According to the website, only 105 people were questioned, 90% of whom live in North America. That’s just too small a number from too small a geographical area for the results to be considered accurate.
I absolutely agree.
In my experience, which is confined primarily to my own parish and internet discussions, most Orthodox have a negative opinion of Catholicism, and would only consider reunion if Catholics abandoned all dogmas not shared by the Orthodox.
That sounds appropriate. A negative opinion of some aspects of Roman Catholicism, such as theological innovation for example, is not a negative opinion of Roman Catholics, or even Roman Catholicism in general, but it is enough to block intercommunion and is liable to be discussed.
Many people in my parish are converts from other Christian denominations and harbor a strong anti-Catholic bias that they retained from their previous faiths.
I am not sure if I understand you here.
Are you saying that the fact the Orthodox “would only consider reunion if Catholics abandoned all dogmas not shared by the Orthodox” is evidence of the strong anti-Catholic bias they would have brought with them from protestantism? Or are you stating this as a second observation, distinct and unrelated to the first?
While I was Lutheran I was taught that the Pope was the anti-Christ and most Catholics would not be saved due to their reliance on their own works for salvation. Most traditional piety, such as the sign of the cross, was viewed with suspicion if not outright rejected as being “too Catholic”. If other denominations have similar attitudes (and historically they do), then it’s likely that converts to Orthodoxy have continued to hold these biases.
It does not follow. Orthodoxy is “too Catholic”. It does all the same things the Roman Catholics do, three times over usually, unapologetically and often better that the Roman Catholic do. When I first visited an eastern parish and saw them making full prostrations, kissing icons and priests hands I was shocked and extremely uneasy. :bowdown::bowdown::bowdown:
I had been a practicing Roman Catholic for fifty years. We never kissed statues and pictures on the walls and our priests hands, and we didn’t cross ourselves as often, we didn’t confess in the open in from of others … we didn’t put our noses and foreheads to the floor and leave our booty’s in the air for all the world to see
Anyone who converts to Orthodoxy has to shed inhibitions and an aversion to making the sign of the cross and a ‘Faith and Works’ outlook toward salvation as well as church authority, because it is in your face big time.
There have been a few cases already when my girlfriend, who is Catholic, attended liturgy with me, and afterward we overheard people criticizing Catholicism, which made her very uncomfortable.
That is unfortunate and tactless. I think it is rude and counterproductive. However, I remember hearing that same kind of thing in conversation at the eastern Catholic parish I belonged to for a few years. Many of the biggest and most vocal critics were former Roman Catholics themselves, now eastern Catholics.
Once, before we had our own priest and were served by clergy who would visit to do liturgy for us, we had a Catholic visitor who was interested in exploring Orthodoxy. After liturgy the priest held a question and answer session, and the subject of Catholicism came up. He said that as a priest he insisted on appearing as Orthodox as possible (e.g. cassock, beard, etc.) so that he wasn’t mistaken for a Catholic priest, which he considered an insult.
I think that sometimes Catholic and Orthodox nuns in habit are mistaken for Muslim women from a distance. They must take great care to wear their crosses prominently. It would surely be a shame to dedicate ones life to be one of the few holy ones, set aside for God’s work, and often mistaken for a different sort of person altogether.
Needless to say, we never saw that visitor again.
I greeted in Catholic and Orthodox parishes for years and saw many visitors. Most for one reason or another choose not to come back. But I think we agree that it does not make sense to be boorishly insulting.
There appears to be little understanding of what Catholicism really is, and misconceptions are contrasted to Orthodoxy in a negative light. I think we have a long way to go to first correct these misconceptions before the majority of laity would even consider reunion. Again, this is just my experience, and I hope it’s not really as bad in other places as it is here.
I would also say that there are misconceptions in Roman Catholicism of what Orthodoxy really is.
