Catholic Coffee Drinkers

I realize that this is my thirds straight post on the Orthodox Church, but I simply can’t help but to find myself showing a little envy for the faithful of Eastern Orthodoxy.  No worries, dear reader, this is not me becoming Orthodox (though I appreciate and admire their many practices and beliefs) but I simply find myself wishing that Roman Catholics could fly under the radar like our brothers in the East (or, as they at least do so in America).  It seems that no matter what the Catholics do, they will be criticized and thrown through fire by our society, meanwhile few even are aware that the Eastern Orthodox exist.

This envy especially became apparent with the news reports of the Catholic welcoming in the Anglicans.  All kinds of nastiness is given, questions of motives, and whatever name calling the simple engage in.  However, the Eastern Orthodox Church in Moscow and Antioch had started opening their doors to an Anglican/Western Use almost a century ago and this has included bringing in entire Anglican parishes as recently as 1991.  At no time, as far as I can find, did the New York Times reserve a space for decrying that the Orthodox were poaching Anglicans and Roman Catholics, that the Orthodox were behind the times or any of that nonsense.

In general, the mass of Americas media legions want to see the Catholic church as backwards and bigoted, but I often wonder how they would feel if they encountered a traditional priest of Orthodoxy.  I remember one encounter with a Serbian Orthodox priest who, when I inquired about attending Divine Liturgy informed me, “We would love to welcome you.  However, I must tell you that you are in schism and thus we can’t offer you communion.  But please join us for coffee afterwards.”  There was no cruelness in his voice, he was merely stating a fact from his perspective and in general he and the parish were among the kindest people I’ve ever met.  However, in this time there is no way a Roman priest could say that and not have throngs of freaked out parishioners claiming that he’s bigoted, anti-ecumenical and unchristian.  In fact, how much ire would be brought about if every Roman Catholic parish published this in their bulletin?

For some people communion is merely the opportunity to share
a sense of “fellowship” with everyone present regardless of their beliefs and practices. We believe that such a practice cheapens and trivializes communion and denies the basic Biblical understanding of what communion is all about.
As St. Paul says, those who do not discern the Body and Blood of Christ partake of their own peril (I Corinthians 11:27-28). While many non-Orthodox Christians may individually hold the same or similar views as we hold, we cannot examine each person on their beliefs as they come to the altar rail, so only Orthodox Christians may receive communion.

I can imagine now that people would clamor that they had some “right” to the blessed Body and Blood of Christ, which is born as much from a misunderstanding of the Eucharist as much as it is a misunderstanding of rights.

I am happy to be Catholic, but I at times can’t help but to wonder what it would be like to have an Orthodox faith in America and no one think me backwards or bigoted.

Father Stephen writes yet another post that makes his blog required daily reading for me.  Reposting an earlier post, the Orthodox priest writes:

Knowing God is not a distraction from knowing other persons, nor is knowing other persons a distraction from knowing God. But, like God, knowing other persons is not the same thing as thinking about them, much less is it objectifying them.

Knowing others is so far from being a distraction from knowing God, that it is actually essential to knowing God. We cannot say we love God, whom we have not seen, and hate our brother whom we do see, St. John tells us. We only know God to the extent that we love our enemies (1 John 4:7-8).

And this matters.

This blog does not matter – except that I may share something that makes it possible for someone to know God or someone may share something that allows themselves to be known. This matters.

The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople spoke at the Religion, Science and Environment Symposium in Memphis with regards to the human responsibility towards the environment.  As he usually does, the HAH Bartholomew I points to the issues surrounding the degradation of the environment as being rooted in humanity overestimating control of its destiny and believing that we would find a way to solve all our crisis.  Knowledge and the pace of technology have not appealed to wisdom, even the most common wisdom that knows the finite character of creation.  His address is short and even comes with a video, both of which are worth watching.  Please find them here.

The Patriarch Delivering his Address.

Every once in a while Time Magazine will do an article that doesn’t send me into a fury.  This happens to be one of them.

Madees Khoury’s favorite days are the ones where she wakes at 5 A.M., slips out of the house, enters the huge shed in the yard and, still in her pajamas, climbs the ladder to the top of the stainless steel tanks to begin brewing beer. A graduate of Hellenic College, Boston, Khoury, 24, is the only woman brewer — or brewster — in the Middle East. She is being groomed by her family to take over the Taybeh brewery, home of the only Palestinian beer.

I’m still trying to maneuver the streets of Chicago to find a good place to buy/drink beer, but this will be something I’ll keep an eye out for.

HT to Sean at The Blue Boar.