Hi everyone,
I am in the process of exploring becoming Catholic. I was originally Anglican but became Orthodox shortly after I turned 18. A raft of problems led to me leaving the church in my early 20s but I am now looking to come back. While a lot of Orthodoxy still speaks to me I find myself dissatisfied with the nationalism and politics rife within the church as well as the open hatred towards LGBT people in Russia.
I am at a point in my life where I am very aware of my need for God and the limitations of my own insights into the world. I am prepared, as an LGBT person to submit my life to God and the Church in order to be within it. This is not easy and scares me but I want and need to be part of a sacramental church again.
Dear madam,
I usually don’t post to much here, but your message has certainly put me into a great deal of distress. While I am certainly not going to try to convince you to stick with Orthodox Christianity over Catholicism as that is not my place, I do feel rather compelled to tell you that your message is rife with a great deal of inaccuracies.
The whole “Orthodox are too tribal and primitive, Catholicism truly is the only universal church” is a rather old canard. What you’re seeing now is a Catholicism that has become deeply entrenched within the culture of the Anglosphere so that it seems universal with no particular culture attached to it. Do you not think that fifty years and onwards that Catholicism was not seen as a tribal and primitive Christianity? Even now in the year 2014 different ethnicities might be the majority in one Catholic parish and be perceived as controlling it. Why, my own Irish Catholic Grandmother and her family fought bitterly to keep their parish named “Saint Clare” instead of letting the newcomer Hispanic congregants change the name to “Our Lady of Guadalupe.” Likewise, in countries where neither Catholicism nor Orthodoxy are deeply entrenched within society, such as Sweden, Denmark, or Finland, Catholicism is
just as nationalistic and unwelcoming as Orthodoxy might be perceived to be. A native Swede, a Chaldean, or a Croat might not feel so welcome at a predominantly Polish congregation where the liturgy is celebrated not in Swedish, but in Polish. And how does any parish anywhere separate itself from one culture? Do you think that a predominantly white, Anglo-Saxon New Zealander parish is somehow beyond nationalism and a clash of cultures? Far from it!
The same goes for politics. The Orthodox Church has a multitude of problems on every given day, but if you think that running away from these problems of any nature into the arms of another Church is going to do you any good, then you are surely mistaken. The Catholic Church has just as many problems as my own Church, if not more due to its sheer size. These problems that we face are terrifying, literally terrifying, and they can shake even the strongest of peoples’ faiths. Myself, a humble sinner who makes dozens of mistakes a day was brought to tears when a group of people on the Internet formally wrote down every problem my own Church was facing, and I too felt the need to run to flee what I saw as wreckage to the Oriental Orthodox Church.
But a very wise woman who is an English convert to Coptic Orthodoxy told me what I am telling you now: running from a problem will do you no good, and that you need to trust in the Lord to see you and your fellow Man through it. Every Church has its own problems on a day-to-day basis: if you want to join a Church that’s not plagued with worldly ills, then you better make your own church where you sit at home alone every given Sunday because you sitting on a couch alone is the only place you’ll find a Church without issue.
Finally, my last point is this: do you honestly think that
Putin’s Russia is somehow the bastion of Orthodoxy and our leader of example on the world stage? I laugh at that very notion! If not even One Bishop to Rule Them All can guarantee that all his followers will be upstart moral-figures, then how do you think our Church with its hundreds of equal bishops could possibly hope to do the same? For every Orthodox Christian spitting on a defenseless person there is an Orthodox Christian in a soup kitchen or far from home in a land not their own preaching the word of God. If you want to only see the bad in one country and not the good in all country, then I think you’re either mislead, headstrong, or scared. I myself am all three of those things, but I absolutely refuse to give in to the temptation of despair. You might be pleased to know that there is a group called Axios out there, founded by LGBT Orthodox Christians, who has taken it upon themselves to be the Church’s emissaries to the gay community, and that there are most definitely gay Orthodox Christians out there who fight for their own salvation as the Church militant just like we all do. You can read about their DC chapter here:
axiosdconline.tripod.com/ If you somehow think that Catholicism will be any different, then I admire your optimism.
You seem to have made up your mind about joining Catholicism, and so be it. This will be the last I say of it to you. But if you somehow think that we Orthodox Christians are all tribalistic homophobes and that running away from us you’ll find your salvation, then I want to tell you that you are gravely mistaken. If you never want to speak to me again, that’s no problem at all; but if you still feel like you have a word to say to me about all of this and how you feel, then I’d love to speak with you about it at
constantinecesak@gmail.com.
Thank you, and God bless. I will pray for you and I ask that you will pray for me, a sinner trying to find his way in the world.
