Quotes and conversations on religion: going for broke in an Orthodox/Catholic fight

• A question of incense: what is it that High-Church Anglicans do differently from Catholics that seems to make the incense so ummmmmmmmm what's the word?? Never noticed a difference in the smell of the incense, just a difference in the culture. The ad-hoc, congregational nature of high-church Anglicanism, sort of a club mentality, successfully resisting (hooray) the changes from Vatican II, made it fun. I imagine it's still much the same that way for Affirming Catholics, even though they're more liberal than Catholicism on some points and more conservative than mainstream Catholics on others (liturgically they still resemble me). Romans tend to give it the token wave with a small thurible in a Basilica; Anglo-Catholics tend to use "big bertha" in a church the size of a walk-in closet. Heh heh. "Romans." (I get it: "We're Catholics too.") Civis Romanus sum.
• “@RorateCaeli: Catholicism is not a super-congregational church where the people grant power to the pastor; it's never been like that.” True, but there is lots of leeway in church polity apart from the papacy and episcopate. Anglican semi-congregationalism enabled Anglo-Catholic parishes to NOT implement the changes after Vatican II, plus it builds strong parish communities, also the Orthodox and Polish National Catholic experience. Reject their errors but learn from these people too. Liberals say that stuff because they're anti-sacerdotal and rebelling against priests who happen to be orthodox. But the women who want to be priests are clericalists, not sacerdotalists, and have you ever run across liberal priests when they're in charge? (Pretty much the story of the church since Vatican II.) Not pretty.
• Orthodox/Catholic fight: going for broke. Long thread in which I make all the points I make here, in the middle of OC.net. You have been warned. If "the whole Church" is limited to Eastern Europe and the Middle East with a few immigrant and convert outposts in the New World, I think I'll go be a Buddhist instead. They're nicer. There seem to be two kinds of Orthodox arguing here: geeks living in their heads coming up with historical sophistry to defend the schism, and xenophobic ethnics, with crossover. The defensiveness of the East in its claims to be the "true Church" is an example of its weakness. Its inability to recognize that it is a piece of the broader Church - an inability nurtured by sultans and tsars who preferred a divided Christendom to a united one - is not a sign of strength. It is just silly. They have a bunch of popes as saints in their calendars, and even the dreaded St. Augustine is a saint to them - "Blessed Augustine" as he is known. I have a relic of St. Augustine, and another of St. John Neumann. We don't hate the East; their reason to exist is to hate the West.
• The idea of a conflict between "Dormition" and "Assumption" is schismatic nonsense from the Orthodox, ironic since we got the story, assumption and all, in a much more flowery form from the East. Pius XII left it open: Catholics can believe she died but don't have to.
• From the rector of a formerly Anglo-Papalist parish that retains those trappings, including today's feast: If she imitated her Son, then she died. Mariolatry is just round the corner in much of the so-called 'developed' doctrine, East and West. True enough, Father, about popular piety but not doctrine. Good thing the church is indefectible to keep us from going round the bend. But riddle me this, Batman: so, Catholic Mariology means "development" is bad (echoing the Orthodox and the classic Anglicans) but women's ordination and same-sex marriage are "development," no? So what's the difference?
• The feast of the Assumption is when the United States got its first Catholic bishop. The anniversary of the consecration of John Carroll. There was once a kind of high-church Episcopalian who had a kind of true-church claim, mirroring the state church in England: I remember from my Anglican days that there was a Feast of the Bestowal of the American Episcopate in the ECUSA calendar, referring of course to Samuel Seabury, not Carroll. I remember how we (that is, the people I associated with) implicity - and sometimes explicitly! - behaved as if the Episcopal House of Bishops were the real, honest to God, truly, true "American Episcopate" whereas the "Roman" hierarchy constituted a bunch of unwelcome interlopers. Of course, I do not blame Bishop Seabury for this mentality one bit - only some of his more obnoxious spiritual descendants (mea culpa!), of which I found one 19th-century choice (better yet, bonkers) specimen from the Project Canterbury website for your amusement. Cue tiny violins and sad trombones. The other reason they call us "the Romans." I wonder if Bolles is an ancestor of Richard Bolles, the Episcopal priest who wrote What Color Is Your Parachute?