [preachers] and in all men were gone,” no denomination is exclusively “acknowledged of God as his church and kingdom,” a redeemed heaven and redeemed earth linger out of our sight, and for the time being all we have to guide us is our own reason and our own consciences—ourselves alone with our God.
Or, as the greatest American prophet, erstwhile Hicksite Quaker Walt Whitman, chanted:
We understand then do we not?
What I promis’d without mentioning it, have you not accepted?
What the study could not teach—what the preaching could not accomplish is accomplish’d, is it not?
Thanks for this. I haven't had many second thoughts since entering the Orthodox Church 23 years ago, but I think it helped that my journey into Orthodoxy was slow (13 years before my chrismation). I also knew something of the messiness and diverse characters in the global Orthodox family, and the good and holy things God has given to non-Orthodox people. My late mom (baptized Orthodox and later as a Baptist, and married to a Lutheran pastor for 66 years) said it was only Christ who kept her in the church. Jesus Christ, the celebration of His Pascha with His Mother and all the Saints, and their recognition of His image in every human being, keep me in the Orthodox Church.
I love this, thank you. I could also simply say, "Pascha made me Orthodox, and I stay Orthodox in the hope of coming to another Pascha."
Wow, this is beautiful and expertly written. I have nothing else to add, you've said it better than I ever could. Thank you for your touching reflection and words.
ty ty ty
I am a Protestant minister with mostly EO theology and Catholic in heart as a western Christian so what can I say?
I say, well met!
Excellent essay. You’ve put your finger on why I and presumably others with “leanings to the mystic,” to perhaps a perennialist polytheistic pantheism (it would make so much more sense of the insoluble problem of suffering), stay in Christianity: Jesus. He’s captivating, somehow even across the millennia. He seems real and human and authoritative and a great mystery, so much solider and wiser than any church or Christian leader in his wake. And also more accepting. A rabbi to the marrow of his bones.
As for Orthodoxy, for whatever reason I have never felt a call to the East even as I have irritatingly agonized over whether to stay Catholic or go where I feel most comfortable, in Anglicanism. When I hear about oikonomia or the minimal amount of dogma, it all sounds wonderful, but when I hear about the fasting expected or how priests can excommunicate you for missing Divine Liturgies, let alone the Orthobros, I think this is not for me. More than that, it’s not my world: I love the Christian East, but I am for better or worse a Western Roman Christian in belief and, more importantly, practice.
Thank you much for this post. I will be returning and re-returning to it.
The one thing that didn't make it into this essay that was in my heart at the beginning is just, For better or worse, Orthodoxy is my home. I actually wrote something about how people shouldn't convert away from their home tradition if they have one. https://www.chansonetoiles.com/p/the-christ-who-is-already-there
Even though I'm a convert to Orthodoxy, it was so long ago, and my soul has grown like a bonsai trained against this structure, that I feel like I've become a cradle. This is just my home. Generally speaking I don't think people should leave their homes.
I understand and sympathize with that.
I’m not sure I have a faith home; though I was baptized and brought up in the RCC, religion was never a big deal for my family (or, rather, “being Catholic” was a huge cultural deal for the Italian side of my mom’s family; believing in Catholicism was irrelevant). My main spiritual teacher, my former-altar-boy grandfather, was much more an Emersonian transcendentalist (with leanings towards Hinduism) than an orthodox Christian.
On his deathbed, he refused to talk to a priest, though he chatted for a while with a rabbi who’d come to talk to his hospital roommate. When I mention this to RC priests, to a man they look at me quizzically; they don’t understand people like my grandfather at all.
But something about Catholicism would never take for me. The expectation of obedience, for one, despite Catholics’ telling me obedience is humility and the beginning of wisdom. As I child I was told simply to obey and not to ask questions; that rankled me then and rankles me now.
Yes it rankles me too! And I have decided pretty much to ignore it. It happens in Orthodoxy. If I were at a parish with a priest like that, I'd go somewhere else; our jurisdictional chaos is super helpful in this regard LOL. I happen to know too, and could hold my own with any priest in arguing it, that the conscience is primary -- not only MAY I obey it, I MUST obey it! Any priest with a heart has to understand how people get turned off of the institutional church, and if he can't say something different to find a way into their hearts, he needs to be a better priest IMHO.
