1. In a sense I didn't leave Eastern Orthodoxy. Been Byzantine again since '16. There is an Orthodox
tradition - with me it happens to be Russian Orthodox - that I'm still part of and love. I don't believe in an Orthodox
Church. They're all independent, there's no teaching authority, they're wrong about remarriage after divorce and on contraception, their anti-Westernism is bigotry pretending to be theology, and they're not even in communion with each other! (Constantinople vs. Moscow in the Ukraine; Moscow's right.) Born Orthodox get the benefit of the doubt. There are post-schism Orthodox in my all-Orthodox icon corner, and I go to the Orthodox several times a year for Vigil as Communion prep. I receive Communion a few times a year, the old-country Orthodox way, but in the Catholic Church of course. Also, the traditional Latin Mass has the second oldest Eucharistic prayer still in use. It doesn't get more Orthodox than that. (By the way, promoting this Mass is not about Latin.)
2.
I came back under Benedict the Great. I don't like Francis but he doesn't faze me. Because he's irrelevant. Our teachings can't change. The Pope can't change them. Papal infallibility is about the Pope's
office as part of
church infallibility, not his
person. We are actually better off under Francis than we were under John Paul the Overrated, the wonderful fellow who brought you altar girls. Francis hasn't undone Benedict's liturgical reforms, better English and making the traditional Latin Mass available to all, because he doesn't speak English and he doesn't care about liturgy.
Catholic integralism is the true seamless garment.
Amen. The Bergoglio papacy is a trial, but you put it into perspective with this post.
ReplyDeleteTwice I've thought he'd vacated the See of Peter but he's off the hook on technicalities: private letters aren't magisterial and he didn't say the death penalty is intrinsically disordered. So he's barely still Pope.
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