Former (Cradle) Roman Catholics

[truefiction1]

Why did you convert to Orthodoxy? What wasn't working for you over there?

 

[E.C.]

I converted at sixteen (2006), about a year after my dad, and I think my stepmom had been Orthodox almost twenty years by that point.

Basically, it started when I had the realization that the Roman Catholic Church had changed. The Second Council at the Vatican, also known as Vatican II, was going on from 1962-1965 and had initially been called because Pope John XXIII believed that the Church needed to do some soul-searching as the world became more secular. Some things were not actually bad ideas such as worshiping in the vernacular language instead of Latin, treating the Eastern Catholics as equals, and also taking a minute to figure out what the Church's position is regarding new stuff. However, some things from Vatican II were just awful and effectively a Protestantization of the Faith such as the current Novus Ordo mass and liquidating the importance of monasticism. In hindsight, the Roman Catholic Church had effectively caved to the modern world.

Now, that was merely sixty years ago now. My dad grew up in the pre-Vatican II Church and in hearing his stories on how things were, I realized just how much the Catholic Church truly changed. If she has changed this much and this drastically in a mere sixty years, how much has she changed in the roughly 1,000 years since the Great Schism? American Catholicism is now roughly split into three camps: traditionalists who want to return to pre-Vatican II, conservatives are are fine with the new mass and the vernacular and don't want to change much, and now the liberals who want to "continue in the spirit of Vatican II" by constantly reforming the Church. The problem with this is that it is called Protestantism. Protestantism does not work in Catholicism.
A great example of the difference in practice I saw in two parishes. The old Catholic parish that we grew up in was built in 1903 in a neo-Gothic design and still retains the old High Altar. The parish's attitude growing up was "we have this new mass, we'll use it, but we'll keep our statues and use some of the older hymns alongside some of the newer less-cringy ones". The Catholic parish that was near the new house where we moved to was very liberal with an altar in the middle and all the Eucharistic Ministers were exclusively women. In that parish's efforts to give women an active rule, they marginalized and excluded the men from any active role.

What do I need THAT level of inconsistency for? Especially when you consider that these two Catholic parishes were in the same county and are so drastically different. Compare that to the OCA parish in Washington state and the OCA parish in Miami, FL which worshiped the same Divine Liturgy, the same way, and in the same language despite being on complete opposite corners of the country.


This combined with the fact that having one guy, the pope, as the sole senior administrator on an organization as large and diverse as the Roman Catholic Church is frankly impractical. Just look at Germany where the Catholic Church allegedly performs gay marriages and the pope is powerless to stop it. Finally, American Catholicism has put social justice on such a high pedestal that it no longer cares for the spiritual health of her laity.

 

[ArmyMatt]

that seems common among former Catholics I know.

 

[rusmeister]

I converted at sixteen (2006), about a year after my dad, and I think my stepmom had been Orthodox almost twenty years by that point.

Basically, it started when I had the realization that the Roman Catholic Church had changed. The Second Council at the Vatican, also known as Vatican II, was going on from 1962-1965 and had initially been called because Pope John XXIII believed that the Church needed to do some soul-searching as the world became more secular. Some things were not actually bad ideas such as worshiping in the vernacular language instead of Latin, treating the Eastern Catholics as equals, and also taking a minute to figure out what the Church's position is regarding new stuff. However, some things from Vatican II were just awful and effectively a Protestantization of the Faith such as the current Novus Ordo mass and liquidating the importance of monasticism. In hindsight, the Roman Catholic Church had effectively caved to the modern world.

Now, that was merely sixty years ago now. My dad grew up in the pre-Vatican II Church and in hearing his stories on how things were, I realized just how much the Catholic Church truly changed. If she has changed this much and this drastically in a mere sixty years, how much has she changed in the roughly 1,000 years since the Great Schism? American Catholicism is now roughly split into three camps: traditionalists who want to return to pre-Vatican II, conservatives are are fine with the new mass and the vernacular and don't want to change much, and now the liberals who want to "continue in the spirit of Vatican II" by constantly reforming the Church. The problem with this is that it is called Protestantism. Protestantism does not work in Catholicism.
A great example of the difference in practice I saw in two parishes. The old Catholic parish that we grew up in was built in 1903 in a neo-Gothic design and still retains the old High Altar. The parish's attitude growing up was "we have this new mass, we'll use it, but we'll keep our statues and use some of the older hymns alongside some of the newer less-cringy ones". The Catholic parish that was near the new house where we moved to was very liberal with an altar in the middle and all the Eucharistic Ministers were exclusively women. In that parish's efforts to give women an active rule, they marginalized and excluded the men from any active role.

