urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
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User ID: 226
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
22d ago
Is this what having a stroke feels like?
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
22d ago
· Edited 22d ago
But in reality, if I wasn't Catholic, I'd be straight-up atheist, no replacement Christianity or other religion for me - if belief goes, it goes completely.
While you're entitled to your conscience, every time I hear these kinds of statements it just makes me very sad; like what is being honored is the whole edifice, and not the encounter with Jesus Christ that is at the very heart of the Gospel -- and has always been the charge of the Church to transmit. Unfortunately, it often makes it easy for me to side with the Protestants and start going, "Wow, is Jesus really so contingent in your eyes not just on the historical continuity of the Church, but on the continuity of one particular interpretation of continuity in the Church?" And I often seriously consider at that juncture whether the attitude being presented is that of many Jews who expected a warrior-messiah and received a crucified one, and even rejected him, because he did not fit their preconceived notions of what God's plan in history would be.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
22d ago
Reunion could take place in this context if, on the one hand, the East would cease to oppose as heretical the developments that took place in the West in the second millennium and would accept the Catholic Church as legitimate and orthodox in the form she had acquired in the course of that development, while on the other hand, the West would recognize the Church of the East as orthodox in the form she has always had.
At the same time, this leaves seriously open whether reunion is possible at all, because if "the West would recognize the Church of the East as orthodox in the form she has always had," then the West would be saying that active, persistent, and stubborn denial of the dogma of Papal infallibility over a century, and of other Catholic dogmas for centuries, has no consequences and requires no renunciation. In other words, it means they're not dogmas!
When dogmas are defined, they're not "suggestions." They're not even "firm teachings," or "infallible teachings." They are solemn declarations that someone who denies this is anathema, accursed, cut off, removed from communion with the Church. The classical ecumenical dogmatic language, "Let them be anathema," comes from St. Paul's declaration that opens Galatians:
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel— not that there is another gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, If any one is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed.
So to say that something is a dogma is, in Biblical and ecclesiastical idiom, to say that all who dissent are "deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ," and "turning to a different gospel!" It is a solemn declaration of unmistakable error, and it cannot be relativized -- only affirmed or denied.
Ratzinger seems to be wanting to do a very Ratzinger thing here: to assert the possibility of reform without reform, even to the point of saying dogma can be held -- or not -- so long as you say someone else can believe it's dogma. It's a functional denial of dogma that doesn't actually want to admit that it is.
Conservative Catholics love talking about Pope Benedict as a "defender of dogma," but the man was, abundantly, a modernist. Just a rather conservative one. And I don't say that as an insult -- I love Pope Benedict, and I prefer his vision of modernist-conservative Catholicism to traditional, pre-conciliar Catholicism -- but because everyone has to be clear what's at stake.
Like much of the post-conciliar Church, Ratzinger's views reflect, essentially, institutional intertia in the guise of teaching authority: we cannot say we were mistaken about our dogmas, because that would scandalize the faithful and call into question our entire history, and so we say, with one side of our mouth the Immaculate Conception is dogma! and with the other the Orthodox East, which steadfastly denies that this is a dogma, is perfectly and entirely prepared for communion with us! But both of these things cannot be true. You can't have your bread and eat it too.
My view is that Catholicism has gone halfway -- opened the door to unity on the basis of the first millennium -- without committing, as did Pope Paul VI, when he called the Catholic ecumenical councils of the second millennium "general councils of the West" -- which seems to demote them to the status of the Councils of Toledo, rather than infallible councils. Yet Christ asks that we give him everything, like he himself gave up everything so that: "those who believe in me... may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee," in the priestly words of Jesus in John 17.
I think the real obstacle to unity isn't so much the two Marian dogmas, provided that the Assumption is considered to be a doctrine of the Dormition as well -- and the Orthodox, not that I speak for them, would probably say that the Immaculate Conception can be accepted as a pious belief, so long as it is asserted as a plausible explanation for the moral perfection and grace-full-ness of the Mother of God rather than a fixed, infallible doctrine, and thus open to critique made in the spirit of charity (as even Thomas Aquinas did).
