I believe we could all stand to soften our words, here. I appreciate people who put things bluntly, but y'all are just pushing each other's buttons at this point.
Rosie Q entered our discussion with amazing nuance to her words. Yet somehow, my side zeroed in on the one aspect of her discourse that was not formed the best. That's unfortunate, and I'm sad to see she appears too frustrated to continue the conversation. Surely, what she said is insulting to our forebears, but I understand she did not mean for it to be. Yet I also understand that she retaliated at some of our words unhelpfully.
Andrewn is trying to suggest mediation from a neutral party. And this is generally a wise idea. However, a good mediator must be neutral in the sense of being sympathetic to both disputing parties. An Anglican such as himself might come close, given as we Orthodox are on relatively warm terms with conservative Anglicans (and Lutherans), compared to some other Protestants. But it would still be not quite ideal. No, the EO and OO haven't succeeded at unity yet, but we do have much warmer feelings toward each other than our ancestors, as evidenced by the fact that dhzeremi feels comfortable enough to post in here regularly. The march of the Holy Spirit's progress is often slow, and I personally am still optimistic about a future reunion.
As for my side (and maybe I'm including dhzeremi here, just a little bit), y'all know the scene better than I do as a 9.5-mo illuminated, but yeah, I totally get the kickback against ecumenism and recruiting Baptists to mediate between us all and Prots seeming to act like they know our history better than we do. Still, I think we could be more hospitable. There are recalcitrant fools who just want to stir up trouble, and those should be firmly reprimanded. But I do not think that describes our two friends above. Please. These are not insults worth souring people's experiences of Orthodoxy over.
Is this talking about Rosie Q's comment on Chalcedon? I wasn't upset or insulted by it (nor by Andrewn's comment, or anyone's really; I'm a guest here...what business do I have being insulted by anyone's opinion on a board that is not meant to represent my communion in the first place?). It's a common enough belief about Chalcedon, and one that I've encountered even among some in my communion (well, less that it was all political, but along the same lines of "it doesn't matter
that much/we should just get over it for the sake of unity"), and that's why I felt that I should add my voice on that topic here, because it's entirely possible that others more generally (I don't know this specific poster) may have heard some similar from someone OO somewhere. So I just wanted to say that, no, Chalcedon was not primarily about politics, and it is possible to agree with the statement that Fr. Matt wrote as he wrote it and still be entirely faithful to your own communion's position on the subject.
None of this is meant as an insult to anyone who thinks it is primarily political, just a corrective to a common and well-meaning but ultimately untrue sentiment. After all, you'd think that if I as a non-Chalcedonian could make that argument in good conscience then I would, right? It would probably 'look better' to the inquisitive person who doesn't want to pass judgment on anyone, in the sense of seeming to take a higher road than those who are still stuck on Chalcedon and insisting that there is substance behind the disagreement, all this many years later. But in reality, as you can tell by the fact that we OO have not 'just gotten over it' as a group (certain individuals, sure, but you're always going to get that in any group), there's more to it than is commonly assumed by those who are not involved in it directly. That is why I had the reaction that I did to Andrewn's suggestion about getting an outside mediator. It's understandable that maybe getting a pair of fresh eyes on the subject would be advantageous, but not only is it literally not possible to find such a person (read: with the
technical exception of the Nestorians, since they left communion with the other churches before it was held, everyone of a preexisting church of any kind is, by their association with their particular church and not necessarily by their personal feelings towards or level of knowledge about the council, either a Chalcedonian or a non-Chalcedonian, as Chalcedon is a fact of history and we are all born into the world as it is, not as we would've liked it to have been over fifteen centuries before we were born), but in this case by being qualified to at least
appear neutral, you'd be virtually guaranteed to be dealing with a person who is predisposed to the view that there's less to it than
either side says that there is. (Read: they're either going to be an out-and-out Chalcedonian without realizing it, like most Protestants, and hence not neutral at all to begin with, or they're going to look at all of the stuff surrounding it and discount whatever does not seem to be relevant
to them because they don't know what they're actually looking at and what it means in the context of the wider points made by both sides regarding why they accepted/rejected the council in the first place. This is very much unlike an impartial judge in either case, which I would assume kind of defeats the purpose of trying to get an outsider to look at it.)