What do I need THAT level of inconsistency for? Especially when you consider that these two Catholic parishes were in the same county and are so drastically different. Compare that to the OCA parish in Washington state and the OCA parish in Miami, FL which worshiped the same Divine Liturgy, the same way, and in the same language despite being on complete opposite corners of the country.


This combined with the fact that having one guy, the pope, as the sole senior administrator on an organization as large and diverse as the Roman Catholic Church is frankly impractical. Just look at Germany where the Catholic Church allegedly performs gay marriages and the pope is powerless to stop it. Finally, American Catholicism has put social justice on such a high pedestal that it no longer cares for the spiritual health of her laity.

I think it fair to point out that the spirit of “constantly reforming the Church” is present among us as well, going about under the expression “a living Tradition” (as if preserving what as passed down to us is ssomehow “dead”) and you are right - it is indeed protestantism. It is that heresy I spoke of that I think should be called “neo-gnosticism”, the idea that we know better than the fathers and that in their “ignorance”, they have no answers to some of our modern problems. It’s a kind of pride to imagine that we have all-new problems that the ancient Church was incapable of understanding, to forget that “there is nothing new under the sun”. The Church is riddled with that heresy in our time. It’s not unique to the Catholic Church. It’s just the spirit of the world trying to creep in and subvert the Church from the inside, through members that embrace it.

 

[E.C.]

I think it fair to point out that the spirit of “constantly reforming the Church” is present among us as well, going about under the expression “a living Tradition” (as if preserving what as passed down to us is ssomehow “dead”) and you are right - it is indeed protestantism. It is that heresy I spoke of that I think should be called “neo-gnosticism”, the idea that we know better than the fathers and that in their “ignorance”, they have no answers to some of our modern problems. It’s a kind of pride to imagine that we have all-new problems that the ancient Church was incapable of understanding, to forget that “there is nothing new under the sun”. The Church is riddled with that heresy in our time. It’s not unique to the Catholic Church. It’s just the spirit of the world trying to creep in and subvert the Church from the inside, through members that embrace it.

The part I underlined there I would have to agree with. That spirit isn't always in the form of "liberalization" however and sometimes appears in the form of "reconstructivism" or trying to recreate some idealistic time that never existed. There's a high number of parishes in the USA that try to recreate some 18th-19th century village life of <pick an Eastern European country> that simply did not exist and can not be recreated even if it did. This isn't 1917 Russia nor 1821 Greece. This is 2023 North America. We are better off acknowledging and dealing with the problems we DO have - such as rising anti-Christian sentiment, hostility towards religious people in general, ever-increasing Nihilism - than we are the problems that we think we have just because those problems were seen as problems in 1917 Russia, for example.

I am all for the Church services being brought to a new country and translated into a new language. I am also all for the organic, natural development of a future American Rite that would likely be a hybrid of Slavic and Byzantine practices. However, I am NOT supportive of forcing liturgical practices from the top down just for the sake of creating "something different".

 

[rusmeister]

The part I underlined there I would have to agree with. That spirit isn't always in the form of "liberalization" however and sometimes appears in the form of "reconstructivism" or trying to recreate some idealistic time that never existed. There's a high number of parishes in the USA that try to recreate some 18th-19th century village life of <pick an Eastern European country> that simply did not exist and can not be recreated even if it did. This isn't 1917 Russia nor 1821 Greece. This is 2023 North America. We are better off acknowledging and dealing with the problems we DO have - such as rising anti-Christian sentiment, hostility towards religious people in general, ever-increasing Nihilism - than we are the problems that we think we have just because those problems were seen as problems in 1917 Russia, for example.

