Nope. At least, I don’t think so. If a Greek marries a Syrian, and they are both considered Orthodox, then that wouldn’t be an interfaith marriage but an intrafaith marriage, wouldn’t it?
Seriously, what do you think the Office of Whatever Marriage is concerned about? If a Greek marries a Syrian and then severs communion with the Greek Orthodox Church but remains Orthodox, why is this a problem?
Firstly, a Greek who marries a Syrian and starts attending an Antiochian Orthodox Church would not “sever communion” with the Greek Orthodox Church. He would simply stop attending his old parish and start attending a new one, as it is the same Orthodox Church, just under a different hierarchy. For me (a member of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese) to go commune in a ROCOR Church or Antiochian Church would not be to sever communion with the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, because it would not be some sort of schismatic act. Secondly, because the author makes it quite clear that his concern is with Greeks who “sever communion” with the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, it stands to reason then that such a scenario is precisely not a problem. In fact, I cannot find any place where the article claims that it would be a problem for an Orthodox Christian to marry another Orthodox Christian and to wind up attending a different parish.
If an Italian Catholic marries an Irish Catholic, do you think Rome is in a panic? No, because that is not an interfaith marriage. However, if the Catholic girl marries the Baptist boy, and then leaves the Catholic Church - that would be a concern because that IS an interfaith marriage.
And that is precisely what the author is concerned with. The author doesn’t express concern about marriages between Orthodox Christians.
So, back to my original point…why do you think the author(s) of the article are sounding this alarm concerning “interfaith” marriages and the grim future of the Greek Orthodox Church in America?
Because when you strip the hyperbole away, the author it attempting to convey the importance of ministering to those who enter into interfaith marriages to prevent them from falling into indifferentism.
And more to my overall point, doesn’t the article’s main premise (namely, that Greek Orthodoxy in America could be in serious trouble “in the very near future”) suggest to you that Orthodoxy’s claim to be the one, true Church cannot be true?
No, because that is a poor reason for supposing that something is not true. We cannot know God’s reasons for allowing things to happen as they do, so to suppose that we know that such and such body cannot be true because of historical circumstance is not sound thinking and in general it is also not theologically sound, because it presupposes some sort of Calvinistic notion of irresistible grace. To paraphrase St. John of Damascus, there is that which is within our control, and that which is left to providence providence, so if there should be a certain failing of the Church in some place because of what is within our control, this does not reflect a sign of abandonment by God, but a failure of men. The Catholicity of the Church is precisely what makes it so that if a failure of one of the Church’s instantiations in time does not falsify the Church. For example, would you be willing to suppose that the destruction of the North African Church or of the Latin churches of the crusader kingdoms falsifies the claims of your ecclesial body to be true?
We can only assess the truth of some doctrine through considering the teaching of the Scriptures as understood through the Tradition which is passed down to us through the liturgy and the writings of the fathers. Anything else is intellectually quite lazy.
I asked Ryan Black this previously: could you please specify the century or centuries to which you are referring when you claim that the the “Church of the East” was the largest?
By the 10th Century, the Church of the East stretched all the way from Egypt through modern-day Iraq and Iran to India and China.
