Good article, despite a negative focus on "masculinity" and a couple other things.
As far as changes, our priest has done a good job, IMO. A few months ago, he reminded the catechumens that wearing shorts, ragged jeans and t-shirts won't preclude anyone from worship, because we're not legalistic, but c'mon, we represent the cherubim, we should do a little better.
It’s clear that the worldly leaders on the far left have identified us now as a threat and are moving to persecute us, by associating us falsely with “white nationalism” (which is absurd as anyone who has visited a typical Eastern Orthodox or Oriental Orthodox parish can attest) and sexist, which is even more absurd.
Indeed on this very site there is a member who I used to be sympathetic towards, but who has now become openly spiteful towards Eastern Orthodox, and especially Coptic Orthodox, Christians, which saddens me very much; she believes our veneration of the Theotokos is inherently sexist, which represents such a horrible degree of prelest that I would urge members to pray for her.
The NY Times operates on the basis of guilt by association; the article conveniently declined to make it clear that Matthew Heimbach is excommunicate, pending his repentance, from the canonical church, and that the problem of Orthobros is rare even among the schismatic Old Calendarists.
At the same time, we must be careful, because this article underscores the harm that our Orthobro problem could cause the Oriental Orthodox; when the world targets us, the OO churches, who are facing dire persecution and who benefit from majority national governments only in Armenia and Ethiopia, both of which are impoverished and in extreme peril from their Islamic neighbors, will be cut off, will lose sources of funding that have been helping many to deal with the persecution. It is my belief that, if required, EO charities such as the Order of St. Ignatius should be prepared to offer direct financial assistance to their OO counterparts if this transpires, because the fact is, most people are unaware of the EO-OO schism, a schism I believe should end based on the deteriminations of the EO-OO theological conferences and in which I align myself with iOTA (the International Orthodox Theological Asscociation) and support expanding the intercommunion model that unites the Antiochians and Syriac Orthodox in the Middle East, but alas not in North America, on a churchwide basis until such time as full communion can be established without causing a schism or being used by those desiring a schism for other reasons as justification for one.
Likewise we should also be enlarging our Western Rite operations. The Antiochian Western Rite Vicarate and the ROCOR Western Rite should inspire a similar vicarate in the OCA; the OCA paradoxically has a monastery dedicated to St. John Maximovitch yet unlike the Antiochians and ROCOR has not moved to implement the Western Orthodoxy he endorsed. This matters, because far-left elements in the Roman Catholic Church are determined to eliminate their traditional liturgy, which has a beauty similar to ours, distorted by various Scholastic era problems and with a depressing lack of parish-level celebration of the Divine Office (the willingness of people to attend Matins and Vespers I regard as a key metric of the health of a liturgical church).