In other words, the pre-1850s landscape could have been a much more fruitful place for ecumenical dialogue. If Vatican II had happened early, in place of Vatican I, we would live in a very different world. But I believe the Vatican Councils destroy each other, like matter and dark matter, and in so doing they also bring to heel the legitimate power of the Vatican -- which should be great indeed, but always in line with tradition, and with the charism of persuasion in the spirit of truth and not "ordinary and universal magisterial teaching" requiring "religious submission of will and intellect."
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
23d ago
· Edited 23d ago
A fair warning that, though he analyzes the patristic evidence powerfully and fairly, he also has a unique model of catholicity that he sees as the bridge between Orthodoxy and Catholicism. He at times presents this as the "Orthodox view of ecclesiology," but I'm given to understand that it's more of a minority view. But still, I found his views on ecclesiology irresistible.
And, to be clear, I am not a current Catholic, nor have I ever been received into the Catholic Church. I believed firmly in Catholicism for a long time, and the priest who worked with me was happy to receive me, but I backed away because of issues of conscience with some Catholic doctrines, and personal struggles with sin -- as well as, to be blunt, utter confusion as to what Catholicism precisely was in a post-conciliar world.
I had a similar experience with Orthodoxy -- the "intellectual evangelical convert" in my narrative wasn't a caricature, but actually myself, and my mother and my girlfriend indeed accompanied me to liturgy a few times and didn't like it. My struggles with Orthodoxy were not so much about doctrines I could not assent to, but about doctrines that were load-bearing in my Christian faith, like the principle of "faith seeking understanding", the concept of inherited fallenness and separation from God (original sin), the importance of divine justice, and the reality of Hell as a place of separation from God (and tragically suffering), being hard to reconcile with the Eastern Orthodox approach especially post-Romanides.
I would argue that both Catholicism and Orthodoxy underwent a severe and belief-altering ressourcement in the 60s, and that has brought them closer in some ways -- every time I read Catholic theologians talking about paschal mystery theology, they sound very Orthodox to me -- but also separated them, injecting polemic where there might have been agreement. While I agree with Orthodox reservations about De Trinitate and believe his works must be understood extremely carefully, I hold St. Augustine to be a great saint, and a personal patron, and the view among some Orthodox that outright denies his sanctity or experience of divine grace is unnecessary and offensive.
I do not believe the West is the author of heresies, as many of Orthodoxy's greatest writers do, and I believe reason in religion to be, not the enemy of divine illumination, but a means of illumination that opens the mind to be receptive to divine grace by teaching how truly deep "the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God" are, in the words of the apostle. I worry sincerely that Eastern Orthodoxy often collapses into a kind of quietism that does not reflect the serious philosophical and theological capacity for thought I see in the fathers of the Church.
I've tried not to present myself as a Catholic, but a "mere Christian," defending views that I believe represent Christianity at its fullness, but this often means I defend Catholic doctrine because, to be blunt, I agree with it as a matter of theology. At the very least, my goal is that Catholicism is described fairly, as I believe Catholics deserve a fair hearing and don't always get it.
But, to make a long story short, this hopefully answers @TheDag's question as well: I am a committed Chalcedonian Christian, but too rationalist, cataphatic, and "western" for Eastern Orthodoxy, too sacramental and synergistic for Protestantism, and too, well, insufficiently totalizingly Marian for Catholicism. I am a wanderer in the wilderness, or taking refuge in "the hallway," in the words of C.S. Lewis, as from a storm prepared to blow away the house built upon sand.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
23d ago
I'm not denying that our God can be characterized as an astronaut.
I realize you’re saying this because you find the comparison offensive, but this statement is pretty funny, outside of its context.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
23d ago
If you’re interested in an Orthodox perspective that offers a grounded, non-triumphalist take on how the Orthodox view Papal primacy in the first millennium, I strongly recommend Laurent Cleenewerck’s His Broken Body. I recommend it both to Catholic and to Orthodox readers — he refuses to stump for either side, and deals frankly, and charitably, with the patristic evidence. He’s clearly someone for whom the schism is a wound, not an amputation.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
23d ago
But the way history is unfolding, I would expect the LDS to be culturally and theologically indistinguishable from, say, progressive-ish Methodist congregations, within a century or two.
