With all respect, I am not going to back down from my expression of concern over the emphasis on ethnicity.
I am convinced that Jesus intends the Church to be one, and the earthly father of that Church – for all Christians, whether they wish to acknowledge paternity or not – is the Holy Father in Rome. The role of Peter in scripture and his successors in history is just too big for me to ignore.
The fractured nature of Orthodoxy was also something that shook my confidence in its claims of being the true Church, even before I came to learn about the foundation of Catholic claims with respect to the role of the Pope as found in Mt16,18, Lk22,31 etc and as supported by the understanding and practice of the early Church which is evidenced in the writings of early Church Fathers and Popes from the first millennium.
From my vantage point, being introduced to Russian Orthodoxy, I saw fractures over ethnic lines, conflicting beliefs and conflicting traditions.
The essence of what I learned is this - perhaps it will help persuade someone considering a Catholic to Orthodox conversion, like I was considering in 2004, that it would be a mistake to do it.
One of the first things I learned among the Russian Orthodox believers was that they are an Old Calendar Church, and they celebrate Christmas on Jan 7, according to the Julian Calendar (essentially all fixed Feasts are celebrated 13 days later than in the CC). In my city at the time (New Orleans), there was a Greek Orthodox and an Antiochian Orthodox Church, however the Russians would not attend those churches because they are convinced that the adoption of the New Calendar by those Churches was a heresy (New = Gregorian Calendar, first proposed by a Pope around the 16th c. and adopted by the Patriarch of Constantinople as well as other Orthodox Patriarchs in the first half of the 20th c.). There were also other concerns over the “purity of worship and traditions”, i.e. the Russians condemned the fact that those other churches had pews to sit in, and the use of musical instruments during Liturgy was condemned, although I’m not sure whether the Greek and Antiochian Churches used musical instruments. There was also a strict dress code in the Russian OC, including head covering and only dresses for women, and these dress codes were not enforced strictly in the other churches. Basically, I found out that the Russian OC I was attending stands in a league of its own, and it regards all other New Calendar EO Churches or churches with pews as somewhat heterodox, even heretic, and lacking the necessary purity of worship. My experience relates to ROCOR (Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia), which at the time was not in communion with the Moscow Patriarchate, and I got the feeling but cannot say for sure that ordinary Russian people from Russia would have similar attitudes about New Calendar Churches. Essentially and for all practical purpose, the Russian Orthodox people I knew were not in communion with the Greek and Antiochian Orthodox Churches.
Since I grew up in Romania, I was also interested how the Romanian OC is regarded by ROCOR. Well, they are regarded as heterodox, because they are a New Calendar Church. Had I converted to the Russian version of Orthodoxy, and in the event of me visiting home to Romania, I would be encouraged to seek out an Old Calendar Church in Romania, and if I didn’t find one, I could attend the ordinary Romanian OC, but partaking in the Eucharist (Communion) there would be discouraged, unless I were to spend a long time in Romania in which case it is better to take communion at a New Calendar OC than not to take communion at all.
Interestingly in my home city of Arad, in Romania, there is a Romanian and a Serbian OC in the same square, within a hundred yards of each other. The Serbian OC might be Old Calendar, and I heard once a Serbian man chatting with a Romanian man and asserting in mid-January that “this is the true New Year”. There is for sure fracture over ethnic lines and perhaps over calendar issues in Old Europe, not only in USA, as evidenced by the Romanian and Serbian church buildings in Arad city. I could contrast this with the fact that many Catholic Churches in Arad city have services in 2 or 3 languages (Hungarian, Romanian, German) in the same building. Likewise here in Miami, USA, St. Mary Cathedral has services in English, Spanish, Creole languages, there are no separate US, Cuban, Haitian jurisdictions for the use of RC believers.
I would appreciate if someone familiar with the reunited MP-ROCOR Orthodox Church could comment on the present day practice of churches that formerly belonged to MP. However, I cannot even imagine the ROCOR priests in the reunited Russian OC altering their attitudes towards the New Calendar Churches.
More recently I found another small EO Church in New Orleans, one that belongs to the Basilian Fathers Secular, and this has Russian roots, but it is surely a big NO-NO for ROCOR and the MP, because this Basilian OC has re-established communion with the Catholic Church, and accepts the validity of Marian apparitions at Guadalupe, Lourdes, Fatima, with the added consequence of accepting the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady (“I am the Immaculate Conception” - she said at Lourdes, to St. Bernadette), which is rejected by most EO Churches.