I am all for the Church services being brought to a new country and translated into a new language. I am also all for the organic, natural development of a future American Rite that would likely be a hybrid of Slavic and Byzantine practices. However, I am NOT supportive of forcing liturgical practices from the top down just for the sake of creating "something different".

I think the biggest problem is the heresy I described, not only because of “liberalizing” tendencies, but because of the central issue - that the Orthodox Christian essentially becomes his own authority, picking and choosing what he will and will not believe, and calling it “Orthodox”. It is one of the three basic types of believers I have come to identify in any religion. I always knew about the nominal believer, the vast majority, who in our religion wear a cross, but do not seriously try to practice the faith, and the true believer, the one who accepts whole cloth an external and continuous authority with the power to teach and correct him. It is only in recent years that I have become more aware of the third type - the eclectic believer, the one who picks and chooses what he likes from a religion, seriously practices that, rejects what he doesn’t like, deciding on his own authority, buttressed by modern teachers who agree with him and similarly reject established teachings of the tradition that displease them. The nominal believer just has the mind of the world; the eclectic believer does too, only clothed with what he imagines to be the mind of the Church, having in his mind the approval of his religion.

THAT is what we have flourishing in the Church, unnoticed, and unaddressed. It would have driven me from the Orthodox Church altogether. Without the acknowledgement of patristic consensus, I see no way to avoid the continual breaking off and endless schism, all imagining that they are in accordance with the true mind of the Church. Just some more Protestants at the end of the day.

 

[truefiction1]

I think the biggest problem is the heresy I described, not only because of “liberalizing” tendencies, but because of the central issue - that the Orthodox Christian essentially becomes his own authority, picking and choosing what he will and will not believe, and calling it “Orthodox”. It is one of the three basic types of believers I have come to identify in any religion. I always knew about the nominal believer, the vast majority, who in our religion wear a cross, but do not seriously try to practice the faith, and the true believer, the one who accepts whole cloth an external and continuous authority with the power to teach and correct him. It is only in recent years that I have become more aware of the third type - the eclectic believer, the one who picks and chooses what he likes from a religion, seriously practices that, rejects what he doesn’t like, deciding on his own authority, buttressed by modern teachers who agree with him and similarly reject established teachings of the tradition that displease them. The nominal believer just has the mind of the world; the eclectic believer does too, only clothed with what he imagines to be the mind of the Church, having in his mind the approval of his religion.

THAT is what we have flourishing in the Church, unnoticed, and unaddressed. It would have driven me from the Orthodox Church altogether. Without the acknowledgement of patristic consensus, I see no way to avoid the continual breaking off and endless schism, all imagining that they are in accordance with the true mind of the Church. Just some more Protestants at the end of the day.

That's gnosticism, which is the antichrist spirit.

 

[rusmeister]

That's gnosticism, which is the antichrist spirit.

Yes. I call it neo-gnosticism to distinguish it from the classical form of the heresy. This new version has an element that is subtle: the neo-gnostic speaks of “living Tradition”, but generally does not think through consciously to the fact that he is making himself the ultimate arbiter of what Church teaching is. That part of it, for most, they do without realizing the fact. But if you bring up patristic consent they will reject it, because “times change” and Church teaching, in their semi-conscious thought, changes along with it and aligns with whatever seems compassionate, kind, and good to the modern world. The ideas of the modern world correct whatever was taught in the Church. They think they are in alignment with Church teaching, consciously, they do not see that they are contradicting it. So it’s a passive heresy, and it is harder to find heresiarchs actively teaching it.

But it is present in our parishes, our hierarchy, our ministries, and even TAW. The only way to protect yourself from it is to humble yourself and ask what the Church has always taught and accept that, even when it runs against what you feel or what seems good and kind to you. You have to strive to understand that the modern worldly idea of kindness and compassion, of love - for they believe that the innovation is more loving - is false compassion, and so, false love, a mask for indifference. We are not more loving than the apostles and fathers.

Too many people in the Church now believe that there is no consensus outside of the Symbol of Faith, the Creed, and that everything else is a matter of opinion, and that they can decide for themselves what is right. Just yesterday I was speaking to Orthodox women that affirmed that.