Can everyone here please offer up their prayers for the new Syro-Malankara Exarchy in North America. Our Exarch is to be installed October 3 in Long Island. I think EWTN should cover it, anyone else interested, please let EWTN know - they are pretty good about acting!

Their international partners at ShalomTV could assist!

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EWTN
5817 Old Leeds Rd.
Irondale, Al. 35210-2164



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Phone: 205-271-2900


EWTN Information & Viewer Response Department

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Thank you.
I think it's important to make such a request, and also to let them know when they do broadcast programs about ECCs/OCCs.

Maybe before EWTN broadcasts information about the ECCs/EOCs they need to straighten up their own house...

Several weeks ago, I checked out "The Journey Home" installment. I, as a former Protestant, on occassion watch the program. I find the dialog between the host and guest often educational. However, on this night, what I heard made me furious.

I did not catch the beginning of the program, so I don't know who exactly the guest was or what his prior religious affiliation was. Anyway he was recounting his "journey" to the Catholic (i.e., Roman) Church when he mentioned that he had given a serious look at Orthodoxy. He said that although he fully respected them and noted how beautiful their liturgies were, he could not become Orthodox because of the "Chair of Peter/unity" issue.

Nothing really additional was said as to what he meant by that, but the host (a convert also) stated that, "Oh, yes, just pick up a phonebook and look at all the different churches they have"... as if to compare the national Orthodox Churches to the 25,000+ Protestant denominations. Maybe it was me, but the comments came across with so much smugness. It seems Converts often, whether swimming the Tiber or the Bosphorus, many times come with that piece of baggage called triumphalism.

Yes, it would be beneficial for EWTN to "promote" the ECC's/EOCs, but not until they "get it right." (By the way, I was so put off by the comments that I turned the channel, so there may have been a chance more concilliary remarks were made later on.)

The smugness is sometimes offputting, but from the convert's perspective (and this is speculation, I didn't see the broadcast), he may have been comparing not only the EO National Churches, but the non-Canonical Churches, in addition to the Oriental Orthodox Churches.. to a protestant, this can be a confusing hodge-podge from the surface (heck, it's confusing to some of us regular forum readers at times, and we're the one's that find this stuff fun!)