ArtVandelay
22hr ago
And yes, I know the objection: ask your priest! The rules can be changed! Economia!
Gee, thanks. I always wanted to be a charity case, a special exception, because I don’t want to be moaning on the floor of the parish hall on Easter Sunday because I was finally able to eat a cheeseburger. This also understandably raises questions of moral inconsistency and clerical power.
It's not about being a charity case. It's a pastoral approach that is completely in keeping with Christology in general (God became Man, a particular Man, so that we could be come god) and the EO emphasis on the Persons of the Trinity (and Their particularity) compared to the emphasis on the Unity of the Trinity in the West. You might want to argue against this theology, but it's completely internally consistent. Seeing the Particular as a manifestation of the Ultimate and Universal is the name of the game, and clergy applying this to the personal needs and stations of their flock is the rule, not the "special exception." If that looks like morally inconsistent from the point of view of western theology, all I can say is that maybe western theology is wrong and in any case, Christians are not worshippers of Immanuel Kant.
I believe the Western approach, of mandating a low minimum and permitting more intense asceticism as spiritual directors and the Spirit himself guides, is a more human and fruitful approach. It sets up people to succeed, not to fail. And it remains open to sanctity in lay life, in a way I think E. Orthodoxy struggles to do.
What you described here is exactly the way my parish is run. It's an Orthodox Church in America parish in a major US city on the East Coast, if that matters.
ArtVandelay
23hr ago
That's probably a tiny minority of very academically-minded converts. As a recent convert in the US in a parish full of recent converts and catechumens and I can tell you that for most of us, the draw was something that is at once utterly at the core of our civilization but at the same time outside of the mainstream enough to not be corrupted by the various forces that pushed us into the Church from wherever we were before.
We have young people coming from broken/divorced families realizing that we have no cultural infrastructure left to build our own families on. We are disillusioned with political solutions to problems. This tends to start with a disgust with the excesses of the left, but I find that most of the "political refugees" that come into the church seeking solely a spiritual justification for their right-wing politics either end up leaving, or in the better case, they find that the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church transcends the political squabbles of 2025 America (though the Church is undeniably traditionalist on many social issues). The scientific enterprise is utterly unable to offer meaning, point ways to build community, and show ways to walk with the divine. Of course, any honest scientist must admit that these are domains outside of the scientific purview. But, especially after COVID, it became obvious to many of us that even in its own domain, the scientific institutions are all too fragile and corrupt -- all too fallen and sinful we come to find out. Perennial problems, but perhaps acutely so in the decadent, post-enlightenment, post-liberal west.
In the face of this, where are we to seek stability, truth, and life more abundant? Protestantism is seen as either dominated by the religion of liberalism (Episcopalian churches with rainbow flags on the outside, and no one inside) or otherwise by fundamentalist young earth creationist types, who cannot be taken seriously by many with even a little bit of curiosity. Relative to the High Church traditions of the Latin Catholics and Orthodoxy, Protestants are also seen as utterly devoid of ritual, which is something I think most Western people are starving for without realizing it. It's hard to get a sense of the Divine without embodying and acting out the symbols and metaphors which point to our ability to the relate to God. Without embodied metaphors (ie rituals), it's hard to focus the mind and find the weightiness of certain moments and places compared to others. Without this weightiness, there is nothing set aside (ie sacred). Every place and moment is fungible, profane. The wet dream of economism.
Why not Catholicism? It's a close second for sure, especially in its traditionalist dispensations, but I think it gets rightly associated with many of the utilitarian/rationalistic excesses of the contemporary West. If the mainstream itself has grown decadent, it's only right to find fault with the largest religious institution of the West. There is a whole new conversation to have here about the Eastern vs Western churches, but suffice it to say that, especially post Vatican II, the Latin Catholic Church has itself become a part of the profane decadent mainstream which it is supposed to be a bulwark against (I recently attended a Catholic Mass which had stadium seating -- with the altar on a stage below the people -- and PowerPoint-style projections of song lyrics and pictures related to the service. Hard to imagine something less otherworldly than that experience). And there are also the sex scandals.
Not to say there are no flaws in Orthodoxy as currently practiced in the West. The earthly Church is not the Heavenly Church. Not fully. Not yet...
It's only after some time in Orthodoxy do we learn about the history and the arguments that it is the original Church. But I think the results speak louder than any history lesson.
ArtVandelay
1d ago
Perhaps symbolic over and against literal I agree with - the literal and the symbolic were seen as one. Symbol literally means "where heaven and earth meet."
Yes, this is exactly what I was getting at. Symbol as a unity between heaven and earth, a point in which the physical and the spiritual are reconciled. A completely different notion compared to when people say "just a symbol" in our modern parlance.
This probably didn't come across clearly in my ramblings of last night -- apologies, we have a newborn and a toddler at home so sleep is in short supply.
ArtVandelay
1d ago
Symbolic thinking is fundamental to the method of these saints without discounting the truth of doctrine.
I'm new to the Orthodoxy stuff (there are at least three of us on here???), so forgive me if I misunderstand, but isn't what you're saying true because the entire idea of "symbolic" was very different for the ancient Hebrews that wrote, redacted, and passed down Scripture and built the Church. Different than our contemporary understanding I mean. The notion of symbolic over and against literal is a very anachronistic way of reading the symbols that are being described and referenced in Scripture and the writings of the saints and church fathers. Similar to the false dichotomy of spiritual vs physical.
Dichotomizing like that gives too much away to the scientific materialist viewpoint which insists that there is the real (its domain) and then there is the other stuff, which is at best entertaining literature and poetry, and at worst woo woo and delusion.
As Orthodox Christians, we see that our entire world is aflame with the Divine Energies. We pray to the God who is "everywhere present, filling all things." We recognize that creation is just one great Burning Bush.
As such, moments of profound symbolic importance are, to us, moments where the physical is fulfilled in the spiritual, where the goodness of this world is, for a bit, perfectly aligned with the Good of the world to come, a point in physical and psychic space where Heaven touches earth.
I would love to see a subculture of tech kids pivot from Jhana-maxxing to pursuing the Uncreated Light. Perhaps Silicon Valley ambition can create a bumper-crop of saints.
That would be awesome. Something to pray for!
Your parish and your priest sound a lot like mine. Mind sharing a bit more about it? DM me if you don't want to post personal stuff publicly.
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