Such a thing has already happened elsewhere within the Mormon tradition!
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
23d ago
I’m sorry, but this just isn’t correct. I am a Nicene Christian, and I use the term as a proud self-description!
The truth is, there are alternative Christianities. Have been since the beginning. Gnosticism. Arianism. When we move further on in the history of the ecumenical councils, Nestorianism.
When I say that I’m a Nicene Christian, I mean to say that I believe the Council of Nicaea defines Christianity. I do not mince my words by saying this. I am not, by saying it, saying that there are other Christians that are just as good.
I’m happy to extend the term “Christian,” sociologically, to Mormons, as in a matter of history they obviously derived from Christianity. But I do not by saying this mean to say that I believe that they are right, that their views are correct, or even that they are acceptable. I reject strongly any view of the divine nature that is not classically theistic, and would even say that Mormons do not even worship the same conception of God as Nicene Christians do, and that very often Mormons do not engage with this with the intense seriousness it deserves, as the principle theological difference between them and Nicene Christians. They obviously find this offensive, but I believe the only way to be charitable is not to water things down in the spirit of “being inoffensive”, but by speaking the truth as I understand it.
That means giving them a point when they deserve it, not being reflexively hostile. What hostility I have towards the LDS church I have because I have earnestly engaged it in the spirit of charity and found it to be too distinct to reconcile with the beliefs I hold dear, and many of its historical claims impossible to reconcile with historical evidence. I do not believe Mormons are evil, or insincere, but I do believe they are mistaken — and gravely so.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
23d ago
Mormons believe in somebody they call Jesus, but they believe he was a guy who came to The United States of America about 2000 years ago and met with people living there at the time.
Well, not quite. They believe all human souls, including that of Jesus, were begotten of God (and the Eternal Mother, whom they try not to emphasize too much and is, to avert a misunderstanding, not Mary), and not created ex nihilo. The incarnation of Jesus, in their view, was a repeat of an event that God the Father also underwent — they believe that God the Father has a physical body. The most intense thing that can be said about them is they are not classical theists. They believe all human beings are literally brothers of Christ, in that we are all exactly like him.
Their stoteriology is that the end result of human life is the full deification of human beings, which they call exaltation — not as an interior unification with the life of God, but as apotheosis in the original meaning. They believe faithful Mormons are destined to create their own worlds, to be gods of their own universes, even to conceive their own spirit children with their eternal spouses (thus celestial marriage).
It is, not only from a Nicene Christian but a broader Abrahamic perspective, incredibly odd.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
24d ago
And then of course there are Anglicans (and, of course, continental Lutherans), who are very insistent that they have a chain of apostolic succession, even if the Vatican disagrees and the Orthodox... don't really care either way, apostolic succesion is tied to Church communion for them.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
24d ago
The commoners long for a ritual weight to legitimize the rulers, even if it isn't their rulers, unchanging tradition which says 'it's ok, we're still here, the world goes on'.
While I'm no monarchist, this is the principle that undergirds my belief in ordered worship, and especially structured, traditional weddings and funerals. The exact last thing I want when I'm choosing to make a lifelong commitment of love and sacrifice, or when I'm mourning someone who has died, is someone getting creative or trying to break the mould. When I get married, I don't want to have an ersatz commitment to someone, maybe, according to whatever private assumptions of relationship we have -- I want to get married according to a known mould with known obligations, duties, rights, and privileges.
And this is even more true with funerals -- when I'm grieving, I want to be upheld in a shared worldview that gives meaning to my grief and reassures that, despite the intensity of the loss, the world is still moving, and life will go on. And not only go on, but go on normally, that this death is not unique, that it does not shatter everything, that others have been here before, felt the very feelings, heard the very words, and listened to the very songs, that I'm hearing. I want to be carried along by a funeral, not pandered to; reassured by the very banality and normality of it that life will, some day, go back to being banal and normal, which is the cry of every mourner.
If I were to make a defense of liturgical religion and sacred ceremony on sociological and psychological grounds, it would be that.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
24d ago
The soteriological approach also allows Protestants having it to reach a truce with Catholics, Orthodox, confessional Protestants, etc- the internal spiritual relationship with Jesus is more important than having a particular theological belief.