Many priests lack hearts, I’ve noticed. They’re company men and have to defend the company against all claims of conscience or movements of the soul. Not all, of course, but many.
My last few priests didn’t get me at all. One said I sound like a Protestant already. One said my doubts mean I’m stubbornly refusing the unconditional offer of grace God is giving me and this won’t look good for me on Judgment Day. One said I have already excommunicated myself by believing in sola fide and I should look for another spiritual home.
And in the back of my mind there is always my first confessor who told me at 8 years old that I could go to hell for missing Sunday Mass.
Which—whew.
"One said I have already excommunicated myself by believing in sola fide and I should look for another spiritual home." WT actual F. Hello -- calling shepherds. "Oh hell sounds like you've already made friends with the wolves [from his perspective], just go get eaten already and get tf out of my hair."
And... your first confessor... there are certain Gospel words for him about millstones and necks and seas, I believe. Lord, have mercy. It's a testimony to your heart's receptivity that you've remained a Christian.
I mean I say, generally I don't think people should move home, or get divorced for that matter, but there are real situations where it makes the most sense.
Of course, I can point to priests who weren’t like this; these guys are just fresh on my mind (plus that first confessor, who left me with the notion that I probably am going to hell).
There’s a priest who posts here with whom I’ve emailed several times and who has been a wealth of help and advice for me, and I am in his debt forever. Most of the Jesuits I knew in college were OK, though I don’t know what they’d be like if I brought my current disagreements with the RCC to them. I had one Paulist confessor a month or two ago who spent a long time with me, commiserating about bad priests.
But—the other type is more common. And even at their best, they’re subject to company policy: They can’t undo the teaching on mortal sins as cutting off grace entirely unless confessed to a priest or undone by perfect contrition, which to me is unbearable. (One priest said to me, “So what do you want from me? You want me to say something that goes against Church teaching? I’m not going to do that”).
“Get tf out of my hair” is the attitude I get fairly often. They don’t particularly care about, for example, people using birth control, I’ve come to realize; they just want people who won’t make a stink about the Church’s policy on birth control. If you do make a stink, they either guilt you or want you out. Or they use the weird tactic they’ve used on me: “*One day* the Church might change; for now keep your head down, keep praying, keep receiving the sacraments, keep loyal to Holy Mother Church. Whatever you do, be like Peter who repented, not like Judas who left. ‘Master, to whom shall we go?’”
As for remaining a Christian—at this point it’s mostly just Jesus who keeps me Christian, as I wrote above. All the churches seem corrupt, backbiting, corporate, schismatic, political, power-hungry, fallible up to the highest levels, including councils, popes, and consensuses of the Fathers. But Jesus is an interesting guy.
As for moving home… I mean, again, I don’t think I ever had a church home. I probably never will. But I’m looking for somewhere I can at least hang my hat.
“Wisdom is youth that has met the tragedy of life.”
Are you quoting another source here? If so, where is it derived from?
I don’t think so. I might be without knowing it, or it might be an inexact echo of something I’ve read. Anyway it came out as I was writing.
I completely respect what you've said here! Unfortunately I couldn't stay, and nowadays I hang out with Anglicans and Quakers and I'm happier for it 😁
I’m newly Orthodox and 1-year in, hopefully forever. Your content has helped me through rather challenging and provocative thoughts and experiences. I thank you for that. You have your own unique way of making me interiorly uncomfortable with my idealizations, and shaking them up a bit, and I like that.
Wonderful to hear, glad to know I am a help and not merely a scandal!
There is a difference between serious intellectual, aesthetic deep consideration of the big picture and the reality where you actually live in and experience. Your essay brought these verses to mind
“I do not concern myself with great matters or things to wonderful for me. But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, put your hope in the Lord, both now and forevermore” Psalm 131
The joy of the Spirit is found in the immediate here and now. It’s okay to have joy. This shallow charismatic christian says, “Take a toke of the Holy Ghost!”
Amen brother amen amen
Do you read fiction, Loup? Because if you like fantasy, I think you'd get a real kick out of A.A. Attanasio's Arthuriad retelling (first book is The Dragon and the Unicorn). I have yet to find a work of literature that captures so well the peculiar feeling of Jesus arriving in an enchanted, glorious pagan world. The first time I read it, some twenty-odd years ago, I could actually feel my imagination growing a few sizes bigger.