Frankly, Kyrill

Francis and Kyrill, Yin and Yang

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NI KA

Several recent events in the Vatican – documents, statements, and rumors – have had online Catholics looking at Orthodoxy. None of it is being done in bad faith, but as someone raised in the West who has been in both places in both rites as well (Eastern and Western Rite Orthodox, Latin and Byzantine Catholic) the present writer, while with a total mess of a religious path, feels there may be something he can offer by way of experience.

First to describe our own journey, when deciding to leave the Episcopal Church, the Catholic Church appeared to be (and, in fact was) filled with the same political dynamics that had tore the Anglican world apart. Never wanting to have that same experience again, Orthodoxy was chosen as a new home because things there looked really solid. No one was going to take a desire for “alternative sexual expression” and turn it into a denial of everything from the Virgin Birth to the Divinity of Christ. When one thread of the tapestry of the Faith is removed, eventually the whole thing falls apart.

After ten years or so in Orthodoxy – in America it is admitted – the author realized that while the Faith may be Orthodox as proclaimed, it was rather a different experience at street level. The upper echelons tend to be influenced by far too many political movements, some advocating openly for “social justice” in lieu of Theology, some secreatly opening doors to “gay married” person in their parishes. The latter, ironically, being among the most trusted as places to send troubled persons. The person standing in liturgy may be of the Q cult or a race purist, a rabid Democrat or Socialist. The person standing next to one at liturgy was just as likely to be “progressive Orthodox”, supporting ordination of women, gay marriage, abortion, etc, as in the Catholic Church. In fact, more likely because Orthodoxy is very thin on the ground so many people from a wide area come to one parish. Outside of the urban areas, where there are many parishes from which to pick, it’s safe to assume the regional parish – sometimes the only one for hundred mile radius or more – is going to be home to a wide variety of persons along the socio-political spectrum. Don’t dig too deep. Even if no one objects to traditional things said in traditional ways, what happens when they get home is another matter. And sometimes, clergy or laity secretly make parochial choices based on secular politics. Sometimes, they’ll say it right out front, rejecting all sorts of things. But at street level, there also an element of strong piety and deep faith that has nothing to do with social justice or other shenanigans.

When the writer dug into Orthodox monasticism it got even harder to deal: the Orthodox had a cross-dressing monastic 15 years before the Catholics did. And this one was no surprise to the Abbot and so, one assumes, to the Hierarch. It was a surprise to the Brotherhood, however, and they exploded, scattering to the hinter parts of the world. One brother ended up in a very holy monastery in Eastern Europe where, since he was from that scandalous place everyone had heard of… was promptly subjected to sexual abuse by the natives who were real men and wanted to prove it on his person. Clergy gossip about such things and the writer heard them all. These don’t make it into the press because the press doesn’t care about something as small as Orthodoxy. There are urban Catholic dioceses that are, themselves, many times larger than the entire Orthodox population of the US. Coming out of the monastery the writer wondered why all the trouble had been gone to since nothing had been avoided, and went to a local Roman parish.

Things progressed from there and – several years later – he discovered all the things the Orthodox say about the Catholics are both true and untrue. Theologians and Canonists are very picky about legalist turns of wording, like Margaret Thatcher searching for that one word that will be able to mean one thing to her and another thing to anyone reading it. Sin, rather than a sickness, is a debit and credit column in a ledger. Sexual morality is at once a must-manage reality and a situation of don’t-ask-don’t-tell. Clericalism is a problem from the bottom up and from the top down. Theological chicanery is rampant, especially in the Academy. And most every Theological conflict (including the filioque) can be resolved by setting all aside and saying, “yes, we disagree, but we both submit to the Pope.” Yet at street level, while there’s an element of the Wild West, there is also an element of solid piety and deep faith. Some Catholics think it’s all very precious and silly, but others think it’s all very real.

Mind you, neither liturgical purity but truth. Almost every Orthodox parish – like every Roman parish – has its own sui generis reality. Most priests have their affectations and their favorite ways to bypass the rubrics. No one is singing Eagles Wings at Panakhida services, yet, as far as is known, but that’s not out of the question. Most folks are moving through their lives blissfully unaware of what “is supposed to be done” or else thinking that what is done at their parish is the 100% right way. Others are clearly modernists. Or, well, you know, those folks (Russians, Arabs, Greeks, Convert Americans) are ruining the faith.

And so, the two communities are mirror images, each of the other.

So one must ask oneself, repeatedly. Is one searching for a new home because of the chicanery or because of the Truth? There is no escaping the chicanery. As the late Fr Victor Sokolov told the present writer, there is no pure church: there is only the True Church. These are very different things.

There are many fine points of theology between the two communities. And yet, at the same time, most of these points mean nothing at Street Level. I mean that sincerely. Can you work out your salvation in fear and trembling where you are, currently? Then stay there. Can you not? Then it is past time to go. Can you do so with some changes? Then make those changes. Those changes cannot mean “let me fix things.” You cannot fix things. Can you work out your salvation by changing your prayer habits? By going to a different confessor? By serving more? By serving less in public and praying more at home? By paying more attention to your own sins than those of others? Or is the situation so very hopeless, so very broken, that you begin to doubt that where you stand is even the Church at all.

Then – and only then – is it time to leave.