Yes, I have heard the common refrain from people of evangelical upbringing that "it's okay, as long as you love Jesus." As you said, this is almost certainly a huge part of why American evangelicals are much more open to good relations with Catholics than confessional Protestants: for the evangelicals I know, the tension with Rome is less "they believe doctrines I believe to be heretical," and more "I do not believe that Catholics love Jesus Christ."
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
24d ago
Yes, I was not much older than a child when Minecraft burst onto the scene, and despite that, it still was astonishing to me when Minecraft started to be treated as “kids stuff.” When I got into it it had an all-ages appeal and the YouTube Minecraft community was full of adults who played it because they enjoyed it, not because they wanted ad dollars from companies wanting to advertise to children. I remember when the focal point of Minecraft content switched from normal gaming YouTubers to people like StampyLongHead, who always came across to me as kinda creepy in his obvious attempt to appeal directly to children over the internet.
Real OPs remember when paulsoaresjr tutorials were the premier way to learn about Minecraft. Even realer OP’s remember X’s adventures in Minecraft.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
24d ago
To add to the points already made: the rules of the Church being subordinate to the needs or present situation of the Church (excepting certain claims of absolute moral right and wrong) is a pretty firm principle of Christianity going back to Jesus.
Or, to put it more bluntly, "Universi Dominici Gregis was made for the Cardinals, not the Cardinals for Universi Dominici Gregis."
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
25d ago
And this is the logic they use to justify it. Not "here's evidence of it" but "maybe it could be true."
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
25d ago
Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”
"My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many."
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
25d ago
· Edited 25d ago
For context, I am a cradle Coptic Orthodox in Canada.
This is the disconnect. I’m talking about the Eastern Orthodox communion, not the Oriental Orthodox communion. They have very different tenors and cultures, and the Eastern Orthodox church in the United States is having a bit of a moment right now where it’s expanding massively due to conversions from Protestantism, and more rarely Roman Catholicism. For what it’s worth, I’ve always found the Coptic Orthodox to be pious, humble, and friendly, both online and in person. (And St. Mark Coptic Orthodox church in Toronto is one of the most beautiful churches I've ever seen photos of!)
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
25d ago
· Edited 25d ago
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
25d ago
The holy spirit is in all of us, so is it really wrong for trump to call himself god?
- The Holy Spirit only indwells within Christians; in Catholicism this is mediated by being in a state of grace, which by all appearances Trump is not.
- Yes.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
25d ago
· Edited 25d ago
Yes, this is very true. I personally know people like this. Typically there's the belief that he was a philanderer and a cheat, but had a conversion experience.
I guess it's just the vain hope that someone, anyone, will stand up for their belief system in the public square. I believe Trump's views on Israel have also influenced this -- it's hard to overstate how much a large segment of American evangelicals are passionate about the state of Israel and believe defending it to be essential for the fulfillment of Biblical prophesy. The only way I can explain it to non-evangelicals is to say that they view Israel with the same quasi-cultic fervor as many Catholics view Fatima: this is the revelation of the end-times!!!!!
So when Trump moves the embassy to Jerusalem, it's seen as a statement of affiliation with Biblical prophesy.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
25d ago
· Edited 25d ago
If anything, joking about becoming the Pope is, in my mind, a positive in that it places the papacy as a position of value.
Yeah, this is exactly how I felt about what Trump meant by it -- "Man, wouldn't it be great if I were Pope! Look how cool the Pope looks!"
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
25d ago
· Edited 25d ago
It's less about Eastern Orthodoxy as a set of beliefs, and more about the practices and people of Eastern Orthodoxy. And we're not talking about secular women here, I suppose they'd just go running in the opposite direction for reasons that you well understand, but conservative-to-moderate, vaguely religious women, in the United States. And it isn't an active hate, it's not that these ladies are obsessed with Orthodoxy and want to cast hexes at it or something, they just have no interest in it and find it a little odd that anyone would.
As I understand it, the median Orthodox convert in the United States is an intellectual, introverted, evangelical, college-educated man, who discovered Orthodoxy through the mysterious workings of the Holy Spirit, also known as Wikipedia. From what I've heard, and seen, the women in this man's life get dragged to the divine liturgy ("St. Nathaniel says 'come and see!'"), and most often do not hear the angels singing the way the man did the first time he witnessed the liturgy.
