www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology My visit to a ROCOR parish

Also, to believe that your faith is the true faith, to want to share the light of your faith, to want some one else to be saved, is hardly fundamentalism.

On the other hand believing that another is on shaky ground, not pointing this out to them while smiling, nodding your head and saying that we all worship the same God is arguably not the Christian thing to do.

Glad you feel that way. I can feel free then to expand my thinking on your notes here.

One can observe that you are on exceptionally shaky ground when it comes to any kind of accurate understanding of many Catholic teachings.

Your errors and mischaracterizations are the standard and predictable ones. So I can be happy that you aren't making up any new ones as you go along!!

Also it has been my decade long experience that ROCOR members, who are cradle Orthodox, tend to have a much better grasp of Catholic teaching and are less likely to make it up as they go and are less likely to call one to account for the faith, if one is Catholic.

On the other hand many non-Catholic Christian converts to Orthodoxy are eager to bring in Catholic "converts." Many Catholic converts to ROCOR, in particular, are what I call "pass-throughs" or those who converted to the Catholic Church from a protestant confession, and passed on through to Orthodoxy. They have very little good to say about the Catholic Church.

It is really a mixed-bag, but it can get very ugly on occasion. It does not seem that Alex ran into anything mean at all in the Matushka that he met. In fact, it seems about right as a response for the time and circumstances. Had he been in Paris, for example, I doubt that he'd have had a similar experience.

Where some Catholics most often run into trouble is when they do not have enough confidence in the teachings of the Catholic Church to be able to express them in common words and defend them against external tendencies toward distortion of those teachings. That is not, of course, the only scenario. Some Catholics truly do not believe as the Church teaches. Others might simply be too luke warm to worry much, some may have had bad experiences and harbor bad feelings, etc.

In any event, the thing that kept me out of Orthodoxy, when the pressures were greatest in me to move in that direction, was the wide spread mischaracterizations of Catholic teachings, and the demand that I reject teachings that were so mischaracterized, and the refusal to even examine corrective evidence.

Now I don't go because I've chosen to remain, and I choose so primarily because I refuse to participate in schism when I do not believe it to be right and true.

Mary

Dear Mary,

You know how I like to sometimes take another's words and twist them around a bit for some fun? Yes?

With respect to your last sentence, would you participate in schism if you believed it to be right and true? And when does that circumstance occur?

Alex

Principle: Obedience to legitimate authority in everything but sin.

There's a post of mine in the "Shoe on the Eastern Foot" thread in East-West that details more fully what I mean by that section that you quoted. I hope I mean what the Catholic Church means. I've done my best to conform to that.

Mary

Dear Friends,

First of all, I cannot tell you all how helpful and enriching your comments here are to me and I'm sure to others who share my privilege to read them!

One thing that I reflected on last evening concerning my encounter with the Presbytera is regarding the matter of my being totally unprepared for her response to me.

And it has everything to do with the view of Catholic and Orthodox relations as I have grown accustomed to see them.

I think it was Krystostomos who somewhere this morning said that EC's and Orthodox were the same except for the Pope (?).

And Catholics have tended to "keep an ecumenical score" with respect to their perception of how that much closer Catholics and Orthodox have come to "full communion."

Different Catholics have different "score cards" - some say that "unity is almost complete," others that "we still have to talk above this or that doctrine."

The image one gets of all this is that of a football game with Catholics as the cheerleaders (go, go, you're almost together!).

My friend the Presbytera (and this is is NO WAY intended as a deprecation of that sincere, hospitable and dedicated Orthodox Christian servant of Christ!) looked me in the eye and simply told me that I needed the "real deal" and to join the one and only true Church of Christ and that there is no other, not Protestantism, not Catholicism.

That was a shock to me when I thought we had more in common than not. It was as if I was little better than the Unitarians who once occupied that church building.

This reminded me of my grandmother telling me about the experiences of our relative, Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky, when he was imprisoned in a Russian Orthodox monastery under the Tsarist regime. Although an Eastern Catholic Primate, Metropolitan-Archbishop etc., he had to leave the Orthodox chapel where he attended services before the Liturgy of the Faithful and stand in the narthex where the unbaptised and public sinners formerly had their places allotted them.

He obviously forgave his captors for that since when they came to him in western Ukraine as they escaped from Bolshevism, he held wide open his own doors to receive them under his protection.

Or is it simply that ROCOR parishes have this view that one should just simply avoid altogether?