At my local Orthodox parish, there was a young guy who dragged his entire family to Orthodoxy, and while his parents and siblings were committed, it's obvious he was the one who orchestrated the whole thing. They'd never have stepped foot in an Orthodox church if he hadn't pushed them.
Frederica Mathewes-Green, who as I understand it is kind of the "influencer mom" of American Orthodoxy, said in one of her videos that she just didn't like the divine liturgy the first time she went to an Orthodox church. She grew to like it, but that initial revulsion, or indifference, is what I've generally seen and heard from women who've had experience with Orthodoxy.
Participating in the honored tradition, I dragged both my mother and my girlfriend to liturgy a few times -- neither liked it. Both of them liked going to mass, though. (Definitely not the latin mass -- they can't understand what anyone's saying.)
I think a lot of it has to do with the people. Your framing says a lot, actually -- the intellectual content of faith is the thing that brings our evangelical man to become interested in Orthodoxy, but the women he drags don't know or care about any of that. She's interested in what's actually going on around her: what songs are they singing? What is this strange artwork on the walls? What's the content of the sermon? What do the candles mean? What are the people like? Are they a bear normal, or strange? Are people happy here? Does this seem like a community where I fit in?
And if we're talking about somewhat conservative American women, the sort of women who might be interested in a conservative religious tradition, we're talking about women who are generally very interested in social convention, unobtrusiveness, familiarity. They're very socially-oriented, they want a community that feels familiar, friendly, and safe, not strange, alienating, and unpredictable.
As our female draggee looks around, she sees these weird Byzantine paintings on the walls where people look odd, with strange proportions and almost alien-like ridges and folds in the depictions of their skin (in some icons, St. Paul genuinely just looks like a space alien to me with his giant head). The church bells ring out, and instead of the sweet ding donging of Western church bells, she hears them clanging like a hailstorm. ("Was that an accident?") She hears odd music she's never heard before, no familiar hymns, no familiar cadence -- if the chant is Byzantine-style, it genuinely sounds, to Western ears, like something from the Muslim and not the Christian world -- and she smells weird smells of strange incense, as some guy in an elaborate robe starts swinging it at her. And the worst part? She's not supposed to sit down! "It's for the old ladies," our evangelical man helpfully told her. Well, she's not an old lady, but this just doesn't seem right. She feels like she's put on the spot and has to stand where everyone can watch her, in a situation where she already feels out of place. And now she can't even get comfortable by sitting down and just watching!
The service ends, and, though she's shy, evangelical man starts dragging her around to talk to people, and she can't help but feel like they're just... a little off. There's the man who's wearing a kilt as his Sunday best in the middle of Kansas. There's the guy who wears a bowtie. There's the dude who seems prone to leering, like he's been on a naval vessel for six months and hasn't seen the sight of a woman in that time. There's the guy she can overhear talking about the upcoming Holy Friday service, who's telling his friends, "I just can't wait to stick it to those Jews." (A real anecdote I heard from an Orthodox friend of mine about someone he knew.) And a bunch of the men, including the priest, have a thick, untrimmed beard -- can't they trim them?
Half the people in the church are speaking in foreign languages she can't understand, and are sticking to themselves, avoiding eye contact. She feels like a foreigner in her own country. People are talking about the lenten fast, and are speaking about cheese like they've been on the naval vessel with the leerer with only bread and water -- wait, these people can't eat cheese for months out of the year? The priest is friendly, but seems strange, overly intellectual, and his beard looks greasy. She strikes up a conversation with another convert's wife, and she tells her, "yeah, I didn't like the orthodox church either at first -- it grows on you."
And the overwhelming feeling our dragged-along woman feels to all this is an unadulterated, grade A:
ICK!
My mom told me once, after I'd stopped exploring Orthodoxy, that the Orthodox parishioners "seemed like hippies." My girlfriend was less expressive, but said she thought they "felt like strange people." Neither would have attended the divine liturgy if I hadn't dragged them, and neither had any interest in continuing to attend after I stopped being interested. They just found it overwhelmingly weird.