Alex

Dear Mary,

I'm going to that thread now - thank you!

Alex

Of all the Internet discussion lists for Orthodox faithful, the Indiana Orthodox list has one of the worst reputations for being a "snake pit" of polemics. The Indiana list is primarily populated by members of ROCOR.

It is the only Orthodox venue that has not labeled me as "mentally ill" and removed me permanently, or silenced me indefinitely. I've been there with the people of the Indiana list nearly 10 years and just yesterday received some of the worst mail that I've ever received from any Orthodox clergy or laity. On the other hand I have for nearly ten years been treated there by many with great respect and sometimes great fondness.

The people of that list, fair to me and foul, have a clearly evident life of prayer and fasting and almsgiving. They are wonderful people and I could no more leave them now than I could fly to the moon on my own steam.

So you never allow comfort to determine your level of engagement.

You do what the Christ did, and does. You remain faithful, even if no one is faithful to you. But it is rare moment of abandon, when no one else is faithful but us.

fondly, in Christ,

Mary

I also refuse to participate in schism when I do not believe it be right and true, thus I am Orthodox. I find your implication that it is our schism to be offensive.

.....

Sometimes I feel like I am posting on the wrong forum.


And speaking of being removed. I have been threatened with a ban more than once for the views I have expressed here.

It would be, I believe, a grave error to ban you at this point, Subdeacon Borislav.

Personally I am more than happy to field your apparent distress as we move along this path toward understanding.

There are always times when things look most bleak and difficult and that try one's faith, one's levels of comfort, one's sense of integrity and well-being.

Love of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and love of neighbor is enough to bear us through anything at all.

I want to continue to bear though it with you nearby.

Forgive me for saying things that cause you immediate distress.

Mary

I have not placed a blame for the schism anywhere.

The logic in what I said is here:

IF I choose to move from where I am, given what I have learned in ten years of study and experience, then I would be willingly participating in a de facto schism.

That holds true no matter who is at fault, or if no one is at fault.

So you see, logically, there is no need for me to place blame for the schism, I simply need to not do anything to dignify it as real and true.

I believe that the Body of Christ is one.

Mary

Dear Boris,
I am also Ukrainian Orthodox but I was born in Canada. Please don't leave this board. The purpose of this board is for Eastern Christianity both Orthodox and Catholic. I think the issue for you is more of how you say things. Anglo culture is more subtle and polite than Ukrainian discourse. Think of this problem as a matter of cutural adaptation to North America.
I also feel like leaving because I am bored because of all the Roman Catholic (not Eastern Catholic) topics recently. The discussions seemed to have changed. However, if the Orthodox leave it will become a Catholic board.

Dear Alex,
I think the truth is in your last sentence:
"Or is it simply that ROCOR parishes have this view that one should just simply avoid altogether?"
The ROCOR members I know complain about all the "tourists" visiting their church here in Toronto just to hear the "nice" choir and look at all the "nice" icons. These people come in off the street dressed in causal clothes and walk around and talk during the services and rusu downstairs for all the good "ethnic" food.
Then in other churches I have visited in the USA, you come across the fundamentalist converts who see your visit as a chance to convert you. These people are not interested in discussion so don't bother. You are on their home court, so I am always polite because it is their building and not a public place. Then also in the USA I have encountered the fanatic "Great Russian" with ancestoral roots in Odesa who wants all Eastern Slavic peoples to "re-unite" with Mother Russia.
I say in the USA because in Canada, I have seen small parishes with many or totally Ukrainian members with roots in Volynia or in Toronto and Quebec in Bukovyna. I even have relatives and friends of my family in this situation. These parishes are more friendly because they are not out to politically or religiously out to convert visitors.

Alex,
You started a very interesting discussion, but I think with people like the Matushlka you met, there is little you can do but bit your tongue and state your views as politely as possible or just bit your tongue tell her you were blessed by the service and leave. It is her church building not a place of free discussion.

Admin,

You threatened me with a ban or removal of posting rights for no reason other than that I made a joke about a title of a thread.

Often when I pose valid questions to Catholic members of this board, I get warned not to do so, or my posts are removed.

I guess the constant attacks on ROC on this board, and former attacks on the Monks of the Holy Mountain aren't vinegar. They are sugar.


Thanks, from now on I'll keep the vinegar to myself.

Dear Borislav,

Remember: retaining too much vinegar, just as in dispensing it, can be poison.

In Christ,
Alice