This obviously doesn't apply to cradle Orthodox -- it is their tradition and they're quite familiar with it. It's western Christianity that seems weird to them. And there are, of course, women who choose to convert to Orthodoxy on their own, but I've never talked to any of them so I can't offer a take.
Sometimes I share my views on Eastern Orthodoxy and people seem surprised by them -- I don't know, maybe I've just seen a tiny sliver of what Orthodoxy in America looks like and it's different elsewhere. I owe a lot to my time exploring Orthodoxy, including a strengthening of my love for the Mother of God, an appreciation for the iconographic tradition (looks over at my icon of Christ Pantokrator), a more reserved approach to the procession of the Holy Spirit, a grounding and softening of my Western 'hard edges' -- without abandoning the juridical lens on Christianity as some Orthodox seem to call for -- and even a belief in the essence-energies distinction, which, interestingly, resolved a struggle I'd had with Western Mariology. And I sincerely and deeply respect the Orthodox tradition as a pathway to communion with God.
But despite all that, my own feeling after sincerely exploring Orthodoxy is that, for all the missionary zeal it's developed in America through conversion, it still feels like it's someone else's church, and I'm just living in barbarian lands an ethnic diaspora of ethnicities I simply am not a part of. And where even the native converts are, respectfully, not always the most 'normal' or conventional people, even if I bear no ill will towards them.
I had a convert friend in the Orthodox church who was quite interesting, obviously very intelligent. But he also had a passion for Orthodoxy and Eastern Europe that bordered on obsessive; he would talk about and cook Russian cuisine for people, despite being as English-German as the rest of us American white people. He had a two-bedroom condo, and one entire bedroom had been converted into what can only be described as a chapel, with icons covering every wall and liturgical books overflowing bookcases. He wanted to be a priest, but had no interest in marriage (which would make him the perfect Catholic seminarian, but obviously led to some stern pastoral advice from his spiritual father). He honestly struck me as the kind of guy who just needed to get laid.
While I respect other cultures and I'm even open to trying their cuisine, I simply have no interest in becoming Greek or Bulgarian or Russian. At times, it felt to me like fitting in the Orthodox church required a cultural self-emptying, not merely a spiritual one. As though to become Orthodox I had to renounce the profound insights of the Western philosophical tradition or the honor due to my ancestors and embrace a worldview that sees them as something between "deeply mistaken" and "the Great Satan of the whole world." I get enough hatred of the West from the secular world, and I just don't care to receive it from my fellow Christians.
And I guess that's what I see in Dreher. He's a Western man, born in Louisiana, and restoring his relationship with his parents was important to him. But he has so self-emptied himself of his culture that he's literally fled the West to go to Hungary, despite writing a book about how Westerners can create pockets of grace within the West after the model of the great founder of Western monasticism.
If I mean anything by this long post, I mean to say that Orthodoxy feels foreign, alien, even converts often feel somewhat odd or unusual, and very often its prescription to Westerners is "reject your people, RETVRN to ours." And that this is picked up by non-Orthodox women more than non-Orthodox men, because of their strong attunement to social signals and preference for the conventional.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
26d ago
More of a joke, I guess -- I wrote it, but I intentionally added the contrasting statements.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
26d ago
Dreher has always struck me as the kind of guy who desperately needs to stop reading the news, but can't help himself. There's something very tragic about a guy who wrote a book about setting up islands of peace away from the mess of the world, but whose output is mostly hot takes on current events.
It's not so much intellectuals, but there are some right-wingers who believe Russia's actually a great wellspring of social conservatism. I know some of them personally. The overwhelming majority think Russia's a terrible, dictatorial place -- but there are a few who think the performative, nationalistic Orthodoxy of the government (as opposed to the quiet piety of the babushka) is an actual representation of Russian culture.
It's psychologically very hard to justify a worldview if there isn't somewhere where it's put into practice. So the deep desire to see your worldview reflected somewhere is what drives both the 20th century Soviet-boosters and the 21st century Russia-boosters. And it also drives, say, evangelicals to believe Trump is a great Christian man, despite his personal conduct and his lack of repentance!
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